prohibition immediately after its revelation. Yet the enforcement of pro-
hibitions was inconsistent. During the Abbasid period, wine was not only
used medicinally, but was even associated with virtues. A student of ibn
Sina recounts how after a reading, the group convened at the master’s
house (majlis)wouldenjoymusicandsingingtotheaccompaniment
of wine, very much in the tradition of the symposium in ancient
Greece.^59 In Andalusia, although themajlisrepresented an inversion
of normal social orders, it also was structured to evoke Quranic
language.^60
As a metaphor whose efficacy depends on experience, wine often served
as a transgressive trope enabling transcendence. In his autobiographical
writings, ibn Arabi frames participation in all-night drinking parties enter-
tained with erotic song as one of his experiences of ignorance (jahiliyya)
before his recognition of the divine path, around age twenty.^61 This
experience enters his poetry, where wine becomes a metaphor for the
Hadith.
At the rock plains, near the bend of the trail
is the place of meeting.
Kneel your camels.
Its waters are home.
...
Revel like maidens, breast curves alluring
or gazelles that slow to graze
and wander,
While thefly hums softly in the meadow
and a songbird trills a reply.
Velvet is the fringe of the garden,
tender the spring breeze,
the cloud, lit from within by lightning,
thunder rumbles the dark sky.
These stanzas allude to the work of Tarafah (543–679), the eminent poet of
thejahiliyya, situating the subject at a recently deserted nomadic camp. Ibn
Arabi thus relocates himself from the Andalusian tradition of his birth to
the Meccan surroundings of his revelations. Nostalgia for a simpler past
depends on tropes of love already embedded in the Sufilexicon, expressed
in the next lines:
(^59) Ahmed, 2015 :57–64. (^60) Robinson, 1997 : 152–153. (^61) Elmore, 1998.
Music between Transcendence and Transgression 73