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CHAPTER THREE
Toward a History of Arabic Autobiography

If the origins of Arabic autobiographical writing in the sīra and tarjama traditions seem to be clear, the historical time frame for the emergence of a general recognition of the autobiographical act within the Arabic literary tradition is more difficult to determine. One of the major obstacles to the study of Arabic autobiography so far has been the tendency to view autobiographical texts as isolated anomalies rather than as examples of a literary-historical tradition. The sheer number of premodern Arabic autobiographical texts now available effectively negates this approach. Even more telling than the raw numbers, however, are the direct historical connections linking many of these texts and their authors and the recurring pattern of historical “clusters” of autobiographical production. These relationships not only establish the familiarity of authors with earlier autobiographies and autobiographers but also provide the groundwork for an understanding of the development of literary conventions in Arabic autobiographical writing. This chapter provides a basic historical overview of several discrete dimensions of the development of Arabic autobiography by surveying, first, historical connections among texts and authors; second, diverse authorial motives for writing autobiographies as expressed in the texts themselves; and third, the emergence of a general “autobiographical anxiety” as reflected in texts written in justification and defense of the autobiographical act by Arabic autobiographers.

Historical Clusters

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The first “proto-autobiographies” appear to have been composed in isolation from each other. Ḥunayn's ninth-century “Trials and Tribulations” account (translated in this volume) focuses on a defense of himself and his reputation against charges of iconoclasm; al-Muḥāsibī's spiritual manual, Kitāb al-Naṣā’iḥ (The Book of Advice), from the same century is significant primarily as a model for later writers assessing and evaluating their spiritual progress; and al-Tirmidhī's text (translated in this volume), Buduww sha’n abī ‘Abd Allāh (The Beginning of the Affair of Abū ‘Abd Allāh), consisting of a very brief life narrative accompanied by a series of dream accounts, seeks primarily to establish the spiritual authority and status of its author.^[1]

If these earliest Arabic autobiographical writings seem to have been composed in isolation from one another, already by the tenth and early eleventh century, short autobiographies by the philosophers and physicians al-Rāzī, Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn Sīnā, and Ibn Riḍwān were circulating in well-known anthologies and would have been familiar to many scholars over a large geographic expanse. In the same period, the politically and polemically oriented autobiographies of Ibn Ḥawshab (d. 914) and Ja‘far al-Ḥājib (d. ca. 954) were circulating in Shi‘ite circles; these two texts survive only as fragments, but internal textual evidence indicates that the complete texts were of substantial length.

In the late eleventh and twelfth century, there appears to have been a flowering of autobiographical writing and personal record keeping, which, if these did not constitute full autobiographies as such, were widespread enough for biographers such as Yāqūt to draw on extensively in compiling their biographical dictionaries. Autobiographical writings by al-Dānī, al-Fārisī, al-Bayhaqī, Ibn Ma’mūn, Yāqūt himself, and others circulated in this manner. Two lengthy, independent autobiographies from the beginning of this period, those of Ibn Buluggīn and al-Ghazālī, were composed within a few years of each other (ca. 1095 and 1107), the former being a political family history in which the author's life occupies well over half the work and the second a systematically organized account of the author's spiritual crisis, exploration of differing schools of religious philosophy, and eventual acceptance of Sufi teachings. The life story of Samaw’al al-Maghribī (d. 1174), which recounts his conversion from Judaism to Islam and is attached to an anti-Jewish polemical treatise, also dates to this period.

In the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, there appears a cluster of distinctive and noteworthy autobiographical texts written by a group who lived in Damascus and Aleppo during and immediately after the time of Saladin, among whom we can establish a number of direct personal links:

1. ‘Umāra al-Ḥakamī al-Yamanī (d. 1175), poet, diplomat, and historian executed by crucifixion for treason and/or heresy on the orders of Saladin;
2. Usāma ibn Munqidh (d. 1188), nobleman who fought in the counter-Crusades as one of Saladin's commanders;

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3. ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī (d. 1201), Saladin's personal secretary and later chronicler of his reign (selections translated in this volume);
4. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (d. 1229), literary historian and prominent biographer who compiled an enormous biographical encyclopedia of literary figures, including several of his fellow autobiographers;^[2]
5. ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (d. 1231), prominent physician and teacher who met Saladin and was rewarded with a position and government stipend (autobiography translated in this volume);
6. Ibn al-‘Adīm (d. 1262): prominent historian of Aleppo and personal friend of Yāqūt (autobiography translated in this volume);
7. Abū Shāma (d. 1268), historian of Saladin's reign and dynasty (autobiography translated in this volume); and
8. Sa‘d al-Dīn ibn Ḥamawiyya al-Juwaynī (d. 1276), military governor, historian, and finally Sufi mystic.^[3]

Given their prominence and fame, this group of literati were well aware of one another's careers and writings; and, indeed, several of them met face-to-face. ‘Imād al-Dīn quotes from ‘Umāra's autobiography in his own work, Kharīdat al-Qaṣr (The Pearl of the Palace), referring to it as the book that ‘Umāra wrote (muṣannafuhu).^[4] Although he cites primarily ‘Umāra's poetry, he presents the poems for the most part in the order in which they occur in ‘Umāra's autobiography, rather than in that of his dīwān (collected poems).^[5] On one of his frequent trips to Cairo, ‘Imād al-Dīn actually had ‘Umāra's poetry recited to him by the son of Usāma ibn Munqidh, who had heard it from the poet himself—the poetry of one autobiographer recited to another autobiographer by the son of a third autobiographer!^[6] In addition, passages from Abū Shāma's historical work, Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn (The Book of the Two Gardens), the supplement to which includes his autobiography, seem to indicate a familiarity with both ‘Umāra's work^[7] and Sa‘d al-Dīn Juwaynī. ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī describes meeting ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī in his autobiography, and Yāqūt personally commissioned the autobiography of his close friend, Ibn al-‘Adīm, for inclusion in his compendium.

