Writing the Twilight

In the eleventh century, as Muslim sovereignty in the Western Mediterranean was eroded by both internal divisions and external attacks, Sicily fell to the Normans. At the same time, al-Andalus fragmented into a series of small kingdoms that were then picked off by powerful conquerors. Against this backdrop, Arabic poets made use of their craft to try and explain the changes in their world. Among them were the Andalusian Abū Ishāq and the Sicilian Ibn Hamdīs, both of whom wrote vividly about their own ageing and mortality, as well as about the broader twilight of the worlds they knew.

Taking these two protagonists as its starting point, this extraordinary volume explores how Abū Ishāq and Ibn Hamdīs, despite their different locations, both made use of poetry. For them, it was a tool to confront their mortality, lament their own physical decay, and appeal to their age and experience, as well as a way of juxtaposing their concerns with the political and social dismemberment of their wider societies and the need for a restoration of world order. The result is also a broader discussion of the relationship between poetry and politics in Maghribī Islam, and a reminder of poetry’s importance as a medium to engage with the world.

Acknowledgements

Introduction. A Poetics of Ageing

Chapter One. The Twilight of Arabo-Muslim Hegemony in the West: The Rise of Abū Isḥāq and Ibn Ḥamdīs as Political Poets

Chapter Two. The Poetics of Ageing: Al-Shayb wa-l-shabāb as a Poetic Motif

Chapter Three. A Poetics of Loss: The Elegies

Chapter Four. The Poetics of Withdrawal: Ascetic Verse

Conclusion

Bibliography

Indices