The Autobiography of Ibn al-‘Adīm
(1192/93–1262)
Introduction
When Yāqūt—the most prolific compiler of biographies of his age—set out to write the biographical notice for his close friend Ibn al-‘Adīm, he first asked Ibn al-‘Adīm to write out a history of his family and of himself. Ibn al-‘Adīm assented to his friend's request and in the space of a week wrote a book of ten fascicles; it is probable that he drew on other previously written texts as sources for this work. The final section of this family history was an account of his own life. Yāqūt read the book written for him by Ibn al-‘Adīm and questioned him further on several points in person. He also gathered supplementary material from various members of the family and other persons in Aleppo. After drafting his “biography” of Ibn al-‘Adīm—using many verbatim passages from Ibn al-‘Adīm's autobiography—he had Ibn al-‘Adīm review the text personally and give his explicit approval of the final product.
The text as it has come down to us is thus an autobiography by Ibn al- ‘Adīm as told to Yāqūt, with a mixture of many different voices, the result of an active collaboration between autobiographer and biographer. It is a complex text but one that is fascinating not only for the life that is portrayed therein but also for the light it sheds on the processes of biography and autobiography at the eve of the Mongol invasions. Both Yāqūt the biographer and Ibn al-‘Adīm the autobiographer demonstrate clear concern with establishing the historical facts and documenting the authority by which those facts have been transmitted. Although Ibn al-‘Adīm's own writing forms the foundation of the text, Yāqūt seeks out and quotes external sources for critical points, such as the statement that every male in Ibn al-‘Adīm's family for many generations had memorized the entire Qur’ān. Ibn al-‘Adīm reports this on the authority of his paternal uncle, who reported it from his father (Ibn al-‘Adīm's grandfather), who reported it from his own father (Ibn al-‘Adīm's great-grandfather); Yāqūt then verifies this claim by checking various reputable sources in Aleppo, one of whom he then quotes. Ibn al-‘Adīm shows equal concern with historical accuracy and authority when, for example, he carefully cites two slightly different accounts of how the family originally came to move from Basra to Aleppo.
Yāqūt also seeks out sources for material that Ibn al-‘Adīm was not in a position to report. Thus we are presented with portions of an oral interview conducted with the tutor of Ibn al-‘Adīm's children who had also been a close companion of Ibn al-‘Adīm's deceased father. It is through his voice that we hear of the tragic early death of Ibn al-‘Adīm's brother, of the dramatic cemetery scene in which the father—driven nearly mad with grief—digs up the grave of his son with his bare hands in an attempt to hold the boy's body in his arms one final time, and, finally, of the vision that foretells the birth of Ibn al-‘Adīm and his future success.
Reflections of the uncertain fate of young children are found at several points in the text: the early death of Ibn al-‘Adīm's brother, the father's statement that at first he was not attached to Ibn al-‘Adīm because he was so skinny (i.e., not likely to survive), and the teacher's conditional prediction about Ibn al-‘Adīm on his first day at school (“If this child lives, no one will be able to compete with his [calligraphic] writing”).
