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The Qur'an and Adab The Shaping of Literary Traditions in Classical Islam
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 The Qur’an and Adab
The Shaping of Literary Traditions
in Classical Islam

EDITED BY

Nuha Alshaar

3
in association with
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First published 2017
Chapters previously published and appear ing here in a revised form are chapter 9 by
Sarah R. bin Tyeer, from The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of Premodern Arabic Prose
(Palgrave, 2016); chapter 11 by Wadād al-Qāī, from Approaches to the Qurān,
ed. G.R. Hawting and Abdul-Kader A. Shareef (Routledge, 1993); chapter 16 by
Denis McAuley, from Ibn Arabī’s Mystical Poetics (Oxford University Press, 2012).
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Cover photographs (starting from the top):

1. Text of Sūrat al-Fātia (dated 723/1323) written in black naskh, with Persian interlinear
translation in red ink. MS W.559 (fol. 2b), Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.
2. Muallaqā (dated 16th/17th century CE) by the pre- and early Islamic poet Labīd b. Rabīa
(d. c. 40/660). MS AP 6 (fol. 62v), Library of the Near East School of Theology, Beirut.

Cover design: Russell Harris

Index by Sally Phillips, Advanced Professional Member, Society of Indexers
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by
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ISBN 978-0-19-878718-1
 3
The Qur’an and the Character of
Pre-Islamic Poetry: The Daˉliyya of
al-Aswad b. Yafur al-Nahshalıˉ
(d. c. 600 CE)

GH A S SA N E L M A SR I

T here is a clear, however untold, affinity between pre-Islamic

poetry and the Qur’an. In both there is a pathos that the Prophet
Muhammad and the poets Imru al-Qays b.
ujr (d. c. 550 CE),
Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā (d. 609 CE), Abīd b. al-Abra (d. before 550
CE), al-Muhalhil b. Rabīa (d. c. 525 CE) and others were inspired
to prevent or to remedy: the individual’s existential predicament –
specifically, the challenge of living a meaningful life in an appar-
ently meaningless and continuously changing world. This affinity
between the two corpora is today savoured by many a reader
steeped in Arabic literature and freed from the so-called orthodox
meanings of the Qur’an that some believ ing Muslims bring to their
reading of it. For such Arab readers (pan-Arabists, secular Arabs,
Christian Arabs and so on), their intellectual canon includes not so
much the Qur’an and the Muslim literature of tafsīr and Hadith,
but rather the Qur’an, poetry and the theological and philosophical
traditions of the Near East. This wider canon of scripture, theology,
philosophy and poetry is not far from the culture of the late-antique
audience of the Qur’an;1 by ‘late-antique audience’, I mean the
recipient who once belonged to an Arab tribe, but left it to join the
nascent Muslim umma. Poetry was one rhetorical space in which
the Qur’an had to claim room for itself if it were to succeed with its
audience, provided it did not lose its message and identity therein.

93

From: The Qur’an and Adab: The Shaping of Literary Traditions in Classical Islam, ed. Nuha Alshaar.
Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2017.
© Islamic Publications Ltd 2017 ISBN 978-0-19-878718-1 www.iis.ac.uk www.oup.co.uk
 Ghassan el Masri

Indeed, one of the few hypotheses that Qur’an scholars tradition-

ally made with a fair degree of confidence regarding the first audi-
ence of the Qur’an in the seventh-century
ijāz, be it from the text
of the Qur’an itself or from the various genres that appeared in
the wake of the prophetic mission (philological commentaries,
poetry anthologies, prophetic biographies, etc.), is that poetry was a
dominant feature in the intellectual horizon of the Arabs at the
time of the prophetic mission. The status of pre-Islamic poetry with
regard to the Qur’an and its function as the register of the language
and culture of the Arabs is embodied in the adage attributed to the
heros eponymus of Qur’anic exegesis,2 Abd Allāh Ibn Abbās (d.
67/687), who christened poetry (shir) as the ‘register of the Arabs’
(dīwān al-arab) and advised that should there be any obscurity in
the holy text then this poetry should be consulted (iltamisūhu fī’l-
shir).3 Poetry was the repository that contained information about
the Arabs regarding – amongst other things – their history, society,
genea logies, culture, ethics and world view. Poetry was recognised,
from the earliest philological commentaries on the Qur’an,4 as a
source of semantic and syntactic material that compares to what
one finds in the Arabic scripture. Despite the abundant recognition
of the importance of poetry, we have no commentaries that inter-
pret the discourse or the literary content of the Qur’an in the light
of poetry, or vice versa for that matter. Nor do we see, in the later
commentaries, poetry being used to shed light on the themes of
the Qur’an or the significance of its narratives or central notions.
In addition, the wider cultural recognition of the contribution of
poetry in understanding and expanding the meaning of the text
has subsided over the centuries. The neglect of poetry, which risks
block ing an entire horizon in the meaning of the Qur’an, is largely
yet to be reversed by modern scholars, writers and even poets. I add
writers and poets because the reasons why scripture is considered
to be either distant from or in close proximity to poetry depends
on broad cultural circumstances involving the text, its readers
and the societal situation, and cannot be limited to the practices
of the exegete. Even the exegete’s work vis-à-vis the text is, in any
given cultural moment and historical context, an expression or a
symptom – rather than a cause or an effect – of the broader cultural

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 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

perception of the text. In the case of the Qur’an and pre-Islamic

poetry, their proximity and distance across the history of their
literary functions, and the effect that this had on the cultural recep-
tion of the one and the other, is a matter of much complex ity that
requires careful theoretical consideration and a fair bit of research,
which is yet to be conducted.5 Currently, poetry is kept at a distance
and is generally considered to have little to contribute to our under-
standing of the meanings of the Qur’an in its historical context.
Moreover, pre-Islamic poetry is thought to lack the requirements to
generate discursive possibilities or open hermeneutical horizons for
the holy text.
One can safely claim that the generic distinction between the
Qur’an and poetry is part and parcel of a broader distinction made
between scripture and literature in modern taxonomies. This distinc-
tion fixes a semiotic barrier between the Qur’an and its poetic envir-
onment, where the broader system of signification of the one does
not have bearing on the other. The current and operative argument
for keeping the Qur’an and poetry semiotically apart is not theo-
logical, as has traditionally been the case, but is rather the result
of a hypothesis made in the literary sciences: the authenticity thesis
first advanced by David Margoliouth,6 then developed by āhā

usayn in his two works Fī’l-Shir al-jāhilī and Fī’l-Adab al-jāhilī.7

According to
usayn’s thesis, pre-Islamic poetry is largely – if not
entirely – ‘the fabrication of “transmitters,” or the forgery of Bedo-
uins, or the manufacture of grammarians, or the pretence of story-
tellers, or the invention of commentators and traditionists and
theologians’.8 These acts of forgery, argues
usayn, were motivated
by a variety of considerations9 that, together, put into doubt the
authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry, which in turn disqualifies it from
being a legitimate source for reconstructing the historical context of
the Qur’an. The remarkable fact about
usayn’s thesis is that it is not
taken seriously anywhere outside the circles of Qur’anic studies,10 and
particularly not by experts of pre-Islamic poetry. Michael Zwettler,
after arguing at length against
usayn’s thesis, concludes:

for, though the critics [of pre-Islamic poetry] from Abū Amr b.
al-Alā and Ibn Sallām al-Jumaī to Ahlwardt, Margoliouth, and

95
 Ghassan el Masri

Taha Husayn have cast doubt both on the reliability of many

transmitters of the ancient poetry and on the authenticity of
much of the transmitted poetry, their criticisms have generally
failed to consider certain important facts that have since been
brought out in a decisive fashion. One may, I think, grant that
these doubts, at least in their extreme form as expressed by
Margoliouth, and Taha Husayn, have been laid to rest through
the efforts of later scholars.11

Thomas Bauer, in his contribution on the Qur’an and its pre-Islamic

poetic milieu, provides another poignant statement regarding the
unjustifiable lack of attention that contemporary Qur’an scholars
give to pre-Islamic poetry:

There exist hundreds of elaborate and lengthy literary texts which

were au courant at the time of the revelation of the Qur an, either
contemporary with it or immediately preceding or follow ing it.
Such texts not only tell us much about the political and literary
environment of the Qur an, they also tell us much about the
linguistic and cultural horizons of those who were the first to
hear the message of the Qur an. Almost perversely, Qur anic
scholars do not show much enthusiasm about the existence of this
literature.12

This lack of enthusiasm that Bauer describes as ‘perverse’ may partly

be explicable by the fact that pre-Islamic poetry, with its cryptic
vocabulary and convoluted syntax, is able to dissuade even the most
devoted student. This state of affairs can also be explained by the
fact that scholars who accept the main tenets of traditional Muslim
scholarship have no time for poetic material in their exegetical
paradigm, except as a quarry of semantic and syntactic data. A
strictly traditional Muslim scholar submits to the claim that the
Qur’an is sui generis religious literature that is not commensurate
with poetic texts, and can therefore only be understood through
the – also sacred – hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad. Yet, even
scholars from the other end of the spectrum, who do not necessarily
abide by Muslim tenets and who represent a growing proportion of
Qur’an scholars today, can disagree with the above claim of a

96
 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

generic distinction while continuing to cast poetry out from their

reconstruction of the Qur’an’s historical milieu. Gabriel Said
Reynolds postulates that ‘the connection . . . between the biography
of Muammad and the Qur ān should not form the basis of critical
scholarship. Instead, the Qur ān should be appreciated in light of its
conversation with earlier literature, in particular Biblical literature
(by which I mean the Bible, apocrypha, and Jewish and Christian
exegetical works).’13 But why only Biblical literature? Why not add
pre-Islamic poetry under ‘earlier literature’, especially if this variety
of scholars is not religiously committed to the sui generis nature of
the Arabic scripture like
usayn was? It seems that āhā
usayn’s
wish to set the Qur’an apart by block ing the possibility of recon-
textualising it with profane jāhilī poetry coincides with a research
programme by scholars, like Reynolds, who are interested in the
scriptural – and often the Biblical – aspects of the Qur’an, often at
the expense of other affinities the text may share with other forms of
literature of its time. Willy-nilly, this line of scholarship ends up
neglecting reading the Qur’an in its poetic milieu in the manner
that
usayn did – perhaps because of a conviction about the
supposed origins of the Qur’an or for no reason other than a lack of
proper awareness of the semiotic wealth that the poetic context may
add to a reading of the text.
Having said that, one should affirm that there is indeed great
benefit in study ing the Qur’an in juxtaposition with pre-Islamic
poetry, not least for our understanding of the conversation between
the Qur’an and Biblical literature. This has been illustrated in a
number of valuable studies on poetry’s use for the student of the
Qur’an and the Bible alike.14 Above all, pre-Islamic poetry can play
a major role in revealing the intellectual situation of the first audi-
ence of the Qur’an and can even provide a clearer view of the intel-
lectual medium in which the Bible was Arabised in the process of
cultural translation-cum-interpretation that would yield the Arabic
Qur’an.
Admittedly, not much has been done in this domain, and a
comprehensive study of pre-Islamic poetry and the Qur’an is yet to
be produced. There are only a very limited number of comparative
studies focusing on a limited set of issues in this area. Toshihiko

97
 Ghassan el Masri

Izutsu’s Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurān is one prominent

example, and Awda al-Khalīl Abū Awda’s al-Taawwur al-dalālī
bayna lughati’l-shir al-jāhilī wa lughati’l-Qurān al-karīm is a less
known, but very worthy, attempt to use semantic fields to identify
the general intellectual developments that can be gleaned by tracing
the conceptual shifts from poetry to the Qur’an.15 The present
chapter, which agrees in principle and in method with the works of
Izutsu and Abū Awda, deals less with semantic fields as such and
concentrates, rather, on the literary and semiotic affinities between
the two corpora.
In this chapter, I will bring to light some of the broad affinities that
organically bind pre-Islamic poetry to the Qur’an and that ground
both in the historical milieu of Arabia. I do so by focusing on a single
poem of thirty-four verses – Mufa aliyya no. 44, the dāliyya of
al-Aswad b. Yafur al-Nahshalī (d. c. 600 CE).16 I will illustrate the
poem’s various thematic connections to the text of the Qur’an before
I return to a discussion of the character of pre-Islamic poetry and
its relevance for the meanings of the text of the Qur’an. Once all
the elements of this poem that are commensurable with the Qur’an
have been outlined and the one put in juxtaposition to the other, it
will be possible to get a clearer view of the strategy by which the
Qur’an addresses the poetic world view, how the new scripture
negotiates the poets’ central precepts regarding man and his destiny,
and the spiritual and moral situation which that imposes. These
affinities, properly understood, render audible the dialogue between
the Prophet and the nihilists-cum-sceptics in the Meccan suras as
well as the interaction between the poetic and the scriptural rhetoric.
This understanding, in turn, will allow us to appreciate the spirit – or
cultural mood – in which pre-Islamic poetry was recorded and under-
stand the process of recording (tadwīn) that determined the character
of early Arabic poetry that we have today, where a process of cultural
reclamation took place and Muslims can be said to have selectively
recollected their predecessors’ literary and cultural history as a foil to
the Qur’anic fact. Selective recollection offers a simpler explanation
for the character of the poetry and its affinities to the Qur’an and
provides a better account of the general historical situation of
pre-Islamic poetry than the one offered by the authenticity sceptic, as

98
 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

the following section on the dāliyya of al-Aswad b. Yafur al-Nahshalī

illustrates.

