Deciphering Disregarded Verses: Ibn Nubāta’s (d. 768/1366) Unique bullayqa in Two Autographs by Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449)

1 Synchronicities – the bullayq and the Emergence of the Eastern zaǧal ^[1]

The historical origins of Eastern zaǧal present a complex challenge for scholars, largely due to the paucity of surviving documentation that limits our ability to reconstruct its early development with precision.^[2] The earliest extant references to Eastern zaǧal appear in the late 6th/12th or early 7th/13th century, at a time when this poetic form seems already well established and widely practiced, particularly within the cultural milieus of the Ayyubid and Artuqid courts in Syria and northern Mesopotamia. Contemporary poets vying for patronage were expected not only to excel in the traditional qaṣīd form but also to demonstrate competence in newer, innovative genres such as the muwaššaḥ and zaǧal.^[3] Similar patterns can be observed in Egypt during the same period, where zaǧal appears to have enjoyed considerable favor. The testimony of the historian al-Udfuwī, writing from Edfu in Upper Egypt, further attests to the spread of zaǧal beyond Cairo, indicating that it was already practiced in Upper Egypt by the 7th/13th century, if not earlier. This geographical diffusion, coupled with the genre’s Andalusian origins, underscores its remarkable dissemination across the Arabic-speaking world during that period.^[4]

Among the earliest poets associated with Eastern zaǧal, two figures stand out: Ibn an-Nabīh (560–619/1164–1222), an Egyptian poet and senior chancery official, and al-Ǧaʿbarī (d. 623/1226), son of a judge and governor of Damascus under al-Malik al-ʿĀdil (538–615/1145–1218). Both appear to have played a pioneering role in the development of the genre, at least as far as current sources allow us to determine.^[5] Alongside them, poets such as al-Qawsān and an-Nūšāḏir (or an-Nušādir), active in the early 7th/13th century, left their mark particularly on the subgenre known as bullayq, often regarded as a distinctively Egyptian form of zaǧal.^[6] A subgenre to which the Ibn Nubāta poem analyzed here belongs.

Modern scholarship on the bullayq has documented multiple readings of the term بليق, reflecting the ambiguity of its orthography. Variants such as ballīq, balīq, and billīq appear in various studies to this day.^[7] However, since Hoenerbach’s 1955 publication of Ṣafiyyaddīn al-Ḥillī’s (677–750/1278–1349) Kitāb al-ʿĀṭil al-ḥālī wa-l-muraḫḫaṣ al-ġālī, the vocalization bullayq has been established as the authoritative reading.^[8] The plural is balālīq, while an individual poem is termed bullayqa (pl. bullayqāt). Occasional deviations from this terminology are attested, as in the autograph examined here, where the individual poem is referred to as bullayq.^[9]

Al-Ḥillī appears to be the earliest Arabic literary figure to define this zaǧal subtype. His definition describes the bullayq as comprising humorous or licentious compositions:

وقد قسمه [الزجل] مخترعوها على أربعة أقسام يُفْرَقُ بينها بمضمونها المفهوم ، لا بالأوزان واللزوم ؛ ما تضمّن الغَزَلَ والنسيبَ زَجَلاً وما تضمّن الهزل والخلاعة والإحماض وما تضمّن الهجاءَ والثَلْبَ وما تضمّن المواعظ والحكمة .

The originators of the zaǧal divided it into four categories, distinguished by their content rather than by fixed metrical patterns. Thus, they called zaǧal that which contains elements of love poetry, romantic elegy, wine poetry, and floral verse; bullayq that which contains jest, licentiousness, and lighthearted entertainment; qarqī that which contains invective and blame; and mukaffir that which contains moral exhortations and words of wisdom.^[10]

From this definition two key insights emerge. First, al-Ḥillī uses the term zaǧal in a dual sense: both as a general term encompassing the four subtypes, and as a specific label for a subtype focusing on love and wine. Second, his typology is explicitly thematic rather than metrical or structural.

