Roses in Hispano Arabic Poetry

Statement of intent: This project looks at material references of roses in troubadour lyric to explore potential channels for the medieval introduction of roses.
Andalusia represents a substantial chance of troubadour exposure to roses and garden culture through prolonged Islamic influence in Iberia ending with the Reconquista. In addition to the Geoponika and Dioskorides, texts like the Diwā al-filāha, observations from the 11th century botanist Ibn Bassāl of Mediterranean agriculture including instructions for rose cultivation, proliferated in Andalusia. Country houses around the capital of Cordoba cultivated roses as early as the 8th century. D. Fairchild Ruggles in Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain notes the development of palaces in Iberia alongside Byzantine and Fatimid exemplars to the east. The garden city Madīnat al-Zahrā beyond Cordoba carried on the opulent tradition of lush estates and palaces around the Mediterranean. A 10th century alliance between Byzantium and al-Andalus against the Fatimids and Abbasids would have stimulated exchange with Constantinople with the aim of rendering Cordoba a proper rival to Baghdad. Civil war and the collapse of the Cordoba caliphate brought destruction to al-Zahrā in 1010. For two hundred years, until the fall of Cordoba to Ferdinand III of Castile in 1236, the ruined gardens served as a poet lyric subject. Other palaces like the Alhambra in Granada and al-Mukarram in Seville continued to cultivate roses after the fall of Cordoba.
The rose “ward” is a prominent element of Islamic poetry, both in Iberia and the Middle East but especially in Persia. This perhaps comes from the Mesopotamian origins of the rose, classical gardening and lyrical admiration, or the proliferation of gardens across Andalusia. The Encyclopedia of Islam details the prominent lyric position of the rose, often pairing with the cheek to indicate laughter, beauty, and blushing, but also rivaling the narcissus. The Monroe anthology, Hispano-Arabic Poetry, has many references to the rose.
Thus it is as though the sun which revives [the garden’s] breath were the brightness of the beloved reviving the lover burning with desire,
And as if the rose, covered with dew, were the cheek of the beloved sprinkled with drops of perspiration,
Which bursts open beside a tender love for the rose,
Like two lovers intimately joined together, of whom the one appears [blushing] with shame while the other is [pale] with fear.
Ash-Sharīf at-Talīq, a 10th century Umayyad prince born into the splendor of al-Zahrā, exemplifies many of the rose’s meanings in this piece of love poetry. Comparing the flowers to lovers, ash-Sharīf at-Talīq enshrines romance in the intimacy of the lavish Iberian garden. Decades after the prince’s death, civil war would devastate the landscape.
I was well acquainted with it when its state of affairs unified its people and life in it was green.
And the prevalence of its splendor shone over them [like the breath of a flower] [exuding] fragrance from which ambergris escapes.
…
And Madīnat al-Zāhira shone brightly with pleasure boats and al-Āmiriyya was rendered flourishing by the stars.
Ibn Shuhaid, an 11th century aristocrat, laments the lost splendors of Cordoba amidst the civil unrest that would follow after the prince’s demise. One should note the prevalence of fragrance in the lament of the gardens. Ali Akbar Husain in Scent in the Islamic Garden notes that Islamic medical texts stressed the curative and physiological properties of aromatics.
O garden wherein long ago our glances plucked roses which youthful passion displayed in their freshness, as well as sweetbriar!
Ibn Zaidūn, writing as a contemporary of Ibn Shuhaid, also invokes the ephemeral beauty of the lost gardens of Cordoba in a poem sent to his lover, the princess Wallāda, following their separation. The destruction of al-Zahrā elevates the garden as a memory of a displaced class into the garden of all lovers, a paradise of sorts.
The rose blooms by reason of my planting it, whenever my eye steals a furtive glance from him.
Would that I knew what thing has made that rose unlawful to its planter.
Ibn Sahl of Seville, a converted Jew of the 13th century, uses the rose already in a different manner. The flower in its ephemeral beauty is treacherous. Note how Ibn Sahl yet situates the relationship within the language of cultivation.
In many ways, Andalusia represents the most likely channel of exposure to roses and garden culture for troubadours. Cerverí de Girona as a Catalan troubadour would have been in close proximity to the Reconquista and Islamic courts of Iberia. Centers like Cordoba had access to similar classical texts as in Byzantium and the Middle East that outlasted the fall of Cordoba itself in 1236. The proximity of Iberia, the elevated role of gardens in Islamic culture, and the prolonged period of exposure during Islamic and then Christian conquest make it likely that troubadours would have had encounters with the rose and its lyric corpus in Iberia.