Gleanings from Maqrizi V:
Poetic Justice for a Minaret's Collapse

September 15, 2009

The Mosque of al-Muayyad (1418-20 AD) was undergoing restoration last time I was in Cairo, and I was thankful this time to be able to go through it. Since it is located right next to Bab Zuwayla it is a mosque I had walked past many times. The interior turned out to be more magnificent than I expected with its elaborate marble paneling, at least on the side of the mihrab. That inlaid wooden minbar (pulpit) is original and its intricacy becomes clear close up:

In his Khitat the Egyptian historian Maqrizi treats the mosques of Cairo in chronological order and since this mosque was completed just twenty years before his own death in 1442 A.D., it's one of the last mosques that he writes about. Maqrizi lived through the construction of this mosque, and a certain familiarity creeps into his description. There are no longer lengthy citations from other sources; he's writing what he knows.

One episode that Maqrizi reports is the collapse of a minaret during construction of the mosque. One day a lean was noticed in the minaret and the engineers recommended it be pulled down before it fell. The Sultan al-Muayyad immediately gave his permission to tear it down. Only they could not get it done fast enough:

Then the minaret collapsed on Thursday the 26th day of the month of Hajar, destroying the property facing Zuwayla Gate and killing a man underneath it. Zuwayla Gate was closed on account of fear on the part of passers-by.

This would have been a major event since Bab Zuwayla marked the entrance to the major thoroughfare of Cairo. The accident attracted lots of attention and poets were especially busy. They took to writing clever lines about the reasons for the accident. Maqrizi gives us six short passages on this topic. Here is the first:

The mosque of our master al-Muayyad is splendid;
     its minaret is radiant with beauty and adornment.
You say, after it had leaned over them, they proceeded           slowly.
     For there is not on my body anything more harmful           than the eye.

The lines are somewhat clunky, and they might leave you scratching your head, but at the end there's a reference to the "evil eye" that can do damage through its envious gaze. Maqrizi finds in the lines a hidden allusion to a man named Shaykh Badr al-Din Mahmoud who was called "the Eye." So with this interpretation the lines contain a veiled reference to a particular person understood to be a damaging member of society.

The poet who wrote those pointed lines was named Hafiz al-Waqt Shihab al-Din Ahmed ibn Ali ibn Hajar the Shafi’ite. His name happens to contain the word "Hajar" which means "stone" in Arabic, so "the Eye" responded with some lines of his own:

A minaret when revealed is like a handsome             bridegroom;
     its destruction comes through the judgment of God             and fate.
They say: “it was struck by ‘the eye.’” I say: “That’s            wrong!
     Nothing imposes destruction except worthless stone            [hajar].

It's an error to say that the minaret was struck by the evil eye, when everyone knows that only worthless stone (hajar) will bring about such a collapse. Those in the know would understand that the other guy is now being called worthless.

Maqrizi clearly finds this exchange entertaining (the only possible reason he would include it in his book), but he sees the limitations of this kind of clever exchange:

Neither of these poets achieved his aim, for neither “the eye” Badr al-Din Mahmoud, overseer of pious donations, or Shaykh Shihab al-Din Ahmed ibn Hajar had any real relation to the minaret so that he might serve as a useful metaphor.

That is a useful note on what makes for a successful literary jibe. In this case neither man can reasonably be connected to the collapse of the minaret, so it's an ultimately pointless poetic exchange.. fun only because of the cleverness of the put-downs. Maqrizi provides for the reader a passage he considers more successful:

Upon the tower [burj] of Zuwayla Gate was founded
    a minaret of the house of God and place of safety.
That damn tower [burj] abandoned it, causing it to             lean.
    So, people, shout: “Damnation to the tower [al-burj]!

In sense this is similar to the first two passages, only now the tower (burj) gets the blame. The poet ends by calling out "Damnation to the tower!" Maqrizi considers these lines a success since they are an allusion to the man put in charge of building the Mosque of al-Muayyad, Baha’ al-Din Muhammad ibn al-Burji. That last name "ibn al-Burji" connects him verbally to the tower that is condemned.. and he happens to be a legitimate target for public ire at the accident.

A section like this is an example of the parts of Maqrizi's Khitat that most interest me. The historical information about when, who, and how can be found in modern history books on Cairo.. if that was all I wanted I would not need to read Maqrizi. These digressions go unreported in books on Cairo's history. What we get from his digression on the poetry passed around at the time of this accident is invaluable: a sense of the contemporary discourse for explaining and discussing events in the city. We find a fair amount of stock pious language in these lines, but most striking is the extent to which personal rivalries are pursued under the slight cover of literary nicety. This was obviously a competitive society.. and one in which attacks and recriminations were circulated widely among the crucial literate learned class by means of poetry.