Dr Abdellatif Chahboune, an academic from Tetouan and Tangier and a specialist in Moroccan Sufi literature, devoted his state doctorate to the poet Ahmad ben Abdelkader al-Tastawti. In this column, he opens to the reader the garden of the melhouns1 of this master of the word. Translation: the editorial team. The melhoun verses are given in their original language, since their music is part of them, with an English rendering by the editorial team.
I have returned, of late, to the sumptuous Sufi poetic corpus of an incomparable Moroccan poet: Ahmad ben Abdelkader al-Tastawti, buried at Bâb al-Barrâd’iyyîn, in Meknes, in 1127 of the Hijra. I wandered along the paths of this Sufi garden, and I stopped at the theoretical threshold that al-Tastawti himself set for the melhouns of the fifth chapter of his Nuzhat an-nâzir wa bahjat al-ghusn an-nâdir. This threshold refers the reader to the principles of this form of expression founded on a popular rhetoric: an act of communication governed neither by the norms of classical Arabic nor by the usual devices of learned expression. And it concentrates on the samâ’2, that “net in which spirits let themselves be caught”, in the words of Abû l-‘Abbâs in a fine Sufi epistle addressed to one of his intimates, al-Hâjj al-Mufaddal, at the end of the second ten days of Safar in the year 1112. In it we read: “he who comes out unharmed from stupor, and towards whom the Beloved becomes tender and welcoming, utters the beautiful praise in the presence of veneration:
خدك ضي اهلال
وللي شافو ف الناس يختبل
وانت غير اغزال
ماخليت لي كل العقلYour cheek is the glow of a crescent moon, whoever sees it among men loses his senses. You are nothing but a gazelle, and you have not left me an ounce of reason.
And in this same style, of astonishing vein:
حسنك حسن اغريب
يجمع لي بين الدا والدوا
وانت غصن ارطيب
وللي شافك يبرا من لهواYour beauty is a strange beauty, it unites for me the ailment and the remedy. You are a tender bough, and whoever sees you is healed of passion.
Al-Tastawti unfolds his melhoun pieces under the sway of the serenity of spiritual intoxication. He confesses that he sings, and that he hopes to find peace, and he justifies his beautiful outpouring: “spirits have degrees in the world of the Malakût, springs in the world of the Rahamût, quests in the world of the Jabarût3. To each station its word, and no one lays claim to what he has not received of stations and states4. The forsaken one must be made to hear what kindles his longing for the meeting. The one who has arrived, what calls for permanence. And if spirits were not chained in the chains of desires, caged in the padlocks of transgressions, the veil would be torn, and you would see the wonder of wonders. We have unfolded for you that of which silence would have been more worthy, gentler and sweeter:
ستكفيك من ذاك الجمال إشارة ودعه مصونا بالجمال محجبا
One indication of that beauty will suffice you. Leave it, preserved by beauty itself, veiled.
The themes of al-Tastawti’s melhoun qasidas turn within broad fields of meaning: tawassul5, Sufi love, and remonstrance, in interaction with the social and political environment of his time. He says, imploring by the people of God:
يا اهل الغياث، يا اوتاد الزمان
يا قطبنا وسياد كل الناس
يا سادتي هذا الظلام دهان
واقماركم غابت ولا نبراس
فكوا لعباد بحرمة لعدنان
واعطوا الجميع أمان من لانغاسO people of succour, O pillars of the age, O our Pole6, O lords of all men. My masters, see how the darkness thickens, your moons have set and no lantern remains. Deliver the servants by the sanctity of the son of ‘Adnân, and grant all safety from drowning.
And he says, pointing to the spiritual Reality:
قالت لي ليلى وقولها مقبول صحيح
ما يوصلي غير فاني من لغيارLaylâ told me, and her word is acceptable and true: none reaches me but the one who has been annihilated7 to all that is not Him.
And on this same Reality, he admonishes his son al-Ma’mûn:
ف كبد السما ترمي لانوار
واضرير العين يا بني: كيف يراها؟!In the heart of the sky the lights burst forth. But the blind man, O my son: how would he see them?
And in a melhoun where he follows the path of the Sufis in expressing their emotions, when their souls mingle with the images of the sensible world, charged with inward and objective import:
هبت ريح ازمان، ارياح الغيض
واهتزت منها اجبال لعياشيThe wind of the age has risen, winds of wrath, and the mountains of al-‘Ayyâchî have trembled at it.
The poems of Abû l-‘Abbâs Ahmad ben Abdelkader al-Tastawti embody the ordeal of a man of letters in Morocco in the eleventh century of the Hijra, prey to the dissolution and oppression of his age. In a garment freed from the usual ordering of classical Arabic, they give popular language its full force of impact: they raise it from its surface level to a refined, suggestive level, through the network of symbolic relations between words that create a privileged poetic cosmos. And yet al-Tastawti’s melhouns have received neither presentation nor study. If researchers and lovers of popular heritage could gain access to these pieces, and to those of the whole Tastawtiyya family, Ahmad, al-‘Ayyâchî, Muhammad al-Hâjj, Ibrâhîm, al-Ma’mûn, Muhammad ash-Sharîf, they would find in them abundant material, worthy of being made known and studied in its artistic, cultural, social, political and human contexts.
Notes
- Melhoun: poetry sung in Moroccan dialectal Arabic, a major heritage of the cities of Morocco, a deep part of which is Sufi in inspiration. ↩
- Samâ’: spiritual audition, listening to song and poetry as a way of raising the heart towards God. ↩
- Malakût, Rahamût, Jabarût: the suprasensible worlds of the Sufi tradition, the kingdom of subtle realities, the world of mercy, the world of divine omnipotence. ↩
- Stations and states (maqâmât and ahwâl): the stable degrees acquired on the path, and the passing touches that God casts into the heart. ↩
- Tawassul: the request for intercession, the act of imploring God by the sanctity of His Prophet ﷺ or of His saints. ↩
- Pole (Qutb): in the Sufi tradition, the saint around whom the spiritual order of his age revolves. ↩
- Passed away (fanâ’): the extinction of the ego in God, the summit of the journey where nothing remains but Him. ↩
Source
Text by Dr Abdellatif Chahboune, “تكفيك إشارة..” (One indication suffices you), consulted and archived on 31 August 2026 in its online republication (2013). The title of the column is the faithful translation of the Arabic title.
