CLASSICAL POETRY

IN THE ARABIC, PERSIAN

AND
TURKISH LANGUAGES

A POETOLOGICAL APPROACH

by
ESAD DURAKOVIĆ
Classical Poetry in the Arabic, Persian and Turkish Languages
A Poetological Approach
Esad Duraković
©Turkish Academy of Sciences, 2019

Science and Thought Series

Number 27

Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi

Piyade Sokak No 27, 06690
Çankaya – Ankara / TURKEY
Tel: +90 312 442 29 03
www.tuba.gov.tr

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may

be made without written permission.

ISBN: 978-605-2249-31-4

Translated by
Selma Đuliman

Graphic Design
Ece Yavuz

First Edition
1000 copies

Printed by
Tek Ses Ofset, ANKARA
October 2019
That what had disappeared in our literature in Oriental languages, translated into the
language we speak, is its form and its vowel component, and that means that we have
been denied the position of a collocutor from the onset.

Nirman Moranjak-Bamburać, “Ideologija i poetika” [“Ideology and Poetics”],

in: Radovi Filozofskog fakulteta, Sarajevo, 2000
It is with great joy that I dedicate this study to my younger associates from the
Department of Oriental Philology, Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo: Elma, Amra,
Suada, Munir, Mirza, Amir D.

I owe sincere gratitude to Dr Selma Đuliman, who translated the book into English.
Her exceptional enthusiasm added to the joy in the final stages of my research. I am
glad that her translation marked my research effort and excitement. I would also like
to extend my gratitude to Mr. Michael Mehen, whose sincere comments and proof-
reading made the writing and translating process that much more enjoyable.

The publication of this book would not be possible without support and encourage-
ment of Turkish Academy of Science (TUBA). It is great honor to have this highly
esteemed institution of excellence in academia as the publisher. I would like to ac-
knowledge with gratitude the care and commitment of Prof. A. Nuri Yurdusev for
showing the confidence, help and patience.

The Author
 CONTENTS

FOREWORD........................................................................................................... 9
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 11

I. LITERARY HISTORY AND/OR POETICS .................................................. 19

CLASSICAL LITERATURE IN ORIENTAL-ISLAMIC LANGUAGES:
INTERNATIONAL HERITAGE AND NATIONAL IDEOLOGIES . ................... 19
PHILOLOGY AS “A SERVANT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCES”.
THE LIMITED POSSIBILITIES OF PHILOLOGY.............................................. 22
LITERATURE USED AS AN ARGUMENT FOR NATIONAL IDENTITY . ...... 28
PHILOLOGY AND LITERARY HISTORY........................................................... 32
PERSPECTIVES OF POETOLOGY IN RESEARCHING CLASSICAL
LITERATURE IN ORIENTAL-ISLAMIC LANGUAGES.................................... 34

II. THE MAIN HISTORICAL-POETOLOGICAL TERMS IN CLASSICAL

LITERATURE....................................................................................................... 45
THE TERM ADAB: A UNIVERSE OF HUMANISTIC VALUES........................ 45
THE SYNCRETIC CHARACTER OF ADAB....................................................... 48
THE INTEGRATIVE POWERS OF ADAB: BETWEEN SHĪ‘A AND SUNNISM.. 53
FUNCTIONS OF THE TERMS SHĀ‘IR (“POET”) AND SHI‘R (“POETRY”)... 56
POETRY UNDER THE PROPHET’S MANTLE . ................................................ 60
THE POETOLOGICAL TERM SAN‘A AS A DEPARTURE FROM THE
IDEOLOGICAL CONTENT OF THE TERM SHĀ‘IR . ....................................... 69
FANN AS A TECHNICAL TERM FOR ART . ...................................................... 72
THE TERM FANN AND ITS REALISATION IN THE FORM OF
TAHMĪS AS A FORM REPRESENTING FANN . ................................................ 74
NAẒIRA AS A SPECIAL KIND OF THE POET’S ABILITY............................... 82

III. THE TERMS CREATION AND BEAUTIFUL IN CLASSICAL

LITERATURE....................................................................................................... 91
ART AS INNOVATION NOT CREATION . .......................................................... 91
ARCHITECTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE TRADITION:
A TRIUMPHANT “SCULPTURING” OF THE FORM ....................................... 95
UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY AND THE BEAUTIFUL IN EUROPEAN
AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE IN THE ARABIC, PERSIAN AND TURKISH
LANGUAGES: A SKETCH ................................................................................... 97

6
IV. TOWARDS THE MORPHOLOGY OF LITERARY GENRES/FORMS:
STABILITY OF THE POETICAL SYSTEM .................................................. 105
ANCIENT QAṢῙDA AS A SUBLIMATION OF TOTALITY.............................. 105
THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW FORMS FROM THE ANCIENT QAṢῙDA... 108
THE MORPHOLOGY OF THE GHAZAL ..........................................................111
THE POETIC FUNCTION OF THE LAPIDARY:
INCORPORATING FRAGMENTS INTO THE SENSE OF A WHOLE . .......... 120
FROM THE GHAZAL IN THE “UMAYYAD PERIOD” TO THE GHAZAL IN
THE TURKISH LANGUAGE.............................................................................. 125
THE QAṢῙDA AS A COHESIVE FORM OF TRADITION ............................... 133
THE MUSAMMAṬ FORMS................................................................................ 147
The issue of genre and form in classical literature . ......................................... 147
Form rather than content becomes an inspiration; the relationship of orientalists
towards it .......................................................................................................... 151
Musammaṭ or the “necklace” as a poetological term. Tradition as a “jewellery
shop” . ............................................................................................................... 153
Endless and carefree game of forms makes the tradition lyrical . .................... 157
Form as a hero of the tradition and marginalisation of the author’s name . ..... 162
THE MATHNAWĪ . .............................................................................................. 167
The form mathnawī and the ancient Arabic qaṣīda ........................................... 167
Mathnawīs as naẓīras in the late classical period .............................................. 172
Works of classical literature in inadequate translations: The Mathnawī as an
example ............................................................................................................. 173
Rumi’s explications on poetry ........................................................................... 176
DISCORD OVER THE DESCRIPTION OF AN ELEPHANT AND ITS SHAPE.. 181

V. SUFI POETRY, A GRAND POETIC SHIFT............................................... 199

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GHAZAL AND SUFI POETRY......... 199
CRITICISM OF THE TERM “OBJECT OF LOVE” IN SUFISM . .................... 203
TRANSPOSITIONS IN SUFI POETRY............................................................... 208
THE TRANSPOSITION OF THE SENSUAL INTO THE SPIRITUAL AND
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ................................................................................. 214
FROM SIMILE, THROUGH METAPHOR, TO SYMBOLS AND CODES ...... 219
A CRITICAL OVERVIEW OF TWO CHARACTERISTIC ORIENTALIST
APPROACHES TO SUFI POETRY..................................................................... 228

CONCLUSION.................................................................................................... 237
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 245
NAME INDEX .................................................................................................... 258
SUBJECT INDEX . ............................................................................................. 262

7
FOREWORD

This book, Classical Poetry in the Arabic, Persian and Turkish Languages: A Po-
etological Approach argues for a unique poetical system of the classical literature in
the three oriental-Islamic languages. The argument is elaborated primarily building
upon the principal historical-poetological terms in the classical period, namely, cre-
ativity and the beautiful; and dealing with the main literary forms in classical litera-
ture (the ghazal, a number of musammat forms, mathnawī, Sufi poetry).

Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA) is pleased to publish this monographic study

of the classical poetical literature of Arabic, Persian and Turkish languages by Aca-
demician Esad Durakovic, member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia
and Herzegovina (ANUBIH). TÜBA conceives science in its widest sense as it is
implicated in the Turkish word “ilim”, which comprises the reliable scholarly study
of nature, society and art. TÜBA sees itself as part of the global scientific commu-
nity and values its international cooperation with sister academies. I do hope that
Durakovic’s work will enhance our cooperation with ANUBIH and contribute to the
collaboration between the scientific communities in Turkey and Bosnia and Herze-
govina. I would like to thank Academician Durakovic for submitting this manuscript
to TÜBA and A. Nuri Yurdusev, former Vice President of TÜBA, for his efforts in
making it to publication.

Ahmet Cevat Acar Muzaffer Şeker

President of TÜBA President of TÜBA
since 2012-2019 since May 2019 -...

9
INTRODUCTION

Literature enjoys the special privilege of constant revitalisation through our ever-
changing perception of it. Hence, theories or reflections on literature do not always
succeed in exhausting all of its meanings or senses and “capturing” them in the
coherence of their own system. Artistic literature is a value that escapes definiteness
in theory or interpretation: it is always – at least somewhat differently – realized in
the open mind of the reader, (that is, readers), even in different epochs, which can
“form” a temporary intersubjective value judgement. The best proof of this, if any
proof is at all necessary, is the abundance of approaches to literature, be it in the form
of the works of individual writers, of certain literary “movements”, or entire literary
periods. Methodologically sound approaches, in principle, produce important contri-
butions to the understanding of literature, but do not exhaust it; hence new approach-
es are formed as a result of the awareness that previous research is incomplete. This
gives rise to the significant fact that the inexhaustible vitality of literature rests not
only in literature itself, but also in our relationship towards literature as a value.
Ergo, the reception of literature – regardless if it is the perception of an “ordinary”
reader, theoretical or literary-historical, or some other kinds of presentations of lit-
erature – is always a kind of reconstruction made current by various forms/aspects
of (our) context. Hence, constant new readings of literature are a necessity, as well
as the constant positioning of literature by various methods. That further inevitably
implies that histories of literature, and its interpretations (theoretical or otherwise)
become a part of literature itself, in one comprehensive meaning, for literature, as a
value, is only realized within a certain context/contexts and with which it interacts
in a dynamic relationship of mutual agreement/understanding as a mutual upgrading
and permanent revitalisation.

This undertaking of reconstruction is, in fact, one of the essential issues in approach-
ing an individual work, an opus, as well as in approaching each literary period
in which a literary work came to life interactively, not by the causality principle,
whereby one needs to be aware of certain specificities of the opus and, especially,
of the literary periods. It is also necessary to keep in mind the ever-important fact
that in artistic literature, we are dealing with values, and that means that the ideal
of research or interpretative objectivity in this field is a mere fantasy on the verge
of senselessness, and that an ideal reconstruction is impossible, nor even desirable,
since we are forming our relationship towards literature that was realised as a value
in its time, while we are positioning it as a value in our own time as well.

A constant but also necessary relative inconsistency we are dealing with here is
manifested in a special way when we talk about comprehending literature of the
classic or ancient period of a culture, in this case, the literature of the Oriental-Islam-
ic cultural milieu. In this sense, it is necessary to warn of a paradox that will show
the insubstantiality of a belief in self-sufficiency and the isolation of histories of the
classical literatures, while it is exactly there that the “character” of artistic literature

11
is shown – in its dynamic nature, in the impossibility of finally closing it within lit-
erary history/histories. Namely, this is the belief that literature has become the final
and static order by a chronology of events in history that may at first appear reason-
able, so much so that even the relationships between literary works seem to have
been finally and irreversibly defined, and that, given this historical “completeness”
it is possible to offer a final history of classical literature; to complete its representa-
tion (and I place emphasis on this word). Such “definitiveness” is represented – and
literature of this kind bears witness to that – in positivistic histories of literature: in
histories that overly depend on chronology as the main stronghold, as well as on
description of “literary facts” in chronological order, all in an effort to represent clas-
sical literature as an objective reality, as “stable,” since it has already been realised
in a past and supposedly forever categorised in time. Since such a representation
of classical literature is most frequently aided by its close ally philology, then, at
first, all that is related to literature is made more certain and fixed, even with greater
self-confidence. And the very representation of classical literature in Arabic, Persian
and Turkish has been and remains mainly in “the field of” philology, especially ori-
entalist, hence in presenting ancient and classical literature, “cooperative” methods
of philology and history are applied to an extent leading to the inability of mutual
recognition; hence literature, in their presentations, is the final fact which can, possi-
bly, be further described in detail, but it is a matter of course that it is not possible to
overrate such literature, since philology does not, in fact, pass a value judgement in
the course of its research. Oriental philology has for a long time been “privileged” in
its approach to ancient and classical literature, so that many have already conceded
to its persistence and its authority. All of that has resulted in inertia.

However, our research relationship towards classical literature and its positioning
in our time is far more complex than that what is perceived at first sight and from
that what philology considers as definite. Moreover, classical literature is especially
suitable for presenting evidence in terms of “time relativity” – to use the term from
physics, with full awareness of its differences in this context. Namely, classical liter-
ature is not completely contained in philological factuality, ergo, in chronological in-
evitability. Since we are talking primarily about values, and not only about historical
facts as implied and presented by methods of philology, the category of historicity
is pungently relativized, for – in order for us to accept that literature as a system of
values in a possible optimum, contexts within which those facts were realised as
such need to be reconstructed, but, at the same time also contextualised, as such, in
their own system of values or within their own contexts. It is precisely this two-way
relationship between classical and modern, or contemporary, that is an extraordinary
energy point in which the relativity of time is unveiled optimally, for classics that
appear finalised in a time strongly affects our time, just as our time – owing to our
efforts at reconstruction – again and in a new way gives life to classical literature,
which is thus, in a way, constantly “reincarnated”. It is a permanent and special kind
of energy exchange for which this study is to provide sufficient amount of evidence
and explanation.

12
A note is needed for further exposition. Namely, as I have already stated in the title
of the study, by classical I always mean the classical literature in the Arabic, Persian
and Ottoman Turkish languages, unless stated otherwise; that is why I will use the
more “economical” title classical literature for that field. Also, by the term ancient
literature I always mean primarily Arabic ancient literature (orientalists usually re-
fer to it as the pre-Islamic literature), and not ancient Greek or any other ancient
literature. If the term ancient refers to some other culture in my exposition, I will
emphasise it. At the same time, one of the main goals of my research is to prove that
ancient Arabic literature is, in fact, in “the status” of antiquity of the entire classical
literature in Arabic, Persian and Turkish: that enormous classical literature shares
one common antiquity in poetological sense.

This classical literature has not been represented – as far as I know – the way that I
was advocating in the above text. It is significantly handicapped because it contains
two predominant methods showing significant limitations. Firstly, I emphasise that
classical literature is represented by an abundance of histories of literature, which,
as I have already stated, derive from philology, especially from oriental philology,
which has undoubtedly had significant contributions, but has yet to overcome its
own obviously limited scope. The majority of histories of classical literature are
of a catalogical nature, which means that they lack value judgements, especially
elaborate ones. One of the key pieces of evidence of the major shortcomings of this
abundance of histories of classical literature is their extremely historical (historio-
graphical) and neutral periodization of literature in terms of value. A mere outlining
of biographies of authors and literary works in history is still not a representation of
a system to which establishing relations is inherent, and it is precisely those works
that will be predominant in the representation of classical literature that is the subject
of this study.

The second important problem in the representation of this literature is (characteris-

tic of the majority of other cultures) contained in the fact that researchers too often
approach classical literatures from the position of their own ethnocentrisms. They
are trying to rein in artistic literature as an important argument of national identity.
That is where an enormous problem arises, for a violence of a kind occurs, even a
forgery of classical literature. It is difficult to understand the extent to which we have
gotten used to appropriate writers and their works on the basis of nationality, thus
denying some characteristics of literature as art. It is inappropriate to draw litera-
ture into this kind of argumentation, for artistic literature is in essence universalistic
and without nationality; hence, its separation into ethnic exclusivities, as a mater
of fact, undermines that characteristic of literature, that is, it shows an utter mis-
understanding of the nature of literature. A writer’s ethnicity should essentially be
differentiated from the poetical “affiliation” of his work: those are different kinds of
“facts”. Literature has constantly been accompanied by the problem of ethnocentric
approaches, especially from the 19th century, and that problem is enormously present
in classical literature, since it is dominated by the poetics of sameness, rather than

13
originality in today’s meaning of the term. In the classical epoch, tradition was a
hero, not a nation; moreover, tradition as a value above nation, or as an international
value seemed a powerful factor of cultural homogenisation at the expense of ethnic
or ethnocentric separate affirmation. The ethnic fragmentation of classical literature
is of a more recent date: it appeared mostly in the later period of the formation of na-
tions and because of the need for augmenting and strengthening national identities.
That is a flagrant and inadequate projection of ideologies, even politics, which apply
the present perspective onto a literary past that was not only entirely different, but
also even opposed to the ethnocentric categorisation that is declaratively represented
as an argument in the domain of passing value judgements. This is how “national
literatures” were formed, containing forcefully fragmented classical literature; they
are nominated and studied that way – as supposedly valuable national exclusivities
and arguments of ethnocentrism: Arabic, Persian, Turkish literature, etc. The fact,
however, is that the classical literature was an exceptionally supranational system,
as I have already stated, for writers made their best efforts to form common cultural,
not national, values (and also common poetics). That is why, for example, in a work
by Rumi, some chapters are written in Persian, and some in Arabic, with poetical
postulates of ancient Indian and ancient Arabian literature prior to Rumi’s time. As
time went by, such “cases” became a commonplace of the Oriental-Islamic culture,
indicating even its semiotisation. The more syncretic a work, the more valued it was.

Literary history has not been able to neutralise the favouring of ethnocentric ap-
proaches to a field that used to be exclusively composite, non-ethnocentric until
recent times. Literary history is simply a method that fails to resist the ethnocentric
fragmenting of a unique system of classical literature; it has no such possibility sim-
ply because, as I have already emphasised, it fails to represent the “soul” of literature,
that is, literature as a form of art; rather, it mainly concedes to history as science and
its demands. This especially concerns classical literature, which is the subject of my
study, since (oriental) philology played a dominant role in its representation. In that
sense, questions arise of what to do in given circumstances, how to meet the desire of
classical literature to be represented to (in) our modernity in a way that will cast new
light upon it for us, as a universe of values we have optimally “reconstructed” and
that are not antiquities but living values for us as well. Before I answer this question,
it should be emphasized that the part of the word that inherits classical literature in
Arabic, Persian and Turkish does not even have a developed literary-historical sys-
tem of thought as seen in the West, and this, sadly, is an additional handicap for the
novel representation of classical literature that will be attempted here.

I also find it necessary to warn from the start that my study predominantly concerns
poetry of the classical period. Such a relationship towards the classical period is not
a consequence of arbitrariness but of the fact that this classical literature is predom-
inantly poetic and that the artistic prose in that period was relatively undeveloped.
Non-artistic prose forms were well known, while artistic prose was also well known
in a significantly smaller production scope, but they all are simply incomparable

14
with the productive abundance and artistic bountifulness of the poetry that marked
that entire cultural circle. What is more, this poetological study aims to reconstruct
the classical period of Oriental-Islamic culture in poetologically barely apprehensi-
ble games of poetic forms, which make the entire tradition utterly lyrical. The study
intensively communicates with my book, titled in Bosnian as Poetika stare i klasične
arapske književnsoti: Orijentologija (Sarajevo, 2004) and published by Routledge in
2015 under the English title The Poetics of Ancient and Classical Arabic Literature:
Orientology. In that book, I dealt with the poetics of ancient and classical Arabic
literature. At the very horizon of my research, what was previously merely a research
hypothesis and what was yet to be proved became apparent and challenging from a
research perspective. In the formation of the Oriental-Islamic cultural universe, the
poetical foundations of ancient and classical Arabic literature had obviously become
the poetical foundations of classical literature in general; that is, literature that was
for centuries written in Persian and Ottoman Turkish. This phase of research and
insight gave rise to a pressing need to write this second study, which will examine
classical poetry in Arabic, Persian and Turkish from a poetological perspective. In
that sense, these two studies are pronouncedly complementary.

Poetology is significantly scarce in the presentation of classical poetry. And I con-

sider poetology to be a highly competent approach to classical literature for several
reasons, out of which I wish to emphasise two basic ones.

First, keeping in mind its scarce application, there is a great need for a poetological
approach because it is able to bring about innovations in understanding and the rep-
resentation of this vast body of literature.

Second, but in relation to the aforesaid – the poetological approach has an advantage
over literary history. It is necessary to immediately warn that it is not possible to
separate literary history from poetics, but neither do they overlap, in spite of some
important efforts in bringing together the inherent and the chronological approach
(in that sense, one should mention Russian Alexander Nikolaevich Veselovsky who
wrote, in the late 19th century, Historical Poetics, a philological critique). In grasping
classical literature, the historical approach has been significantly and persistently
suspended by historicity, prevented by the historical character of philology, while
poetology overcomes all of that because it encompasses the enormity of classical
literature as a system of values realised in mutual relations. At the very beginning,
it abandons positivisms and surrenders to the efforts of presenting the very soul of
literature as art. In that sense, in encompassing and presenting literature as a form
of art, poetology is at a higher level of research compared to literary history. A valid
poetological approach would, consequently and inevitably, also offer a different pe-
riodization of literature in accordance with the principle of inherence.

There is an important distinction to be made here between two terms that I use in this
study – poetics and poetology. By poetics, I mean a coherent approach that attempts

15
to reach and represent the specifically literary structures of a work, that is, of an opus.
Poetology approaches those poetics in an attempt to present them as functional parts
of a (higher) system. Poetical approaches are lacking in studies of classical literature,
especially the poetological approach. My study belongs to poetology in the sketched
meaning – its task is to encompass and present classical literature as a system. In
that sense, I am not dealing here with the poetics of individual works, although such
approaches do provide valid results. The reader will notice that I occasionally speak
of certain works, but that is an illustration of the system’s functionality – I introduce
into the discussion only some exemplary works that syncretised the poetical experi-
ence of several individual works in history and several related poetics, so that those
works already represent a complex system that demands a poetological approach.
This is all the more important considering the previously emphasised fact of the
dominance of the poetics of similarity in classical literature.

The poetological approach to classical literature deconstructs ethnocentric fortifica-

tions where ethnically itemised literatures are imprisoned, separated without foun-
dation from a vast system of classical literature, and that was done (it appears even
today) through violence of non-literary factors which include various ideologies,
especially national or nationalistic, always fully supported by one or many politics.
In that sense, this study expects disagreements, but I hope it is sufficiently secured
by consistency and coherence, since it deals with a system, not with its supposedly
self-sufficient fragments. Potential opposing arguments based upon adducing indi-
vidual works as exceptions will be to the detriment of those same works that have
“escaped” the system, for given its poetics of similarity, classical literature truly was
an enormous, powerful system, and hence any kind of projection of ideology from a
more recent vantage upon that system would be inappropriate. It will be seen by the
end of this study that one of its primary subjects is the defence of classical literature
as an art form from this same kind of ideological invasion.

Now, let us immerse ourselves in the text and in doing so perhaps achieve this.

16
CHAPTER I
I. Literary history and/or poetics

CLASSICAL LITERATURE IN ORIENTAL-ISLAMIC LANGUAGES:

INTERNATIONAL HERITAGE AND NATIONAL IDEOLOGIES
A literary work is always “condemned” to new approaches and interpretations,
which also become a part of literature, for they construct a succession of different
con/texts in which a work is invariably situated as a new value. Its destiny is com-
plex to the extent that it is used in the construction and affirmation of all kinds of
identities (individual, national and other kinds of collective, even historical identity,
etc.), and, in the process, a literary work as an artistic entity is relativized. Hence, a
literary work, written in the recent or more distant past, is not only a historical – it is
not even primarily historical – but an anthropological fact: no single history, no sin-
gle approach in history fully and forever exhausts a literary work. Various method-
ological approaches to literature bear witness to that, together with literary histories
that have been constantly written anew.

In light of these facts lies Barthes’ recommendation to always read literature in a new
light, for “every era may be convinced to own the canonical sense of a work, but it
only takes for history to expand a little for that unique sense to be transformed into a
multitude of meanings and a closed work into open.”1 It is necessary to always create
new literary histories, the same way as Lucien Febvre and Merleau Ponty demanded
always the creation of a history of history and history of philosophy, in order for
“the past object of historicity” to become “a complete object”.2 In that sense, literary
history is necessarily transient, even though it creates “academic canons” through
evaluation – its necessary aspect and goal, but Barthes’ claim that every period has a
right to a canonisation of its own is entirely sensible.

The need of new readings of classical literature in the Oriental-Islamic languages is

especially important because it is most frequently read in the post-classical epoch,
especially in the modern period, in its highly complex compositeness, and hence
there have been attempts to affirm “national” literatures in a “literary empire” mostly
on the basis of the ethnic background of the author. That literature is fragmented by
“ethnic readings” in a unique poetical system, such that histories of Turkish litera-
ture, Persian literature, and of Arabic literature, etc. have already been established. I
will dedicate special attention to “the Bosniak heritage in Oriental-Islamic languag-
es”, which was created over several hundred years during the time of the Ottoman
Empire in the Balkans, as representative of the complex position of “national literary

19
entities”, or corpuses, although I would like to emphasise to the reader that “heri-
tage” is a “model” for other “national literatures” formed in the classical period and
that they are all open to the same methodological approach.

The “Bosniak heritage in Oriental-Islamic languages” (I use the title tentatively) is

paradigmatic in the sense that is used in an attempt to establish national identity in
history, as has been the case with other peoples who participated in the creation of
classical literature, primarily Iranians and Turks: they find classical literature to be a
stronghold of their national identity in history. However, in the case of the Bosniak
national corpus, the issue concerning that heritage is far more complex because in
that very example one can see the controversial effects of ideologies in the domain
of classical literature, which are used as an argument for national identity.

The issue is that relatively large peoples, like Iranians or Turks, do not have prob-
lems with the argumentation of their national identity through literature, and the goal
of my study is to problematize the trustworthiness of such argumentation. Bosniaks,
as a people, who have historically been exposed to the blind forces of neighbouring
assimilations, have also tried to argue for their national identity (also) in classical
literature, but there have been decades-long attempts to neutralise and prevent their
efforts, primarily because of ideological reasons: “greater” peoples around them
strive to invalidate all aspects of the national identity of Bosniaks (including that
which is believed to be contained in classical literature) for assimilation purposes,
that is, for the realisation of “local national hegemonies”. In both cases ideology is
at play; ideology from the position of the present striving into a past that has under-
stood and represented itself entirely differently. Our reading of the literary “past” is,
thus, highly complex, and this is seen in the Bosniak example. Hence, my reflection
on that example is not a dedication to a “local heritage” as allegedly marginal and,
thus, irrelevant, but I want to use that example to show the different courses of action
of modern “ethno-ideologies” or ethnocentric ideologies in a cultural universe that
“functioned” on different principles.

The Bosniak heritage within Oriental-Islamic languages is a converging junction of

the golden age of the Oriental-Islamic Middle Ages and its cradle in Oriental-Islamic
(Arabian) antiquity on one hand, as well as the modern Bosniak western spirit on the
other. It is tendentious to interpret and situate it – as is frequently done – as a dis-
continuity in the development of spirituality and, in so doing, the term discontinuity
is burdened with considerable negative potential. The primary goal of that alleged
discontinuity is of an extreme ideological nature, for in that case, to the greatest ex-
tent possible, the intention is to problematize, that is, deny the national and cultural
identity of a people through the “interpretation of literature”. In that way, literature,
the character of which was exclusively supranational, is forcefully placed under
ideological and even political deformations and repressions of the more recent past.
Moreover, this heritage is an expression of a cultural dominance, since it equally par-
ticipated in the creation of the entire cultural universe, of universal significance. That

20
is why this analysis should be unapologetic; instead it is necessary to write its valid
history/histories and present its senses, meanings and its importance for our under-
standing of history, as well as for our understanding of an Identity in the multitude
of aspects of that term, but by no means only in the meaning of the national identity.
Similar “historical episodes” (with the recognition of differences) are well known
elsewhere and in other periods: there is an entire Croatian literature in Latin, even
in Italian; there is that enormous “complex” eruditely presented by E. R. Curtius as
“the European Literature of the Latin Middle Ages”.3

The main problem with the search for a continuity at any cost and with proclaim-
ing so-called discontinuity as an argument for “non-totality” or problematic identity
(primarily ethnic) rests in interpreting and valuing certain historical periods exclu-
sively from our present perspective and in projecting, in fact, one’s own identity
onto those historical periods for the needs of our ideological goals, disregarding the
fact that identities were perceived differently at that time and that national entities
are more recent phenomena. It is often forgotten that identity is a historical category
because it is constantly exposed to the winds of history.

Unlike Arabic, Iranian or Turkish heritage, Bosniak heritage in Oriental-Islamic lan-

guages was long neglected in the sphere of scientific interest or from institutionally
supported research, and this primarily for ideological reasons: elements of Islamic
culture in the countries of socialist Yugoslavia (but also before socialist Yugoslavia)
were deemed a foreign entity and a disruptive factor through a strong affirmation of
the epic awareness of identity, which we see in the canonical literary works primari-
ly of Serb and Montenegrin writers, all the way to the repressive measures of official
politics.4 The goal was to a priori declare deviant and disruptive all those elements
of the culture and, by doing so, to deny the identity of a people. Hence, its neglect
was not the result of science, but an extremely rigid and persistent ideology.

The consequence of such a relationship towards Oriental-Islamic culture in the area

of the former Yugoslavia was, among other things, the prevention of a wider and
institutionally supported study, interpretation and evaluation of heritage in Orien-
tal-Islamic languages. The ultimate goal was to problematize an identity. Among
the numerous forms of violence that occur in the context of literature, perhaps this
is of the worst kind. The result of this long repression is that the history of Bosniak
literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, situated either separately or in a poetically
integrated empire of Oriental-Islamic literature, has not yet been written. The truth
is that that literature has been “distanced” from us in a special way, and not only a
“historical” one. It is, somehow trapped in history, in languages not spoken in the
Balkans, but literature is not to be “blamed” for that, nor is it inferior because of that;
on the contrary, it significantly contributed, from the very edge of the semiosphere,
to a cultural, global universe, in a period when affirmation of Tradition, rather than
an individual talent and the “virtues” of ethnocentrism, was considered normal. That
literature – observed from all “observation points” for the estimation of its value –

21
reached the highest peak in an intercultural and interliterary community. It waits for
a constructive dialogue. Still – the history of Bosniak literature in Oriental-Islamic
languages has not yet come to life. The majority of what exists is a profusion of facts
which fail, due to their extremely positivistic nature, to even indicate a system, a
functional “kingdom of art”; there are layers of cultural folds which bear witness to
the incompetence of the research methods, incompetence in presenting this heritage
as an “aesthetic entity” that gains its full sense within the wide frames of culture in
which it was created. The largest portion of this literature has not been investigated
sufficiently. It has been in the “research province” of orientologists, or to be more
exact – of oriental philologists, who, paradoxically, moved literary heritage both
closer and away from us at the same time. They were dedicated to forming an inven-
tory of a vast and mostly unidentified literary opus, and in doing so moved it closer
to us, as antiquities and artefacts, but they have also moved it away from us in the
following way.

PHILOLOGY AS “A SERVANT OF HISTORICAL SCIENCES”.

THE LIMITED POSSIBILITIES OF PHILOLOGY
In this context, it would be useful to remember Curtius’ observation that philology
is “a servant of historical sciences”.5 Oriental philologists approached heritage as
past, as an opus that is an examinable object of their expertise, which gives credence
to general or certain cultural events, not as an aesthetically living, abiding material
that we read not only as past, but also as something that significantly influences our
self-awareness; a collocutor, as Moranjak-Bamburać would say. To insist that the
historicity of the opus is the final realisation in the past, with permanently completed
and finalised sense/senses is that trait of historicity in philology that is unable to
understand literature in general as art, for the art of literature is characterised by that
special dynamics and vitality that make it both intersubjective and trans-historical,
“unrested” in the past. Literature does not know of old age; it does not abide by
“one-way traffic” in history, for that would make it a museum of artefacts, even if
consecrated. Instead of that “one-way traffic” which turns history into a museum
of artefacts, trapped in historiographical periodisation, which is a special form of
violence over its everlasting, trans-historical identity – instead of that kind of traffic,
we are partaking in a marvellous and constant “energy exchange” between past and
present.6 Oriental philology is not able to understand this simply because it is such a
science and cannot be expected to because it performs other duties, duties which are
not unimportant but are mainly preliminary.

Keeping in mind the fact of the constant “energy exchange” between past and pres-
ent, it is clear why a final version of literary histories, of any literature, is not possible
unless reduced to exclusively positivistic knowledge of exactly those (positive) phil-
ological facts. Yet that is not the history of literature: Barthes rightly recommends,
even warns of the need of constant new readings of literature, and that entails the
writing of new literary histories. Philology attempts to present the past, while liter-

22
ary history – owing to that exchange of energy between past and present – delib-
erately “curves” the past, showing, in defiance of philology, that it cannot be final,
but periodical and temporary. Literary history should not feel any kind of guilt or
lack because of that, for it is simply the way it is because we treat it the way we do.
Literary science (even sciences) have carried the inferiority complex towards exact
sciences for too long.

Orientalists from all over the world face similar problems concerning the relation-
ship with literary heritage in Oriental-Islamic languages. Their main problem al-
ready begins at the periodisation of that literature; periodization which is eminently
philological, meaning that the “methodological nature” of that periodization is, in
essence, historiographical, rather than literary-historical (that is how literary pe-
riods are formed: Umayyad, Abbasid, Ottoman literature, etc.). Even though they
undoubtedly spent large amounts of energy doing a useful job, philologists felt – in
the early stages of their endeavour – rather pleasant, full of self-confidence, for their
science, that is, method, is close to “objectivity”, which had been the ideal of literary
science. Philologists deal with facts and place them in their scientific domain, but
those are, in essence, factographically indisputable facts. This is the valid source of
their self-confidence.

Diligent work by oriental philologists becomes the basis of the next phase: philolo-
gists collect material with which one is to enter into a dialogue. Making an inventory
of literary material does not bring literature into life, it does not dialogise with it,
for only after that follows reading of the material, but not with a philological “ob-
jectivist” expertise that situates the work as an “ancient value”; rather, it is the kind
of reading that brings back to life the text as an aesthetic value, as something we
breathe life into and give space in our consciousness and living system of values.
Those works necessarily need to be introduced into the system of literary history
where they can live as treasures. Philology is not able to do that. Carl Brockel-
mann’s7 famous History of Arabic Literature, for example, or ‘Umar Farrūkh’s8 His-
tory of Arabic Literature in the Arab world, as well as numerous other similar works,
are histories, but are not primarily literary histories. Their titles, together with their
enormous reputation in traditional and still dominant oriental philology extraordi-
narily confirm the aforementioned Curtius’ remark on philology as the “servant of
history”: such and similar works are valuable, but only as a historical, catalogue
inventory of heritage, not as the history of literature which, in essence, does not
strive for a factographic representation of literature, but towards our perception and
evaluation of literary history which – wisely and necessarily – renounces aspirations
to so-called objectivity, and by that also to finiteness.

After making an inventory and after reading the material, the next step is criticism
and evaluation accomplished only within a system, within relations. In that phase,
philological meticulousness, the dedication of historicity as a finality and certainty,
and the “objectivised” self-confidence of philology are all abandoned in favour of

23
“value vortices”, a system of evaluation and judgements as non-objective categories.
It is that extraordinary state of the research spirit in which a philological meticulous
desire for a literary work is abandoned and replaced by a new kind of desire that I
could call the desire for one’s language. Or, to be more precise – the desire for a
literary work as a philological fact is not abandoned, it is only subjugated, which
means that it is contained also in the phase of a desire for one’s own language; this
second phase is subjugation, that is, an upgrade of the first stage. It is that particular
form of energy exchange between past and present. The highest possible reach in
that alternant movement of the past into present and our present into past is – ow-
ing to the cultivation of the desire for one’s own language – an invincible need for
writing, regardless if it is the writing of literary history, or about an artistic/artist’s
writing that is intertextual, even if it may not necessarily appear as such at first, since
an entire culture and its history is one Text.

We are still largely in the era of philology, although newer generations of researchers
indicate in their works attempts at overcoming a strict philological method. Gener-
ally, oriental philologists have performed for decades several functions, and at least
four need to be mentioned here.

1. Philologists are “finders” in the first phase of their work, rather than researchers:
for decades they found manuscripts, physically extracting them from attics, base-
ments and other kinds of dungeons, and placed them in illuminated depots – illumi-
nated both physically and metaphorically – making records of them in catalogues of
Oriental manuscripts. This was an important task – the basic collection of material,
whereby the originality of work, its autographic or transcribed status is authenticat-
ed; the author and/or his work is situated in a certain period, locality, etc. This is a
line of positivistic operations that mainly deals with the issues of the authenticity
of a literary work. By determining the date of a writer’s death and establishing his
work – which is at this stage only recommended for consideration – a fundamental
preparation for the growth of a work into a myth is performed, as Kafka stated: “It
is only after death that a man starts developing in his own way”.9 Philology creates
conditions we can use to prevent death from grabbing hold of the living.10

2. Oriental philologists are frequently – not always – also translators of some of the
works they discover. I use the word discover here in its full sense: it is this kind of
restlessness and impulsivity that forces a philologist to an immediate action and to a
kind of philological excitement of the same kind that archaeologists probably expe-
rience upon making a discovery. The philological “experience of discovery” makes
philologists not speak of the discovery themselves; instead, it prompts them to en-
able the discovery to speak for itself, but, in doing so, they do not give the power of
speech to the literary work by presenting it to the public; rather, they try to translate
it into their own language, since the public has changed compared to the public of
the source text: only a handful of experts can understand the language of the source
text. Serious problems arise at this stage, for philologists, who are specialists, bring

24
us closer to one sense of the source text, neglecting many other senses that certainly
could be realised in different and various understandings. Amongst those neglected
senses, we should mention the form, which is unrecognisable in the majority of phil-
ological translations, and frequently severely ignored. Transferring a form, which
was brought to the verge of perfection in the source text, into aesthetically inapt
prose, is a severe form of transgression. If unable to translate the form of the source
text, philologists should at least be able to explain or describe it, notwithstanding the
fact that that too is impoverishing the source text. They often state that they are try-
ing to transfer “only the meaning of the text”, without being aware that the meaning,
or sense, of an artistic text is not possible without its form: They are simply ignorant
of the sense or meaning of an art work, that is, ignorant of the fact that such a rela-
tionship between content and form, in a simultaneous form of expression, is what
gives a full sense or meaning to a text.

The second neglected sense of a literary work in philologists’ presentation is that

which realizes the work in a dynamic intertextual and value-based set of relations
with other works of its epoch, not to mention establishing relations between the
sense of those works and our own consciousness and time. Philologists are overly
subservient to their methods in order to be able to become competent and trust-
worthy transmitters of the polysemous nature of the discovered work into another
source (language, culture, etc.). Hence, the speech of a literary work in their articula-
tion is not also the speech of the source text, although it may be said, in a very broad
sense, that their translations have become a part of literature. I have experienced
severe disappointments and have read in disbelief translations of verses from Arabic
into other languages (Bosnian, Russian, English, Italian, etc.), even from the pens of
the world’s most renowned orientologists. Those translations are indeed dead stuffed
birds, and there is nothing sadder. It strikes me as even more interesting that many
oriental philologists, to my knowledge, do not even have a guilty conscience over
their translations, and all over the world, continue with the same practice. Those
philologically oriented “translations” of literary works have lasted for too long – for
decades, and have become, in a way, a normal situation and inertia.11

3. Apart from “translations”, philologists occasionally present their own interpre-

tations of literary works from history, but those interpretations, as a rule, do not
succeed in presenting the literary works in their interrelations, even at the level of
genre or formal historicity, or in their relationship towards other works with which
they construct “the empire of literature.” Interpretation is not only the retelling of
the content or motifs of a work, it is also one’s own representation of a multitude of
senses of works in their networking with other texts into a global Text as Culture. To
write about a literary work in history, or about a literary-historical period, does not
entail an “objective presentation” of a world, but its reorganisation, a kind of new
creation, for the facts trustworthily determined by philology need to “swing” in our
understanding of its history, and that is achieved by reviving the multitude of senses
of a literary work. And the last stage of philologists’ relationship towards a literary

25
work bears witness to the fact that philology is not apt for a “creative” task or feat.
Their “translations” of literary works, especially those that are exceptional for their
form and that warn of it (and the majority of literary works in classical literature
are exactly that), show that it is futile to expect an interpretation. I hereby propose,
as a creative organisation of literary history, or a new organisation of the world,
the following: One should avoid interpretations of literary works that show through
flagrant translational deficiencies that those who interpret and translate them are
not even aware of the crude fact that a literary work is alive only in the unity of its
“content” and its “form” and that it is exactly that unity that simultaneously makes
its primary sense. All those who fail to understand that should be mercilessly left to
their inapt factography. A literary work should wait for one who is able to afford it
the power of speech.

4. In the last stage of oriental philologists’ work occurs something they are not pre-
pared for in any of the previous stages; that is, something for which they never
prepared their “material”. They occasionally decide to write literary histories (of
Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Ottoman, literature etc.). Their motives for writing can be
twofold. On one hand, philologists are exposed to the pressure of a thick layer of
recorded facts (literary works, findings about authors, their genealogy and relations,
etc.) so that they succumb to this pressure and start a philological layering of the dis-
covered facts into an “order” that is unconditionally chronological, and that is why
the “systematisation” of facts is placed in the “drawers” of historiography: at the
same time, periodization is implemented, not literary, however, but predominantly
historiographical. Such works are, in fact, to a greater extent extensive catalogues,
rather than histories of literature. Philology simply cannot go against its own nature,
as Curtius exceptionally noticed and defined – philology is a servant of the historical
sciences.

On the other hand, since the results of their research are facts unbeknownst to the
wider public, philologists feel a strong need to publish them, for the essence of their
research rests on the desire that their results are made public; the research effort is
transformed into the marvellous joy of the creation of a final formation into a pre-
sentation, that is, into publicising. Thus, the anonymity of philological facts – all the
greater if stemming from a more distant past – surrenders, through time, to a want
of publication. Through such acts, philology would like to establish its “objectivity”
to the greatest extent possible, bringing the results of their research to a (seeming)
finality. Thus, philologists opt to write “literary histories”. However, this is where
they are mistaken – as I have already pointed out – because they inadequately “pres-
ent” their facts. Still, their scientific ideal in the positivistic sense of the word is
preserved, but in their “histories” the material remains untreated as art. However
– paradoxically – literary histories in oriental languages have so far been written by
philologists. What is there to criticise in their histories?

26
It is necessary in this context to forestall a possible conclusion by the reader on my
allegedly “hostile relationship” towards philology. I am aware of the enormous sig-
nificance of science for researching literary history in general. It is exactly its scien-
tific character, in the sense of a positivistic reliability that represents an extraordinary
precondition for later stages in approaching all that philology brought about by its
reliability. This virtue of philology should be appreciated by every approach, for the
results it achieves are the basic and, at the same time, reliable research upon which
new structures will be formed. However, the reliability of philology is later trans-
formed into something else. I have already emphasised the philologists’ pretentious
translations, which have “damaged” literary works by entirely ignoring their form,
thus preventing their sense and speech to come forward (also) in our contemporar-
iness. Exceptions are rare: the majority of globally significant oriental philologists
have produced aesthetically completely passivized and useless translations.12 That is
why their enormous reputation may come as a surprise. Once they decide to write
literary histories, the surprise becomes even greater. They introduce an abundance
of their material into an order that is chronological, or historiographical. Their sense
of time is strictly linear; it is much more chronological than it is historiographical
(chronicles and histories differ). Hence, in such literary histories, literary material
is presented chronologically in one, through a mainly mechanical succession. Writ-
ers are sorted; they are “boxed in” in accordance with ethnic and regional criteria
(Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Bosniak, etc.); they are classified in accordance to the
criterion of language those writers wrote in, although not even language (which I
will speak more of later) is the only criterion for belonging to a poetical system, and
all that is done in accordance with the absolute criterion of chronological succession
(the birthdates of writers – that is, of their literary work). That is how the tyranny
of historiographical method is introduced into literature, for philology is unable to
subdue its historical nature in the study of literary heritage. That is why oriental
philologists predominantly and favourably use the term history in their works. Also,
by using such titles, they are trying – perhaps even subconsciously or by nature of
the philological method – to optimally emphasise the philological ideal of science,
because it is as if they are saying that it is a history of facts beyond dispute. At the
same time, this is the way to portray that history, or the “history of facts” in the fi-
nal, strict meaning of scientism. That ideal and inertia drive philologists so strongly
that many of their works, that is, the works of some of the most prominent oriental
philologists, have acquired the form of an “expanded catalogue”, for in that way,
in the final result, those works have become handbooks of an everlasting value and
immediate usage. In them, hardworking authors who construct the “knowledge of
objectivity” are chronologically outlined, through positive facts of course (biograph-
ical data), by mentioning titles of their works, their occasional referencing of other
works, etc. Even if there are short explanations, or sustained interpretations, they
are unrefined, for mainly they speak of the one-way and reduced so-called influence
of an environment to a writer, or, less frequently, of the influence of a writer on an
environment. Philological descriptions of a work are most frequently mentioned,
meaning a precise and detailed description of its “physical appearance, which itself,

27
leaves an impression of an unparalleled scientific authority. However, although all
of that is useful, that is not literary history, the essence of which I tried to present in
the previous exposition. Literary history as a system of values, not facts in their indi-
vidualities, is necessarily arbitrary, not objective; that is the realisation of unity of the
highest order, unity which implies a dynamic relationship between “smaller unities”
(periods or genres, for example). In that sense – and that should be emphasised here
– literary history translates factography, abundantly presented by philology, into a
system of values which cannot be objective, ergo it cannot be final. That is why I can
say that it is possible to make a final philological literary “history” (it unjustly adopts
the word history), but it turns out that philology is unable to make a true literary his-
tory as final – as the living unity of the highest order. I will again emphasise some ex-
amples in this context, namely Carl Brockelmann’s History of Arabic Literature, or
‘Umar Farrūkh’s History of Arabic Literature. Those are the two best achievements,
the best editions of the German philological school (as probably the best philology),
and yet those are not the best literary histories; rather, they are good handbooks.
Those works meticulously and usefully marked traces of barely overviewed literary
history, but it is only after that that one needs to use the confident traces of those cat-
alogues-handbooks and through reading approach the literary works listed and bring
them into our speech. However, to emphasise again, philology has been dominant
in grasping the Oriental-Islamic literature for too long; it seems that the situation
has not changed and even today works of philological literary history are published.

LITERATURE USED AS AN ARGUMENT FOR NATIONAL IDENTITY

Many researchers of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, primarily ori-
ental philologists, are faced with paradoxes that are impossible to solve with their
existing methodological determination and criteria. This concerns in particular re-
searchers who “subordinate” philology as science to current ideologies. Their trou-
ble is that they do not understand the essence of that literature, do not consider the
position of the past and do not see the contexts of the past; rather, they approach
heritage from a priori current points of view. They try to reduce heritage to ar-
guments that will serve the current needs of the researcher and his time. It should
be emphasised that in the process their needs are exclusively ideologised, and this
incapacitates research validity, notwithstanding the fact that a neutral discourse does
not exist. Ideological imperative imposed by its time that is optimally ideologised in
all spheres causes real trouble in the presentation of heritage, and frequently some
solutions are offered that are beyond unacceptable – even absurd at certain stages of
research. Although it may appear that the local ideological imperative is irrelevant
as such, the following example is paradigmatic for the relationship towards classical
literature in Oriental-Islamic languages. It may bear witness to the extent to which
the a priori and ideologically unyielding, non-immanent approach to literary heri-
tage may cause unacceptable “results”. What is more, they are transformed in that
compulsion into their own opposite – that is, they function as counterarguments,
contrary to the intentions of the researcher and his or her ideology.

28
Pressured by an a priori ethnocentric criteriology, Sulejman Grozdanić expresses a
dilemma whether to classify Bosniaks who wrote in the Turkish language as Turkish
literature, or as “our” literature, and concludes that they cannot be considered writ-
ers of the Turkish literature because they are simply not Turks.13 In other words, the
ethnic criterion is made absolute. Obviously, criteria have been disturbed, priorities
replaced, for in such an approach it turns out that the writer’s origin is the most im-
portant issue; the birth certificate matters more than the writer’s opus. Without any
intention of being ironical – it is as if we have here a subsequent census instead of
a scientific representation of the history of literature. It is simply hard to believe it
possible to overlook – even in preparation for writing, let alone in the very writing
of a history of literature – such an important criterion as the language in which an
author wrote, and, even more so, the poetics within which the writer composed. The
researcher overlooks those criteria in order to create convincing conditions for en-
riching his own national corpus rather than a literary-historical system within which
that national corpus was created; a system that is predominantly non-ethnocentric
and transnational. However, this is not all.

In the history of literature in Oriental-Islamic languages (thus, also the Bosniak

heritage in those languages), things are complicated to the extent that the ethnic
criterion, or ethnocentric approach, is brought to absurdity. In this literature, there
are many authors who simultaneously wrote in two or in all three Oriental-Islamic
languages (Arabic, Persian, Turkish). This is a renowned literary-historical fact that
should warn every researcher of the inadequacy of ethnic criterion: namely, the fact
that such literature was written in cultural, historical and poetic conditions com-
pletely different than those projected into the past from the arrogant and ideologi-
cally irreconcilable point of view of the present time. Probably nowhere is this more
evident than in the case where an exclusive point of view of the present time is able
to “present” the history of literature in unimaginable deviations. Not only did many
authors write in two or three oriental languages, but there are also familiar cases of
one work being written in two languages. I will name only two examples. Rumi’s Se-
crets of Transcendence contains 72 chapters, seven of which were written in Arabic,
others in Persian.14 The poet ‘Ushshāqī (18th century) wrote a notable poem Tahmis
in Arabic and in Turkish, in one artefact, in a single poem. The question arises of
where to classify such a writer, and especially where to classify such a work.

Such writers (of whom there are many) who composed bilingual or trilingual works
should warn researchers that, judging by such opuses, the habit of classifying ev-
erything and always, especially into some given frames, drawers, etc., is inapt. The
problem lies in the habit that everything, without exception, can and has to be classi-
fied into eras, periods, so-called literary schools, genres, even in ethnic frames. The
essence of artistic literature, especially of the classical period, lies within something
different. Literature is, essentially, intertextual and transnational; it always, from the
point of view of poetics and the history of literature, communicates with other pe-
riods, even with other genres, although it may not appear so at first. However, even

29
when the so-called literary periods or epochs appear/“are substituted”, the next peri-
od in line may appear antagonistic to the previous, but is, in fact, already contained
or conceived in the previous; their relationship is alive to those who understand
literature: that is, the dynamic and meaningful relationship of “poetic conversation”,
not mutual exclusion. It is, in fact, a highly subtle relationship neither philologists
nor positivists will notice, but those who are well familiar with literary history as a
form of literary science are able to notice it, especially poetologists. Thus, literature
is exceptionally dynamic and alive; it gains power from the tension formed between
its “specialisation” into several possible but always conditioned peculiarities (poetic,
“historical-periodisational”, language, even ethnic specialisation, etc.) and its essen-
tial, never permanently disabled desire and capacity for universality in the sense of
universal values and trans-historicity. That tension is creative power. In that point,
in fact, the energy we call creation is formed; energy that makes artistic literature
immortal. At the same time, we cannot certainly predict the future of our past. This
character of literature determines it as exceptionally humanistic. Of course, works
contaminated by ideological or ideological-political pretentions and tasks are ex-
cluded from that; in such cases, it happens that something exclusively humane is
subjected to all kinds of exclusiveness, appropriations and hijack, all of which are
inhumane acts.

Here it is also necessary to say something else about the universalism of literature
and its humane essence, and those are arguments against the (inappropriate) classi-
fication of literature.

Not a single history of Oriental-Islamic literature or literatures of the classical period

(so-called Arabic, Turkish, Persian literature) may disregard the term adab (only
provisionally: literature). A careful researcher has to keep in mind the terminology
in history into which he enters as a researcher, for terminology says much about
literary works, context, poetics, etc. Today, the term adab has become reduced in the
Arabic world to artistic literature, hence, all essential content, transferred through
history, has been lost: adab was a sum of “written goods”, of all that contributed to
the cultivation of man, of the enrichment of his spirit.15 That is why the term adab
encompassed almost all sciences, not only artistic literature. That truly is an impres-
sive historical fact that has been neglected from the consideration and content of
the modern age. The term mu’addab has been coined from adab, and it means well-
raised, educated, enriched, of full moral integrity, of educational and ethical vigour
in the full sense of the word. Hence, the classical term adab is exceptionally import-
ant as a literary-historical, as well as a poetological term. It is both a term for moral
integrity and fullness, as well as for optimal education of a man of the classical era,
who by far surpasses with those characteristics a modern man of significantly scat-
tered identity. Is it at all possible to find a better proof of humane and humanistic
determination of literature in Oriental-Islamic tradition? The situation is quite the
same with other terms in this culture.16

30
Following the notion of ethnocentrism, orientologists have been faced with the
prominent fact that members of different ethnic communities wrote in the same lan-
guage, which was not their first, and the special difficulty for their undertaking the
classification of those writers has been the additional fact that some writers wrote in
two or three languages. In such cases, an orientologist opts to classify a writer into
the literature of the language in which he mostly wrote.17 Grozdanić states that such
is the practice of the Oriental Institute, which is an institution dedicated to research
on heritage in Oriental-Islamic languages. With time, we have gotten used to such
research inertia, so we consider it normal.

Since such a form of literature research is relatively widespread – and by no means

limited to oriental philologists! – one could conclude that people are, in general,
prone to adopting the values that belong not only to them, but are universalistic.18
Those appropriations are ideological in nature, even political, for political elites,
for their own purposes, and for the purpose of preserving their particular interests
(interests that are particular even at the level of state communities), use science and
art to affirm the alleged special characteristics of those communities, and in doing
so, emphasise that the term community both affirms common values and goals within
the community, as well as sets a boundary/limit with other community/communities.
That is where all its paradoxical nature rests. The interests of an ideological-political
community are imposed upon something that is not familiar with such boundaries.
In that sense, classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages is fragmented through
the criterion of “nationalisation”.

It is necessary to give a full swing to the classical literature that we talk about here
and to establish its position at a transnational level, as well as at an intercultural lev-
el, for art – and that entails literature as well – always contains something necessary
and something local, but it also always strives for universalization, which is opposed
to the self-centric nature of social-political communities; moreover, its value (the
value of individual works) is in proportion to the degree of their universality as
a general value. Art possesses extraordinary possibilities and needs to cross, even
eliminate, the aforementioned boundaries, for that is the most reliable way of its
realisation as value.19

Philologists consider themselves to be especially competent for writing literary his-

tories; they are filled with self-confidence for they believe that they are close to
“objectivity”. In that alleged closeness, they oftentimes adjust the material to their
own methods; more precisely – philologists present it the way that it appears as “ob-
jective” and as “scientific” as possible, so their presentations are overburdened with
positive facts through biographies of authors, descriptions of manuscripts through
word-to-word translation of literary works, and that all of this, in turn, neutralises
them aesthetically, etc. Chronological layering, which is also an “objectivity factor,”
is obligatory in the process, and in that way philology is presented as a servant of
the historical sciences.20 However, in spite of this affiliation with history, it has been

31
shown that philology does not have the means necessary for writing valid literary
history.

PHILOLOGY AND LITERARY HISTORY

Literary historians are by far in a more difficult position than philologists. A literary
historian needs to bring into unity of the highest order and present in a more-or-
less mechanical succession the fragmented and simultaneous nature of the literary
and cultural facts determined by a philologist. He deals with periods as conditional
“fragments”, with genres or certain opuses, but his task is contained in establishing
relations, which primarily entails an aspect of value. It goes without saying that such
a relationship towards smaller wholes or “smaller unities” (genres, periods, etc.)
that are brought to the “bigger unities” all the way to those of the highest order pre-
vents literary history from preserving the philological ideal of science in the sense
of “objectivity” or exactness. I have stated earlier that literary history is temporary,
for it always depends on our reading and our present point of view towards the past.
Following in the footsteps of Barthes’ previously mentioned statement, it should
be pointed out once more: “There is nothing odd when a country reflects from time
to time upon matters of its own past and describes them again in order to find out
what can be done with them: the issue is – the issue should be – regular evaluation
procedures”.21 Consequently, literary history is necessarily arbitrary and temporary.
Surely, it gravitates towards the establishment of academic canons, and that means
also to a certain degree of universalization, but only conditionally, for our permanent
reading of literary history – that is, works created in history – makes literary history
temporary. In that sense it is a valid conclusion that “injustice of a literary history
does not spring out that much from the content it shows as much from the form of
its behaviour towards literature”.22 The arbitrary character of a literary history and
its necessary temporariness (unless it is one of those philological literary histories
we previously discussed) take from it the ability to be the science of literature in
the meaning of natural sciences. Barthes rightly considers that we “own the literary
history, but not science of literature, because we are, undoubtedly, still unable to rec-
ognise, in the full sense of the word, the nature of a literary object, to realise that it
is a written object.”23 If that science ever comes to life, Barthes continues, “that will
not be a science of the content (that can be grasped only by historical science in the
strictest sense), but a science of the conditions of the content”.24

It could be assumed that the temporariness of literary history entails a lesser degree
of obligation and consistency, perhaps even subjectivity on the verge of arbitrariness
– that is not present with philologists – and that, in fact, all is “easier” (I shall use
this word again) for a literary historian. Yet the situation is the reverse: a literary his-
torian has no right to arbitrariness, for it would disqualify his work; instead, he nec-
essarily strives for – as I have already stated – academic canonisation and the inter-
subjective. That is why his work demands a comprehensive knowledge of literature,
a far greater intellectual effort in consistency and coherence, all with the purpose of

32
introducing philological facts into establishing relations and unity in the full mean-
ing of the word. Philology presents a literary historian the material it had researched
and presented through its methods, while a literary historian introduces that material
into a value system. At the same time, that same material is written in other lan-
guages, so it would be useful for philologists to try and transfer it to the language in
which the literary history is written, but to do so through an aesthetic transfer, not by
aesthetically inadequate writings. Finally, every researcher of classical literature in
Oriental-Islamic languages – a philologist, a historian, a poetologist – needs to pay
attention to a peculiar relationship among the “philological facts” of the period he is
researching, for it is just as specific as it is vast: it has its history and poetics, which
are significantly different than ours, or from the modern era in general. In other
words, making relations between smaller unities (all the way to individual works) in
that grand period becomes complex for a literary historian because the perception of
originality was significantly different than it is today. Relationships between literary
works, genres, etc., need to be within the focus of a literary historian (and the prob-
lem becomes even more complex in the process, because literary works are highly
diluted in space and time) in order to make a systematic overview of the abundance
of philological facts and smaller unities. To my knowledge, the majority of oriental
philologists, with all due respect to their enormous efforts, are not able to write such
a literary history, especially not a poetological study. It seems to me that they are
mainly not even aware of the problem: the spirit of philology has for a long time
been present and dominant in research on Oriental-Islamic heritage. Philologists
comprehend the history of literature mainly as mere enumeration of facts, with rare
comments, while most of them are of the opinion that the title history justifies the
chronological ordering of facts. Literary history truly is something different.

In an adequate philological treatment of literature in Oriental-Islamic languages,

philology has achieved noteworthy research results.25 A literary history of Orien-
tal-Islamic languages faces significant challenges: writing a literary history demands
a succession of preparatory activities, one of which is that the literary works need to
be satisfactorily researched. However, since the literary material has been, to a cer-
tain extent, researched within the competences of a philology that we have already
spoke of, it seems to me that the main precondition for writing a literary history of
this literature is that new generations of oriental philologists gain a sufficient, qual-
ity education in the disciplines of literary theory, in order to be able to observe their
area of research in a new way; in order to organise and present it differently. That
means – this may seem paradoxical – that they need to stop being philologists in
the meaning of the term that we have so far spoken of, or, more precisely, that they
should overcome philology as an exclusive method. Here I use the term “overcome
in the meaning that they accept the research results of philology, but to make a step
forward into a new sphere from that platform. Delayed realisation of that goal stems
from the fact that this literature is in languages known only to specialists (oriental
philologists) and they are the ones who should fulfil that obligation. In that process,
it is possible, even reasonable, to expect different literary histories of the same (clas-

33
sical) period, but that is no reason to abandon them, on the contrary. Literary history
should be at ease with the fact that it is not science in the scientific sense of the word,
and that its presentation of literary history is not final.

However, another “science of literature” is exceptionally capable of examining clas-

sical literatures in Oriental-Islamic languages, although it is very rare.

PERSPECTIVES OF POETOLOGY IN RESEARCHING CLASSICAL

LITERATURE IN ORIENTAL-ISLAMIC LANGUAGES
Philology greatly contributes to the presentation of literary heritage in Oriental-Is-
lamic languages in that it prepares literary material for other kinds of research. Lit-
erary history is necessary, notwithstanding the fact that it is determined as temporary
as opposed to heritage, especially because that experience has shown that it is ideo-
logically burdened to a greater or lesser extent.

Considering the experience and the limited reach of the two methods, it seems rec-
ommendable to approach literary heritage poetologically, for that method may pro-
vide exceptional results in the research of literature in Oriental-Islamic languages.
Poetology seems desirable, especially considering the “nature” of the material: clas-
sical literature was written in three languages, but not in the modern understanding of
originality, rather in the poetics of similarity characteristic of that time, or sameness.
It was an epoch of exceptionally strong, conscious relationships between writers,
even more so between genres and individual segments of certain genres, or to put it
otherwise: between forms, in a culture that perceived time as a chronicle, rather than
history. And literature in Oriental-Islamic culture, as a dominant part of the culture,
bears witness that it was not a historical succession that mattered, a historical axis
in the development of genres or styles, for their “rebellious” replacement never took
place; rather, there was a “cyclic” perfecting of genres/forms for hundreds of years,
in all three languages (Arabic, Persian and Turkish). As an example of that, we could
take a rather widespread form thamis, which brilliantly culminated in ‘Ushshāqī’s
(d. 1782) Thamis, dedicated to al-Būṣīrī’s poem Qaṣīda burda, which will be dis-
cussed at greater length later in the text. For the time being, it will suffice to say
that it is a poem that strongly “homogenises” the form through circular movement
through languages and time, and makes it one of the poetical connective “threads” of
the entire literature. If one takes into consideration that something similar happened
to other forms, it can be concluded that they contributed – like centripetal forces – to
a certain homogenisation of the entire culture. Figuratively speaking, forms in clas-
sical literature – its dominant forms – moved through time and space in a “circular”
motion, in accordance to the principle of the arabesque, the way the most signifi-
cant works of the culture in the classical period were structured: from the ancient
al-Mu‘allaqāt, through One Thousand and One Nights, to the works of Rumi. Thus,
classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages is a special kind of entity that sur-

34
prisingly resisted other, more precisely different traditions and poetics, like ancient
Greek literature and its (Aristotelian) poetics, which remained completely outside
the interests of literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, although Muslims of the
time were well-acquainted with ancient Greek philosophy, having even syncretised
in a very creative way.26 The traditional and poetic self-sufficiency of this literature
– adding to it the fact of its timelessness in the meaning of a “vertical”, dynamic his-
torical development – signifies that it is especially suitable for philological research.

Considering the dominance of the “poetics of sameness” in that literature, and con-
sidering that imitation and even the so-called “literary theft” were publically encour-
aged within its tradition, it follows that literature is abundant with commonplaces,
with even entire forms becoming, conditionally speaking, commonplaces because
of their prominent intertextuality. Thus, an enormous literary space was formed in a
specific morphology, with an endless succession of works, whose poetical ideal was
to resemble each other to the greatest extent possible, provided that mere plagiarism
was avoided.27

The abundance of similarity in classical literature has always been a special chal-
lenge for philology, especially keeping in mind that it is a vast heritage, all contained
in manuscripts. A special characteristic of that tradition was, among others, that the
works contained no titles, that the authors did not place their names at the outset
of the book; rather, their names were built into the text, so sometimes, the position
of the author would not differ from the position of the scriveners – all that posed
extraordinary demands before philologists. It was necessary to determine whether a
work was authentic or apocryphal, to determine the place and date of their creation,
to learn particularities related to the authors and scriveners, etc. All those are, un-
doubtedly, strong motives for philology, so it is no wonder that oriental philology de-
veloped to become a highly authoritative science and remained such for a long time.
The material and the method applied in its research (philological method) spurred
on each other strongly, thus building each other’s reputation. However, the powers
of philology are limited.

Classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages does not cooperate with literary

history in the same way it does with philology. That literature was more exposed to
philological research than to the writing of literary history, since literary tradition in
general is not characterised by a strong vertical movement in history. The reasons
for this have for the most part been stated in the previous pages of the book: resent-
ment of the tradition towards vertical and linear historical movement, in the sense
of the latitudinal development of forms/genres, and the introduction of new genres,
or even literary genres. The principle of the arabesque movement is dominant in
this tradition – from the arabesque structuring of certain canonical works28 to the
arabesque structuring of entire epochs that can be called as such only provisionally.
It is a literary tradition, which, of course, developed to a certain extent, but it spread
much more in the sense of poetic turnovers, although we have grown accustomed

35
to understanding poetics primarily through seeing its characteristics as a result of
negation, “of an aberration from a norm wthat synchronically and diachronically
surrounds the works”.29

The “development” of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages is difficult

to observe historically, for it spread in space more than in time. For example, the
form qasīda, predominant in this tradition, was established in the ancient, pre-Is-
lamic Arabian period and then spread throughout the Arabian-Islamic empire – all
the way to Andalusia, and in time since before the Revelation to the 18th century in
the “Bosniak” literature in Oriental-Islamic languages. There have been, of course,
certain “modulations” of the form, but (structural) basic forms of the qaṣīds have
always remained recognisable. Speaking from a literary-historical, and especially
poetological angle, it may seem striking that other forms (the so-called genres for
which I will rather use the term forms), like the ghazal, which developed from the
love prologue of the qaṣīd, remained tied by an “umbilical chord” to the ancient
qaṣīd by taking over its introductory love-lyrical theme and the most important fac-
tors of the form (monorhyme and a unique metre). A careful poetological approach
shows that the ancient mu‘allaqa, as an exemplary poetical form, lasted, in fact, for a
long time and simply grew in both space and time. The situation is similar with other
dominant poetical forms, like panegyric (madaḥ), lampoon (hijā’), etc. Of course,
it would be wrong to understand my elaboration as a claim that there existed no
novelties in classical literature. There were innovations within the literary tradition,
but they were surprisingly small and disproportionate to the incredibly fast spread of
the caliphate, as well as the exceptionally fast development of a multitude of social
and natural sciences. During their conquests, Arabs exhibited an impressive ability
to learn from conquered peoples, yet they expressed that ability the least in poetry.

Poetry, an indisputably dominant part of the literary tradition as a whole, remained

surprisingly self-centred and resilient to foreign influence. Its situation in Orien-
tal-Islamic languages made the literary-historical approach difficult to apply. The
periodization of literature is inherent to such an approach, since one of the main
tasks of literary history – as we have already seen – is to determine “smaller unities”
and their meaningful networking into a complete unity as the end result of literary
history. Oriental philologists attempted to write a periodization of the Arabic litera-
ture, as well as Persian and Turkish, but their periodization (more precisely: period-
izations) is inadequate, and such “solutions” resulted for two main reasons. First, as
I have pointed out, philology is prone to using historical/historiographical methods
and thus presents itself frequently as a historical method. The second reason is more
important in this context. Since in the literature we speak of, there were no poetic
turnovers that would determine clear and poetically different periods in the literary
history, researchers resorted to historical periodization.30

The periodization of literature based on social-political history is essentially incom-

petent in comparison with the material it approaches, because it attempts to classify

36
it into certain “historical drawers”. For example, all histories of the Arabic literature
have been consistently presented as separate periods: a pre-Islamic or pagan period,
literature of the Umayyad period, literature of the Abbasid period, etc. The same
issues trouble the periodization of Turkish literature. For example, two great peri-
ods in history of so-called Turkish literature are frequently called literatures of the
divan and Tanzimat periods. Divan literature was named subsequently and on the
basis of criteria that are, in essence, non-literary. It was named so in the 20th century
because divans (collections of poems) were composed in that particular period. It is
a mere formality that has nothing to do with literary history as such, with poetics,
with aesthetics – with any kind of science that studies literature as such – as a system
of values in its immanent historical development. The situation is similar with Tan-
zimat literature, or Tanzimat period: the name refers to a symbol of political reforms
of Ottoman society.31 Such periodization is prominently non-literary, for it simply
does not exist. For example, something like the literature of the Umayyad period in
the sense of specifying that literature, to make it different from the following period
entitled Abbasid, etc., is specious. The Umayyad and Abbasids were dynasties that
ruled the empire and their alternation – when it occurred – did not mean also signify
an alternation of literary epochs. The situation is similar to a greater or lesser extent
with “other classical literatures” of Oriental-Islamic circle (Persian, Turkish, etc.),
and I here am classifying them conditionally – in accordance with today’s enrooted
ethnocentric approaches, for one of the main goals of this study is to present that
this literary empire is impossible to divide, which is contrary to the division we
see today – to literatures of ethnic and state-political communities. It is simply sur-
prising to see that this inadequate division has maintained for such a long time. In
consequence, this means that a comprehensive history of classical Oriental-Islamic
literature has not been written yet – at least I am not aware of such a literary history.
It should be immanent, not distanced from us; submerged in the past; it should be
re-evaluated in accordance with the fact that it is also our participation in a system
surpassing the nation we are obliged to. Also, we cannot approach it from the point
of view of the present, just as it is impossible to observe it exclusively from the
point of view of the past – in its historicity. Moreover, it cannot be a kind of history
of literature that neutrally, almost mechanically, lists positivistic facts about authors
and their works. It is necessary to cultivate the responsibility and awareness of our
own past, which is that only seemingly, for the past – as a value – actively exists in
our present. That is our responsibility “along the vertical axis”. At the same time, we
are responsible “along the horizontal axis” as well, towards our own time, and only
these two dimensions, in fullness and complementarity, form the future.

In such an understanding of the relationship between the past and present in the
domain of literary history, our understanding of the past and present in their unity,
that eternal exchange of energy that I have already mentioned comes to life: past
and present as such are overcome by that exchange of energy. Such should be the
history of Oriental-Islamic literatures – from its beginning to our moment in history.
However, in spite of all the literary histories of this cultural circle, the considerable

37
lack of poetological studies is interesting. Poetological studies can be very precious
for a valid research of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, as well as
the so-called Bosniak literature of the time. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, poetology is based on the interpretation of relationships between the in-
dividual and the general. It constantly strives – for that is the condition of its survival
– towards the universality of its assumptions, which are, in essence and seemingly
paradoxically, deduced from the individuality of works of art. Of course, in such an
approach there is a continuous tension between the poetological desire for universal-
ity and the establishment of the individuality of a literary work, individuality that is
limited in a very specific way, characteristic of art. Such position brings a poetologist
into a situation that makes his effort harder than that of a philologist and historian
of literature, for the positioning at the core of his research of the optimally complex
relationship between the individual and the general, the individual in the general and
the general in the individual, he exposes himself to far greater risks of delivering an
opinion and far greater effort in the “institution of writing”. Understandably, it is
possible to use different kinds of poetological approaches, for not every poetological
approach is equally competent for every literature, or for every literary period. In
the case of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, a literary poetics seems
appropriate (especially those of the Russian schools from Bakhtin onwards), but it
is also appropriate, for example, for a normative poetics as well, keeping in mind
the predominance of the “poetics of sameness” in the literature of Oriental-Islamic
languages.

Poetology is recommendable for the study of this literature – which is least present
in scientific literature – also because poetology is far more resilient to the penetration
of non-literary methods, unlike philology and the history of literature, which are far
more exposed to it. Poetology is to the greatest extent possible free of ideological
burdens; it is the most immanent because it is mainly focused on literature.

Because it focuses on tension that arises between universality and individuality of

a literary work it observes in a system, the poetological approach is able to present
and explain the very exchange of energy that we have spoken of: an eternally dy-
namic relationship between the general and the individual on the one hand, and the
so-called past and present on the other. Furthermore, in comparison with those axi-
oms of poetology, neither philology nor the history of literature (as they have proven
themselves in the approach to the classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages)
is able to present and interpret that literature as a whole as “a unity of the highest
order”. Poetology, on the other hand, is.

Keeping in mind the specific characteristics of classical literature in comparison with

the modern understanding of originality, poetology can argue through arguments for
the inseparability of that system to a degree and intensity that neither philology nor
literary history as they are known to us possess when presenting classical literature

38
in all three languages. Only a comprehensive poetics will give a full sense, a live
meaning of literature of the classical period of Oriental-Islamic languages.

The main terms in Oriental-Islamic literature bear witness to the prevalence of the
poetological approach, and I will present them as historical-poetological terms, or
categories that maintain this literature within one poetical system.

39
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1
1. R. Barthes, Kritika i istina [Criticism and Truth], transl.: Lada Čale Feldman, Algoritam, Zagreb, 2009, p. 43.
2. Ibid., p. 33.
3. This brilliant book (E. R. Curtius, Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter) appeared in 1961. In this
book, I used the translation into Croatian: Ernst R. Curtius, Europska književnost i latinsko srednjovjekovlje [Eu-
ropean Literature and Latin Middle Ages], second edition, transl.: Stjepan Markuš, Naprijed, Zagreb, 1998.
4. An important factor in the canonisation of literary works in Serbian and Montenegrin literature was often an
“artistically” transposed ideological animosity towards elements of the Islamic culture of Bosniaks.
5. E. R. Curtius, op. cit., str. 22.
6. Cf.: Vladimir Biti, Strano tijelo pri/povijesti [Foreign Body of the Hi/Story], Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada, Za-
greb, 2000, p. 15.
7. Carl Borckelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, Bd. 1-2, 2 Aufl, Leiden, 1943-1949. Suppl. Bd. 1-3,
Leiden, 1937-1942.
8. ‘Umar Farrūkh, Tārīkh al-adab al-‘arabī, I-III, Dār al-‘ilm li al-malāyīn, Bayrūt, 1978.
9. F. Kafka, “Préparatits de noce à la compaque”, Paris, Gallimard, 1957, p. 366.; Cf. Roland Barthes, Kritika i istina
[Criticism and Truth], p. 51.
10. Cf.: Barthes, op. cit., p. 51.
11. More will be said about translators’ transgressions in the chapter “Classical Works of Literature in Inadequate
Translations: Mathnawī as an Example”.
12. This will be discussed further in the study. Here I can only mention some names: Gabrieli, Крачковский, even
R. A. Nicholson, etc.
13. Ibid., p. 63.
14. Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, al-Aṣrār al-jalāliyya / Fīhi mā fīhi. Translated into Bosnian: Tajne uzvišenosti [Secrets of
Transcendence], transl.: Munir Drkić, Bookline, Sarajevo, 2011.
15. More on the term adab, see chapter “The Term adab: A Universe of Humanistic Values”.
16. For example, the word for poet in Arabic is shā‘ir, and the term contains a multitude of other meanings, with its
primary being poet. It is a literary-historical term, as well as poetological; aside from not being neutral, the term
brims with meanings that concern not only language and semantics, but also ideology, religion, literary history,
etc. For the needs of this context, I will shortly say that shā‘ir is an active participle, on the verge of synonymy
(a permanent characteristic or vocation), and the meaning is – the one who acknowledges through feelings/imag-
ination and acts through words in accordance with cognition. Shā‘ir is thus a medium between the higher powers
and “ordinary” people, and his shi‘r (“poetry”) is significantly imaginational; it is at the same time the kind of
cognitional activity achieved through imagination. Those complex and thought-out, ordered meanings are not
contained in our terms poet or poetry, just as our term literature does not contain the term adab. A researcher must
always keep in mind these capital literary-historical and poetical meanings.
17. “However, since neither of these writers wrote one half of their opus in, say, Turkish, and the other half in Arabic,
rather, each of them mainly wrote to a greater or lesser extent in one of the three oriental languages, we preferred
the criterion of prevalence, which has been practised at the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo: a writer belongs to the
language he wrote in most.” (Sulejman Grozdanić, “Dosadašnja izučavanja književnosti Bosne i Hercegovine”
[The Previous Research of Literature of Bosnia and Herzegovina], Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju, no. 39, Orijen-
talni institut, Sarajevo, 1990, p. 51.)
18. The situation is similar (but only similar, for similarities always entail primarily differences, which the enable
determination of similarities) in the natural sciences, and in art in general. In that sense, one could let different
catalogues, lexicons, etc., “locate” important people in the field of science and art in accordance with their ethni-
cal, or administrative-political background, or in accordance with nationality (Syrian, Argentinian, etc.), but only
in accordance with the place of their birth or residence, while their works are international and universal, and in
that sense they are optimally humane and humanistic. Again, we are dealing here with two non-complementary
characteristics: art and science are irreducible to the frames of the national and the state-administrative, for they
are realised as values in the full extent only in that what is beyond-national, or international.
19. However, ideology does not give up its goals. It can offer an enormous support to ideologised works that are, as
such, antagonised against different cultures or cultural communities. A good example of that is the Nobel Prize
for Literature, which is frequently – as was the case with Ivo Andrić – awarded to works encouraging cultural
antagonisms.

40
20. It is interesting to mention in this context that the first issues of the yearbook published at the Oriental Institute in
Sarajevo were entitled Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju i istoriju jugoslovenskih naroda pod turskom vladavinom
[Contributions for Oriental Philology and History of the Yugoslav Peoples under Turkish Rule]. The affiliation
of history and oriental philology is irrevocably expressed this way, and the school remains dominant even today,
although the yearbook has been renamed: Prilozi za orijentalnu filologiju /Contributions for Oriental Philology/.
In an introductory text named “Uz prvi broj” [A Foreword for the First Issue], Branislav Đurđev determined the
programme tasks for oriental philology within “historical and cultural-historical tasks”. (Prilozi za orijentalnu
filologiju i istoriju jugoslovenskih naroda pod turskom vladavinom [Contributions for Oriental Philology and
History of Yugoslav Peoples under Turkish Rule], no. 1, Sarajevo, 1950.)
21. R. Barthes, Kritika i istina [Criticism and Truth], p. 7.
22. Vladimir Biti, Strano tijelo pri/povijesti [Foreign Body of the Hi/Story], Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada, Zagreb,
2000, p. 123. Cf. also: Nirman Moranjak-Bamburać, “Ideologija i poetika” [Ideology and Poetics], in: Radovi
Filozofskog fakulteta, Sarajevo, 2000, p. 116.
23. Barthes, op. cit., p. 48.
24. Ibid.
25. Classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages is often called Oriental-Islamic literature. That title encompass-
es some characteristics of the literature that we are dealing with here, but, at the same time, part of the syntagm Is-
lamic (in: Oriental-Islamic) introduces considerable misunderstandings and imprecisions. The title itself is tasked
with signifying a cultural space (Oriental-Islamic world) in which its literature was formed, but the word Islamic
suggests it is Islamic religious literature. Nirman Moranjak-Bamburać stated that religious discourse is dominant
in that literature, but it is still unjustified to name it by terms that situate it as Islamic literature: it is only a section
of the vast body of literature. (Cf.: Nirman Moranjak-Bamburać, “Ideologija i poetika” [Ideology and Poetics], in:
Radovi Filozofskog fakulteta, Sarajevo, 2000, p. 109.)
26. A distance of philosophy from literature in the classical Oriental-Islamic world (although both were highly de-
veloped), especially underdeveloped aesthetics, testifies, in its own way, to the specificity of this literature, its
understanding of artistic creation, and that consequently also to its poetics and poetology, which will be discussed
in the following chapters.
27. On the issue of the legalisation of “literary thefts”, on the term plagiarism and loans in that literature, I wrote more
extensively in my work: Orijentologija. Univerzum sakralnoga Teksta [Orientology. The Universe of the Sacred
Text], Tugra, Sarajevo, 2007.
28. A corpus of ancient poems, entitled al-Mu‘allaqāt, Kalīla wa Dimna by the translator ‘Abdullāh Ibn al-Muqaffa‘,
A Thousand and One Night, Rūmī’s Masnavi, etc. can serve as an example of arabesque structuring.
29. Vladimir Biti, Pojmovnik suvremene književne teorije [Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory], Matica hr-
vatska, Zagreb, 1997, p. 276.
30. Poetical exceptions are scarce in that tradition, but are significant. For example, Sufi poetry, or Andalusian mu-
washshaḥ have unexpected and brilliant poetical twists. I will pay special attention in this study to Sufi poetry,
convinced that it is necessary to present it in a comprehensive poetical manner: I will show that it is an exceptional
poetical novelty in that tradition, but – at the same time and seemingly paradoxical – Sufi poetry maintains very
tight connections with the poetical tradition in general. Not many (if any) literary genres in that amazingly rich
tradition both innovate and cement tradition.
31. On the definition and history of the name divan literature, see: Fehim Nametak, Divanska poezija XVI i XVII stol-
jeća [Divan Poetry of 16th and 17th Centuries], Institut za književnost and Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1991, p. 8 onwards.

