Kissing at The Kaba Ghazal Poetry

The Institute of Asian and African Studies
The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation
Offprint from
JERUSALEM STUDIES IN
ARABIC AND ISLAM
47 (2019)
W. Sasson Chahanovich
Kissing at the Kaʿba: ghazal poetry and early

Islamic conceptualizations of the sacred
and the sensual
THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
CONTENTS
Albert Arazi Narratif et lyrisme dans la poésie arabe 1

ancienne : le raḥīl et l’amour chez Kaʿb b.
Zuhayr
Samuel A. Stafford Constructing Muḥammad’s legitimacy: 133
Arabic literary biography and the Jewish
pedigree of the companion ʿAbd Allāh b.
Salām (d. 43/633)
W. Sasson Chahanovich Kissing at the Kaʿba: ghazal poetry and 187
early Islamic conceptualizations of the
sacred and the sensual
Omar Abed Rabbo Was the Fāṭimī caliph al-Āmir bi-Aḥkām 237
Allāh buried in ʿAsqalān? Following the
recent discovery of his epitaph
REVIEWS
Rachel Milstein Houari Touati, ed. De la figuration humaine 275

au portrait dans l’art islamique
Roy Vilozny Ansari Hassan. L’imamat et l’occultation selon 285
l’imamisme: Étude bibliographique et histoire
des textes
JSAI 47 (2019)
KISSING AT THE KAʿBA: GHAZAL POETRY AND EARLY ISLAMIC

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF THE SACRED AND THE SENSUAL
W. Sasson Chahanovich
Harvard University
Abstract In this essay I argue that the polarizing classification of ghazal poetry into
“chaste” (ʿudhrı̄) vs. “licentious” (ʿumarı̄) types is a hyper-moralizing position that is
not observed in the earliest historical record of Islamic-era shiʿr. Unconsummated
love, as advocated in later Sunnī religious literature, is implicitly understood as pure
and ideal, whereas physical and titillating adventures are construed as aberrant and
outré. Nineteenth-century European cultural mores critically helped to advance this
reductive dichotomy. Thus, a preference has prevailed in academic research that has
totally marginalized the more erotic ghazal tradition. This is clearly observed in the
poetry of ʿUmar b. Abı ̄ Rabı ̄ʿa, the titular progenitor of the supposedly salacious genre.
By examining the early Islamic poetic record as reflected in ʿUmar’s works, as well as
Islamic historiographic texts and traditional religious sources, I demonstrate that
early Arabic love poetry was neither preferentially chaste nor was erotic ghazal
deemed by its earliest audiences as violating religious taboos. ʿUmar’s trope of
courting and kissing in and around the Kaʿba precinct is the smoking gun. His
accounts of both real and imagined courtship in the Meccan sanctuary help us
resitute classical Arabic literary articulations of desire and reclaim an early stage of
Islamic life removed from later orthodox stricutres.
Keywords ʿUmar b. Abı ̄ Rabı ̄ʿa, ghazal, Kaʿba, Mecca, ḥajj (Pilgrimage), Taboos,
Eroticism
187
188 W. Sasson Chahanovich
“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.”
Song of Solomon 1:21
“I espied her and her ladies one night
Betwixt Abraham’s Place and the Black Stone did they stride […]
He who savors her saliva after sleep
is poured a perfume of musk, cold and sweet.”
ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa2
Some of the most influential names in modern Arab3 and European4 academic
interrogations of love poetry (ghazal) have propagated a simple dichotomy
that informs contemporary inquiries into the cultural legitimacy of Arabic
erotica in the first centuries of Islam. On the one hand, there is ‘chaste’
(ʿudhrī) love poetry as exemplified in the texts attributed to Jamīl b. Maʿmar 5
and Qays “Majnūn Laylā.”6 On the other hand, and in discursive tension with
the former, there is the ‘licentious’ (ibāḥī) ʿumarī type captured (in)famously
in the dīwān of its eponymous poet ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa (d. 93/712 or 103/721)
1 Cant. 1:2: ‫טֹובִ ים דֹּדֶ יָך ִמיָּיִן‬-‫ כִ י‬,‫ יִ שָּ ֵקנִי ִמנְּ ִשיקֹות פִ יהּו‬.
2
Abṣartuhā laylatan wa-niswatahā / yamshīna bayna -l-maqāmi wa-l-ḥajarī […] man yusqa baʿda -l-
manāmi rīqatahā / yusqa bi-miskin wa-bāridin khaṣirī. See Der Diwan des ‘Umar ibn Abi Rebi‘a, Paul
Schwarz, ed., vol. 1, p. 27, vv. 4, 11. Schwarz’s edition is the best critical collection of ʿUmar’s
poetry. All citations of ʿUmar’s poetry are taken from Schwarz. I have also cross-referenced the
poem in the following additional editions: Dīwān ʿUmar, ed. Yamūt, pp. 120-121; Dīwān ʿUmar
(Beirut, 1961), p. 168; Shāʿir al-ḥubb, eds. Khafājī and Sharaf, p. 128; Dīwān ʿUmar, ed. Māyū, pp.
311-312; Dīwān ʿUmar, ed. Farḥāt, pp. 270-271. All translations, especially from Arabic and
including the Qurʾān are mine, unless stated otherwise.
3
E.g. Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, ʿAbbās Maḥmūd al-ʿAqqād, Shawqī Ḍayf.
4
E.g. Régis Blachère, Francesco Gabrieli, Gustav von Grunebaum. Notable exceptions are Renate
Jacobi and Thomas Bauer.
5
For a critical study of his poetry, see Gabrieli, “Jamīl al-ʿUd̲rī,” passim.
6
There are in fact two possible nasabs for Majnūn: 1) Qays b. al-Mulawwaḥ or 2) Qays b. Muʿādh.
The former is more common, however. Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī (d. 356/967) asserts this as the
incontrovertible truth. See al-Iṣbahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī, vol. 2, p. 419. Another famous “Qays” of
the period is Qays b. Dharīḥ, or Qays Lubnā, equally known for unconsummated love. For a
literary-historical analysis of the development of the Majnūn legend, see Khairallah, Love,
madness, and poetry. Khairallah identifies three major receptions/interpretations of the Majnūn
tale — poet, lover, madman — in the works of Ibn Qutayba (d. 275/889), al-Iṣbahānī, Abū Bakr al-
Wālibī (d. late 3rd/9th century), and Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 998/1492).
Ghazal poetry and early conceptualizations of the sacred and the sensual 189
and his contemporaries, like Waḍḍāḥ al-Yaman (d. ca. 90/707).7 Such a
conceptualization of the early Arabo-Islamic articulation of desire is
problematic for two basic reasons.
First, on a polarized spectrum of emotions and acts, unconsummated
love is implicitly understood as pure and ideal. This is placed in juxtaposition
against physical and titillating sensual adventures which are explicitly
defined as licentious and therefore of questionable quality. Such simple
definitions stymy our apprehension of early Islamic sensibilities vis-à-vis
pious praxis and erotic poesis. In other words, the diachronic and cultural gaps
between production in situ, classical commentary, and modern scholarship
remain unbridged, or, more precisely, unreconciled. Our own ‘objective’
conceptualization of Arabic eroticism is somehow still filtered by later pious
Muslim scholars’ sensitivities and shackled to nineteenth- and twentieth-
century colonial aversions to the language(s) of desire. Second, this
diametric opposition of sublime vs. smutty art disincentivizes research into
the latter, negatively charged adab. Thus, much academic interest in the
“licentious” sort remains “sporadic[ally]” addressed at best. 8 Glibly put,
Arabic erotica remains a prurient interest of a few salacious scholars.
7
Cf. Blachère, “Ghazal.” Blachère qualifies the use of the term “licentious poets” (ibāḥiyyūn): “It
is justifiable, provided one makes it clear that their licence [sic] does not descend to indecency
or depravity; it is very noteworthy in this connexion [sic] that the Ḥidjāz manner never offends
against nature and a certain respect for good manners.” Blachère is a little too sanguine. Both
ʿUmar and Waḍḍāḥ were known for flirting with the Caliph’s daughters and wives. Waḍḍāh was
even assassinated for his transgression of good manners with Umm al-Banīn, the wife of Caliph
al-Walīd I. See also Andras Hamori’s entry “Ghazal,” especially p. 204. ‘Chaste’ poetry in Hamori’s
analysis receives greater exposure (e.g. pp. 205, 209ff, 214). Cf. also Hussein, “One qaṣīdah with
several chaste love affairs.” Hussein speaks of “erotic escapades and sincere or chaste affairs,” in
which the erotic poet “boasts of his ability to conduct sexual escapades with one woman or
more” — hence licentious — and the chaste poet-lover “tells of a sincere and heart-breaking love
affair” (ibid., p. 1).
8
Rowson, “Rawḍat al-qulūb (review),” p. 380. Rowson argues that European and North American
attention has been, at best, “sporadic”; this is a serious judgment. After all, Rowson has
published widely on sex, sexuality, and gender in Arabic literature and society. The primary
source literature on classical and mediaeval Arabic theories of love is vast. It is remarkable,
therefore, that an early work like Ibn Dāwūd’s Kitāb al-zahra has received scant attention. Only
the first half of the work has been edited and published in monograph form. See Ibn Dāwūd,
Kitāb al-zahra. In general, the following works are significant surveys on the topic of love: Giffen,
Profane love; Jacobi, “Anfänge,” pp. 218–250; idem, “Time and reality,” pp. 1–17; idem, “Theme and
variations,” pp. 109-119; idem, “Al-Khayālāni,” pp. 2–12; Poveda, Teorías. Otherwise,
In this essay, I will assess the motif of kissing and flirting at the Kaʿba
and its sanctified environs (e.g., al-Ṣafā, al-Marwa, Minā, al-Muzdalifah),
specifically. I will also generally treat the employment of Islamic religious
language (astaghfiru ʼllāh, ayyām ʿaẓīmat al-ḥurma), intimate spaces (miḥrāb,
masjid), and symbols (al-ḥajar, al-maqām) in the articulation of (sensual) love
in Umayyad Arabic ghazal poetry.9 This particular motif and subject matter
can be observed for comparative purposes in several early prominent poets
— e.g., Abū Nuwās (d. between 198/813 and 200/815) and Ibn al-Rūmī (ca.
283/896), and even as late as the Ottoman poet Yunus Emre (d. 720/1320-1).10
For now, one is best served by approaching the problem chronologically. As
a case study for examining the admixture of amorous activity and religious
space, let us turn to ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa, the prince of the Ḥijāzī school of
ghazal.11
Today, one might define this hitherto neglected combination of
human desire and Islamic cultic sacrality as demonstrative of the
transgressive folly of ‘licentious’ poets (ibāḥiyyūn). Yet such an approach only
indulges in the distortive binary of ‘chaste vs. salacious.’ Moreover, it reveals
a modern aversion to the mixing of religious and profane discourses. What is
investigations into desire and love in the Arabo-Islamic tradition tend to focus almost
exclusively on the sublime Ṣūfī manifestations thereof, and more particularly the heritage of
several particular Ṣūfī masters: al-Qushayrī (465/1072–3), Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), and ʿUmar
b. al-Fāriḍ (632/1235).
9
One of the greatest contributions to the field of ghazal studies in recent years is Thomas Bauer’s
Liebe und Liebesdichtung. But Bauer focuses exclusively on the ʿAbbāsī development of the genre;
only eighteen pages (pp. 38-55) actually discuss the embryonic Umayyad, and therefore
fundamental, period of Arabic ghazal poetry.
10
One should note that Abū Nuwās employs the motif of kissing at the Kaʿba in describing his
love affair with the slave Janān, his singular well-known heterosexual pursuit.
11
See Wagner, Abū Nuwās: eine Studie, p. 309. I do not agree entirely with Wagner’s teleological
sketch of the evolution of ghazal out of the amatory prelude (nasīb) of the polythematic ode
(qaṣīda). Nevertheless, for the remainder of this essay, I maintain that ghazal as an independent
genre did in fact crystallize with ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa, an opinion I share with Wagner: “Thus, the
ghazal slowly became an independent genre that was called to life by the Umayyad poet ʿUmar
b. Abī Rabīʿa […].” Ibid., p. 309. Cf. Jacobi, “Angfänge.” Jacobi identifies the beginning of ghazal
with Abū Dhuʾayb, or at least claims that the genre had emerged in some coherent fashion by
the time of his death in 29/650, i.e. when ʿUmar was still an infant. Though the technical
acknowledgment of ghazal as genre type is not analytically established until the 3rd/9th century,
the act of ghazal — i.e., the amatory-elegiac praise of a beloved — is attested as early as the late
1st ~ 2nd / 7th~early 8th century. See Blachère, “Ghazal.”
at stake, therefore, is the restitution of classical Arabic literary articulations

of desire and the reclamation of an early stage of Islamic life far removed
from later orthodox strictures.
Religious sanction?
Reviewing the pleasures of Paradise and prophetic permissiveness
First, a preliminary investigation into the images and rhetoric of

