Looking Back at al-Andalus: The Poetics of Loss and Nostalgia in Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Literature.

• Author: Tobi, Yosef
• Position: Book review

Looking Back at al-Andalus: The Poetics of Loss and Nostalgia in Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Literature. By Alexander E. Elinson. Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures, vol. 34. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Pp. x + 185. $133.

This book is based on a doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Columbia University's Magda al-Nowaihi (1958-2002), the late scholar of medieval Arabic poetry. The method on which the book is based is comparative. The book's main objective is to learn how and to what extent Arabic poems of Andalusia that express the loss of Muslim cities to the Christian kingdoms (ritha al-mudun) may have been derived from the pre-Islamic tradition of reminiscing about the beloved's campsite, particularly in the opening lines (naslb). A second concern treats two separate literary genres in Andalusian Arabic literature: poems written in quantitative measure (qasida) and narratives, or odes, written in rhymed prose (maqama). Finally, the book compares ritha al-mudun poetry with poems in Andalusian Hebrew literature.

The book is comprised of four main chapters, an introduction (pp. 1-13), and a short conclusion (pp. 151-53). The introduction is devoted to "The Poetics of Loss and Nostalgia in Muslim Spain," the main tragic narrative of the Muslims regarding the Reconquista, the long historical process during which the Christians regained control of all of the Iberian Peninsula. This process of recovering suzerainty may have actually had its beginnings in 1085, when the major Muslim stronghold of Toledo was taken back for the first time by the Christians, but it definitely came to an end in 1492, when the last ruler of the last Muslim kingdom of Granada was forced to leave the country. The genre of poetry known as ritha' al-mudun does not relate solely to the Muslim-Christian conflict in Spain, however, but also to the downfall of the Umayyad caliphate (929-1031), whose glorious palace-city of Madinat al-Zahra', directly adjacent to the capital Cordoba, was ruined in 1011-1013, as a result of the fitna, or civil war, among Muslims and the ensuing insurrection spurred on by Muslim Berbers. Similarly, the invasion of the Almoravid Muslim Berbers from North Africa in 1091, who occupied the city of Granada, the celebrated center of Muslim-Arab culture, and later that of the Almohad Muslim Berbers in 1145, who gained control of al-Andalus, symbolize the disappearance of Arab culture in Spain.

The author comprehensively surveys the literary sources of rith' al-mudun, in which the poets or the maqama authors mourned the loss of the eastern-styled Arab culture in Spain and expressed their sincere and deep longing, or what some might call nostalgia, for that highly esteemed culture. The subject of poetry styled as ritha' al-mudun of Muslim Spain has been extensively dealt with in Arabic literature, such as in the portly volume of cAbd Allah Muhammad al-Zayyat, Rithay al-mudun fi l-shicr al-carabl (Benghazi, 1990), Elinson's main source for the relevant Arabic texts.

As Elinson correctly notes, the strong nostalgia of Muslims for the lost Muslim culture in medieval Spain has not been limited to medieval writers and thinkers, as modern Muslims as well are nostalgic for Muslim Spain. To the list of poets, writers...