ديوان الحصْري: المتفرّقات والمعشّرات

Al-Husri did not undertake to collect his poetry except for his collection 'Iqtirāḥ al-Qarīḥ wa Ijtirāḥ al-Jarīḥ,' [The Offering of the Inspired and the Transgression of the Wounded] as he stated in its introduction. He says: “The Qur’an is my emblem, and for that reason I did not compile my poetry. I bewitched minds with it, and they admired it; then I cast it behind me. I left it for those who could grasp it—so they may steal it or claim it as their own; inheriting me without being my next of kin, possessing it without effort—except for what is in this book of mine.” (Published by Bayt al-Ḥikma, p. 313). For this reason, no trace of his poetry or accounts from his youth in Kairouan can be found. However, he is credited with a lost dīwān titled “The Collection of Preferred Poems,” which included his panegyrics for the Banū ʿAbbād and some of the Ṭāʾifa kings. He also composed a qaṣīda of over two hundred lines, known as the Ḥuṣriyya, composed in accordance with Nāfiʿ’s recitation of the Qur’an.

Nevertheless, some works of literary history, such as Adh-Dhakhīra fī Maḥāsin Ahl al-Jazīra by Ibn Bassām ash-Shantarīnī (d. 542 AH/1147 CE), have preserved some of his poems and fragments in praise, satire, and love poetry. These were collected by the editors Muḥammad al-Marzūqī and al-Jīlānī ibn al-Ḥājj Yaḥyā, who added to them unique pieces from the Escorial Library) and the ʿAbdaliyya Library. Accordingly, his dīwān (poetic collection) can be divided into two sections: al-mutafarriqāt (miscellaneous poems) and al-muʿashsharāt (ten-line poems).

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The “Miscellaneous” section: The editors organized the poems alphabetically, and within each letter, by vowelization order—beginning with the ḍammah, followed by the fatḥah, then the kasrah, and finally the sukun [jussive]. These poems revolve around four main themes: The first is ghazal (love poetry or madrigal), which appears in a limited number of verses, despite al-Ḥuṣrī being one of the great ghazal poets—as evidenced by his famous poem “O Night of the Lover.” It is likely that this ghazal originally served as nasīb—i.e., introductory verses to now-lost poems—so it’s unsurprising that these were not lengthy pieces. The second theme is panegyric poetry, praising certain Andalusian rulers such as Ibn ʿAbbād, al-Muqtadir ibn Hūd, the emir of Zaragoza in al-Andalus, and Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Balansī, the blind grammarian, of whom he was one of the disciples. The third is elegy, including his lament for al-Muqtadir ibn Hūd and for his city of Kairouan. The fourth is satire, the most notable of which are his biting attacks on Sulaymān ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭarāwah al-Māliqī, a grammarian and poet.

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Al-Muʿashsharāt: This is a poetic style found in themes of nasīb (love prelude), asceticism, and praise of the Prophet. The term refers to any poem comprising ten verses, each of which begins and ends with the same letter from the twenty-nine letters of the Arabic alphabet, including the “lām al-alif.”

The reasoning behind the name, as we suggest based on “Lisān al-ʿArab” and its various lexical treatments of the root ʿ. sh. r, includes expressions like “ʿashshartu al-shayʾa taʿshīran” — meaning ‘it was nine, and I added one until it became ten,’ and “ʿashartu,” in its lightened form — ‘I took one from ten so it became nine’; since, as the Arabs say, ‘they do this because arithmetic is not very common among them’ — or because counting is done on the ten fingers of the hand.”

Al-Ḥuṣrī may have been the first to come up with this poetic form, as he adopts in his muʿashsharāt—each written in the genre of nasīb (love poetry) and in the ṭawīl meter—the same approach as in “luzūm mā lā yalzam,” [self-imposed compulsion] where rhyme and thematic unity are strictly adhered to. This is also seen in his work “Dhayl Iqtirāḥ al-Qarīḥ.” An example of this is his use of the alif rhyme, where he ends each verse with the same letter he began with: alif.

al-baḥr al-ṭawīl [“the Ṭawīl meter”]

ʾalā ʾinna qalba aṣ-ṣabbi fī yadi ḥibbihi // yuqallibuhu fī al-ḥubbi kayfa yashāʾu

Behold, the heart of the passionate lover is in the hand of his beloved —

he rolls it in love however he pleases.

And his verse in the ṣād rhyme, where he begins with the letter ṣād and ends each line with it :

al-baḥr al-ṭawīl [“the Ṭawīl meter”]

ṣilū fī al-hawā yaqtaṣṣa minkum jarīḥukum // faqad qāla rabbī: “wa-al-jurūḥa qiṣāṣun

Love as you will, your wounded one may take vengeance on you —

for my Lord has said: “Wounds require equal retribution.”