Contemporaries of al-Ḥillī, such as aṣ-Ṣafadī al-Barīdī (active late 13th–mid-14th century), affirm this classification. In his Maqāma al-Qūṣiyya, aṣ-Ṣafadī al-Barīdī states that the bullayq follows the structural pattern of the zaǧal (ʿalā tartīb az-zaǧal), and he highlights Egyptian poets’ distinctive contributions to both forms, as well as to the qarqī.^[11] Later writers – such as Ibn Ḥiǧǧa, al-Muḥibbī, and al-Muqaddasī – incorporated al-Ḥillī’s typology into their own discussions.^[12]

Unlike qarqī and mukaffir, whose use remained largely theoretical and confined to technical treatises, bullayq enjoyed wider circulation. It frequently appears as a title for poems in anthologies and biographical sources, often juxtaposed with zaǧal. Ibn Saʿīd al-Maġribī (d. 685/1286), writing before al-Ḥillī, already knew the term bullayq and noted its popularity in the East. He cites a bullayqa by his contemporary al-Ḫawlī (d. ca. late 7th/13th century) addressing themes of wine and homoerotic desire, attesting to its early diffusion.^[13] In another work, Ibn Saʿīd describes the bullayq as equivalent to the Andalusian zaǧal, noting its practice in Fusṭāṭ.^[14] Similarly, al-Udfuwī (d. 748/1347) lists balālīq alongside azǧāl in his biographical entry on Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd (d. 702/1303), implying their distinction as separate poetic forms.^[15] Aṣ-Ṣafadī likewise differentiates the two in his biography of Šihābaddīn Ibn Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarī (d. 749/1349), describing him as a composer of qaṣāʾid, arāǧīz, epigrams, dūbayt, muwaššaḥāt, azǧāl, and balālīq.^[16] As-Saḫāwī reports similar information about Ibn al-Munaǧǧim (d. 1410).^[17]

Al-Ḥillī’s definition emphasizes humor (hazl) and licentiousness (ḫalāʿa) as the thematic core of the bullayq. Aṣ-Ṣafadī al-Barīdī specifies that the content of a bullayqa must be coherent and unified, adding that the bullayq focuses on humorous themes (tulzamu fīhi muṭābaqat al-maʿnā wa-kulluhu hazl). However, this humor could at times be so bold that his tongue would not comply in explaining it, and his sense of decency would not permit him to elucidate it because of the strength or crudeness of the humor (lisānī mā tuṭāwiʿunī ʿalā šarḥihi li-quwwat hazlihi).^[18] Poets like al-Ḥillī, al-Qawsān (d. after 635/1237), an-Nūšāḏir (d. after 635/1237), al-Miʿmār (d. 749/1348), and Ibn Nubāta – whose bullayq forms the focus of this article – stand as representative figures of this literary tradition.

The bullayq also found its way into prose collections like 1001 Nights and erotic works such as al-Māǧārāyāt, where female characters recite balālīq to narrate their extramarital escapades.^[19] Beyond licentiousness, some balālīq adopt absurd or satirical tones, as seen in works by Ḫāriǧ aš-Šām (fl. pre-1386)^[20] and Ibn Sūdūn (810–868/1407–1464).^[21] Others lament personal or social hardships with biting wit, exemplified by al-Miʿmār and aš-Šaraf Ibn aṭ-Ṭaffāl (d. 722/1322).^[22]

Furthermore, the theme of sexuality is often intertwined with that of wine or drugs – balālīq on this subject are found in the bullayqa of Ibn Nubāta, al-Miʿmār,^[23] al-Ḫawlī,^[24] aṣ-Ṣāḥib Tāǧaddīn Ibn aṣ-Ṣāḥib Bahāʾaddīn b. Ḥinnāʾ (640–707/1243–1308),^[25] and ʿAbdalkarīm as-Suhrawardī (aš-Šahrazūrī) al-Qūṣī (d. 720/1320).^[26]

Thematically, the bullayq overlaps with the zaǧal, especially regarding wine, jest, and sensuality. This blurring complicates efforts to define the bullayq purely by content, as poetic practice and anthological classification often disregard rigid distinctions. Even formal boundaries prove porous: some muwaššaḥāt are misidentified as balālīq and vice versa. Examples from al-Miʿmār’s Dīwān and an-Nawāǧī’s ʿUqūd underscore the fluidity of these labels.^[27]

