''Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyazīn'' ( ar, رايات المبرزين وغايات المميزين, ''Banners of the Champions and the Standards of the Distinguished'', also translated as ''Pennants of the Champions'') is a thirteenth-century anthology of Arabic Andalucian poetry by
Ibn Said al-Maghribi.
[Robert Irwin, ''The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature'' (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999), p. 301.] It is, in the words of Louis Crompton, 'perhaps the most important' of the various medieval Andalucian poetry anthologies. 'His aim in compiling the collection seems to have been to show that poetry produced in the West was as good as anything the East had to offer (and that stuff by Ibn Sa'id and his family was especially good)'.
It survives today in only one manuscript.
History of the compilation
Origins
Ibn Said compiled ''Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyazīn'' in Cairo, completing it on 21 June 1243 (641 by Islamic dating). Its patron and dedicatee was
Musā ibn Yaghmūr (1203-65).
The ''Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyazīn'' was made as an epitome of the fifteen-volume ''
al-Mughrib fī ḥulā l-Maghrib'' ('The Extraordinary Book on the Adornments of the West'), whose compilation Ibn Said completed. However, Ibn Said's prologue to the ''Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyazīn'' explains that he made it before ''al-Mughrib fī ḥulā l-Maghrib'' was complete, and accordingly he took care to indicate the ultimate sources of his texts. The apparent limited circulation of the anthology and its stated purpose of honouring Ibn Said's protector, Mūsa b. Yaghmūr, suggests that the intended audience of the anthology was a small, private circle rather than a broad public.
Organisation
Ibn Said wrote that he wished to include only those few fragments "whose idea is more subtle than the West Wind, and whose language is more beautiful than a pretty face."
The poems chosen are all in the classical style, following 'all the traditional conventions of rhyme, meter, and lexicon' and excluding colloquial verse.
The anthology is arranged according to home and occupation of the writer. proceeding through western, central, and eastern Spain, to Ibiza, North Africa, and then Sicily. It thus covers the whole of the Andalusian world, including
Alcalá,
Córdoba Córdoba most commonly refers to:
* Córdoba, Spain, a major city in southern Spain and formerly the imperial capital of Islamic Spain
* Córdoba, Argentina, 2nd largest city in the country and capital of Córdoba Province
Córdoba or Cordoba may ...
,
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 ...
,
Lisbon,
Murcia
Murcia (, , ) is a city in south-eastern Spain, the Capital (political), capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia, and the List of municipalities of Spain, seventh largest city in the country. It has a ...
,
Zaragoza
Zaragoza, also known in English as Saragossa,''Encyclopædia Britannica'"Zaragoza (conventional Saragossa)" is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tribut ...
,
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 Peninsul ...
,
Toledo, and
Valencia
Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...
. Within each region, the poems are ordered by city, and then by the poet's occupation, from the highest social rank to the lowest. Authors include bureaucrats, gentlemen, kings, ministers, and scholars; the book is evidence of how important love poetry was to the educated 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 Mus ...
. In all, the anthology contains 314 poetic fragments by 145 identifiable poets; Ibn Said also included a prologue and a short epilogue, along with occasional comments on the texts and brief notes on the poets.
According to
A. J. Arberry
Arthur John Arberry (12 May 1905, in Portsmouth – 2 October 1969, in Cambridge) Fellow of the British Academy#Fellowship, FBA was a British scholar of Arabic literature, Persian studies, and Islamic studies. He was educated at Portsmouth Gramm ...
.
:: the author has exercised, and everywhere demonstrates, his personal judgement, first as to the poets selected for quotation, and secondly as to the passages chosen. He was not able to deny himself the immodest pleasure of quoting from his own writings, for more extensively than from those of any other poet; and the entire section devoted to Alcalá la Real is taken up with the products of members of his family ... It seems doubtful whether more than a small handful of poems have been cited in their entirety; most of the quotations are quite brief extracts---in some instances a single stanza---from what were originally lengthy compositions.
Sources
For poetry composed in the lifetime of Ibn Said and his father, much of the material clearly comes from oral sources. At times the transmitters of the verses are named, among them
Ibn Al-Abbār
Ibn al-Abbār (), he was Hāfiẓ Abū Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn 'Abdullah ibn Abū Bakr al-Qudā'ī al-Balansī () (1199–1260) a secretary to Hafsid dynasty princes, well-known poet, diplomat, jurist and hadith scholar from al ...
, Ibn Al-Ḥusayn, Abū-l-Maḥāsin al-Dimashqī, and Al-Tīfāshī. Ibn Said's named written sources are as follows.
