Usage of al-shayb wa-l-shabāb in Ibn Ḥamdīs’s ḥāʾiyyah ‘Ṭaraqat wa-l-laylu’

Abstract

Abstract This article examines Ibn Ḥamdīs’s ḥāʾiyyah ‘Ṭaraqat wa-l-laylu’, a multi-partite ode of thirty-four lines. I argue that the poet’s deployment of the motif of old age vs. youth (al-shayb wa-l-shabāb) within this qaṣīdah responds to a codified “poetics of old age” that sought to enhance the poem’s semantic layering. Ibn Ḥamdīs adheres to a normative aesthetics of Arabic old-age poetry, obtaining an effect that I refer to as “thematic displacement.” In support of my argument, I quote an excerpt of al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā’s introduction to his anthology al-Shihāb fī-l-shayb wa-l-shabāb, which reveals how the critic prized Arabic verse on old age precisely because of its capacity to interact dialogically with the traditional maʿānī al-shiʿr. The article includes a revised biography of Ibn Ḥamdīs and a new English translation of the poem.