The production of multiple autobiographical texts from this rather close-knit literary and scholarly group may have been prompted by these many personal connections, or the large number of autobiographies known from this period may only reflect the fact that it has been more intensely researched than most other periods of Islamic history. Another possibility, noted by Rosenthal, is that the tremendous political instability of the period may have helped to foster a fertile context for autobiographical production.^[8]

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As a result of the considerable attention devoted to the period of Saladin and the Crusades by both Arab and western historians, most of these texts are well known, commonly used as historical sources, and usually recognized and treated as autobiographies. Among them, however, the work of ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī stands out, for it is ostensibly a biography of Saladin. Yet later Arab sources such as al-Suyūṭī and al-Sha‘rānī consistently refer to it as an autobiographical work.^[9] They clearly assessed the work from its contents and not from the formal framing device of its title and dedication. Since ‘Imād al-Dīn wrote of himself extensively in this work, it was deemed an act of self-tarjama.

Two other historical clusters appear in Spain. The autobiographer Ibn Sa‘īd al-Maghribī (d. 1286) knew of the earlier autobiographical notices of Ibn al-Imām (d. 1155), al-Ḥijārī (d. 1155), and Ibn al-Qaṭṭā‘ (d. 1121).^[10] Later, Lisān al-Dīn Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 1374) states that he saw and read the autograph copy of the eleventh-century autobiography of Ibn Buluggīn when he visited southern Morocco, where Ibn Buluggīn had died in exile, and then returned home to write his own autobiography. He might also have been familiar with the autobiography of Abū Ḥayyān al-Andalusī (d. 1344) who lived a generation earlier, the text of which—although now lost—achieved some fame in the late Middle Ages and was still being cited two centuries later by al-Suyūṭī and al-Sha‘rānī in Egypt as a lengthy autobiographical work; it was probably written during Abū Ḥayyān's sojourn in Egypt. Only a few years after Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khaṭīb wrote his text, the famous historiographer Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406), whose family was originally from Spain, and who had met and worked with Ibn al-Khaṭīb in Spain in 1363, also wrote an autobiography.^[11] It is clear that by the end of the fourteenth century there were numerous examples of independent, lengthy autobiographies circulating throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

A more tenuous, but still intriguing, connection lies in an encounter that took place between Ibn Khaldūn and Tamerlane (Timur-lenk) outside of Damascus in 1401. Ibn Khaldūn was trapped inside the city during Tamerlane's siege, but Tamerlane had heard of Ibn Khaldūn's presence and wished to meet him. Ibn Khaldūn describes in a dramatic scene in his autobiography being lowered over the city walls by rope in the middle of the night. Over a period of six weeks, the two met several times and discussed a variety of topics, including Ibn Khaldūn's life story, Tamerlane's genealogy and place in history, the kings of the ancient world, and the geography of the Maghreb. At Tamerlane's request, Ibn Khaldūn wrote out a great deal of information, including a book-length description of the Maghreb. Ibn Khaldūn was eventually released and allowed to return to Cairo.

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It seems plausible that when Tamerlane questioned Ibn Khaldūn about his life, as they had discussed Ibn Khaldūn's other writings, Ibn Khaldūn may have mentioned that he had penned an account of it. And Ibn Khaldūn, as a historian, might well have asked whether an official biography (or autobiography) of Tamerlane was available, or in the process of being written, that he could consult. In any case, soon thereafter Ibn Khaldūn decided to expand his earlier autobiography so as to include his encounter with Tamerlane and republish it as an independent volume, for it had previously existed only as a chapter in a larger historical work.^[12] An autobiography of Tamerlane also appeared and was for centuries accepted as authentic, although in recent decades most modern scholars have come to agree that it was probably created a century or more after Tamerlane's death and was perhaps written by one of his descendants.^[13]

One of the largest clusters of texts is that associated with Ibn Ḥajar al-‘Asqalānī and his pupils. Ibn Ḥajar (d. 1449) wrote several brief autobiographies (one of which is translated in this volume). His student al-Sakhāwī (d. 1497) wrote a thirty-page autobiography that he included in his celebrated biographical compendium of the ninth Islamic century as well as an independent autobiography that remains in manuscript,^[14] and two of al-Sakhāwī's students, Ibn Dayba‘ (d. 1537) and Zarrūq (d. 1493), each wrote autobiographies. Another of Ibn Ḥajar's students, al-Suyūṭī, wrote a substantial autobiography that was then emulated by Ibn Ṭūlūn al-Dimashqī (d. 1546) and al-Sha‘rānī (d. 1565). At more than seven hundred printed pages, al-Sha‘rānī's text is the longest premodern Arabic autobiography known to us. These texts circulated widely and were cited by later autobiographers as far afield as India (al-‘Aydarūs; d. 1628) and Morocco (Ibn ‘Ajība; d. 1809).