Egyptian poets in particular cultivated the bullayq as a hallmark of their playful, ironic sensibility – a connection noted by modern scholars such as Muṣṭafā Ṣādiq ar-Rāfiʿī, who attributed its inventiveness to “the sweetness of the Nile.”^[28] While al-Ḥillī acknowledged a Baghdad variant of the bullayq, his description contrasts it with the bold irreverence characteristic of the Egyptian form.^[29]

2 Ibn Nubāta and his Involvement with Strophic Vernacular Poetry

Ibn Nubāta al-Miṣrī (686–768/1287–1366) is universally presented in Mamluk biographical literature as the pre-eminent littérateur of his generation and, in some assessments, of the entire period. His upbringing in Cairo within a family of ḥadīṯ-scholars from Mayyāfāriqīn afforded him early access to learned circles. Immersion in these milieus produced a man of letters who combined impeccable command of classical Arabic with an almost playful eagerness to test the limits of rhetorical virtuosity. The extant dīwān – preserved in several recensions, two of which were compiled by Ibn Nubāta himself and two others after his death by Badraddīn al-Baštakī (748–830/1347–1427) – offers a wide panorama of his poetic craft, ranging from panegyric qaṣāʾid and elegiac marṯiyyāt to ġazal and arāǧīz. Across this corpus Ibn Nubāta deploys tawrīya, ǧinās, istiʿāra, iltifāt and other devices in profusion, yet rarely at the expense of semantic precision – a balance that drew praise from critics such as aṣ-Ṣafadī, Tāǧaddīn as-Subkī (728–771/1327–1370), and Waliyyaddīn Ibn al-ʿIrāqī (762–826/1360–1423).^[30]

Indeed, aṣ-Ṣafadī’s appraisal of Ibn Nubāta is nothing short of effusive: he describes him as “unique in the elegance of his poetry, the sweetness of his expression, the excellence of his poetic compositions, the astonishing quality of his themes, the clarity of his language, and the gracefulness of his writing”.^[31] Nor does his admiration stop at verse: Ibn Nubāta’s prose, aṣ-Ṣafadī asserts, “embodies the pinnacle of eloquence. He followed [al-Qāḍī] al-Fāḍil, adopting his style; he extinguished the light of Ibn ʿAbdaẓẓāhir, leaving no favored place for him in the hearts of men”.^[32] Ibn Nubāta is primarily remembered as a poet – second in renown in his era only to Ṣafiyyaddīn al-Ḥillī (677–749/1278–1349) – yet he must also be recognized as one of the foremost exponents of ornate prose within the premodern Arabic literary tradition. Tāǧaddīn as-Subkī included his handwriting in this eulogy: “If anyone in our century tried to equal Ibn Nubāta in poetry, prose, or handwriting, he would attempt something impossible and aspire to something that will in no way occur.”^[33]

Alongside the inheritance of esteemed elite literature, the poet engaged – selectively but significantly – with the strophic genres that had become fashionable in Ayyubid and early-Mamluk urban settings. Learned poets of the eighth/fourteenth century, while continuing to regard the muwaššaḥa as the most dignified strophic structure, increasingly experimented with the zaǧal, whose vernacular coloring and intricate rhyme-scheme produced a different sonic effect, often employed in musical performance. Figures trained in the adab tradition, but also religious scholars – among them Ibn Ḥiǧǧa, Faḫraddīn Ibn Makānis (745–794/1345–1393) and Ibn al-Ḫarrāṭ (777–840/1375–1436) – normally restricted themselves to one or two specimens, treating the form as an occasional display of ingenuity rather than a core mode of expression. It is plausible, therefore, that earlier masters of the muwaššaḥ such as Ibn Sanāʾ al-Mulk, whose Dār aṭ-ṭirāz codified strophic poetics, or the chancery stylist al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil (529–1134/569–1199), also tried their hand at azǧāl now lost.