Muḥammad’s revelation is warranted. This line of inquiry also involves
delving into some ḥadīths that record the Prophet’s extra-revelatory
behavior.12 One must first determine to what extent Islam — as a nascent
religious culture and identity — ab ovo accounted for a “comfortable
coexistence” of sensual behavior and practices of purity (ṭahāra).13
Approaching the Qurʾān as historical document, the reader encounters a
remarkably sensuous image of heavenly reward. The celestial garden is
populated with “immortal youths” (wildān mukhalladūn) that hover about
while serving intoxicating beverages in “cups and pitchers” (bi-akwāb wa-
abārīq) from which the blessed and saved will “[never] suffer hangovers” (lā
yuṣaddaʿūna ʿanhā).14 Also, “buxom coeval maidens” (kawāʿib atrāb) attend to
the lucky souls taken up into the supreme spheres of the Qurʾānic great
beyond.15 One would be remiss if the “Houries” (ḥūr ʿīn) did not also figure in
this discussion.16 These bright-eyed maidens of Paradise are promised as
12
Pre-Islamic poetry is also very explicit in its articulation of desire. This paper, however,
exclusively focuses on poetry from the Islamic period; the question of the authenticity of many
jāhiliyya poems is, admittedly, problematic.
13
Maghen, Virtues of the flesh, p. 281. See my conclusion for a further discussion of Maghen’s
research and its relevance to this essay.
14
Qurʾān 56:17-19. The “immortal youths” and similar banquet-like settings are also to be found
in Qurʾān 76:12-21. The translation of lā yuṣaddaʿūna ʿanhā as “hangover” may not capture the
literalness of Arberry’s “no brows throbbing,” but it does bring the text a little closer to
contemporary language.
15
Qurʾān 78:31f.
16
Qurʾān 44:54; 52:20; 56:22. In 55:72 the locution is ḥūr maqṣūrāt fī al-khiyām (“Houries withdrawn
in tents”). This is followed by the explicit indication of their virginal status in v. 74: lam
yaṭmithhunna ins qablahum wa-lā jānn (“Before them, neither jinn nor man has touched [the
Houries]”). For an etymology of the phrase and its treatment in the exegetical literature, see
Jeffery, Foreign vocabulary, pp. 117-120.
brides (zawwajnāhum) to the devout male believer upon his spiritual

ascension into Heaven.17 Apropos the discussion of delineating the sensual
and the salacious, the ḥūr ʿīn most of all have captured the non-Muslim
imagination; their place in Muḥammad’s revelation is disparagingly
identified as paradigmatically representative of Islamic concupiscence.18
Along with rivers of milk, honey, water, and wine also flowing in infinite
abundance, the Qurʾānic Paradise is, in short, a desirable place to end up.19
Pleasure is the ideal.
Ḥadīth collections go even further. For example, God is recorded in
a popular “divine saying” (ḥadīth qudsī) as revealing to Muḥammad that the
descriptions of Paradise are but a superficial preview of the heavenly
Hereafter (al-ākhira):20
The Apostle of God said: “God said: ‘I have prepared for My

upright servants what neither eye has seen, nor ear has heard,
nor has entered into the heart of [any] man.’”21
Such words speak to very human expectations and desires of the heart.
Perhaps more relevant to this study, I argue that they reflect, too, a uniquely
Islamic concept of the self, the soul, and the (un)conscious yearnings of
mankind’s appetitive nature.22 I do not suggest that the above Qurʾānic
discourse is singularly libidinous, intrinsically salacious or eminently carnal.
Yet it would also be misleading to ignore the fact that Muslim exegetes were
17
Qurʾān 44:54. For an improbable reading of the concept as meaning “white grape”, see
Luxenberg, Syro-aramäische, pp. 221-242. For a thorough rejection of this thesis, see de Blois,
“Syro-aramäische (review),” pp. 92-97.
18
Smith and Haddad, Islamic understanding, p. 164.
19
Qurʾān 47:15.
20
For the first and only book-length analysis of the ḥadīth qudsī, see Graham, Divine word, pp. 9-
48; 81-106.
21
Ibid., p. 117 f. The translation is Graham’s: wa-qāla rasūl Allāh ṣ-l-ʿ-m inna Allāh qāla ʿazz wa-jall
qāla aʿdadtu li-ʿibādī al-ṣāliḥīn mā lā ʿayn raʾat wa-lā udhun samiʿat wa-lā khaṭara ʿalā qalbi bashar.
Graham provides an extensive list of citations of this phrase in the canonical ḥadīth collections.
Christian Lange augments Graham’s textual citations. See Lange, Paradise and hell, p. 2, n. 7. This
ḥadīth is an adaptation of 1 Corinthians 2:9, which is itself, ultimately, a reformulation of Isaiah
64:3.
22
Izutsu, God and man, p. 75.
themselves quite interested in expanding on this material. In fact, “Islamic

tradition has detailed quite sensuous and fanciful descriptions of the
paradise virgins and of the pleasures in paradise.” 23 Al-Ṭabarī, Ibn al-ʿArabī,
and Ibn Kathīr are a few prominent names to have expounded on the topic.
Nevertheless, Orientalist inquiry has often steered the Western
reception of Islam regarding this particular topic away from the nuanced
discussion of Islamic pleasure on its own terms. This is especially true of
Christian polemical literature. The obsession with celestial marriage of post-
resurrection believers with the Houries takes on a kind of voyeuristic aspect
with ‘what goes on up there.’24 As Norman Daniel notes, “It was the Islamic
paradise which, more than any other theme, summed up the Christian notion
of Islam. It was always thought to prove the contention that this was no
spiritual religion.”25
The fact remains that the “somaticity,” as Christian Lange calls it, of
Muslim Paradise is distinct from the Jewish and Christian conceptions of the
Afterlife.26 The Qurʾān conveys a particular revelatory Weltanschauung that
does not discern an ingrained dissonance between spiritual reward and
23
Jarrar, “Houris.”
24
For a contemporary overview of classical positions on physical resurrection (i.e., qiyāma,
nushūr, baʿth), see Smith and Haddad, Islamic understanding, pp. 31-62. Jane Smith also notes
elsewhere that, “While definitely physical, recompense in the ultimate sense is generally
understood to have a reality beyond what we are now able to comprehend.” See Smith,
“Eschatology,” s.v.
25
Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: the making of an image (Edinburgh: University Press, 1962),
p. 172. Perhaps the most memorable barb against Islam’s voluptuous conceptualization of post-
mortem pleasure is captured in the words of the Florentine Dominican monk Riccoldo da Monte
Croce (d. 1320). He dismissed the Qurʾānic conception of Heaven as a “lata et spatiosa via.” This
choice phrase echoes the Gospel of Matthew’s warning that, “The gate is wide and the road is
easy that leads to destruction […]” (Matthew 7:13). On da Monte Croce, see Tolan, Saracens, pp.
235-255.
26
Lange, Paradise and hell, p. 18. So-called ‘apocryphal’ books in both Judaism and Christianity
do, however, develop more vivid depictions of Heaven and Hell. Rabbinic commentaries and
sermons of the Church Fathers are equally rich sources for tracing the respective Jewish and
Christian traditions of Afterlife. Research has also identified potential works from these
preceding traditions that may have influenced Muḥammad’s own concept of the Hereafter, such
as St. Ephrem the Syrian’s Hymns on Paradise. For an extensive treatment of the Syriac influence
on the Islamic revelation, see Joseph Witztum’s PhD thesis, The Syriac milieu of the Quran: the
recasting of Biblical narratives (Princeton University, 2011).
enjoyment, particularly of the sensuous kind. 27 Paradise is, simply put, a

place of maximally fulfilled desires.
A contextual framework herewith emerges for reconstructing Ḥijāzī
society in the first century AH. Clearly, early Islamic religious discourse was
comfortable with sensual affects. If Heaven can be replete with callow
youths, fair damsels, wine, as well as detailed enumeration of other
accoutrements,28 it is reasonable to conclude that the earliest community of
“Believers” (al-muʾminūn) also did not discern an antithetical dichotomy
between divinity and desire, piety and pleasure. 29
This preliminary observation is supported by prophetic traditions.
As M. J. Kister pointed out, the Prophet is recorded as having officially
sanctioned “concessions” (rukhaṣ) regarding “ritual practices and
customs.”30 Kister’s observation below is particularly relevant for
understanding the fluid laws, practices, and lifestyles of the earliest umma:
In a wider sense, rukhaṣ represent in the opinion of Muslim

scholars the characteristic way of Islam as opposed to Judaism
and Christianity. The phrase “…and he will relieve them of
their burden and the fetters that they used to wear” (Qurʾān
7:157) is interpreted as referring to the Prophet, who removed
the burden of excessively harsh practices of worship and of
ritual purity. The rigid and excessive practice of worship refers
to Jews and Christians alike.31
Kister also wrote about another instructive situation concerning rukhaṣ in

the ḥadīth regarding festive celebrations and musical fanfare. Specifically, in
several ḥadīths it is recorded that Muḥammad comes across a group of
27
The Qurʾān also develops, in tandem with depictions of Paradise, a profoundly horrific
discourse of pain and suffering in Hell. Such a discourse has its place, too, in a thesis about
sensory dynamics (desire vs. fear, pleasure vs. pain) in Muḥammad’s revelation. This falls
outside the purview of the present essay.
28
E.g. Qurʾān 88:13-16: “Therein are raised couches / and cups displayed / and cushions in rows
/ and carpets unrolled” (fīhā sururun marfūʿa / wa-akwābun mawḍūʿa / wa-namāriqu maṣfūfa / wa-
zarābiyyu mabthūtha). See also Qurʾān 56:18; 76:15.
29
Donner, Muhammad and the believers, passim.
30
Kister, “Concessions,” p. 89.
31
Ibid., p. 94.
(Abyssinian) musicians playing the dankala (also recorded as darkala) and

chanting poetry enthusiastically. The prophet then exhorts the players to
continue in their festive display, “so that the Jews and Christians may know
that there is latitude (fusḥatun) in our faith.”32 There is even a report of
Abyssinian minstrels playing in the mosque of Medina which, perhaps
remarkably for contemporary standards of prophetic propriety, Muḥammad
allows ʿĀʾisha to watch from a distance.33 The moral of these traditions,
according to Abū ʿUbayd, is for one to learn of the “permissibility” (rukhṣa)
of entertainment in a Muslim’s life. However, flutes and lutes (mazāmīr,
mazāhir), evidently satanic instruments, remain beyond the pale. 34
In short, we are not dealing with a world of extremely pious moral
police and ritual injunctions. Physical pleasure and sensual comforts are
encouraged in contrast to the cumbersome laws of Jews, or Christian
asceticism’s predilection for the mortification of the flesh.35 Both the Qurʾān
and its divinely-elected mouthpiece Muḥammad were content with mixing
the sensual with the sacred. Words, images, and acts of desire quite factually
constituted the new religious grammar of Arab-Ḥijāzī life.
Continuity and change:

ʿUmar’s love affairs and the eroticization of the ḥajj
ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa is the most famous of the first bawdy bards of ghazal born
and raised exclusively in the post-prophetic age. This is not his only
qualification that justifies attention. The home-grown Ḥijāzī poet’s august
status in the corpus of classical Arabic poetry was, for the Western tradition,
first observed by Friedrich Rückert (d. 1866), who extolled ʿUmar as,
32
Kister, “Exert yourselves,” pp. 53-55. I thank the editors of JSAI for drawing my attention to
Kister’s article.
33
Ibid., p. 53. Kister has this from a report in ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Muṣannaf. See ibid., fn. 3.
34
Kister, “Exert yourselves,” p. 55.
35
Paul of Tarsus introduced the concept as a cornerstone of emerging Christian faith and piety
in Romans 8:9-13. Other major Church Fathers who expounded on the issue — which includes
extreme fasting and, of course, sexual abstinence — are John Chrysostom, Basil of Ancyra, and
Gregory of Nyssa, to name a few. For a good source on all these writers and the tradition of
Christian mortification, see Shaw, Burden of the flesh, passim.
“undoubtedly the greatest love poet of the Arabs.” 36 Western scholars have
since chosen to ignore the esteemed German Orientalist’s words of praise
and, instead, have churlishly qualified ʿUmar’s dīwān as exemplary of
“dilettantisme,”37 and as “sensual and dissolute.”38 These statements, I argue,
are reflective of two separate issues. One factor is the heritage of nineteenth-
century social sensitivities in the United Kingdom, the United States, France,
and Germany. The other factor is due to the patrimony of what Fred Donner
classifies as the nineteenth-century school of “Descriptivism.” This approach
is overly-loyal to later, ‘orthodox’ Islamic sources and their authors’
perspectives and biases, especially that of Sunnī Islam.39 Scholars today
continue to pass down this academic heirloom.
True, ʿUmar, as we will see, freely expressed his desire for women
in the sanctity of the Kaʿba. He even claims to have hassled them during the
ritual performance of the ḥajj. If a poet today were to commit the same acts,
one might justly decry his/her poetic habit as erotically transgressive and
36
“Unleugbar größten Liebesdichter der Araber.” See Abū Tammām, Hamâsa, tr. Rückert, p. 637.
It is remarkable that, contrary to twentieth-century valorizations of ʿUmar’s poetry, Abū
Tammām, and Rückert as well, deemed the Ḥijāzī ‘prince’ as exemplary of “dignified morals”
(feine Sitten). For a similar assessment, see Paul Schwarz’s dissertation ‘Umar Ibn Abî Rebîʹa, p. 28.
For example, Schwarz proclaims that, in contrast to the stereotyped qaṣīda-esque crying over
barren campsites and harsh mistresses, ʿUmar achieves a “Feinheit in der Empfindung und im
Ausdruck, die harmonische Verbindung der einzelnen Teile, der Wohllaut der einzelnen Verse”
that were, “in solcher Vollkommenheit etwas durchaus Neues und Eigenartiges.” For this
reason, Schwarz concludes, “eroberten sich ‘Umars Lieder auch in raschem Fluge die Herzen”
(ibid.).
37
Vadet, L’esprit courtois, p. 113. The term is incongruous culturally, socially, and historically. The
héritage of the French dilettante, which invokes the image of the dabbling aristocrat with a,
“[g]oût très prononcé pour les arts en général, ou pour un art, et spéc. pour la musique,” (s.v.
“Dilettantisme”) does not wholly reflect what Vadet meant. Though Vadet does claim that
ʿUmar was “un aristocrate mecquois” (p. 112), he is in fact attempting to paint a more negative
association of aristocracy: one of high-class, yet degenerate morals — a Meccan Marquis de Sade,
perhaps. Thus, one is confronted with the awkward image of ʿUmar wearing a wig ensconced in
a rococo chaise lounge with a whip and nipple clamps. Similarly, A. Kh. Kinany, in The
development of Ghazal (p. 184f.), depicts ʿUmar’s life in the Ḥijāz as one of “literary salons” filled
with “wealthy well-bred society living in opulence, security and laziness” are the hallmark of
the “refined [Ḥijāzī] society in which [ʿUmar] lived.” See also Thomas Bauer’s discussion of
imputed economic decadence and moral decay. Bauer, Liebe, pp. 49ff.
38
Kinany, Development, p. 194.
39
See Donner, “Modern approaches,” p. 629. For a pithy and comprehensive summary of
historical research on early Islam, see also Donner, “How ecumenical was early Islam?” pp. 1-25.
sacrilegious. But that is the point: ʿUmar violates boundaries of religion and
sex, taboo spaces and profane performance only when viewed —
anachronistically — from the perspective of post-classical (ca. 3rd-4th /9-10th
centuries) standards of Islamic ritual. Again, our analytical lens is regulated
by orthodox considerations that prefer ‘chaste’ objects of focus. Such
sensitivities towards the admixture of faith and desire were not an
observable concern for 1st-2nd/7th-8th century poets.40 Scholarly receptions of
ʿUmar’s “hedonism”41 has therefore been skewed by their own cultural hang-
ups over the contentious relationship between sex and religion, and has been
complicated by a sincere appraisal and scholarly concern for conveying
classical Islamic orthodox tradition. One is well advised to keep in mind that
Islam had yet to produce in the poet’s own time (i.e., the first century of
Islam) a system of codes that delineated the taboo of dīn from the erotic vein
of Arabic shiʿr.42
ʿUmar’s reputation — precisely the one continually repeated by
twentieth-century scholars — is best captured in the following
bibliographical entry by the 3rd/9th-century renaissance man, Ibn Qutayba (d.
276/889):
ʿUmar was immoral (fāsiq), he would accost women performing

