ENTERTAİNMENT, STATUS AND THE QUESTİON OF GENRE İN THE HUNTİNG JOURNEYS OF AL ANDALUS

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Uzunyaylalı M. E., Karakuş Ö. F., Yılmaz N.

Interpersona, cilt.20, sa.2, ss.1-28, 2026 (Scopus)

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 20 Sayı: 2
  • Basım Tarihi: 2026
  • Doi Numarası: 10.54899/ijpr.v20i2.1414
  • Dergi Adı: Interpersona
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus, Sociology Source Ultimate (EBSCO), Psicodoc, Psycinfo, Directory of Open Access Journals, DIALNET
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-28
  • Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
  • Atatürk Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

In Arabic literature hunting, once a means of subsistence, became a courtly display of pleasure  and  power,  accompanied  by  an  independent  genre  of  hunting  poetry,  the ṭardiyya. Possessed in the East of a particular metre, a formulaic opening, a dedicated chapter within poetic collections and a recognised line  of poets, the  genre  never  took shape in al‑Andalus, although the peninsula was mountainous, forested and rich in game, and treated the hunt in both prose and verse. The question this study addresses is why, with hunting so widely practised, the theme never became a genre. The hunting journey,  or  riḥlat al‑ṣayd,  is  examined  here  as  an  occasion  of  entertainment  and prestige, the Andalusian corpus being set against three criteria: the arrangement of the dīwān, the metre, and the opening formula. Eastern writers established the hunting journey  in  both  prose  and verse. Al‑Andalus inherited the prose branch alone, Ibn al‑Ḥannāṭnarrating a hunting journey in a risāla of named chapters and Ibn Khafāja describinga  hunting  bird  he  sent  as  a  gift,  while  no  independent  poetic  genre  was assigned to the hunt, the theme being dispersed among the qaṣīda, the rajaz urjūza, the panegyric and the muwashshaḥ. None of the three Andalusian dīwāns examined opens a chapter for the hunt. The hunt nevertheless survived as a measure of rank, as falcon ownership  and  the  tax  levied  on  bayzara  attest.  These  findings  show  that  a  varied hunting   terrain   and   courtly   patronage   are   necessary   but   not   sufficient   for   the detachment    of    a    genre from    the    qaṣīda,  the  decisive  factor  being  literary institutionalisation.