Ibn al-‘Adīm eventually achieved the success foretold in his father's vision. He became a well-known historian and wrote not only a history of Aleppo but also a forty-volume biographical dictionary of people associated with Aleppo. (Both Ibn al-‘Adīm and Yāqūt were historians, biographers, and autobiographers, though Yāqūt's autobiography has not survived.) Ibn al-‘Adīm also rose to become a ranking diplomat and served as an emissary to the ‘Abbāsid court in Baghdad in 1257, one year before it was sacked by the Mongols, and then to the Mamluk court in Cairo to seek help in fending off the Mongol invasion that then threatened Aleppo. Following the Mamluk defeat of the Mongol forces at ‘Ayn Jālūt in 1260, he visited Aleppo one last time and composed a long poem describing its devastation. Unable to bear living among the wasted ruins of his hometown, he moved to Egypt, where he died a year later, in 1262. These intellectual and diplomatic achievements, however, are not found in Yāqūt's text, for it was written when Ibn al-‘Adīm was only thirty-one years old and Yāqūt died before Ibn al-‘Adīm achieved his most prominent accomplishments. Ibn al-‘Adīm is therefore portrayed here primarily as a promising young scholar from a prestigious family, a prolific author, and an accomplished calligrapher.[1]
Several points of personal detail in the autobiographical passages com- municate a more intimate tone than most of the biographical entries in Yāqūt's compendium; the childhood memories of school, the story of how Ibn al-‘Adīm's father offered him money to memorize more books, the portrayal of his close relationship with his father, and the reference to his failed first marriage all would probably not have been included in a purely biographical entry. Otherwise, however, the account of his youth reflects standard educational practices of the day, a childhood devoted to memorizing works and reciting them back to reputable teachers, an adolescence spent furthering his education and his skill in calligraphic writing [khaṭṭ], and a young adulthood spent producing his first publications. At the close of the entry, Yāqūt shifts to his own voice to recount Ibn al-‘Adīm's appointment to the Shādhbakht academy at a surprisingly young age, to list Ibn al- ‘Adīm's writings, and finally to cite a poem by Ibn al-‘Adīm followed by a responding poem by himself praising his friend. It is this final poem that indicates that Ibn al-‘Adīm was thirty-one years old at the time this entry was being compiled.
Along with intimate details of Ibn al-‘Adīm's life, Yāqūt includes a number of poems composed by Ibn al-‘Adīm that shed additional light on his life and personality. These poems, the contents of which evolve over the course of the text from externalized referents to ones of a more personal and emotional nature, imbue the auto/biography with additional psychological impact. The interplay between the two roots N-‘-M (blessings, bounty) and ‘-D-M (destitution, deprivation) is a motif that recurs in both the poetry and the prose of the text, demonstrating that the poetry is integral to the text as a whole. It is also closely tied to Yāqūt's curious opening question regarding the family's name, the Banū ‘Adīm (Sons of the Destitute). Ibn al-‘Adīm's denial that the name was ancestral makes clear that the issue carried immediate and personal import; indeed, it seems clear that there was no Banū ‘Adīm family, as modern scholars have assumed, but rather a single Ibn al-‘Adīm (Son of the Destitute). The text lingers over Ibn al-‘Adīm's father and in many ways is devoted to the psychological portrayal of a son determined to rise above the tribulations and trials suffered by his father (the losses of the judgeship of Aleppo and of his firstborn son) and to continue the older, more august strain of the family's history.
In this translation, all passages reported in Ibn al-‘Adīm's voice appear in boldface. The text opens with a list of the generations of Ibn al-‘Adīm's family back to ‘Adnān, legendary progenitor of the northern Arabs. The following chart shows the fourteen most recent generations of Ibn al-‘Adīm's family.
Bibliography
Missing
‘Umar ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Jarāda, known as Ibn al-‘Adīm
[Irshād, pp. 18–46]
From the ‘Uqaylī tribe. His agnomen is Abū al-Qāsim and his surname is Kamāl al-Dīn. He is one of the notables and elite of Aleppo. His full name is ‘Umar, son of Aḥmad, son of Hibat Allāh, son of Muḥammad, son of Hibat Allāh, son of Aḥmad, son of Yaḥyā, son of Zuhayr, son of Hārūn, son of Mūsā, son of ‘Īsā, son of ‘Abū Allāh, son of Muḥammad, son of Abū Jarāda, one of the companions of the caliph ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib—may God's blessings be upon him. Abū Jarāda's full name was ‘Āmir, son of Rabī‘a, son of Khuwaylid, son of ‘Awf, son of ‘Āmir, son of ‘Uqayl (father of the tribe of the Ibn Ka‘b), son of ‘Āmir, son of Ṣa‘ṣa‘a, son of Mu‘āwiya, son of Bakr, son of Hawāzin, son of Manṣūr, son of ‘Ikrima, son of Ḥafsa, son of Qays, son of ‘Aylān Muḍar, son of Nizār, son of Ma‘add, son of ‘Adnān.