the pilgrimage (al-ḥawājj), during their performance of the
circumambulations (ṭawāf), and other rituals of the pilgrimage.
40
Talal Asad has confidently addressed the problem of contemporary conceptualizations of
religion, which, he argues, “is a modern [i.e. post-Industrial Age] concept not because it is reified
but because it has been linked to its Siamese twin ‘secularism.’” See Asad, “‘End of religion,’” p.
221.
41
Bencheikh, “K̲h̲amriyya.”
42
I am specifically referring to the concatenation of several major events that occurred from the
3rd-5th/9th-11th centuries: the discontinuation of the miḥna under the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (r.
232-247/847-861), the ascent of Ḥanbalī-Ashʿarī kalām (theology) and the canonization of both
the ḥadīth and classical Sunnī fiqh, the latter receiving its final formation under the auspices of
the Seljuks. See Azzam, “Sunni revival,” p. 99. Only after this historical juncture does the ritual
sacralization of acceptable behavior in the ḥaram emerge. Some of the earliest ḥadīth collections
that address specifically proper ritual behavior during the ḥajj are: 1) al-Nawawī, al-Īḍāḥ; al-
Zarkashī, Iʿlām al-sājid; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn. For a modern collection of all
relevant sources proving the formative importance of ḥadīth in defining the sanctity of Mecca
and stipulating the rules of pilgrimage purity, see al-Ḥuwayṭān, Aḥkām al-ḥaram al-makkī; the
bibliographical references are on pp. 381-398.
He would also flirt with them amorously. Consequently, ʿUmar

b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz [r. 99-101/717-720] exiled him to al-Dahlak. He
died after having recited the shahāda. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar said:
‘ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa enjoyed this life and the next.’43
Likewise, Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahāni (d. 356/967), records in his entry on ʿUmar
b. Abī Rabīʿa several instances in which the poet’s audacious behavior is
underscored. One will notice that the perspectives of the purported source
narrators are markedly less critical than that of Ibn Qutayba. They also lack
the religiously charged language.
For example, a man by the name of Samura b. al-Dūmānī from
Ḥimyar relates that, while performing the ṭawāf, an old man next to him
pointed out ʿUmar, who evidently was present within the Kaʿba precinct.
Samura, markedly impressed, breaks off from performing the ritual
circumambulation, grabs ʿUmar’s arm, calls out his name and asks: “Have you
really done all that you say in your poetry?” ʿUmar first dismisses the
solicitous pilgrim, who beseeches his attention by invoking God (asʾaluka bi-
’llāh). It seems that ʿUmar was not allergic to religious evocations. The poet
responds in the affirmative, to which Samura exclaims: “God forbid
(astaghfiru ’llāh)!”44
To complicate the issue of ʿUmar’s identity, another narrative
follows. Here, ʿUmar approaches a group of men — presumably the same as
those in the preceding narrative — in the state of ritual purity during the
pilgrimage (wa-hum muḥrimūn). The bard swears outright, “By the Lord of
this building [the Kaʿba],” that he never did anything untoward or blatantly
sinful that his first accuser had also not done. 45 This is striking for it seems
that ʿUmar is surreptitiously implicating his detractors in the very salacious
behavior of which he is accused. Had his interlocutors once spoken, in
43
Ibn Qutayba, Kitāb al-shiʿr, vol. 2, p. 554: wa-kāna ʿUmar fāsiqan yataʿarraḍ li-l-nisāʾ al-ḥawājj fi al-
ṭawāf wa-ghayrihi min mashāʿir al-ḥajj wa-yushabbib bi-hinna fa-sayyarahu ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ilā
al-Dahlak thumma khutima lahu bi-’l-shahāda. Qāla ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar: fāza ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa bi-’l-
dunyā wa-’l-ākhira.” Ibn Qutayba’s association of fisq with ʿUmar’s behavior at the ḥajj is
Qurʾānically based. See Qurʾān 2:197: fa-lā rafatha wa-lā fusūqa wa-lā jidāla fi-’l-ḥajj.
44
Al-Iṣbahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī, vol. 1, p. 75.
45
Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 75: wa-rabbi hādhihi al-bināya mā qultu li-mraʾa qaṭṭu shayʾan lam taqulhu lī wa-mā
kashaftu thawban ʿan ḥarāmin qaṭṭu.
revelry, of such sexual acts or of their desire for women within the sacred
precinct? Had they once encouraged him in his poetry? If yes, then what
ʿUmar does cannot be decried outright by these pilgrims as sin, for then they
would be hypocrites (munāfiqūn), a much maligned category in the Qurʾān.46
Consequently, ʿUmar cheekily quips, “I never lifted a dress (thawb)
[revealing] what was forbidden [to see].”47 The logical fallacy tu quoque seems
to have been au courant for deflecting criticism in Mecca as much as it was in
Rome.
In another, perhaps more bombastic narrative, Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm al-
Mawṣilī relates that Abū al-Muqawwim al-Anṣārī once said: “Never was God
so disobeyed as he was in the poetry of ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa.”48 If the following
khabar is correct, then Abū al-Muqawwim might be taken at his word:
[Isḥāq said] “I was told by al-Haytham b. ʿAdī: ‘A woman of

spectacular beauty approached Mecca. Among us ʿUmar b. Abī
Rabīʿa was performing the circumambulation around the
Kaʿba. Then, suddenly, he caught a glimpse of her and she stole
his heart. He went up to her and began to chat her up
(yukallimuhā). Yet she did not pay him any mind. On the second
night, he continued to ask for her hand until he finally made a
move. She then said to him: ‘Get away from me, you cur! You
are in the Sacred Precinct of God (ḥaram Allāh) during
extremely holy days (ayyām ʿaẓīmat al-ḥurma).’ He continued to
flirt with her and she feared he would publicly defame her
(yushahhiruhā). On the following night, she told her brother:
‘Come with me, my brother, and show me the proper rituals of
the ḥajj (manāsik), for I do not know them.’ Then she went out
with her brother. When ʿUmar saw her, he wanted to interrupt
her performance of the ritual (arāda an yaʿriḍ lahā). Yet, upon
seeing her brother with her, he turned away. Then the woman
cited the following line from al-Nābigha:
46
Hypocrisy is equally maligned in the Torah (e.g., Isaiah 65:5, Ezekiel 33:31) and Gospels (e.g.,
Luke 18:11, Matt. 23:5).
47
Al-Iṣbahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī, vol. 1, pp. 75 f.
48
Ibid., p. 76 f.: mā ʿuṣiya ’llāh bi-shayʾ kamā ʿuṣiya bi-shiʿr ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa.
Wolves attack the man

without a hound at hand,
but fear whomever stands
lion-like, the guardian.49
From a post-classical perspective, the above narratives are certainly

damning. One may understand why modern Arab Arabists employ the
descriptor ‘ibāḥī’ when speaking of ʿumarī ghazal. It is equally evident why
modern European and American scholars also label ʿumarī verse as a
“licentious” subgenre of ghazal. But the narrative installments, when
examined closely, provide us with a picture far less condemnatory than we
moderns would expect. In the eyes of his contemporaries, ʿUmar is a popular
personality: men, like Samura above, seem inclined to seek him out, even if
it means breaking off their ṭawāf, in a state of iḥrām, no less. In another
instance, the Kūfan rāwī Ḥammād al-Rāwiya (155/772) demonstrates
profound esteem for ʿUmar. When told that someone had denigrated ʿUmar’s
status as master of the ghazal, Ḥammād called up a posse to “wail down” on
the man’s mother (yanzū ʿalā ummihi) until the woman herself identifies
another poet “better than ʿUmar.”50 This situation is essentially one of fan
fanaticism in which the mother — a locus of honor — becomes the focus of
ire and insult. Presumably, the poor woman was unable to save herself and
her son. ʿUmar was an Arabian Tupac not to be topped in the poetic charts.
Through the episode in which ʿUmar pesters an unnamed lady at
the Kaʿba, one may glean some insight into the religious ambience in and
around the Kaʿba. The preceding account of Kaʿba-based flirtation also
throws some light on a regular Muslim lady’s sense of public propriety and
49
Al-Iṣbahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī, vol. 1, pp. 78f.: [qāl Isḥāq] wa-khabaranī al-Haytham b. ʿAdī qāl:
qadimat imraʾatun Makkata wa-kānat min ajmal al-nisāʾ fa-baynanā ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa yaṭūfu idh
naẓara ilayhā fa-waqaʿat fī qalbihi fa-danā minhā fa-kallamahā fa-lam taltafit ilayhi fa-lammā kāna fī al-
layla al-thāniyya jaʿala yaṭlubuhā ḥattā aṣābaha fa-qālat lahu ‘ilayka ʿannī ya-hādhā fa-innaka fī ḥaram
Allāh wa-fī ayyāmin ʿaẓīmati -l-ḥurma fa-alaḥḥa ʿalayhā yukallimuhā ḥattā khāfat an yushahhirahā fa-
lammā kāna fī al-layla al-ukhrā qālat li-akhīhā, ‘ukhruj maʿī yā akhī fa-arinī al-manāsika fa-innī lastu
aʿrifuhā’ fa-aqbalat wa-huwa maʿahā fa-lammā rāḥā ʿUmar arāda an yaʿriḍ lahā fa-naẓara ilā akhīhā
maʿahā fa-ʿadala ʿanhā fa-tamaththalat al-imraʾa bi-qawl al-Nābigha:
taʿdū -dh-dhiʾābu ʿalā man lā kilāba lahu / wa-tattaqī ṣawlata -l-mustaʾsidi -l-ḥāmī.
50
Al-Iṣbahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī, vol. 1, p. 76.
personal piety. According to classical fiqh compendia, on the first day (the 8th
of Dhū al-Ḥijja — yawm al-tarwiya) of the ḥajj, pilgrims enter a state of iḥrām
and circumambulate the Kaʿba. In the absence of any concrete evidence to
the contrary, it is reasonable to presume that similar stipulations existed at
that time; thus, the lady herself must have been in some ritually specific state
of purity. ʿUmar, nevertheless, pitifully begs the woman for her attention at
the holiest site of Islam, the bayt al-ḥarām; yet neither character — nor, for
that matter, their companions circling about them — seem to sense any ritual
transgression. ʿUmar is smitten and the lady plays it cold. It is an almost
mundane scene of spirited courting. Such an exchange could have taken
place in a market, not a mosque. Be that as it may, on the second day (the 9th
of Dhū al-Ḥijja, yawm al-wuqūf, i.e., yawm ʿArafa), at nightfall ʿUmar tracks
down the lady. This frame narrative corresponds to the ritual at Muzdalifa
whereupon the pilgrims pray maghrib and ʿishāʾ jointly and proceed to collect
the pebbles for the ritual Stoning of Satan (rajm al-shayṭān) at Minā (jamrat al-
ʿaqaba) the following day.51 At this juncture, the lady becomes fed up and
proceeds to admonish ʿUmar for his lack of respect for the sanctity of the
places of pilgrimage during a holy time.
The conjunction of holy space and holy time is important: it
suggests that the taboo status of the Kaʿba and the ḥaram precinct reach — at
least at this stage in Islamic ritual development — a certain threshold of
inviolate sacrality only during the ḥajj. Otherwise, Mecca and its environs
recede into a quotidian state of Islamic life and leisure that permit sensuality,
prayer, and piety simultaneously within the same space. Desire, implicitly, is
not per se impermissible. But if it were the case that clearly delineated ritual
boundaries had already been codified, why does the lady not express
indignant outrage at the holiest of holies, the Kaʿba? Why does it seem that
she only resorts to religious language when there is a risk of being publicly
impugned? May one surmise from the foregoing that the crux of the matter
is saving face and preserving personal/familial honor rather than adhering
to a religiously legislated principle of piety? Given both characters’ evident
indifference toward the hallowed and revered site of monotheistic devotion
on the first day of the ḥajj, one may venture to conclude that flirting at the
Kaʿba was not categorically an act of fisq, as Ibn Qutayba would have it.
51
This is one of ʿUmar’s favored pick-up sites/rituals, as may be observed below.
The technical term fisq, and its scripture-based derivatives, is