A later thread links members of Sufi circles in North Africa. Ibn al-‘Ajība (d. 1809) was familiar with the autobiographical works of al-‘Arabī al-Darqāwī (d. 1823),^[15] Zarrūq (d. 1493), al-Sha‘rānī (d. 1565), and al-Yūsī (d. 1691). Still another cluster is found in the Shi‘ite community in Jabal ‘Āmil (now southern Lebanon) during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including Zayn al-Dīn ibn ‘Alī al-‘Āmilī (d. 1558), his great-grandson, ‘Alī ibn Muḥammad al-‘Āmilī (d. 1692), and Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al- Ḥurr al-‘Āmilī (d. 1688).

One fascinating cluster of Arabic autobiographies written by enslaved West Africans appeared in the early nineteenth century in the United States and the Caribbean. These were made famous by the American popular press and played prominent roles in several political causes célèbres. Although the authors were not personal acquaintances, they may very well have known of one other. It seems that those who solicited these autobiographical texts did in fact know of the other cases; thus, if the texts themselves were not directly linked, the political forces that motivated their composition certainly were. The best documented are those written by Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān, and ‘Umar ibn Sa‘īd.^[16]

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Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq (d. 1850), later renamed Edward Donellan, was originally from Timbuktu and educated in Jennah. As a child he traveled extensively with his teacher but was captured at the age of fourteen or fifteen by the Ashanti and sold to Christian slave traders. He arrived in the West Indies in 1807 or 1808 and ended up keeping the accounts for the plantation where he was a slave. He kept these records in Arabic script, which he then read aloud each evening to the plantation owner in pidgin English. A visitor to the plantation, Dr. Madden, was so moved by Abū Bakr's literacy, his faith in the One True God, his highborn rank (he was later often referred to as a prince), and his desire to return to his homeland that he fought for his manumission, which was eventually granted in a British court. On his route homeward, in August 1835, Abū Bakr stopped in England. There, at the request of his hosts, he wrote out his life story in Arabic. Though only a few pages long, it offers a vivid description of his childhood education, his travels, his capture and sale as a slave, and his experiences among the Christians.

‘Abd al-Raḥmān (d. 1829), known as “Prince,” originally from the region of Futa Jalloun, was educated in Timbo, Jennah, and Timbuktu. He was captured at the age of twenty-one while leading a military expedition, sold into slavery, and then purchased by a landowner in Tennessee. He ran away but could not manage to live in the wild and so finally returned. Eventually he married and had several children. In 1807, in an astonishing development, he encountered in the Natchez market John Coates Cox, a man who had lived in Timbo twenty-five years earlier as a guest of his father. Cox recognized ‘Abd al-Raḥmān and tried to buy him but was rebuffed. He then petitioned the governor for the slave's manumission but failed. Finally he launched a publicity campaign with the help of a local newpaper that promised to publish and deliver to ‘Abd al-Raḥmān's father a letter written by his son in Arabic. The U.S. State Department became involved, and ‘Abd al-Raḥmān was freed, but he did not wish to return to Africa without his wife and children. With help from friends, he launched a lecture tour across the northern United States to raise money to buy his family's freedom. For a year he was probably the most famous African American in the nation. During his tour he was constantly asked to write things in Arabic (when asked to write the Lord's Prayer, he would dutifully copy out the opening chapter of the Qur’ān). At the request of those fighting for his cause, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān wrote a short autobiography in Arabic that was translated into English and reprinted as part of the newspaper war that had erupted after his liberation. Eventually his wife was freed, and the two of them sailed for Liberia in February 1829. On arrival they were delayed by the rainy season, and, tragically, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān died of fever before being able to complete the final leg of his journey home. His brief autobiography, written in Arabic and broken English, recounts his life up to the death of his friend, Mr. Cox.

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‘Umar ibn Sa‘īd (d. 1864), also known as “Prince Moro,” was originally from the region of Futa Toro. Accounts of how he ended up being sold as a slave vary, but he eventually arrived in South Carolina, probably in 1807. Reporters portray him as a man of royal lineage and as a converted and faithful Christian. In 1831 he composed an autobiography in Arabic, later translated in two different versions, both of which were published. He even entered into correspondence with Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” He remained in the United States until his death; the Arabic text of the autobiography, lost since 1925, resurfaced in 1998 and has been published with an introductory analysis.^[17]

In all three cases, the popular press constructed these slaves as “Moors,” as opposed to “Africans”; as royalty (all three were again and again referred to as princes); and as Muslims who worshiped God, in contrast to pagans. The popular press also sought to portray them as potential (or actual) converts to Christianity. But it was their ability to write in Arabic that set each of them on the road to celebrity. In the 1820s even many staunch supporters of slavery were shocked that literate men of noble rank and education were being maintained as slaves; much of the encouragement for setting these men free came from Southern slave owners. In all three cases, the autobiographies were produced at the request of white friends, but the texts clearly draw on features of the Arabic religious biographical tradition (although it is unclear, from the evidence available, whether any of these men had read an Arabic autobiography).

