The Convergence of Judaism and Islam. Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions

One Thousand Years of Cultural Harmony between Judaism and Islam r 261

This Baqashah which is sung at dawn, was inspired by a Turkish ghazal of
the poet Qazi Burhanuddin (1314–98), la’l-i lebin ki sordugum (It Is the
Ruby of Your Lips That I Am Asking About) (Tietze and Yahalom 1995,
133).
This poem presents one of the structural variations of shir me ̔eyn-
ezori. It consists of four stanzas; the first has five lines, of which the last
functions as the refrain. Each of the following three stanzas has four lines
and is divided over two segments.
Najarah’s rich repertoire of original Arabic and Turkish sources re-
sulted in an equally rich repertoire of poetic forms, which demonstrates
many types of rhyming patterns even in the frame of one poem. Indeed,
the poem under discussion has two sets of rhyming schemes. The first
is unique to each of the stanzas, and the second appears in the last word
of each of them and rhymes with the last word of each line of the first
stanza.^17 The overall structure of the poem and its rhyming scheme are
typical of the shir me ̔eyn-ezori and, in fact, of a large number of Najarah’s
poem (Schirmann 1997, 707).
The poem is written in the Arabic meter called rajaz (Tietze and Ya-
halom 1995, 133), the syllables of which are determined according to the
principle of the PSM. Thus each line has sixteen syllables, eight in each
hemistich.^18
Najarah’s language is simple and uses vocabulary that is no longer
purely biblical, at least not to the degree and intensity of sophistication of
the Spanish school of poets.
The strong bond between God and the people of Israel is described
through a comparison with the type of relationship other nations have
with their gods. In this respect the poem reflects the shift from the con-
cerns of the individual worshipper, which occupied Ibn Gabirol and his
contemporaries, to those of the nation, a development typical of poems
written in the post-exile era following the expulsion from Spain.
There is no indication in the Mishaf as to the melody to which Yihyu
Kemos is sung. However, in the heading of two other poems, Yihyu Kemos
is quoted as the recommended melody for their performance.^19 The only
known melody sung by the Babylonians to Yihyu Kemos is performed by
Shlomoh Reuven Mu ̔alem in maqām ̔ajam and by Havushah in maqām
bayāt (Shiloah 1983, 40).^20