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The three great Abbasid poets: Abu Nuwás, al-Mutanabbi and al-Maarri
January 22, 20257:00 p.m.
CORDOBA
Casa Árabe Auditorium (at Calle Samuel de los Santos Gener, 9).
7:00 p.m.
Free entry until the event’s capacity is reached.
In Spanish.
Professor and translator Salvador Peña will give us a closer look at the
work of the three luminaries of Abbasid poetry in a conference to be
held in Cordoba on Wednesday, January 22. The presentation forms part of
the event series “The Arabs and Their Poetry: A journey across the
centuries.”
The Abbasid period lasted several centuries (five or seven and a half, depending on how we calculate it) and over a large part of the Arab and Islamic territorial domains. It can be assured, therefore, that at least between 750 and 1258, and from the Iberian Peninsula to the eastern confines of Asia, we could come across societies that in one way or another can be described as Abbasid. Moreover, and especially if we focus on the central territories of the empire, it is clear that this was the golden age of Arab Islamic culture. Therefore, discussing such an important manifestation of culture as poetry during the Abbasid period is quite an ambitious undertaking. As a result, the lecture will be limited to examining the three beacons of Abbasid poetry, Abu Nuwás, al-Mutanabbi and al-Maarri. However, in order to understand them, they will be compared with seven other poets, both male and female, from different centuries, backgrounds and social strata. From each of these figures, we will examine a limited number of verses that allow us to know the external and internal circumstances of poetic composition in the Abbasid period.
Salvador Peña Martín (Granada, 1958) A professor at the University of Malaga, in the past he has formed part of the staffs of the Universities of Baghdad (Iraq) and Granada, as either a teacher and/or researcher. Translator The books he has had published as either an author or co-author include Maarri según Batalyawsi (Maarri According to Batalyawsi), Granada, 1989; Traductología (Translatology), 1994, and Corán, palabra y verdad (Qur’an: Word and Truth), Madrid: CSIC, 2007. Peña Martín has authored or co-authored over one hundred articles in academic journals and chapters in monograph editions. For more than twenty years, he has been looking into the interaction between different semiotic modes in works and objects. His most notable translations from Arabic include: Abu l-Alá al-Maarri, Chispa de encendedor, “Spark of a Lighter,” Madrid, 2016; Abu Nuwás, Masculina, femenina, (Masculine, Feminine, Madrid, 2018; Adanía Shibli, Un detalle menor (A Minor Detail), Gijón, 2019 (currently in its sixth edition); Abdelaziz Báraka Sakin, El Mesías de Darfur (The Messiah from Darfur), Madrid, 2020; Amr Afia, Cuando se cierra el telón (When the Curtain Goes Down), Bogota, 2024; as well as a new Spanish-language version of The Thousand and One Nights, Madrid, 2016 and 2018. The last of these has won several awards, including Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad Translation Award, 2016; Spain’s National Award for Best Translation, 2017, and the Literary Translation Award of the Spanish Society for Arab Studies in 2017. He has also received the Acknowledgment for his work as a translator of Arabic literature, by the Lebanese Ministry of Culture in 2018.
*Image: Illustration from the Book of Songs (Kitab al-Aghani), 1216-20, by Abu’l-Faraj al-Isfahani, a compilation of songs by renowned Arab poets and musicians made in the tenth century (Source: Wikipedia).
