Al-Ma'muni

ʿAbū Ṭālib ʿAbd al-Salām ibn al-Ḥasan al-Maʾmūnī(ابو طالب المأموني; after 953 CE in Baghdad – 993) was an Arab poet, noted for his epigrammatic writing.
Al-Maʾmūnī's name indicates that he was descended from the caliphal-Maʾmūn. Though born in Baghdād, he soon moved toRayy, where he studied withṢāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād; falling out with some of Ibn ʿAbbād's circle, he moved toNīshāpūr, joining the court ofAbu ’l-Ḥusayn al-ʿUtbīand his successorAbū NaṣrinBukhārāthrough the patronage ofIbn Sīmjūr, a Sāmānid commander. There he metal-Tha'ālibī, who was later to write a biography and record the lion's share of al-Maʾmūnī's surviving verse. Although al-Tha'ālibī reports that al-Maʾmūnī aspired to win (or regain?) the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, this clearly never transpired, and he died ofhydropsyin 383/993.
While he wrote in other forms, al-Maʾmūnī's oeuvre is most noted for its short,ekphrasticepigrams, showing Persian influence and characteristic of the Perso-Arabic literary concept ofwaṣf('description') on themes such as buildings, utensils (for example, writing implements, scissors, baskets), fruits, and foods.The following, 'fī al-tannūr' ('on a baking oven') is an example (albeit attested only in one manuscript):
(Here the conceit is that an unbaked piece of bread looks like the moon, and when baked it is like the sun.)
Another example is this five-line verse in three-footrajazlines:
Epigrams included by Bürgel but not in the Beirut edition:
Al-Maʾmūnī's style is a good example of the general tendencies of Arabic poetry of the 4th/10th centuries, which, like theNew Persianpoetry that was emerging at the same time, tended towards florid and sophisticated forms resembling later Europeanmannerism; no verse was complete without incorporating someconceit(Persiannukte). Thus al-Maʾmūnī uses ostentatiously artful language and unusual words, sometimes creating a purposefully comical contrast between the banality of the content and the pathos of the expression.In Bürgel's estimation, al-Maʾmūnī's language is sometimes rather strained, as in epigram 45 (in Bürgel's numbering, on barley-water), but at other times manages to sound both natural and fresh, as in epigram 7 (on a palm-fibre basket).Though not much inclined to usehyperboleor the device of repeating the same word in different meaning, al-Maʾmūnī is fond of word-play and sound-play, making extensive use of assonance and alliteration.He often deploys antithesis, ranging from simple opposites such as standing and sitting (e.g. poems 1, 2, 3, 94), black and white (e.g. 73), or gold and silver (76, 78, 83, 84) to complex forms (and, in 11 and 18, joking pseudo-antitheses).
Metaphor is central to al-Maʾmūnī's epigrams, which often have a riddlic quality: while in some poems, the subject is named explicitly at the outset, others start with the metaphor, challenging the audience to guess the subject matter before being explicit. While all his descriptions are short and pointed and characterised by fantastical metaphors, each poem almost always contains one or more lines that make a literal statement about the subject, for example that the throne has iron posts and a leather cover (epigram 1), that the bucket is made in Damascus and that its handle creaks (6), or that there are brown and white feathers in the pen box (14).
Personification of inanimate objects is a key technique,sometimes achieved using the termsdhū/dhāt('owner'), andibn/ibna('son/daughter').Al-Maʾmūnī values harmonious choices of metaphors in his epigrams, for example using only tree-based metaphors in poem 4, and uses a rich array of linguistic techniques to express his comparisons: the usual particleskakaʾanna,kaʾannamā,mithlandli;verbs from the rootssh-b-h(form IV) andḥ-k-y(forms I and III); first-person verbs reflecting his personal perspective such askhaltu,ḥasibtu,raʾaitu,taʾammaltu; and direct "A = B" juxtaposition of his comparisons without particles.Al-Maʾmūnī's favoured form ofmetonymyissynecdoche, especially via adjectives, which also contributes to the riddlic character of the verse.He makes extensive use of the technique that the Persian critic of Arabic literatureal-Jurjānīcalledtafṣīl('going into details'), whereby a natural unity is dissolved into a fantastic multiplicity: for example, epigram 64, on the melon, says that "لَهَا حلَّة من جلّنار وسوسن * مغمَّدة بالآس غِبَّ غمام" ('she has a garment made of pomegranate flowers and lilies, covered with myrtles after rain'). Much more rarely, he uses the opposite device of presenting a multiplicity as a whole (as in epigram 73, on white cheese and olives).Like riddles, al-Maʾmūnī's epigrams frequently deploy comparison through subtraction: thus the candle-holder (epigram 4) is "وحديقةٍتهتزُّ فيها دَوْحَةٌ * لم يُنْمِها تُرَبٌ وﻻ أمطار" ('like a garden in which a large tree trembles which neither earth nor rain enabled to grow').
The main source for al-Maʾmūnī and his work is theKitāb Yatīmat al-dahr fī mahāsin ahl al-ʿasṛbyAbū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī(who had met al-Maʾmūnī and had access to at least some of his verse in manuscript):
Some verses appear elsewhere, including theNihāyat al-arabbyal-Nuwayriand theAsrār al-balāghabyal-Jurjānī.