Survey: Has Andalusi literature influenced Moroccan literature?

Hal kān li-l-adab al-andalusī taʾthīr ʿalā al-adab al-maghribī? / Has Andalusi literature influenced Moroccan literature?

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Al-Motamid Forum

Has Andalusi literature influenced Moroccan literature?

Responses from: Muhammad Aziman, Muhammad bin Tawit and Al-Muntasir al-Katani.

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Response from Professor Muhammad Aziman [1]:

Al-Motamid 27, Tetouan 1954. Source Spanish National Library.

When we talk about the act of influencing something and the state of being influenced by something, we assume the existence of two different things: one that influences and the other that is influenced.

When we ask if Andalusi literature influenced Moroccan literature, we therefore assume the existence of two literatures, each of them with its own distinct character, its own special mark and its own particular features that set it apart.

I believe that it is difficult to apply all of this to our discussion of Andalusi literature and Moroccan literature.

This is because the Moroccan-Andalusi culture, in general terms, is actually one entity; both here and there, there was one community made up of Arabs, Berbers and Iberians, which dissolved into the Arab-Islamic culture, the one mixing into the other, contributing to the establishment of a single culture, that is, the Morrocan-Andalusi culture, with its centre located as much in Córdoba as in Marrakesh, in Granada as in Fez.

Given all this, Andalusi literature is not so distant from Moroccan literature that we might ask whether the one influences the other or not; rather, they both reached out to one another and cut across one another, irrespective of whether they were based on this shore or on that shore [2].

It was the Moroccans who conquered al-Andalus in cooperation with the Arabs, establishing there that shared culture.

The Moroccan dynasties that governed Morocco and al-Andalus played the greatest of parts in laying the groundwork for this shared glory.

Many of the most remarkable scholars and writers of al-Andalus spent some of their lives in various regions of Morocco, profiting from the intellectual and literary awakening that had occurred there; just as many of the scholars of Morocco, and their students, lived in the cool shade of the Andalusi culture and drank plentifully from its springs [3]. When the shade cast by Arab culture receded from al-Andalus, Morocco continued to live with its portion of that shared heritage, inheriting whatever it could save from the loss of Andalusi culture.

Given all of this, Moroccan literature cannot simply be described as an inheritance of Moroccan culture, for this is an Andalusi-Moroccan culture. Moroccan literature, Moroccan music and architectural design in Morocco, the legal system, the method of farming, even the way homes are decorated and the way all sorts of different foods and drinks are prepared, as well as many social customs: all of these matters, and many more besides, continue to leave a particular mark on the material and spiritual life of Morocco, a mark that is, in fact, part of that shared heritage, the heritage of the Andalusi-Moroccan culture.

Indeed, the name of this Andalusi culture outshone this shared culture precisely because it flourished so perfectly in al-Andalus, in a way that it did not in Morocco.

Even if we look at literature in its most limited sense, we can still hear the sound of the Andalusi muwashshah echoing in the air of Morocco. The style of Ibn al-Khatib and Al-Fath ibn Khaqan still flows from the tips of the pens of those writers who epitomise the Old School and it is clearly visible in the royal libraries, in religious sermons and at other sites traditionally associated with holiness and honour [4].

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Response from Professor Muhammad bin Tawit:

Has Andalusi literature influenced Moroccan literature? Yes! There is a fullness to this influence – and this is not to say an influence of al-Andalus over Morocco in terms of the one’s overwhelming power or complete dominion over the other, but, rather, an influence that is felt in the sphere of literature and of the arts in general. 

It is true that Morocco came to be directly influenced by Arabness because of the journeys people took to the East and because of large cities nearby like Kairouan and Tiaret, but this early influence did not include religion and the intellectual issues related to religion and so, in this respect, it might have been Morocco that influenced al-Andalus first…

When it comes to literary influence, this took a long time to come from al-Andalus and only occurred after al-Andalus had drunk from the wells of Arab culture and had watered itself with its literary reserves, creating for itself its own special character. It was only then that Morocco was ready to extend its hands, one from Ceuta and the other from Tangier, to receive the literary gift from its neighbour al-Andalus. This occurred in the fifth century [AH] and from then on we begin to see examples of poetry, such as those by al-Mu’tamid ibn Abbad, in which the poets of Tangier are described, although al-Mu’tamid put a stop to this at the time of his exile [in 1091CE]. Thereafter, we encounter powerful personalities in Moroccan literature such as Al-Qadi Ayyad in Ceuta and Al-Qadi al-Hassan b. Zinba in Tangier, both of whom were influenced by Andalusi literature. The echoes of Andalusi literature therefore continued to resonate in Morocco, sometimes loudly, sometimes softly, but their presence could never be denied, neither in the poets of Morocco – and these are poets in the true sense of the word – nor in its other writers – and most of them were writers, rather than poets… [5]

Three years ago, I said, in relation to the writings of Al-Qadi bin Zinba,* that if we were to offer a judgement on the character of Morocco’s poetry at that time, then the judgement would be that it was a response to the poetry of the Andalusis: nothing more, nothing less. Such a statement should come as no surprise to us given that we know Morocco drew its literature from al-Andalus before any other region.

* Letter to Al-Maghrib, 20 January 1951.

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Response from Professor Muhammad al-Muntasir al-Kattani:

Andalusi literature did not only influence Moroccan literature, it moved towards it and mixed with it: it mixed with it like blood mixes in the veins, it spread towards it like water spreads through the branches of a tree. In the sorrows and the hopes it described, it became able to depict in extraordinary detail the environment of Morocco: its mountains and its plains, its deserts and its pastures, its rivers and its oceans, its land and its sky. And, in doing so, it became a mute, silent literature: the eye could see it, the ear could hear it, the nose could smell and the hand could touch it; and the deepest recesses of the heart, of the chest, could feel it too.

Then this literature began to overflow with its twin potencies, its capacity for both sorrow and for hope, making the mute speak, making the deaf hear. It poured forth, undiluted, as eloquence and fluency, revelation and inimitability [6].

The veil was lifted. And then came the descendants of Baqi b.Makhlad, Ibn Ayman al-Qurtubi, Ibn Hazm, Ibn Abd al-Barr, Ibn Darraj al-Qastalli, Ibn Zaydun, Ibn al-Abbar, Ibn Abdun, Ziryab, Abbas ibn Firnas, Abd al-Rahman I, al-Mu’tamid and Ibn al-Ahmar [7].

And among the descendants of all of these figures, too, was political power and religious authority, science and art, and a literature that was overwhelming in its completeness. All of these set out, at a crawl, each roiling into the other like the swell of the sea, jealously guarding their language, their articles of faith, their literature, until they reached Morocco, where they visited every inch of the land in pilgrimage, north and south, east and west. Morocco was, as a result, both the beneficiary and the executor of this inheritance[8]. As this intimacy grew, as Morocco grew closer to al-Andalus and was guided ever more closely by it [9], it was, then, al-Andalus that became covetous of that with which it had previously been entrusted, longing desperately for its articles of faith and clinging tightly to its literature, to the calls to Islam and the traditions of the Prophet, to the religious sermons and the written records, to poetry and to prose.