Requerimientos específicos

This section will focus on the dialogic form of the food theme found in the

Maqāmāt. In his Of Dishes and Discourse, Geert Jan van Gelder argues for the existence of Arabic gastronomic poetry as a minor poetic genre.132 Among his quotations, there is Kushājim’s waṣf of the jūdhābah-sweet and Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mahdī’s (d. 224/839)

muzdawij-recipe for narjisīyah (“narcissus dish”).133 The ability to describe food or even cook dainties134 could be one of the signs of the inheritors of pre-Islamic kāhins. In a previous note to Shu Xi’s Bing fu (Fu on Pastries),135 we briefly touched on the theme of food in some maqāmāt. Browsing through al-Hamadhānī’s verbal descriptions of food (either in sajʿ or poetry), we find that they are usually cast in an unbalanced dialogue between a loquacious addresser and one or more silent addressees. Although these descriptions can nourish the imagination in the same way as stilllife paintings do,136 they are at the same time able to provoke the internal audience and create humorous narrative effects in the maqāmāt in question.

In the Maqāmah of Sāsān, for example, al-Iskandarī chants “a litany of urīdu (“I want”) sentences concerning different foodstuffs,”137 which is known to have been borrowed by al-Hamadhānī from an earlier source:

urīdu minka raghīfā yaʿlū khuwānan naẓīfā urīdu milḥan jarīshān urīdu baqlan qaṭīfā

153 urīdu laḥman gharīḍan urīdu khallan thaqīfā urīdu jadyan raḍīʿan urīdu sakhlan kharūfā urīdu māʾan bi-thaljin yaghshā ināʾan ṭarīfā urīdu danna mudāmin aqūmu ʿanhu nazīfā….

yāḥabbadhā anāḍayfan lakum wa anta muḍīfā raḍītu minka bi hādhā wa lam urid an aḥīfā

I desire from thee a white cake upon a clean table. I desire coarse salt, I want plucked greens. I desire fresh meat, I want some sour vinegar. I desire a sucking kid, I want a young ram. I desire water with ice, filled in a rare vessel.

I desire a vat of wine from which I may get up drunk….

O what an excellent guest am I! and what a charming host art thou! I will be content with this from thee, and I do not wish to impose.138

The meter of the poem is mujtathth whose “swinging lilt”139 is considered appropriate for the enumeration of names of food and other pleasures. Hearing it, ʿĪsā ibn Hishām gives al-Iskandarī a silver coin and promises to entertain him with all the enjoyments that he requests. Because its penultimate verse reads yā ḥabbadhā anā ḍayfan / lakum wa anta muḍīfan (O what an excellent guest am I! and what a charming host art thou!), Hämeen-Anttila considers that the possibility of the adoption of a preexisting poem does not quite fit the plot of this maqāmah.140 However, when greeted by the Banū Sāsān, ʿĪsā

ibn Hishām is described as being at the door of his house (ʿalā bāb dārī).141 On other occasions, he has displayed the appropriate manners of hosts in front of poor and hungry

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strangers.142 In ancient Indian literature, the usual behavior in the reception of guests includes preparing water, Madhuparka (mainly composed of honey and curd), and even a cow.143 Demanding guests such as the itinerant priest (prātaritvan) are frequently mentioned.144 In al-Hamadhānī’s maqāmah, ʿĪsā’s response to the urīdu-requests provides a strong parallel to the good-tempered Indian host who tries to satisfy his guests with a series of dadāni (I give).145

This poem in the Maqāmah of Sāsān praises the Bedouin virtue of hospitality. Narrated again in the Maqāmah of theFamine, it constitutes a part of a sajʿ-description that is used to satirize a stingy host. If the poem comes from an earlier source, then its appearance in both maqāmāt serves as good examples of ikhfāʾ al-sarq (concealing theft), a concept elaborated by al-Hamadhānī’s contemporary, Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī.146

The Maqāmah of theFamine takes place “in Baghdad in a famine year,”147 when

ʿĪsā ibn Hishām comes across “a youth with a lisp in his tongue and a space between his front teeth (fatan dhū luthghatin bi-lisānih(i) wa falajin bi-asnānih(i)).”148 The very same front teeth (thanāyāhu)149 _{appear at the conclusion of the Maqāmah of Poesie:}

when ʿĪsā ibn Hishām recognizes the rogue-hero by this particular mark, the former pronounces a Qurʾānic verse (Q 26:18):

a lam nurabbika fīnā walīdan wa labithta fīnā min ʿumrika sinīna?

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Since in the Qurʾān the question is directed to Moses by the Pharaoh, al-Hamadhānī may deliberately intend that his hero should be taken as the prophet in both maqāmāt. The youth in the Maqāmah of the Famine greets ʿĪsā with the words: “What is thy affair (mā

khaṭbuka),” which is the exact text of Moses’s question to the pseudo-prophet Sāmirī (Q 20:95). The “lisp in his tongue” also echoes Moses’s speech impediment: in the same

sūrah (Q 20:27), Moses prays to Allāh to remove the block from his tongue.

