The Arabic Origins of the "muwashshaḥāt"

Author(s): Jareer Abu-Haidar

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 56,
No. 3 (1993), pp. 439-458
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African Studies
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 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHAHA T

By JAREER ABU-HAIDAR
School of Oriental and African Studies

In a recent study entitled 'The muwashshahat: are they a mystery? ',' I

described the muwashshahatas the product of the simple and natural attempt
by the Arab literati to extend the proliferation or permutations of rhyme in
Arabic prose to Arabic poetry. I pointed out also that in order to accommo-
date this proliferation of rhyme or to make it possible in poetry, Arabic verse
forms had to undergo two notable and quite pervasive developments:
1. The frequent use of hemistichs and short versicles instead of the tradi-
tional Arabic verse, in order to multiply the internal rhymes, or to accom-
modate more of them.
2. The regular use of pausal forms out of pause, in order to circumvent the
prescripts of desinential inflexion (i'rab).
It was also pointed out in the same study that just as the monorhyme in
the classical Arabic qasfda had often occasioned strain and prosodic irregular-
ities in the works of the best poets, it was inevitable that the proliferation of
rhyme in the muwashshahat would lead to added strain, and a rampant or
anarchic irregularity. So long as the muwashshah continued to be based on
the traditional verse or half-verse (hemistich, no serious irregularity
arose. Half-verses, ashtur, were often rhymed insha.tr),
the Arabic poetic tradition in
the opening verses of odes (matla), in the individual verses of the ardjLz,and
in the musammat form of poetic composition. When the muwashshah thus
conformed to tradition, tradition ensured its regularity. It was also 'franked'
as regular in such cases by being referred to, or described as al-muwashshah
al-shi'rT.Things got out of hand, however, when the proliferation of rhyme
got out of hand. Muwashshah compositions with prolific internal and end
rhymes showed serious irregularities of usage and syntax and, ineluctably in
the process, in their metrical structure or metrical regularity. It was to a good
extent this metrical irregularity which led many scholars to try to trace the
appearance of the muwashshah, irregular and regular alike, to Romance ori-
gins, and to postulate syllabic accentual metres both for the muwashshahand
the cognate zajal. One simple axiom seems to have been overlooked in such
an implausible exercise. Only regular poetic compositions in Arabic would
yield a regular syllabic count. Irregular compositions, quantitative or other-
wise, in any language would only yield irregular counts.
It was also pointed out in the article mentioned above that the extensive
use of rhyme by the Andalusian Arabs amounted to an exercise which their
contemporaries in the Arab East had taught them to prize. The
muwashshahat, it was maintained, were the product of a literary process
which had already peaked in the Arab East.2
In the light of all this, the purpose of the present study is twofold:
1. To illustrate still further the proliferation of rhyme in the muwashshahat
and the irregularities it occasioned.
2. To trace and illustrate the clear origins of this process in Arabic literature
in the East. This, it is hoped, would avert any further efforts being ex-
pended on trying to trace the muwashshahor the zajal to Romance origins.

I
Al-Qantara, xiII(1), 1992, 63-81.
2ibid., 72.
440 JAREER ABU-HAIDAR

In any sample of verses picked out at random from an irregular

muwashshah, the reader would be able to note immediately the dogged
attempt by the washshah to present a plethora of rhyme at any cost, or with-
out any consideration given to correct usage and syntax or the demands of
prosody:

This is a qufl of a strophe from a muwashshah by Al-Kumayt.3 In order to

maintain the required internal and end rhymes in this qufl, six in all, the poet
resorts to what amounts to a free field of poetic licence. He eliminates the
madd (lengthening), in baqd' and substitutes the shortened form, maqsar,
baqd. He then eliminates the tanwfn from naqan in the following line, so that
it would have the required accordance of rhyme with baqd. The qdfiya used at
the end of the two verses, as can be seen, is a qdfiya muqayyada, or fettered.
If the poet had used the qdfiya mutlaqa, i.e. loose, as he should have done,
and vocalized the rhyme words, the rhyme would have been irretrievably
impaired. Qad sabahu 'l-yawma would have no accordance of rhyme with
muftirunfJ'l-sawmi. 'Freeing' the rhyme at the end would entail, as can be
clearly seen, one case ending in the accusative, al-yawma, and another in the
genitive, al-sawmi. Prominent classical critics, as is pointed out below,
expressed their disapproval of the use of a fettered qdfiya in this way in order
to group together and make conform varying case endings in the rhyme posi-
tion.
It will also be noticed that massani,in the second verse, is vocalized in the
genitive as if it were an attribute of the subordinate naqan, at a time when it
is meant to qualify the subject of the preceding phrase, ghusnun, which of
course is in the nominative case. At the same time also, the tanwfn is arbi-
trarily eliminated from masani in order to make it rhyme with dfni Apart
from all this the qhusnun 'ala naqan or, in other words, the divine stature,
which has left the poet bereft of his piety is not one that 'revokes its own
fast', as the text would make us understand, but one which invalidates the
fast of other people, or compels them to revoke their fast. Accordingly, the
poet should have said mufattirunfi'l-sawm and not muftirunfi'l-sawm. But he
uses the latter form because it is the one which accords metrically with the
corresponding versicle immediately above it.
If we move on to the main body, the aghsan of the following strophe, we
find the same telling story, an over-eager attempt to present a plethora of
rhymes, but with little regard for the demands of syntax or regularity of style.

