Mutual Duties and Rights of Benefactor and Protégé

In this relationship, both parties have a long-term commitment to each other. The patron affords the poet protection from penury and slander.¹ His generosity comes easily, and he does not remind people of it. His motivation for generosity is not gain; rather, this virtue is inherent in his noble nature. Generosity counts toward his honor and grants him credit toward his afterlife.² Generosity is also bound to other virtues, such as respect of the recipient’s honor, reliability in the fulfillment of promises, and anticipation of wishes and hopes.³ Finally, generosity is a power exerted over free people, and therefore it needs to be exercised justly toward both the needy and those who merit it by virtue of their excellent work.⁴ The tax expert and poetic critic Qudāma b. Jaʿfar (d. 327/938) agreed with connecting justice to generosity. In his discussion of madīḥ, he offers a broad subdivision of praiseworthy virtues for males, which include ʿaql (reason), shajāʿa (courage), ʿadl (justice), and ʿiffa (decency). Samāʿa (generosity) falls under the heading of ʿadl and is substituted by it later in the text. Most virtues listed under ʿadl (justice) are associated with giving: samāḥa (generosity) as opposed to taghābun (cheating in buying and selling), inẓilām (taking upon oneself injustice and difficulty), al-tabarruʿ bi-l-nāʾil (charity), ijābat al-sāʾil (granting the plea of a supplicant), and qirā l-aḍyāf (hospitality).⁵ These good deeds (niʿam) place a burden on the protégé.⁶ He acknowledges his gratitude and obligation to his benefactor by reciprocating with gratitude, loyalty, and trust.⁷ This, in turn, entitle the poet to renewed generosity, protection, and so forth.⁸ If the patron does not perform as expected, the poet chastises him for delaying or breaking his promise, for administering his generosity unjustly, or neglecting his devoted protégé and sincere friend. The poet’s commitments are fulfilled by poetry, but that is poetry’s only function here, and its specific character as a literary form is not of great importance. The poem is a token of the poet’s ongoing allegiance, just as the patron’s gifts and benefits were tokens of his ongoing protection and benevolence. To this end, the poem performs a service and thereby repays the patron’s gifts and relieves the poet of some of his liability.⁹ The relationship emerges as a mutual exchange. However, it is not one of discrete transactions of giving and thanking; rather, it represents an ongoing process. This exchange in essence mirrors the relationships in commercial trade. In his study on the Būyids in the century following Ibn al-Rūmī’s lifetime (334–440/945–1050), Roy Mottahedeh compares the loyalty arising from benefit to a long-term trade relationship:

The commercial analogy fitted the continuing barter of niʿmah and gratitude.… But it was an analogy appropriate to a commerce of long-standing patterns of trade, in which, for all the calculus of benefit, neither seller nor customer wanted a final ‘reckoning’ of accounts between them, since such a reckoning would sever the bonds of loyalty that the exchange had created.¹⁰

Here, the trade analogy includes the exchange of tangible goods as well as the intangible quality of trust and protection of each other’s interests. From the Koran, we know the purchase as an image for a (usually disadvantageous) exchange of immaterial things. Unbelievers sell guidance for error; the hereafter for the here; belief for unbelief; etc.¹¹ When Ibn al-Rūmī uses the trade image, he emphasizes the calculated benefit, be it material or immaterial. In praise, such calculation is the opposite of honorable disinterested giving: https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315823607/3c1f901b-2452-42b4-bd5b-1f8301092ec7/content/figu1_153_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> When vying with an honorable man, he is higher than him in honor, and when weighing himself with him, he is lower, outweighing him [in importance]. When all and sundry kings [just] buy praise, he sees a distinction between trade and giving favors.¹² (S1312’: 3–4 to an anonymous patron)¹³