Abu nuwas

Abū Nuwās al-Hasan Ibn Hāni' al-Hakamī (in Arabic: أبو نواس الحسن بن هانئ الحكمي‎) (Ahvaz, Iran, 747-Baghdad, 815), or simply Abū Nuwās (أبو نواس) or Abu Novas in Persian transliteration, was one of the greatest classical Arabic poets. Born in the city of Ahvaz (Persia), in present-day Iran, to an Arab father and a Persian mother, he became a master of all contemporary genres of Arabic poetry, but his reputation rested on Bacchic poetry (خمريات jamriyyat), and towards homosexual love (مذكرات mudhakkarat). Abu Nuwas thus entered the folklore tradition, as a celebrated and dissolute poet, present as a character several times in the book A thousand and one nights.

He died during the Great Abbasid Civil War before Al-Ma'mūn advanced from Khurāsān in 199 or 200 AH (814–816 AD).

Early Life and Works

His father, Hani, whom Abu Nuwas never knew, was from the Banū Sa'd Arab tribe and a soldier in Marwan II's army, and his mother Golban, a weaver by trade, was Persian, because since he was a child he spoke Persian and Arabic interchangeably.

Biographies differ on Abu Nuwas' date of birth, placing it between 747 and 762. Some say he was born in Damascus, Basra, or Ahwaz, his name being al-Hasan ibn Hani al-Hakami. His pseudonym, Abu Nuwas (Father of the Lock of Hair), refers to the two long locks that fell to his shoulders.

He lived his youth in Basra, where he studied the Koran and grammar and had as a teacher and lover the poet Waliba ibn al-Hubab, a libertine bard, who took him to live with him in the city of Kufa. Back in Basra he studied with Jalaf al-Ahmar, a teacher of pre-Islamic poetry. To improve his Arabic, he lived for a while among the Bedouins of the desert, but hated that life and decided to return to populous Baghdad.

Exile and prison

Abu Nuwas was forced to flee to Mecca and then to Egypt for a while, after writing an elegy in praise of the Barmakids, the powerful family of hierarchical protectors of Abu and persecuted and killed by the caliph at the time, Haroun al-Rashid of the Abbasid dynasty. Despite the appreciation he aroused at court, he did not fail to spend some time in jail as a result of his hedonistic life and his fondness for wine.

He returned to Baghdad in 809, after the death of Harun al-Rashid and AlMuhammad al-Amin ascending to the throne, the young and libertine son of Al-Rashid, barely twenty-two years old, and former pupil of Abu Nuwas, a coup of luck, during which it is believed that he wrote most of his poems, since Al-Amin was not only a lover of arts and letters but also shared the hedonism of Abu Nuwas, being his most famous royal commission the casida he composed in praise of Al-Amin. To Abu's misfortune, the caliph died after four years of reign and his brother succeeded him, also a lover of letters and the arts, but not of drinkers and rebels.

It is said that the secretary of Al-Ma'mun tricked Abu Nuwas into writing a satire against Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, while drunk. Zonbor deliberately read the poetry in public, and ensured that Nuwas remained in prison. Depending on which bibliography is consulted, Abu Nuwas died in prison, or was poisoned by Ismail bin Abu Sehl, or both, around the year 815.

Legacy

Abu Nuwas is considered one of the great poets of classical Arabic literature. He influenced many later writers, such as Omar Khayyam and Hafiz of Shiraz (both Persian) and Ibn Quzman (Andalusi poet), to mention just a few.

Among his best-known poems are those that ridicule the Mu`allaqat, that is, the poems of pre-Islamic poetry whose theme is nostalgia for Bedouinism, and which praise modern life in Baghdad as a foil.

He first cultivated a poetry in the classical Arabic tradition, and then abandoned it in favor of new themes. Much of his poetry resorts to the bacchic and erotic topic, in keeping with his dissipated life. The descriptions of his carousing, which usually takes place in a Jewish or Christian tavern at night, are highly realistic.

A lustful personification of Abu Nuwas appears several times in The Thousand and One Nights.

His freedom of expression, his celebration of love and sex between men, continued to inflame the spirits of his censors:

Do you love me?
When I saw that beautiful young man,
He laughed with godeos.
We were both alone, anyway,
alone with God. And yet,
He put his hand in mine
and he spake me a great time;
Then he said, "Do you love me?"
"Yes, beyond love."
"And therefore," he said, "Do you want me?"
"Everything in you is desirable."
"Then fear and forget me like this..."
"If my heart would obey me..."

Translation of Alfonso Bolado of the original of Abu Nuwas

Her poetic output was collected after her death by scholars al-Suli and Hamza al-Isbahani. Approximately 13,000 verses are preserved. Despite being one of the most esteemed Arab poets, some of the current editions of his works omit, for reasons of modesty, including the many poems he dedicated to his multiple male lovers.