41
CHAPTER II
II. The main historical-poetological terms in classical literature

THE TERM ADAB: A UNIVERSE OF HUMANISTIC VALUES

In the Oriental-Islamica world of the classical period, poetology, aesthetics, even lit-
erary criticism was not developed in the sense that those disciplines have today, or in
the sense those disciplines had in other cultures of the time. Metrics were developed,
or, more precisely, codified early on, on the basis of exemplary literary works, and it
served as a fixed, closed manual. Rhetoric (‘ilm al-balāġa) was also developed, but
then Arabic stylistics was exceptionally inductive and normative, reduced greatly to
the formal-structural dimension of an almost mathematical precision.

Even if it may seem surprising, the situation is more or less similar in the modern
period of the Oriental-Islamic world in the countries or “cultural regions” that were
strongly integrated into a unique cultural space and a unique poetical system in the
classical period. What we call the theoretical consideration of art was not adequately
developed, because literary production, which was largely formed within norma-
tive, inductive poetics, was dominant and self-sufficient. Literature simply did not
strive for speculation by which it would explain its creative abilities, or its origin
in the supernatural, that is, in the metaphysics of inspiration (except in the ancient
period), because literature in that culture was not even considered a form of art in
the full sense of the term (I will discuss this issue later in the text). It is interesting,
however, that the main terms in that literature in a way compensate for the absence
of poetology, whose meaning I presented in the final part of the previous chapter, the
same way as they compensate for the general absence of literary theory in that tra-
dition. “Poetical awareness” in classical literature is not authorial in the sense that it
was anticipated and developed by individual authors; rather, it is notably traditional,
formed and defined on the basis of experience of the tradition: it is a special kind of
poetological generalisation deduced from established literary production.

Key notions, or terms, in classical literature have significantly reduced their over-
whelming meanings in the modern age. That is why today Arabs and Arabists, Turks
and Turkologists, Iranians and scholars of Iranian studies, sometimes overlook the
very important, reasonable, historical and poetological depth of these terms, which
bear witness to at least two aspects of the entire culture. Firstly, that concealed, deep
sense/meaning spoke abundantly of poetics, of literature (artistic and non-artistic), of
its nature and general principles of its creation. Second, these terms say much about
the position of literature within the sphere of spirituality in general, and in society,

45
which means that they are not only representatives of the essence of literature in a
poetological sense – as a deep structure of literary works. In other words, these terms
imply a relationship of literature towards society and of society towards literature,
wherein – as we will see in the following pages of the text – the variable relations
of literature with ideology are also present. Sadly, those immense meanings are not
observable at first sight today, but a literary historian and a poetologist cannot over-
look them if valid work is their ambition: noticing those grand historical “layers”
and introducing them to our understanding of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic
languages is of immense importance for our relationship towards the past, for it en-
sures their eternal vitality and rewards our spirituality with those unique, incredibly
abundant gifts that the ancient and classical period give to modernity.

The term adab has already been somewhat discussed, but in this context it is nec-
essary to emphasise certain peculiarities. Adab today entails artistic literature. In
that way, the fullness the term used to have in the classical period is lost – the same
as the vigour of the man from the ancient and late classical period is lost today.
Long before our fragmenting of contemporariness, adab was a realm in its own right
that included, along with artistic literature, all forms of literature and science, even
those that we today call natural sciences, which contributed the adab that included
upbringing, education, sophistication, even ethics.32 Adab as literature in the com-
prehensive classical meaning of the term states that the “protagonist of the adab”
– the one who optimally mastered the adab – can and should introduce others into
the realm of adab so that they too become its protagonists, even its heroes. In that
way, adab is optimally universalised, hence learnedness in the field of literature is
understood as the highest degree of education, which is equated with the notion of
the highest sophistication. In accordance to that, adab was introduced into the formal
education of princes and princesses at caliphates, as well as in the families of emirs
of a lower rank. Education and sophistication without adab was unimaginable. In the
modern era, the term adab does not have such a comprehensive meaning or function
in society as it had in the classical period of this culture. That is in accordance with
the fact of spiritual fulfilment, of the accomplishment of the man of the era, unlike
the contemporary man whose integrity simply disintegrates. Adab, as well as litera-
ture in a broader sense of that term, used to be an important humanistic base, while
today its status is humanitarian.

Presented in a rough outline, the position of adab has a poetological significance.

That position is a testimony to the firm connection with literature and with the over-
all spirituality of a man, not only in elite circles – as “high literature”33 – but also
in society in general. That means, among other things, that literature was not only
art for art’s sake, apart from the later, turbulent development of certain forms (like
musammat, naẓīra etc.), which will be discussed later; it did not serve exclusively
and always for pastime at the court, as a décor or hedonistic element; rather, it was
essentially educational and multifunctional even in the early phase of development.
Literature denounced – under the imperative of the Qur’ānic Text – the prophetic

46
ambitions it had in the ancient, pre-Islamic period, and it entered the system of culti-
vation and sophistication at all levels of the society – from soldiers to princes – while
also constituting an important part of that system, complementary to theological
education.

The inclusion of literature in the educational system, into the cultivation of man at
that time, was, as can be seen, at such a high level and so important that it participat-
ed in a broad syncretism, in synthesis, and not through fragmenting or specialisation
in certain fields. And the capaciousness of the term adab, which encompasses mu-
tual “relations” of what we today call literary forms, bears witness to the strength of
that syncretic spirit. In the classical literature of Oriental-Islamic languages – espe-
cially in Arabic, it seems – both poetry and prose were contained in a single piece of
writing, be it folklore or work by an individual artist.34 It would suffice to mention
One Thousand and One Nights or some works by al-Ma‘arrī (d. 1058) or works by
al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868), etc. In that syncretism, cooperation between poetry and prose was
very intense and spontaneous. Different poetic genres existed in a single “prose”
work. Verses served as an illustration; in fact, they were a form of argumentation in
the prose text.

Argumentation through verses acted on at least two levels. On the one hand, verses
were integrated into the prose text as a form of argument of the prose narrative in the
domain of logical, even scientific exposition. On the other hand, and simultaneously,
verses were skilfully incorporated as gilding on the prose exposition, as an efficient
aesthetic argumentation of exposition in any field and in relation to everything, for
prose exposition, no matter how skilful and convincing, was considered incapable
of contributing such a level of precious aesthetic argumentation. In other words, in
works of all kinds, in all literacy, it is aesthetic sophistication that matters, and that
is best achieved by the best verses.35 In One Thousand and One Nights, for example,
together with everything mentioned thus far, numerous verses strongly contribute
the events in the stories, the formation of protagonists’ characters and the direction
of their actions, and with that, their fates. There are examples where verses in entire
stories dictate the behaviour of heroes, while prose only “describes” the states that
are generated in the protagonists by verses. This is, undoubtedly, the brilliant syncre-
tism of literary forms or genres.

It is also interesting to state in this context that the works discussed here contain an
abundance of verses that belong to other authors, and not to the author of the prose
text. Such structures are very pliable for intertextual analysis. It is the successful
effort of a vast culture, diluted in time and space, to connect through intertextuality,
to integrate diachronically and synchronically, to resist centrifugal forces and frag-
mentation of any kind.

47
THE SYNCRETIC CHARACTER OF ADAB
Another characteristic of adab I can illustrate is its inclination towards syncretism
within itself, and, consequently, towards the culture/society where it assumed a very
high position. Namely, written works often contained sections (most frequently, in-
troductory sections, which were very assertive in works that did not contain titles
or the names of authors as first information) that were created in a prose form but
with carefully crafted rhyme and rhythm. Sadly, in translations, that specific genre
is most frequently not seen, because oriental philologists were not sensible enough
to notice and transfer this characteristic, just as they were not sensible enough for
the many other characteristics of adab that they dealt with. Perhaps in the context
of this expose, the degree of transgression against not only the source text but also
against the entire culture can be seen, because translators treat the works they would
like to present quite carelessly. In such cases, which are dominant in the translation
of adab works from Oriental-Islamic languages, the issue is not only bad, but even
incompetent translation; the issue is the wrong presentation of poetics – which is the
essence! – of a work and the poetics of the entire literary tradition that lies within
the comprehensive meaning of adab. Philologists “dedicated to such translation are
not even aware of their incompetence, regardless if it is related to translation, liter-
ary history, or literary theory: their poetological approach to the presentation of the
tradition as a whole is wrong. Many significant works of Oriental-Islamic culture
contain – in a single work – prose, rhymed and rhythmic prose, as well as verse.
Apart from that, different genres of prose are contained in a single work, which is,
in certain cases, “ornamented” by different poetic genres.36 Such poetics is, on the
one hand, an expression of the feelings of a man from the classical period towards
his own spiritual completeness and integrity; an expression of his awareness of the
necessity of formation of an entity that integrates all elements of scientific, aesthetic
and ethical values that are at his disposal, one of which was certainly the adab in its
full capacity. In later times, “specialisations” were conducted, which meant breaking
down the feeling of spirituality and fulfilment, such that literature later on – in our
time especially – became socially neglected to the extent that one can frequently
hear of it as of a social burden. This is convincing testimony of the destruction of
man’s integrity. On the other hand, in the vigorous times of the classical period, adab
(as well as artistic literature as its part) strongly participated in maintaining and con-
stantly cultivating the individual and collective awareness of the necessity of adab in
education, upbringing and the ethical system of values of both an individual and the
society. Such a two-way exchange of experience and energy between adab and soci-
ety, the society and adab has still not been – at least, to my knowledge – sufficiently
examined from the point of view of poetology and aesthetics in the Oriental-Islamic
circle, or in oriental studies. Research needs to be directed there as well – towards
poetology and the aesthetics of the old and classical literature in Oriental-Islamic
languages.

48
In this phase of the expose, it should be pointed out that in the classical period
of Oriental-Islamic culture conditions were created everywhere and constantly for
adab to be a particularly powerful integrative factor of that culture and society as a
whole. Islamic culture spread very quickly, but the adab I present here acted cen-
tripetally although it too adopted the experience of other cultures – it did not let that
culture fall apart or collapse together with its basic values in space and time. The
effects of the adab are in this regard stronger if its exceptional position in culture
is considered, which I have just elaborated. It is seemingly paradoxical, yet in fact
utterly reasonable that the accelerated spread of Oriental-Islamic culture, its close
contacts with other cultures and traditions, could have expectedly contributed to
the self-neglect of that culture, or to its metamorphosis beyond recognition. But
this did not happen instead: the culture succeeded in dispersing “itself”, spreading
whilst maintaining its unquestionable, particular spirit and morphology, and it thus
reacted in contact with other cultures in a creative-syncretic manner: it became more
sophisticated, without changing its essence. The entire literature of Oriental-Islamic
languages bears witness to this: from the ever-recognizable form of (ancient) qaṣīda,
madaḥ, marsiyya, ghazal, to Sufi poetry, to multifunctional adab in general – all that
lasts in Oriental-Islamic culture, a unique universe, especially in the classical period,
and which scientists carelessly compartmentalise into Arabic, Persian and Turkish
cultures in the classical period. It is possible, only from this position, to comprehend
the significance of this fact regarding the integrated cultural space of the classical pe-
riod, that is – it is possible to understand the insubstantiality of the later (and contem-
porary) ethnocentric approaches burdened with ideologies that prevent a valid take
on the Oriental-Islamic culture of the classical period: that adab, that literature, are
simply inseparable, and should not be separated in the way that they are by both aca-
demic and ideological institutions in the modern era. It is thus my opinion that adab
should be studied from the position of poetology, aesthetics, or a literary history that
deals with the history of genres, forms, and the morphology of that entire culture.

An enormous strength of syncretism in adab, of integration, even to a certain extent

of homogenisation, largely stems from the character of that culture that prevailed
in that time, and that also entails the adab, which was decisively influenced by the
Qur’ān, the core text of Oriental-Islamic culture.37

In many ways, the sacral Text affects the character of Oriental-Islamic culture and
its adab, regardless if they communicate directly, intertextually, or in ways in which
their relationship is not immediately recognised; in any case, the sacral Text had an
immense power that affected the character of the culture, even adab. For example,
it may appear to an inexperienced observer of this culture, or to a person to whom
this culture is presented incompetently, that the poetry of the post-Qur’ānic era is
beyond the influence of the sacral Text, for poetry – having been eliminated by the
Qur’ān from the sphere of the religious/prophetic – was dedicated to non-religious
topics, and that such a poetical direction lies in the sphere of the influence of the
Qur’ān: it is desacralized in its poetic postulates, yet one needs to keep in mind that

49
that too is a form of an influence. I will speak later in this study about Sufi poetry as
an extraordinary poetic turn and the remarkable ingenuity of the tradition by which
poetry again (even as traditional poetics were dominant) entered the sphere of the re-
ligious and the sacral. With regards to the citation and intertextual integration of the
sacral Text into the adab in general, especially in prose – regardless if it was artistic
or scientific literature – it can be traced to at least two levels, but it should be men-
tioned that they both affect the “universalising” of the adab as a system exclusively
beyond the national, a system not malleable to ethnocentrisms and relatively robust
for historical periodization.

First and foremost, all works of prose in general began with quotations from the
Qur’ān by praising Allah (taḥmīd), and then by seeking blessings for the Prophet
Muhammad, most frequently in rhymed and rhythmic prose. Since those works in
most cases did not have titles, but a topic “positioned” by quoting the ayah that
announced the theme, this obligatory prologue is that much more significant.38 Com-
monplaces as such (and here we talk about the commonplace of adab) are strong
cohesive factors in a tradition, or represent poetical dominants that “homogenise”
the tradition. Since here we are dealing with a section of the sacral Text at the posi-
tion of an obligatory prologue, invocation, this means that it strives for emphasising
the sacral character of the work, that is, of the culture, all the more so because it is a
commonplace of the adab.

Apart from this kind of citation, the influence of the sacral Text is seen also in that the
very invocation was formed in rhymed and rhythmic prose, which is characteristic
of the entire Qur’ānic Text, which is in rhymed and rhythmic prose. Even after the
invocation, sometimes even in the entire work, rhymed and rhythmic prose is present
– again, a characteristic of the sacral Text. This is a traditional dominant.39 Thus, not
only in literary, but also in scientific works, stylistic devices with a prominent poet-
ical function are used, even including works that today would be classified as hav-
ing an administrative functional style. For example, waqfiyahs as legal documents
(deeds of endowment) contain the obligatory introduction (taḥmīd and ṣalawāt), and
then also a section of the text in rhymed and rhythmic prose, with an abundance of
devices. The length and stylistic value of the text were usually proportional to the
prominence, that is, social position of the waqf/the founder. This “aestheticizing” of
even legal documents may come as a surprise, especially since – as far as I know
– translators did not at all care about the aesthetic “articulation” by which legal doc-
uments were incorporated into standards of a culture, and into the norms by which
that culture was identified. Namely, the very fact that it is not possible to “isolate”,
to distinguish functional styles or genres in many works important for that culture
shows the syncretic spirit of classical literature, because, certain functional styles ex-
ist simultaneously in one work in order to achieve the overall fullness of the work.40
I will illustrate this by citing the beginning of Ghazi Husrev-bey’s waqfiyah for the
Ghazi Husrev-bey’s madrasah in Sarajevo:41

50
 This a verified form of the waqfiyah, transcribed from its preserved form.
It was edited by the one who, more than all men, needs His forgiveness – praised and
exalted be He – Muhammed Refik, the son of Alija, who is the son of hajji Abdullah,
the chief supervisor of the waqf – may all their sins be forgiven. What an honourable
friend Muhammed is!

Praise be to Allah, Who from the dust brought to life this humble Earth for schools of
science prosperous and most brilliant; Who lit by lanterns bright and highest the heav-
enly ocean42; Who taught Adam in the school of Two Universes all names; Who from
the Heaven brought down the Scripture Clear; Who made waqfs of the castles of Jan-
nah for those who are devoted to deeds of good and benefaction; Who intended fruit-
ful gardens as property to those who spend their belongings on the path of rectitude
and benefaction; Who bestowed His slaves upon His will to provide for themselves and
prepare for the Place of the Return, Who enabled those willing to erect foundations
to do it with ease, and to acquire benevolence and heavenly gifts, may He double their
prize for generosity that stems from longing immense and love that is the same – “like
a grain that gives birth to seven stalks and in each a hundred grains lay.”43

May blessing and salvation accompany Muhammed, who all creatures guides towards
the Path Righteous; who holds all early prophets of Israel to be scholars of his ummah;
may blessing and salvation be with his family righteous and noble, with his companions
virtuous and esteemed, and with scholars as long as the wise and the virtuous engage
in dialogue at the hours of wisdom trying to unveil that which to secrets belongs, and
discuss at the scholarly assemblies with the aim of bringing the Truth to the light of
day and night.

This is a document founded and formed on Sharia, an extraordinary document pro-

viding for statements and meanings, the content of which clearly states and interprets
that which in it rests – stating that before the court of Sharia, honourable and bright,
before the assembly that follows the path of flowers, stood mevlevi44 Muhjuddin, the
son of Kasim, an imam, as a representative to establish and take possession of a waqf,
on behalf of a ruler most admirable, the grand emir, a paragon for the esteemed and
the rich, who is of a noble and esteemed character, whose honour is vast and position
important, who is master to all judgement and plans, who erects the edifice of power
ablaze, who lays foundations of a state so powerful, who raises the flags of Islam by
ferocious strength, who destroys in triumph heresies of all kinds, before the conquer-
ors, above the conquerors and Islamic fighters, shows no mercy towards heretics and
pagans, who establishes foundations most outstanding, who bestows with permanent
goods, the honourable Husrev-bey, the son of late Ferhat-bey, a wali in the country of
Bosnia – may Allah adorn the gardens of his rule with the flowers of his judgement
that is right, may he bring order into people with fingers of his ideas most sensible…

51
The “gilding” of legal documents through rhymed and rhythmic prose, with the use
of literary devices that belong to “high literature”, acts as a means of intertextually
connecting the entire culture, not only its adab. Since works from different fields
(from literary texts to waqfiyahs) were imbued with poetry, as well as with rhymed
and rhythmical prose, it should be emphasised once more that two main objectives
were achieved in this way, both functioning for the purpose of diachronically and
synchronically connecting the culture.

First, by integrating texts with pronounced literary values into non-artistic works, an
aesthetical principle was affirmed; more precisely, the inseparability of the aesthetic
and the argumentative was shown and the argumentative value of the aesthetic em-
phasised. That is another way of the realisation of syncretism and cohesiveness in
the classical literature.

Second, by introducing the obligatory invocation at the beginning of the work,

which is essentially sacral in nature, the entire culture, namely, adab, was sacralised
in a way. That is, of course, a peculiar factor of interactivity present in classical
culture. In this, it is important to suggest the multiple intertwining of Culture as
Text and Text as Culture, which the pivotal Text of that culture – the Qur’ān – op-
timally affirmed: the principle and necessity of a highly stylised artistic expression,
with the text itself using the highest achievements of literary expression, although it
successfully refused to identify with art, that is – it refused to be reduced to art, for
it represents itself as the Argument of the highest order – as the Revelation. Hence,
the Qur’ān brought, at the highest level of that culture, the argumentative and the
aesthetic into an inseparable unity, as two inseparable “poles” of human being. The
syncretic character of that culture becomes, in a way, almost sacred, unconditional;
culture becomes optimally cohesive.

Obviously, in a poetological approach to the classical adab, it is necessary to keep

in mind these postulates, this omnipresent and strong relationship between the main
Text and culture, and which I could, without hesitation, call its culture. It is not pos-
sible to correctly understand the poetics of the classical period if the effect of this
proficient “mechanism” is overlooked. Although not entirely static, chronology is
relativized in the development of this culture, and to an extent that can only be seen
in such a poetological approach that is simply imposed by the culture we talk about.
More precisely, such an approach shows the extent to which the classic Oriental-Is-
lamic culture – especially its adab – is “simultaneous” in many centuries. That is one
of the important reasons – along with those that I have already mentioned – why the
past attempts of its periodization proved to be inadequate and unsuccessful, especial-
ly because it was conducted through historiographical methodology. Periodization
entails a clear recognisability of the chronological order and succession, while liter-
ature can be – in this case it is obvious – more or less poetically indifferent towards
the chronological succession of social and political events.

52
The pivotal Text of Oriental-Islamic culture influenced to a large extent the creation
or revision of other main poetological terms, which means that it cannot be separated
either from medieval, classical adab, or from Oriental-Islamic culture in general.

In relation to the position of the Qur’ānic Text in the adab, we should at least sketch
a situation that is seemingly paradoxical, and concerns the relationship between
shī‘a and sunnism. Namely, shī‘a and sunnism are based on antagonism, although
both are founded on the Qur’ānic Text. Owing to their special characteristics ex-
pressed through contact, special forms in adab were created, but in such a way that
the adab, enriched by new experience, acted as an integrative element in that vast
culture, in spite ideological (religious) disagreements.

THE INTEGRATIVE POWERS OF ADAB: BETWEEN SHĪ‘A AND

SUNNISM
By accepting Islam, Iranians and Turks also accepted the Arabic alphabet, since that
is the alphabet of the Qur’ān, and they wrote entire literatures in the Persian and
Turkish languages, but in the Arabic alphabet and by adopting a vast section of the
Arabic lexis in accordance with the postulates of Arabic poetics, in which the terms
shā‘ir and shi‘r assume important positions. Although that poetry was developed
in three languages, its general characteristics are recognised everywhere – starting
from those related to genre and terminology, which again confirms my thesis on
the remarkable poetical unity of the entire Oriental-Islamic tradition in the classical
period.

Different kinds of sacralisation are present everywhere in that culture. Ultimate-

ly, Turkish literacy in the Ottoman period was developed in the Arabic alphabet,
although in the Turkish language (with several graphemes adjusted to the Turkish
language); Persian literacy from the time of acceptance of Islam to this day has been
developed in the Persian language and the Arabic alphabet, also with only several
graphemes adjusted to the Persian language. That fact is of diverse significance. Pri-
marily, its importance rests in the fact that Oriental-Islamic culture as a whole, not
only its adab, is connected synchronically and diachronically, horizontally and verti-
cally, and thus obliges researchers and heraldists of that culture to attend to all of the
important factors of its integration. If one adds that Turkish and Persian are abundant
with Arabic lexemes and semantemes (which includes contemporary Turkish and
Perisan), we arrive at the conclusion that those languages, in spite of their differenc-
es, belong to the universe of the same culture, which is – to a greater or lesser extent
in some places – of sacral origin, or is even today in the state of sacralisation, using
the term sacral in its broad meaning of being in a kind of immediate or direct rela-
tionship towards the Qur’ānic text. Both Persian and Turkish accepted the Arabic
alphabet not only because it is Arabic, but also because it is the Qur’ānic alphabet,
an exceptionally important factor of cultural homogenisation in the domain of the

53
sacral, which always seeks to be within reach of the pivotal Text of the culture.45 To
this, one should add the aforementioned fact – occasional repetition is necessary, but
in different contexts – of the dominantly identical morphology of the “genres”, of the
poetics of similarity, which lead to a conclusion that this is a culture whose outcomes
are the same and whose common characteristics are recognisable everywhere. That
similarity expressed through use of the same alphabet, through linguistic influence,
the poetics of similarity, and most importantly through affiliation to the same reli-
gion, brings a researcher into a situation where he must speak of the semiotization
of the entire culture. The same alphabet applied in three aforementioned languages
(the alphabet which I could call Qur’ānic rather than Arabic in the given context,
although those terms are not, of course, mutually exclusive), the same religion and
the same religion in a vast Oriental-Islamic culture obviously represent principles
of a universe that lasts as such in spite of certain “incidents” within it, for incidents
confirm in their own way the laws of their universe. For example, in one historical
period, there was animosity between Turks and Arabs, for Arabs had a negative rela-
tionship towards the Turkish occupation of the Arabic countries. Before that, Turks
were “conquered” or “refined” – depending on the point of view – by Arabs through
acceptance of Islam, with which they adopted a number of elements from the Arab
culture. However, one should point out that Iranians, that is, their culture, played a
significant role in the acceptance of Islam and Oriental-Islamic culture by Turks;
Iranians were crucial and highly creative intermediaries.

Those mutual “conquests”, no matter how marked by the occasional animosities,

represent, in fact – to use Hegel’s words – the movement of the Spirit, the production
of a colossal civilisation and cultural energy in the same universe.

The “excess history” of Iranian-Arabic, that is, Shia-Sunni animosity, is a different

story. Truth be told, Shi’ism primarily developed as an “Arab-Arab relationship”,
while Iranians “entered” Shi’ism much later – mainly with the Safavids, a Turkish
dynasty – but Shi’ism is later dominantly linked to Iranians. Iranians were conquered
militarily by Arabs and accepted Islam even though their culture was superior to the
culture of their conquerors. Iranians never accepted, emotionally or rationally, the
fact of the Islamisation of their culture, although they feel Muslim to the extent that
they understand and promote their own version of Islam as superior. Seemingly,
this is a paradox for which I will try to provide the shortest possible explanation,
knowing that simplifications always carry risks, especially regarding important is-
sues such as this one. On the other hand, one could think that I am exiting the frames
of the main topic by this “excursion”, but my goal is to explain, in the broadest sense,
this unity of culture and unity of poetics, as well as the exceptional degree of their
sacralisation even at points where elements of this unity seem to be annulled.

Islamised Iranians brought to Islam some elements of their old culture and religion
that lay deep in their collective consciousness. The feeling of pre-Islamic supremacy
never left them; on the contrary, it is that feeling that generated the grand cultural

54
innovations in the domain of adab in the golden age of Arabic-Islamic culture (the
Abbasid period, 750 – 1250) – “under the auspices” by mainly Iranian movement
known as shu‘ūbiyya. That feeling of supremacy was a great cultural motivation for
Iranians; it was a special kind of resistance to the hegemony of the “conqueror”, in
spite of the fact that it fed itself from the sources of a truly significant pre-Islamic
Iranian culture. At the same time, Iranians truly accepted Islam, even though they
somewhat modified it within the context of Shi’ism; they accepted the Qur’ānic
alphabet, the influences of the Arabic language and literature, etc. In fact, the rela-
tionship between Shi’ism and the “Iranian element” is rather complex in its history.
Although that relationship is not at the centre of this study, it should be pointed out
that Shi’ism, in the early centuries of Islam, cannot be exclusively linked to Irani-
ans. What is more, Iranians significantly contributed to Sunni Islam. The Samanids
supported caliphs in Baghdad in the fight against Shi’ism. However, with time, Ira-
nians were more strongly drawn into Shi’ism, especially by the Safavids in the 15th
century, where they found refuge in their pre-Islamic cultural supremacy. That later
inertia of the Iranian orientation towards Shi’ism was continued even more decisive-
ly, and in our time it identified with the “Iranian element” and entered the phase of
a dramatic, even fateful clash with Sunni Islam, represented mainly by Arabs in the
Middle East. That seemingly paradoxical situation of Iranian acceptance-rejection
in connection with Sunni Islam, that is, Shi’ism, was and still is the main source of
the Iranian Shia melancholy that found religious foundation in the tragedy of the
early protagonists of Islam – in the tragic fate of the caliph Ali and his family. Mel-
ancholy evolved into the highest form of the religious affirmation of tragedy. There
occurred a kind of “bending” of what we call Sunni Islam, for Iranians managed to
create their own “version of Islam”, based on a strong collective and historical feel-
ing of tragedy. One should keep in mind, because it is important in the context of this
elaboration, that religion strongly marked the entire culture. The collective feeling
of tragedy and its transformation into the religious to the extent that this variant dis-
tanced itself from Sunnism to the point of antagonism in some very important partic-
ularities comes from this sense of the loss of pre-Islamic traditional, cultural values
that Iran has never overcome. It turns out that the collective sentiment of Shia, their
experience of history and culture, is tragic in at least two ways, as opposed to Sun-
nism.46 The paradox stems from the never-settled situation where Iranians accept
in Islam what all Muslims, including Iranians themselves, see as salvation, while,
at the same time, the experience of a sense of misfortune due to the loss of the old
traditional values remains in their historical and cultural existence. This is why Shia
is, in essence, tragic.

This position of Shi’ism, its inner paradox on the one hand and its relationship to-
wards Sunni Islam, which Arabs before all spread to other nations, on the other, gen-
erated a vast energy in the field of culture, and it was in the field of culture (literature,
philosophy, etc.) that such a position, in fact, proved fruitful, producing incredibly
valuable blossoms in the history of Oriental-Islamic culture. This is not an occasion
for me to elaborate more upon those profound cultural values; it will suffice to men-

55
tion – in the domain of the poetics of literature – the importance of the poetical en-
richment of Arab-Islamic culture to which the very Iranian cultural identity, which
is the name I prefer over Iranian ethnic element, greatly contributed. Those contribu-
tions primarily contain prose, artistic prose, an enrichment of traditional Arab forms
– all the way to that miraculously grand and beautiful, magnificent poetic innovation
that “occurred” in the sea of Sufi poetry and which developed most successfully un-
der the influence or under the wings of Iranian cultural identity, although it cannot be
exclusively tied to it. In an attempt to prevent a misunderstanding, I should say that
Sufi poetry cannot be reduced exclusively to an Iranian ethnic element, for other Is-
lamised peoples left significant opuses of that poetry. Moreover, some other peoples
(like the Turks) developed this poetry mainly under the influence of the Iranian Sufi
poets, but that very fact bears witness to the main thesis of this study: it is necessary
to disregard an ethnocentric approach and to affirm a universalist poetological ap-
proach that neglects the ethnic element within the full bloom of Oriental-Islamic cul-
ture. Generally speaking, Iranians accepted the majority of poetical forms from the
Arab tradition, but, at a higher level – at a cultural level – they enriched that cultural
universe almost beyond comprehension. The entire Oriental-Islamic culture, and
world heritage, would be unimaginably poorer had it not been for Sufi poetry. The
Iranian inclination towards curvatures, a persistent orientation towards the affirma-
tion of their own peculiarities, was obvious even in the period of the development of
Sufi poetry, alongside the inclination towards creating “one’s own version of Islam”.
In the chapter that concerns Sufi poetry, as an extraordinary poetic innovation, I will
talk more about how poetically the distancing relationship of the Qur’ān towards
poetry was overcome; a relationship thought of as permanently fixed. That partic-
ular denial of the final determination of the Qur’ān and poetry, as it was achieved
by Sufi poetry, resulted in one of the greatest accomplishments of Oriental-Islamic
culture. It is interesting that the basic poetological terms transcend from one culture
to another (Arabic-Persian-Turkish) and remain there as universal terms in spite of
all attempts by tradition/traditions to preserve the important elements of this identity.
Centripetal forces were far too strong. In order to understand this better, the terms
shā‘ir and shi‘r need to be discussed more thoroughly, for their semantic and poeto-
logical base has remained the same in all three languages.

FUNCTIONS OF THE TERMS SHĀ‘IR (“POET”) AND SHI‘R

(“POETRY”)47
Shā‘ir (tentatively: a poet) is an Arabic word whose semantic pool contains one of its
basic meanings: to feel. However, here we talk about the feelings of cognition.48 In
the ancient Arabic literature, in its so-called pre-Islamic period, the shā‘ir assumed
an esteemed position in the tribe: he was a spiritual face, a synonym for kāhin –
the tribal shaman. By the power of his feelings/imagination, he communicated with
supernatural forces (jinns, shaitans, even with deities) and was a medium between
them and the “ordinary” people in a way that could be called “priest-like prophetic”.
Of course, in that special communication – aside from the poet’s allegedly extraor-

56
dinary imaginative ability that stems from his feelings, that is, his special sensitivity
– he used shā‘ir as his basic tool, as words, as speech. The poet’s speech is not any
kind of speech. It is a two-way communication channel, which means, in this case,
that it has a double value.49

First, the shā‘ir, by the aesthetic characteristics of his word, acquires a privileged
status with higher powers in that he can talk to supernatural forces, and even more,
can receive their mercy and win them over for certain needs, which were most fre-
quently the needs of the community, for – the shā‘ir’s social status, owing to the fact
that he provided for those needs, is institutionalised to a level that only priests could
obtain in tribes. By his extraordinary ability for shi‘r (only tentatively: poetry), the
shā‘ir strongly, even as a saint, stood out from his fellow tribesmen and, at the same
time, strongly became closer to the good will of supernatural powers.

Secondly, the shā‘ir believed, just like his fellow tribesmen, that his extraordinary
power of speech was a gift from those higher powers, and that he in his medium/
medial position affirmed the speech of the Supernatural, successfully conveying it to
his fellow tribesmen. That determined the special position of the shā‘ir, to whom, as
an optimally successful medium, both supernatural powers and people are grateful.
Thus, it should be noted that in the period of antiquity, which is the cradle of that
culture, the Word, unlike any other “means” or quality ensured a special place for
its bearer (shā‘ir), so even the supernatural powers, implicitly, authoritatively, po-
sitioned themselves in relation to the quality of the Word (shi‘r) that was addressed
to them. I warn of the irreplaceable authority of the Word – for it always strives for
the divine quality – because the entire Oriental-Islamic culture is, in fact, the Cul-
ture of the Word, such that even the Qur’ān will position itself through its form and
content, as well as through numerous elucidations on the issue, as a rival that cannot
be matched in expression for its esteemed content and the unparalleled nature of its
form.

Thus, from the point of view of poetology and aesthetics, shi‘r originally firmly
belongs to the domain of ideology, and his ideological “efficiency” is permanently
brought into a connection with the form in which ideological content is announced
so that it could act adequately. In other words, shi‘r is determined as a simultaneous
“action” of the supernatural and the aesthetic in the relationship towards the super-
natural. That is the essence of things: the aesthetic is inseparable from the divine, and
the divine operates in the aesthetic, all through the irreplaceable force of the Word/
Speech. Since in the ancient period we can talk about the medial position of the
shā‘ir in relation to the metaphysical forces over which the poet himself possesses
a certain power, it follows that the synthesis aesthetic-supernatural or supernatu-
ral-aesthetic is situated in the domain of the magical. A similar positioning of the
poet and his word can be found in other cultures, so that the magic-prophetic origin
of the poet, that is, his word, has for a long time been recognisable in history: the
conviction of poets that they are special and the acceptance of this conviction by

57
a multitude of people even in modern times, which means that this term has never
“forgotten” its magical origin in the antiquity.

This positioning of the shā‘ir and his work (shi‘r) involves three authorities working
together: the divine-the aesthetic-the magical. This combination explains why the
shā‘ir’s immense authority in the ancient Arab period, as well as in later stages of
Oriental-Islamic cultural history, should come as no surprise.

It should be added in this context that poetry in the ancient period was not written
down; it was philologists who wrote it down only a century or two after the emer-
gence of Islam.50 One should assume that poetry, which lived in an oral tradition,
acted more strongly upon all those who recited it and who listened to the shi‘r that
was formed orally, mainly in a ritual, just like the saj‘– a rhymed and rhythmic prose
used for the same purpose by priests in Arabic antiquity. The general “condition of
oral tradition” of ancient poetry and saj‘ is particular evidence of their ritual-magical
character. Poetry was recited with special modulations of the shā‘ir’s voice, for it is
reasonable to assume that the very reciting on sight could have produced a magical
effect; in that way only could the shā‘ir convince the metaphysical forces that he was
“qualified,” and in doing so grow closer to them, as well as to his fellow tribesmen,
establishing his superior position and through inspiration from the Supernatural.

The oral character of poetry affected its forms – the rhyme and metre that had con-
siderable “vocal” potentials and that facilitated memorisation.51

It is useful to draw attention here to the morphology of the word shā‘ir. It is an ac-
tive participle, and active participles in Arabic are very prone to word building. This
special characteristic creates a special kind of tension, for the semantic base, owing
to “morphological convention,” strives to become a permanent characteristic of the
subject, but it is because of the “morphological convention” that shā‘ir is prevented
from becoming a true noun. Thus, the active participle shā‘ir marks a permanent
characteristic of the subject: it is a person that is constantly, like a vocation, filled
with all of the content of its semantic pool. Thus, the shā‘ir is characterised by stead-
fast (hyper)sensitivity, an above average or unusually strong sensitivity/imagination
by which he reaches cognitions that stem from religious inspiration. The existence of
this characteristic of the shā‘ir consequently leads to the development of its sensitiv-
ity in proportion with the frequency and intensity of its “contacts” with supernatural
forces: one should assume that the intensity of those contacts, as well as their qual-
ity, affects the appeasement of the Supernatural and the shā‘ir’s reputation with his
audience. He is original in a certain way, even if he repeated occasionally the same
formulae. Namely, he essentially improvises in the sense that he “creates”, always
in a different situation, and in somewhat a different context, but that is never a me-
chanical operation, for his success to a great extent depends on his inspiration: it is
not possible to communicate with the Supernatural in an indifferent or a mechanical
tone. Supernatural forces will not agree to that, nor is it appropriate for a man, even

58
if it were a shā‘ir, to engage in the communicative channel without special feelings
that lead him to cognition. Elation, trance, ecstasy are necessary. It is a consequence
of exactly this medial function of the shā‘ir that he has, in fact, two audiences at
the same time. One is the supernatural, which he addresses, and the other is “in the
background” – tribal. Such a position excludes the mechanical, for the shā‘ir is not
the same as any mechanical medium. The very etymology of his title that I have
spoken of indicates that it is a person who exalts over this world, over himself even,
by a strength of sensitivity and imagination that ultimately have cognitive values. By
sketching such dynamics, the “double subject” position of shā‘ir, we can see that he
is, in fact, exposed to the permanent cultivation of his abilities and his particularity.
He is in permanent tension, which his “background audience” can feel, and for this
reason he is secured with an exceptional social position of kāhin (shaman) that can
outweigh all other positions in the community. Ultimately – and interestingly from
the point of view of poetology – the Word is meritorious for everything, and it has
the true power even over the shā‘ir and his audiences.

This peculiar “magic of the Word” that we find in the ancient period will be passed
on, even though modified to a certain extent, through the entire Oriental-Islamic
culture, for antiquity is a birthplace of its culture, its childhood by which it can be
recognised. And it should come as no surprise to a researcher that elements of that
culture can be constructed not only on the principles of the “rectilinear develop-
ment”, compatibility, upgrade, etc., but they can also be built upon the principles of
to a greater or lesser extent sharp opposites, contrasts. And that is exactly what hap-
pened to the term shā‘ir and with the position of the Word in the shā‘ir’s culture. The
Qur’ānic text which I have already stated to be pivotal in Oriental-Islamic culture –
and which can also be observed as Text – has entered the Tradition and the World as
a supernatural, “divine mastery” of the Word. The Qur’ān positioned itself as such
explicitly and implicitly, wherein it decisively faced the poetics of the poetry of the
time. Thus, the Qur’ān determined itself opposed to the poetry that it found – in fact,
mostly opposed towards the magical-poetic function of the shā‘ir, though even that
opposition occurs in the realm of the Word.

The Qur’ān fiercely confronted ideological, pre-Islamic poetry; it embraced poetry,

under the condition that it resigned its ideological, that is, prophetic function. It was
recorded that, in the ancient period, tribes would send their poets/shā‘irs to represent
them at peace talks, showing thus their belief that aesthetic argumentation was stron-
ger than any other, even the one we would, form today’s position, call political or
legal.52 It was a heroic age for poetry, which represented the totality of the aesthetic,
the divine and the magical, even the legal and political in that society.

In later periods, in the Islamic epoch, the poet maintained the status of a highly ap-
preciated individual, although the Qur’ān denied it the function of the shaman. The
very prophet Muhammad (pbuh) “gave way” to poetry in an aesthetic and histori-
cally significant manner – when he listened in silence to a qaṣīd, a paean written by

59
Ka‘b Ibn Zuhayr, he paid an immense tribute to the poet by taking off his mantle and
covering the poet with it. That is why the poem entered history as the Poem of the
Mantle.53 This extraordinary event in the history of literature can be observed both
figuratively and pragmatically. At the pragmatic level, it should be observed that
poetry was exculpated in that way; it was encouraged from the highest level. Figura-
tively, his highness the poet, that is, his work, is positioned in the safest place – under
the mantle of the Prophet, who was accused of uttering poetic words (which means,
hoodwinked), but who persistently claimed he had not been a poet, both by the Rev-
elation and by his Word. The Prophet’s “gesture of the mantle” was an expression
of mercy, of respect towards poetry, although his enemies tried to disqualify him
by claims that poetry was what he had delivered as the Revelation from God. That
gesture also meant protection under the (Prophet’s) mantle for the entire Culture of
the Word, which would flourish in the vast Oriental-Islamic empire.

POETRY UNDER THE PROPHET’S MANTLE

Poetry and the mantle! The Prophet’s covering of the poet by the mantle (in the very
essence of things, it was not the poet who was covered, but his work) is a special
kind of poetological affirmation that was indicated in the poem recited by Zuhayr.
The Prophet silently and with pleasure listened to the poem, which was recited to
him in the context of a merciless confrontation between the Qur’ān and poetry pre-
cisely in the domain of poetics and aesthetics, in a context that took away the right
of poetry to the ideological aspect upon which it had rested until then. Yet the act of
mantling the poem promoted a new poetics that would dominate the literary empire
formed afterward. The later history showed the immense protective benefit of the
Prophet’s Mantle.54

Another peculiarity should be mentioned in relation to this. Namely, it is stated that

the mantle that covered the poem is the only preserved relic of the Prophet – passed
on from one ruler to another, from one dynasty to another.55

The history of the Mantle is factual,56 but it is so beautiful and polysemic that it may
appear surreal – as a myth of the Prophet’s Mantle and Poetry, which, by its nature,
belongs to the Divine. In other words, even if there had not been such a history of
the mantle, it should have been created, for it constructed a poetological co/relation
between the divine-the prophetic-the poetic in an exciting, yet historically verifiable
manner.

The mantle by which the Prophet covered Zuhayr’s poem is the only mantle that
belonged to the prophet known to have been preserved. And it should be noted that
the item in question is the Mantle, not any other piece of clothing/requisite. It was
the very Mantle that – semantically very effectively – represents protection, dignity,
even: protection and dignity and the “speech” of the dignity at the same time; the

60
poem is the only one worth the Mantle. No other garment possesses such value and
function as the mantle: all other garments are, more or less, pragmatically functional,
but the mantle is aesthetically functional – it, in fact, dos not cover, but emphasises
the aesthetic dimension of the human figure and efficiently symbolises man’s digni-
ty. In this moment especially, such was the Prophet’s mantle that covered the poem
by prophetic wisdom, benevolence and vision; in fact – in that moment, it covered
poetry in its new poetics. Words were redundant to such an act, to the covering of the
Word by the Prophet’s Mantle: the only way for the Prophet to do that was in silence,
for, in that historical act of pardoning of Poetry by the Prophet’s Mantle, his words,
regardless how carefully chosen, could have reduced or impoverished an immense
amount of content that was preserved by this same silence.

One could object to my interpretation of the relationship of the Prophet towards

poetry – the relationship expressed in the very event with the Mantle – but all facts
go in favour of my explanation. Namely, the Prophet shielded the very poetry by his
own dignity and authority symbolised in the Mantle. This is not a coincidence, for all
later history, the development of poetry, the entire tradition, excluded coincidence as
an option. The entire Oriental-Islamic culture is abundant with poetry, to the extent
that it is impossible to imagine the culture without the poetry by which it expressed
itself so powerfully, while this culture enormously contributed to European roman-
ticism, for many world writers were inspired by it; even Hegel wrote about it so
wisely and attentively…

Thus, it is not a coincidence that the Qur’ān allowed poetry that would give up
pagan ideological pretences; the Prophet’s gesture with the Mantle is also an expres-
sion of wisdom and farsightedness that is impossible to imagine in collision with the
Divine. The Qur’ān and the Prophet – that dedicated messenger of the unreachable
Word in the tradition – could have excluded poetry from the life of Muslims; that is,
from the universe of Islamic culture, by the very meaning and position of the shā‘ir,
whom they encountered and who fatefully competed with them in the domain of the
ideological and the aesthetic, but they did not undertake a vengeful action that would
have been lethal for the entire Oriental-Islamic culture that ascended on the wings
of poetry. They were determined to intervene in the domain of poetics – to dispose
poetry of pagan religious competence. This occurred on the very “chest of Islam”. I
take this Arabic syntagm (ṣadr al-islām) used in Arabic literature because I consider
it especially appropriate to the context: it is a figure marking not only the beginning,
the origin of Islam, but also the meaning of warmth, closeness, motherly affection
and life-giving care. Poetry, therefore, was poetically rearranged on the chest of
Islam and thus nourished it and blossomed for hundreds of years throughout the Is-
lamic empire – until Sufi poetry brought it back to the sphere of the ideological, that
is, the religious, by its poetic twist, which will be discussed later in the text.

In the magnificent metaphor of the Mantle and Poetry, in that symbolism, there is
additional content worthy of attention. Namely, a strong connection is observable –

61
in the domain of poetology and value – in this cooperation between the prophetic
and the poetic on the one hand, and the pre-Islamic hanging of the best poems on
the walls of the greatest Arabian chancel – the Kabah, which was the ultimate ex-
pression of cooperation between the holy and the worldly; this was, in fact, a way of
sanctifying poetry. The prophet’s noble gesture cannot be separated from the context
of his mission; the act of covering poetry by the prophetic mantle is placed deep
in the context of his mission. In both cases – in the case of the Kabah and Ka‘b’s
mantled poem – the essence is cooperation between the poetic and the holy, about
the engagement of poetry in the “dialogue” at the highest possible instance in the
domain of the sacral. In both cases, this is a protective relationship. With regard to
the Mu‘allaqa (poems on the walls of the Kabah), the chancel is adorned by poetry,
and the “exchange of energy” is two-way – in the domain of ideology and value.
That energetic point in the history of the Oriental-Islamic Culture of the Word is
magnificent: their bright future was announced at that early moment.

In the case of the Poem and the Mantle, we again talk about covering: just as the
pre-Islamic Kabah was covered by hymns written on the gilded silk fabric, so not
long after that was Ka‘b’s poem covered by the Prophet’s Mantle. The relational
inversion could be neglected, but, I believe, that is how it functions. Namely, in the
first case, the Kabah is hallowed by poems and the Khabah hallows the hymns (the
exchange of energy is mandatory), while, in the other case, the supreme religious
authority “hallows” Ka‘b’s poem. In both cases, it is a reliable, authoritative con-
tinuation of the tradition dominated by poetry. The relational inversion contains but
one significant difference: the odes on the walls of the Kabah, which was the central
shrine, bring before the Kabah that pre-Islamic ideological position of the shā‘ir,
the priest; poetry “under the Prophet’s Mantle” is tasked with liberating the poet of
that ideological positioning – in accordance with the ayah in the closing of the surah
Poets: “… apart from those who believe and do righteous deeds, remember Allah
much and are victorious after suffering injustice, and those who do injustice will
learn about the Scaffold they will be brought to!” 57 The reversal is also significant in
the domain of poetry that occurs on the chest of Islam.

The event with the Poem and the Mantle also had a two-way effect. Namely, I have
already pointed out the beneficial effect of the Mantle for poetry, that is, for the po-
etic tradition as a whole. However, poetry too, on its side – similar in a way to the
relationship between the Kabah and the Mua‘llaq – “recompensed” the Mantle. The
Mantle became known to history in the form in which it has been preserved to this
day – as the Mantle of the Poem, as the Mantle by which the Prophet covered the
poet Ka‘b Ibn Zuhayr after he recited his poem to the Prophet. Such a magnificent
act could not have fallen to oblivion in the tradition; rather, the tradition made the
greatest effort to preserve the Mantle to this day, even physically; to preserve it as
a historical requisite, an antique of the highest order; to preserve it as a testimony
in its own right in the field of the literary-historical, the poetical and the aesthetical.
For the moment when Ka‘b stood before the Prophet, whose spirit at that moment

62
underwent a realisation with ideological, poetological and even aesthetic aspects of
the poem which Ka‘b recited to him, was a historical moment for Oriental-Islamic
poetry and its position in faith and religion that would start to spread at an unsus-
pected speed. Already at that moment – regardless of how paradoxical it may seem
- Ka‘b Ibn Zuhayr was depersonalised, for the protagonists of the event were the
Poem and the Mantle; it is the momentary relationship towards the tradition, towards
poetry as such, towards the poetics. And in that context exactly should the “title” of
the event (the Poem of the Mantle) be illuminated, not the title of the very poem, for
poems did not even have titles at the time. The title of the event (Poem of the Mantle)
is extraordinarily and multiply functional. Namely, since poems of the time did not
have titles, it follows that this poem was named thus by a decision of the tradition.
Tradition was aware (in a way that tradition can be aware) that Poetry was decorated
by the Mantle under certain poetical conditions; what is more – a certain poetics was
decorated by the Mantle of the Prophet. The tradition had all of the reasons for taking
its Mantle from the past into the future, and by giving it incredibly abundant content.

We frequently neglect these literary-historical, poetological and even religious facts

contained in the name The Poem of the Mantle: it is no coincidence that the poem
firmly entered the history of literature under that name (it is the poem’s literary-his-
torical name, not its title), for, the situation would have been entirely different, there
would have been a different relationship of tradition and poetology towards this
event, had the poem entered history of literature like all other poems, named after
the first bayt (couplet), after the initial consonant that carries the rhyme, or after the
author. As I have already pointed out, the author is, in a way, depersonalised, which
also corresponds with the tradition wherein the author’s name is embedded deep in
the text.

In relation to that unusual depersonalisation that occurs at the very dawn of Islam
– that is, in the fateful era of the future vast tradition – something very important
from the point of view of poetology should be noted. Namely, shā‘ir, due to his
significant superiority in the inter-subject tribal community, was the subject that
stood out amongst other subjects in his community – and that lasted until the arrival
of the Prophet, or more precisely, until the vertical descent of the Revelation into
the World. Poetry is a means for the realisation of inter-subjective superiority that
shā‘ir drew from metaphysical forces, and thus his supremacy is proportional to
that – until he became an institution in his community. In such poetics, the poem
is largely an expression of metaphysical forces, since they communicate with the
poet as his inspiration, inaccessible to other subjects, hence shā‘ir’s personality is
intertwined with the subjectivity of metaphysical forces with which he constantly
communicates, elevates and then differentiates in the inter-subject community. That
is the position of shā‘ir, the position in which he is also determined as a kāhin (a
tribal priest). In any case – and that is the point in this context – poetry is a kind of
“instrument” that serves as mediation between the natural and the supernatural. It
is, of course, a special form of poetics at the dawn of Islam, when the term shā‘ir

63
was inextricably linked with the poetics of that age, with a tendency to carry that
content and function deep into the future. However, that intention was prevented; it
was realised only partially.

The Event with the Poem and the Mantle initiated the inversion. I have already ex-
plained that the Mantle covered the Poem. Of course, the Mantle immediately cov-
ered the poet, but not because of the poet himself, but for his poem, which gives
me a right to say (and this was confirmed by history and the name The Poem of the
Mantle) that it was, in fact, the highest decoration the poem could have received.
That is where shā‘ir was prevented from bringing his function and his power of the
“supra-subject” to the Islamic culture. In an exceptionally perfidious manner, which
will prove highly efficient in the future, The Event with the Mantle tells of paying
tribute to a poem, provided that the poet is no longer shā‘ir: a “supra-subject” who
uses poetry as a means of cognition and communication with metaphysical forces.
In such a situation, the poem is presented as more important than the poet, that is,
than the shā‘ir whose function and work are mistrusted in the early days of Islam,
in the ideological enlightenment of the Tradition by the Revelation. Shā‘ir, a “su-
pra-subject” on the verge of the Supernatural and on the verge of his own supernat-
ural trait, is left without an ideological base, thus he can recite the poem that does
not communicate with metaphysical forces, while the Prophet is, on the ideological
plane, the one who assumes his alleged competences. The Prophet did exactly that –
generously and wisely he neither rejected nor despised poetry as such, but annulled
the shā‘ir’s position from which he used the word of the poet to communicate with
higher powers. This opened new doors and to a long history of Oriental-Islamic po-
etry in full swing. The “poetic intervention” was that condition, a correction of the
content carried by the term shā‘ir in his being and in his mission.

It may appear unusual to interpret the Event with the Mantle as a depersonalisation
of the poet – by a decision to proclaim the poem more important than the name of its
author. In a strict and simplified causality, that can truly seem an unusual, or wrong
claim, for there would not have been a poem had it not been for Ka‘ba Ibn Zuhayr.
However, the poem’s history, as well as the history of literature in general, states
that literature is unusual also because the created works manage to drift away from
the author’s personality in order to be able to live in a realm of artistic values. The
author’s personality ceases to be important, for the author “authorised” his work
to represent him in its own way. It may be useful, but not necessary, to know the
author and his “civil personality” in order to be able to read his work successfully.
This principle is more efficient if we talk about more significant literary works, for
those works – created from the personality that is, necessarily, marked by its culture
– strive to transcend to the sphere of the universal from the sphere of the personal/
the individual. In this context, I would like to recall Barthes’ and Kafka’s consider-
ations. Barthes writes: “Death is of secondary importance; it unrealises the author’s
signature and turns the work into a myth: the truth of an anecdote is exhausted in
vain in an attempt to join the truth of a symbol (…) By erasing the writer’s signature,

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death establishes the truth of the work, its enigmatic character”.58 In the same place,
Barthes cites Franz Kafka: “The reason why the judgement of the progeny about a
certain individual is more just than that of his contemporaries rests in death. Only
after death does a man develop in his own way…”59

The moment when the Prophet covered Ka‘b Ibn Zuhayr, who stood before him,
with his Mantle, that is, the moment when Ka‘b recited his poem, Ka‘b personally
was no longer important, or, in any case, his poem became important: the poem was
mantled, not its author as a person.

Such understanding of the Event with the Mantle certifies the history of Oriental-Is-
lamic literature. It is not known whether the Prophet uttered a single word when he
performed this act – he did not need to – but his act determined the attitude towards
poetry of the time and towards the shā‘ir’s function, and he corrected dominant po-
etic principles, thus directing the future literary production. Ultimately – regardless
of the brevity of my conclusion – the Event with the Mantle is an early anticipation
of the modern attitudes of Barthes, Kafka, and others, since it prefers the poet’s
work to his personality. The aforementioned authors, of course, were unaware of the
Event with the Mantle, but, essentially, it is the same idea, the same relationship. We
studied, until recently and within positivistic approaches to literature, a number of
positive facts about the author, about his civic personality at the expense of an im-
manent study of his work; namely, even in the Event with the Mantle, we encounter
an authoritative message that a work, in proportion to its significance, should be in
the focus of our interest, rather than the author, for such a work becomes a relevant
subject, even a protagonist of literature’s history and future.

A number of poems bear witness to and were inspired by the Poem of the Mantle,
which annulled a part of those poetics that involved shā‘ir; they had a strong inter-
textual communication with the Poem and affirmed its poetics in the grand tradition.
Probably no other poem in the history of literature in Oriental-Islamic languages
was – poetically – as influential as was the Poem of the Mantle. Many poetic paral-
lels, counterparts to that poem, were written, and Al-Busiri’s Peom of the Mantle,
which I have already mentioned, is among the most famous. ‘Abdullāh Ṣalāḥuddīn
‘Ushshāqī60 was among those who wrote a notable poem inspired by the previous
Poems of the Mantle. It is unusual that I use the plural name Poems of the Mantle,
but it is a curiosity of a sort that concerns the poem and the poetics it partly formed.
As I have already stated, this is not, in fact, the title of the poem, but the name by
which it entered the history of literature as the first, original poem that concerned
that topic and poetics, and which was recited to the Prophet by Ka‘b Ibn Zuhayr. In
that context, I will call it a proto-poem, unlike a number of poems that treat the same
theme that I will call meta-poems, since they communicated with the proto-poem
not only through the topic, but also found in it their own religious, aesthetic and po-
etic motif. In terms of its broadest consequences, it can be said that the Poem of the
Mantle has become a “ritual” ode in the sense of its positioning in the domain of the

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religious, as well as in the domain of the traditional. Namely, that poem has become
a commonplace in the poetical tradition of Oriental-Islamic languages; it has gained
the status of a “leitmotif” in that tradition, primarily in the field of the genre in which
it was formed and which was enriched by these meta-poems.61

(A relative abundance of commonplaces, especially in cases when genres appear in

the form of the commonplace, indicates that this poetics was inductive, even norma-
tive, which has yet to be discussed.)

The act of eliminating the ideological function of the pre-Islamic shā‘ir is rein-
forced by the fact that the shā‘ir stood before the Prophet in a significant historical
delineation between their positions and functions. The bravery of the shā‘ir before
the Prophet and the Prophet’s supremacy are expressed through a single gesture, by
which the Prophet, without uttering a single word, solved the ancient dispute, the ri-
valry between prophets and poets. This bravery itself expressed the shā‘ir’s decision
to give up his prophetic and magical prerogatives, and that poetry, in the future, can
only be ideologically neutral or engaged in the affirmation of Islam, in accordance
with the quoted ayah by which poetry is accepted if it is a deed of those who do
righteous deeds.62 Without a doubt, at that pacifying moment, in the Event with the
Mantle, neither “side” was defeated nor hurt. The poet’s bravery was, in fact, an
expression of devotion, while the Prophet’s gesture was, to the highest extent, an ex-
pression of self-respect, and simultaneously recognition of the dignity of the “other
side”. At the crossroads of cultures – the pre-Islamic (called in Arabic literature the
era of paganism, jāhiliyya) and Islamic, the Event with the Mantle took place – it
was the confrontation of two poetics: that of poetry and of the Qur’ān, wherein the
Qur’ānic poetics positioned itself as latitudinal, deductive poetics. Nevertheless, this
was essentially a confrontation between two ideologies, yet in the sense and in the
domain in which ideologies are inclined to the literary Word, or in which the literary
Word is considered a means of ideological strategy and the realisation of goals.

The difference in the relationship towards the Word – the difference between Poetry
and the Revelation – is fundamental. Namely, the shā‘ir’s word is a powerful means
for dominance over a supernatural force, which, in return, gives power to the Word;
hence, it is a two-way movement. The exchange of energy in which the poet signifi-
cantly influences the metaphysical is problematic from the point of view of the need
to determine the deductive or inductive character of the shā‘ir’s poetry. The revela-
tion is, however, only vertical, deductive; it vertically descends to the world that it
wants to change ideologically (and ethically, of course) by attempting to allure and
win over the World through its aesthetic value. In this relationship, the positions of
the shā‘ir and the Prophet change significantly. The Shā‘ir is overwhelmed with the
feeling of power that resulted from a successful communication with metaphysical
forces and with the help of his Word, so he tries to optimally differentiate himself
among all of the other subjects of the community. The Prophet’s position is signifi-
cantly different: it is emphasised in many places in the Revelation that the Prophet

66
is only an ordinary man and that his duty is only to “transmit the Revelation”, etc. In
that way, the deductive nature of the Revelation is optimally accentuated.

Thus, at the crossroads of epochs, stood side by side the shā‘ir, symbolising poetry,
regardless of the fact that he would give up important prerogatives of the traditional
shā‘ir, the embodiment of another and general conviction that he is but the magician
of the Word, and a man who claimed the opposite (by the Revelation he announced)
– that he was not a poet but a man like any other. Their historical encounter occurred
in relation to the Word, but the Word that is – “on both sides” – aesthetically deco-
rated at the highest level.

The interpretation of the Event with the Mantle that I here present is not arbitrary.
It was a confrontation of two poetics. One should constantly keep in mind the al-
ready-emphasised fact that the Arabic culture is eminently the Culture of the Word,
that shā‘ir was, in antiquity, a powerful subject in his community because of his rela-
tionship to the Word, and that the Revelation was determined in relation to the Word,
regardless of whether it emphasised the value of the Word and the shā‘ir expression,
or if it emphasised its own value. Their differences were substantial, but the resolu-
tion of their confrontation was surprisingly peaceful, even creative, for what would
that culture and its history be today without poetry?

Thus, by analysing the poetological and the historical meaning of the term shā‘ir
and its function, and confronting that term with a different poetics (shā‘ir position)
on the very “chest of Islam”, I am only attempting here to let facts speak on history
and historical poetics, knowing that their voice has become “hoarse”, or has become
mislaid in the depths of history, such that we are no longer even aware of some of its
very important echoes. Thus, since we sometimes are not fully aware of the tradition,
or of some of its fateful endeavours and articulations, even articulations as endeav-
ours, I am, in fact, trying to reach the awareness of the Tradition about itself through
the Event with the Mantle, for undoubtedly the Tradition is self-aware, it has always
been, and the Event with the Mantle and the literary-historical fate of the Poem of
the Mantle bear witness to it.

Such an understanding of the poetological and literary-historical fate of the Poem of

the Mantle confirms my introductory considerations about the history of literature
always being alive, always with us in our world and system of values; one should
only know how to approach it. The Poem of the Mantle is historical in the sense that
it decisively separated certain crucial issues in relation to the position of the shā‘ir
and his Word. Moreover it is historical in the sense that it occurred in a remote mo-
ment in history, on a remote date. Through its importance it becomes, like other sig-
nificant works, trans-historical and intertextual. In relation to this, I can now expand
upon Barthes’ and Biti’s claim on the need of permanent reading, of a constantly new
reading of literature and the regular “procedure” of evaluation (re-canonisation) of
literary history. Namely, it is important to read anew literary history, literary works

67
created in history, as well as to read literary histories, regardless of the fact that we
say that they are temporary. What is more, they should be read because they are
temporary, for they themselves become, through time, a part of literature – its inter-
pretation, evaluation, sometimes even supervision by the production that is achieved
by academic canonisation. That is how literary histories – as well as literature itself,
in the narrow sense – become “immortal” and transcend the historical, becoming
trans-historical. The Poem of the Mantle belongs to those values, just as its history
and the histories written about it.

In the Islamic period, the Shā‘ir lost the majority of that content because of the au-
thoritative stance of the Qur’ānic text towards its function in the ideological domain,
but its distinguished position in the society was still relatively significant. Through-
out history, Muslim rulers competed in assembling the best poets at their courts –
and considered them an important part of their entourage. Emirs at the lower level
of rule followed them in such attempts, knowing that the reputation of a dignitary
significantly depended on the reputation of poets assembled in the entourage.

Contextualising historically his social position, the shā‘ir was not a shaman in the
Islamic period, meaning he was not a priest, but his work, even then, contained much
of the importance and reputation it had had in antiquity. Namely, in the Islamic peri-
od, the poet’s work was an important part of adab, whose meaning and importance
I have already discussed – as a system that had pretences related to upbringing and
education, for adab was not only fun or joy (dolce), but done for the sake of per-
fecting man’s education and ethics; adab is dolce et utile. And as such it was not of
crucial importance that, in the meantime, genres developed that were very functional
in the domain of adab: poetry always remained at the highest position in society.
This is a continuation of ancient poetics, although reduced in relation to content
and form, that is, in relation to the prophetic function of the poet. In other words,
poetry remained an important factor in the system for man’s ethical and educational
improvement. Thus, the shā‘ir was important in antiquity, and in the Islamic period,
although then in a different way. At the same time, the semantics of the shā‘ir rests
in his conscience: the meaning of this word, as well as its morphological form, is
carried through history, even if its prophetic significance is neglected. This word and
this term are not completely devoid of the content they had. There is memory; there
is historical poetics as testimony. The poet in the Islamic epoch writes, that is, sings
his song by feeling (and that is the semantic pool of the tri-literal shi‘ir), but he does
not strain himself to enable the poem to reach cognition (that meaning is also in its
semantic pool). However, the poet compensates for this by his primary status in the
court entourage and adab. What is more, we saw his work being situated both aes-
thetically and argumentatively in medieval poetics; even his aesthetic character is an
argument on its own, aside from the fact that it appears as the “crown argument” in
works whose nature is utterly scientific. Without a doubt, the shā‘ir received decent
satisfaction in the Islamic epoch. The Event with the Mantle emphasises its impor-
tance and polyvalent nature time and again.

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The poet’s high position in the society, his important role in the system of adab and
the historical content of the term shā‘ir would later, in the Islamic epoch, take po-
etry in a direction where it would, to the greatest possible extent, poetically express
awareness of its origin in the term shā‘ir. Namely, Sufi poetry would come to dom-
inate Arabic-Islamic culture through its literature. We will speak of that epochal po-
etical innovation of the tradition, and, in this context, it would be necessary to point
out that Sufi poetry affirms the poetic cognition of the highest religious truths and
sublime states anew. Poetry can lead to an ecstatic state and is, at the same time, an
expression of such a state. Sufi poetry is, essentially, “religious expression”. Howev-
er, the difference between the ancient and Sufi shā‘ir exists: the former was a pagan
and the latter a monotheistic “medium”. That difference is, from a religious point of
view, or from the point of view of ideology, fundamental, but minimal from the point
of view of poetology, since, in both cases, religion as ideology is introduced into the
content of poetry. It is interesting to emphasise again that shā‘ir is etymologically
an Arab word, but it historically also became the term of the so-called Persian and
Ottoman Turkish literature. Hence, one of the essential poetological terms became
a strong bond of a culture, a common factor of its poetics. For one should keep in
mind that Iranians and Turks, more than Arabs, realised greatest achievements in
Sufi poetry.

Still, the shā‘ir managed to smuggle into the future much of its ideological “luggage”
in the Event with the Mantle. I would like to emphasise that Sufi poets, through their
poetry in the domain of the religious, were on many occasions those who founded
and led the dervish orders. That fact will be explained later from the poetological
perspective.

In modern literature, the shā‘ir has become a poet – a mere writer of poems, a writer
whose memory contains the antediluvian, ancient content of the term shā‘ir, for, in
Oriental-Islamic culture, as well as in many other cultures, there remained a con-
viction on the poet’s peculiarity, on his poetically eccentric individuality in a posi-
tive sense of the word. Only in the contemporary age, dehumanised by a demonic
economy and the tragic annihilation of cultural integrity, did there arise an almost
complete disparagement of the poet as an authority of culture. This disparagement
took the form of rendering the poet’s work a tragically lost part of contemporary
man’s integrity. In fact, aside from the contemporary promotion of profit into a deity,
the world today is being devastated by a demon, which we call politics, and which is
increasingly and at an ever faster pace undergoing its own dehumanisation.

THE POETOLOGICAL TERM SAN‘A AS A DEPARTURE FROM THE

IDEOLOGICAL CONTENT OF THE TERM SHĀ‘IR
The interpretation of the common poetological term ṣan‘a brings us back to the main
term of shā‘ir, for they developed in tandem. The poet maintained something from

69
the term shā‘ir in the Islamic epoch. He renounced using poetry as a device and
medium in communicating with metaphysical forces, but he kept – as we have seen
– a high position in the society, owing to, of course, his extraordinary skill with the
Word. As paradoxical as this may seem, the Qur’ān that positioned itself as superior
in relation to poetry, surpassing it by its essentially incomparable poetics, played a
decisive role in recording, in writing down poetry that existed in oral tradition for the
most part. This is how the Qur’ān continued helping the highly positioned poet to
maintain his reputation, partly for the purpose of positively contrasting the Qur’ānic
text in opposition to poetry. This was an important motive for philologists to start
writing down ancient poetry. The Qur’ān, essentially, only changed the position of
the poet.

This displacement of the shā‘ir from the sphere of religion had far-reaching poetic
consequences. It is because the poet’s reputation in the Islamic period rested less on
his supernatural abilities than on his ability with the Word that the road was open
for preference of the form in poetry. This is how motifs became of secondary impor-
tance, with even the traditional reservoir of motifs is postulated poetically, and hence
it was desirable to use motifs abundantly used by other poets, while innovation was
reduced to the domain of form, to its perpetual improvement. In accordance with
this, the greatest authorities in classical literature strongly affirmed the term san‘a
for poetry, for poetical “invention”, for in this context the term “poetic creation”63
cannot be used. For example, Ibn Ṭabāṭabā elaborated that the technique of writing
a poem was key to successful poetry.64 Al-Qāḍī al-Jurjānī emphasised that a poet
needs to learn the writing of poetry from tradition, and called his product san‘a.65 Ibn
Sallām al-Jumahī, in a work that had an immense influence in the history of Arabic
literature and philology, – Ṭabaqāt al-shu‘arā’ – (9th century) wrote that poetry is
ṣinā‘a and thaqāfa (poetic mastery and cultivation) mastered by learned men, just as
is the case with all other kinds of knowledge, that is, artistry.66

There are two main reasons for the dominance of the form in classical poetics; that
is, for giving preference to its technical aspect, which may be called, in a certain
sense, even technological.

First, by exclusion of the religious content of the poem in the sense of its pagan pref-
erences of the divine, the influence of poetry in the community was reduced; more
precisely – the position of poetry is now completely specified, so that a certain com-
pensation had to be agreed upon, although the poet himself had always taken care of
the form of his utterance. By giving up the metaphysical or religious meaning, there
arose a need for a “replacement” in its technological aspect.

Second, poetry was a highly appreciated and profitable vocation in the Islamic ep-
och: it was an extraordinary profession generously looked upon by politicians and
the wealthy, turning it thus, for the most part, into a vocation supported by patrons.
Consequently, poets – the grandest amongst them, who were the essential part of

70
the entourage – wrote poems that could be called “commercial”, that is, emotionally
somewhat empty poems, since they were motivated by the profit and generosity
of the patron rather than authentic imaginative content. In other words, the poem
is “degraded” in terms of content; more precisely, in relation to the content that
included the shā‘ir’s “product”. The poet tried to camouflage a relative emotional
scarcity and artificial imaginativeness with a glittery form, perfected to the extent
of the enchantment of the recipient (be it a patron or his devotees), thus preventing
him in engaging in the exciting quest for the shivers of sense.67 Moving poetry away
from the divine as the creative force inevitably led to giving preference to form
(ṣan‘a), which also has a synonymous word – naẓm, as the optimal organisation of
speech achieved by poetry in an exceptionally disciplined form. This could also be
a technological expression. Such a character of poetry underlines the universal and
opposite term for prose forms: nathr, meaning scattered, dispersed, disorderly, etc.
It is obvious that the terms are poetological, but, at the same time, they also pass a
value judgement. Tradition, by using such expressions, passes a value judgement
over literary genres, in terms of their organisation or the lack of it – in terms of their
technique. The poetological functions of the terms are thus clearly emphasised. In
accordance with this, prose did not have a reputation in a tradition that could match
that of poetry. The majority of prose works were considered, in relation to poetry, a
second-rate literature, for it did not contain the degree of order, the prosodic organi-
sation that characterised primarily poetry.68

Because of such differentiation of literary genres on the basis of their technique,

even technology, a need for syncretism of the poetic and prose genres appeared.
Prose works strived for the golden embroidery of verses, not only in artistic, but also
in scientific texts. What is more, differentiation of literary genres into the technically
ordered (poetry) and the technically disordered (prose) led to a poetic victory that
marked the tradition of rhymed and rhythmic prose integrated into the invocations
of prose works, and which constituted the majority of those works. It should be
emphasised once more that, for example, One Thousand and One Nights was con-
sidered “second-rate” literature because of perceptions of Scheherazade’s linguistic
indolence, but that work is decorated with nearly eight thousand bayts.69 Rhymed
and rhythmic prose embellishes also The Epistle of Forgiveness, a renowned and
praiseworthy piece of writing, the translation of which is available in Bosnian.70 For
centuries, the technical aspect of poetry, which was a safe way of maintaining the
cohesion of the tradition, was perfected, as well as the way to a poetics of similarity.
It was not before the early 20th century that some significant literary groups (the
Diwan, the Apollo, the Mahjar, that is, the literature of the Arab immigration to the
United States) raised questions on the relationship between form and content in a
literary work; that is, the issue of so-called artistic truthfulness (al-ṣidq al-fannī),
through which an attempt was made to transfer the focus from the poetic how to the
poetic what, to give advantage to poetic content that needed to fit within an adequate
form.

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Thus, after taking away the “metaphysical dignity” of the shā‘ir, as the stronghold
of his authority depended on an attribution of superhuman qualities, the tradition as
a technical aspect of poetry became the new stronghold of the poet’s authority. In
this sense, even the term defining art was made more “technical” by its translation
into ability (fann).

FANN AS A TECHNICAL TERM FOR ART

In history of Arabic literature, fann has been an inveterate term for art. It is almost
synonymously close to the term ṣan‘a, which means that fann is a term expressing
the technical aspect of a work of art, or an artefact. That aspect of the term fann is
very interesting from the point of view of poetology, since it is contrasted with the
term shā‘ir: fann does not include the metaphysical content of a work as is the case
with shā‘ir, where metaphysical content is primary; fann is limited to the constitu-
tion of a work (ṣan‘a) as a special skill that particularly characterises poets. Fann is
a matter of talent, but also of learning; it is not the same as the shā‘ir’s contact with
the metaphysical, even if talent was a matter of supernatural inclination. Classical
Arabic literature and philology, even philosophy, place emphasis on fann as the dil-
igent mastery of the technique of the poet’s “creation”, exercise, learning, etc. – to a
much greater extent than on talent, as something that originates from the supernat-
ural. That is how poetry was increasingly distanced from the shā‘ir’s metaphysical
strongholds.

Apart from the aforementioned philological authorities that speak of the importance
of technique in the formation of a poem, I will shortly mention an opinion shared by
several more authors in classical Islamic literature. Those attitudes are commonplac-
es of the classical Oriental-Islamic period, and that is why I believe it is important
to mention them (I dedicated special attention to that in my book Orientology…).

Qudāma Ibn Ja`far (d. 948), ranked highly the factor of rationality (‘aql) in the com-
position of a poem and insisted that the “art of versification” traditionally consisted
of poetic metre, rhyme, style.71 The eminent Ibn Khaldūn also believed that learning
poetry by heart, mastering traditional prosody, was the main precondition for a per-
son to become a poet, for it was the best way to master the technique of “creating”
poems. In his most famous work, The Prolegomena, he writes: “Be aware that writ-
ing poetry and the poetic craft fall under a number of conditions, the first of which
is learning poetry by heart, learning Arabic poetry until an ability is formed within
the soul to weave on its loom (…) Whoever does not learn poetry by heart produces
bad, inapt verses”.72 I will name one other example that illustrates preference being
given to ways of learning to write poetry, especially that which is exemplary and
canonised. One of the greatest Oriental-Islamic philologists, Khalaf al-Aḥmar (d.
796), recommended Abū Nuwās (d. 814), an aspiring poet, to learn one thousand
qaṣīds by old Arabic poets by heart, and once that heroic task was completed, he was

72
to contact him, the philologist. Literary-historical sources state that the young Abū
Nuwās performed the task over likely a very long period and that when he appeared
before the philologist he was told: “Now, in order to begin writing, you need to for-
get all those poems.”

This story is interesting for several reasons. First of all, al-Aḥmar was the greatest
philologist of his time. Second, a philologist was both a poetologist and a literary
critic, all at once – which means – a manifold authority. Third, all of this took place
in the golden era of the Islamic-Arabic caliphate. Fourth, Abū Nuwās then became
the most famous poet of the Abbasid period, a poet in the entourage of Hārūn al-
Rashīd.

All of the details presented here are important. The demand of the authoritative phi-
lologist (critic and poetologist) is aimed to make the young “candidate” completely
master traditional poetry, for he knows that the opposite will occur: the abundance
of memorised poems will form Abū Nuwās the way that Ibn Khaldūn mentioned
many years later, with the same goal. Namely, when Abū Nuwās memorised the
number of poems he was tasked with, he did not master them; rather, they mastered
him. The philologist’s recommendation to the young poet to forget these memorised
poems sound both anecdotal and ironic: of course, he was unable to do it – and the
philologist was aware of that. Within the story the following should be emphasised:
al-Ahmar is the most authoritative philologist, while Abū Nuwās the most signifi-
cant poet of the most important, Abbasid period. The importance of the technical
side of poetry is thus maximised.

In such a poetical positioning of the tradition and individual talent – to use Eliot’s
words – the poet is not a hero like shā‘ir; rather, tradition is the hero. The indi-
viduality of the shā‘ir in the ancient period was more emphasised than the poet’s
authority in the Islamic epoch. Because of such an understanding of originality – if
it is at all possible to talk of that term in classical literature – the term fann is used
for literary “creativity”, which does not mean artistic creation in the sense in which
we understand it today: fann is more an ability than art.73 That term remains to this
day the only one signifying art in Arabic culture. Of course, in the modern period, it
changed its content to a certain extent – just like many other literary terms, especial-
ly poetological, under the influence of the Arabic literary tradition’s contacts with
the experience of other literary traditions. Fann today means art, but the term also
preserved the meaning of ability: the content of the literary work became primary,
but care for its form has not been abandoned.

This comprehension of fann as described in the aforementioned lines is present in

the entire classical literature of Oriental-Islamic languages. It was one of the most
important factors behind the homogenisation of an enormous literary tradition in
three languages, and by that I primarily mean “poetic homogenisation”. In Orien-
tal-Islamic literature, an interesting parabola can be found, which tells of the rela-

73
tionship of “Muslim craftsmen” towards creativity, that is, towards technique in art,
although that parabola is sometimes used, and with good reason, also as an illustra-
tion of a mystical worldview. I believe it would be useful to introduce that parabola
in this context, not because of its anecdotal charm as much as because of its genuine
and brilliant elucidation – expressed in the manner of a parable, nonetheless – of the
understanding of technique in Oriental-Islamic art.

Thus, there once was a powerful sultan who ordered the engagement of the best
craftsmen in the world to construct and decorate a hall worthy of his power and
reputation. The sultan’s associates assembled the best craftsmen from China and
Byzantium (the Byzantine craftsmen were mystics), and they immediately got down
to business. The Chinese craftsmen were working in one part of the hall, the Byzan-
tine in the other. An arras separated them so they would not see each other’s work.
Finally, the work was completed and the sultan was invited to see what was done. He
first entered the part of the hall where Chinese craftsmen were working. The walls
were painted magnificently. The sultan was exhilarated. Then they took the arras
off and the walls the Chinese had painted shone in a magnificent reflection from the
walls the Byzantine craftsmen had burnished to perfection. The sultan was thrilled
even more. The other group of craftsmen knew that the sultan would be impressed
far more by the reflection than the original image. Ghazals and many poets who ac-
cepted this parable say that the reflection is prettier than reality itself.74

THE TERM FANN AND ITS REALISATION IN THE FORM OF

TAHMĪS AS A FORM REPRESENTING FANN
Organising tradition in accordance with the principle the aforementioned parable
suggests resulted in the emergence of entire forms in accordance with that principle.
Numerous creators significantly contributed to the “burnishing” of the tradition, not
only through intertextual communication with canonical works of literature in Ori-
ental-Islamic languages, but also through the development of forms that were creat-
ed in the “process” of such a perfecting of the literary tradition, but within the poetic
principles asserted by the term fann. In that process, there existed several directions
and endeavours in the domain of poetic form, interesting from the point of view of
poetics, the basis of which contain the same principles from ancient and classical
Arabic poetics, through Persian and Turkish, to the poetics within which Bosniaks
wrote. This is how forms like tahmīs75 emerged.

