Jewish poetry from Al-Andalus

Last updated

The golden age of Jewish poetry in Al-Andalus developed in the literary courts of the various taifas. Like its Arabic counterpart, its production diminished in the 12th century under the rule of the Almoravids and Almohads. [1] In the last part of the 10th century, Dunash ben Labrat revolutionized Jewish poetry in Al-Andalus [2] by bringing Arabic meter and monorhyme into Hebrew writing. [3] Jewish poets employed Arabic poetic themes, writing bacchic poetry, garden poetry, and love poetry. [4]

Contents

Literary language

As in the rest of the Arabic world at the time, Arabic was the typical language for Jewish writing, except for sacred religious texts [5] and belles lettres. Practically all Jewish works about philosophy, theology, mathematics, were written in Arabic, typically in Hebrew characters. This type of writing has been called Judeo-Arabic, although there was little difference in the language used by Jews and non-Jews at this time. The choice of Hebrew as the poetic language can be seen as an expression of Jewish self-assertion. [6] Contemporary Arabic poets considered their language, the language of the Qur'an, the most beautiful language, and Arabic verse as the highest form of poetry; Jewish poets thought similarly of their sacred writings and composed poetry in Biblical Hebrew [7] Apart from Dunash's metrical innovations, the Hebrew of these poems tried to emulate the diction and style of Classical Hebrew, abolishing elements that had been introduced into the language after the canonization of the Hebrew Bible. This classical approach was facilitated by advances in the study of Hebrew grammar and biblical interpretation. [3]

Hebrew liturgical poetry

The Tanakh contains several poetic sections, including the Song of the sea [8] and the Song of Deborah, [9] as well as poetic books such as the Book of Psalms [10] and the Book of Job. [11] The Talmud also includes a number of poetic sections. Piyyut had flourished in Byzantine Palestine between the fifth and seventh centuries. The incorporation of the complex and opaque poetry of the piyyutim required the recognition of an unusual vocabulary, foreign words, complex grammatical forms, and a great number of allusions to Jewish religious sources. [3]

Caliphate of Córdoba

In the late 10th century, Dunash ben Labrat, a North African rabbi and student of Saadia Gaon, arrived at the Caliphate of Córdoba and revolutionized Hebrew poetry in al-Ándalus. Dunash designed a system of short and long vowels for Hebrew that allowed it to imitate Arabic meter, and adopted the structure of the qasida. Practically all Judeo-Spanish poets adopted Dunash's innovations. Moses ibn Ezra said that the best Hebrew poetry was composed according to the Arabic model, but Yehudah Halevi, a contemporary of ibn Ezra, felt ambivalent toward the metric innovations, condemning them as a cultural surrender. [3]

Golden age of Judeo-Spanish poetry

Taifas in 1080. The division of the Caliphate of Cordoba into taifas produced a literary flourishing in al-Andalus. Reinos de Taifas en 1080.svg
Taifas in 1080. The division of the Caliphate of Córdoba into taifas produced a literary flourishing in al-Ándalus.

The division of the caliphate into taifas, and the subsequent literary courts in various taifas, brought a golden age to Judeo-Spanish poetry. Notable poets of this period include Semuel ibn Nagrella (993-1056), Salomón ibn Gabirol (1021-1055), Moses ibn Ezra (1055-1138), Yehudah Halevi (1074-1141), Yishaq ibn Gayyat (1038-1089), and Abraham ibn Ezra (1092-1167). [12] These poets were particularly influenced by Middle Eastern Arabic poets such as al-Mutanabbi and Abu Tammam, rather than by Andalusians poets. Many shared al-Mutanabbi's elitism toward a society that wasn't interested in their poetry. [13] Love poetry, following the Arabic tradition, was inspired by the work of Abu Nuwas. Themes included beauty and longing, unrequited love, the pleasures of wine or naseeb , as well as the love obstacles of Hejazi poetry. [14] A number of medieval Hebrew songs glorify the beauty of boys, particularly between the 11th and early 13th centuries. [15] As with Arabic poetry, the production of Jewish poetry diminished under the reign of the Almoravids and the Almohads from the 12th century onwards. [1]

Meters and genres

The qasida was typical for major poetic genres. The madih praised and honored a great man, while the martiyya or ritza commemorated the death of a great man. The satirical hiya or hichá ridiculed enemies, although this form is much more prominent in Arabic poetry.