Mufad·d·aliyya no. 44, the daˉliyya of Nahshalıˉ

Although I primarily selected this poem because it possesses a
number of extra-textual qualities that set it apart from other poems
in the early anthologies, its text contains themes, figures and other
literary features that make it representative of the highly significant
amatory prelude (nasīb) section of many a pre-Islamic qa
īda. No
other poem, as far as I know, better illustrates the qualities of the
nasīb on the one hand and the thematic and semiotic contiguities
between pre-Islamic poetry and the Qur’an on the other. The poem
is also an excellent illustration of how these affinities and contigu-
ities are rooted in the historical context of late-antique Arabia as we
know it from the historical, epigraphic and archaeological sources.
The poet al-Aswad b. Yafur al-Nahshalī belonged to the clan of
Nahshal,17 from the tribe of Dārim and the tribal confederation of the
Tamīm. The poet never knew the faith of the Arab Prophet, and lived
most of his life in his tribal areas around the Sawād (pre-Islamic Iraq),
but did move frequently around Najd, the
ijāz and eastern Arabia.
He is said to have been a contemporary and boon companion of
al-Numān Abū Qābūs (r. 580–602), the last Lakhmid king of al-
īra.
The poem we have dates back to a time subsequent to the fall of the
Lakhmid dynasty and the destruction of Iyād by Chosroes (vv. 8–12)
(c. 573 CE), the bloody events of which were very likely the motive or
the inspiration for the composition of the poem.18 Nahshalī is
described as a knight (fāris). He is also said to have had no stable
associations with any royal courts and to have renounced and written
an invective against his own tribe.19 Thus, as a poet, he was neither a
voice of the court in the ordinary sense nor a voice of his tribe. Not
much verse by him survives, and probably all that we have from him
is what is in the anthology of al-Mufaal al-abbī (d. 164–70/781–7)
and also some of what is listed under his name in the Kitāb al-Aghānī
of Abū’l-Faraj al-I bahānī (d. 356/967).20 The editors of Nahshalī’s
dīwān state that, indeed, the most reliable material is what we already
had in the Mufa aliyyāt.21 The poem under consideration is, in

99
 Ghassan el Masri

addition, attested in Kitāb al-Aghānī (which contains a biography of

the poet), al-amāsa by Abū Ubāda al-Walīd b. Ubayd al-Buturī
(d. 284/897), al-Shir wa’l-shuarā of Ibn Qutayba al-Dīnawarī
(d. 276/889), al-Iqd al-farīd by Ibn Abd Rabbih al-Andalusī (d. 328/
940), al-ināatayn by al-
asan al-Askarī (d. c. 400/1010) and ifat
jazīrat al-arab by al-
asan al-Hamadānī (d. 334/945). The poem’s is
also very widely quoted: Abū Ubayda Mamar b. al-Muthannā (d. 209/
824) quotes from it in his Majāz al Qurān, Abū Muammad Abd
al-Malik Ibn Hishām (d. 218/833) in his Sīra, Abū Jafar Muammad
b. Jarīr al-abarī (d. 310/923) in his Tafsīr al-Qurān, Alī b. Ismāīl
Ibn Sīda (d. 458/1066) in his Mukha

a
as well as several others
that I have occasionally encountered citing verses from the poem.22
In none of these works do we find anything that casts doubt on the
poem’s authenticity or disputes the poem’s attribution to Nahshalī.
As such, this poem which was passed on to us by abbī, who died in
170/787 at the latest, and confirmed by Abū Ubayda, who died less
than forty years later, appears to be a very reliable piece of poetry from
pre-Islamic times and one rarely finds a poem with better credentials.
Indeed, its credentials are as good as they get, and although they are
no proof of authenticity, they are important for our evaluation of
the poem. This poem, like many an Arabic poem, is buttressed by
traditions, three of which are particularly interesting for us; one
speaks of a judge, the two others of two caliphs, each shedding a
different light on the early reception of the poem.

The judge and the two caliphs

Generally considered a valuable piece of wisdom poetry (madūda
min mukhtār ashāri’l-arab wa ikamihim23), the poem is associ-
ated with a tradition cited by the editors of the dīwān. This tradition
is taken from Kitāb al-Aghānī and appears in Mu jam al-buldān of
Yāqūt al-
amawī (d. 626/1228), which tells of a judge, Sawwār b.
Abd Allāh, who refuses to accept the testimony of a man of Dārim
(the poet’s tribe) after realising that this witness does not know the
poem of his fellow tribesman. The judge, addressing the witness,
says: ‘a man of your people, who is of such intelligence, and who
composed such wise verses, and you neither can recite them nor

100
 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

know of him [Nahshalī]? Muzāim [the judge’s clerk]! Drop his

testimony, I will not take it until I inquire about him, for I think
him unreliable.’24 It is not clear where I bahānī took the tradition
from, and I was unable to locate it in any antecedent source. The
tradition, however, if authentic, testifies to both the value attributed
to the poem and its popularity among the people of Dārim, where
men of good judgement were expected to know some of its verses by
heart, if not commit the poem to memory in its entirety.
It was not only the Dārimī witness who lost credibility because
he did not know the poem, but also the poet/reciter (rāwī) al-
akam
b. Mūsā al-Salūlī, who lost a potentially handsome reward for his
inability to recite it in full in the caliph’s court. Here, and according
to I bahānī, the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 170–93/786–809) offered
ten thousand dinars to whoever could recite this famous dāliyya to
a large host of noble guests. In that particular convention, no profi-
cient rāwīs had memorised the poetry of Nahshalī, so none could
perform the recitation. This incident prompted al-
akam al-Salūlī
to learn the poetry of Nahshalī.25

Alī b. Abī ālib: The literato caliph

A third tradition, which one finds in the oldest records of the poem,
is by far the most significant for the purposes of a comparative study
of pre-Islamic poetry and the Qur’an, and will serve to put the poem
into clear perspective vis-à-vis the holy text. This tradition involving
Alī b. Abī ālib (d. 40/661) is cited – with variants – in the Aghānī.
However, I will present here the version that appears in al-Ma āsin
wa’l-a dād by Amr b. Bar al-Jāi (d. 255/869),26 since this work
was the oldest record in which I could locate this tradition.
According to Jāi, when Alī entered the newly conquered
al-Madā in (Ctesiphon) he looked at and reflected upon the once
glorious palace of Chosroes (Īwān Kisrā), and a man in his company,
upon seeing the edifice, recited verses 8–12 of the poem (see text
and full discussion of the tradition below).
Hearing these verses, Alī said ‘more eloquent than that [would be]
. . .’ (ablaghu min dhālika . . . ),27 then recited the following verses
from Q. 44:25–8: many a garden and spring they left behind, many a

101
 Ghassan el Masri

cornfield and noble building, many a thing in which they had delighted:
We gave these to another people to inherit (kam tarakū min jannātin
wa uyūn, wa zurūin wa maqāmin karīm, wa nimatin kānū fīhā
fākihīn; ka-dhālika wa awrathnāhā qawman ākharīn).28 This trad-
ition involving Alī is quite significant, not only because it weaves
the poem into the traditions of the Companions (
a āba) and the
holy men of Islam, but mostly because it constitutes a rough equiva-
lence index between poetic and Qur’anic themes and topoi, namely
between the poetic theme of despair of the possibility of any lasting
state of well-being and the Qur’anic theme of divine deprivation for
the unjust and the just redistribution of worldly goods. In fact, and as
the detailed analysis of the poem will show, almost every single motif,
theme and topos of the poem of Nahshalī has a Qur’anic equivalent,
which might indicate that the tradition involving the literato caliph is
a truncated index of a host of literary equivalences between the
Qur’an and this poem in particular and pre-Islamic poetry in general.
Indeed, once we juxtapose all the elements of this poem that are
commensurable with the Qur’an, we see that the sacred text responds
to the profane world view, thoroughly addressing its central precepts
regarding man and his destiny, as I will show in more detail below.
The spiritual and moral situation as conveyed by the poem appears,
in turn, to be bound to a crisis-ridden milieu in Arabia, as the poem
contains a number of historical references that can help us locate its
poetic motives or pathos in the social, political and cultural events of
Arabia in the century before Islam.

The historical context of Nahshalī’s dāliyya

Given that the poet was a boon companion of the king al-Numān
Abū Qābūs, and explicitly mentions the line of the Muarriq of
Lakhm, we should look to the Lakhmid dynasty for general context.
In this regard, Charles Lyall comments:
After the wreck of the dominion of Kindah29 the power of the
kings of al-
īrah gradually extended itself over the northern half
of the peninsula and along the southern coasts of the Persian
Gulf. The energetic kings al-Mundhir III and his son Amr b.
Hind [Qābūs b. al-Mundhir] are often heard of in the poems of

102
 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

that time. These kings ruled, the former from 505 to 554, and the
latter from 554 to 569. King Amr was killed, in the midst of his
Court, by a proud Arab chief, Amr son of Kulthūm of Taghlib,
upon whom he was endeavouring to fix an indignity which the
fierce nomad resented. Two of Amr’s brothers succeeded him and
had short reigns, and then, between 580 and 602 or 603, followed
their nephew an-Numān Abū Qābūs, the last Lakhmid king of
al-
īrah. The Courts of all these kings were frequently visited by
poets from the nomad tribes, and much verse which has survived
was composed on these occasions.30

Lyall’s description of events remains, to my knowledge, sound,

although recent research suggests that the reigns of Amr III b.
al-Mundhir and Qābūs b. al-Mundhir might have been slightly
later than Lyall believed, that is, 554–69 and 569–73 respectively.31
This implies that the tribes of Iyād were overrun by the Persians
some time after the last date (573) and two Lakhmid rulers – Suhrāb
(r. 573–4) and al-Mundhir IV b. al-Mundhir (r. 574–8) – followed a
Persian interregnum, after which came our poet’s boon companion,
the last Lakhmid king al-Numān Abū Qābūs. The context of the
poem was therefore the dire social and political situation that
accompanied the end of a dynasty, with raging wars, Persian inva-
sions and possibly wholesale massacres taking place at the time.32 In
short, the poem is witness to a kingdom seeing its last days, with
momentous events unfolding; all of this was happening right
around the birth of the Prophet in 570. These circumstances have
left their imprint on Nahshalī’s poem, and on the general character
of pre-Islamic poetry as a whole.

The formal character of Nahshalī’s dāliyya

The poem is written in a language that is strik ingly similar to that
of the Qur’an, and its structure and composition are relatively
simple. Regarding its general features, Alan Jones, commenting on
the poem, writes:
this is the poem in which the ghara [main subject] comes first.
Pessimistic contemplation of change, decay, fate and death take

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up the first half of the poem, lines 1–7 dealing with the poet’s
plight and 8–17 that of the others in the past. Then after a two line
bridge passage the poet turns to reminiscences of the past: 20–27
treat wine and women and 28–34 the poet’s travels.33
In his comments on the first verse of the poem, Jones adds: ‘I know
of no poem that illustrates the essentially elegiac nature of the nasīb
better than the beginning of this one. The first four lines could well
be part of an extended nasīb.’34 We are thus before a poem, or a
fragment thereof, that is in many ways an extended nasīb, whose
ghara is the typical pre-Islamic poetic themes of lamenting the
deserted dwellings and the lost past relationships with women.
These obser vations should be borne in mind when evaluating its
relationship to the Qur’an and the relationship of the latter to the
nasīb phenomenon in pre-Islamic poetry as a whole.

Nahshalī’s dāliyya and its Qur’anic affinities

With this historical and traditional background in mind, one can look
at the elements that join the poem to the Qur’an in this section. Some
of the shared elements that will be identified below are commensur-
able though their points of similarity are not quite significant; others
bear close affinity, in some cases with rather significant parallels. I will
point them out, sometimes very briefly, and leave it to the reader to
judge the import of these affinities. Important for the purposes of this
comparative study – and the conclusions drawn therefrom – is that
the literary dialogue between the poetic and the scriptural horizons of
meaning becomes audible to the reader. However, proving the exist-
ence of inter-textual sources is not the objective here; neither is it
necessary to do so to arrive at conclusions for this chapter.
In the first two verses of the poem, we see a common motif of
pre-Islamic poetry – the sleepless night, where rest and serenity are
replaced by melancholy, anguish and fatigue:35
v. 1 Nāma’l-khaliyyu wa-mā u issu ruqādī
wa’l-hammu mu ta irun ladayya wisādī
The worry-free sleeps, but I feel not my rest
worry is my bed-mate, present, there – [it is my] pillow.