In the first line above, the relative pronoun man is separated from its com-
plement, and the preposition 'an from the genitive it governs, for the sake of
providing two internal rhymes. The purport of the whole line is unclear. Does

I
S. Ghazi, Diwan al-muwashshahatal-andalusiyya(henceforth Ghazi), (Alexandria, 1979), I, 49.
 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHSHAHAfT 441
the poet really mean to say that the beloved should be faithful to someone
whose loved one has gone far away from him! Shajan in the second line is
divested both of its case ending and of the tanwin. In other words the pausal
form is used out of pause. The imperfect indicative yu'anwinu is likewise given
a pausal form, or treated as a jussive without any grammatical grounds for it.
This is again done arbitrarily so that yu'anwin will have accordance of rhyme
both with 'an in the preceding line and an in the following one. For metrical
considerations, an is made to govern the jussive instead of the subjunctive in
the third line and yanqadf is substituted for yanqadiya.4
The more complex the rhyming scheme a poet chose to grapple with, the
more he needed to fall back on licence. By the same logic, as the aqfal in the
muwashshah,unlike the aghsan, entailed the repetition of a set rhyme scheme,
the strain occasioned in them was greater, and poets had to avail themselves
of the qdfiya muqayyada, or press it into service more often in order to
smooth over the endless grammatical anomalies which arose. Within the con-
text of an article (or within any context), a few examples of what is meant
here should suffice.
One of the most elaborate of the Romance kharjas as far as its rhyme
scheme is concerned is the famous Mew sidi Ibrahim (no. I in Garcia G6mez),
used by Muhammad b. 'Ubada in one of his muwashshahs.5It has eight inter-
nal and end rhymes. As only three of these end in vowels, Ibn 'Ubada resorts
to the qdfiya muqayyada in his aqfdl in order to match the rhymes of the
kharja with Arabic rhymes.6 In the process he totally suspends the regimen of
Arabic grammar. What follows here is the matla' of the muwashshah in ques-
tion and its first qufl:

0 L..3L;ij

If the proper desinential inflexions were introduced, or better, restored,

none of the corresponding rhymes in these lines, or in any of the other aqfal
of this muwashshah, would remain intact, as the reader can see from the fol-
lowing transliteration with the appropriate declensions introduced:
Min mawridi '7-tasnimi min silki faljin cdhghurzibin ft qaltin
in dhdqahu 'dtishun mulzan wajTbun atfa'a 'l-lahfba fJ 'l-waqti
Fa-ballight '1-taslima f Jtayyi wahjin ya janubu salimti
wal-tus'idTwdhishan yalqd 'l-habfba khawfa 'l-raqfbi dha samtin

4 An example of an governing the jussive is cited by al-Fayritzabadi. But it occurs in a verse

of poetry, where the use of the jussive is clearly dictated by poetic exigency. Cf. Al-Qiimus al-
art. an, and W. Wright, A grammar of the Arabic language (Cambridge University Press,
1951), II, 28, where the same example is used. In the present context reading yanqadiya nahbuh
Muh.t,
would entail four movent letters in two separate feet (taf'Tlas), and that is inadmissible in any
metre.
5 Ghazi, 1, 186, and E. Garcia G6mez, Las jarchas romances de la serie irabe en su marco
(Madrid, 1965), 50-1.
6 The use of fettered instead of loose rhyme in Arabic is roughly tantamount to changing
masculine rhymes into mute or feminine rhymes.
7 The poet should either
have said ft '1-hali or li '1-waqti.See the correct idiomatic usage of
these two terms in Al-HarTrT,47, and Al-HamadhanT, 159, respectively. See notes 11 and 22
below.
442 JAREER ABU-HAIDAR

It might well be said that the poet dropped all desinential inflexions in his
aqfal in this particular case because he was trying to match Arabic rhymes
with rhymes in Romance. But, as we have already seen, the poets writing the
muwashshahat resorted to the qdfiya muqayyada, the fettered rhyme, just as
often in the aghsan of their compositions to which the kharja was of no rele-
vance whatsoever in its structure or its rhyme scheme. What follows here are
the last four lines of Ibn 'Ubada's muwashshahwhich introduce the kharja:8

If the qdfiya mutlaqa 'loose rhyme' were used in the first hemistichs
above, and the proper terminal vowels restored, all four internal rhymes
would be impaired as can be clearly seen from the following transliteration:
Wa-ghadatinlam tazal
Yd wayha man yattasilu
Lammd ra'athu batald
Ghannat wa-md li 'i-amali
Writing in 1945, and seemingly endorsing the views of Giammaria
Barbieri close on four centuries earlier, Robert Briffault said that 'It was the
Arabs who introduced rhyme into Europe'.9 There are those, no doubt, who
would disagree with Robert Briffault. But there is no disagreement that

8Ghazi, 1, 186. Alan Jones, in his recent work, Romance k/harjas in Andalusian Arabic
Muwaggahpoetry (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1988), emended batal to read matal in the third ghusn
quoted above. The logic of ba-tal,however, seems incontestable in the context, as it is meant to
provide an element of antithesis, and reveal the paradoxical contrast between two attitudes:
'When she saw that he was not in earnest (lit. " that he was talking lightly "), While she was
passionately in love'
Jones translates instead, reading matal:
'When she has seen him delay fulfilment of his promise while she is smitten with passion'
The delay in the fulfilment of the promises of love is a charge which is more likely to apply to
the woman, as indeed is the case in the introductory lines to kharja 15, which Jones does not
refer to when making his emendation. Jones, like other scholars before him, seems also to have
read the suffix pronoun in the fourth ghusn as referring to the lover, when in actual fact it refers
to hope (al-amal). In this way the universal idea the poet sought to convey is reduced to an ordi-
nary, if not a banal comment. Jones translates, reading ilayhi as a reference to the lover:
' She has sung when the only hope has been to go out to him'
When this should in fact read:
'She sang, and hope is (always) bound to be the ultimate retreat (refuge, resort)' (op. cit. 27).
Incidentally, although in kharja 15 Jones gives the Arabic text as , he never-
theless transliterates: la tumtilThi(sic), bi-lahmi xaddayki, and translates,
~.a reading
4.41 lahm in lieu of
lathm: .
'Do not fail it, [i.e. the lover's heart], in the promise you have made of the flesh of your
cheeks ' (ibid., 118).
To readers who do not know Arabic this is apt to seem crude, and no doubt quite puzzling.
I R. S. Briffault, The troubadours,transl.
by author; ed. L. F. Koons (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1965). French original, Les Troubadours et le sentiment romanesque (Paris,
1945). See also on Barbieri's work R. Boase, The origin and meaning of courtly love: a critical
study of European scholarship (Manchester University Press, 1977), 11 and 17-18.
 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHSHAHAT 443

