The Tyranny of the Anecdote: Alternative Readings of the Pre-Islamic Poet, al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar’s Poem and Its Anecdote (<Special Feature> Arabic Poetry)

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  • 逸話の専制：前イスラーム期詩人アルムラッキシュ・アルアスガルの詩の読解
  • The Tyranny of the Anecdote : Alternative Readings of the Pre-Islamic Poet, al-Muraqqish al-Asghar's Poem and Its Anecdote

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Abstract

Al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar (the Younger) was a pre-Islamic poet, active in the sixth century C.E. This study deals with one of his poems and its associated khabar, or anecdote. The poem is the Mīmiyyah (poem with the rhyme-consonant mīm), which opens with “A-lā ya-slamī (Be safe)” in Al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, the well-known anthology of ancient Arabic poetry compiled by al-Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbī (d. ca.786 C.E.). The poem expresses the poet’s ardent love for a woman named Fāṭimah and his sorrow at losing her. The main goal of this paper is to explore the relationship between the poem and its anecdote to determine the function of the anecdote regarding the interpretation of the poem. The anecdote provides the poet’s biographical information and the occasion for which the poem was composed, and it is inserted before the poem. Using mainly the performance theory of Richard Bauman and reader-response criticism, I examine why the anecdote was included, why it was done in this way, and how its presence has affected interpretations of the poem. I argue that the poem may stand by itself to demonstrate its own inherent literary and aesthetic qualities, and may have been intended to do so. Thus, the anecdote can be taken as an imposed influence that tends to direct interpretation in only one way, while al-Muraqqish al-Aṣghar may have wished to allow wider possibilities.

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