In the nineteenth century, the advent of Arabic printing assured the more rapid dissemination of new texts in the Arab Middle East. The semiautobiographical accounts of travels to Europe such as al-Ṭahṭāwī's Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz ilā talkhīṣ Bārīz (Purified Gold from an Account of Paris Told), published in 1834, as well as experiments in autobiographical fiction such as Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq's al-Sāq ‘alā al-sāq fīmā huwa al-Faryāq (Thigh upon Thigh on the Question of Who Am I), published in 1858, found substantial readerships. In scholarly circles ‘Alī Mubārak published an account of his life in his massive geographic-biographical compendium of Egypt, al-Khiṭaṭ al-tawfīqiyya (1888–89), which was later imitated by Muḥammad Kurd ‘Alī in his six-volume geographic-biographical compendium of Syria, Khiṭaṭ al-Shām (1925–28), which concludes with Kurd ‘Alī's autobiography. In 1898 the famous poet Aḥmad Shawqī prefaced his autobiography to his four-volume anthology of poetry, al-Shawqiyyāt, which unleashed a storm of newspaper commentary. And a wave of political memoirs by figures such as Ibrāhīm Fawzī Pasha (who wrote a personal, and at the time highly controversial, account of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan campaigns) and, later, Nubar Nubarian Pasha (Armenian-Egyptian civil servant), Sa‘d Zaghlūl (Egyptian nationalist leader), and Bābakr Badrī (Sudanese nationalist leader) and a putative autobiography by Aḥmad ‘Urābī (leader of the Egyptian rebellion of 1881–82), also originated in this period.

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In short, these historical clusters of autobiographical production and the myriad individual links among various authors and texts make it clear that Arabic autobiographical writing constituted an often tightly knit literary tradition over many centuries. It is important to note, however, that in only a few of the cases do the autobiographies in these historical clusters actually resemble one another as texts. While the biographical branches of the sīra and tarjama genres remained in formal terms often rigidly conventional, their autobiographical counterparts expanded and evolved beyond the original conventions and purposes of their type. Whereas biographers usually accepted the conventions of earlier examples in their own fields, autobiographers found precedents but did not view them as binding formal models. As a result, the corpus of Arabic autobiographies displays a high degree of formal variety and includes a number of highly idiosyncratic texts. Perhaps this was possible precisely because the production of autobiographical texts remained limited in comparison to that of biographies and prosopographical notices. This degree of variation may also explain why the establishment of different categories or types for Arabic autobiographies in the medieval and premodern periods has proved of such limited usefulness.^[18] Such divisions group together texts that have few formal similarities and at the same time obscure precedents and influences that cut across the boundaries of these heuristic categories.

Whether contact took place between authors or through reading another autobiographer's text, what seems to have been communicated is the autobiographical act as precedent, rather than specific formal characteristics or a sense of what the style or content of an autobiography should be. To whatever degree these authors influenced, motivated, or inspired one another to interpret their lives in literary representations, they did so in a manner that left themselves free to tailor their interpretations to their own individual needs and desires. This history of formal innovation seems to be indicative of an individualistic impulse that is connected in a very significant way to self-portrayal in the Arabic literary tradition.

Authorial Motivations

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The earliest autobiographical texts covered in this survey, those from the ninth through the eleventh century, present themselves directly, with little in the way of framing or justification and no overt concern about how the reader will interpret the fact that the author is writing of himself: Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and al-Rāzī write to defend themselves against their critics; al-Muḥāsibī's brief autobiographical passage is of a spiritual nature and located in a larger guide to his followers; al-Tirmidhī wrote to establish his own spiritual status and did not provide any introduction or dedication for his text; the works of Ibn Ḥawshab, Ja‘far al-Ḥājib, and al-Mu’ayyad al-Shīrāzī are all memoirs of Shi‘ite religiopolitical activities of the tenth and eleventh centuries; Ibn al-Haytham, al-Dānī, and Ibn Riḍwān wrote scholarly reports of their lives without framing devices to articulate the authors' aims beyond the overtly historical. Two texts from the eleventh century, by Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Buluggīn, are notable from the point of view of the emergence of autobiography as a literary act.

The autobiography of Ibn Sīnā has been well known among western scholars for quite some time and has been edited and published from several different sources.^[19] Although written as a scholarly autobiography, it is more detailed than other contemporary examples of this type.^[20] The autobiography focuses on Ibn Sīnā's childhood and youth and ends while he is still a young man. Ibn Sīnā's student, al-Jūzjānī, later continued the text as a biography, providing an account of the remainder of Ibn Sīnā's life.

The appearance of the text in the biographical dictionary ‘Uyūn al-anbā’fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ (The Sources of Knowledge about the Generations of Physicians), by Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a (d. 1270), provides an example of how such texts were transmitted during the Middle Ages. The entry on Ibn Sīnā includes a short introduction by the compiler, the text of the autobiography itself, the biography by al-Jūzjānī, a short bibliography of Ibn Sīnā's works, a selection of his poetry, and a bibliographical addendum.

