Judah Halevi's Criticism of Andalusi Courtly Culture and Shlomo Ibn Zakbel's "Ne'um Asher Ben Yehudah"

Abstract

This paper investigates the possible connection between Judah Halevi's criticism of Jewish Andalusi courtly culture, on the one hand, and Shlomo Ibn Zakbel's maqama "Neum Asher Ben Yehudah," on the other. A short survey of Halevi's criticism of courtly culture is followed by a discussion of Tova Rosen and Ross Brann's suggestion that Halevi's censure led to the formation of an alternative poetics of Hebrew poetry. The article develops this assumption and focuses on a new subgenre of erotic epithalamia created by Moses Ibn Ezra and Halevi which offered an alternative to secular Hebrew love poetry. An analysis of Ibn Zakbel's maqama supports this thesis: the maqama's main topic, it shows, is the confrontation between the decorum of love poetry and the conventions of the erotic epithalamia, a confrontation which ends with a complete affirmation of matrimonial love and a condemnation of free, non-institutionalized relations. The article concludes with an analysis of the impact this confrontation had on rhymed love narratives written in the East as well as in Christian Spain.