Humor in Early Islam (Brill Classics in Islam)

Humor in Early Islam

Brill Classics in Islam VOLUME 6

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/bcii.

Humor in Early Islam by

Franz Rosenthal with an introduction by

Geert Jan van Gelder

LEIDEN • BOSTON LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

Cover illustration: “Wandering musicians and entertainers two of whom are dressed in goat skins.” Attributed to Mîrzâ Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynî and dated I(0)22/1613. Freer Gallery of Art, No. 07.157. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

ISSN 1872-5481 ISBN 978 90 04 21148 3 Copyright 1956 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS Foreword����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓������ vii List of plates����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�ix Introduction����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�xi  Geert Jan van Gelder    I. Materials for the study of Muslim humor����������������������������������尓��������������1   II. The historical personality of Ashʿab����������������������������������尓����������������������17 III. The Ashʿab legend����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓����������������� 27 IV. Conclusion����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�������������������������������34    V. Translation of texts����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓���������������36 Appendix: On laughter����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓����������������132 Bibliography����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�����������������������������������139 Index of selected rare or explained Arabic words����������������������������������尓���142 Index of proper names����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓����������������147

FOREWORD This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is. This is the common air that bathes the globe.

The following pages are a further small installment of my studies on significant aspects of Muslim man. Others have already been published in various periodicals. Here, the tremendous mass of material on Muslim humor has been boiled down to its historical essentials. I hope that I have achieved that conciseness of presentation which is all too easily sinned against in the field of Islamic research. I trust that nobody will consider it my fault that the translations take up more space than my own remarks. Arabic works tend to be prolix, and though we are grateful to Arabic authors for their labors because much valuable information would otherwise be lost, we do not have to vie with them as to the quantity and size of literary production. A translation, however, must be complete or at least omit nothing that belongs to the subject and is able to illuminate it. The “chains of transmitters” are particularly obnoxious to anyone who wants to derive true intellectual enjoyment from reading our stories. Nevertheless, they have been retained because they conceal a good deal of crucial information on the early literary history of Muslim humor, and only an understanding of that history€can reveal to us the role that humor played as a leaven in Eastern medieval€society. My thanks are due to the libraries which I was privileged to consult, in particular those which permitted me to use their manuscript treasures. In view of the fact that most publications of adab works leave much to be desired, it would have been advisable in many instances to have recourse to manuscripts in order to check the available editions. However, there is a limit to what can be done in this respect by the individual researcher, and I have paid attention mainly to unpublished texts. Readers of this booklet no less than its author are greatly indebted to Dr. Richard Ettinghausen for giving them an opportunity to observe how Muslim humor expressed itself in another medium, that of the

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visual arts. Dr. Ettinghausen kindly supplied me with a number of photographs in which humorous scenes are depicted, occasionally with greater finesse than we find in the spoken and written word. A small selection of these pictures has been reproduced here. Permission to do so was generously granted by the present owners of the originals as indicated in the list of plates (p. ix).

LIST OF PLATES I. “Wandering musicians and entertainers two of whom are dressed in goat skins.” Attributed to Mîrzâ Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynî and dated 1(0)22/1613. Freer Gallery of Art, No. 07.157. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Paraphrase of an earlier version in the style of and possibly by Muḥammadî (third quarter of the sixteenth century), in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, which includes a third goat dancer. Cf. F. R. Martin, The Miniature Painting and Painters of Persia, India and Turkey, vol. 2, pl. 102 A (London 1912). At least two other versions of the drawing by Muḥammadî are known. The Freer miniature is unpublished. The subject was formerly thought to represent dervishes, cf. F. W. Arnold, Painting in Islam 112 f. and pl. XLVII (Oxford 1928). II. “Contortionist upon a column.” Detail of a wooden panel from the Coptic monastery Dayr al-Banât in Old Cairo, now in the Coptic Museum, No. 835. Fâṭimid period, middle of the eleventh century. A detailed discussion of this object by R. Ettinghausen will appear in the near future. III. “A glutton at dinner.” From a manuscript of the Maqâmât of al-Ḥarîrî in the Asiatic Museum of the Academy of Sciences, Leningrad. Undated, but probably written and painted between 1230 and 1240, as the miniatures of the manuscript are related to those in the Ms. ar. 5847 of the Bibliothèque Nationale, which is dated 634/1237 and like the Leningrad manuscript of ʿIrâqî origin. Cf. P. W. Schulz, Die persisch-islamische Miniaturmalerei, vol. 2, pl. 9 A (Leipzig 1914). IV. “Two men fighting with each other.” Persian tile from about 1300, in the possession of the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, Md. Courtesy of the Walters Art Gallery. V. “A child dancing on a dais or tightrope.” From the same wooden panel as pl. II.