rhyme, both in Arabic poetry and Arabic prose in Islamic Spain, hailed from
the Arab East. Equally certain is that it constituted the hallmark of well-
regarded literary compositions, be they khutab, rasa'il or the much prized
maqamat.'0 What has been described above are the techniques, or rather,
makeshift devices, by means of which the Andalusian Arabs tried to grace
Arabic poetry with an added ornament of rhyme. The rest of this study will
try to show that these techniques were not of an Andalusian, Hispanic or
Romance provenance, but of an Eastern Arabic origin. It will be seen, it is
hoped, that before the Andalusians used these techniques in order to intro-
duce a proliferation of rhyme into the muwashshah, the Eastern Arabs had
used them quite extensively. In other words, even in their so-called 'invention'
of the muivashshah,the Andalusian Arabs were simply treading a path which
their contemporaries in the Arab East had blazed and made smooth for them.
Al-Hamadhani, in his maqamat, quite often resorts to the qdfiya muqay-
yada where he feels that it helps to smooth over any grammatical anomalies.
In one such instance, his editor, the Imam Muhammad 'Abduh, points out in
a marginal comment that with a slight emendation al-Hamadhani could have
used the qdfiya mutlaqa to good effect. This occurs in the maqama al-
Hamdaniyya which ends with the following three verses: "

'Abduh gives the reader to understand in a footnote that he had come

across another reading of the second hemistich in the first verse:
. He then adds that by using this reading and putting jiddu in
--_atU
with
apposition sakhffin the qdfiya mutlaqa could then have been used, with
sakhff and the other two rhyme-words given the genitive case-ending.'2
Without this emendation, as the reader will note, sakhff as the predicate of
inna would be in the nominative case, while the other two rhyme-words
would have the genitive case-ending. In such an eventuality only the fettered
rhyme would smooth over the resulting anomaly.
An equally revealing case appears at the end of the maqama al-Qazwfniyya
of al-Hamadhani: '3

If the qdfiya mutlaqa were used in this case, it is clear from the syntactical
structure that the three rhyme-words would have to be al-nasabi, 'nqalabaand

"'See on this
my article, 'The muwashshahat in the light of the literary life which produced
them', in Studies on the muwaggah and the khaija, Proceedings of the Exeter International
Colloquium, ed. A. Jones and R. Hitchcock (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1991), 115-22.
"
Maqamat al-Hamadhanm,ed. M. 'Abduh (Beirut, 1908), 164. All subsequent references to
the Maqdmnatof al-Hamadhani, unless otherwise stated, will be made to this edition.
'• 164, n. 5.
'396.
444 JAREER ABU-HAIDAR

al-'arabi, with the rhyme scheme impaired. The same maqama, al-QazwTniyya,
contains a poetic composition of 14 verses in which the qdfiya muqayyada is
used, as this is the only way of giving uniformity of rhyme to its medley of
different case-endings in the rhyme-words.
'Abduh points out that on occasion al-Hamadhani arbitrarily changes the
internal vowels of words in order to achieve a complete accordance of sound
or a perfect rhyme.14 The following verse is the last of six, encoding a riddle,
which appear at the end of the maqdma al-Maghziliyya: '

'Abduh says, making what amounts to an apology for al-Hamadhani: 16

... the author would have pluralized sabala as sabal with a vowel (on the
ba'), but then made the bd' vowelless so that sabl would tally with the rest of
the rhymes.' 1
'Abduh points out a strikingly similar case in al-Hamadhain's rhymed
prose in the maqdma entitled al-Asadiyya, where a group of travellers on
horseback are surprised by a rapacious lion and one youthful member of the
party hastens to check the beast: 1

'With a heart egged on by fate, and a sword all lustre and sharpness'
'Abduh then comments in a footnote: 19

... al-qadr, with the dal turned vowelless, so that it would tally with the
rhyme, has the meaning of al-qadar with the dal vocalized, and that is to
create or bring into being in keeping with the divine will.' 20
Just as 'Abduh draws attention to the uses of fettered rhyme by al-
HamadhanI, albeit in the obscurity of a brief footnote, long before 'Abduh,
the critic Ibn al-Khashshab (1099?-1172) drew attention to the fact that al-
Harfrf also uses fettered rhyme in his verse compositions in order to accom-

'~ It should be pointed out here that, unlike the case in English, imperfect rhymes are not tol-
erated in Arabic.
'~ 176.
'6 176, n. 2.
'7 M. M. 'Abd al-Hamid, who draws a lot on 'Abduh's comments in his edition of the
maqdmat of al-Hamadhani (Cairo, 1923), makes a practically identical comment on al-sabl, and,
like 'Abduh, does not question this arbitrary change of the vowel, n. 6, 218. See, however,
W. Wright, II, 384, where the suppression of internal vowels is discussed.
'X36.
'~36, n. 3.
20
Again neither 'Abduh nor 'Abd al-Hamid comments on the inadmissibility of this change
of the internal vowel. They both feel that their task is to explain the text and its obscurities to
the reader. I have not seen the texts on which they based their respective editions, but I am as
good as certain that al-Hamadhani would not have used a term like al-muntazahat in the
maqdma al-Basriyya which both editors pass over without any comment (pp. 67 and 70 in
'Abduh and 'Abd al-Hamid respectively). This term is in fact the product of modern journalese,
and has no lexical or logical sanction, as the verb form intazaha, from which it may be presumed
to derive, does not exist. The verb is tanazzaha, and the appropriate term in the context is
mutanazzahat. If 'Abduh and 'Abd al-Hamid had been at all critical, they would have been
guided to the right derivative al-mutanazzahat by the fact that the corresponding rhyme is al-
mutawajjahat, with tashdTd.
 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHSHAHAT 445

modate widely varying case endings within a single rhyme scheme.

