Abstract

While premodern Arab critics did not use the label “sukhf” to categorize poems and preferred mujūn instead,3 there is no doubt that sukhf qualifies as an independent mode. In addition to being incorporated and seamlessly woven into various qaṣīdas, there are numerous poems composed by Ibn al-Ḥajjāj that should be approached and read as independent sukhf poems. As noted and illustrated in previous chapters, much of what sukhf is about is the deliberate confusion and conflation of modes and poetic registers in general and parodying them, yet there is a certain direct debt to mujūn; the mode with which it is often coupled and from which it branched off. So where does mujūn end and where does sukhf begin and is it possible to answer this question?4 While the boundaries separating the two are not always clear or easily detectible, there are, for sure, areas to which only sukhf extends, especially, but not only, in extreme scatological references.5 Moreover, there are standard mujūn topoi, themes and sub-themes that are elaborated, taken to their maximum potential, and inverted in and into sukhf, particularly in Ibn al-Ḥajjāj’s poetry. Another intimately related issue that will be addressed in this chapter is the debt to Abū Nuwās (140–198/755–813), whose name and persona are synonymous with mujūn in both popular and literary culture. The Nuwāsian influence on Ibn al-Ḥajjāj was briefly alluded to in chapter 1, particularly via Abū Ḥjukayma.6