The autobiography proper has come down to us without any formal preface or dedication. In the various medieval biographical compendiums in which it appears, however, compilers prefaced the text in a way that reveals how it was received. Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a, for example, wrote:

He related his experiences and described his life so that everyone else could dispense with his own account. And therefore we have confined ourselves for that reason to what he related about himself and also to those of his experiences described by Abū ‘Ubayd al-Jūzjānī, the companion of the Shaykh.^[21]

Al-Qifṭī (d. 1248) included Ibn Sīnā's text in his biographical compendium of scientists and physicians, Ta’rīkh al-ḥukamā’ (History of Scientists), which may have been Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a's source, and prefaced the text with the statement: “One of his pupils asked him about his past, and so he dictated what has been recorded from him to [the pupil], which was that he said . . .” A number of the compilers use the Persian term sar-guzasht (recollections) in presenting the text of the autobiography proper, which may well indicate a lingering sense of ambiguity in that period about what Arabic term should be used to describe such a text.^[22]

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The remark by Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a that Ibn Sīnā composed his own account of his life so that others would not do so reflects a concern echoed by a number of later writers. For them, the issue was not to write an (auto)biographical text so that such a text would exist but rather to write an account of their lives before others should do so, thus asserting control over the content and presentation of the material and preventing the spread of factual errors. Ibn ‘Ajība (d. 1809), for example, writes that he discovered that his colleagues and pupils were gathering biographical notes about him: “And therefore, fearing that they might allow some addition or omission to slip into their work, I decided to report, with God's assistance, what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, for that which is transmitted is not that which was actually seen.”^[23] Al-Sakhāwī (d. 1497) notes of ‘Abd al-Ghānī al-Maqdisī that a certain Makkī ibn ‘Umar ibn Ni‘ma al-Miṣrī “collected a tarjama of him before he could collect one himself.”^[24]

The frame created by al-Qifṭī for Ibn Sīnā's autobiographical text, that of writing in response to a request from someone else, is a common prefatory device found in many genres of writing in the Islamic Middle Ages. Whether the request was real or simply a rhetorical device, this opening was deployed by autobiographers and then reused and transmitted by later compilers of biographical compendiums. Al-Sakhāwī, for example, writes that he wrote “a tarjama of himself in response to those who asked him concerning it [ijābatan li-man sa’alahu fīhā].”^[25]

In contrast, the autobiography of ‘Abd Allāh Ibn Buluggīn (d. after 1094) provides explicit, self-conscious justifications for the autobiographical act. In his introduction, Ibn Buluggīn explains that he wishes to portray the truth and that the “intention in this enterprise of mine is not to narrate some entertaining tale [nādiramustaṭrafa] or some strange anecdote [ḥikāya mustaghraba] or an edifying or profitable notion [ma‘nā yu’addī ilā ta’addub wa-intifā‘].”^[26] Rather, he declares that he shall eschew fancy language and embellishment and relate the events of his life directly: “I believe that a continuous narrative is better in both form and composition than one which is cut into pieces. I would like, therefore, to write this work in a manner that flows [smoothly] from topic to topic.”^[27] Among his motives for writing are “to enumerate the blessings of God and to thank Him as is His due, as God has urged in addressing His Prophet: 'And as for the bounty of your Lord, speak!' [Q 93:11]”^[28] and to defend the reign and reputation of his dynasty. These concerns are reiterated in the closing chapter of the work. Perhaps the most striking detail in this passage is that Ibn Buluggīn felt it necessary to justify not the act of recording his life or the history of his family but rather the technique of presenting his work as a coherent narrative instead of as a sequence of carefully substantiated historical anecdotes along with their sources.

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The reference here to Qur’ān 93:11 as part of the motivation for writing an autobiography is intriguing. The same verse is quoted in an earlier, well-known work by another Andalusian writer, Ibn Ḥazm (d. 1064), Ṭawq al-ḥamāmafi al-ulfa wa-l-ullāf (The Neckring of the Dove on Lovers and Love). In the context of discussing fidelity, Ibn Ḥazm writes: “I do not say what I am about to say in order to boast, but simply relying upon the precept of God Almighty Who says, 'And as for the bounty of your Lord, speak!'”^[29] The verse appears to have been deployed as a disclaimer of pride or arrogance when speaking about oneself. Ibn Buluggīn's text provides the earliest-known use of this verse in connection with the writing of an autobiography, but it was later used by a number of Arabic autobiographers in other regions. They could not have picked up this usage from Ibn Buluggīn's autobiography, however, because it did not circulate widely; in fact, it appears to have remained in the original autograph copy of the author or possibly in a single copy made directly from the original. Only one manuscript of the work is extant, that discovered in the library of the Qarawiyyīn Mosque in Fez, Morocco, which was published by E. Lévi-Provençal in the 1930s.^[30] Lisān al-Dīn Ibn al-Khaṭīb saw the autograph copy of Ibn Buluggīn's work on a visit to Aghmāt, Morocco, where he had been held in captivity. Apart from two other brief references to the work, also by fourteenth-century writers, the book seems to have remained completely unknown, uncited, and unreferred to, until this century.^[31]

The next occurrence of Qur’ān 93:11 in an autobiographical text appears to be in Abū Shāma's thirteenth-century work written in Syria, followed by its use nearly two centuries later in the title and preface of al-Suyūṭī's text from Egypt. The use of this verse in three geographically and historically separate instances raises several questions. Are these parallel citations coincidental or related? If the latter, are they related to each other via other autobiographical texts, through Qur’ānic commentaries, or perhaps through other channels such as popular usage of this verse in oral discourse, public sermons, and the like?

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The connection between Qur’ān 93:11 and the act of writing an autobiography is not as direct as might appear at first glance. In the context of this particular chapter of the Qur’ān, “The Morning Light ” (Sūrat al-ḍuḥā), the command “And as for the bounty of your Lord, speak!” is addressed to a singular, male interlocutor identifiable as the Prophet Muhammad:

• In the Name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate!