Commenting on maqdma 29 of al-Hariri, al- Wdsitiyya, Ibn al-Khashshab
says: 21

.)UL-
t. ,tj J
..jr•Jt)yj?)ieQ*r,,~ ~-,J ••IL ;

What Ibn is referringto is a poetic composition of 18 verses,

in the maqdma al-Khashsh.b
concerned, of which he gives the opening verse, and adds the
comment quoted above:
' It is fettered (i.e. its rhyme), and there are verses in it, which if the rhyme
were to be loose (unfettered), would have accusative, nominative and gen-
itive case-endings, and this is inadmissible.'
What follows here are the first seven verses only of the composition in
question: 22

What Ibn al-Khashshab is saying is that if the appropriate inflexions or case-

endings were to be introduced instead of the fettered rhyme at the end of
these verses, we would have the following rhyme-words, with the rhyme
impaired at practically every stage, as the transliterations clearly show: surcl-
fun, 'l-'asifi, 'arafun, 'l-duyiffa,zuyiifan, makhiafun,'l-'atiifi, etc.
The grammarian and critic Ibn Barri, a contemporary of Ibn al-
Khashshab (A.D. 1106-1187), takes it upon himself to defend al-Hariri's
special repute. He disagrees with Ibn al-Khashshab and says: 23

'... what al-Hariri has written is correct, as it is not imperative to apply

to fettered rhyme the inflexions which apply to loose rhyme.'
Ibn Barri goes on to seek supporting evidence for his views by citing an
example of iqwd', often considered a serious fault, from the poetry of Imru'
al-Qays, and giving two further citations from pre-Islamic poetry in which

' Istidrakdt Ibn al-Khashshab 'ala maqamlntal-HarFrTwa-intisdrIbn BarrFli 'I-HarTrI

(Istanbul,
1328 A.H.), 58-9.
2 Maqamat al-HarFrf(Cairo, 1326 A.H.), 309. This edition contains also the work mentioned
in the preceding note as an appendix, pp. 1-36. All references to the Maqamat of al-Hariri, will
henceforth be made to this edition.
23 Istidrdkat Ibn al-Khashshdb, 59, and Maqdmdt appendix, 23.
al-.HarTrf,
446 JAREER ABU-HAIDAR

fettered rhyme is used.24Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry has always been viewed by

Arabs as the normative, incontrovertible evidence for correct usage and prac-
tice.
The issue of the argument between Ibn Barri and Ibn al-Khashshab, how-
ever, is of little relevance to the present discussion. It is, besides, one of those
arguments which are apt to end inconclusively with a substantial body of
vocal support on both sides. What is important for the present discussion is
that al-Hariri, whose maqamat, with common consensus, are more elaborate
than those of al-Hamadhani, resorts to the fettered rhyme technique in his
verse compositions just as often and as extensively as al-Hamadhani. What is
indeed surprising is that Ibn al-Khashshab should have referred to one
instance only where al-HarTriresorts to fettered rhyme in his verse composi-
tions, when in actual fact he could have referred to scores of such instances.
What neither Ibn al-Khashshab, nor any other critic has pointed out,
however, is that both al-Hamadhani and al-HarTrioften resorted to fettered
rhyme in their rhymed prose also where they felt that observance of the
appropriate case endings and other syntactical requirements would impair the
rhyme. It could well be claimed, of course, that it is legitimate to use the
pausal forms at the end of clauses in rhymed prose in order to achieve uni-
formity of rhyme despite the varying case-endings. But here again, I am not
attempting to raise or resolve an argument which is bound to remain incon-
clusive, but simply pointing out the fact that the use of fettered rhyme is just
as pervasive in the rhymed prose of both al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri as it is
in their verse compositions. Or, to state this differently, if the pausal forms
were not observed in many of the rhyming clauses of both al-Hamadhani and
al-Hariri, the rhyme in their prose would be impaired, or even disappear alto-
gether. Ibn al-Khashshab might well have noted, for example, that the fol-
lowing two rhymed sentences in the maqama al-Saymariyya of al-
HamadhaniT,2" jL~l j ? ~a 1, would lose all accordance of sound, if
the fettered rhyme were abandoned, and the proper case-endings introduced.
Of course no one would even remotely suggest that a master like al-
Hamadhani was unaware of such a breach of syntax as the use of the vernac-
ular and familiar hafi in lieu of hafin. But he retained both hafi and faydfi, it
seems, in order to retain the 'catchy' and playful effect of the rhyme.26
A practically identical concession to rhyme is made by al-Hariri, and
again no one is going to charge a master like al-Hariri with being unaware of
the solecism entailed in the process. In his seventh Maqdma, al-Barqa'Tdiyya,
we come across the following rhymed clauses: 27

If the appropriate (nominative), case-ending and the tanwTn were to be

retained in the vernacular khjftl the rhyme involved would be impaired
beyond recognition. Khaffn and al-athaff do not have much accordance of
sound. Nor are these isolated or rare instances in the maqamat of al-
Hamadhani and al-Hariri, although, of course, the cases involving obvious

24
appendix, 23-4.
Istidrakat, 59-60 and Maqmandtal-HarTrT,
25218.
26'One can only surmise, although there is a lot in the texts to prove it, that both al-
Hamadhani and al-HarTriwere not averse to retaining a rollicking, frolicsome tone in their
mnaqdnit. Lame or impaired rhymes hindered the racy, and at the same time waggish, effect they
sought to sustain.
S766.
 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHSHAHAT 447

solecisms like those described here are rare indeed. In the same maqdma of al-
Hariri, we read the following perfectly rhyming clauses: 28

In the process of explaining unajthito the reader, the editor of al-Hariri com-
ments in a footnote:

'I talk to him, with a sukan on the ya' in both cases (i.e. ufajfhi and unajfhi),
in a manuscript of al-Hariri.'
It is quite clear that the great master had deliberately intended to main-
tain perfect rhymes in the three clauses quoted above. As a concession, he
annulled the regimen of an on the two following subjunctives, and resorted,
besides, to the takhftf of the hamza in ufaji'ahu. Or one might say that al-
Hariri allowed himself, in prose, the poetic licence of using the indicative
form of the imperfect after an instead of the subjunctive. If the proper
desinential inflexions were to be restored, the three clauses would forfeit their
rhyme: 29
wa-dthartuan ufaji'ahu wa-undjiyahuli-a juma 'adafirdsattffhi
I have already referred to the fact that the recourse to fettered rhyme is
just as frequent in the rhymed prose of both al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri as
it is in the verse compositions quite lavishly interspersed through their
maqdmas. The editors of both al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri have vocalized
their texts with scrupulous care. But if we look at the very opening clauses of
the maqdma by al-Hariri, just quoted, al-Barqa'Tdiyya,we read: 30