especially relevant for our discussion. As an active participle, the root f-s-q
occurs thirty-seven times in the Qurʾān.52 Lane notes in his Lexicon that the
root as recorded in Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī’s Tāj al-ʿarūs and Ibn Manẓūr’s Lisān al-
ʿarab in its earliest attested sense meant the action of going out of, developing
away, or departing/separating from something in a “bad, or corrupt,
manner.”53 Hence, the earliest Qurʾānic implication of the term more
correctly meant ‘to deviate’ or ‘to go astray from the Right Path,’ in a moral-
religious sense. Arberry’s translation of the term as “ungodly” is, therefore,
slightly off the mark.54 “Ungodly” is an eisegetical rendering of fāsiq(ūn) in
light of Protestant cultural concepts. We are not dealing with abominations
of divine creation or un-natural acts. Instead, Muḥammad almost exclusively
used the term in contexts whereby he reprimands and/or warns his listeners
from “turning away” (tawallā) from the message. Thus, this is not an issue of
a possible godliness, which is implied when one sides with “ungodly” as a
possible translation. It is an issue of human recalcitrance, which the Qurʾān
takes as an essential and problematic quality in human nature. Fāsiq is a
rhetorical term employed in the group-formation process; English
translations that suggest an antithesis to godliness lie outside the religio-
semantic field. Muḥammad’s revelation was, after all, a religious revolution
as much as it was a socio-politically transformative movement.
Consequently, the Prophet needed a tight cohort of dutiful followers and a
vocabulary to designate who was in and who was out. Thus, the term fāsiqūn
should more properly be rendered “rebellious,” “dissidents,” or “dissenters”
in the following: “Then whosoever shall turn away from this covenant, they
are the dissenters.”55 Though politically problematic for the Prophet, these
are very human and natural acts.
52
Qurʾān 2:26, 99; 3:82, 110; 5:25-26, 47, 49, 59, 81, 108; 7:102, 145; 9:8, 24, 53, 67, 80, 84, 96; 21:74;
24:4, 55; 27:12; 28:32; 32:18; 43:54; 46:35; 49:6; 51:46; 57:16, 26-27; 59:5, 19; 61:5; 63:6.
53
Lane, Arabic English lexicon, vol. 1, p. 2397.
54
The Koran interpreted, tr. A. J. Arberry, pp. 23, 32, 40, 53, 77, 85, 87, 89, 132, 135, 136, 137, 141,
145, 154, 167, 184, 188, 203, 208, 209, 213, 217, 218, 219, 229, 239, 260, 261, 262, 269, 274.
55
Qurʾān 3:82: fa-man tawallā baʿda dhālika fa-ʾulāʾika humu -l-fāsiqūn. The verb tawallā is likewise
used in contexts in which Muḥammad’s audience willfully turns their backs to him and dismiss
his charismatic preaching. Thus, the verbs fasaqa and tawallā may be understood in a ‘political’
vein, sit venia verbo, as opposed to belonging exclusively to the epistemological realm of moral-
ethical connotations or natural — i.e. divinely decreed — states of being.
ʿUmar did not have the opportunity to willfully disregard (fasaqa)

the salvific and moral teachings of Islam. He was born into the faith and
never left it.56 Moreover, as Ibn Qutayba notes as an aside, our ibāḥī poet
enjoyed “this life” in Mecca as well as his “next life” in Paradise despite his
sensually charged verse and aggressive behavior towards women. He was
never charged with apostasy (ridda) for his words of desire. Neither did his
sensually provocative activity in and around the most sacred site in Islam
during its most holy month (ayyām ʿaẓīmat al-ḥurma) provoke accusations of
infidelity (kufr). At worst, he was reprimanded and chided by women who
wished not to be bothered.
Whether or not Ibn Qutayba’s use of the term fāsiq may denote a
subsequent semantic development is up for debate. Regardless, fāsiq as
denoting an “ungodly” or heretically transgressive way is not how ʿUmar’s
coreligionists would have understood the term in their own time. Certainly,
ʿUmar achieves a status as “rebellious” (fāsiq), but no evidence exists in
which his contemporaries denounce him as such. This all comes from later
sources, a relevant point that must be taken into account.
Who then was ʿUmar if neither a religious dissenter nor an
“ungodly” bête-noir? The answer is simple: ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa was a well-
known Muslim man of elite status from Mecca who did not consider amorous
activities in the Kaʿba precinct as taboo. It was home turf, hangout joint, and
a holy house of God — all in one. Nor did he, or his earliest admirers,
conceptualize the erotic-elegiac mode of ghazal as incompatible or
56
ʿUmar was born into a family of prominent and prosperous Muslims from the Makhzūm clan
of the Quraysh. His father, whose pre-Islamic name was Baḥīr, was personally renamed by
Muḥammad as ʿAbd Allāh upon his conversion. In the mind of ʿUmar’s contemporaries, this
qualifies Baḥīr, or ʿAbd Allāh, as a Companion (ṣāḥib al-nabī) and therefore a member of a semi-
sanctified class of persons in early Islam. By extension, the so-called “dilettante” poet’s family
embodied a certain charismatic clout in the post-prophetic age. ʿUmar’s father was a religious
warrior (ghāzī) in the Path of God (fī sabīli ʼllāh) and, more importantly, a liberator of the center
of the believers’ devotional worship, the Kaʿba. Such a close relationship with the Prophet of
God is not the only pious item in ʿUmar’s family history. According to a tradition, his father also
personally endowed the covering (kiswa) for the Kaʿba. See al-Isbahānī’s Kitāb al-aghānī, vol. 1,
pp. 61, 64. The naughty songster was, according to a popular tradition, ominously born on the
eve of the assassination of ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, hence his own name, ʿUmar, and his kunya, Abū
al-Khaṭṭāb. See al-Iṣbahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī, vol. 1, p. 71. Paul Schwarz notes that Ibn Khallikān
and al-Suyūṭī record the same tale. See Schwarz, Der Diwan des ‘Umar, vol. 4, p. 3 and fn. 8; p. 7.
antithetical to Islamic rituals and standards of piety. One is here reminded of

the above discussion about Qurʾānic narratives of celestial reward and
prophetic permissiveness.
In short, Mecca and its environs comprised ʿUmar’s backyard. I
argue that the idealization of religious spaces from the distant past are often
hyper-sanctified. One forgets the humanity of pilgrimage sites: these were
places of community, of living, of trade, of chaos, as much as they were places
of prayer, penitence, and pious communication with the Almighty. It
behooves scholars to recognize how our own seemingly perfect definitions
and categories obfuscate the reality of history. Be it a temple, tomb, church,
or mosque, the activity in and around the site probably resembled more a
complex Venn diagram of myriad imbricate spaces, performances, and
values.
The poetic proof:

Four exemplary ghazals of commonplace courting at the Kaʿba
The following excerpts from ʿUmar’s dīwān are further primary examples of
courting and kissing at the Kaʿba that would ruffle our contemporary
standards of propriety and piety. In our first piece, ʿUmar serenades none
other than the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik’s (r. 65-86/685-705) daughter Fāṭima
during her pilgrimage:
Recalling ladies loved fills my heart with desire

the calamities of exultation have overtaken me
O, my two companions, know well that my heart
is captivated by the lady of the miḥrāb.57
This introductory excerpt seems, at first glance, hardly erotic; perhaps even
chaste. Yet the characterization of the beloved — Fāṭima — as the “lady of
the prayer niche/platform (rabbat al-miḥrāb)” is unique and subversive.58
57
ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿah, Dīwān, vol. 2, p. 172, vv. 1-2 (see Appendix, p. 225).
58
For an excellent article on the etymological and structural development of the miḥrāb, see
Serjeant, “Miḥrāb,” passim. Serjeant’s sources are critical for understanding exactly how
First, in addition to a piece by Waḍḍāḥ al-Yaman (d. 90/707),59 ʿUmar’s image

may be counted as one of the earliest instances of combining amatory
evocations of the beloved with Islamic ritual spaces generally, and the
practice of prayer specifically.60 In addition, ʿUmar takes up an element of
the amatory prelude (nasīb) of the classical pre-Islamic polythematic ode
(qaṣīda) by invoking his “two companions” (khalīlayya). The poet thus
demonstrates simultaneously his skill in employing religious imagery, his
familiarity with — and adroit control over — the art of epic poetic recitation,
as well as his creative capacity to dislodge the nasīb and turn it into an
independent poetic piece. One may herewith enjoy an early example that
foreshadows the collapse of the qaṣīda into the various generic types that are
more commonly identified as developing in the late Umayyad and early
ʿAbbāsī periods, i.e. under the aegis of the so-called muḥdathūn, like Bashshār
b. Burd, Abū Nuwās, Muslim b. al-Walīd, and al-Buḥturī. In short, ʿUmar was
not only the progenitor of ‘licentious’ love poetry: he was the father of the
entire genre.
Second, there are several layers to ʿUmar’s appropriation of
religious language, imagery, and history. The first connotation is clear given
the space within which the piece takes place: the miḥrāb is a central
architectural element in a mosque. As such, the miḥrāb is critical for directing
Waḍḍāḥ and ʿUmar would have conceptualized the material and special implication of the trope.
According to Serjeant, the miḥrāb may have initially constituted an elevated platform in the
mosque, rather than the modern-day niche (pp. 442 f.). Evidently, the platform was reserved for
high-ranking individuals, political, religious, or otherwise. See also Whelan, “The origins of the
Miḥrāb Mujawwaf,” p. 206: “In the earliest decades of Islam the minbar and the maqṣūrah seemed
to have shared with [the miḥrāb] certain connotations and to have fulfilled overlapping
functions.” The technical Arabic term is intentionally kept to reflect the original meaning, as
well as the modern-day ambiguity in reading and translating the line.
59
“A lady of a miḥrāb who, should I come to her, / I come not close except by climbing stairs
(sullam)” (rabbatu miḥrābin idhā jiʾtuhā / lam adnu ḥattā artaqī sullama). See Ibn Durayd,
Genealogisch-etymologisches Handbuch, p. 47. Cf. Serjeant, “Miḥrāb,” p. 439 for the presentation of
this source in the context of his analysis.
60
For example, Majnūn Laylā conflates love and prayer: “I see myself, when praying, directing
my face to her / even when the house of worship is at my back.” See Khairallah, Love, madness,
and poetry, p. 100. Cf. Kitāb al-aghānī, vol. 1, p. 56. Yet, Majnūn’s character is, arguably, imaginary.
The generally accepted dating of Waḍḍāḥ and ʿUmar’s lifetimes to the late 1st/7th and early
2nd/8th centuries consequently presents itself as a flexible, and more reliable, terminus ad quem.
The birth of a trope is herewith observed.
the physical orientation of early Muslims toward an elevated place of