The Banū Jarāda house is a famous Aleppan family of literati, poets, jurists, pious worshipers, and judges who inherit nobility and virtue from earlier generations and pass them on to later ones. Before I begin my account of Ibn al-‘Adīm, I will first report on the history of his family and some of its most famous members, after which I will give an account of him, copying the information from a book Ibn al-‘Adīm composed—may God extend his life—that he titled al-Akhbār al-mustafāda fī dhikr Banī Jarāda [A Useful History of the Banī Jarāda Family]. I have read this [account of his life] back to him and he has approved it.
First I asked him: Why is your family called the Banū al-‘Adīm [lit. “Sons of the Destitute”]?
Ibn al-‘Adīm replied: I have inquired among my family about that and they do not know. It is a recent name, not an ancestral one. My best guess is that my great-grandfather, the judge Abū al-Faḍl Hibat Allāh, son of Aḥmad, son of Yaḥyā, son of Zuhayr, son of Abū Jarāda, though he had great wealth and lived in complete contentment [ni‘ma shāmila, often spoke of destitution [Ar. ‘adam and complained of the tribulations of time in his poetry, and so was named accordingly. I can think of no reason other than this.[2]
Ibn al-‘Adīm said to me: My uncle Jamāl al-Dīn Abū Ghānim Muḥammad, son of Hibat Allāh, told me, “When I had memorized the Qur’ān, my father—may he rest in peace—kissed me between the eyes, wept, and said, `Thanks be to God, my son. This is exactly what I had hoped for and expected from you. Your grandfather told me that among our forefathers, going all the way back to the Prophet—upon whom be peace—there was no one among us who did not memorize the entire Qur’ān.'”
The author [Yāqūt] says: This is an honorable trait the like of which I do not know of among other men. I inquired about its veracity among the people of Aleppo and they assured me that it is true. Zayn al-Dīn Muḥammad, son of ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Niṣṣībī, told me: “Forget about the past and look to the present for proof. For I can count for you each living member of the Banū Jarāda family, and there is not one among them who has not completely memorized the Qur’ān.” He started listing them one by one, and not a single one among them broke this rule.
Ibn al-‘Adīm—may God extend his life—told me: The descendants of the Banū Abī Jarāda used to live in Basra, in the Banū ‘Uqayl quarter there. The first [of our family] to move away from Basra was Mūsā, son of ‘Īsā, son of ‘Abd Allāh, son of Muḥammad son of ‘Āmir, who, after the year 200 [815], came to Aleppo for trade.
Ibn al-‘Adīm told me: My uncle Abū Ghānim Muḥammad, son of Hibat Allāh, son of Muḥammad, descendant of Abū Jarāda, also told me, “I heard my father mention, based on information he received from his forefathers, that our ancestor had come from Basra to Syria on business and settled in Aleppo.” [My uncle also] said, “I heard my father say that he heard that when Basra was visited by the plague, a group of the Banū ‘Uqayl left it and went to Syria, and our ancestor settled in Aleppo.” [My uncle also] said, “The sons of Mūsā[3] wereMuḥammad, Hārūn and ‘Abd Allāh. Muḥammad had a son named ‘Abd Allāh, and I do not know whether or not this ‘Abd Allāh had any progeny. Those who are alive today are the descendants ofHārūn, our own ancestor, and of ‘Abd Allāh, and these latter are our uncles.”
[Here follow several pages on the individual descendants of both ‘Abd Allāh and Hārūn, all extracted from Ibn al-‘Adīm's Useful History. Yāqūt closes the account of the family with a notice on the life of Ibn al-‘Adīm's father and then turns his attention to Ibn al-‘Adīm himself.][4]
This is what I [Yāqūt] copied in summary form from the book I mentioned earlier, and these are but a sampling of this family's many virtues. Now I will mention my subject, Kamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Qāsim ‘Umar, son of the Judge Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad, son of the Judge Abū al-Faḍl Hibat Allāh, son of the Judge Abū Ghānim Muḥammad, son of the Judge Abū Sa‘īd Hibat Allāh, son of the Judge Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad descendant of Abū Jarāda. All of these ancestors of his were judges of the Ḥanafī school of law in Aleppo and its dependencies, and he is our current subject.