There is little doubt that al-Hariri intended these two opening clauses, like
numerous others with varying case-endings in his rhymed prose, to be read
with taskfn or fettered rhyme. If he ingeniously introduced two terms like
which would have total accordance of rhyme with the place name
.he did not intend such deliberate efforts to be sidestepped or shunned
.•, some pedant who would remember that Barqa'id is a diptote, which takes
by
an a vowel in the genitive and does not admit the tanwin, while the corre-
sponding rhyme-word is a triptote with the normal genitive case-ending.
Likewise, al-Hamadhani did not intend the four clauses below 3 to be read
with four alternating case-endings, but with a qdfiya muqayyada which makes
all four rhymes uniform by removing or disregarding the respective terminal
vowels:

At this stage a point of definition, or simple differentiation, starts to seem

imperative. Since the Arabs applied the term qafiya to the monorhyme at the
end of verses in the traditional qastda, it is only right and apt for the pur-

28 65 and n. 28 loc. cit. See also the

Bfilaq ed., 1317 A.H., 74.
29Al-Hariri's makeshift vocalization is prompted by the fact that the u vowel of the suffix pro-
noun k , verbal as well as nominal, changes into an i vowel after a vowelless yT' or another i
vowel.
3060.
3' 225, al-maqdma al-DTnariyya.
VOL. LVI. PART 3 32
448 JAREER ABU-HAIDAR

poses of this discussion to make a distinction between end-rhyme in the

qasida and rhyme in the muwashshah, and in rhymed prose. As the primary
semantic and technical denotations of qdfiya are 'end' and 'end-rhyme'
respectively, the permutations of internal as well as end rhymes in the
muwashshah would be referred to as taqfiya, with the added designations
muqayyada and mutalqa, as the case might be. It would, in any case, be
anomalous to speak of a qdfiya in the muwashshah. Rhyme in prose would
likewise be referred to as taqfiya in the present context, instead of the tradi-
tional term saj'.
Having adopted a simple nomenclature for clarity of differentiation, the
rest of this discussion will concentrate on establishing the validity of two
statements:
1. Fettered rhyme, or al-taqfiya al-muqayyada, is the single most basic con-
stituent of the structure of the muwashshah.
2. Both fettered rhyme and all other ancillary techniques in the structure of
the muwashshah derive from Arabic literature in the East, and primarily
from the maqamat.
Very much like fettered rhyme, what I have referred to as 'other ancillary
techniques' amount also to a range of syntactical and morphological licence
which the poets resort to primarily in the rhyme-carpentrywhich pervades the
muwashshahat.While in the poetry interspersed through the maqamat, and in
the regular muwashshah these techniques appear also as accessories to the
metre, or amount to traditional poetic licence, in the irregular muwashshah
their added role is to even the balance between the corresponding parts or
versicles in the aghydn and aqfal.
These techniques, not unfamiliar to students of Arabic prosody, are the
following:
(a) Suppression of the tanwtn.
(b) TakhfJfor change of the hamza into other letters.
(c) The shortening (qasr), of the madd or mamdi7d.It will also have been
noticed in the course of this discussion that the muwashshah composers
often allow themselves the added liberty, quite rare in Arabic poetry,32of
lengthening the maqs?r for the sake of evening the rhyme.
(d) The use of the indicative form of the imperfect instead of the subjunctive
or jussive in verbs deriving from defective roots, and the use of the nom-
inative instead of the accusative case in nouns deriving from such verbs.
The muwashshah composers, as we shall see, extend this licence quite
indiscriminately.
(e) The separation of rhyme words from their complement or logical
sequent. This feature, infrequent in the maqamat, becomes a stock-in-
trade device in the muwashshahat.
The frequent resort to fettered rhyme, and the various licences listed
above, in the maqimat will be illustrated first. Further examples of their pro-
lific use in the muwashshahatwill follow later.
As the use of fettered rhyme (al-qdfiya al-muqayyada) in al-Hamadhani's
verse compositions has already been illustrated, examples of its use by al-
HarirTwill be given here. The following are 11 out of 24 similar strophes
declaimed by Abi Zayd in the Maqdma al-sdwiyya: 3

32See J. Sh. 'Atiyya, Sullam al-lisan (Beirut, n.d.), 96, and W. Wright, A grammar of' the
Arabic language, II, 376.
33100-4.
 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHSHAHAT 449

It is important to point out, before any further comments are added, that
these strophes have exactly the same pattern and rhyme distribution as the
standard form of the Andalusian zajal, bbba, ccca, etc., with the simple dif-
ference of the matla' being composed of two instead of one, monorhymic
couplets, aa, aa. As Ibn al-Khashshab had pointed out,34if the fettered rhyme
in
theallproper strophes, both
these desinential internal
inflexions and end rhymes,
introduced, none ofwere
theserelinquished, and
strophes would
retain any regularity of rhyme. Al-Hariri seems also to have preferred to
retain the regular rhyme at the expense of doing violence to the metre which

34See n. 21 above.
450 JAREER ABU-HAIDAR

otherwise, i.e. with loose rhyme, would scan throughout as a perfect hazaj.35
It should be noted also that in the second verse of the very first strophe (first
in the whole composition, as it sets the final rhyme in mTmfor all the other
strophes), al-HariTrallows himself the unusual licence of using the jussive
forms of the imperfect tu'abbTand tukhtt in place of the indicatives tu'abbi'u
and tukhti'u. The hamza is eliminated in both cases. As pointed out in (d)
above, the classical poets allowed themselves the use of the indicative form of
the imperfect instead of the subjunctive or jussive. If the loose rhyme were to
be restored in the first strophe above, and the proper grammatical inflexions
observed, the rhyme sequence would simply cease to exist, and the metre in
the second verse would be seriously impaired, as can be seen from the follow-
ing transliteration:
Ayd man yadda ' 'l-fahm ild kam y& akh& 'l-wahmitu'abbi'u 'l-dhanba
wa 'l-dhamma wa tukhti'u 'l-khata'a 'l-jamma
In the same maqdma, the narrator, al-Harith, makes the following decla-
mation in the same rhyme and metre: 36

Again the rhyme is fettered. Al-Hariri makes a further concession to the

rhyme scheme by suppressing the tanwfn in Zayd, and a concession to the
metre by using the jussive ta'ba' instead of the grammatically correct indica-
tive ta'ba'u. Ta'ba'u biman would give a Succession of four movent letters in
two different feet and that is inadmissible.37
(taf'l1t),
What follows below is eight strophes of a verse composition of al-HarTir
comprising in all 22 similar strophes, and appearing in his fiftieth and last
maqdma, al-Basriyya: 38

J ?UL ,U3

C?iULL..- cLOIS, j ?

