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APPROACHESTO ARABIC LITERATURE
General Editor: Kamal Abu Deeb No. 2
THE EPISTLE ON SINGING-GIRLS OF JAHIZ • • Edited with translation and commentary by
A. F. L. Beeston
CONTENTS
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Introduction
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F. L. Beeston 1980. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
Bibliography and Abbreviations
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Translation
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Commentary
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Glossary
65
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Published by ARIS & PHILLIPS LTD., Warminster, Wilts, England.
Printed in England by BIDDLES LTD., Guildford, Surrey.
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Arabic Text Critical Apparatus (in Arabic)
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INTRODUCTION
§ 1 The Author.By common consent, Abu 'Uthman 'Amr b. Bal)r al-Jahiz (160-255 a.h./776-869 a.d.) is regarded as one of the great' masters of Arabic prose. His works show an astonishingly wide range of interests, admirably illustrated in a collection of selected extracts from his whole work presented by C. Pellat in English translation in 'The Life and Works of Gfil).if; but besides this, his subtle and colourful style has a tremendous fascination in itself. Although other works of his (notably the 'Book of Misers' and the 'Book of Animals') have become the most widely known and quoted, it is in his 'Epistles' that his style shows itself at its most characteristic. For European readers, however, this style is decidedly difficult, mainly I think for two reasons. One is the nature of his thought. He was constitutionally incapable of seeing only one side of a question. Hardly has any idea presented itself to his consciousness, before he rambles off into a series of observations adding to it or qualifying it, and these may lead in the end to a near-contradiction of the remark which started the train of thought off; a single idea sparks off a whole coruscation of associated ideas often with only the slenderest logical connection between them. To a European reader, accustomed to a logically ordered progression of arguments tending to a definite conclusion, the discursive nature of Jal).i:f writing can be very baffling. But he was not a logician, and his Epistles were not always written with the object of convincing the readers and securing their adherence to a particular proposition or point of view, even though they frequently present a superficial appearance of argumentation; he was an observer of life, and his observations are as many-sided and mutually contradictory as life itself. It is as a picture of the life of his time that his Epistles are so valuable. It would be difficult to find anywhere in literature a more vivid and penetrating picture of a social environment than we find in the 'Epistle on Singing-girls' and some of his other epistles.
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The second feature making his style difficult for a modern reader is his inordinately complex paragraph structure (in which he bears some resemblance to Thucydides). A turmoil of subordinate clauses and parentheses results in paragraphs which may ramble over the best part of a page before petering out at a genuine full stop. But once these difficulties have been overcome, the 'Epistle on Singing-girls' can be seen as a document of social history of the highest importance, as well as one which demonstrates a very lively sense of humour. § 2 The Singing-Girls.The position of the singing-girl, qaynah, in Abbasid society was one not easily apprehended by the modern reader; perhaps the nearest parallel is furnished by the geisha of Ja pan. In essence, these girls were simply slaves trained to sing for the entertainment of their masters; the word itself meant originally no more than 'trained technician' (and the masc