eminence as well as the correct direction for prayer: toward the Kaʿba. 61 Yet
the exact semantic limitations of many technical terms in Islamic
architecture and ritual within this earliest of periods are unclear, and the
term may have still connoted other older or secondary interpretations. For
example, there are several instances in which Ibn Hishām (d. ca. 213 or
218/828 ~ 833), Abū Nuwās, and Ibn Durayd (d. 321/933) speak of “the musk
of the maḥārīb of Ṣanʿāʾ.” This trope, Serjeant convincingly argues,
metonymically evokes the upper rooms of the ladies of the house.62 In light
of the fact that ʿUmar is reciting this poem on the occasion of Fāṭima’s
pilgrimage to Mecca, one may confidently assume that he is playfully
merging the polyvalent meaning of miḥrāb.
On one level, ʿUmar achieves a unique and impressive poetic feat of
imagination by conjuring up the Meccan masjid and its architectural
accoutrements. The Meccan miḥrāb, which figures abstractly as the ideal type
in all believers’ minds in prayer, is conflated with Fāṭima as the ideal beloved
in all poets’ hearts. Like his contemporary Waḍḍāḥ al-Yaman, ʿUmar compels
his listener to ask: unto whom should I pray, if not unto the lady of my heart?
Yet, is it not equally as cogent to argue that this poet may be inferring that
her private chamber, held aloft in some caliphal estate, is really the focus of
his sensual attraction. The bedroom here becomes the sanctuary to which
his heart sends amatory prayers. Serjeant’s observations allow one to
translate this as both the “lady of the prayer niche” and the “lady of the loft.”
Qibla and perfumed bedchamber are lyrically synonymous. The Kaʿba is
reconcilable as sacred space with ʿUmar’s desire. Eros and pietas, raghba and
taqwā are rhetorically fused.
Third, an equally legitimate reading of the “lady of the miḥrāb” may
also be understood as an invocation of the tale of Zachariah’s wife and, more
prominently, Mary (Maryam) in the Qurʾān.63 Three of the four occurrences
61
Serjeant, “Miḥrāb,” pp. 451, 452. Interestingly, to demonstrate the fluid meaning of miḥrāb as
a technical architectural term, Serjeant cites a line of ʿUmar’s poetry in which he speaks of a
painted image in the miḥrāb of a monk’s cell. A miḥrāb here refers to a “row of columns” or “the
side of a chancel” (p. 450).
62
Ibid., p. 452.
63
Zachariah’s wife is not named in the Qurʾān. In the Gospel of Luke 1:5-25 she is identified as
Elizabeth, the sister of Mary.
of the technical term miḥrāb in the Qurʾān are taken directly from these two
narratives of miraculous birth, with Mary’s pregnancy obviously
foregrounded.64 It is not exaggerated to suggest that ʿUmar is playing with a
very particular cultural element here that, for the contemporary observer,
may seem transgressive: holy female status. Let us expand on this complex
package of cultural signs and meaning.
Fāṭima is the daughter of the caliph. Her father is a man who is not
only the guarantor of the safety of the umma, but he is also God’s deputy
(khalīfat Allāh), the Commander of the faithful (amīr al-muʾminīn), and the seat
of God’s power on earth (sulṭān Allāh fī arḍihi).65 Given the primacy attributed
to agnate relations (ʿaṣaba) and genealogical pedigree (nasab) in Arabian
tribal society, Fāṭima bint ʿAbd al-Malik must have been socially conceived
as a physical extension of corporal holiness that her father embodied. The
practice of attributing sanctified status to female relations — via descent or
betrothal — in the Islamic historical record is, of course, not unique to the
Umayyad period. A precedent can be easily identified in the Qurʾān. The
divine voice of the Qurʾān tells Muḥammad’s wives that they are “unlike any
other women” precisely because of their marital relationship to the
Messenger.66 To further emphasize their special status, the revelation
instructs believers to speak with them only “from behind a curtain (ḥijāb).”67
ʿUmar’s Fāṭima bears the name of the daughter of the prophet, of
the wife of ʿAlī, and of the mother of al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn. All together,
the namesake of ʿAbd al-Malik’s daughter can and should be construed as a
nomen omen. It is more than a name; it is a loaded moniker in Islamic political
disputes over the right to rule. ʿAbd al-Malik was certainly aware of what it
meant to name his own daughter Fāṭima, especially in an age when the
Umayyad murder of al-Ḥusayn, the other Fāṭima’s son and contender for the
caliphal throne, was still fresh in the minds of the umma.
64
Qurʾān 3:37, 39; 19:11.
65
Scholarship on the caliph and the caliphate is immense. For a detailed and concise analysis of
the development of the caliphal office as a position of political, military, and religious/spiritual
power, see Crone and Hinds, God’s Caliph, especially pp. 4-23.
66
Qurʾān 33:32.
67
Qurʾān 33:53. For other instances of ḥijāb as meaning curtain, veil, or some kind of separation,
cf. Qurʾān 19:17; 38:32; 17:45; 41:5; 42:51; 7:46. See also Stowasser, Women in the Qurʾān, p. 168.
In light of the foregoing, one may confidently suggest that the

notion of the transference of caliphal (religio-political) charisma among
members of the same household regardless of gender is tied up in the choice
of names. Our bard is not unaware of this. Thus, his employment of specific
poetic symbols should not be separated from an imputed discourse of
political power and holy femininity. ʿUmar’s beloved lady of the miḥrāb
hereby emerges as a quasi-sacrosanct person.
Finally, it is relevant to note that Islamic society, at least in this early
period, can still be described as an eschatologically charged community. The
Qurʾān abounds with notions of the “coming hour” (al-sāʿa ātiya).68
Muḥammad’s earliest listeners were themselves solicitous concerning the
eschaton of time: “They will ask you about the Hour, ‘when will it come?’” 69
Such enthusiasm did not abate after the Prophet’s death.70 Any caliph in this
early period was, in a fashion, the guarantor of religio-political organization
until the End Times, which according to tradition would involve the return
of Jesus. Obliquely, ʿUmar may also have been suggesting that Fāṭima’s womb
could bear the seed of salvation.71 If Mary, the revelatory ‘first lady’ of the
miḥrāb, gave birth to Jesus, a prophet and revenant character in the Islamic
End-Times scenario, what a remarkably flattering comparison to make with
a beautiful specimen of caliphal progeny like Fāṭima. In short, one can
observe how much Islamic religious space (Kaʿba, Mecca), religious language
and symbolism (miḥrāb  Mary  Fāṭima), and ʿUmar’s erotic eulogizing
flawlessly overlap, mutually inform, and rhetorically enliven each other.
Let us turn now to Fāṭima’s own voice in the poem. Modern scholars
have depicted both the Islamic faith and Muslim society across time as
monolithically prudish, overly zealous, and hypersensitive to discussions of
68
Qurʾān 15:85; 20:15; 22:7; 40:59.
69
Qurʾān 7:187; 79:42.
70
For a poetic manifestation of this Zeitgeist, see Donner, “Piety and eschatology,” pp. 18f. The
early ʿAbbāsīs were certainly eschatological enthusiasts, as indicated by the titles of the first
four caliphs (al-Saffāḥ to al-Hādī). Fāṭimī state ideology was fundamentally linked to the idea of
one of their Caliphs being the expected Mahdī who will initiate the end times. The Ottomans
also believed that their conquest of Constantinople would catalyze the cosmological cogs that
would bring the Hour. Current events, alas, are an unwelcome reminder that the eschatological
material at the heart of the Qurʾānic revelation remains inspirational.
71
This is not so outrageous a reading when one considers the mythological development behind
the figure of the Sufyānī. On this character, see Madelung, “Sufyānī,” esp. p. 6.
the female body. Given this entrenched view, one may be initially inclined to
interpret erotic elegies on (holy) women as exemplary of ibāḥī content.72 Yet
Fāṭima’s response in the poem indicates a complete absence of rigorous
(post-classical) Muslim female propriety. As ʿUmar sings her praises during
the ḥajj, the beloved caliph’s daughter feigns a coquettish playfulness:
A brocaded Janadī robe diaphanously draped her body

as though she were a sun shining through the clouds
She revealed herself enough to drive my heart insane;
her slave girls then covered her again.73
ʿAbd al-Malik’s daughter evidently was the kind of girl who performed the
ḥajj wearing a translucent robe, as opposed to the now official white iḥrām
frock imposed on pilgrims today. In a historical period yet blissfully
untouched by later orthodox strictures, why should we not expect women,
especially those of high class, to be the subject of erotic poetry? ʿUmar’s love
poem seems on par with what any mediaeval French trouvères or German
Minnesänger would have composed. It behooves modern scholars to
reconsider ʿumarī love poetry in a similar light.
Another remarkable poem, much like the first, is dedicated to
another elite lady of early Islamic aristocracy: ʿĀʾisha bint Ṭalḥa.74 For those
familiar with popular figures in early Islamic history, this particular
beloved’s lineage would sufficiently indicate another combination of early
religious history and ghazal. Ṭalḥa b. ʿUbayd Allāh is counted as one of the
Prophet Muḥammad’s closest Companions, one of the earliest converts to
Islam, and praised prominently as one of the Ten Promised Paradise (al-
ʿashara al-mubashshara). As though such a curriculum vitae were not enough,
Ṭalḥa was involved in the event known as the First Fitna of Islam (36/656).
His daughter ʿĀʾisha was, therefore, no common pilgrim. She was an heiress
of sacred history, the progeny of piety and devotion to the Prophet, and, by
72
History, again, proves that Islamicate culture and society was not puritanically prudish. Proof
of the pudding is the proliferation of ʿilm al-bāh (erotology) works by leading religious scholars,
such as Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya. For a summary account of this genre,
see Franke, “Before scientia sexualis,” passim.
73
ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿah, Dīwān, vol. 2, p. 172, vv. 5-6 (see Appendix, p. 225).
74
See Arabic text in the Appendix, no. 2, below (p. 225).
extension, an immediate witness to the fluorescence of his religion. Such an

august status in the collective memory of the community did not, however,
inhibit ʿUmar from falling for the girl and, more relevant for this essay,
flirting with her during the ḥajj.
A single line helps readers understand the continued role of
religious space in ʿUmar’s dīwān. The frame narrative is similar to the
preceding poem. ʿĀʾisha is undertaking the ḥajj. As though in a royal
promenade, she conspicuously rides through Mecca on her donkey (baghla),
hence the opening address: “O, lady on the grey donkey.” In response to
ʿUmar’s call, ʿĀʾisha shoots back with three lines of biting rebuke. The poet’s
persistent pestering is clearly an unwelcome exhibition of admiration. “May
you die by your disease,” she snaps at him. The disease in question is a
common poetic code word for ‘love’.75 “You have burdened me with ire,” she
cries out, evidently in a vain attempt at teaching the poet about what his
lovesick entreaties actually cause. In line five, ʿUmar counters her
accusations with the following powerful rebuttal:
So I said: ‘No, I swear by [the Kaʿba] to which pilgrims

perform the ḥajj
My love for you, in my heart, has neither waned nor
withered.76
The Kaʿba is not verbatim invoked, yet poetry is far from a set of verses with
some simple one-to-one mathematical correspondence between signifier
and signified. A basic understanding of the purpose and ultimate goal of the
Islamic pilgrimage fills in the intimated semantic connection. A mental
image of the Kaʿba emerges between the oath “by that to which” (lā wa-ʼl-
ladhī) and basic awareness of the place to which Muslims orient themselves
in the five-fold daily prostrations and to which they flock yearly (ḥajja al-
75
Dīwān, vol. 2, p. 208, v. 2 (Appendix, no. 2: qālat bi-dāʾika mut). The following lines from Abū
Nuwās constitute the locus classicus for demonstrating the powerful persistence of imagining
love and desire as sickness:
“Stop blaming me, for can’t you see, / your chiding words downright ravish me. / Rather give
me the very medicine / that keeps the illness coming back again.” (daʿ ʿanka lawmī fa-inna -l-
lawma ighrāʾu / wa-dāwinī bi-l-latī kānat hiya -d-dāʾu). See Abū Nawās, Dīwān, p. 2.
76
ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿah, Dīwān, p. 208, v.5 (Appendix, no. 2, v. 5).
ḥajīju lahu). It is clear, in other words, that ʿUmar is swearing his love by the
Kaʿba, the very building supposedly erected in devotion to the One God Allāh
by Abraham and the central cultic importance of which replaced the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem.77 So too is it the central site of conflict over which
Muḥammad left Mecca, only to return with an army to reconquer it in the
name of Islam.
In this light, ʿUmar’s success at fusing religious space with erotic
desire, and Islamic zeal with poetic devotion becomes all the more
irrefutable. Courting, flirting, and now swearing by the Kaʿba — at least in
the first century AH — constitute performative threads of an emotional
tapestry, the seams between each element woven intricately together with
the warp of sacred symbolism and the weft of personal sensuality. 78 That is,
contrary to later ʿudhrī poets who chose to experience the raptures of love
silently from a distance and, as Vincent Monteil noted, “to resign
[themselves] haughtily to suffer carnal bondage without yielding to [the
temptation],”79 ʿUmar and his ilk were positively ebullient in their outbursts
of love, physical attraction, and libidinal needs. 80 Such outbursts, evidently,
were admissible.
77
Qurʾān 2:143-144.
78
Another categorization of this type of erotic eulogizing of women is known as tashbīb, which
is considered synonymous with nasīb. Ibn Rashīq in his al-ʿUmda (vol. 2, p. 775) — notes that
“nasīb¸ ghazal, and tashbīb all mean the same” (al-nasīb wa-ʼl-ghazal wa-’l-tashbīb kulluhā bi-maʿnan
wāḥid). Scholarship has considered this type of ecstatic love poetry peculiar to the Ḥijāz. For
example, see Vadet, L’Esprit courtois, p. 110: “Ce sont surtout les Qurayshites, entendons la société
noble de Médine et de La Mecque qui ont un goût prononcé pour le tashbīb.” See also idem, p.
113. I disagree for if erotic eulogizing was a part of the nasīb, then ghazal/tashbīb was a general
mode of pre-Islamic erotic poesis that stretched from Syria to Yemen, from Mesopotamia to
Egypt. This is important to note, even as an aside, for ʿUmar and his ‘licentious’ poetry is too
often dismissed as a unique product of the political malaise and decadent wealth of Mecca and
Medina.
79
Monteil, Abû Nuwâs, p. 33. See also Jayyusi, “Umayyad poetry,” p. 420. Here, Jayyusi suggests
that Platonic ʿudhrī love poetry is the outcome of introspection, i.e., the new “care for the self”
(επιμέλεια ἑαυτοῦ), discussed prominently by Foucault in volume 3 of his History of sexuality. Guy
Stroumsa has recently developed this theme in relation to the study of monotheism (The end of
sacrifice). It is clear that Jayyusi sees this mortification of the flesh, interiorization of emotion,
and self-confession as an emotive practice preferred over other, more ‘carnal’ kinds.
80
A legendary — and infamous — case in point concerning ʿumarī poets is the narrative of
Waḍḍāḥ al-Yaman and Umm al-Banīn, the wife of Caliph al-Walīd I b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 705-715).
Due to his overt courtship with the caliphal consort, Waḍḍāḥ was assassinated. See al-Ṣafadī,
Having examined two ghazals addressed to specific historical

persons, it is worth examining, for comparative purposes, two additional
poems dedicated to nameless addressees. Some initial points justifying the
following selection and their place within the greater argument of this essay
should be made. First, that ʿUmar also composed ‘explicit’ ghazals to women
in a generalizing mode seems to suggest that the poetic trope was not
singularly motivated by personal experience; how many affairs with elite
mistresses could a Meccan poet have really managed in a lifetime? Rather, I
would argue that this indicates how ʿUmar developed the act of flirting in
the sacred precinct into a common ghazal device. ʿUmar, as we shall see,
employed the trope in inspired bursts of poetic creativity intended for
common consumption.
Issues of length seem to support this hypothesis. The first poem
below is only four verses long;81 the final piece thereafter examined is
thirteen verses long. Having examined his entire dīwān, this suggests that the
trope was suitable for both ʿUmar’s pithy, one-off erotic pieces, as well as for
his more grandiloquent exclamations of love; easier to memorize, at least for
this scholar, the shorter pieces may have enjoyed wider popularity and/or
circulation. Much like greeting-card poems á la “roses are red/violets are
blue,” for what the following piece lacks in complexity of style and imagery,
it makes up for in indelible appeal. As I will demonstrate, the commonplace
pithiness of the first poem is another indication of just how quotidian
instances of flirting and kissing were in and around the Kaʿba.
Perfumed, a herd of gazelles proceeding from Qubāʾ passed me