~ ~LA

15 As a resultof the fetteredrhyme,manyparts,

both in the 'aradand darbpositions,scan as
maf 'TI,which is inadmissible.See Mustafaal-Ghalayini,Al-Thurayyaal-mudiyya ft 'l-durasal-
'aradiyya(Beirut,1931),34.
36 105.
3 Al-Ghalayini,op. cit., 16, 19 and 42-3.
596-601. It would be noted that these strophes,like those quotedabove from the Maqdmna
-
al-sdwiyya,have both the form and rhymeschemeof the Andalusianzajal.
 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHSHAHAT 451

- 1I I

1 P

It will be seen from these eight strophes that the rhyme scheme, that is,
both internal and end rhymes, alternates between fettered and loose rhyme. It
will be noticed also that al-HarTrihas allowed himself a wide range of licence
for both metrical and rhyme exigencies. The tanwfn is suppressed in mu'takifa
(strophe 2), for rhyme purposes. The jussive yajib is used in lieu of the indica-
tive (strophe 3), for both metrical and rhyme considerations. Al-mubtadi' and
al-muhtadhT,both accusative (strophe 6), are left vowelless for both metrical
and rhyme purposes. The hamza is eliminated from the former term, ostensi-
bly to give it accordance of sound with its sequent. For both rhyme and met-
rical purposes the hamza is eliminated also from the rhyme-word al-badht'. Of
greater relevance for our present purpose, however, is the fact that al-HarTrl
uses the relative pronoun 5-iJ1 as an internal rhyme-word (strophe 6), and
thus sets it apart from its relative clause. Similarly, in the second verse of
strophe 5, the complement of the relative pronoun man is disjointed or sec-
tionalized, with 4J standing as the rhyme-word at the end of one hemistich,
while the rest of the relative clause constitutes the following hemistich. What
al-HarirTresorts to so sparingly here becomes, as already indicated, a run-of-
the-mill exercise in the muwashshahat.39
I should perhaps repeat that it is not my purpose to fault what al-HarTrT
has written, or to question the validity of the methods he resorts to when
coining his rhymes. I am only pointing out how both he and al-Hamadhani
gave their sanction to processes which the Andalusians adopted and often
carried to extremes which the Eastern masters might not have envisaged or
approved of. I have already pointed out in the study referred to above,40 how
the muwashshahcomposers turned even prepositions into rhyme-words, sepa-
rating them from the genitive they govern. I also pointed out one case where
the inseparable definite article in Arabic is turned into a separate rhyme-word
by no less a master poet than Ibn BaqT.
Al-HarTri,as we have seen, allows himself in his verse compositions the
traditional forms of poetic licence. But on occasion, he allows himself added
licence. He uses the indicative imperfect after tl: 41

19See (e) above.

40
See n. 1 above.
4167.
452 JAREER ABU-HAIDAR

And again after J (lam kay): 42

And at the beginning of the following verse: 43

The appropriate vocalization in the verse above, i.e. tughlia, would entail
four successive movent letters in two separate units of the verse, a contiguity
that is not admissible in any metre.44
Al-Hariri goes beyond accepted licence in the following verse: 45

While in the strophes quoted above, al-Hariri had legitimately given the
perfect passives nu t and du'Tpausal forms because they appear in the rhyme
position, and in the verse above are both given pausal forms out
of pause. •'I
It may be apt at this point to observe that if acknowledged masters like
al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri had to bend under a certain latitude in licence
because of the technical demands of rhyme in prose, the poets in al-Andalus
who introduced elaborate permutations of rhyme into poetry had, in equal
measure, to accept a plethora of poetic licence with the plethora of rhyme.
Indeed Ihsan 'Abbas the modern literary historian of al-Andalus, describes
the muwashshah composers as 'latitudinous' in observing the demands of
Arabic syntax.46But he makes this stricture without stopping to consider the
technical difficulties these poets had to labour under. This may be no more
than a strong hunch, but if the paragons of Arabic writing at the time were
seen to allow themselves some licence when introducing rhyme into prose, the
Andalusian poets may have felt less inhibited about licence themselves when
introducing added rhyme into poetry. The main intention here, however, was
to show how practically all the techniques used by the muwashshahcomposers
in extending the proliferation of rhyme in Arabic prose to Arabic poetry have
their origins in the maqdmat.
As the use of fettered rhyme in the maqamat has now been amply illus-
trated, looking for examples of fettered rhyme or taqfiya muqayyada in the
muwashshahat may prove a rewarding exercise. Fettered rhyme is the hall-
mark of the muwashshah, and this is true of the earliest compositions left
by Ibn Ma' al-Sama', as well as the corpus left by a fourteenth-century com-
poser like Ibn Zamrak. In fact the two-volume Dwdan al-muwashshahat al-
andalusiyya put together by S. GhazI starts with the fettered versicle 47
J. '} and ends with the following three versicles with their patently fettered
rhyme: 48
E I&. i I
LJt

42
564.
43 367.
44See n. 37 above.
45 482.
46 I. 'Abbas,ed. Dfwanal-A'm al-TutAli
(Beirut,1963),introduction,p. .
47
Ghazi,1,5. .
48 ibid., Ii, 673.
 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHSHAHAT 453

For the purpose of the present survey one further example may be added to
those examined above. The following are two strophes from a muwashshahby
al-Kumayt: 49