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v. 2 min ghayri mā saqamin wa-lākin shaffanī

hammun arāhu qad a
āba fuādī
It is no sick ness (that I have). But I have been emaciated
by a worry that has hit my heart.
This anguish, as the poem shall later tell us, is existential, occasioned by
wars, lack of individual purpose and the general futility of human
endeavour; all these reflect the recent crises that ravaged the poet’s
land. The theme of worry, which accompanies the motif of the night in
the poem, is presented in direct contrast to the peaceful sleep in the
Qur’an’s Sūrat Āl Imrān (Q. 3): After sorrow, He caused calm to descend
upon you, a sleep . . . (thumma anzala alaykum min badi’l-ghammi
amnatan nuāsan . . ., Q. 3:154); the unsure among the believers are
worried, they are sleepless and conjecture in jāhilī ways (anna’l-
jāhiliyya), while the believers are resting peacefully in a divinely
induced sleep. In the early suras, the night is recognised as a moment
of existential anxiety in a manner not much different from the way it
is treated in poetry. Consider the openings of Sūrat al-Muddaththir
(Q. 74) and Sūrat al-Muzzammil (Q. 73) where the Prophet is told to
leave his bed (and, one might say, his doubts and fears) and rise to
proclaim his message, to be patient, to pray and draw near to God. In
Sūrat al-u ā (Q. 93), the lines which read and by the night when it
grows still, your Lord has not forsaken you [Prophet] nor does He hate
you (wa’l-layli idhā sajā, mā waddaaka rabbuka wa-mā qalā, Q. 93:2–3)
remind the Prophet that his Lord has not forsaken him, nor does He
hate him, and they reassure him that the tenebrous hours should be no
reason for existential angst. In the same sura, deep night and the
diametrically opposed high noon ( u ā) are presented as mere stages
in a continuous cycle; these apogees are by no means fateful destinies,
nor are they to be taken as finalities. In another early poem, the Lāmiyya
by al-Shanfarā al-Azdī (d. c. 525 CE) (verse: wa yawmin mina’l-
shira . . .), the heat of the high desert noon makes for a hellish land-
scape in a scene depicting the impossible challenges that life throws at
mortals, and which they are expected to overcome in solitude and
without anguish. In Sūrat al-u ā, the two singularities of tenebrous
night on the one hand and the harsh bright heat of the deadly desert
sun at midday on the other are transformed to a merciful duality in the

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Qur’an. In later suras – for example, Sūrat al-Shams (Q. 91) and Sūrat
al-Layl (Q. 92) – the timed and equilibrial relationship between the two
elements of this duality are adduced as proof of God’s mercy, which is
guaranteed by the general balance that resides in His creation.
The second verse of the poem contains one further commensur-
able element pertaining to the theme of existential angst, which is
reflected in the use of the term saqīm. Consider, in relationship to
that, Abraham’s moment of loss in search of existential purpose
or metaphysical support as he wanders at night in search of the
one true God in Sūrat al-āffāt (Q. 37), where, after looking at the
stars at night he cries, I am sick (innī saqīm, Q. 37:89), or Jonas in
Q. 37:145 who is cast in the wilderness, sick (fa-nabadhnāhu bi’l-arāi
wa huwa saqīm). These are comparable to the poet’s own existential
predicament, which he likens to sick ness that has emaciated him,
despite the absence of a true ailment (min ghayri mā saqamin).
v. 3 wa mina’l- awādithi lā abā laka annanī
uribat alayya’l-ar u bi’l-asdādī
And the [unfor tunate] events [chase me],
and the lands [around me] have been blocked by barriers

v. 4 lā ahtadī fīhā li-maw ii talatin

bayna’l-Irāqī wa bayna ar i Murādī
I cannot find my way to an overlooking hill
between Iraq and the land of Murād
In these two verses the poet begins to explain the reasons for his
state of anguish: the impossibility of any escape from his predica-
ment and the absence of moral and spiritual guidance (lā ahtadī).
The poet is here dejected and hopeless, and sees no way out; he finds
no path to a water source that can quench his proverbial thirst and
revive him. Consider the language of Sūrat Yā-Sīn (Q. 36) describing
the Meccan unbelievers and their sightlessness as they reach their
fateful and terminal moment: We have placed chains around their
necks, up to their throats, [now] they are crestfallen. We have set
barriers before and behind them, blocking their vision, so they do not
see (Q. 36:8–9). The barrier (saddan) in the Qur’anic verses and

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barriers (asdād) in verse 3 represent – with the same term – the

same idea of boundedness, lack of vision and dead-end fates.
Compare the poet’s image of being surrounded by barriers and
seeing no way out to the following two verses from Sūrat al-Ankabūt
(Q. 29:55–6): on the day when punishment overwhelms them from
above and from below their very feet, and they will be told: ‘taste the
[consequences] of what you used to do’. My believing servants! My
earth is vast, so worship Me, and Me alone. The punishment repre-
sented here by being enclosed, bound and constricted affects the
unbeliever at the terminal point when all hope is lost; the fatality of
that moral-psychological moment matches that of the pre-Islamic
nihilist portrayed in poetry. The believer, however, optimistic and
firm in his/her belief in the justness of fate, is reassured of the vast
earth and the boundless possibilities. Finally, the lā ahtadī in verse 4
of the poem recalls the recurrent guidance (hudā) of the Qur’an, and
it is worth remembering that, in the Qur’an, hudā is often juxta-
posed with mercy (ra ma), a pair which stands in contradistinction
to suffering and anguish.

v. 5 wa-laqad alimtu siwā’l-ladhī nabbatinī

anna’l-sabīla sabīlu dhī’l-awādī
I have known, apart from what you have told me,
that the path is the path of those who bear the dead

v. 6 inna’l-maniyyata wa’l- utūfa kilāhumā

yūfi’l-makhārima yarqubāni sawādī
Death and destruction, both of them,
from up the summits, watching my person

v. 7 lan yar ayā minnī wafāa rahīnatin

min dūni nafsī ārifī wa tilādī
They do not accept, as ransom, anything
but my soul, no wealth of mine, whether old or newly got.

In verse 5, the poet, in his state of despair, expresses his deep

sense of hopelessness and avows his belief that the only thing that he

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knows for certain is that death awaits him at the end of the line. This
is comparable to the portrayal of a similar character that only
believes in the destructive aspects of time (al-dahr) in Sūrat
al-Jāthiya (Q. 45:24): and they said it is only our life, here and now, we
die and we live and only time destroys us (wa qālū mā hiya illā
ayātunā’l-dunyā namūtu wa na yā wa-mā yuhlikunā illā’l-dahr);
or to those who deny resurrection in a similar vein in Sūrat
al-Muminūn (e.g. Q. 23:37); or to those who despair of any revival in
Sūrat al-Furqān (Q. 25:40): they expect no resurrection (lā yarjawna
nushūrā). Jāhilī poets and the Qur’an’s Meccan unbelievers express,
using similar motifs, the same nihilistic disposition.36 The general
despair of any kind of revival (and not only resurrection in the
eschatological sense) among the addressees of the Prophet is a
running theme in the Meccan suras. Looking closely at the term
sabīl in verse 5, used to designate the path to death, we see that it con-
trasts with the Qur’an’s repeated use of the same term to designate
the right path, or the path of redemption, or the path that one might
choose towards God, as, for example, in Sūrat ā-Hā (Q. 20:53),
Sūrat al-Zukhruf (Q. 43:10) and Sūrat al-Anbiyā (Q. 21:31). The
poet’s sabīl leads to death, the Qur’anic sabīl leads to redemption.
Verse 6 emphasises, with stronger language, what verse 5 has already
claimed regarding death. The poet uses the terms al-manāyā and
al- utūf to refer to death and destruction, two central and highly
recurrent destiny related terms from pre-Islamic poetry.37 These two
terms are remarkably not employed in the Qur’an, perhaps because
of the associative connotation in pre-Islamic Arabia with the pagan
goddess Manāt and her epithet ‘the fatal/fateful one’ (al-manūn)38
and because of the strongly deterministic associations in the case of
derivatives of the root -t-f.39 Verse 7 contains a rather complex
metaphor regarding fate and being held for ransom. The poet claims
that death and misfortune will not accept any ransom from him, not
the money he earned, nor the money he inherited – death and fate
(al-manāyā) want his soul, and their demand is not negotiable. One
finds this theme of being held for ransom in several locations and
contexts in the Qur’an. First, in Sūrat al-Muddaththir (Q. 74:38),
which uses the same term to qualify ‘soul’ (rahīna): every soul is held
ransom by what it has earned (kullu nafsin bimā kasabat rahīna);

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here, these dues will be paid or received on the Day of Judgement.

Second, in Sūrat al-Maārij (Q. 70:11–14), which uses the term ‘to pay
ransom’ (yaftadī), where on the Day of Judgement the evil-doer
would wish that he could be ransomed from the punishment of that
day by his children, and his wife and his brother, and the nearest kin
that shelters him, and whoever is on earth entirely, so that he could
save himself; here, it is divine destiny that the criminal wishes to
escape, a destiny he brought upon himself. Third, in Sūrat al-Rad
(Q. 13:18), when the promised fate befalls the Meccans and the
moment of judgement arrives, the divine voice proclaims, if they
had all that is in the earth entirely and the like of it with it, they would
[attempt to] ransom themselves thereby. Those will have the worst
account, and their refuge is Hell, and wretched is the resting place
(law anna lahum mā fī’l-ar i jamīan wa mithlahu maahu la’ftadaw
bih).40 Both Arabic poetry and Arabic scripture agree on the
impossibility of paying ransom to save oneself from fate, regardless
of whether that fate is suffered passively by poets, through no fault of
their own, or is brought upon oneself actively by the human agent
according to the Qur’an. That humans are held ransom and that
they are hostages is a shared idea, with diametrically opposed
agencies in the two corpora: manāyā and utūf (agents of dahr) hold
man hostage in poetry, while man is held hostage by his own actions
before God in the Qur’an.
In the following four verses, the poet will explain the reasons
behind his desperation and his hopelessness of ever being able to
break the fateful cycle:
v. 8 mādhā uammalu bada āli Mu arriqin
tarakū manāzilahum wa bada Iyādī
What can I hope for, now that the house of Muarriq
have left their dwelling places? What, after Iyād?

v. 9 ar u’l-Khawarnaqi wa’l-Sadīri wa Bāriqin

wa’l-qa
ri dhī’l-shurufāti min Sindādī
The lands of Khawarnaq and al-Sadīr and Bāriq,
and the castle overlook ing [its surrounding] at Sindād

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v. 10 ar an takhayyarahā li-dāri abīhim

Kabu’bnu Māmata wa’bnu ummi Duādī
A land which Kab, son of Māma, chose and Abū Du ād
to be the place where their fathers’ stock should prosper
and grow.

v. 11 jarati’l-riyā u alā makāni diyārihim

fa-kaannamā kānū alā mīādī
Now sweep the winds over all their dwellings;
as though they had been set a [promised] time.
The poet’s hopelessness is occasioned by the devastation of the
Muarriq’s kingdom and the tribes of Iyād,41 who are said to have
hailed from noble ancestry and who had built glorious palaces in the
past. The function of the topos of the destroyed predecessors is not
dissimilar to the function of the destroyed ancients that appear
frequently in the Qur’an, such as Ād and Thamūd, and even Biblical
instances of the same topos such as Pharaoh and the people of Lot
(the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, described in Genesis 18–19). For
the poet, the destroyed ancestors are a sign of the intrinsic injustice
of the world and proof of the necessarily ruinous end of all endeav-
ours and the vanity of life; all these things underlie his existential
despair. This ‘negative significance’ sharply contrasts with their
opposite function and significance in the Qur’an. In the Qur’an,
where they are a sign of divine justice that does away with the unjust,
the demise of some nations is merely one aspect of the cycle of birth,
life, death and resurrection. This contrast between the two corpora
becomes apparent in verse 11. There, the poet speaks of the wind that
swept over their lands (jarati’l-riyā ), which reminds us of the func-
tion of the wind in the simile of the meadow in Sūrat al-Kahf
(Q. 18:45), which also treats the issue of the vanity of worldly life: and
present to them the example of the life of this world, [its being] like rain
which We send down from the sky, and the vegetation of the earth
mingles with it and [then] it becomes dry remnants scattered by the
wind (tadhrūhu’l-riyā ).42 This image is meant to illustrate the futility
of pursuing worldly goods; human culture is like a meadow – it
grows, flourishes, dies and turns to chaff that is then blown by the

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wind. The phrase at the end of verse 11, ‘as though they had been set
a [promised] time’ (fa-kaannamā kānū alā mīādī), employs the
notion of a promised time, which implies the kind of predestination
seen in the same simile of the life cycle of the meadow. The notion of
mīād is commensurable with the Qur’anic ‘term’ (ajal), which, in
Sūrat al-Arāf (Q. 7:34), as in the poem, is used in reference to a nation
(umma): and for every nation is a term (li-kulli ummatin ajal).43
In the same manner that the Qur’anic address speaks of the pros-
perous past of the nation (umam) before the arrival of their divinely
fixed term (ajal), the poet will describe the lost prosperity of a now
destroyed age and a bygone time – the theme of the follow ing six
verses:
v. 12 wa-laqad ghanū fīhā bi-anami īshatin
fī illi mulkin thābiti’l-awtādī
Yea, once they lived there a life most ample in wealth and
delight
beneath the shade of a kingdom stable, not to be moved.

v. 13 nazalū bi-Anqiratin yasīlu alayhim

māu’l-Furāti yajīu min awādī
They settled in Anqira, and there by their stead
flowed down the Euphrates from high mountains.

v. 14 fa-idhā’l-naīmu wa kullu mā yulhā bihī

yawman ya
īru ilā bilan wa nafādī
Lo! how luxurious living and all the ways of delight
decline one day to decay, and pass therefrom into
naught!

v. 15 fī āli Gharfin law baghīti liya’l-asā

la-wajadti fīhim uswata’l-udādī
And if you seek solace, look at Gharf and his house:
in them you will find the solace – the many [who had also
lost their former prosperity].

