From Spain to Syria: what did al-Jilyānī bring with him?
Abū l-Faḍl ̔Abd al-Mun̔im b. ̔Umar al-Jilyānī, from Jilyāna near Guadix in southern Spain, was a physician, mystic and poet. He lived from 531/1136 to 602/1206. At a date, and for reasons unknown to his biographers, he migrated to Syria, and we also find him in Egypt. He never returned home, and di...
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| Format: | Conference item |
| Language: | English |
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Peeters Publishers
2019
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| _version_ | 1797108224497811456 |
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| author | Bray, J |
| author_facet | Bray, J |
| author_sort | Bray, J |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Abū l-Faḍl ̔Abd al-Mun̔im b. ̔Umar al-Jilyānī, from Jilyāna near Guadix in southern Spain, was a physician, mystic and poet. He lived from 531/1136 to 602/1206. At a date, and for reasons unknown to his biographers, he migrated to Syria, and we also find him in Egypt. He never returned home, and died in Damascus. He attached himself to Saladin both as a physician and as a poet, writing two kinds of poem for him: firstly, panegyric accounts of sieges and battles in standard Arabic verse forms, extracts of which are quoted by Ibn Abī Uṣaybi̔a and Abū Shāma and in some modern scholarship. Secondly, for Saladin, for Saladin’s brother Tūrān Shāh, and, after Saladin’s death, for the son who succeeded him in Egypt, al-Malik al-Ẓāhir, and for two other Ayyubids, he produced panegyric picture-poems or puzzle-poems: poems which interweave with each other within linear frames, forming geometric figures or figures that combine geometric designs with tree-like or foliate finials. These visual surprises in turn combine with a hidden content that has to be decoded by the reader, who must follow the contours of the figures so as to derive from a parent poem new poems that differ from it in rhyme and metre. Rhymed prose (saj̔) is treated in the same way. Tadbīj (interweaving) is the word al-Jilyānī used for this process of composition, mudabbaja (brocaded) the term he applied to the often very large works he produced by this method. As well as forming figures, the mudabbajāt are colour-coded as an aid to decipherment. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T07:26:14Z |
| format | Conference item |
| id | oxford-uuid:d16ed5ad-8dcb-4adc-8962-6cd5ff9d4045 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T07:26:14Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publisher | Peeters Publishers |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:d16ed5ad-8dcb-4adc-8962-6cd5ff9d40452022-11-17T11:27:46ZFrom Spain to Syria: what did al-Jilyānī bring with him?Conference itemhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_5794uuid:d16ed5ad-8dcb-4adc-8962-6cd5ff9d4045EnglishSymplectic Elements at OxfordPeeters Publishers2019Bray, JAbū l-Faḍl ̔Abd al-Mun̔im b. ̔Umar al-Jilyānī, from Jilyāna near Guadix in southern Spain, was a physician, mystic and poet. He lived from 531/1136 to 602/1206. At a date, and for reasons unknown to his biographers, he migrated to Syria, and we also find him in Egypt. He never returned home, and died in Damascus. He attached himself to Saladin both as a physician and as a poet, writing two kinds of poem for him: firstly, panegyric accounts of sieges and battles in standard Arabic verse forms, extracts of which are quoted by Ibn Abī Uṣaybi̔a and Abū Shāma and in some modern scholarship. Secondly, for Saladin, for Saladin’s brother Tūrān Shāh, and, after Saladin’s death, for the son who succeeded him in Egypt, al-Malik al-Ẓāhir, and for two other Ayyubids, he produced panegyric picture-poems or puzzle-poems: poems which interweave with each other within linear frames, forming geometric figures or figures that combine geometric designs with tree-like or foliate finials. These visual surprises in turn combine with a hidden content that has to be decoded by the reader, who must follow the contours of the figures so as to derive from a parent poem new poems that differ from it in rhyme and metre. Rhymed prose (saj̔) is treated in the same way. Tadbīj (interweaving) is the word al-Jilyānī used for this process of composition, mudabbaja (brocaded) the term he applied to the often very large works he produced by this method. As well as forming figures, the mudabbajāt are colour-coded as an aid to decipherment. |
| spellingShingle | Bray, J From Spain to Syria: what did al-Jilyānī bring with him? |
| title | From Spain to Syria: what did al-Jilyānī bring with him? |
| title_full | From Spain to Syria: what did al-Jilyānī bring with him? |
| title_fullStr | From Spain to Syria: what did al-Jilyānī bring with him? |
| title_full_unstemmed | From Spain to Syria: what did al-Jilyānī bring with him? |
| title_short | From Spain to Syria: what did al-Jilyānī bring with him? |
| title_sort | from spain to syria what did al jilyani bring with him |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT brayj fromspaintosyriawhatdidaljilyanibringwithhim |