The extent to which the technical side of this poetry was preferred can be supported
by the fact that this unity (3+2) was brought to such a level that it was literally possi-
ble to distinguish them only by the colour of the ink in which they were written, for
red ink was used for prototext and black ink for metatext. The author of the metatext
thus indicated – in an extremely formal manner – that two poems were integrated
into a single poem. In such cases, one can speak of an artefact in the full sense of the

74
word. The verses of the metapoem are remarkably reminiscent of the reflection of
the work of the Chinese craftsmen on the walls of Byzantine craftsmen. For exam-
ple, the poet ‘Ushshāqī brilliantly mastered the craft of poetry, so his verses appear
like a reflection in the verses of the protopoem. It is not at all surprising – in accor-
dance with their poetics – that the verses of the metapoem, that is, ‘Ushshāqī’s verses
in the “reflection” of al-Būṣīrī’s verses, drew far more attention than the protoverses
when they are alone, separated into the integral and self-sufficient text of the source
poem. In fact, to be more precise, in such cases, an artefact achieves full effect in
its unity, in its integrity and newly created artistic individuality, for not a single part
of the tahmīs individually achieves the meaning that was conquered, poetically and
aesthetically, in the new work, created from two poems. The point is their unity
within a newly-created form. In that, the “other” poet is credited with the effect, for,
without his engagement, there could not have been such a work.

This is how the paean to the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) by Ka`b Ibn
Zuhayr begins:

‫ُمتَيًّ ٌم ِع ْندَها َ لَ ْم يُجْ َز َم ْكبُو ُل‬ ‫َت ُس َعا ُد فًقَ ْلبِي ْْاليَوْ َم ًم ْتبُو ُل‬
ْ ‫بَان‬

ِ ْ‫َضيضُ الطَّر‬
‫ف َم ْكحُو ُل‬ ِ ‫اِال اَغ َُّن غ‬ ْ ‫َو َما ُس َعا ُد َغدَاةًَ ْالبَي ِْن اِ ْذ بَ َرز‬
‫َت‬

‫َّاح َم ْعلُو ُل‬

ِ ‫كـَأنَّ ْه ُم ْنهَ ٌل بِالر‬ ْ ‫ض ِذى ظَ ْل ٍم اِ َذا ا ْبتَ َس َم‬
‫ت‬ ِ ‫تَجْ لُو َع َو‬
َ ‫ار‬

‫اف بِأ ْبطَ َح أَضْ َحى َو ْه َو َم ْش ُمو ُل‬

ٍ ‫ص‬َ ْ ‫ُشج‬
‫َّت بِ ِذى َشبَ ٍم ِم ْن َما ِء َمحْ نِيَ ٍة‬

ِ ْ‫ِم ْن صَو‬
‫ب غَا ِديَ ِة بِيضٌ يَ َعالِي ُل‬ ُ‫تَ ْنفِى الرِّ يَا ُح ْالقَ َذى َع ْنهُ َو أ ْف َرطَه‬

Suada rode away hence my heart is broken today

In her it is captured and from slavery unrescued

And when she appeared before parting in the morning

Like a fawn its cervine eyes humbly lowering

She smiled a smile glistening, showing pearl white teeth

Her mouth like a trough filled with wine so sweet

Like wine mixed with water flowing and cold

A stream in a sandy ravine to the Northern wind exposed

With its crests to the wind inevitably losing the shreds

That in the morning rain from white clouds gathered

75
 Al-Būṣīrī’s ode begins with the following bayts:

‫َمزَجْ تَ َد ْمعًا َج َرى ِم ْن م ْقلَ ٍة بِد ٍَم‬ ٍ ‫اَ ِم ْن تَ َذ ُّك ِر ِجي َر‬
‫ان بِ ِذى َسلَ ٍم‬

َ ِ‫ق فِى الظَّ ْل َما ِء ِم ْن ا‬

‫ض ِم‬ ُ ْ‫ض ْالبَر‬
َ ‫َو اَوْ َم‬ ِ ‫ت الرِّي ُح ِم ْن تِ ْلقَا ِء ك‬
‫َاظ َم ٍة‬ ِ َّ‫اَ ْم هَب‬
ُ ِ‫ك اِ ْن قُ ْلتَ ا ْستَف‬
‫ق يَهَ ِم‬ َ ِ‫َو َما لِقَ ْلب‬ ‫ْك اِ ْن قُ ْلتَ ا ْكفُفَا هَ َمتَا‬
ِ ‫فَ َما ل َع ْينَي‬

‫َما بَيْنَ ُم ْن َس ِج ٍم ِم ْنهُ َو ُمضْ طَ ِر ِم‬ ‫اَ يَحْ َسبُ الصَّبُّ اَ َّن ْالحُبَّ ُم ْن َكتِ ٌم‬

‫ان َو ْال َعلَ ِم‬

ِ َ‫َو ال اَ ِر ْقتَ لِ ِذ ْك ِر ْالب‬ ‫لَوْ ال ْالهَ َوى لَ ْم تُ ِر ْق َد ْمعًا َعلَى طَلَ ٍل‬

Have you because of the memory of your neighbour from Selem

Mixed blood with tears both running from your eyes

Or is the memory awoken by the wind blowing from Khazim

And made the lightning strike through the gloom of Idam

Why do your eyes well up when you tell them to stop

And your heart withers away even more when you tell it to sore

Does the one in love think that love can be hidden

When it is revealed by teary eyes and a wounded heart

You do not shed tears for what is left of the camp of your beloved

Nor because Ban and Alem live on in your memories

‘Ushshāqī’s intertextual edifice, Tahmīs, begins with the following stanza:

‫اى خوش اول كريان اوالن عشق اﮂﭽره باحون و الم‬ ِ ‫لخز ِن َو األَل َم‬
ْ ِ‫في ال ْه َوى با‬
ِ ‫يا َ با َ ِكيًا‬
‫وى نظم لولوى اوصاف يا رذى الكرم‬ ‫ب ِذى ْال َك َر ِم‬
ِ ‫َاظما ً ِم ْد َحةَ ال َمحْ بُو‬
ِ ‫يَا ن‬

‫سلك نظمك زين ايد بدر درّوياقوت سدم‬ ِ ‫َر َّشحْ تَ بِال ُّدرِّ َو ْاليَاقُو‬
‫ت ِم ْن َسد َِم‬

‫نولدى باعث يادكه كلد يمى صحت ذى سلم‬ ٍ ‫أَ ِم ْن تَ َذ ُّك ِر ِجي َر‬
‫ان بِ ِذى َسلَ ٍم‬

‫اشك ﮁشمك كيم اولو بدرد مبدم آلو ده دم‬ ‫ت َد ْمعًا َج َرى ِم ْن ُم ْقلَ ٍة بِد ٍَم‬
ْ ‫َم َز َج‬

76
Oh, you crying over love, shedding tears in pain

You, writing verses of praise to the noble beloved

You, who preen with sadness made of pearls and emeralds

Have you because of a memory of the neighbour from Salem

Mixed tears with blood and both shed from your eyes

As I have stated, the first three verses (‘Ushshāqī’s) were written in black ink, and
I have bolded them for practical reasons; the second two verses (al-Būṣīrī’s) were
written in red ink and I have underlined them. The left column contains a text in
Turkish, written in black ink.

Several conclusions can be drawn from such a relationship between the “first” and
the “second” poet, the relationship in which a new work was formed. Primarily, such
structuring of the poem necessarily suggests that it should be understood as the po-
et’s work (in this context, it would be risky to use the word creation).

Since the “second” poet takes over the “first” poet’s theme/motif, as well as the
prosodic features of his work, as given features, it clearly follows that the “second”
poet’s main goal is to demonstrate his technical mastery. And there rests the key
point of this kind of poetics. Namely, the “second” poet deliberately and with pride
renounces the term creativity in the meaning we understand it to have today. His
poem is in the domain of traditional science and technical precision. The artist’s
originality is replaced by the effect expressed in the “reflection wall” parabola: orig-
inality is not the goal of the metapoem’s author (in this case, ‘Ushshāqī); rather, he
reduces originality to the term technique (fann or ṣan‘a). Thus, it cannot be said that
originality was not present and that poetry was reduced to mere epigonic practice;
originality did occur, even in such forms, but it should be understood in the meaning
of the poetics of the time, not in today’s understanding of the term originality. ‘Ush-
shāqī achieved a high degree of originality, but in the sphere of technical innovation,
in innovation of the form, to the extent that a completely new form was achieved,
or, a “new” poem in the new form. The “condition” of his poem is seemingly para-
doxical. It appears at first that such kind of poetry is traditionalistic, to the degree of
epigonism, but it is, in fact, a kind of technical originality in which the tradition is
innovated within itself, in frames of the traditionally-given and the already-created.
Within the framework of normative poetics, ‘Ushshāqī claimed victory, and in that
sense he can be proud of “his” poem, for that is what the tradition expected of him,
the tradition that feels affirmed because a poetic topic (which originates from the
Prophet’s time) is introduced into the “second” poem as a traditional “connective
motif”, and at the same time refreshed with other verses in the same metre and

77
rhyme. In this way, the boundaries of the traditional are moved: a dominant form (the
paean, for such is the Poem of the Mantle) keeps its prosodic characteristic (metre
and rhyme), the bayt structure, but the poem is also “upgraded” by new verses, by
which the protoform transformation is achieved, for in the new artefact we find a
new form. That form is constructed on the foundations of the genre-related experi-
ence of the tradition, in the domain of technical innovation, which means that the
poet’s primary task is to enrich the tradition within the tradition itself through vast
knowledge of it. Ultimately, it is clearly seen that the term inspiration has been sig-
nificantly shifted compared to the shā‘ir’s inspiration, such that, in accordance with
it, the term originality is shifted as well. The poet “burnishing” the tradition does not
even seek inspiration in the metaphysical; rather, his inspiration is the tradition itself,
his inspiration is the second literary work with which the poet competes poetically
and reduces that poetics to basic forms. This is a further reduction of content, which
the term shā‘ir entailed, and that proportionally means giving even greater prefer-
ence to technique, or the “composing” (ṣan‘a) of poetry in a technological sense.
These phases of reduction look like this.

Ka‘b Ibn Zuhayr, in the protopoem Poem of the Mantle, gave up the shā‘ir’s ideolog-
ical pretensions of the highest order – the intermediary mission between people and
metaphysical instances. Through the poem, he placed himself in the service of the
Prophet to whom he acknowledges the spiritual possession of that which the shā‘ir
used to appropriate as his own exclusive prerogative. This historical concession and
the reduction of the term shā‘ir has already been sufficiently discussed. However,
poems were later written whose primary inspiration was not even the content of
Ka‘b’s poem, but the poem itself – as an antique and artefact. Such a relationship
towards Ka‘b’s and then towards al-Būṣīrī’s poem is found in ‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs.
This technique or ability (fann) is constantly developed in poetry. Drawing a differ-
ence between protoverses and metaverses on the basis of the ink colour in which
they were written symbolises the superiority of the technique. Nevertheless, this
“technical means” indicates peculiar changes to the form, intertextuality of a special
kind, in order to signal to the reader visually as well that a new form is being created,
a new entity in the universe of the tradition that rests on “reincarnation” of a sorts.76
Originality is realised in two ways. The technical means of creating verses are em-
ployed to create a new form; ‘Ushshāqī personally contributed to the experience of
that form.

In ‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs, which I use as an example, the Arabic text follows simulta-
neously the text of the poem in Turkish. This technique reminds of the daring “bur-
nishing” of the tradition presented in the parable on the construction of the sultan’s
special hall. ‘Ushshāqī’s poem has a “double reflection”. On one hand, his verses
are “reflected” in the protopoem; the intertextual “artefact” is then reflected in the
same poem in Turkish. One should keep in mind that the verses in Arabic and the
verses in Turkish are written in parallel, in two columns. That technical solution is
not a coincidence: had those two poems been written in succession, one after the

78
other, their unity in the same artefact would contain a quality, different from the
form given to the artefact by ‘Ushshāqī. Namely, a parallel writing of verses in two
languages, in the form of parallel columns, creates a far stronger unity than the one
the poem would have had if the verses had been written in succession, one after the
other. In a possible writing of the poem in one and then the other language, the text
would easily have dispersed; it would easily have become two poems, in two lan-
guages. In that way, only the vertical aspect would have been satisfied. However, in
‘Ushshāqī’s original form, two dimensions are simultaneously fulfilled – horizontal
and vertical – and by that a far greater unity of artefacts is achieved – to the point
of inseparability. In every aspect, it appears that the technique has been brought to
a complete functionality. However, this is not all: namely, the poet’s filling of space
– by the poem, both vertically and horizontally – strongly suggests something else.
We do not have written evidence that the poet’s intention was to realise that which I
will elaborate in the following lines, but the tradition and its poetics were obviously
aware of their goals and effects. Poetically, the effect is of considerable significance.

Namely, the vertical and horizontal connecting of “space” resembles the diachronic
and synchronic connecting of time and space through text. ‘Ushshāqī’s (d. 1782)
poem refers, through Būṣīrī’s (d. 1297) poem to Ka’b’s poem from the 7th centu-
ry. This is vertical connecting, a reinforcement of history and literary tradition. At
the same time, connecting is conducted in space, “horizontally” – from ‘Ushshāqī’s
Bosnia in Oriental-Islamic culture, through the Ottoman Empire, to Arabia. The bi-
lingual nature of the poems is also a very active factor of the connection.

What we see here is fann of the highest order, in an extraordinary action. It is dif-
ficult to imagine a more efficient way to affirm tradition than simultaneousness:
such works show how history – as a succession of events in the past – is strongly
relativized as irreversible, that is, how literary tradition should be taken as omnipres-
ent, as everlasting: the best literary works are always present, as values, and it was
considered a poet’s responsibility to keep it ever-present, eternally alive. ‘Ushshāqī’s
poem achieved that grand poetical task of intertextuality – the heroic nature of the
tradition, because of its everlasting character. At the same time, such a poetic victory
in relation towards the tradition was highly regarded. Form one ethnically liminal
area arrived a precious contribution to the epicentre-values of the cultural empire.

The technical achievements of the tahmīs, as ‘Ushshāqī’s for example (but also some
other forms, like tasdis, etc.), represent the greatest literary values in “the mirror”.
The verses of the metapoem are formed in accordance with the principle of the
“mirror image” of the protopoem – in accordance with the Muslim craftsmen’s con-
viction that the reflection itself is more beautiful than what is reflected.

The poet’s reflection in “the mirror” of the poetic tradition strongly corresponds to
the function of the “mirror” in some other important segments of Oriental-Islamic
culture; hence, that multiple poetic functionality of the “mirror” can be taken as an-

79
other strong cohesive factor in the entire culture, for it acts simultaneously in several
of its areas. Namely, it is well known that the mirror is an important “requisite” in
Sufism. Calligraphy often uses the “mirror principle”. Calligraphy is one of the most
widespread forms of art in the Oriental-Islamic world. It is a unique synthesis of the
sacral and the worldly, of textual and visual expression. In calligraphy, the Word has
visual content, and that primarily concerns the sacral Word (ayet, hadith, sentence),
and, since calligraphy/lawha is one of the hallmarks of the culture, it follows that
the sacral Word found a way to sacralise the culture through this visual expression
as well. In the context of this expose, it is important to mention that the technical
aspect is exceptionally important, perhaps even crucial, in the poetics of the lawha,
hence in the poetics of the lawha, art and ability are supplemented in a peculiar way,
one could say, in the given context and through word play, that it is the ability of art.

A very brief reflection on the poetics of the lawha may seem digressive, but I want
to show briefly that the mirror principle is active in the poetics of different Orien-
tal-Islamic forms of art.

In lawhas that use the “mirror principle”, a certain text is written so that it comprises
a half of the visual expression, that is, it occupies a half of the lawha’s surface, while
the other half of the surface is a faithful reflection – just as in a mirror – of the text
written in the first half. In that way, the text is dedicated to itself, it stares at itself
– just as the literary texts stare, poetically, into the canonised texts of the tradition.
This is very similar to ‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs as a poetic form.

In elaborating the poetics of the lawha, one should not disregard that the Word is
in action in/on the lawha, that it is the item and the motif of the artist’s expression,
which means – according to this universalised poetics – that the Word (and Orien-
tal-Islamic culture is eminently a culture of the Word) is always searching for its
“reflection”. The symbolism is also Sufi; it is generally multiple.

The Word is consecrated in that culture in at least two ways, and they both cooperate.
It is consecrated, on the one hand, by the fact that the Qur’ānic Word is by itself sa-
cred and is as such sacred in the Culture, while on the other the Word is consecrated
in that culture by the very fact that it is predominant in it, as its most successful
expression. Let us recall how the ancient Arabians coated the Kiblah as the greatest
chancel by verses written in gold on silken linen. The tradition has never forgotten
this importance of the word, and the Qur’ān only emphasised that enormous signifi-
cance. If we take the entire Culture as Text in a semiotic meaning – and that appears
quire reasonable – it follows that the Word, especially sacral, is the very soul of the
culture as Text.

Consequently, we conclude that the Word is an expression of the highest Divine

Sense and that it is, as such, looking for its reflections in the World: in poetry in gen-
eral, especially in the poetry of ‘Ushshāqī’s type (brought to technical perfection);

80
in salat and tajweed articulation; even in calligraphic writings as one of the dom-
inant expressions of Oriental-Islamic culture. It is the eternal quest for one’s own
reflexion in the World.77 The poetic principle of the reflexion is utterly functional
because, among other things, it maintains with extraordinary success the Word itself,
which, “looking itself in the mirror”, becomes more self-aware, proud of itself and
of the significance it has in the Culture. This may sound also like an expression of
its narcissistic nature, but bother not – the Culture gave it just as much significance
as the Word itself on its side gave the highest contribution possible in affirming that
Culture. The Word in lawhas is looking for its “micro reflections” – in each harf, in
its multitude of characteristics and possible transformations. In the end result, and
in the deepest understanding of the poetics of the lawha, one can observe – if the
observer of the lawha is competent to understand the poetics of the lawha – that the
word is searching for its own shivers of multiple senses in an abundance of possi-
ble calligraphic expressions, in that creative calligraphic tension between the effort
to create a new calligraphic expression and to simultaneously discipline the visual
expression, since the very essence of calligraphy is, after all, technical discipline.

The “mirror reflexion” principle is, in many lawhas, such that the observer/recipient
gains an impression that in the very middle of the lawha/space in which the Word
is boldly placed there is a vertical axis for text separation on the right side and its
reflection on the left. The reason for that is, primarily, in the fact that the Arabic
alphabet is written from the right to the left, but that fact optimally cooperates with
the other fact – that in that culture in general, the right side is prevalent and has
priority as the Side of Good.78 Finally, in order to observe the overwhelming com-
plexity in relations between forms in which the Word is announced in the tradition,
one should bear in mind that all literary works were handwritten, and the scriveners
were especially gifted, so each transcription/writing of a literary work also contained
prominent calligraphic values. In other words, tradition had a multitude of ways of
“reinforcing”, of homogenising, of establishing cooperation between a significant
number of art forms.

The form tahmīs, which I illustrated by ‘Ushshāqī’s poem in order to show that
the miraculously organised interlace of traditional values in both space and time, is
only one of the forms that act cohesively in classical literature in Oriental-Islamic
languages, the basis of which is understanding of the term fann, as a technical aspect
of the poetics we are talking about. I will illustrate such understanding of the term
fann as a poetological category by another successful example, that is, form, which
differs somewhat from tahmīs, but is essentially within the same poetic task.

81
NAẒIRA AS A SPECIAL KIND OF THE POET’S ABILITY
In 16th and 17th century Bosnia, a special literary form developed – the naẓira – as
the form of a fully developed tradition that preferred the technical aspect of a liter-
ary work. Naẓira differs, as a special form, in certain characteristics, from tahmīs
or other forms similar to the tahmīs by the technique of intertextualisation,79 but are
essentially similar in that the nazira takes over the “foreign” motif, one which exists
in another, already written poem. The form of naẓira was characteristic of not only
poems, but also of other highly complex and abundant literary structures, such as
mathnawī. In principle, many literary forms could contain their own naẓiras. I will
speak of that more in the chapter “Mathnawīs as Naẓiras in High Classicism”. For
the time being, I will dedicate my attention to two poems that construct the relation-
ship characteristic of naẓira, and were written in the Ottoman Turkish by poets who
lived in Mostar in the mid-17th century.

The first poem was written by Dervish Pasha Bajezidagić (d. 1603), who sang in
exhilaration to the town of Mostar:

There is no match anywhere for the beauty of Mostar -

And that you love it so much, oh, heart, should you wonder!

Save in Firdaws sublime, in this world there is nothing

Like the mild air of Mostar and its water life living.

The one who walks the town will live life anew
And every spectacular part of Mostar will bring joy true.

In waters and fruits abundant, Mostar with Damascus compares,

Its every beautiful garden Jannah resembles.

And with two towers of its bridge proud and might

It ascends to heights like the Zodiac belt.

Even a rainbow heavenly is not its equal

The bridge ascending to heaven it can merely resemble.

The industrious live in Mostar, beyond compare truly

For Mostar, this gem of the world, is of the gifted a nursery:

And always in it, you will meet the brave and the learned -
For there are always in Mostar the noble and the gifted.

Before it even the songbird of India their peace will hold,

But you, Dervish, like a nightingale will sing of Mostar songs untold.80

82
Dervish effendi Mostarac Žgarić (d. 1640) wrote a naẓira as a response to Ba-
jezidagić’s poem, in a resonating poetical voice:

So slender a girl fills every corner of Mostar

And no wonder then that many have fallen in love there.

Pleasant air, heavenly waters that cease not to run,

The hills and fields of Mostar allow for life to become.

Nobody has seen a match for Mostar in this world

In every corner of it there is something to experience and behold.

Whoever visits, will not leave and wants to stay

For the beauty of Mostar’ only to Jennah can compare.

Along the riverbank the Safa plain opens

For all in Mostar a place to relax it provides.

With waters abundant truly it is Damascus,

The soul can feed on the fruit of Mostar, so luscious.

The span of two towers Taq Kasra’s slender arch resembles -

Only with the heavenly arch the Mostar Bridge compares.

If a spring be, then Mostar is the spring of knowledge, honour and learning
The learned and the chaste always in it residing.

My lord, Hajji Dervish, in your praise you are not alone –

Mostar is blessed by the most renowned and those unknown.81

Žgarić’s poem borrows the rhyme and metre of the poem it both looks up to and
attempts to exceed in certain poetical aspects. Namely, the poet selects a poem, al-
ready acclaimed, written by another poet, as a “target” of his poetical competition.
Borrowing motifs and main elements of the form of a certain poem seems, at first, as
a limit preventing the poet as an innovative creator; that is, such a decision suggests
that this second poem – called naẓira – could be exclusively a caprice of an epigone,
yet it is not so. The poet of the naẓira is in a dual position. On one hand, his aim is to
affirm tradition as value, but also to innovate it at least in a technical aspect. He uses
an important segment of the technique/form from the protopoem, but tasks himself
with expressing the same topic through other stylistic devices, though in the same
rhyme and in the same metre. Without a doubt, it is an unusual relationship towards
both the tradition and towards the technique of poetry. In order to better identify this
complexity, it is necessary to explain the etymology of the word naẓira.

One of the main meanings of the word is: similar, similar to the predecessor, similar
to someone or something in the same field, in the same domain, etc. Dictionaries of-
fer meanings in the field of antagonism, opposition, even rivalry, although those are

83
significant semantic differences, moving towards a divergence that is not founded in
poetics, especially not in the meaning and “traditional behaviour” of the form. Naẓi-
ra is, conditionally, an obverse poem that is not antagonistic to the poem it relates
to and with which it communicates. On the contrary, naẓira highly “appreciates” its
poem-predecessor, for a poet who appreciates his own talent and name would not
select a worthless poem for his poetic collocutor. The point is quite the opposite: by
selecting a certain poem to which he will write a naẓira, a poet also positions himself
as an authoritative critic who highly values the protopoem. In that way only does he
form a basis for a possible personal authority to which he strives in poetry. In that
sense, naẓira is not an antagonist to the protopoem; on the contrary, the naẓira wants
to enrich the experience of the protopoem through the possibilities of other forms of
expression as well, at least in the use of different stylistic means. The naẓira’s goal is
not negation, annihilation, or devaluation of the poem-collocutor; rather, it wants to
resemble it and to surpass it (that meaning is most appropriate in this context in the
semantic field of the Arabic triliteral NẒR), not through a ferocious antagonism but
the exuberance of its technical performance. The poet of the naẓira communicates
with the best in order to become better, and his ability (primarily technical) and
chances of success can best be expressed on the “back” of another, similar poem. In
other words, the poet strives to express his subjectivity in the poem as well, but in
accordance to the similarity principle, knowing that every similarity can only exist if
we are aware of their simultaneous differences. The naẓira aims at a similarity upon
which it builds its differentiating features. This is another kind of mirror.

Since the quality of being similar entails a certain degree of subjectivity, contrastive-
ly inferred in accordance with the similarity principle, it follows that the naẓira is,
still, the second expression – as a kind of a limited poetic individuality. The poet’s
goal is to present to the reader/listener the degree of the realised individuality. The
recipient’s relationship is, in fact, as follows. He is first excited by the observed sim-
ilarity, which always draws our attention, in all domains. However, after the similari-
ty is observed, the recipient is even more excited by the difference, by understanding
that one work was written, in fact, because of another. The effect is multiple. This
is where the limitations of the mirror metaphor I have previously spoken are seen,
since the mirror mechanically reflects, while naẓira is formed in accordance with the
individuality principle, albeit to a limited degree.

Individuality is expressed in the naẓira in two ways; yet every time in a limited man-
ner, since tradition, as an absolute authority, never retreats, and is never questioned
in the classical period. On one hand, the poet of the naẓira acknowledges the degree
of the individuality of the protopoem, yet at the same time, he attempts to achieve
a certain degree of individuality in his own poem, for that is a precondition of the
survival of this form. In that way – through the complementary interplay of two indi-
vidualities – a third individuality is formed, which I would call in this context a new
form as the new entity. The form becomes the newly born hero of the tradition. The
poet of the naẓira showed simultaneously and in a poetically absolutely “decent”

84
manner that he is not ready to deny tradition; on the contrary, he affirms the tradition
through his work as a truly undisputed authority within which relative innovations
occur, mainly in the technical domain. In accordance with this, it is wrong to under-
stand tradition as an irrevocable antagonism towards the protopoem that symbolises
the tradition as the achieved system of values. Quite the contrary: the protopoem is
the foundation, it is the traditional value in this relation and the naẓira is its unusual
gilt.

As is the case with tahmīs, the poet of the naẓira does not treat content in a meta-
physical sense, or in the sense of the romantic notion of the imagination that strives
to be expressed in a certain form. Rather, it is the other poem that in its proper form
inspires him. In other words, the content/theme/motif of the first poem – such as
Mostar in the naẓira presented previously – is not also the “inspirational theme” of
the naẓira – as would be the case when two poets are inspired by the same motif, in
this case, by the beauty of Mostar. The beauty of Mostar is an inspiration to the first
poet, but, to the second poet, the author of the naẓira, the first poem is the inspiration.
In that sense, the naẓira appears as a “metapoem”. The protopoem is a challenge for
technique and for the poet’s learnedness in versification. In such a relationship be-
tween the two poems, and in such poetics, the work of a poet (it is difficult to use the
word creation in the usual sense) is reduced to fann, to ṣan‘a, that is, to the technical
aspect of poetry. The poet of the naẓira demonstrates his virtuosity in the domain of
versification, in which that word is capable of expressing a preference for the poetic
form, that is, technique. By that he expresses, more than anything else, learnedness
in poetry, and so he again and in a peculiar way affirms the principle of mastering
traditional poetry, which was made prerogative by esteemed philologists, including
al-Aḥmar, with his unconditional task for Abū Nuwās, or the learned Ibn Khaldūn,
one of the greatest minds of the Oriental-Islamic culture, who emphasised the irre-
placeable value of the learnedness of the poet in/about tradition.

In my past exposition concerning classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, I

have highlighted some important poetic changes that occurred from the ancient Ara-
bic to the late classical period of this literature, created by numerous peoples in three
languages – Arabic, Persian and Turkish. The changes were expressed in some basic
poetic categories, including shā‘ir (and its “product” shi‘r), adab, ṣan‘a, fann. From
that expose, it follows that the poetry of the Islamic period was primarily character-
ised by technique or form, instead of the previous preference for the metaphysical
content of poetry. At this level of interpretation, it is necessary to pay attention to
the term creativity in the classical period of this literature and, in relation to that, to
the term beautiful.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 2
32. Aside from literature, the term adab has also signified ethics, morality, hence it has kept the meaning of morality
even today, but, when it refers to literature it is now reduced to artistic literature; today, adab does not encompass
a number of scientific disciplines, especially not the natural sciences.
In accordance with this comprehensive meaning of the term adab in the classical period, this term is used today
for a number of sciences in some oriental studies, while other studies treat the term to include only literature in a
narrower sense of the word.
33. The term “high literature” see: B. L. Riftin, “Tipologija i uzajamne veze srednjovekovnih književnosti” [Typology
and Mutual Relations of Medieval Literatures], in: Treći program Radio Beograda, No. 26, Belgrade, 1975, p.
391 – 432.
34. Such experience, to a certain extent, is shared by other oriental as well as non-oriental traditions.
35. Even in the natural sciences of the Arabic tradition, there have been many works that are anthologies of poetry of
a kind. For example, the collection of zoological texts by al-Jāhiz, entitled Kitāb al-haywān [Book of Animals] is
a work of strong scientific propensities. However, the author introduces into his elaboration about 3,000 selected
verses for the purpose of affirming his statements. Also, for example, Ibn Khaldūn’s al-Muqaddima, a very sig-
nificant work, contains many verses, and is of a prominent scientific character.
36. Among such works are those that I mentioned in the closing lines of the previous chapter.
37. I extensively wrote about the Qur’ān as the pivotal text in my book Orijentologija. Univerzum sakralnoga Teksta.
[Orientology. The Universe of the Sacred Text], Tugra, Sarajevo, 2007.
38. I will talk more about the prologue/invocation in the section of the study about the commonplaces, that is, topoi.
39. When I translated One Thousand and One Nights (Sarajevo, 1999), for example, I sadly did not notice that in that
prose work containing nearly eight thousand verses one of the main connectors is also rhymed and rhythmicised,
and appears in the work one thousand times – every time Scheherazade, at the crack of dawn, stops telling. That
sentence reads: Wa adraka Shaharzād al-ṣabāḥ / wa sakatat ‘ani-l-kalāmi-l-mubāḥ. Although the sentence was
written in continuo, without being separated into verses, or into rhythmic units, the beats of rhyme and rhythm are
evident. Today, I would translate that section of the text differently – acknowledging its structure and genre-related
peculiarity that I had failed to recognise at first because it is distributed in the depth of the prose work.
40. The Madrasah administration asked me to translate the waqfiyah although two translations had already been avail-
able (Fehim Spaho, in: Spomenica Gazi Husrevbegove četiristogodišnjice [Memorial Book of Ghazi Husrev-bey’s
Quadricentennial], Sarajevo, 1932; Fehim Spaho /junior/, “Vakufname iz Bosne i Hercegovine /XV i XVI vijek”
[Waqfiyahs of Bosnia and Herzegovina/15th and 16th century], in: Monumenta turcica, IV, Orijentalni institut,
Sarajevo, 1985.) I accepted that pleasant yet demanding task and I tried to preserve the genre characteristics of the
source text in the translation that was published on the Madrasah’s web site, as well as in: Prilozi za orijentalnu
filologiju, 56/2006, Orijentalni institut, Sarajevo, 2007, p. 159 – 175.
41. I here would like to direct the reader’s attention to the “beats” of rhythm and intertwined (changeable) rhyme.
42. source text contains mistakes. Thus, here as well, the text reads ‫( الحضراء‬civilisation), but the
entire context indicates that it should be ‫ الخضراء‬, meaning sky.
43. Qur’ān, 2:261.
44. Mevlana is an honorary title for prominent Islamic scientists.
45. The same process can be seen in some Balkan countries – in Bosnia, as well as in Sandžak. It is known that in some
Balkan countries, including for Bosniaks, literacy developed in local languages written in the Arabic alphabet,
which is the Qur’ānic alphabet (Bosnian Cyrillic). That is a form of sacralisation of culture to the ultimate limits
to which the influence of the Qur’ānic Text is observed, even if it may not at first appear that it is a form of sa-
cralisation. If one keeps in mind that an entire literature, an entire adab, developed in Arabic, Persian and Turkish,
in the spirit of the same poetics, than a high degree of integrative character of the culture and impossibility of its
fragmenting according to the ethnic criteria is obvious. Adequate approaches to that culture are simply lacking.
46. Chronicles, historiographical texts and texts from literary history are abundant with testimonies of the esteemed
reputation of the Iranian dignitaries of the empire, who, in the time of the Abbasids, and within a wide movement
shu‘ūbiyya, were trying to prove the Iranian pre-Islamic superiority over Arabic.
47. I wrote about these terms in my book Orijentologija. Univerzum sakralnoga teksta [Orientology. The Universe of
the Sacred Text]. Those terms are not in an overlapping but complementary relationship.
48. In the Qur’ān, this word is found in exactly that meaning: Do not say for those have fallen in the way of Allah that
they are dead! On the contrary, they are alive, but you do not feel it. (Qur’ān, 2:154.)

86
49. In the continuation of the exposition, I will mainly use the source term shā‘ir instead of poet, for this analysis
shows that the relationship between the content and functional overlap of the two terms does not exist. I will
explain their differences in the following text.
50. It has not been reliably determined that that poetry was written in pre-Islamic period, except, perhaps, in the very
few instances. It was mainly transmitted orally. I wrote more about this in: Muallaqe. Sedam zlatnih arabljanskih
oda [Muallaqe. Seven Golden Odes of Arabia], Sarajevo Publishing, Sarajevo, 2004.
51. This aspect of ancient poetry is not the focus of my attention at the moment. See more about it in: Muallaqe...
52. Mu‘allaqa poets, shā‘ir Ḥārith Ibn Ḥilizza (d. 580) and ‘Amr Ibn Kulthūm (d. 570), had the significant mission of
bringing peace between the warring sides.
53. In the history of literature there is one other poem known under the title Qaṣida burda (Poem of the Mantle). It
was written by al-Būsīrī (b. 1212). Legend has it that the poet suffered from paralysis and that he barely managed
to write a paean to the Prophet. He then had a dream in which the Prophet covered him with his mantle (burda)
and the poet then healed miraculously. After that, belief spread that the verses of this poem are miraculous, so they
were used for different kinds of amulets. This placed the poem into a completely new sphere. Al-Būṣīrī’s Qaṣīda
burda is most famous under that title, but in a poetological and literary-historical sense Zuhayr’s Poem of the Man-
tle is more important; hence, whenever I mention this poem under this title in my book, I refer to Zuhayr’s poem.
54. The relationship between the Qur’ān and poetry according to some is a relationship between Islam and poetry in
general – often wrongly interpreted. Goethe’s understanding of this complex relationship may serve as a prom-
inent example, for Goethe took this relationship out of context. Thus, in the book Goethe i islam [Goethe and
Islam], there is a discussion of how the antagonism between Muhammad and poets came to life, and that “Goethe
could have learned about that antagonism from many sources he had used while working on the Divan. Among
others, he found the humiliation of the poet mentioned in the ayets 217 – 227 in surah 26” etc. (Katharina Mom-
mesen, Goethe i islam [Goethe and Islam], translated by Vedad Smailagić, Dobra knjiga, Sarajevo, 2008, p. 279.
Original title: Katharina Mommesen, Goethe und der Islam, Insel Verlag Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig, 2001.)
My study largely interprets this complex relationship between the Qur’ān and poetry, that can be summarised
to the claim that the Qur’ān took a negative stance towards shā‘ir, hence, towards the poet who communicated
through poetry with metaphysical forces and who represented himself as their medium. The belief that Islam pro-
hibited poetry in general is not only inaccurate, but also utterly malicious. Since classical Oriental-Islamic culture
expressed itself most successfully in poetry, it would mean that it did so in spite of the “prohibition” by the Qur’ān,
and that, consequently, it is a culture of hypocrisy and sin. This is a misunderstanding of the fundamental issues or
forgery of the Qur’ānic text and historical reality.
55. It is stated that the caliph Muawiya bought the mantle from the poet’s son and that it had since been among the
caliphs’ treasure until the conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols (1258). Allegedly, Hulagu had it burned, but, it
was later claimed to have been saved and that it is preserved in Istanbul today. See: Nerkez Smailagić, Leksikon
islama /Lexicon of Islam/, Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1990, headword Burda.
56. In further text, I will write the common noun mantle with an initial capital letter, as it has become special in a
number of ways.
57. Qur’ān, 26:227.
58. Barthes, op. cit., p. 51.
59. Ibid.
I had an opportunity to hear Abdulah Sidran state the following on the occasion of death of writer Nedžad Ibriši-
mović: A writer should die to move on from a dead point.
60. ‘Abdullāh Ṣalāḥuddīn ‘Ushshāqī Bošnjak (d. 1782) wrote in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish. He wrote Tahmīs (785
verses) to al-Būsīrī’s poem Qasīda al-Burda. The manuscript of this poem is preserved in the Süleymaniye Mosque
library in Istanbul, in the collection of manuscripts “Fatih”, number 003714, entitled Tahmīs-i Terceme-i Kaside-i
Burde. Berin Bajrić defended his master’s thesis on this topic in 2011 at the Sarajevo Faculty of Philosophy.
61. The Poem of the Mantle is interesting for a number of reasons from the point of view of poetology. Since its po-
etical authority became so powerful that new poems were written for hundreds of years that communicated with
it at several levels, that ode can be justifiably situated as a commonplace in poetics of the classical literature in
Oriental-Islamic languages. As soon as commonplaces are mentioned in a poetics, a possibility opens for it to be
determined as a normative poetics, and that will be discussed later.
Convinced that the Poem of the Mantle is one of the commonplaces of the poetics I present here, I will provide a
more detailed account of ‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs, in section the “Musammat Forms”. The initial stanzas of all the three

87
 poems I presented in the section entitled “The Term Fann and Its Realisation in the Form Tahmīs“. By that I will
show that an entire genre, or, more precisely – form – can become a commonplace, provided that a motif is taken
from a protopoem (paean to the Prophet), as well as rhyme and metre.
62. Qur’ān, 26:227.
63. The principal meaning of the word san‘a is manufacturing, production, etc., but the emphasis is always placed on
craftsmanship, on the technical aspect of production.
64. Compare: al-Duktūr ‘Adnān Ḥusayn Qāsim, al-Uṣūl al-turāthiyya fī naqd al-shi‘r al-‘arabī al-mu‘āṣir fī Miṣr
[Traditional Basis in Criticism of Contemporary Arabic Poetry in Egypt], [Ṭarāblis], 1981, p. 317.
65. Al-Qāḍī al-Jurjānī, al-Wasāṭa bayn al-Mutanabbī wa khuṣūmih [The Mediation between al-Mutanabbi and His
Opponents], al-Qahira, s. a., p. 21.
66. Ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥī, Ṭabaqāt al-shu‘arā’, ed. Brill, Leiden, 1913, p. 3.
67. It is interesting that the Greek words for poetry contain a “technological” rather than a metaphysical or a religious
meaning. Compare: Ernst Robert Curtius, op. cit., p. 162.
68. For example, the stories of One Thousand and One Nights were considered exclusively popular, “low” literature.
69. There exist several critical editions of the Arabic text One Thousand and One Nights with an unequal number of
pages. Here I refer to the so-called Bulac critical edition that translated into Bosnian (Sarajevo, 1999).
70. Abu al-Ala al-Ma’arri, Poslanica o oproštenju [The Epistle of Forgiveness], translated by: Sulejman Grozdanić,
Sarajevo, 1979.
71. Compare: Al-Duktūr Ahmad Kamāl Zakī, Dirāsāt fī al-naqd al-adabi [Studies on Literary Criticism], ed. 2., v.
l., 1980., p. 110.
72. Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddima [Prolegomena], [al-Qāhira], s. a., p. 505.
73. In western culture, the term art also contains an etymology in which skill, ability is emphasised.
74. Eva de Vitrej-Mejerovič borrowed this parable from Gazali. Compare: Eva de Vitrej-Mejerovič, [“’Poetika’ isla-
ma” “’Poetics’ of Islam”], in: Julija Kristeva, Prelaženje znakova [La Traversée des signes], Svjetlost, Sarajevo,
1979, p. 205.
75. Tahmīs has an Arabic etymology: five-line stanzas. The author of the tahmīs first writes his three lines and then
“adds” two lines by another author, borrowing the rhyme and metre of the proto-poem.
76. The first bayts of ‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs that I have cited may serve as an illustration.
77. In the section where I discuss the form mathnawī, focusing on Rumi’s Mathnawī (section Mathnawī), we will see
how dramatic a relationship that brilliant mind had towards the Word.
78. In many places, the Qur’an emphasises that the right side is that from which Good comes; that is the very symbol
of the Good.
79. Within the musammat form, several of its subforms came to existence, and were constructed on the same poetical
principles. The musammat subforms are: tahmīs, muhammas, tasdis, murebbe, muselles, etc. See: Fehim Name-
tak, Pojmovnik divanske i tesavvufske književnosti [Glossary of the Divan and Tasawwuf Literature], Orijentalni
institut, Posebna izdanja XXVII, Sarajevo, 2007.
80. Both of these poems were translated (by prosaic and passivized philological transcription) Omer Mušić, in: “Mo-
star u turskoj pjesmi XVI i XVII stoljeća” (Mostar in the Turkish Poem of the 20th Century), Prilozi za orijentalnu
filologiju, No. XIV-XV/1964-65, Sarajevo, 1969, p. 74-76. The poem was adapted by Safvet-beg Bašagić, in:
Bošnjaci i Hercegovci u islamskoj književnosti. Prilog kulturnoj historiji Bosne i Hercegovine [Bosniaks and
Herzegovinians in Islamic Literature. A Contribution to the Cultural History of Bosnia and Herzegovina], Sa-
rajevo, 1912. However, I also adapted both poems in an attempt to present them in the same rhyme, since it is
characteristic of this form.
81. Dervish Pasha Bajezidagić also wrote a two-volume naẓīra to Rumi’s Mathnawī. See: Fehim Nasmetak, Pregled
književnog stvaranja bosansko-hercegovačkih Muslimana na turskom jeziku [An Overview of the Literary Pro-
duction of the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Turkish Language], El-Kalem, Sarajevo, 1989.

88
CHAPTER III
III. The terms creation and beautiful in classical literature

ART AS INNOVATION NOT CREATION

Modern studies of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages oftentimes con-
tain a methodological mistake that I have previously defined as the problem of the
point of view of the present and the point of view of the past. As far as I know, oriental
studies of classical literature are mainly philological in nature; it is positivistic and
descriptive. However, the true problem arises when researchers assess that literature
exclusively from the point of view of the present and through a persistent quest for
elements of “local shades” in an attempt to classify that literature in accordance
with the principles of ethnocentrism. Such an approach leads to a conclusion on the
epigone character of the majority of works belonging to that literature, while argu-
ments on the occasional originality of the writer and ethnocentric valorisation are
utterly inadequate and unconvincing.

The approach to classical literature that I emphasise is inadequate and incompetent

in the interpretation of that literature primarily because such modern researchers
approach classical literature in accordance with their own understanding of creation
and the beautiful, neglecting the fact that those terms were significantly different
in the classical epoch. In the majority of cases, researchers today use the terms art,
creation, originality, in order to mark something in classical literature that cannot
be marked by those terms without the rest, for their content was different in the
classical period. Every approach to classical or medieval literature needs to take into
consideration that basic differentiation in order to be valid and successful. That is
why poetological and aesthetic approaches to classical literature are necessary, and
are, in fact, extremely rare. By a consistent use of today’s categorical apparatus, that
art cannot be validly explained. It is necessary to penetrate the historical essence of
those works; that is, to strive towards the optimal reconstruction of context and po-
etics. That cannot be entirely achieved, in the sense that we can immerse ourselves
completely in the past, but cannot ignore the essential peculiarities of that time, that
is, of its poetics and aesthetics.

When I elaborated on the basic poetological terms in classical literature, I empha-

sised that creation was understood differently than today: art was understood as
ability, skill (fann, ṣan‘a), etc. It is interesting that art was perceived similarly in
Medieval Europe – as artes, that is, skill.

91
Elaborating on the terms creation and beautiful in classical literature demands an
occasional emphasis on the terms previously elaborated on, such as fann, ṣan‘a, etc.
What may sometimes appear as repetition in this study is, in fact, a necessary con-
nection, for the same terms and phenomena (forms) appear in classical literature in
different aspects and in different historical contacts that are to be analysed in those
very positions, which means that it is necessary to shed light on the same terms and
phenomena in different contexts, since their activity (and their sense) is multiple in
the universe of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages.

First, we should emphasise a fact that bears extraordinary poetological (and poetical)
significance for classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages. Namely, in clas-
sical literature, that is, in that tradition, a term for (artistic) creation does not exist.
Even today, in Arabic literature, the term for artistic creation is of a technical nature
(fann). Understandably, we are burdened – even when we are not aware of that – by
such crucial differences between our own and medieval terms that we want to pres-
ent as adequate. In the Arabic language, the dominant word for artistic creation or
only for creation is ibdā‘, together with ibtikār, etc. However, ibdā‘ means, in fact,
innovation, novelty, rather than creation, for, in that culture, creation is only inherent
to God. Man innovates within that what God created. This is a way of understand-
ing art as a skill, even “technology”, not creation ex nihilo. Oriental-Islamic culture
understands that man’s position in the world is such that he does not intervene in a
creative manner (he does not create), rather, he reveals, invents; he acts in a techno-
logical manner – always optimally harmonises with a world in which he reveals and
affirms God’s creative powers. In accordance with that, man does not produce, he
merely reveals.

Such understanding of discovery is not adequate to our modern understanding of the

term creation, thus I would create misunderstandings in categorisation by the use of
the term creation as adequate; that is why I will use the source term ibdā‘, which en-
compasses the aforementioned meanings. If we take ibdā‘ in the poetological mean-
ing it has had in its history, the extent to which it is congruent with “technological”
terms ṣan‘a, ṣinā‘a, fann, etc. will be clear: they brilliantly cooperate and complete
each other. What we call today artistic creation is understood as an innovation upon
what had already been formed within a tradition that is only of a revealing character
– again, in relation to God’s creation. What is originality then in such an understand-
ing of artistic literature?

The term originality is also a modern phenomenon, just as is the term authorship
in the meaning of inherent originality. In classical literature, originality such as we
know it today did not exist – as something innovative to the extent that it is com-
pletely subjective, unknown, non-existent, creation. Such an ideal is unknown to lit-
erature of the classical period. Creation/creativity is, in fact, a theological metaphor.
When something is truly created, then it means that it is absolutely new, since it was
created out of nothing. Thus, creation and originality are categories in a relationship

92
and that the latter results from the former. Medieval man did not understand the
world or art that way. Originality, as a modern prerequisite for the value of a work
of art, is something that rests in subjectivity, since it is creation as a production of
the beautiful, not a finding of the beautiful. In the aesthetics of the classical period,
however, only God produces/creates, which means that the beautiful that He creates
is absolutely suprasubjective, Divine, and man’s task is to reveal the beautiful that
has emanated in the world. Thus, the author’s subjectivity, individuality, originality,
etc. are categories inappropriate to the poetics of classical literature in Oriental-Is-
lamic languages and its aesthetics. “Originality” and “subjectivity” are contained
in the terms innovation, discovery. Namely, the author that always emphasised his
modesty and dependence on God wanted to but slightly contribute in relation to what
God gave him and in relation to what others had long revealed and innovated, which
became tradition. In that sense, originality as we understand it today was reduced to
innovation, and that term was mostly understood in its technical aspect. Original is
creative today, while the new of that period is primarily technical.

From this position, it is necessary to contrast further today’s sense of the classical
term creation from its meaning then in order to contribute to a better understanding
of classical poetics and the term beautiful in that tradition. Today, the author’s sub-
jectivity/originality are determined as something that constitutes art. The individ-
uality of a literary work, in accordance with that, is an ideal strived for and which
determines the value of a work. However, in the classical period, subjectivity was
constantly supressed, for a writer was not entirely free, as is believed today. His
subjectivity was limited, in part, by a conviction that the World is a Divine creation
and that an artist innovates within the frames of that which God had created. On the
other hand, and at the same time, artistic subjectivity – and that entails also so-called
originality or inventiveness – is significantly limited by the poet’s full awareness re-
garding his duties towards tradition, towards its experience in art, which determines
this poetics as normative and inductive. Since tradition has been perfected exactly
in such a manner – as an authority towards which every individual poet had certain
duties – it drove poetry in a direction that significantly differs from today’s under-
standing of poetical creation.

For the most part, the poetry of classical literature strived towards a certain objec-
tivity, and not subjectivity, as is the case today. This was achieved in several ways,
all of which resulted from a turnover in which the new position of sha‘ir was deter-
mined compared to that which he had anciently.82

Abandoning the metaphysical content of poetry and understanding the position of

shā‘ir as a spiritual, clerical character communicating with supernatural forces, po-
etry found an inspiration in a very poetic tradition. The metaphysical content and
character of the shā‘ir’s inspiration guaranteed a considerable degree of subjectivity,
for every experience of the shā‘ir was, essentially, unique. At the historical moment
when poetry became an inspiration to itself, the ideal of subjectivity was replaced

93
by the ideal of objectivity. That is why notable philologists, some of whom I have
already mentioned, insisted on the optimal mastering of traditional poetry; they in-
sisted on the poet’s prosodic learnedness incomparably more than on his talent and
inspiration in the meaning of surrendering to some metaphysical content. Such a
strong focus on the authority of the tradition, which limited the freedom of an artist,
implies giving preference to inductive, normative poetics – one that demands the
absolute emulation of works that the tradition had already canonised; the poem’s
content is determined publically and from the highest (philological) instances as
something of secondary value, since – as it was believed – all motifs and all content
had already been contained in the tradition, and hence new poets could freely borrow
them and dress them in the “new clothes” of the form. What is more, borrowing mo-
tifs was not considered plagiarism, nor even something worthy of criticism; rather,
poets were encouraged – mutually and by philological authorities – to act thus; it
was poetically desirable. Form became primary.

By that poetological preferring of the artistic form and encouragement of borrow-

ing content, the artist’s subjectivity was significantly prevented; his originality had
become irrelevant in today’s understanding of the word. This is complementary to
giving preference to categories such as ṣan‘a, fann and the like, which are, in fact,
téchnē, or even a “technology of poetry”. Art was in a state of objectivisation. Liter-
ary criticism did not exist as discipline, but was contained in a comprehensive and
pretentious philology – such criticism became exact, for it was able to exactly exam-
ine the extent to which a certain work corresponded with some other work in content
and form, even with a genre in which it was created, and it felt especially supreme
because it could obviously examine and explain the form of a work: the extent to
which rhyme was realised successfully, as well as metre, frequent figures of speech,
etc. The poet invents; he does not create in the domain of the form, and that is why
the most appropriate term for his work is ibdā‘ – bringing novelty to the dominant
values of the old. That is why form was the focus of interest in the classical period
of Oriental-Islamic culture: content was relatively unimportant, for only borrowing
was encouraged, while the shape of the art, its form, drew attention and provoked
emotion. Only in such a context is it possible to understand the excitement felt by
the reader of Bajezidagić’s naẓīra, of ‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs, etc.: those poets (like oth-
ers who adhered to the same poetics) demonstrated through their works a profound
knowledge of the poetic tradition; a prosodic mastery; they brilliantly demonstrated
the dominant poetics of similarity and only relative differentiation. Every reader,
or, better yet, every listener of such a poem was captivated with the form, for it was
considered that the form drew attention rather than content, as if both the poet and
the listener were saying: look how mastery can transmit one and the same motif into
marvellously beautiful forms that are both similar and yet different!

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ARCHITECTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE TRADITION:
A TRIUMPHANT “SCULPTURING” OF THE FORM

While we are listening (or, perhaps, reading), what is more – while we are looking
at ‘Ushshāqī’s poem Tahmīs in its horizontal and vertical succession of bayts, or
some other form of the same poetical manner, it is impossible to resist a strong
and important impression.83 Namely, the poet is captivated by form, he is heavily
inspired by it, and is persistent in constructing a sumptuous form (the content of the
poem is ancient; it is a commonplace) as if he wants to visualise it: he constructs a
magnificent “poetic dome”; the poet “sculpts” a prodigious poetic “monument” to a
commonplace, to the general topic in that literature, so that the employed theme feels
good in its new form. As I diligently immerse myself into it and similar poems, or
forms, that are – and I am not exaggerating – in the very essence of an architectural
character, I think it may be one of the subtlest ways for substituting sculpture as a
branch of art that had never been affirmed in this culture. The Word is here used with
such powerful “technological transformations” in form that it is able to strongly
suggest the artistic form of the sculpture. It is difficult to believe that ‘Ushshāqī was
aware of all that I am saying, but that does not prevent us from understanding his
work in Oriental-Islamic languages exactly like this, fully aware of the unwavering
intentions of the tradition and the poetics of the time that prevented such understand-
ing, which is associative. That is the sense of literature – we are prepared for recep-
tion in two ways: on the one hand, we prepare ourselves through the context of the
work, and, on the other, we are prepared through “our own context” to understand
the symbolic meanings of what we read.84 The intention of a literary work, in the
sense of the author’s intentionality, does not always have to match our reading – a
work can be “accidently” suggestive, in accordance with the context in which we
read it. Such is the case with ‘Ushsshāqī’s work, which I take as representative of its
kind, as well as with other, similar forms, that were formed in poetics that nurtured
artistic form in general. Probably the dominant understanding of ‘Ushshāqī’s poem
is that which leads to a conclusion that perfecting of the technical aspect of poetry
in this very form and in the poem that is representative of it was brought to a culmi-
nation in which form became a priority for itself, and that the achieved perfection
fused in the poem’s meanings and encapsulated its senses into form. That technically
perfected poem I comprehend – at one level – as a work that achieved in its own
time the highest tasks of its poetics, which postulated the ideal of the technical in-
stead of the creative. In a valid understanding of its context, in particular the poetics
and aesthetics of the time, we can successfully reconstruct the poetic and aesthetic
conditions under which it came to life, and by that its position in the historical scale
of values. However, the issue is that works of art have, in fact, an indefinite number
of senses that are realised in reception, in contact with our subjectivity. One of those
senses is the one I “saw”, not read, in ‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs, and which takes away that
work from the forces of a technicism that would imprison it forever. It is important
to preserve the work within the “shimmers of senses” that I reveal in it, regardless
if it is unexpected.

95
I shall take the liberty of explaining through the example of this work that literature
truly lives and that it reveals a treasure of senses in different times. In ‘Ushshāqī’s
Tahmīs the motif is the Prophet – a sublime motif worthy of a panegyric or ode, of a
sculpture or visual representation, if it were allowed in Islam. However, since Islam
prohibits the visual arts to present the Prophet’s image, it was presented in a mul-
titude of poems, among which the Ka‘b’s and al-Būṣīrī’s are the most important. If
we keep in mind the fact that the Word (text) served as “material” in classical poetry
for constructing the poetic form, we can understand that the relationship between
the Word and its brilliantly cultivated form is suitable for writing paeans to promi-
nent people, but those were paeans that insisted on form as the “forefront plan” of a
work in an aesthetic meaning. Poets as grand masters (ṣan‘a) become adherents of
the form. They are sculptors of a kind. That very cult of form culminated in works
such as T/tahmīs. Form is an inspiration to those poems; it is an encouragement for
further perfection, and the motif can be the Prophet or some other person. Observing
that complicated and, at the same time, technically very complete perfection of the
form in tahmīs, I could not but recall Hegel’s opinion that art is “a sensory shining of
an idea”; in this case, of a motif: we are simply witnessing an enormous, masterful
effort to express the motif in the Word, which the master approaches as a kind of
“material”. Association with the work of a sculptor is inevitable. And, of course, we
are aware that the master, after all, “sculpts” the Word, or in the Word, and thus in
his poem, associativity and connotation of the highest order are affirmed – to the ex-
tent to which the poem opens new meanings and new senses, exactly at the moment
when we were on the brink of the decision to situate it as a narcissistic verbalisation,
empty technicism, etc.

A new horizon is ahead of us. Namely, in such revelation, one can see utter witti-
ness, even the wisdom of the Tradition that is expressed through the language of this
poem, that is, by means of the poetic form it belongs to, an unexpected compensation
for the absence of visual arts. That is a sudden sublimation.

I have stated that this poem connects the tradition horizontally and vertically; that
it is the perfect moment of intertextuality that makes a substantial poetical system
optimally cohesive, and that its function is of exceptional importance for those rea-
sons, among others. However, an unexpected value also arises in the emergence of
a new sense. And in relation to that, one should bear in mind the following. A new
sense, connotation, association, sublimation – all that emerges from this artefact as
an individual poem; a work containing artistic individuality, even limited, but, at the
same time – and that is the point – emerging from an entire genre, for tahmīs is a
form/genre with enormous intertextual potential and an extraordinary capacity for
explication, meaning that it contains the experience of the entire tradition. Within
such an understanding, it is clear that the poet’s individuality works together with
the enormous traditional experience of a genre entity (here: tahmīs), in a multitude
of aspects that are not even sensed at first. This is only another way of revealing the
intertwined nature of Oriental-Islamic culture in the classical period: that insepara-

96
ble unity of the sacral and the worldly, of the traditional and the innovative, of the
artistic and the masterful – all through the sublimation of other arts covered by the
mighty Word. Owing to that thick weaving, the Culture truly became the Text in the
meaning of the word that entails weaving. The technique of the poet’s “creativity”
significantly contributed to this: here is a way to understand that classical domina-
tion of the form seems from this perspective a triumph of the form. Its perfectionism
makes sense in its time only, but we are also left with the possibility for searching
for new senses. Of course, it is necessary to emphasise here once more, in order to
forestall possible misunderstanding, that such abilities are not only characteristic of
‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs, but also of other forms and other genres of literatures in Ori-
ental-Islamic languages that are created in accordance with the poetic principle of
citation – only conditionally called that way – as an optimally explicit intertextuality.
Giving preference to the technique of writing poetry brought about a certain crossing
of genres and “mutual production” of forms, hence “metapoems” were cultivated
and valued to the extent that they won the status of poetic forms that the tradition
greatly valued. Exposing the emergence of a new sense from these forms – in the
poetological and aesthetic interpretations that I have just presented – increases their
value and keeps them away from being viewed as epigonal – although everything
indicated that they were caught in those almost inexpressible “gravitational” forces
of poetical technology, which, as it seems at first sight, becomes its own goal and
renounces connotation. However, at the very “event horizon” – to develop a meta-
phor from physics – those forms manage to escape “gravitational forces” that could
prevent them from being open to new senses, to new readings: it is very important to
read them from our time, in their context.

UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY AND THE BEAUTIFUL IN EURO-

PEAN AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE IN THE ARABIC, PERSIAN
AND TURKISH LANGUAGES: A SKETCH
Although the object of this study is classical literature in the Arabic, Persian and
Turkish languages, some similarities with understanding creativity and the beautiful
in medieval European literature are observed. It is not certain whether mutual influ-
ences existed between these two great traditions, so it is difficult to assume that un-
derstanding literary creativity and the beautiful in one tradition influenced the other.
What is more, it is surprising and completely reliable, for example, that Aristotle’s
Poetics and Plato’s understanding of literature remained outside the influence of Ar-
abic-Islamic, that is, Oriental-Islamic literature. However, the similarities are almost
striking in some important peculiarities. Hence I believe that it would be useful to
perform an intercultural study of this issue: I am convinced that the results achieved
would be very important. Here I will only reflect upon some characteristics of the
European tradition in this domain – without pretences regarding the scope, I would
only like to point to the challenge of such an intercultural approach.

97
As was the case with classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, in medieval
European literature, attention was given to the technical aspect of creativity, that is,
craftsmanship. That is how artistic subjectivity was preserved. There are two main
reasons for the repression of subjectivity in medieval literature. This was the case
first because it was believed, just as was the case in Oriental-Islamic culture, that
creation was generally inherent only to God; it was exclusively the competence of
God. “Objective beauty glares from God into the world.”85 It was considered in the
medieval period that “beauty is an objective characteristic of a being per se; man
could discover that characteristic, but not produce it.”86 Such conviction is almost
identical to that of Oriental-Islamic culture, contained in the term ibdā‘ which, as a
substitute for creativity, means innovation, or the contribution of innovation within
that which God created. In such an understanding of creativity, that is, the beautiful
in art, it is understood that the notion of artistic originality was significantly different
in medieval literature from today’s view. Since God is the only one who creates,
that meant that a man’s work of any kind could not make advances towards being
“original in creativity”, in the sense that it would be completely new, created from
nothing. Originality in that sense was not even the goal of an artwork. That is one
of the main reasons why it is not adequate to study European medieval literature
through a consistent implementation of modern apparatuses of categories. Literature
was oriented towards technique instead of originality, that is, towards the technology
of “making of the poem”. That is why the very term art had a different meaning that
that it has today: it was artes = skills. The meaning of those terms, or notions, is the
same to that in Oriental-Islamic culture that I presented as fann (term for art) and
ṣan‘a – a synonym for fann.

Being oriented towards the technical side of an artwork and the conscious refraining
from originality and subjectivity resulted in an optimal objectivisation of art that is
most part dedicated to form: mere perfecting opens the possibility for the objectivi-
sation of art. The second reason for refraining from originality in medieval literature
in Europe rests on its relationship towards tradition. Namely, the medieval poet did
not consider himself free in the modern meaning of artistic freedom; rather, he was
greatly obliged towards the experience of the tradition. That is the second kind –
another way towards the objectivisation of art. Here we should recall the demand of
authoritative Islamic philologists that poets need to optimally master the traditional
craft of versification, that is, the poetic tradition as such, for only then were they able
to become “good poets”. To the poet of the greatest, Abyssinian period, this demand
was an expression of respect towards a tradition that was presented as model, exem-
plary, as well as considerably limiting with regard to the artistic originality and sub-
jectivity of the author. It is the aforementioned demand of the philologist al-Aḥmar
to Abū Nuwās the poet. A prominent philosopher and sociologist Ibn Khaldūn also
proposed a similar demand. Motifs/contents are irrelevant in poems, according to the
Arabic classical authorities; the form in which poems were “clad” mattered. Thus,
for example, Ibn Rashīq emphasised in his influential work that poetic mastery is not
proven by peculiarity of content or motifs, for they do not exist; rather it is proven

98
through forms that result from the content.87 Other authoritative philologists were of
almost the same opinion. In European literature, especially in renaissance poetics,
a poet was also greatly obliged towards tradition and was expected to imitate role
models.

Petrarch wrote that imitation was the essence of poetry. That imitation was specific
and creative. Similarity to the model needed to be of a special kind – similar to the
similarity between a father and a son. In other words, the poet selects – and that is
where his freedom lays – a model he likes and uses it the way that suits his nature
the best.88 Dante wrote that the poet is a master in a technical sense and that he dif-
fers from others because he does not write mechanically, but is free.89 Ancient poets
were role models for poets in European medieval literature, just as the writers of the
Oriental-Islamic circle looked up to the ancient poets of their tradition, all the way
to their ancient period. It was believed in both traditions of the time that real beauty
came only from God and that striving towards the individual/the original was an ex-
pression of arrogance, that it was sinful, and that an artist should strive for the “god-
send”, primeval patterns. In both traditions, that was the way towards what Lotman
called the aesthetics of sameness – as supposedly correct, the objective reproduction
of what had already been created.90

In both literary traditions, there was a strong conviction that literature had no pur-
pose of its own - on the contrary. In both traditions, the task of literature was to
preserve the values of tradition, but at the same time, it was strongly attached to the
field of ethics and morality. The goal of a literary work was to teach, to ennoble. Art
for art’s sake was foreign to those literatures. In Oriental-Islamic culture – similar to
the European Middle Ages – the great turnover occurred, when shā‘ir stopped being
a prophet and a medium of the metaphysical, so that “loss” was compensated by
promoting literature into a very important means of upbringing. It had an aesthetic
function since all prominent people of the culture assembled poets, but its primary
task was in the domain of didactics and ethics.91 Moreover, even the aesthetic as-
pect of literature was an exceptionally important part of education, and served the
purpose of ennobling. This compensation of literature for the loss of the ideological
content of the shā‘ir preserved literature at the very top of the necessary skills for the
formation of a man in his full integrity in terms of upbringing, education and ethics.

In accordance with this position of literature in the society, classical literature is

abundant not only with anagogical works, but also works (mostly prosaic, inter-
weaved with verses) whose purpose was explicitly to educate rulers, people of pow-
er and influence, for the ennobling and taming of their characters. In that context, I
can mention as representative the opus of ‘Abdullāh Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (d. 756), who
wrote two significant works related to upbringing and education. One is al-Adab al-
kabīr and the other al-Adab al-saġīr.92 One of the seminal works of Oriental-Islamic
artistic prose is Kalīla wa Dimna, written by this same writer. The work itself is both
artistic and pragmatic, so it can be taken as representative of the classical literature

99
in the sense that I speak of it: as a kind of synthesis of the artistic and the utilitarian,
of the aesthetic and the pragmatic, of the aesthetic and didactic. The structure and
purpose of the work brilliantly cooperate with a general trend in literature of that
time. Namely, the role of literature is very complex and has an entire spectrum of
tasks in the areas I have just mentioned; the term for literature at the time does not
in any way match the reduced term used today. (In certain periods of the European
literature, literature also denoted all that was related to literacy generally.) Not only
did the term for literature encompass such numerous and important areas, but also
certain individual works encompassed several genres: one work contained both po-
etry and prose, rhymed and rhythmic prose, etc. Genres overlapped performing the
same task. Differentiation between tasks is a modern trend, in which the classical
vigour of the writer and of the recipient of his work has been abandoned.

The didactic character of literature was sometimes directly expressed – as moralities

to rulers and folk, and sometimes as allegories, in order not to threaten the dignity
of those to whom a morality was dedicated. The work Kalīla wa Dimna may serve
as an illustration. The book contains fables aimed to teach, ennoble and bring joy to
man. They are primarily intended for emperors, khalifas, and their closest associates,
for, to them, in a suggestive fable, instructions were given in the field of political
skills and statesmanship on how to make the subjects of the empire happy and to
rule a prosperous empire. The same stories were intended for other people, to a man
in general.93 It is interesting that such work came from ancient India in the Persian
language of pre-Islamic period, and that ‘Abdullāh Ibn al-Muqaffa’ transferred it
to Arabic. Today it is considered a part of Arabic literature, but the work belongs
to the experience of Oriental traditions. Similar didactic works were numerous in
Oriental-Islamic culture, for example, the work Kitāb al-tarbī‘ wa al-tadwīr written
by the prominent al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868). The work Secrets of Transcendence by Jalāl al-
Dīn Rūmī written in the 13th century was didactic, as well as many other works.94
It is worth mentioning that the popularity of such works was mostly proportionate
to their didactic utility, and the number of transcriptions of a certain work mostly
determines the degree of their popularity.

It is necessary to remind the reader of the term adab in the context of this exposi-
tion of the didactic character of literature; to its etymology and pragmatic function.
This term denotes upbringing, education, ethics, even morals, and only does mean
literature where all of those functions are unified. In fact, since adab means all of
the aforementioned spheres, it thus “acquired conditions” to encompass the term
literature, in its classical meaning. This is why the classical term adab included all of
the sciences that contribute to the upbringing and learnedness of a man – both social
sciences, as well as natural.95

100
NOTES TO CHAPTER 3
82. By the term shā‘ir I refer to its content in Arabian antiquity.
83. These days (early 2014), I have been reading an excellent book Transatlantic mail by Miljenko Jergović and
Semezdin Mehmedović (VBZ, Zagreb, 2009). There is a place where they lucidly discuss that the poem, in fact,
exists only in loud pronouncing, in recitation. Their extraordinary discussion awakens associations in my Arabist
experience. Namely, Arabic poetry was made in oral form; it was “forged” in situ, and it especially lived in an oral
tradition for at least two to three hundred years before it was written down. That is a vast experience of poetry in
speech, in recitation.
Even hundreds of years later, poetry in this tradition was preferably recited than read: its form is simply such; it
is so important that it is necessary to hear its recitation “rustling”. However, tradition has advanced so far that, for
example, a poem of the 17th and 18th century in particular, called for visual reception as well, alongside the phonet-
ic, like the form of tahmīs, in which the horizontal lining of verses in colophons and an extraordinarily purposeful
game of red and black ink were important. See: the Tahmīs facsimile.
84. Cf.: Zdenko Lešić, Teorija književnosti [Theory of Literature], Sarajevo, 2005, p. 54.
85. Rozario Asunto Teorija o lepom u srednjem veku [The Medieval Theory of the Beautiful], transl. Gligorije Ernja-
ković, Srpska književna zadruga, Belgrade, 1975, p. 14.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibn Rashīq, al-‘Umda fī maḥāsin al-shi‘r wa ādābih wa naqdih [The Mainstay Concerning Poetry’s Embellish-
ments, Correct Usage and Criticism], op. cit. Dr: ‘Izz al-Dīn Ismā‘īl, p. 216.
88. Compare: Rozario Asunto, Teorija o lepom u srednjem veku [The Medieval Theory of the Beautiful], transl.
Gligorije Ernjaković, Srpska književna zadruga, Belgrade, 1975; also in several texts, in: Poetika humanizma i
renesanse [Poetics of Humanism and Renaissance], I-II, Književni pogledi, Belgrade, 1963.
89. Rozario Asunto, op. cit. 110.
90. J. M. Lotman, Struktura umetničkog teksta [The Structure of the Artistic Text], transl. Novica Petković, Nolit,
Belgrade, 1976, p. 178.
91. This issue was discussed more in the section: “The Term adab: A Universe of Humanistic Values”.
92. These two tractates are important examples of didactic prose. The work al-Adab al-kabīr belongs to “high liter-
ature” – it was intended for rulers and their advisors, statesmen in general, and it contains moral lessons on how
to be productive, modest and just; not to be hasty in solving the problems of their subjects, etc. A tractate entitled
al-Adab al-ṣaġīr, an instance of “low didactic literature” (a typical form of the adab) was intended for a wide
audience of readers with the purpose of educating them. In the centre of the authors’ attention were ethical issues
that were deliberately cultivated, for the authors knew that those issues determined a man’s happiness.
93. Compare: Esad Duraković, “Svjetska riznica basni” [“The World Thesaurus of Fables”], in: Kelila i Dimna. Stare
indijske pripovjetke [Kelila and Dimna. Old Indian Fables]. Transl. Besim Korkut, Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1997, p.
6 – 7.
94. In 2011 a translation of this work by Munir Drkić was published (Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Tajne uzvišenosti [Secrets of
Transcendence], transl. Munir Drkić, Bookline, 2011).
This work of Rumi’s appears in old manuscripts under two titles. One is al-Asrār al-jalāliyya for which Munir
Drkić opted, and which he translated as Secrets of Transcendence. The second title is Fīhi mā fīhi, translated in
French as Le livre du dedans. Most of the work was written in Persian, but seven chapters (out of 72) were written
in Arabic.
95. The most extreme reach of the notion of adab in Oriental-Islamic culture is a special kind of police force in the
Arab world today: shurṭa al-adab, which means “morality police” and which monitors for immoral events in
public.

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CHAPTER IV
IV. Towards the morphology of literary genres/forms:
stability of the poetical system

ANCIENT QAṢῙDA AS A SUBLIMATION OF TOTALITY

Historians of Arabic literature – as far as I know – frequently point out a significant
poetic fact: the majority of poetic divisions in Arabic literature that were later spread
to literature in Persian and the Ottoman Turkish language, evolved from ancient
Arabic qaṣīda, and from that it follows that the Arabic qaṣīda is home to a vast
Oriental-Islamic literary tradition. Such claims are reasonable, founded both from a
literary-historical and a poetic point of view; hence, they are sometimes transformed
into the biological claim that the ancient qaṣīda is the “mother” of all later poetic
divisions.

The ancient qaṣīda was by nature polythematic, but formally unique. This is a com-
monplace in Arabic studies. A qaṣīda had, on average, sixty to one hundred bayts,
encompassing an entire spectrum of themes that a poet integrated into his poem in
short forms, with an optimal lapidary skill that was one of the poetic postulates,
covering mainly everyday themes transposed into a journey that was a Bedouin no-
madic reality. The polythematic composition of the qaṣīda was created in the spirit
of the poetics of the arabesque, which I wrote more extensively about in another of
my studies.96 The qaṣīda’s thematic diversity was preserved in a single poem by the
elements of form: a unique metre and a unique rhyme, regardless of the length of the
poem. The technical aspect of the qasīda was emphasised already at that time in an-
tiquity. However, the researchers’ trouble was that the authenticity of ancient poetry
was highly problematic, since it had been transferred through oral tradition for at
least two centuries, until Muslim philologists wrote it down, and it is almost certain
that the transmitters/reciters (in Arabic: ruwāt) as well as philologists who wrote it
down also “depaganised” it, excluding from the content all that was related to the
pagan belief of the pre-Islamic period. That is why poetics of that poetry, in the full
meaning of the term poetics, can be partly reconstructed from the relationship of the
Qur’ān towards the poetry that had existed at the time.

In any case, literary history records a certain poetic victory of tradition in the Islamic
period in relation to the ancient qaṣīda. It would be difficult to call that change a
poetic shift, for – as we shall see – in spite of the important changes that occurred in
the Islamic period in the domain of re/constituting forms, their final outcome in the
ancient qaṣīda cannot be overlooked.

105
The themes assembled in a qaṣīda, in which they survive owing to the strong activity
of the form, have achieved in the Islamic period their aspiration to be independent
as individual poetic forms. Poetry was freed from being obliged to the metaphysical
content that the ancient shā‘ir expressed; the society as a whole got a completely new
content of that kind in the Qur’anic text, and thus poetry as a whole largely changed
its position in accordance with Hegel’s well-known phases of the movement of the
Absolute Spirit: poetry ceased being prophetic and cognitive; it ceased being the es-
sential part of the religion, for those competences were decisively terminated by the
Prophet. Religion replaced poetry in that sense. Poetry lived through the last trans-
formation in the poetically significant encounter between the Prophet and the Poet,
when poetry was shielded by the Prophet’s sacred mantle, exactly because poetry
agreed to redefine its social position. Islam brought about a new understanding of
the world97 – in its non-nomadic, differently motivated and comprehended totality.

The poet was dedicated to his themes, taking them as a full content and expression
of his own reality. His qaṣīda represented the entire life of an individual and his (trib-
al) community, their reality in full scope; hence, the corpus of the ancient qaṣīdas
known as al-Mu‘allqāt was, in a way, the seed of the epos of the Arabic ancient era,
but never evolved into an epos, for important conditions were not met for that. Thus,
the ancient qaṣīda was poetically continued, but in such a way that there was a kind
of tension between its constituents, contained in the following.

First of all, the qaṣīda was a poem, an artefact, in spite of all, especially in spite of the
variety of themes it contained. It had a unique metre and rhyme as a decisive factor
of its cohesiveness, similar to the poetics of the arabesque, in which the meander-
ing liana holds in a specific kind of unity a multitude of elements that aestheticise
it. However, such a “shield of form” was pressed from “within” other elements of
the poem; that is, themes that were far too multiple and diverse not to perform such
pressure to the cohesive elements of a unique form. In that, one should keep in mind
that the dispersive forces (the diversity of themes in the qaṣīda) and cohesive forces
(the form factors) were brought to their optimum: the diversity of themes was indeed
grand, while, on the other side the form was greatly empowered in the direction of
integration, so that it achieved a double unity: regardless of the length, the poem
had one metre and one rhyme. Hence, observed poetically, the relationship between
the content and the form, in the unity of expression, was exclusively dynamic. The
Bedouin reality fully supported such a structure and poetics; it was expressed very
successfully, almost faithfully and realistically, since the themes of the qaṣīda were
(cyclic) themes of the Bedouin reality that was – in its monotony – both periodic
and timeless. In that sense, the ancient qaṣīda is a very successful expression of the
Bedouin reality, of this world, which was mostly monotonous, and descriptive in its
monotony, and – in that monotony and descriptiveness – completely fragmented.
And that insuperable fragmentation is expressed in the thematic fragmentation of the
qaṣīda. To that, one should add something else equally important.

106
Namely, ancient Arabic society – the Bedouin, which had formed the poetry – was
also fragmented into tribal communities that needed to be extremely self-centred
considering the conditions in which they survived; a community or communities
at the state level, as a fateful overcoming of that fragmentation, was unimaginable.
Totality constantly and everywhere escaped the pre-Islamic Arabian society. In that
rest some of the main reasons why the society failed to create an epos, although
they had poetry that exceeded their social development in general, as we know it
to have been; also, they had almost epic motifs for long-term inter-tribal wars and
heroes of the ancient frame, like ‘Antarah Ibn Shaddād, including the abduction of
women, battles for resources, etc. In spite of all of this, an epos did not develop, most
probably because all that I have stated in relation to it was hopelessly fragmented.
The qaṣīda was relatively long for a poem; it encompassed almost every important
theme/content concerning the life of a Bedouin, and it should be pointed out that
poetry was the highest spiritual activity of that heroic age. All that can be seen as
embryos of epic consciousness and epic literature that did not develop in that soci-
ety. That is why I am prone to observe ancient Arabic poetry, especially the corpus
al-Mu‘allaqāt, as a kind of collective sublimation of the epos.

Apart from a general fragmentation that functions as a kind of prevention of the

epos, one should keep in mind that Arabs are a people that has always been charac-
terised by the expansion of spirituality into the world, rather than submergence into
one’s own subjectivity, to use the language of Hegel. As such it is a place of eruptive
lyricism, not the epic, especially not drama.

Thus, the ancient qaṣīda, as we know it, expresses its time in a poetically excellent
manner and presents its culture very successfully. Some Arabists failed to notice this
kind of harmony between the society and its poetry, since they were far too burdened
with the present point of view and learning their own culture as patterns that they
projected into a completely different tradition and poetics, assigning to it a multitude
of alleged factors of inconsistency and incoherence because of the very fact that it
resisted their patterns and culturally arrogant prejudices.98

In the ever-changing circumstances created by the Qur’anic text by its immersion

into the world that it later constantly re/created by infusing other cultures into its or-
bit – those that were supreme compared to the pre-Islamic Arab culture – in the new
circumstances, the ancient qaṣīda simply could not have survived. By the enormous
strength of the Qur’anic text, all in that world was completely turned round.

107
THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW FORMS FROM THE ANCIENT QAṢῙDA
Themes assembled in the ancient qaṣīda that were, by means of the form, brought to
the optimal state of compression, to the lapidary character of the poem which was
considered its virtue, strived for independence in order to be able to, finally, devel-
op and present themselves in new forms. The ancient qaṣīda was simply unable to
adequately express the reality that was changing under the influence of Islam in all
aspects and with a rapidity never before seen in the spreading of a culture. (History
records faster conquests, but very few – if any – spread as fast.) The Qur’ān disbur-
dened poetry of “heavy” metaphysical content, which played a significant role in the
transformation of the qaṣīda. In that way, the Qur’ān, in fact, liberated poetry as art
and thus created one of the basic preconditions for the “fermentation” of the poetics
in which the delayering of the ancient qaṣīda occurred.

