al-Muʿallaḳāt

(a.) a collection of pre-Islamic Arabic poems, generally numbered at

seven. The tradition of poetical anthologies is old, and has left traces in
every aspect of later poetic criticism. The Muʿallaḳāt form the most
celebrated of these, and the place assigned to them by Arab literary men
has not been without a certain overshadowing effect on western criticism
in its turn.

It seems that the anthology was, like several others, put together towards
the middle of the 2nd/8th century by the transmitter Ḥammād [q.v.],
called “al-Rāwiya”; it seems to have been already known to Ibn Ḳutayba
[q.v.] in the next century not under that title ¶ but as “the Seven” ( S̲h̲iʿr ,
ed. S̲h̲ākir, i, 188). The qualification of muʿallaḳāt , of uncertain origin,
probably appears around this time. Among the proposed etymologies, the
oldest, and probably the one most to be regarded with caution, claims that
the universal admiration for these poems led the ancients to write them on
cloth in letters of gold (whence the other appellation of mud̲h̲ahhabāt ,
applied to collections which contain all or a part of these same poems)
and to suspend them ( ʿallaḳa ) on the walls of the Kaʿba. Among those
giving this explanation, one might mention Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi (d.
329/940), Ibn Ras̲ h̲īḳ (mid-5th/11th century), Ibn K̲h̲aldūn (d. 808/1406),
al-Suyūṭī(d. 911/1505) and some modern critics who are little affected by
knowledge of criticism. Others, such as Ibn al-Naḥḥās (d. 338/950), reject
this without being able to substitute for it any more satisfactory
etymology. Modern Arabists, since the time of Lyall ( Ancient Arabian
poetry, London 1885), hold the more feasible view that the connection
with the use of ʿilḳ , pl. aʿlāḳ in the sense of “necklace, ornament” often
found in the titles of old works of the anthology or collection type, makes
a rendering with the meaning of “collars” or “hanging jewels” more
likely.

Since the time of the origins of the poems, the number and identity of the
authors of the Muʿallaḳāt have themselves varied. The present-day
observer, whose own subjective choice naturally has no validity here, can
only take cognisance of the lists successively put forward through the
ages. Al-Aṣmaʿī (d. 213/828) seems already to have gathered together six
poems under the title of K. al-Ḳaṣāʾid al-sitt , according to Ibn al-Nadīm
( Fihrist , Cairo n.d., 88). Abū ʿUbayda (d. 209/824) and then Ibn
Ḳutayba (d. 276/889) knew of a collection of seven poems, a tradition
which seems to take fixed shape with the D̲j̲amhara of Abū Zayd al-
Ḳuras̲ h̲ī (end of the 3rd/9th century), which contains the names of Imnjp
al-Ḳays, Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā, al-Nābig̲h̲a al-D̲h̲ubyānī, al-Aʿs̲ h̲ā
Maymūn b. Ḳays, Labīd b. Rabīʿa, ʿAmr b. Kult̲ h̲ūm and Ṭarafa b. al-
ʿAbd. Ibn al-Naḥḥās for his part lists Imruʾ al-Ḳays, Ṭarafa, Zuhayr,
Labīd, ʿAmr, al-Ḥārit̲ h̲ b. Ḥilliza and ʿAntara b. S̲h̲addād. These fairly
varying lists are perhaps to be explained in certain cases by the evolution
of cricitism, but more likely from combinations of circumstances
involving tribal rivalries. All these persons lived substantially before the
coming of Islam, in highly diverse and often antagonistic changes of
circumstance: Christian, Jewish, G̲h̲assānid environments, tribal
confederations, etc., whose tensions must only have become gradually
relaxed, leaving their traces in the literary judgments of the earliest, and
often in much later, times.

Moreover, around the same time there appeared the collection of nine
poems, adding to Ibn al-Naḥḥās’s selection the names of al-Nābig̲h̲a and
al-Aʿs̲ h̲ā (e.g. in al-Zawzanī, 5th/11th century).

Finally, another critic of the opening years of the 6th/12th century, al-
Tibrīzī, enumerates ten Muʿallaḳāt by adding to the previous names that
of ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ. Clearly, the only names common to all the lists are
those of Imruʾ al-Ḳays. Ṭarafa, Zuhayr, Labīd and ʿAmr.

The personality of each of all these authors is delineated, as far as the

evidence allows, and their work analysed in the individual EI articles on
them. In general, other poems are attributed to them as well as their
Muʿallaḳa , sometimes collected together into a dīwān .

