ARBC 210Introduction to Pre-Islamic Poetry

Important vocabulary:

Qasida: monorhymed, polythematic odeFus-ha: classical Arabic, oratorical registerRawi: transmitter of memorized poetryMu’allaqah: one of the 7 “suspended” odesNasib: lyric opening sequenceAtlal: traces of abandoned campsiteRihla: desert journeyNaqa: she-camel

- Minimalism- Homogeneity- Functionality- Associated with bedouin (semi-nomadic) lifestyle- “Amateur” poets- Oral composition

Chief Characteristics of Jahiliyya-era Qasida:

“Arabic poetry is minimalist in form. What in Shakespeare would be a soliloquy is in Arabic a line or even a hemistich. Seven lines of the Lâmiyyat al-’Arab would have provided the Greek tragedians with the plot for a full play”

-Roger Allen, Early Arabic Poetry (vol. 1), p. 3

Minimalism

How is it a ‘Minimalist’ Literature?

Networks of Association

Atlal:

Naqa:

memory, abandonment, unfulfilled (?) love, youth, desolation, nature = eternity, humanity = ephemera, two riding companions, antisocial

patience, endurance, self-denial, self-sacrifice, the poet, desert journey, independence, sustenance

Homogeneity: A Formulaic Structure

Nasib:

Rihla:

“Boast”:

Amatory prelude, elegaic (intersection of love and grief motivated by departure, not death), existential wistfulness, atlal, departing womenfolk, “halting at the traces”, “effaced abodes”, room for sexuality, passivity

Journey, agency, activity, solitude, wilderness, the desert, heat, cold, rain, wild animals, hunger, vigor, naqa, the hunt

Society, self-assertion, interdependence, commensal feast, wine, companionship, the tribe, gentle rain, promise of pasturage

Ibn Rashiq (d. 1065 AD) : The poet was a defence to the honour of them all [the tribe], a weapon to ward off insult from their good name, and a means of perpetuating their glorious deeds and of establishing their fame for ever. And they used not to wish one another joy but for three things – the birth of a boy, the coming to light of a poet, and the foaling of a noble mare.

Ibn Sallam al-Jumahi (d. 846 AD): In the Jahiliyya, verse was to the Arabs the register of all they knew, and the utmost compass of their wisdom; with it they began their affairs, and with it they ended them.

Functionality of Qasida

“Suspended” Ode?

mu’allaq = hung or < ‘ilq, ‘a’laq = necklace?

“Tuck-bellied brindle leg” (Arabian oryx)