Soledad Gibert Fenech

Poetas Arabes de Almeria (s. X-XIV), edited by Soledad Gibert, is part of a large stack of books that have been sitting in my office for the last couple of years as part of an ongoing research project. My goals with these books are to glean details of clothing, food, gardens, and historical figures from taifa period al-Andalus and to a lesser degree other time periods or possibly other Islamic cultures, inasmuch as they can inform me about likely details of taifa cultures. To a lesser degree I read for enjoyment, largely because poetry is mostly a mystery to me. Some of it speaks to me; much does not.

Poetas Arabes de Almeria (s. X-XIV) is different from many of the other research books I've accumulated. First, the editor is focused on a particular taifa kingdom, Almeria. So she has collected poetry from anyone who has some connection to this kingdom, whether living there, originating there, or a celebrity passing through. This local, place-based focus filters the topics of the poems to some degree as well.

Second, the Arabic original on the verso page accompanies each Spanish translation, typeset so that it is possible to match corresponding Arabic and Spanish verses. I'm a big fan of editions that allow this direct comparison, whatever the languages involved or the motivation in reading, which is why I love M. S. Merwin's edition of Poem of the Cid. This juxtaposition allowed me to puzzle out some of the specific clothing terms used in the original, which is exactly what I need. Because I don't know Arabic (beyond deciphering some individual letters in a word), my research is largely hostage to translators who could turn many different words into the generic "tunic" or "robe." Hence, the value of pictorial sources, which admittedly have their own suite of issues, particularly artistic license and stylized figures instead of realism, but that's another discussion.

She includes a broad range of poets and a smaller range of poetic styles. Only one woman was represented, but this says more about the limitations of written evidence for an oral tradition and the restrictions on women in Islamic society. Frankly, there just isn't much by women that was documented in the first place and that's been preserved through the centuries in all of al-Andalus, much less one small corner of it. Before this, I read a book that concentrated on women's poetic voices in al-Andalus (Poesia Femenina Hispanoarabe), and about one-third consisted of the anonymous closing couplets of muwashshahs, the jarchas in the vulgar Romance language of the streets, often cribbed from popular songs of the day (according to scholars), that acted as a piquant, satirical, ironic, or simply emotional twist to the classical Arabic sentiment of the main poem, not unlike the final line of a haiku. Usually this final twist is interpreted as a feminine response to the masculine poem.

This collection contains only one muwashshah. Most of the others appear to be qasidas, or simply poetry tossed off in letters and general conversation that were saved for posterity. Quite often, she provides details of the circumstances leading to the extemporaneous composition. I also appreciated the biographical sketches, including significant works and places to find the specific poem, in terms of later authors and compilers in the Islamic literary tradition.

So an interesting read exposing me to new poets and some useful leads in my research project. Obviously, this book has appeal to a fairly limited audience.… (meer)