The famous Günzburg facsimile of the best known poetry in Andalusian Arabic

Quzman, Ibn / Günzburg, David Goratsiyevich. Le diwan d’Ibn Guzman. Texte, traduction, commentaire enrichi de considerations historiques, philologiques et litteraires sur les poemes d'Ibn Guzman, sa vie, son temps, se langue et sa metrique.

€ 7,500.00

A full facsimile diwan of the most famous poet of Al-Andalus, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Isa Abd al-Malik ibn Isa ibn Quzman al-Zuhri (1087-1160), known today as Ibn Quzman. Published by Baron David Goratsiyevich Günzburg (1857-1910), who initially proposed to publish the facsimile alongside an edition and his own translation with a commentary; however, only the facsimile volume with its eight-page foreword, seen here, was ever produced.

The importance of the St Petersburg manuscript, and indeed of the Günzburg facsimile which made it accessible to scholarship, can hardly be overstated. The St Petersburg manuscript is a unique survival of Ibn Quzman's work, and preserves the vast majority of the zajals attributed to the poet, and in turn provides much to the study of Andalusian Arabic literature: "It could perhaps be said that no other publication, or no other single diwan has been as pivotal in the study of Hispano-Arabic literature during the past hundred years. There is no other poet who singly stands as a representative of a whole genre" (Abu-Haidar 273).

Ibn Quzman's zajals, 149 of which appear in the St Petersburg manuscript, also constitute a good portion of the zajal genre: a type of popular and often satirical poetry popular in 11th century Muslim Spain, where it rubbed elbows with European troubadour poetry, and of continued importance and practice across the Arabic-speaking world today. In this way, the present facsimile represents an era of this genre which would be otherwise little understood or nearly lost: "The 1896 Facsimile is not only the unique manuscript of a poet's work. It constitutes at one and the same time the major corpus of popular literature in Al-Andalus known to us" (Abu-Haidar 272-4).

Ribbon ties frayed or lacking, light exterior wear. Complete and well preserved.