Ibn Nubāta conforms to this pattern. To our knowledge he composed eighteen muwaššaḥāt that confirm his comfort with the fuṣḥā leaning variant of strophic writing.^[34] Comparison of their prosodic architecture with his two zaǧals indicates that he considered the muwaššaḥa a more natural extension of his learned literary training. Ibn Nubāta’s first zaǧal is cited in its entirety – among other sources – in Ibn Ḥiǧǧa’s Bulūġ al-amal, where it appears as a muʿāraḍa (literary response) to the well-known zaǧal by Ibn an-Nabīh, which opens with az-zamān saʿīd muwātī. Ibn Ḥiǧǧa, who rarely quotes zaǧals in full, describes the poem as an unparalleled example of formal correctness.^[35] The composition is panegyrical in nature, praising the Ayyubids broadly while focusing on Abū l-Fidāʾ al-Malik al-Muʾayyad (672–732/1273–1331). Linguistically, it adheres closely to fuṣḥā, exhibiting only minimal dialectal features; indeed, with slight modifications, the poem could be classified as a muwaššaḥa. Ibn Nubāta’s decision to model his sole zaǧal on Ibn an-Nabīh’s established exemplar, while avoiding heavy vernacular influences, indicates an engagement with the formal conventions of the genre without departing too far from classical norms. This choice may reflect an intention to align with contemporary literary fashions and to satisfy patronal expectations, while maintaining his commitment to the rhetorical and linguistic standards characteristic of his broader poetic oeuvre.^[36]

Interestingly, Ibn Nubāta acted also as a referee in zaǧal competitions, that appear to have been a prominent feature of zaǧal practice during this period: a courtly episode at the maǧlis of Abū l-Fidāʾ al-Malik al-Muʾayyad (r. 710–732/1310–1331) illustrates Ibn Nubāta’s authority in matters of poetic taste and genre conventions. On this occasion, the poet Ibn Muqātil performed a zaǧal beginning with the line qalbī yuḥibb tayyāh. At the conclusion of the performance, al-Ḥillī – present at the gathering and regarded, along with Ibn Nubāta, as one of the most refined stylists of the time – praised the text as malḥūn bi-alf muʿrab, a composition “inflected with a thousand elements of formal Arabic.” Ibn Nubāta, turning to the sultan and gesturing toward al-Ḥillī, repeated the expression bi-alf muʿrab with hardly veiled irony, suggesting that the excessive use of fuṣḥā contravened the vernacular spirit of the zaǧal form. The sultan reportedly received this comment with a smile, implicitly endorsing Ibn Nubāta’s judgment.^[37]

This anecdote, recorded in multiple literary sources, is instructive on several fronts. It reveals the degree to which the zaǧal had become integrated into the courtly culture of the Mamluk elite – a repertoire cultivated and appreciated by leading figures such as al-Malik an-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn, al-Malik al-Muʾayyad, al-Ḥillī, Ibn Makānis, Ibn Ḥabīb, and aṣ-Ṣafadī. More specifically, it illustrates how Ibn Nubāta, though himself sparing in the use of dialectal features, was nonetheless able to invoke genre norms as a rhetorical strategy to critique competitors, in this case targeting al-Ḥillī’s stylistic excesses. Notably, Ibn Nubāta’s own surviving zaǧal is similarly limited in its use of colloquial Arabic. Yet, as the sources suggest, this did not preclude him from policing the boundaries of the form when it served to enhance his critical authority or courtly standing.

An important factor in the possible background of this anecdote is his relationship with al-Ḥillī, marked by mutual competitiveness and stylistic divergence. In his verdict on the poetic tribunal involving al-Amšāṭī, Ibn Nubāta again adopted a critical stance – perhaps colored by personal estrangement after an earlier friendship deteriorated when al-Amšāṭī’s fame eclipsed his.^[38] Ibn Nubāta thus appears not only as a masterful craftsman, but also as a discerning – and at times caustic – critic of strophic experimentation.

