‘The Creation of Loyalty’: Public and Private Staging of the ʿĀmirid Court

Abstract

When Sulaymān [al-Mustaʿīn] established himself in Cordoba ... those that remained of the ʿĀmirid poets (shuʿarāʾ ʿāmiriyyīn) that were still residing in Cordoba at that time began to compose panegyric for him in the hope of tapping the stores of his generosity. So they composed in his praise good poems in which they appealed to religion (dīn) and manly virtue (murūʾa), and most of them recited them openly in his public audience. He listened with manifest delight, but then defrauded them in accepting the panegyric, for he neither rained down generous rewards upon them nor even sprinkled. Because of this the dispersal of the group [of poets] from Cordoba was completed and most of them abandoned his protection. Thus every trace of culture (adab) was erased there and was vanquished by barbarism, and the Cordobans reverted from their customary humanism to blatant vulgarity, and nobility was abandoned. Ibn Ḥayyān, apud Ibn Bassām 1989, I, i:501