The poetic memorialization of the Maghribī city illuminates the ways in which exilic Maghribī poets constructed idealized images of their native cities from the ninth to nineteenth centuries CE.
The first work of its kind in English, Of Lost Cities explores the poetics and politics of elegiac and nostalgic representations of the Maghribī city and sheds light on the ingeniously indigenous and indigenously ingenious manipulation of the classical Arabic subgenres of city elegy and nostalgia for one’s homeland. Often overlooked, these poems – distinctively Maghribī, both classical and vernacular, and written in Arabic and Tamazight – deserve wider recognition in the broader tradition and canon of (post)classical Arabic poetry. Alongside close readings of Maghribī poets such as Ibn Rashīq, Ibn Sharaf, al-Ḥuṣrī al-Ḍarīr, Ibn Ḥammād al-Ṣanhājī, Ibn Khamīs, Abū al-Fatḥ al-Tūnisī, al-Tuhāmī Amghār, and Ibn al-Shāhid, Nizar Hermes provides a comparative analysis using Western theories of place, memory, and nostalgia.
Containing the first translations into English of many poetic gems of premodern and precolonial Maghribī poetry, Of Lost Cities reveals the enduring power of poetry in capturing the essence of lost cities and the complex interplay of loss, remembrance, and longing.
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Table of Contents
- Of Lost Cities: The Maghribī Poetic Imagination 1
- Cover 1
- Half Title Page 3
- Title Page 5
- Copyright 6
- Epigraph 7
- Contents 9
- Acknowledgments 11
- Note on Translation, Transliteration, the Titles of Arabic Poems, the Usage of the Amazigh/Tamazight, and Other Language Choices 15
- INTRODUCTION: The Lost Wall of Gabès, ma ville natale 19
- PART ONE: Maghribī Lamentations over Fallen Cities - Rithāʾ al-Mudun 31
- CHAPTER ONE: Ibn Rashīq’s Mournful Elegy for the Destruction of Qayrawan 33
- Ibn Rashīq and his Nūniyyah 35
- English Translation of the Nūniyyah 37
- CHAPTER TWO: Ibn Sharaf’s Wailing Elegies for Qayrawan 50
- Ibn Sharaf and the Kharāb of al-Qayrawan 51
- The Lāmiyyah of Ibn Sharaf 52
- The Poem 52
- CHAPTER THREE: Mourning over Palatial Ruins - Ibn Ḥammād al-Ṣanhājī’s Lament for Qalʿat Banī Ḥammād 59
- Ibn Ḥammād al-Ṣanhājī and his Surviving Qalʿiyyāt 62
- The Lāmiyyah of Ibn Ḥammād al-Ṣanhājī 64
- CHAPTER FOUR: The Dey’s Doomed Éventail - Ibn al-Shāhid’s Classical and Vernacular Cris over La Prise d’Alger 71
- Ibn al-Shāhid: The Blind Muftī-Poet who Lamented the Fall of Algiers 73
- Ibn al-Shāhid’s “Sūr al-Jazāʾir” 74
- PART TWO: The Maghribī Poetics and Politics of Exilic Nostalgia - Al-ḥanīn ilā al-Mudun 85
- CHAPTER FIVE: A Blind Poet’s recherche de la Qayrawan perdue - Al-Ḥuṣrī al-Ḍarīr 87
- Al-Ḥuṣrī al-Ḍarīr and his Tāʾiyyah 89
- The Tāʾiyyah of al-Ḥuṣrī al-Ḍarīr 90
- The Poem 90
- CHAPTER SIX: Granadian Longing for a Lost Tlemcen - The Exilic Tragedy of Ibn Khamīs 103
- Zayyānid Tlemcen: The Gem of the Maghrib and the Laylā of Ibn Khamīs 104
- Ibn Khamīs: The Exiled Poet Yearning for Tlemcen 105
- The Ḥāʾiyyah of Ibn Khamīs 110
- CHAPTER SEVEN: “This Tunis, sir, was Carthage!” - Abū al-Fatḥ al-Tūnisī’s Levantine Yearning for the Bride of the Maghrib 119
- Abū al-Fatḥ al-Tūnisī: Longing for Ḥafṣid Tunis from Early Ottoman Damascus 122
- Abū al-Fatḥ’s Nūniyyah 123
- The Poem 124
- CHAPTER EIGHT: Olives before Walls - Al-Tuhāmī Amghār’s Pastoral Nostalgia for Imperial Meknes 135
- Al-Tuhāmī Amghār and his Maqṣūrah on Meknes 139
- The Maqṣūrah of al-Tuhāmī Amghār 139
- CONCLUSION: Towards a Maghribī Turn in Premodern Arabic Elegiac and Nostalgic City Poetry 148
- APPENDIX: Original Arabic Texts of the Main Translated and Studied Poems 153
- NOTES 171
- INDEX 247
