Dominion Built of Praise. Jonathan Decter

you judge them by the laws of the Torah and teach [the laws’] general and specific principles!

      May your tongue utter wisdom and God illumine your face!

      Again, several elements suggest a ritual occasion: the boisterous singing, the blessing of welcome, and the words “from this day on.” Again, we do not know that this poem was uttered within an initiation ceremony, but it seems likely that there was some sort of ceremony that involved the singing of songs. Unfortunately, we still know very little about the performance of public rituals among Andalusian Jews. It seems that there was at least some continuity with Jewish rituals of installation as known from the Islamic East, and in both locales we find parallels with contemporary Islamic rituals of power. However, the installation of a judge in al-Andalus was a less “imperial” occasion than the appointment of an exilarch in Baghdad. In any case, there is no reason to believe that this poem was commissioned by a paying patron.

      As stated, the most likely testimonies for Jewish panegyric performance on a courtly model pertain to the brief period of Ḥasdai Ibn Shaprut. Mosheh Ibn Ezra writes concerning Menaḥem Ben Saruq and Dunash Ben Labrat that Ibn Shaprut “rejoiced at their wondrous poetry and their marvelous and eloquent addresses.”¹¹⁸ In all likelihood, at least some of these poems were the panegyrics for which these poets are known.¹¹⁹ Yet many panegyrics were clearly not performed face-to-face by the poet before his mamdūḥ, such as one that Ben Saruq sent to Ibn Shaprut when the former was imprisoned by the latter.¹²⁰ Nonetheless, the poem presents elements of “performativity” we might expect from formal courtly performance such as first-person speech and a boast over poetic skill.¹²¹ In the final verse of the poem, the poet captures the rhetorical function of the address, which is to assuage the anger of the mamdūḥ and to gain freedom, a purpose masterfully developed through the rhetoric of the appended letter. Was the poem recited by a rāwī subsequent to its reception before the mamdūḥ alone, in a small social gathering, or in a public assembly? Oral performance remains a possibility, but we have no evidence one way or the other. What is certain is the poem’s function as part of an epistolary package.

      The most extensive anecdote that we possess concerning the performance of a panegyric paints a picture quite different from that of a poet presenting a poem before a patron with the hope of remuneration. Yehudah Halevi, in a letter to Mosheh Ibn Ezra, recounts how he came from “Seir” (Christian Iberia) to “dwell in the light of the masters of great deeds, the great luminaries, the wise men in the west of Sepharad (al-Andalus),”¹²² who ultimately befriended him. Recalling their generosity, he wrote: “Time took an oath not to make an end (of me) but in the house of my estrangement it sustained me, delighted me with songs of friendship, and satiated me with the wine of love after I had sworn to wander.” The company was reciting a poem by “the prince of their host,” Mosheh Ibn Ezra (who was not present), a panegyric in honor of Yosef Ibn Ṣadīq in muwashshaḥ form that concluded with an Arabic kharja, titled “Leil maḥshavot lev a‘ira” (A night when I rouse the thoughts of my heart).¹²³ After the others attempted to imitate the poem but failed, Halevi invented a complete version (presumably orally), which he later memorialized in the letter.¹²⁴ In Halevi’s version, it is now Ibn Ezra who is appointed the mamdūḥ.

      What do we learn about the place of panegyric in Andalusian social culture through this anecdote? First, we learn that Ibn Ezra’s panegyric to Ibn Ṣadīq circulated beyond the hands of its recipient; it was likely sent to Ibn Ṣadīq and then copied or circulated orally to others.¹²⁵ Halevi’s letter might be alluding to some of the social practices associated with court culture (wine, music, poetry), particularly the majlis uns, and the reciprocity of the social relations recalls the mujālasa most directly. The oral recitation of poetry, including Ibn Ezra’s panegyric for Ibn Ṣadīq and possibly other panegyrics (perhaps suggested by “songs of friendship”) is clearly attested.¹²⁶ However, to the extent that Ibn Ezra was the “prince of their host,” he was not actually present; there was no patron in the sense of one receiving praise and offering payment in exchange. Halevi also created a panegyric without the mamdūḥ’s being present, a poem that he subsequently sent within an epistle. What did Halevi want from Ibn Ezra in sending him the epistle embedded with the poem? The answer, quite simply, is recognition, association, protection, and possibly even financial support. However, he was not seeking quid pro quo cash remuneration but something much broader, the dynamics of which we explore further in Chapter 2.

