Translating Desire: The Violence of Memory in the Judeo-Iberian MAQĀMĀT

Abstract

In this poem the Judeo-Andalusi intellectual, Moses ibn Ezra (ca. 1055–1140), an almost exact contemporary of al-Saraqustī, compares his condition as an exile in northern Christian Iberia to his former life in al-Andalus.¹ Moses ibn Ezra uses the imagery of the Andalusi courtly lyric to express his disillusionment and despair. In Ibn Ezra’s poem, al-Andalus has become, much as it was represented in Ibn Hazm’s The Dove’s Neck Ring, an ideal site of memory—an abandoned urban landscape haunted by gazelles, the memories of erotic encounters, and good friends—memories of Ibn Ezra’s access to the privileged spaces and discourses of Andalusi power. Moses ibn Ezra’s current home, Christian Iberia, is, on the other hand, a hostile space, the cursed territory of brutish men incapable of refined thought or speech, a dark place where the light of Andalusi culture and learning is dimmed. Andalusis have become gazelles of memory wandering in the abandoned palaces of their former splendor, whereas Ibn Ezra’s actual neighbors are the stammering Christians and Jews of northern Iberia who bray like wild asses. Inherited wisdom and tradition (Jewish culture), the testimony of the wise, hold no consolation, nor do they offer Ibn Ezra an erotic does, however, offer the poet some relief.