This brings us to Ibn Nubāta’s second zaǧal, a bullayq whose analysis will allow us to evaluate his own adherence to the conventions of bullayq poetry as outlined above. The poem is preserved exclusively in two draft autographs compiled by Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī (773–852/1372–1449), who augmented the Dīwān with additional poems, frequently sourced – as he repeatedly observes – from the author’s own autograph manuscripts.^[39] Ibn Ḥaǧar’s admiration for Ibn Nubāta extended beyond his poetic compositions to his calligraphic skill: he sought to imitate the poet’s distinctive nasḫ and nastaʿlīq hybrid, and the muswadda preserves a calligraphy that is visually refined yet palaeographically challenging.^[40] That Ibn Ḥaǧar deemed the poem worthy of rescue confirms the stature Ibn Nubāta enjoyed among fifteenth-century scholars and highlights the role of individual scribal choices in shaping the post-humous corpus. Absent from al-Baštakī’s dīwān and ignored by subsequent anthologists, the poem has survived thanks to Ibn Ḥaǧar’s decision to gather additional poems – some of which, contrary to his own claims, were actually part of the established dīwāns.^[41] Ibn Ḥaǧar’s drafts invite a palaeographic inquiry that can illuminate stages of authorial redaction and scribal mediation. The study of this unique bullayqa, through its orthographic, linguistic, and codicological features within Ibn Ḥaǧar’s drafts, offers a window into Ibn Nubāta’s navigation of the tension between learned literary eloquence and the colloquial, thematic exuberance often expected in such popular forms. It also illuminates how scribal practices and the accidents of preservation determine our understanding of the strophic experiments of one of the Mamluk era’s most celebrated literary figures.

3 Ibn Nubāta’s bullayqa in the Autographs of Ibn Ḥaǧar

Šihābaddīn Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī (773–852/1372–1449) was born five years after the death of Ibn Nubāta. Yet despite this temporal distance, he appears to have been profoundly influenced by Ibn Nubāta’s literary legacy. Confronted with the overwhelming stature of Ibn Nubāta in the domain of adab, Ibn Ḥaǧar seems to have felt eclipsed, prompting him to turn away from literary pursuits and instead dedicate himself to the study of ḥadīṯ, a field in which he would ultimately achieve distinction.^[42] Although Ibn Ḥaǧar could not have known Ibn Nubāta personally, he had access to his manuscripts, including autograph copies he most likely inherited from his father. Moreover, he was acquainted with udabāʾ who had known Ibn Nubāta directly – figures such as al-Baštakī, who undertook the compilation of Ibn Nubāta’s poetry, or the poet al-Qīrāṭī (d. 781/1379) who stood in his literary tradition. Ibn Ḥaǧar regarded al-Baštakī’s collection as incomplete; in the introduction to his own supplement, he explicitly notes that much poetry had eluded the earlier compiler:

This is what [I could assemble] from what escaped the collector of the poetry of the leading figure among the literati of the modern age (shaykh al-udabāʾ al-mutaʾakhkhirīn), Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Nubātah. It includes texts that I found written by himself or by people who transmitted them from his manuscripts or who heard it from him… [it is] astonishing how much it is, though he who had collected [Ibn Nubātah’s poetry] before claimed comprehensiveness.^[43]

Ibn Ḥaǧar transcribed Ibn Nubāta’s bullayqa in two autograph manuscripts of his supplements to Ibn Nubāta’s dīwān, preserved respectively in the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen and in the Reisülküttab collection of the Süleymaniye Library (Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi) in Istanbul:

Ms. Göttingen 80 Cod. Ms. arab. 179 is a maǧmūʿa in two parts, both transcribed by Ibn Ḥaǧar himself while residing in Zabīd (Yemen) in 800/1397. The first part (fols. 2r–18r) contains an anonymous treatise on the art of writing and the science of letters or books, arranged in unnumbered chapters. The second part (fols. 21r–62v) is entitled Ziyādāt ʿalā d-dīwān; however, this title appears to be a later addition, as Ibn Ḥaǧar mentions Ibn Nubāta by name in the incipit but does not cite the title explicitly. Ibn Ḥaǧar’s supplementary material is likewise referenced by as-Saḫāwī, who records it under the title aḏ-Ḏayl ʿalā mā ǧamaʿahū al-Baštakī min naẓm Ibn Nubāta al-Miṣrī. As-Saḫāwī further notes that he had seen Ibn Ḥaǧar’s additions both in the form of a muswadda and a mubayyaḍa; the manuscript under examination here is evidently the muswadda, as indicated by its markedly rough and cursory script.^[44] The bullayqa is situated on the folio 59r–v and carries the heading lahu bullayq.

