THE “SKY OF WINE” OF ABU NUWAS AND THREE GLAZED BOWLS FROM THE GOLDEN HORDE, CRIMEA

Abstract

The metaphor sky of belongs to Abu Nuwas (762-813), the favorite poet of Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Being a good judge of wine, he as no one else excellently united the temperament of a man of merry feasting with the wittiness and ingenuity of a literary artist.' I. Y. Krachkovsky likens the subjects selected by Abu Nuwas to become the heroes of his poems to the decoration of Sasanian gold and silver bowls on which representations of royal feasts, hunting, and military scenes are concealed under the wine. In the figurative array of the poetry of Abu Nuwas, who was much esteemed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we are attracted by a particular poetic image that through the magical phrase ...the sky of wine, on which stars are like bubbles...2 allows us to perceive and closely approach the authentic meaning of separate pictures decorating the glazed banqueting vessels of the Crimea-quite distant from Baghdad. It may seem strange that we have turned to the Abbasid period to explain the subjects on vessels remote from the poet's own period by three or even four centuries. In explanation we can note only that the wine cycle poems of Abu Nuwas were also popular at the end of the twelfth and in the thirteenth century; they were more than occasionally commented on by the Arabian historian Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233), who gathered the first rumors about the invasion of the Mongols. Information about the poet was also preserved by such biographers as Yaqut alHamawi (1179-1229) and Ibn Khallikan (1211-81).3 Even if we do not see Abu Nuwas's favorite subjectsKhusraw's court entertainments, Bahram Gur's hunts, or Christian clergy with their Gospels-in the decor of the glazed bowls from the Crimea, it is impossible to give up the idea that the joy of the street with its Crimean warmth, Levantine tolerance, and bravery of bold local youths might have left their traces here. It is clear that this article will be about the attribution