Ubi Sunt: Memory And Nostalgia In Taifa Court Culture

Abstract

I have only cruel absence to ask, for he has dispersed them, [I know not] if to the mountains or to the plain. Time has worked its tyranny on them, and they were dispersed to all ends of the earth; most of them have died. Destiny has invaded their dwellings: they have changed, and their former inhabitants are not what they were. Time has refused to [again] create light in its courtyards, which [before] almost set hearts ablaze. For such as Cordoba, the wails of he who weeps with only one eye are but little, for her tears flow unceasingly. I am afflicted by the memory of that springtime house where fresh gazelles wandered about a spacious courtyard, and the gazes when the gazes of all nobility turned toward her from everywhere, and the days of unified power, in the hands of its Amir and the Amir delegated by him, And the days in which every peaceful hand was raised in salute, hurrying anxiously toward her. My sadness is renewed for her chiefs, narrators, people of confidence, and defenders. My soul sobs for her rectitude, grace, splendor, and grandeur. My entrails are split for her benevolent wisemen, her poets and her elegant men.1