Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic Middle Ages: Poetry, Public Performance, and the Presentation of the Past (review)

Within the increasing movement in late classical and medieval studies to focus on orality and its role in textual, cultural, and historical development, Samer Ali’s volume on medieval Arabic literary salons, the mujasala, is a welcome addition. Showing evidence of its origins as a PhD thesis, this book is nonetheless a useful study of the practices and impact of the oral performance of literature in the Abbasid caliphate. The author uses textual examples to illustrate his study on the social significance of the practitioners in these salons, including that of women and children in the community, their impact as social institutions, and the formation and transmission of an Arabo-Islamic cultural memory. A familiarity with Abbasid history and geography is implemented throughout, making this book accessible to the wider, and Western, medieval scholarly community.

The book begins with a survey of the historical influences, or predecessors, of the mujalasat, relating the Greek symposion to its development. Setting the space for literary performance, the forms that the mujalasat took are traced to both salons and gardens, and its geographical reaches from ninth-century ‘Iraq’ to Andalusia and North Africa. Ali’s choice of secondary literature to buttress the historical and cultural framework for non-Arabists is kept within the scope for medieval scholars with the references to George Makdisi’s work on medieval Arabic culture and societies of learning and patronage. The nature of the texts performed is also addressed, with emphasis on the great variety of literature used. Ali also notes the accessibility of paper and the consequent proliferation of texts in the Arab World, facilitating this performance culture. A large number of historical texts were performed, and Ali makes convincing points on the perception of truth and authenticity, the literal and the figurative, in the interplay between history and fiction, as well as the differing approaches to recording history.

The study encompasses the impact of the mujalasat on the audience and performers. Ali looks at the motivations for the performers to be appreciated and credible, gaining social status and influence. The preparation for performance was social in nature, but carried the responsibility of transmitting differing versions of histories, with the influence of well-known performers lending importance and credibility to the material and the performer. Ali examines the interpretation and reinterpretation of the material according to the audience, and how the poet’s integrity was appraised by his consistency in verbal structure, humour, and adjustment of the text. In this way, the author shows how the individual held the power to reframe tradition and cultural history by adapting literary canon, and how the mujalasat became the venue for ‘receiving, adjusting, and re-presenting inherited knowledge’ (p. 116).

The relationship of the concept of adab and those values of the influential practice of Sufism to literary reception and performance is discussed skilfully. The role that Sufi values played in performance, as well as on medieval Arabic culture, is expounded, with the example of the poems of Ibn al-Jahm. Here Ali provides a contextual reading of Rusafiyya, the story about the transformation of a character from bumpkin to courtier, illustrating the complex impact of performance poetry on the suppression of glory and ego in Sufi futuwa, or chivalric behaviour.

Though there is demonstrated intimate knowledge of primary texts, and even appendices presenting the poems in Arabic, from the opening sentence this book seems to attempt to address a wider, non-medieval audience. The giant Sequoia trees of the North American continent are referred to in setting the timeframe of the Islamic Middle Ages, and, though these trees are more than 1000 years older than the author gives them credit for, these redwoods have no relation to, or influence on, Arabic literary society. Almost as disparate are the references to nineteenth...