An Ethnomusicological Approach to Arabic Anti-Frankish Poetry

Hillenbrand, Irwin and others have indicated the importance of anti-Frankish poetry for our understanding of Muslim responses to the crusades. Osman Latiff’s book The Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword, published in 2018, is an essential springboard for research on this material. Yet despite the frequency with which poetry is quoted in the Arabic sources, it has been sidelined in scholarship; treated as illustration or ornament to the main text. In some modern editions and translations, the poetry has been left out altogether. This is understandable. By their nature, the poems depend for their effect on linguistic subtleties, complex interconnections and layers of meaning not easy to grasp for scholars who do not speak or read the original Arabic. Studies that do exist tend to focus on the poems' thematic content, not on sonic aspects such as rhyme, rhythm, pitch and vocal timbre.

Taking as a case study a poem by Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Maṭrūḥ (d.649 AH /1251 CE) I argue in this paper not only that the poems are important historical sources in their own right, but also that a focus on their sonic elements, informed by practice-based ethnomusicological methodology and considering performative and social aspects, can bring us valuable insights not offered by the more conventional sources and methods. I suggest that we are only just beginning to appreciate the full significance of poetry in Muslim perspectives on the crusades and in the more general cultural contexts of the period.