We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Shuhayd (or Shahīd) al-Balkhī is remembered mainly as one of the earliest poets in Neo-Persian. But he was also a minor poet in Arabic and, moreover, a tantalizingly obscure figure in the history of Muslim philosophy in the ninth century. A first sifting of the relevant biographical material was made by M. Qazwīnī in 1910 and the only really significant contributions since have come from P. Kraus and most recently from G. Lazard, who published a critical edition and translation of the surviving fragments of Shuhayd's Persian poetry together with a comprehensive bibliography. The present attempt to add a bit more flesh to Shuhayd's still decidedly skeletal biography is based essentially on just two texts, one of which has been known all along, but has not, I think, previously been understood correctly; the other has only recently become available.
1 At least in the literature in roman script, the name has previously been interpreted as ‘Shahīd’, ‘martyr’, but, as far as can be seen, in the classical period this is never used as a proper name, but only as a posthumous epithet for Muslims killed in battle; as a name of a living person it would seem ludicrous and indeed sacrilegious. By contrast, the homograph (and metrical equivalent) Shuhayd (evidently a diminutive from shahd, ‘honeycomb’), though very rare, is attested, notably as the name of the Arab ancestor of a family of Andalucian notables, the Banū Shuhayd, and also as that of the grandfather of ՙUmayr b. Saՙd b. Shuhayd, the governor of Hims at the time of Muՙāwiya. Al-Dhahabī, , Kitābu ՙl-mushtabihi fī asmā'i ՙl-rijāl (ed. Jong, de, Leiden, 1881), 305–306Google Scholar, specifies the pronunciation Shuhayd, bi l-ḍamm, in these two cases, though he also gives Shahīd as the name of ‘some’ (Jamāՙa), but without examples. The latter name may well have been in use at the time of al-Dhahabī (fourteenth century), when the depreciation of the traditional Arabic honorifics was already well advanced, but this was hardly the case at the time with which we are concerned. The name of our Shuhayd is occasionally corrupted to Sahl or Suhayl—the manuscripts of Asadī's Lughat-i furs have also Sipahbadh (see the introduction in Horn's edition, 23)—, but the spelling sh.h.y.d is found often enough to be regarded as certain. Note in particular that ՙAwfī, (Lubābu 'l-albāb, II, ed. Browne, London, 1903, 3)Google Scholar, who normally begins his entries with a pun on the name of the poet in question, introduces our writer with the words ‘Shuhayd shāՙir-ē shahd-sukhan-i shāhid-kalām būdh’, which leave no doubt at least about his of the consonants.
2 See his edition of the Chahār maqāla of al-Samarqandī, Ahmad b. ՙUmar al-Niẓāmī al-ՙArūdī (Leiden/London, 1910), 127–128, n. 6Google Scholar. Qazwՙnī's note is reprinted, together with other material from his posthumous papers and some additional notes, in the new edition of the same work by M. Muՙīn (Tehran, 1331 shamsī/1952–53), 80–3 of the taՙlīqāt.
3 In his edition of al-Rāzī's, Rasā'ilun falsafiyya (Cairo, 1939), 145–147Google Scholar.
4 Les premiers poètes persons (IXe–Xesiècles), (Tehran/Paris, 1964), I, 20–21, 62–9; II, 23–39Google Scholar.
5 Ed. Flügel (Leipzig, 1871), 299; ed. Tajaddud (second ed., Tehran, n.d., with a preface dated 1973), 357. This passage from the Fihrist is quoted explicitly by Uṣaybiՙa, Ibn Abī, Kitābu ՙuyūni 'l-anba՚ fī ṭabaqāti ՚l-atibbā՚ (Cairo, 1299/1992), I, 311Google Scholar. The translation given below can be contrasted with that in Dodge, B., The Fihrist of al-Nadīm (New York and London, 1970), 702Google Scholar.