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VI. “A beggar receiving a handout at the garden gate.” Detail of a miniature showing “A prince being entertained in a garden pavilion”, illustrating Subḥat al-abrâr in a manuscript of Jâmî’s Haft Awrang written for Sulṭân Abû l-Fatḥ Ibrâhîm Mîrzâ, a nephew of Shâh Ṭahmâsp, in Khurâsân between 963 and 972/1556-65. Freer Gallery of Art, No. 46.12, fol. 179b, unpublished. A publication of this manuscript by the Freer Gallery is in preparation. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art. VII. “Cupping attracts a large audience.” From the same manuscript as pl. III. Cf. Schulz, op. cit. vol. 2, pl. 6 A; E. Kuhnel, Miniaturmalerei im islamischen Orient, pl. 10 (Berlin 1923). VIII. “Al-Ma’mûn being shaved in the Ḥammâm.” Illustration to Makhzan al-asrâr in a Khamseh manuscript of Niẓâmî dated 955/1548 and executed in Shîrâz. Freer Gallery of Art, No. 08.261. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art. Cf. G. D. Guest, Shiraz Painting in the Sixteenth Century, especially, pp. 33-35 and pl. 3 (Washington 1949. Freer Gallery of Art Oriental Studies, No. 4). IX. “Two drunkards assisting each other to rise.” Persian, about 1575. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, No. 51.37.32. Courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Cf. E. Schroeder, Iranian Book Painting. An Introduction, fig. 6 (New York 1940). X. “Street scene with a worn-out horse.” Detail from an illustration of a horse market in Silsilat adh-dhahab in the Jâmî manuscript mentioned in connection with pl. VI. Freer Gallery of Art 46.12, fol. 38b, unpublished. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art. XI. “An acrobat standing upon his head.” From the same wooden panel as pl. II.

INTRODUCTION Geert Jan van Gelder Franz Rosenthal (Berlin, 31 August, 1914–Branford, CT, USA, 8 April, 2003) was one of the most versatile of scholars. He produced important works on the Aramaic language, but his main contribution is to Arabic and Islamic studies. He is the author of standard works on Muslim historiography, epistemology, the Greek tradition in Islam, and the technique of Muslim scholarship. He wrote pioneering books on various aspects of Islamic culture: gambling, hashish, freedom, complaint and hope, and many articles on such diverse topics as autobiography, suicide, sex in Muslim society, being a stranger, the ventilation shaft as a poetic motif, the number nineteen, and Arabic “blurbs”,1 which means that by rights he should have written this introductory and laudatory essay himself. He made a richly annotated three-volume translation of Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddimah and contributed two volumes (the opening and the concluding ones) to the translation of al-Ṭabarī’s great History. It seems that a few of these many topics had some connections with his life; I have been informed (but have forgotten the isnād, or supporting chain of authoritative transmitters) that he practised gambling, not to win money but for fun, as a regular pastime, kept well under control. As an emigrant to the United States in 1940 (he had left Germany in 1938) he was familiar with being a “stranger”. The question whether or not he used hashish he himself answered obliquely by saying that he had written on suicide but without practising it. He was a true man of letters, who used his great skills as a philologist and his vast erudition to understand and explain cultures in their intellectual, social, and literary aspects. In line with the precept often expressed in mediaeval Arabic literature that a true adīb (literate and erudite person) should judiciously mix seriousness and jesting, he also produced a seminal€work on Arabic humour, the re-published volume presently in the reader’s hand. Again, it seems that the topic was not

1  “ ‘Blurbs’ (Taqrîẓ) from Fourteenth-Century Egypt”, Oriens 27–28 (1981) 177–96. For a bibliography of his writings see Oriens 36 (2001), pp. xiii–xxxiv.