While his works were widely known until the early years of the XX century, in 1932 the first modern, censored edition it was published in Cairo, leaving out all homoerotic poetry entirely. 6000 books of his poetry were burned by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture in January 2001.. In the Saudi Global Arabian Encyclopedia entry on Abu Nuwas, any mention of pedophilia is omitted.

Bacchic poetry

Much of his poetry is Bacchic, in keeping with his dissipated life. The descriptions of his revelry, which generally took place in a Jewish or Christian tavern at night, are both highly realistic and aesthetically pleasing of a quality that spectacularly advances its most brilliant predecessors.

«The glass is so thin and the wine so limpid!

How to distinguish it? Difficult business!
It's like there's only wine and no glass.

like there was only glass and it didn't come. »

The Bacchic genre or khamriyya was one of the most cultivated Arabic poetic art, which traveled from the depths of the Arabian peninsula to Andalus, and Abu Nuwa was one of the Arab-Persian poets who exposed this theme the most in his work. The author describes the poems of this genre as metaphors and mixes with great personality and harmony exquisite puns such as cups, bowls and chalices, taverns or convents, Christians or Jews, beautiful women hidden in amphoras, the parents of which they only deliver in exchange for a good dowry, courtly life with luxuries or camps in ruins, perfumes and religion.

«Where the flowers are,

the good wine and the laúdes,
Stop and don't move.
That pours the copera
that inspires the poems.
Dance the wine in the mixture
inside the cups and dorks.
Let the bubbles shine
like the rays burst,
storm day. »

- Catalan translation: Anna Gil and Jaume Ferrer Carmona

• The wine and its attributes: view, smell, touch, ear, taste and effects of wine.

Abu Nuwas surrounds wine with the attributes of the five senses; Wine has the power to illuminate the face of the loved one at night, the heat of winter nights, or how the sun blinds the eyes of those who look at it. The perfume that he exhales is like the aroma of an apple and his perfume compares it to the breath of the beloved or the flowers in the garden where friends drink. The touch that the wine has is smooth as silk and through the glass cup, when the butler carries it in his fingers, the red color is reflected, with which he seems to stain his hands with blood. According to Abu Nuwas, wine speaks and tells secrets to the drinker. The taste of wine, he defines as "spicy like pepper" or "bitter until the nose shrinks" -at that time wine was a thick drink and had to be mixed with water-. Among the numerous effects that he describes of wine.

• Digestaries, Coppers and Censors: the poet, the copero, the comensales and the censor.

The poet does not separate the Bacchic genre from the erotic; thus, he presents the diners together with the wine servers as erotic objects full of love and debauchery, he combines the passion for both genders together with the power of the poet. The cupbearer or server of the wine, he sometimes compares to a gazelle with seductive gaze and movements, he serves the wine in the glass and in his eyes another kind of intoxicating wine can also be appreciated. As if it were a metaphor, Abu Nuwas sometimes names the cupbearer Gulam with a feminine ending gulaminyya, representing in this case the chaste love for wine and in the other the obscene love that the cupbearer inspires in him. He always defines diners as intelligent and highly sensitive characters. Censorship or the censor are openly criticized, many of his poems begin with a sentence addressed to this censor to beg him to stop criticizing, he is a character always shown in a hateful way and always countering his actions when he argues the most the censor to stop drinking further encourages him to do the opposite and encourage his friends to continue drinking.

• The Balkan Space: the taverns, the convents, the gardens and the court.

The spaces where all his Bacchic poems are celebrated are very diverse, although with something in common: the poet and his friends are always surrounded by the pleasures of music, love and wine. The taverns were, like the convents, outside the walls of Baghdad, among vineyards that used to produce their own wine and run by Jews or Christians; Going to these places used to always be at night; the innkeepers, always before opening their doors, questioned the group of friends to be sure of their solvency; there, many of these nights, and due to drunkenness, they had to stay for one or more nights. The nights in the Christian convents where they were offered the wine produced by them, used to be related more or less like the taverns, with the difference that Abu Nuwas gives a lot of news about the organization of monastic life. The gardens and orchards are sites related to the enjoyment of drinking wine together with his group of friends, under the trees and surrounded by flowers, accompanied by musicians and singers; in these places, poems are always compared to the perfume and beauty of flowers. Finally, inside the palaces of the caliph's court, is where the best parties were held; the drink joined music, poetry and the most select pleasures.

• Wine and Islam: drinking in Ramadan, the pilgrimage to the tavern, the other precepts of Islam, wine and demon.

According to the Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said Esber, known by his pen name Adonis, Abu Nuwas is the "poet of fault for being the poet of freedom", for he turned the life of pleasure, and secretly wine, into element of worship and got its own language as a symbol of a religion; Abu Nuwas himself reported: "I have my religion"; His poetry served him to show in his time an element of modernity that of his free action and opinion: "the morality of lack."

