Introduction: Source Studies with a Reconstruction of Abu Turab's K. al-[l.sup.[subset]]tiqab and Diwan of Abu n-Nagm: Materials for tile Study of Ragaz Poetry, 1. (Brief Reviews of Books).

Montgomery, James E.

Lexical Ibdal, Part 1: Introduction: Source Studies with a Reconstruction of Abu Turab's K. al-[l.sup.[subset]]tiqab. By JAAKKO HAMEEN-ANTTILA. Studia Orientalia, vol. 71. Helsinki: THE FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY, 1993. Pp. 196 + 47 (Arabic text); Diwan of Abu n-Nagm: Materials for tile Study of Ragaz Poetry, 1. By JAAKKO HAMEEN-ANTTILA. Studia Orientalia, vol. 72. Helsinki: THE FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY, 1993. Pp. 147 + 105 (Arabic text); "Und der Kalif lachte, bis er auf den Ruckenfiel": Ein Beitrag zur Phraseologie und Stilkunde des klassischen Arabisch, vols. 1 and 2. By KATHRIN MULLER. Beitrage zur Lexikographie des Klassischen Arabisch, no. 10. Munich: BAYERISCHEN AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN (PHILOSOPHISCH-HISTORISCHE KLASSE), 1993. Pp. 360; Der Beduine und die Regenwolke: Ein Beitrag zu Erforschung der altarabischen Anekdote. By KATHRIN MULLER. Beitrage zur Lexikographie des Klassischen Arabisch, no. 12. Munich: BAYERISCEEN AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN (PHILOSOPHISCH-HISTROISCHE KLASSE), 1994. Pp. 272.

Three of the four volumes under review here deal with aspects of the articulation and conceptualization of the relationship between nomadism and sedentariness, between the Bedu and the oppidans, in the early Islamic Middle Ages. It is difficult to over-estimate the centrality of this relationship to the intellectual and social life of the period. The [Arab.sup.[subset]], the desert nomads, were in so many ways an ideal to be respected, emulated, and admired. Indeed, during the early [Abbasid.sup.[subset]] period, for example, the reception of Greek (and Iranian and Indian) wisdom during the translation movement was balanced and complemented by the reception and interpretation of the pre-Islamic Bedouin Arab past. This idealism is nowhere more manifest than in the injunction to aspiring poets to live among the Bedu in the desert. The fourth volume under review treats an anecdotal aspect of the genre of writing which it is customary in the West to refer to as adab (belles-lettres). Both authors, Hamee n-Anttila and Muller, offer fine examples of the philological approach that characterizes the tradition of European scholarship. The works that they have produced are gems of meticulous and thorough scholarship, species of the "finetooth comb" approach, as it were.

In the tenth century, Abu l-Tayyib defined ibdal (consonantal exchange) as follows: "by ibdal we do not mean that the Bedouins have changed one letter with another on purpose. What we mean is that different dialectal words are used to denote the same meaning so that two words denote the same thing in two different dialects and are [phonetically] close to one another so that they differ in only one letter" (Hameen-Anttila, p. 19). Hameen-Anttila provides an exhaustive analysis of the source materials, of the history of ibdal writings, and a reconstruction of the work on the subject by the late ninth century philologist Abu Turab. This is a valuable case-study of the development of the Arabic linguistic sciences. Rajaz poetry was excluded from the qasidah canon (referred to as qarid poetry) by medieval Muslim literati. For the literary historian, rajaz poetry is a fascinating locus of tensions within the development of Umayyad poetry, from the vantage point of the move away from polythematic compositions to the appearance of monothematic compositions among the poets of the two dynasties (i.e., those who had lived during the transition from Umayyad to [Abbasid.sup.[subset]]). In many cases, this poetic shift is attested in rajaz poems before it makes itself manifest in qasidah poetry. Hameen-Anttila has done the historian a great service by making available not only the diwan of Abu l-Najm (the composer of a magnificent camel description: see J. E. Montgomery, "Abu al-Najm [al-.sup.[subset]]ljli," in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, ed. Meisami and Starkey [London 1998], 40), but also (in successive publications in the same series [nos. 76 (1995) and 78 (1996)]) the extant works of other rajaz poets such as al-Aghlab [al-.sup.[subset]]ljli, Humayd al-Arqat, and minor poetasters such as Khitam al-Mujashi. With these volumes and the works of Manfred Ullmann (Untersuchungen zur Ragazpoesie (Wiesbaden 1966), and Beitrage zu den Gedichte des Abu n-Nagm [al-.sup.[subset]]lgli (Gottingen 1995) and Rei nhard Weipert ("Abu n-Nagm [al-.sup.[subset]]lgli--eine Nachlese," ZDMG 149 [1999]: 1-78) at our disposal, the literary historian is now much better equipped to investigate the development of poetic genres in the Umayyad period.

The anecdote studied by Muller in her 1994 publication, on the subject of the bedouin and the rain-cloud, does not, as she notes on page 21, tend to appear in adab collections but pertains more to that branch of pre-Islamic Arab folk astronomy epitomized by the [anwa.sup.[contains]] (stars that herald the onset of rain) genre, such as the Kitab al-[Anwa.sup.[contains]] of Ibn Qutaybah (d. 889), in which this author contributed to the recoil against non-Arab astronomy, as part of the anti-[Shu.sup.[subset]]ubi backlash of the latter ninth century. The anecdotes themselves are analyzed in three categories: those that appear in rhymed prose; those that appear in prose; and those that appear in verse. The work is part of a wider, European study of the nature and form of the "anecdote," and contains very useful chapters on anecdotal structure, construction, and style. It is a veritable cornucopia of information. Muller's two-volume study of laughter in medieval Arabic sources concentrates on one manifestation of l aughter, viz. laughter that is so intense the caliph, the very symbol of temporal religious authority on earth and God's vice-gerent, falls over. The material on which Muller bases her analyzes is taken from, among many others of course, Abu l-Faraj al-Isfahani, al-Jahiz, al-Tanukhi, Ibn Abi [Usaybi.sup.[subset]][ah.sup.[subset]], and al-Zamakhsari. She also includes the Alf Laylah within her remit. It is a fascinating study not only of the textual dynamics of anecdotal formulations, but also of inner and outer, physical and psychological, expressions of laughter as enunciated in the written materials of the Islamic Middle Ages.