      While scholars often cite this anecdote in order to capture Halevi’s remarkable skill and rise to fame, here I stress the social dynamics revealed. The poem, after all, was not any old muwashshaḥ but one dedicated to Ibn Ezra’s honor. The events that Halevi describes might be viewed as a pretext for directing praise toward Ibn Ezra. The letter is essentially a “self-introduction” written in the hopes of formalizing a relationship. Praise is the expected rhetorical register for doing so and is highly attested both in the introduction to the letter and in the poem that it contains. It is possible that Halevi’s poem was recited aloud after reception, but we do not know this with certainty. This turned out to have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as Ibn Ezra responded to Halevi’s letter with a poem inviting the young poet to Granada. The poem praises the eloquence of Halevi’s letter and the poem that it contained and reflects astonishment at the author’s prowess despite his youth. On the other hand, Ibn Ezra’s response did not praise Halevi himself; the poem is a type of panegyric sent from an older and more powerful “patron” to a younger and less powerful “client.” The poem employs only circumscribed praises and thus defines the formality and vertical dynamic of the relationship during its formative stage.¹²⁷

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      In discussing Jewish panegyric in the Islamic East above, I pointed out that many poems held a specifically epistolary function. The same is true of many poems from the Andalusian corpus. An important example is the poem “Afudat nezer,” written by Menaḥem Ben Saruq as the introduction to an epistle on behalf of Ḥasdai Ibn Shaprut for Yosef, king of the Khazars. Adopting monorhyme (a standard feature of Arabic prosody), the poem opens with the kinds of blessings that one would expect in an epistle proper:

      May the priestly crown [be given] to the tribe that rules the far-off kingdom,

      May God’s benefit be upon it and peace be upon all its governors and host,

      May salvation be a raiment upon its shrine, its holidays and sacred occasions.

      In particular, the wishes for “God’s benefit” and “peace”—ne‘imot and shelomot—correspond precisely to Arabic epistolary standards and are actually cognates of the widely attested ni‘mat allah and salamāt.¹²⁸ The epistolary style here is not surprising, given that the poem introduced an actual epistle, was used by Ibn Shaprut to introduce himself to the king, and was sent over a great distance.

      Epistolary function is apparent even in many of the so-called courtly panegyrics exchanged among intellectuals within al-Andalus. Medieval scribes often indicate when a poem was written in response to another poem, and such sets of poems, generally written according to the same meter and rhyme, served as a type of correspondence. Previous scholars have assembled lists of such exchanges—between Abū Faḍl Ibn Ḥasdai and Shemuel ha-Nagid, Yiṣḥaq Ibn Khalfūn and ha-Nagid, Yehudah Halevi and Mosheh Ibn Ezra, Avraham Ibn Ezra and Yosef Ibn Ṣadīq, Todros Abulafia and Yosef al-Qarawi—and we need not rehearse them here; let it suffice to say that such exchanges demonstrate that the function of poems as correspondence was obvious and paramount.¹²⁹ Despite their performative aspects, these poems were clearly not performed by their authors before their mamdūḥs, though it remains a possibility that they were recited orally subsequent to reception.

      A significant number of poems originally accompanied letters. As Schirmann suggests, many of the freestanding poems that have reached us were likely affixed to letters and were severed through anthologizing processes and the vagaries of textual transmission. Shemuel ha-Nagid’s famous war poem “Eloah ‘oz” (God of might) bears a superscription: “He