Snow Poetry!

Sanawbari  (d. 945CE / 334H) was famous for describing nature in his poetry, and appears to be a pioneer of the sub-genre of snow poetry (easy to remember, given that his name is pronounced “Snowbury”!). Below is my translation of one of his brief pieces on snow (in unrhymed, iambic tetrameter; yes I know), followed by the original Arabic (note that the Arabic versions show some variation.)

 Shake off your slumber, fellow fine,
 Rejoice amidst this sterling day!
 Behold the meadow air made crisp,
 Today she’s decked in lustrous pearl!
 Do you consider this is snow? O Fie!
 It’s roses that the boughs shake off,
 For spring’s rosettes are diverse hues,
 But winter’s roses are pure white!

انفض نُعاسَك يا غلا               مُ فإن ذا يوم مُفَضَّــضْ

 

والجو يُجْلى في الريــا               ض وفي حُليِّ الدرِّ يُعْرَض

 

أظننت ذا ثلجاً؟.. وذا              ورداً من الأغصان يُنْفَض

 

وَرْدُ الربيع ملـــوَّنٌ                   والوردُ في كانونَ أبيـض

PICTURE CREDIT: Snowscape, by F. Laher

Sanawbari, Biography

Sanawbari (d. 945CE / 334H) – whose name was actually Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Dabbi – was a poet from the ancient city of Aleppo (a city which today is found in Syria). He was a contemporary of the famous poet Mutanabbi (d. 965CE / 354H(. Sanawbari means “pine tree,” and was apparently a nickname given to his grandfather because of his intelligence and sharp temperament. The poet Sanawbari would frequent the court of Sayf al-Dawla (d. 967CE / 356H), the Hamdanid emir of Aleppo, and was in charge of the palace library. Sanawabari was a pioneer of poetry focusing on nature (such as meadows, water and flowers), and most of his poems are in this genre, but he did write other types of poems, including an elegy for his daughter who died young. He excelled in the nature genre and became famous for it. Sanawbari is the first poet we know of wrote “snow poetry” (the sub-genre later known as الثلجيات). Nature poetry later became popular in the Andalus, and it has been said that these Andalusian poets were all indebted to Sanawbari. The historian Dhahabi (d.) described Sanawbari as shaʿir al-waqt (“the poet of his time.”)

Shaykh Muhammad Raghib Tabbakh (d. 1981, also from Aleppo) published many of Sanawbari’s poems (in Arabic) under the title al-Rawdiyyat (‘Meadow Poetry”, Aleppo, al-Matbaʿa al-Ilmiyya, 1932CE / 1351H), but it is not exhaustive of his output. Dr. Ihsan Abbas subsequently an anthology for Sanawbari (Diwan al-Sanawbari), also in Arabic in over 400 pages (Beirut, Dar Sadir, 1998).

[Sources: Zirikli’s al-Aʿlam, Tabbakh’s Iʿlam al-Nubala’ bi-Tarikh Halab al-Shahba’, and Ihsan Abbas’ introduction to the Diwan, Rida Attar’s article ʿAwdat al-Dawla al-Hamdaniyya, ʿAbd al-Quddus Abu-Salih’s article.)

PICTURE: Inner Gate of the Aleppo citadel, photo courtesy Wikipedia (User: Xvlun~commonswiki), from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inner_Gate_of_the_Aleppo_Citadel.jpg. Original photo edited by me to exclude the modern-day people from the picture.