It was well known that that estimable “prince of the litterateurs of the Maghreb” (sayyid al-‘udabá’ al-maghreb) Bouhammouda Hassan as-Sijilmásí al-Fásí al-Málikí and that equally estimable “sage of Córdoba” (al-hákim al-qurtubí) Abul-Hakam Mas‘úd ibn Yahya al-Qurtubí had a quiet but intense rivalry, and so it was no surprise when shortly after the publication in 1245 of the latter’s Rasá’il al-Máyurqiyya (“The Mallorcan Epistles”), a veritable encyclopedia of all contemporary knowledge, the former published an even more daring encyclopedia, twelve volumes in length, twice the size of his rival’s, which he titled, at-Tamhídat al-muntaṣir fi kullil ‘ulúm al-‘aṣr (“The Triumphant Primer to all Contemporary Knowledge”). Not to be outdone, of course, Abul-Hakam soon saw the need to “expound on certain ambiguities in the Rasá’il” and shortly thereafter produced the eighteen-volume Muqaddimah al-Iskandaríyya (“The Alexandrian Prolegomenon”), so named because he had at the time briefly taken up in the city as a high-ranking jurist and judge. Inevitably, shortly after this, “certain issues in the appendices to the Tamhídat” required further elucidation on the part of al-Fásí and before long those elucidations issued in a twenty-five-volume monument named al-Burhán al-‘ulúmiyya (“Proofs regarding the Sciences”).
At this point, it became clear to Abul-Hakam that this game, which, of course, neither would admit to playing (they were only “expanding the frontiers of knowledge with their publications” they would have said) could carry on indefinitely for the remainder of their lives, so he decided to draught a new game altogether in which he believed he had the upper hand. So instead of another behemoth he soon published the Khuláṣat al-Rasá’il (“A Concise Summary of the Rasá’il”), a tightly abridged version of his initial encyclopedia, in two slim volumes. Not to be outdone at the game of concision anymore than at the other game of expansive erudition, which, of course, if you asked them, they were not playing, al-Fásí published the Sharh al-‘ulúm (“Explication of the Sciences”), a single volume abridgment of his Tamhídat. One can guess by now the contour of the counter-attack: Abul-Hakam produced the Alfiyyah (The Thousand[-line] poem), a poem which claimed to summarize key concepts whose mastery was the key to all contemporary science, leaving the long-winded ground of prose and staking the battle on the elliptical ground of poetry. al-Fásí shortly after composed the Khamsami’yya (The Five Hundred[-line] poem). With this title it became indubitably clear to all observers and indeed to themselves, even if they continued to deny it, what was going on. So the confrontation became more direct: before long a letter, half a page long, arrived from Abul-Hakam to al-Fásí in which the former claimed to be writing only as an “admirer of your concision, to seek helpful criticism about this half page summary which I think captures the heart of all contemporary knowledge.” After a very long delay (for this was the time when, according to the posthumous biography of him written by his confidant and student, the famous philologist Habíb Ould Habíb, al-Fásí disappeared for almost eight months without explanation) he sent back a letter consisting only of a single word. When he received that letter with its singular word, the sage of Córdoba immediately conceded the game, for he saw in that single word all that had been written between them since the Rasá’il. Terrified by the infinitude contained within that letter, he destroyed it, never to speak about it. All his writing after that point, as the recent bibliographic work of Professor Salis has shown, was mystical poetry, a genre in which he had never dabbled before then, the most most famous of which is the dramatic monologue al-Maqála al-Adamiyy (“The Discourse of Adam”). Al-Fásí himself died shortly after that letter and never spoke of its content, though it is known, from the aforementioned biography, that his trusted student Ould Habíb asked him several times about it.
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