ABSTRACT
Zajal 145 is a poem in which the twelfth-century Cordovan poet Ibn Quzmān invokes the conventions of Arabic courtly love poetry while simultaneously violating them. The glaring logical contradictions in the poetic Persona’s justification for his uncourtly behavior indicate that he is an “unreliable narrator,” and alert the Reader to the poem’s underlying message, which is a critique of the Sunnī belief system, as viewed from the vantage point of Shīʿism. By disguising the nature of his critique in the popular, Colloquial, and hence sub-literary zajal poetic form, and by presenting it humorously, as the performance of a “ritual clown,” Ibn Quzmān, it is suggested, hoped to avoid the severe censorship of the orthodox Mālikī jurists who dominated Andalus under the rule of the Almoravid dynasty.