6 musawwadāt, ‘rough copies’, is well-known; for dasātīr (singular dustūr) the context would seem to demand the meaning ‘fair copies’, though this definition does not appear to be given in any dictionary. The juxtaposition of musawwada/sawād with dustūr occurs also in al-Khuwārizrnī, , Mafātīḥu 'l-ՙulūm (ed. van Vloten, G., Leiden, 1895), 58Google Scholar, who, while enumerating the technical terms of the secretarial profession, defines dustūr as ‘a copy of the (financial) total transcribed from the rough draft’ (al-dustūru nuskhatu ՚l-jamāՙati 'l-manqūlatu mina 'l-sawād). There are good number of passages in the manuscripts of the Fihrist where the scribes state that they have copied ‘from his (the author's) dustūr and (what is) in his handwriting’ (min dustūrihī wa bi khaṭṭihī) or that they left empty spaces ‘as we found them in the dustūr’ (ka mā wajadnā fī 'l-dustür); see Mīnuwī's English introduction in Tajaddud's edition, pp. 1–2 (without mention of the present passage). This, like the other meanings of Arabic dustūr, must derive ultimately from Middle-Persian dastwar, ‘ authority’.
7 Flügel (wrongly): b. al-Hasan. Both editions break this sentence into two paragraphs, making nonsense of the whole passage.
8 yajrī majrā falsafatihifī 'l-ՙilmi wa lākin li hādhā ';l-rajuli kutubun musannafatun. These words have been the main crux in the previous literature, but I do not see how they could mean anything else.
9 EI I s.v. al-Rāzī.
10 Muhaqqiq, M., in his Fīlsūf-i Ray Muḥammad-i Zakariyyā-yi Rāzī (Tehran, 1349sh./1970), 16–19Google Scholar, has collected the material on Erānshahrī and maintains, with plausible, though perhaps not overwhelming arguments, that he hailed not from Balkh, but from Naysābūr, and consequently cannot be the same person as al-Nadīm's ‘al-Balkhī’.
11 By contrast, Sezgin, F., Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, III (Leiden, 1970), 275Google Scholar, thinks it ‘höchstwahrscheinlich’ that the two Balkhīs are identical.
12 Ed. Flügel, 138; ed. Tajaddud, 153.
13 See also Muhaqqiq, op. cit., 14–15.
14 See Risālatun li 'l-Bayrūniyyi fī fihristi kutubi Muḥammadi bni Zakariyydā'a '1-Rāzī (ed. Kraus, P., Paris, 1936)Google Scholar.
15 al-Bayrūnī, 11, 1.12, quotes the title as Fī mā jarā baynahū wa bayna Shuhaydini 'l-Balkhiyyi fī 'l-ladhdha. al-Nadīm (ed. Flügel, 310 1. 5; ed. Tajaddud, 358 1. 22) gives it as: Kitābu naqdihī ՙaiā Shuhayd (both editions: Suhayl, but see Flugel's apparatus) al-Balkhiyyi fī mā nāqaḍahū bi-hī mina 'l-ladhdha.
16 Muntakhabu ṣiwāni 'l-hikma (ed. Dunlop, , The Hague, etc., 1979), 127Google Scholar.
17 Kraus (loc. cit. in n. 3, p. 139) has shown that Rāzī's theory of pleasure probably derives from Plato's Timaeus, 61 d-e. The attempts by some to trace this and other aspects of Rāzī's philosophy back to Epicurus ignore the fact that the writings of the Epicureans were entirely unknown in the Islamic world.
18 al-Bayrūnī (18, 1.9): ar-Raddu ՙalā Shuhaydin fī lughzi ՚l-maՙād. Al-Nadīm (ed. Flügel, 301, 1. 5; ed. Tajaddud, 358, 1. 29) has Kitābun ՙalā Shuhayd (both editions: Suhayl, but the correct lectio is, once again, in Flügel's apparatus) al-Balkhiyyi fī tathbīti ՚l-maՙad. The latter formulation, in particular, suggests that it is Rāzī who is ‘confirming’ the idea of maՙād against Shuhayd's attack, rather than the other way around. In this case maՙād can hardly refer to the Muslim doctrine of resurrection (which Rāzī rejected), but must have some special meaning in Rāzī's own system.
19 al-Wāfī bi ՙl-wafayāt, xvi (ed. al-Qāḍī, Wadād, Beyrouth, 1982), 197–198Google Scholar.
20 pp. 1421–2.
21 The seventeenth-century Shāhid-i ṣādiq of Muḥammad Ṣādiq al-Iṣfahānī gives (according to Dihkhudā's Lughatnāma, s.v. Abū ‘l-Ḥasan Shuhayd) our author's date of death as 325, but, as will become clear, this must be a mistake for 315.
