expectations. AbnNuwms’s (d. 813) transgressions were permissible, not
only due to the Caliph al-Amln’s acceptance, a fact that carried a definite
legitimizing power, but also because of the vogue with new urban audiences.
He was lucky “that people celebrated his poetry and the notables of his age
acclaimed him,” says Ibn Manznr. He was so overwhelmingly in vogue that
whatever made a good light verse was attributed to him. More significant is
the remark made by Muhlhal b. Yamnt b. al-Mizri‘, for the poet was popular
with the underprivileged, the common and the riff-raff, who preferred him to
all, “unsurpassed in what they used to relate and care for.”^15
The counter discourse to legitimacy has its undermining mechanisms, too.
There is an undermining poetic, which nevertheless makes use at times of the
opening of the qaxldah. For instance, the matter of the dominating tripartite
form, in its dialectical and interchangeable poetics and politics of transgression
and redemption or supplication and atonement cannot hold in poems of revolt.
The case is more conspicuous in the poetry of the brigand–poets, especially
al-Shanfarm. The opening line of his Ode calls on his people to embark on
their journey away from him, as he intends to depart, too. The emphasis on
separation, not integration, gains impetus through substitution of loyalty to
“another people.” In this instance, the naslbprelude no longer holds.
Modern nostalgiaHaving said this, we have to remember, however, that the aylmlprelude
assumes its powerful presence not through imitation but through repetition,
for the latter, as Suzanne P. Stetkevych argues in line with Jaroslav Stetkevych
and G. B. Conte, invests the poem with “literary identity” (The Poetics of
Islamic Legitimacy, p. 25). No matter how ancient/Islamic poets like >assmn b.
Thmbit, or ancient ones like Imru’ al-Qays or ‘Antarah argue the case of pla-
giarism and the use of the traditional or contemporary corpus, transgression
stops short of meddling with the aylmlopening and its following structural
design.^16 Unless we keep in mind the empowered association between the
spatial, the mythical, and the human, we may bypass the intimidating pres-
ence of this aylml, which cannot be dislodged unless there is a radical trans-
formational change, like the spread of Islam and the urban expansion of the
‘Abbmsid era. It was then that the prelude underwent harsh criticism too, and
AbnNuwms was among the first who revolted against its formal and cultural
implications, a revolt that should conversely tell us of its heretofore rigorous
presence and imposing demands on the creative mind.
On the other hand, the form of the prelude passed through other transfor-
mations that also attest to its acceptance as a literary identity. As Michael
Sells persuasively argues,^17 early Muslim Sufis made use of the prelude not
only as a means of meditation on the fleeting moment as was the case with
both al-Junayd (d. 910) and al-Qushayrl(d. 1074), but also as a threshold for
the second movement in the poem, namely the journey or the quest. For the
CONCLUSION: DEVIATIONAL AND REVERSAL POETICS