[Passage in rhymed prose praising Ibn al-‘Adīm][5]
I asked Ibn al-‘Adīm—may God preserve his exalted state—about his birth and he told me: I was born in the month of Dhū al-Ḥijja in the year 588 [ = December 1192]. When I was seven years old I was taken to [Qur’ān] school and seated in front of the teacher who began instructing me as one would instruct a little child, drawing a line and placing three [letter] S's upon it. I took the pen from him and, having seen him write the word bism and extend it, I did the same so that my writing resembled his own.[6]Surprised, the teacher turned to those around him and said, “If this child lives, no one will be able to compete with his writing.”
[Yāqūt notes]: By my life, the teacher's prophecy has come true, for his writing is certainly better than that of all those who came before him as far back as Ibn al-Bawwāb.[7]
Ibn al-‘Adīm said: I finished memorizing the Qur’ān when I was nine years old, and could recite the Qur’ān in all ten variant readings when I was ten.Penmanship and calligraphy [khaṭṭ] appealed to me and my father encouraged me to pursue this.
The teacher of Ibn al-‘Adīm's son, Shaykh Yūsuf, son of ‘Alī, son of Zayd al-Zuhrī al-Maghribī al-Adīb, told me in Ibn al-‘Adīm's presence: This man's father (and he pointed to Ibn al-‘Adīm) told me, “A number of girls had been born to me, but I had only one son. This son was extremely good-looking, handsome, intelligent, and bright, and he had memorized a good portion of the Qur’ān by the time he was five. One day I happened to be sitting in a room of ours that overlooked the street when a funeral procession passed by. That child watched the procession, then turned to me and said: `Father, if I were to die, what would you cover my coffin with?' I scolded him, but felt extremely worried about him at that moment.”
“No more than a few days passed before he fell ill and passed on to God's mercy and joined his Lord. I was stricken with grief over his death as no father has ever been stricken for the death of a child. I stopped eating and drinking, and sat in a darkened room enjoining myself to be steadfast, but I could not endure his loss. In my extreme grief, I went to his grave and dug it up myself, and I intended to take him out and console myself by seeing him again. It was due to God's will and His kindness, to either the child or to me—lest I see what I would not like—that I encountered a large rock that I could not remove no matter how hard I tried despite the strength for which I was well known. When I noted that moving the rock was beyond me, I realized that this was from God's pity on the child or on me. So I chided myself and, after returning his grave to its previous state, I went home filled with feelings of loss and longing.”
“Afterward I saw the child in a dream, and he was saying, `Father, let my mother know that I want to come to you.' I awoke startled and informed his mother of what I had seen. We cried and invoked God's mercy and said, `We are God's and to Him we shall return.' Then, in my sleep, I had a vision of a [shaft of] light that appeared to come out of my male member and hang above our houses and the entire quarter, rising up to a great height. When I woke up, I had the vision interpreted and I was told, `Rejoice, for this is news of a newborn who will be of prodigious worth and great importance, whose renown will be as great among people as the greatness of the light that appeared to you.' So I rejoiced in God, Almighty and Exalted, and I invoked and thanked Him. I fortified myself after my despair, for I had exceeded the age of forty.”
“A short time later, the mother of this boy—my son (and he pointed to Ibn al-‘Adīm—may God always support him)—completed her term and gave birth to him on the aforementioned date. But he was at first not as sweet to my heart as my first son had been, for he was very skinny. As he grew older, however, he grew in stature and worth, and I invoked God many times regarding him. I asked God for many things for him, and—thanks be to God—I have seen most of these requests realized in him.”
[The teacher added]: One day in my presence a man said to [Ibn al-‘Adīm's father], as people are wont to say, “May God give you the pleasure of seeing him a judge like his forefathers before him!” He said, “I do not want that for him. My desire is that he should become a teacher.” [Yāqūt notes]: God fulfilled that wish after his [i.e., Ibn al-‘Adīm's father's] death.
