ABSTRACT

The traces of an abandoned Bedouin camp become a reconstructed imperial Persian city which both precedes and nearly precludes the abandoned encampment as a source for an Abbasid poetics. Of course, it would not have been possible for Buhturi to reconstruct an imperial Persian city unless the Persian Empire had been conquered by the Arabs and the city in question reduced to ruins. Nonetheless, Buhturi's appropriation of an imagined Persian alternative to the Arab abandoned encampment permits him to question the source—and value—of imperial Arab culture. The floods have rendered the traces of the abandoned encampments clearer by sweeping away debris or dust. Similarly, it would seem, the renewing pens render the text clearer by paradoxically sweeping away commentary and notes. Doughty's 'commentary' replaces the heroism and passion of pre-Islamic poetry with the venality and buffoonery of degenerate nomads and their domestic tiffs.