Ibn Quzman


Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Isa Abd al-Malik ibn Isa ibn Quzman al-Zuhri was the single most famous poet in the history of Al-Andalus and he is also considered to be one of its most original. One of the characteristics of his poetry was "satire, verging on the licentious, aimed at religious experts." He deeply admired his "Eastern predecessor" Abu Nuwas.

Life

He was born and died in Cordoba during the reign of the Almoravids, to a family of possibly Gothic origins, as his name suggests and from the fact that he described himself as being blond and blue-eyed in several of his zajals. After leading a lifestyle similar to that of troubadours, traveling to Seville, Granada and Jaén, he became a mosque imam towards the end of his life.

''Diwan''

Only 149 poems from the Diwan of Ibn Quzman appear in a manuscript in Saint Petersburg, which was the subject of a notice published in 1881. A facsimile edition of it titled Le Divan d'Ibn Guzman was published in 1896 in Berlin by Baron David von Günzburg.
Most of the extant poems are zajals, the genre by which he earned his fame which are characterized by their colloquial language, as well as a typical rhyming scheme: aaab cccb dddb, where b rhymes with a constantly recurring refrain of one or two lines. As noted by James T. Monroe,
His approach to life as expressed in these melodious poems, together with their mixed idiom, shows a ressembance to the later vernacular troubadour poetry of France.

Translations

The Diwan has been translated in Spanish by Federico Corriente and in English by Monroe.