[Yāqūt, summarizing from the Useful History, writes:] He heard ḥadīth from a number of people in Aleppo, some who are settled there and others who were passing through. He also heard much from al-Shaykh al-Sharīf Iftikhār al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib al-Hāshimī. Twice, in 603 [1206/7] and 608 [1211/12], his father took him to Jerusalem, where he met a number of shaykhs, and he also met shaykhs in Damascus. On both trips he read much of what one now hears from him with Tāj al-Dīn Abī al-Yumn.
Ibn al-‘Adīm—may God preserve his high worth—told me: My father told me, “If you memorize the Luma‘,I will give you such and such.” I memorized it and read it to the Aleppan shaykh of the day who was al-Ḍiyā’ ibn Duhn al-Ḥaṣā. Then he told me, “If you memorize al-Qudūrī, I will give you a good amount of money as well.” I memorized it quickly.[8]
During that time I used to practice calligraphic writing. My father—may he rest in peace—used to encourage me in that, polishing the paper for me himself. I remember one time when we were out at a village of ours and he ordered me to write, whereby I said, “There is no good paper here.” So he took some low-quality paper that we had and some ceruse mixture we had with us, and polished the paper with it himself, saying to me, “Write!” His own handwriting was not particularly good, but heknew the principles of calligraphy and used to tell me, “This is good, and this is bad.”
He had samples in the hand of Ibn Bawwāb in his possession and used to point out its principles and rules to me until I perfected it to my satisfaction. I did not study calligraphic writing with any renowned teacher, but Tāj al-Dīn Muḥammad, son of Aḥmad, son of al-Birfatī al-Baghdādī, came to visit us in Aleppo and I wrote under his direction for a few days, but got no additional benefit from him.
Later on, my father—may he rest in peace—got me engaged and married me to a woman from the elite of Aleppo, and he took the family the gifts customary on such occasions. But things happened between us [i.e., the woman and Ibn al-‘Adīm] that caused constraint to my heart. So my father let them keep those gifts and I got divorced. After that, he got me married to the daughter of the great shaykh Bahā’ al-Dīn Abū al-Qāsim ‘Abd al-Majīd, son of al-Ḥasan, son of ‘Abd Allāh, known as al-‘Ajamī [“the Persian”],who is the head of the Shafi‘ite community and among the wealthiest, most prestigious, and highest-ranking people in Aleppo. My father sent them the bridal gift and was exceedingly generous and kind.
My father—may he rest in peace—was extremely kind and generous to me. He enjoyed nothing more in the world than seeing to my affairs, and he used to say, “My wish is [to live long enough] to see you with a son and to see him [old enough to] walk.” My son Aḥmad was born and my father saw him. My father lived to a ripe old age and then fell ill with his final illness. The day he died, the child walked [for the first time] and fell upon his breast, and then my father died, on the aforementioned date.
Al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Ghāzī, son of Saladin, ruler of Aleppo—may he rest in peace—used to show me great honor. Whenever I was at his court, he never treated anyone better than he treated me, despite my youth.
In the year 618 [1220/21], I happened to fall ill, and people despaired for my life. But during that illness it occurred to me that God Almighty would no doubt restore my health, for I had confidence in the vision my father had seen; I would say, “I have not yet achieved a position that would fulfill that vision.” When God—thanks be to Him—generously restored my health, I forgot all about those imaginings, and I no longer think about them, for God's blessings enfold me and His hand continuously supports my rights.
[At this point there appears to be a conflation between Yāqūt's voice and that of Ibn al-‘Adīm, perhaps as a result of summarizing from the autobiographical section of the Useful History; the passage starts in the first-person voice but soon shifts to the third person, possibly so that Yāqūt could add the passages of praise that could not, for modesty's sake, be included in Ibn al-‘Adīm's own voice.]
