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JAHILI POETRY BEFORE IMRU’ AL-QAIS By Abdullah Ali Yahya al-Udhari Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies March 1991 ProQuest Number: 10672918 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10672918 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract Classical Arab critics held conflicting and blurred views regarding the history of Jahili poetry. They believed that Irma* al-Qais was the father of Jahili poetry and the creator of most, if not all, of the Jahili poetic conventions, but at the same time they referred to a host of distinguished poets who either lived before Imru^al-Qais or were his older contemporaries, and whose works embody most of the conventions attributed to Imru1 al-Qais. The discrepancy of the classical critics seems to have been overlooked by the scholars of the last two hundred years who, instead of examining the inherited opinions and the work of individual poets, postulated a series of cul de sac theories on the origins of Jahili poetry, thereby adding more confusion to an already confused situation. The reason for this confusion is that the basic ground-work has not been done. The aim of this thesis is three fold: -jbo investigate the validity of the classical criticsf assumptions; to trace the history of Jahili poetry before Imm* al-Qais; to study the work of over thirty poets, so as to prove that Imru1al-Qais drew on a well-established poetic tradition. The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter deals with the source material and the language of Jahiliyya; the second chapter covers the historical and religious background; the third chapter, which makes up more than half the thesis, discusses the work of over thirty poets. The thesis ends with a conclusion that highlights certain aspects of the Jahili poetic experience before Tmru^al-Qais. Transliteration Table th o11°h kh d k d J 1 dh f m n j s j w (u, aw) sh 4 yCl, ai, ay, ya) The same sign is also used as an apostrophe. Note; The titles of the hooks used in the footnotes have been shortened to either the first word of the title or the word by which the book is known. For example: Tabari1s Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk appears as Tarikh, and Abu al-Faraj’s Kitab al-Aghani as Aghani. Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Professor H.T. Norris whose openminded approach to Arab literature made the realisation of this study possible. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor John Wansbrough and Dr. M.A. Abdel Ealeem for their encouragement. Finally, I would like to thank the Staff of the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies for being helpful. Contents Abstract Transliteration Table Acknowledgement s Introduction i-iii Chapter I The Sources AndThe Language 1-41 a. Are the Arab Sources Realiable? 1 b* Are the Jahili Poems Authentic? 4 c. What Was the Language of the Jahiils? 24 Chapter II The Jahiliyya 42-88 a. The Arabs 42 b. Religious Beliefs t 70 Chapter III Jahili Poetry 89-273 a. The Poetry of the Jahiliyya of Lost 91 Civilisations b. The Poetry of the Ancient Jahiliyya 93 c. The Poetry of the Late Jahiliyya: The 114 Pre-Imru1 al-Qais Period Conclusion 274 Bibliography 292 i i Introduction When Sir William Jones first introduced the seven Mucallaqat to the English reader in the second half of the eighteenth century, he generated an interest in Arab poetry in general and Jahili poetry in particular. But unfortunately the scholars who followed Sir William Jones have made no real attempt to map out the landscape of Jahili poetry. Instead, they concentrated on the Mu°allaqa poets, and considered them as being the product of one mould rather than poets representing the various stages of development in Jahili poetry. Eor example, there is hardly any study of the generation of poets before Imru*al-Qais, or of Imru* al-Qais*s generation, or of the generations who came after Imru1al-Qais. Scholars seem to have overlooked the. fact that each succeeding generation has its own distinct poetic qualities• The only scholar to take a broader perspective of Jahili poetry is the Arab Jesuit Louis Cheikho. Although Cheikho went overboard in baptising the major Jahili poets in Shucara' al-Nasraniyya Qabl al-Islam, his method enabled him to shift the emphasis from the Mucallaqa poets to the poets of each tribe, and in consequence threw light on the history of each tribe as seen through the eyes of its contemporary poets. ii Like Shucara* al-Nasraniwa Qabl al-Islam, our study Jahili Poetry Before Imru’al-Qals shifts the emphasis from the Mucallaqa poets to other neglected areas of Jahili poetry hut, unlike Cheikho*s work, traces the history of Jahili poetry from the earliest known Jahili poet Mudad b. cAmr al-Jurhumi to the Mucallaqa poet cAbid b. al-Abras. 