Poetry

“The register of the Arabs” (dīwān al-ʿArab) is the age-old phrase whereby Arabs have acknowledged the status and value that poetry has always retained within their cultural heritage. From the very earliest stages in the Arabic literary tradition, poetry has reflected the deepest sense of Arab self-identity, of communal history, and of aspirations for the future. Within this tradition the role of the poet has been of major significance. The linkage between public life and the composition of ringing odes has remained a direct one from the pre-Islamic era—when the poet was a major verbal weapon, someone whose verses could be invoked to praise the heroes of his own tribe and to pour scorn on those of their enemies—through the premodern period—when poetic eulogies not only extolled the ruler who patronized the poet but reflected a pride in the achievements and extent of the Islamic dominions—to the modern period—in which the poet has felt called upon to either reflect or oppose the prevailing political mood. In times of crisis it has always been, and still remains, the poet’s voice that is first raised to reflect the tragedies, the anger, the fears, and the determination of the Arab people.

The tribes of the Arabian Peninsula in the pre-Islamic period (pre-7th century ce) provided the social venue for the earliest examples of Arabic poetry. The poet’s performances of his odes were a powerful tool at the tribe’s disposal, arousing its heroes to battle against their enemies, extolling the chivalry and generosity of its men and the beauty of its women, and pouring scorn on the foibles of opposing tribes. Fallen heroes were commemorated in the marthiyyah, or elegy, and it is in this role that the voice of the female poet is prominently heard, as, for example, in the verses of the 7th-century poets al-Khansāʾ and Laylā al-Akhyāliyyah. Many of the earliest male poets became renowned as warriors and lovers, and around their careers (or, perhaps, their “personae”; the historical existence of several poets remains unverified) elaborate traditions of narrative developed, as, for example, with the pre-Islamic cavalier-poet ʿAntarah and the hapless love poet Majnūn Laylā (literally, “He Who Was Driven Crazy by Love for Laylā”). Such was the status of the poet as spokesman for the virtues of the tribal community that a kind of anticommunal persona was developed in reaction by the so-called ṣuʿlūk (“brigand”) poets, who were depicted as living a life of solitude and hardship in the desert accompanied only by its fiercest denizens (the snake, the hyena, and the wolf). Taʾabbaṭa Sharran (“He Who Has Put Evil in His Armpit”) and al-Shanfarā are among the best known of the ṣuʿlūk poets.

This tradition of poetry, composed by poets and passed on through the memories of bards from one generation to the next, emerged in the 7th century as the primary linguistic precedent to the Arabic of the newly recorded text of the Qurʾān. As such, it became the focus of a great deal of attention as scholars began the lengthy process of compiling, anthologizing, and analyzing the corpus of an oral tradition of poetry that stretched back several centuries to distant, unknown beginnings.

During the Islamic centuries (post-7th century), poetry came to occupy a central place within the courts of the caliph and of the sultans, emirs, governors, and other potentates who ruled over the various regions of the Islamic world following its breakup into smaller, more local dominions. Poetry by itself rarely, if ever, provided a sufficient living for even the most gifted crafter of verses, and that remains as much the case today as it did during the premodern period. A large percentage of poetry (especially panegyrics) was inspired and often commissioned by the ruling authorities for public recitation on many sorts of “state occasions,” and the poet would expect to be rewarded for such celebrations of the glories of Islam and its rulers. Furthermore, a number of prominent figures—caliphs (al-Walīd ibn Yazīd, for example, and Ibn al-Muʿtazz), ministers, philosophers, and theologians—were prominent contributors to the poetic tradition. However, the variety of other genres and subthemes that have been preserved in collections of poetry make it clear that there were other occasions that were less public and more informal at which poetry of a less official stamp would be recited.

Metre and rhyme

The recording of the earliest-known Arabic poetry provided future generations with examples of recitations by bards of 7th- or 8th-century versions of poems whose original composition and performance date back perhaps centuries. The collections reveal an already elaborate prosodic system, the earliest phases in the development of which remain substantially unknown.

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The various types of poem are marked by particular patterns of rhyme and syllabic pulse. Each line is divided into two half-lines (called miṣrāʿ); the second of the two ends with a rhyming syllable that is used throughout the poem. In order that the listening audience may internalize the rhyme that is to be used, the first line (which is often repeated) uses the rhyme at the end of both halves of the line; thereafter the rhyme occurs only at the end of the complete line.

The great 8th-century philologist al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad developed a system whereby the differing stress patterns that he heard in poetic recitations were subdivided into 15 separate metres (later expanded to 16). While al-Khalīl (who also wrote treatises on music and compiled an Arabic dictionary) clearly stated that his system merely set down one method for the metrical analysis of Arabic poetry and while later scholars have suggested different systems, it is remarkable that al-Khalīl’s prosodic system remained the standard—and, indeed, constituted one of the modes of defining what was poetic and what was not—until well into the 20th century.