-4"
'?J I

If the fettered rhyme scheme were to be made loose, the initial versicles of the
first strophe would read as follows:
Zabyun agharru; yahkt 'l-qamard;jayshu
'l-hawari;yd ii 'l-sihami;minhdyusdmu;
As can be seen, no two of these versicles would retain the requisite rhyme.
In the second strophe the poet subjects the two verbs tasab and yadhab to
fettered rhyme. They both acquire a form unknown to Arabic, as they retain
formal aspects of both the jussive and the indicative. Indicative forms of the
imperfect with the terminal vowel of the jussive are a common feature of the
muwashshah,owing to fettered rhyme.50
This seemingly free field of licence goes still further. In the qufl of the sec-
ond strophe the poet uses the unfamiliar plural form al-ri'am. The lexical
forms al-ardm and al-ar 'am do not fit the metrical pattern. Further on in the
same muwashshah he coins yet another of his own plurals-al-daydjTn. For
both metrical and rhyme exigencies, he refers to the dual subject 'aynahuwith
the feminine singular tusaqni. In view of its anomalous idiom and structure
(unless the text is corrupt), it is difficult to attach any meaningful import to
the final versicle.
These are not isolated examples of licence or its excess in the muwashshah.
In the context of classical Arabic poetry, as the following remarks might fur-
ther indicate, the muwashshahwas the poetry of licence par excellence.
Both al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri resort to the legitimate licence of short-
ening (qasr) of the mamdad. Al-HamadhanTuses al-'alyd in lieu of al-'alyd' in
his poetry,"5while al-HarirTuses the shortened forms hiba, hidha and buka,52

49 ibid., i, 68-9.
50 For further examples see Ghazi, i, 84-90, 100-2, 105, 220-2, 276-81, 373, etc.
5' 82.
52 132, 597 and 601 respectively.
454 JAREER ABU-HAIDAR

in place hibd', hidha' and bukd' respectively. Similarly, al-Kumayt uses safra
in lieu of safrd' in the following strophe: 53

It will be noticed, however, that for exigencies of rhyme and metre, al-
Kumayt uses al-'udhra where proper idiomatic usage requires al-'idhara.
Further on in the qufl of the same strophe we read:

where the syntactical structure clearly demands ZD if this epithet is not to

be understood as qualifying ka's or mabsim.54 The poet finds himself
obliged to use the masculine form of the adjective, because the feminine
equivalent would upset the metrical balance. It should be added here that the
muwashshahcomposers, as already indicated, allow themselves the added lib-
erty of lengthening the maqsiir, a practice which was rare, and far from
normative in Arabic poetry. Thus al-Jazzair gives both and the
s.
epithet lengthened forms (madd), in order to even the rhyme scheme of
L?. versicles: 55
the following

Under the heading of added licence we should also include the way al-
Kumayt handles a word like L.J1as a mamdtidform, although the alif in it is
integral to it and not za'ida (an augment), as in the mamdfid.56He thus arbi-
trarily subjects al-md' to a process of qasr and makes it rhyme with almd: 7

It should be noted that in the first line of this qufl, thaghran alma is to be
understood, although not written, while in the second line, it is hardly neces-
sary to point out that bi 'l-ma is redundant, and that it is introduced in order

53 Ghazi, 1, 63.
54 This seems to have puzzled Ghaizi, and he vocalizes nd'imu where he should have vocalized
nd'imi. Ghazi also vocalizes tiflatin where the context requires taflatin. Qardh means 'pure ',
'unmixed', yet the poet goes on to say in the same breath 'mixed with honey'. It is quite
customary to try and explain away such anomalies by claiming that the poet meant to say 'it
was pure, and then it was mixed with honey'. Such interpretations amount to little more than
apologies.
55Ghaz, i, 101.
56 The alif in md', like the alif in dd' replaces the original j in *o and PJ respectively, and
neither of these terms qualifies as a mamdaid.Cf. Atiyya, Sullam al-lisdn, 94.
57Ghazi, i, 66.
 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHSHAHAT 455

to straighten out the rhyme: an orchard cannot be rained upon with anything
other than water!
The elimination of tanwtn for purposes of rhyme is just as widespread in
the muwashshahat as it is in the maqdmdt. Thus in the rhymed prose of al-
Hamadhani: 58

If the rhyme is to hold good in these two sentences, the tanwtn has to be sup-
pressed, and fettered rhyme, taqfiya muqayyada, has to be introduced to cir-
cumvent the different case-endings.
And likewise in the following: 59

tt j I 49?JJ
A? J5 4
OJJiA)L4Al j ?l liaft S

In the following example, too, even though the case endings are the same, the
tanwtn has to be suppressed, and taqfiya muqayyada introduced, if the rhyme
is to subsist: 60

The more elaborate maqamat of al-Hariri offer in their turn a profusion of

similar examples. In the last two clauses below, both cases of tanwTnhave to
be suppressed, and pausal forms used instead: 61

Likewise the tanwtn has to be suppressed in the first of the two following
rhymed sentences: 62

In the following example, as qaylata constitutes a diptote, the two cases of

tanwTn have to be suppressed and taqfiya muqayyada introduced if the
accordance of rhyme is to be maintained between the three clauses: 63

And likewise in the following two clauses: 64

The suppression of tanwtn for purposes of rhyme is perhaps just as rife in the
muwashshahatas the use of the pausal form. Quite often the two coincide or
are conjoined in what can be described as a double licence, eliminating the
tanwfn and replacing the remaining vowel sign with a sukfunor a pausal form.
Examples are easy to come by both in the most elaborate early compositions

196.
151 198.
60
193.
6' 594.
62449.
63 27.
6464.
456 JAREER ABU-HAIDAR

(the over-sanguine experimental works), and in the guarded and fairly stereo-
typed works of later composers like Ibn al-Khatib and Ibn Zamrak. The fol-
lowing strophe from a famous muwashshah by Ibn al-Qazzaz should suffice
for an illustration: 65

#J!,;