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wholly detached from the personality of the author: an obituarist speaks of Rosenthal’s “dry and sometimes cutting humor”.2 It is well known that for the serious study of humour it helps to be a native speaker of German; a Viennese neurologist, Sigmund Freud (d. 1939) wrote a monograph on the joke and its relationship to the unconscious (Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten) and an article “Der Humor”; but this author, perhaps being too obscure, is not quoted by Rosenthal. The tradition has been continued in Arabic studies after Rosenthal, by scholars such as Ulrich Marzolph, especially in his study and inventory of jokes, Arabia ridens,3 Kathrin Müller in her studies of anecdotes and expressions denoting excessive laughter,4 and Ludwig Ammann, in his study of Islamic attitudes towards laughter.5 Rosenthal, for the great benefit of those many unfortunate people who do not know German, wrote most of his works in English. The introduction of Humor in Early Islam, first published in 1956, begins with a survey of the “materials for the study of Muslim humor” and ends with an essay on laughter; but whereas one could imagine both topics (preferably in German) to be the titles of fat books, the chapters, though learned, are short and the bulk of the book is devoted to one person: the greedy and stupid Ashʿab, a singer and entertainer who apparently was alive in Medina in the eighth century, and whose fictional, legendary life long survived him. In due course, however, his fame as the focus of jokes was overshadowed by Juḥā, who, like Ashʿab, is first mentioned by al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868–9) but unlike him is alive and well in modern Arabic and even survives in Sicily (once Arab) as Giufà. Jokes and anecdotes have a habit of jumping like fleas, easily attaching themselves from one person to another and many of the Ashʿab jokes are found in other contexts, attached to Juḥā and others. Thus Juḥā became the prototype for yet another popular figure, Naṣr al-Dīn Khoja or (in his Turkish spelling) Nasreddin Hoca.6 A careful study of the reports about Ashʿab sheds light 2  His colleague Benjamin R. Foster, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, quoted in an In Memoriam on the website of Yale University, published 15 April 2003 (http:// opac.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=3711). 3  Arabia Ridens. Die humoristische Kurzprosa der frühen adab-Literatur im internationalen Traditionsgeflecht. 2 Bde. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992. 4  “Und der Kalif lachte, bis er auf den Rücken fiel”. Ein Beitrag zur Phraseologie und Stilkunde des klassische Arabisch, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Philosophisch-historische Klasse / Sitzungsberichte. Jrg. 1993, Heft 2. 5  Vorbild und Vernunft: Die Regelung von Lachen und Scherzen im mittelalterlichen Islam, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1993. 6  For 666 “true stories” about him, see Ulrich Marzolph’s translation, Nasreddin Hodscha: 666 wahre Geschichten (2nd ed. München: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2002).

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on what Hilary Kilpatrick has called “the relativity of fact and fiction” in classical Arabic literary texts.7 Reading about jokes is not the same as reading jokes; Rosenthal understood this well and the greater part of the book consists of a translation, thoroughly annotated, of a tenth-century text with jokes and anecdotes about Ashʿab, with some additional material from later periods. The main text is a chapter from the monumental Kitāb al-Aghānī (“The Book of Songs”) by Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (d. c. 363/972), a vast book about singers and poets. Abū l-Faraj was a man of letters and a scholar who took pains to give his sources, in the traditional AraboIslamic manner by providing chains of authorities for every single report, or joke. He does not tell us whether he believes all the reports, nor does he give clear indications that he finds the jokes amusing. His aim is not to crack jokes, but to record information about the life of Ashʿab, who is included because (unusually for a stock figure of jokes and buffoonery) he was a singer. The introductory chain (isnād) may be as long as the joke itself or even longer. Here is an example (no. 45 in Rosenthal’s numbering and translation, with my parentheses): I was informed by Aḥmad [this is Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Jawharī] who said: I was told by Muḥammad b. al-Qâsim [b. Mihrawayh] who said: We were informed by Aḥmad b. Yaḥyâ who said: We were informed by al-Madâʾinî as follows: Ashʿab’s girl friend said to him: “Give me your ring so that I may remember you by it.” He replied: “Rather remember that I refused it to you. I like that better.”