Here we will note only the problems raised by these famous poems,
beginning with that regarding their authenticity. The personality of the
“transmitters” ¶ such as Ḥammād, the presumed “originator” of the
Muʿallaḳāt , and the uncertainties which surround their actions lead one
to think that the attribution of these poems to persons duly classified and
identified should be strongly regarded with caution. The faculties of
adaptation, even of imagination, by these intermediaries—themselves
poets—do not authorise us to see in the “official” anthologies anything
more than the reflection of an ancient poetical situation, expressing itself
by poems more or less arbitrarily taken from a much greater and more
varied production, at least as representative in any case of the ancient
poetic genius.

Out of the lively debate raised up by Ṭāhā Ḥusayn in the nineteen-

twenties when, as the first person in the Arabic-speaking environment, he
cast doubt on the authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry, a middle position has
emerged which is also that of the orientalists: in their form and content,
and given that they comprise in part elements almost certainly
apocryphal, the Muʿallaḳāt must be considered as fixed, if not
stereotyped, specimens of a poetic tradition—already very old—
vigorously flourishing in different parts of the Arabian peninsula. This
tradition was made up of the ḳaṣīda , comparatively lengthy, with a
monorhyme, in the long metres which became classical, and dealing with
the limited themes, in various proportions, which are described in the
article ḳaṣīda .

(G. Lecomte)

Bibliography

This is considerable. See Sarkīs, 1127

Brockelmann, I2, 13 ff., S I, 44 ff

Blachère, HLA, esp. i, 147-8

Sezgin, GAS, ii, 46 ff. — T. Arnold, Septem muʿallaqât, carmina

antiquissima Arabum, Leipzig 1850, ed. of text and coram.

Ibn Ḳutayba, S̲h̲iʿr, ed. S̲h̲ākir, Cairo 1369/1950, i, notices on most of the
authors of the Muʿallaḳāt

Abū Zayd al-Ḳuras̲ h̲ī, D̲j̲amharat as̲ h̲ʿar al-ʿArab, Beirut 1963

Zawzanī, S̲h̲arḥ al-Muʿallaḳāt, Cairo, several edns.

Naʿsānī, S̲h̲arḥ Muʿallaḳāt al-ʿArab, Cairo 1324

Tibrīzī, S̲h̲arḥ al-Muʿallaḳāt al-ʿas̲ h̲r, ed. C.J. Lyall, Calcutta 1894, repr.
Ridgewood N.J. 1965 — W. Ahlwardt, The diwans of the six ancient
Arabic poets, London 1870

W. Muir, Ancient Arabic poetry: its genuineness and authenticity, in

JRAS (1875), 75-92

L. Cheikho, Poètes arabes chrétiens avant l’Islam, Beirut 1890

D.S. Margoliouth, The origins of the Arabie poetry, in JRAS (1925), 417-
49

Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, Fi ’l-adab al-d̲j̲āhilī, Cairo 1345/1927

G. Richter, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der altarabischen Qaṣîde, in
ZDMG, xcii (1938), 552-69

Abdulla El Tayib and A.F.L. Beeston, in Camb. hist, of Arabic lit., i,

Cambridge 1983, 27-113.

There are numerous translations in various European languages. German:

Th. Nöldeke, Fünf Moʿallaqât, in SBWAW, cxl, cxlii, cxliii (1899-1901).
English: Lyall, Translations of ancient Arabian poetry, London 1885

A.J. Arberry, The Seven Odes: the first chapter in Arabic literature,
London 1957. French: A.P. Caussin de Perceval, Essai sur l’histoire des
Arabes avant l’Islamisme, Paris 1847-8, ii, 326-536 passim

L. Machuel, Auteurs arabes, Paris 1924, 38-86. Polish: J. Danecki,

Siedem kasyd staroarabskich (muʿallaki), Warsaw 1981. For comparison
purposes, see a partial tr. of the dīwān of Aws b. Ḥad̲j̲ar by W. Marçais in
Arabica, xxvi (1977), 109-37.
 Ḳaṣīda
Ḳaṣīda collective ḳaṣīd is the name given in Arabic to some poems of a
certain length. It is derived from the root ḳaṣada , “to aim at”, for the
primitive ḳaṣīda was intended to eulogize the tribe of the poet and
denigrate the opposing tribes. Later it was concerned with the eulogy of a
personality or a family from whom the poet was soliciting help or
subsidies. Although the funerary elegy ( mart̲ h̲iya or rit̲ h̲āʾ ) does not
seem to have been included originally under the same designation, the
form of the ḳaṣīda may nevertheless be classified in this poetic genre. On
the other hand, the poetic satire ( hid̲j̲āʾ ), which, furthermore, does not
go beyond insult in verse, is often called ḳaṣīda by the ancient poets, even
though it does not present all the characteristics of the ḳaṣīda.