I say: Some time after my father died, the Shādhbakht academy's professor of law passed away as well, the Shādhbakht being the most esteemed and important of Aleppo's academies. He [i.e., Ibn al-‘Adīm] was then appointed professor there in the month of Dhū al-Ḥijja 615 [1219], at the age of twenty-eight. Even though Aleppo was teeming with jurists, scholars, shaykhs, and other learned persons, he alone was considered capable enough and deserving enough of that position. He achieved prominence and lectured with a strong heart and sharp tongue, and he mesmerized the audience and pleased them.
Despite his youth, he has written many books, among which is the Kitāb al-Darārī fī dhikr al-dharārī [The Book of Pearls on the Mentioning of Offspring] that he compiled for [the above-mentioned ruler] al-Malik al-Ẓāhir and which he presented to him on the day his son, al-Malik al-‘Azīz, Aleppo's current sultan, was born. He had also compiled the KitābḌaw’ al-ṣabāḥ fī al-ḥathth ‘alā al-samāḥ [The Book of Morning Light on Provoking Generosity] for al-Malik al-Ashraf who had sent for him from Harran; after he saw a sample of Ibn al-‘Adīm's writing, he desired to meet him. Ibn al-‘Adīm went to him and al-Malik al-Ashraf treated him well and honored him, and bestowed a robe of honor upon him.
He also compiled the al-Akhbār al-mustafāda fī dhikr Banī Jarāda [Useful History of the Abī Jarāda Family]. I asked him to do this, and in the space of a week he did so. It is ten fascicles in length. He also has a book on calligraphy concerning its principles, requirements, rules, pens and papers, as well as the ḥadīth and bons mots that have been said about it. It is still incomplete at this time.
[Also] Kitāb Ta’rīkh Ḥalab [History of Aleppo], a history of Aleppo's kings and rulers, its founding, and an account of the scholars who lived in it and those scholars of ḥadīth and religious knowledge who came to it, as well as its kings, princes, and authors.
[Here follows a passage in rhymed prose by Yāqūt in praise of Ibn al-‘Adīm and his writing, followed by his account of the monetary worth of the latter.]
He became renowned throughout the land, and his calligraphy was famed among those near and far. It became a gift among kings, like precious pearls strung on strings. In his own lifetime he is considered an exemplar, an ideal for all his contemporaries.
One reason people seek samples of his calligraphic writing is that one day he bought a single sheet of Ibn al-Bawwāb's writing for forty dirhams. He copied it on a piece of antique paper and gave it as a gift to [the bookseller] Ḥaydar al-Kutubī, who claimed that it was in the hand of Ibn al-Bawwāb himself and later sold it for sixty dirhams, twenty dirhams more than the price of the authentic sample of Ibn al-Bawwāb!
Ibn al-‘Adīm wrote this text for me in his own hand, and contemporary scribes have offered me an Egyptian dinar for it, knowing that it is in his hand, but I cannot bring myself to sell it. He also wrote a piece in thirteen columns for me that he had copied from a sample by Ibn al-Bawwāb. I was offered forty Nāṣirī dirhams for it—the equivalent of four gold dinars—but I did not sell it. I know for a fact that Ibn al-Bawwāb's writing was never so highly valued during his own lifetime, nor did anyone pay such prices for it.
Here follows another section concerning Ibn al-‘Adīm's calligraphic writing, followed by several samples of his poetry translated below.]
[Yāqūt writes]: [Ibn al-‘Adīm]—may God cause his high status to endure—recited for me a love poem in which he used a curious motif:
[Ibn al-‘Adīm] himself recited for me in his home in Aleppo [these verses] in the month of Dhū al-Ḥijja, 619 [1222], and he dictated [them to me]:
Slender and honey-lipped, I imagined that
in his cheeks was a press [‘āṣir] for wine,That causes the most delicious of wines to flow to his mouth,
a nectar that over years [a‘āṣir] has been aged.From this his figure grows drunk and unsteady,
he sways haughtily, with languid eyes,As if the prince of sleep were lowering his eyelids,
when he attempts to raise them, his eyes decline.I was alone with him after all his people had retired,
the stars of Gemini slipped away and the night protected us.My palm was his pillow and he slept in my embrace,
until the morning's pure light first appeared.Then he arose, casting off the night's chill, untouched,
and I rose as well, having given no cause for rebuke.This is the sweetest form of love, for its ending was
blameless, a tryst unsullied by guilt.