The syncretic character of the qaṣīda was completed – generally speaking – in the
ancient period, although one poem assembled several themes, even in the Ottoman
period, which will be elaborated on later in the text. Some forms did contain the
multi-theme structure for a long time, but in the Islamic period, the majority of
thematic “units” of the qaṣīda was separated into independent poetic forms. I hope
that the metaphor of the Big Bang will not sound banal, since in that way, an entire
universe of Oriental-Islamic poetry was created – from Arabia to Bosnia and Anda-
lusia, in space, and from the 7th to 18th centuries, in the Arabic, Perisan and Turkish
languages. And in the process, the universal title qaṣīda has remained – not only in
Arabic, but in other languages as well, even in today’s Bosnian language – although
later special forms were created and were nominated separately. The qaṣīda has re-
mained for hundreds of years in the tradition (both as the term and as the form);
it changed on several occasions its poetic characteristics, seeking independence of
genre. For example, the qaṣīda changed to a certain extent in the literature in Turk-
ish, but not radically and irreversibly: the qaṣīda remained as a notion for the joint
outcome of poetic divisions. It will also for a very long time transfer the recognisable
elements of its primal, ancient form onto the newly-created forms: monometrics
and monorhyme, as well as the bayt structure. Much time had passed and powerful
influences of other cultures had affected that culture before certain novelties to this
canonised form were introduced.

In the polythematic structure of the ancient qaṣīda, first place belonged to the lyrical
love prelude (nasīb) of unequal length. The majority of other themes in the qaṣīda
could have their positions changed, but the love prologue had a permanent position
at the very beginning of the qaṣīda, while panegyric was most frequently positioned
at the end of the poem. Different themes were positioned between them. In the early
Islamic epoch, in the 7th century, the lyrical love poetry prologue became indepen-
dent and became a special genre known as the ghazal. In classical Arabic literature,
the ghazal was lyrical love poetry, especially in the Umayyad period (661 – 750).
That period was marked by a flourishing of this love lyricism, so the entire period
was called the ghazal period, rather than the Umayyad period, for this other name,

108
from the historical point of view, was completely neutral, uninformative as far as
literature is concerned. It is obvious that poetry, liberated of the ideological burden,
spread like never before, and this can be considered one of the important merits of
the Qur’anic text’s contributions to tradition.

It is difficult to observe the ancient qaṣīda as a genre not only in today’s meaning of
the term, but also in the meaning of genre in the early Islamic period, since it encom-
passed many themes and always in the same form – in one metre and one rhyme. I
do know, however, that elegy, for example, existed in the early Islamic period, as a
special form, yet the polythematic qaṣīda, as a strong syncretic form, dominated the
pre-Islamic tradition. I have already drawn attention that it sublimated the Arabian
potential for totality.

Thus, it is difficult to talk about genres in Arabic literature – in its ancient and clas-
sical period – and that fact is of considerable poetological significance, both for the
ancient poetry and for the poetry that developed later. Hence, the emergence of the
ghazal as a form “deduced” from the lyrical prelude of the qaṣīda is the turning point
in the development of classical literature in Arabic and later all three Oriental-Islam-
ic languages.99 One of the most important characteristics of that truly revolutionary
poetical shift is the new relationship between the content and form of the poem.
Namely, in the ancient qaṣīda, themes undoubtedly felt confined. They were under-
developed, supressed, somewhat even averted. There were far too many for a form,
that is, a poem. Apart from that, it was necessary to determine – also from a poetic
standpoint – the way in which that “announcement” of several themes in a single
form was realised poetically, that is, in what way to aesthetically explain the fact that
different content was announced in the same single form. One should assume that in
such a poetic state there existed in the qaṣīda a special tension. However, that issue
should be discussed on another occasion – at this moment, the birth of new forms
from the polythematic qaṣīda is in the focus of my attention.

Regarding the polythematic character of the qasīda, another thing should be added.
Namely, the formal framing of themes into a single poem within which themes were
confined successfully expressed a Bedouin reality that was, in essence, episodic,
similar to film sequences, at the same time – stated figuratively – “frustrating” these
themes, for they were underdeveloped and unsaturated. Finally, the qaṣīda had al-
ways the same form (monorhyme and monometre) and structure, always refraining
from development of the theme/themes, and as such became poetically far too mo-
notonous, like the Bedouin’s life, even more so given that its dominance of literary
tradition was unquestionable. Such a sublimated totality could not have remained in
the same form, especially in the dramatically changed general social conditions that
were formed through the spread of Islam and encounter with other cultures.

Ancient poetical principle according to which a relatively large number of themes

was framed in a single form, in a single poem, was perfected in another principle – in

109
the striving to achieve an optimally lapidary quality, cultivated to an extent that most
frequently, one bayt represented an individual unit of meaning. The forces of frag-
mentation thus acted strongly in the ancient poetics, and thus, ultimately, the ancient
qaṣīda, at the level of poetics, implied a kind of enforced “thematic striving”: the
themes – essentially, although it may sound paradoxically – strived for exiting their
“pre-form” in order to take flight in the poet’s imagination, liberated, in order to be-
come saturated and poetically self-sufficient. They could achieve that by becoming
independent, separate forms that were brought to life in the important crossroads of
epochs, even of worlds, when the Prophet shielded poetry with his Mantle.

This relationship marked by “tension” between the content and form of the ancient
qaṣīda, between the multitude of themes and their suppression, is one of the main po-
etical characteristics of Arabic ancient poetry, and only in such a context is it possible
to understand how that tension grew and gave rise to the strengthening of centrifugal
forces that liberated the themes into independent forms. That is why in that exact
moment – from the dawn of the “Umayyad epoch”, that is the ghazal epoch onwards,
poetry flourished in a vast cultural and political empire, in a full spectrum of forms,
liberated and content with harmonious relations with the Qur’anic Text. The ancient
period was far too closed, self-content, and highly monotonous regarding art and so-
cial development, and thus poetry of the time can be valued in two ways. On the one
hand – and this should be again stated – it brilliantly expressed the kind of totality
that poetry normally expresses in ancient cultures, especially that of the Arabs. In that
sense, ancient poetry is successful, especially if one keeps in mind its general, barely
measurable popularity in a society that was marked by poetry. On the other hand,
poetry was far too (long) poetically monotonous during the entire ancient period, so
that significant changes had become necessary, especially because a long poetical
standstill is not appropriate for art. Themes had for a long time strived to become
independent forms. It was an ancient dream of a future, a future that would be able to
preserve the memory of antiquity as its roots. Namely, we will see later on in the text
that the newly-created forms in the entire literature of the Oriental-Islamic languages
preserved much of the poetics of the ancient qaṣīda, which obliges us to research
the morphology of genres, that is, of forms. Literature in Oriental-Islamic languages
managed to create a magnificent arch between its own antiquity and the full maturity
of classicism; an arch that ensures stability and the maturity of the entire culture.

In this context, I will mention something important for the realm of literature – in
Arabic Persian and Turkish – although I will later need to return to this assertion.
Namely, one can see here that literature in all of the three aforementioned languages
had the same root in antiquity: the proof lies in the very morphology of forms in Ar-
abic, Persian and Turkish classical literature. Many researchers are unaware of this
fact, for the ethnocentric approach to a time that simply was significantly different
than their own took them in a wrong direction from which they have been unable to
comprehend the real state of affairs, freed of their vision and ideological coercion.
However, the tradition is still sufficiently self-aware.

110
The dejection of themes in the ancient qaṣīda stems from their poetical awareness
of an inseparable development, of a disciplined refrainment that is, in essence, a
form of lapidary - cultivated in accordance with the position of the themes in one
poem – as a poetic principle, even as an ideal; we have seen that it had advanced
to the point that the bayt had been situated, in a characteristic number of cases, as
an independent semantic unit, which is a characteristic of that poetry. Such com-
pression was possible to a certain point – the point at which it began striving for an
irremissible transformation into its opposite, that is, to the point that it began divar-
icating and developing into the forms in which the saturation of themes would be
realised. And exactly that occurred in the ancient qaṣīda: under certain conditions, it
simply had to bring out its themes to the freedom of independent forms. That is how
the ghazal (love lyricism), madaḥ (panegyric), hijā’ (lampoon), khamriyyāt (wine
poems), fakhr (self-praise), ṭardiyyāt (hunt poems), waṣf (descriptive poetry), etc.
were formed. Some of those forms strived for additional amplification, and by that,
to an ever-increasing enrichment of the tradition. For example, the ghazal developed
into two significant subdivisions, each becoming a separate form: urban or Umarite
ghazal (mainly dominant in Hijāz, especially in Mecca and Medina, during the Uma-
yyad period), characteristic of so-called sensual or hedonistic expressions of love;
the ‘uḏrī ghazal (also dominant in Hijāz, but mainly amongst Bedouins), known as
the “opposing” lyrical love expression – the so-called chivalric, platonic love, for
which many claim it represented the idealised base for the later development of Sufi
poetry. Aside from these two subdivisions of the ghazal, this genre continued to
divaricate even further. Thus, in his interpretation of literary history, Ṭāhā Ḥusayn
draws attention to the political-satirical ghazal, which is a genre “hybrid”, as can be
seen from the very title.100

That is how the amplification of the ancient qaṣīda began, and by that, the develop-
ment of new forms and tradition in general. However, the majority of the new forms,
or poetic transformation of the same forms, show that, in a certain phase, the com-
plete genre-related distancing to the extent of the impossibility of recognising their
origin is prevented, which is reflected in literature in all three languages in a single
poetical system. In order to make that cohesiveness clear, it is necessary to analyse
the morphology and history of forms in Oriental-Islamic culture, and I hope that my
study will serve as an encouragement for researchers to investigate further in that
direction. Several basic forms that I am about to present may serve as examples of
this kind of phenomenon.

THE MORPHOLOGY OF THE GHAZAL

The ghazal draws thematic roots to the ancient Arabic qasīda, and more precisely, to
its love-lyrical prelude (nasīb).

The following verses of the pre-Islamic poet Ṭarafa faithfully represent the
nasīb in ancient literature:

111
Havla left traces in the sandy planes
Showing clearly like on the hand tattoo traces.
Their camels my friends next to me halted -
“Despair not, but be a man!” they said.
And I remember when my love’s palanquins went away at dawn
And through vast valleys like vessels immense they sailed on;
I wondered if those were vessels unfriendly, or was it Ibn Yamin sailing
Across open seas his vessels with a safe hand leading,
The ships’ bows cut through the waves, firm and decisive
Like when playing, into the sand your hand you dive:
My love is like a young gazelle, just grown –
On her dazzling strings of pearls and topaz shown;
Like a gazelle with other gazelles grazing in a thicket
Covered by the shrub her neck elegantly stretching for the fruit;
And the smile on her luscious lips is like a dazzling daisy
Whose beauty from the sandy hill was saved by the warmth hazy;
The sun pours its light into her lips and her pearly teeth
The whiteness of which she cherishes; and the dark gums beside her teeth;
As if by the sun’s robes adorned:
It is of colour delight – neither shrivelled nor wrinkled.

‫ْاليَ ِد‬ ‫ْال َو ْش ِم فِى ظا َ ِه ِر‬ ‫تَلُو ُح كَباَقِى‬ ‫ثَ ْمهَ ِد‬ ‫بِبُرْ قَ ِة‬ ‫أطال ٌل‬ ْ َ‫لِ َخوْ لَة‬
‫تَ َجلَّ ِد‬ ‫َو‬ ‫اَس ًى‬ ‫تَ ْهلِ ْك‬ ‫ال‬ َ‫يَقُولُون‬ ‫َم ِطيَّهُ ْم‬ ََّ ‫َعل‬
‫ى‬ ‫صحْ بِى‬ َ َ ‫ا‬ ‫ه‬ ِ ‫ب‬ ً ‫ُوقُوفا‬
‫َد ِد‬ ‫ِمن‬ ‫ف‬ ‫اص‬
ِ ِ َ ِ ‫و‬ َّ ‫ن‬ ‫ال‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ين‬
ٍ ِ ‫ف‬ ‫س‬َ َ ‫خَاليا‬ ً‫ُغ ْد َوة‬ ‫ْال َمالِ ِكيَّ ِة‬ ‫ُحدُو َج‬ ‫كَأ َ َّن‬
‫َو يَ ْهتَ ِدى‬ ً‫ْال َمالّ ُح طَوْ را‬ َ ‫يَجُو ُر بِها‬ ‫يا َ ِم ٍن‬ ‫ين اب ِْن‬ ِ ِ ‫ف‬ ‫س‬َ ْ
‫ن‬ ‫م‬
ِ ْ‫و‬َ ‫ا‬ ٌ ‫ة‬َّ ‫ي‬ ِ ‫ل‬ ْ‫َو‬ ‫َعد‬
‫بِ ْاليَ ِد‬ ‫ْال ُمفاَيِ ُل‬ ‫ب‬ َ ْ‫التُّر‬ ‫قَ َس َم‬ َ ‫كَما‬ َ ‫بِها‬ َ ‫َح ْي ُزو ُمها‬ ‫ْال َما ِء‬ َ َ ‫َحبا‬
‫ب‬ ‫ق‬ُّ ‫يَ ُش‬
‫َزبَرْ َج ِد‬ ‫و‬ ‫لُ ْؤلُ ٍؤ‬ ‫ُس ْمطَ ْى‬ ‫ُمظا َ ِه ُر‬ ‫شا َ ِد ٌن‬ ‫َو فِى ْال َح ِّى اَحْ َوى يَ ْنفُضُ ْال َمرْ َد‬
‫تَرْ تَ ِدى‬ ‫َو‬ ِ ‫ْالبَ ِر‬
‫ير‬ َ‫طراَف‬ ْ َ‫ا‬ ‫تَنا َ َو ُل‬ ‫بِ َخ ِميلَ ٍة‬ ً ‫َر ْب َربا‬ ‫تُراَ ِعى‬ ‫َخ ُذو ٌل‬
‫ص لهُ نَ ِدى‬ َ ٍ ‫ِدع‬ ْ ‫ُح َّر ال َّر ْم ِل‬ ‫تَخَلَّ َل‬ ً‫ُمنَوَّرا‬ َ‫كَأ َّن‬ ‫أل َمى‬ ْ َ ْ
‫عَن‬ ‫تَب ِْس ُم‬ ‫و‬
ْ
‫بِإِث ِم ِد‬ ْ
‫َعلي ِه‬ َ ْ
‫تك ِد ْم‬ َ َ
‫ل ْم‬ ‫َو‬ ‫ف‬ َّ ‫أُ ِس‬ ‫لِثاَتِ ِه‬ ‫إال‬ ِ ‫ال َّش ْم‬
‫س‬ ُ‫إياَة‬ ُ‫ثَقَ ْته‬
‫يَتَ َخ َّد ِد‬ ‫لَ ْم‬ ‫اللَّوْ ِن‬ ‫نَقِ َُى‬ ‫َعلَ ْي ِه‬ َ ‫ِرداَ َءها‬ ‫ت‬ْ َّ‫َحل‬ ‫س‬َ ‫َوجْ ٍهٌ كَأ َ َّن ال َّش ْم‬ ‫َو‬

During the rule of the Umayyad dynasty, this love-lyrical prologue of the qaṣīda de-
veloped into an independent genre termed the ghazal. In the entirety of the classical
literature that followed, the love-lyrical prologue of the qaṣīda preserved the memo-
ry of the original position of love lyricism (nasīb). Hence, it was not unusual in clas-
sical literature to see verses belonging to some other form, also stemming from the
ancient qasīda, at the beginning of a poem. For example, some panegyrics written
for dignitaries began with love-lyrical verses. At first it may seem unusual, even in-

112
appropriate, to see a panegyric dedicated to a dignitary containing love verses at the
beginning, in an ode that is almost a hymn. However, that was a manner that soothed
the taste of the time, and which happens to oppose our taste. In classical literature in
the Ottoman Turkish language, it was usual to see a panegyric beginning with lyri-
cal verses that were not even connected to the addressee of the panegyric, with that
“initial” part of the qaṣīda written in almost fifteen bayts. For example, Hasan Ziyāī
al-Mustārī begins his panegyric to Mustafa bey (in the Ottoman Turkish language)
primarily with a description of nature. Out of sixteen bayts, I cite the first four:

I looked around this morning admiring that beauty

The brink of dawn was a manifestation of God’s grace
Each thread of grass came to life in the rose garden
And trees like Hidr started wearing Jannah’s green dresses
It is not dew that is seen, but a rosebud’s teeth
Cheered by the joke, and started laughing
Heavenly beauty has arrived as if Jannah is here
A morning breeze started blowing, as if God’s Mercy dispensing.
(...)

The panegyric begins in verse seventeen:

Long live Mustafa Bey

To Muhammad’s Ummah he will shine like the sun
As he is just and truthful in this world
The Creator of men shall undoubtedly have mercy upon him
Not even Kisra can match his virtuousness
After the Prophet, he equals Omer in fairness
(...)101

Thus, the ghazal developed as a separate form, but it preserved the “poetical im-
pulse” of the nasīb to be a prologue of different poems as well, poems characterised
by another form of sublimation – just like panegyrics dedicated to prominent people,
whose social position demanded a poetic tone resembling a hymn. In that way, the
ghazal recalls, among other things, its own origin, as well as the origin of the form
it is being integrated into – the panegyric, which was also formed from an integral
theme of the ancient qaṣīda: it evokes the origin of both forms, and the reception was
obviously positive and stimulated that “syncretic reflex”. In other words, the “dis-
solution” of the qaṣīda that occurred in the classical period still did not prevail over
the integrative cultural processes and trends for which I have already stated to have
contributed the feeling of fluffiness and completeness of the man at the time. In fact,
even poetical forms were not created in accordance with the principle of poetical an-

113
tagonism: they simply developed by a kind of arabesque branching and “meandering
of forms” in cooperation, not in antagonism. (In that sense, let us recall the section
of the text where it is stated that writers of that period considered artistic originality
unnecessary.) Not even creative (hence, not even genre) conflict is characteristic of
the time, that is, of classical literature. On the contrary, harmony is as optimal as al-
lowed by the development of forms, genres and their coexistence – and that is a very
considerable amount. Such harmonising in the system – of which the morphology of
forms testifies – is crowned by the very term adab, which was sufficiently wide to
syncretically encompass all kinds of literacy that educate and ennoble a man. Poetic
mutiny would arise in the modern age.

It is understood that love-lyrical verses that are integrated into the beginning of a
panegyric, for example, are not a ghazal in the meaning of a genre or an independent
form, for the ghazal developed simultaneously with the panegyric, in the same cul-
ture and in the same time: as an independent and self-sufficient poetic division that
simply felt pleasantly in its own independence and thematic saturation. Love verses
were integrated into another theme, and are simply aimed to evoke their privileged
position in the ancient qaṣīda. Since I have stated that the themes of the ancient qa-
ṣīda became separate and that they formed separate, self-sufficient forms, it follows
that the (mono)thematic character of the poem – at least at that time – was a precon-
dition for independence of the poetic form and for its naming: panegyric, lampoon,
hunt poems, wine poems, ascetic poetry, etc. However, we see the “transgression” of
themes, their intertwining, on the example of panegyric, regardless if the theme ac-
cording to which a division was named, is dominant or not (in this case, panegyric).
By the repetitive “spill over” of themes, several goals are achieved.

First, tradition is aware of its own development, of the necessity of shifts and prog-
ress, regardless of what it may have meant at the time; at the same time, tradition
cultivates an awareness of the necessity of a continuity, since continuity, in the mul-
titude of its meanings that must not be reduced to the epigone and affectation, en-
sures the survival of the tradition as such. With these vestiges of poetic syncretism,
tradition preserves itself and its broadest reception, including its highest at the level
of the court, provides maximum support to these efforts of the tradition. I would
like to draw attention at this point to the previous discussion on the predominant
conviction in the age of classicism that originality was not the author’s obligation,
but rather the study and preservation of tradition. Such a development of forms bears
witness to this, and more precisely it greatly contributes to these overall efforts. A
poet of the panegyric is aware, as well as his influential patron, that the introduction
of love lyrical verses at the beginning of a panegyric is beautiful in at least two ways:
on the one hand, love-lyricism is beautiful per se (especially if it comes from the pen
of a good poet), and, on the other, it is beautiful to recall the virtuous old times, espe-
cially the ancient period. Just as people gladly remember their childhood regardless
of some difficulties they may have experienced at the time, so do cultures. You are
bound to fascinate every Arabian emir – in the most high-tech comfort – if you recite

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at least a part of a mu‘allaqa, that is, a 6th or 7th century poem. That ancient poetry
has become, in time, much more than a poem for our cultural being. To an Abbasid
khalifa, for example, as well as to everybody else in that culture, in the Baghdad of
that time, that reminder of the very source, of the pure spring of poetry that marked
his world and his age, was very close and dear.

Second, and in relation to the aforesaid, regardless of the fact that new poetic forms
were created, a general striving was preserved, one which I can call in this context an
integralism of classicism, expressed by the introduction of themes belonging to other
forms; that is, themes that characterise another form/genre. That can be observed in
the introduction of the love prologue into a panegyric, but the same phenomenon can
also be seen in other forms as well. In other words, some forms in classical literature
are prone to migrations into forms that they do not belong to thematically. We can
see that especially in some more voluminous works,102 but the phenomenon is obvi-
ous also in the example I have previously provided. It is understood that the lyrical
verses at the beginning of a panegyric are not a genre, but rather are integrated into
another genre, without any intention of preventing its “genre sovereignty”: they are
“aware” that they are entering another genre and by their thematic contrast they
emphasise the specificity of their own position with regard to genre morphology.103
They achieve this in two ways.

On the one hand, the thematic orientation of the prologue/prelude is so contrastive to

the main theme of the genre that situating them in one poem may seem stylistically,
structurally and poetically awkward. On the other, because they are situated at the
beginning of the poem, these verses irresistibly resemble their position in the ancient
qaṣīda, which means – ultimately – that they are reminders of the value of antiquity
as such, including the ancient qaṣīda that sacrificed its integrity for the sake of the
independence of poetic forms. This other fact (and I constantly emphasise antiquity
and the morphology of forms/genres) is of special significance for poetology, and
more precisely for historical poetics.

Third, and in relation to the aforesaid, for all of those facts act in the same direction,
by mixing two themes as “genre determinates” (love-lyricism in the panegyric, or in
bacchius poems, etc.), the tradition tries to somewhat limit, or relativize the indepen-
dence of poetic divisions. That fact is of extraordinary significance for the historical
poetics of classical literature in the Oriental-Islamic languages. Studying the history
of forms bears strong witness to this, as can be seen from this analysis. In other
words, classical literature is not characterised by dramatic poetic shifts. Sufi poetry,
which I will introduce later, seems at first a dramatic turnover, but that too is, in
fact, relativized, as I will later explain. Poetry of the classical period developed har-
monically, harmonised traditionally, for, a general characteristic of that culture was
harmony between the subject and the world, a state one can speak of, in a Hegelian
manner, as transcending from the poet’s spirituality into the world he rejoices with
and harmonises with to the greatest extent possible. What is more, the development

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of poetry as I present it here emphasised the advancement of the tradition in a po-
etical development free of conflicts, in the absence of antagonisms between literary
divisions or forms. One could say that the “disintegration” of the ancient qaṣīda was
that shift, for it is not difficult to prove – in the aforementioned and similar examples
– that there is an optimal coordination. The diversity of themes in the ancient qasīda
did not transform into poetical antagonism. On the contrary, they have been opti-
mally harmonised, and opposing the strong integrative factors of the form, brought
into a state of almost exactly measurable strength and reliability (monometre and
monorhyme). That is why I wrote in a study of the universal arabesque structuring
of the Oriental-Islamic arts – including literature – about the exemplary mu‘allaqas,
as well as other poems where the poetics of the arabesque is obvious. The same
principle is recognised in later development of literature – including the one we are
talking about here. Namely, that nomadic “migration of themes” from one genre into
another points to the principle of an arabesque-harmonised overcoming, rather than
a genre/thematic antagonising of those insuperable oppositions. It is necessary to
keep in mind here that themes in this phase of development are set as the decisive
factor of the constitution of a literary genre.104

This development of literature – as well as other arts, although primarily literature

– is not only a matter of poetics, but also of the Oriental-Islamic aesthetics and worl-
dview in general. The integralism of that culture is reflected where one could expect
it to be overcome, and that confirms – time and again – the unity of the poetic system.

When we talk about the ghazal as a “pure form” in the sense that it does not mix
themes but is fully dedicated to the theme of love, one can perform an analysis,
immanent to the genre and poetics of the classical literature, that shows that it is a
poetic harmonisation of tradition, even in places where that does not appear at first.
Let us briefly observe, in that light, two subdivisions of the ghazal, which was char-
acteristic of the so-called Umayyad period, and which later flourished in the Persian
and Ottoman Turkish languages.

In the historical starting point of the ghazal – Hijāz in the Umayyad period – two
forms of the ghazal developed. On the one hand, the urban ghazal was developed,
represented by the outstanding poet ‘Umar Ibn Abī Rabī‘ah (d. 712). It was charac-
terised by singing of carnal love and is thus known as the sensual, hedonistic ghazal.
It was extraordinarily popular, to the extent that a literary division could have felt
popular in a tradition that felt liberated in the domain of poetry as the most success-
ful expression of spirituality at the very dawn of the imperial future.

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The following are some of Rabī‘ah’s verses:

The heifer amongst them is of breast firm

as if she ascended from the face of the Moon

Her thighs are made more beautiful

when over them there is a light mantle

The gentle girl, her hands give breath

as if doused with amber and mirth

Her smile when compared to camomile blossom

wins over its scent when her teeth glisten

She who is paralleled by none

and with whom the dark nights become undone

On a mule’s back she left leaving me

and only her distant traces I can see

I shall never forget her, I swear by God

and will take her love to the grave so cold.105

The following verses by Rabī‘ah are somewhat blasphemous, for they introduce the
erotic atmosphere into an important hajj ritual:

At Mina, the place where pebbles are thrown

I saw the sun hidden in a Yemeni gown

From which a woman’s hand appeared throwing pebbles

Entirely decorated in splendour with henna on her fingers

When we met on the hill, she greeted me

And my misfortunate animal from the bridle broke free

By God, I cannot even recall

Seven or eight pebbles if I had thrown...

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This is how Majnūn sings of Layla:

I thought that I would see

The mountain called Radva disappear
But I would never live to see
The end of love of Layla Ben Amir
(...)
By God, have you embraced Layla
Before falling to sleep
Or kissed her fine face
And her delicate lip?

Have the locks of her hair

Started to glow
The way a lamb shines
Under the sparkly dew?106

Another well-known ‘uḏrī poet after whom the ‘urrī poetry was named, Jamīl al-
‘Uḏrī, sings:

My soul united with hers before birth,

Together we became the seed, our cradle was the same.

We grew and our love flourished with us,

When we die, it will prove a true commitment.

Whatever happens to us, love shall remain,

It will stay with us in the darkness of the grave.107

And while the towns of Hijāz cultivated erotic lyricism, the ‘uḏrī ghazal, the desert,
platonic, etc. ghazal was cultivated elsewhere – that is, love-lyricism which sang not
of the carnal, physical love; in it, eroticism was sublimated to the extent to which,
allegedly, the Sufi poetry would recognise its own “material”.108

Literary histories are mostly prone (some at least should be named) to situating the
‘urrī and the urban ghazal as antipodes, as two poetic opponents, even as two genres.
Reflecting this issue, I find it necessary to emphasise that in such an early phase of
classical literature (when the ancient qaṣīda themes were becoming separate forms)
the theme, or the thematic saturation of the poem, was a decisive factor of the genre
and in the naming of the genre. Bearing in mind this immanent criterion, it is not

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possible to speak of two ghazals, as two poetic genres, although they have some
peculiarities that differentiate them. Their theme is the same – love – but it always
appeared in two variations: in the so-called carnal and in its platonic variant. A cer-
tain antithetical quality in the variation of the same theme is obvious. What is more,
it is consistently performed, poetically constantly, so that on the basis of that con-
sistency they are situated as “two forms”. At first sight, those are poetic opposites in
the corpora of the urban and ‘uḏrī ghazal. Poetical variations of the theme of love are
encompassed poetically to the extent that the poet of the urban ghazal (for example,
Abū Rabī‘ah) brings carnal love to the very edge of blasphemy and shamelessness:
he even sings about courting the women performing hajj, and he sometimes sings
about “love” towards several women. These manners of the poet place “love” of
the urban ghazal in the domain of the senses, even of erotic lust, and the poet thus
transforms the notion of love into a notion of erotic desire. For one justly may pose
the question – which is only rhetorical – of whether love is the theme if a poet sings
of his erotic desire towards women performing hajj; whether love is the theme if a
poet sings of his alleged love towards several women in one poem.109 In such poet-
ry, love is transformed into something else: the poet, in fact, sings about his lust.110
Ultimately, the theme of the urban ghazal is love, but it is specified by eroticisation.

The ‘uḏrī ghazal is opposed to the urban ghazal in the sense of its understanding of
love. The ‘uḏrī ghazal does not sing of carnal love; it is almost completely freed of
eroticism in the sense of referring to the carnal. It is dedicated to the lyrical perfect-
ing of love as a prominent, even exclusive state of spirituality and soulfulness to the
extent that the love “couple” needs love, suffering for achieving an “immeasurable
perfecting” of love, in which the prominent poet Majnūn Layla would even end up
losing his mind. This is truly the opposite of the “rationalised love” of the Umarite
ghazal and strategies for achieving it. Of course, poetry cannot be looked upon as an
autobiographical record and its content cannot be taken literally, but – in the urban
ghazal – it is about the “poetical strategy” of love, which is, even if it is sublimated,
directed towards fulfilment. Opposed to this, the ‘uḏrī ghazal develops a “poetic
strategy” focused on unfulfillment, or more precisely, on an endlessly cultivated and
unfulfilled desire. Those are the two poles of the ghazal. This is why the ‘uḏrī ghazal
endures on the spiritual, non-physical aspect of love, to the extent that it needs to be
unrealised in physical contact: interestingly, its realisation would mean its termina-
tion, its elimination. (Again, the suitability of ‘uḏrī poetry for Sufi poetic turnovers
is shown.) Consequently, not only does the ‘uḏrī poet sing about one woman in
one poem, but he sings of the same woman over the course of his whole life and
opus. (‘Umar sings of several women in one poem!) Love-lyrical “monotheism”
has been brought to the outermost limits. The tradition recognised that well and it
even “eliminated” names of the ‘uḏrī poets and introduced them under other names
into the literary history – under the name of their lyrical heroines.111 Such names
of poets – perhaps I could state in this context, such titles of poets – do not contain
solely literary-historical value, or status; they even contain poetological value and
status, since by their own “titles” (“literary names”) they direct towards the poetical

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characteristics of their immensely important poetry. These “titles”/names should not
be taken as pseudonyms, for pseudonyms have completely different motifs and func-
tions. A poet assumes a pseudonym by his own will, and, importantly, he assumes it
at any stage of his creative life, most frequently, independent of his poetics. In the
case of ‘uḏrī poets, on the contrary, their “names” appear post festum – only when
they prove their everlasting “love lyrical monotheism”, thus their “names” are pri-
marily poetical. The urban ghazal promotes “monotheism” of another kind: the poet
is one in a multitude of women, while in ‘Uḏrī poetry the author and his heroine are
one – to the fulfilment of love-lyrical “singularity”.112

In this short analysis, I emphasised the main elements of the distinction between the
urban and the ‘uḏrī ghazal, on the basis of which some literary historians consider
them to be poetical, that is, genre antipodes. It is obvious that such a thematic opposi-
tion gave rise to a certain “poetical tension”, which is entirely positive from the point
of view of literary history and poetology. Poetic creativity in the domain of literary
history most frequently appears in accordance with the principle of such creative,
poetic opposition; of a tension that results in innovation. However, the urban and
‘uḏrī ghazal are not poetically divergent to the extent that they could be considered
separate poetical genres. The theme is not always – in every period and in every lit-
erature – decisive for the emergence of a genre, but in this phase of the history of Ar-
abic, and later Arabic-Islamic literature, themes that stemmed from the disintegrated
ancient qaṣīda actively formed new genres. Apart from that, both subdivisions of the
ghazal have the same characteristics of the form with the same theme in different
variations, which prevent their separation into independent genres. I believe that in
this case it is desirable to speak of a certain binary rather than of a radical opposition.
This is differentiation in unity, unity in differentiation, which irresistibly reminds
of the arabesque overcoming of differences in unity. The morphology of a form is
recognisable, and it is directed “upstream” towards its source in the ancient qaṣīda.

THE POETIC FUNCTION OF THE LAPIDARY: INCORPORATING

FRAGMENTS INTO THE SENSE OF A WHOLE
A distinguishing characteristic of the ancient qaṣīda is striving towards the lapidary.
It is expressed, at one level, in the thematic compositeness of the qaṣīda, since the
themes – as we have seen – are unsaturated; they remain short of the kind of plea-
sure that they will acquire as independent forms. On another level, even within each
individual theme, in the integral ancient qaṣīda, there is a noticeable desire for each
bayt to represent an independent and self-sufficient, complete unit of meaning. The
independence of meaning of a bayt was suitable, among other things, for moving
the bayts toward an oral tradition, which lasted for at least two centuries, or even to
an omission of some bayts or their moving from one poem into another within the
memory of the narrator/rhapsode. That is why, several hundred years later, in the
realm of classical literature, all the way to the modern period, a value judgement pre-
vailed according to which the best poet is the one who manages to say the most, us-

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ing as few words, that is, bayts, as possible. Literary criticism did not develop in the
tradition, but an authoritative philology that was considered competent for criticism
as well. Philology cannot be radically separated from history, and that means that
philologists – with general approval – directed poetic creation with their assessment
towards ancient poetic postulates, and thus also towards the lapidary as a poetical
postulate. Philology is all the happier if it is more dedicated to antiquities.

Such a situation can explain why readers and philologists alike persistently valued a
poem on the basis of some of its parts, the excellence of which were primarily deter-
mined on the basis of the traditionally constant principle of the lapidary. The poetics
of the arabesque is recognisable there as well, although on a higher level: leaf-by-
leaf=the arabesque; bayt-by-bayt=a poem. The tradition successfully maintains a
recognisable continuity although it constantly develops. Understood and positioned
in such a way, the lapidary quality of certain verses, or their smaller “units” within
one theme to which an entire poem is dedicated, remains a primary poetic task.

Thus, we notice an unusual phenomenon: the themes abandoned the integral ancient
qasīda in order to be able to develop sufficiently, but, at the same time, lapidary
ideals were preserved within a single theme. Poetically, the contrast is very inter-
esting.113 A critic who passes judgement on a work on the basis of its fragments – in
so far as the work insists on fragmentation – is in a way deceived; that is, he is not
theoretically or poetologically equipped to be able to understand the way in which
such a work should be approached. This is a lower level of impressionist criticism. A
fragment, per se, can have a certain meaning, even significance, but its full and real
meaning and significance are revealed through their function in a work as a whole.
Medieval philosophers lacked such an approach, as well as Bašagić, who would
evaluate poems from the heritage on the basis of their fragments.

One of the goals of the lapidary that leads towards a poetically functional fragmenta-
tion is the creation of a specific type of tension between fragments. It is necessary to
determine both the kind and the strength of the tension that is not generally crafted,
even at the level of poetics; rather, it is harmonised in an arabesque manner and
soothing. In other words, it is unjustified both poetologically and critically to focus
on fragmentation as an ostensibly finalised process, and as its own goal; rather, that
is only the starting point – one should look for answers on the nature and ultimate
goals of fragmentation, since it is a poetic constant, a postulate.

The same poetic principle of fragmentation is found in highly complex, enormous lit-
erary structures, not only in the ancient qaṣīda, ghazal or panegyric. Some of the most
important works of Oriental-Islamic culture, such as Mathnawī, Kalīla wa Dimna,114
or One Thousand and One Nights are based on fragmentation. I will shortly dwell on
this last work, since its significance to the world literature, not only Arabic – where its
significance is not so prominent – is enormous, especially because it is an enormous
narrative structure, heterogeneous in genre, syncretic, with abundance of verses, etc.

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One Thousand and One Nights insists on fragmentation, for Scheherazade, almost
abruptly and at the most interesting moment, interrupts the story, so it is necessary
to “wait” for the following night in order to enter the following fragment of the nar-
rative. The listener (be it Shahryar, or a contemporary reader, for both are facing the
same poetic principle) is simply exposed to the implacability of fragmentation. How-
ever, the narrator successfully and harmoniously overcomes this through a number
of means, including the general framework of the story, which is the most important.
I am fairly prone to believe that, from a poetological point of view, the most im-
portant issue is to determine and explain the “ostensible cracks” of the narrative; its
temporary but very prominent fragmentation. On the one hand, the narrator builds
his narrative structure on fragmentation, on sudden and stringent interruptions, and
always at the most interesting place; while, on the other, the narrator does this only
to be able to overcome those interruptions, to “braze the cracks”, to connect with his
extraordinary skill fragments into wholes, and those wholes into even bigger wholes,
in the vast Wholeness of the Work. Thus, One Thousand and One Nights cannot be
judged on the basis of one or several stories, but from a perspective that “observes”
and analyses the work as a whole.

From the point of view of poetology, the same is the case with the fragmentation of
poems, or certain genres. The essence is the prevailing/connecting of the fragments,
the ability of the narrator (or a poet) to successfully integrate the fragments into a
whole – until the narrative of the One Thousand and One Nights is seen as a func-
tional universe. Not a single story there – regardless of how beautiful it may be –
equals the beauty of the entire work. The poetics of the arabesque triumphs.

Another work amongst the most important in Oriental-Islamic languages has the
same structure – the prose Kalīla wa Dimna. I have mentioned other forms that
are poetically constituted the same way. Prior to deducing the final conclusion, we
should recall the obvious principle of fragmentation in certain works of poetry, even
in genres, because the conclusion will be equally valid for them and for the afore-
mentioned complex narrative structures, to the extent that they are based on certain
fundamental, yet identical poetic principles.

The focus of poetics is fragmentation, but only for the purpose of overcoming it in
different ways. The final effect of such structuring of a work is opposite to that seen
by philological and critical adherents of the fragmentation. The effect is contrary to
the meaning and sense of fragments as structurally irrevocably isolated units. And
that is where I see the utter defamiliarization of this poetics.

Namely, just as the reader believes (and in that conviction remain poetologically
naïve readers) that everything ends in fragmentation, as a special force of entropy,
he suddenly reveals – literally radiantly through the surprise given by grand works
of art – that fragmentation is not aimed at utterly dismissing wholeness, at ending
its importance and beauty, but quite the opposite: the purpose of fragmentation is to

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stimulate the desire for wholeness, for the beauty of the work as a whole. This is how
a completely new horizon is revealed. While traditional critics remain loyal to the
charms of fragments without ever being aware of the overwhelming beauty of the
whole, a poetologically-conscious reader understands that the fragment has a poetic
significance in its function as a fragment – thus, by being determined as a fragment,
it perceives itself as such and is burdened with a desire to be integrated into a whole
that primarily enlightens the meaning of its fragmentation, as well as its position and
its structural contribution to the whole, or more precisely, to its wholeness. In other
words, this is a form of the poetics of antithesis that compensates, in such oriental
characteristics of art (in the classical period), that is, in such poetic postulates, for
the drama-related and dramatic tension that we know in the experience of the so-
called western tradition. The antithesis is expressed in the situating of fragments
as seemingly and always self-sufficient “wholes” (the fragmentation is structurally
emphasised to the greatest extent possible), where one can see the purpose of their
introduction into increasingly larger structures, that is, wholes, to the extent of in-
sisting that the tradition is a vast whole, and poetology is the only way of presenting
it as such.

This is where we come to one of the crucial terms in classical literature, its poetics.
This is desire, primarily a poetological term/category. Desire is the basic energy
point of classical literature in the domain of poetics and poetology. It is the base for
works spanning from the ancient Arabic qaṣīda, through vast narrative structures
like One Thousand and One Nights, or various mathnawīs, to the sublimations of
Sufi poetry. The fragment appears static, inert, but – paradoxically – becomes dy-
namic if it is (poetically) positioned in such a way that it moves that grand creative
power within ourselves, which we call desire, for – desire is, in fact, the greatest
form of activism in reading, in communication with a work – to the extent that it
overcomes the impressionist approach and the reader’s empathy, and is transformed
into a special kind of co-creative relationship with the work. Each reader of the sem-
inal works of this literature knows what I am talking about: the reader has already
gained that experience. The desire initiates the narrator/author as well as the reader
as his “loyal companion” in the same direction – towards the satisfaction of desire,
which is achieved by overcoming the fragments’ inertia, that is, by their poetically
dynamic integration into the sense and beauty of the whole. All of this is opposite to
what we can see in the reception of many philologists in the past, the many Arabists
and sometimes even the Arabic interpreters of literature who positioned fragmen-
tation as a finality, and by doing so, in fact, prevented desire. It represents poetic
liberation and the unimaginable dynamization of fragments.115

The desire in those works was cultivated from one story to another, from one bayt
to another, from one fragment to another, ad infinitum. Regardless if this may sound
paradoxical, a fragment and desire are one; by uniting they produce enormous ener-
gy through the structures of the subdivisions we speak of here.

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At the very outcome of this tradition, desire is reflected as a poetic principle. Name-
ly, the ancient Arabic qaṣīda is a poem with a purpose (and that is the content of the
term qaṣīda), and the purpose cannot be realised, or cannot be reached without a
certain degree of desire; one without the other is unimaginable. The purpose of the
qaṣīda is multiple; in fact, the desire is accordingly cultivated in accordance with the
multiple nature of its goals. First of all, a poem is an imaginary journey, and each
journey has a goal towards which one strives. The poet travels through an imaginary
textual space to reach his ultimate goal. Second, in the polythematic structure of the
qaṣīda, as a form of fragmentation, each theme strives for – to the very limits of lust
– one’s own satisfaction within a framework of the necessary wholeness. Third, at
the level of poetics, fragments are in a state of desire (which I have already presented
as desire) to be integrated into the unity of a poem. Fourth, the poet’s goal/desire is to
ingratiate himself with the patron, as well as with the tastes of the tribe, etc. Since the
qaṣīda very much contains the elements of travel literature, such sequences want to
be integrated into the “general impression” and into one’s own eventide of the genre.

Ultimately, it is possible to identify a universal poetic principle in individual poems

(from Arabic antiquity, as well as poems from other periods), in genres and in tradi-
tion generally, in its classical period. This is the relationship between the fragments
and the whole; it is the omnipresent integralism of classical culture (which entails
fragments and a temporary parcelling), that is, desire as an energy point. In explain-
ing such a conclusion, it is necessary to state the following.

Classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages has become a system, in the mean-

ing of unity, which still needs to be revealed and explained. It became like this owing
to the factors that I have mentioned and that are mutually conditioned, arising one
from another: the relationship between fragments and the whole, integralism and
the poetic cultivation of the desire. The delight of such a “state” is not in its finality,
but in eventfulness. Literature developed owing to the tension and exertion of the
aforementioned factors (they are not the only ones, but I consider them the most
effective). The process in which literature developed was marked by dynamism.
Seen from today’s position, that dynamism ended in the past, but it affects our con-
temporariness from the past. Our interpretation of the system is neither complete nor
in unison: diametrically opposite interpretations of fragments and the whole bear
witness to that, and we have spoken of it before. For a researcher – myself included
– revealing and explaining those dynamic processes towards integrality, towards the
integrity of classical literature as a poetic system, is more important and exciting
than the very integrity itself. Processes are more exciting than the final state. Those
processes can be especially well observed in the shifts of the morphology of forms of
classical literature. The qaṣīda itself is an imaginary journey, and a journey is always
a peculiar process.

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FROM THE GHAZAL IN THE “UMAYYAD PERIOD” TO THE
GHAZAL IN THE TURKISH LANGUAGE
In the development of forms in the classical literature of Oriental-Islamic languages,
the relationship between form and content played a key role. That is why genres in
this literature were, for the most part, relatively unstable during the entire classical
period, in the sense that they were not always clearly differentiated; that is, they
stemmed from each other, taking over elements of form or content from each other.
The relationship between theme and form in this literature is for that reason one of
the fundamental poetological issues.

First, in the period of the thematic disintegration of the ancient qaṣīda, the theme was
the base for the formation of a new genre. That is how the formation of the ghazal as
the genre of love-lyricism; of panegyric as a genre in which the saturation of praise
is achieved; hunt poetry; wine poetry, etc. occurred. In that early stage, the form
of the poems essentially did not differ from one genre to the other, in the majority
of cases; and by form I mean the structure of the bayt, rhyme and metric system in
general. Poems are characterised by the “two-member bayt” (two “half-bayts”), one
metre and one rhyme in the entire poem. Those were also the formal characteristics
of the ancient qaṣīda.

The strictness of the form was neither violated nor weakened, so it remained a pow-
erful cohesive factor of the poem, in spite of the desire to transpose the “habit” of
the independence of bayts, even within the same theme. The form remained very
important; its “forefront” was, in fact, always important, and thus the poem increas-
ingly imposed itself as an artefact in which “the forefront and the background”116
were increasingly obvious – in time, the form had become a meta-theme. Such pro-
gression in the development of forms is in accordance with the poetic postulates that
I have elaborated earlier, and according to which art in general was not determined
as a creative process and originality in the modern sense of those terms; rather, cre-
ativity was successfully and to the greatest possible extent directed towards inven-
tion in the domain of form, that is, directed towards the technical aspect of poetry.

The ghazal was accepted in Persian and Ottoman Turkish literature from literature in
Arabic, and became one of the dominant literary divisions in those languages. How-
ever, it was characteristic of the Ottoman ghazal to contain between five and fifteen
bayts.117 We should emphasise that the ghazal preserved the rhyme structure of the
ancient qasīda, which means that half-verses were rhymed in the first bayt, and the
rhyme appeared always at the end of the bayt; hence the ghazal is characterised by
monorhyme, just like the ancient qaṣīda: aa / ba / ca / da, etc. Let us now see how
subdivisions of the ghazal developed from this basic form. Namely, if a poem con-
tains more than twelve bayts, it is called müzeyyel or mütawwel (expanded), and if it
contains less than five bayts, it is called nātamām (an incomplete ghazal).

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My goal is not to deal with the prosodic peculiarities of all these poetic divisions
and subdivisions, but to emphasise something that is important for poetics. Namely,
the point here rests in the fact that the names of genres and their subdivisions are
determined in accordance with the elements of form, in accordance with the author’s
(technical) solutions (let us recall the meaning of terms fann, ṣan‘a; which should
always be kept in mind when relating to classical literature in Oriental-Islamic lan-
guages). The theme truly becomes “the background” and the form the “forefront”,
not only in the meaning in which Nicolai Hartmann118 discusses them, or – to say it
in the language of Hegel – as a sensory shining of the idea; rather, the form becomes
primary in the poetic sense. Naming genre/genres according to form became a char-
acteristic of classical literature, and that indicates the attention that the tradition paid
to form in art. If we are to recall the principle according to which the ancient qasīda
delaminated into independent genres, we will notice that the primacy of the theme
in the nomination of a genre in the Ottoman period gives way to form, which means,
consequently, a permanent advancement of technique in the development of poetry.

Frequently, a ghazal poet borrows verses of some other poet and adds to them – in
accordance with a certain prosody – a number of his own verses, also from “the
sphere of the ghazal”. However, that new creation is no longer called a ghazal (that
is only understood) but it is named in accordance with the quantitative expansion
of the structure. For example, a very popular form in the literature of the Ottoman
Turkish language was tahmīs, which was achieved by a poet adding his three bayts
to two bayts of some other poet, integrating them in the form of those proto-verses.
The point is that the term tahmīs is a numeric designation (from Arabic khams = five;
hence, “couplets in five verses”). Some other subdivisions are created according to
the same principle. For example, the division musammaṭ has the following subdivi-
sions: muselles, murebba‘, muhammes, museddes, tasdis, etc. All were named after
the number of bayts, regardless if they were independent, written by some other poet,
or if a poem was written by integrating the bayts of one poet to the bayts of another
poet. The point of this discussion is the rule of the form, even formality, for it is un-
usual and characteristic of this tradition that genres and “subgenres” are diversified
in accordance with the technical, almost mathematical multiplication of bayts, rather
than in accordance with the theme/content (as well), which remained in the deep
memory as a factor of development and the naming of genres. Such forms were nu-
merous and their popularity was huge, which was a result of a common tendency of
technically perfecting the tradition. Tradition has always been the main protagonist.

Thus, in the literature of Ottoman Turkish, the ghazal gradually changed as a genre;
it transformed, but its distinctive features remained – the form can be recognised
by the ghazal formed in the Umayyad period; the morphological “derivation” of
this genre into several subdivisions, of which I have named only a few, indicates
its outcome at the dawn of Islam, in the Umayyad period, when the nasīb originates
from the ancient qaṣīda. The bond is strong, in spite of certain differences; the path
of development is recognisable, so much so that those were technical “modulations”

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of the base of the genre. That development unfolded over hundreds of years and
covered a very wide space, from Saudi Arabia, through Turkey, to Bosnia. However,
there is a far more interesting trajectory – the one that time and again bears witness
to the poetics of classical literature as a system. Namely, the ghazal developed in no
less than three languages (Arabic, Persian, Turkish) and became one of the dominant
literary divisions in the literatures of those languages. Keeping in mind that poetry
was exceptionally popular in all of the three languages, it follows that literature
in Oriental-Islamic culture was – together with religion, which was in all respects
primary – one of the main cohesive factors that acted such a way that we can speak
of Oriental-Islamic culture in the classical period as of a single universe. The sus-
tainability of genres in all three languages, their recognisable character in spite of
certain differences, that is, in spite of certain amplifications, proves that it is unjust to
speak of particular national literatures, for poetology – which I have already stated to
possess excellent competences – simply does not allow for such violent ethnocentric
fragmentation or separation.

In this context, in the poetological domain, the fact that literary terminology in all
three languages is also (for the most part and in the most important way) unique is
interesting, as well as that the direction of its historical movement equals the move-
ment and development of the dominant poetic forms – from Arabic, through Persian
to the Ottoman Turkish language, always from antiquity towards the late classical
period. The fact that these are three different languages did not prevent the strong
overcoming of cultural experiences; on the contrary, the languages opened widely
towards each other. Two languages even changed their alphabets (they adopted the
Arabic alphabet), and along with that came much other content in the fields of lan-
guage and culture.

Adopting literary terminology that became dominant at the same in all three lan-
guages is not a mere formality; of course, it cannot be reduced solely to terminology,
since terms bear enormous potential and are not a matter of arbitrariness – neither
in the culture they are formed in, nor in the culture that adopts them. Terms name a
genre on the basis of its certain characteristics; terms usually have both poetic and
poetological content: fann, ṣan‘a, ibdā‘, musammaṭ (in the literature of the Ottoman
Turkish language), al-sumūṭ (name for the mu‘allaqas), etc., are always poetic terms.
In these three languages, there is a migration of genres, of their (poetical) names,
of an entire series of other, key literary terms – apart from the aforementioned “ag-
glomeration” of one language into another, and then into a third. It was both forceful
and overwhelming to the extent that not even the notion of influence manages to
provide an adequate explanation of that unity: influences were only initial, but they
ascended that distance, which always implies the notion of influence, so forcefully
and so closely that one can speak only of unity in the classical period of this culture,
of a unique system that, as such, had preserved a sufficient number of differences
(especially the “Persian segment”) in order to be able to become an energy point of
innovation controlled by the full appreciation of the tradition.119

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The gradual development of the ghazal genre – as one of the basic forms of literature
in all three languages – resulted in some changes in the content / form relationship
– in addition to the formation of subdivisions of the ghazal that I have mentioned in
the previous lines, and which have not changed the morphology of its genre beyond
recognition.

In Arabic literature, the ghazal of the so-called Umayyad period prominently be-
longed to love-lyrical poetry. Even the very root of the triliteral ĠZL has a meaning
(there are other meanings, of course, but they move within the same semantic field)
– to court a woman, but here we are talking about artistic transposition, of an art-
work dedicated to love towards a woman. Thus, that is a thematic determination of
a genre; the theme was a criterion for the nomination of a genre, and the theme had
specified it for a relatively long period in literary history. However, many years later,
in the literature of the Ottoman Turkish language, other themes are integrated in the
ghazal, aside from love-lyricism. In this way, that desire for genre syncretism that
was expressed in the ancient Arabic qaṣīda appears again. The problem of “genre
purity”, in the sense of dedication to a single theme, appears in an almost strict
form, notwithstanding the fact that it had been, at least in the ancient literature in
the Arabic language, “resolved” by that dedication to a single theme of this genre,
that is, of the urban and ‘uḏrī ghazal cultivated in Hijāz in the time of the Umayyad
dynasty. In literature in the Ottoman Turkish language, where the ghazal appeared
in the 13th century, love was still a frequent theme of the ghazal, but it too spread
to themes like the panegyric, lampoon, self-praise, reflexive, even mystical poetry,
etc. Characteristics of its from are also applied to this genre, regardless of the theme
a poem was dedicated to. From that arises an important conclusion. Namely, while
theme was of decisive importance in the formation and naming of a genre in the
period of defragmentation of the qaṣīda into independent genres, in the literature of
the Ottoman Turkish language, where the ghazal was a dominant literary division,
a certain poetic inversion occurred whereby the theme was not always decisive for
naming the genre; that role belonged to the form. This could perhaps be described
as the ultimate effect of giving preference to form in classical literature, in which
form simply imposed a kind of poetic tyranny. Themes that used to belong to other
genres, like the panegyric, the lampoon, etc. are integrated into what is still called
the ghazal. Of course, these genres still exist as such, but they are not strictly divided
thematically, in the sense that only one theme “lays claim” to only one form. In such
poetical innovation, it is important to emphasise the always-problematic relation-
ship of content and form in the classical literature of Oriental-Islamic languages.
That relationship is essentially unstable, even fluid in a certain way. The truth is that
such thematic fluctuation was registered in the works of important, canonical poets,
before the ghazal arrived into the literature of the Ottoman Turkish language – for
example, it was often placed, as we have seen, at the beginning of the panegyric ded-
icated to rulers, while it is evident that the thematic instability of the ghazal culmi-
nated in the literature of the Ottoman Turkish language. Of course, there have been
cases in other traditions to identify genres, that is, to “legitimise” them through form

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rather than theme, but that became a phenomenon, made poetically unusual in the
literature of the Ottoman Turkish language. The poetic content in classical literature
had already become far too independent, able to transcend from one form into anoth-
er, but the strictness of form was cultivated and the enrichment of certain forms was
conducted in accordance with almost mathematical precision, compared to the basic
morphology of the form, thus the naming of new forms was conducted numerically
(tahmīs, tasdīs, etc.). In artistic expression, content is no longer decisively affecting
the form in which it is announced, but the multitude of content obeys the authority
of the form and enters it in order to affirm the form by its multifarious character and
distinctive characteristics. This is the kind of “reversed coercion” characteristic of
medieval literature.

One of the final conclusions that can be drawn from this kind of dynamism in tradi-
tion is that its dynamism in the poetic notion of form, in that truly cheerful and lavish
amplification of forms, “consciously” ignores the previous thematic borders within
genres. This directs us further, but in the same direction – towards giving preference
to form rather than content, which is expressed in classical literature in all three lan-
guages. Fann and ṣan‘a, as technical aspects of poetry, remain dominant.

Literary lexicons, dictionaries of literary terms, regardless of whether they were is-
sued as separate books or as an accompanying apparatus of individual studies of
literature, contribute to this unusual nomination of poetical forms, as well as their
subdivisions in classical literature, especially in the Ottoman Turkish language. It is
quite noticeable that the terms are related to an interpretation/description of certain
forms on the basis of the number of bayts, as well as on the number of bayts orig-
inating from proto-poems and those originating from metapoems (if such division
is in question), on the basis of rhyme structure, etc. Hence, lexicons are, with good
reason, oriented towards the description of the form, for the purpose of presenting
that form, and one can also notice an almost consistent naming of forms according
to the number of bayts, their multiplication, reduction or expansion of the basic
morphological profile, etc.120

Such a lexicographical approach is justified, for it is essentially immanent. From

the point of view of the present, this dedication of genres to the formal values of
the poem – whereby the genres are reduced almost to “quantitative characteristics”,
characteristics that are mathematically verifiable and consistent – may appear unusu-
al, inappropriate to our relationship towards artistic expression and our literary-his-
torical experience. Classical literature has been dedicated to form more than mod-
ern literature; hence, this lexicographical presentation of classical literature can be
credited with the principle of immanence. However, a wider elaboration of such a
relationship between content and form, as well as the amplification of basic forms,
remains in the domain of aesthetics and poetology, and, as far as I know, classical
literature in Oriental-Islamic languages has not been sufficiently researched through
the competences of aesthetics and poetology. Researchers have been focused on

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form – just as the form was focused on itself, but it is necessary to investigate the
migration of motifs and themes in literature in all three languages, especially in po-
etic genres, for, in such a way, the guidelines of the development of the tradition can
be determined, its readiness for innovation and its ability for cultural memory, which
significantly influences the reach of innovation or originality.

Regarding the migrations of themes from one genre to another, a fluctuation even in
determining categories of the genre can be seen in literary histories: to which genre
do certain poems belong, what criteria are applied to determine this, etc. The reason
for such fluctuation is, again, the immanent approach to literary history. Namely,
the moment the theme ceased being the decisive criterion in the nomination of the
genre, which also entails its consistency as a genre in literary history, the problem of
the nomination of genres arose, as well as their at least relatively firm structure and
consistency. Genres were named – not exclusively, but in the majority of cases – by
the characteristic features of their forms reduced to the term téchnē. To that category
fall the subdivisions originating from the musammaṭ, as well as many others. On the
other hand, the name ghazal also bears witness that the theme by which it had first
been affirmed as a genre became insufficient to determine it as a genre, and hence
the form fulfilled that function (the ghazal needs to have a certain number of verses,
rhyme structure, etc.). The very name ghazal (singing a love poem to a woman), in
its primal content, had become a formality subdued to the poetic forces of the form.
It has remained an expression of cultural memory in all three Oriental-Islamic lan-
guages, and, in that sense, it consistently performed the function of a cohesive factor
of the tradition. Its cohesive potentials are all the greater if it is kept in mind that the
ghazal, as a literary term, was accepted in three different languages, which means
that it transfers, in each and their respective literatures, certain common characteris-
tics, regardless of certain changes.

In its campaign through literature – from the nasīb in the ancient qaṣīda, through the
“Umayyad” ghazal, to its multitude of genres and amplification in literature in the
Ottoman Turkish language – the ghazal was transformed into a form suitable for a
number of lyrical themes: we find in the ghazal – apart from the love or love-lyrical
content – the elements of bacchius poems, the panegyric, the lampoon, etc. – an ar-
ray of themes, all the way to expressively Sufi themes. The “thematic identity” of the
ghazal had become utterly unreliable. In that phase of literary history, in that point of
Turkish literary theory, an important and indicative problem appears, represented as
a sudden and, from the point of view of literary theory, impermissible confusion of
literary division and genre, of division and subdivision, which is unusual to our lit-
erary-theoretical experience. In that sense, it is worth mentioning that Alena Ćatović
correctly observed these fluctuations in literature in the Ottoman Turkish language,
in Turkish historiography of literature, and tries to bring such comprehension into
connection with the experience of Western literary theory.121 A turkologist, Ćatović
refers to Cem Dilçin, a Turkish theorist, who can be taken as representative of con-
temporary Turkish literary theorists for the attitude that “the ghazal mostly expresses

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the sensible and subjective aspect of diwan poetry.”122 Such a determination of genre
is accompanied by citations characterised by musicality, emotionality, the phonetic
features of its form, etc. On that basis, the ghazal is determined as lyrical poetry, as
having a lyrical form.

Classifying the ghazal as lyrical poetry is reasonable; it is even the only possible
option, but the problem is expressed – in such classification – on two levels. First,
an entire cluster of other genres has the same characteristics: they too express “the
sensible and the subjective aspect”; they too are dedicated to the phonetic values
of language and form, yet they cannot be deemed to fall within the ghazal. For
example, a panegyric is a lyrical form with a pronounced pathos, or with a highly
developed “sensuality”, but it is not the ghazal; the dirge also entirely “consists of
feelings and subjectivity”, but neither is it a ghazal, etc. At the same time, all those
and other genres of classical literature are extremely dedicated to the form – to the
extent that the form itself strongly initiates and cultivates sentimentality comple-
mentary to the one produced by the content of the poem; still, they are not ghazals,
even in spite of the occasional intertwining of their “thematic competences”. Obvi-
ously, the terms sentimentality, subjectivity, musicality, and the like are not apt and
reliable determinants of the characteristics of the genre; on the contrary, they are
far too generalised to be used for the determination of the specificities of individual
genres. In drawing final conclusions, one could get the impression that categories of
genre and subdivision, that is, of genre and division could be confused. For it is not
at all disputable – nor is it necessary to prove – that the ghazal is lyrical poetry, just
as many other genres – ranging from the panegyric to Sufi poetry – also belong to
lyrical poetry, based on the general characteristics of lyrical poetry. Lyrical poetry is
a division, not a genre. That indisputable literary fact must not be overlooked. How-
ever, the ghazal expressed a vast “thematic pretentiousness” in Ottoman literature
– always preserving the basic determinants of lyrical poetry in general – such that it
simply managed to deceive certain researchers who called it lyrical in the sense of
the genre, rather than division. Its thematic inconsistency is mimetic, it keeps it away
from “templates” or stereotypes that have created a habit among us to easily identify
and nominate genres.

Since it is clear that the ghazal belongs to a division of lyrical poetry, as its subdivi-
sion, we face an important question: what kind of genre is it? In fact, the importance
of that question is only of supposed importance: it reflects our (sometimes even
subconscious) need to seek, in every tradition, for genre-related, terminological and
literary equivalents in general, which optimally soothe our tradition, our literary-the-
oretical experience. Inspired by that almost instinctive need, we overlook a number
of issues, based, actually, on the simple fact that not all traditional experience is
identical. The ghazal eludes our habits of framing it in a genre, while we search for
its equivalent in Western literature. Thematic inconsistency is the basic means by
which the ghazal eludes our attempts; the relative frequency of love themes in the
ghazal is insufficient to become its genre determinant. Sentimentality, subjectivity,

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musicality, etc. are also not the differentia specifica of a single genre; rather, they are
characteristic of lyricism in general, to which the ghazal belongs. The established
content and established form, as “synchronised” determinants of genre, are, in fact,
overly “desynchronised”, and too poetically arbitrary, for nomination to be based on
them. It is simply necessary to accept the fact that a different experience is before us
and that equivalents for certain genres are not necessary. What is more, this example
shows that the issue of genre as such can be problematized considering the criteria
we habitually apply to situate genres in literary history.

It appears that the only possible conclusion – considering the previous elaboration –
is that the ghazal is not a genre in the usual meaning of the term; rather, it is a form.
There exists a certain synonymy of the two terms in literature, but I would like to
emphasise the difference on this occasion. The ghazal can simply be called a ghazal,
but, when we would want to determine it as a genre, it is better to call it a form,
for the simple fact that it is essentially specified through form, rather than through
content/theme, or an aesthetic content-form relationship. From the point of view of
poetology, the point lies in the following: a ghazal is devoted to many themes, it is
characterised by lyricism that contains many characteristics, but the form, different
from others and always recognisable, is what makes the ghazal. It is therefore under-
standable why lexicographical literature describes the ghazal the way I have stated
earlier: the emphasis is on the description of the form, not on the poetical explana-
tion of content and form and their significance and shifts in historical poetics. Is a
greater poetological argumentation on giving preference to form in classical litera-
ture in Oriental-Islamic languages and the exertion of form as an integrating force of
tradition at all possible? That is the extraordinary cultural memory of the tradition,
its poetic awareness, and it is all the more significant if we keep in mind that the
ghazal is a dominant literary form in all three languages. Its memory, especially in
the domain of poetic structure, reaches very far – all the way to the ancient Arabic
qasīda, which integrated an entire mosaic of themes, and which is one of the reasons
that it had no title and literary historians were later unable to identify it. The general
name for the poem in the heroic period of Arabic-Islamic literature in general, not
only of Arabic literature, was the qaṣīda. Something similar happens with the name
ghazal: in that vast literary realm, the name ghazal strives towards the general in
the way that I have just elaborated – it became a form for a number of themes, and
its title is only the ultimate poetic defamiliarisation, since it ceased being a form for
only love themes. Observed from this aspect, the ancient qaṣīda had acted poetically
normatively for hundreds of years – until the ghazal, and the ghazal remembers its
own source in the heroic period. The point of both is as follows.

On the one hand, in certain historical and cultural conditions, the thematic disinte-
gration of the qaṣīda proved necessary. In that sense, it established a certain arch
with the ghazal that gives way – again – to multitudes. The plurality of themes in
the ghazal was controlled by the poetic title ghazal: it was for a certain period of
time in literary history classified as genre, not only form (in the Umayyad period); it

132
was integral genre-wise and in time, by the ultimate poetic wit, it encompassed the
plurality of themes by a single term that only preserved the memory of the genre.

In this transformation of the ghazal, a principle can be observed. As the cultural

empire spread, these integrative poetic forces strengthened the awareness of the tra-
dition based on the need to maintain a single and a unique system, which is obvious
in the given example of the ghazal, as well as in other forms that I will speak of later.
The name ghazal is associative and cohesive on several levels. Studying literary
history also as a history of genres, that is, poetic forms, has proven recommendable.
For, in the given case, it is obvious that genre dynamics are relatively high, especial-
ly concerning form. At the same time, one cannot but notice that this dynamism is of
a sort that determines the entirety of the classical literature and culture to which they
belong as literature and a culture of memory.

Another form that is dominant in classical literature acts quite similarly, and with the
same goals, and is known as the qaṣīda.

THE QAṢῙDA AS A COHESIVE FORM OF TRADITION

Qaṣīda as a term and a poetic form derives from the ancient literature that poetically
inspired the entirety of classical literature in the Oriental-Islamic languages. Enough
has been said about its poetics in the previous discussion. However, for the sake of
historical-poetological contextualisation, in classical literature of the Ottoman Turk-
ish language, it will be necessary to occasionally recall the poetics of the ancient
qaṣīda, which can be conditionally called Arabic, for everything indicates that it is an
ancient form (in the temporal, value and normative sense) of the classical literature
in all three Oriental-Islamic languages. Thus, even though this is a commonplace, it
should be emphasised again here that the basic characteristic of the ancient qaṣīda
is its thematic diversity. A poem encompassed a number of themes, some of which
had relatively stable positions in the structure of the poem, while some could also
alter their positions. In that change, the first place in the qaṣīda inevitably belonged
to the nasīb (the love-lyrical prologue); followed by themes with a relatively unre-
liable stability of positions. In the end, however, there was one obligatory theme,
established as the ultimate goal of the imaginary voyage, for a qaṣīda is a poem of an
imaginary voyage, and a voyage always has, both in textual and real space, a certain
goal. That goal is, in fact, the point of the poem, its crescendo – to use an appropriate
term from another art. Most frequently, the goal of the poem is for the poet to express
praise to a dignitary a prominent man with the aura of a patron.

The extent to which thematic structuring (as well as structuring of form) in literature
in the Ottoman Turkish language is similar to the structure of the ancient qaṣīda is
almost remarkable. The qaṣīda in Ottoman Turkish primarily transposes its name
from antiquity, and I have already emphasised that adopting a name from a genre

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or a form, from one language to another, with all of the cultural characteristics that
inevitably entail that borrowing, is poetologically and culturally important – it is not
transposed only in the domain of the basic semantic content, but is also a transposi-
tion of a category with all of the multifarious and highly complex content by which it
was impregnated in a poetic tradition, that is, in a culture. Given all of the aforemen-
tioned, it is necessary to keep in mind that the qaṣīda, both in antiquity and in the lit-
erature of the Ottoman Turkish language, was not an ephemeral but a dominant form
of poetry. A comparison I will perform here does not aim to emphasise mere simi-
larities that many researchers of literature bring into the state of mechanical analogy,
poetologically neutralised to the extent that the “classical literatures” in three lan-
guages are studied separately as national literatures. In the classical literature elab-
orated here, specificity is significant insofar as there mainly exists a corresponding
relationship of national and linguistic criteria (Arabs and the Arabic language, Irani-
ans/Persians and the Persian language, and Turks and the Turkish language). Modern
research is particularly focused on the aspect of nationality, and engages literature
as a powerful factor in argumentation regarding national identity. If it is necessary
to accept that from an ideological or political position, nevertheless it is neither
justified nor scientifically sound from a literary-historical and (especially) from a
poetological position. The following discussion will thus show that the comparative
similarity was overcome by the sameness of the kind that guarantees the survival of
literature in a single system, in a single poetics. One should monitor the morphology
of genres and poetic forms in literary history in order to determine their common de-
velopment in a system, their phases and changes, sometimes their metamorphosis of
a kind, but always in such a relationship that is not mere or mechanical similarity but
a creative dynamism of the tradition. As I have already stated, modern researchers
of literature in particular put their greatest effort to prove that the alleged literatures
(I hereby emphasise the plural!) in the classical period were formed as separate and
self-sufficient wholes – as Arabic, Persian and Turkish literature.

Researchers exert great amounts of energy to find, at any cost, even the minimal
peculiarities of certain literary works or opuses that confirm their a priori attitudes,
even claims of the national distinctiveness of literature. They consider the possible
and mainly marginal, excessive difference as an advantage of a work, or, allegedly,
of an entire opus, only to explain the ethnic affiliation of the author by his alleged-
ly ethnocentric literature. The situation is paradoxical. Namely, researchers we are
talking about here accentuate a methodology, a direction that is opposed to the real
state of classical literature in the Oriental-Islamic languages. In that poetics, differ-
ence or originality was not determined as an advantage, as a virtue, but the contrary:
sameness was quintessence. To be more precise – that literature, in its most signif-
icant part and reach, cannot be determined as mimetic, as the work of an epigone,
in the sense of mimicking the canon by technique, which irrevocably leads poetry
into mechanical mimicry. In fact, the issue here is the difference in sameness or the
relativized difference of the author, which affirms the poetic principle of sameness,
regardless of how unusual this may sound. That is, at the same time, an optimal

134
affirmation of the universal poetic principle ibdā‘ as inventing within the frames of
what has already been created. Since many modern researchers of classical literature
do not possess the necessary knowledge on these poetic characteristics; that is, in-
stead of recognising them, they impose their points of view and a priori determined
tasks to the matter. It is natural that they will misinterpret that literature, and will
not manage to adequately evaluate it; not even the fact that literature was created
in three languages will be of assistance to such research. One may conclude at first
that these are three literatures because they were written in three languages, and it is
difficult to deny the fact that literature belongs to the language in which it is written.
Setting aside – at least for the time being – the issue of how literature can be classi-
fied in accordance with the ethnic background of the author, although his opus is not
in the language of his ethnicity, and that the language in which literature is written
can be considered its determining factor, with the very example of the literatures of
the Oriental-Islamic languages can one see the limitations of that factor. Namely,
one cannot deny that the literature is Arabic, and Persian, and Turkish, since it was
written in three languages, but its poetics shows just how much it is specific, for it
is poetically unique – to the extent that I am convinced it would be most appropriate
to call it classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages.123 To that contributes the
fact - which I have emphasised in another context – that the three languages were
exposed to enormous mutual influences – from the same alphabet, through the abun-
dance of lexical characteristics, to literary terminology, which always carries strong
poetological content.

The qaṣīda in the Ottoman Turkish language usually comprises six thematic wholes.
Just as was the case in the ancient qaṣīda, first comes the lyrical prelude (nasīb).
The position and the title nasīb are the same, but the content is different: while
the nasīb was love-lyricism in the ancient qaṣīda, it preserved only lyricism as its
characteristic in the Ottoman Turkish language, but thematically it is very diverse
and is emphatically descriptive: the nasīb is dedicated to the description of nature,
of seasons, of a city, holiday, etc. According to the theme a nasīb is dedicated to, the
entire qaṣīda was entitled, and thus the nasīb, even from that aspect, lies within the
“strong position” of the qaṣīda. The similarity is also contained in the fact that the
ancient qaṣīda did not have a title, but was remembered/identified by the first bayt,
or by the rhyme.

The following is from a qaṣīda written by Ḥasan Ziyāī al-Mustārī (1584) in Ottoman
Turkish as a paean to Sinan Bey, a dignitar; the nasīb, its primary section, is an ode
to spring:

Last night at the corner by the roses when I stood

Every garden for Jennah sublime cried
By the river on the bank resembling my lady’s lips
There were beauties and garden adornments

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The king of jasmine leaned against the water somewhere
As water touched his hand he recited the surah Al-Kawther
This bank and this garden shall pass in the end
That is why for pleasure every chance should be used
The rose is beautiful enough to a garden, for the month of Farvardin
Is by itself a true ornament of the earthly garden
(...) 124

It is necessary to pay attention to the introductory part of the “two kinds” of qaṣī-
das – the ancient and the Ottoman Turkish. They first poetically determined their
similarity, so that using that similarity as a “backdrop”, which is immediately visible
from the very name qaṣīda, they can create differences – as invention within the
bounds of the created (ibdā‘). The invention was realised in the change of theme, but
the focus was still their similarity. Structurally, the nasīb had an important position,
and its name is transposed from antiquity because of its position in the structure,
rather than because of the theme that had become changeable. In the ancient qaṣīda,
the nasīb was the term for a love-lyrical prologue, while in the Ottoman qaṣīda, a
shift occurred and the term remained the same and preserved the same position but
was no longer a love prologue. Something important is emphasised in this way from
the point of view of poetology. By this something important from a poetological
point of view is emphasised. Namely, the structure, that is, the form in that tradition,
is enormously important, so much so that the nasīb remained in the same position
and particularly in the same term, regardless of the change in content by which it
had acquired its name. The prevalence of form is able to perform such a significant
change: the position of the nasīb in a poetic form determines the term, not its con-
tent. Undoubtedly, if one observes carefully such relationships, a conclusion can be
reached, unusual only at first sight. Namely, establishing this difference in relation to
the ancient qaṣīda (the change of theme in the nasīb) in fact highlights the similarity
between these works, not their difference. Differentiation (as invention) is aimed
at warning of significant similarity, verging on sameness, to initiate the researcher
or a recipient in general, to use the interpretation of a balanced differentiation, and
direct towards the cognition of basic similarity, or poetics of sameness. That is the
factor of “structural defamiliarization” in relation to the dominant ancient qaṣīda; it
is not a stylistic but a poetic effect of defamiliarization that initiates dynamism in the
tradition, its poetics, exactly in accordance to the poetological term ibdā‘. In poeti-
cally consequent and theoretically coherent consideration, this means that the entire
poetic tradition, by those dominant poetic forms, strongly preserves the memory of
itself, its poetic source and the balance of innovation. In fact, tradition thus becomes
enlightened and consistent. The same principle of bringing dynamics into the tradi-
tion by the poetics of the ghazal should be mentioned again here: it too had become
very liberal in the sense of the content that it encompassed – the ghazal is not nec-
essarily in the domain of love-lyricism, but it has remained one of the conductors of
the tradition owing to the same kind of poetic defamiliarization of what the ghazal

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initially was as a genre; it is identified by form in literature in the Ottoman Turkish
language but not always through the same theme (love-lyricism).

According to the normative poetics especially prominent in the qaṣīda, the second
part of the qaṣīda is made up of a smaller number of verses whose goal is to bridge
two different themes – the one contained by the nasīb and panegyric dedicated to the
person because of which the qaṣīda was, in fact, written. That link (girzīgāh or girīz)
expresses, in fact, the awareness of structural difficulties of the qaṣīda: it is aware
of its own “thematic whimsicalness”, but it does not give it up because of cultural
memory, or a poetic memory that warns of a closeness with the ancient qaṣīda that
cannot be overcome.

The panegyric is the central, third part of the qaṣīda. Its name (medhiye) in literature
in the Ottoman Turkish language is also a borrowed term from ancient literature
(madaḥ, madiḥ). The madaḥ is most frequently placed at the end of a poem in the
ancient qaṣīda, while madhiya takes the central position in the Ottoman Turkish qa-
ṣīda. That is only a minor departure from the congruence that existed in the ancient
qaṣīda between the term qaṣīda (the ultimate goal of a journey, that is, of a poem)
and the positioning of the panegyric at the end of the poem. However, the Ottoman
qaṣīda compensates for that change by positioning the theme of the panegyric at the
centre of the structure – as the central theme, as the goal of the poem. The medhiye
is abundant with clichés, stereotypes, and commonplaces.

The fourth part of the qaṣīda (tegazzül) consistently borrows the term from ancient
literature, even the Arabic morphological form, and is written in the “style of” the
ghazal – as an emphatically lyrical expression. Experts on the classical literature of
the Ottoman Turkish language are prone to characterise this section of the qaṣīda as a
“transitional” section – from the panegyric to self-praise.125 These “joint” sections of
the qaṣīda warn, in fact, of its thematic partition. In the exemplary ancient qaṣīdas –
in Mua‘llaqas – one cannot notice such integration of themes, but the principle con-
cerning the qaṣīda as an expressively polythematic structure remains recognisable.

The fifth part of the qaṣīda in the Ottoman Turkish language (fahriye; in the ancient
qaṣīda: fakhr = self-praise) is also an obligatory part of the ancient qaṣīda – where
the poet praises himself, his tools, and, in the Ottoman literature very often even his
verses, etc. It is interesting how Alena Ćatović illustrates the “transitions” between
self-praise and praise of the patron through the verses of Hasan Zijaija Mostarac,
whose work in that sense is “poetically typical”:

Of esteemed fate, humble he is like water

To pride and vanity he is not prone at all

I rely on that pure gem

For treasure lies under his feet.

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These verses by Zijaia are accompanied by self-praise:

How would it be if my verses appealed

To him, who is perfect and most fortunate

Of my verses there are many indeed

That may of the flowing water remind.126

The self-praising section of the qaṣīda in all its periods is to an extent contrary to
the panegyric as the main theme of the poem, and in that sense it is poetically very
interesting. Namely, since the primary goal of the qaṣīda is to express the panegyric
(qaṣīda is generally the patron-oriented poetry), the issue arises of how appropriate it
is for self-praise to go along with the praise of the patron or a dignitary in general. It
is reasonable to assume that the self-praising section of the qaṣīda, mainly burdened
with hyperbolae, could have “overshadowed” the panegyric, which is also laden
with hyperbole, for such a result could have negatively influenced the munificence
of the patron. That is a “competition of virtues”, although in different areas. It is, of
course, possible to introduce this competition into a context in which it is deemed
acceptable, perhaps even desirable. Namely, the general rule, the social standard of
the highest order, was to determine the power of the patron, his high social position,
also on the basis of the number of influential poets he managed to assemble in his
entourage, or, whether influential poets addressed him, for the poet in the classical
epoch was highly positioned in society. One of the means of the poet’s high promo-
tion was the poetry of self-praise. The better the poet, the more influential the poet,
the higher the price, as well as his chances for the highest “reception from the pa-
tron”, or more precisely for the patron’s reward. Thus, it was in the patron’s interest
that the poet would be praised and self-praised, for the patron’s influence grew in
this way. In the end the result that appears logical and historically contextualised is
that this competition of virtues was not a competition of the kind that could hurt the
patron’s or poet’s vanity. What’s more, emphasising their virtues reflects optimal
cooperation; they are mutually encouraged and fed in accordance with the simple
logic of the social positioning of both the patron and the poet: the better the poet,
the bigger the score for the patron (as well as a bigger reward from the patron); the
more significant and powerful the patron – and the poet’s “master craftwork” (the
accent being on this syntagm) significantly contributes to his importance – the more
significant the poet becomes. The cooperation is, in fact, optimal; it is extraordinary.
However, regarding self-praise, one could locate another problem in the context of
the Oriental-Islamic culture as such, and poetry is its most prominent part.