Occidental anthologies
*
Ibn ‘Abd Rabbi-hi, ''Kitāb al-‘iqd al farīd''
* Abū-l-Walīd Ḥabīb al-Ḥimyarī, ''al-Badī‘ fī faḍl'' (or ''faṣl'', or ''waṣf'') ''al-rabī‘''
*
Ibn Bassām, ''Kitāb al-dhakhīra''
*
Ibn Khāqān, ''Qalā’id al-‘Iqyān'' and ''Maṭmaḥ al-anfus''
* Umayya b. Abī-l-Ṣalt, ''Ḥadīqa''
* al-Hijāri, ''Hadīqa''
* Ibn al-Imām, ''Simṭ al-jumān''
* Ṣafwān b. Idrīs, ''Zād al-musāfir''
* al-Mallāḥī, ''Ta’rīkh fī ‘ulamā' Ilbīra’''
* al-Shaqundī, ''Ẓarf al-ẓurafā
* Abū-l-‘Abbās al-Jurāwī, ''Kitāb ṣafwat al-adab''
* Abū-l-Khaṭṭāb b. Diḥya, ''al-Muṭrib''
* al-Khushanī, ''Kitāb zamān al-rabī‘''
* Abū-l-Ḥajjāj al-Bayyāsī, unnamed work
* ''Taqyīd'' by a Granadan writer
Oriental anthologies
*
ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʻālibī, ''Yatīmat al-dahr''
*
Ḥarīrī, ''Durrat al-ghawwāṣ''
*
al-‘Imād al-lṣfahānī, ''Kharīdat al-qaṣr''
Diwāns
*
Ibn Hāni’
*
Ibn ‘Ammār
*
Ibn Ḥamdīs
*
Ibn Khafāja
*
Ibn al-Zaqqāq
*
al-Tuṭīlī al-A‘ma
*
Ibn Waḍḍāḥ al-Buqayra
*
Abū-l-Rabi‘ b. ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Abd al-Mu’min
*
Ibn ‘Iyāḍ, ''al-Maqāma al-dawḥiyya''
Manuscript
When the text was edited by
Emilio García Gómez
Emilio García Gómez, 1st Count of Alixares (4 June 1905 – 31 May 1995) was a Spanish Arabist, literary historian and critic, whose talent as a poet enriched his many translations from Arabic.
Life
Emilio García Gómez decided to pursue ...
, he had access to photographs of a single manuscript, whose whereabouts and classmark he did not know but which he thought to be in Istanbul. The codex contained 272 pages (numbered as such rather than as folios), on which were written two texts: pp. 1-201 contain the text ''Laṭā’if al-dhakhīra wa-ẓarā’if al-jazīra'', an epitome of
Ibn Bassām's ''Dhakhīra'' by Abū-Makārim As‘ad al-Khaṭīr ibn Mammātī (d. 606/1209), and pp. 202-72 the ''Rāyāt al-mubarrizīn wa-ghāyāt al-mumayyazīn''. The manuscript was copied by the noted scribe Yūsuf ibn Muḥammad, probably in Egypt; he finished the first text on 1 December 1702 CE and the second on 18 May 1703.
Example
An excerpt from a poem of the ''Pennants'', "The Tailor's Apprentice" by
Ibn Kharuf (d. 1205), in Arberry's translation, serves as one example:
His stool, the steed he rides upon
Rejoices in its champion
Armed with the needle that he plies
Sharp as the lashes of his eyes.
The needle o'er the silken dress
Careers with wondrous nimbleness
As down the sky bright meteors snake.
With threads of lightening in their wake.[''Moorish Poetry: A Translation of 'The Pennants', an Anthology Compiled in 1243 by the Andalusian Ibn Sa'id'', trans. by A. J. Arberry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), p. 75.]
Influence
Gómez's translation greatly influenced modern Spanish poetry, not least
Lorca, whose ''El diván del Tamarit'' was particularly indebted to the book.
[; M. Ángeles Pérez Álvarez, 'La influencia oriental en "El diván del Tamarit" de Lorca', ''Anuario de estudios filológicos'' (1992), 269-78, http://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/58764.pdf.]
Editions and translations
*
El libro de las banderas de los campeones, de Ibn Saʿid al-Magribī', ed. and trans. by
Emilio García Gómez
Emilio García Gómez, 1st Count of Alixares (4 June 1905 – 31 May 1995) was a Spanish Arabist, literary historian and critic, whose talent as a poet enriched his many translations from Arabic.
Life
Emilio García Gómez decided to pursue ...
, 2nd edn, Series mayor, 39 (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1978),
irst publ. Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1942(edition and Spanish translation).
*
Moorish Poetry A Translation of 'The Pennants', an Anthology Compiled in 1243 by the Andalusian Ibn Sa'id'', trans. by
A. J. Arberry
Arthur John Arberry (12 May 1905, in Portsmouth – 2 October 1969, in Cambridge) Fellow of the British Academy#Fellowship, FBA was a British scholar of Arabic literature, Persian studies, and Islamic studies. He was educated at Portsmouth Gramm ...
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). (A selection of poems in English translation. Arberry seems to have avoided including poems with particularly explicit sexual (especially homosexual) content, however.)
* Ibn Said al-Andalusi,
Rayat al-Mubarrazin wa gayat al-Mummayazin', ed. by Numan Abd al-Mutaal al-Qadi (El Cairo: Yina al-Turat al-Islami, 1973) [رايات المبرزين وغايات المميزين, لابن سعيد الاندلسي ؛ تحقيق الدكتور النعمان عبد المتعال القاضي. القاهرة, المجلس الأعلى للشؤون الإسلامية،]
* []
* ''The Banners of the Champions of Ibn Said al-Maghribi'', translated by James Bellamy and Patricia Steiner (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1988).
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rayat al-mubarrizin wa-ghayat al-mumayyazin
Arabic anthologies
Literature of Al-Andalus
13th-century Arabic books
Medieval Arabic poems