Poets also adopted the Muwashshah, a strophic form typically devoted to issues related to the pleasures of life, descriptions of wine and its consumption, love or expressions of regret for the ephemeral nature of these pleasures. [16] The Kharja, or final refrain of these muwashshahat typically switched from classical Arabic to colloquial Andalusian Arabic. In Hebrew poems, the change was between different languages—from Hebrew to Arabic or a Romance language like Judaeo-Spanish - a testament to the trilingual society Andalusian Jews lived in. [17] As for themes, Jewish poetry, which had previously centered on the liturgical, became very similar to the Arabic tradition. By the tenth century, Arabic culture had developed a rich and varied poetic tradition. Jewish poets used the nostalgic tone of poetry of the Arabian Desert for poems about their own exile; imitated the Bacchic poems that described the pleasures of wine and sheltered gardens, and reflected on the lifestyle of a well-to-do class that shared values with their Muslim peers. They also shared an interest in Neo-Platonic concepts about the soul and other themes of Arabic love poetry, reformulated through the language of the Hebrew Bible (especially the Song of Songs), which penetrated both sacred and secular Hebrew poetry. [4]

Notable poets of the era

Related Research Articles

Abraham ibn Ezra Sephardi rabbi

Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra was one of the most distinguished Jewish biblical commentators and philosophers of the Middle Ages. He was born in Tudela in northern Spain.

Sephardi Jews Jewish ethnic group

Sephardi Jews, also known as Sephardic Jews, Sephardim, or Hispanic Jews, are a Jewish ethnic division originating from traditionally established communities in the Iberian Peninsula. Largely expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the late 15th century, they carried a distinctive Jewish diasporic identity with them to North Africa, including modern day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt; South-Eastern and Southern Europe, including France, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Turkey; the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran; as well as the Americas ; and all other places of their exiled settlement. They sometimes settled near existing Jewish communities or were the first in new frontiers.

Judah Halevi

Judah Halevi was a Spanish Jewish physician, poet and philosopher. He was born in Spain, either in Toledo or Tudela, in 1075 or 1086, and died shortly after arriving in the Holy Land in 1141, at that point the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, which coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, was a period of Muslim rule during which, intermittently, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished.

<i>Maqama</i>

Maqāmah are an (originally) Arabic prosimetric literary genre which alternates the Arabic rhymed prose known as Saj‘ with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is conspicuous.

Dunash ben Labrat

Dunash ha-Levi ben Labrat was a medieval Jewish commentator, poet, and grammarian of the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain.

Medieval Hebrew

Medieval Hebrew was a literary and liturgical language that existed between the 4th and 19th century. It was not commonly used as a spoken language, but mainly in written form by rabbis, scholars and poets. Medieval Hebrew had many features that distinguished it from older forms of Hebrew. These affected grammar, syntax, sentence structure, and also included a wide variety of new lexical items, which were either based on older forms or borrowed from other languages, especially Aramaic, Greek and Latin.

Solomon ibn Gabirol Andalusian poet and Jewish philosopher

Solomon ibn Gabirol was an 11th-century Andalusian poet and Jewish philosopher in the Neo-Platonic tradition. He published over a hundred poems, as well as works of biblical exegesis, philosophy, ethics and satire. One source credits ibn Gabirol with creating a golem, possibly female, for household chores.

Hasdai ibn Shaprut

Hasdai ibn Shaprut born about 915 at Jaén, Spain; died about 970 at Córdoba, Andalusia, was a Jewish scholar, physician, diplomat, and patron of science.

Dunash ibn Tamim was a Jewish tenth century scholar, and a pioneer of scientific study among Arabic-speaking Jews. His Arabic name was أبو سهل Abu Sahl; his surname, according to an isolated statement of Moses ibn Ezra, was "Al-Shafalgi," perhaps after his (unknown) birthplace. Another name referring to him is Adonim.

Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, known as Ha-Sallaḥ was a Jewish, Spanish philosopher, linguist, and poet. He was born in Granada about 1055 – 1060, and died after 1138. Ibn Ezra was Jewish by religion but is also considered to have had great influence in the Arabic literary world. He is considered one of Spain's greatest poets and was thought to be ahead of his time in terms of his theories on the nature of poetry. One of the more revolutionary aspects of Ibn Ezra's poetry that has been debated is his definition of poetry as metaphor and how his poetry illuminates Aristotle's early ideas. The impact of Ibn Ezra's philosophical works was minor compared to his impact on poetry, but they address his concept of the relationship between God and man.

Hebrew literature

Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews. Hebrew literature was produced in many different parts of the world throughout the medieval and modern eras, while contemporary Hebrew literature is largely Israeli literature. In 1966, Agnon won the Nobel Prize for Literature for novels and short stories that employ a unique blend of biblical, Talmudic and modern Hebrew, making him the first Hebrew writer to receive this award.

Jonah ibn Janah or ibn Janach, born Abu al-Walīd Marwān ibn Janāḥ, was a Jewish rabbi, physician and Hebrew grammarian active in Al-Andalus, or Islamic Spain. Born in Córdoba, ibn Janah was mentored there by Isaac ibn Gikatilla and Isaac ibn Mar Saul, before he moved around 1012, due to the sacking of the city. He then settled in Zaragoza, where he wrote Kitab al-Mustalhaq, which expanded on the research of Judah ben David Hayyuj and led to a series of controversial exchanges with Samuel ibn Naghrillah that remained unresolved during their lifetimes.