Among the characteristics of classical literature – as an important commonplace –

is the humility topos. This is not the topos of affective humility; it is authentic and
deeply enrooted in the author’s conviction in his own overwhelming dependency on
God, on the Divine, on the conviction that his contribution is, in essence, small, etc.

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The humility topos deserves to be separately considered, but here it is necessary to
say the following at least.

Works of adab in general, especially prose, regardless of whether it is artistic, scien-

tific or some other kind of prose, were characterised by the topos of humility without
affectation, strongly positioned in a text whose beginning did not contain the name
of the author; the name was pushed further in the text because of the “inherited”
instinct of modesty, so that one needed to reveal it, ornamented as it was with the
attributes of modesty and dependence: “…I, meagre and poor Mustafa M. have de-
cided to write…”, etc. In poetry, however, we see the opposite of the humility topos
– the self-praise topos – especially in the qasīda as the dominant form from antiquity
to the Ottoman period. It should be noted that the panegyric, as an independent
genre, was also cultivated together with self-praise. Keeping in mind the stability of
self-praising verses in ancient and classical literature, one can, in that case, speak of
a topos, but that topos is opposed to the humility topos. Oriental-Islamic culture in
general had (and still has) a strategy of extraordinary politeness and an exceptionally
important segment of it is expressed humility in many different ways. The poetic to-
pos of self-praise can be considered in that sense a cultural phenomenon. The humil-
ity topos successfully cooperates with the aesthetics of the classical period, that is,
with the notion of the beautiful in classical literature, and I have already elaborated
upon that; in fact, that topos is an expression of aesthetics and poetics according to
which, let us recall, creation is inherent only to God, hence, the conviction in the au-
thor’s supremacy, in his originality, is an expression of arrogance primarily towards
God, and then towards the authority of the tradition.

One of the reasons for such a significant presence of self-praise in Oriental-Islamic

culture – to the extent that it has become a commonplace – is most probably the rela-
tionship between the poet and the patron, which I have elaborated on in the previous
lines. The second reason is in the legacy this poetry draws from the pre-Islamic peri-
od. The poet (shā‘ir), as we know, had such a position in the society, which gave him
the feeling of unreachable supremacy in relation to all other members of the commu-
nity: his position, it was considered, belonged to the domain of the prophetic and the
divine. In this context, it is important to emphasise that the poet owed this position,
a real position in the community and the feeling of supremacy that followed from it,
to the poetic word: it was his magic to which all merit belongs. The truth is, this feel-
ing of the pre-Islamic poet and his foundation for such a feeling (the magical poetic
word) were targets of the Qur’ān, which persistently emphasised the necessity of
modesty, even humility, as the principal virtue of the faithful. Poetry was to a large
extent ideologically harmonised with the Qur’ān, but ancient poetry brought to the
Islamic epoch some important poetic foundations, such as self-praise poetry.127 In
that sense, self-praise poetry is a form of the persistent “remnant” of ancient poetry.

The poet of self-praise poetry, in fact, emphasises his dual position. On the one hand,
he abundantly emphasises, through hyperbole, his poetic and other qualities, almost

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to the point of boasting, but, again – on that basis – he emphasises his humility as
well (and that is the way he describes himself) in comparison to the patron, or to the
praised person in general. He is modest, humbled before the “goal” of his panegyric,
and from that it follows that his self-praising verses, burdened by hyperbole, are, in
fact, a “strategy of modesty of the panegyric”, whose task is to, seemingly paradox-
ically, enormously emphasise the value of the patron who was, essentially, brought
to a fait accompli by such a strategy: from the point of view of the tradition in
which poetry was significantly powerful, and from the point of view of the strategy,
brilliantly developed by the poet, the patron cannot retreat: he needs to abundantly
reward the poet. By that, he additionally strengthens the social position of poetry and
the poet’s reputation.

The poet’s self-praise was, after all, transformed in the Islamic period in compari-
son to the ancient period (which was no longer the Arabic antiquity, but the ancient
poetry of the Oriental-Islamic period in general). The poet’s boasting in the ancient
period developed from a feeling of supremacy in relation to the members of the com-
munity in general, and was carried by the wings of the word towards metaphysical
forces. In the Islamic epoch, however, the poet’s boasting does not establish relations
towards metaphysical forces; its goal is to express, in a counterpoint, the extraor-
dinary character of the praised person, which is the ultimate goal of the qasīda, as
well as the poet’s self-praise. Hence, the self-praising verses remain a constant, a
commonplace of classical literature, from its ancient dawn to the end of the classical
period, but their strategy changed, as well as the relationship towards the addressee.

Finally, the sixth part of the qaṣīda in the Ottoman Turkish language is the dua
(du‘ā’). In it, the poet invokes God for benevolence towards the goal of his qaṣīda –
which is most frequently the patron, while sometimes the goal of the dua is the poet
himself. This final part – especially when the poet is both the subject and the goal of
the dua – should not be taken as a far echo of the ancient position of poetry, which
was considered capable of appeasing the pagan god or gods. That is simply a dua
of the poet’s heart and word, without those magical aspirations that characterised
poetry in the ancient period. Duas will forever be uttered in Islam, as well as in Is-
lamic culture in general, through carefully rhymed and rhythmicised sentences. That
is simply an obligatory “rhetorical attitude” of an entire culture: duas in this culture
in general (and it is noticeable and indicative that the culture is abundant with duas)
are not presented through aesthetically passive sentences, but quite the contrary:
they are rhetorically and stylistically cultivated. That is an important factor of their
invocation, and it is very noticeable, to the point of assertion, in khutbahs, in daily
prayers, in khatam dua, etc. That too is one of the commonplaces in Oriental-Islam-
ic culture. A believer does not use such language or style (although the authors of
duas were mainly people of relatively considerable education) not only because it is
believed that the success of their dua will be proportional to its rhetorical supercil-
iousness, but because a stylised, rhetorically optimised dua significantly contributes
to the devotion of a believer, to this exaltation as a believer. A believer simply feels

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that his rhetorically perfected dua has more power to bring his emotionality to an-
other level, which also means his devotional ardour. As a believer, a man feels more
comfortable and self-confident with a rhetorically cultivated dua. On the other hand
– and this is important to emphasise – by such duas, a believer consciously, some-
times even reflexively through tradition, intertextualises the dua with the Qur’ān,
which belongs to rhymed and rhytmicised prose.

Thus, a poet directs himself to many goals through the dua, some of which are al-
ready realised at the very beginning: by a rhetorically perfected dua, he is immedi-
ately – by the language of the dua and by the heart which utters it in such a form
– harmonised with the Text that is his universe. Formally, the stylised feature of a
dua is its wings.

In relation to this position of the dua in the qaṣīda and in religious texts, one other
item needs to be emphasised. Since almost all duas are carefully rhymed and rhyth-
micised, and since they all are oriented towards stylistics in general, for they are
created by the highly educated “authors of duas”, this means that the “common”
people too who are not gifted with creating the stylised duas on their own but utter
them daily, ascend by the rhetorical values of the text that they utter and that was
written by others. Invocation always seeks a higher tone and a higher style, for only
then are they appropriate to the condition of the invoker’s soul. The rhythm of the
dua and the rhythm of the poem brilliantly cooperate in this same task.128 However,
let us return to the dua as the end of the qaṣīda.

In self-praise and in the panegyric, as thematic sequences of the qaṣīda in the Ot-
toman Turkish language, the morphology of the ancient qaṣīda is recognisable, as
well as the poetic constant that stretches through the entire history of this literature
– from the ancient period, through literature in Persian, to the late Ottoman period. If
these sections of the qaṣīda were observed separately from the poem – and we have
seen that the “criticism” of the classical period was prone to that – some inadequate
conclusions could be drawn related to the overemphasised boasting of the poet and
their radical departure from the idea and humility topos that characterise the entire
Oriental-Islamic culture. I have presented this possibility as highly likely just before.
However, this dua, as a part of the qaṣīda, sheds a different light on the previous
sections of the qaṣīda – and thus on self-praise verses and the panegyric – which
means, to a significant extent – that it innovates the qaṣīda in the domain of poetics;
it contributes to what I would call in the given context the intersubjective poetic in-
novation, that is, invention within the framework of what has already been created.
Owing to this relationship of the dua towards other thematic and structural elements
of the qaṣīda, it is again shown, in an unexpected aspect, that the authority of the
tradition was enormously respected and at the same time the goal was to innovate it
occasionally and steadily, which represents a peculiar form of dynamisation of the
tradition. It is very interesting that in such cases one can speak of – conditionally, of
course – “collective originality”, in the sense that such and similar changes/innova-

141
tions occur periodically, that is, in works of certain authors, in some temporal cycles,
or in some other kinds of periodicity – temporal, local, etc. In any case, historically,
this is poetic pressuring of the form (for the ancient qaṣīda cannot be called genre
in the strict sense of the term) to break away from a complete and fatal sclerosis,
considering the excessively long time in which it thrived. Following measured der-
ivations in the morphology of the qaṣīda form – as well as of other forms – again
leads to a conclusion of an unexpectedly high firmness and homogeneity of a vast
poetic system, of its centripetal forces, in spite of certain innovations. What is the
role of the dua in that?

All themes assembled in the qaṣīda are annotated from the position of the last, invoc-
ative theme, that is, the dua. It is at the last place of the structure, but is functionally
primary, for it opens up a new sense to all of the previous themes. It is like a cre-
scendo in music: after its thunderous echo, there is nothing further to say; the piece
needs to end there.

Memorising the name qaṣīda (a poem with a goal) in ancient literature and knowing
that the goal of the qaṣīda is expressed exactly at its very end (like at the end of an
imaginary journey), one needs to face the conclusion that the ultimate goal of the
qaṣīda is structurally at the very end of the poem, here, in uttering the dua. The full
poetological potential of the term qaṣīda should never be left out. If we accept that
the dua realises its point at the finale of the poem – and the argumentation of his-
torical poetics unambiguously directs us towards that conclusion – then it follows
that the panegyric in the qaṣīda is problematized at its most important place, as its
ultimate goal, and in that I assign the meaning of the main goal to the syntagm the
ultimate goal. From the point of view of poetics, that is truly surprising and unusual.
We are used to reading in literary histories of the Ottoman period that the panegyric
is the central place of the qaṣīda, not only because it assumes a central position in
the poem, but also because the panegyric is the basic and ultimate intention of the
poem. From the point of view I have presented here, especially within the poetics
of the qaṣīda as such, the aforementioned interpretation is questionable at best, for
there exists a serious poetic argumentation for a strong relativisation of the inter-
pretation according to which verses of the panegyric are most important in such a
poem. What is more, even though it may seem to be the researcher’s pretence, not
even the author himself is necessarily aware of that revitalisation of the supposedly
central importance of the medhiya or fahriya, for the author of the poem (or, in El-
iot’s words, “individual talent”) often creates his work without even being aware, in
many peculiarities, that general poetic principles affect his work, and that the forces
of tradition have a great power, so that the new work is determined according to the
tradition, especially in the classical period when significantly cohesive forces were
at play. Ultimately, the individual talent, that is, his work, gains its senses (not one,
but several) through literary-historical, poetological, aesthetic and other forms of
reading. No single author can be forever detained in his own sense of the work, just
as no single literary history can be encapsulated into one, final sense.

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Hence, in the qaṣīda in the Ottoman Turkish language, the most important place
belongs to the theme that comes at the very end of the poem. That is an argument of
historical poetics. The strong positions of the work are mainly invocative (in prose)
and “invocative-closing”. As with the ancient qaṣīda, wherein it also impossible to
state that the poem is a panegyric to so and so, so it is with the qaṣīda in Ottoman
Turkish, for its thematic structure and relative saturation of theme do not allow for
such “classification”: that is a mere consequence of our insuperable need and our
habits acquired in the reading of other forms of literature to reduce thematically
complex works to only one of their themes. Other kinds of reading, in other times,
are entitled to their own selection of a central theme.

Observed from the angle of the dua, the main point, the poetical hyperbolising and
“boasting” are reduced to a certain extent. Through its structural position and expli-
cations, the dua shows – additionally, from the perspective of the end of the poem
as its point – that both the self-praising poet and the praised person are essentially
and finally dependent upon God, upon His resolution to take their side or not. All of
the “temporary boasting” – observed from the perspective of a dua that comes as a
gild and ultimate goal – becomes an affectation, a rhetorical boasting, an imbalanced
affirmation of virtues of both the poet and his patron, for the confirmation of their
virtues resigns itself in the end to the dua, that is, to the unquestionable competences
of God. With its structural position and verbal intonation, the dua sends word that
man – regardless of all his virtues and alleged power – essentially depends on God
and His mercy. What is more, such thematic structuring of the poem achieves an
effective gradation in the positioning of protectors, to the “benefit” of God, for He
is the Protector above all protectors, a “Patron” to every patron. A critic, literary
historian or a poetologist who fails to observe such a position of the dua, which is
inappropriate in the consequent consideration and coherent explanation, is simply
not able to validly assess the self-praising and praising verses whose “boasting” is
relativized maximally by a dua, just as he is not able to notice other poetical charac-
teristics of the qaṣīda and of the tradition in which it lives, or the “topos of boasting”,
which seems essentially contrary to the humility topos which I have already stated
characterises Oriental-Islamic culture, especially the prose of the adab. In such a
reading, the dua is observed only as the topos of the qaṣīda, completely reduced to
its general features, almost to mechanics. However, this “second reading” which I
propose as a poetic reading, reveals a discovery of a kind. Namely, “the topos of
boasting” is introduced into the sphere of “boasting in affectation” for, in the end
result, all has been brought to the essential dependence on God. This procedure in
the qaṣīda is poetically extraordinary, and very efficient, and – what is particularly
important – it magnificently cooperates with the Tradition. On the one hand, it coop-
erates with the Tradition by passing on self-praise and praise as thematic constants
for hundreds of years, from the ancient qaṣīda, so that it may appear to a poetologi-
cally ignorant reader that the “boasting” of the poetic heroes is inappropriate given
requisite Islamic humility. On the other hand, the qaṣīda in the Ottoman Turkish
language reaffirms such an ideal by a brilliant poetical shift (which was brought to

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the level of topos by its high frequency of occurrence), for, after all of the self-praise
and praise hyperbole, it faces, inevitably and ultimately, dependence on God. That
procedure in the domain of poetics equals the procedure known as the iltifāt in the
domain of stylistics.

By introducing the dua at the end of the qaṣīda and by its poetical “duty” to relativize
the self-praising and praising verses, the qaṣīda realised a double effect. On the one
hand, it preserved within the polythematic structure two very important themes – the
self-praise and panegyric verses. By that it realised, in fact, one of its basic goals,
which is cultural, or, more precisely, the poetic promotion of the traditional forms
that began in antiquity. That confirms traditional awareness. The second goal that
is achieved, and that only appears to be opposed to the first, is innovation of that
tradition respected in principle. Thus, thematic units of the qaṣīda are preserved, but
significantly different functions are introduced. Essentially, that is a radical change
of ideological perspective. Namely, the morphology of the ancient qaṣīda, as well
as the qaṣīda in the Ottoman Turkish language, contains a recognisable ideological
aspect, one may even say an important ideological level. We have observed that the
position of shā‘ir in the ancient qaṣīda is expressly ideological, thus his poem is
contextualised. The qaṣīda in the Ottoman Turkish language also contains that ideo-
logical level, expressed in the invocative theme. Hence, the morphology of form is
still recognisable; the tradition dwells on that constant.

However, in that very place there is a diametric difference. In the ancient qaṣīda,
the ideological level is essentially within the domain of the pagan, which the pivotal
Text of Islam confronted decisively. The ideological level of the qaṣīda in the Otto-
man Turkish language, however, is principally different from the ancient, because,
by the invocative intonation and lexis, it affirms as the greatest value in monotheism.
Thus, by this structural sameness of the ancient and of the Ottoman qaṣīda, as well
as the simultaneous differentiation of their ideological levels, the poetic dynamism
of the tradition is achieved, for both similarity and difference are achieved at once.
Here, tradition exposed a significant witticism. One cannot but recall the Poem of
the Mantle, for already there this poetic innovation was anticipated; an innovation
that would occur in several hundred years when the Prophet shielded the poet Ka‘b
Ibn Zuhayr. On that significant historical crossroads, the ancient poet abandoned his
ideologisation of the poem, yet such a qaṣīda will also affirm a “new ideology” in
the centuries to come: Islam – for the dua at the end of the qaṣīda is Islamic. Conse-
quently, one should emphasise also how the Qur’ānic Text affected poetics. Namely,
in that dramatic closure of the surah al-Shu‘arā’ (Poets), the Qur’ān condemns – by
the power and authority of the sacral Text – poets and deems them as those who
lead into delusion; deems them hypocrites, etc., only to make a life-saving shift:
“Apart from those who believe and do righteous deeds, who remember Allah and
are victorious after suffering injustice, and those who do injustice will learn about
the Scaffold they will be brought to!”129 That was a call for poets to affirm Islam.
The qaṣīda did that many years later, for it emphasised by its closure the right belief

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of poets in such a way that it tamed the poetic urges and poetic memories reaching
back to antiquity.

The extent to which the closure of the qaṣīda, that is, the dua, functioned in all the
directions that I have merely touched upon, would perhaps be best seen if we at-
tempted to imagine the qaṣīda without it. Namely, the aforementioned effects of tam-
ing the poet’s self-praise and panegyric dedicated to his patron would not have been
realised, and that entails a completely different ideological discourse. One should
keep in mind that the qaṣīda is one of the dominant literary forms, which means that
it could influence the poetics of the classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages
in general. This significance of the closing dua in the qaṣīda unveils another aspect
of its poetical defamiliarization.

Namely, keeping in mind the frequent distribution of the dua in qaṣīdas, one could
easily conclude that it is a topos, that is – a commonplace, which, as such, is not
tasked poetically. The dua does not acquire the status of the commonplace solely
because of the frequent distribution, but also because of its stable position (at the
end of the qaṣīda). The commonplace in a poem, in the literary tradition in general,
functions by limiting the originality of the literary work to a certain extent; that is,
it contains the potential that maintains the tradition as such, which expresses respect
towards the traditional: that is its factor as mannerism. However, I have concluded
– and I believe that I have made it apparent – that the closure of the qaṣīda has a
very active poetic and ideological role in the entire structure of the poem, and that
eliminates its position as a commonplace: such activity is not characteristic of topoi.
In other words, we have a dual position in this case: closure of the qaṣīda (the dua)
bears some characteristics of the commonplace according to some criteria, and by
other criteria it decisively eludes the status of a commonplace. Such a dual position
is neither its flaw, nor is it a lack of the qaṣīda in general; on the contrary, by such
positioning, it is positively active on two levels. On the one hand, the dua unusually
introduces dynamism into a qaṣīda as such, and, on the other hand, even though it
may seem paradoxical, it maintains the “stability of the tradition” on the verge of
traditionalism; the dua makes that tradition dynamic, in the sense and within the
reach that I have spoken of previously in relation to the authority of the tradition
and the comprehension of originality, that is, in relation to the notion of creativity in
classical literature.

Thus, the ancient qaṣīda, as well as the qaṣīda in the Ottoman Turkish language, have
the same structure in the sense that in both cases the structure is polythematic. That
is a poetic postulate common to both the qaṣīdas; it is constant, in spite of the signif-
icant timespan between them and a considerable mixing of languages and traditional
experiences that occurred in the timespan in which Oriental-Islamic culture grew.
However, they have one more thing in common, and which emphasises a continuity
of historical poetics, a consistency that bears witness to a highly coherent system.
Namely, they have the same form.

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The qaṣīda is monometric and monorhyme. In both cases, those characteristics are
the main integrative factors of the poem, which – by a considerable strictness of the
norm characteristic of the classical epoch – held together a diversity of themes. The
rhyme appears at the end of the bayt, but in both cases, the half-bayts are rhymed in
the first bayt: aa / ba / ca / da, etc.130

Keeping in mind the emphasised characteristics of the ancient and Ottoman qaṣīda,
whereby their thematic and formal structure is most important, we reach another ar-
gument on their enormous poetic similarity. Namely, if we adhere to the proclaimed
principle that in order to constitute and recognise a genre, a thematic peculiarity and
saturation is necessary, we cannot state for either of the qaṣīdas that they are a poet-
ic genre. In both previous cases, there is no thematic saturation; quite the contrary,
qaṣīdas insist on polythematic structure. They persist on that in spite of the fact that
independent genres developed in the Arabic literature exactly on the basis of those
thematic components. In other words, both subdivisions of the qaṣīda are forms;
more precisely, they are a single form.131

On the basis of the past comparative deliberation on the ancient qaṣīda and the qa-
ṣīda in the Ottoman Turkish language, one can draw a conclusion that those are
not comparatively determined similarities between them; rather, it is essentially the
same poetic form.

Studying the morphology of genres/forms that refused to become a genre, in this

case the qaṣīda, one can see that such a method can lead to important findings about
literary history in Oriental-Islamic languages, especially on the (historical) poetics
of that tradition. The degree of sameness between the genres, that is, forms, is im-
pressive – from their titles to their structures at all levels. A conclusion logically
follows from these deliberations on the necessity of further examination through this
method, as well as the slightly uncomfortable but necessary conclusion that only an
arrogant ideology/policy could have overseen this impressive unity of system, for it
“crushed the unity down” for its political, mainly ethnocentric goals, even ideals; it
is simply incompetent, it is unable to understand such structures within the universe
of art. All its efforts are null before the order and powers of that universe.

Another important issue needs to be addressed in relation to the structure of the

qaṣīda, that is, its poetics. It is noticeable that the ancient qaṣīda, as well as the qa-
ṣīda formed in Persian and Ottoman Turkish, hundreds of years later, insisted on its
structure, that is, they refused to terminate their polythematic composition. The point
is in that rejection, for – the “spite” of the form, that is, of the genre, in a very long
tradition has both poetic and traditional value. It is important to keep in mind that it
is not any form, but the dominant traditional form, which means that it attempts to
mark tradition, to homogenise it as much as possible, and to preserve its memory of
itself. Such a grand “caprice” of an important form is a factor of the poetic coherence
of classical literature in the Oriental-Islamic languages. For, from the point of view

146
of poetology, which attempts to represent the poetics of both ancient and classical
literature, the fact of the poetical consistency and striking similarity of the ancient
qaṣīda in Arabic with the qaṣīda in Persian and Ottoman Turkish is impressive. This
consistency warns of a need to search for the morphology of genres and forms, for
by its poetic consistency the qaṣīda makes the entire Oriental-Islamic literary tradi-
tion unique, to the extent that its uniqueness cannot be disregarded. Knowledge of
literature dictates examination of historical morphology and forms.

The qaṣīda, as a form, is both very close and distant to us: it came to exist at the very
dawn of literature in the Oriental-Islamic languages in its ancient, heroic period, but
it also survived to the very end of that literature – to literature in the Ottoman period,
in the so-called diwan literature. Its “distance” in the ancient period is only temporal,
diachronic, but also very close to us: antiquity, in fact, is never unreachably distant,
for to us, it is a value that, as such, lives in a peculiar way in contemporariness, in our
experience and artistic production. Without a doubt, that consistency of the qaṣīda –
by the term and poetics – is amazing. It creates the connection between antiquity and
the classics that is similar to other cultures, a connection that demands a repetitive
reading, a reading that can never be exactly the same, and that is why I use the word
repetitive conditionally: by that word, I want to say, in fact, one needs to expect re-
petitive reading to bring relatively new results.

In dealing with the morphology of genres/forms, in this case, of the qaṣīda, it is pos-
sible to cross the boundaries of the classical epoch through those “custom offices”
that scientists oftentimes open to mark boundaries between certain literary epochs,
stylistic periods, literary movements, etc. In that sense, it would be interesting to ex-
amine the term genre/form of the qaṣīda in modern, even in contemporary Bosniak
literature, which came from ancient and classical literature. What is more, I believe
it to be an outstanding research challenge, the results of which can only be hypothe-
sised. Hoping that this suggestion is not digressive, I would like to say that it would
be interesting – of course, within a competent research effort – to examine what the
qaṣīda is like in the contemporary Bosnian language. For, it is known that even today
poems that are labelled qaṣīdas (and nasheeds) are written in Bosnian. Indications
are even more significant because they are written by Džemaludin Latić, a brilliant
poet and our contemporary. There is no doubt that it would be truly interesting to
examine this phenomenon from the point of view of literary history and poetology.132
However, since I am here dealing with the classical literature in Oriental-Islamic
languages, examining this phenomenon goes beyond the framework of my current
task. Still, I would like to emphasise that it too languishes on the research horizon.

THE MUSAMMAṬ FORMS

The issue of genre and form in classical literature

The poet’s game with form in classical literature in the Oriental-Islamic languages is

147
a traditional constant – from Arabic antiquity to the diwan literature of the Ottoman
Turkish language. Creativity was in most part limited to that aspect of the artistic
literature, especially in poetry, but prose forms were also frequently obsessed with
form. That is why in the research of classical literature in these languages, especially
in poetry, we face significant difficulties if we approach it with the terminological
apparatus that we use for modern or contemporary meanings: matter resists and it is
impossible to consistently apply a modern terminological apparatus.

Classical literature in the Oriental-Islamic languages is characterised by a specific

relationship towards the formation of literary genres which – as many other basic
categories of classical literatures – cannot be understood in the modern sense of
those categories. In this context, it is necessary to again emphasise that the char-
acteristic of this kind of classical literature is the instability of its genres, that is,
a resistance of that literature to generally form genres in the sense in which the
theme/content/motif strongly participates in the “stabilisation” or recognisability of
the genre, and by that in its nomination: that very nomination should come from
a relatively stable relationship of a certain kind of content and form in which it is
artistically expressed; on the other hand, the nomination of a genre has the task of
maintaining the (relative) stability that artistic creativity tries to overcome, although
it fails to do so radically. In classical literature, form has the key role in the innova-
tion of tradition, which is consequently characterised by an extraordinary dexterity
in terms of form, although not genres in the sense of genres today. In this way, I
am speaking of form, that is, about forms that are not the same as literary genres.
Oriental sentiments for form in general, not only in literature, strive towards a kind
of carelessness that liberates it from strict consistency. At the level of culture, many
have recognised it as a supposed inclination of Oriental people towards anarchy
(people are generally inclined to observe things in strict opposition), but it is more a
peculiar kind of pantheistic carelessness irreconcilable with formalities, a careless-
ness which, as pantheistic, leads to the verge of hedonism, sometimes even crossing
into it. Such a spirit could not have formed literary genres with the utmost strictness,
that is, with complete stability. In order to forestall possible misunderstandings, an
interesting phenomenon in this tradition should be mentioned.

The truth is that forms in classical literature – at least the majority of forms, that is,
the dominant ones – are relatively strict, especially in poetry, where they have quan-
titative metrics that align with rules determined by a mathematical precision (the
exact number of short and long syllables in each bayt, precisely-determined rhyme,
etc.); yet that obvious and seemingly relentless strictness is relaxed very efficiently
when least expected. Namely, on the one hand – and this is poetically interesting and
important – that strictness is “absorbed” in an extraordinarily loose relationship of
content and form, and vice versa – in the capability of forms to joyfully surrender
to any content. Thus, it is impressive that while there is strictness of form, ardent-
ly cultivated, there is at the same time and significantly a huge flexibility within
these content-form and form-content relationships. I have already emphasised that

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the ghazal simply resisted the possibility to be “reserved” for love-lyricism only, so
it became a “home” for any lyrical content, a synonym for lyricism in general. The
qaṣīda preserved similar characteristics in classical literature, etc.

Through this relationship between form and content – a relationship between strict
forms and a relaxing migration of content – a form of dynamism is created in poetry,
that is, in poetics and in the tradition as a whole, which makes classical literature in
the Oriental-Islamic languages highly lyrical and dynamic, essentially freed from
the strictest demands of normativity in relation to what we are used to fixate on as
literary divisions and their subdivisions. That is one of the basic aesthetic and poetic
points in which classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages differs significantly
form what we call western. Many have described the difference in terms of the infe-
riority of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages.133

Thus, in classical literature there is a two-fold and simultaneous expression of resis-

tance to ultimate normativity, which would drag tradition into barren traditionalism
and leave it the work of epigones. That free spirit, that careless movement “to and
fro” characteristic of Oriental mentality that Hegel speaks of134 could not have creat-
ed poetry, nor even literature, different from that which it had already created: with
an immense knowledge of form as such, of poetic virtues and the victories of forms,
as well as of the need for their constant amplification and appropriateness to all
content. Ultimately and simply stated – regardless of the fact that simplifications are
always risky – crudeness was prevented by a sketched relationship between forms
and content, as well as by the internal relationship between forms: a vast knowledge
of forms was expressed traditionally, as well as respect towards experiences on the
form as such, but also emphasising the necessity of its permanent poetic overcoming.

The form mathnawī is a peculiar expression of that creative liberation in which even
reflexivity made absolutely serious (and this includes Sufi poetry) acquires unlimit-
ed conditions for lyrical expression, which amazes the world even today – both the
East and the West. However, before I turn my attention to the form mathnawī, I am
obliged – in preparation for that approach – to say a few more words on that liber-
ation in which the classical Oriental-Islamic poet wrote, as well as of the limitless
freedom of the movement of forms.

In classical literature – and particularly literature in the Arabic language – a writer

could not have become a supreme authority if he had looked solely upon one subdi-
vision, regardless of the fact that he could have achieved superiority in that subdi-
vision. The tradition irrevocably demanded the poet to successfully “mirror” him-
self in as many dominant forms as possible, which primarily means that he had to
possess exceptional knowledge of the tradition, and that he had to optimally master
creative techniques – ultimately, the “techniques of forms”, even the “technology”
of literary writing. A writer’s reputation was mainly proportionate to his ability to
move freely and independently in the realm of forms. Some writers, mainly poets,

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became recognisable by a certain form in which they, allegedly, expressed them-
selves most successfully. For example, Abu Nuwas is always associated with wine
poetry, although he, like many others, was successful (judging by his contemporar-
ies) in many other forms as well. However, one may not overlook that some writers
did express themselves more successfully in one form than in others, but it was an
imperative of the tradition – and that is very important for poetology and the history
of literature – that good writers had to prove their talent in numerous forms, and thus
overcome the sternness of a writer being tied to a form.

In creative play such as we see in the musammaṭ forms or in naẓīras, for example,
which are the ultimate achievements of the simultaneous poetic dependence and
liberation from that dependence, we come across a phenomenon that could be called
intertextuality. However, in the cases adduced (for example, in tahmīs), it is not
only about the kinds of relationships between texts as they appear in some forms
of intertextuality; there is that noticeable level of intertextuality in which someone
else’s text is virtually taken over, as a text, which is citationality at work, as a form
of intertextuality. However, at the same time, this kind of intertextuality prevails
in another, significantly higher level, so that the question arises if it is at all rea-
sonable to speak of intertextuality in the usual meaning of the word, or to speak of
intertextuality without the necessary interpretations of its additional poetic abilities.
Namely, in these forms, the author’s primary goal is not to cite the content of another
work (its selected section), for the content – as we have seen several times so far –
is mainly not primary in this poetics; rather the author’s goal is to “cite the form”
of his prototext, that is, the work with which he is poetically dialogising. That is a
significant difference in relation to “ordinary” citationality – citing the content of
the prototext – and the difference arises from the fact that I have explained so far
by the immanent approach. Thus it comes from the fact that classical literature in
Oriental-Islamic languages is an empire of forms, that forms are a priority, and that
they relativise, that is, ask for additional interpretations of categories of intertextu-
ality. What is more, it appears that in these poetically “perfected” forms, that free
relationship between content and form on the one hand, and the relationship between
forms themselves on the other, is expressed in the best way. For, on the “first level”
in the protopoem, the free relationship between form and content, their free move-
ment and inundation, but that freedom is optimally developed in metapoem (for
example, in tahmīs or in naẓira), since the same content “emigrates” into a new form
by introducing to it both itself and the form in which it had already been expressed.
The interlacing is complete. In other words, in that poetics, the content is capable of
visiting various forms, all forms; content is even completely careless in that sense,
so that the unlimited and unrestrained adjustability of content and form characterises
all of classical literature. However, this is not only characteristic of content: in the
late stage of the classical period, forms also express a kind of poetic desire for “mi-
gration”, for symbiosis and metamorphoses of an almost unimaginable reach. That
is why classical literature is suitable for intertextual research – those methods should
be recommended – but it is necessary to keep in mind that the citationality of forms

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is the key point in the intertextual poetical communication of classical poetry, and
not the sole content of literary works. Poetics is thus made specific; the importance
of form is optimised the way that forms are permanently aware of the importance of
the tradition that is always determined, on its part, as their “homeland”.

Form rather than content becomes an inspiration; the relationship of orientalists

towards it
In classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, form became an inspiration for
artists. Writers did not expend their efforts in search of peculiar content that would
lead towards the individuality of a literary work. Very early in history, a “poetic
proclamation” was introduced, according to which all possible content had already
been used, and that the final reservoir of motifs in the tradition had been formed. The
already-used motifs needed only recontextualisation through form. That is how an
endless empire of forms was formed.135

Because of such a preference for form in tradition, we are often ready – especially
orientalists – to proclaim that a vast literary tradition is exclusively traditionalistic,
even the work of epigones, yet those are disqualifying determinants. However, in a
deeper immersion in the literary tradition, especially in its poetics, we understand
that the danger rests in the fact that we today understand literature as art in a consid-
erably different way than our distant ancestors understood it. Unless we deviate from
the exclusive point of view of the present, we shall have no possibilities whatsoever
to comprehend the tradition, that is, classical literature, as something basically dif-
ferent. The entire literary tradition, in its main currents, proclaims that it is poetically
recommended, even postulated, to use the same motifs that were “processed” by
other poets – as close to the source and to the model as possible – because of that, we
object to it, criticise it and question its value. That is an essential misunderstanding.
One should assume with valid reasons and on the basis of the “old poetics” that the
poet of the classical epoch in general would not mind us calling him a traditional-
ist; on the contrary, he is loyal to tradition and proud of it, just as is the case with
his contemporaries. The term traditionalism/simulation (taqlīdiyya, ittibā‘iyya, etc.)
simply has different poetic and value content in different periods. Besides, value
judgement is an unstable category; it is not an objective, but an intersubjective fact,
and that means – consequently – that it is also a historical category. That is why it
is inadequate to proclaim classical literature traditionalistic, in the negative sense of
the term. It had its brilliant dynamics realised primarily in the domain of form (there
were innovations in the domain of content, and I will speak of that later), that is,
on the relentless perfecting of the form. The musammaṭ forms bear witness to that,
as well as the forms we have spoken of already. However, before I introduce the
musammaṭ forms (only briefly), it is necessary to emphasise other “consequences”
of giving preference to form in the classical period and the relationship of our con-
temporaries, especially orientalists, towards that preference.

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I have already touched upon the negative consequences of the point of view of the
present towards the differently illuminated past: they emerge in insufficient knowl-
edge of the literary past, its inadequate evaluation, and in fact very frequently in its
aesthetic neutralisation. In relation to this there is a particularly important problem
that orientalists persistently develop in a negative direction.

Orientalists present classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages to Western cul-

ture – and many of them do it, quite persistently – in such a way that it is prevented
from being regarded as art to an almost tragic degree, given the loss this entails to
readers in the West. Such an analysis of the importance of form in classical poet-
ics – at the theoretical level – is followed by orientalist translation practice (for a
long time, especially in the canonical works of orientalists) in which disregarding
the form of a literary work was brought to the ultimate limits. Thus, we will read,
in many places of the canonical works of orientalists, “verses” in translation that
not only are not close to the source text, but are not verses at all: they are awkward,
completely passive prose, without rhyme, rhythm, metre, in fact having nothing of
the qualities on which the source text insisted upon. It is not at all clear why people
produce such “translations”. It appears that their goal is to transmit to the reader of
their text the so-called meaning of the source text, neglecting the fact that the mean-
ing of an artistic text is not at all contained in what could be called its content in a
literal sense of the word. The meaning of an artistic text, as an aesthetic creation,
is primarily in its insisting upon unity of form and content, even upon their simul-
taneousness, regardless of their prevalence, which is itself historically changeable.
Transmitting only content, as we call it, separated from its form, especially because
the form strives for perfection, is a tragic lack of understanding of a work of art, of
its aesthetical function and that is its permanent perversion. Furthermore, by such
violent procedure, the conviction of (in)competence is confirmed, and I have spoken
of that as of the point of view of the present. Namely, that means that an artistic work
of literature is, in fact, contained in its “message” and its form can be disregarded.
That is a complete shift in understanding of the poetics. On the contrary, the classical
literature we speak of here marginalises the content in the meaning understood by
the point of view of the present; what is more, the form, that is, an endless “creative
game” of form, becomes a kind of content of the work: the form is, in essence, its
theme. I have had an opportunity to see such “translations” from classical literature
many times (I cannot read them, simply because my knowledge and experience of
literature is such that I cannot agree to such mutilation of artistic works of litera-
ture) and I have always wondered, discouraged, if those “translators” knew anything
relevant about that work as art, of the poetics and tradition in which it is situated.
And, paradoxically, I know they are orientalists, meaning people who are suppos-
edly dedicated to that culture and its literature.136 One should seriously consider the
possibility that some deliberately mutilate the tradition they “represent” and that –
also in more important cases – the canonisation of their work is closely knit to those
negative intentions.137

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The translations I speak of here do not serve the literature of the source text, nor
the culture in which they are transmitted, which is also mutilated. In other words,
classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages is, in fact, significantly denied the
representation in another cultural circle. The extent to which it is denied can only be
comprehended by those who are able to read source texts.138

Forms are, like genres, historical categories. In classical literature in Oriental-Is-

lamic languages, forms were developed very successfully, since the “technology
of poetry” was traditionally preferred. That overwhelming play of forms, as I have
stated previously, is perhaps best expressed in one of their “flocks” known as the
musammaṭ. In the tradition that I represent here poetologically, there are forms that
cannot be spoken of individually, keeping in mind their abundance, but I represent
the dominant forms, or those characteristic for their enrichment of the tradition by
forms; these are primarily the musammaṭ forms.

Musammaṭ or the “necklace” as a poetological term. Tradition as a “jewellery

shop”
Like other terms in classical literature, musammaṭ contains poetological and liter-
ary-historical significance. Etymologically, the word means a pearl necklace, a belt,
bearing the full positivity of those words. The literary-historical content of the term
rests in that it is value-related: a necklace is a value that embellishes, decorates a
culture and its literature. The value aspect is so obvious that it is not necessary to
explain it further, and it is literary-historical because this term always implies a con-
sensual, or at least, intersubjective historical value judgement.

Another aspect in which this term is determined as literary-historical, as well as

historical, is its obvious traditional continuation until a very common source in an-
cient literature. Primarily, although here we are dealing with musammaṭ forms in the
so-called diwan literature in the Ottoman Turkish language, one should know that
the term is purely Arabic – even morphologically and semantically – and borrow-
ing the term is both theoretically and poetologically far too important to ignore the
transmitted content of the function, since the terms are expressly capable of that. The
term we speak of here is that marvellous arch towards antiquity, towards the heroic
period of literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, which suggests a conclusion on
the common outcomes and common poetics of the literature in all three languages:
Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian. Namely, the most famous corpus of poems in
the entire Oriental-Islamic tradition – an authority of incomparable significance and
strength – were the al-Mu‘allqāt poems that also carried one of the “honorary” lit-
erary-historical and poetic titles al-sumūt: pearl necklaces. Obviously, poetry in the
Ottoman Turkish language remembers this, and it is not always certain if researchers
and literary critics remember and understand this appropriately; that is, it is uncer-
tain if they give it due attention.

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The poetic content of the name al-sumūṭ, that is, musammaṭ, is essentially the same,
for it says much about preferring form in this poetry, and on understanding the rela-
tionship between form and content. The exemplary corpus al-Mu‘allqāt is known as
a collection of pearl necklaces – in a poetical sense, for the verses are simply strung
in succession onto monorhyme and monometre, resembling the “thread” on which
pearls are strung. I have already explained that the main poetical postulate of the
ancient qaṣīda, as well as the poem that developed long after the ancient period, was
the independence of the bayt in terms of meaning; thus, the bayt resembled a pearl
because of that independence, while a string of independent bayts-pearls maintained
the unity of metre and rhyme as an artefact. It is obvious that the pearl necklace
figuratively expressed the basic poetical principles of the model poems that seemed
normative for hundreds of years.

In poetry in the Ottoman Turkish language that principle was perfected – just as the
form in general was perfected in classical literature – to barely imaginable amplifica-
tions, multiplications. Namely, the basic principle of “hanging” or stringing pearls,
in a technically perfected poetry, has gained new forms and new senses: poets truly
immersed into the charms of poetic inventing did so within the frames of what had
already been created (ibdā‘).

Musammaṭ is stanzaic poetry containing various rhymes. This general title entails
a large number of forms that are different according to the number of stanzas and
bayts in a stanza, as well as the distribution of the rhyme. On the basis of such pecu-
liarities, the names muselles, murebbe, muhammes, tahmīs, tasdīs were created. All
of those names, interestingly from a poetological standpoint, are “numeric”, which
means that the defining criterion for each, decisive for their nomination, is the num-
ber of stanzas, that is, bayts, as well as the numeric relationship of the protoverses,
as well as metaverses if the form in which the poet includes bayts of another poet.
It is also characteristic that all of the names come from the Arabic language, which
again carries poetic content and expresses commitment to the tradition. The content
of the musammaṭ forms is very diverse, so that they cannot be identified on that basis
alone, but can be connected to a form constructed with mathematical precision – a
precondition of its identification and survival.

Without entering into a detailed analysis of each form, it should be stated, at the level
of poetological generalisation, that they perfected the ancient “poetical jewellery
shop” primarily by having developed, in the structural domain, a set of technical
means for improvement of the tradition (but not for its radical domination), so it
is possible in that sense to speak of the “technology of poetry”. The ancient qaṣīda
strung bayts one after another like pearls in a poem, and a number of its themes per-
form the same function, while the musammaṭ forms, apart from the “bayts-pearls”
form a “necklace” by stanzas (that grand achievement of literature in Oriental-Islam-
ic languages), different rhymes that are always created by a maximum precision and
continuity: they are the very soul of the form. By technique, and especially by the

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name of the form, this kind of poetry in the Ottoman Turkish language – one could
say at first sight – creates a special, Ottoman literature. This is an inadequate conclu-
sion from the point of view of poetology, for classical literature in the Ottoman pe-
riod has another complicated way to innovate within tradition while cultivating the
cultural memory and poetical consistency. Namely, in the “flock” of the musammaṭ
forms, there are special forms known as the tahmīs and tasdīs. Keeping the “jewel-
lery” rules contained in other forms of the musammaṭ group, these two forms realise
a new poetic victory: they are constituted by integrating the verses of two poets into
a single form, in a poem as an artefact. It is a victory because the poet, in accordance
with the prevailing poetics and aesthetics of the time, managed to optimally inno-
vate within the tradition and to simultaneously maintain its continuity. That was the
poetic ideal.

It is useful to emphasise the morphology of the word musammaṭ, which brilliantly

bears witness of the historical morphology of the poetic forms in classical literature.
Namely, in the ancient period, the name al-sumūṭ, was used for al-Mu‘allqāt, which
means pearl necklaces, while the term musammaṭ that was used for a group of poetic
forms in the Ottoman Turkish language is, in fact, the passive participle of the same
three-letter word or semantic base; the participle that developed from another kind of
verb (sammata). I here emphasise the morphological form of the lexeme musammaṭ,
which was borrowed from Arabic and refers to the ancient literary tradition; I warn
that the terms in this literature are abundant with meanings, literary-historical and
poetic referencing and connotations. In ancient literature, the term simply meant the
threading of a pearl necklace or a pearl necklace, but by transferring this base onto
another kind of verb, that action, contained in the first kind, is diversely multiplied
and intensified. And that is precisely the point: namely, all that is expressed by the
first kind of the verb from the tri-letter SMṬ is multiplied and intensified in the
second kind: those are the poetic forms that are highly complex in the “stringing
of pearls”, but the point always remains recognisable, for the matter is always the
“stringing of pearls”. This is what the musammaṭ forms achieved – they brought
technique to the highest level possible.

In order to notice this cultural memory and traditional continuity, I will here shortly
expound upon variations of the figure about poetry as a piece of jewellery that we
find in the works of many Arabic philological authorities in the classical period.139
The esteemed Qāḍī al-Jurjānī speaks of the relationship between form and content
in poetry and emphasises – contributing to the form, of course – that a ring is not
valued by the quality of gold but by its craftsmanship.140 The word by itself, with its
semantics, is not sufficient to “produce” the value of a literary work, but their value
is realised in the way in which they are organised into form.141 Ibn Qutayba also con-
sidered poetical work a kind of a jewellery piece.142 Medieval Arabic philosophers
use in that context the term ṣiyaġa for poetic work, which means goldsmith craft,
moulding. In accordance with the analogy of this term, the motif/content of the poem
is gold, accessible to everybody, but most people do not know what to do with it: it

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can be given the ultimate sense only if it ends up in the hands of a master craftsman.
What is more, a bad craftsman can ruin the “gold”. Thus, “gold”, as a metaphor, is
not tasked with emphasising the value of the content/gold, but its aim is to emphasise
the importance of the “jewellery craftsmanship”, that is, its final product, the form.

This poetological metaphor is highly complex. It produces a significant tension

among its constituents, by making a kind of “shift in value” that brilliantly explains
medieval poetics – up to and including the poetics we find in Ottoman literature,
especially in the musammaṭ forms. Namely, the creators and subsequent recipients
of this metaphor understand that content carries a certain value, but that those values
are strongly relativized (and through that a certain “tension” of the figure is created),
for, regardless of the fact that we speak of gold, its value can be seriously threat-
ened, even neutralised in the hands of a bad “jeweller”/”goldsmith”. In the most
extreme consequences, the purpose of gold is to open possibilities for craftsmanship,
to enable the master craftsman to mould and shape. Philologists develop this figure,
saying that it is even necessary for the good masters (poets) to again melt the “old
gold” (the previously used motifs, content) and to cast it into newer and even more
beautiful moulds/forms. The musammaṭ form masters could not have received a bet-
ter recommendation than this: it is obvious that they understood it very seriously and
practised it vigorously. What is more, poets went that far so that they, for example,
by tahmīs or tasdīs, introduced elements of their own “mould” into the existing
“mould” (into the poem of another poet) and thus created something new – a form
that is absolutely unexpected from the perspective of the author’s originality, yet it is
a perfectionistic value from the point of view of the “technology of poetry”, that is,
from the point of view of the traditional need for an infinite perfecting of the form.

Classical philologists occasionally used the diamond analogy. Namely, they warn
of the fact that – as they say – a diamond does not possess great value through its
composition, but gains its value in proportion to the skill behind its refinement.143

Since Oriental-Islamic culture and its literature lasted for a very long time and over
a vast space, such preference of form resulted in an extraordinarily strong amplifi-
cation of literary forms, to which the many names of these literary divisions bear
witness. For the titles of the divisions are, in fact, numeric, instead of being nomi-
nated in accordance with other characteristics, such as their themes. Of course, some
forms were nominated on the basis of thematic determinants, but we were able to
see in the previous discussion that the thematic juncture of such forms is also very
relativized (madaḥ – madḥiyya, rilā’ – marsiyya, fakhr – fakhriyya, etc.). The ghazal,
for example, “mutated” so that it paradoxically became recognisable by form, not by
(love-lyrical) theme, and to that it is obliged by its very name: it could be dedicated
to any theme, but it had to contain the form of the ghazal. That numerical nomination
of numerous poetic forms emphasises a constant relativizing of the form-motif-con-
tent relationship and an excessive strictness in achieving normative demands in the
domain of form.

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If we are to follow the amplification and morphology of poetic forms from ancient
literature through literature in Persian and literature in the Ottoman Turkish lan-
guage, it is easy to notice certain constants that signify a syncretic feature of the lit-
erature, as well as their inclination to infinitely reproduce – to use a biological term.
In that way, tradition is defamiliarised, because forms are – in the majority of cases,
with certain exceptions that I will speak of later – those that give life to the tradition,
that bring dynamics into the tradition. The status and identification of genres are
extensively relativized, since the relationship between content and form is poetically
postulated in the way that a “chalice” is always more important than its “content”;
the poetic how is more important than the poetic what.

From all of the aforesaid on the musammaṭ forms as the optimal improvement of
poetic technique and form in general, a general conclusion needs to be drawn re-
garding classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages. Namely, at the level of
poeological generalisation (which means that there are exceptions), one can assert
that the classical literature is a kind of a jewellery shop (remaining within the previ-
ously-mentioned philological interpretations and poetical parameters), from ancient
pearl necklaces to the musammaṭ forms and naẓiras in a tradition that had already
been greatly developed. That tradition is an empire of forms. Classical literature
was so obsessed with forms in poetry, consequently forms themselves were very
narcissistic, to the extent that the development of genres was suppressed in the sense
in which the unity of genres and the form that made them: content is set as a prior-
ity searching for its form. Art, in essence, was a constant and a creatively dramatic
quest on the part of content for its form. That straining of Oriental-Islamic tradition
is closely tied to its expressed lyricism, which will be introduced next.

Endless and carefree game of forms makes the tradition lyrical

There are several samples for a sketched development of classical literature in Ori-
ental-Islamic languages, that is, for the flourishing of forms in it. One is contained
in the then-dominant understanding of literary creativity and originality (which is
why I need to return to it occasionally, in different contexts), as a category that is,
essentially, not inherent to human activity. More precisely, in the Middle Ages, the
religious factor played a key role in the understanding of literary creativity, hence,
the Qur’anic Text was determined as the pivotal Text of an entire culture, even when
this is not seen at first. Just as in the European Middle Ages,144 conviction in the
man’s creational or creative abilities was considered sinful and arrogant in Orien-
tal-Islamic culture. On the other hand, that culture grew and spread at an incredible
speed, over a vast space, in contact with the best experiences of other traditions,
all of which means that an enormous energy developed within it, directed in most
part – apart from the development of philosophy, for example, as well as theology,
jurisprudence, etc. – to a grand poetic production, which, in accordance with the
aforementioned, gave itself fully to the abundance and embellishment of forms as
the most affirmative relationship towards God’s creational order of the world and
man’s general adjustment to that order. Man’s task in that culture is to discover the

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perfection of the world, as God’s creation, to harmonise, not antagonise it. (It is
known that when a man from the East even suffers the worst fate, he will neither
curse nor surrender to hopelessness, but says: Thank God).

Thus, in that general harmonising, man discovers a number of already-created forms,

while also inventing forms within that which God has already created. That is why
classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages is emphatically lyrical, not only
in the usual sense of lyrical poetry, but in another, peculiar sense. That literature is
cheerfully and lyrically dedicated to the creation and competition of forms, so a con-
clusion is simply imposed on the tradition as of an emphatically lyrical character
of forms. By that I do not mean that the forms are lyrical per se and for themselves
alone, but that they create an entire sphere of lyricism/lyrical character by mutual re-
lations and dialogising; they greatly contribute to the lyrical character of the culture
as a whole. Forms as such have become a theme, and served as important content
in the tradition. This is the specific manner of the poetological “presentation” of
classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages in lyrical forms. A careful analysis
of different types of the ghazal, musammaṭ forms and naẓiras, for example, in the
period of the highest development of this culture, shows that those forms were not
created as opposed to one another in the sense of mutual negation, poetical antag-
onism; rather, they are regularly formed upon the principles of complementation,
improvement, harmonisation, etc., but always for the purpose of the improvement of
the tradition as an improvement of the form. That is the essence in the development
of literary forms, primarily in poetry, and which says much about the character of
the culture as a whole. At the same time, this proves that it is unfounded to speak of
the epigone in the literature of Oriental-Islamic languages as of mere imitation. It is
exactly in that phase of the development of classical literature, when one could reach
the conclusion of epigone – in the phase of the musammaṭ forms and naẓiras – that
we find the highest degree of innovation of forms - innovation that is harmonised
with tradition.

These two “groups” of forms that I take as an operative example are not, thus, in
conflict of any kind. On the contrary, they brilliantly dialogise at the level of poetics,
and stylistics in general – in the domain of the poetic experience of the tradition.
In this context, I will use an analogy, fully aware of the inevitable weakness of
analogies, as well as the prevalence of analogies in a certain situation. Namely, the
mutual dynamic poetical relations in the musammaṭ forms and naẓiras, for exam-
ple, can be associated with the term polyphony that Bakhtin used in his study of of
Dostoyevsky’s poetics. Of course, the contexts are different, but in relations between
individual forms in classical literature there is a polyphony that never turns into
cacophony, or into a “denying” intonation and attitude; rather, it represents an over-
all adjustment and harmonisation. That makes the entire tradition cheerful; it turns
it – in the domain of literature – into a lyrical vastness. Whoever sees in a naẓira
or in some musammaṭ form a poetic denial or antagonism (as it may appear to an
amateur eye), or the epigone, fails to understand the essence of the poetics of clas-

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sical literature, including that expressly lyrical dialogising of forms; the attitude of
such a recipient has no excitement, mired at the horizon of events, methodologically
incapacitated to step “inside”.

Greater Oriental-Islamic commitment to literary forms than to content is consciously

marginalised in order to express a certain poetic ecstasy in the form – that commit-
ment, thus, cooperates fairly well with the fact that lyricism dominates that litera-
ture. In the genres and forms in which special attention is given to content, genre
is primarily lyrical, oftentimes hymn-like, or can even be categorised as an ode.
Drama, that is, tragedy, like ancient Greek tragedy, or an epic poem, were not given
an opportunity to develop in that culture, that is, in that literature, for the Oriental-Is-
lamic subject is expressed differently, since it sees the world, and its own position in
it, differently. One of the features of that literature is that the subject does not dive
into its emotionality, where it could find the basis for melancholic mood, even for
pessimism. The subject in that culture is essentially extroverted – open to the world
and in a permanent, joyful, lyrical entrance to the world with which it harmonises,
almost ecstatically, as with an emanation of God. That is why variations of panthe-
ism, to which some elements of Sufism and Sufi poetry essentially belong, will find
fertile ground in that culture. I will speak of this in a suitable place of this study. In
the given context, it is advisable to recall Hegel’s opinion related to the “Muham-
madan” poetry:

“The personal life of the spirit in natural phenomena and human affairs ani-
mates and spiritualizes them in themselves and sounds anew a special relation between
the subjective feeling, and soul, of the poet and the objects of his song. Filled by this
soulful glory, the heart in itself is peaceful, independent, free, self-subsistent, wide and
great; and in this affirmative identity with itself the heart imagines and now makes its
own the soul of things it attains like a peaceful unity with it; it grows into the most bliss-
ful and cheerful intimacy with objects in nature and their splendour, with the beloved
and the tavern, in short with everything worth praise and love.”145

In Oriental-Islamic literature, especially in the classical period, there is no pessimis-

tic poetry: it is impossible because of the relationship described towards the world.
In accordance with our traditional experience, it appears that we are prone to “de-
termine” that, in classical literature in Arabic, a significant poet, Abu al-`Atahiya
(d. 825), readily proclaimed by literary histories as an ascetic poet, greatly inclined
towards pessimism. A careful analysis of his poetry, however, shows that the opus
of this poet cannot be characterised as pessimistic poetry. One can even seriously
problematize whether or not it is appropriate to call this poetry ascetic (zuhdiyyāt),
for ascetics is not a characteristic of Islam. Abū al-‘Atāhiya’s poetry is, in fact, pious
poetry and it appears in the Abbasid period as a strong “poetic opposition” to poetry
(like that of Abū Nuwās) that transformed the specific manifestations of Oriental
pantheism into bacchanal gluttony and hedonism. These two “opposite” representa-
tives of the epoch should be observed as poetic competition, as a poetic expression

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of unrestrained hedonistic and pious self-control. In that literature, in general, there
is no pessimism, for – as I have already stated – a man from the East, and that entails
Muslims in general (Hegel would say: Muhammadans), does not fall into pessimism
even in the greatest of suffering, but humbly and calmly praises and thanks God for
it. Here it would be useful to cite Hegel on “Muhammadan poetry”, that is, the poet-
ry of the East. After this citation, I wish to show that it complements the marvellous
game and dialogising of forms in classical literature. Hegel writes:

“As for what essentially distinguishes a song’s mode of expression, I will em-
phasise only two chief points on which I have touched before: (i) The poet may express
his inner life and its emotions quite openly and without reserve, especially his cheerful
feelings and attitudes, so that he communicates in full everything that occurs in his con-
sciousness. (ii) Alternatively he may go to the opposite extreme and, as it were by his
approach, make us only surmise what is concentrated in his undisclosed heart. The first
kind of expression belongs mainly to the East and especially to the carefree cheerful-
ness and concentrated expansiveness of Mohammedan poetry, which with its brilliant
outlook loves to spread itself in all directions pensively and in ingenious combinations
of images. The second kind, on the other hand, is more to the taste of the self-concen-
trated inner life of the Nordic heart, which in represented stillness can often seize only
on purely external objects.”146

Hegel’s reflections on the classical Oriental-Islamic literature (the “Mohammedan”

poetry) are founded on the lyrical content of that poetry that opens up to the world,
in full abundance, like a flower, in which the poet’s spirituality always joyfully meets
the world where it announces his harmonisation with that world. That is why the
themes of the poems are very free in relation to the form – so much so that they are
not obligatory for certain genres. Themes move throughout the poetic forms with an
ease that is somewhat surprising, considering our conventional view of a relation-
ship of dependence of certain forms and certain content, thus the very movement
of themes after the initial surprise, increases the general impression on classical
literature, that is, its poetics – as of a true empire of lyricism. Every form can be a
“home” for every theme.

Thus, the loose relationship of themes toward content and vice versa strongly con-
tributes to the lyrical character of classical literature in general and its dynamics
expressed in the lyrically joyful movement of different content and forms, which
Hegel called the “carefree joy of the Mohammedan poetry and its expansion”. That
movement of themes to and fro contributes, on the one hand, to the joyful movement
of the entire literature and, on the other, and at the same time, it is one of the unex-
pected factors of the strong dynamics of the tradition. At first sight and superficially,
the tradition appears rather static, as if it is in that terrible condition that we call
traditionalism, but mechanisms of its dynamics are unusual and they need to be ex-
amined and interpreted from our perspective. For example, one could conclude that
the ghazal is one of the factors of making the tradition sclerotic, keeping in mind the

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historical stability of its name – from the Umayyad dynasty, to the so-called diwan
literature in the Ottoman Turkish language. However, it has been transformed in sev-
eral ways and in several aspects, among others, because it changed its form several
times, so it even “opened” that form – originally fully dedicated to love lyricism – to
many other kinds of content. What is there then to say about the poetically magnifi-
cent transformation of the ghazal into Sufi poetry; or at least that it largely inspired
it, with many orientalists of the opinion that this theory deserves special analysis?
Thus, these are peculiar kinds and ways of bringing dynamics into the tradition, and
the musammaṭ forms greatly contributed to that.

Apart from the dominant lyrical content of poetry, two phenomena contribute to the
general condition of the lyricism of classical literature.

First, the liberation of themes and forms, in the sense that they are not privileged
in the relationship, intensifies the overall freedom as openness in the world, and
towards the world; it intensifies the lyrically liberated entrance to the world. We can
see, even when in one poem – like the ancient Arabic and late “Ottoman” qaṣīda –
the majority of the dominant themes of poetry, and by that the poet’s freedom in the
sense of not being strictly limited to one theme is expressed. That is not anarchy,
but freedom, or, more precisely – that is poetical liberation, a process of constant
poetical liberation in the tradition, but not liberation from the tradition, in spite of
the strictness of the form; the issue is a constant movement of the Tradition, on its
refusal to surrender to lethal sclerosis and collapse.

Second, with the liberation that is expressed in the free relationship between forms
and content, it is interesting to observe – as Hegel would say “cheerful playing to
and fro” – an imaginative, creative game that forms play with each other, their ability
of producing a joyful metamorphosis, to transfer from one to another. Thus, poet-
ical forms express the lyrical cheerfulness of the tradition within themselves and
towards each other and are thus open to one another. I have stated earlier that it is
not a relationship of antagonism and elimination, even though it may appear at first,
but a relationship of traditional cooperation and poetic ennobling. Extensiveness
and the extroverted nature of the tradition and its forms are thus optimised towards
the “carefree joy of the Mohammedan poetry” in all its aspects: from the content
of the poems to mutual relationships between the forms. Although they are not the
only ones, the musammaṭ forms are a great example of that. Here it is important to
emphasise an element of those forms that may appear contrary to my conclusions.

The strictness of prosody and form in general in classical literature (the length of
syllables and their exact number, one rhyme, or a carefully controlled diversity of
rhymes in individual poems) may appear, because of such strictness, as a serious
limitation of the freedom of poetry that I have emphasised as a characteristic of clas-
sical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages. The situation is, in fact, the opposite.
Namely, the prosodic, or metric strictness of poetic forms is positioned in such a

161
way that it encourages the poetic game: it encourages the introduction of verses by
another poet into a poem of a poet (tahmīs, etc.), the experimentation with verses,
rhymes, etc. Let us recall the naẓīra, its understanding of limitations and freedom.
The issue is related to the (free) games of forms, and every game (I use here that
word only conditionally, of course) is essentially an effort for creativity within a
framework of strict rules, that is, in the strictness of rules. That is how many forms in
classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages behave, especially the musammaṭ
forms. The contrast is always exciting. In the musammaṭ forms, for example, in the
formal discipline of the poem, a reader can feel joy, and then he lives the excitement
of liberation, for a poet, within the framework of the set rules, brings something
new and significantly enriches the form he found. Had that not happened within the
framework of certain rules, a reader would never feel that liberation. However, he
feels it in several ways. On the one hand, the free movement appeals to the reader,
as an “exchange” of forms and content; on the other hand, the reader is pleased with
the lyrical expression of the theme. Finally, the reader sees the value of the poem in
that liberating game of forms that needs to be represented as the hero of the literary
tradition.

Form as a hero of the tradition and marginalisation of the author’s name

A complex and optimal reception of works of classical literature entails awareness
of the tradition. The values of a poem in the musammaṭ form, for example, can be
understood or affirmatively valued to a certain extent if the reader focuses solely
on that poem outside its literary-historical and poetical context. However, the same
poem will have a significantly different value for a reader who has knowledge of the
literary tradition, of the framework in which a poem is created, for valuing a poem
is realised within the reader’s familiarity with all the complex contexts in which that
poem is poetically realised. ‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs, which I here use as an example, is
not only complex by its form, but also by the fact that in one “vertical” (in Arabic)
a complex intertextual edifice is built with the bayts of another poet, but also by the
fact that in another, parallel textual “vertical”, it is represented as a complex form in
another language (the Ottoman Turkish language), thus constructing one and unique
form. It is complex on several levels.

This Tahmīs, as one of the musammaṭ forms, can be experienced, that is, valued, on
a “lower” level, with a more humble acquaintance with literary tradition. However,
it seeks, numerous reading competences in order to be read and valued in the full
scope of its literary-historical, poetical and artistic capacities. In other words – and
that is the point with this and other similar forms of classical literature – this Tahmīs
does not set demands only at the level of the reception of an art work, i.e. to be read
“only” as an individual art work. On the contrary, it expects another set of receptive
competences of which I have mentioned the literary-historical and the poetological.
For an optimally valid reception of this work, it is useful to know that it poetically
refers to the Ka‘b Ibn Zuhayr’s (7th century) Poem of the Mantle and it is necessary
to be familiar with many other details about that significant poem – for a competent

162
reception, it is of significance to know why the poem is, in fact, valuable; then it is
important to be acquainted with al-Būṣīrī’s qaṣīda (13th century), to which it also
refers, as well as intertextual relations between Būsīrī’s and Ka‘b’s poem, etc. In that
way, this literary division is presented as a kind of a “conduit motif” of the tradition.
Also, poetological knowledge is important in order to understand all the aforemen-
tioned and other relations between their intertextual communication. Ultimately,
the Tahmīs represents such a construct at the level of form, but also at the level of
content-related dialogising, which surpasses the receptive abilities of the so-called
average reader. These forms, in the full blossoming of classical literature, to which
the musammaṭ forms belong, simply demand an optimal knowledge (and respect) of
the tradition, as a condition of their valid, also optimised reception. That demand is
set at two levels, or in two directions. On the one hand, the author needs to possess a
relatively vast knowledge of literary tradition on the basis of which he constructs his
own work, and, on the other hand, the author and his work expect, proportionally, for
a reader to be familiar with the tradition. In such conditions for the “constructing” of
the work, literary contexts, poetic postulates, but also readers’ knowledge and recep-
tion are multiplied and intertwined. In that way, essentially, the tradition is multiply
“reinforced” and it treasures memory of itself.

One could object to this analysis by arguing that valuable works of art, including
those of the post-classical periods and our time, are in contact with the tradition,
since original literary works are not created outside the experience of the tradition,
even when they are poetically strongly opposed to it. And in that, a writer does not
have to be fully aware of the importance of tradition and of the relationship of his
work towards it. That indisputable fact has been well-known ever since T. S. Eliot’s
important essay on tradition and the individual talent. However, there are important
differences between Eliot’s and the classical relationship towards tradition. In clas-
sical literature – especially in forms that I here present as works of the late classical
period – forms are constructed so that the poet’s knowledge of tradition and the
creative “play” with it is demonstrated in unpredictable obviousness; that classical
creative inventing of forms occurs in poetics that we can call – conditionally, in
this context – a “poetics of cheerful forms”. In other words, the poet warns of his
own knowledge of poetry in the tradition, and of his determination to demonstrate
that knowledge in his own poetical creation to the highest possible extent. Such a
relationship of the poet towards tradition is very explicit. In that way, the “horizon”
of receptive expectations is marked: the reader is expected to value the work in
accordance with the author’s success in achieving his intentions, which are realised
almost surgically, because they are reduced to the domain of form without the “un-
predictability of the metaphysical” carried by the content of a literary work. Such a
strong focus on form, which becomes an inspiration, does not mark modern poetics
– that is, in the spirit of Eliot’s relationship between “tradition and the individual
talent”.

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Such a different accentuation or explication of the relationship between the poet
and tradition in which he creates carries numerous consequences. One of them is a
different understanding of originality or creativity in classical and modern literature,
from which follows a different relationship towards forms.147 In relation to that, it
is necessary to draw a conclusion on the position of the author/authorship as well. I
have spoken earlier about the position of the author in classical literature, in relation
to the term creativity, but here it should be expanded – in the context of elaboration
about forms, especially about the musammaṭ forms, in which the strictness of tradi-
tion culminated and in which it expressed full self-awareness.

In classical literature, there were different ways for suppressing the author’s position
from the beginning of the work, the dominant being that his name was mentioned
deeper in the text, after the invocation, that is, the taḥmīd. That was a standard way
of marginalising the author’s name. However, strongly and poetically entirely rea-
sonable, the articulated dialogising of forms, that I have previously only condition-
ally named the “polyphony of literary forms” in the tradition, also performs the
function of “dethroning” the author as the first or most important “fact” in a work
of art. The claim that the author is a new age phenomenon is especially true for the
Oriental-Islamic literature. Bakhtin’s term polyphony concerns, among other things,
the structure of the novel, especially Dostoyevsky’s novels, because it is suitable
for drawing analogies in the exposition on forms in classical literature; their mutual
relation strongly associates with the term polyphony.

Namely, the care with which forms are amplified and innovated in classical liter-
ature was very prominent and had such impressive results that the created forms
acquired their own “voice”, an individuality that they conquered in poetic dialogue
with other forms, while the author mainly remained in the shadow of their poetical
self-awareness; the individuality of the author was significantly supressed, for we as
readers who know the history of that form/forms in which they compete are almost
completely dedicated to the means by which competition is performed and results
achieved; we are not driven solely by the poem as such, but also by poems-its collo-
cutors, and, especially, the content of its poetic dialogising. Focus of the interest that
we today call reception is thus shifted significantly from the author to his work in a
dialogue with other works. As we read, for example, ‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs, the impor-
tance of the author’s name will be lost from our receptive horizon. It is understood,
of course, that it never vanishes, but that importance is significantly shifted from
the central position. To the reader of Tahmīs that I take as an example, there appears
at a certain “receptive phase” the importance of the name of the author whose po-
ems ‘Ushshāqī uses to construct the poetic edifice, but the progress of that poetical
dialogue gradually marginalises the importance of those other authors’ names, for
the poet’s technical virtuosity is so impressive and imposing that it demands full
attention. Every poet (participating in the construction of a musammaṭ form, that is,
a poem) had his own “poetic voice” while he was writing a poem, but they entered a
dialogue and thus relativized their voices, which are – all together – integrated into

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the musammaṭ form as a symphony. In that sense, in the exemplary Tahmīs, they are
cited, and ‘Ushshāqī’s verses strongly refer to poems by other two authors (Ka‘b
Ibn Zuhayr and al-Buṣiri).148 In other words, this poem (as well as many other from
similar or same group of forms) is in a way a collective work: the tradition ideally
expressed itself as the author – it emphasised its indisputable authority in whose
frames the innovation is realised.

In order to read this way, that is, in order to understand poems in the musammaṭ
forms, we need to possess a comprehensive knowledge of literature and of the tradi-
tion; we need to be able to understand such a dialogue of forms. That means, in fur-
ther consequences, that the poet, on the one hand, needs to brilliantly understand the
tradition, that is, the possibilities of forms that have already been realised in the tra-
dition, as well as to be able to open new perspectives to forms, which is the domain
of “creativity” and “originality” as they were perceived in classical literature. On the
other hand – and I have mentioned this on another occasion – the reader also needs
to be competent in order to be able to understand the poem appropriately. More
precisely – a reader needs to be learned in the field of literature. This is a complete
triumph of form. And that is the ultimate reach of the poetics of classical literature.

I will mention another example. Namely, I will return to Bajezidagić’s and Žgarić’s
poem, which brilliantly affirms the poetic tradition. I wrote more extensively about
them and presented their translations in the chapter “Naẓīra as a special kind of
poet’s ability”. I here reflect upon those two poems (emphasising their translation)
in another context.

At the first level of perception of Žgarić’s (17th century) naẓīra to Bajezidagić’s

poem about Mostar,149 the name of this poet can be placed at the very beginning of
the poem as an important piece of information; we can remember it as Bajezidagić’s
poem, but the more we find out about its motifs, about its political dialogue – and
the dialogue by itself entails other voices as well, stylistic devices, etc. – the more
we advance into other preoccupations in which the importance of the author’s name
fades. Today, we rightfully speak of the Mostar naẓīra as of a traditional poetic
phenomenon, and the name of the author appears only at some other level. Thus,
since we are talking about a true triumph of form, rather than of the originality of the
author in today’s meaning of the term, a conclusion logically follows that the form
is the hero in that tradition, not the individual author, and its task is to preserve and
cultivate the tradition as a supreme value, and to set the same demands before the
reader if his ambition is to perceive the work, for by perceiving a work he at the same
time perceives the tradition as such.

From such a situation, it is necessary to draw another conclusion, which I have al-
ready turned attention to in other contexts, and this exposition only verifies it. Name-
ly, the presented relationship/relationships of the poetic forms, their self-awareness
expressed in what I have conditionally called the “polyphony of the musammaṭ

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forms,” again confirms that the tradition was dynamic, for through a constant di-
alogue and metamorphosis a dynamism in the “space” of the tradition is achieved
that they have given a sound to in a specific way. In this context, we should recall
that that literary tradition could be perceived as sclerotic, as traditionalistic, as idly
epigonic, but such possible conclusion is but a result of today’s understanding of
originality, authorship, creativity, and other, mainly post-romantic categories. Clas-
sical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages in general was neither static nor scle-
rotic – it only needs to be revealed and the manners and mechanisms of its dynamism
interpreted. Let us shortly return to the naẓīra and see another way of making the
tradition dynamic.150

Žgarić’s poem is oftentimes tied through motifs and other important elements of the
form to another poem: as if it wants to be parallel (naẓīra =parallel) to another poem,
which we can call, in this context, a protopoem. However, its position is essentially
ambivalent, and that is what it wants to achieve. On the one hand, it submits itself
to the determined motifs and elements of the form in order to express full respect
towards the tradition. Because of that, it at first leaves the impression of its own con-
tribution to traditionalism and the epigonic, of poetic dedication by which it resigns
its own subjectivity and individuality because of the affirmation of other values as
priorities. On the other hand, he also constructs his own individuality, for a poet
wants to write a different poem from the one he dialogises with. In other words, he
is not an epigone, but a writer who respects tradition as a primary value and on that
basis constructs the individuality of his own poem, which is, however, significantly
limited. That is his ideal, and that is also the ideal of the entire tradition, realised
very successfully and unexpectedly: the poet demonstrated mastery by sacrificing a
significant part of his own (author’s) subjectivity to the authority of the form as the
most active factor of the tradition, but, to an extent that would suffice for his own and
the reader’s understanding of the author’s “originality”, he also expressed his own
subjectivity, that is, the artistic individuality of the work. Ultimately and put simply
– it is the different within the same.

From the thus presented relationship between the protopoem and metapoem, which
is the same with other musammaṭ forms, like tahmīs, it obviously follows that those
forms are not static at all, that the authors have subjectivity and that their works have
an identity, whereby both are constructed in mutual relations, in a peculiar kind of
poetical dialogue in which voices are not dissonant - on the contrary. The dynamism
of tradition is realised through the dynamism of its forms.

If we were to pass value judgements on such works, that is, forms, then we are,
after the previous analysis, reaching our goal. Namely, one should keep in mind a
classical understanding of originality, creativity, the beautiful, the poetic technique,
the indisputable authority of the tradition, the normativism of poetics, etc. Hence, if
we consider the poetics of the period – fully aware that we are approaching literature
that had different poetics – then the only possible conclusion is that the musammaṭ

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forms, naẓīras and other related forms are the ultimate reach of that poetics: they
are its gild and its point. That is what I call the ultimate development of the tradi-
tion. It was created for hundreds of years, over a vast space, cultivating the expe-
rience of the great ancient traditions, such as those in Sanskrit, in Persian – in the
“Pahlavi-plateau” to the troubadour poetry of Andalusia which was later powerfully
“dominated” by Lorca. That indeed was an impressive, inimitable poetical empire,
not only according to the width of its space, but also by the depth of its time. It is
presented by a unique poetic system.

In that cultural empire, in its late period, poems were written that were – it is ob-
vious from the previous analysis – the most successful expression of the poetics of
the time. Among them are poems by many authors that were at the very verge of the
empire, but at the heart of the same poetics. Their work bears witness to the kind of
creative relationship between the borderline and the epicentre that Lotman success-
fully defined as the semiosphere, in his work dealing with issues of semiotics.151 The
enormous forces of poetics, the centripetal strengths of that culture marginalised, as
we have seen, the poet’s peculiarity, as well as his ethnic exclusivity.

This loose relationship between form and content is, in fact, a characteristic of clas-
sical literature and thus has become – as a characteristic – a kind of an obligation,
regardless if this may appear paradoxical: all poetic forms are open to all themes;
any theme can be expressed in any form. Apart from that, the relationship between
forms themselves is such that they are easily perceived as the most apparent meta-
morphoses, but always acknowledging the determined, that is, the very strict rules
of the form. They complement each other, they are combined and they emerge from
one another creating new “entities of forms” that never forget their poetical origin
in the tradition.

The discussion about the complex relationship between different content and poeti-
cal forms in which a loose relationship prevails is only a preparatory activity for an
analysis of such a relationship in one of the most complex, yet, at the same time, one
of the most important forms of the classical literature. It is mathnawī.

THE MATHNAWĪ

The form mathnawī and the ancient Arabic qaṣīda

Literary historians are prone to claim that this literary form is of Iranian origin.152 By
entering classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, it became very popular
also in literature in the Ottoman Turkish language. Its great popularity is largely a
result of the Sufi character of some mathnawīs. This openness in a literary form to
different contents is the theme of this expose.

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The mathnawī is one of the supreme examples of the extent to which the Iranian
spirit was able to contribute to Oriental-Islamic culture in general, and especially its
literature. Many of the most significant forms, even entire and relatively numerous
literary subdivisions originate from Iranian culture, and by that I primarily mean its
pre-Islamic period in the Pahlavi language. That culture, especially literature, was
extraordinarily rich and its contribution to the Oriental-Islamic culture in general
was precious, but one should seriously take into account the following hypothesis:
How probable is it – and I am very prone to that opinion – that the Iranian culture
would have become sclerotic and collapsed had it not come to a strong connection
with the Arabic culture, which was, occasionally, poetically and ideologically dra-
matic, but, in the very essence of things, culturally ennobling for the most part. The
relatively fresh, suddenly growing Arabic culture ennobled by its freshness – the
freshness of novelty in general – Iranian culture, and thus strongly revitalised it, but,
at the same time, Arabic culture was also immensely enriched by Iranian culture,
thus creating an amalgam that would later ennoble Ottoman culture, etc. It is difficult
to at all state who contributed more within this is special kind of unity.153

Upon mentioning the mathnawī, the first association is Rumi’s pivotal work under
the same title. Readers who are not well-acquainted with classical literature in Ori-
ental-Islamic languages do not move forward from that momentary association of
Rumi’s work, while specialists know that Rumi’s Mathnawī is only the most famous
in a multitude of works created in the form of mathnawī. The associative reduction
of the abundance of works created in the form of mathnawī to a single work (Rumi’s
Mathnawī) - this unusual “substitution” - is interesting from literary-historical and
poetological points of view.

Thus, the mathnawī is a form with special characteristics, and many works were
written in that form. The theme/content is not crucial for its title. This means – con-
sequently and according to what we have seen so far in relation to so-called genres,
that is, with the absence of genres in a strict sense of the word – that the mathnawī
cannot be spoken of as of as a genre. However, Rumi’s Mathnawī has become, ow-
ing to its great power resting on associated literary and ideological potential, a rep-
resentative of its form to the extent that it is completely identified with it. What is
more, by that power and significance, this work became capable enough to suggest
its own content (that is, the content of Rumi’s Mathnawī) as the content of the math-
nawī in general. In other words, in the reception of many readers, especially ones
in the West, it is identified as a genre, that is, a literary division, and as a title, with
the kind of identity and simplicity that is characteristic of the titles of literary works.
In the Western reception it has become reduced to the title of Rumi’s work. By po-
sitioning itself as a title, Rumi’s Mathnawī shows how a form can become a genre
and, at the same time, adopt the identity of the title. Specialists know that Rumi’s
Mathnawī is, in fact, only one of many mathnawīs, that is, that it is a form in which
Rumi wrote his work. That resembles the hypothetical situation in which a work by
an author entitled The Novel could be identified with its subdivision to the extent it

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represented its kind independently and completely, so that by the mere mention of
that (hypothetical) title, one would immediately think of a certain work.

This fact of Rumi’s Mathnawī (it is a reception-related fact, after all) goes unnoticed
by many readers, but I believe that it should be emphasised that this bears witness
– perhaps more convincingly than anything else – of the miraculous power of the
Mathnawī in a very rich literary tradition. As far as I know, the case where a work
convincingly assumed the name of a form and thus represents the form itself and
several works written in that form is unique in literary history. This truly shows the
great power of a work in literary history.

The mathnawī as a form is a special literary entity, and, as such, it differs abundantly
from other forms. There are commonplaces in the mathnawī structure that are found
in other forms of classical literature that are – as commonplaces – a cohesive poetic
factor in the vast literary tradition. Namely, the mathnawī contained, like a topos, the
taḥmīd as an introductory section in which God was praised and the Prophet blessed.
The exception is Rumi’s renowned Mathnawī: it does not contain a taḥmīd, that is, a
prelude with a topos. It begins with an imperative: Listen. Commentators are prone
to interpret this imperative as a kind of a parallel to the first word in the Qur’an:
Read. However, it is useful to observe the first word of the Mathnawī as an explica-
tion of the author’s intention to act as a missionary among his numerous listeners.

