The Diwan

The core of Ibn Nubātah's extensive poetic oeuvre is his Dīwān, the collection of his poems, on which he worked continually, adding new poems and revising older ones, until the end of his life. Four different versions (recensions) of this collection can be distinguished, that are well documented in the available manuscripts. Two of these versions (recensions) were compiled by Ibn Nubātah himself, two others were compiled posthumously. There are also additions to the latter. All four versions/recensions are edited here and linked to each other for comparison purposes. The edition is eclectic: the variant readings of the manuscripts used are given in the critical apparatus (“apparatus 1”). The edition also comes with a commentary on the contents of the poems (“apparatus 2”).  

I. Proto-Dīwān

Ibn Nubātah compiled the first collection of his poems around 738-739/1337-1339. This “Proto-Dīwān” (pD) is edited on the basis of three mss.:

    Istanbul, Köprülü MS 1249 (undated, but corrected and supplemented by the poet himself);

    Berlin MS 7861 (761/1360);

    Istanbul, Ayasofya MS 2292 (854/1451).

II. Dīwān al-Aṣl

A significantly later version, which was also compiled by Ibn Nubātah and contains additional and revised poems, is the so-called Dīwān al-Aṣl, presumably a “final version” of sorts, of which only two undated (9/15th century?) mss. are known:

    Istanbul, MS Ayasofya 3891;

    Oxford, MS Marsh 273 (second part only).

III. Baštakī Alpha

The two posthumous Dīwān recensions, arranged according to the rhyming letters and length of the poems, were compiled by Badraddīn al-Baštakī (748-830/1347-1427), a poet and bookseller who made a living by copying manuscripts and who had known Ibn Nubātah personally. In his two recensions, al-Baštakī often distorted the poems by inserting verses that Ibn Nubātah had deleted or replaced with another version.

The first recension, Baštakī α (BA), was created in 773/1371-2. The mss. used for its edition are:

    Istanbul, Ahmet III MS 2352, (878/1473);

    London, SOAS MS 40911, (1072/1662);

    Cairo, Dār al-Kutub MS 4658, (1223/1808);

    Paris, Arabe 3362, fol. 98v-158r, selection, (805/1403?).

IV. Baštakī Beta

However, the BA recension lacked care and completeness. This is why it was superseded by the later Baštakī β (BB) recension, which became the standard Dīwān recension and is transmitted in more than 14 mss. Its edition is based on the following (oldest and best) mss.:

    Tūnis MS 13438 (Baštakī autograph, 803/1400);

    Dublin, Chester Beatty MS 3813 (second part only, 803/1401);

    Uppsala MS 144 (806/1404);

    Berlin MS 7862 (second part only, 812/1410);

    Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye MS 7862 (ca. 826-863/1423-1458);

    Cairo, Taymūr MS 106 (837/1434).

Ziyādāt (Additions)

Two autographs by the great hadith scholar Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī (773-852/1372-1449) contain Additions (Ziyādāt) to recensions BA and BB. These are:

   Istanbul, MS Reisülküttab 953 and

   Göttingen, MS Arab 179 (fol. 21r-62v).

These additions will be edited separately and linked to the Dīwān for comparison purposes.