1. By the morning light!
2. By the darkening night!
3. Your Lord has not forsaken you, nor does He feel spite.
4. The Hereafter is better for you than this [first] life!
5. Your Lord will lavish [bounties] on you and you will know delight.
6. Did He not find you an orphan, then give you respite?
7. Find you unaware, then guide you aright?
8. Find you wanting, and then provide?
9. So as for the orphan, wrong him not!
10. And as for the beseecher, shun him not!
11. And as for the bounty of Your Lord, speak!^[32]

Discussion in many Qur’ānic commentaries is restricted to whether the term “bounty” (ni‘ma: the Arabic is singular, although commonly translated as “blessings”) refers to the Qur’ān itself, so that “speak” would mean “recite,” or, alternatively, to the status of prophethood, in which case “speak” would mean “inform people that you are God's messenger.” The generalization of this verse to apply to anyone other than the Prophet himself is therefore a secondary development, not a close or literal interpretation of the text.^[33]

A preliminary study of the major Qur’ānic commentaries only partly answers these questions. Al-Ṭabarī's tenth-century commentary offers only a synonym for the word “speak,” dhakara, meaning “to mention” or “to state.” It is nonmainstream scholars such as the Mu‘tazilites (a theological school that advocated free will, divine justice, and allegorical interpretation of the Qur’ān) and Shi‘ites (who recognized a series of spiritual leaders after the Prophet Muhammad possessing direct inspiration from God) who first concerned themselves with broader issues and questions. In the case of Qur’ān 93:11, one early treatise, that of the Mu‘tazilite al-Qāḍī ‘Abd al-Jabbār (d. 1025), extends the message of the verse beyond the immediate addressee, the Prophet, to all Muslims, thereby generalizing the obligation of showing one's gratitude for God's blessings to the entire Islamic community. One century later, the commentator al-Zamakhsharī (d. 1144), also a Mu‘tazilite, not only included this broader interpretation but also supported it with a number of Prophetic traditions. More significantly, his text includes the term iqtidā’, “to take as an example or model,” along with an anecdote involving ‘Alī (fourth caliph of the Islamic community and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad) being asked to speak of himself. When he at first refuses, he is reminded of this Qur’ānic verse and only then agrees.

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In most of the major commentaries subsequent to al-Zamakhsharī (with the exception of al-Bayḍāwī's paraphrastic commentary), passages concerning this verse include an ever-larger number of Prophetic traditions in support of the broader interpretation, including examples of members of the Prophet's family speaking of themselves in response to questions and referring directly to the concept of exemplarism. Chronologically, this development roughly parallels the proliferation of autobiographies beginning with the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The large cluster of autobiographies written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Ibn Ḥajar and his students follows immediately on Ibn Ḥajar's own study of the Prophetic traditions cited in al-Zamakhsharī's commentary. Ibn Ḥajar's student al-Suyūṭī includes in his commentary on the Qur’ān a greater number of ḥadīth concerning this verse than any previous or later commentator; and he himself, as already mentioned, inspired several of his own students to write autobiographies. The increasing number of ḥadīth cited in support of this interpretation of the verse may have been inspired by the proliferation of autobiographical writings, and it is clear that the interpretation of this verse as applicable to all Muslims and all blessings, the concomitant growth of autobiographical writings, and the increased anxiety demonstrated in those texts in the fourteenth to the sixteenth century all reflect broader developments in medieval Islamic society and thought.

From the twelfth to the fourteenth century we encounter autobiographical texts written in a number of different forms: scholarly vitas, spiritual guides, conversion narratives, belletristic works, and historical works in which the author plays the central role. Almost none, however, betrays any misgivings on the part of its author about engaging in the act of writing about himself. One exception is Ibn Sa‘īd al-Maghribī (d. 1286), who wrote: “I excuse myself for this desire to write my own biography [tarjamatī] here with the same excuse used by Ibn al-Imām in [his book] Simṭ al-jumān [The String of Pearls], and the excuse of al-Ḥijārī in his book al-Mushib [The Lengthy Account], and Ibn al-Qaṭṭā‘ [d. 1121] in al-Durra [The Pearl].”^[34]

By the end of the fifteenth century, Arabic writers displayed increasing awareness of earlier autobiographical writings. Al-Sakhāwī, writing in 1466, gives a long list of noteworthy Arabic biographies beginning with those of the Prophet in the introduction to his biography of his teacher, Ibn Ḥajar. This list also contains the following references to autobiographies:

1. The historian al-Ṣārim Ibrāhīm ibn Duqmāq al-Ḥanafī collected a tarjama of himself [jama‘ahā li-nafsih].
2. Ibrāhīm ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥīm ibn Jamā‘a collected a tarjama of himself.
3. Iftikhār al-Dīn Ḥāmid ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Khwārizmī al-Ḥanafī wrote a tarjama of himself in one fascicle [tarjama li-nafsih fī juz’ ].
4. Al-Ṣalāḥ Abū al-Ṣafī Khalīl ibn Aybak al-Ṣafadī collected a tarjama of himself.
5. I saw a booklet [kurrāsa] in the script of al-Samaw’al ibn Yaḥyā ibn ‘Abbās al-Maghribī, later al-Baghdādī, in which he states the cause for his conversion to Islam, and it is like a tarjama of himself [wa-huwa shibh al-tarjama li-nafsih].
6. Abū Muḥammad ‘Abd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Ṭā’ī. I think he himself wrote it [aִzunnuhā li-nafsih].
7. Al-Ḥāfiִz ‘Abd al-Ghanī ibn ‘Abd al-Wāḥid al-Maqdisī . . . Makkī ibn ‘Umar ibn Ni‘ma al-Miṣrī collected a tarjama of him before he could collect one on himself [sabaqahu ilā jam‘ihā li-nafsih].
8. Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz ibn Muḥammad al-‘Izz ibn Jamā‘a wrote a fascicle [juz’ ] which he called Ḍaw’ al-shams fīaḥwāl al-nafs [The Light of the Sun on the States of the Self] in which he gave a tarjama of himself [dhakara fīhā tarjamat nafsih].
9. The compiler [of the present work], Abū al-Khayr Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sakhāwī, collected a tarjama of himself in response to those who asked him to do so [ijābatan li-man sa’alahu fīhā].