22 Shuhayd's eminence as a scribe is alluded to also in a verse by Farrukhī, (see his dīwān, ed. ’l-rasūlī, ՙAbdu, Tehran, 1311sh./1932, 187)Google Scholar, who says of his own patron, Khwāja Abū Sahl al-Zawzanī: ‘He writes a handwriting which is indistinguishable from the handwriting of Shuhayd; he recites poetry which is indistinguishable from the poetry of Jarīr’ (khaṭ niwēsadh ki binashnāsand az khaṭṭ-i Shuhayd* shiՙr gōyadh ki binashnāsand az shiՙr-i Jarīr).
23 Aḥmad b. Abī Rabīՙa (the name occurs thus also in the verses themselves) was appointed wazīr in Muḥarram 278/891 (according to the anonymous eleventh-century Tārīkh-i Sīstān, ed. M. T. Bahār, Tehran, 1314sh./1935, 250) and defected to the Sāmānid Ismāՙīl on the eve of the latter's victory over ՙAmr in Rabīՙ II 287/900 (see Khallikān, Ibn, Wafayātu ՚l-aՙyān. ed. ՙAbbās, Iḥsān, Beirut, 1968–1972, VI, 428)Google Scholar. Aḥmad b. Abī Rabīՙa is also mentioned by Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmilu fī ՙl-ta՚rīkh, ed. Tornberg, VIII, 192, and by ՙAlī b. Zayd al-Bayhaqī (Ibn Funduq), Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, ed. Aḥmad Bahmanyār (Tehran, 1317sh./1938), 67. See also the next footnote, and Bosworth, C. E., The history of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz (Costa Mesa and New York, 1994), 20, 359Google Scholar.
24 al-Maḥāsinu fī ՙl-naẓmi wa ՙl-nathr, ed. van Gelder, G. J. (Istanbul, 1987), 77Google Scholar. The unique manuscript garbles the names both of the poet (‘al-Shahīd b. al-Ḥasan’; nowhere else does his given name appear with the article) and the victim (‘Ahmad b. Rabīՙa’).
25 Aḥmad's opponent, the Sāmānid Naṣr II (reg. 301/914 to 331/943) is the dedicatee of Shuhayd's Persian qaṣīda a few verses of which are quoted by ‘Awfī, op. cit., 3, where one must read ‘amīr-i saՙīd Abū ’l-Ḥasan Naṣr < b. Aḥmad > b. Ismāՙīl b. Naṣr al-Sāmānī’.
26 Muՙjamu ՚l-udabā՚, ed. Margoliouth, 1, 143; ed. Iḥsān, 275.
27 The name has been supplied in brackets in the new edition.
28 Ed. Margoliouth, 1, 151; ed. Iḥsān, p. 281.
29 The earliest of the rulers of Ṣaghāniyān of whom we have any information is Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Muẓaffar b. Muḥtāj, who is first mentioned in connection with events of 298/911 and died in 327/939, and to whom Abū Zayd al-Balkhī dedicated at least one of his works (cf. Bosworth, C. E., Iran, XIX, 1981, 4)Google Scholar. It is just about possible that Yāqūt's Muḥtāj is Muḥammad's grandfather, though it is perhaps more likely that once again the text is not in order and that the anecdote in fact refers to Muḥammad b. al-Muẓaffar.
30 Muՙjamu ՚l-buldān, ed. Wüstenfeld, II, 167–8.
31 loc. cit. (see n. 2, above).
32 Differently Taqīzāda, apud Muՙīn (work quoted in n. 2) 83, who takes the text as it stands and understands it to mean that Shuhayd's father was a contemporary of the Bedouin philologist Abū Ziyād Yazīd b. ՙAbdallāh b. al-Ḥurr al-Kilābī, who died c. 200/815 (see Sezgin, VIII, 39, 265, with references), and to whom Taqīzāda gives the nisba al-Kaՙbī, but there seems to be no authority for this.
33 Damascus edition, 1304/1886–7, IV, 21. The same author quotes ‘Shuhayd b. al-Ḥusayn’ also in his Laṭā'ifu ՙl-maՙārif (ed. al-Abyārī, Ibrāhīm and al-Ṣayrafī, Ḥasan Kāmil, Cairo, 1960), 203 (see also Bosworth's translation, 135 and n. 114)Google Scholar.