The poet was provocative against one of the great contributions of the Arabian peninsula and its people: Islam. The precepts of the Islamic religion made him commit the worst mistakes. The month of Ramadan and its laws were the subject of satire and blasphemies by the writer, during which he continued to drink in secret along with his friends, according to him, locked in taverns or also posing as Christians. He exchanged the pilgrimage to Mecca for a symbolic one to Baghdad and its vineyards and taverns. In his poetry, he simulates a conversation between an alfaquí and his disciple, the one who asks the duties to be a good Muslim; the teacher responds with curses against the most sacred precepts of his religion. In another poem, the same poet seduces the devil, to whom he proposes a pact: he will invoke whenever he needs his help in exchange for the devil not losing his adoration; Thus, for example, whenever a lover of Abu Nuwas does not fall into his arms, he turns to the devil.

• Wine and poetry: abandoned camp and intratextuality.

Abu Nuwas' work is always critical of the Arabs and their traditions; he also reaches criticism of classical Bedouin poetry; It is contrary to the precise distribution and the established treatment on the treatment of some topics. Like the nasib or love prologue with which the classic casida always begins, in which the poets complain at the vision of the camp where his beloved was, abandoned by her nomadic tribe. Always at this point, poets remember the moments lived with their love. Abu Nuwas begins many of his poems with his usual sarcasm, and instead of crying at the abandoned camp and the absence of his beloved, the poet encourages them to continue drinking and describes instead of remembering his beloved the memory of the night spent with her friends drinking and with her lover, she mentions taverns instead of desert camps. Thus, Abu Nuwas, although he sometimes inserts verses from other poets into his work with the same meter and rhyme, always changes the nuances and sentiments shown by previous poets.

Erotic poetry

He spread enjoyment, both legitimate and 'illegal', witty and fun. His dissolute performance made him wicked and polymorphous by night, and cosmopolitan and aristocratic by day. His performances, from the caliph's protection, were full of fantasy and eccentricities. His poetry overflows with sex, eroticism, power and ostentation. Reading his poetry, he has the feeling of attending an orgy in a tavern in the desert, with overflowing vases of nectars, abundant food and glasses full of wine. Reading it, he can imagine the shadow of weakened slaves and submissive lovers, mixed with cynical and frivolous diners and guests.

He cultivated erotic poetry without feeling limited by any subject, with the sharpness that his assumed debauchery allowed him. He attacks directly and alters acquired habits. He expressed himself directly, without hypocritical pseudonyms or misleading qualifications or substitutes. He called the lovers by his name and flattered them by treating them as deas. A freedom in his expression that is impossible to understand in the society of his time. From this position, he developed new attitudes, such as the cult of appearance, the fondness for eroticism, conventions and refinement. A courageous attitude and an independent style that positioned the poet as an advance of modernity with a great influence on Arabic poetry.

Abu Nuwas is considered one of the greats of classical Arabic literature. Despite his irreverent literature and poor reputation in life, he influenced many later writers, including the poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam (11th century) and the mystic poet Hafez of Shiraz of Shiraz (XIV) (both Persian). A hedonistic caricature of Abu Nuwas appears several times in One Thousand and One Nights. Among his best-known poems, those that ridicule the Mu'allaqat stand out, that is, the poems of pre-Islamic poetry, the theme is nostalgia for the Bedouin, and they praise modern life in Baghdad as a contrast.

Works

Ismail bin Nubakht, a contemporary of Nuwas's contemporaries, said:

"I never met a man of greater knowledge than Abu Nuwas, nor one who, with such a richly furnished memory, possessed so few books. After his death, we searched his house and only found a book cover containing a paper folder, in which there was a collection of rare expressions and grammatical observations.."

Early anthologies of his poetry and biography were produced by:

• Yaḥyā ibn al-Facordl and Ya`qūb ibn al-Sikkīt ordered their poetry in ten categories according to the subject, instead of alphabetical order. Al-Sikkīt wrote an 800-page comment.
• Abū Sa’īd al-Sukkarī edited his poetry, including comments and linguistic notes; he was able to edit about two thirds of the work of a thousand folios.
• Abū Bakr ibn Yaḥyā aI- fellowshipūlī edited his work, organizing the poems alphaberically, and correcting some false powers.
• ‘Alī ibn Ḥamzah al-I calabahānī also edited his writings, compiled works alphabetically.
• Yūsuf ibn al-Dāyah
• Abū Hiffān
• Ibn al-Washshā’ Abū ayyib, Baghdad scholar
• Ibn ‘Ammār wrote a critique of Nuwas’ work, including quotations in which he had made plagiarism at his discretion.
• Al-Munajjim family: Abū Man; Yaḥyā ibn Abī Man; Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā; ‘Alī ibn Yaḥyā; Yaḥyā ibn ‘Alī; Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā;
• Abū al-Ḥasan al-Sumaysāṭī also wrote a loa to Nuwas.