Ibn al-Sharīf Dartarkhwān al-‘Ādhilī

‘Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Riḍā ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī al-Musāwī al-Ṭūsī, also known as Ibn al-Sharīf Dartarkhwān al-‘Ādhilī (b. 589 AH/1193 CE in Ḥamāh, Syria; d. 655 AH/1257 CE), was a poet.[1] He is noted as the author of the Alf jāriyah wa-jāriyah ('one thousand and one slave-women'), which survives in one manuscript of 255 folios, now in the Austrian National Library.[2] The work seems to have been a sequel to the same author's Alf ghulām wa-ghulām ('one thousand and one male slaves'), now lost; Alf jāriyah wa-jāriyah comprises eight chapters of short poems in the epigrammatic form known as maqṭū‘ (pl. maqāṭī‘).[3]

chapter number of epigrams subject matter
1 250
2 50
3 100 name-riddles
4 100
5 100
6 211 women from different cities
7 45
8 145

Examples

The following examples come from the sixth chapter of Alf jāriyah wa-jāriyah, in which each three-verse epigram celebrates the women of a different city of the Islamic world. This example is in the sarīʿ metre:[4]

wa-qāla fi jāriayatin miknāsata
iqṭaʿ ilā wahrāna fī ṭāʾirin yasbahu fī l-māʾi bilā rūḥī
laylan ʿalā laylin wa-min baʿdihā qudda l-malā bi-l-ḍummari l-fiḥī
fa-lī bi-miknāsata khawdun ḥashat qalbī l-muʿannā bi-tabārīḥī

And he referred to a girl from Meknès:
Cross (the sea) to Oran on a bird that swims in the water without life
night after night, and after it (i.e. Oran) traverse the deserts on large and slender camels!
For at Meknès I have a lovely girl who has filled my tortured heart with passionate desires.

This is in the wāfir metre:

wa-qāla fi jāriayatin min ishbīliyata
hajartu bi-ṭūsa min ahlī ʿadīdan bi-andalusīyatin jaydāʿ a ghaydā
bi-ishbīlīyatin sanaḥat mahātan taṣīdu bi-laḥẓihā l-ḍirghāma ṣaydā
janā l-zaytūna wa-l-zarjūna fihā jamālan ṣāra li-l-jawwābi qaydā

And he referred to a girl from Sevilla:
I left, at Ṭūs, a great number of my people, because of a long-necked, supple Andalusian girl!
A Sevillian who appeared as a wild cow that hunts down the lion by her looks
— he had been collecting olives and grapes there — by virtue of (her) beauty that has turned into shackles for the traveller.

Editions and translations

No edition of the whole work exists, but editions and translations of numerous poems or sections have been published by Jürgen W. Weil. The most prominent publication is his Mädchennamen — verrätselt. Hundert Rätsel-epigramme aus dem adab-Werk Alf ǧāriya wa-ǧāria (7./13.Jh.), Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 85 (Berlin: Klaus-Schwarz-Verlag, 1984), ISBN 392296835X, which published chapter 3 of the work in transliterated Arabic and in German translation. Other editions and translations include:

References
  1. Arie Schippers, review of: Jürgen W. Weil, Mädchennamen — verrätselt. Hundert Rätsel-epigramme aus dem adab-Werk Alf ǧāriya wa-ǧāria (7./13.Jh.), Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 85 (Berlin: Klaus-Schwarz-Verlag, 1984), ISBN 392296835X, Bibliotheca orientalis, 47 (1990), 819-20.
  2. Gustav Flügel, Die arabischen, persischen und türkischen Handschriften in der kaiserlichen und königlichen Hofbibliothek zu Wien (Vienna, 1865), I 362-64.
  3. Adam Talib, How Do You Say “Epigram” in Arabic?: Literary History at the Limits of Comparison (Leiden: Brill, 2017), p. 13 fn. 2.
  4. Jürgen W. Weil, 'Girls from Morocco and Spain: Selected Poems from an adab Collection of Poetry', Archív Orientální, 52 (1984), 36–41.
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