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v. 16 mā bada Zaydin fī futātin furriqū

qatlan wa nafyan bada usni taādī
What hope for us after Zayd whose kin were scattered into
fragments (alt. lost for a maid),
slain and banished, despite their goodly array?

v. 17 fa-takhayyarū’l-ar a’l-fa āi li-izzihim

wa yazīdu rāfiduhum alā’l-ruffādī
They chose the broad open land because of the strength
that they had,
and best of helpers were they, beyond all bountiful hands.
Verses 12–14 speak of the luxurious life that these tribes once enjoyed
and of how, despite all their grandeur and splendour, their deeds
were for naught. One can point out the term awtād (‘tent pegs’)
used by the poet in verse 12 to designate the apparent stability of the
dominion of these tribes, and compare it to the awtād of Pharaoh in
Sūrat al-Fajr (Q. 89:10), where it is used with a fair measure of irony
precisely to show the instability and ephemerality of human
dominion. Also, the mention of the term furāt (‘sweet water’) in
reference to the Euphrates in verse 13 and adhbun furāt in Sūrat
al-Furqān (Q. 25:53) and Sūrat Fāir (Q. 35:12) enumerates the
bounties and sources of well-being. In verse 14, the poet affirms
his perception that all the luxuries and delights that the world
presents to man shall one day become derelict and perish (bilan wa
nafād); this sentiment is explicitly countered in the Qur’an (Q. 38:54)
– using the same lexeme nafād – which affirms that God’s paradis-
iacal delights are eternal and limitless: Indeed, this is our provision;
for it there is no depletion (inna hādhā la-rizqunā mā lahu min
nafād). Amongst other things, verse 14 shares terms such as ‘delight/
amenity’ (naīm) and ‘frolic’ (yulhā) with the Qur’an;44 they are
employed in the latter’s critique of the life of the ‘here and now’
(al-dunyā). Turning to verse 16, which traditional commentators
interpret as referring to an obscure incident involving a maid (fatāt),
I propose here that in light of Sūrat Saba (Q. 34) it can be read not as
a derivative of f-t-y, but of f-t-t (‘to fragment’), meaning ‘fragments’.

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 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

This makes it readily commensurable to the notion of being ripped,

torn or split, as implied by muzziqtum, mazzaqnāhum, mummazaqin
in Q. 34:7: Shall we lead you to a man who will inform you [that] when
you have been ripped into fragments, you will [then] be [recreated] in
a new creation? 45 This verse speaks of a sceptic’s doubt of the possi-
bility of resurrection after disintegration. If the reading with the
alternative root f-t-t (‘to crush, fragment’) is sound and thus com-
parable to the Qur’anic verse, as I claim here, then the poetic verse
can be understood to be a sample representation of the sceptic from
the Qur’anic verse, who disbelieves that the figuratively ‘broken’
individuals – or fragmented nations – can be brought to life again.
To this sceptic, the divine voice responds with the reassurance
that those who have disintegrated, or were fragmented, will be
resurrected in a new form (khalqan jadīd). The second hemistich of
verse 17, ‘and best of helpers were they, beyond all bountiful hands’
(wa yazīdu rāfiduhum alā’l-ruffād), refers to the noble among those
departed, killed and fragmented as having been the most bounteous
and generous of men. This seems to be directly countered – in a
strikingly similar construction of derivatives of the root r-f-d – in
the story of Pharaoh as presented in Sūrat Hūd (Q. 11:99), where the
tyrant’s bounties are said to be wretched (bisa’l-rifdu’l-marfūd).
The contrast between the poetic wa yazīdu rāfiduhum alā’l-ruffād
and the Qur’anic bisa’l-rifdu’l-marfūd – employing a double occur-
rence of the root r-f-d – is strikingly direct and invites, if not imposes,
the thesis, by now perhaps already in the mind of some readers, that
either the Qur’an was aware of the poem or that the poet (rāwī), or
later composer, was aware of the Qur’an (more on this matter below).
The possible contrasts and comparisons between the two textual
corpora continues to increase in subsequent verses, particularly in
the poet’s reminiscences of his youth where the nostalgic scene of
the delights now lost has many of the ingredients of the paradisiacal
scenes in the Qur’an.46 By briefly addressing his ādhila (‘reproaching
woman’) in verses 18–20, the poet begins the second part of the
poem where he nostalgically speaks of his lost youth:
v. 18 immā tarīnī qad balītu wa ghā anī
mā nīla min ba
arī wa min ajlādī

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If now you see me [and I have become] worn out and

diminished of sight,
and all my limbs without strength to bear my body along,

v. 19 wa a
ītu a
āba’l-baālati wa’l-
ibā
wa aatu ādhilatī wa lāna qiyādī
And that I heed not the calls of idleness and dalliance,
and obey the one who keeps me in order [through
reproach] and that leading me [around] has become easy

v. 20 fa-laqad arū u alā’l-tijāri murajjalan

mudhillan bi-māli layyinan ajyādī
There was a time when I frequented the [wine] merchants
with my hair combed,
and was liberal with my possessions, compliant, easy of
mood.
The descent of the poet from the vigour of youth to the wretchedness
of old age is set in parallel to the fall of tribes and dynasties from royal
glory and vast dominion to fragmentation and destruction. Both the
micro and the macro levels represent instances of the general ruinous
nature of dahr. Fond remembrances in this case are meant to counter-
balance the work of oblivious time in the memory of the poet. He
boasts of what he liberally spent in his careless years and speaks of
wine being served by young attendants (verses 22–3) and of stunning
maidens (verse 24–7) who speak and move in their soft ways. In verse
21, the first ingredient of his lost paradisiacal youth appears – wine.
v. 21 wa-laqad lahawtu wa li’l-shabābi ladhādhatan
bi-sulāfatin muzijat bi-māi ghawādī
Yea, once I played, and enjoyed the sweetest flavour of
youth,
my wine the first of the grape, mingled with water of
morning rain clouds

v. 22 min khamri dhī naafin aghanna munaaqin

wāfā bihā li-darāhimi’l-asjādī

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 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

Wine bought from one with a twang in his speech, and

rings in his ears, a belt girt round him:
he brought it forth for the dirhams of the prostrating
[Persians].

v. 23 yasā bihā dhū tawmatayni mushammirin

quniat anāmiluhu mina’l-fur
ādī
A boy deals it to our guests, girt up, two pearls in his ears,
his fingers having acquired the colour of mulberry.
The servant that brings the wine has a ‘twang in his speech’, ‘pearls’
and ‘rings in his ears’, a ‘belt’ on his waist, and is paid in Persian silver
coin. According to al-Qāsim b. Muammad al-Anbārī’s commentary
on the poem, ‘the darāhim of the asjād are dirhams of the Khosrows,
on which were images to which they [the Persians] prayed and pros-
trated’ (darāhim al-asjād: darāhim al-akāsirati, kānat alayhā
uwarun
yukaffirūna lahā wa yasjudūn).47 The image of this person is strikingly
similar to the servant in Sūrat al-Wāqia (Q. 56:17–19): There will circu-
late among them young boys made eternal [alt. adorned with jewellery/
earrings48], With vessels, pitchers and a cup [of wine] from a flowing
spring, No headache will they have therefrom, nor will they be intoxic-
ated (yaūfu alayhim wildānun mukhalladūn; bi-akwābin wa abārīqin
wa kasin min maīn; lā yu
addaūna anhā wa-lā yunzifūn). Note that
the image of the young boys adorned with pearls appears in Sūrat
al-Insān (Q. 76) (also called Sūrat al-Dahr), albeit in a different con-
figuration; Q. 76:19 reads, There will circulate among them young
boys made eternal [alt. adorned with jewellery/earrings]. When you see
them, you would think them scattered pearls (luluan manthūr). As
for the wine that these servants bring, it is said to be of a sort, mixed
with ‘morning rain’ (bi-māi ghawādī); together, the two ingredients
(old wine and fresh rainwater) make up an impressionistic image
of heavenly water mixing with old wines, a reminder of aging and
beginning a new.
From the wine and its servants, the poet moves on to the second
feature of his paradisiacal landscape – maidens!
v. 24 wa’l-bī u tamshī ka’l-budūri wa ka’l-dumā
wa nawāimun yamshīna bi’l-arfādī

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And white [women], walking [around; they are] like the

moon or like statues,
soft, carry ing around the drink ing bowls

v. 25 wa’l-bī u yarmīna’l-qulūba ka-annahā

ud iyyu bayna
arīmatin wa jamādī
And the white [women], they shoot at the hearts [of men],
they are as
eggs betwixt rock and sand.

v. 26 yaniqna marūfan wa hunna nawāimū

bī u’l-wujūhi raqīqatu’l-akbādī
They speak kind words; they are smooth [to the touch],
their faces bright [white], and their hearts [to lovers] gentle
and mild.

v. 27 yaniqna makhfū a’l- adīthi tahāmusan

fa-balaghna mā āwalna ghayra tanādī
Their conversation is quiet . . . a murmur,
and they reach what they set out to get without clamour.
The four verses describe the maidens, likening them to full moons
and statues, perhaps idols,49 walking around with more wine to serve.
They shoot at the hearts of men with arrows, like a Greek Eros cast in
feminine guise.50 If we take a look at the description of women in the
paradisiacal setting of Sūrat al-āffāt (Q. 37:48–9), we find that after
the harmless wine in verse 47 there appear women restraining [their]
glances, with large [, beautiful] eyes, as if they were [delicate] eggs, well-
protected (wa indahum qā
irātu’l-arfi īn; ka-annahunna bay un
maknūn). The image of the women being well protected, like ‘eggs
betwixt rock and sand’ (verse 25), caries similar implications to that
of the Qur’anic image of eggs/maidens that are well-protected
(maknūn) or reserved in pavilions (maq
ūrātun fī’l-khiyām) in Sūrat
al-Ra mān (Q. 55:72). In addition to the notion of being protected,
this image conveys the idea of demureness that the poet lauds. If the
poet’s maidens speak in subtle ways (ghayra tanād, verse 27), the

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 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

Qur’an’s maidens have subtle, restrained glances; their (aural) soft

speech reminds us of the (visual) restrained glances (qā
irātu’l-arf)51
in Q. 37:48, Q. 38:52 and Q. 55:56, or the devout obedience (qānitāt) of
the wives of the Prophet and of the believers in Q. 4:34, Q. 33:35 and
Q. 66:5. Finally, the white faces (bī u’l-wujūh) in verse 26 compares to
the faces of those that shall enter paradise in Q. 75:22 and Q. 3:106.
The close resemblance, almost identification, between the feminine
figure of the poem and of the suras is perhaps best captured by the
recension of the poem in the Kitāb al-Ikhtiyārayn of Alī b. Sulaymān
al-Akhfash (al-A ghar) (d. 315/927), where verse 24 reads wa’l- ūru
tamshī52 instead of wa’l-bī u tamshī; al- ūr, needless to say, is the
label of the paradisiacal maidens of Sūrat al-Ra mān (Q. 55:72).
But unlike the goods of the Qur’anic paradise, and as is always
the case in the pre-Islamic qa
īda, loss is the end to which all things
tend, and our poet embraces this fact and departs from memory
and loss with heroic courage:
v. 28 wa-laqad ghadawtu li-āzibin mutanādhirin
a wā’l-madhānibi muaniqi’l-ruwwādī
Yea, oft at dawn would I ride afar in dangerous grounds,
[with] dark green [herbage] along the runnels, delight for
those who seek pasture;

v. 29 jādat sawārīhi wa āzara nabtahū

nuf an mina’l-
afrāi wa’l-zubbādī
Thereon the clouds of the night had shed their bounty,
and whose herbage was made luxuriant by tufts of afrā,
and Zubbād

v. 30 bi’l-Jawwi fa’l-Amarāti awla Mughāmirin

fa-bi-ārijin fa-Qa
īmati’l-urrādī
In Jaww and al-Amarāt, around Mughāmir’s sides,
and ārij, and in Qa īma, choicest land for the chase

v. 31 bi-mushammirin atidin jahīzin shadduhū

qaydi’l-awābidi fī’l-rihāni jawādī

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 Ghassan el Masri

On a steed, ever prompt to yield the whole of his speed

to ride the wildings to bay, a racer not to be beat

v. 32 yashwī lanā’l-wa ada’l-mudilla bi- u rihī

bi-sharījin bayna’l-shaddi wa’l-īrādī
It runs down for the roast the solitary [male Oryx] that
exults in his galloping,
At times it runs fast [and at times it keeps a] slower pace.