[Yāqūt comments:] Whoever reads these lines should not be deluded into thinking that the author of these verses is of poor or modest means; quite the reverse, for he—may God protect him!—is the owner of extensive villages and many estates; he possesses great wealth, many slaves and serving women, horses and livestock, fine clothes and robes. Take for example the fact that following his father's death he paid thirty thousand dirhams for a house that had once belonged to his family. But he is expansive of spirit and a man with high ambitions; verily, the desires of this world are in proportion to those who crave them, and the yearnings for them are in proportion to those who seek them. [Ibn al-‘Adīm] also recited for me at his home on the same date [the following verses]:
She of bewitching eyes and honeyed deep-red lips,
Her mouth bestows a cure for every thirst.She arched her brows at me and loosed
arrows from her eyes into my soul.A wonder is her [sweet] saliva, so pure
and permitted, yet now it is forbidden to me.If it were wine, what wine could possess its color
and its flavor? Though I have never tasted either.She has a residence in the district of my heart, its place
is well-guarded there, ever since she made it her own.Her love's course is the flow of my life, intermixed
is her love with my soul, my flesh, and my blood.“How long will you live so unhappy,” she says to me,
“content in not becoming whole, resigned?Go seek your fortune in God's [wide] lands,
perchance you will find a rescuer if you wish, or, if you wish, an accuser.”I said to her, “He who created Mankind
has graciously blessed and secured for me sustenance.It does me no harm to be lord only of virtues
and knowledge, strong-willed, free and respected.If I am made destitute [‘udimat kifāya] of wealth and fortune,
my soul is safeguarded from humiliation and deprivation.I have not dedicated my life to serving knowledge
in order to serve those I meet, but in order to be served.”
[Ibn al-‘Adīm] also recited for me in his home, emulating others of his relatives in their family pride:
Beware your paternal cousin, for he is [as two-faced] as a book [muṣaḥḥaf]
and your close relative, for he is as crooked [aḥraf] as letters [uḥruf].The letter qaf is for the grave [qabr] he digs for you,
the letter rā’ is the death [radā] he plots for you.The letter yā’ is your perpetual despair [ya’s] that any good might come of him,
the letter bā’ is the ever-present hatred [baghd] you get from him.Accept this advice as a gift from me,
for when it comes to cousins, I know best![9]
Ibn al-‘Adīm recited to me the following verses that he had composed when he noted his first gray hairs, at the age of thirty-one:
I shall force myself to pardon all wrongs committed against me
and shall forgive them as an act of nobility and generosity.I shall use my wealth, as well as my honor, as a protective safeguard,
even if this does not leave me with a single dirham.I shall follow the paths of the most righteous, those who earned their high rank
and attained it from whomsoever approached through their good deeds.These are my people, great benefactors, men of power,
the Banū ‘Āmir—so ask about them so that you may learn [of them].Whenever they are called during times of trouble, when the situation is grim,
with their speech they cast light upon what was in darkness.Whenever they sit in the gathering to make judgment they are like
full moons in the darkness and the others around them like stars.Whenever they ascend the pulpit to deliver a sermon,
they are more eloquent than any who ever in preaching spoke.Whenever they pick up their pens to write,
they are better than any who ever ornamented a page.Their words clarify their excellence
and their judgments have made the religious law secure.Their invocations [to God] remove tribulations when they occur,
and bring down drops of water from the heavens' horizons.A woman [wife?] says to me: “O Ibn al-‘Adīm [Son of the Destitute] how long
shall you be so generous with all you possess? You'll be destitute [mu‘dam]!”So I said to her: “Leave me be!
for I believe that the best of people are the generous [mun‘im].I reject meanness, [for] I am of noble origin, from a family
of the ‘Uqayla tribe, who radiate with generosity and munificence.”
