Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Isa Abd al-Malik ibn Isa ibn Quzman al-Zuhri ( ar, أبو بكر محمد بن عيسى بن عبدالملك بن عيسى بن قزمان الزهري; 1087–1160) was the single most famous poet in the history of

Al-Andalus Al-Andalus translit. ; an, al-Andalus; ast, al-Ándalus; eu, al-Andalus; ber, ⴰⵏⴷⴰⵍⵓⵙ, label= Berber, translit=Andalus; ca, al-Àndalus; gl, al-Andalus; oc, Al Andalús; pt, al-Ândalus; es, al-Ándalus () was the M ...

and he is also considered to be one of its most original. One of the characteristics of his poetry was "satire, verging on the licentious, aimed at religious experts." He deeply admired his "Eastern predecessor" Abu Nuwas.

Life

He was born and died in Cordoba during the reign of the

Almoravid The Almoravid dynasty ( ar, المرابطون, translit=Al-Murābiṭūn, lit=those from the ribats) was an imperial Berber Muslim dynasty centered in the territory of present-day Morocco. It established an empire in the 11th century tha ...

s, to a family of possibly Gothic origins, while according to certain scholars he was from an Arab family. as his name suggests and from the fact that he described himself as being blond and blue-eyed in several of his zajals . After leading a lifestyle similar to that of troubadours, traveling to

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Penins ...

Granada Granada (,, DIN: ; grc, Ἐλιβύργη, Elibýrgē; la, Illiberis or . ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the c ...

and Jaén, he became a mosque imam towards the end of his life.

''Diwan''

Only 149 poems from the ''Diwan'' of Ibn Quzman appear in a manuscript in Saint Petersburg, which was the subject of a notice published in 1881. A facsimile edition of it titled ''Le Divan d'Ibn Guzman'' was published in 1896 in Berlin by Baron David von Günzburg. Most of the extant poems are

zajal Zajal () is a traditional form of oral strophic poetry declaimed in a colloquial dialect. While there is little evidence of the exact origins of the zajal, the earliest recorded zajal poet was the poet Ibn Quzman of al-Andalus who lived from 1078 ...

s, the genre by which he earned his fame which are characterized by their colloquial language, as well as a typical rhyming scheme: aaab cccb dddb, where b rhymes with a constantly recurring refrain of one or two lines.Gorton, T.J., "The Metre of IbnQuzman: a "Classical"Approach", ''Journal of Arabic Literature'', 6 (1975), pp. 1-29 As noted by

James T. Monroe James Thomas Monroe, or James T. Monroe, is an American scholar and translator of Arabic. He is emeritus professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, focusing on Classical Arabic Literature and Hispan ...

, His approach to life as expressed in these melodious poems, together with their mixed idiom (occasionally using words of the Romance languages), shows a resemblance to the later vernacular troubadour poetry of France.Robert Kehew, Ezra Pound, William De Witt Snodgrass, ''Lark in the morning: the verses of the troubadours'', University of Chicago Press, 2005, p.10

Translations

The ''Diwan'' has been translated in Spanish by Federico Corriente (under the title ''Cancionero hispanoárabe'') and in English by Monroe.

References

External links

''Le Divan d'Ibn Guzman''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ibn Quzman 1087 births 1160 deaths People from Córdoba, Spain Poets of Al-Andalus

Life

''Diwan''

Translations

References

Further reading

External links