Bleating a song swiftly, publicly on their way to pray.
I dared approach, casting off the coats of coyness;
As always has been my wont, a womanizer I be.82
Dedicated, as is stated, to a group of peregrinating damsels from Qubāʾ — a

village near Medina — one is struck by how hackneyed the opening line is. In
Kitāb al-wāfī, vol.18 , p. 71; al-Thaʿālibī, Thimār al-qulūb, p. 110; Mughalṭāy, Kitāb al-wāḍiḥ al-mubīn,
pp. 108-112; al-Iṣbahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī, vol. 6, pp. 2304-2306. For several variations of how
Waḍḍāḥ was killed, see Kitāb al-aghānī, vol. 6, pp. 2298-2303.
81
See Arabic text in the Appendix, no. 3 below (p. 225).
82
Dīwān, vol. 2, p. 148, vv. 1-4 (Appendix, no. 3).
the ghazal to Fāṭima he croons nostalgically of painful paramours past; in the

ghazal to ʿĀʾisha he greets us with the commanding image of an elegant lady
riding astride a silver steed. Here, in contrast, ʿUmar indulges in one of the
more bromidic comparisons of Arabic poetry: ladies are gazelles, perfumed
ones at that. Moreover, he erases any particular detail. They are simply one
collective body of abstract feminine beauty. Despite this stereotyped
imagery, the quality of this piece, its rightful place in ʿUmar’s oeuvre, and its
relevance to the overall argument of this essay, comes out in the second
verse:
Bleating a song swiftly, publicly on their way to pray.
Here ʿUmar draws directly on a ready-made cache of contextual references,

and, more importantly, the trope of pilgrimage as an opportunity for finding
love: the “herd” of cooing Muslim gazelles come from the environs of Medina
“swiftly” (musriʿāt) to the place of prayer (muṣallā). Of course, the ladies are
headed to no other place than the Kaʿba. ʿUmar need not state this explicitly.
We know well that he is the supreme Meccan poet, a man who exclusively
sings of the Ḥijāzī terrain as his self-proclaimed stage for poetic performance
and erotic articulation. As in the preceding poems, we observe how ʿUmar
successfully connects the sanctified geography of Islam with the sensual
interests of its male inhabitants. It would not be exaggerated to argue that
ʿUmar has added, now implicitly, Medina to his catalogue of cities known for
their exceptional female fauna. Perfumed gazelles, indeed.
Let us return to the clichéd opening line. How can we reconcile
something so prosaic with the second line, the key verse for setting the scene
and action of the poem? Arguably, many contemporary scholars would
designate the second line as exhibitive of the scandalous and, more
specifically, sacrilegious nature of ʿumarī verse. Pursuant to this logic, one
would categorize this ghazal in terms of its transgressive purport. This is not
only reductive, but also analytically myopic. I argue that the balance of
commonplace and ‘indecent’ imagery more correctly points to how, in fact,
the irreverent element is, simply stated, conventional. ʿUmar’s final line
seems to provide the documentary proof of its quotidian nature. In first-
person voice, the bard nonchalantly eroticizes the Meccan sanctuary:
As always has been my wont, a womanizer I be.
A lingering question remains. Is ʿUmar simply flippant, exploiting his elite

status as Meccan high-class playboy who disregards social convention? Or
did the historical conditions of life in Mecca actually allow for such self-
assured egos? Given the previous discussions of the Qurʾān’s sensual
depictions of Heaven (wildān mukhalladūn, kawāʿib atrāb, ḥūr ʿīn, akwāb wa-
abārīq), the Prophet’s own permissiveness (e.g., rukhaṣ), and the preceding
evidence of composing sensually explicit verse to elite Muslim women,
Ockham’s razor demands a simple answer: ʿUmar comfortably composed
both high-brow and pedestrian ghazals about his erotic escapades and
‘libertine’ desires in and around the ḥaram because life in seventh-century
Mecca was not as puritanical as one ahistorically conceives it to have been.
The final piece, which is included in the epigraph to this essay,83 is
commonly known as “I espied her at night.”84 In the opening lines (vv. 1-2),
ʿUmar addresses one of his many unnamed love interests:
Who will help the heart of a lover enslaved,

who has gone mad for a languorous young lass
Who walks gently, and, should she go out, dons a one-piece
bejeweled garment cut from one cloth
And she is like a fresh tree sprig budding on a tree. 85
One may hereby observe ʿUmar’s poetic prowess. From the second hemistich
of the first verse into the entire second line, he concatenates a series of
actions and images that foreground the girl’s youthful beauty, purity, and
grace. Then, having captivated his listeners’ attention, the bard situates the
love scene in his favorite place: the Kaʿba precinct.
83
See Arabic text in the Appendix, no. 4 below (p. 226).
84
The ad hoc title here is taken from the fourth line of the middle section (Dīwān, p. 27): abṣartuhā
laylatan.
85
Dīwān, p. 27, vv. 1-2 (see Appendix, no. 4).
I espied her and her ladies one night

Betwixt Abraham’s Place and the Black Stone did they
stride.86
Here, ʿUmar demonstrates how to create a poetics of Islamic space. His lyrical
desire maps directly onto the contours of the Meccan sanctuary and its
environs. Such detail seems to suggest that the Ḥijāzī troubadour is in fact
speaking from intimate experience. Empirical observation of women
“sauntering” (quṭufan) sensually around the Kaʿba “like bright white virginal
beauties” — a vision that evokes Qurʾānic scenes from Heaven — may strike
one as a fawning appraisal of feminine beauty that draws from a common
cache of poetic tropes.87 White skin in the Arabian Peninsula, as today, was,
as one may glean from the poetry, a much admired complexion. 88 Yet the
studied specificity achieved by ʿUmar in describing this veritable congeries
of enticing muslimāt dressed in “bejeweled garments” (fuḍul) is palpable and
energetic. The whole scene suggests a time when the Kaʿba may have been a
dual-purpose fashion runway-cum-pious hangout.
The erotic escapade around the Kaʿba reaches an affective peak of
emotional reality, or at least the poetic simulacrum of one, in verses 8-9
below. Here, the primary focus of ʿUmar’s amatory song turns and addresses
her own companions; she calls off — unexpectedly! — their
circumambulatory ritual so that they might flirt with ʿUmar:
Approvingly she said, while conversing with one of her

companions:
‘Go spoil your ṭawāf for ʿUmar.’
‘Go,’ she said, ‘and try to catch his attention so he might see us.
Then give him a wink, dear sister, however coyly.’89
86
Dīwān, p. 27, v. 4.
87
Dīwān, v. 5 (see Appendix, no. 4).
88
Ahmad, “Are you dying to have white skin?”
89
Dīwān, p. 27, vv. 8-9 (Appendix, no. 4, vv. 8-9). See also Britz, Omajadische Liebeslyrik, p. 13. This
is not a unique instance of female daring and fickleness. Al-Iṣbahānī provides a frame narrative
for the poem dedicated to Suʿdā (Dīwān, p. 437, qāfiyat nūn: Aḥinnu idhā raʾaytu jamāl Suʿdā...) in
which Suʿdā, sitting in the Kaʿba mosque, sends a messenger to ʿUmar asking him to come to her
once he finishes his ṭawāf. ʿUmar concedes, comes, and begins to recite love songs to Suʿdā; she
And, in a further mutation of the standard seesaw of masculine yearning and

feminine restraint, ʿUmar — or is it some meta-narrative voice? — tells us in
the first hemistich of line 11:
The companion said: ‘I winked at him, but he refused.’
A sudden shift in perspective occurs, again, in the second hemistich of this

line. ʿUmar interjects:
Then she quickened her pace and pursued me. 90
A translator is compelled to exercise editorial constraint; one itches to insert

an exclamation mark. The smooth shifts in narrative voice are like a well-
executed tango with multiple partners.91 First, the third person (masculine)
objective observer slides into the voice of the beloved herself (i.e. first
person), who then turns to address her silent companion (qūmī taṣadday […]
la-tufsidinna). This dialogue then shifts back to third person objective
observer and concludes with the first person (masculine) protagonist (ʿalā
atharī). Both male and female voices glissade and trot between the various
staccato shifts in diegetic distance. Moreover, the poem exhibits a honed
makes no objections to ʿUmar’s words of desire during the performance. Yet, once he finishes,
the lady rebukes him: “Shame on you, ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa! Are you still so bold as to defile God’s
Precinct, approaching the beautiful ladies of the Quraysh with your tongue?” See Kitāb al-aghānī,
vol. 18, p. 644f.
90
Dīwān, vol. 1, p. 27, v. 10 (see Appendix, no. 4, v. 10). This, I argue, seems to be a different
narrator than the one who can, at least, observe the dialogue between the women themselves.
In the foregoing, the hypothetical meta-narrator seems to speak in the third person limited
narrator perspective, whereas the final hemistich shifts back to ʿUmar’s autobiographical poetic
voice. He can see her running behind him. I suggest this in the subsequent paragraph on this
page by not asserting that the entire scene is under ʿUmar’s control as the first-person
protagonist narrator.
91
For an important work on narrative voice, see Genette, Narrative discourse, especially pp. 212-
262. Starting on p. 245, Genette introduces his concept of the heterodiegetic and homodiegetic
narrator. The former refers to a narrator who is not a character in the story, whereas the latter
is both the narrator as well as a character in the story. In “I espied her at night,” ʿUmar creates
a lyrical story in which he switches between both voices. Such dynamism should be analyzed at
greater length and depth throughout his oeuvre.
familiarity with mixing grammatical tense and mood. ʿUmar’s earliest

listeners were compelled to move in and out of perfect and imperfect tense,
as well as undergo the intensely personal insertion of the beloved’s voice.
Here we have a rare peak into a seventh-century Ḥijāzī man’s
understanding of feminine psychology: the lady in question commands
(imperative mood) her girlfriend to go off and catch the poet’s attention
perchance they may bid farewell to their divinely prescribed
circumambulations and, themselves, indulge in the erotic hunt. In the end,
this particular poem is quite the treat for a contemporary reader. It brings
one into the furtive exchange of desirous glances between the poet as sexual
hunter and his voluptuous “heifers” (baqar).92
Now, let us turn to kissing at the Kaʿba proper. The following
verses are especially intriguing for analysis:
He who savors her saliva after sleep

is poured a perfume of musk, cold and sweet.93
One may, initially, not consider this a kissing scene. After all, ʿUmar seems at
first glance to be merely hypothesizing the pleasure a man may relish if he
ever locks lips with his beloved.94 Such analysis, however, misses the point.
The trope of savoring saliva in classical Arabic poetry recalls an event that
has passed — when the lover and the beloved used to lock lips. In the erotic-
elegiac nasīb of the pre-Islamic qaṣīda, the poet sings of how the memory of
physicality now only haunts his mind, instigating in him the desire to quaff
again the wine of her lips and the ambrosia of her mouth. 95 ʿUmar derived all
his themes, motifs, and tropes from the classical reserve of imagery and
meaning, albeit giving it his own new twist.
In this light, I contend that it is too literal and blinkered to claim
that ʿUmar did not herewith implant in his very first listeners’ minds the
92
Comparing beautiful women with a heifer (baqara), especially a wide-eyed (najlāʾ) and/or
white-eyed (ḥawrāʾ) heifer, is a common trope, evocative of sublime natural beauty.
93
Dīwān, vol.1, p. 27, v. 11 (Appendix, no. 4, v. 11).
94
The hypothetical postulate of the verse is indicated by the conditional particle man plus the
jussive mood (yusqa).
95
Blachère (Histoire, vol. 2, pp. 394-396) gives the following poets as examples: al-Aʿshā Maymūn,
ʿAntara, Muraqqish, and Suwayd b. Abī Kāhil. See also Beeston, “Introduction,” p. 7.
expectation and mental image of two lovers embraced at the Kaʿba in a kiss.
The progenitor of ‘licentious’ love poetry is, after all, entirely known for
indulging in physicality — or what a more moralistic observer might term
‘carnal pleasure.’ In this regard he is, quite rightly, the antithesis of his
‘chaste’ poetic Doppelgänger, Jamīl al-ʿUdhrī, who spends his whole life pining
after Buthayna.96 One must also remember that poetry is most certainly not
a literary narrative, like a novel, nor is poetry a historical register of events
replete with details. To read poetry is to decipher complex images and to
parse the veiled meanings behind them. For ʿUmar’s poetry, one must take
into account the tradition from which he draws inspiration. Moreover, one
must recall that the Kaʿba is itself a site of kissing: pious pilgrims emulate the
Prophet by pressing their lips to the Black Stone. ʿUmar even mentions this
object in line 5: “Betwixt Abraham’s Place and the Black Stone did they
stride.”97
In short, two factors support the interpretation that ʿUmar and his
damsel move in and lock lips: 1) the poetic tradition informing the trope of
savoring saliva and 2) the fact that the ritual of the ḥajj itself sanctions the
labial caress of a holy object. The argument that ʿUmar himself is here
sincerely playing coy misses the complex interconnectivity of artistic
tradition and religious practice, poetic personality and generic trends,
spatial specificity and cultural contingency. All of these variables are at work
in this piece. Kisses — real or artistically implied — were exchanged between
Abraham’s Place (maqām) and the Black Stone (ḥajar).
In the final line, ʿUmar transports his audience into a scene void of
temporal specificity:98
96
Bauer’s observation further drives home the point of difference between the two poets.
Specifically, Bauer qualifies Jayyusi’s declaration of the Umayyad poetic period as an age of
“longing for individual freedom” (Jayyusi, “Umayyad poetry,” p. 425) by clarifying “that in ‘udhrī
poetry desire for individual freedom is not articulated, but rather the fear that one has of such
a freedom.” Bauer, Liebe, p. 48. Throughout his dīwān, ʿUmar in fact never shirks from expressing
his emotions, asserting his sexual freedom, and acting on his desire. Therefore, one may safely
assert that any interpretation of this poem that concludes with an unfulfilled love affair is
erroneous, or, at best, confused.
97
Dīwān, vol. 1, p. 27, v. 4.
98
On the importance of present tense narrative voice in ghazal, see Jacobi, “Time and reality,”
pp. 1-17.
A lady loved, one of voluptuous thighs, of pitch-black pupils

