The underside of arable panegyric: Ibn Quzmān's (unfinished?) «Zajal no. 84»

Abstract

Ibn Quzmān's «Zajal No. 84» has hitherto been viewed as a poem lacking its final, panegyrical section, due to an assumed accident in the manuscript's transmission. According to such a view, the poem has come down to us in an incomplete form. By analyzing certain prominent thematic features contained in the poem, and showing that they fit closely together, exhibiting a complex but carefully organized structure of the kind known as ring-composition, the following article attempts to suggest that there are strong reasons why «Zajal No. 84» may not be incomplete, but that it may, instead, have been composed with the deliberate omission of the ending one would normally expect in an Arabic panegyric. This strategy may have been adopted by the poet, the article proceeds to suggest, in order to stimulate the reader/listener to consider deeper theological, philosophical, and moral implications in a work that, on the surface, deceptively appears to be nothing more than an exercise in buffoonery, devoid of any social concerns. Ultimately, the article attemps to explore the literary value of the poem, and the extraordinary merits of its author.