The manuscript Reisülküttab 953, by contrast, is a non-composite codex. The hand of Ibn Ḥaǧar in this manuscript is more legible, and the layout of the pages exhibits a greater degree of organization, with fewer passages written in the margins or inserted in free spaces. Overall, it presents a more orderly and deliberate textual arrangement than that found in the Göttingen manuscript. Unlike the Göttingen copy, Ibn Ḥaǧar introduces the poem with the phrase wa-waǧadtu bi-ḫaṭṭ al-Qīrāṭī, indicating that he accessed the poem through a manuscript written in the hand of al-Qīrāṭī, a known disciple of Ibn Nubāta. This attribution suggests that Ibn Ḥaǧar’s transmission draws directly on material stemming from Ibn Nubāta’s immediate circle. The poem starts on fol. 57v and is interrupted by a different poem on fol. 58r (his other zaǧal) and continues on fol. 58v.

4 The bullaya: badā lī nathattak wa-rǧaʿ ʿan at-talbīs

4.3 Edition of the Text

It was sometime in 2020 that I first turned my attention to this poem as preserved in the Göttingen manuscript, presenting my initial readings at the meetings of the ALEA group in Münster. There, I had the invaluable opportunity to discuss the text with my colleagues, whose insightful comments consistently enriched my work. In the years that followed, the project of editing and translating the poem gradually fell into abeyance, until recent circumstances brought it back to my attention. During this period of dormancy, the Reisülküttab manuscript came to light. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, despite its still challenging legibility, Ibn Ḥaǧar’s somewhat more careful hand in this manuscript confirmed the majority of readings I had originally proposed on the basis of the Göttingen manuscript. Particularly challenging to interpret is Ibn Ḥaǧar’s habitual omission of diacritic dots, along with the nearly complete absence of vowel marking, both of which render the editorial process especially intricate. In the following edition variants between the manuscripts are indicated by the sigla G (Göttingen) and R (Reisülküttab). The critical apparatus recording the rejected variants is presented in the footnotes, each footnote encompassing the variants of all the verses within a single stanza.

Beyond the challenges of its transmission and its readability, the poem itself exhibits a precise and recognizable structure. We are dealing with a zaǧal in the proper sense. In this type of zaǧal, the common verses – that is, those which end each strophe – are equivalent to half the verses of the maṭlaʿ, the opening verse of the poem. Consequently, in Ibn Nubāta’s bullayqa, the common verses only contain one hemistich (half-verse) each. This structure seems to be the norm for the bullayq: the first verse consisting of two hemistichs, which is reduced by half in the common verses. This characteristic gives the poems a marked concision and a rapid rhythm, making the delivery dynamic and lively.

The rhyme scheme of this bullayqa unfolds as follows: aa bbba ddda eeea fffa. Both the maṭlaʿ and the common rhymes end in -īs, while the special rhymes vary and include endings such as -rā, -lū, -bī, -ūb, -rī, and -ālū. With regard to meter, Ibn Nubāta makes use of a shortened variant of sarīʿ, which can be scanned either as – – ᴗ – / – – or as ᴗ – ᴗ – / – –.

وٱعودْ لذاك الحالْ وٱتبعْ مراد ٱبليس	1 بدا لي نِتْهَتّك وٱرجِع عن التلبيس
قبل ٱن نموتْ حسرا	2 وٱرصدْ حبيبْ قلبي
عسى نجدْ نُصرا	3 وٱضربْ رمل ماعو
بياضْ مع حمرا	4 وٱجمعْ من الخدّينْ
وراسْ عذولي ٱنكيس48	5 وٱجعلْ هواهْ رايهْ
عيشي زمان وصلو	6 يا قلبِ ريت ما ٱحلى
وٱقصف على شكلو	7 حتّى ٱغضب العُذّال
وٱَخُدْ شرابْ مثلو	8 وٱنفق ذهَبْ أحمرْ
ما كانْ قَبَلْ في الكيس49	9 ٱنتقل للكاس
محبوبَه ٱلى50 قلبي	10 ما دي المدام إلّا
بالصرف يا صحبي	11 ولا سما إن كان
لا تفسدو شربي	12 لا تمزجو الكاسات
صونوه عن التنجيس	13 فكم طهور الما
إلّا بريق محبوب	14 لا تمزجو كاسي
ناعم نزِف مشروب	15 حُلُوْ رشيق فاتن
بحسنوا ألمحجوب	16 أشّو الثيابْ يزري
غنيْ عن التلبيس51	17 والمنظر الواضح
بحسنو ألبدري	18 مليح يضلّ الناس
وٱفْلس عليهْ صبري	19 خسرتُ فيهْ عقلي
في من أمري	20 قف لي وَإتعجّب
والقلب في تفليس52	21 الجسم في جلّق
يصبر عـلى ٱحوالو	22 قلبي المسيكر كم
وٱوقف عليهْ حالو	23 حبّس فيه ٱشجانو
مقفول بأقفالو	24 وكان مكان أسرار
الوقفِ والتحبيس	25 واليوم رجع ديوان