v. 33 wa laqad talawtu’l-āinīna bi-jasratin

ujuddin muhājirati’l-siqābi jamādī
And I have followed after those departing, riding a large
and stout she-camel,
unable to bear young, a rugged [beast]

v. 34 ayrānatin sadda’l-rabīu kha

ā
ahā
mā yastabīnu bihā maqīlu qurādī
Strong as a wild-ass: the spring has filled the chinks of her
frame . . .,
whereon no tick can find room to lodge.
In this last part of the poem, we see that the poet departs (ghadawtu)
from the scene of nostalgic memory, to a place of new beginnings.
The new place is a far-away place, green, thrilling and rich with game
for hunting. Here, too, we find a short but very succinct Qur’anic
note in the term ‘dark’ (a wā) in verse 28, which is used to describe
the greenery of the lush pasture around the runnel. One finds the
term in Sūrat al-Alā (Q. 87:5), where it is used in the opposite func-
tion in a reference to the green pasture [which God then] turned foul
(fa-jaalahu ghuthāan a wā). The pasture in Sūrat al-Alā is a meta-
phor for the transience of the life of the here and now as well as the
measured cyclicality of life in the natural order. Even this natural
refuge that the poet escapes to in order to avoid the fatalistic end to
which all human endeavours tend is subsumed in the Qur’an under
the same over-arching order of cyclicality and ephemerality. Unlike
in poetry, where human culture obeys a linear fatalistic history and

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 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

nature obeys a circular time frame, in the Qur’an, the natural and
the cultural orders follow the same logic and destiny.
At the end of the poem, the poet describes his ride. Note how his
instrument of departure is a male steed, swift and well-equipped
for hunting (verse 31), while his instrument of pursuit of the
departed is a stout, rugged she-camel, a female that bears no young
(verses 33–4). With the masculine, vigorous steed and the feminine,
infertile camel, the scene of departure from a lost paradisiacal past
of virility and fecundity ends.

Sura and qaīda

If one were to go into the finer details and nuances of both texts, then
further parallels between Nahshalī’s poem and the Qur’an can be
adduced. Here, I have highlighted only a selection. Yet the ones that
were noted above, especially in view of the tradition in which Alī b.
Abī ālib quotes the poem in relation to the Qur’an, should suffice to
support the claim that this poem, which in many ways is an extended
nasīb, exemplifies a set and particular manner of relating pre-Islamic
images, motifs and topoi from poetry to their counterparts in the
Qur’an. The tradition of Alī appears now as a succinct index of a
fairly extended set of equivalences of literary constituents that is not
limited to verses 8–12 and Q. 44:25–8. For an overview, Table 1 lists
some of the commensurable items between the poem and the Qur’an.
We notice that the equivalent elements include, first, psychological
and existential items pertaining to the poet’s anguish in verses 1–7,
which compares to the disbeliever’s disquietude and contrasts with
the believer’s appeased soul. Second, in verses 8–17, we notice the
rootedness of this anguish in time and destiny related issues pertaining
to man’s temporal (dahr) predicament. This temporality is visible on
the micro-level of the ageing and dying of the individual as well as on
the macro-level in the demise of major tribes and the fatalistic conclu-
sions that this implies for the poet on the existential and human level.
The fatalistic nihilism of the poet stands in contra-distinction to the
Qur’anic balanced predetermination (ajal, qadar/miqdār) that reas-
sures the believer of God’s acts in history on both the individual and
collective levels. Third, in verses 20–27, we notice the similarity
between the poet’s recollection of the past life he had lost and the

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 Table 1: Commensurable elements in Mufa aliyya 44 and the Qur’an
Poem Qur’an
Verse no. Words Concepts in the Qur’an Qur’anic reference
1 nāma, ruqādī, al-hamm the night the openings of Q. 73, Q. 74, Q. 91, Q. 92 and Q. 93
2 saqam, hammun a
āba fuādī saqīm Q. 37:89, 145
3 al- awādith, uribat alayya’l-ar u bi’l-asdād sadd Q. 36:7–9
4 lā ahtadī fīhā hudā // alāl both are recurrent in the Qur’an
5 sabīlu dhī’l-awād sabīl recurrent in the Qur’an
6–7 al-maniyyata, al- utūf – wafā rahīna kullu nafsin bimā kasabat rahīna Q. 5:36, Q. 13:18, Q. 39:47,
Q. 70:11–14 and Q. 74:38
8–10 mādhā uammalu, Mu arriq, Iyād, al-Khawarnaq, cf. the mention of Ād, Thamūd, a
āb recurrent in the Qur’an
al-Sadīr, Bāriq, Sindād, Kabu’bnu Māmah, ibna al-Riss, Firawn, etc.
ummi Duād
11 jarati’l-riyā , makān diyārihim, kānū alā mīād tadhrūhu’l-riyā miād, ajal Q. 14:18, Q. 18:45, Q. 7:34, Q. 10:49 and Q. 16:61
12 wa-laqad ghanū fīhā, anami īshah, mulkin Firawnu dhi’l-awtād Q. 89:10
thābiti’l-awtād
13 māu’l-Furāt, awād adhbun furāt Q. 25:53 and Q. 35:12
14 al-naīm, mā yulhā bihi, bilan wa nafād nima/niam; lahwun wa laib recurrent in the Qur’an
nafād Q. 38:54
15 al-asā, uswa uswatun asana Q. 33:21
16 Zayd, fatāh, furriqū, qatl, nafy muzziqtum, mazzaqnāhum, mummazaq Q. 34:7 and 19
17 yazīdu rāfiduhum alā’l-rufād bisa’l-rifdu’l-marfūd Q. 11:99
20 mudhillan bi-māl ahlaktu mālan lubad Q. 90:6
21 lahawtu, ladhādha, sulāfa lahwun wa laib recurrent in the Qur’an
22–3 khamr, dhī naaf, yasā bihā, dhū tawmatayn cf. the description of wine and servants Q. 56:19 and Q. 76:19
24–7 al-bī /al- ūr, ud iyyu bayna
arīmatin wa jamād, bay un maknūn, qā
irātu’l-arf Q. 37:48–9
yaniqna marūf, nawāim, bī u’l-wujūh, yaniqna ūr Q. 4:34, Q. 33:35, Q. 37:48, Q. 38:52, Q. 55:56
makhfū a’l- adīthi tahāmusan and 72 and Q. 66:5
wujūh Q. 3:106, Q. 8:88 and Q. 75:22
28 a wā ghuthāan a wā Q. 87:5
 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

images the Qur’an draws of the coming paradise that the believer will
gain once revived and recompensed: what the ‘jāhilī’ lost in the past,
the believer will gain in the future. These three elements combine to
constitute the broad thematic axis that this poem shares with the
Qur’an and, arguably, with much of pre-Islamic poetry as well. The
common theme is existential, and the existential axis is itself grounded
in the question regarding the deteriorating situation of the tribes in
the crisis-ridden milieu of sixth-century Arabia, something explicitly
stated in verses 8–12, that is, the verses that Alī heard his officer recite
and that constitute the core of the poem’s affinities with the Qur’an.
The poet’s response to the existential crisis is to courageously embrace
the tragedy; he revisits the memory for solace but accepts the nihilistic
fatalism all the same.53 The Qur’anic response, however, is to show that
fate is divinely ordained and that mercy will follow for those who
believe and work for it. The scripture’s strategy is to make existential
optimism palatable for the moral agent, where investing oneself in a
future paradise becomes the most reasonable – even only – solution.
The shared existential axis that the equivalences underline is
expressed in two additional verses that I bahānī includes in his
recension of the poem – one towards the end of the first third of the
poem (after verse 13) and one at the very end. The focal point of
these two verses effectively combines all the common elements
listed above. The first verse is essentially an ubi sunt motif,54 and the
second verse sums up the poem:
Ayna’lladhīna banū fa-āla bināuhum
wa tamattaū bi’l-ahli wa’l-awlādī
Where are those who built, whose edifices were high,
and enjoyed the kinfolk and the children?

fa-idhā wa dhālika lā mahāha li-dhikrihī 55

wa’l-dahru yuqibu
āli an bi-fasādī
All this and that . . . there is no point in remembering it,
for time follows wholesomeness with corruption.56
The first of the two verses is a frank and straightforward ubi sunt, the
basic human universal question regarding those who lived before us

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in this world. With these verses, the poem is lifted above its particular/
local circumstance of the crisis-stricken milieu of sixth-century Arabia;
it is made to express the universal question of human destiny vis-à-vis
history as well as the nihilistic answer that asserts the destructive
function of time as the supreme power that replaces wholesomeness
with corruption. One would not be off the mark in claiming that the
last verse is the answer to the ubi sunt question: where are they? The
answer: ’tis time that took them! It is time that makes death follow
life. Perhaps it might be worthwhile to consider a similar ubi sunt
question asked in Sūrat ā-Hā by Pharaoh, the tyrannical archetype
who transgressed the basic rule of history by denying the ephem-
erality of all created beings and by assuming that he could achieve
immortality. In Q. 20:51, Pharaoh asks Moses: Then what is the case of
the first generations? (fa-mā bālu’l-qurūni’l-ūlā). In Q. 20:52–5, Moses
responds to this loaded question by essentially affirming that man is
brought forth out of the earth by celestial intervention, only to die and
be brought forth from it again, with the entire cycle fixed, through a
clear logic, in a divine record (kitāb). The pre-Islamic poetic answer to
the ubi sunt question is a pessimistic ‘for time follows wholesomeness
with corruption’ (yuqibu
āli an bi-fasād), a heroic acceptance of the
essentially tragic human existence and an attempt to surpass this
injustice through deeds of glory and honour. The Qur’anic answer, on
the other hand, is neutral; life is a cycle of opposites following one
another in a divinely ordained balance and there is no injustice to be
surpassed. It is a just creation: in the end, the vicious and the nihilistic
perish and the virtuous and the optimistic live. It is up to the human
subject to either adopt the divine optimistic view or submit to his/her
own pessimistic human inclinations.
The ubi sunt question and the dahr answer represent the lock and
key of this poem, and constitute the core of its thematic axis. This
axis – which I have characterised as existential – joins more than the
elements of this poem to each other and to their Qur’anic parallels; it
is the one constant that thematically joins many (if not most) of the
poems in the Mufa aliyyāt, the A
maiyyāt and the Muallaqāt, and
a large number of pre-Islamic poems from the subsequent antholo-
gies and dīwāns. This obser vation has been noted, to various degrees,
by commentators such as Walther Braune, Muammad Najīb

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al-Bahbītī, Abd al-

alīm
ifnī, Mu afā Nā if, Kamal Abu Deeb,
Gottfried Müller, Yūsuf Khulayyif and Abd al-Ramān Badawī, to
mention the main names.57 Al-dahr – with its instruments and
manifestations of decay, ageing, war, loss and misfortune – is the
overriding source of concern that permeates pre-Islamic poems. It is
visible mostly in the nasīb section, which opens almost every
complete qa
īda. It is equally the subject of many a short piece (qia)
and is visibly present in most of the famous master poems. The rele-
vance of the dahr and the ubi sunt themes assume a deeper signifi-
cance if we recall the fact that commensurable elements pertaining
to temporality, divine eschatology and human historicity permeate
many of the earlier suras. The focus on the temporality and ephem-
erality of human existence in these suras and the moral implications
drawn therefrom suggest that the rhetorical strategy of the earliest
suras consisted of tack ling the existential crisis of the Arab mind at
the time by addressing them through their modes of expression in
poetry. The Qur’an, according to these obser vations, is not silent in
its discourse and rhetoric regarding themes that the poets of its day
dealt with, nor are the basic thematic and literary constituents of the
qa
īda absent from the literary landscape of the Qur’an. Quite the
contrary, the Qur’an in particular and the new faith in general vehe-
mently and expressly militate against the common understanding of
dahr that poets share,58 and dismiss the proposed answers they
provide to pertinent moral questions as a form of blindness, errancy/
loss (amā, alāl). Instead, the Qur’an and the new faith present their
own solutions to the moral dilemmas of the poets of the time, and
provide a sociocultural solution to the political and social crises that
plagued parts of Arabia and led to the destruction of much of
pre-Islamic Arabian culture. The divine solution starts by proposing
a measure of existential optimism grounded in other-worldly eschat-
ology and long-term consequentialist ethics. (Belief in the afterlife,
al-ākhira, takes on an inner-worldly dimension.) The sum of these
considerations is distilled in the mutual treatment by the Qur’an and
poetry of the universal theme of dahr.
Against this background, it is therefore no coincidence that the
most succinct definition of dahr in Arabic literature comes not from
a poet or a traditional commentator, but from the Qur’an itself, that