The Taḥmīd could not change its position in classical literature because, as a pro-
logue, it expressed the author’s humbleness in relationship to God and the Prophet,
which was in accordance with the understanding of the so-called author’s creativity
at the time. After the taḥmīd, next in the “hierarchy” is the writer’s praise of a dig-
nitary, most frequently, of a ruler, after which he would finally begin exposing the
reason for writing his poem, at which point the poem begins. Such structure is stan-
dardised in prose works of literature, in scientific works, in hotbas (oratory genre),
etc. Of course, all that is a consequence of the conviction that God is the only one
who creates, and these explications – which are both mandatory and introductory –
function as a “poetic mechanism” for the sacralisation of culture.

As with the majority of other forms, the mathnawī has an Arabic etymology: math-
nawī, which means a rhyming couplet. Namely, since half-bayts are rhymed, that
means that the work is written in a couplet rhyme, and, since every bayt has a dif-
ferent rhyme, it is, at the same time, an intertwined rhyme: a bayt is an independent
syntactical unit, and leaving it is impermissible. Although the relevant literary-his-
torical sources and lexicons speak of the mathnawī as an “originally Iranian form”,
its strong poetic correlations with literature in the Arabic language are more obvious
– from the term mathnawī to the structure of the first bayt found in the ancient Ar-
abic qaṣīda. It was written in bayts. Two half-bayts make a bayt, which is the basic
principle of the poetic form that originates from the ancient literature. This is further
evidence of a connection between the ancient and classical literature in Oriental-Is-

169
lamic languages. Although this form is defined as Iranian, regardless of the fact that
Iranians cultivated it as “their own”, it also fosters a common experience of ancient
poetry, notwithstanding certain differences.

The mathnawī rhyme is innovative in relation to the ancient qaṣīda, which persisted
in the monorhyme, while the consonant that carried the rhyme appeared at the end
of the bayt (the second half-bayt), and half-bayts were rhymed only in the first bayt.
However, the structure of the bayt remained the same as it was in the ancient period:
Two half-bayts were written in parallel, horizontally, and then bayts were strung
vertically as well. I will present an example:

‫وز نما مردم بحيوان بر زدم‬ ‫از جمادى مردم نامى شدم‬

‫پس ﭽه ترسم كى ز مردن كم شدم‬ ‫مردم از حيوانى آدم شدم‬

‫تا بر آرم از ماليڪ پر و سر‬ ‫حملهء ديگر بميرم از بشر‬

‫كل شيى هالک اال وجهه‬

154
‫وز ملک هم بايدم جستن زجو‬

This is a translation of the verses:

I died as a mineral and became a plant,

And died as a plant and became an animal;

I died as an animal and became a man...

So why should I fear? Each death ascended me!

After this I shall die a man

And like a winged angel ascend to heaven.

And I’ll leave the angelic stations,

For all shall pass but His face.155

By maintaining an important part of the structure of the ancient qaṣīda, the mathnawī
borrows the rhyming principle of the first two half-bayts from the ancient qaṣīda,
and applies that to the entire poem. Thus, half-bayts are rhymed in a mathnawī, but
each bayt has a different rhyme: aa / bb / cc / dd, etc. In that way, a strong connection
with the ancient qaṣīda is maintained, for it is impossible to predict that the rhym-
ing of the first two half-bayts was a norm in the ancient qaṣīda. In this way, the to
half-bayts were significantly defamiliarised in relation to the entire (monorhymed)
poem: they represented a strong “headline” position. In other words, in the ancient

170
qaṣīda, a “poetical tension” was created in relation to the first bayt, or structural
defamiliarisation, by standardising the rhyme of the first two half-bayts, while this
precisely – and seemingly paradoxically – relativizes normativity to a certain extent,
for the first half-bayt – especially because it is initial – takes over the poem from the
monotony of the monorhyme.

Poetic awareness of the need to save work from the monotony of the monorhyme
is especially strong in the mathnawī form. Namely, since the mathnawīs were very
long poems – frequently of epic proportions – monorhyme was an exceptional, per-
haps even impossible task for the author. However, even if the author managed to
write such a work in monorhyme, it would undoubtedly be tiring to a reader/listener
because of the length of the work. That is how a flaunting rhyme of the mathnawī
helped avoid lassitude, that is, monotony.

Thus, the mathnawī cultivates a strong position from the ancient qaṣīda: the bayt
is a structurally strong position of the qaṣīda, so the mathnawī assumed it as its
own structure. What used to be defamiliarisation in the form of the ancient qaṣīda,
became a norm in the mathnawī. Defamiliarisation at the form level, in relation to
the ancient qaṣīda is contained also in that the mathnawī abandons the structure of
the poem in “a block” that is realised by the monorhyme: the mathnawī bayts have
an independent (pair) rhyme, which ensures a certain level of “sovereignty” to the
bayts, the sovereignty in the very domain of the form. The ancient qasīda had, until
that point, gained independence for bayts at the content level, and it held them in a
tense unity by the elements of the form, in a “block”. Independence of bayts, real-
ised in such a way in the mathnawī, provides ease to the entire form, a “flaunting”
uncharacteristic of the ancient poetry, for the poet of the mathnawī, by abundance
of his rhymes, presents himself as a master craftsman who has a new approach to
ensuring the “lyrical character of the form”, its cheerful movement “to and fro”. The
phonetics of the rhyme in such a form are significantly different than the phonetics
of the rhyme in the ancient qaṣīda, regardless of the fact that their dialogue is validly
articulated at the structural level and recognisable to experts (and a reader in the
classical period had to be familiar with the poetic tradition). In that way, the devel-
opment of the morphology of literary forms in the universe of classical literature in
Oriental-Islamic languages can be reliably traced. What could be described as the
Iranian “poetical spirit” undoubtedly ennobled the “Arabic poetical spirit,” which
also had vast traditional experience and in which the Arabic genius expressed itself
independently. In fact, it should be emphasised that the creativity was exclusively
two-way.

As far as the content-form relationship is concerned (which is always a current rela-

tionship in classical literature), it should be emphasised that it was poetically postu-
lated in the mathnawī as in other forms. Namely, the form mathnawī is not reserved
for certain content, but more precisely for a certain form, for every form can be the
content of the mathnawī. Thus, in that form as well, by which classical literature in

171
Oriental-Islamic languages is largely characterised, we see a constant loose relation-
ship between the theme and the form, and between the form and the theme, which
again characterises classical literature as poetics of “dynamic contrasting”: on the
one hand, the principles of form/prosody are respected, and, on the other hand, and
at the same time – the movement of themes through different forms is unbridled,
which to a great extent relativizes the seeming strictness and normativity of the po-
etics of classical literature. This is also an efficient way of dynamising the tradition.

It is necessary to point to another differentia specifica of the mathnawī as a form.

Namely, apart from a special rhyme, the mathnawī is characterised by being signifi-
cantly longer than other forms. Its characteristic is also narrativity, thus, by these
elements, it is brought to the verge of the experience of epic poetry. In any case, the
mathnawīs are significantly longer than qasīdas, although the length of the mathnawī
varies. For example, A Rhymed Autobiography of Varvar Ali Pasha contains 177
bayts.156 Rumi’s Mathnawī contains about 27,000 bayts, while Firdawsi’s Shahnama
contains up to 60,000 bayts.157

The content of the mathnawī varies. Firdawsi’s Shahnama is an epic poem in the
form of a mathnawī, and it focuses on the history of Iranians (containing a number
of legends, of course), from the dawn of the world to the loss of Iranian national
independence in the 7th century. The Mathnawī is a work of the greatest Sufi poet
Rumi (1207 – 1273) and it presents a kind of an “encyclopaedia of Sufism” and a
hymn of the desire for meeting with God. It discusses the sense of human existence,
on one’s own being in a quest for the Wine of the Divine Love, or the efforts for
uniting with God.

Mathnawīs as naẓīras in the late classical period

What is interesting in relation to the mathnawī as a form is its special value in the
tradition expressed through the writing of naẓīras (work/parallel) to famous math-
nawīs, especially to that of Rumi. That fact affirms an intense communication among
other forms, as well as a poetic dominant of classical literature, a creative game
of forms as a continuation of the tradition and as the expression of a special kind
of authorial freedom within it. Naẓīras in the form of the mathnawīs express the
ultimate “creative heaviness” of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages.
Ethnic Bosniaks also significantly participated in that, contributing significantly to
the integralism of classical literature as a unique poetic system.

From the classical literature of the Oriental-Islamic languages in which Bosniaks

wrote, I will only mention the mathnawīs called A Rhymed Autobiography of Varvar
Ali Pasha and Muradnama by Dervsh Pasha Bajezidagić (d. 1603), which is also
Tasawwuf.158 It would be useful also to mention here that another Mostar poet – Der-
vish Mostarac Žgarić (d. 1640) – wrote a naẓīra to Bajezidagić’s famous poem about
Mostar, and that he was famous for that poem. Thus, it is difficult to classify a naẓīra
as a genre in the modern meaning of the term, for it is all contained in the poet’s

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technique, or, better said, it is contained in the “technology of poetry” that optimally
affirmed the principle of imitation rather than originality in classical literature.

Mathnawī – even the Sufi mathnawīs – such as is the Bajezidagić’s – maintain a

polythematic character. Namely, even though these are relatively long poems – in-
cluding epic poems – a polythematic “morphology” of the qaṣīdas is recognisable,
and it included several themes in relatively stable positions. Those themes have a
tendency to become independent of genre, but still remain in the structure of a single
work/poem. This is how the so-called “Persian character” of the mathnawī appears
in a conditional meaning, for here the issue is the poetic principle that is maintained
in classical literature – primarily in the qaṣīda – and in the Persian and Ottoman
Turkish languages, and all of which we recognise in the ancient qaṣīda in Arabic.
The poetic persistence by which even the mathnawī is marked by a polythematic
structure preventing the themes from separating is almost fascinating. For exam-
ple, Bajezidagić’s mathnawī-naẓīra, entitled Muradnama, contains introductory
themes/”genres”: taḥmīd, nat, panegyric to the ruler at the beginning and at the end
of the work, sebebi telīf (the reason for writing a work) – all that according to the
normatives of this form. The central part of the poem is Sufi. The qaṣīda is structured
in the Ottoman Turkish language almost in the same manner.

Sabit Užičanin (1650 – 1712) wrote several mathnawīs and was respected in litera-
ture in the Ottoman Turkish language. Edhem ü Huma – a poem of unrealised love
between two young people – is his famous mathnawī. Another mathnawī of his,
Zafernama, written in 426 bayts, is dedicated to Selim Giray, a Crimean khan, whose
victories in fights against the Russians are celebrated.159

Although this may seem digressive, it is necessary to reflect here upon some transla-
tions of Rumi’s Mathnawī into Bosnian, keeping in mind the importance of his work.
I will here pay attention solely to some translations of the Mathnawī into English
and Bosnian. The reason is even more important because the English translation was
translated into Bosnian. That digression is not only bibliographical; on the contrary,
by it I want to show that translations can be very inadequate, and that a reflection
should be made on some translations of the Mathnawī from the point of view of
poetics, which is the theme of this study.

Works of classical literature in inadequate translations: The Mathnawī as an

example
Translations of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages are always and
especially problematic. These are mainly translations by oriental philologists who
were for the most part insensitive to the aesthetic values of the source text, as was
mentioned earlier in the text. However, I need to return to this unpleasant but import-
ant theme because of the translations of some mathnawīs, especially Rumi’s Math-
nawī, since it is one of the most important works not only of the Oriental-Islamic
but world literary heritage. However, beforehand one should superficially mention

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Marija Đukanović, who translated A Rhymed Autobiography of Varvar Ali Pasha in
such a way as to ignore even the basic characteristic of the work, that is, its math-
nawī form, which is expressed in the word rhymed in the very title of the work. Mar-
ija Đukanović’s translation (it was her doctoral thesis) does not contain any rhyme,
nor even rhythm, or parallelisms – for that matter, anything that characterises the
mathnawī form.160

Things are even worse with Rumi’s Mathnawī, since it is an immensely significant
work. Fejzulah Hadžibajrić translated the work from Persian. He was a famous recit-
er and interpreter of the Mathnawī from Sarajevo (the so-called chair for Mathnawī
in Sarajevo), and he was a successor of Haji Mujaga Merhemić, who interpreted the
Mathnawī in the Mevlevi Khanqah on Bentbaša in Sarajevo. The chair for Math-
nawī existed in Sarajevo, with certain interruptions, until 1969.161 After that, hafiz
Hadžimulić, imam of the Emperor’s Mosque in Sarajevo, lectured on it, and after
him, even today, hafiz Mehmed Karahodžić lectures on the Mathnawī.

With full respect to the tradition of the interpretation of the Mathnawī in Sarajevo,
one should warn against its translation, published by the Ljiljan publishing house,
which is aesthetically completely inadequate, even wrong in that sense. Namely, I
have stated that the mathnawī is a form that is in poetical sense brilliant and consis-
tent, but the translator ignored that fact: Hadžibajrić’s translation of Mathnawī does
not even resemble a poem – these are prose writings that are aesthetically utterly in-
competent, which is, in a way, a forgery of the source text.162 To make matters worse,
the book was published as obligatory reading in schools.

This relationship between the translator and the text points to the fact that some
translators and commentators, although considered important in a given field, se-
verely reduce a poetic work to its ideological (religious) dimensions. The poetic
postulate of the mathnawī in general – especially Rumi’s – is that the narrative, in
fact that which is usually told in prose forms (stories, parables, complex allegorical
stories, occasionally even fables), should be expressed in the form of a poem that is
prosodically carefully structured. That is an outstanding poetic shift. Putting stories
into verses is not only “formal”, for it functions to a great extent in the cultivation
of the reader’s/listener’s pathos, even in his or her religious exaltation. Finally, with
a poetic form thus organised, the Mathnawī corresponds with the sacral text, which
also simultaneously affects the reader’s mind and heart by its content, as well as by
its form. By transferring such a form, one very precisely tasked, into aesthetically
passivized prose writings, the entire work is displaced, essentially and irrevocably,
from certain spheres of its tradition, so that it loses a significant part of its identity.
Paradoxically, the Mathnawī has been interpreted for decades; a chair for Mathnawī
even existed in Sarajevo (in a khanqah) and threatening its identity was a priori
agreed to, sometimes even deliberately.

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After Hadžibajrić’s translation, another inadequate introduction of the Mathnawī into
Bosnian appeared.163 This translation bears the same kind of irresponsibility towards
the virtues of the source text as can be seen in Hadžibajrić’s translation. Namely,
the Mathnawī text in this translation does not even resemble poetry: it does not
contain rhyme, rhythm, parallelisms – nothing that could make a text poetic. Only at
certain points does one find inversion. However, that is not all – the troubles never
end. Namely, the text was translated from an English translation. Retranslation is a
brilliant way to additionally distance the text from the source text, especially if we
are dealing with grand works of literature like Mathnawī. It is also difficult to com-
prehend the irresponsibility of the publisher who agrees to publish translations of
translations. Furthermore, Imamović translated Nicholson’s translation, and Nichol-
son was a famous orientalist.164 His work in oriental studies has been canonised long
ago, so it is possible that Imamović fell under the influence of that fact. However, it
is often the case that the famous orientalists are the guiltiest of misrepresenting the
classical literature of Oriental-Islamic languages through translation, so systemati-
cally in fact that we must ask ourselves whether this was their strategy. Nicholson’s
translation falls among philological translations that are aesthetically passivized,
although his translation of Mathnawī was very much praised at the time. The “rela-
tionship of measure” is interesting in all of this. Namely, I have mentioned several
times that Mathnawī is one of the most important works in the world literature and
that Nicholson is one of the most famous names in oriental studies. The possibility
that such an esteemed scholar is unaware of the integrity of the Mathnawī (as well
as any other literary work) is simply surprising, and just as surprising is that a trans-
lation such as his is so aggressive against the integrity of a work that conquered the
world. If a theologian in a Sarajevo khanqan was unable to understand that, then a
prominent orientalist who had already become an institution had to be aware what
he was dealing with, together with the consequences of his translation. Every literary
expert would ask himself: What is the courage that permits a significant work to be
desecrated by transferring its brilliant poetic form into prose writings and what will
it say about the brilliant reception of that work? Finally, the work was published in
English, the language in which it will have the most readers.165 Such a translation
is sufficient evidence that the translator, in fact, does not understand best what a
literary work is and how it functions. Nicholson, as well as many other philologists,
had a complex called “adherence to the source text” so he was thriving to achieve an
ideal that was wrongly understood.166

On the basis of my experience with the translation-violence performed by some

orientalists, or more precisely, oriental philologists, it should be concluded that it is
truly necessary to unmask the translation forgeries of the prominent literary works of
classical literature and how they disavow an entire literature. The anathema is upon
their publishers as well – from Great Britain to Bosnia and Herzegovina.167

This digression regarding the translations of the most important works of Orien-
tal-Islamic culture is really necessary because the problem is very serious: from

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one language or one culture the disfigured works are introduced, and the excuse, or
argument that is, paradoxically, presented as a virtue, is literal translation, that is,
a translation “loyal to the source text”. That is the fate of Rumi’s Mathnawī in the
Bosnian language – although there has been a long tradition of studying the Math-
nawī in Sarajevo – but also in English and in many other languages. This should be
investigated.

The mathnawī form contains a poetic specificity that needs to be brought into con-
nection with these wrongdoings in translation. Namely, in the poetics of classical
literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, the mathnawī is an extraordinary achieve-
ment because, among other, all that is usually expressed in prose works (stories,
anecdotes, various parables, etc.) here it is expressed in verse. It is essentially nar-
rative, but its narration is developed within a strictly determined poetic form. In the
domain of poetics – and its essence is what makes it special form, a form inseparable
from the work of art, for in its separation it would cease being what it is - it strongly
participates in the reception of the mathnawī narrative. The primary task of its con-
tent is to teach religion (in the Sufi belief, of course) and other aspects of life to an
individual and community.Hence, in accordance with this, the mathnawī could be
categorised in a wider context as an adab, in the sense of moral-didactic literature.
On the other hand, and I have emphasised this earlier, it is thematically composite
like a polythematic qaṣīda, which means that it simultaneously contains a cultivated
memory of the tradition, as well as a need for poetic refreshment.168

Rumi’s explications on poetry

The extent to which the poetic form of the mathnawī is important can be well illus-
trated by several significant attestations of Rumi regarding the relationship to one’s
own work, and more precisely to the poetics of one’s own work, as well as to the
poetic tradition whose poetic postulates are cultivated by Rumi’s work. Those places
(I will later cite them) deserve special attention in this exposition, since there are
different interpretations of them.

Speaking of his own work, Rumi seriously complains – as a man seriously worried
about, as he believes, mutual unsuitability of his thought, idea, emotion and form in
which he is to announce them to people:

“There is so much love within me, that when my friends visit me, fearing they will
be bored, I recite poetry to keep them entertained. But where am I and where is that
poetry? My God, I detest poetry; there is nothing worse for me. It is the same as
when someone thrusts his arm into the stomach to wash it, only to entertain guests. If
guests want the stomach, I need to do it. My God, a man examines well what kinds
of goods a town needs and what kind of commodities they buy, and then he buys it
and resells. It does not matter that the goods are worthless. (…) What can I do? In
my country, among my people, there is nothing more disgraceful than poetry. Had I
remained in my country, I would live the life they are used to and I would do what

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they would want me to, like, lecture, write books, warn and advise people, ascetics
and jobs that are seen by the outer eye.”169

These deliberations by Rumi seem controversial. For a valid understanding of Ru-

mi’s words cited here, it is necessary to contextualise them (and that is what Rumi
himself indicates). They are important for my exposition in at least two ways. On
one hand, through pervious citations, Rumi problematizes some basic poetological
issues, and, on the other, it is important to keep in mind that the issues were ad-
dressed by one of the most important writers in the Oriental-Islamic languages.

In Rumi’s statements that “there is nothing more disgraceful than poetry” in his
country and that he “detests poetry”, it appears that he deems poetry as something
crude, unworthy of him and his mind. It is like a stomach (intestines) that contains
inappropriate content. However, he states – and that is absolutely clear – that poetry
in his country, with his people, is very popular, in spite of his different opinion of it.
Rumi the poet is still aware of the importance of words, but the problem is that he is
constantly “struggling with” the word, that he reaches for it with changeable success
and that he “subjects” himself to it: “The word is my enemy, it subjugates me. That
is why I am sad, I would guide my friends to the right path, I speak, but the word
does not comply with my wish. That is why I am sad. But the word hovers over me
and I am subjugated by it. I rejoice because the word is God-given, all will revive
where it goes.”170

Without a doubt, Rumi is aware that poetry is extremely popular with his people, or
more precisely, in his culture, but the trouble is, mainly, that it entertains his friends,
and this to a certain extent diminishes his ultimate, unspeakable Sufi seriousness,
which is essentially in opposition to all kinds of entertainment. Rumi is fully ded-
icated to the Sufi experience, to metaphysical love (“There is so much love within
me”), and when his friends come for his advice, to listen to his experience, he is
afraid that he will not be able to find a true expression for his love and that his visi-
tors will be bored (“out of fear that they will be bored, I recite poetry so that they are
entertained”). He is ready to “dig” to “search the intestines” to please his guests, that
is, to act in accordance with the love he is filled with and of which he would want
to unburden himself by passing it to dear people. He is aware that he is forced into
the poetic word, for his guests have a high opinion on it, and his people as a whole:
“My God, a man examines well what kinds of goods a town needs and what kind of
commodities they buy, and then he buys it and resells.”

Contextualising Rumi’s words related to poetry shows the complexity of his rela-
tionship towards poetry, which is manifested in two ways – on the one hand, he is
aware that poetry is a general need of his people and friends, and, on the other hand,
he treats poetry as means by which he expresses a love that devastates him. And the
third very important factor in considering these complex relationships is that Rumi
agrees to the poetic word (“I am looking for a man in this world whom I could teach

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the work, and as I cannot find a buyer of the work but a customer for speech, I thus
speak.”).171

In all of the aforementioned citations, Rumi takes up a critical position towards

poetry in the sense that he always speaks of it in relation to expressing the supreme
content of his imagination and intuition (that is, of course, Sufi in nature), and in
relation to a strong internal imperative to teach, which means that he feels to be part
of a noble mission. That is why his relationship towards poetry cannot be considered
unconditionally and finally negative, for he still expresses himself through poetry, he
is aware that his friends love it, even his entire people, and he is not a man capable
of abhorring all of that.

Rumi’s relationship towards poetry is expressed in these citations - which have be-
come very famous and exposed to controversial interpretations - as an essentially
strongly tense relationship between content and form, as a critical deliberation of
form from the point of view of its ability to adequately “encompass” (sublime) Sufi
content. Rumi personally believes that he is pure love striving to unreservedly pres-
ent itself to others as well so that they could comprehend its values, or, at least, a
part of its values, but poetry is unable to express that wealth. Such an understanding
does not mean worthlessness, but simply the inexpressibility of the poet’s imag-
ination; poetry bears a certain value (that is why everybody loves it), but it is an
inadequate expression of Sufi ascensions, the stations “of its content”: it is about
the brilliant selection of contrasts. After all, he expresses himself through poetry, for
there is no better way of guiding his audience towards the love he is filled with. By
that very fact, poetry is not rejected. If we were to expand Rumi’s metaphor on the
“intestines”, then the “intestines” stand opposite to the heart – which is the ultimate
symbol of purity, nobleness, love: he carries the “heart” while the visitors are asking
for the “intestines”.

According to the aforementioned statements on poetry, Rumi positions it as a (nec-

essary) means, not as the ultimate goal. Poetry has (i) an entertaining function (Rumi
recites it so that his friends have fun), and he strives to express the highest levels
of seriousness and reality – pure Love as the cognition of God. Those two kinds of
“states” – the entertaining and the cognitive – Rumi sees an non-complementary, if
not in conflict, but he is persistently aware that he is under the pressure of words; he
has no other means for his mission (teaching) than poetry. Thus, poetry for him is
a necessary instrument; regardless how limited in expressing his cognitive states, it
has no substitution as an “instrument”.

Rumi’s account of how he underestimates poetry (in poetry he announces his most
important works, states of spirit and mind) carries another meaning. Namely, a sig-
nificant section of this study so far has been dedicated to explaining the philological
and technical nature of classical poetry – to the poetics in which form was preferred
over content, even over the maximum synchronisation of content and “its” form. In

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the aforementioned citations, Rumi constructs his relationship towards that aspect
of poetry, towards an infinite game of forms. The technical perfecting of poetry that
becomes a goal unto itself is, from Rumi’s position, of course, necessarily placed
in an inverse position in relation to Rumi’s priority – expressing supreme Sufi con-
tent. Obviously, that is what he holds against his friends who want him to entertain
them with verses. Rumi unquestionably prefers content – not just any content, but
Sufi content – and the transcendence of that content is by itself inappropriate to any
kind of entertainment or fun. The Sufi position and entertainment are inappropriate
to one another. Rumi complains that the word does not obey him, but he is, at the
same time, aware of its meaning, for “the word is God-given, all will revive where it
goes.” The content of his work is not “blessed” with its form, although a more opti-
mal form does not exist. That is why Rumi says he is sad: the inability of the poetic
word to fully transfer love, the Sufi experience, to others, as a state of his mind and
soul, creates within him a sort of tension, even melancholy, since he is aware that it
is impossible to completely and finally overcome it. One should not doubt that such a
feeling, because it is permanent, creates within him the kind of warmth, the glow that
makes poets sensible. For Rumi is restless and upset in two ways – in at least two
ways. On one hand, his Sufi restlessness is permanent and quite special – as a special
form of excitement in the cognitive ascent. On the other hand, he is disturbed by the
permanent quest for an optimal form by which he can never be fully satisfied. The
first kind of excitement is the state of the Sufi spirit; this second kind of excitement
is a peculiar kind of the poet’s sensibility and restlessness, which means that Rumi is
a Sufi and a poet at the same time, and that his states persist in a strong interaction,
and that they are, after all, mutually cultivated. Apart from this, Rumi described in
the aforementioned citations – and it is contextually clear – the state of traditional
poetry as a dominant literary form, but one sold in philotechnic, as a dominant lit-
erary form, as well as his relationship towards such poetry and poetics. All of those
aspects of his statements on poetry are truly poetic and deserve our full attention.
The relationship between content and form in which he needed – by an inner dic-
tation of the overstretched Sufi experience – to express that content and especially
to transfer it to others are the key issues/problems of Rumi’s existence as a man of
faith and as a poet. He is simultaneously “imprisoned” in the tradition, in historical
poetics, for poetry has no alternative for expressing its spirituality. That is why his
“contempt” towards poetry was seen in his distance from “elitist” poetry, which he
sang – judging by the scholars of Iranian studies – in an ordinary, almost people’s
language, without complicated Sufi symbols and terms, freed of the elitist, artificial
style.172 By accepting the necessity of poetic form, he used a relatively simple (math-
nawī) structure in which couplets are rhymed. This poetic technique is much simpler
than monorhyme poetry, hence the burden on the author is less heavy and he can
direct his attention far more successfully to content as the primary aspect of his ex-
pressivity. Of course, Rumi was aware, being a successor of the poetic tradition, that
verse structure – its rhythmic and, generally, phonetic value – strongly participates
in the reception of his work, that it cultivates the emotions of his listeners/readers,
and that this emotion is valuable for all that he is trying to present to the world, from

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himself, from his experience. The simple language intended for the widest circle
of his listeners/readers, as well as the relatively simple but also resonating rhyme,
played an exceptional role in the reception of the Mathnawī hundreds of years after it
was created. It was especially popular with the recipients that we usually call a “wide
audience”, suitable for its endless spread around the khanqahs, while the rhythm and
quality of its verses called for a ritual cooperation between musical instruments, and
all of that together contributed to ecstatic self-contemplation.

Rumi’s explicit need for teaching (adab!) most probably exceeded all of his expecta-
tions, hundreds of years after his passing (it would be inappropriate to say for such
a Sufi that he died). Such success rests in the way he problematized the relationship
between content and form, which will be discussed later. At this point, one needs to
focus on association in the given context.

From the point of view of poetics, it is interesting to see the way in which Rumi
used the polyvalent nature of the content to poetically upgrade the simplicity of
the language and the verse. He mainly used fables, parables, and different kinds of
allegorical structures in general to ensure the polyvalence of his work, including its
openness towards many subjects and different periods. That is one of the reasons
for the constant interpretation of the Mathnawī: it had an abundance of comments; I
have already mentioned the Sarajevo “chair” for interpretation of the Mathnawī. In
that way, Rumi’s Mathnawī is poetically defamiliarised considering its importance
in a tradition, in a culture, which means that his work is an important innovation
to the entirety of classical literature in the Oriental-Islamic languages. Hence the
Mathnawī differed from the dominant technical complexity of form (we can recall
the complex nature of the musammaṭ forms), just as it simplified language and style,
showing thus, among other things, that Rumi de facto confirms his belittling rela-
tionship towards a highly developed philological technique of poetry, the perfec-
tionism of its form, its stylistic artificiality and generally towards poetry’s pretence
of omnipotence. At the same time, however, Rumi overcomes that demonstrative,
proclamative simplicity by choosing “narratives” that contain the highest degree of
allegory and multiple meaning, and hence his work appears as a kind of antithesis
with great tension: complex thought is expressed through simple language and a
relatively simple poetic form. In such relations, the form appears as something truly
“external” and “formal” in relation to the content, something not worthy of optimal
attention as was the then-predominant poetry of philological technique; rather, one
needs to dive in beyond that form in search of meanings that are covered by many
veils. Without a doubt, this is a brilliant way of creating the kind of tension formed
through specific relationships between content and form that are deliberately, as a
poetical credo, encouraged in some works, like the Mathnawī. Parables and fables
are especially suitable for this kind of tension: the simplicity of their language and
style aims to ultimately emphasise the complex nature of the content, for it requires
effort in revealing the senses contained in the narrative. One can hardly imagine a
better possibility to express this dramatic content-form relationship in one’s poetics.

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Namely, Rumi simplified the form of his poetic expression to the greatest extent
possible; in that way, he poetically contrasted it with the dominant poetic production,
confirming thus the part of his “manifesto” in which he deemed poetry as inappropri-
ate for presenting, that is, for expressing the inexpressible Sufi love within, his Sufi
cognition (“…where am I and where is that poetry?”). Opposed to that simplicity
stands the complexity of the content that awaits in veils to be cheerfully, exegetically
revealed. Poetry as such is insufficient (that is why one should not thrive for its form,
Rumi implies) in the relationship towards a precious burden that is dressed in form
(“There is so much love within me”). Simplicity of form and the parabolic nature of
Rumi’s work can be illustrated here by his verses:

DISCORD OVER THE DESCRIPTION OF AN ELEPHANT AND ITS

SHAPE

There was an elephant in a dark house:

Some Hindus had brought him for viewing.
Many people went to see him,
and each one entered that darkness.
As eyes were not able to see him,
one by one they started touching him.
And one man’s hand touched the trunk:
and said: “This is like a pipe through which water runs”.
Another man touched his ear,
and it appeared to him like a fan.
The third man touched his leg,
and said “I find an elephant the same as a pillar”.
The fourth man lay his hand on the back,
and said “Well, he is like a throne”,
And whenever anyone heard of the elephant,
they each would understand it by the part that they touched.
Their claims differed by what they perceived:
for some the elephant is like a “D” and for some like an “I”.
If each of them held a candle,
their words would not have remained in discord.
The eye of the senses is like a palm of a hand:
a palm that is not able to encompass entirety.
The eye of the Sea is one thing, sea spray something different,
never mind the sea spray and look through the eye of the Sea.

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Sea spray necklaces pour in day and night,
Behold! You only see the sea spray, not the Sea.
We come across each other like vessels:
Our eyes have gone blind, although the water is clear.
O, you who have slumbered in the ennui of your corporality,
You have seen water already, and now behold the Water of water.
There is Water in water which pushes it forward
a Spirit in a spirit that always calls it.173

If Rumi’s thoughts about poetry are viewed in the light of my understanding – and
there are many reasons for it, even an entire context – then one can understand why
he felt sad: his fate was that he constantly had an impression, in fact, a conviction,
of failing to express through poetry all that he had comprehended (and poetry is the
most suitable for that), for, in his case (he was a Sufi) the point is more in the process,
in a “voyage” than in the completed state: joy and excitement lie in comprehension
as a process, and finality in that sense is barely reachable.

The fact that he had a growing audience that was permanently fascinated by com-
plete spiritual submission; that he enjoyed the reputation of an indisputable elder
– those facts were sufficient to dissuade Rumi in relation to his, as he thought, hum-
ble powers to express his various content and to thus act very efficiently: his mis-
sion gave extraordinary results. However, knowing that he uttered all the words I
mentioned earlier, which are the object of this analysis, can only lead to, I believe,
one conclusion. Namely, not a single reception (to use that modern and, today, very
popular word to encompass the many and complex meanings of the reception of the
classical work in classical period) succeeded in freeing Rumi from that sorrow, from
the gloom that borders “poetic unhappiness” because he failed to fully express the
content, or because he did not have some other “medium” to express this content in-
stead of poetry. Such poetic and Sufi “frustration” does not suggest the inferiority of
poetry – even though it may sound paradoxical – as much as it does the fleeting su-
periority of its content: regardless of how content is expressed, it is only a “shadow
of a shadow” – to use the association in Plato’s understanding of art in relationship to
the world of Ideas. Rumi’s Idea, his Wisdom and his Sufi Sensitivity – which is never
only pure knowledge but an optimally intensified feeling – are far too exalted to be
quite “fatefully expressed” in any form. That is the source of Rumi’s sorrow, but it
is also the challenge of his “poetry making”. He was not only a Sufi, but a poet as
well. Had he been only a Sufi, he could have found peace on his Sufi path and ecstasy
and could have been completely at peace and in accordance with the Subject/Goal
of his ultimate cognitive, imaginational, and emotional efforts.174 However, he was a
poet, coerced to the Word, not only to cognition or feeling; this is, I believe, the most
difficult form of coercion: alone with himself and with the Word, the poet (Rumi
was that too) can never be at peace, for he is coerced to the eternal, almost mythical
grasping of the Sense and of the Word that could carry the Sense. The grander the

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poet, the greater the struggle and, in Rumi’s case, his work can be considered a mere
echo of that vast, permanent inner struggle, the outcome of which did not make him
completely happy. Such a great mind, such a strong pulsating heart, as were Rumi’s,
could not have literally despised the tradition marked by poetry: it was far too great
and conscious to ignore.

On the other hand, tradition long and persistently expressed its full awareness of the
value of Rumi’s poetic Sufi work, which means that the Mathnawī and the tradition
in which it was comfortably situated cultivated mutual respect. Thus, Rumi’s words
on how he despised poetry should not be taken literally, as is the case sometimes, for
that great mind simply could not have expressed itself in any other way. History later
showed that his expression was optimal. At the same time, his relationship towards
poetic tradition is also not an expression of arrogance of that Mind and Heart, but
full awareness of the inexpressibility of the Sufi content, which exalted Rumi, of the
inability to be adequately encompassed by any form.

In a subsequent consideration of Rumi’s complex poetic position, one should draw

additional conclusions.

I have stated that Rumi was both a Sufi and a poet of impressive potential, which
means he was completely aware both as a Sufi and as a poet; what is more – one of
his numerous specific features – he was aware that the two positions are not sepa-
rate, nor antagonistic, but have the potential to be a single whole, acting together.
That is a poetic specificity. Consequently, Rumi had listeners/readers, and by this I
mean people who respected his expression as art. In other words, the section of his
poetry towards which he expressed ultimate strictness (poetry as a form, as a kind of
expression) had a very positive reception with a large portion of his listeners/read-
ers, with whom he, through the Word, connected, as with a true audience. However,
Rumi also ensured followers of his work, and that is, by itself, an enormous progress,
or, in any case – a follower is a significant change in comparison to a listener/reader,
regardless of the quality of his relation to the work. The path from the listener/reader
to the follower is very long and it is not necessary for the path to be crossed in every
contact with the work, in this case, with the Mathnawī. On that path, one first enters
the sphere of an aesthetic and poetic acceptance of the work, and then, in the phase
when a listener/reader becomes a follower – enters the phase of ideology, which is
the path suggested by Rumi’s thoughts of poetry and Love within, thoughts suggest-
ed by his poetics: the listener of his speech is first directed to the form of his work,
and through it, reaches content frequently contained in the domain of premonition
because of the relative restrictions of the “medium” (poetry).

These two stages in the reception of Rumi’s work (the listener and the follower) do
not have to be mutually exclusive, but they should not be identified as the same,
either. The first phase ends in the second. Namely, Rumi’s work can suffice for the
reception of the art work (not every reader of Rumi’s work is a Sufi, although they

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respect his work and appreciate it as a work of art), and it can be active in the domain
of ideology – open and stimulative to the Sufi heart and mind. Of course, a simulta-
neous activity is also familiar: the Sufis perceive and characterise it in the domain of
both the aesthetic and of the ideological (religious).

Not every mathnawī has both readers and followers: there are numerous works in
this form that were not noted as much, even at the time they were written, and only
reached us as literary-historical or philological antiquities. Since the form of the
mathnawī is always the same, it follows that the acceptance of certain mathnawīs
– Rumi’s is always a positive exception – depended on the content expressed in the
form of the mathnawī. The content of Rumi’s Mathnawī was obviously important
and powerful enough to have historical and transnational value. For hundreds of
years, it had a very wide audience throughout the entire world, and not only among
Muslims.175

It is understood that Rumi’s poetics had a decisive influence on the reception of the
work, including both believers/followers and ideologically neutral readers. This is
one of the main places in which such a wide reception of his work should be discov-
ered and explained. The central place of that poetics – at lest the one discussed – are
quotations I mentioned several times, and that I interpreted in different contexts.

In the last lines of the exposition on the form of the mathnawī, as well as Rumi’s ex-
emplary Mathnawī, one should once again return to those quotations. It is, of course,
possible to deal with his implicit poetics – poetics that would represent poetic postu-
lates contained in his artistic production – but the poetic principles explained above,
that is, poetic problems that Rumi himself was aware of, contain the very essence
of his understanding of art, of the artistic word, the content-form relationship (a
relationship that was always at the centre of classical poetics); his understanding of
expression in Croce’s meaning of the term. The quotations also express Rumi’s un-
derstanding of poetic tradition, its evaluation, and, indirectly, of Eliot’s relationship
of the “individual talent” towards tradition. Great writers are always aware of the
tradition, regardless of the way in which they position themselves towards it.

Rumi had a dual relationship towards tradition. On the one hand, he poetically rec-
ognised tradition, for he accepted many elements of traditional poetics. One of the
main reasons for that is certainly his expressed need – explained by the aforemen-
tioned quotations – to make his work communicable, for the author’s goal is to
teach, to transfer his Sufi experience, and to cultivate and ennoble his listeners and
followers. He clearly stated that he accepted the traditional form of expression and
teaching, although unwillingly, for he neither had a better way nor means to achieve
his primary goal. Mathnawī existed as a form before Rumi; he accepted it as a form
of tradition, which, in the final outcome, emphasised the rhyme of the first bayt in
the ancient qasīda (a/a).

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Rumi also adopted the second important part of traditional poetics, and the one by
which the crucial narrative structures in classical literature in Oriental-Islamic lan-
guages are characterised. That is “ring-like” or “cyclic” structuring, the most famous
representative of which is One Thousand and One Nights. However, One Thousand
and One Nights is only the ultimate achievement of the tradition with such narra-
tive architecture, for the origin of the narrative structure of One Thousand and One
Nights comes from Sanskrit. One of the seminal works of classical artistic prose,
Kalīla wa Dimna (8th century), has the same structure and the same origin – in San-
skrit literature. There is an entire spectrum of works of the same structure that were
made both before and after Rumi.176

Obviously, oriental literature in general, and especially its ancient and classical liter-
ature, had a significant experience in this structuring of literary works, for the audi-
ence was accustomed to such a structure in grand narratives, and in which one could
enter through many places, just as one could leave them at many places. In fact,
every story (“the ring” or “the concentric circle”) represented a whole with its own,
a separate “entrance” and “exit” in the universe of narratives. This is the principle of
arabesque structuring, which was dominated by the poetics of classical narratives in
literature in Oriental-Islamic languages.177 Rumi’s Mathnawī is structured exactlyth-
is way – as a “galaxy of the signifier”: the text is reversible; there are several entranc-
es to it, as well as several exits, and it is difficult to say which is most important.178 It
consists of a multitude of stories and each can be an independent entity.

Hence, Rumi flattered the tradition such a way; that is, he flattered his audience
by deciding to speak to them through the poetic word, through verse. This second
“compromise” – the use of the well-known and popular arabesque structure – Rumi
never mentioned, at least as far as I know, yet researchers of Rumi’s work and clas-
sical literature in general should keep in mind this indisputable fact concerning the
poetics of classical literature, for it is for this reason that Rumi’s relationship towards
tradition in general is more fully understood and the quality of the conditions for the
evaluation of his work are created.

Apart from the two “compromises” with the tradition, which strongly relativize or
contextualise Rumi’s statements on poetry, one should remember that he preferred
so-called simple, non-artificial language, and a relatively simple rhyme. I have al-
ready emphasised this, but in the given context I emphasise that this fact provides
the conclusion that Rumi’s poetics are essentially prone to a significant cooperation
with experiences in the literature within which his work was created. In other words,
all three of the aforementioned aspects of poetic contextualisation in the tradition
primarily aim to contribute as much as possible to the appeal of Rumi’s work, its op-
timal communicability. In order to understand the extent of his need and the effects
of “poetic means” by which he aims to fulfil his goals, I will point out the important
“poetic activities” of certain postulates and structuring principles that I have already
cursorily mentioned, but will now introduce in a somewhat different context.

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Rumi’s goal is, thus, to initiate the interest of his listeners, which is clearly indicated
in the previous quotations about his reluctant use of the poetic word his listeners
adhere to. I will call this the first level of awakening interest. The second level of
awakening lies in the selection of “narrative type”: Rumi uses fables, parables,
allegorical stories, etc. quite frequently in order to encourage intellectual efforts in
revealing the sense/senses of his stories, and “identification” of the sense is followed
by, or rewarded by, a positive emotion such as is brought about by the act of reveal-
ing the sense mantled by the parabolic character of the story. Thus, the same device
is used to cultivate intellectual and emotional efforts of the listener. In this way, the
work shows from its very onset that it will not reside exclusively in the sphere of the
aesthetic, but will entail the cognitive engagement of the listener. But that is not all.
The ring-like, or arabesque structure of stories (as the “galaxy of the signifier”) sig-
nificantly contributes to a permanent awakening of attention. This is the third level,
which I will describe in this phase of poetic consistency, as the cultivation of de-
sire.179 Namely, the stories in all works containing this structure are wholes that can
be independent, but at the same time introduce to the reader a special curiosity, even
desire, to find out what occurs in the following story, that is – what kind of exciting
content is brought about by the following story, since the listener/reader already
witnessed that the stories he had just heard/read carry the content that deserves his
attention. Thus, Rumi achieved his goal in several ways – to attract the attention of
readers who are drawn into the state of desire constantly amplified by the polyvalent,
elliptical nature of his stories, suitable for very creative interpretations.

Once Rumi brings us with his poetics into a state of desire, it is impossible to foresee
the functionality of the category desire in his poetics and, at the same time, in Su-
fism. I hope that I have emphasised clearly enough that Rumi affirmed the principle
of desire as a characteristic of his work, through a coherent and consistent poetics,
always in the function of the optimalisation of the reception of his work, which is
his primary goal. However, those who are acquainted with Sufism know that desire
(the desire for cognition, for a merging with God, etc.) is the basic and permanent
state of the Sufi mind and heart. Desire leads to ecstasy. In this way, Rumi made the
desire of his listeners, readers and believers complementary – all in one, at the same
time. They operate in the same direction, through the same work. In this way, also,
he made his work both literary (literary-aesthetical) and ideological (religious and
pious). It appears to be - in accordance with all the aforementioned – a simple work,
but it is, in fact, very complex, for a number of mechanisms are at work in it at the
same time. And this is the fascinating delight of this work.

Also, in accordance with the aforementioned, Rumi’s Mathnawī can be very suc-
cessful at a “lower level of reception” – that is, without knowing the complex mech-
anisms that I here only sketched. However, it is understood that its value increases
in proportion with the principle of discovering those complex mechanisms and the
ultimate effects of their activity. That is why I believe it is not optimal, although it
is legitimate, that only dervishes interpret the Mathnawī from the Sufi perspective.

186
Neither is it appropriate that only experts on literature and linguistics interpret, if
they focus solely on its stylistic values, or if they approach it linguistically and sty-
listically, or only linguistically. Each of these approaches can bring about valuable
results – one should neither neglect them, nor restrain them – but, to me, the poeto-
logical approach to Mathnawī, appears precious, and this applies to any other work
that primarily marked its epoch, and then authoritatively stepped into other epochs
and cultures, including our own, dehumanising age, in which the splendour of liter-
ature in general has started to fade away to a disturbing extent.

It is interesting that Rumi’s work is a result, to the greatest extent, of that restless-
ness that Rumi was exposed to because of the feeling of being forced into the poetic
word as his only means of expression, although he knew, that is, he felt, that the
means was insufficient to adequately express the fullness of his emotions. That very
collision that Rumi felt made him a great writer and a Sufi, and it should be kept
in mind that his Sufism and poetic inspiration developed simultaneously, feeding
off each other, and were, essentially, mutually dependent, so that there are reasons
for saying that they were one. Rumi is not indoctrinated in the Mathnawī, nor is he
philosophically speculative; rather, he is poetically inspirational and experimental.180
On the one hand, he was in the middle of a positive restlessness produced by the Sufi
path of imaginational cognition, and, on the other hand, he was poetically disturbed,
excited: he lived in a constant effort to express “only in the given form” the enor-
mous potential of his imagination. These are more the “pains” of a great poet than of
the mind of a speculative philosopher. In relation to this, it should be kept in mind
that both the Sufi imagination and the poet’s expression are more in “the zone of the
heart” than they are the issue of mind or reason.181 R. A. Nicholson, who was well
acquainted with Rumi’s work, reached the following conclusion on the Mathnawī:

“Mathnawī for the most part exposes Rumi as a perfect spiritual leader, devot-
ed to the perfection of others and to giving, both to a young Sufi and a faithful fol-
lower, everything that suits their needs. Supposing that the general theory of monoism
is familiar to his readers, he presents them a panoramic view of the Sufi gnosis (the
immediate intuition of God) and evokes thrill in them, an enchanting elation of those
who ‘reached the Oneness’ and who lived the revelation of all secrets.”182

Ultimately, Rumi is not only a famous Sufi, but also a very successful poet. The re-
ception of his work bears witness to that, in an audience that is not only Sufi, but not
even Muslim at all: I have already stated that Rumi has become one of the most-read
writers in the West in the past several years. Rumi’s explicit relationship towards
poetry (and it should be emphasised that he is esteemed as a poet in the West) can be
observed, with good reason, as a certain topos of humility: no poetry, not even the
poetry he speaks through – to paraphrase him – is able to express his inner experi-
ence, or his inner being as experience. The relationships are, after all, more complex
than what is expressed by Rumi’s quotations. Namely, he is, after all, a poet as well.
His Mathnawī says more, it appears, through the heart of the poet’s imagination than

187
by the mind and speculatively, and thus he relied much more on the response of the
imaginations and the hearts of readers and followers alike.

The time has come for me to draw a seemingly unusual conclusion. It is possible
that Rumi would not have accepted it, but that does not lessen the possibility or the
foundation of the conclusion: Rumi’s poetics and the centuries-long reception of his
work in the East and in the West lead to this conclusion.

Namely, Rumi represented his work as an allegedly failed attempt to express Sufi
“content” in poetry (“There is so much love within me”!), but, there was, undoubt-
edly, a reverse course of action, even though Rumi may not have recognised it: his
Sufism was also inspired by the poetic word. The auditorium perceiving his work as
“poetic Sufism” is far too big. And that fact perpetuates Rumi. His Mathnawī brings
us into the foamy whirlpools of Sufi poetry.

Now it is necessary to enter more deeply and further into the poetics of Sufi poetry.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 4
96. Esad Duraković, Orijentologija. Univerzum sakralnoga Teksta [Orientology. The Universe of the Sacred Text],
Tugra, Sarajevo, 2007.
97. It is frequently asserted that Islam is a new religion, the youngest religion, etc. For Muslims, that is, from the point
of view of Islam, it is not a new religion, for the first man, Adam (SAWS) is also the first prophet of Islam. From
the Muslim position, Muhammad’s prophetic mission was, in fact, the last God’s intervention in correcting the
deformities that occurred in Islam in the meantime.
98. As an illustration of that, the book Arapska književnost [Arabic Literature] (translated by: Milana Piletić and
Srđan Musić, Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1985) by Francesco Gabrieli can serve as an example among orientalists, but
there have been authors in the Arabic world as well who non-critically (“auto-orientalistically”) accepted orien-
talist opinions – for example, Abū al-Qāsim al-Shābbī, al-Khayāl al-shi‘rī ‘inda al-‘Arab [Poetic Imagination in
Arabs], s. l., 1975.
99. One should always keep in mind the structure described in this book of the ancient qaṣīda - I refer to this qaṣīda
when I use this term for the ancient Arabic poem. This warning is important because the term qaṣīda, any content
and form in a poem under that title, will somewhat change in the literature of Ottoman Turkish, although some
important structural elements will indicate its ancient origin. This will be discussed later in more detail.
100. Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, Ḥadīth al-arbi‘ā’, I, Dār al-ma‘ārif bi Miṣr, ṭab‘a 9, al-Qāhira, dūna sana.
101. Hasan Zijaija Mostarac, Divan [Diwan], translated and edited by: Alena Ćatović, Dobra knjiga, Sarajevo, 2010,
p. 76-77.
102. For example, in the vast bodies of prose, the abundance of verses of different poetic forms can be seen.
103. This desire to mix genres, this persistent principle of syncretism in classical literature, always and again warns that
the notion of genre can be used only conditionally in classical literature.
104. See more on that in: “Poetika arabeske” [Poetics of the Arabesque], in: Esad Duraković, Orijentologija. Univer-
zum sakralnoga Teksta [Orientology. The Universe of the Sacred Text], Tugra, Sarajevo, 2007.
105. Klasična arapska poezija (VI-XVII vek) [Classical Arabic Poetry (6th – 17th century)], selected, translated, with
written commentary by: Vojislav Simić, Bagdala, Kruševac, 1979, p. 47.
106. Translated: Muhamed Seid Mašić. Taken from: Klasična arapska poezija (VI-XVII vek) [Classical Arabic Poet-
ry (6th – 17th century)], selected, translated, written and with written commentary by: Vojislav Simić, Bagdala,
Kruševac, 1979, p. 58.
107. Arapska poezija [Arabic Poetry], selected by: Darko Tanasković, Rad, Belgrade, 1977, p. 29.
108. Orientalists seriously deal with determining such origins of Sufi poetry, more precisely the marking of the ‘Uḏrī
ghazal as poetic material and a reservoir of very inspirational motifs that would serve as poetic requisites for Sufi
poetry. The very fact of research to determine such communication between ‘Uḏrī and Sufi poetry emphasises
the necessity of explaining the poetic system of classical literature. One should keep in mind that ‘Uḏrī poetry
originates from the 7th century Arabian Peninsula in Arabic, while Sufi poetry developed enormously in all three
Oriental-Islamic languages – in a vast space and over several hundred years. However, the relationship between
the ‘uḏrī ghazal and Sufi poetry is a special problem that I will discuss later; here I am merely mentioning it – by
this functional digression that can only remain within this footnote for the time being.
109. Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, Ḥadīth al-arbi‘ā’, I, Dār al-ma‘ārif bi Miṣr, ṭab‘a 9, al-Qāhira, dūna sana, p. 309.
110. The most famous ancient Arabic poet, Imru’u-l-Qays, also sings of his love towards several women in the can-
onised mu‘allaqa.
The references made in the urban ghazal to the poetic authority of ancient poetry is obvious.
111. The poets of the ‘uḏrī ghazal were of those exact names: Jamīl Buthayna, Majnūn Layla, Qays Lubnā, etc. It
should be mentioned in this context that those are syntagms of annexation at the level of language – of the geni-
tives: Buthaynin Jamīl, Laylin Majnūn, etc.
112. Tradition miraculously treated this work of literary history. Namely, it transmitted the titles of ‘uḏrī poets, named
after lyrical heroes, into the realm of legend, and then of myth. For example, Majnūn spent most of his life roam-
ing the hills of his native Najd, all because of his impossible love for Layla (see: Filip Hiti, Istorija Arapa od
najstarijih vremena do danas [History of the Arabs from Ancient Times until Today], “Veselin Masleša”, Sarajevo,
1967, p. 237). (Majnūn means frenzied, which is another way of depersonalising love.) Is that not a victory of
the tradition, that brilliant cultural-historical opposition to the “mentality of the harem” – all the way to its most
refined lyrical condemnation?

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113. In such literary history and historical poetics, from antiquity to the end of the classical period, the poetic and criti-
cally-valuable position of a modern author from Bosnia, no less, may appear to be a curiosity. Namely, Safvet Bey
Bašagić was very familiar with literature in Oriental-Islamic languages, and I have spoken of his contributions to
the representation of this heritage more thoroughly in the first chapter. It is impossible not to mention him in this
context. Namely, this notable researcher of heritage in the Oriental-Islamic languages was prone to evaluate poetry
that was the subject of his research, but his value judgements are mainly unexplained and, what is more important
for this context, they were based on the fragments of poems. Bašagić frequently passed judgement on a writer and
his work on the basis of a small fraction of a poem.
Bašagić’s critical relationship towards works is almost identical to that of philologists and writers in history of
classical literature, who affirmed the lapidary as a poetical ideal – both in literary production and in its “criticism”.
Obviously, Bašagić was drawn into, or, simply “sucked” into the matter he was researching and thus submitted
himself to the laws of its world. This is a methodologically inadequate path in criticism, for it overlooks the fact
that a work should be judged as a whole, even if it was formed as a whole in a special way. The following would
be a methodologically correct approach:
Since we know that the lapidary was associated in classical literature with the obvious fragmentation of a work, it
is necessary to examine and explain that fragmentation principle from the point of view of poetics, which means
to explain in what way and with what success are the fragments, that is, the fragmentation as a procedure, inte-
grated into the wholeness of the work, for one must never overlook that it is and in spite of all a whole (here, the
importance of the arabesque is again emphasised).
114. The work Kalīla wa Dimna was translated from Persian into Arabic by ‘Abdullāh Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (d. 756). Besim
Krokut translated the work into Bosnian (first edition: Kelila i Dimna. Stare indiske pripovijetke [Kalīla and Dim-
na. Old Indian Tales], Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1953).
115. Figuratively stated, such understanding of fragments in the desire for poetical dynamicising and liberation resem-
bles, like a parabola, the stories in One Thousand and One Nights about the liberation of the jinns that Suleiman
(saws) kept closed in the ibriks and threw into the sea to spend hundreds of years there, imprisoned. Neither the
jinns, nor their imprisonment, would have made narrative sense had they not been liberated by a fisherman one
day: only then does everything get a full sense.
116. Nicolai Hartmann, “Estetika” [Aestheticism], in: Nova filozofija umjetnosti. Antologija tekstova [New Philosophy
of Art. An Anthology of Texts]. Selection and foreword by: Danilo Pejović, Nakladni zavod MH, Zagreb, 1972,
p. 290-305.
117. Nametak states that the ghazal most frequently contains between five and seven bayts. See: Fehim Nametak, Po-
jmovnik divanske i tesavvufske književnosti [Glossary of the Diwan and Tasawwuf Literature], Orijentalni institut,
Special edition XXVII, Sarajevo, 2007.
118. Op. cit.
119. Apart from literature, the Qur’ānic text is the pivotal text of Oriental-Islamic culture, its “gravitational field”, and
as such, it played a decisive role for creating that cultural universe. I wrote more extensively on this theme in my
book Orientology. The Universe of the Sacred Text.
120. See, for example: Fehim Nametak, Pojmovnik divanske i tesavvufske književnosti [Glossary of the Diwan and
Tasawwuf Literature], Orijentalni institut, Special edition, XXVII, Sarajevo, 2007; Iskender Pala, Ansiklopedik
Divan şiiri söz lûğû, Ankara, 1995.
121. Alena Ćatović, Hasan Zijaija Mostarac: Divan [Diwan], Dobra knjiga, Sarajevo, 2010, p. 52-60.
122. Op. cit.: Alena Ćatović, Hasan Zijaija Mostarac: Divan [Diwan], p. 53.
123. It is possible to establish many parallels with the so-called European literature of the Latin Middle Ages, but there
is an important difference between them: European literature of that period developed in one language: Latin.
124. Rendition: Esad Duraković, on the basis of translation by Alena Ćatović, in: Alena Ćatović, Hasan Zijaija Most-
arac: Divan [Diwan], p. 74.
125. Cf. Alena Ćatović Hasan Zijaija Mostarac: Divan [Diwan],...
126. Hasan Zijaija Mostarac, op. cit., p. 42. Rendition: E. D.
127. As part of the humility topos of the prose works, the authors are regularly described as meagre and poor (al-ḥaqīr
al-faqīr), but poor (faqīr) always meant that the author was poor in relation to God, from Whom the author hoped
to receive blessings, primarily knowledge.
128. Ultimately, an important conclusion here arises, one that may appear marginal because it is situated in a footnote.
Namely, one should bear in mind the fact that Oriental-Islamic culture in general was most successfully expressed

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 in the text, primarily in poetry, and that its pivotal text (the Qur’ān) is in rhymed and rhythmic prose, and that
the majority of works of the classical adab are threaded by rhymed and rhythmic prose; that prose works opened
with invocations as strong positions that were carefully rhymed and made rhythmic; that all functional styles were
strongly kneaded by that: from the administrative, where even the waqfiyahs began with rhetorically cultivated
invocations, to the sacral style in which the duas are written and recited in a cultivated style… If we keep all those
facts within the focus of research, then we can conclude that, realistically, Oriental-Islamic culture is not only a
Culture of the Word, but that such culture simply flickers on the rhymed-rhythmic Word. It is eminently lyrical, in
Hegel’s meaning of the term.
129. Qur’ān, 26:227.
130. It is advisable for sections of a verse, as well as for the verse itself in literatures of Oriental-Islamic languages, to
use the source terms (bayt, half-bayt), because such structure is not applicable to our poetry. In that literature, a
bayt is formed by two of its parts (two half-bayts) written horizontally, one next to the other, with the bayts then
layered vertically. All translations transmit them differently, in accordance with the tradition of the translation:
half-bayts are written vertically, one under another, and the separation of bayts is not noted in the majority of
cases. In such a translation of the poem, incorrect information on the structure of the source text is given from the
point of view of prosody, even poetics. Namely, two half-bayts written horizontally construct a firmer structure
than that achieved when they are written vertically. On the other hand, the bayt in the source text (consisted of
two half-bayts) confirms the mutual dependence of its parts by being positioned in a single metre, meaning that
both parts of the bayt construct a metre. In that joint action of constructing a strict form, two half-bayts form
a tight relationship. One should also keep in mind the quantitative nature of the metre, which means that the
metre is formed by a precisely determined number of open and closed syllables in each bayt. Thus constructed
and persistent elements of integration of two half-bayts into a single bayt does not exist in our prosody, nor is it
possible to transmit in the best translation possible such activity in the construction of the bayt as a whole, since
our metric system simply belongs to some other type. (On this occasion, I would like to mention Dante and Croce
who claimed that poetry is, in fact, untranslatable.) Besides, half-bayts are in the domain of meaning structured in
the sense that they achieve their full sense only in the entirety of the bayt.
It thus appears that the achieved entirety in relatively small structural units (in one bayt) satisfies the need for
wholeness to the extent that the need for the realisation of one content, or sense, is satisfied in the entire poem.
The efforts of the form and sense to be satisfied in a single bayt are obvious: unity of form and content triumphing
in a single bayt. I believe that it is one of the important reasons why the semantic independence of the bayt in this
poetry is a poetic dominant. Content is successfully “compressed” into a small unit from all forms, constructed
with a mathematical precision.
In any case, there is an enormous difference between the traditional qaṣīda structured this way, its ability to
regulate the relationship between form and content, as well as structural parts of the form, and between its trans-
lational transmission in the vertical layering of the couplets, as is seen in all translations – more precisely – in the
transmission of this poetry.
131. I have warned earlier of the difference between form and genre, which comes from the poetic specificities of
classical literature.
132. In that sense, Zilhad Ključanin’s study entitled Lice svjetlosti. Pobožni i sinkretizirani elementi u bošnjačkoj
poeziji XX vijeka [The Face of Light. Pious and Syncretised Elements in the 20th Century Bosniak Poetry], OKO,
Sarajevo, 2004.
A reliable expert in modern literature, Ključanin marked, in this study, some forms from literature in Oriental-Is-
lamic languages that he recognised in modern Bosniak literature under the same terms (qasīda, ghazal, etc.), but
he rightfully categorises them as “pseudo-ghazals” (p. 30) because of significant structural deviations from the
forms in classical literature. Ključanin’s study could be a good starting point for competent oriental research.
133. See, for example, Francesco Gabrieli, Arapska književnost [Arabic Literature], translated by: Milana Piletić and
Srđan Musić, “Svjetlost”, Sarajevo, 1985.
134. G. V. F. Hegel, Estetika III [Aesthetics III], translated by: Nikola Popović, PhD, Kultura, Belgrade, 1970, p. 549.
135. At the very source of the tradition, we find such conviction expressed in the verse of ‘Antara Ibn Shaddād’s
mu‘allaqa:
‫اَ ْم هَلْ َع َر ْفتَ الدَّا َر بَ ْع َد ت َِوه ُِّم‬ ‫هَلْ غَا َد َر ال ُّش َع َرا ُء ِمنْ ُمتَ َرد ِِّم‬
Have the poets left something unsung? / Have you in fantasy recognised your sweetheart’s home?!
Long after this verse, Arabic philologists explained theoretically the early “completion of motifs” in the tradition.
I wrote more extensively about that in the book Orinetology.

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136. Among the translations that do not take into consideration the form of the source text, I could mention, for
example: Le Coran, Traduction et Notes de M. Kasimirski, Ars Mundi, France 1990; The Diwan of Abu Nuwas
al Hasan ibn Hani al-Hakami, translated and commented on by Arthur Worhoudt, William Pen College, 1974;
Филъштинский, И. М., Арабская литераура в средние века, Москва, 1977, and many others.
137. As I was translating One Thousand and One Nights, for example, I was shocked to find out that some of the lead-
ing European orientalists, like Francesco Gabrieli (in Italian), or Salye (in Russian) “translated” several thousand
verses of the original text in a way that was absolutely indifferent towards the brilliant form of the source text.
To make matters even worse, even negativistic, in a number of places the narrative is connected, like by golden
threads, by Scheherzade’s words: “… and the poet made beautiful verses about that…” And then the source text is
truly embroidered by the classical verses in an outstanding form that are introduced in the “translation” as prose,
and that does not even remotely resemble a poem. A reader of the translation is confused at best, since he becomes
convinced that Scheherzade is lying. The reader thus gains a multitude of wrong impressions that forge an entire
work, as well as the tradition it represents. Most of the classical Arabic poetry, rhymed and rhythmic prose, was
transmitted in the form of those passivized and scientifically forged “translations” into Western languages. The
exceptions are truly rare.
138. What can be said about, for example, the translation of translations of classical literature? This is a double distanc-
ing from the source form and from its ability – even its task – to make a reader happy as such: the first translator
especially if it was an insensible philologist, was the first to make the distance; the second, even greater distance
was made by the translator of the translation, who, to make the tragedy even more complete, was unaware or
was not able to anticipate the aesthetic position of the text he was translating in relation to the source text. That
problem of incompetence is all the greater – and it should be again stated here – if the source text insists on the
form. What kind of opinion or judgement about the pleasing form of the ancient Arabic qaṣīda can a reader of the
so-called philological translations have? Even Rumi’s Mathnavī, for example, is translated into Bosnian from
English, and the loss is indescribable. The translator is motivated by the ideological (Sufi) aspect of the work,
while the form is completely neglected. The language of the translation is careless; the semantics meagre. Trans-
lators of the translation should know that Rumi would collect the debt for aesthetic confusion they caused to the
translation of his work. In fact, all translations incompetent to the extent to which the majority of philological
translations of Oriental-Islamic classicism are should be exposed to cultulorogical and aesthetic, even ethical
embarrassment because they definitively introduce the reader into their deceptive translation. Until we face such
a crippled translation, we at least joyfully anticipate the excellence of the work, and at least such anticipation is
better for us, as well as for the work, than the reality of a bad translation: to those who are not able to read the
source text, bad translations take away the valuable thread of anticipation, or desire; the reader in that case is aware
that what he sees is not what he had thought of the work in his noble curiosity as a reader. What we call the content
of a literary art work – and this kind of translation shows just that – is not able to exalt the reader as the source
text in its “aesthetic integrity”, for the form brings a double joy: on one hand, it brings joy through “its content”
with which it announces itself in an exciting unity, and, on the other, it brings joy to the reader as well, for – how
many times has our reader’s sensibility shivered in creative contact with the joyful form? All classical literature
consists of these joyful forms.
139. I wrote more about this in my book Orientology. The Universe of the Sacred Text, in chapter “Maturation of
post-Qur’anic poetics and literary tradition”.
140. Cf.: dr. ‘Izz al-Dīn Ismā‘īl, al-Usus al-jamāliyya fī al-naqd al-‘arabī. ‘Arḍ wa tafsīr wa muqārana [Aesthetical
foundations in Arabic criticism. Representation, interpretation and comparison], [al-Qāhira], 1974, p. 404.
141. Ibid.
142. Cf.: Al-Duktūr Aḥamd Kamāl Zakī, Dirāsāt fī al-naqd al-adabī [Studies on the literary criticism], Dār al-Andalus,
ed. 2, s. l., 1980, p. 119.
143. Similarly, the term ṣiyāġa (al-ṣiyāġa al-fanniyya) was used by Ibn Khaldūn (al-Muqaddima, p. 578), as well as
al-Jāhiz (Cf.: Dr. ‘Adnān Ḥusayn Qāsim, op. cit., p. 116).
144. Cf.: Rozario Asunto, Teorija o lepom u srednjem veku [The Medieval Theory of the Beautiful], transl.: Gligorije
Ernjaković, Srpska književna zadruga, Belgrade, 1975, p. 14.
145. Hegel, Aesthetics (Lectures on Fine Art) Vol. I, transl. T.M. Knox, Calrendon Press, Oxford, 2010, p. 368-369.
146. Hegel, Aesthetics (Lectures on Fine Art) Vol. II, transl. T.M. Knox, Calrendon Press, Oxford, 1975, p. 1144.
147. Hundreds of years will pass until the issue of free verse is brought about in modern Arabic literature: in the Mahjar
literature in the United States (which was most productive between the world wars), the literary circles Apollo
and Dīwān, etc.
148. I have presented the poetic relationship by the initial stanzas of their poems in the section “The term fann and its
realisation in the form tahmīs”.

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149. Derviš-paša Bajezidagić (16th century) spent a part of his life at the court in Istanbul. He wrote in the Ottoman
Turkish language.
150. This form, as well as ‘Ushshāqī’s Tahmīs, I mention as examples because they are representative of the full blos-
som of forms in classical literature.
151. J. M. Lotman, Semiosfera. U svetu mišljenja. Čovek – tekst – semiosfera – istorija [Semiosphere. In the world of
opinion. Man – text – semiosphere – history], transl.: Veselka Santini, Svetovi, Novi Sad, 2004.
152. Cf.: Bećir Džaka, Historija perzijske književnosti [History of Persian literature], Naučnoistraživački institut “Ibn
Sina”, Sarajevo, 1997, p. 71 onwards.
153. For example, a very strong movement shu‘ūbiyya existed in the Abbasid period, initiated and managed by Iranians
for so-called cultural equality with Arabs, and they significantly contributed to the development of Oriental-Islam-
ic culture (not only Iranian or Arabic, but Oriental-Islamic culture in general) and literature. Entire prose forms, as
well as some poetic forms, originate from pre-Islamic Iranian literature.
In such vistas of intercultural achievements, growth, the undisruptive habit of many researchers to classify writers,
works, opuses, even entire literatures into ethnic communities is again shown. For example, there is a conviction
– and it should not be a final issue for intercultural studies – that One Thousand and One Nights is a work be-
longing to Arabic literature. I have spoken previously about the principle according to which a work is classified
as belonging to the literature whose language it was written in. However, such an approach is problematic, for it
overlooks the fact, in the given example, that One Thousand and One Nights had for a long time “lived” in the
Persian language, in the significant cultural “pahlevi-plateau”, before it entered the Arabic language. The case is
similar to one of the first prose artistic works in “Arabic literature” – the Kalīla and Dimna (it was transmitted into
Arabic from Persian by ‘Abdullāh Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, d. 756). Such significant literary-historical facts should not be
ignored. Much more space and “rights” should be given to intercultural studies of literature.
154. Mesnevi ma‘nevi, III, Tehran, 1958, verses 3902-3905.
155. Dr Fehim Bajraktarević, Pregled istorije persijske književnosti [A Historical Overview of Persian Literature],
Naučna knjiga, Belgrade, 1979, p. 54-55.
156. For the source text and the translation of this mathnawī written by an author of Bosnian origin (to the joy of ethno-
centrism) see Marija Đukanović, Rimovana autobiografija Varvari Ali-paše [A Rhymed Autobiography of Varvari
Ali Pasha], Faculty of Philology University of Belgrade, Monographs, Book 10, Belgrade, 1967. The source text
of this Autobiography was presented by Hikmet Ertaylan in the magazine Türk Dili ve Edebiyati Dergisi, Istanbul,
cilt II, sayi 3-4, p. 155-170.
157. Upor.: Bećir Džaka, Historija perzijske književnosti od nastanka do kraja 15. vijeka [History of Persian Literature
from its Beginning until the End of the 15th Century], Naučnoistraživački institut “Ibn Sina”, Sarajevo, 1997, p. 71.
158. Adnan Kadrić translated Bajezidagić’s Muradnama into Bosnian: Adnan Kadrić, Muradnama Derviš-paše Ba-
jezidagića [Dervish Pasha Bajezidagić’s Muradnama], Oriental Institute, Special Editions, XXVIII, Sarajevo,
2008. In this book, Kadrić presented the source text and the rendition into Bosnian. Also, the book is equipped
by diverse and useful tools. Obviously, the author put in a lot of effort into the preparation of this edition, which
deserves praise. However, it would be good if the book were restructured in a possible new edition, so that the
chapters are reorganised for the purpose of improving the usability of the book.
159. Cf.: Fehim Nametak, Divanska poezija XVI i XVII stoljeća [Diwan Poetry of the 16th and 17th Century], Institute
for Literature and Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1991, p. 23.
160. Marija Đukanović, Rimovana autobiogradija Varvari Ali-paše [Rhymed Autobiography of Varvari Ali Pasha],
Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, 1967.
161. Cf.: Fejzulah Hadžibajrić, “Tesavvuf, tarikat i tekije na području Starješinstva Islamske zajednice BiH danas”
[“Tasawwuf, tariqa and khanqahs in the jurisdiction of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina today”]
Tesavvuf u Glasniku VIS-a, in: Kelamu’l šifa’, No. 38-39, UG Hastahana Mesudija, Kaćuni, 2014, p. 111.
str. 111.
162. Munir Drkić stated that Hadžibajrić translated only the first two volumes of Mathnawī (published by Ljiljan, Sara-
jevo 2000). Cf.: Dželaluddin Rumi, Tajne uzvišenosti [Secrets of Transcendence], Bookline, Sarajevo, 2011, p. X.
The Sarajevo publishing house Buybook published from 2004 to 2007 the translation of the remaining four vol-
umes. Velid Imamović was the translator from the English language, on the basis of Nicholson’s critical publishing
of the original text and Nicholson’s translation of the Mathnawī.
163. This is the aforementioned translation by Velid Imamović.
164. Nicholson’s study on Sufism: The Mystics of Islam. The work appeared in translation into the Serbian language:
Rejnold Nikolson, Sufizam: mistici islama, IP Babun, ed. 2., transl.: Dušan Stojanović, Belgrade, 2011.

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165. Gabrieli did the same in his translations of verses from ancient and classical literature. Cf. Francesco Gabrieli,
La letteratura araba. Nuova edizione aggioranata. Firenze – Milano, 1967. “Le letterature del mondo”. The book
appeared in translation into the Serbian language: Frančesko Gabrijeli, Arapska književnost, transl. Milana Piletić
and Srđan Musić, “Svjetlost”, Sarajevo, 1985. Gabrieli’s translations of verses from One Thousand and One
Nights are exceptionally bad, keeping in mind that the source text contains an outstanding form.
166. I have had a similar experience. Namely, when I translated the integral text of One Thousand and One Nights from
Arabic, and in the phase of numerous presentations of the published translation, domestic and foreign journalists
would ask a number of times: How loyal were you to the source text? That persistent question is by itself indica-
tive; obviously, there is a problem and one should look for the origin of it.
In the translation of a literary-artistic work, what does it mean to be “loyal” to the source text, or for that matter,
“disloyal”? Such a question should not make any sense. In the very essence of things, it is unreasonable, for it
entails – as obligatory – that the ideal of every translator is to transmit the work in optimal values into another
language and the culture of that language. “Loyalty” to the source text is an absolute and underlining condition.
However, the inevitable question of “loyalty” to the source text is not unreasonable; rather, it emerged from wide-
spread practice among translators as necessary. Namely, translators – especially oriental philologists – commit an
act of violence over literary works of art by adhering to that monstrous ideal of the so-called literal translation,
which is the worst kind of translation. Literal translation means the strict transposition of meaning/content of the
work in the lexical domain, word-by-word. And the very notion of the literal becomes a forgery because it relates
to only one aspect of the work – as if it can live as an artwork only in one aspect! The practice of the literal
translation of literary works should mean an optimally faithful transposition of an artwork as such, and that means
– because this is the only way a translation can be valuable – the transposition of its content in its form. When the
“translator” transposes a literary work only in its “content” in order to seemingly be faithful to the source text, he
commits violence over that text, as if he introduced into his own language and culture a bird whose wings he had
previously clipped. And precisely so, for a literary work of art lives in its form and its meaning is not contained
only in its lexis; rather its meaning, as a form of art, is contained in the simultaneity of its content within its form.
This applies to all literature, especially for poetry. It is simply incredible that people involved professionally in any
form of literacy, especially philologists who want to transpose Oriental-Islamic literature into their language and
culture. In that sense, the question of a translator’s “loyalty” to the source text has become legitimate, although it
may sound paradoxical.
Jawid Mojaddedi (Oxford University Press, 2014) presented a significant verse translation of Rumi’s Mathnawī
– a true turnover in the tradition of the translation of this work. According to information available to me at this
point (year 2015), only the third volume of his translation has been published.
167. Translators who attempted to transpose the characteristics of the form of works of classical literature are scarce,
especially in the area of the former Yugoslavia. Among them are some translations by Fehim Bajraktarević and
Darko Tanasković (although they are not the only ones): and that is the reason why I decided to include their
renditions in this work about Mathnawī.
168. Since I am aware of the poetic peculiarities – that is, of values – of works in classical literature on one hand, and
their mostly unacceptable translations by many philologists on the other, so I translated/rendered the basic works
of the Oriental-Islamic classicism into Bosnian: the Qur’ān (Sarajevo, 2004), One Thousand and One Nights
(Sarajevo, 1999), and Muallaqe (Sarajevo, 2004). In all those works, I tried to emphasise, in accordance with my
abilities, that which was neglected by other translations: the aesthetic values of the source texts.
169. Dželaluddin Rumi, Tajne uzvišenosti [Secrets of Transcendence], transl. Munir Drkić, Bookline, Sarajevo, 2011,
p. 113-114.
170. Op.cit.: “Džavelidze, Pesnička reč i symbol” [“Dzhavelidze, the Poetic Word and Symbol”], in: Sufizam [Sufism],
Darko Tanasković and Ivan Šop (eds.), “Vuk Karadžić”, Belgrade, 1981, p. 177.
171. Dželaluddin Rumi, Tajne uzvišenosti [Secrets of Transcendence], transl. Munir Drkić, Bookline, Sarajevo, 2011,
p. 114.
172. Cf.: Džavalidze [Dzhavelidze], op. cit., p. 178.
My explications of the simplicity of language and form concern the Mathnawī. It is interesting that Rumi’s Diwan
contains a different poetics, and those are the ultimate achievements of the Sufi ghazal. In Diwan, Rumi paid a
large amount of attention to language and form; he even created 13 new poetic metres, and that overwhelming
innovation of the author always discouraged the Diwan commentators. Rumi highly appreciated the poet al-Mu-
tanabbi. He occasionally (outside the Mathnawī ) put in a large effort to achieve the perfect poetic form, and he

194
 thus used the Arabic language, considering it “the best among languages” (Cf. Munir Drkić…). The Mathnawī has
always had a special task to which its language and form were adjusted.
173. Mesnevija [Mathnawī], III, verses 1259-1274. Translated and adapted by: Darko Tanasković, in: Sufizam [Sufism],
Darko Tanasković and Ivan Šop (eds.), “Vuk Karadžić”, Belgrade, 1981, p. 42.
174. In literature, the God to whom a Sufi strives is often stated to be an object of Sufi love. The use of the term object
for God to whom a Sufi strives for is unacceptable: the word love and the phrase object of love are unacceptable
in every syntagmatic, logical, and emotional sense, especially if God is mentioned as the supposed object of love.
I will speak more of this in the chapter dedicated to the Sufi poetry.
175. In the past few decades, in the West, especially in the United States, there has been a true craze for Rumi’s work.
It would be interesting to examine the reasons why such an interest exists in the Mathnawī in the West, and to pay
special attention to the proportional rise of interest in the Mathnawī and the advance of the dehumanisation of
Western society, initiated by the overall demonic rule of the economy.
176. I will mention at least two works, distant from one another in time, but structurally so close that the latter imi-
tated the preceding work, with both fitting into the dominant structure of Oriental literature characterised by an
abundance of verses in texts that were, mostly, written in rhymed and rhythmic prose. Namely, the work by Sa‘dī
Shīrāzī (1213 –1292), entitled Golestān, belongs to the narrative I am talking about. Among numerous works that
adhered to the Golestān was also Bolbolestān by Fawzī al-Mostārī (1739). The similarity principle is especially
prominent in the tradition of poetic naẓīras. For example, Derviš-paša Bajezidagić wrote a two-volume naẓīra
about Rumi’s Mathnavī, and I will speak of this separately.
177. I wrote more extensively about the poetics of the arabesque as the dominant poetical principle in Oriental-Islamic
art in general in the introductory chapter of my book Orientology. The Universe of the Sacred Text.
178. Cf.: R. Barthes, S/Z, An Essay, Hill and Wong, New York, 2000.
179. P. Brooks brilliantly explained the concept of the “reader’s desire” in Western poetology in: Reading for the Plot.
Design and Intention in Narrative, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, London, 1996.
180. Cf.: H. E. Whinfield, in: Rejnold A. Nicholson, “Rumi: pjesnik i mistik” [“Rumi, a Poet and a Mystic”], in: Sufi-
zam /Sufism/, Darko Tanasković and Ivan Šop (eds.), “Vuk Karadžić”, Belgrade, 1981, p. 173.
181. Several hundred years later, another writer from the Orient, Khalil Gibran (1883 – 1931), turned these philosophi-
cal doctrines into brilliant poetic works. I am fully aware of the differences between them and that Gibran was not
a Sufi, but he did strongly reject an institutional understanding of religion. Gibran was enchanted by Nietzsche’s
philosophy and R. W. Emerson’s transcendentalism, but he reshaped their spectacular character, which he truly
lived, to the abilities of a grand writer and into a significant literary work. It is a poetic inspiration by great philo-
sophical systems which carry, in the poet’s work, only a distant, although recognisable memory of the speculative
nature and coherence of the system, which bow in the poetic work to the laws of lyrically unbound poetic freedom.
182. Reynold A. Nicholson, “Rumi: pjesnik i mistik” [“Rumi, a Poet and a Mystic”], in: Sufizam... [Sufism…]. p. 174.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5

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CHAPTER V
V. Sufi poetry, a grand poetic shift

Sufi poetry is dominant in the classical literature of Oriental-Islamic languages, es-

pecially in the Persian and Ottoman Turkish languages. By using the word dominant
with this poetry, I want to emphasise that in both Persian and Ottoman Turkish the
works that belong to so-called Sufi poetry are the best, but it is likely that such poet-
ry, by its abundance, became dominant in classical literature, in the sense of its grand
production. There are additional valid reasons to situate Sufi poetry at the poetic
centre of classical literature.

