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The Dīwᾱn attributed to Ibn Bᾱjjah (Avempace)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

Considerable expectation has been raised by the announcement from Turkey that the Dīwān or collected poems of the famous 12th-century author Ibn Bājjah (Avempace) has been discovered. Nowadays when Ibn Bājjah's name is mentioned we think of him as a prominent figure of what may be called the Spanish school of Arabic philosophy. But in his own time and later Ibn Bājjah's reputation as musician and poet, cultivator inter alia of the new poetical style of muwashshaḥāt, was, it appears, scarcely less high than his philosophic fame. The biographers have preserved for us a score or two of his verses, some of which have been englished by A. R. Nykl. In general however, we are short of material to form a judgment on what was evidently a very characteristic part of Ibn Bājjah's activity. His complete Dīwān has till now apparently never been heard of, but the news that it had been brought to light was not on that account less welcome.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1952

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References

page 463 note 1 Khaldū, Ibn, MuqaddimahGoogle Scholar, ed. Bulaq-Beirut, , p. 414.Google Scholar

page 463 note 2 For Ibn Khallikān, for example, Ibn Bājjah is , for adh-Dhahabī he is (Bodleian MS. Laud Or. 304 fol. 17b), for al-'Imād, Ibn (Shadharāt adh-dhaẖab, iv, 103).Google Scholar

page 463 note 3 Hispano-Arabic Poetry, Baltimore, 1946.Google Scholar

page 463 note 4 Ateş, Ahmed, Fârâbînin eserlerinin bibliyografyasi, in Belleten, Cilt XV (1951), Ankara, p. 189Google Scholar: ‘İbn Bâece'nin Dîvān'i: . Bu meşhur felesufun (bk. İslâm Ansiklopedisi, yazilmiş, A. Adnan Adivar tarafindanİbn Bâcce maddesi; G.A.L., i, 601Google Scholar, ve Suppl., i, 831)Google Scholar felsefî ve ahlâkî şiirlerini ve bu arada bir çok melîklere, reislere ve dostlarma gönderdiǧi manzûm mektuplarini () ihtiva ettiǧi için, hayatiri aydinlatacak mühim bilgiler vereoeği muhakkak olan bu Dîvân, bildiǧime göre, yegâne nushadir ve, siirlerin mevzularina göre, onbeş bâba ayrilmiştir’.

page 464 note 1 The Dīwān itself was transcribed at the end of Ṣafar, A.h. 882 (fol. 136a).

page 464 note 2 For a more complete account of the other contents of the MS. see Ahmed Ateş, loc. cit.

page 464 note 3 Several of these mention wine, of. infra.

page 465 note 1 [sc.] the Deity.

page 466 note 1 MS. .

page 466 note 2 of. infra.

page 466 note 3 MS. , but cf. p. 475.

page 466 note 4 sc., apparently, the work is of the same quality, has the same effect as music, etc. The phrase is in any case descriptive, not the title, cf, next note.

page 467 note 1 The work is named in another passage (fol. 108b) Munāẓarat al-'aql an-naẓari li'sh-Shaiṭān al-basharī (‘Debate of the Speculative Intellect with the Satan of the Flesh’). It is not clear in what respects it resembled the Risālah Ḥaiy b. Yaqẓān. Presumably the latter is the treatise by Ibn Sīnā, not that of the same title by Ibn Ṭufail (posterior to 1169 according to Gauthier, , Ihn Thofail, p. 43).Google Scholar

page 467 note 2 For this, cf. the account of a meeting of philosophers in a ‘house of wisdom’ () from Muḥammad b. 'Alī al-Anṣārī, Kitāb ādāb al-falāsifah: (a hall of gilded images) (MS. ) (MS. Escorial 760, fol. 8a). The same work indicates illuminated Greek MSS. as the source of such fantastic descriptions:

(fol. 6a, ibid.). ‘Ḥunain b. Isḥāq said: I have found what I have copied of the works of the ancients in letters of purple, which is a red colour like wine, written with gold and silver, and letters written in gold, and designs (?) written in other colours. At the beginning of the volume was a picture of the philosopher on a couch, and the pupils were represented in front of him. Ḥunain b. Isḥāq said: Till the present day the Greeks do this with their books and psalters, writing (them) with gold and silver in letters of these colours, with a picture of the wise man represented at the beginning. If the volume contained several discourses, a distinction was made between each, and a picture of each philosopher was represented before his words. The books were covered with skins of leather and shagreen in gold and silver. This was owing to their desire for wisdom, their love of it and respect for it,’

page 469 note 1 loc. cit.

page 471 note 1 In ‘Remarks on the Life and Works of Ibn Bājjah (Avempace)’, a paper read at the 22nd Congress of Orientalists, Istanbul, 1951.Google Scholar

page 471 note 2 i.e. the signs Aries, Leo and Sagittarius.

page 471 note 3 The date of composition is here given as 547/1152.

page 472 note 1 This is rather the result of theorizing on the existing ruins at Ba'albak than a reminiscence of the former celebrity of the temple of Jupiter there.

page 473 note 1 The elegy mentioned above (p. 470) has as its subject-matter:

(sic)

(sic) (fol. 136a).

page 473 note 2 Dr. H. G. Farmer doubts the correctness of the attribution of the Fī'l-alḥān to Ibn Bājjah. In his recent article ‘Avenpace’ in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. F. Blume, he implies as much, but assumes that the little work is part of the Tadbīr al-mutawaḥḥid.

page 473 note 3 Details of the correspondence differ in the Dīwān, thus: zīr, fire, bile (?), hot and dry (?); mathnayā, water (?), phlegm, cold and wet; mathlathā, air(?), blood (?), hot and wet(?); bamm, earth, black bile (?), cold and dry.

page 473 note 4 cf. Dunlop, D. M., ‘Aspects of the Khazar Problem,’ Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society, xiii (1951), pp. 36–7.Google Scholar

page 473 note 5 In MS. Ahlwardt 7685.

page 474 note 1 MS. Ahlwardt 8211, fols. 33a–33b. A third copy of the poem is in MS. Ahlwardt 7866.

page 474 note 2 Suppl., i, 462.Google Scholar

page 474 note 3 RAAD., iii, 342.Google Scholar

page 474 note 4 If it is a nisbah and not a name (), cf. the citations infra.

page 475 note 1 cf. Brockelmann, , GAL Supp. ii, 137.Google Scholar

page 475 note 2 Ed. Müller, A., i, 290–7.Google Scholar

page 475 note 3 Ibn abī Uṣaibi'ah was evidently not familiar with the larger work, Kitāb rauḍ an-nudamā’.

page 475 note 4 cf. p. 471, n. 3.

page 476 note 1 GAL Supp. ii, 63.Google Scholar

page 476 note 2 cf. as-Sam'ānī, , Kitāb al-ansābGoogle Scholar (Gibb Memorial Series), s. voce.

page 477 note 1 Ihn Khallikān in fact so gives it, as August Müller, observed, in loco, p. 33.Google Scholar

page 477 note 2 GAL Supp. i, 882.Google Scholar