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10. Al-Shams Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Khiḍr al-‘Ayzarī al-Dimashqī collected a tarjama of himself.^[35]

Of these nine autobiographies, cited haphazardly in the introduction to a biography, only two have come down to us.

As we have seen, authors had begun to write autobiographical texts for a wide variety of purposes by the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and these diverse purposes were reflected in the development of a number of innovative forms: political autobiographies (Ibn Buluggīn, Ibn Ḥawshab, al-Ḥājib Ja‘far), belletristic autobiographies (‘Umāra al-Yamanī, Usāma ibn Munqidh), conversion autobiographies (the Jewish convert Samaw’al al-Maghribī and his later counterpart, the Christian convert ‘Abd Allāh al-Turjumān [ = Fray Anselmo Turmeda]). By the late fifteenth century, when Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī was writing his autobiography, the various threads of development had cross-fertilized and influenced one another such that different types of texts and different authorial motivations are difficult to distinguish. Al-Suyūṭī's autobiography touts scholarly and intellectual achievements; in it the traditional elements of the tarjama have been drastically expanded, reframed as a spiritual duty, and then validated by his citation as precedents of three scholarly autobiographies (al-Fārisī, Ibn Ḥajar, Abū Shāma), two political autobiographies (al-Iṣfahānī, Ibn al-Khaṭīb), one belletristic autobiography (‘Umāra), and two texts that have not come down to us (Yāqūt, Abū Ḥayyān). Notably missing from his list is any overtly spiritual autobiography, although he himself had been ceremonially invested as a Sufi.

A half century later when the Sufi shaykh al-Sha‘rānī wrote his autobiography demonstrating spiritual rather than intellectual achievements, he borrowed al-Suyūṭī's list of earlier autobiographers and added four new names (Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Qurashī, Abū al-Rabī‘ al-Mālaqī, Ṣafī al-Dīn ibn Abī al-Manṣūr, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī) and discreetly dropped ‘Umāra al-Yamanī, whom Saladin had crucified for heresy and possibly treason.^[36] Al-Sha‘rānī, however, recasts the entire list of writers as religious scholars by including the appropriate religious title—shaykh, imām, or mujtahid—for each. He then discusses his reasons for writing an autobiography both in scholarly terms, also borrowed from al-Suyūṭī, and in mystical terms, taken from the works of his Sufi masters. Finally, he composes the body of his text in a completely idiosyncratic manner by listing separately each blessing he has received from God. Not only were the formal features of the textual tradition flexible, but the entire tradition was liable to differing portrayals; it could equally well be characterized as one of scholarly, textual precedents (al-Suyūṭī) or as one of spiritual predecessors (al-Sha‘rānī).

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Autobiographers of the late fifteenth through the nineteenth century, such as al-Sakhāwī, al-Suyūṭī, Ibn Ṭūlūn al-Dimashqī, Ṭāshköprüzāde, al-Sha‘rānī, al-‘Aydarūs, ‘Alī ibn Muḥammad al-‘Āmilī, and Ibn ‘Ajība, all demonstrate their familiarity with the Arabic autobiographical tradition in a variety of ways: by including lists of previous autobiographers in the introductions to their works, by incorporating earlier autobiographies into their own historical or ṭabaqāt works, or by borrowing justifications for writing an autobiography from the prefaces of earlier texts.^[37] On the whole, beginning in the late fifteenth century, Arabic autobiographers become more and more concerned with the careful framing of their texts, the articulation of their motivations, and defending themselves from potential charges of vanity, falsification, and innovation.

Autobiographical Anxieties

Todorov remarks that “the historical existence of genres is signaled by discourse on genres.”^[38] Autobiography, in the form of tarjamat al-nafs, engendered a scholarly and religious discourse in Arabic literature at least as early as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This was the era of al-Suyūṭī, al-Sakhāwī, Ibn Ṭūlūn al-Dimashqī, and al-Sha‘rānī, all of whom included discussions of autobiography in their writings.

The passage cited in the introduction to this volume from one of al-Suyūṭī's autobiographical works presents his justifications for writing an autobiography. These were the obligation to enumerate the blessings one has received from God as an act of thanks, emulation of the many respected figures who had previously composed autobiographical works, and the laudable nature of writing whereby one passes on information of one's life to subsequent generations, to which he appended his claim that he did not write his book out of pride or conceit. Implicit in al-Suyūṭī's argument about autobiography as historical writing is his belief that a firsthand account by the author is more reliable than an account written by others.