This joke is found in many other sources; one may consult the references given by Marzolph in his Arabia ridens ii, 122–23 (no. 487). In a variant, not found in al-Aghānī but in an even older source, the stingy Ashʿab does not want to give his gold ring because (so he claims) “gold” (Arabic dhahab) suggests “going away” (dhahāb) and he would rather give a piece of aloe wood (ʿ ūd) because it suggests that she will return (taʿ ūd).8 Which version is funnier? The latter is more sophisticated and will appeal to those who like puns; it is also more logical than the former, because memories are triggered by concrete things rather than

7  Hilary Kilpatrick, “The ‘genuine’ Ahsʿab: The relativity of fact and fiction in early adab texts”, in Stefan Leder (ed.), Story-telling in the framework of non-fictional Arabic literature, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998, pp. 94–117. 8  Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 328/940), al-ʿ Iqd al-farīd, ed. Aḥmad Amīn et al., repr. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1983, vi, 213 and see Marzolph, Arabia ridens, ii, 51 (no. 190) for more references.

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by the absence of something. Nevertheless, much though I am fond of word-play, I think the former is funnier, precisely because of the slight absurdity. Appreciating jokes from a culture distant in place and time, in another language, is not always easy, as Rosenthal points out in his introductory chapter. I have sometimes read classical Arabic jokes as “unseen texts” with students. By the time the Arabic, not the easiest of languages,9 has been unravelled, the punch line has usually lost some of its force, by the lost-in-translation principle, so it is a great help, even for Arabists, to have a good translation. Even then the jokes are rarely if ever of the side-splitting or thigh-slapping kind (a Dutch idiom), let alone falling over backwards with laughter, as caliphs and others regularly do in classical Arabic;10 but many can produce a smile. Among my own favourites is the well-known story about Ashʿab who tells some children, just for fun or to get rid of them, that somebody is distributing money (or dates, or nuts, in other versions); when they run away and do not come back he follows them, thinking it might be true.11 But even when not particularly amusing, most jokes are enlightening and informative in some way or other, about habits, material culture, attitudes, norms, values, and prejudices. This, of course, is why jokes are a serious subject and why a respectable academic publishing house such as E. J. Brill has no qualms about republishing this book on Arabic humour. Quoting jokes has to be justified. Mediaeval Arabic writers do this all the time. Al-Jāḥiẓ, the greatest prose-writer in Arabic, often inserted humorous anecdotes, explaining that this would help to revive the flagging attention of the reader. The stern theologian, historian, preacher, and extremely prolific author Ibn al-Jawzī (597/1201) wrote a work on stupid and gullible people and another on witty and bawdy people, not only to amuse but also to preach and admonish. Today, the scholarly study of Arabic humour is flourishing: in addition to the studies by Germans mentioned above,

9  Being a pedant I point out a rare mistake in Rosenthal’s translations: on p. 128 (no. 152), instead of “What have you got from your greed?” one should read “How greedy are you?” or “What is the extent of your greed?” (mā balagha min ṭamaʿ ika, cf. Ibn Ḥamdūn, al-Tadhkira al-Ḥamdūniyya, Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1996, iii, 139). The answer is (in Rosenthal’s translation) “You are asking this question only because you have in mind doing me a good turn.” His greed is such that he interprets every incident or saying as possibly indicating a windfall for himself. 10  See the German title of Müller’s book quoted above in note 4. 11  See in the present work pp. 62–63, no. 46.

