Decoding Muslim Cultural Code: Oral Poetic Tradition of the Jbala (Northern Morocco)

Abstract

Spiritual, sometimes directly imbued and sometimes indirectly suggestive of religiosity, poetic genres are common in all corners of the Arab world. While authored religious poetry in Arabic is fairly well studied, oral, unauthored poetic traditions remain somewhat under-researched, although the latter represents an intriguingly complex microcosm infused with local systems of beliefs and traditions. In my study, I propose to examine one such tradition – from the region of the Jbala (northern Morocco). This tradition is generally regarded as consisting of three genres (ayta, ayyu, and ughniya). Textually, however, all three genres are very similar, and entire beyts freely migrate from one genre to another. Although Jebli poetry cannot be classified as religious, much of it is contextually linked to religious aspects of life of the Jbala people – most notably, pilgrimages to the tombs of local saints, as well as lifestyle shaped by Islamic faith. In addition, this tradition draws from the heritage of the famous sixteenth-century Moroccan Sufi Abderrahman el-Mejdoub. In this article, I will demonstrate how Jebli's poetic texts are built on Islamic cultural code and how the readability of this code depends on the religious identity of the audience. To do so, I suggest analyzing the available corpus of Jebli poetry.

Keywords

• islam
• cultural code
• morocco
• oral improvised poetry
• arabic language
• sufi poetry