SAMUEL
HA-NAGID Biography
In tenth-century Spain there was a circle of wealthy Jews, thoroughly
educated in Arabic language and literature, skilled in professions,
and holding positions of responsibility and power in public life, and
also pious, learned, and fiercely loyal to Jewish interests. These extraordinary
men, sometimes known as the Andalusian courtier rabbis, were not the
first medieval Jews to take part in the life of the larger world, for
Jews in tenth-century Iraq had functioned in the courts of the Abbasid
caliphs. What was unique about the Andalusian Jewish courtiers was the
self-conscious way in which they synthesized the dominant Arabic-Islamic
culture with Jewish religious and literary traditions.
These men founded
a new type of Jewish life, based on a novel educational program and
geared to producing a new leadership; they sought literary expression
in a completely renovated poetry. For these Jews, religious commitment,
cultural identification, and national loyalty were strong enough and
flexible enough to permit them to openly enter the life and style of
the dominant culture while maintaining their identity as Jews. The Andalusian
Muslim ruling class of the time was sufficiently worldly and tolerant
in its religious outlook to welcome them as participants; the price
was acculturation, but not conversion. To the Jews who benefited from
the opportunity to join the brilliant material and intellectual life
of Andalusian-Moorish culture, at its peak in the tenth century, the
world must have seemed one great wine party held in the enormous lush
garden of Spain and they themselves a uniquely
gifted generation.
In the world of
the Muslim ruling class, literature, particularly poetry, enjoyed enormous
prestige. Linguistic studies grammar, lexicography,
and rhetoric were the basis of education.
The intellectual formation of the Muslim aristocracy was based on intense
application to a corpus of classical literary texts in a language which,
though similar to the dialect in daily use, was distinct from it and
required systematic study. These texts provided a classic cultural model
distinct from the religious tradition, rooted in and deriving its values
from the world of the pre-Islamic Bedouins tribesmen. This model was
somewhat in conflict with the monotheistic religious values of the Quran
and Hadith; it provided a secular valence to a life in which religious
values and observances played a very great part.
Jews learned the
Arabic language and literary models, not by passively absorbing them
from the environment but through concentrated study; their aim was to
be part of the highest level of a society that judged a man largely
by his social graces, linguistic skills, and literary taste. Pious and
loyal Jews enjoined their sons to apply themselves with all assiduousness
to the study of the Arabic grammarians and rhetoricians. The Jewish
boys who labored at conning the pre-Islamic tribal poetry were at no
great disadvantage vis-à-vis their Muslim friends, for both spoke
the same dialectical Arabic and, as the children of wealthy city folk,
were equally distant culturally from the exotic yet dreary life portrayed
by the ancient poets. Since the values inculcated by the study of these
poets were outside the Islamic religious system, Jewish boys had no
religious inhibitions against studying, absorbing, and eventually even
loving them
.
Much of the Arabic
and Hebrew poetry of medieval Andalusia was courtly panegyric: eulogies
of friends, patrons, or allies intended partly to flatter the recipient,
partly to shape public opinion in a world in which poetry was the chief
form of publicity. Related to panegyric in function were satirical poems,
in which the enemies of the poet or his patron were lampooned, and funeral
laments, really a species of panegyric. These three genres are united
by their predominantly political function as instruments for the regulation
of interpersonal relations within the ruling class. As such they are
serious works of substantial length, thematic complexity, and a studied,
formal character.
But poetry was also
composed for simple amusement. Members of the courtier class, Muslims
and Jews, entertained each other by listening to poetry, reciting their
own verses, discussing those of others, and setting themes for improvisation
for one another.
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From:
Raymond P. Scheindlin. Wine, Women, and Death. Copyright
© 1986 The Jewish Publication Society (Philadelphia), pp. 4-6.
Permission of The Jewish Publication Society of America.
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SAMUEL HA-NAGID Biography
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