The poetological consideration of Sufi poetry brings us back to a point in literary his-
tory when the Qur’ān and poetry fatefully met, for the overall Sufi poetic production
would remain for hundreds of years in the orbit of the Qur’ānic text; that is, it would
poetically be constituted in relation with the determination of the Qur’ān towards
poetry, keeping in mind the relationship of poetry towards belief. A firm connection
between this poetics and the Qur’ānic text is testament to the continuation of the
tradition, whereby the term continuation should not be understood in the meaning
of normative poetics, as a non-creative subservience to the canonised works; rather,
it is realised also in the domain of the poetic improvement in the tradition, even in
opposition to its normative poetics.

As a reminder, the Qur’ān explicitly denied poetry the right and ability to legitimate-
ly (and this is the only way the Qur’ān recognises) reach for and represent the truths
of the religion. Surprised by such an attitude from the Qur’ān, poetry halted for a
while (in the so-called transitional period), unsettled by the ideological orders of the
Qur’ān, as well as by its extraordinary style, which tradition deemed non-imitative,
precluding imitation, only to flourish after like never before, unburdened ideologi-
cally. For a long time after, poetry would again reach for “religious truths”, for re-
ligious (imaginative) cognitions, in the very corpus of Sufi poetry, which obviously
had in mind the second part of the ayah in which the Qur’ān makes an exception for
poetry: “…apart from those who believe…”183

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GHAZAL AND SUFI POETRY

Poetically, it is possible to establish certain parallels between Sufi poetry and the
ghazal (love lyrical poetry), which reached its peak in the Umayyad period (661 –
750), especially in Hijāz, relatively soon after the ideological divide between the
Qur’ān and poetry. Such research “findings” demand comprehensive explanation.
The quest for the historical outcome of Sufi poetry in the ghazal most frequently

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leads to its ‘uḏrī variant – that is, love lyricism that is entirely dedicated to the so-
called spiritual aspect of love, allegedly freed from the carnal, from sensuality of
every kind. This poetry developed in the same area (Hijāz) and at the same time
(the Umayyad period) as Umarite poetry, which was devoted to the carnal and the
blossoming of the senses.184

These two kinds of a single poetic form (the ghazal) can be only conditionally poet-
ically separated, for in each thrives essentially the same “poetic instrumentarium”,
the same or almost the same figures of speech; they are both determined by their
dominant theme – love – the only difference being that in one case the love is carnal,
and in the other “platonic.” Observed from that perspective, both kinds of ghazal,
in the domain of poetics, are more similar than they are different, although they are
represented, most frequently, as antipodes of a kind. One should bear in mind these
observations in a possible determination of the origin of Sufi poetry in the ghazal.
Thus, a significant similarity between the Umerite and ‘uḏrī ghazal – at the level of
their common topic – gives enough reason for the conviction that Sufi poetry was
poetically inspired by both ghazals, and that inspiration was unveiled in a very com-
plex poetic manner that I will explain in this chapter. Furthermore, there is a wide-
spread opinion that the ‘urrī poetry was far more suitable for the inspiration of Sufi
poets because it was “purely spiritual”, unlike the Umarite, or urban love lyricism,
while the Sufi love of God is, naturally, exclusively spiritual. Although this approach
is founded only in the domain of poetics, one should take notice of a similarity be-
tween both kinds of ghazal, a similarity that demands comprehensive interpretations
of the poetic positioning of Sufi poetry towards them. Namely, love between a man
and a woman is central in both kinds of ghazal, or, to be more precise – it is the love
of a man towards a woman, for a noticeable (poetic) characteristic of the ghazal is its
predominantly “male” love lyricism, which is a separate topic for discussion. Thus,
it is necessary to keep in mind this emphasised “direction” in the ghazal, which does
not entail that it is “two-way”.

There is something unusual concerning ‘uḏrī poetry, which problematizes its “emo-
tional authenticity”, and in that sense also its suitability for possible inspiration for
Sufi poetry. Namely, ‘uḏrī poetry is about the love of a man for a woman, or about
their mutual love, which means that the essence of the ‘uḏrī ghazal is erotic love,
after all, or a kind of sexuality, regardless of the immense poetic perfecting of spiri-
tuality as a form of concealment of the explicitly erotic, etc.185

In order to see if Sufi poetry was essentially inspired by the ghazal, and why it es-
tablished such a relationship towards the ghazal, it would be useful in this context to
present another observation – that Sufi poetry was poetically “inspired” by wine, by
bacchic poetry, from which it borrowed a set of requisites, even its basic requisites
– wine, sommelier, inebriation, etc. One could expect that Sufi poetry is primarily
inspired by the panegyric and self-praise poetry, since these forms, especially the
panegyric, are the closest to hymnic poetry – to which poetry of “religious states” or

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“high poetry” – to use here Riftin’s term186 – essentially belongs. It is necessary in
this case to explain the unusual “poetic cooperation” of Sufi poetry with the ghazal
and wine poetry.

Ghazal and wine poetry (khamriyyāt) have one common feature: passion, which
fills its subject, that is, the lyrical hero, completely. A panegyric always maintains
a significant dosage of distance, regardless of its “wine”, hymnic character; it ap-
pears that the hymnic feature from which the underlying distance, that sublime pa-
thos, is inseparable, prevents the spontaneity, the utter un-affectation (affectation is
characteristic of a panegyric). Finally, a panegyric prevents a closeness to which a
lyrical subject of Sufi poetry strives toward as an ultimate goal. ‘Uḏrī is the poetry
of a peculiar passion, and, as such, it allegedly resembles Sufi poetry: the ecstatic
“cognition in imagination”; at the same time, Sufi poetry is reflective in a peculiar
sense, but not in the domain of the rational or philosophical, but in the domain of
the imaginative, which is endlessly perfected through the Sufi passion for ecstasy
and annihilation (fanā’). In the hymnic character of panegyric poetry, the one who
praises and the praised person, regardless of the extent of astonishment that is most
frequently expressed in affectation, essentially maintain an unbridgeable distance
between them, for a poet is never able to be the same as the one whom he praises
– their “communication” is, in fact, based on the vast distance between them, and,
most importantly, an interest upon which a panegyric is formed: eliminating that
distance would mean abatement, or, more precisely, prevention of the panegyric as
such. Sufi poetry cannot be such because it thrives to the highest degree on closeness
and non-interest – the Sufi annihilation in God. Love lyricism, even wine poetry, is
more suitable for this kind of relationship, for it expresses and cultivates love and
passion; what is more, it cultivates love as passion, which corresponds to the Sufi
“imaginative mechanisms”.

With regard to passion characterising ghazal and wine poetry, which strongly attract
the Sufi poets whose poems demonstrate extraordinary abilities of transposition,
there is another characteristic of the ghazal and wine poetry that also characterises
the “poetry of hedonism”. I take hedonism in this case to have a meaning realised at
two levels. First, in ghazal and wine poetry, it is expressed tin he way that love and
wine provide the greatest satisfaction, enjoyment of the highest order. Thus, hedo-
nism and passion are here complementary, even mutually conditioned. Second, he-
donism, as a principle of human action, is transposed in Sufi poetry into a passion for
the highest imaginative cognition. Hedonism in this context is the conscious submis-
sion of one’s “I” to optimal pleasure, to a pleasure promoted from a raw sensuality to
an exclusively spiritual satisfaction. And there ultimate joy is achieved – by surren-
dering oneself to self-oblivion – be it in love, or in wine, or in the Sufi self-oblivion
as annihilation. In spite of the hymnic character of the panegyric (which is one of
the dominant modes of the classical literature), a panegyric is not hedonistic. On
the contrary, a panegyric is essentially interest-based (in it, the interests of a poet
and the one whom he praises through the poem seek one another and cooperate),

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and the essence of every kind of love between people, especially the love of God,
is without interest, mutually encouraged and cultivated for the sake of bringing joy.
This is one of the possible reasons why ‘urrī poetry is brought into connection with
Sufi poetry: spirituality develops even more within it, more significantly than it does
in Umarite poetry; its passion is deeper, stronger and more obviously interest free,
for it presupposes that not even “love interest” as unification through the erotic is
realised. Furthermore, the ‘uḏrī love is always accompanied by pain, by a lover’s
suffering, but in a desire to reach the second subject of love, for love, as the highest
sense of existence, is created in tidal emotions that produce its two poles, which does
not happen in other forms of lyrical poetry as it does in love poetry, especially in
the ‘uḏrī ghazal. In that sense, the hedonistic trait of such forms of poetry should be
observed, not in the banal meaning of pleasure and the carnal. Ultimately, the Ori-
ental understanding of pantheism, which is, in fact, close to Sufi poetry, is in a way
connected to such an understanding of hedonism. It is characteristic of hedonism in
this meaning that it is always an individual experience, just as the Sufi experience is
in a strict sense individual.

In finding relations between Sufi poetry and the ghazal, one should warn of a signifi-
cant difference. Namely, the ghazal always clearly displayed “sexual heterogeneity”:
the addresser is a poet and the addressee is a lyrical heroine – always a woman of
extraordinary, fascinating features. The heroine is sometimes real, and sometimes it
is a figment of his imagination and within the traditional norm by which a poet had
to have a heroine. In Sufi poetry, however, a significant change occurs in that sense:
the “addressee” is not female, but male. For most Sufis, a man is the perfect human
through which even “God becomes aware of Himself”. In that sense, we can take as
exemplary Rumi and his relationship towards the “mysterious” Shams al-Dīn from
Tabrīz, whose fate should not necessarily be observed as the fate of a certain hu-
man personality. What is more, Tabrīzī as such does not appear interesting as a civil
personality with an abundance of positivistic biographical data, for Tabrīzī exists
only in relationship to Rumi: Tabrīzī is one of the main drivers of the complex and
always tidal emotional and imaginative states of Rumi, and which make irrelevant
Tabrīzī’s civil character, because it is completely transformed by the force of Rumi’s
Sufi spirituality.

The Sufi transformation of the lyrical heroine that we see in the ghazal, even in wine
poetry, is a poetic victory. Namely, in lyricism that deals with the love between a
man and a woman, there is a clear “direction” that does not leave the possibility
for ambiguities such as are needed in Sufi poetry. In accordance with this obvious
man-woman relation, it becomes clear – and this is important for the differentiation
of the aforementioned divisions of poetry – that where the ghazal talks of erotic love
it always at least implies sexuality, even in the so-called platonic love of ‘uḏrī poetry.
However, when a Sufi poet uses the ghazal in which a lyrical hero is male, then it is
one of the first and most important signals that it is a poetic shift that de-eroticises
the poem in the sense of the sensual, the carnal.187

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There are many who failed to recognise Sufi intervention in the traditional poetic
divisions – transposing the character of the heroine into the character of an idealised
“hero” – and it is important to emphasise this fact for the purpose of understand-
ing historical poetics in general, and Sufi poetry in particular. Many have literally
understood the introduction of a male hero into Sufi poetry, so their interpretation
is not only wrong but is essentially harmful for the entire Oriental-Islamic culture.
The damage is proportional to the significance of the poets (who truly are among
the most significant poets in that culture) whose works were used as a base for those
supposedly expert findings. Thus, some have, through a harsh approach to an exclu-
sively subtle poetry and the bold poetic transformation characteristic of Sufi poetry,
realised that it was homosexual poetry. Keeping in mind an enormous production of
Sufi poetry in classical literature and keeping in mind the high positioning of that
poetry within the tradition, it consequently follows that the Oriental-Islamic culture
in general was marked by homosexuality, and its very significant poetry is, allegedly,
a proof of that. It is strange that such researchers do not understand literature, poetic
status and the constitution of great works in the tradition.188

In relation to the love transposed by Sufi poetry, another issue needs to be explained,
which I have mentioned briefly, emphasising that I would speak of it at a later stage.
This issue is the relatively widespread use of the term “object of love” in the litera-
ture on Sufi poetry.

CRITICISM OF THE TERM “OBJECT OF LOVE” IN SUFISM

Sufi poetry is closely tied to the ghazal, but it also differs from it in certain poetic
postulates. Love is the theme of both kinds of poetry, although these are different
kinds of love: the thematic similarity drew Sufi poetry to the ghazal, which it poet-
ically reorganised to express its own kind of love. Neither of the ghazals talk about
the object of love, although there are certain differences between the ‘uḏrī and the
Umarite ghazal in the sense that spiritual and sensible relations are more prominent
among the lovers in the ‘uḏrī ghazal. However, in neither case is there a basis for
talking about an object of love. This especially concerns elevated Sufi poetry; that
is, the Sufi poetry of love. In spite of this, certain authors write about the objects of
love for God to Whose love a poet strives and Whom the poet immeasurably loves.189
The use of the word object in that discourse is wrong to such an extent that the
entire “concept” of Sufi love – in fact, the entire universe of that love – is reduced,
disturbed, and displaced from its reality in a multitude of aspects: poetologically,
poetically, logically, and philosophically.

Primarily, in neither form of love, realistic or fictional (thus, not even in ‘urrī) exists
an object and a subject, for such positioning of things is, in fact, a simplification
that damages love as such – it does not express it at all. The subject and the object
are inappropriate to the notion of love, unless we talk about violence. The use of the

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word object in relation to the Sufi love is, undoubtedly, a special form of violence.
In love, there are only subjects, for only subjects in a mutual relationship are able to
“generate” what we call love. The object is passive; in fact, it is passivized by such
nomination, and disabled in at least two ways. On the one hand, it endures love (!),
since it is an object, and thus it completely changes the quality of love, it abates it
and is unable to receive it with the joy and creativity that is produced by the fulfilled
spirituality and awareness the subject has of love and with which it is showered,
because, as a subject, it stimulates such a love. On the other hand, and at the same
time, the so-called object of love is prevented from returning the love because of
which it is loved as well, while, in fact, it is prevented because it is passivized. The
precondition or the main characteristic of love is freedom, the absence of interest
– the one that culminates in, for example, ‘urrī love: it can develop solely in the
complete liberation of the subject, that is, in an optimal and free interaction between
subjects of love.

The same applies to love among people, and in Sufi love, that quality is brought to
the extreme. It is difficult to understand how it is possible to call God an object of
love. Those who use the term object for God probably do not consider Him an ob-
ject in a literal sense, but that does not liberate them from the obligation to look for
some other word, considering the amount of negative content and the connotations
of that term. It is redundant to even prove that God is not in any sense an object of
any kind or belongs to any kind. He is not an object even in the simplest manifesta-
tions of pantheism, when His emanation is desired in our world. He is the Absolute
Subject. As such, He created A/all, which means that assigning any kind of (object)
passivisation to Him is inappropriate.190 That absolute Subject created people (in this
context, one could say: Sufis in particular), but He created them as subjects – the
thinking and the free, with an ability to choose faith; thus, He created subjects that
are to act and cultivate their own heart and awareness of Him as of their Subject. In
other words, God and man are mutually active; that activity is permanent and of the
highest order. The aspects of God’s subject activity towards man are multiple, so it
is not possible to mention them all in this context, nor is that the goal of my delibera-
tion: I only want to emphasise the obvious fact that God is a subject – always and in
every world and in every discourse. God, among other things, loves man, and directs
him to the Right path, etc., while man respects God with awe because of His activity;
and Sufis in particular love Him for this reason.191 Thus, the interaction culminates
in Sufi love, just as the absence of interest, the complete dedication to love as such
culminates in it. God is a subject in every respect, and also because it is activated by
the Sufi heart.

Considering the aforementioned points, it is beyond comprehension how the idea

of God being called an object of love emerged in the first place.192 It is possible that
those are linguistic transpositions into a field where they function wrongly, and what
is more create an enormous confusion that turns the highest subject into a (passiv-
ized) object, which annuls the entire Sufi conception and turns it into its own contra-

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diction. Basic linguistic knowledge, that is, of traditional Arabic linguistics, would
include the understanding that the most frequent constituents of a sentence are, al-
legedly, the subject and the object (I am here speaking in simplified, but essentially
precise terms); that is, every subject needs to have an object. I do not see another
field from which that analogy could have been borrowed; it is utterly inappropriate
in this case, to the extent that – to its own surprise – it achieves a miraculous inver-
sion: that which syntax calls an object in linguistics, is the (Absolute) Subject in
Sufi poetry, or – to engage in word play here – that Subject is, in fact, so active that
it creates other subjects together with the audible springs of love in them towards
Him. It is wrong to reduce the world, the universe, to those binary oppositions, for
the relationships between that which we call the subject and the object are far more
complex, in theology and religion especially. Even where it seems that everything
can be reduced to the one-sided subject-object relation, there is a two-way activity in
highly complex manifestations and nuances, which indicates that everything can be
observed as the world of subjects, not the universal linguistic syntax: subject-object.
In any case, the positioning of God as the object of love is in the realm of blasphe-
my, in addition to being wrong and contrary to facts as far as doctrine is concerned.
We will now observe the poetically incorrect thesis of God as the object of love, for
poetics is at the very core of my current interest.

If we consider Sufi poetry as artistic literature, then, in consequence, we accept the

obligation to speak of its lyrical heroes, which means – again, consequently – that
we are talking about the transposition of reality, and not reality itself. The issue of
whether Sufi poetry should be taken as artistic literature, or a “theological litera-
ture” of sorts, or religious “confession”, deserves our attention (and is poetically
important), since the majority of Sufi poets would say that their work reflects actual
reality, and represents a form of commission, not artistic transposition. Let us recall
Rumi’s credo by which he felt compelled to teach the highest truths to others, which
ultimately means that he did not limit his work to the sphere of the aesthetic, of art,
but that his primary goal was ideological and missionary.

The “receptional status” of Sufi poetry is two-sided. On the one hand, it is artistic
poetry for those who are not believers, or are not Sufi. Sufis themselves have a dif-
ferent relationship towards Sufi poetry, especially towards its canonical works. For
them, such poetry is not art, but the highest level of reality expressed through literary
devices. The point is that art is always a transposition of reality, not reality itself. The
use of literary devices in a text – at least at the highest level – does not make that text
artistic, but presents a relationship to reality. That is why I have mentioned earlier
that some texts, like the Mathnawī, have both readers and followers. By readers I
mean those who approach it as a work of art, and by followers those who are active
members of the Sufi order. In accordance with the aforementioned, in the given con-
text, the Mathnawī can be situated as an “inter-sacral” text: apart from being a work
of art for some, it is a kind of religious revelation for others (who become its follow-
ers), although, of course, it cannot be compared to the sacral value of the Qur’ānic

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text. That status of “inter-sacral” nature ensures the special place of the Mathnawī in
literature and culture in general.

Lyrical heroes in general, including those of Sufi lyricism, are not objects but true
heroes, or what we call lyrical heroes. The relationship between the author’s I and
the individuality of other lyrical heroes can be extremely complex and diverse, but
a lyrical hero is not an object, especially not in Sufi poetry. He is active in many
ways. There are serious reasons to understand a text, especially a literary artistic text,
always as modelling of the universe. In that universe, his rules apply. The notion
of the hero in a text cannot be reduced to the author’s I, but heroes of the text are
determined by different criteria, in accordance with a peculiar kind of stylisation,
transposition, modelling of reality, whichever approach one takes. A hero in a novel,
for example, is easily recognised as such, that is, as a subject, but in other literary
divisions heroes are also those who do not appear as such at first, for their “status”
escapes our habits and inclination towards simplification. For example, in a lyrical
poem, the subject is also the poet and the heroine he loves, not only because she
loves him too, but because she, with her love and even with her existence, ultimately
and in the manner of a subject, affects the poet, his creation of the poem as model-
ling of the universe. That is obvious, I hope, when heroes as conscious beings are in
question, heroes who are people and to whose heroic characteristics we present, even
reflexively, our own experience of their individuality in the real world, since we can
never be freed of the awareness of the fact that a literary character in a literary work
is, after all, a transposition of a real life personality. When talking about lyrical he-
roes who are not human, their status of a hero is less obvious; it is more complex and
demands certain warnings. This is because there are special laws implemented in the
world of the text, the activity of which escapes those who crudely reduce sublime
Sufi poetry to homosexuality, as well as those who see the Sufi Other (God) as an
object of the poet’s love. For example, the landscape in a lyrical poem – as much as
my claim may seem unusual – is a hero, but not in the same way as a real-life person
transposed into a character of the literary world. Landscape, or something else that
we usually call “still life,” is very active in the text (it is active also in reality, but in
other ways), for it moves the text, sets it in motion, and establishes special relations
with the author’s subjectivity as a subject. Landscape can absolutely be the hero of
the text and is a very active constituent element, performing very important aesthetic
tasks, alongside its important structural poetic activity.193 This is one of the miracles
that art produces: that what appears to be the real world becomes exceptionally ac-
tive in the universe of the text. Landscape in the lyrical poem, for example, in Im-
ru-ul-Qays’s mua‘llaqa, is not still, it is not an object of the poet’s description; rather
it is a subject/hero who had (I warn here of the past tense) certain dynamic, subject
relations towards me as well, as a subject/recipient. In other words, the position of
the subject and awareness of an alleged object in the text (in my operative exam-
ple: a landscape) is constantly reactivated because it is of a subject and it is always
perceived as a subject, and depending on a subject who “observes” the landscape in
the text. The temporal distance of the author from the text contributes to the further

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subjective liberation of the hero of the text, for they will realise their individuality
always in a unique way, since they meet with different (reading) kinds of self-aware-
ness. The text as a universe is “freed” and distanced from the author the very minute
he writes it. A possible claim, for example, that in the text of Lorca’s poem, the ob-
ject of his love is the sabres of the lilies who fought with the wind is unsustainable.

In Sufi poetry, unsustainability is even more obvious, for the syntagm the object of
love is used for God, or more precisely, for the most intense relation possible be-
tween two subjects, brought to an elevated state. Thus, God is not an object in Sufi
belief or poetry: He is the One for Whom one strives, Who is loved immeasurably,
and Who cultivates love in the subject that He created, Who accepts that subject to
His infinity, or attends to his faithful subjectivity – all the way to that ecstatic inter-
twining described by Ḥallāj (d. 922) with the notable words: I am the Truth [God]
(Ana al-Ḥaqq). Such a subject, inappropriately dubbed an object by interpreters, re-
mains a subject in the literary Sufi text, both at the levels of ideology and poetics. To
situate Him as an object means to declare Him a passive item in Sufi observations,
expertise, and one-way mystical endeavours of the subject.194

Ultimately, such simplified and inappropriately used linguistic syntactics deforms

Sufism, both as a method and intensity of belief, while, at the same time, it proves
the lack of knowledge of Sufi poetics and poetics in general. When a Sufi poet de-
scribes an “object” (!) of his love (the eye, lips, locks, a mole, or when he uses other
Sufi “requisites” or symbols), it is not only a description, but also an interaction, all
the greater because it is not only a description, but also a construction of metaphors
that have grown into symbols, since the metaphorical transfer is conducted from
human attributes to the Divine, and much more: the transfer is performed from pe-
culiarities of human carnality, from the physical, to something that is in the realm of
spirituality and metaphysics of the highest order – to the very Divine. The dynamics
is extraordinary; it constantly progresses, for two subjects are in a lively communi-
cation. The loved one in the Sufi “description” is not only observed, He is very ac-
tive: it strongly emits signals, messages; it stirs emotions, etc. It initiates and accepts
(that too is activism!) the desire of a Sufi to be immersed in His Beauty.

Understanding Sufi poetics, which I here oppose, is more than mere reductionism; it
is a severe wrongdoing against the poetics of Sufi poetry, which is, in fact, construct-
ed in the orientalist discourse. While some orientalists see in Sufi poetry outbursts of
homosexual desire, without noticing something that is not difficult to notice – that it
is a poetic “strategy” and heavily saturated figurative language – others reduce it to a
(lustful) relation: an active/lustful subject and its numb object, although Sufi poetry
is diametrically opposed to this. R.A. Nicholson, whose work was long ago canon-
ised in oriental studies, and who is considered to be an expert on Sufism, an allegedly
brilliant translator of Rumi’s Mathnawī and the like, contributes to such orientalist
discourse by carelessly considering the use of the aforementioned metaphors for the
“Loved One” in the Sufi poetry (including those from the wine poetry) to be “erot-

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ic and bacchanalian symbolism”.195 Although the word symbolism was used in this
syntagm, it appears that it is not able to distance the statement from interpretations
of Sufi poetry that gladly reduce that poetry to the erotic and bacchanalian.196 Not
even in philosophy is hedonism a phenomenon or a notion with a single meaning: its
history signifies that it cannot be reduced to the sensual. Bacchanalias contain very
clear connotations that are appropriate for bacchanalian orgies, but inappropriate for
the insulated immersion of a Sufi. For, although bacchanalias were initially related to
some forms of religious festivities, they are essentially a synonym for orgy, even for
orgiastic ritual crimes, performed collectively, all of which has nothing to do with
Sufi exaltation and experiences. What is more, the unique individual experience is
emphasised in Sufism. Thus, the word symbolism in Nicholson’s construction fails
to mask the connotations of bacchanalias and erotic frenzy. Besides, it should be
again emphasised in this context that the very word hedonism should be understood
in a special way in Sufi poetry – as enjoyment of spiritual pleasures, the initiation of
which is encouraged by symbols for spiritual joy (wine, cupbearer, the bodily attri-
butes of the loved one, etc.) are used exclusively as poetical requisites. This is the
domain of transpositions in which Sufi poetry reached very high achievements and
which deserve to be separately considered.

TRANSPOSITIONS IN SUFI POETRY

There are different opinions regarding the origin of Sufism, but the prevailing con-
viction is that the Iranian contribution to Sufism, and, thus, to Sufi poetry, is cru-
cial.197 Even if this conviction were true, it seems that it is more important to present
its earliest fruits than to discuss the origin of Sufism. Determining the “right of pri-
macy” in literary history is a legitimate historical act, but it is marginal compared
to the need to determine value and the poetic system. Ethnocentric approaches need
this “right of primacy”. What is more, the greatest artistic values are achieved be-
yond the “country of origin” of a genre, form, etc. However, Iranians undoubtedly
have achieved primacy in Sufi poetry, not only in terms of their productivity, but for
the exceptional quality of their verse as well.

And with this observation I return to the issue laid out at the beginning of this book.
Namely, the literary historical fact of the primacy of Iranians in Sufi poetry – the
works of whom are a serious candidate for the greatest poetic achievement of classi-
cal literature in the Oriental-Islamic languages - imposes the question of whether or
not the ethnic criterion can be taken as important in the “distribution” or fragmen-
tation of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages. I still believe that stating
this as a rule and presenting such fragmentation as the final result is unfounded. In
their pre-Islamic period, Iranians had a more developed culture than the “conquer-
ing” Arabic culture; hence, owing to that, they significantly enriched the Arabic cul-
ture, and were open, widely and fatefully, to the influences of Arabic culture – from
pre-Islamic Arabic poetry to religion. That is how, in fact, that unique culture that
we call classical Oriental-Islamic culture developed, in which the peculiarities of

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cultures in their previous syncretisms participated – just as in an “amalgam culture”.
That is why it is unimaginable, for example, to try and separate Sufism (and Sufi po-
etry) from Islam as a religion and the religion that was brought by Arabs, regardless
of the fact that there are grounds for discussing non-Islamic influences on Islamic
Sufism. In Sufi poetry, as well as in other literary divisions, Iranians also adopted
important experiences from Arabic poetry, including one from the ancient period.
They adopted, among others, the term ghazal (thus, also the Sufi ghazal), as well as
a number of other terms and metric norms. Thus, at the very start, the essential deter-
mination to preserve tradition as a unity of Oriental-Islamic culture was expressed,
regardless of the innovations that followed.

After the emergence of new poetic forms from the disintegrated ancient qaṣīda -
forms that represented grand poetic novelties and that I have earlier characterised as
having introduced dynamics to the tradition that appeared static from time to time,
or traditionalistic – the Sufi ghazal continued to enrich the tradition, but its poetic
innovations were unexpectedly significan, to such an extent that Sufi poetry can
be marked as its unique poetic victory or probably the highest achievement of this
tradition. In this it is important to keep in mind that Sufi poetry performed its poetic
achievements almost always in relation to the existing poetic experiences – regard-
less if it had opposed them, or transformed them. Its poetic freshness, innovation,
its creativity, was impressive, and likely these were the main reasons for the spread
of Sufi poetry in its cultural realm. However, in time, it too, as well as other forms,
was significantly sclerotized, surrendered to commonplaces, codes and clichés, and
allowed for the submission of its charms to technique – in the same manner that
other philological-technical forms also surrendered. I will not observe Sufi poetry
here from an ideological aspect, its theological dimension, but I will approach it
poetologically, which means that I will take its ideological aspect into consideration
only in cases where it functions poetically – as an ideological layer in relation to its
conquest of poetic form.

Sufi poetry performed a number of transformations and transpositions that make it

unique in the tradition. I believe that the most important poetic shift ever to have
been performed in classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages concerns Sufi
poetry and its content. Namely, in the previous exposition, I emphasised that poetry
in the Islamic period was reorganised in comparison to the ancient period, primarily
because it was pressured by the Qur’ānic text – and by that, I mean its ideological,
as well as literary-aesthetic authority – to give up its aspirations for reaching and ex-
pressing metaphysical content, just as the ancient shā‘ir had. After that, poetry was
adjusted in terms of content, and the poet was no longer a medium between people
and higher powers; hence poetry was poetically freed, and owing primarily to that,
new forms flourished (different kinds of ghazal, primarily) that were truly freed from
ideological burdens, and were dedicated to pure lyricism. This flourishing of lyrical
forms, mainly dedicated to a hedonistic acceptance of the world, could not have been
disturbed even by ascetic poetry (zuhdiyyāt), which was marginalised in production,

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and which was far closer to pious poetry than to ascetic poetry in the full sense of
the term asceticism. This name likely played a role in the poetry’s opposition to
the predominant ambient hymnic (panegiryc) and bacchius poetry of the Abbasid
period. However, by an almost sudden and eruptive promotion of Sufi poetry, things
significantly changed; poetics were significantly reorganised, and hence Sufi poetry
in the classical literature of the Oriental-Islamic languages brought an excitement to
the tradition, which made that poetry truly epochal and very unique, culturally. Its
poetic audacity is vast, deserving a high position among (religious) content, as was
the case with poetry in the ancient period. Figuratively stated, before Sufi poetry,
especially in the early Islamic period, poetry was unprepared for the high content of
such poetry, in a way “intimidated” by the harsh qualifications of the poet in the clos-
ing of the surah al-Shu‘arā’ – although in the second part of the ayah the “faithful
poets” are saved, which could be seen as the permission of poetry that affirms Islam.
However, one should not overlook another probability: poetry in the Islamic period,
until the emergence of Sufi poetry, was inspired with new poetical possibilities, new
forms, simply – new experience, distanced from experience and the metaphysical
preoccupations of ancient poetry. Poetry affirmed new themes in new forms, pre-
serving the continuity of ancient poetry mainly in the domain of form, which opened
into an endless game of forms.

With the tradition in such a state, Sufi poetry prioritised content of the
highest order: religious cognitions and religious feelings. From the point of view of
poetics, this meant that it re-established significance to poetic content, which was
present in ancient poetry, that is – it re-affirms the content-form relationship that
once was dominant. Undoubtedly, there are very similar, almost identical poetics
in that domain, albeit with one exception, which from the point of view of ideology
made an enormous difference, and legitimised this poetic shift, that is, the re-affir-
mation of an ancient principle. Some readers may deem unacceptable the claim that
the ancient and Sufi poetry are close, since it is well-known that ancient Arabic po-
etry was considered pagan, from the point of view of ideological periodization and
estimates. However, the reader needs to keep in mind that I speak here of poetics,
not of ideology; that is, even when I speak of ideology, I do not consider its kind and
quality; rather, I refer to ideology as such, as contained in poetry, and its representa-
tion in form. There certainly is a fundamental difference in kind, and that difference
ideologically legitimised Sufi poetry. On the one hand, such Sufi poetry affirmed the
principal postulate of ancient poetics, ensuring, in part, the poetic continuity of the
tradition for several hundreds of years. On the other, it also reinvigorated poetics,
that is, tradition, in a clever way, for in Sufi poetry, tradition showed an extraordinary
witticism, on the very edge of cunningness, by opening poetry to ideology (religious
content) with unforeseen possibilities of development. It appears that the tradition
itself was surprised and rejoiced in that cunningness with an optimally positive po-
etological meaning – hence, in that state, it “dedicated” itself to the “new poetry”,
giving it undivided attention.

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Although huge, the shift occurred in a simple way, in fact, owing to the second part
of the ayah in which “poets who are believers” are exempt. Thus, poetry is allowed if
it is in accordance with Islam, its monotheism. Tawḥīd – Islamic monotheism - is the
key point of admission for ideological poetry. Sufi poetry brilliantly used that possi-
bility and thus it enacted a transformation of a sort of the then-dominant poetics; it
even transformed ancient poetry to a certain extent – in the sense that it changed the
kind of underlying ideology’s poetic content.

The turning point of the final lines in the surah The Poets (…apart from those who
believe…) opened doors to poetry to develop in three directions, since the previous
part of the ayah unambiguously condemned poetry that is in conflict with the Islamic
tawḥīd and with Islamic ethics in general.

1. The determination of the Qur’ān towards poetry (one should keep in mind
that the Text literally ruled over the new culture in creation) meant that “ideo-
logically-neutral” poetry was allowed, which means that poetry was not obliged
to affirm Islam in expansion: its neutrality sufficed in that sense. The turbulent
development of the ghazal in the early Islamic period bears witness to this, for
what historians of Arabic literature call the Umayyad period should be, in fact,
called the period of the ghazal, or the period of love lyricism, since the ghazal
marked the Umayyad political epoch by innovation and productive abundance.

2. Poetry that “cooperates” with the section of the Qur’ān quoted above was
also given an option to be put in the service of the spread of Islam, be it pane-
gyric poetry for the Prophet and his entourage, or direct praise of Islam itself,
without being tied to a certain person. This direction for the development of po-
etry is also well-known – starting from the significant panegyric that I have al-
ready elaborated as the Poem of the Mantle, as well as a number of other praises
not only to the Prophet, but also to his tribe, the Quraysh. Of course, there were
some poets who introduced poetry into affirmation of Islam in general.

3. An opportunity was given to poetry that did not antagonise Islamic monothe-
ism and ethics, such as Sufi poetry.

In that “hierarchy” and in the following succession, Sufi poetry represents the third
and highest phase in the “reconciliation” of poetry with ideology: the religious pan-
egyric to the Prophet – an ode to the Faith – “gnoseological” poetry.

Primarily, a poem is engaged in ideology by praising its main divulgators; at the sec-
ond level, poetry affirms ideology itself; third, poetry is introduced into the function
of individual cognition of the highest order. At that point, poetry is characterised
as gnoseological; it becomes both the means and an expression of cognition. One
should state immediately – in relation to the third level, or stage in the development
of poetry and its relationship towards ideology – that Sufi poetry is also determined

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as medial. Namely, a Sufi poet uses poetry to enhance his own imagination by the
means it possesses, for the purpose of individual, personal cognition, that is, for
reaching religious truths. At the same time, he uses the poetical expression in order
to present his comrades on the quest for cognition and his friends in faith, to the
extent to which it is possible, levels of his cognition in order to provide an incentive
in them as well. In that sense, the “dual” position of Sufi poetry is interesting, and I
will have to occasionally return to that position in accordance with the demands of
the context of the exposition. Let us recall here Rumi’s words on how burdened he
is with the love he is trying to transmit to his comrades by “inappropriate” poetry.
As a rule, Sufis were aware of both the necessity and the relative helplessness of po-
etry in the transmission of inexpressible Sufi experience, and frequently emphasise
that their poetic expression is only a hint, a mere signal of their cognition, of their
experience.

To the explanation why I deem Sufi poetry to be the highest stage in the relationship
between poetry and ideology should be added that in Sufi poetry the individual en-
deavour is primary, and that there is an attempt to make the endeavour “collective”,
that is, transmitted and shared with fellow travellers en route to Sufi cognition. In
that context, one should recall the question I previously asked, which still awaits an
answer: is Sufi poetry art, since its ultimate goal is not aesthetic, but gnoseological,
and since a Sufi does not consider his cognition, or his kind of cognition, an artistic
fictionality, is it instead Truth of the highest order? Through such a relationship to
the Truth, that is, Reality, Sufi poetry reminds of the Qur’ānic text, which in an ex-
traordinary, non-imitative way, uses the best experience of literary expression, and at
the same time pushes the limits of that experience, decisively claiming that it is not
art, for such a confession would essentially change its character and its goal. Thus,
one should reasonably assume that poetry is a kind of a mission; his experience, or
cognition as an authentic, real experience and the fact that it is expressed in poetry
is only his attempt to express his condition in a form optimal for him, as well as the
most suitable for influencing others. However, other people too, who are not Sufis,
have a right to their own reception of Sufi poetry, and in that one is not obliged to
accept the Sufi determination of his own work. The Sufi poetic production is indeed
enormous within the tradition and it has a wide reception outside the Dervish orders,
which means that a large number of readers, even outside Muslim circles, accept it
as artistic literature.

Because of its importance, content (since that is the religious experience of Sufis)
has priority over form in Sufi poetry, and that is what differentiates Sufi poetry from
the majority of classical poetry, which I have already stated had been concentrated
on the endless creation of forms. Such significant poetic innovation belongs to the
special abilities and interests of Iranian spirituality. That is the reason why the best
works of Sufi poetry were written by Iranians, and why literary historians claim that
Sufi poetry essentially originates in Iran, although it was written by many other peo-
ples as well – Arabs, Turks (in particular), Bosniaks, and many others.

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In relation to the origin and blossoming of Sufi poetry, the situation is somewhat
similar to the case of the origin of Shi’ism. Namely, Iranians had a special ability,
even a pronounced inclination, to significantly intervene in the new religion and in
the culture that the religion had brought. Since Iranians had a superior culture long
before the arrival of Islam, they were not only recipients of Islam and the culture
that had arrived with it, but they accepted it by significantly intervening in each, in
an attempt to preserve their previous supremacy, and to leave their own, recognis-
able trace, frequently in contrast not only to the culture that grew suddenly under
the wings of Islam and Arabic culture, but also to Islam as a religion. This Iranian
ideological interventionist passion resulted in Shi’ism, which led to a sectarian rift
in the unity of Islam, bringing about dramatic consequences and conflicts. (Conflicts
between the Shia and Sunnis are especially dramatic today: they kill each other
mercilessly, as if waging a war bent on total destruction.) Hence, Iranians accepted
Islam by creating their own variant of Islam, which exists in contrast to the so-called
Sunni variant. In the domain of culture (which can never be radically separated from
religion in the Islamic world), Iranians acted, in the Abbasid period – at the height
of the caliphate – within a powerful, important movement, shu‘ūbiyya, which they
had created themselves and to which they provided such contributions to culture that
they integrated to it a very important feature of their own. The case is similar with
Sufi poetry.

Namely, the Iranians accepted important elements of Arabic poetics and prosody, as
well as poetical terms, etc., but they almost radically intervened by restoring the lost
primacy of content in poetry, and not just any content, but pious or religious content.
From that follows the fact that the intervention was performed simultaneously in
religion and in poetry: poetics was set on foundations enabling it to serve religion,
while religion became the “essence” of poetry; faith is the “object” of the imagina-
tive powers of poetry, and in that aspect, Sufi poetry and religion found an optimal,
common “interest”. This was a radical poetic intervention in tradition; although the
elements of the traditional are recognisable, they are also strongly reorganised, all
the way from ancient literature.

In order not to be misunderstood, I should immediately state that Sufi poetry cannot
be reduced to the so-called Iranian ethnic element, for it is widely known that other
peoples created it as well, just as other peoples accepted Sufism. Also, one should
prevent another misunderstanding: Sufi poetry cannot be tied exclusively to Shi’ism,
although they do have common traits, for they historically do not entirely overlap:
they are not formed at the same time and do not form an unconditional cause-and-
effect relationship. Some prominent Sufi poets were not Shiites. There are nuances
in those relations. However, it should be again emphasised that the facts indicate
that Sufi poetry was, in large part, and especially in terms of its quality, formed in an
Iranian environment, and that interventionism in Islam was initiated in Iran. From
that unquestionably it follows that both – Shi’ism and the finest Sufi poetry – come
from the same spirit, from the same creative Iranian drive to emphasise religious

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and cultural self-awareness and dominance. The quest for the influence of Shi’ism
on Sufi poetry and vice-versa, as well as for what came first, belongs to another line
of research.

However, in relation to the powers of transposition in Sufi poetry, one should pay
close attention to its poetic shift in relation to the dominant poetic divisions – the
ghazal and wine poetry.

THE TRANSPOSITION OF THE SENSUAL INTO THE SPIRITUAL

AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL
The poetic feat of Sufi poetry is specifically contained in the fact that such poetry,
in its most essential part, represents a transposition of the poetic tradition. This con-
cerns its poetic postulates from the early phase of Sufi poetry, which I have already
stated that it began adjusting to the tradition in the late phase. Namely, Sufi poetry
assumed the ghazal and wine poetry as its “poetic base,” but it did so in order to
transform them poetically, or more precisely, to transpose them and thus create its
own poetics. More precisely, Sufi poetry assumed two genres with their dominant
themes, that is, two motifs (I take only those two types as representative), which – as
we have seen earlier – it had brought to the state of Sufi symbols and codes.

Regarding this issue, two things should be considered. First, ghazal (love lyricism)
and wine poetry are the dominant poetic forms in two long periods – the Umayyad
and Abbasid – and the absorption of those forms cannot be considered accidental
given their epochal significance, as well as the suitability of the motifs of love lyr-
icism and wine poetry for Sufi poetry. Second, both themes belong to the sphere of
the senses, or hedonism, regardless of the fact that, for example, the ‘uḏrī ghazal
concerned the spiritual aspect of love. Although not expressed explicitly, the ‘uḏrī
ghazal implied a man-woman relationship, which poetically represents a sublimated
eroticisation. In order to comprehend multiple achievements and types of transposi-
tion, I will perform the analysis gradually.

Love lyricism and wine poetry that are dedicated to the carnal are transposed in Sufi
poetry into their very opposite – into the highest level of spiritual pleasure, even spir-
itual passion. Passion is what they have in common. God is loved in the life of a Sufi
by a “passion” – stated only conditionally – that resembles love towards a sweetheart
in real life, yet this former love is far stronger. Still, there hardly is another way to
express this intensity. To a man in love, there is nothing more valuable in the world
than the person he loves, just as for a Sufi there is no greater love than love for God.
The issue here is one of quality, not of quantity: the greatest good of the world (the
Sufi world) is represented by the greatest good of another. This marks an exciting
path of metaphorical transfer.198

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Wine is a metaphor for the drinking up of Sufi love to the point of intoxication.
Thus, in this case, the theme, or poetic division dominant in classical literature was
borrowed. Both subtypes – the ghazal and wine poetry – have something in common
that Sufi poetry “marked” to present its powers of transposition. What they have
in common is a belonging to the sphere of the sensual, emphasised by a number
of follow-up tools. Sufi poetry manages to transpose these “aspects” of hedonism
into their opposite: it transposes them from the domain of the purely sensual to the
highest order of the spiritual, the metaphysical – as an inexplicable experience of
love towards God, all the way to complete immersion within Him. Thus, Sufi poetry
uses an extraordinary poetic shift to mark by the figurative transposition of meaning
something that is divinely abstract, and yet, at the same time, to present in the Sufi
imagination through something of this world, that is real and intensive to the extent
that it appears hedonistic. The distance between these two constituent tropes that
at first glance appear to be metaphors is so vast that it appears unlikely they could
form a successful figure of speech or trope. In “ordinary” metaphors, their constit-
uents need to have obvious similarities in order for a metaphor to be constituted
(for example, night pearls as a metaphor for stars). In such a Sufi metaphor, apart
from the obvious similarity, there exists a divergence that tests the power of Sufi
poetry to the ultimate limits. Namely, ghazal love, which always implies the erotic,
for love occurs among the sexes, and the wine that is forbidden to a Muslim, is, in
fact, a “negative” potential that is, as such, in collision with spirituality and God.
Ultimately, one could say that we are witnessing Sufi blasphemy of sorts, and yet the
poetics manage to overcome blasphemy by using multiple devices, among which the
widest allegorical Sufi context plays a very important role: a context that turns the
entire text into a complex allegory. Hence, these “structural units” of the allegory
are transposed by Sufi poetry into their opposites – into cognition as ibadah of the
highest order. If one keeps in mind these facts, then one can see how impressive the
poetic powers of Sufi poetry are.

In this context, I will mention one important issue that should not be overlooked.
Namely, one should seriously consider the possibility that Sufi poetry accepted these
elements of hedonism because of pantheism, which was familiar in Sufism – as an
emanation of God in all accidences, including those of a peculiar “quality”.

From all of the aforementioned, it follows that Sufi poetics transposes entire poetic
forms (the ghazal, wine poetry) into other poetic forms, that is, into Sufi poetry.
This seems to be above all expectations, for Sufi poetry is a transposition of the
transposition: the aforementioned poetic forms are a kind of a transposition, in ac-
cordance with the principle by which every work of art is a transposition, and pre-
cisely through this quality becomes art. Wine poetry, or love lyrical poetry, is not a
biographical entry; otherwise it would not have been a work of art. And that is a pure
fact that should not be discussed at all. Thus, those kinds of lyrical poetry already
possess the precious experience of transposition, and Sufi poetry, by its poetic defa-
miliarization, transforms them again, for the Loved One is not the loved one in Sufi

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poetry, just as Wine is not wine, the Flower is not a flower, the Nightingale is not a
nightingale, etc. That diverse lyrical world, and all its heroes, are displaced in mar-
vellous transfers and transposition of one into another, even in a completely different
world in which all is transformed into an optimal lyrical reflexion, into an unusual
synthesis of the cognitive and the emotional, the poetic and the philosophical, the
poetic and the religious – which is why this world is entirely different. At the same
time, Sufi poetry initiates all of this at the same time; it simply “reincarnates” motifs,
figures, lyrical forms, etc. Without a doubt, shows an extraordinary dynamism that
is barely recorded elsewhere in the tradition, and extraordinarily interesting from the
point of view of poetological analysis. One should also bear in mind that I here, of
course, refer to the authentic feats of Sufism, not its meagre epigones. However, it
does not end here: Sufi poetry performs another significant transposition.

Namely, we observe that melancholy and lament, dominates Sufi poetry. Mirza Sa-
rajkić marks this characteristic of poetry by illustrating it through the verses of the
poet Hatem Bjelopoljak, who wrote esteemed Sufi ghazals. Sarajkić emphasises the
lyrical and Sufi “experience of sorrow” and states that Hatem Bjelopoljak writes
poems about a Sufi who is “disturbed as a nightingale who cries over a flower”.199 Of
course, Hatem is not an Iranian, but is a Sufi who accepted that dominant Sufi emo-
tion. It is not possible to separate Sufism from some form of pantheism that leads to
the joy of revealing God’s omnipresence in the world, His emanation in accidences,
but the poetic transformational powers of the Sufi poetry are so vast that the expect-
ed joy of which Hegel wrote as a characteristic of oriental poetry is transposed into
something else, into its opposite. The extent of the power of that transposition can be
seen in Hatem’s verses on the nightingale and the flower. In the complex metaphor
that Hatem uses, the constituents are positive: the nightingale and the flower. In the
real world, in the non-Sufi experience, it is almost unimaginable that a nightingale
and a flower, that is the nightingale before the flower, can produce “negative” emo-
tions that could be a source of lament or sadness. Quite the contrary: each is positive
within itself and by itself, and hence, their meeting, connecting them, strongly im-
proves their positivity. However, in Sufi verses, things are quite the opposite, which
is one of those significant Sufi transpositions that make this poetics defamiliarized
and successful.

Hatem’s verses that I mention here are characteristic of Sufi poetics because they use
frequent Sufi metaphors that transform into symbols with time (the nightingale, the
rose, the flower, etc.), and thus this image is one of the commonplaces of Sufi poetry.
Multiple transfers and transpositions are performed in them. At first glance, one can
observe the metaphorical transfer of the notion of the nightingale as a metaphor for a
man, or more precisely, a (Sufi) poet. A common trait of the nightingale and the poet
is singing: just as the nightingale sings most beautifully among birds, the Sufi poet
sings most beautifully amongst poets; apart from that, their song is mesmerising, in
the sense that it needs to draw attention of all who can hear the song, for the ultimate
goal of the Sufi expression (and here it is singing) is not in self-sufficiency; it is not

216
a goal for itself, but to initiate others (hearers), to address their hearts for inspiration.
The nightingale is a metaphor for “innocence on wings”, for the “enchanting winged
poem”. A Sufi could have hardly found a more suitable metaphor for the content it
transfers. Similar metaphorical transfers are performed with the flower, which is a
metaphor for God.

The nightingale is, thus, a mark of the highest positivity, just as is the flower, and that
positivity should be multiplied by their encounter: they stand in opposition. Separat-
ed from one another they do not have the full sense as in an encounter – only when
they are opposed can beauty, that is, positivity, be optimally dynamised. The flower
does not speak, literally, and that is one of the issues that disturbs the nightingale: the
entire flower in its inexplicable beauty is at the same time present, yet distanced in its
unattainable secret; in fact, its greatest secret is being unattainable to the nightingale
standing before it.

The point of this pantheistic image is the emotion that fulfils it, and that is sorrow, or
melancholy. Such an emotion is uncharacteristic of the actors, these lyrical subjects,
for one is to expect that the meeting of the two positives, such are the nightingale
and the flower, would result in a poem of joy, in happy, almost ecstatic pantheistic
immersion into the “very soul of things”. However, the nightingale is disturbed and
he sobs. Obviously, something very different occurs. In other words, in these verses,
characteristic of the Sufi ghazal, several kinds of transpositions and transformations
occur simultaneously, which make this poetry specific because of their multiple na-
ture. Among them is the transformation of an emotion whose origin and results need
to be explained, and I will do that by presenting a number of poetic reshapings
and transformations. Here, one should pay close attention to the constituents of this
complex metaphor, which is developed to the extent that it could be considered an
allegory, but, in Sufi poetry, their relationships are frequently taken as (Sufi) sym-
bols, even as codes of a kind. All these terms have something in common, but cannot
be completely equated with one another. Especially in the domain of poetics that I
here present, an understanding of these terms, determining their intersecting points
and their differences, is very important, for, in that aspect as well, the grand ability
of Sufi poetry to transpose and transform can be seen.

Hatem’s typical image bears witness that Sufi poetry translates the sensual and the
hedonistic into the expressly spiritual, and then succeeds in performing another dou-
ble transposition. In Hatem’s verses, the Nightingale sobs disturbed before the secret
of the Flower. What is first observed is that the poet primarily presents his images,
accidences in the real world that are enforced by positivity (the nightingale and the
flower), as constituents, or protagonists of the Sufi event. One cannot ignore the
serious possibility that that is, in fact, a reflex of the Sufi pantheistic acceptance of
the world as a universe of accidences in which God is emanated, so the poet assumes
the best accidences because they are especially suitable for purposeful poetic images
able for the great transfers of meaning, all the way to the symbols (a nightingale

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before a rose). The Sufi pantheism makes the visible world positive, and it is almost
made spiritual in the Sufi imagination. A Sufi poet, like Hatem in the aforementioned
verses, emphasises that his subjective awareness immerses into the external and the
individual in order for his awareness – expanded in the Sufi manner – to elicit to-
wards what he considers substantial, towards all that is emanated in appearances.
That is why he describes things through way he is within them, and not through the
way they reside within him. Since the poet sees the divine in everything, he aban-
dons his own I in order to be able to immerse himself into that what is “outside” of
him, the individual and the external. That is the direction of the extrovert, not the in-
trovert; that is the expansion of the lyrical, so a Sufi poet can never be pessimistic.200

Since he introduced into his poetic world these positive accidences, necessary for the
further adjustment of Sufi poetic positivity, the poet produces a shift by activating
them through “negative” emotions (I here use the word “negative” only condition-
ally and only temporarily for reasons that I will present later in the text). This is a
general phenomenon in Sufi poetry. The nightingale is disturbed, he sobs, although
that does not characterise the bird as such, and, in that way, a strong poetic effect
is achieved; the flower, on the other hand, instead of making the nightingale happy,
stirs its unrest and sobbing, for one is to expect that the flower exists entirely in
appearance, that by its manifestations (by shape, colour, smell) it initiates positive
feelings – to the level of exaltation – but that the essence of the “pantheistic flower”
is not in its appearance but in its secret/secrecy, since the flower, in a Sufi manner,
points to God. The flower here is a pantheistic accidence and, at the same time, it is
also a strong poetic figure. One of the specific characteristics of Sufi poetry is that
“poetic requisites” (like those in my representative example) are also strong stylistic
devices, with powerful transfers of meaning, and pantheistic accidences of the spir-
itualised world. In order to intensify their semantic potentials, the nightingale and
the flower are brought into a maximally dynamic relation: the nightingale expends
its full effort to reach the secret of the flower that emphasises its own inaccessibility.
In that way, all that has positive potential is prepared by the Sufi poetics to express
“negative” emotions. A specific Sufi garden image is created. A garden, as an im-
mense stylistic device, is dominant in Sufi poetry – starting from Hatem’s “structure
miniature” to entire works that frequently contained allegorical titles.201

Thus, in the garden image, or, in a garden, which is, as such, abundant with posi-
tives, or those potentials at least inherent to it, a sort of dramatic shift occurs, for, in
a garden, which is a sum of the positives of Oriental-Islamic culture and a world that
is an emanation of God, we do not hear the bird’s carol, nor do we hear the joyful
singing of its most positive “protagonist” – the nightingale (the Sufi) – rather, we
hear the nightingale sobbing before the flower (a symbol of God) whose beauty he
sees, but whose secret the nightingale cannot reach. The contrast is exceptionally
huge, optimal, since “negative” emotions flourish in the ambient/text and in the con-
text (a garden and its “protagonists”). This is one level of Sufi transformation and
transposition. With it, brilliant effects are achieved.

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 However, this exemplary poem advances in the direction of transforming the emo-
tion (which is always important for a Sufi, at least as much as contemplation), which
is represented as negative and contrary to the context, into a positive one. It is com-
pletely unexpected and almost triumphant. Sufi poetry achieves such a shift by po-
sitioning this second context as superior to the “initial” context – the image of a
garden with a sad nightingale and a secretive, inaccessible flower. The garden image
is primary, it is a kind of a context, but Sufi poetry – the poetic innovations of which
seem endless (the context, the scene, and its primary meanings, are all an introduc-
tion to the wider context of the Sufi world, its imaginative powers and representa-
tions) – introduces that primary context into the world of specific Sufi pantheism in
which (by forces of contextualisation in this, “other” world) the first image and its
context are reshaped at the second level.202 Namely, the emotions of a Sufi are pri-
marily necessary because he knows that the secrets of the flower cannot be reached
(the essence of God’s Existence), but his emotion – that can be said now – is, in fact,
not negative because he is neither depressed, nor pessimistic. What is more (again,
seemingly paradoxically), his emotion is positive – a joy expressed in a special way
and understood in a special Sufi context. In that way, the “protagonists” from the
garden (the nightingale and the flower) are given back their positivity, which was
only temporarily “taken away” – until we situated it in this second, superior context.
The emotion of the Sufi is in the very essence positive, since he sees the divine in
everything, to the extent that he leaves his own I and immerses himself in the ema-
nations of God. Hegel would say that his inner liberation increases in that way,203 and
that he feels completely liberated, basically happy. His “lamentation” arises from
the desire to advance further – to annihilation within the Divine – and that is why
his emotion is never negative, in the sense of pessimistic, or unhappy in any other
way. The emotion Hatem presents is, in fact, a stimulating melancholy, a desire for
continual advancement on that path – towards solving the Secret of the Flower, and
he is always optimistic about the perspective of his journey. An extraordinary beauty
is in the voyage or procession, for such states provide an immeasurable trait of dyna-
micity. This is why the Sufi/poet does not know of pessimism, or hopelessness. The
allegedly negative emotion of a Sufi is cultivated and contextually translated into a
positive emotion.

FROM SIMILE, THROUGH METAPHOR, TO SYMBOLS AND CODES

In the previous exposition, I stated that the Iranian element had a powerful effect on
Oriental-Islamic culture in the domain of the emotional; it can also be said, in gener-
al, that it strongly absorbed the kind of rationality, which – again, generally speaking
– characterises Sunni Islam. In that sense, the dominance of Shi’ism is a peculiar
emotion, a special kind of melancholy, as Asad stated correctly.204 In relation to this,
it is necessary to emphasise that Sufi poetry is, in fact, predominantly emotional,
since Sufi cognition is, in large part, a cognition achieved by emotion. What is more,
Sufis believe that the highest level of cognition can be reached through an imagina-
tion that can be contemplative, but, ultimately, ecstatic, which means that it is essen-

219
tially emotional. Thus, what we are facing is the highest cooperation possible for the
purpose of reaching the same goal – the religious and the emotional. In all of that,
imagination, which is constantly perfected, plays the key role, and since it is always
individual, this means that every experience is unique, subjective on the one hand,
and, essentially inexplicable on the other, for there are no adequate means for a truth-
ful transposition of that experience. Furthermore, the authenticity and strength of the
Sufi experience depend on the capacity of a Sufi’s imagination, and his ability to use
it and perfect it, which ultimately leads to a hierarchical positioning among Sufis.

In the given context, one should keep in mind that imagination is always – in this
case especially – the basic “instrument” of poetry. It was especially strongly deter-
mined in that sense in the ancient period (in the poetry of the shā‘ir), as well as later,
in the Islamic period, when the significance of imagination weakened, proportion-
ally to the emphasised orientation to phylotechnical poetry, to the games of forms,
where the technical aspect was perfected, even to the level of craftsmanship, but at
the expense of imagination in which Sufi poetry restored primacy.205

At the first level of reception, one can speak of metaphors in Sufi poetry, like the
frequent metaphors of wine, a mole on the face of the “Loved One”, His hair locks,
etc. At this level, a certain shift in traditional poetics was performed, for the means
of description (comparison) advanced to the sphere of the metaphorical transfer: the
dominant trope simile transformed into dominant metaphors. In non-Sufi, profane
poetry, the poet describes his heroine by marking her dominant features through
simile. However, a Sufi poet terminates the comparable element and the first item of
comparison (and that is why some inadequately call the metaphor a “shortened sim-
ile”) for the purpose of transposing not only the figure of comparison, but also the
entire world that is expressed through that form into strong vortices of metaphorical
transfers. The simile is unable to give impetus to imagination, unlike the metaphor
that, in fact, exists owing to the force of the transfer and its liberated connotations.
Similes and metaphors are, essentially, two different understandings of the world,
and two different forms for expression. The simile is more static, while the metaphor
is expressly dynamic, which goes in favour of the forceful exaltations of a Sufi. One
should always keep in mind, especially when Sufi poetry is in question, that the
metaphor is not only a matter of stylistics, but also an expression and the form of a
special relationship between the man and the world; it is not a mere stylistic device
(in fact, a trope) because it mediates the world. Nietzsche correctly said that the
basic human urge is the urge to create metaphors. A metaphor represents, it does not
compare; it essentially belongs to the language of poetry and to the language of phi-
losophy. What is more – it possesses a miraculous ability to bring philosophy closer
to poetics and poetry to philosophy.

I deem these short observations on the metaphor necessary in the given context to
show that Sufi opinion, even Sufi opinion in poetry, is not possible without meta-
phoric language.206 If we observe the relationship of Sufi poetry towards metaphor,

220
the conclusion inevitably follows that Sufi poetry performs a poetic shift, at the level
of tradition, by replacing simile with metaphor, which brings a new dynamism to the
tradition as a whole. As I have already stated, metaphor is not only a matter of style;
its predominance affects poetics in general. It is closely connected to the relationship
towards the content of poetry. I have already emphasised this, but now further con-
sequences need to be identified.

Content is primary in Sufi poetry; it is in the highest spheres of the imagination and
it is impossible to express in any other way than through the language of metaphor,
since it opens up enormous possibilities for connotations, and to a number of associ-
ations proportionate to the imaginative potential of the “protagonist” and the recipi-
ent. The goal of metaphor is not to describe; rather, it is to lead towards (imaginative)
cognition through its unique description; that is why the language of metaphor is
characteristic of sacral texts. Hence, in the relationship towards them, the metaphor
is determined more as cognitive than aesthetic, although these two aspects are not
mutually exclusive. Sufis claim that not even this metaphor can express the essence
of their experience, but can only strongly point to it, and if the metaphor is unable to
achieve that, then no other means in language can. Literature created by Iranians – at
the level of the traditional innovation – belongs to the swirling world of metaphor
more than to the rational steadiness of simile.

Considering the prevalence of content in Sufi poetry – and especially Sufi content
– and considering the effort to express it in language, it follows that Sufi poetics is
deductive. Much later, Sufi poetry would, paradoxically, show considerable affinity
towards sclerotisation, towards tiresome generalisations, borrowing completed Sufi
patterns that would seriously jeopardize its poetic vitality and the originality of indi-
vidual work, its artistic individuality. Ultimately, this poetry was exposed to the most
serious risks of being transformed into inductive, normative poetics, regardless of
the fact that the content was still primary, for, in time, Sufi poets would increasingly
adhere to already canonised works in crafting their own works, to already-existing
production, which is the characteristic of inductive, rather than deductive poetics.
However, my goal is to present Sufi poetry poetically and in its best light, in the
basic, “youthfully enthusiastic” period in the tradition that flourished so powerfully.

Hence, at the first level – in its relationship towards tradition – Sufi poetry over-
comes simile as the dominant figure in favour of metaphor as a necessary means for
mediation, not for a description of the Sufi world (owing to the different priorities in
the content-form relationship), which by itself was a great poetic innovation. That
transition is so delicate that many readers of Sufi poetry failed to notice the change
in some prominent Sufi poems, or even in the entire Sufi opus; they failed to observe
the metaphorical transfer that we elaborate on here, or the transpositions that I will
discuss below; instead, they perceive this poetry in a literal sense: they understand it
as love lyricism (erotic poetry), even as homosexual poetry; they see in the Sufi met-
aphor/symbol wine, that is, bacchic poetry, etc. I will name one, but important exam-

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ple: Many readers have always understood Hafiz’s poetry in two ways: as Sufi poetry
and/or as literal, which means, most frequently, as hedonistic poetry. Of course, both
readings are legitimate if they are poetically coherent, and Hafiz’s poetry (and I state
it only as an example) is not responsible for any of the interpretations. What is more,
by that cunning transposition of simile into complex metaphorical transfers, Sufi
poetry contributed to its own ambiguousness, an openness for different interpreta-
tions, but one should bear in mind that different readings of Sufi poetry are mutually
exclusive, divergent, and therein lies their problem. For there is an enormous differ-
ence – to the point of opposition – if we understand a poem that focuses on wine and
intoxication as a theme in both a literal and metaphorical sense: in the first instance,
the poet (in a bacchic manner) surrenders to vice (wine), which is prohibited in
Islam, while, in the second instance, the poet, quite the opposite, is intoxicated by
the Sufi cognition of God, which is the highest virtue.207 Without a doubt, the loss is
huge; it is proportional to the potentials of its ambivalence and connotative nature,
and which means, in the case of Sufi poetry, enormously much. In other words, the
oversight is similar to a claim that the metaphor is a shortened simile.

“Prepared context” is very important for the reception of a literary work. On the
one hand, context can entail the reader’s individual competence for reading, for per-
ceiving: the reader’s education, sensitivity, etc. On the other hand, the “prepared
context” means that the reader, alongside general education, a familiarity with liter-
ature and openness to it, should know the position of a work, even the opuses of that
literature, which is particularly important if we are talking about important works
(like Hafiz’s work, for example), because their significance is formed on the basis
of peculiar relationships towards other works and the tradition in general, as well as
towards literature as such, since it expands the horizon of its experiences. Sufi poetry
is, undoubtedly, looking for such a context, since it also constructed a specific liter-
ary-historical and poetic context. Differences in perception are ultimately dependent
on whether or not a work is read outside or within its literary-historical context.
That is why literary histories and poetological studies are written. Sufi poetry and
its poetics are deeply conditioned historically. However, one should now return to
the metaphor that the Sufi poetry continues to transform, contrary to expectations,
since it had appeared that Sufi poetry reached the ultimate means of expression by
reaching the level of metaphor.

The transfer of meaning upon which the metaphor is based has a tendency to develop
further. Thus, certain words/notions, very frequent in Sufi poetry – like the nightin-
gale and the flower, like wine and the wine bearer, etc. – in the Sufi verses in Arabic
by Ahmed Hatem Bjelopoljak (d. 1754) become symbols for what is exclusively in
the sphere of the spiritual. In this way, we again go back to the importance and spec-
ificities of Sufi poetry, which, as such, enriches the experience of the tradition. The
strong connection of poetry for the spiritual, in fact, for the metaphysical, makes its
poetics specific as well, for it opens a possibility for the transformation of metaphor,
in addition to the fact that this poetry, as we have seen, has already been introduced
into the world of the metaphorical transfer to which allegory belongs as well.

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The metaphor has great connotative potential, but that appears to be insufficient to
Sufi poetry, since it belongs to a world of complete abstraction (Sufis consider their
experience inexpressible). That is why these terms (which should be called poetic
requisites only conditionally) turn into symbols from metaphor. Symbols also rest
on the transfer of meaning, but they are for the “needs” of Sufi poetry, more suitable
than metaphor because they possess a greater ability to express multiple meanings
and an abstraction that is the very essence of Sufi poetry. In that sense, metaphor and
symbols have different potential – a symbol unifies within an image and thought, the
visible and the sensual with the invisible and the non-material, with someone who
is pantheistically of this and of that world. Obviously, Hatem’s verses illustrate that
brilliantly: the image of a crying nightingale before the secrets of the flower uses the
best “samples” of the sensual world in order to reach something completely opposite
to its abstraction – the Flower (God), whose abstraction is intensified (if that can be
at all graded) by the word secrets, since they are unreachable to the nightingale and
who sobs because of it, although it is unimaginable in the real world for a nightingale
to sob.

The image of the nightingale and the flower is a commonplace in Sufi poetry. For
example, Ahmed Hatem Bjelopoljak, a Bosniak Sufi poet, sings:

(...)
When an observer looks to the right
He thinks it is a garden that long flourished.
To a nightingale the only loyal friend is love
It cries with sadness as it flutters around and above.208
(...)

Constituents of symbols from the material world are used, but they are transferred
from the highest order of abstraction by their highly complex relationships. The
dynamism of the transfer is intensified proportionally to the “distance” of the visible
and the material, from the invisible, the abstract. In such extreme conditions, the
efforts of the constituents in the transfer to reach and express that which is, neverthe-
less, inexpressible in its entirety, are enormous. The image and the thought, the ma-
terial and the metaphysical, are brilliantly unified here. Thus, Sufi poetry has posi-
tioned itself in a syncretic manner: just as it had accepted important poetic elements
of the tradition in order to prevail over those as well, it also accepted the metaphor
because of tis transferable abilities for the purpose of prevailing over it also through
the construction of Sufi poetic symbols. Something related to the growth of symbols
should be mentioned here.

Apart from the fact that a symbol is characterised by a striving to achieve multiple
meanings, to unify the sensual and the non-material in a single image, Sufi poetic
symbols become frequent and are relatively stable in meaning; that is, their transfers

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are stable. In time and through a frequent distribution in the corpus, they transform
themselves from the individual into common symbols that dedicated readers recog-
nise in the given discourse and in Sufi poetry, while other readers need assistance. A
symbol requires a certain level of generality to be able to function as such, but also
a certain level of ellipticity in order to be a symbol. Thus, Sufi poetry became abun-
dant with symbols whose transfers cannot be decoded by readers insufficiently fa-
miliar with Sufi opinion and Sufi poetics. In that sense, dictionaries of Sufi symbols
and terms frequently appear in collections of Sufi poetry or with texts on Sufi litera-
ture, and that is rare in other kinds of poetry. This means that in Sufi poetry there is
a proportionally small number of original and truly significant works; that is, in that
abundant production, there is a relatively large number of imitative works. In any
case, many authors in Sufi literature adhered to certain role models, and understood
the term to adhere to very freely, almost infinitely.209 Also, expert interpretations
of certain Sufi texts are published in practice, in order to facilitate understanding
for readers unfamiliar with Sufi literature. (Let us recall the so-called Chair for the
Mathnawī that was active in Sarajevo for decades.)

Since symbols have become frequent in Sufi poetry, with stable meanings, and since
that poetry was widespread in classical literature where it was expected to under-
stand the meaning of symbols as preconditions for understanding the work, it is quite
suitable to speak of those symbols as codes: the allegedly competent entrance to the
world of such works entailed understanding of its codes. That is why dictionaries of
symbols accompanying Sufi texts are, in fact, codebooks. Thus, in a relatively short
historical period, a long path was traversed in terms of literary tradition: from the
simile to the metaphor; from the metaphor to the symbol; from the symbol to the
code and the accompanying dictionary/codebook.

Sufi poetry was faced, relatively early on, with a particularly serious problem. Name-
ly, a diligent constitution of symbols and their relatively large distribution in poetic
Sufi texts – which was a precondition of their survival as symbols – led to the accel-
erated transformation of Sufi poetry into cliché, into a stereotyping of the poetry; it
led to the suffocation of the initial inventiveness through an abundance of symbols
that have become its topoi. In fact, the codebooks were a negation of the individu-
ality of the work. The originality of the work is thus seriously prevented, and that
to me seems the most important problem in Sufi poetry, after its initial refreshment.
For, if a codebook is produced to go along with a vast literary production, which is
the case with the Sufi poetry, it means that its creational, artistic unpredictability is
locked up in codes, in turn meaning that the author’s originality is prevented. If the
“state of being encoded” is observed at the level of a single work, then the codes,
paradoxically, do not have to have the status of codes; rather they can be observed
as (complex) metaphors, as allegories, or even as symbols. If that is seen as a rule,
or as a characteristic of the entire subtype, then we reach a completely different
conclusion: the exaggerated distribution of the same symbols/codes introduces that
work into the abundance of the same poetic procedures, which ultimately prevents

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the author’s originality and brings even this poetry closer to the joys of poetic techni-
calities, or technology, a characteristic of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic lan-
guages. This is why there are familiar cases of naẓīras being written by significant,
even canonised mathnawīs, although it had appeared impossible at first, considering
that Sufi texts prefer content over form.210

Clearly, Sufi poetry did not become this immediately: over time, the wealth of pro-
duction and an immense distribution of symbols within it brought Sufi poetry to the
state we elaborate here. In connection to the considerable presence of symbols/codes
in this poetry, there are several ostensible paradoxes.

First, since Sufi poetry entails a unique Sufi experience, it should always be based
on imagination, and it follows that its expression always needs to be individual and
subjective, meaning also original, considering the subjective nature of the experi-
ence and that it is always based on an imagination that is inherently subjective.
The apparent dominance of codes in Sufi poetry bears witness to the absence of the
subjectivity/originality of a significant portion of that production, especially in the
later classical period. After I present certain other paradoxes, I will draw certain
conclusions regarding the apparently threatened individuality of poetic Sufi work.

Second, a symbol/code as such has a dual function. On the one hand, the code im-
plies containment, impenetrability, except to those who are dedicated to the field;
Sufi poetry brought the content to the level of codes because the image upon which
the transmission rests (of which I have already spoken) is overburdened with mul-
tiple meanings and spirituality. Thus, codes on the one hand express a relative con-
tainment of the work/meaning, while, on the other hand, there is a need for being
open, and hence works are equipped with codebooks.

Third, the majority of Sufis strive for communicability, for initiating listeners/read-
ers and their followers through their expression. However, the encoding of the work
seems opposed to this desire because it closes the meanings for a number of people.
The essential task of the symbol (I only conditionally call it a code in the Sufi poetry,
in the meaning that I have already elaborated) is to suggest certain meanings or con-
tent to the reader, which means that the poetry is ambivalent. On the one hand, the
symbol is represented as inherently open, elliptical, for the very word to suggest (the
meaning) entails a possibility of other meanings, that is, it entails openness. On the
other hand, the symbol is also characterised by containment by the very fact that it
demands a certain effort, knowledge, from the reader in order to be able to determine
the ways and reach of the symbol transfer. Even though it may seem paradoxical, it
follows that Sufi poetry, because of the abundance of its symbols, strives to be com-
municative through a language (symbols, codes) that is simultaneously open (for
those who are dedicated to Sufi thought and poetry) and relatively confined for those
who are outside that circle. This is one of the important specificities of Sufi poetry.
It becomes communicable through means that are, principally, either incommunica-

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ble, or with limited communicable abilities. Sufis most probably think that that it is
inevitable because of the specific content of their poetry (their imagination) and the
inability of language to adequately express the uniqueness of that content.

Fourth, the language of Sufi poetry, as well as its style, is most frequently described
as simple.211 However, the situation is far more complex than it may first appear.
It is necessary in these cases to explain what is meant by the “language and style”
of Sufi poetry when they are described as simple. The language of Sufi literature
is specific in that it abstains from artificiality – symbols excluded – and loftiness,
which characterised poetry of the time; Sufi literature is in that sense incongruous.
The language of fables, parables, usually used in Sufi texts, is a simple language;
however, the pronounced parabolicity, which requires a skillful interpretation and
deciphering, indicates that these, in fact, are not simple texts: simplicity at that level
is overcome by the complexity of greater structural units, or entire structures that
have an emphasised tendency to be transformed into symbols, because it is burdened
with a multiplicity of meanings that need to be expressed. Thus, Sufi literature is
seemingly characterised primarily by simple language, but it again surprises us, for
after this simplicity follows a complexity by the introduction of symbols that strive
towards the status of codes, just as it surprises us by the symbolic character of entire
structures.

Sufi poetry initially represented a kind of successful escape from predominant nor-
mative (inductive) poetics. In that sense, it achieved remarkable results, but with
time it became fatigued. The production of Sufi poetry became quite abundant in
classical literature, and I have already stated that it was, with time, dominated by
commonplaces, especially symbols. That means that something very similar oc-
curred with “profane” poetry, in two aspects.

First, just as “profane” poetry became a reservoir of motifs rather early, and poets
were even recommended to take the motifs of other poets and “mould” them into
another form, Sufi poetry became, with time, a reservoir of Sufi symbols that poets
freely borrowed to the extent that their poetry became stereotypical. In that, one
should bear in mind something that I will only mention in this context, and will re-
turn to it later – a sort of a transposition that Sufi poetry performed. Namely, from the
reservoir of motifs of “profane” poetry, Sufi poetry borrowed certain kinds of motifs
(being in love, being drunk on wine, etc.), but in such a way that it “transposed”
entire motifs into symbols of its own. This is one of the specific characteristics of
Sufi poetry, which deserves special attention. Thus, in both cases, the issue concerns
creating certain reservoirs, and also means reduction of the notion of originality, or
artistic freedoms with regard to the selection of themes, stylistic means, etc.

Second, and in relation to the aforementioned, Sufi poetry was – surprisingly, con-
sidering its initial determination in drifting away from normative poetics – directed,
with time, towards imitation, for a vast number of poets wrote poems in the manner

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of Sufi poetry. Many writers warned that they were writing Sufi works influenced
by their glorious predecessors, and in that they did not have a guilty conscience;
on the contrary, they proudly spoke of borrowing the entire structures of other Sufi
works, and even wrote naẓīras corresponding to certain Sufi works. What is more,
the reputation of a writer was interestingly not threatened because he imitated other
work. Such a procedure states that the content of a poem/work in one historical stage
ceases being a priority, as it had been in the Sufi poetry we could call authentic, like
Rumi’s, Hafiz’s, or other poetry. Consequently, this means that Sufi poetry – to a
large extent – becomes its own inspiration. That is how “priority” in the content and
form relationship is again misbalanced. In the imaginations of many Sufi poets, an
authentic Sufi content does not exist, but another poetic work is both content and
inspiration to their poetic imagination. Of course, one cannot deny that a certain
authentic work initiates metaphysical states within the other poet, but in his imag-
ination – and this is important – the poetic Sufi work, which he is imitating, is the
primary content. This is a considerable change in orientation towards form, since the
other poet is not “forced” by the seriousness and authenticity of his imagination to
search for a form (let us recall the ferocity of restlessness Rumi experienced for this
reason). This is a dramatic moment for Sufi poetics because it first made a shift in
relation to normative inductive poetics: in this stage of development and ossification,
it was seriously exposed to the danger of becoming normative and inductive – in
the sense that “new” works were written in the pattern of the exemplary, canonised
Sufi poetic production. The peculiar form of defamiliarization is obvious: the form
is given priority over Sufi imaginative content, which is not expected from that kind
of poetry. I here emphasise form because one can speak of form in this kind of Sufi
poetry – which is truly surprising – rather than of genre in the meaning of the form
that I have already elaborated when I wrote about the forms of “profane” poetry.

If one keeps in mind this kind of domination of Sufi symbols, in the elaborated
functions, and that Sufi poetry gradually becomes mesmerised by its own self – as
a self-aware and highly popular poetic entity – then it logically follows that Sufi
poetry conducted a “poetic adjustment” over time, in the medieval poetic tradition
and poetics, in the sense of a general relationship towards form in the Middle Ages.
Principally, it poetically started resembling the “profane” poetic tradition that is sub-
jected to endless games of forms. Furthermore, a vast horizon of classical literature
becomes breviloquent if its forms are presented this way – through a reasonable
emphasis on poetically dominant Sufi poems, on the abundance of the commonplac-
es of Sufi poetry and on its gradual transition towards imitation, so intensive and
abundant that, for example, one can simply identify the “line” of inspirations by the
Sufi form from Rumi (13th century) through Hafiz (14th century), to Fawzī al-Mustārī
(18th century). And this kind of breviloquence in the tradition and the exaggerated
influence of the canonical works of Sufi literature in its abundant production offers
the possibility of seriously considering the semiotisation of the entire culture.

