Abu'l-ayna, the blind humorist from basra, who pulls the satire arrows out of the guiver of Qu'ran

Abstract

The deep respect, which the Muslim community has for the form and content of their "holy" scriptures, seriously distinguishes them from other members of religion and civilization through their reverence not only during the practice of religious rituals but also in various forms reflected in everyday life. At the same time, the members of this civilization have always felt free to produce religious content with humour down the ages by getting encouraged from the prophets who consider the jokes indulgently and whom they regarded as role models. It is understood that, this freedom also seems to encourage them to make witty remarks over the holy scripture of which the text they are familiar with because of its intensive intervention in their daily lives. In as much as, since the first century of the hijri era, hundreds of literary and humorous collections exhibiting humorous examples based on the text of Qu'ran have been introduced with an increasing quantity and quality.This literary art, which aims to benefit from the associative power of the Holy Scripture and which may more or less be defined as "including a verse of the Qur'anic text completely or partly in a contemporary dialogue context or in the form of a poetry or prose" has been stated using a number of terms including similar meanings such as "husnu't- tevessul", "et-temessul bi'l-Qu'ran", "al-istishhad bi'l-Quran", "quotation" and "restitution".In fact, starting from the texts of the Prophet's khutbah and letters, since the earliest periods of Islamic history, the rashidun caliphs, companions of prophet Muhammad, the Muslim ruling class (emirates, sultans, governors), ulema class and especially the early representatives of ascetism have been often used this technique in order to strengthen their expressions. In this sense, today we have a rich source of narrative material indicating that the verses of the Qu'ran were interpreted in different ways, ignoring the revelation requirements and related contexts.It is observed that certain names come into prominence in the Qur'an-driven humour and that they are the main protagonists of more anecdotes in numerical terms. Without a doubt, Abu'l-Ayna is at the top of this list. The fact that the number of his narrations is high and that these narrations are preserved in such a way to be included more in later works may be because of the fact that he has often mentioned a large part of the dialogues, which he had established with people of palace, into his narrations. A considerable part of the anecdote collection related to Abu'l-Ayna consists of the wits referenced to the verses of Qur'an. As far as we can determine for now, this number is around 30 and there is no Quranic wit referred to a single person in this number on the date of nevadir. The influence of Qur'anic culture is clearly visible in most of the sarcastic responses of repartee Abu'l-Ayna including sarcasm, irony, and despisement style and in some of his portrayals of literary value. His success of using the idioms and expressions from Qur'an as a means of description, when satirizing his opponents and people, whom he did not like, undoubtedly brings the level of viciousness and acerbity of his satire to the top.Abu'l-Ayna, a good social observer in spite of his paradoxical blindness, has often been protected by palace people, despite the viciousness of his wits. This very special form and character of this humour, which he has introduced, has provided him with sympathy that causes him to be tolerated even in the criticism of senior officials such as sultan, emirate, governor and tribal leader.One of the cases, where Abu'l-Ayna instrumentalized the verses of the Qur'an, is the use of some cliche phrases as a "tag", when defining persons in a positively or negatively. Again in spontaneously developing dialogues, Abu al-'Ayna generally describes certain people upon the questions directed to him as patterned expressions, which are specific to the Qur'an, and this extraordinary form of "literary despisement", which his is the expert of, provides a humour.Classical Arabic nevadir includes numerous narrations, which have been fictionalized by many litterateurs, poets and humourist persons talented in humour and are wholly or partly imaginative, as well as numerous anecdotes and historical narrations that have historical reality. In this context, the issue of authenticity of story-like narrations is a serious issue for the modern researchers and anecdote editors. If whether a certain humorous narration has historical roots or not is based on a historical basis, the question of whether or not the characters or the flow of the narration or humorous emphasis evolve as the time goes keeps straining the mines of those interested in this field. I should state that this problem, which has not yet been solved yet, when mentioning the examples of the art of making humour with reference to the verses of the Qur'an comes up more because of their difficulties in practicing the art.However, it is considered that the problem of authenticity is at the minimum level in the narrations of the famous humourists, who have lived in the history and many narrations from their mouths have been included in the classical sources, like Abu'l-Ayna, Cahiz and Cemmaz. As a matter of fact, the biographies and characteristic features of these individuals are the evidence for the fact that they are capable of producing such a humorous skill themselves. Especially, most of the humorous anecdotes of Abu'l-Ayna, which he has produced in the field of wit with Qur'an, are the anecdotes in which he has used his most obvious characteristic, repartee. It is quite natural for a person, who has this kind of character is a Qur'an hafiz, to produce witty remarks spontaneously by using the Qur'anic verses.The fact that there are some changes arising due to minor modifications made in different narrations of an anecdote and sometimes in the names of the characters and fiction does not mean that this anecdote is synthetic. As a matter of fact, it is a known fact that minor differences, which will not disturb the general fiction and composition, can be present in the narrative tradition. This situation, which also applies for the anecdotes of Abu'l-Ayna, does not bring us into any doubt about the authenticity of his wits.