This mirror image of the youth and Moses is interesting. In the following text from the Maqāmah of the Famine, the youth fabricates a tripartite description of a banquet in front of the extremely hungry ʿĪsā:

fa mā taqūlu fī raghīf(in) ʿalā khuwānin naẓīf(in) wa baqlin qaṭīf(in) ilā khallin thaqīf(in) wa lawnin laṭīf(in) ilā khardalin ḥirrīf(in) wa shiwāʾin ṣafīf(in) ilā milḥin khafīf(in)….adhāka aḥabbu ilayka am awsāṭun maḥshūwa(tun) wa akwābun mamlūʾa(tun) wa anqālun muʿaddada(tun) wa furushun munaḍḍada(tun) wa anhārun mujawwada(tun) wa muṭribun mujīd(un) lahu mina ʾl-ghazāli ʿaynun wajīd(un) fa in lam turid hādhā wa lā dhāka fa mā qawluka fī laḥmin ṭarīy(in) wa samakin nahrīy(in) wa bādhinjānin maqlīy(in) wa rāḥin quṭrubbulīy(in) wa tuffāḥin jannīy(in) wa maḍjaʿin waṭīy(in) ʿalā makānin ʿalīy(in) ḥidhāʾa nahrin jarrār(in) wa ḥawḍin tharthār(in) wa jannatin dhāti anhār(in).

What sayest thou to a white cake on a clean table, picked herbs with very sour vinegar, fine date-wine with pungent mustard, roast meat ranged on a skewer with a little salt….Is that preferable to thee, or a large company, full cups, variety of dessert, spread carpets, brilliant lights, and a skilful minstrel with the eye and neck of a gazelle? If thou desirest neither this nor that, what is thy verdict regarding fresh meat, river fish, fried brinjal, the wine of Quṭrubbul, picked apples, a soft bed on a lofty place, opposite a rapid river, a gushing fountain, and a garden with streams in it?151

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Maqāmah of Jāḥiẓ, is yet another location where a charming muṭrib appears. The youth’s description is structured as a crescendo, starting with the prosified (ḥall, “dissolved”) verses in the Maqāmah of Sāsān and rising through a climactic simile to the heavenly banquet. Spread carpets, full cups, a soft bed in a lofty mansion, these are well-known images associated with the Qurʾānic heaven. The addresser’s identity as a youth (fatan/ghulām) also leaves a hint of his similarity to the immortal servants in the Garden of Paradise (Q 76:19).

When the youth has completed his description, ʿĪsā ibn Hishām exclaims: “I am the slave of all three (anā ʿabd al-thalāthah)!”152 At this point, the audience must have understood that the enjoyments offered by his host are too lofty to be real: al-Iskandarī

not merely looks like the prophet Moses, but also fascinates ʿĪsā with many Qurʾānic references. He is indeed a heavenly servant who nourishes ʿĪsā with his eloquence, something that can both revive desire and “grip their palate.”153

The structure of the Maqāmah of theFamine is reflected in the one entitled Fresh Butter, which consists of a tripartite dialogue between a Bedouin host and his “guests who have tasted nothing for three nights.”154 Unlike the usually very hospitable Bedouin, the host coughs (tanaḥnaḥa)155 and starts describing his extremely luxurious dates, bread, and roasted kid. This maqāmah “is remarkable for recondite words and technical terms”156 and its description somewhat resembles the provision of recipes. There is a very similar Bedouin discussion of food recorded in the Kitāb al-aghānī (Book of Songs)

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by Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī (284-356/897-967).157 Al-Hamadhānī may have adapted the anecdote, which “is not adorned with the sajʿ, assonances and parallelisms so often found in sayings ascribed to the ancient Bedouins.”158 He also divided it into parts and used it as another interesting piece of mockery aimed at both stingy hosts and ignorant guests who should have noticed the cough in the very outset.

The other maqāmah named for food, the Maqāmah of the Maḍīrah (al-Maqāmah al-Maḍīrīyah), follows the same narrative configuration.159 We are told that a certain Baghdad merchant invites al-Iskandarī to a maḍīrah-lunch.160 Once their host-guest relationship has been established, the merchant bores al-Iskandarī with his never-ending boasts about his house, wife, table, basin, slave, or even lavatory.161 If the Maqāmah of the Famine is marked by its Qurʾānic associations and the Maqāmah of Fresh Butter by the typical Bedouin eloquence, then the Maqāmah of the Maḍīrah can be read as one about mores, for its discussion of middle-class values, together with its satirical touch, closely resembles Petronius’s (d. 66 C.E.) Cena Trimalchionis.162

The loquacious merchant makes the Maḍīrah the longest Hamadhānian maqāmah

in ʿAbduh’s edition. Its employment of exhaustive sajʿ, dialogic form, and the covering of themes beyond that of food (although it remains the most significant one) also suggest a similarity to Mei Cheng’s Seven Stimuli.163 Mei Cheng’s development of the food theme, as one of the seven enjoyments, was aimed at curing an overindulged prince. The

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Summons),164 where a display of food names was used by Chu shamans to lure back departed souls. The food described in the highly idealized Chu homeland is comparable to that in the Qurʾānic Garden. In both the Chinese and Arabic traditions, these images about food became immortal by means of people’s recollection of the theme’s religious functions. When heavenly pleasures were secularized and enjoyed by rulers, aristocrats, and even merchants, they still seem to have inspired rhymed compositions for different purposes. For example, the poet Ibn al-Rūmī’s (221-283/836-896) panegyric of his hosts is introduced by ten verses describing delicacies.165

It has been the aim of this short survey of the maqāmah’s resort to the food theme to illustrate al-Hamadhānī’s talent in switching from poetry to sajʿ, and creating different versions of almost identical subjects. Readers may also have become aware of “the charm of an already ongoing game with known rules and still unknown surprises.”166 The dialogic form, as we will elaborate in the next chapter, is connected with debate and plays an important role in the existence of envoi in the Maqāmāt.