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A CRITICAL OVERVIEW OF TWO CHARACTERISTIC ORIENTALIST
APPROACHES TO SUFI POETRY
The transpositions in Sufi poetry that I attempted to present through a summary
brought the learned readers and interpreters of this literature, as well as those who
do not belong to the siècle of the dedicated, into a dilemma. Bećir Džaka was among
those who accentuated this.212 Annemarie Schimmel, for example, noticed the poly-
valent nature of Sufi poems, but she left her readers short of a proposal for inter-
pretation. By mentioning the discussions on whether or not the verses by Hafiz, for
example, should be interpreted mystically, or erotically (hedonistically), she is of the
opinion that both meanings are equally distant from the “truth”; “to look for either
purely mystical or purely profane interpretation is pointless”.213

Such an attitude is problematic because it is incomplete, unspecified. Namely, if

Hafiz’s poetry (which is mentioned as a possible example) is neither mystical nor
profane, then what is it? It cannot be both at the same time (in a single interpreta-
tion), and if it is something else, then what it is should be stated. To be more precise:
due to highly complex transpositions that I have so far explained, Sufi poetry is
open, thus both the “profane perception” as well as “mystical perception” can be
considered legitimate, provided that each of them is coherent and explanatory in
explication. If both interpretations are equally distant from the “truth”, then such an
attitude deprives us of the possibility of any coherent interpretation, for – I assume
it is logical – the “third solution”, which entails that a poem by Hafiz, for exam-
ple, is both mystical and profane, is impossible. In any case, what is the truth used
in Annemarie Schimmel’s statement? That word calls for reasonable explanations.
Does that mean that we need to dig through Hafiz’s biography – in the manner of a
rigid positivism – in order to see what the “truth” is in his poetry - did he really drink
in taverns or did he worship in khanqahs…? Such an approach overlooks the well-
known fact that lyrical poetry is not an autobiographical detail and that it has a life of
its own, independent of the author, from the very moment it is written and introduced
into the realm of art. Also, the word truth is always problematic when a work of art is
in question: truth in real life is not the same as truth in an artistic work. Additionally,
the very title of the author’s book contains a clearly defining syntagm “Persian and
Turkish mystical poetry”: it is categorised as mystical poetry by its very title.

Annemarie Schimmel seriously deals with the issue of the alleged homosexuality
of Sufis, that is, of the Sufi poets. She operates within the orientalist discourse upon
which I have already elaborated, and which understands the male lyrical heroes in
Sufi poetry literally, and overlooks many issues characteristic of an art work, of
the structure of its universe, including the fact that sublimation is key in a lyrical
art work, that it is a reshaping in reality, etc. In that context, Annemarie Schimmel
mentions a dream of a certain Haraz from 9th century as an argument. It is neces-
sary to quote that text here in order to see that the prominent orientalist is even
using a dream as an argument for the alleged “inclination” of the Sufis to “beardless
youths”: “One can conclude that many Sufis were not prone to restrain their feelings

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[homosexual feelings towards beardless youths – E. D.] from concern over such ten-
dencies, expressed in Sufi circles. Haraz (late 9th century) even dreamt of Satan who
bragged about having at least one, if not more, reliable trap for Sufis, namely ‘their
love of beardless youths’”.214

I mentioned this relationship of Annemarie Schimmel towards Sufi poetry and to-
wards Sufis in general only to show that there are possibilities for different interpre-
tations of Sufi poetry, and also to illustrate that distinguished orientalists are known
to promote simplified, reductionist approaches to a highly complex poetry, and
which is thus made inferior. In this way, serious presuppositions are created, keep-
ing in mind the vast production and esteemed position of Sufi poetry, that are ethical
in nature, and focus on the poetic problematizing of an entire culture that, allegedly,
promoted homosexuality. In fact, this is the devil’s trap of orientalism, not the trap
that a certain Haraz allegedly dreamt of. Also, the aforementioned “conclusions” and
interpretations by Annemarie Schimmel are yet another example – a very prominent
example, keeping in mind the immense reputation of the author – that some oriental
philologists strongly deformed oriental literature by their philological translations
and their interpretations, since they were not sensitive enough for the aesthetic ele-
ment in an art work and that they lacked – in some important instances – elementary
knowledge of literature and poetology. It is again seen that philology as science is
incompetent for an adequate treatment of complex works as works of art.

The complexity of the transformation of the tradition that Sufi poetry made, espe-
cially the complexity of its transpositions, which are inseparable from art, show the
immense inadequacies, the incompatibilities of simplified approaches; they demon-
strate the necessity of observing a traditional literary phenomenon, such as Sufi
poetry, primarily in a poetological manner. Reducing that vast corpus that we call
Sufi poetry to the inscriptions of the alleged inclination of Sufis towards “beardless
youths” annuls all of its poetic transformations and transpositions. By such banalisa-
tion, all of those vast potentials of the spiritual, which we have so far elaborated, and
because of which the corpus is called mystical (Sufi) poetry, are annulled, and the
mystical character of the poetry is oversimplified and made profane in an extremely
negative way.

At the very beginning of the study I stated that every literary history and every writ-
ten interpretation of literary history, are a part of literature. Sufi poetry is literature,
thus, studies of the Sufi literature ultimately become a part of that literature. That
is why it is necessary to reflect upon both coherent and incoherent texts on Sufism;
they become a big text in time.

One of the “problems” of Sufi poetry stems from the ambiguity I mentioned, which
was also noted by Annemarie Schimmel, but which she did not clarify. And by that
ambiguity I mean that Sufi poetry can be perceived, characteristically, both as a re-
flexive, philosophical poetry, and as a non-systematic, profoundly imaginative phi-

229
losophy. Both of these kinds of perception are widespread. Some analysts approach
Sufi poetry as a form of philosophy, as a philosophical system of Islamic mysticism,
at which point they are faced with immense difficulties, for philosophy and poetry
function differently. One should keep in mind that they frequently are not poetolo-
gists and are thus unable to approach poetry poetologically, which is necessary. In
such cases, Sufi poetry, for example, is understood as erotic or hedonistic, for the
transformations that I elaborated are left unnoticed, while Sufi poetic metaphors that
were transformed into symbols are understood as mere descriptions (of, for exam-
ple, a male person) coming from another man’s quill. In that way, preconditions are
created to mark the entire culture as being latently or truly homosexual. As is the
case elsewhere in science, the analytical method and the competence of the analysts
is decisive.215

Annemarie Schimmel states in the same text: “Persian lyricism would never have
acquired its peculiar charm had there not been Sufi theories; they are the backdrop
for the development of that poetry (…)”.216

This is also a problematic attitude, since the situation is far more complex. Primar-
ily, the majority of distinguished theoreticians of Sufism were not poets, while it
also remains to be confirmed that Sufi poets were (competent) authorities in “Sufi
theories” and that became distinguished poets owing to the “theoretical backdrop”
of their poetry.217

The poetry and theory of Sufism developed in the same culture and different contacts
certainly existed in both directions. Sufi poetry was significantly independent from
theory. Rumi acted independently, through a “poetic contemplation” that was freed
from the shackles of theory by poetic ascent. At the same time, the above-quoted
claim oversees a significant fact – that the greatest works of Sufi poetry played an
immense role in the perception of Islam, in spreading the dervish orders, as well
as that a poetic expression, such as the Mathnawī, fatefully led to the proliferation
of Mathnawīs throughout the Islamic world, elevating Rumi’s poetic expressions
almost to the level of a doctrine. Hence, some Sufi poems became a stronghold of
tariqas; their nature was missionary, and Sufism spread owing to Sufi poetry as well.
What is more, it is reasonable to develop a thesis opposite to that of Annemarie
Schimmel. Namely, Sufism would not have acquired its “peculiar charm” without
Sufi lyricism. Additionally, in the given context, one should pay attention to the
aforementioned syntagm “Persian lyricism”: since I have already stated that Irani-
ans wrote the most important works of Sufi poetry, one can ask only a hypothetical
question regarding the achievements of Sufism in the Islamic world (and in the West)
had there not been those grand works of Sufi literature like the Mathnawī or Hafiz’s
opus. Sufism among Muslims (numerous tariqs) was formed greatly owing to Sufi
literature. In fact, it brought charm to Sufism in general. Without Sufi literature,
Sufi theories would have remained mostly in considerable isolation, in specialised
philosophical circles, while, owing to poetry, Sufism – even though partially mod-

230
ified – was disseminated throughout the Islamic world. Hence, their relationship is
complex, and in no way one-sided, making Annemarie Schimmel’s claims seriously
problematic.

Another prominent example of simplification and incorrect generalisation can be

found in the work of Eva de Vitrej-Mejerovič, who is considered a respectable sci-
entist, and made claims that art for art’s sake was non-existent in Islamic culture,
based on the observation that “the greatest poets of Islam, for example, Djalāl-ad-
Dīn-Rūmi, whom I greatly admire, did not consider himself a poet (…); by that he
wanted to say that his work should be used for educational purposes”.218

It should firstly be emphasised that the syntagm poets of Islam is imprecise. The
question arises of whether or not the author refers to the art of poetry that developed
in Oriental-Islamic culture; to art that served the purpose of affirming Islam as a reli-
gion; or if her words refer to art that is in Islam, as is, for example, “pious literature.”
The meaning of “poetics of Islam” is also unclear. Lack of precision in these state-
ments burdens the term art with generalisation, for in the very domains of education,
literature, calligraphy, architecture, etc., it does not function the same way. However,
by all accounts, de Mejerovič is referring to the classical literature of Oriental-Islam-
ic languages, which confirms her mention of Rumi as an example. In any case, it is
useful to prevent a misunderstanding in relation to the claim that the task of classical
literature was always to educate. That is the essence of the term adab.

I have explained that the term adab includes all products of the human spirit for
the purpose of making a man cultivated, ennobled. Eva is partly right – the task of
literature in the Islamic world was in large part educational. However, it was not
always the only task. In time, attention was largely placed upon the form, to an end-
less playing with forms, and in such a situation, education, that is, teaching, is not a
priority of literature.

Immediately following the above-quoted section, Eva de Vitrej-Mejerovič contin-

ues: “Form is secondary, it is an intermediary”.219 History proves the opposite: with
the partial exception of Sufi poetry in the first stage of its development, classical
literature in Oriental-Islamic languages is characterised by giving preference to form
over content. In the late period of the tradition, some forms were self-obsessed, to
the extent that their goal was, in fact, to show that the author was learned (educated
about the tradition that he brilliantly mastered), not to emphasise his intention of
teaching; the author’s learnedness was directed to his own self; its task was not to
educate the reader. Mentioning Rumi as an example that should “cover” the entirety
of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages in the sense of its obligatory
educational function is careless, for Rumi is an atypical poet, that is, his poetry is
atypical. This entire chapter of my study is dedicated to a poetological explanation
of the unique character of the Sufi poetry of which Rumi is a superb representative.
This means that he is an atypical poet in two ways. For if he were typical he would

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not be significant, he would be suffocated in mediocracy; and, since he is exception-
al this means that the entirety of “Islamic art” cannot be categorically and without
exception “covered” by his work. Rumi’s double peculiarity is apparent in the fact
that he is an exceptional poet whose work became prominent in the tradition because
it is exceptional. That can be reasonably explained by the poetics of Sufi poetry and
the poetics of Rumi’s work: they show the lively nature of correspondence with tra-
dition, but even more its dominance in the domain of poetic forms and its preference
for special content, which emphasises the engaging nature of his poetry. This is why
the reader not only perceives the “outer” side of his story, and this is why Rumi does
not pay attention to that side as much as he pays attention to the “inner”, “hidden”
side that teaches, that educates. “It is impossible” Rumi says, “to tell people more
than that. The sea cannot inflow into a river. I speak so simply so that your minds
will accept what is said. That is not for judgement – that is the fate of a prophet”.220
It appears that Rumi’s thought and expression – in spite of the humility that is related
to it – managed to shed light on his entire culture by its own luminance. Observed
poetologically, some very popular forms – for example, the nazira, tahmīs and other
musammat forms – do not have the same function and goal as the Mathnawī: they
succumb to technical games and the perfectionism of the form; their priority is not to
teach and educate. What is more, the issue is inversion, for – as Rumi speaks of his
“spite” towards poetry incapable of expressing his sublime states – the forms that I
have just mentioned do the exact opposite: they celebrate expression and form, and
not content. The consequences of such different poetic priorities are enormous and
they show that Rumi’s work is more of an exception than a rule.

Sufi poetry was a grand poetic innovation in the tradition, but in time, it too, as I
have already stated, gave way to the common forces of the tradition that led poetry
to imitation. Classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages in general – hence,
poetry and prose – succumbed to citations, intertextuality, especially to topoi, and,
consequently, Sufi poetry gradually neglected the virtues of originality and started
accepting the traditional habit of being marked by canonical works. Thus, abun-
dance of topoi and canon in this tradition requires special consideration in the light
of semiotisation in Oriental-Islamic culture.

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183. Qur’ān, 26: 224-227.
184. On the relationship between the ‘uḏrī love and Sufi poetry, see, for example: As‘ad E. Khairallah, Love, Madness
and Poetry. An Interpretation of the Ma\nun Legend, Beirut-Wiesbaden, 1980; Adnan Kadrić, Objekt Ljubavi u
tesavufskoj književnosti: Muradnama Derviš-paše Bajezidagića [The Object of Love in Tasawwuf Literature: the
Muradnama by Dervish Pasha Bajezidagić], Orijentalni institut, Posebna izdanja, XXVIII, Sarajevo, 2008, p. 25,
onwards.
185. When artistic literature is in question, one should always keep in mind the transposition and sublimation from
which it is inseparable; the ancient truth is that literature is not a piece of biographical writing, nor is it a “faithful
reflection” of society. However, it is interesting that ‘uḏrī love is, in a way, expressly opposed to the kind of he-
donism that is manifested in carnality as such, or transferred through harem-like love. The ‘uḏrī ghazal developed
in a culture that, in the sphere of the erotic, presented itself as overtly hedonistic, but the ‘uḏrī ghazal is the “other
face” of that developed hedonism: love in the ‘uḏrī ghazal is also expressed as a strong emotional state, as lyrical
suffering perfected in the manner of tragedy.
186. B. L. Riftin, “Tipologija i uzajamne veze srednjovekovnih književnosti” [Typology and Mutual Relations of Me-
dieval Literatures], Treći program Radio Beograda, br. 26, Belgrade, 1975.
187. With regard to Sufi poetry, it is possible to speak of Eros in Plato’s meaning of the term – as of a voyage from
actuating manifestations, through soul and spirituality, to the highest cognitions, not in the meaning of the carnal
as the ultimate goal.
188. See more on this in the section “A critical overview of two characteristic orientalist approaches to Sufi poetry”.
189. In a multitude of works globally, the term “object of love” is used for God. A lot of space would be occupied
by mentioning all such literature, to which a section of orientalist literature in Bosnia and Herzegovina belongs.
Here, I shall only mention some works. For example, Slobodan Ilić writes about the “beautiful object of his love”
(“Hurufijski pjesnik Vahdeti Bosnevi i njegov divan” [“Hurufi Poet Vahdeti Bosnevi and His Diwan], Prilozi za
orijentalnu filologiju, br. 38, Orijentalni institut, Sarajevo, 1989, p. 70.); as well as Bećir Džaka, who wrote about
the object of Sufi love in: Historija perzijske književnosti od nastanka do kraja 15. vijeka [History of Persian
Literature from the Beginning to the End of the 15th Century], Naučnoistraživački institut “Ibn Sina”, Sarajevo,
1997, p. 321; Adnan Kadrić introduces the word “object” into the title of his book (Adnan Kadrić, Objekt Ljubavi
u tesavufskoj književnosti: Muradnama Derviš-paše Bajezidagića [The Object of Love in Tasawwuf Literature:
the Muradnama by Dervish Pasha Bayezidagić], Orijentalni institut, Posebna izdanja, XXVIII, Sarajevo, 2008).
190. Ultimately, the Qur’ān reads that He Is Eternally Active (55:29).
191. Even the name insān (man) has extraordinarily positive semantics – the semantic pool of this word is: being socia-
ble, being kind (towards someone), feeling sympathy towards someone, etc. Opposite to that, one can frequently
hear, even amongst the ulema, that the word insān means one who forgets, with all negative connotations, whilst
the term primarily means a careless relationship towards God. This is completely wrong, for the word insān is
derived from the root ALIF-NUN-SIN, and the root for forget is NUN-SIN-YA (nisyān).
192. For Sufis, He is, among other things, al-Maḥbūb (the One Who is loved), al-Ma‘shūq (ferociously Loved), al-
Maḏkūr (the One to Whom Dhikr is made), etc.
193. In ancient Oriental-Islamic literature, the poetic “revival of still life”, especially landscapes, and space in general,
was very pronounced, so I published a paper about that: “Prostor kao junak u staroj arabljanskoj kasidi” Novi Iz-
raz, br. 49-50, Sarajevo, juli-decembar 2010, p. 133-142; “Space as a Hero in Old Arabian Qasida”, International
Journal for Arab Studies, Vol. 3, No 1, February 2011.
194. In philosophical discussions on the existence of subjects only, the works of the very popular German philosopher
Peter Sloterdijk (1947) should be mentioned, including the bestseller Critique of Cynical Reason (Kritik der
zynischen Vernunft, 1983).
195. R. A. Nicholson, Sufizam: mistici islama (The Mystics of Islam), transl.: Dušan Stojanović, Babun, Belgrade,
2011, p. 80.
196. The highly esteemed orientalist Nicholson starts the fifth chapter of the same book with the sentence: “Let us
assume that an ordinary Muslim knows to read English…” (op. cit., str., 92), which means that it is not likely
that an “ordinary” Muslim knows English. He then, on the very same page, speculates that “A Muslim would see
some sort of a ghost, an afrīt or a jinn in a telegraph.” At the very beginning of the study, “Dr. Nicholson, one of
the leading experts on Islamic mysticism”, as announced by the publisher on the book cover, portrays Islam the
following way: “The Qur’ān, as I said, begins with the representation of Allah, the Only One, the Eternal, the
Almighty God, far beyond human feelings and aspirations. The Master of Slaves, not the Father of His children,

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 rigidly exacts justice on sinners, and shows mercy only to those who divert His rage through repentance, humility,
and a persistent piousness. Here we see the God of fear, not the God of love. That certainly is the most prominent
characteristic of Muhammad’s teaching.” (op. cit. p. 20.).
This is how Nicholson paves way to those who even today teach students that every other word is related to vio-
lence in Arabic (see: Edward W. Said, Orijentalizam [Orientalism], transl. Rešid Hafizović, Svjetlost, Sarajevo,
1999, p. 355). Nicholson “forgets” the content of the Bismillāh, Al-Fātiḥa, and a multitude of other ayahs, laden
with the words merciful, compassionate, etc. In fact, it not so much this work of Nicholson’s that is a problem
(such works are numerous in oriental studies), but the fact that their reputations grow in proportion to their ability
to make (ideological) falsifications. Nicholson hides from his readers, for example, that the most frequent sentence
in the Qur’ān is In the name of Allah, the compassionate the merciful; that a Muslim engages in every work with
those words; that the beginning of the first surah is: Praise be to Allah / the Lord of the Worlds / The beneficent, the
merciful. The Qur’ān also reads that Allah Prescribed mercy for Himself (6:12; 6:54, etc.). And he presents such
a God exclusively as the God of wrath. Francesco Gabrieli can join the ranks of such orientalists, with his book
Arabic Literature (La letteratura araba).
In the chapter on the Qur’ān, for example, Gabrieli writes that the Qur’ān is “spiritually poor”, “endlessly repeat-
ing a handful of the main motifs”, that it is “harsh and clumsy in expression, chaotic in the current succession, in
short and honestly, boring”, and as such “it was the light and guidance to a large portion of humanity…”. Gabrieli
integrated this abundance of disqualifications into a single sentence. And, in doing so, he situated the Qur’an as
the base work of Oriental-Islamic literature. Orientalism is monstrous, for this canonised orientalist disqualifies,
in a very short text, over a billion and a half of Muslims, calling them idiots (such a book is their “light and guid-
ance”!) as well as a vast Oriental-Islamic literature, since its pivotal text (Gabrieli positions it as such as well), was
“evaluated” by incredible disqualifications. Two issues are obvious: Gabrieli knows nothing about the values and
“nature” of literary texts, but he is certainly overburdened by ideological prejudices. (See: Gabrijeli, Frančesko,
Arapska književnost [Gabrieli, Francesco, Arabic Literature], transl.: Milana Piletić and Srđan Musić, “Svjetlost”,
Sarajevo, 1985, p. 59.)
Considering these prominent orientalists’ scientific reductionism to ideological prejudices in which the very es-
sence of a religion is interpreted wrongly, a rhetorical question arises: What kind of trustworthiness characterises
their interpretation of anything related to Islam?
197. Darko Tanasković mentions in this respect several orientalist authorities, to whom he too inclines. See: Darko
Tanasković, “Privlačne zagonetke sufizma” [“The Attractive Riddles of Sufism”], in: Sufizam [Sufism], Darko
Tanasković and Ivan Šop (eds.), “Vuk Karadžić”, Belgrade, 1981, p. 13. Cf. also: Džaka, Bećir, Historija perzijske
književnosti od nastanka do kraja 15. vijeka [History of Persian Literature from the Beginning until the End of the
15th Century], Naučnoistraživački institut “Ibn Sina”, Sarajevo, 1997, p. 71.
198. The complex Qur’ānic metaphor jannah rests on the same principle: it should not be taken literally (women,
chalices, etc.), but as a metaphor for the greatest sum of (Bedouin) goods by which the greatest and unimaginable
sum of riches of that world is presented metaphorically. I have written a text about it entitled “The Qur’ānic met-
aphor jannah”, in: Stil kao argument. Nad tekstom Qur’āna [Style as an Argument: Over the Text of the Qur’ān],
Tugra, Sarajevo, 2009.
199. Mirza Sarajkić, Ghazali Ahmeda Hatema Bjelopoljaka na arapskom jeziku [Ghazals of Ahemd Hatem Bjelopoljak
in the Arabic Language], Orijentalni institut, Posebna izdanja XXXIX, Sarajevo, 2011, p. 90.
200. Cf.: Hegel, Aesthetics, II, p. 75.
201. Such works are abundant – from Shirazi’s Gulistan to Fevzi Mostarac’s 18th c. Bulbulistan. Oriental-Islamic
culture is the culture of the garden. The garden is its commonplace – from such stylistic devices, to the endless
gardens in One Thousand and One Nights, or to the aforementioned titles that are only a small section of an enor-
mous production with the same titles. Even Jannah is a distanced garden replica, although I understand it as an
allegory. There hardly exists something as exciting as a garden, that is, an oasis, and that is why it is not unusual
that in Oriental-Islamic culture in general the greatest values are represented through gardens, or an oasis. In the
semiotics of space, it is an extraordinary, incomparable place, just as it is an extraordinary styleme in semiotic
stylistics. This requires special attention.
202. Zdenko Lešić rightly states that a reader is prepared through context to notice the symbolic meanings of what he is
reading. See: Zdenko Lešić, Teorija književnosti [Theory of Literature], Sarajevo, 2005, p. 54.
203. Hegel, Aesthetics, II, p. 75.
204. Muhamed Asad, Put u Meku (The Road to Mecca), transl.: H. Ćerimović, Starješinstvo Islamske zajednice u Bosni

234
 i Hercegovini, Hrvatskoj i Sloveniji, Sarajevo, 1981, p. 225-226.
205. Interestingly, a similar trend can be seen in the European tradition which I have previously mentioned. Namely,
in medieval European literature, the technique of poetic creativity was primary, in accordance with the aesthetics
of the period, according to which a man was not a creator, since creation is restricted to God. However, in later
periods, especially in Romanticism, the notion of originality is raised to the highest level; hence, in accordance
with that, the category of imagination was considered a priority in literature, to the extent that the Romantic writers
believed themselves to have been on a messianic mission, that their position is prophetic, etc. Let us recall the
way in which, for example, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle, etc., observed imagination. Khalīl Jubrān assumed
a similar position.
206. I wrote more extensively on similes and metaphors as different views of the world in: Orientology. The Universe
of the Sacred Text, Tugra, Sarajevo, 2007.
207. Bećir Džaka wrote more extensively on the dual interpretation of Hafiz’s verses in: Historija perzijske književ-
nosti... [History of Persian Literature…], p. 397 onwards. Interpretations of Hafiz’s verses are also problematic
in Annemarie Schimmell’s work. See more about it in the section: “A Critical Overview of Two Characteristic
Orientalist Approaches to Sufi Poetry”.
208. Mirza Sarajkić, Ghazali Ahmeda Hatema Bjelopoljaka na arapskom jeziku [Ghazals of Ahemd Hatem Bjelopoljak
in the Arabic Language], Orijentalni institut, Posebna izdanja XXXIX, Sarajevo, 2011, ghazal XXVII, p. 133.
Hegel, among other, mentions the image of the nightingale and the flower in Oriental poetry in: Estetika [Aes-
thetics], III, p. 554.
209. For example, the significant work Golestān by Shīrāzī (1213-1292) has been commented on a number of times,
but there were also writers who imitated this work. One of them was the Bosniak author Fawzī al-Mostārī, who
wrote Bolbolestān in 1739, in Persian, where he emphasised that Shīrāzī’s work served as a model from which he
borrowed entire structures, while it would be redundant to speak of its imitation of the style.
210. Dervish Pasha Bajezidagić, among other authors, wrote a two-volume nazira to Rumi’s Mathnawī. (See: Fehim
Nametak, Divanska poezija XVI i XVII stoljeća [Diwan poetry of 16th and 17th Centuries], Institut za književnost
i Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1991, p. 49.)
211. This is how the most significant representative of Sufi poetry – Rumi – is portrayed in writings. (See, for example:
E. D. “Džavelidze, Pesnička reč i simbol” [“Dzhavelidze, the Poetic Word and Symbol”], in: Sufizam [Sufism],
Darko Tanasković and Ivan Šop (eds.), “Vuk Karadžić”, Belgrade, 1981, p. 178.
212. Bećir Džaka, Historija perzijske književnosti od nastanka do kraja 15. vijeka [History of Persian Literature from
the Beginning until the End of the 15th Century], Naučnoistraživački institut “Ibn Sina”, Sarajevo, 1997, p 401.
213. Anemari Šimel, “Ruža i slavuj: perzijska i turska mistička poezija” [Annemarie Schimmel, “The Rose and the
Nightingale: Persian and Turkish Mystical Poetry”], in: Sufizam [Sufism], Darko Tanasković and Ivan Šop (eds.),
“Vuk Karadžić”, Belgrade, 1981, p. 154.
214. Anemari Šimel, “Ruža i slavuj: perzijska i turska mistička poezija” [Annemarie Schimmel, “The Rose and the
Nightingale: Persian and Turkish Mystical Poetry”], in: Sufizam [Sufism], Darko Tanasković and Ivan Šop (eds.),
“Vuk Karadžić”, Belgrade, 1981, p. 156.
215. There was a noticeable turcological (orientalist) effort in the former Serbo-Croat language to ascribe a feature of
latent or real homosexuality to the entire culture, on the basis of one poetic form in the Ottoman Turkish language
(šehr-engiz). Vančo Boškov, for example, published a paper full of methodological and logical “acrobatics”, so
that the paper cannot be used in serious studies, and I mention it here in that light. The aim of the paper is to show
that an entire poetical division is dedicated to the love of a poet towards young men, but the author states at the
very beginning of the text that one cannot determine with certainty if the poem was written for a young man or a
woman, for the problem is in the “neutral nature of the Turkish language in relation to gender” (p. 178). A similar
situation exists in English, when the noun beloved is concerned. Boškov continues (p. 178-179) that “there is no
difference” if one compares the poems where the “object of love”(!) is a man with the poems where the “object
of love” is a woman. In spite of these reasonable statements, he continues to speak of this poetry as homosexual.
Boškov goes as far as to use the example of Haži Derviš from Mostar as the most prominent poet (16th – 17th c.)
– to complete the paradox – and state that Derviš uses Sufi terminology, while it is known that in Sufi poetry, the
masculine gender is used for God. That said, the highlight of Boškov’s writing is his reference to J. Rypka, who
forged the issue by stating that “Sufism (Islamic mysticism) distorts heterosexuality into homosexuality” (p. 182).
(Vančo Boškov, “Šehr-engiz u turskoj književnosti i šehr-engiz o Mostaru” [“Šehr-engiz in Turkish Literature and

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 šehr-engiz on Mostar”], Radovi Filozofskog fakulteta, VI, Sarajevo, 1971.)
216. Op. cit. p. 154-155.
217. In that sense, Darko Tanasković observes well: “One should not neglect the fact that the majority of Sufis and
dervishes never reached the heights of the theoretical discussion and shaping of theosophical systems, but, on the
other hand, they were the true bearers of the historical life and the collective subject of Sufi activity in society.”
(Darko Tanasković, “Privlačne zagonetke sufizma” [“The Attractive Riddles of Sufism”], in: Sufizam [Sufism],
Darko Tanasković and Ivan Šop (eds.), “Vuk Karadžić”, Belgrade, 1981, p. 28.)
In the khanqahs of the former Yugoslavia, the works of the classical Persian poets were interpreted almost ritually
(Rumi, Sadi, Hafiz, etc.).
218. Eva de Vitrej-Mejerovič, “‘Poetika’ islama” [“The ‘Poetics’ of Islam”], in: Julija Kristeva, Prelaženje znakova [La
traversée des signes], Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1979, p. 194-195.
219. Op. cit., p. 195.
220. Dževalidze, op. cit., p. 179.

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CONCLUSION

Our world is in an ever-worsening crisis. The Muslim world especially is in a diffi-

cult situation because it is engaged in conflict at several fronts: it is simultaneously
exposed to an aggression of several western countries, as well as to devastating in-
ter-Muslim wars, leading it to a complete chaos and destruction. At a time of this ut-
ter destruction, increasing phobias and dehumanisation of our world, every attempt
at finding a stronghold for its humanisation and integration as a successful unity in
differences is precious. Research and presentation of culture – thus, literature as well
– in the period of late classicism of the Muslim world can be a very functional means
to achieve this goal. In that sense, it is always beneficial to emphasise that one of the
main reasons for a dramatic crisis in the Muslim world is that it has brought the Text
(The Qur’an) out of the Context (reality).

The problem does not rest in the Text itself; rather, one of the main causes of the
crisis is the incorrect relationship of the Muslim contemporariness towards the Text.
For, in the Muslim world, the Qur’an – as the pivotal Text of its faith, culture and
history – has created and motivated the Muslim society as a subject throughout
history, and for as long as Muslims had understood it correctly, they had been plan-
etary successful. Consequently, I am of the opinion that it is useful, for the purpose
of understanding the contemporariness, to observe the successful past/history of the
Muslim world in various aspects.

In other words, the crisis is generated also by a wrong interpretation of the past of the
Muslim world, where differences are given primacy and are transferred into dramat-
ic contemporary conflicts. Opposite to that, in the classical period of what we call
Oriental-Islamic culture, the Muslim society was the enlightened, thus, a creative
subject that was enlightened and to a certain extent culturally homogenised by its
Text. As such, the subject acted very creatively also in contact with other cultures
(Ancient Greek culture, Indian culture in Sanskrit, the Pahlavi culture, etc.) and it
decisively contributed to what is known as the European Renaissance upon which
the European culture rests.

The integrative classical culture of Islam encompassed a vast space, that much great-
er and impressive since it was not connected or permeated by means of fast com-
munications, as is the case today. One of the main and very powerful factors of inte-
gration of that world was the literature of the classical period, even though it might
seem odd today, for the position of literature at the time was incomparably better
than is the case today, in the world dominated by the demons of profit and politics.
In the classical period, the same term (adab) was used for literature and ethics.

The vast empire of Oriental-Islamic literature stretched from the Arabian Peninsula
to the Middle East and Asia Minor, through North Africa to Andalusia, Sicily, and

237
Bosnia for several hundreds of years. That truly great literature was thus created in a
large section of the Mediterranean basin as a unique system at the level of poetology.

In the modern studies of classical Oriental-Islamic literature, literary-historical, the-

oretical, thus, largely methodological issues appear, and by that I primarily mean
that the fragmenting of that literature into independent, even separate ethnic litera-
tures: Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Bosniak literature in oriental languages, etc. is prob-
lematic. Researching that vast “literary empire” requires a methodological re-exam-
ination, even abandonment of ethnocentric approaches as the only valid or the best
of the approaches; it seeks prevalence of a strictly philological method, for it often
reduces literature to positivism, or to mere factography which is inadequate in the
studies of literature as art. The necessity a of re-examination of history, nomination
and systematisation of classical literature in Oriental-Islamic languages concerns, of
course, also the Bosniak literature of the time, which was created in the period of
several centuries in Oriental-Islamic languages, since it was strongly included into
the Oriental-Islamic cultural circle in the Ottoman period.

Literature enjoys the special privilege of constant revitalisation through our ev-
er-changing perception of it. Hence, theories or reflections on literature do not al-
ways succeed in exhausting all of its meanings or senses and “capturing” them in the
coherence of their own system. Roland Barthes argues, with good reason, that liter-
ature needs to ensure itself the right to frequent re-examination of its own history in
the same way that the history of history and the history of philosophy have that right.
Artistic literature is a value that escapes definiteness in theory or interpretation: it is
always – at least somewhat differently – realized in the open mind of the reader, (that
is, readers), even in different epochs, which can “form” a temporary intersubjective
value judgement. The best proof of this, if any proof is at all necessary, is the multi-
tude of approaches to literature, be it in the form of the works of individual writers,
of certain literary “movements”, or entire literary periods. Methodologically sound
approaches, in principle, produce important contributions to the understanding of
literature, but do not exhaust it; hence new approaches are formed as a result of the
awareness that previous research is incomplete. This gives rise to the significant fact
that the inexhaustible vitality of literature rests not only in literature itself, but also
in our relationship towards literature as a value. Ergo, the reception of literature –
regardless if it is the perception of an “ordinary” reader, theoretical or literary-his-
torical, or some other kinds of presentations of literature – is always a kind of recon-
struction made current by various forms/aspects of (our) context. Hence, constant
new readings of literature are a necessity, as well as the constant positioning of liter-
ature by various methods. That further inevitably implies that histories of literature,
and its interpretations (theoretical or otherwise) become a part of literature itself, in
one comprehensive meaning, for literature, as a value, is only realized within a cer-
tain context/contexts and with which it interacts in a dynamic relationship of mutual
agreement/understanding as a mutual upgrading and permanent revitalisation.

238
This endeavour of reconstruction is, in fact, one of the essential issues in approaching
an individual work, an opus, as well as in approaching each literary period in which
a literary work came to life interactively, not by the causality principle, whereby one
needs to be aware of certain specificities of the opus and, especially, of the literary
periods. It is also necessary to keep in mind the ever-important fact that in artistic
literature, we are dealing with values, and that means that the ideal of research or
interpretative objectivity in this field is a mere fantasy on the verge of senselessness,
and that an ideal reconstruction is impossible, nor even desirable, since we are form-
ing our relationship towards literature that was realised as a value in its time, while
we are positioning it as a value in our own time as well.

A constant but also necessary relative inconsistency we are dealing with here is man-
ifested in a special way when we talk about comprehending literature of the classical
or ancient period of a culture, in this case, the literature of the Oriental-Islamic cul-
tural milieu. In this sense, it is necessary to warn of a paradox that will show, on the
one hand, the insubstantiality of the conviction in the self-sufficiency and isolation
of the so-called national histories of literature of the classical period, while, on the
other hand, it is precisely there that the “character” of artistic literature is revealed
in its dynamism, in the meaning of the impossibility to finally confine it within the
history/histories of literature. Namely, this is the belief that literature has become the
final and static order by a chronology of events in history that may at first appear rea-
sonable, so much so that even the relationships between literary works seem to have
been finally and irreversibly defined, and that, given this historical “completeness”,
it is possible to offer a final history of classical literature; to complete its representa-
tion (and I place emphasis on this word). Such “definitiveness” is represented – and
literature of this kind bears witness to that – in positivistic histories of literature: in
histories that overly depend on chronology as the main stronghold, as well as on
description of “literary facts” in chronological order, all in an effort to represent clas-
sical literature as an objective reality, as “stable,” since it has already been realised
in a past and supposedly forever categorised in time. Since such a representation
of classical literature is most frequently aided by its close ally philology, then, at
first, all that is related to literature is made more certain and fixed, even with greater
self-confidence. And the very representation of classical literature in Arabic, Persian
and Turkish has been and remains mainly in “the field of” philology, especially ori-
entalist, hence in presenting ancient and classical literature, “cooperative” methods
of philology and history are applied to an extent leading to the inability of mutual
recognition; hence literature, in their presentations, is the final fact which can, possi-
bly, be further described in detail, but it is a matter of course that it is not possible to
overrate such literature, since philology does not, in fact, pass a value judgement in
the course of its research. Oriental philology has for a long time been “privileged” in
its approach to ancient and classical literature, so that many have already conceded
to its persistence and its authority. All of that has resulted in inertia.

239
However, our research relationship towards classical literature and its positioning
in our time is far more complex than that what is perceived at first sight and from
that what philology considers as definite. Moreover, classical literature in the Ara-
bic, Persian and Turkish languages, is especially suitable for presenting evidence in
terms of “time relativity” – to use the term from physics, with full awareness of its
differences in this context. Namely, classical literature is not completely contained
in philological factuality, ergo, in chronological inevitability. Since we are talking
primarily about values, and not only about historical facts as implied and presented
by methods of philology, the category of historicity is pungently relativized, for – in
order for us to accept that literature as a system of values in a possible optimum,
contexts within which those facts were realised as such need to be reconstructed, but,
at the same time also contextualised, as such, in their own system of values or within
their own contexts. It is precisely this two-way relationship between classical and
modern, or contemporary, that is an extraordinary energy point in which the relativ-
ity of time is unveiled optimally, for classics that appear finalised in a time strongly
affects our time, just as our time – owing to our efforts at reconstruction – again and
in a new way gives life to classical literature, which is thus, in a way, constantly “re-
incarnated”. It is a permanent and special kind of energy exchange. That is why new
studies of classical literature are necessary, ones that are methodologically focused
on poetology, rather than on history of literature. Such research of classical literature
in the Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish languages leads to a conclusion that the
ancient Arabic literature is, in fact, in “the status” of antiquity of the entire classical
literature in the Arabic, Persian and Turkish languages: that vast classical literature,
in the poetological sense, shares the antiquity, but it also has a unique, although
broadly understood, poetics in the late classical period.

This classical literature has not been represented – as far as I know – in that way
and by that method. It is significantly handicapped because it contains two predom-
inant methods showing significant limitations. Firstly, I emphasise that classical lit-
erature is represented by an abundance of histories of literature, which, as I have
already stated, derive from philology, especially from oriental philology, which has
undoubtedly had significant contributions, but has yet to overcome its own obvious-
ly limited scope. The majority of histories of classical literature are of a catalogi-
cal, that is, positivistic nature, which means that they lack poetologically explicated
value judgements. One of the key pieces of evidence of the major shortcomings of
this abundance of histories of classical literature is their extremely historical (histo-
riographical) and neutral periodization which is based on the “historical-political”
periods (the Umayyad, the Abbasidian, the Tanzimat, etc.) instead on the criteria
immanent to literature. A mere outlining of biographies of authors and literary works
in history is still not a representation of a system to which establishing relations of
certain works and opuses is inherent.

The second important problem in the representation of this literature is (characteris-

tic of the majority of other cultures) contained in the fact that researchers too often

240
approach classical literatures from the position of their own ethnocentrisms. They
are trying to rein in artistic literature as an important argument of national identity.
That is where an enormous problem arises, for a violence of a kind occurs, even a
forgery of classical literature. It is difficult to understand the extent to which we have
gotten used to appropriate writers and their works on the basis of nationality, thus
denying some characteristics of literature as art. It is inappropriate to draw literature
into this kind of argumentation, for artistic literature is in essence universalistic and
without nationality; hence, its separation into ethnic exclusivities, as a matter of fact,
undermines that characteristic of literature, that is, it shows an utter misunderstand-
ing of the nature of literature. A writer’s ethnicity should essentially be differentiated
from the poetical “affiliation” of his work: those are different kinds of “facts”. For
example, to which ethnical faction would it be appropriate to place Fevzi Mostārī
(18th c.), a Bosniak by birth, who also wrote in all three Oriental-Islamic languages,
thus his most important work (Bolbolestān) was written in the Persian language
and in the spirit of poetics of the classical Oriental-Islamic literature?! The same
applies to ‘Ushshāqī, a Bosniak (18th c.) who even wrote a poem (tambis) in parallel,
in the same “artefact”, in the Arabic and Ottoman Turkish languages?! By study-
ing, for example, the morphology of genres in this literature, we will easily observe
that the production-wise and poetically dominant genres qasīda, madah (panegy-
ric), marsiyya (elegy), ghazal (love lyricism) had been formed as genres even in the
pre-Islamic Arabic literature, while others – even with certain transformations and
amplifications – were formed in the so-called Persian and Ottoman Turkish classical
literature, even in the Bosniak literature in Oriental-Islamic languages.

Literature has constantly been burdened by the problem of the ethnocentric ap-
proaches, especially since the 19th century, and that problem especially concerns
classical literature, since it was dominated by the poetics of similarity, rather than
originality, in the modern meaning of the term. The relationship between modern,
ethnic exclusivity and the essential “supernationality” in the Ottoman period, for
example, can be observed as the relationship between the centre and periphery in
semiotic sense of the term. Namely, certain literary talents, of different ethnical
background or stemming from the most distant areas of the empire, were exposed
to strong influences of the cultural centre, the basic values of a culture, based on de-
nomination, hence they wrote within the framework of an already-established value
system, on the principles of inductive poetics. Even if they had possessed certain
characteristic traits, given their bordering origin, they would use them as a form of
energy in order to establish themselves in a system which had created the norms,
and which used the “energy of the periphery” to constantly revitalise and resist the
collapse. The writer, of course, wanted to establish himself, but he wholeheartedly
incorporated his individual talent – to use the words of T. S. Eliot – into the author-
ity and affirmation of the Tradition. For, the age we are discussing here was not the
Ottoman empire only in the sense of a constitutional or administrative construct,
perhaps a political edifice, rather, it was – ever more so – a cultural empire which, as
such, functioned on the basis of a sketched semiotic relationship between the centre

241
and the periphery. In the classical epoch, tradition was the hero instead of the nation;
what is more, tradition as a supernational or international value acted as a powerful
factor of cultural homogenisation, at the expense of ethnic or ethnocentric separate
affirmation. Ethnic fragmenting of the classical literature is a more recent phenome-
non: it arises mainly in the later formation of nations and in the need for augmenting
and strengthening of national identities. That is a flagrant and an inappropriate pro-
jection of ideologies, even of different policies, from the point of view of the present
to the literary past that was completely different, opposite to the ethnocentric classi-
fication that is posed as an argument in the evaluation domain. That is how “national
literatures” were formed into which the classical literature was forcibly fragmented;
they are nominated and thus studied – as an alleged precious national exclusivities
and arguments of ethnocentrism: the Arabic, Persian, Turkish literature, etc. The fact
is, however, that the classical literature was a supernational system, as I have already
stated, for writers had put in their best efforts to construct common cultural, rather
than national, values (that, thus, includes common poetics as well). That is why, for
example, certain chapters of Rumi’s work were written in Persian, some in Arabic,
with the poetic postulates of the ancient Indian and the ancient Arabic literature,
all the way to Rumi’s age. Such cases had become, through time, a commonplace
of the Oriental-Islamic culture that even refers to its semiotisation. The more syn-
cretic a work, the more valuable it was held. For example, a monumental work One
Thousand and One Nights contains a “ring” structure which can be traced back to
the ancient India, from literature written in Sanskrit, which was later adopted by the
Persians in the pre-Islamic period (in the Pahlavi language). It was then adopted by
Arabs who considerably enriched it in the period of several hundreds of years. Even
the first translation of the work in Europe (by a French Arabist, Jean Antoine Gal-
land, in the 18th century) was so much processed for the reception in the other cul-
ture that one can hardly recognise the source text in some parts. But, that is not all:
Scheherazade’s magic of a “ring structuring” of the narrative is obvious in a number
of other canonical works of that culture – from Kalila wa-Dimna (early 8th century
CE), through the The Masnavi (13th century CE), and other important Sufi works, all
the way to, for example, Fevzi Mostārī’s Bolbolestān (18th century CE). That poetic
principle, as a structuring principle, dominated on a vast space and for a very long
time, and that proves that the roots of the cultural empire stem deeper and further
than the borders of the empire in the constitutional, that is, administrative meaning.

History of literature is unable to neutralise the new-age favouring of ethnocentric ap-

proaches to the area that used to be highly composite, non-ethnocentric. Simply, it is
a method that fails to resist the ethnocentric fragmenting of a unique system of clas-
sical literature; it does not even possess such abilities simply because it fails – and I
have already warned of that – to present the “soul” of literature, that is, literature as
art, and, instead, it succumbs to the science of history and its needs. This especially
concerns classical literature, since the (oriental) philology had a dominant role in its
presentation. Thus, a question arises as to what can be done in such circumstances,
how to face the desire of classical literature to be presented in/to our modernity the

242
way that it would be presented, through a reconstruction, in new light: as a universe
of values optimally “reconstructed” and that are not antiquities but rather living val-
ues for us as well. Before I offer an answer to that question, one should emphasise
that the part of the world that inherits classical literature in the Arabic, Persian and
Turkish languages does not have a developed literary-theoretical thought like that of
the West, and that is an additional handicap for the presentation of this literature in
the aspects in which, sadly, it has not been presented.

Having seen an abundance of histories of literature that present the classical liter-
ature in Oriental-Islamic languages, it is necessary to introduce a poetological ap-
proach, because I consider poetology to be highly competent for the presentation of
literature as a system of values based upon immanent criteria. Poetologically consis-
tent and coherent endeavours are able to bring about novelties in the understanding
and presentation of that vast literature.

Poetological approach has an advantage over history of literature. It is necessary

to warn that neither is it possible to completely separate history of literature from
poetics, nor do they overlap, notwithstanding some significant efforts to conjoin
the immanent and chronological approach (in that sense, the Russian philological
criticism of the late 19th century and Alexander Veselovski’s Historical Poetics are
well-known). In the effort to apprehend classical literature, historical approach has
greatly produced findings on literature, but it is also greatly supressed by historicity,
suspended by the historical nature of philology, while poetology overcomes it all
because it encompasses the vast classical literature as a system of values that are re-
alised in mutual relations. Poetology abandons positivism in the very essence and is
dedicated to the outmost efforts to present the very soul of literature as a form of art.

It is here necessary to emphasise the distinction between the terms poetics and po-
etology. Namely, by poetics I mean a coherent approach that attempts to grasp and
present exclusively literary structures of a work, that is, of an opus. Poetology, on
the other hand, is dedicated to those different poetics, in an attempt to present them
as functional segments of a (higher) system.

(I have applied that method in my study “Classical Poetry in the Arabic, Persian and
Turkish Languages. A Poetological Approach”, which is in the final stages of com-
pletion. In this study, I present classical poetry in the three languages as a unique,
coherent system at the level of poetology.)

Poetological approach to classical literature deconstructs ethnocentric fortifications

within which ethnically-nominated literatures are imprisoned, independently sepa-
rated from a vast system of the classical literature, and that has been done (and it
seems to me that it is ongoing) through non-literary factors that include different
ideologies, especially national, even nationalistic, and which are fully supported by
different politics. Thus, I expect to see denials of my study, but I hope it is protected

243
by consistency and coherency, since it deals with a system rather than its suppos-
edly self-sufficient fragments. Possible opposite argumentation by naming certain
works as potential exceptions directly contributes the “damage” of those potential
exceptions that have broken away from the system, for, classical literature, keeping
in mind the poetics of similarity, truly was a vast, powerful system, hence projecting
the modern ideologies to it would be highly inappropriate.

In studying classical Oriental-Islamic culture in general, even the one written in the
Ottoman period, the poststructuralist conviction that a closed and completed work
does not exist and that every identity is intertwined by traces of the other/others,
including other texts as well, proves useful. In other words, there is no text without
a context, but the context too is a part of a text, rather than its frame. In the classical
Oriental-Islamic literature, the importance of context is very high because the poetic
principle of the sameness constituted the entire culture as a system with an empha-
sised activity of centripetal forces in it: that poetic principle acted as a centripetal
force in the culture. Namely, culture has strongly and for a long time spread in space
and time, so there existed a serious danger for its collapse or disappearance in that
vast a space and too deep a time. The poetical principle of similarity, that is, an op-
timally nourished intertextuality, acted as a protection mechanism of that culture, in
order not to collapse in space and time. Thus, studying this culture from a national,
monologue perspective is futile in the sense of its valid systematisation, and that
entails its adequate evaluation.

“National literatures” separated from a unique poetical system of the classical period
of the Oriental-Islamic culture – thus, literatures that are today analysed as separate,
self-sufficient units – are to be reinterpreted. Ethnocentric, monologue interpreta-
tions of the classical literature need to be overcome and situated in history in accor-
dance with the “criteria” deduced from that very literature.

244
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orijentalnu filologiju, br. 62, Orijentalni, institut, Sarajevo, 2013, p. 177-214.

257
NAME INDEX

A C
‘Abdullāh al-Busnawī 257 Čale Feldman, Lada 40
Abdurezak 247 Carlyle, Thomas 235
Abū al-‘Atāhiya 159 Ćatović, Alena 139, 137, 189, 190, 245,
Abū Rabī‘ah, ‘Umar Ibn (see: ‘Umar) 247, 248, 257
Adam 51, 189 Čehajić, Džemal 247, 249
Adūnīs 245 Čengić, Husnija 247
‘Aljamāt, al-duktūr Yūsuf 245 Colerdige, Samual Taylor 235
Ananda, Ahmed 245 Corbin, Henry 247
Andrić, Ivo 40 Curtius, Ernst Robert 40, 88, 247
Asunto, Rosario 101, 192, 245
Attar, Feriduddin Muhammad 245 D
B Dante, Alighieri 99, 191
Ḍayf, Shawqī
Babović, Dželila 245 Derviš Džami Mostarac 252
Bajezidagić, Derviš-paša 82, 83, 88, Deržavina, V. 250
94, 165, 172, 173, 193, 195, 233, Dilçin, Cem 130
235, 252 Dizdar, Ibrahim 247
Bajraktarević, Fehim 193 Dizdar, Mak 248
Bajrić, Berin 87, 245 Dizdarević, Sadat 248
Bakhtin, Mikhail 38, 158, 164 Dobrović, Mirjana 256
Bakšić, Sabina 245 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich
Barteljs, J. E. 245 158, 164
Barthes, Roland 19, 22, 32, 40, 41, 64, Drkić, Munir 40, 101, 194, 255
65, 67, 87, 195, 238 Duraković, Enes 248
Bašagić, Safvet-beg 88, 121, 246 Duraković, Esad 101, 189, 190, 248
Begić, Midhat 246 Džaka, Bećir 193, 233-235, 248-250
Bejtić, Alija 246 Džanić, Asaf 256
Beker, Miroslav 246 Džavelidze, E. D. 149, 235, 249
Biti, Vladimir 40, 41, 246 Đukanović, Marija 174, 193, 249
Bjelopoljak, Ahmed Hatem 216, 223 Đurđev, Branislav 41
Bogdanović, Dimitrije 253
Boškov, Vančo 235, 236, 246 E
Bošnjak, Abdullah-efendi 87
Božović, Rade 247 Edhem 173
Braun, Maximilian 246 Eliot, Thomas Stearns 73, 142, 163,
Brockelmann, Carl 23, 28, 40, 247 184, 241
Brooks, Peter 195 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 195
al-Būṣīrī 34 75, 77, 78, 96, 163 Ernjaković, Gligorije 101, 192, 245
Ertaylan, Hikmet 193

258
F Hodžić, Suada 247
Hulagu 87
Farrūkh, ‘Umar 23, 28, 40 Huma 173
Fawzī al-Mustārī 195, 227, 235 Humo, Hamza 252
Febvre, Lucien 19 Ḥusayn, Ṭāhā 252
Ferhat-bey 51
Filipović, Muhamed 249 I
Filipović, Nedim 249
Filipović, Nenad 249 Ibn Khaldūn 72, 73, 85, 86, 88, 98, 192
Фильштинский, И. М. 192, 250 Ibn Kulthūm, ‘Amr 87
Firdawsi / Firdousi 172, 250 Ibrišimović, Nedžad 87
Ilhamija 250
G Ilić, Slobodan 252
Imamović, Velid 255
Gabrieli, Francesco 40, 191, 194, 234 Imru’u-l-Qays / Qays 189, 206
al-Gazali 256 Ismā‘īl, ‘Izz al-Dīn 101, 192, 252
Gazi Husrev-beg 86, 251, 252, 256
Gazić, Lejla J
Giray, Selim 173
Goethe 87, 254 al-Jāḥiẓ 47, 100
Grincer, Pavel Aleksandrovich 257 Jamīl al-‘Uḏrī / Jamīl Buthayna 189
Grozdanić, Sulejman 250 Jergović, Miljenko 101
al-Jumaḥī, Ibn Sallām 70, 88
H al-Jurjānī, al-Qāḍī 70, 88, 155

Hadžibajrić, Fejzulah 193, 250, 255 K

Hadžijahić, Muhamed 250
Hadžijamaković, Muhamed 250 Kadrić, Adnan 193, 233, 252, 254
Hadžiosmanović, Lamija 255 Kafka, Franz 24, 40, 64, 65
Hafiz Širazi 222,227, 228, 235, 236, Kahteran, Nevad 253
250, 255 Kaler, Džonatan 252
Hafizović, Rešid 234, 255 Kapidžić-Osmanagić, Hanifa 246, 253
Hajji Abdullah 51 Karahalilović, Namir 248
Ḥallāj 207 Karić, Enes 256
Handžić, Mehmed 251 Khairallah, As‘ad E. 233, 253
Haraz 228, 229 Khalifah, Abdul Hakim 245
Ḥāriṯ Ibn Ḥilizza 87 Khazim 76
Hartmann, Nicolai 190, 251 Kisra 113
Hasan Ibn Sabit 245 Ključanin, Zilhad 191, 253
Ḥasan Ziyāī al-Mustārī 113, 135 Knox, Thomas Malcom 192, 251
Haverić, Dženita 251 Korkut, Besim 101
Hawla 112 Kovač, Zvonko 253
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 191, Крачковский, И. Ю. 40, 253
192, 234, 235, 251 Kristeva, J. 88, 236, 253, 256
Hidr 113 Kudeljin, A. V. 253
Hitti, Philip 189, 251

259
L O

Latić, Džemaludin 147 Oraić-Tolić, Dubravka 254, 255

Leaman, Oliver 253
Lešić, Zdenko 101, 235, 253 P
Letić, Branko 253
Lorca, Federico Garcia 207 Pala, Iskender 190
Lotman, Yuri Mikhailovich 101, 193, Pavličić, Pavao 254
253 Pejović, Danilo190, 251
Petković, Novica 101, 253
M Petrarca, Francesco 99
Piletić, Milana 189, 191, 194, 234, 250
al-Ma‘arrī, Abū al-‘Alā’ 47 Plato 97, 182, 233
Majnūn (Layla) 118,119, 189 Ponty, Merleau 19
Maković, Zvonko 252 Popović, Alexandre 255
Markuš, Stjepan 40, 247 Popović, dr Nikola 191, 251
Medarić, Magdalena 252 Pournamdaryan, prof. dr. Taqi 255
Merhemić, Haji Mujaga 174 Prophet / Muhammad 50, 59-66, 75,
Mint, Milica 252 77, 78, 87, 89, 96, 106, 110, 113,
Mojaddedi, Jawid 194 144, 169, 211
Mommesen, Katharina 87, 254
Moranjak-Bamburać, Nirman 3, 22, 41, Q
254
Mostari Fevzi 195, 235, 241, 242 Qāsim, al-duktūr ‘Adnān Ḥusayn 88,
Muhamed, Refik 51 192
Muhammad (see: Prophet) Quraysh 211
Muhjuddin, the son of Khaism 51
Mujić, Munir 254 R
al-Muqaffa‘, ‘Abdullāh Ibn 41, 99, 100,
190,193 Rajković, Ljubinka 255
Mušić, Omer 88 Riftin, Boris L’vovich 86, 233, 255
Musić, Srđan 189, 191, 194, 234, 250 Rizvić, Muhsin 255
Mustafa-bey 113 Rumi, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad 14,
al-Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib 88, 195, 101, 183, 193-195, 202, 231,
254 236, 255
Rustem 250
N Rypka, Jan 236, 255

Nametak, Fehim 41, 88, 190, 193, 235, S

254
Navaej, Ebtehaj 247 Šabanović, Hazim 256
Nicholson, Reynold A. 40, 175, 187, Sadi 236, 256
195, 207, 233, 234, Said, Edward W. 234, 255
Nobel, Alfred Bernhard 40 Salem 77
Novopazarac, Ahmed Vali 254 Salihbegović, Melika 256

260
Salye, M. A. 192 Vitray-Meyerovitch, Eva de 88, 231,
Santini, Veselka 193, 253 236, 253, 256
Sarajkić, Mirza 234, 235, 255, 256 Vuković, Đorđije 257
Scheherazade 71, 86, 122, 232
Schimmel, Annemarie 228, 229, 235 W
Šerifović, Fadil-paša 254, 256
al-Shābbī, Abū al-Qāsim 189, 256 Wordsworth, William 235
Sharif, Miam Mohammad 245, 256
Sheikh, M. Saeed 256 Z
Shirāzī 195, 234, 235
Simić, Vojislav 189, 253 Zakī, al-duktūr Aḥmad Kamāl 88, 192
Sinan-bey 135 Zijaija Mostarac, Hasan 137, 189, 190,
Sloterdijk, Peter 233 247, 257
Smailagić, Nerkez 87, 247, 254, 256 Zildžić, Ahmed 257
Smailagić, Vedad 87, 254 Žmegač, Viktor 255
Šop, Ivan 254 Zuhayr, Ka‘b Ibn 60, 65, 78, 62-65, 75,
Spahić, Vedad 256 78, 87, 144, 162, 165
Spaho, Fehim 86
Stojanović, Dušan 194, 233, 254
Suada 5, 75, 247
Sudi 249
Suhrab 250
Sušić, Hasan 245, 256
al-Šuštari 255

Tabrīzī, Shams al-Dīn 202

Tanasković, Darko 189, 195, 234, 236,
256
Ṭarafa 111
Trako, Salih 256

‘Umar (Ibn Abī Rabī‘ah) 116, 117, 119

‘Ushshāqī, ‘Abdullāh Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn 29,
34, 65, 75-81, 87, 88, 94-97, 162,
164, 165, 193, 241
Užičanin, Sabit 173

Vahdeti, Ahmed 233, 252

Varvari Ali-paša 193, 249

261
SUBJECT INDEX

A B
administrative functional style 50 bacchius poems 115, 130
aesthetics 37, 41, 45, 48, 49, 57, 60, 91, bayt 63, 78, 110, 111, 120, 121, 123,
93, 95, 99, 116, 129, 139, 155, 125, 135, 146, 148, 154, 169,
192, 234, 235, 251, 253 171. 171, 184, 191
- Oriental-Islamic aesthetics 116 beautiful 6, 56, 79, 82, 85, 91-94, 97,
allegory 180, 215, 217, 222, 234 98, 114, 117, 122, 136, 139, 156,
- allegorical stories 174, 186 166, 192, 233
amplification 111,129, 130, 149, 156, binary oppositions 25
157
anagogical literature 99 C
ancient Arabic literature 13, 56, 240,
242 calligraphy 80, 81, 231
ancient Indian literature 14, 242 canon/canonisation
antiquity 13, 20, 57-59, 67, 68, 101, - academic canons 19, 32, 68
195, 110, 115, 124, 127, 133, - canonical works 35, 74, 152, 205,
134, 136, 139, 140, 144, 145, 227, 232, 242
147, 148, 153, 190, 240 causality 11, 64, 239
apocryphal 35 classical literature 6, 7, 11-16, 19, 20,
Apollo 71, 193 26, 28, 31, 33-36, 38, 45-48, 50,
‘aql 72 52, 70, 73, 81, 85, 87, 91-93,
arabesque 34, 35, 41, 105, 106, 114, 97-99, 109, 110, 112-116, 118,
116, 120-122, 185, 186, 190, 195 120, 123-129, 131-135, 137-140,
- arabesque structuring 35, 41, 116, 145-155, 157-165, 167-169, 171-
185 173, 175, 176, 180, 185, 189,
Arabic-Islamic culture 55, 69 190-194, 199, 201, 203, 208-210,
art 6, 13-16, 22, 25, 26, 31, 38, 40, 45, 215, 224-227, 231, 232, 238, 239,
46, 52, 72-74, 80, 81, 88, 91-96, 240-244, 256
98, 99, 108, 110, 122, 123, 125, - classicism 8, 110, 114, 115, 192,
126, 133, 146, 151, 152, 162-164, 194, 237
176, 182, 183, 184, 192, 194, code/codes 7, 209, 214, 217, 219, 224,
195, 205, 206, 212, 215, 228, 225, 226
229, 231, 232, 238, 241, 241, 243 collective work 165
art for art’s sake 46, 99, 231 commonplace 14, 35, 50, 66, 72, 86, 87,
artefact 22, 29, 72, 74, 75, 78, 79, 96, 88, 95, 105, 133, 137-140, 145,
106, 125, 154, 155, 241 169, 209 223, 226, 227, 234, 242
artes 91, 98 comparison 36, 38, 134, 140, 183, 192,
ascetic poetry 114, 209, 210 209, 220, 252
authenticity 24, 105, 200, 220, 227 - shortened simile 220, 222
connective motif 77
content (of a work)

262
 - metaphysical content 72, 85, 93, epigone 83, 91, 114, 134, 149, 158, 159,
94, 106, 108, 209 166,
context 11, 12, 21, 22, 27, 28, 30, 36, ethnocentric approach 29, 56, 110
40, 41, 46-48, 54, 55, 58, 60, 61- ethnocentrism 13, 14, 21, 31, 50, 91,
65, 69, 70, 74, 77, 78, 80, 84, 86, 193, 241, 242
87, 91, 94, 95, 97, 99, 100, 110, evaluation 19, 21, 23, 24, 32, 67, 68,
115, 119, 127, 135, 138, 139, 152, 184, 185, 242, 244, 245
141, 148, 155, 158, 159, 162-166, expression 20, 25, 48, 52, 57, 60, 61-
176,180, 182, 185, 189, 190, 200, 63, 66, 67, 69, 71, 80, 81, 84, 98,
291, 294, 205, 208, 212, 215, 99, 106, 111, 116, 129, 130, 137,
218, 129, 220, 222, 226, 228, 139, 149, 159, 160, 162, 167,
230, 235, 237, 238, 240, 244 172, 177, 178, 181, 183, 184,
contextualisation 133, 185, 219 187, 211, 212, 216, 220, 222,
creativity/creation 225, 230, 232, 234, 251
- poetic creation 70, 121
criteriology 29 F
criticism 7, 23, 40, 41, 45, 88, 94, 121,
141, 190, 192, 203, 243, 246, fables 100, 101, 174, 180, 186, 226
248, 249, 250, 252, 255 fahriye 137
Croatian literature 21 fakhr (self-praise) 111, 137, 156
fanā’ 201
D fann 6, 72, 73, 74, 77-79, 81, 85, 91, 92,
94, 98, 126, 127, 193
dervish order/orders 69, 212, 230, 247 “forefront” (of a work) 125, 126
desire 14, 24, 26, 30, 38, 119, 120, 123, form/forms 3-8, 11, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22,
124, 125, 128, 150, 172, 186, 24-27, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 45-51,
189, 190, 192, 195, 202, 207, 53, 55-59, 62, 63, 66, 68-71, 73-
219, 225, 242 75, 77-88, 92, 94-99, 101, 105,
didactic literature 101, 176 106, 110-116, 119, 120, 122-134,
disintegration of the qaṣīda 132 136, 137, 139, 141-174, 176,
Dīwān 193 178-184, 187, 189, 191-195, 200,
diwan literature/poetry 131, 147, 148, 202-205, 208, 209, 210, 212-216,
153 220 221, 225-227, 230-232, 235,
drama 107, 123, 159 238, 243
du‘ā’ 140-145 - “meandering of forms” 114
dua-the closing 145 form/genre 96, 115
fragment 121-123
E
G
elegy 109, 241
empathy 123 “galaxy of the signifier” 185, 186
epic 21, 197, 159, 166, 171, 172, 173, garden image (Sufi) 218, 219
216, 248, genre 7, 25, 32-36, 41, 47, 48, 49, 50,
- epic consciousness 107 53, 66, 68, 71, 78, 86, 88, 94, 96,
- epic literature 107 97, 100, 105 108, 109, 110, 111,
112, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120,

263
 121, 122, 124-128, 128, 129, 22, 238
130-133, 134, 137, 139, 142, 146, - history of Persian literature 194,
147, 148, 153, 157, 159, 160, 233-235
168, 169, 172, 173, 189, 191, homosexual poetry 203, 221
208, 227, 241 hunt poems 111, 114
ghazal 6,7, 36, 49, 108-114, 116, 118- hymnic poetry 200
121, 125-128, 130-133, 136, 137, hyperbola 138, 139, 140, 144
149, 156, 158, 160, 161, 189,
190, 191, 195, 199, 200-203, 209, I
211, 214, 215, 217, 233, 235,
241, 256 ibdā‘ 92, 94, 98, 127, 135, 136, 154
- desert ghazal 118 ibtikār 92
- ghazal epoch 110 identity 6, 13, 19, 2021, 22, 30, 56, 130,
- hedonistic ghazal 116 134, 159, 166, 168, 174, 241, 244
- incomplete ghazal 125 - trans-historical identity 22
- ‘uḏrī ghazal 111, 118, 119, 120, iltifāt 144
128, 189, 200, 202, 203, 214, 233 imagination 40, 56, 58, 59, 85, 110,
- Umarite ghazal/poetry 111, 119, 178, 187, 201, 202, 212, 215,
200, 202, 203 218, 219, 220, 221, 225-227, 235
- urban ghazal 116, 118, 119, 120, imitation/imitating 13, 35, 84, 99, 158,
189 173, 199, 226, 227, 232, 235
girīz 137 immanent approach 28, 130, 150
girzīgāh 137 individual talent 21, 73, 142, 163, 184,
“gnoseological” poetry 211 241
individuality 38, 69, 73, 75, 84, 93, 86,
H 151, 164, 166, 206, 207, 221,
224, 225
Hadith 80 innovation 56, 69, 70, 77, 78, 92, 93,
half-bayt/bayts 170, 171, 191, 125, 146, 98, 120, 127, 128, 130, 136, 141,
169 144, 158, 165, 180, 195, 209,
half-verse 125 211, 212, 221, 232
heritage 6, 19-23, 27, 28, 29, 31, 33-35, intercultural approach 97
56, 121, 173, 190, 254, 249 interpretation 11, 20, 21, 26, 38, 61,
hero of the text 206, 207 67, 68, 69, 85, 91, 111, 124, 129,
“high literature” 46, 52, 86, 101 136, 142, 174, 180, 192, 203,
“high poetry” 201 226, 228, 229, 234, 235, 237, 238
hijā’ 36, 111 intertextuality 35, 47, 78, 79, 96, 97,
historicity 12, 15, 19, 22, 23, 25, 30, 37, 150, 232, 244, 246, 252, 254
240, 242, 243 - explicit intertextuality 97
history of genres/forms 49, 133 invocation50, 52, 71, 86, 140, 141, 164,
history of literature 22, 23, 29, 33, 37, 191
38, 60, 63, 64, 65, 67, 87, 150, ittibā‘iyya 151
240, 243
- history of Arabic literature 23, J
28, 70, 72
- history of Bosniak literature 21, jāhiliyya 66

264
K “metapoem” 85
metaverses 78, 154
kāhin 56, 59, 63 metre/metrics 36, 58, 72, 77, 78, 83, 89,
khamriyyāt 111, 201 94, 105, 106, 109, 125, 152, 191,
195
L - monometre 109, 116, 154
- quantitative metries 148
lapidary 7, 105, 108, 110, 111, 120, “mirror principle” 80
121, 190 monorhyme 36, 108, 109, 116, 125,
lawha 80, 81 146, 154, 170, 171, 179
lexicographical approach 129 morphology 7, 35, 49, 54, 58, 105, 110,
literary division 116, 128, 130, 163, 168 111, 114, 115, 120, 124, 128,
literary epochs 37, 147 129, 134, 141, 142, 144, 146,
literary history 6, 12, 15, 19, 22, 23, 24, 147, 155, 157, 171, 173, 241
26, 27, 28, 30, 32-38, 40, 48, 49, - morphology of genres/forms 110,
67, 86, 105, 111, 119, 120, 128, 134, 146, 147, 241
130, 132, 133, 134, 142, 146, - morphology of the ghaza l 7, 111
147, 169, 189, 190, 199, 208, motif 65, 77, 80, 82, 85, 88, 94, 96,
229, 245 148, 155, 156, 163
literary period 11, 23, 30, 38, 238, 239 - epic motifs 107
literary school 29 al-Mu‘allaqāt 34, 41, 107
“literary theft” 35 “Muhammadan poetry” 160
love-lyrical prologue 112, 133, 136 murebba‘ 88, 126, 154
love prologue 36, 108, 115, 136 musammaṭ 7, 46, 88, 126, 127, 130,
“low” literature 88 150, 151, 153-158, 161-166, 180
lyricism 107, 108, 111, 112, 114, 115, musammaṭ forms 150, 151, 153-158,
118, 125, 128, 132, 135, 136, 161-166, 180
137, 149, 157-161, 200, 201, 202, müseddes 126
206, 209, 211, 214, 221, 230, 241 muselles 88, 126, 154
mütawwel 125
müzeyyel 125
M
“mystical perception” 228
“mystical poetry” 128, 228, 229, 235,
madaḥ/madīḥ 36, 49, 111, 137, 156
256
Mahjar 71, 192
mannerism 145
marsiyya 49, 156, 241 N
medhiye 137
metaphor 61, 84, 92, 97, 108, 156, 178, narrative/narration
215, 216, 217, 220-224, 230, - prose narrative 47
234, 235 nasīb 108, 111, 112, 113, 126, 130, 133,
- metaphor constituents 106, 156, 135-137
205, 206, 215, 216, 217, 223 national literatures 19, 20, 134, 242,
- metaphorical transfer 207, 244
214,216, 220-222 nathr 71
- poetological metaphor 156 naẓīra 46, 88, 94, 162, 165, 166, 172,
- theological metaphor 92 173, 195

265
 - the Mostar naẓīra 165 - classical period 7, 14, 15, 20, 29,
naẓm 71 30, 34, 39, 45, 46, 48, 49, 52, 53,
84, 85, 86, 91-94, 96, 109, 113,
O 115, 123, 124, 125, 127, 134,
139-142, 150, 151, 155, 159, 163,
“object of love” 7, 203, 233, 235 171, 172, 182, 190, 225, 237,
objectivisation of art 98 239, 240, 244
objectivity 11, 23, 26, 27, 31, 32, 93, - historical period 21, 25, 54, 224
94, 239 - period of love lyricism 211
ode/odes 62, 65, 76, 87, 96, 113, 135, periodization (of literature) 13, 15, 23,
159, 211 26, 36, 37, 50, 52, 210, 240
oral tradition 58, 70, 101, 105, 120 - pre-Islamic period 47, 56, 87,
oriental philology 13, 23, 35, 41, 240 100, 105, 139, 169, 208, 242
Oriental-Islamic cultural circle 238 philological translation 25, 175, 192,
Oriental-Islamic literature 21, 28, 30, 229
37, 39, 41, 65, 73, 97, 159, 160, philotechnics 179
164, 194, 233, 234, 237, 238, pious poetry 159, 210
241, 244 plagiarism 35, 41, 94
orientalism 229, 234, 255 poem-predecessor 84
orientalist/orientalists 7, 12, 13, 23, poetic cognition 69
151, 152, 161, 175, 189, 192, “poetic requisites” 218
207, 228, 229, 233, 234, 235, poetics/poetical
239, 248, 250 - Arabic poetics 53, 74, 213
orientologist 31, 22, 25, 31 - Aristotelian poetics 35
orientology 15, 41, 72, 86, 189, 190, - classical poetics 70, 93, 152, 184
192, 195, 235, 248 - historical poetics 67, 68, 115,
originality 14, 24, 33, 34, 38, 73, 77, 132, 142, 143, 145, 179, 190, 203
78, 91-94, 98, 114, 125, 130, 134, - historical-poetological terms 39,
139, 141, 145, 156, 157, 164-166, 45
173, 221, 224, 225, 226, 232, - implicit poetics 184
235, 241 - inductive poetics 45, 227, 241
- normative poetics 38, 77, 87, 94,
P 137, 199, 221, 226
- poetic postulates 49, 105, 121,
panegyric poetry 201, 211 123, 125, 163, 176, 184, 203,
pantheism/pantheistic 159, 202, 204, 214, 242
215 - poetic turn 50
- Sufi pantheism 218, 219 - poetical system 19, 27, 39, 45,
parabola/parabolas 73, 74, 190 96, 105, 111, 244
patron 70, 71, 114, 124, 133, 137-140, - “poetics of sameness” 35, 38
143, 145 - poetics of the lawha 80, 81
period - Sufi poetics 207, 215, 216, 218,
- ancient period 11, 45, 57, 58, 59, 221, 224, 227
73, 99, 108, 110, 114, 140, 141, poetology 15, 16, 38, 41, 45, 48, 49, 57,
147, 154, 155, 170, 209, 210, 59, 62, 63, 69, 72, 87, 115, 120,
220, 239 122, 123, 127, 129, 132, 136,

266
 147, 150, 155, 195, 229, 238, Q
240, 243
poetological 7, 13, 15, 16, 30, 33, 36, qaṣīda 7, 36, 49, 105-116, 118, 120,
38, 39, 40, 45, 46, 48, 52, 53, 56, 121-126, 128, 130, 132-138, 140-
60, 63, 67, 69, 71, 73, 81, 87, 91, 147, 149, 154, 161, 163, 167,
92, 94, 97, 109, 119, 122, 123, 169, 170, 171, 173, 176, 189,
125, 127, 132-136, 142, 153, 154, 191, 192, 209, 233, 241, 245,
156, 158, 162, 163, 168, 177, 247, 252, 257
187, 199, 210, 216, 222, 229, Qaṣīda Burda 34, 87
231, 240, 243 Qur’ān 49, 50, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 60,
poetological studies 38, 222 61, 66, 70, 80, 86, 87, 88, 105,
poetologist/poetologists 30, 33, 38, 46, 108, 139, 141, 144, 191, 194,
73, 143, 230 199, 211, 233, 234, 237, 248
poetry 7, 14, 15, 36, 40, 41, 47, 49, 50,
52, 53, 56-75, 77, 78, 80, 83-88, R
93-97, 99, 100, 101, 105-111,
114-116, 118-120, 122, 123, 125- reception 11, 95, 101, 113, 114, 123,
129, 131, 134, 138-140, 148-151, 138, 162, 163, 164, 168, 169,
153-161, 163, 167, 170-173, 175, 176, 179, 180, 182, 183,
175—183, 185, 187-192, 194, 184, 186, 187, 188, 212, 220,
195, 199, 200-203, 205-233, 235, 222, 238, 242, 252
236, 243, 245 recipient 71, 81, 84, 100, 136, 159, 156,
- hedonistic poetry 222, 230, 233 180, 206, 213, 221
point of view of the past 37, 91 reconstruction 11, 12, 91, 238, 239,
point of view of the present 29, 37, 91, 240, 243
129, 151, 152, 242 requisite/s (Cf.: poetic requisites) 60,
polyphony 158, 164, 165 62, 80, 189, 200, 207, 208, 218,
polythematic composition 105, 146 223
positivism/positivistic 228, 238, 243 reservoir of motifs 70, 151, 226
“profane reception” 228 revelation 36, 52, 60, 63, 64, 66, 67
prologue 36, 50, 86, 108, 112, 113, 115, rhapsode 120
133, 136, 169 rhetoric/rhetorical 45, 119, 140, 141,
prophetic function (of a poet/poetry) 143, 191, 234
59, 68 rhyme 48, 58, 63, 72, 78, 83, 86, 88,
prose 14, 25, 47, 48, 50, 52, 56, 58, 71, 94, 105, 106, 109, 125, 129, 130,
86, 99, 100, 101, 122, 139, 141, 135, 147, 148, 152, 154, 161,
143, 148, 152, 169, 174, 175, 169—172, 174, 175, 180, 284,
176, 185, 189, 190-193, 195, 232 185
- artistic prose 14, 56, 99, 185 - couplets 126, 179, 191
prosody 72, 126, 161, 172, 191, 213 - intertwined 63, 86, 96, 163, 169,
protoform 78 244
protopoem 75, 78, 79, 83, 84, 85, 88, - rhymed and rhytmic prose 48, 50,
150, 166 52, 71, 86, 100, 125, 140, 141,
protoverses 75, 78, 154 191, 192, 195

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S al-sumūṭ 127, 154, 155
sunnism 55
sacral Text 49, 50, 174, 144, 221 syncretism 47, 48, 49, 52, 71, 114, 128,
sacralisation 53, 54, 86, 169 189
ṣadr al-islām 61 Šehr-engiz 236, 246
saj‘ 58
ṣalawāt 50 T
ṣan‘a 6, 69, 71, 72, 77, 78, 85, 91, 92,
94, 96, 98, 126, 127, 129 taḥmīd 50, 164, 169, 173
sebebi telif 173 Tahmis/tahmis 29, 74-76, 78-82, 85, 87,
self-praise 111, 128, 137, 138, 139, 140, 88, 94-97, 101, 126, 129, 150,
141, 143, 144, 145, 200 154, 155, 156, 162-166, 193,
semantic independence 191 232, 245
semantic unit 111 tanzimat literature 37
semiosphere 21, 167, 193 taqlīdiyya 151
semiotics 167, 234 ṭardiyyāt 111
- semiotics of space 234 tasdīs 129, 154, 155, 156
- semiotisation 14, 227, 232, 242 tawḥīd 211
shā‘ir 40, 53, 56-59, 61-73, 78, 85, 87, tegazzül 137
93, 99, 101, 106, 139, 144, 209, “thematic identity” 130
220 theory 11, 33, 45, 48, 130, 161, 187,
shaman 56, 59, 68 230, 238
shī‘a 53 topos/topoi
shi‘r 6, 40, 53, 56, 57, 58, 85, 88, 101, - humility topos 138, 139, 141,
245 143, 190
shu‘ūbiyya 55, 86, 193, 213 - self-praise topos 139
al-ṣidq al-fannī 71 - topos of boasting 143
simile 220, 221, 222, 224 totality 21, 59, 106, 109, 110
ṣiyāġa 192 traditionalism 145, 149, 151, 160, 166
source text 24, 25, 48, 86, 152, 153, transfer of meaning 222, 223
173-176, 191-194, 242 transposition / transpositions 7, 128,
station (Sufi) 178 134, 194, 201, 205, 206, 208,
style 50, 72, 137, 140, 141, 179, 180, 209, 214-218, 220, 221, 222, 226,
191, 199, 221 226, 235 228, 229, 233
- functional style 50 troubadour poetry 167
stylistics 45, 141, 144, 158, 220, 234
sufi poetic symbols 223 U
sufi poetry 41, 49, 50, 56, 61, 69, 111,
115, 118, 123, 131, 149, 159, universality 30, 31, 38
161, 188, 189, 195, 199, 200, universal value 30
201, 202, 203, 205-233, 235,
236, 245
sufism 80, 159, 172, 186, 187, 188, 194,
V
195, 207, 208, 209, 213, 215,
value judgement 11, 12, 71, 120, 151,
216, 229, 230, 234, 235, 236,
153, 238, 239
245, 249, 254, 256
versification 72, 85, 98

268
W

waqf/donor 50, 51
waqfiyah 50, 51, 52, 86, 191
waṣf 111
work of art 72, 93, 152, 164, 176, 184,
194, 205, 215, 228

zuhdiyyāt 159, 209

269