set amidst eyes of bright white;
She does not give into coquetterie while stoning Satan
at Minā.99
The line seems to be a jump, a disjuncture. For seven lines ʿUmar keeps us in
the perfect tense of a bygone tryst. I propose the following interpretation as
a means to reconcile this final line with the opening of the poem and its mid-
section (“I espied her at night…”) and thereby further demonstrate ʿUmar’s
mastery and ability to play with both time and space.
Specifically, this final line is a coda that connects back to the
introductory section (vv. 1-3) in which the bard sings of a beauty he has laid
eyes on just now ( “Who will help the heart of a lover enslaved, who has gone
mad for a languorous young lass”).100 When juxtaposed against the rest of the
piece, the mid-section emerges as a dreamy interlude. The vision of an
unknown lady jogs the poet’s memory. ʿUmar herewith places his audience
into a personal recollection of a love once savored, of a courtship pursued,
and a kiss exchanged “betwixt Abraham’s Place and the Black Stone.” Then,
in the penultimate line, ʿUmar hints that it was all a sweet flashback to a
bygone paramour; the nostalgic “he who savors” is, as mentioned above, a
typical trope in pre-Islamic poetry: the poet contemplates his life after his
sweetheart has moved on with her tribe. One discerns here the lingering
influence of the nasīb in shaping the lyrical frame of the poem.
In the final line, we learn what jogged his brain and inspired the
poem: the image of another lady (vv. 1-3) whose bodice reminds him of the
former fling (vv. 4-12). Thus, the new woman in question in the first lines is
both a vehicle for Mnemosyne to play tricks on the poetic mind and,
simultaneously, a promising opportunity to relive amorous escapades in the
Meccan sanctuary. Like so many of ʿUmar’s other victims, this unsuspecting
beauty also stands poised to perform a ritual act: the stoning of Satan at
Minā.101 Our bard evidently loved to be on the voyeuristic prowl precisely at
99
Dīwān, vol. 1, p. 27, v. 12 (Appendix, no. 4, v. 12). I thank the editors, and in particular Albert
Arazi, for helping improve the translation of this difficult line.
100
Dīwān, p. 27: yā man li-qalbin mutayyamin kalifin / yahdhī bi-khūdin marīḍati -n-naẓari.
101
Dīwān, vol. 1, p. 27, v. 12: ʿinda mujtamari.
the time when we, the passive recipients of orthodox narratives, expect
sexuality and sacrality to occupy two separate — and perhaps opposing —
cultural spaces. But the sensual kiss is only ever exchanged at the central
Islamic qibla. Kissing at the Kaʿba and flirting in Mecca, at least as ʿUmar
shows us, were not in this early chapter of Islamic history that outrageous or
transgressive after all.
Conclusion
In the epigraph of this essay, I juxtaposed a quotation from the Song of

Solomon with that of ʿUmar’s poem “I espied her at night.” It is germane to
reintroduce the first quotation here:
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is
better than wine.102
The Biblical passage is from the Song of Solomon, the erotic poem par excellence
in the opinion of many Hebrew Bible specialists.103 Such a well-studied piece
102
Cant. 1:2.
103
The Song of Songs became a mystical text early on in the hands of its rabbinic-midrashic
readers. Gerschom Scholem argued that the ultimate origins of the allegorical-mystical
interpretation of the Song and its association with Merkavah mysticism, especially with the
doctrine of Shiʿur qomah, can be traced to the Tannaitic period (ca. first to mid-third century).
Scholem, Jewish gnosticism, pp. 18-24, 39-40. As external evidence, Scholem also noted that Origen
of Alexandria (d. 253) was already aware of this mystical appraisal among Jews. See Scholem,
ibid., pp. 38-40. Evidently, only the mature (“full and ripe”) Jew could read it. Origen, Song of
Songs, p. 23. Memorably, Saadya Gaon (d. 942) described the Song as a lock whose key is lost (Gaon,
Five scrolls, p. 26). The esoteric transformation is obvious here. Regarding research that points to
a general scholarly reading of the Song as erotic, see Pope, Song of Songs, p. 114. Pope importantly
employs the word “salacious” to identify the canticle and situate it within Christian exegetical
history. Evidently, Solomon’s “evil impulse” and “carnal desire” necessitated an act of Christian
bowdlerization that transformed the piece into a mystical tractate. For a case study that
problematizes the historical argument for a Christian mystical cleansing of Solomon’s erotic
poem, see Engh, Gendered identities, passim. See also Fiona Black’s Artifice of love, where the author
deconstructs the notion that the “Song of Solomon” is (aesthetically) erotic by employing the
notion of the grotesque, á la Bakhtin’s concept of “carnivalesque” in Rabelais and his world (pp. 4,
65) and Kristeva’s notion of the “abject” (pp. 107, 116 f.). Interestingly, Black notes that scholars
have invoked the Arabic waṣf to explain the poetic imagery and assuage their anxieties about
of canonical religious literature in the lyrical mode is important for scholars

of early Islam and early Arabo-Islamicate poetry as well. Specifically, the
Song’s poetic voice is a veritable paean to desire. 104 One is transposed into a
world of erotic poesis that, for modern sensibilities, may very well seem
incompatible with the ‘religious’ nature of a ‘Holy Book’ and the pious
behavior one expects from its most famous figures, historical or otherwise.
A Christian correlate may be found in the prominence of kissing as
an act of Christian piety during sanctified rituals (e.g., receiving the
Eucharist, baptism, performing monastic vows).105 Christian mysticism takes
the admixture of religious devotion and sensual imagery to the next level.
Two prominent examples are the image of receiving the foreskin of Jesus as
a communion wafer (Agnes Blannbekin)106 or as a wedding ring (Catherine of
Sienna).107 This is a trope that further complicates the borders between the
sacred and profane, between faith and art for the modern mind.108 Yet they
are ineluctably a part of the story of the pre-modern Christian spiritual
experience.
Outside of Christian devotional literature, one likewise finds further
instances of queer combinations of seemingly sensual imagery and practices
in hallowed contexts. Alan Bray, for example, famously demonstrated that
same-sex friendships could be ecclesiastically sanctioned in conjugal-esque
ceremonies, even in churches. His study notably commences with the
startling discovery in 1913 of a tombstone under the floor of the Arap Camii
in Istanbul, once a Dominican church. There, two knights, Sir William Neville
and Sir John Clanvowe, are depicted embraced in a kiss of peace, their
the poem (pp. 19-21). The inclusion of this quotation, therefore, is not only apt, but also suggests
a point of comparison that Arabic literary scholars may want to pursue.
104
There is also the obvious parallel image here of the lover comparing the beloved’s saliva with
wine. This is an interesting point of trans-regional poetic parallelism that, as far as I have been
able to ascertain, has yet to be explored.
105
See Penn’s Kissing Christians.
106
Wiethaus, “Street mysticism,” p. 297. Blannbekin was a late 13th-early 14th century Austrian
Beguine nun. According to the mystic, Christ’s foreskin tasted as sweet as honey (p. 299).
107
Catherine writes about this in a number of letters. For example, see Catherine of Siena, Letters, vol.
1, pp. 147-148, letter T143/G313/DT39; vol. 2, pp. 596-596, letter T50/G185. See also Walker Bynum,
Holy feast, pp. 174-175. Walker Bynum observes that, “Catherine, in letter after letter, says we do not
marry Christ with gold or silver but with the ring of Christ’s foreskin […].”
108
Muir, Ritual in early modern Europe, p. 167.
heraldic shields united as if bound in marriage.109 So much for prudish pre-

modern Christian practices. Can we not, therefore, situate ʿUmar’s ghazal as
also constituting a logical expression of early and different erotic standards?
To balk at the above examples as violating the sacrosanct borders of
squeamish spirituality is wholly unjustified. The numerous examples one
may give regarding the mingling of human sexuality within pious practices
— Jewish, Christian, Islamic, etc. — render increasingly absurd the thesis that
pre-modern religious history can only account for acts of impious
transgression; or, as scholars of Islamic poetry have more commonly argued,
that pre-modern Islamic history only allows for reductive binaries of ‘chaste’
(ʿudhrī) and ‘licentious’ (ibāḥī-ʿumarī) acts, poetic or otherwise. Yet history is
neither uniform nor stable. The assertion that things ‘have always been the
way they are’ collapses under the weight of evidence; there are “no such
timeless concepts” such as that of trans-historical poetic purity, religious
conservativism, or ritual rigidity.110
Of course, further research should be undertaken in order that we
more fully understand exactly how much we need to reassess our notions of
desire, sexuality, religious experience, and poetic performance in early
Islam. This essay is a small, focused contribution of several select poems from
a dīwān that contains many more. Yet the poetic examples chosen above best
reflect ʿUmar’s habit of combining spaces of cultic practice with human
desire; they are the best technical examples of the early experience of Islamic
piety, sacred space, and artistic expression.
My conclusion is not unique, however. Rather, the present essay
builds on recent efforts to resurrect pre-modern Islamicate attitudes towards
109
Bray, The friend. Bray is careful, however, not to suggest that these amicable unions amount
to homosexual relationships. Rather, as in the case of Neville and Clanvowe, the Church was
following a ‘sunna’ — if one will permit a cross-cultural borrowing — of the Dalmation rite, ordo
ad fratres faciendum (Order for the making of brothers). This fourteenth-century code allowed for
the blessing of profound friendships in fraternal matrimony. For additional primary source
examples concerning chivalric homosociality, see the following fourteenth-century texts:
Geoffroi de Charny’s Book of chivalry, Geoffrey Chaucer’s tale Troilus and Crisey, and the tale Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight. Of course, in marked contrast to Bray’s careful analysis, John
Boswell’s Christianity, social tolerance, and homosexuality (1980) and, more notably, his Same-Sex
unions in pre-modern Europe (1994) argues for a more explicit ecclesiastical sanction of same-sex
practices.
110
Skinner, “History of ideas,” p. 53.
sex and sexuality; or, to borrow Ze’ev Maghen’s words, it hopes to have shed
a little extra light on a “corner of Muslim experience where human sexuality
meets ritual purity.”111 In fact, I see my work as following on Maghen’s study
on the jurisprudential interest in sexual purity (fiqh al-ṭahāra) and the
juridical subfield of cross-gender contact (mulāmasa).112 Maghen provides
compelling evidence that Muslim jurists (fuqahāʾ) of the pre-modern period
exhibited what modern parlance would term ‘sex-positive’ legal positions
vis-à-vis the appetitive nature and libidinal urges of mankind, as well as the
intellectual/emotional articulation of sensual sentiments. 113 Perhaps one of
the most incisive of Maghen’s observations is his argument that, “Muslim
thinkers of every era must be no more embarrassed about such subjects than
ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib,” who in a well-attested ḥadīth boasted having excessive
seminal fluid (kuntu rajulan madhdhāʾan).114 Likewise, Maghen notes that
ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb claimed to possess equally overactive testicles. The
second caliph, otherwise known for his extreme zeal and piety in popular
culture, evidently declared the following: ‘”I find that semen gushes forth
from me like flour soup (yataḥarraru minnī mithla al-ḥarīra).”115 Freud would
have had a field day. With such descriptive language, the act is brought to
vivid life in the mind of the reader. ʿUmar’s inventive language is completely
bereft of any shame. In this light, ʿUmar’s own shenanigans in and around
the Holy Precinct seem to fit perfectly within a world of desire and sacrality.
What does this mean for ʿUmar, the transgressive bard and
eponymous progenitor of ‘licentious’ poets (ibāḥiyyūn)? ʿUmar and his ilk
wrote and performed their work prior to the canonizing compositions of
Muḥammad Ibn Dāwūd al-Iṣfahānī’s (d. 296/909) Kitāb al-zahra and al-
Washshāʾ’s (d. 325/937) al-Muwashshā, both major tractates on ‘good’ courtly
behavior that influenced the later artistic treatment and social
conceptualization of Arabic erotica. We must also recall that ʿUmar lived well
111
Maghen, Virtues of the flesh, p. ix.
112
Maghen, ibid., passim.
113
The history of homosexuality in the Islamic world is a rich field of research that provides
further proof of this line of historical reassessment. Literature on this topic has proliferated over
the past several decades.
114
Pace Maghen, ibid., p. 9, who translates “I am a man who suffers from premature ejaculation.”
115
Maghen, ibid., p. 10.
before the canonization of fiqh in the ninth and tenth centuries, after which
point the ritual sacralization of acceptable behavior in the ḥaram emerges.
In conclusion: How can one back-project the late Sunnī synthesis of
centuries-long theological and cultural debate onto this early period and its
pioneering actors? Reason requires a reformation of our modes of
thinking.116 Consequently, the motif of the poet stealing a kiss from his
beloved at the Kaʿba or flirting with ladies performing the ḥajj opens a
window onto the early Arabo-Islamic lived experience of spiritual devotion
and erotic desire. These were not mutually exclusive but, in fact,
complementary and synonymous human practices. 117 My essay has
interrogated the regnant academic discourse on Arabic literary erotica,
offered a case study to complicate the binary of ‘chaste’ and ‘licentious’
Arabic love poetry, and, finally, provided the field with a new view on how
Islam and the Arabian art par excellence — shiʿr, poetry — created a syncretic
cultural faith that did not exclude physical desire.
116
Deconstructing orthodoxies is well underway in studies of early Christianity. See, for
example, King, Gnosticism; idem, “Which early Christianity?”; Buell, Why this new race?, esp. pp. 1-
33; idem, “Rethinking the relevance of race.” The following quote from King, “Affects of
heresiological discourse,” summarizes the generally accepted position in historical studies on
Christianity: “Orthodoxy and heresy are not essential qualities that groups or ideas possess, but
correlative and mutually reinforcing categories belonging to the dynamics of social-political and
intellectual processes of boundary-setting and identity formation” (p. 28).
117
The motif of conflating a beloved with the Kaʿba persists well into the post-classical period.
For example, the Ottoman-era Ṣūfī poet Yunus Emre (d. 720/1320-1) penned the following lines:
“For unto us, love is our imam, the heart a spiritual fellowship / the beloved's face is our Kaʿbah,
a perpetual site of prayer” (Işk imamdir bize gönül cemâat / Kıblemüz dost yüzü dâimdür ̣salat).
Gölpınarlı, Yunus Emre, p. 20.
‫‪Ghazal poetry and early conceptualizations of the sacred and the sensual‬‬ ‫‪225‬‬
‫‪Appendix‬‬
‫)‪Ghazals (in order of appearance in the paper‬‬
‫‪1.‬‬ ‫‪Ghazal to Fāṭima bint ʿAbd al-Malik (khafīf):‬‬