In the first ghusn alone the tanwin is suppressed four times. If an allowance
were to be made for the legitimate dropping of the tanwin at the end of each
ghusn and simt, this strophe would still have seven cases of arbitrary suppres-
sion of tanwTnout of pause, or without any apparent cause other than the
maintenance of rhyme. The yd', whether single or geminate, is eliminated
from shajf or shajiyy. With the attention of the poet focused on the rhyme,
the grammatical structure of the strophe, and indeed of the whole
muwashshahin which it occurs, is tenuous.66It is doubtful whether usage like
antaqa 'an and alhaza 'an was familiar before the days of Ibn al-Qazzaz, or
whether it ever caught on after being used in his muwashshah.
To all the technical aspects mentioned above, one could perhaps also add
the lightening of gemination in both the maqdmat and the muwashshahdtfor
the purposes of metre and rhyme. But one aspect which is not purely techni-
cal, yet very closely related to rhyme, is the use of paronyms. Relatively late
muwashshah composers like Ibn Zuhr (1110-98), and Ibn Sahl (1212-51),
showed a partiality for paronomasia. Each one of these poets has left a
muwashshahin which the paronym is extensively cultivated as a basic feature,
and one of these (that of Ibn Zuhr), could well have provided the inspiration
for the other.67But there is little reason to doubt that it was al-Hariri who
had provided the earlier examples, and earlier inspiration, both in his prose
and in his poetry.
One can also point out that the muwashshahcomposers allow themselves
liberties when they are dealing with feminine plurals, and particularly those
which do not denote rational beings. They alternately treat the latter as gram-
matically feminine singular or sound feminine plurals, and they often do this
within the space of a single verse. Thus in a well-known muwashshah by an
unknown poet: 68

;:LAI !bkilA

65 Ghazi,1, 163.
Ihsan Abbas, commenting on the fourth strophe of this same muwashshahby Ibn al-Qazzqz
66

(Ghazi, 1, 164), simply wonders whether any 'coherent grammatical structure' can be made out
in the strophe. See his TarTkhal-adab al-andalust, 'asr al-tawd'if wa (Beirut, 1962),
244. 'l-murdbi.tn
67 Ghazi, ii, 114-15 and 238-40.
68 ibid., 625.
 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHSHAHAT 457

And again in the same muwashshah:69

And in a muwashshahby Ibn Baqi: 70

An early sanction of such poetic licence can be found in two verses by al-
Hamadhani in his maqdma al-Basriyya: 71

But all this can in a sense qualify as peripheral or incidental to the basic argu-
ment of this paper. The two great masters of Arabic letters of all time, both
endowed with an unquestionable and predominating genius, had written their
masterpieces in rhymed prose. It was rhymed prose which stood out as the
distinctive feature of their delightful productions. Both authors, so to speak,
treated rhyme in prose with indulgence. In one instance, al-Hariri's editor
tells us, the great master must have overlooked the demands of Arabic callig-
raphy so that his rhymes would rhyme to the eye as well as to the ear of his
readers: 72

The alif of thawd at the end of the first verse is not written in the form of a
yd', as it should be written, so that thawa bihi in the first verse would have
total accordance, both in graphic deliheation and rhyme, with thawabihi in
the second.
I have described elsewhere, and in some detail,73how rhymed prose from
the Arab East simply took the cultural life of al-Andalus by storm. All the
literati of al-Andalus, including, of course, the muwashshahcomposers, stud-
ied at the feet of al-Hamadhani and al-HarTri.The muwashshahat are the
product of a sanguine attempt by Andalusian poets to give rhyme the same
indulgence in poetry that al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri had given it in both
prose and poetry.
To sum up, I have tried to show in the preceding pages how practically all
the techniques used to adorn poetry with added rhyme (i.e. in the process of
tawshih),74derive from the maqamat. And I need no reminder at this stage
that I have overlooked in all this the 'enigmatic' and 'highly controversial'
problem of the kharja and its role in the muwashshah. But I have variously

69ibid., 626.
70 ibid., i, 449.
7 70.
72 202, and n. 2, 202.
73See article referred to in n. 10 above.
74 See the article referred to in n. 10 above, where it is pointed out that the term tawshth
meant ' adornment ' or 'literary embellishment ' in classical Arabic usage.
458 THE ARABIC ORIGINS OF THE MUWASHSHSHAHA4T

referred to the kharja in a number of previous studies as an element of had 75

or burlesque, of mujuin76 or that 'intimate' mixture of the sharp, the witty, the
prurient, or frankly lascivious, meant to divert and entertain. Readers of the
maqamat will be well aware that there is a good, or even a hefty measure of
all that in the maqamat of both al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri, and that it was
often saved until the end of the maqdma so that it would have the striking
and lasting effect of a finale. It is only a cause of regret, however, that the
Imam Muhammad Abduh should have given us an expurgated edition of the
maqamat of al-Hamadhani, and that M.M. 'Abd al-Hamid should have fol-
lowed in the Imam's footsteps some twenty years later. Both the Imam and
'Abd al-Hamid end many a maqdma with words, which take varying apolo-
getic forms, that indicate that whole sections had been left out 'because they
are of little benefit to readers, and use language which is adverse to public
morals'.77But readers of al-Hariri can find in the 20th and 43rd maqamas,
and in many others, the sharp and salacious elements familiar to them in the
kharjas. They are the same elements which al-HariTr'sequally famous British
confrere of three centuries later introduced into some of his CanterburyTales.
Chaucer, too, incidentally, graced his tales with rhyme.
There are no muwashshahatin the maqamat, but all the rudiments, all the
masonry, every aspect of the technique employed in writing them has the
maqdmat as its fons et origo.

'75The kharja of the muivashshahin a new light ', Journal of Arabic Literature, ix, 1978, 1-13.
See also my article entitled, 'The case for the Arabic origins of the muwashshahat,court poetry
and burlesque in al-Andalus', The Maghreb Review, vol. 18, nos. 1-2, 1993 (forthcoming).
76' The language and function of the Hispano-Arabic zajal'
in A miscellany of Middle Eastern
articles, In Memoriam Thomas Muir Johnstone 1924-1983, ed. A. K. Irvine, R. B. Serjeant and
G. Rex Smith (Longman, 1988), 3-14.
77
See e.g. 'Abduh's edition, 165, 173 and 224, and 'Abd al-Hamid, 215 and 223.