1. 48

   Verse 1 (maṭlaʿ): عن G عمر, verse 3: رمل G زجل, verse 3: نجد R نجده. The word التلبيس in the maṭlaʿ appears distorted in G, with a ص written above the word to signal a correction. It seems that Ibn Ḥaǧar initially misspelled the word and then overwrote his first attempt, rendering it particularly difficult to decipher. R offers the reading I have adopted. The word ٱنكِيسْ (ankīs) in verse 5, meaning “I lower” or “I humble,” originates from the Arabic root نكس, which signifies lowering, inverting, or debasing. It functions as a first-person singular imperfect verb, likely a poetic adaptation of a classical form such as ankusu (from form I nakasa = “to bow one’s head”) or unakkisu (from form II, nakkasa = “to humiliate/make bow”). The distinct -īs ending is a deliberate phonetic modification by the poet to seamlessly integrate the word into the poem’s consistent -īs stanza-end rhyme scheme.

2. 49

   Verse 9: انتقل R .

3. 50

   Read maḥbūb-a-lā qalbī. Metric requirement.

4. 51

   Verse 15: نزف G possible to be read as ترف (tarif) “effeminate” or “living in opulence”, verse 16: أشو R .

5. 52

   Verse 18: يضل R أضل.

5 Conclusion and Final Remarks

Although Ibn Nubāta is primarily known for his command of high-prestige literary forms, the bullayqa discussed here reflects his refined engagement with the strophic, vernacular zaǧal, a genre whose Andalusian origins are still traceable in its structural and linguistic features. In this poem, Ibn Nubāta closely follows the conventions of the zaǧal as practiced in the eastern tradition more broadly, while also attending to features specific to the bullayq subgenre. He reworks motifs familiar from the ġazal and ḫamriyya traditions with a tone that is both playful and rhetorically agile, integrating them into the formal and linguistic fabric of the bullayq. Characteristic of Ibn Nubāta is his use of double entendre, culminating in the final image of the heart as a dīwān of waqf and taḥbīs. This bullayqa illustrates Ibn Nubāta’s capacity to infuse a performative popular form with literary sophistication, both stylistic and conceptual.

Given the highly idiosyncratic script of Ibn Ḥaǧar and the draft status of his compilation, some readings in the present edition may inevitably be open to question. Yet I would argue that this ought not to deter us from the undertaking itself. However imperfect the result may be, many of the readings will nonetheless approximate what Ibn Ḥaǧar intended to record at this draft stage. This study should thus be regarded as a preliminary step toward deciphering the paleographic challenges posed by Ibn Ḥaǧar’s often elusive hand. To this end, facsimiles of the folios containing the bullayqa have been included, allowing other scholars to engage directly with the material and, should they wish, to advance the task further and refine the edition presented here. In the end, such a process of incremental correction and collective effort is, after all, the very principle upon which scholarly progress rests.

I therefore hope that this critical edition and textual analysis of the bullayqa may stand as a modest contribution – and at the same time a subtle homage – to the groundbreaking project carried out by Thomas Bauer and his team at the University of Münster, who, since 2020, have been engaged in the pioneering task of producing a complete digital edition of Ibn Nubāta’s oeuvre.

Annex

1. Ms. Göttingen 80 Cod. Ms. arab. 179, fol. 59r-v

   

   

2. Ms. Reisülküttab 953, fols. 57v and 58v