15 - Ascetic poetry (zuhdiyyāt)

Summary

PRECURSORS OF THE ZUHDIYYAH

“To renounce”, “to withdraw”, “to abstain from gratification” – these are the senses of the verb zahada. The verbal noun zuhd camz in Islam to mean a life of self-denial and devotional exercises. The master-themes of the poems that medieval Arab anthologists and editors placed in the category of zuhdiyyāt are, accordingly, the cold look at the allurements of the world in which fortune is capricious and life frail, and the need for repentance before time runs out and the accounts are closed. Many zuhdiyyāt are built on motifs of the first kind alone, dwelling on mortality and the vanity of human wishes.

The literary history of many of these motifs goes back to the pre-Islamic age. This was obvious to the authors of medieval literary studies and adab works (treasuries of prose anecdote and verse, intended for the pleasant teaching of practical wisdom and polite culture). Verses on the inevitability of death, or the succession of feeble old age on vigorous youth, are quoted from pagans and Muslims alike in the zuhd chapters of such books as al- Jāḥiẓ's Kitāb al-Bayān wa ʾl-tabjīn or Ibn Qutaybah's ʿUyūnal-akhbār. Pagans and Muslims both used such motifs as premises, but to different results. Al- Jāḥiẓ, for example, quotes the pagan poet ʿAntarah: "I answered her: death is a watering stop where, no doubt, I will have to drink." This, a convention of the pre-Islamic poetry, is the warrior's reply to a scold who disapproves of his reckless ways with his money and his blood.