One day I went to [Ibn al-‘Adīm] and he said to me, “Do you not see, I am now but thirty-one years old, and I have just found some white hairs in my beard.” So I said of him:
Dawn on the horizon is but a sign or mark
of the passage of night and its period of dark,So also does youthful growth come close to dryness
when in its [dark] field there first appears brightness.
Congratulations, [Ibn al-‘Adīm], for a virtue that you like
and a blessing of which no one before you has received the like,Your forehead is busy its youth to assure
while the attainment of noble goals remains your cynosure,At this decade of your life you have become complete
in glory with which your elders cannot compete,When with wisdom and understanding you matured
your beneficence was perfected with white hair, premature.[10]
Notes
1. The terms kataba and kitāba (“to write” and “writing”), often used with reference to the quality of Ibn al-‘Adīm's handwriting, also emphasize the fact that he was a prolific author, another possible interpretation of his teacher's statement: “If this child lives, no one will be able to compete with his writing” (la yakūn fī al-‘ālam aktab minhu). Other terms used in the text in reference to his writing are khaṭṭ (tracing, inscribing) and tajwīd (perfecting, beautifying). [BACK]
2. In fact, no other member of the family is known by this name, whether in Yāqūt's biographical compendium or elsewhere. This suggests that the name was even more recent than Ibn al-‘Adīm implies and that it was attached primarily to him because of his father who had suffered great losses in his life and career. This explains why Ibn al-‘Adīm could not find any explanation for it. It also explains why the issue was considered important enough to be raised and included in the account. From the outset, Yāqūt allows his subject to rationalize a name that is the antithesis of ni‘ma, the blessings that autobiographers often cite as a reason for writing accounts of their lives. [BACK]
3. Ibn al-‘Adīm's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. [BACK]
4. Yāqūt al-Rūmī, Irshād al-arīb ilā ma‘rifat al-adīb (Mu‘jam al-udabā’, ed. D. S. Margoliouth (Cairo: Hindiyya Press, 1907–26), 6:20–35. [BACK]
5. Ibid., 35–36. [BACK]
6. Bism means “in the name of” and is the first word of the basmalah [bism Allāh al-raḥmān al-raḥīm], “In the name of God the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate,” a favorite subject for calligraphic art and commonly placed at the top of the opening page of any piece of writing. [BACK]
7. Ibn Bawwāb (d. 1022) is the copyist of the first known cursive-script Qur’ān manuscript (Chester Beatty Library, 1431, dated [A.H. 391/1000–1 C.E.). His achievement, according to the medieval commentators, was to refine the methods invented by Ibn Muqla, investing the script with “elegance and splendor.” Ibn Muqla (d. 940), who also appears in Yāqūt's entry on Ibn al-‘Adīm, is the ‘Abbāsid minister who reformed Qur’ānic scripts through the invention of the “six pens,” or types of writing. This reform replaced the older Qur’ānic scripts with new ones whose primary qualities were clarity and precision. An important study of these reforms, which places them within the context of ‘Abbāsid-Fatimid polemics, is Yasser Tabbaa, “The Transformation of Arabic Writing: Part I, Qur’ānic Calligraphy,” Ars Orientalis 21 (1991): 119–48. Nuha N. N. Khoury is currently preparing a study on the implications of the text for the aesthetics and meaning of Ibn al-‘Adīm's writing. [BACK]
8. Al-Qudūrī (d. 1037) is the author of al-Mukhtaṣar, one of two foundational texts on Ḥanafī jurisprudence (the other being the Mabsūṭ of Sarakhsī, d. 1090). The Luma‘, the author of which is not mentioned, is probably Ibn Jinnī's work on Arabic language and grammar or another short treatise on law. This “curriculum” implies that Ibn al‘Adīm was being groomed by his father for a career in law. [BACK]
9. The letters cited in the poem (q-r-y-b) spell out the Arabic word “relative,” qarīb. [BACK]
10. The early appearance of gray hair plays a similarly prominent role in the autobiography of Ibn al-‘Adīm's contemporary, Abū Shāma (translated in this volume). [BACK]