0 In order to study this extensive period within a historical framework we have divided the Jahiliyya into three main periods: the Jahiliyya of Lost Civilisations, Ancient Jahiliyya and Late Jahiliyya. And since the output of Late Jahili poetry is richer and more varied than that of the Jahiliyya of Lost Civilisations and Ancient Jahiliyya, we have divided the Late Jahiliyya into the pre-lmru’al-Qais period, which is the end-point of the present study, the Imru1al-Qais period and the post-Imru*al-Qais period. The surviving poems of the Jahiliyya of Lost Civilisations and Ancient Jahiliyya have been studied in chronological order, while the pre-Imru1 al-Qais poets of the Late Jahiliyya have been divided into four groups. The first group of poets includes al-Barraq b. Hawhan, Laila bint Lukaiz and Uhaiha b. al-Julah, and they have been studied as • • • individual poets. The second group of poets have been studied within a historical context. The third group of poets includes al-Muraqqish al-Akbar and al-Muraqqish iii al-Asghar whose work centres around the theme of love. The fourth group of poets includes cAmr b. Qaml'a, Abu Du1ad al-Iyadi and cAbid b. al-Abras who have been left to the end because of their relevance to Imm* al-Qais who represents the second stage of development in Late Jahili poetry* Like Slu^ara* al-Ndsraniyya Qabl al-Islam, Jahili Poetry Before Imru1al-Qais reconstructs the textual history of Jahili poetry by drawing on mainly classical Arab sources.lt is only by examining the classical Arab sources will we be able to appreciate and understand Arab poetry in general and Jahili poetry in particular* 1 Chapter I The Sources And The Language Are the Arab Sources Reliable? One of the problems in tracing the origins of Jahili poetry is the lack of sufficient, corroborated data relating to the political and cultural history of the Jahili Arabs. Most of the data we have on the Jahili .Arabs come from Arab sources, like Ayyam al-cArab, Akhbar al-Yaman, Kitab al-Ti.jan, Jahili poetry, the Qur'an, Hadith and Amthal literature, which were based on both oral and written traditions. Although no significant Jahili documents have surfaced to verify the Arab historians' accounts, nevertheless the 1 excavations of Thamudi and Musnad ruins together with the discovery of Syriac and Aramaic texts as well as the reassessment of Greek and Roman work support the accounts of the Arab historians. The Arab historians, like Tabari, took great pains in collecting, collating and sifting the historical data about the Jahili Arabs and their Byzantine, Eebrew, Greek, Roman and Persian neighbours. The Arab historians did not take the information about the history of the above peoples at face value; they consulted the various 2 available sources and then tried to draw up a plausible and logical history. For example, Tabari*s reference to 1 Alexander the Great and the Persian king Darius, to Constantine the Great who built Constantinople and who adopted Christianity as the state religion and divided 2 his kingdom between his three sons, as well as to Julian the Apostate’s two-year reign during which he tried to put a stop to Christian influence and restore the old 3 Roman religion, is in line with Greek and Roman records. In addition, Tabari’s accounts of the Arab conquest of 4 Persia and the founding of Kufa by Sacd b. Abi Waqqas, - 5 and Khalid b. al-Walid’s conquest of Syria, are corroborated by an anonymous Syriac text written 6 _ c.670-680. The same Syriac text also endorses Tabari’s reference to Mundhir I as being the sixth Lakhmid king _ 7 of Hira. # If Tabari’s reference to the Greeks, Romans and Byzantines has a ring of truth, this would mean he took great care in ascertaining the facts about these civilisations. As these civilisations flourished much earlier or were contemporaneous with the Arab kingdoms he described, and although the sources were in languages he did not speak, Tabari was able to give credible sequential accounts of the non-Arab civilisations with approximate dating.

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