14 - Ibn Quzmān

Summary

Though celebrated as the outstanding composer of zajal – the strophic form that uses vernacular Arabic of al-Andalus – Ibn Quzmān has by and large remained an enigmatic and neglected poetic figure. We know little about his life: what has been passed on to us is a series of fragmented references found primarily in his diwan. At the outset, this is quite ironic, because Ibn Quzmān’s presence haunts almost all of his 149 zajals, regardless of their themes. Unexpectedly and frequently his voice breaks through the poetic frame, alerting the reader to his proximity. Ibn Quzmān enters a poem sometimes as its character and sometimes as his “real” self, further distracting the reader from an empathic response.

Ibn Quzmān’s life spans the period of Almoravid domination of the peninsula. In a panegyric dedicated to Almoravid leader Yūsuf ibn Tāshfīn for the victory gained against the Christian forces at the battle of Zallaka in 1086, he mentions himself in a satirical reference to the great event. Although the reader at first experiences a sense of awe before a crucial military victory, Ibn Quzmān disrupts this sensation by drawing attention to himself through a facetious autobiographical remark:

What a day that was!

Many people were then gathered, and whatever happened to the victors happened. In my father’s testicles I was and did not see But the one who did narrated the story to me.

(no. 38)