Jewish literature

Jewish literature includes works written by Jews on Jewish themes, literary works written in Jewish languages on various themes, and literary works in any language written by Jewish writers. Ancient Jewish literature includes Biblical literature and rabbinic literature. Medieval Jewish literature includes not only rabbinic literature but also ethical literature, philosophical literature, mystical literature, various other forms of prose including history and fiction, and various forms of poetry of both religious and secular varieties. The production of Jewish literature has flowered with the modern emergence of secular Jewish culture. Modern Jewish literature has included Yiddish literature, Ladino literature, Hebrew literature, and Jewish American literature.

Abū Muhammad al-Qāsim ibn Alī ibn Muhammad ibn Uthmān al-Harīrī, popularly known as al-Hariri of Basra was an Arab poet, scholar of the Arabic language and a high government official of the Seljuk Empire.

Joseph Yahalom

Joseph Yahalom is a professor of Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since 1983, he has been a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language.

Riddles (Hebrew) Traditional form of word-play in Hebrew

Riddles in Hebrew are referred to as חידות ḥidot. They have at times been a major and distinctive part of literature in Hebrew and closely related languages. At times they have a complex relationship with proverbs.

Qasmūna bint Ismāʿil, sometimes called Xemone, was an Iberian Jewish poet. She is the only female Arabic-language Jewish poet attested from medieval Andalusia, and, along with Sarah of Yemen and the anonymous wife of Dunash ben Labrat, one of few known female Jewish poets throughout the Middle Ages.

Riddles of Dunash ben Labrat

The riddles of Dunash ben Labrat are noted as some of the first recorded Hebrew riddles, and part of Dunash's seminal development of Arabic-inspired Andalusian Hebrew poetry. Unlike some later Andalusian Hebrew riddle-writers, Dunash focused his riddles on everyday objects in the material world. His writing draws inspiration from the large corpus of roughly contemporary, poetic Arabic riddles.

Literature of al-Andalus

The literature of al-Andalus, also known as Andalusi literature, was produced in Al-Andalus, or Islamic Iberia, from the Muslim conquest in 711 to either the Catholic conquest of Granada in 1492 or the Expulsion of the Moors ending in 1614. Andalusi literature was written primarily in Arabic, but also in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Aljamiado, and Mozarabic.

References

  1. 1 2 Zwartjes, Otto (1994). La sociedad andalusí y sus tradiciones literarias. Amsterdam: Rodopi. p. 139. ISBN   9789051837407.
  2. ↑ "Medieval Hebrew Poetry". Medieval Hebrew Poetry. Retrieved 2020-06-28.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Decter, Jonathan (2005). "Literatures of Medieval Sepharad". In Zion Zohar (ed.). Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry : from the Golden Age of Spain to modern times (First ed.). New York: New York University Press. p. 78. ISBN   9780814797068.
  4. 1 2 Decter, Jonathan (2005). "Literatures of Medieval Sepharad". In Zion Zohar (ed.). Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry : from the Golden Age of Spain to modern times (First ed.). New York: New York University Press. p. 80. ISBN   9780814797068.
  5. ↑ "Jewish Sacred Texts". www.israel.org. Retrieved 2020-06-28.
  6. ↑ Decter, Jonathan (2005). "Literatures of Medieval Sepharad". In Zion Zohar (ed.). Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry : from the Golden Age of Spain to modern times (First ed.). New York: New York University Press. p. 79. ISBN   9780814797068.
  7. ↑ Cohen, Mark (2005). "The origins of Sephardic Jewry in the medieval Arab world". In Zohar, Zion (ed.). The origins of Sephardic Jewry in the medieval Arab world. New York: New York University Press. pp. 26–27. ISBN   0814797059.
  8. ↑ Exodus 15:1–18
  9. ↑ Judges 5:2–13
  10. ↑ Psalms HE
  11. ↑ Job HE
  12. ↑ Scheindlin, Raymond (1998). "La situación social y el mundo de valores de los poetas hebreos". La sociedad medieval a través de la literatura hispanojudía (in Spanish). Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. p. 60. ISBN   9788489492967.
  13. ↑ Zwartjes, Otto (1994). La sociedad andalusí y sus tradiciones literarias. Amsterdam: Rodopi. p. 141. ISBN   9789051837407.
  14. ↑ Schippers, Arie (1994). Spanish Hebrew poetry and the Arabic literary tradition : Arabic themes in Hebrew Andalusian poetry. Leiden: E.J. Brill. pp. 148–149. ISBN   9789004098695.
  15. ↑ Schirmann, Hayyim (1955). "The Ephebe in medieval Hebrew poetry". Sefarad: Revista de Estudios Hebraicos y Sefardíes. 15 (1): 55–68.
  16. ↑ Scheindlin, Raymond (1998). "La situación social y el mundo de valores de los poetas hebreos". La sociedad medieval a través de la literatura hispanojudía (in Spanish). Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. p. 59. ISBN   9788489492967.
  17. ↑ Decter, Jonathan (2005). "Literatures of Medieval Sepharad". In Zion Zohar (ed.). Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry : from the Golden Age of Spain to modern times (First ed.). New York: New York University Press. pp. 84–85. ISBN   9780814797068.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.