Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Abī al-Fatḥ Ibn Khafāja (1058/59–1139)

Dīwān

Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Khāṣṣa bi-Jamʿīyat al-Maʿārif, end of Rabīʿ al-awwal 1286 AH [1869].

Pagination to 135. Arabic text within ornamental borders, with a decorated title-page and ornamental opening. Edited by Muṣṭafā Salāma al-Najjārī.

Marbled-paper boards with red-brown leather spine and corners.

Ink and pencil annotations on the title-page; blue ink stamps towards the end and a green stamp on a rear blank.

Rahmi Er identifies this as the first printed edition of Ibn Khafāja’s collected Arabic poetry. The Andalusian poet is particularly associated with gardens, water and the landscape of his native Šuqar, modern Alzira. Al-Najjārī arranged 256 poems by rhyme, omitting the author’s extensive introduction and some prose introductions and comments: an editorial reshaping of the medieval collection.

The imprint names the press attached to the Jamʿīyat al-Maʿārif, which al-Najjārī helped found in 1868. The society offered a collective means of bringing Arabic classics into print. Islam Dayeh describes its shareholding structure: members contributed five Egyptian pounds and received publications at preferential prices. Associated with the Wahbiyya printing house, it undertook substantial scholarly projects, including the multi-volume Tāj al-ʿarūs. Its significance lies in joining learned selection to the practical financing and distribution of books.

Printed the following year, this Dīwān belongs to that programme of literary recovery. Mestyan and Schwartz’s reconstruction of al-Najjārī’s estate shows an editor and entrepreneur with manuscripts on loan and printed books for sale. Editing, printing and bookselling were connected activities; the owners represented by this copy’s stamps remain unidentified.

Condition

Binding heavily rubbed, with exposed board edges and a split front inner hinge; the front board is separating from the text block. Pastedowns browned and worn. General paper toning, scattered spotting and marginal dampstaining, with occasional small edge losses.

References

• Er, Rahmi. “İbn Hafâce.” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, 1999. Source
• Ibn Khafāja. Hādhā dīwān nādirat ʿaṣrihi… Cairo, 1286 [1869]. American University in Cairo copy, Arabic Collections Online. Source
• Mestyan, Adam, and Kathryn A. Schwartz. “An Egyptian Shaykh’s Literary World, 1870: Digitally Reconstructing Islamic Print Culture Through Mustafa Salama al-Najjari’s Books.” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, vol. 9, no. 2, 2022, pp. 85–90. Source
• Dayeh, Islam. “From Taṣḥīḥ to Taḥqīq: Toward a History of the Arabic Critical Edition.” Philological Encounters, vol. 4, nos. 3–4, 2019, pp. 245–99, especially p. 250. Source

Artem reference: 208.