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1 Mystical Improvisations In most of his moments of inspiration, the Shaykh was always perplexed, eyes fixed, hearing no one who spoke, nor even seeing them. Sometimes he would be standing, sometimes sitting, sometimes he would lie down on his side, and sometimes he would throw himself down on his back wrapped in a shroud like a dead man. Ten days, more or less, would pass while he was in this state, he neither eating, drinking, speaking, or moving. . . . Then he would regain consciousness and come to, and his first words would be a dictation of what God had enlightened him with of the ode Naẓm al-Sulūk.1 Master Poet This account of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s trance and verse reflects several medieval Muslim notions regarding poetic and religious inspiration. First, the trance confirms the inspired quality of the poet’s verse that, then, should not be confused with the contrived poetry of academic artifice. Like the pre-Islamic poets and soothsayers, and the legendary Muslim poets driven mad by love, Ibn al-Fāriḍ has tapped deep spiritual sources. Yet his inspiration is not from a jinni or Satan, but from God, and this attests to the profound truth of the poet’s religious message. After being lost in divine love, Ibn al-Fāriḍ recovers to spontaneously recite verse, which would later compose his most famous mystical poem. Such miraculous tales of Ibn al-Fāriḍ were popularized and passed on by generations of his admirers, and they form an important chapter in the story of the poet’s posthumous sanctification.2 But this image of Ibn al-Fāriḍ as an ecstatic Sufi obscures important literary dimensions of his work, especially questions regarding his literary benefactors and their influence. For Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s polished and highly mannered 31 32 PASSION BEFORE ME, MY FATE BEHIND poetry challenges persistent views of him as a manic oracle reciting from the depths of mystical trance. His poems are carefully crafted works replete with intricate rhetorical displays, and Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s learned poetic skill is also evident in his conscious references to verse by earlier Arab poets.3 In an eleventh/seventeenth-century grammatical commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Dīwān, Ḥasan al-Būrīnī (d. 1024/1619), occasionally noted the poet’s direct dependence on amorous verses by his predecessors, including al-Buḥturī.4 More recently, A.J. Arberry believed that Ibn al-Fāriḍ was indebted in several places to Imru’ al-Qays and ˜Umar Ibn Abī Rabī˜ah. Furthermore, Ibn al-Fāriḍ was clearly influenced by several of his older contemporaries including Yaḥyā al-Suhrawardī, as Yūsuf Sāmī al-Yūsuf has argued persuasively.5 Ibn al-Fāriḍ also improvised on a ghazal by an earlier Egyptian Sufi poet Ibn al-Kīzānī.6 However, the poet who may have exerted the strongest influence on Ibn al-Fāriḍ was al-Mutanabbī. Homage to al-Mutanabbī Every competent Arab poet and litterateur of the sixth/twelfth century was well acquainted with al-Mutanabbī’s esteemed poetry. Al-Būrīnī often cited verses by al-Mutanabbī in commenting on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Dīwān, and he recorded several examples of direct borrowing. Arberry pursued al-Būrīnī’s leads and discovered that Ibn al-Fāriḍ had gone so far as to pattern two of his poems, the al-Lāmīyah and the al-Dhālīyah, after two poems by al-Mutanabbī. Arberry charted the rhyme words and a few of the themes and images common to the poems, and further analysis will reveal the extent to which Ibn al-Fāriḍ mystically improvised on this master poet.7 Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s al-Lāmīyah is a beautiful love poem of sixty verses, in the meter ṭawīl, rhyming in the letter lām, or “L,” and modeled on a panegyric by al-Mutanabbī that begins:8 ˜azīzun asan man dā’uhu-l-ḥadaqu-n-nujlu ˜ayā’un bihi māta-l-muḥibbūna min qablu How a man hurts afflicted by beautiful eyes; so many lovers died, victims of this incurable disease. If you want, look at me; the sight of me should warn you: passion is not easy. It is nothing, just a glance after a glance, but...

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