Die Plejaden in den Vergleichen der arabischen Dichtung.

Montgomery, James E.

There are many important and striking features of classical Arabic poetry about which the scholar and enthusiast entertains, at best, a faint and all too often muddled impression. Thus it is frequently impossible to distinguish, with exactitude, what is unusual in the treatment of an idea, image or theme from what is commonplace and to discern, with confidence, when the line in question is conventional and when it is imitative and allusive. By means of a series of studies devoted to the lexicographical study of Classical Arabic, Manfred Ullmann has endeavored to place at the disposal of the scholarly public the taxonomical tools needed for a close and comprehensive reading of this strange but frequently uplifting tradition. Together with Paul Kunitzsch, Ullmann in this monograph catalogues and discusses the references to the constellation of the Pleiades as found in Arabic poetry. In the famous introduction to his Kitab al-Shi r wa-l-Shu ara, Ibn Qutayba discusses the contents of his Kitab al-Arab, which deals with the "edifying annals, sound genealogies, the wisdom equal to the wisdom of the philosophers, the scientific knowledge of horses and of the stars, their rising and setting and how to find directions by them, of the winds, which herald rain and which do not, of the (various kinds of) lightning, which are deceptive and which truthful (prognosticators of rain), of the clouds, which are waterless and which carry rain - with all of which the desert Arabs filled their poetry" (Ibn Qutayba, Kitab al-Shir wa-l-Shu ara, ed. M. J. de Goeje [Leiden: Brill, 1904], 6). For the ancients, then, the study of the heavenly firmament was an integral and pedagogical part of the diwan al-arab.

The body of the monograph is an inventory of references to the Pleiades (pp. 35-144), in which the authors present us with 421 instances, transliterated, translated, and provided with a brief apparatus. The first part of the book contains an Introduction (pp. 11-13), discussions of the astronomical and historical dimension (where it is noted that the designation al-thurayya "mit dem die Plejaden bezeichnet werden, gehort zu den alten, allgemein verbreiteten Namen" [p. 15] and that for the early periods we are dealing not with a scientific discipline but with widely disseminated popular knowledge [p. 18]), of lexical and etymological aspects (pp. 23-29), and of the thematic range of the references (pp. 30-34). To the central catalogue is appended an overview detailing such topics as the historical development of the similes, their content, the question of allusions, the arbitrary nature of the images (many of the details of the comparisons are also applied by the poets to constellations and stars other than the Pleiades) and the astronomical correctness of what are, after all, poetic comparisons (pp. 145-54). The work is also copiously indexed, by names and key-words, and contains a short bibliography.

The findings of this latter part of the monograph are interesting. Of the 421 catalogued references, only 26 originate from before the year 132/750 (6.2%), very few of which are in fact similes: of the 22 references to al-thurayya in the diwan of Dhu l-Rumma, no more than 3 occur as similes. From the early Abbasid period (132/750-287/900) we have 26-28 instances (depending on the authenticity of one or two references: 6.2%). The study also highlights the significance of Ibn al-Mu tazz, who emerges as seminal and innovatory, having penned at least 19 Pleiades comparisons (7 having been excluded from the reckoning owing to dubious attribution), of which not only the number but also the content and stylistic form are relevant, in that they evince a scenic dimension not to be found in the earlier static and linear treatments.

In the discussion of the impact made by a poet on succeeding generations (pp. 149-53), we find the illuminating case of the relatively obscure mukhadram Ashhab b. Rumayla, who seems, through his comparison of the Pleiades with a pair of earrings, to have produced a very evocative and potent image, given that 29 similar comparisons followed his probable example. The authors point out that this phenomenon has little to do with the celebrity of the poet, adducing Dhu l-Rumma's comparison with a sand-grouse as proof: it was imitated but twice.

On pp. 157-59 the authors treat the astronomically accurate descriptions and produce some interesting examples of images which are scientifically incorrect (p. 159). In the enumeration of the former category, one feels the want of a discussion of the chronology and the percentage of such images. Furthermore, the role of the Andalusian poet Ibn Shuhayd and of Ibn al-Muc tazz in the development of the poetical adaptation of astronomical terminology should be remarked upon.

One general feature of the Pleiades in early Arabic verse is that their appearance, being a harbinger of rain ("die Plejaden hei[beta]en augeblich so ... weil aus dem Regen, den sie anzeigen, die Fulle [at-tarwatu], d.h. der Reichtum, entstehe" [pp. 23-24]: cf. the cognate root th-r-y, denoting "moisture"), is deemed a most propitious time for sexual dalliance. This is implied in the first quotation on p. 30, from the su luk poet Qays b. al-Hudadiyya, as well as in the celebrated passage taken from the Mu allaqa of Imru al-Qays, given as the first item of the inventory, and in nos. 46 (Ibn al-Rumi) and 154 (Mu aqqir al-Bariqi). See further the second quotation on p. 32 (Dhu l-Rumma). Imru al-Qays also uses the other celebrated Pleiades-image in his Mu allaqa (given on p. 30), as an anticipatory device for the cataclysmic flood which concludes the poem.

By categorizing the heavenly canopy, man strove to impose order on apparent chaos. Kunitzsch and Ullmann have helped to bring order and system into one aspect of the study of classical Arabic poetry.