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Four decades later, Ibn Ṭūlūn al-Dimashqī (d. 1546) was to write the following in the introduction to his autobiography:

The author of a tarjama sometimes sets it apart in a separate work, as did our teacher Abū al-Fatḥ al-Mizzī (and I have followed him in this here); and sometimes someone else writes a separate work about him (and this is better), as the expert on prophetic tradition Shams al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī did in his work al-Jawāhir wa-l-durar [Jewels and Pearls], a tarjama about his teacher, the great scholar of Islam, Ibn Ḥajar. Our teacher, the historian Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Nu‘aymī followed him in this by writing an independent tarjama of his teacher and ours, the ḥadīth scholar Burhān al-Dīn al-Nājī. But sometimes a tarjama is not set apart in a separate work, but is found within another of the author's works, as our teacher, the consummate scholar Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, did by mentioning himself in his medium-sized book Ṭabaqāt al-nuḥāt [The Generations of Grammarians]. In it he said:

I hoped that there would be some mention of my name in this book to be blessed by, and in imitation of, the deeds of those of my predecessors who mentioned their own names within their writings on history, such as the Imām ‘Abd al-Ghāfir in his al-Siyāq [Continuation],^[39] Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī in his Mu‘jam al-udabā’ [Biographical Dictionary of Writers], Ibn al-Khaṭīb in his Ta’rīkh Gharnāṭa [History of Granada], and al-Taqī al-Fāsī in his Ta’rīkh Makka [History of Mecca]—these latter two wrote their tarjamas at great length—Ibn Ḥajar in his Quḍāt Miṣr [The Judges of Egypt], and innumerable others.^[40] Then there are those who wrote of themselves [in a biographical compendium] under the first letter of their name, such as al-Fāsī and Ibn Ḥajar, and I have followed them in this. There are also those who wrote of themselves at the end of a book, and in the case of Yāqūt this involved a fortunate coincidence since his name begins with Y [the last letter of the Arabic alphabet].

And I [Ibn Ṭūlūn] say: This coincidence also happened to our teacher, the ḥadīth-scholar Jamāl al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn ‘Abd al-Hādī when he wrote an entry on himself and inserted it into his compendium of Ḥanbalī scholars in his book Manāqib Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal [Praiseworthy Qualities of the Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal]; he wrote a lengthy autobiography [aṭāla fī tarjamatih].^[41] I have even heard him recite this aloud and at that time he mentioned to me what the ḥadīth-scholar Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Bukhārī said in his Ṣaḥīḥ, quoting Rabī‘a^[42]: “It is not fitting that anyone who possesses even a small amount of knowledge should allow himself to be forgotten.”^[43]

When Ibn Ṭūlūn declares that it is “better” that someone else write one's biography than to write a text about oneself, it seems clear that it is better, not from a historical, factual point of view, but from a moral or ethical point of view; it spares the author the temptations of pride or arrogance and being accused thereof. It was in fact standard practice for a student to compile a biography of his teacher, sometimes on the basis of autobiographical materials supplied by the teacher. Ibn Ṭūlūn, however, curiously states that he wrote his autobiography at the request of his teacher, Shaykh Muḥyi al-Dīn al-Nu‘aymī, rather than at the far more usual request of a student.

Another major Arabic autobiographer of the sixteenth century, the Sufi shaykh ‘Abd al-Wahhāb al-Sha‘rānī, pulls all of these threads together in his lengthy defense of autobiography. He asserts that autobiography enables others to emulate one's good characteristics, functions as an enduring act of thanks to God that outlives the author, and provides useful information for future generations. Al-Sha‘rānī firmly supports the idea that a firsthand account is more reliable than someone else's rendering and substantiates this argument with quotations from the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur’ān, and the mystical philosopher Ibn al-‘Arabī. His final argument reiterates that, in writing an autobiography, one is following the example of great figures of the past. He closes with a spirited denial that an autobiography is written out of pride.^[44]

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Ibn ‘Ajība, a Moroccan Sufi writing in 1807, also cites the desire for historical accuracy as the primary justification for writing an autobiography. Rather than allow his students to compile a biography—a task that they had apparently already begun—he forestalled their work by writing his own text, preferring to provide a more reliable account himself: “Fearing that they might allow some addition or omission to slip into their work, I decided to report, with God's assistance, what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, for that which is transmitted is not that which was actually seen.”^[45] Ibn ‘Ajība also cites the Qur’ānic injunction to speak of God's bounty and gives a list of famous Sufis who had previously written autobiographies to further justify his undertaking.

The judgment that an autobiography is a more reliable account than a biography fits quite closely with the structure of Islamic historiography and religious sciences in general, where eyewitness accounts were carefully transmitted for centuries in both oral and written form. This advantage from the point of view of historical methodology, however, did not entirely outweigh the fear of stumbling into the moral pitfalls involved in writing about oneself.

This brief historical survey provides a rough sense of how the writing of autobiography became an ever more conscious act within the Arabic literary and historical traditions, an act at times fraught with significant “autobiographical anxieties.” Paradoxically, the need to justify the writing of such a text appears to have grown most intense in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, a period in which the autobiographical act itself had become fully established and quite widespread. Nevertheless, it also seems reasonable that critical debate over a literary genre should intensify after it achieves a certain currency. In any case, just as autobiography itself grew out of a genre, the tarjama, concerned with maintaining the lines of inheritance back to exemplary figures including the Prophet, eventually it too came to carry a legacy, to which its inheritors staked their own claims.

Notes

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