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 Ghassan el Masri

is, Sūrat al-A

r (Q. 103). The sura is a terse phrase that effectively
resumes the central notion of time leading to loss in two lines
(Q. 103:1–2): by the epoch, indeed mankind is in loss (wa’l-a
r, inna’l-
insāna la-fī khusr). A variant reading (qirāa) of the verses, attributed
to the literato caliph Alī, is: by the epoch, by the vicissitudes of time,
indeed mankind is in loss (wa’l-a
r, wa nawāibu’l-dahr, inna’l-
insāna la-fī khusr).59 This very dense, but brief, sura is a landmark in
the beginning of the deep cultural shift that would affect the Arabian
intellectual mood from the early days of the nascent community of
believers, and can be read as a semiotic key in the transition from the
poetic dahr-based ethos to the Qur’anic ākhira-based ethic. Dahr,
the active agent of change in the world, recedes to the background
and God (rabb al-ālamīn, Lord of the ages) assumes the role of sole
controller of the temporal development of the human world and the
universe as a whole, which He created according to the rules of tele-
ology and becomingness. Perhaps nowhere is the divine reappropri-
ation of dahr more directly stated than in a qudsī hadith that is a
direct divine acquisition of time’s role in the cosmic scene through
direct identification between dahr and God; ‘Do not insult [endless]
time; I am [endless] time (la tasubbū al-dahr, fa-anā al-dahr)!’60

The Question of Pre-Islamic Poetry’s Authenticity Revisited

The obser vation regarding a common existential axis between the
Qur’an and pre-Islamic poetry and the rootedness of this axis in
the crisis-ridden milieu of Arabia will not settle the authenticity
question. However, it will hopefully inform the various issues and
questions that scholars will need to grapple with when proposing
answers to the question. In this regard, Nahshalī’s poem is a perfect
example of the conundrum that Qur’an scholars face when treating
the issue of the authenticity of a pre-Islamic poem. On the one hand,
the poem has the best credentials that a pre-Islamic poem can have.
It is a mufa aliyya and thus belongs to the oldest extant poetic
anthology. Mufaal is a very well-known rāwī who is particularly
appreciated for the reliability of his transmission, and the poem is
very frequently attested in diverse sources. On the other hand, the
character of the poem has some striking affinities to the Qur’an,

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 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

and both share very similar themes and constructions (almost

identical in certain places, e.g. the image of paradise and the poet’s
nostalgia or the use of the root r-f-d in verse 17). Looking back at
āhā
usayn’s claims regarding the ‘fabrication of transmitters’, the
‘forgery of Bedouins’ and the ‘manufacture of grammarians’, and in
light of what has been said, what hypothesis, then, can one advance
here in order to explain the semiotic commonalities between the
Qur’an and poetry and their similar handling of the issue of dahr?
Can this be explained by citing political, religious, exegetical, profes-
sional or patriotic reasons, or be dismissed as an act of ‘resistance’ in
the manner of
usayn? Hardly; in addition, such considerations
become untenable when one bears in mind the rootedness of the
existential axis in a society in crisis in parts of Arabia, affirmed by
the Ayyām al-Arab genre61 as well as by palaeography, archaeology
and comparative history,62 and treated and responded to by poetry.
The sceptic can of course claim that the crisis-ridden history is never
cast in doubt, but still maintain that the poetic expression thereof is
a later invention, and that the resulting poetry was tailor-made to be
diametrically opposed to the rhetoric, discourse and literary
elements of the Qur’an. However, the sceptic in this case will have to
assume a very large number of ad hoc hypotheses to explain – or
explain away – all the poetic data we have; s/he will also have to
explain the poets’ organic relationship to the wider society and their
poetry to other genres such as prophetic biography, history, philo-
logy, genealogy and others. And last but not least, how is the sceptic
to explain the clear and organic commonalities and contiguities that
this poetry shares with later poetry and later Islamic poetic genres
in Arabia?

Fact and Foil

At best, we may gather that a literary movement occurred in Abbasid
times which left a record of a poetic foil that by its contrast to the
Qur’anic fact underscored and made explicit the distinctive charac-
teristics of the meaning of the new scripture and the nuances of its
discourse. Furthermore, the fact and the foil were set in such a way
and populated with such themes that they resulted in a duality of

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 Ghassan el Masri

optimism and pessimism, pre-determinism and fatalism, faith and

nihilism, dīn and muruwwa (piety and virility) to use the abbrevi-
ated correlation pair.63 If this movement was a purposeful and
conscious cultural construction – as the sceptic claims – meant to
create or enhance a certain meaning of the Qur’an, then should we
not expect to find traces of traditional commentaries that deal with
the poetic aspects of the Qur’an and that establish the principles,
methods and results for this form of interpretation? Not only are
there no such records, or even mention thereof, but poetry is strictly
and fundamentally anathema to the Qur’an, and any attempt to
compare or relate the two on the discursive and semiotic levels was
unpalatable for the adepts of the faith from an early moment in
Islamic history, if not from the very period of revelation. To posit
the hypothesis of an Abbasid construction of a wholly new semiotic
range of meaning for the Qur’an requires positive evidence, of
which none exists. Moreover, this hypothesis will have to contend
with the obser vation that the hard facts of comparative history,
archaeology and epigraphy indicate that the verses of the poets
describe the social and political contexts of pre-Islamic Arabia
rather accurately.
Applying Occam’s razor, we should therefore opt for the simplest
explanation of the thematic affinity that we saw between Nahshalī’s
extended nasīb and the Qur’an, and conclude that the poem is on
the whole authentic and that it was reclaimed (not invented) in
Abbasid times. According to this proposition accounting for the role
of Abbasid compilers in determining the character of pre-Islamic
poetry, the first generation of Muslim scholars re-appropriated their
literary, political, social and aesthetic – effectively, their cultural and
intellectual – past. This past, encapsulated in poetry, was at its time
and remained thereafter their dīwān and cultural register. Instead of
the oft-repeated claim of forgery, one can posit the softer thesis that
after the Qur’anic phenomenon a process of discriminatory cultural
re-collection took place in the tadwīn period where the so-called
‘jāhilī’ past was selectively remembered in accordance with the new
cultural facts of the time. The first generation of Muslims did not so
much invent or forge the poetry as re-collect what was relevant to
the Qur’an, inter alia, and reclaim the literary items that were

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pertinent for its discourse and served to bring out the rhetorical and
discursive affinities of the one vis-à-vis the other. The early antholo-
gists might have had other motives in this process of re-collection,
not least of which the desire to revive their pre-Islamic Arabian
literary heritage, but that does not amount to a sufficient reason for
interpreting this desire as motive for forgery.
The fundamental issue in the sceptic’s position, however, is not
one of evidence and motives, but seems to lie elsewhere and can be
condensed into the following question: Was the Qur’an, through its
author, aware of the ambient literary culture, which included, along
with Biblical and other related literature, poetry? The intuitive
response is: How could it not have been? If the dāliyya of Nahshalī is
‘counted among the choicest of Arabic poetry and one of their
wisdom literature’, whose verse and language are cited and copied
by commentators, philologists, anthologists and, later, poets,64 then
what argument is there to continue to support the exceptionalism of
the text of the Qur’an, especially if scholars recognise its organic
relationship to Biblical literature and thought? One should not look
here for causes but for aims, and the religious aim is the preser va-
tion of the sanctity of the Qur’an by categorically setting it apart
from all profane literature. As for modern Qur’anic studies, the
sidelining of poetry appears to be a fortuitous by-product of an
exaggerated attention, short of an obsession, that is paid to the
Biblicality of the Qur’an, that often comes at the expense of the
other personae of the text. The Prophet and the first community
were no doubt aware of the poetry that was circulating among the
tribes of Arabia and its pertinence for constructing an effective
rhetoric befitting the nascent religious, social and moral movement
that later became Islam.

Summary
Through a comparative reading of the pre-Islamic poem of Nahshalī
and some verses from the Qur’an, I have given one example
illustrating how the poetic corpus relates to the Arabic scripture; the
axis that connects the two is the common theme of dahr, which
constitutes the core character of the poetic foil and the Qur’anic fact.

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This axis, I propose, firmly roots the Qur’an in its Arabian historical
and literary milieu; not only does this axis make manifest the rhet-
orical and discursive affinities of the two corpora, it also coheres
with other textual, archaeological and palaeographical evidence
relating to Arabia and the Qur’an at the time of the revelation.
Understanding the role of poetry in determining the rhetorical char-
acter of the Qur’anic discourse has the potential of opening up the
literary and scriptural constituents of the Muslim scripture to
further interpretive possibilities. The existential axis and the fact/foil
relationship invite – by explaining the affinity between the two
textual corpora – a reconsideration of the authenticity thesis that has
so far hampered poetry’s contribution to Qur’anic studies. Against
the sceptic’s claim that pre-Islamic poems are for the most part
forgeries, I propose the thesis that they are the result of an act of
selective cultural reclamation that was determined by a variety of
criteria, not least of which was poetry’s thematic relevance to the
Qur’an and its pertinence for the new discourse on history. As such,
the re-collection of largely authentic pre-Islamic poems during the
tadwīn period and the choice of the character of the poems was a
tacit hermeneutical act and should be treated as such.

NO T E S
1 See Angelika Neuwirth’s notes on the multi-faceted relationships that bind
pre-Islamic poetry to the Qur’an, and poetry’s place in the intellectual horizon
of the late-antique audience of the new scripture: chapters I.5 and XII in
Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike: Ein europäischer
Zugang (Berlin, Verlag der Weltreligionen im Insel Verlag, 2010).
2 Claude Gilliot, ‘Portrait “mythique” d’Ibn Abbās’, Arabica 32, no. 2 (1985),
pp.  127–84; ibid., ‘Les débuts de l’exégèse cora nique’, Revue du monde
musulman et de la Méditerranée 58 (1990), pp. 82–100.
3 This idea of poetry as the register of the Arabs and as an important source for
understanding the language of the Qur’an was expressed by Abū’l-
asan Alī
al-Wāidī; see Walid Saleh, ‘The Introduction to Wāidī’s al-Basī: An Edition,
Translation and Commentary’, in Karen Bauer, ed., Aims, Methods and
Contexts of Qur’anic Exegesis (2nd/8th–9th/15th C.) (Oxford, Oxford University
Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2013), pp. 76–96.
4 Examples of such early philological commentaries are Abū Ubayda Mamar b.
al-Muthannā’s Majāz al-Qurān, ed. Muammad Fu ād Sazgīn (Cairo,
Maktabat al-Khānjī, n.d.) and Abū Zakariyyā al-Farrā ’s Maānī al-Qurān
(Beirut, Ālam al-Kitāb, 1982). For a study of one philological commentary that
is grounded in poetry, see Angelika Neuwirth’s ‘Die Masā il Nāfi ibn al-Azraq:

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Element des “Portrait mythique d’Ibn Abbās” oder eine Stück realer Literatur?
Rückschlüsse aus einer bisher unbeachteten Handschrift’, Zeitschrift für
arabische Linguistik 25 (1993), pp. 233–50.
5 As an example of such research that has been conduc ted for the early period,
see Umar Farrūkh, Das Bild des Frühislam in der arabischen Dichtung: Von
der Hira bis zum Tode Umars, 1–23 DH/622–644 N. Ch (Leipzig, Druck der
August Pries GMBH, 1937) and Muhammed Rahatullah Khan, Vom Einfluss
des Qurāns auf die arabische Dichtung (Leipzig, Harrassowitz, 1938).
6 David S. Margoliouth, ‘The Origins of Arabic Poetry’, Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 57, no. 3 (1925), pp. 417–49.
7 These works were published in 1925 and 1927 respectively by Dār al-Maārif,
Cairo.
8 Translation by Arthur J. Arberry, The Seven Odes (London, George Allen and
Unwin, 1957), p. 236.
9 Arberry summarises these under six headings. First, polit ical, where revived
tribal rivalries between the Quraysh and the supporters of the Prophet made
use of invented traditions to reinforce their claims of ancestral supremacy.
Second, religious, where the new Muslim community, confronted by the rejec-
tion of the people of the old faiths, produced literature to prove that ‘the
coming of the Prophet had been foreshadowed or foreseen by men of prudence
and vision in the century before Islam, . . . and that Islam’s claim to be the
original true religion, corrupted in all other creeds, was founded in historical
fact’. Third, exeget ical, where the eagerness to solve puzzles presented by the
language of the Qur’an had commentators invent verses to explain gram mat-
ical and lexicographical anomalies, rather than admit their incapacity to
explain the difficult language of the text. Fourth, professional, given that ‘the
art of story-telling was ancient and highly esteemed among the Arabs, and the
competition for a good and lucrat ive hearing would encourage its practitioners
to introduce copious quotations from “old” poetry into their narratives’. Fifth,
patriotic, given the glorious ancient cultures of the conquered peoples ‘who
ridiculed the ignorance and boorishness of their conquerors, the Arabs sought
to bolster up their prestige by showing that they also had great literary achieve-
ments to look back upon dating from the days before they emerged from their
desert homeland’. Sixth, resistance, given the affected pride of the conquered
peoples, they – the Persians in particu lar – would seek to gain advantage at the
Arab’s expense by ‘composing in their conquerors’ language and would then
pretend to the gullible that it was genu inely old’. Ibid., pp. 236–7.
10 For a recent crit ical assessment of the value and reliability of pre-Islamic
poetry for the study of the Qur’an, see Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qurān and
Its Biblical Subtext (Abingdon, Routledge, 2010), pp. 29–33.
11 On the point about doubts being laid to rest, Irfan Shahid claims: ‘the views of
D.S. Margoliouth and āhā
usayn on the authenticity of pre-Islamic Arabic
poetry may now be said to be dead beyond resuscitation’ (Irfan Shahid,
Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century [Washington, DC, Dumbarton
Oaks, 1984], p. 443). Note that the response to the Margoliouth/āhā
usayn
thesis by scholars like Renate Jacobi, James Monroe, Michael Zwettler, Nā ir
al-Dīn al-Asad, Alan Jones and other experts of classical Arabic poetry was
merely one of more caution and continued use, while Qur’an scholars tend to

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respond with rejection and express deep doubts about the reliability of the
poetic sources. The quote from Zwettler is taken from his The Oral Tradition of
Classical Arabic Poetry: Its Character and Implications (Columbus, Ohio State
University Press, 1978), p.  12. See, further, Gustave von Grunebaum, ‘Zur
Chronologie der früharabischen Dichtung’, Orientalia 8 (1939), pp.  328–45;
idem, ‘Pre-Islamic Poetry’, Muslim World 32, no. 2 (1942), pp. 147–53; Arberry,
The Seven Odes; Muammad al-Nuwayhī, al-Shir al-jāhilī, manhaj fī dirāsa-
tihi wa taqwīmih (Cairo, al-Dār al-Qawmiyya li’l-ibāa wa’l-Nashr, 1966);
Abdulla El Tayib, ‘Pre-Islamic Poetry’, in Alfred F.L. Beeston et al., eds, The
Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Arabic Literature to the End of the
Umayyad Period (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 27–113;
Renate Jacobi, ‘Die Altarabische Dichtung (6.–7. Jahrhundert)’, in Helmut
Gätje, ed., Grundriss der arabischen Philologie, Vol. II: Literaturwissenschaft
(Wiesbaden, Reichert, 1987), pp. 20–31; Nā ir al-Dīn al-Asad, Ma
ādir al-shir
al-jāhilī (Beirut, Dār al-Jīl, 1996); Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen
Schrifttums, 15 vols (Leiden, Brill, 1967–2010), vol. II, pp. 14–33, 36; Zwettler,
The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry, pp.  188–234; Werner Diem,
Studien zu Überlieferung und inter textualität der altarabischen Dichtung: Das
Mantelgedicht Kab ibn Zuhayrs (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2010).
12 Thomas Bauer, ‘The Relevance of Early Arabic Poetry for Qur anic Studies
Including Observations on kull and on Q 22:27, 26:225, and 52:31’, in Angelika
Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai and Michael Marx, eds, The Qurān in Context:
Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurānic Milieu (Leiden, Brill,
2010), p. 700.
13 Reynolds, The Qurān and its Biblical Subtext, p. 2.
14 Poets like Adī b. Zayd or Umayya b. Abī al-alt received particu lar attention
either because their poetry contained elements from Christian and Biblical
lore or because it offered additional background knowledge for some of the
stories and narrat ives of the Qur’an that the Bible does not mention. See also
Clément Huart, ‘Une nouvelle source du Coran’, Journal Asiatique 4 (July–
August 1904), pp. 125–67; Edmund Power, ‘Umayya Ibn Abi a -alt’, Mélanges
de l’Université Saint-Joseph 1 (1906), pp.  197–222; Israel Frank-Kamenetzky,
Untersuchungen über das Verhältnis der dem Umajja b. Abi
-alt zugesch-
riebenen Gedichte zum Qorān (Kirchhain, Schmersow, 1911); Tor Andrae, Der
Ursprung des Islams und das Christentum (Uppsala, Almqvist and Wiksell,
1926); Isabel Toral-Niehoff, ‘Eine arabische poetische Gestaltung des
Sündenfalls: Das vorislamische Schöpfungsgedicht von Adī b. Zayd’, in Dirk
Hartwig et  al., eds, ‘Im vollen Licht der Geschichte’: Die Wissenschaft des
Judentums und die Anfänge der kritischen Koranforschung (Würzburg, Ergon
Verlag, 2008), pp. 235–56; Kirill Dmitriev, ‘An Early Christian Arabic Account
of the Creation of the World’, in Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai and Michael
Marx, eds, The Qurān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into
the Qurānic Milieu (Leiden, Brill, 2010), pp. 349–88; Nicolai Sinai, ‘Religious
Poetry from the Quranic Milieu: Umayya b. Abī l-alt on the Fate of the
Thamūd’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 74, no. 3 (2011),
p. 397–416. Perhaps the most extensive of the recent studies in this domain is
the work of Agnes Imhof, who offered a comparat ive study of the conception of
man and the world between three prominent mukha ram (i.e. poets who lived

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in pre- and Islamic times) and early Islamic poets and the Qur’an. See Agnes
Imhof, Religiöser Wandel und die Genese des Islam: Das Menschenbild altar-
abischer Panegyriker im 7. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, Ergon Verlag, 2004).
15 Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurān (Montreal, McGill
University Press, 1966; repr. 2002) (orig. pub. as The Structure of the Ethical
Terms in the Koran [Tokyo, Keio Institute of Philological Studies, 1959; repr.
Chicago, ABC International, 2000]); Awda al-Khalīl Abū Awda, al-Taawwur
al-dalālī bayna lughati’l-shir al-jāhilī wa lughati’l-Qurān al-karīm: Dirāsa
dalāliyya muqārana (Zarqā , Maktabat al-Manār, 1985).
16 Azīza Fawwāl Bābātī, Mu jam al-shuarā al-jāhiliyyīn (Tripoli, Gross Press,
n.d.). Mufa aliyyāt are poems gathered in the anthology of al-Mufaal
al-abbī (d. 164–70/781–7); a dāliyya is a poem with a d-ending rhyme.
17 He was sometimes called ‘the blind man of Nahshal’ (ashā Nahshal) because
he is said to have lost his sight in old age.
18 Commentary, text and translation of the poem are adapted from Charles Lyall,
ed. and tr., The Mufa alīyāt: An Anthology of Ancient Arabian Odes, 3 vols
(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1918), vol. I, no. 44, pp.  445–57 (corresponding
translation in vol. II, pp. 161–6) and Alan Jones, Early Arabic Poetry, Vol. II:
Select Odes (Oxford, Ithaca Press, 1996), pp. 138–43.
19 Ibn Sallām al-Jumaī, abaqāt fu ūl al-shuarā, ed. Mamūd Muammad
Shākir, 2 vols (Jeddah, Dār al-Madanī, n.d.); see poet’s entry, ibid., vol. I,
pp. 147–9.
20 Abū’l-Faraj al-I bahānī, Kitāb al-Aghānī, ed. Amad al-Shanqīī, 21 vols
(Cairo, Mabaat al-Taqaddum, 1323/[1905]), vol. XI, pp. 128–34.
21 The dīwān was edited twice, by Rudolf Geyer and then Nūrī al-Qaysī: Amad
b. Yayā Ibn al-Abbās, Kitāb al-ub al-munīr fī shir Abī Ba
īr Maymūn b.
Qays b. Jandal al-Ashā, wa’l-Ashayn al-ākharayn, ed. Rudolf Geyer (Vienna,
Adolf Holzhausens Nachfolger, 1927) and Dīwān al-Aswad b. Ya fur, ed. Nūrī
al-Qaysī (Baghdad, Wizārat al-Thaqāfa wa’l-Ilām, 1968).
22 Alan Jones remarks: ‘Quotations are mainly from verses 5–14, but among the
lesser sources Yāqūt . . . quotes verses 28–30 and the doubt ful verse 35 is quoted
not only in Lisān al-arab but also in abarī’s Tafsīr al-Qurān and in Ibn Sīda
Mukha

ā
. In general, the poem was well-known to the grammarians, phil-
ologists and lexicographers’ (Jones, Early Arabic Poetry, Vol. II, p. 138).
23 I bahānī, Aghānī, vol. XI, p. 129.
24 Ibid. The Arabic text reads: rajulun min qawmika lahu hādhihi’l-nabāha
wa-qad qāla mithla hādhihi’l- ikma wa-lā tarwīha wa-lā tarifuhu . . . Yā
Muzā im: athbit shahādatahu . . . fa-innī mutawwaqifun an qubūlihā attā
asala anh . . . fa-innī aunnuhu aīfan.
25 According to Ibn Sallām al-Jumaī’s abaqāt fu ūl al-shuarā, al-Mufaal
al-abbī claims to have learnt 130 poems by Nahshalī; it adds that the Kufans
knew a lot more of his poetry. Nahshalī’s dīwān, unfor tunately, has fewer than
that, including all the spurious poems; it contains a meagre seventy-three
pieces, whether of poem or fragment.
26 Amr b. Bar al-Jāi [attrib.], al-Ma āsin wa’l-a dād, ed. Alī Fāūr, Amad
Rammāl and
usayn Nūr al-Dīn (Beirut, Dār al-Hādī, 1991), pp. 177–8; this is
equally attributed to the caliph Umar b. al-Khaāb in another tradition in
Kitāb al-Aghānī. The tradition is also noted by Jaroslav Stetkevych, ‘Toward an

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Arabic Elegiac Lexicon’, in Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, ed., Reorientations:

Arabic and Persian Poetry (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1994),
p. 64.
27 In the Aghānī, this is given as ‘had you said’ (law qulta). According to Usāma
Ibn Munqidh (d. 584/1188), Alī b. Abī ālib then turned to the person and
added: ‘these [people] were ungrateful for the blessings [of life] so [God’s]
wrath fell upon them’ (hāulāi kafarū’l-niam fa- allat bihim al-niqam); see
Usāma Ibn Munqidh, al-Manāzil wa’l-diyār, ed. Mu afā
ijāzī (Cairo, Dār
Suād al-abbā, 1992), p. 21.
28 The Qur’an translations in this chapter are adapted from Muhammad A.S.
Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an. A New Translation (Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 2005).
29 An excel lent article by Christian Robin on the Kingdom of
ujr of Kinda sheds
valuable light on a very important, yet obscure, period in pre-Islamic history
and is an invaluable source for understanding the situation in Arabia in the
period immediately preceding the rise of the Lakhmid kings whom Lyall
describes. See Christian Robin, ‘Le royaume hujride, dit “royaume de Kinda”,
entre
imyar et Byzance’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 140, no. 2 (1996), pp. 665–714.
30 Charles J. Lyall, ‘Ancient Arabian Poetry as a Source of Historical Information’,
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 46, no. 1 (1914),
p. 64.
31 Kenneth A. Kitchen, Documentation for Ancient Arabia, Part I: Chronological
Framework and Historical Sources (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press,
1994), pp. 251–2.
32 For a description regarding the situation in the surrounding areas, see the
Muallaqa of Abīd in The Dīwāns of Abīd ibn al-Abra
, of Asad, and Āmir ibn
A-ufayl, of Āmir ibn a
aah, ed. and tr. Charles Lyall (Leiden, Brill, 1913).
33 Jones, Early Arabic Poetry, Vol. II, pp. 138.
34 Ibid., p. 139.
35 The scene of the endless night towards the end of the Muallaqa of Imru
al-Qays is a prime example of this recurrent poetic motif. For other examples
see, Jalīl Rashīd Fāli, ‘al-Layl fī’l-shir al-jāhilī’, Majallat Ādāb al-Rāfidayn 9
(1978), pp.  529–68; Nūrī al-Qaysī, al-abīa fī’l-shir al-jāhilī (Beirut, Dār
al-Irshād, 1970); and more recently Nawāl Mu afā Ibrāhīm, al-Layl fī’l-shir
al-jāhilī (Amman, Dār al-Yāzūrī al-Ilmiyya li’l-Nashr wa’l-Tawzī, 2009).
36 These ideas can be the result of the influences of certain religious doctrines –
such as the belief in dahr (endless time) – on the people of Arabia. They can
equally be cultural moods shared by poets from a variety of religious back-
grounds (pagan, Christian, Jewish, etc.), these moods having been occasioned
by the crisis-ridden milieu of Arabia. Much has been written about dahriyya as
a doctrine in relation to these verses. Whether dahriyya was indeed an intel lec-
tual current and a philosophical doctrine in Arabia before Islam is a moot
issue. Scholars seem to agree, however, that by the early second/eighth century
this was indeed the case in southern Iraq, and was likely an effect of Zoroastrian
and Iranian intel lectual and religious influences. Pre-Islamic poetry, particu-
larly verse originating from eastern Arabia, has strong nihil istic and materi-
alist strands, and dahr regu larly reappears as the main mover in the cosmic

