Zawāl al-taraḥ: A commentary about the poem by Ibn Faraḥ al-Ishbīlī (m. 699/1300) in a 19th century Ethiopian manuscript

Abstract

There are myriad examples of how Andalusī intellectual production spread through space and time thanks to commentaries that other ʻulamā’ wrote about works ori- ginating in the Iberian Peninsula. This paper looks at one such example. The paper analyz- es the way in which Ibn Faraḥ/Farḥ’s poem on ʻilm al-ḥadīṯ came to be known to Ethiopi- an ʻulamā’ of the modern era (early 19th century, in this case), given that their textual tradi- tion —produced in Arabic— has only recently begun to be studied. To do so, this contribu- tion studies the edition of the Zawāl al-taraḥ, the commentary on Ibn Faraḥ/Farḥ’s text made by Ibn Jamāʻa, which was copied in a manuscript produced and preserved in Ethio- pia. In this copy, however, the commentary is wrongly attributed to an Ethiopian scholar. After comparing this version with the extant editions of other versions of the Zawāl and examining the variations between them, it has been confirmed that the text is the same as Ibn Jamāʻa’s text. Attempts are made to discover the causes of the mistaken attribution. Finally, the paper analyzes the reasons that led the ʻulamā’ of certain Sufi circles to include the Zawāl al-taraḥ in their recommended readings.