Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.
Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry
| Part of a series on |
| Arabic culture |
|---|
,_Maqamat_al-Harari,_1237.jpg) |
Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry is a term used to refer to Arabic poetry composed in pre-Islamic Arabia roughly between 540 and 620 AD. In Arabic literature, pre-Islamic poetry was went by the name al-shiʿr al-Jāhilī ("poetry from the Jahiliyyah" or "Jahili poetry"). This poetry largely originated in Najd (then a region east of the Hijaz and up to present-day Iraq), with a minority coming from the Hejaz.[1] The earliest person known to have distinguished eras of poetry into Islamic and pre-Islamic periods was Ḥammād al-Rāwiya (d. 772).[2]
Pre-Islamic poetry constitutes a major source for classical Arabic language both in grammar and vocabulary, and as a record of the political and cultural life of the time in which it was created. A number of major poets are known from pre-Islamic times, the most prominent among them being Imru' al-Qais.[3] Other prominent poets included Umayya ibn Abi as-Salt, Al-Nabigha, and Zayd ibn Amr. The poets themselves did not write down their works: instead, it was orally transmitted and eventually codified into poetry collections by authors in later periods, beginning in the eighth century. Collections may focus on the works of a single author (such a collection is called a diwan) or multiple authors (an anthology).
The emergence of these collections of pre-Islamic poetry was driven by three stages of expertise: that of the poet, the transmitter, and the scholar. Each was a distinct profession, though the same individual could participate in two or all three. The poet (sha'ir) creates the poetry and commits it to memory. The transmitters (ruwāt) take charge in its memorization and preservation, generally in a tribally affiliated manner. The scholars (or collectors) collect poetry across their sources into a single, written collection that can be copied and read.[4] Scholarship in poetry (al-ʿilm biʾl shiʿr) emerged as a distinct disciple around the end of the eighth century, and most of its participants were mawāli (offspring of non-Arab converts to Islam) engaged in the royal courts of the empire.[5] Historically, experts in each domain of this process claimed authority over preservation which, in turn, functioned as a claim to authority over the representation of the past, and the poetry was the vehicle by which the pre-Islamic past was understood.[4]
A war poem has been found in a pre-Islamic Arabic inscription.[6] The earliest references to Arabic poems are from 4th century Greek histories.[7] Pre-Islamic Arabic and Greek poetry share some similar themes, such as the inescapability of death and the notion of self-immortalization through the accomplishment of heroic deeds in battle.[8]
- ^ Miller 2024, p. 3–4, 30–31.
- ^ Drory 1996, p. 41.
- ^ Stetkevych 1993.
- ^ a b Drory 1996, p. 35–36.
- ^ Drory 1996, p. 42–43.
- ^ Al-Jallad 2017.
- ^ Shahid 1984, p. 152n54.
- ^ DeYoung 2023, p. 48–49.
Previous Page Next Page