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 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

and human scenes. See Ignaz Goldziher and Amélie-Marie Goichon,

‘Dahriyya’, EI 2 , vol. II, pp. 95–7; Wilhelm L. Schrameier, Über den Fatalismus
der vorislamischen Araber (Bonn, Universitäts-Buchdruckerei von Carl Georgi,
1881); Hans Daiber, ed. and tr., ‘Rebellion gegen Gott: Formen atheistischen
Denkens im frühen Islam’, in Friedrich Niewöhner and Olaf Pluta, eds,
Atheismus im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz,
1999), pp. 23–44. Also see the application of the term dahrī to the adherents of
the Iranian Zurvanite doctrine in Robert C. Zaechner, Zurvan: A Zoroastrian
Dilemma (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1955), pp.  23, 267; Shaki Mansour and
Joseph van Ess, ‘Dahri’, EIr, vol. VI, fasc. 6, pp. 587–90. For the earliest mention
of belief in dahr in the Islamic literature, see Patricia Crone, ‘The Dahrīs
According to al-Jāi’, Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 63 (2010–11),
pp.  63–82; Martin J. McDermott, tr., ‘Abū Īsā al-Warrāq on the Dahriyya’,
Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 50 (1984), pp. 387–402.
37 Helmer Ringgren, Studies in Arabian Fatalism (Uppsala, Lundequistska
Bokhandeln, 1955), pp. 9–30.
38 These terms appear in the Qur’an in Q. 53:20 and Q. 52:30 respect ively, but
only in polemics against the unbelievers.
39 See Ghassan el Masri, ‘Al-Dunyā, al-Ākhira in the Qur ān and Pre-Islamic
Poetry’ (PhD Dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin, Microfiche, 2011).
40 Cf. Q. 39:47 and Q. 5:36.
41 Iyād is mentioned in the early inscriptions among the leading tribes of Arabia;
cf. ‘Iyādhum’ in Christian Robin, ‘Arabia and Ethiopia’, in Scott Johnson, ed.,
The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (Oxford, Oxford University Press,
2012), p. 273.
42 Cf. Q. 14:18.
43 Cf. Q. 10:49 and Q. 16:61.
44 Cf. frolic and play (lahwun wa laib) in Q. 29:64.
45 Cf. Q. 34:19.
46 This has already been noted by Georg Jacob in Altarabisches Beduinenleben
(Berlin, Mayer and Müller, 1897), pp. 48–9, 104–5. See also Josef Horovitz, Das
Koranische Paradies (Jerusalem, Hebrew University, 1923). Horovitz,
expanding on Jacob, remarks on a number of common elements between the
construction of paradise in the Qur’an and the description of women and
material culture (wine) in pre-Islamic poetry (Horovitz, Das Koranische
Paradies, pp. 65–71).
47 See Lyall, Mufa alīyāt, vol. I, p. 452.
48 Exegetes and philological commentators vary in their interpretation of mukhal-
ladūn. Although the majority of exegetes accept that it means ‘eternal’, the
sense of the boys having earrings or being adorned with jewellery (muqarraūn)
is stated as a viable option. See, for example, Abū’l-Qāsim Mamūd b. Umar
al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf an aqāiq al-tanzīl wa uyūn al-aqāwīl fī wujūh
al-tawīl, ed. Ādil Abd al-Mawjūd and Alī Muammad Muawwa, 6 vols
(Riyadh, Maktabat al-Ubaykān, 1998), vol. VI, p. 25. abarī, however, treats it
as merely a secondary suggestion: ‘and others said that by that it was meant that
they [are/were] wearing earrings and bracelets’ (wa qāla ākharūn: uniya
bi-dhālik annahum muqarraūn musawwarūn); see Abū Jafar Muammad b.
Jarīr al-abarī, Tafsīr al-Qurān: Jāmi al-bayān an tawīl āy al-Qurān, ed. Abd

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 Ghassan el Masri

Allāh al-Turkī, 26 vols (Cairo, Dār Hajar, 2001), vol. XXII, p. 295. The philolo-
gical commentaries treat the senses of ‘adorned’ and ‘eternal’ as standing on
equal footing. For example, in Maānī al-Qurān, vol. III, p. 123, Farrā inter-
prets mukhalladūn as ‘mu allawn: musawwarūn, wa yuqāl muqarraūn’ and in
Kitāb al-Ishtiqāq (ed. Abd al-Salām Hārūn [Beirut, Dār al-Jīl, 1991], p.  163),
al-
asan Ibn Durayd claims that Abū Ubayda inter prets the phrase ‘wildānun
mukhalladūn’ as musawwarūn, that is ‘having bracelets’ in the Yemenī dialect,
and that Abū Ubayda provides the follow ing verse as proof: ‘[maidens] adorned
with silver bracelets [alt. ‘earrings’]/their buttocks like sandy hills (mukhal-
ladātin bi’l-lujayni ka-annamā/a jāzuhunna aqāwizu’l-kuthbāni)’. I was unable
to find this verse in Abū Ubayda’s Majāz al-Qurān, however. Last, but by no
means least, there is the Kitāb al-Ayn by al-Khalīl b. Amad al-Farāhīdī, who is
unequivocal on the meaning of the term; he writes, rather decidedly, ‘and the
meaning of young mukhalladūn [servants], is wearing earrings’, ‘wa tafsīru
wildānun mukhalladūn: muqarraūn’; see entry kh-l-d in al-Khalīl b. Amad
al-Farāhīdī, Kitāb al-Ayn, ed. Mahdī al-Makhzūmī and Ibrāhīm al-Sāmarrā ī,
8 vols (Beirut, Alamī, 1988), in situ.
49 D-m-y in Khalīl’s Kitāb al-Ayn (in situ) is defined as ‘the idol and the orna-
mented (alt. inscribed) image’ (al-
anam wa’l-
ūra al-munaqqasha).
50 See Cristóbal P. Cánovas, ‘The Genesis of the Arrows of Love: Diachronic
Conceptual Integration in Greek Mythology’, American Journal of Philology
132, no. 4 (2011), pp. 553–79.
51 Cf. the expression ‘restrained glance’ (gha ī arfuha), describing Abla in the
nasīb of the Muallaqa of Antara al-Absī in Dīwān Antara b. Shaddād al-Absī,
ed. Muammad Saīd Mawlawī (Cairo, al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1964), p. 184.
52 Alī b. Sulaymān al-Akhfash (al-A ghar), Kitāb al-Ikhtiyārayn, ed. Fakhr
al-Dīn Qabāwa (Beirut, Mu assasat al-Risāla, 1984), p. 566.
53 Ringgren, Studies in Arabian Fatalism, pp. 117–18; idem, ‘Islamic Fatalism’, in
idem, ed., Fatalistic Beliefs (Stockholm, Almqvist and Wiksell, 1967), pp. 57–9.
54 Carl Heinrich Becker, ‘Ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere’, in L. Scherman
and C. Bezold, eds, Aufsätze zur Kultur- und Sprachgeschichte vornehmlich des
Orients (Breslau, Marcus, 1916), pp. 87–105.
55 The term dhikr (and derivat ives of dh-k-r), in the sense of the recol lection of the
ancients (mentioning, remembering or recalling them), recurs in the Qur’an.
Perhaps the best examples are from Sūrat al-Qamar: Q. 54:17, 22, 25, 32 and 40.
56 See the verses in Muammad Ibn al-Mubārak’s Muntahā’l-alab min ashār
al-arab, ed. Nabīl al-urayfī, 9 vols (Beirut, Dār ādir, 1999), vol. I, p.  417,
n. 51. The two verses are not to be found in Akhfash’s Kitāb al-Ikhtiyārayn.
57 Walther Braune, ‘al-Wujūdiyya fī’l-Jāhiliyya’, Majallat al-Marifa al-Sūriyya
2, no. 4 (1963), pp. 156–61; Muammad Najīb al-Bahbītī, al-Shir al-arabī
fī mu īihi’l-tārīkhī al-qadīm (al-Dār al-Bayā , Dār al-Thaqāfa li’l-Nashr
wa’l-Tawzī, 1987); Abd al-
alīm
ifnī, Mala al-qa
īda al-arabiyya wa
dalālatuhu’l-nafsiyya (Cairo, al-Hay a al-Mi riyya al-Āmma li’l-Kitāb, 1987);
Mu afā Nā if, Qirāa thāniya li-shirinā al-qadīm (Beirut, Dār Lubnān, n.d.);
Kamāl Abū Dīb [=Kamal Abu Deeb], al-Ruā al-Muqannaa: Na w Manhaj
Bunyawī fī dirāsat al-shir al-jāhilī (Cairo, al-Hay a al-Mi riyya al-Āmma li’l-
Kitāb, 1986); Gottfried Müller, Ich bin Labīd und das ist mein Ziel: Zum
Problem der Selbstbehauptung in der altarabischen Qaside (Wiesbaden, Steiner,

134
 The Dāliyya of al-Aswad al-Nahshalī

1981); Yūsuf Khulayyif, Dirāsāt fī’l-shir al-jāhilī (Cairo, Dār Gharīb, 1982);
idem, al-Shuarā al-
aālīk (Cairo, Dār al-Maārif, 1959); Abd al-Ramān
Badawī, al-Zamān al-wujūdī (Cairo, Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1943).
58 Theodor Nöldeke, ‘Vorstellungen der Araber vom Schicksal’, Zeitschrift für
Völker-psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft 3 (1885), pp.  130–35; Johannes
Pedersen, ‘The Islamic Preacher: Wāi, mudhakkir, qā

’, in Samuel Löwinger
59
60
usayn Muslim b. al-
ajjāj al-Qushayrī
and Joseph Somogyi, eds, Ignace Goldziher Memorial Volume, Part I (Budapest,
Globus, 1948), pp. 226–51; Hellmut Ritter, Das Meer der Seele (Leiden, Brill,
1955), pp. 43–4.
See abarī, Tafsīr al-Qurān, vol. X XIV, p. 613.
For variants of this hadith, see Abū’l-
al-Nīsābūrī, a
ī
Muslim, ed. Abū Qutayba al-Faryābī (Riyadh, Dār ība,
2006), hadith no. 2246 in Bāb al-nahī an sab al-dahr, p. 1069. For a discussion
of this hadith and Muslim doctrines of time and predestination, see Josef van
Ess, Zwischen adīt und Theologie: Studien zum Entstehen prädestinatianis-
cher Überlieferung (Berlin, de Gruyter, 1975), pp. 75–81.
61 Ayyām al-Arab translates as ‘The [war] days of the Arabs’. For more on this
genre, see Eugen Mittwoch, ‘Ayyām al Arab’, EI 2 , vol. I, pp.  793–4; Werner
Caskel, ‘Aijām al-Arab: Studien zur altarabischen Epik’, Islamica 3, supple-
ment (1930), pp. 1–99.
62 Robert Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of
Islam (London, Routledge, 2001), pp.  78–83; Andrey Korotayev, Vladimir
Klimenko and Dmitry Proussakov, ‘Origins of Islam: Political-Anthropological
and Environmental Context’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum
Hungaricae 52, nos. 3–4 (1999), pp.  243–76; Robin, ‘Le royaume hujride’,
pp. 665–714; idem, ‘Cités, royaumes et empires de l’Arabie avant l’Islam’, Revue
du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée 61, no. 61 (1991), pp. 45–54; Irfan
Kawar, ‘The Arabs in the Peace Treaty of A.D. 561’, Arabica 3, no. 2 (1956),
pp. 181–213; Sidney Smith, ‘Events in Arabia in the 6th Century A.D.’, Bulletin
of the School of Oriental and African Studies 16, no. 3 (1954), pp. 425–68.
63 See Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies, tr. Samuel M. Stern and C. Renate Barber,
2 vols (London, Allen and Unwin, 1971), vol. I, pp.  1–44 (orig. pub. as
Muhammedanische Studien, 2 vols [Halle, Niemeyer, 1889–90], vol. I, pp. 1–39);
also Meir M. Bravmann, The Spiritual Background of Early Islam (Leiden, Brill,
1972), pp. 1–7.
64 Notably in the dāliyya of al-Ashā Maymūn (verse no. 1 ‘ajabīra . . . zād’), in
Geyer’s edition of Ibn al-Abbās’s Kitāb al-ub
, poem no. 16, pp. 97–101.

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