The Form

Of all verse dedicated to Abbasid caliphs, governors, generals and scribes, only a part represented the ceremonial genres of madīḥ (panegyric) and rithāʾ (lament); the remainder included the informal genres of ghazal (love poetry), khamriyya (wine poetry) and wasf (descriptive poetry). Ceremonial genres could be recited at both official (majlis ʿāmm) and semi-private audiences (majlis al-uns); informal only at the latter. Only madīḥ (and rithāʾ) could render the public portrayal of a patron, and its most traditional, prestigious and therefore poetically most challenging form was the qaṣīda. For much the same reasons, i.e. difficult language, style, and imagery as well as a limited catalogue of themes, the panegyric qaṣīda has only recently received due scholarly attention. With the concern for representative results, however, many interpretative approaches address the qaṣīda sequence of nasīb, raḥīl, and madīḥ, as described by Ibn Qutayba in the preface of his handbook on poetry and identified by Renate Jacobi as a popular Umayyad form.¹ While the insights gained about this ‘typical’ qaṣīda are inestimable, it is equally vital to realize that poets took great freedom in the thematic composition of their qaṣā’id (pl. of qaṣīda). The second half of this chapter, a comparison between two contrasting pieces by al-Buḥturī and ʿAlī b. al-Jahm, will dispel any impression of uniformity in qaṣīda composition.