‫األطرابَ‬ ‫ْ‬ ‫واعترتْني نوائبَُ‬ ‫شاقَ قُ ْلبي تذ ُّك َُر األحْ بابَ‬
‫ُمسْتهامَ بربةَ المحْ رابَ‬ ‫يا خليليَ فاعلما أنَ قلبي‬
‫ذاتَ دلَ نقيةَ األثوابَ‬ ‫عُلقَ الق ْلبَُ من قُريشَ ثقا َ‬
‫لا‬
‫ذروة األحسابَ‬ ‫َ‬ ‫جدُّها حلَ‬ ‫رب َةا للنساءَ في بيْتَ ملكَ‬
‫ف ْهيَ كالش ْمسَ من خاللَ السحابَ‬ ‫شفَ ع ْنها ُمحققَ جنديَ‬
‫سترتْها ولئدَ بالثيابَ‬ ‫ت حتى إذا ُجنَ ق ْلبي‬ ‫فتراء َْ‬
‫ليسَ هذا لعاشقَ بثوابَ‬ ‫قُلتَُ لما ضربنَ بالسترَ دوني‬
‫ذاتَُ دلَ رقيقةَ بعتابَ‬ ‫ت منَ القطينَ فتاةَ‬ ‫فأجاب َْ‬
‫ق َْد فع ْلنا رضى أبي الخطابَ‬ ‫أرسلي نحوَهُ الوليدةَ تسعى‬
‫ماجدَ الخيم طاهرَ األثوابَ‬ ‫طع في قطيعة ابنة بشر‬ ‫ل ت ُ َْ‬
‫واح ُكمي في أسير ُك َْم بالصوابَ‬ ‫فاتقي ذا الجاللَ يا أُمَ ع ْمروَ‬
‫فا ْفهميهنَ ثُمَ ُردي جوابي‬ ‫ا ْفعلي باألسيرَ إحدى ثالثَ‬
‫ل تكوني عليْهَ س ْوطَ عذابَ‬ ‫الا سريحَا ا ُمريحَا ا‬ ‫ا ُ ْقتُليهَ قتْ َ‬
‫الا في الكتابَ‬ ‫سَ قضا اَء ُمفص َ‬ ‫س بالنَْفـ‬ ‫أ َْو أقيدي فإنما الن ْف َُ‬
‫ل الكذابَ‬ ‫ص َُ‬ ‫إنَ شرَ الوصالَ و ْ‬ ‫الا يُق َُّر عليْهَ‬‫صَ‬ ‫أو صليه و ْ‬ ‫َْ‬
‫)‪(Dīwān, Schwarz edition, vol. 2, pp. 172-173‬‬
‫‪2.‬‬ ‫‪Ghazal to ʿĀʾisha bint Ṭalḥa (basıṭ̄ ):‬‬

‫أن ت ْرحمي عُمرَا ا ل ترهقي حرجا‬ ‫َْ‬ ‫ل ل ُك َُم‬‫يا ربةَ الب ْغلةَ الش ْهباءَ ه َْ‬
‫فما نرى لكَ فيما ع ْندنا فرجا‬ ‫ش تُعال ُجهَُ‬ ‫أو ع َْ‬
‫ت َْ‬ ‫قالت بداءكَ ُم َْ‬
‫َْ‬
‫ن تُقدْني فق َْد عنيْتني حججا‬ ‫فإ َْ‬ ‫ق َْد ُك ْنتَ حم ْلتني غيْظَا ا أُعال ُجهَُ‬
‫ن غيظي وما نضجا‬ ‫أك ْلتَُ لحْ مكَ م َْ‬ ‫حتى لو اسْطي َُع مما ق َْد فع ْلتَ بنا‬
‫ن ق ْلبي ول نهجا‬ ‫ما محَ ُحبُّكَ م َْ‬ ‫ج لهَُ‬ ‫فقُلتَُ ل والذي حجَ الحجي َُ‬
‫ُم َْذ بانَ م ْنزلُ ُك َْم مناَ ول ثلجَا ا‬ ‫وما رأى الق ْلبَُ من شيءَ يُس َُّر بهَ‬
‫ن ُحسْنها الس ُُّرجا‬ ‫تُغشي إذا برز َْ‬
‫ت م َْ‬ ‫كالش ْمسَ صورتُها غرا َُء واضحةَ‬
‫ن غيرَ ه ْندَ أبا الخطابَ ُمختلجا‬
‫ْ‬ ‫م َْ‬ ‫ت بنائلها ه ْندَ فقد ترك َْ‬
‫ت‬ ‫ضن َْ‬
‫)‪(Dīwān, Schwarz edition, , vol. 2, p. 208‬‬
‫‪3.‬‬ ‫‪Ghazal to ladies from Qubāʾ, near Medina (ramal majzūʾ):‬‬

‫رائحاتَ من قُباءَ‬ ‫مرَ بي سربَُ ظباءَ‬
‫ُمسرعاتَ في خالءَ‬ ‫ُزمرَا ا نحوَ ال ُمصلى‬
‫جالبيبَ الحياءَ‬ ‫فتعرضتَُ وألقيتَُ‬
‫وفُتوني بالنساء‬ ‫وقديمَا ا كانَ عهدي‬
‫)‪(Dīwān, Schwarz edition, vol. 2, p. 148‬‬
4. Ghazal to unnamed love (bası ̄ṭ):

َ‫يهذي بخودَ مريضةَ النظر‬ َ‫ن لقلبَ ُمتيمَ كلف‬ َْ ‫يا م‬
َ‫و ْهيَ كمثْلَ العُسلوجَ في الشجر‬ ‫الا‬
َ‫ض‬ ُ ُ‫ت ف‬ َْ ‫ت ْمشي ال ُهوينا إذا مش‬
َ‫حتى التقينا ل ْيالاَ علىَ قدر‬ َْ ‫حار إ َْذ نظر‬
‫ت‬ َُ ‫ما زالَ ط ْرفي ي‬
َ‫يمشينَ بيْنَ المقامَ والحجر‬ ‫أبصرتُها ليل َةا ونسوتها‬
َ‫يمشينَ هونَا ا كم ْشيةَ البقر‬ ‫طفَا ا‬ ُ ُ‫بيضَا ا حسانَا ا خرائدَا ا ق‬
َ‫الا بالدلَ والخفر‬ َ ‫وفُزنَ رس‬ ‫قد فُزنَ بال ُحسنَ والجمالَ معَا ا‬
َ‫كيما يُفض ْلنها على البشر‬ ‫يُنصتنَ يومَا ا لها إذا نطقت‬
َ‫لنُفسدنَ الطوافَ في عُمر‬ ‫قالت لت ْربَ لها ُمال طف َةا‬
َ‫ثمَ اغمزيه يا أُختَ في خفر‬ ‫ي لهَُ ليُبص ْرنا‬ َْ ‫ت تصد‬ َْ ‫قال‬
‫ت تسْعى على أثري‬ َْ ‫ثُمَ اسبطر‬ ‫ت لها قد غمزتُه فأبى‬ َْ ‫قال‬
َ‫يُسقَ بمسكَ وباردَ خضر‬ ‫من يُسقَ بعدَ المنامَ ريقتها‬
َ‫عسرا َُء للشكلَ عندَ ُمجْ تمر‬ َ‫حورا َُء مم ُكورةَ ُمحببة‬
(Dīwān, Schwarz edition, vol. 1, p. 27)
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The Institute of Asian and African Studies

The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation

Kissing at the Kaʿba: ghazal poetry and early

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

Albert Arazi Narratif et lyrisme dans la poésie arabe 1

Rachel Milstein Houari Touati, ed. De la figuration humaine 275

KISSING AT THE KAʿBA: GHAZAL POETRY AND EARLY ISLAMIC

at stake, therefore, is the restitution of classical Arabic literary articulations

First, a preliminary investigation into the images and rhetoric of

brides (zawwajnāhum) to the devout male believer upon his spiritual

The Apostle of God said: “God said: ‘I have prepared for My

themselves quite interested in expanding on this material. In fact, “Islamic

enjoyment, particularly of the sensuous kind. 27 Paradise is, simply put, a

In a wider sense, rukhaṣ represent in the opinion of Muslim

Kister also wrote about another instructive situation concerning rukhaṣ in

(Abyssinian) musicians playing the dankala (also recorded as darkala) and

Continuity and change:

ʿUmar was immoral (fāsiq), he would accost women performing

He would also flirt with them amorously. Consequently, ʿUmar

[Isḥāq said] “I was told by al-Haytham b. ʿAdī: ‘A woman of

Wolves attack the man

From a post-classical perspective, the above narratives are certainly

The technical term fisq, and its scripture-based derivatives, is

ʿUmar did not have the opportunity to willfully disregard (fasaqa)

antithetical to Islamic rituals and standards of piety. One is here reminded of

The poetic proof:

Recalling ladies loved fills my heart with desire

First, in addition to a piece by Waḍḍāḥ al-Yaman (d. 90/707),59 ʿUmar’s image

the physical orientation of early Muslims toward an elevated place of

In light of the foregoing, one may confidently suggest that the

A brocaded Janadī robe diaphanously draped her body

extension, an immediate witness to the fluorescence of his religion. Such an

So I said: ‘No, I swear by [the Kaʿba] to which pilgrims

Having examined two ghazals addressed to specific historical

Perfumed, a herd of gazelles proceeding from Qubāʾ passed me

Dedicated, as is stated, to a group of peregrinating damsels from Qubāʾ — a

the ghazal to Fāṭima he croons nostalgically of painful paramours past; in the

Bleating a song swiftly, publicly on their way to pray.

Here ʿUmar draws directly on a ready-made cache of contextual references,

As always has been my wont, a womanizer I be.

A lingering question remains. Is ʿUmar simply flippant, exploiting his elite

Who will help the heart of a lover enslaved,

I espied her and her ladies one night

Approvingly she said, while conversing with one of her

And, in a further mutation of the standard seesaw of masculine yearning and

The companion said: ‘I winked at him, but he refused.’

A sudden shift in perspective occurs, again, in the second hemistich of this

Then she quickened her pace and pursued me. 90

A translator is compelled to exercise editorial constraint; one itches to insert

familiarity with mixing grammatical tense and mood. ʿUmar’s earliest

He who savors her saliva after sleep

A lady loved, one of voluptuous thighs, of pitch-black pupils

In the epigraph of this essay, I juxtaposed a quotation from the Song of

of canonical religious literature in the lyrical mode is important for scholars

heraldic shields united as if bound in marriage.109 So much for prudish pre-

‫‪1.‬‬ ‫‪Ghazal to Fāṭima bint ʿAbd al-Malik (khafīf):‬‬

‫‪2.‬‬ ‫‪Ghazal to ʿĀʾisha bint Ṭalḥa (basıṭ̄ ):‬‬

‫‪3.‬‬ ‫‪Ghazal to ladies from Qubāʾ, near Medina (ramal majzūʾ):‬‬

4. Ghazal to unnamed love (bası ̄ṭ):