The Listening Self: Two Ghazal-Mukhammas Pairs from the Dīwān of Najm al-Dīn b. Isrāʾīl Ibn Siwār al-Dimashqī

This article offers a study and translations of two pairs of poems composed by the 7th/13th-century Syrian poet Najm al-Dīn b. Isrāʾīl b. Siwār. Each of these pairs comprises a monorhyme love lyric (ghazal) and a stanzaic poem that “remixes” some material from the ghazal and intersperses it with new poetic material (mukhammas). In addition to contributing to the still-limited corpus of scholarly studies on Ayyubid poets and translations of Ayyubid-era poetry, this article also models an interdisciplinary approach that draws on materials and methods from both Arabic literary studies and practice-led research in music and performance studies. Ultimately, the article reads each of these poem pairs as staging a conversation between two voices (those of the ghazal and the mukhammas)—a conversation that is ultimately an exchange between the poet and his own “listening self,” and one that, crucially, can be brought to life only as an audible, unfolding process staged before an audience.