Zia Mohyeddin column

The story of Karbala has a prominent place in the history of Urdu, Persian and Arabic literature. Look at the mise en scene: seventy-two people, men, women and children on the march; the path is tortuous, the provision are inadequate they know what lies in store for them; they are deprived of water in the scorching heat, and yet they move inexorably towards their destiny.

The question is why has no one put this incident in the form of a dramatic tragedy? In fact, there should have been scores of such tragedies spread over centuries for each generation manages to find its own interpretation of Karbala. People who ask this question fail to understand that to enact such a tragedy an actor has to impersonate a protagonist who is closely related to the Prophet of Islam and there is no allowance for that in the Islamic religion.

The only developed form in which this tragedy has been recorded is elegy. You could say that since elegy is close to recitation it is therefore close to the theatre. Once there was the elegist himself who performed; today the elegy is rendered by professional and semi-professional reciters. The ladies have their own exclusive gatherings in which a female threnodist (not always a professional) exhorts them to lament.

A marsiya is an elegy but there is a difference. An elegy is poem that mourns someone who has departed, usually a noble personage or someone who has influenced his own age in some way. Barring a few exceptions a marsiya, in Urdu or Persian, always commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussain and his companions. Our poetic literature is rich in marsiya.
The scheme of a marsiya has been laid down in textbooks. It must be divided into set sections:

a. scene setting

b. taking leave of Hussain before departing for the battle.

c. mounting the horse; glowing tributes to the horse.

d. detailed description of the battle; praise of the sword, the Zulfiqar.

e. heroic bravery of the faithful before meeting their death and , finally

f. the martyrdom of Imam Hussain followed by mourning.

If you keep the classical unities of a marsiya in mind, “Jab Qata ki Musafat-e-shub” is perhaps the finest example of a marsiya written in Urdu. It was written in the 19th century by Mir Anees, who is generally recognised to be the doyen of marsiya writers. The English orientalist, David Mathews, has translated this masterpiece into English and I must say he has done a splendid job:

Anees does not, as a rule, adhere to the scheme as set out in the textbooks, but here, in this marsiya, he maintains an extraordinary equilibrium between the prescribed sequences. The opening stanza is a muted unfolding of a sense of impending doom:

“the sun has set his journey o’er the night
Unveiled, the Dawn revealed her golden face,
The king who rules the heavens saw her light
And called his brave companions to their place
The time has come at last to give God praise
Arise! In fitting prayer your voices raise.

In language which is neither grandiose nor hyperbolic, Anees, the poet-dramatist transposes the last two lines, making a perfect start to Act I, as it were. Indeed, the opening two stanzas are speeches written for a chorus who outlines the action and prepares the audience for what to expect, just like Shakespeare does in Romeo and Juliet. Here is the second stanza:
‘Brave hearts! For strife and slaughter dawns this day;
Here the blood of Muhammad’s race will flow.
Zehra’s darling, honoured, seeks the fray;
The night of parting fades ‘neath union’s glow,
We are those for whom the angels weep;
To live this day we sacrificed our sleep’.

The Aristotelian ‘unities’ are also observed. The plausible action takes place in locations close to one another, within the space of twenty-four hours and focuses on a single storyline.

By the time Anees arrived on the literary scene in the early part of the 19th century, marsiyas were, invariably, written in six line stanzas, the last two lines of the stanza were usually the cue for the listeners to invoke the name of Hussain, beat their breasts and cry out, ‘Ya Hussain, Ya Hussain!’ in unison. The marsiya reader (often the poet himself) invariably invested the last two lines with charged emotion. In ‘Jab Qata ki Musafat-e-Shab’, Anees constructs his stanzas so craftily that the last couplet seems to be a perfectly natural progression; the emotional pitch is created without any artifice:

‘There was no tree that still bore flowers or fruits
The date-palms were on fire like the chenar
No smiling rose drew moisture from its roots
Thorns grew on branches burnt as black as tar
No limbs could stir, no beating heart would race
All nature bore a pale consumptive face.

The rhyming pattern of the six lines of a marsiya is AA AA BB. David Mathews comes as close to the original as possible by employing the pattern of AB AB CC, which is a fairly common scheme in English verse. It is just as well that he does not make any attempt to imitate the original Urdu metre since, as he puts it, “that would have been impossible in a language with a phonetic structure of English.” The iambic pentameter, popular since Chaucer, seemed to fit best and it is not so different from the metre which Anees has employed.

Judge for yourself the dramatic force of the scene just as Abbas goes to battle:

“Hearing her words the Sayyid women cried
Qasim came near and called to the Imam
‘The Syrian Army masses with its pride
And fast approaches, bent on doing harm’
Husain replied ‘No cause for fear this day
Abbas will bear our standard to the fray’.

Standard in hand, Abbas to action fell.

The barefoot women ran with hair dishevelled,
The lord cried, “Brood of Mustafa farewell!
We part. ‘Tis time the scores were duly levelled.

Realism is irrelevant in a marsiya. Contradictions are as frequent as oxymorons in all marsiyas — and Anees is no exception.

Essentially, a marsiya was a work to be recited (in a highly mannered style) in front of an extremely receptive audience more than familiar with the details of the story of Karbala. In order to move such a knowing audience, the marsiya writer did not hesitate from employing more and more amazing metaphors. The audience lapped it up. If the desert was blazing hot in one stanza and a green and verdant garden in the next, so be it; the poet dazzled the audience with the power of his imagery; his listeners were ecstatic. (to be continued)

Frome: Daily Jang November-17 2013