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one can refer to the recent volume with twenty-two articles in English or German edited by Georges Tamer, as Humor in der arabischen Kultur / Humor in Arabic Culture,12 and a volume that, as I write, is expected to appear soon.13 All this may help to dispel the opinion held by rather many people in the western world who believe that “Islam” is averse to humour. Apart from the fact that one should never write as if “Islam” were a person, it is unfortunately true that there are many Muslims in the world of today who have a dim view of humour, and who think that especially the mocking of traditional values and beliefs should be condemned and the perpetrators punished. Precisely the same may be said of some Christians, but one must admit that a Muslim counterpart of, for instance, The Life of Brian is unthinkable. Ashʿab’s jokes do not mock Islam, although occasionally one finds mild mockery of Islamic institutions and disciplines, or the religious behaviour of Muslims. A popular joke, also found in the present book, is the one in which Ashʿab, who claims to be a specialist in Hadith (the traditions about the Prophet), is invited to tell a tradition. He proceeds to do so, beginning, of course, with the required chain of authorities, mentioning some famous transmitters: I was told by Nâfiʿ on the authority of Ibn ʿUmar that the Messenger of God said: “A man in whom there are found two qualities belongs to God’s chosen friends”.

Ashʿab’s interlocutor, understandably curious about these qualities, asks what they are, upon which Ashʿab replies, “Nâfiʿ had forgotten one, and I have forgotten the other.”14 It goes without saying that the both the tradition and its isnād are spurious (other versions have different names and a different saying attributed to the Prophet) and that the point is the mockery of Hadith scholarship. And, needless to say, the joke itself is introduced with an isnād. Al-Jāḥiẓ15 reports that Ashʿab once drastically shortened his ritual prayer in the mosque, explaining that “it was not mixed with hypocrisy”. The obvious implication, that Muslim prayer  Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009.  Ruse and Wit: The Humorous in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish narrative, ed. By Dominic P. Brookshaw.—It is impossible to give here a fuller survey of studies on Arabic humour. Needless to say, there are also several valuable studies in Arabic. 14  pp. 116–17 (no. 118). 15  al-Jāḥiẓ, al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn, Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1968, ii, 334, and see the present book, p. 116 (no. 117). 12 13

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usually contains a large admixture of hypocrisy, is of course not spelled out, but it is harmless because it is put into the mouth of a buffoon, someone who may say uncomfortable truths with impunity. A common source of jokes, frowned upon by the pious, is quoting the Qur’an in an irreverent way, out of context; an example is no. 74 (p. 81) in the present book. Sometimes the jokes are obscure, such as Ashʿab’s saying “I desire, and my mother is certain. Thus, rarely does anything escape us”.16 I would have been at a loss (and, I suspect, most other readers with me) to make any sense of this, were it not for Rosenthal, who with the help of a slightly less opaque parallel is able to say that “the point of the story is to make fun of the legal-theological concept of certainty (yaqîn).” He is, after all, the author of a book on Muslim epistemology.17 I must confess that I still do not quite understand it, but it is gratifying to see that the book contains a joke that illustrates, be it darkly, what is surely one of the main functions of humour: the gentle undermining of certainties.

 See the present book, p. 118 (no. 122).  Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam, Leiden: Brill, 1970, republished (with an introduction by Dimitri Gutas) in 2007. 16 17

Plate I

Dancers dressed as goats

Plate II

Contortionist upon a column

Plate III

A glutton at dinner

Plate IV

Two men fijighting with each other

A child dancing on a dais or tightrope

Plate V

A beggar receiving a handout at the garden gate

Plate VI

Plate VII

Cupping attracts a large audience

Plate VIII

Al-Ma’mûn being shaved in the bath

Two drunkards assisting each other to rise

Plate IX

Plate X

Street scene with a worn-out horse

An acrobat standing upon his head

Plate XI