Dominion Built of Praise - Jonathan Decter Jewish Culture and Contexts

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within the chancery, defines various types of wordplay and rhetorical devices using works of poetics as his basis.37

      Epistolographic manuals not only reflect the aesthetic and intellectual ideals of the age but also reveal a great deal about how society was organized and how the relations among various ranks of people were imagined. Al-Ḥumaydī (c. 1028–95), who was born in Córdoba and died in Baghdad, intended his book for “private letter writing” (ikhwāniyya) and planned another book that would deal with “letters from rulers dealing with matters of governance” (sulṭāniyya).38 Within the volume on private letters, opening blessings are organized hierarchically according to the ranks and professions of the correspondents (caliphs, governors, scribes, judges, merchants). Although these openings essentially offer the same blessings for long life, for God’s kindness and favor, and so on, the precise phrasing encodes social rank and negotiates the status differential between writer and recipient. Some elements also relate to the particular profession, as when a merchant is wished good fortune and even profit in business.39 The Ṣubḥ al-a‘ashā’ similarly organizes blessings according to social rank, what is appropriate for a superior to send to an inferior (ra’īs and mar’ūs) and vice versa. One of the most unadorned forms of address occurs when a father writes to his son. When a letter is sent from a subordinate to a superior, the formulas tend to expand and become more elaborate rhetorically—for example, “May God elongate the life of the qāḍī (judge) in might (‘izz) and happiness; may He extend his prestige (karāma) and execute His kindness (ni‘ma) for him with the broadest well-being (‘āfiya) and the utmost security (salāma).”40 Actual letters discovered in Quseir, which were directed to an elder merchant, follow similar formulas.41 In short, blessings constitute a form of praise because their wording can mark the relative status of author and addressee.

      The Geniza document Oxford e.74 1a–6b is part of a Judeo-Arabic transcription of an Arabic epistolary manual attributed to Aḥmad Ibn Sa‘d al-Iṣfahānī; the work was divided into twenty-one chapters, beginning with taḥmīdāt (doxology) and sulṭaniyāt, and included examples for different genres, occasions, and purposes, including the expression of condolence, gratitude, apology, and, of course, praise (al-thanā’).42 While the section on praise does not survive, it seems likely that it included formulations for figures of different rank. The existence of the text in Hebrew characters, which even preserves specifically Islamic formulations (including qur’ānic verses), indicates that the genre was sufficiently important among Jews to be studied and, in all likelihood, imitated.43 Further, a book list from the Geniza includes a work titled adab al-kātib, possibly the guide for scribes by Ibn Qutaiba.44

      As Haggai Ben Shammai points out, the Judeo-Arabic correspondence of the academies adopts conventions of Islamic chancery correspondence.45 With likely precedent from Late Antiquity, numerous Jewish letters from the Islamic milieu open with an introductory formula of blessing, often in three parts, with dimensions of literary play. Examples of mellifluous letter introductions abound in Geniza correspondence. As is the case with the formulas for blessing in Islamic correspondence, the degree of ornament and even length usually correspond with rank. Sa‘adia Gaon gives examples of the types of wordplay that “we constantly write in our epistles” (fī rasā’ ilinā),46 and, in a fragment from an actual letter by Sa‘adia, itself a response to a panegyric, the opening blessings follow the same pattern.47 Here Sa‘adia was writing to a student of one of his disciples and likely invested the blessing with literary effect to demonstrate his skill, to “thank” the inquirer for his query and poem, and to mark them both as members of the same Jewish social and intellectual elite.

      Although there are no manuals for Hebrew letter writing on the scale of the Arabic guides for scribes, there do survive Geniza manuscripts that compile Hebrew literary introductions for letters to addressees, both real and hypothetical, of various ranks (gaon, scribe, cantor, even synagogue caretaker), thus following the structural organization of Arabic epistolary manuals.48 The most significant of these formularies (TS J 3.3; Figure 3) was published by Tova Beeri.49 Such texts were probably intended to circulate as models for Jewish letter writers, including aspiring scribes. The mere existence of these documents demonstrates that Hebrew letter writing was also considered an art that adhered to conventions. Many of these introductions, and many actual letters dedicated to known recipients, include panegyric sections ranging from a few lines to several manuscript pages. Much of the literary creativity associated with versified panegyrics is observed within epistles, and the execution of literary praise was not dependent upon a “courtly” structure, per se; it was a by-product, or better a means, of human interconnection, whether bureaucratic, intellectual, mercantile, or familial.

      There is also ample evidence for the Arabization of Jewish writing in letters exchanged between merchants or family members. Mark Cohen has demonstrated that authors of Hebrew letters found in the Geniza employ loan translations of Arabic locutions; examples include Jewish versions of the basmallah, certain epithets for God, opening and closing formulas, blessings for the addressee, and wishes that the addressee’s enemies be thwarted.50 In some cases, certain Hebrew words absorb the semantic force of their Arabic equivalents or cognates (shelomot = salāma; ne‘imot = ni‘ma; haṣlaḥa = tawfīq). Like Arabic letters, Hebrew counterparts sometimes incorporate Hebrew poetry or rhymed prose within the body of the letter.51 Hebrew held a certain cachet and was used even when both correspondents knew Arabic (as mentioned, this was also the case when Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Near East). The historical Jewish language was important in delineating boundaries for a specific community of learned Jewish men. Still, the spirit of their writing remained that of the Arabic milieu in which they lived.52

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       Titulature

      Another hallmark of letters of Arabic-speaking Jews from the Islamic Mediterranean is the addressing of a recipient, whether of higher or lower rank, with a series of appropriate terms and epithets that can be in Hebrew and/or Judeo-Arabic. This can be as simple as the ubiquitous “Our master and teacher” (mareinu ve-rabeinu) or as complicated as several lines of carefully chosen and rhetorically sophisticated phrases. In certain circumstances, the epithets selected represent actual titles that were bestowed upon their bearers in an official sense. In other cases, the epithets evoke the style of formal titles but are actually devoid of official function. It is not always easy to distinguish the official from the unofficial, but in either case, the formulations are telling measures of Jewish notions of power and “statecraft” and bear the stamp of Islamic titulature practices.53

      Addressing a powerful figure in the medieval Islamic world was a highly ritualized act that adhered to fairly strict conventions. This was the case whether the “encounter” was in person or in writing.54 Caliphs, wazīrs, governors, scribes, and judges all expected to be addressed with strings of titles that marked their elevated status. As Islamic civilization developed an increasingly formalized political structure, the laqab (lit., “nickname”) was transformed from being a rather nonspecific form of admiration to an official, fixed, and prestigious honorific. Caliphs claimed laqabs for themselves as regnal titles and reserved the right to bestow them upon their favorites. Caliphs and other high-ranking officials often signed documents with nothing but their honorary titles, insignia known as ‘alāmas specific to the individuals.

      Most cynically, Muslim historians quipped that titles were bestowed upon underlings with liberality because the caliphate had nothing real to offer them (such as money, a practice that has been followed well by university administrators). Yet such honorifics were an essential part of the political machinery of Eastern Islamic lands and also enjoyed more limited usage in the Islamic West.55 The terms selected convey ideals of the state, and the trained

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