The classical ḳaṣīda, represented ideally by the pre-Islamic or at least

archaic poems [see mu’allaqat], collected and perhaps also given their
form during the first centuries of Islam, has been defined by Ibn Ḳutayba
in a famous passage many times translated and commented upon (see
Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Introduction au Livre de la poésie et des poètes
, Paris 1947, xvi-xviii, 13-15, 54-55), and then by the various literary
critics who pronounced their judgments (particularly Ibn Ras̲ h̲īḳ, see A.
Trabulsi, La critique poétique des Arabes , Damascus 1955, passim ). It
contains a series of successive developments whose conventional
character implies a tradition already immemorial. The ḳaṣīda, which
numbers at least seven verses, but which generally comprises far more,
consists essentially of three parts of variable length: (1) a prologue in
which the poet sheds some tears over what was once the camping place of
his beloved now far off ( bukāʾ ʿalā ’l-aṭlāl ), then describes the charms
of the latter, which he forebears to pursue (the nasīb [see g̲h̲azal ]). (2)
The poet’s narration of his journey ( raḥīl ) to the person to whom the
poem is addressed. This part of the ḳaṣīda is a pretext for descriptions of
the desert and the hero’s mount, as well as for lyrical flights of eloquence,
for example on the insignificance of man. (3) As a general rule, this raḥīl
leads without any great transition into the central theme, constituted by
the panegyric of a tribe, a protector or a patron, or in satire of their
enemies.

The Arabic ḳaṣīda is a very conventional piece of verse, with one rhyme,
whatever its length, and in a uniform metre. Consequently, the charm and
originality of certain of the themes employed cannot prevent boredom
and monotony from reigning over these never-ending poems. These
formal constraints were moreover resented by the poets themselves; they
are without doubt the cause of the fragmentary character of many of the
pieces, which took a particularly long time to compose. Tradition reports
numerous examples of poets paralysed by the tyranny of the form.
Furthermore, this situation can no doubt provide a good explanation for
the hesitations with regard to the original structure of a given poem: a
poet could well have recited a ḳaṣīda on different occasions with more or
less important variants, additions or suppressions. A number of ḳaṣīdas
have doubtless never contained all the essential parts of the ideal piece,
and it is always very unwise to assert that such a poem has been lost or
truncated on the pretext that one knows only a part of the work. Certain
ancient pieces, nevertheless describable as ḳaṣīdas, do not even contain
the essential part, praise or satire.

At the end of the 2nd/8th century, the classical ḳaṣīda , while it continued
its triumphant reign among poets with a classical tendency, on the other
hand bursts forth among the “modern” poets and gives birth to a whole
series of autonomous poetic genres, which are however already present in
embryo form in the themes employed by the classical ḳaṣīda; thus the
nasīb gives birth to the erotico-elegiac genre, directly associated with the
Bacchic genre; the description of the desert becomes description of nature
and gardens; the description of the mount and the ride results in the
poetry of war or hunting; etc.

All these genres are represented in independent pieces, to which the name
of ḳaṣīda continues often to be given, even though incorrectly. The long
classical metres become shorter, and lend themselves better to musical
adaptation.

The tripartite form of the ḳaṣīda survived through the agency of the post-
classical poets who did not always observe it strictly (see notably R.
Blachère, Abou ṭ-Ṭayyib al-Motanabbī , Paris 1935, passim ), until the
modern period in its neo-classical form. The Bedouin or partially
sedentarised societies—as in Mauritania—still cultivate it with delight.

The classical or neo-classical ḳaṣīda can in certain cases be a vehicle for

information of a historical nature. It is always advisable to use it in this
respect only with the greatest prudence (see further M. Canard, Les
allusions à la guerre byzantine chez Abū Tammām et Buḥturī , in A. A.
Vasiliev, Byzance et les Arabes , i, Brussels 1935, 397-403).

The collective ḳaṣīd , designating in the aggregate these ample and

elaborate pieces, was in ancient times opposed to the rad̲j̲az [q.v.] which
is a rough and everyday verse form, in a rudimentary metre of constant
structure.

Bibliography

The classical bibliography is immense. It is to be found, in an almost

exhaustive state, in R. Blachère, HLA, as much in the “general
references” i, XVIII-XXXIII, as at the end of the chapters or paragraphs
dedicated to archaic poetry

see especially i, 82-186, ii, 243-453, iii 455-716. See also, ʿArūḍ, G̲h̲azal,
Hid̲j̲ā, S̲h̲iʿr.

Among the more recent studies, one should see especially: M. C.

Bateson, Structural continuity in Poetry, Paris-The Hague 1970

R. Jacoby, Studien zur Poetik der altarabischen Qaṣīde, Wiesbaden 1971,

J. E. Bencheikh, La création poétique à Bagdad de 200 à 250. Modes et
procédés (forth-coming).

On contemporary survivals, see M. el-Moktar Ould Bah, Introduction à

la poésie mauritanienne, in Arabica, xviii (1971), 1-48.