Textual Problems in Ibn Quzmān

Abstract

THE Diwan of Ibn Quzman has many attractions for the student of Arabic poetry, Western Middle Arabic, medieval Hispanic subjects, Spanish Islam, Bacchic-cum-panegyric poetry, poetry in general, and other things besides. The approaches to this attractive corpus of poems are fraught with difficulties, however, though probably not as many nor as serious as is sometimes alleged. In a previous study, I have attempted to delineate some of these problems and to dissipate others 1. My main point was that the metrical basis of the Hispanic zagal is demonstrably ( Classical)>, that is, made up of quantitative rhythms closely related, and in many cases identical, to the traditional metres of the Arabs. The most immediate consequence of this concerns the text. The textual difficulties in IQ's Dtwan have been frequently emphasized, and it is true that the major sources of his poems were either copied (MSD) or composed (AH) in the Arab East by Easterners having at best a demonstrably shaky command of the Hispanic dialect of Middle Arabic in which IQ's zagals are written. Four-fifths of the D?wdn, furthermore, survives in a defective unique MS. The quantitative scansion of each poem, easily obtainable in some cases from the Classical Arabic muwassahMt of which some of IQ's zagals are explicit metrical imitations (mu'dra.da), and in the rest by applying the techniques of scansion derived from an attentive study of such mu'dradas, is at least as useful a tool for establishing the text of these songs as Greek metre is for poems in that language. Using these techniques, as decribed in considerable detail in Metre, I have now completed a critical edition of the Diwdn compiled from all the relevant manuscript and published sources 2. The result is a