Literature
The literature of Arabia has its origin in the songs, improvisations, recitations and stories of the pre-Mahommedan Arabs. Of written literature in those days there was, so far as we know, none. But where books failed memory was strong and the power of retaining things heard was not confined to a professional class. At every festive meeting many could contribute a poem or a story, many could even improvise the one or the other. When members of different tribes met in peace (as at the fair of ʽUkāẓ) the most skilful reciters strove to maintain the honour of their own people, and a ready improviser was held in high esteem. The smartest epigrams, the fairest similes, the keenest satires, spoken or sung on such occasions, were treasured in the memory of the hearers and carried by them to their homes. But the experience of all peoples in that memory requires to be helped by form. Sentences became balanced and were made clear by some sort of definite ending. The simplest form of this in Arabian literature is the sajʽ or rhymed prose, in which the sentences are usually (though not always) short and end in a rhyme or assonance. Mahomet used this form in many parts of the Koran (e.g. Sura, 81). The next step was the introduction of metre into the body of the sentence and the restriction of the passages to a definite length. This in its simplest form gave rise to the rajaz verses, where each half-line ends in the same rhyme and consists of three feet of the measure 
. Other metres were introduced later until sixteen altogether were recognized. In all forms the rhyme is the same throughout the poem, and is confined to the second half of the line except in the first line where the two halves rhyme. While, however, these measures were in early use, they were not systematically analysed or their rules enunciated until the time of Khalīl ibn Ahmad in the 8th century. Two other features of Arabian poetry are probably connected with the necessity for aiding the memory. The first of these is the requirement that each line should have a complete sense in itself; this produces a certain jerkiness, and often led among the Arabs to displacement in the order of the lines in a long poem. The other feature, peculiar to the long poem (qasīda, elegy), is that, whatever its real object, whatever its metre, it has a regular scheme in the arrangement of its material. It begins with a description of the old camping-ground, before which the poet calls on his companion to stop, while he bewails the traces of those who have left for other places. Then he tells of his love and how he had suffered from it, how he had journeyed through the desert (this part often contains some of the most famous descriptions and praises of animals) until his beast became thin and worn-out. Then at last comes the real subject of the poem, usually the panegyric of some man of influence or wealth to whom the poet has come in hope of reward and before whom he recites the poem.
Poetry.—The influence of the poet in pre-Mahommedan days was very great. As his name, ash-Shāʽir, “the knowing man,” indicates, he was supposed to have more than natural knowledge and power. Panegyric and satire (hijāʽ) were his chief instruments. The praise of the tribe in well-chosen verses ennobled it throughout the land, a biting satire was enough to destroy its reputation (cf. I. Goldziher’s Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie, i. pp. 1-105). Before Mahomet the ethics of the Arabs were summed up in muruwwa (custom). Hospitality, generosity, personal bravery were the subjects of praise; meanness and cowardice those of satire. The existence of poetry among the northern Arabs was known to the Greeks even in the 4th century (cf. St Nilos in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, vol. 79, col. 648, and Sozomen’s Ecclesiastical History, bk. 6, ch. 38). Women as well as men composed and recited poems before the days of the Prophet (cf. L. Cheikho’s Poetesses of the Jāhiliyya, in Arabic, Beirut, 1897).
The transmission of early Arabic poetry has been very imperfect. Many of the reciters were slain in battle, and it was not till the 8th to the 10th centuries and even later that the earliest collections of these poems were made. Many have to be recovered from grammars, dictionaries, &c., where single lines or groups of lines are quoted to illustrate the proper use of words, phrases or idioms. Moreover, many a reciter was not content to declaim the genuine verses of ancient poets, but interpolated some of his own composition, and the change of religion introduced by Islam led to the mutilation of many verses to suit the doctrines of the new creed.[1]
The language of the poems, as of all the best Arabian literature, was that of the desert Arabs of central Arabia; and to use it aright was the ambition of poets and scholars even in the Abbasid period. For the man of the towns its vocabulary was too copious to be easily understood, and in the age of linguistic studies many commentaries were written to explain words and idioms.
Of the pre-Mahommedan poets the most famous were the six whose poems were collected by Asmaʽī about the beginning of the 9th century (ed. W. Ahlwardt, The Diwans of the Six Ancient Arabic Poets, London, 1870). Single poems of four of these—Amru-ul-Qais, Ṭarafa, Zuhair and ʽAntara—appear in the Mo’allakat (q.v.). The other two were Nābigha (q.v.) and ʽAlqama (q.v.). But besides these there were many others whose names were famous; such as Taʽabbata Sharran, a popular hero who recites his own adventures with great gusto; his companion Shanfarā, whose fame rests on a fine poem which has been translated into French by de Sacy (in his Chrestomathie Arabe) and into English by G. Hughes (London, 1896); Aus ibn Hajar of the Bani Tamīn, famous for his descriptions of weapons and hunting scenes (ed. R. Geyer, Vienna, 1892); Ḥātim Tā’i, renowned for his open-handed generosity as well as for his poetry (ed. F. Schulthess, Leipzig, 1897, with German translation); and ʽUrwa ibn ul-Ward of the tribe of ʽAbs, rival of Ḥātim in generosity as well as in poetry (ed. Th. Nöldeke, Göttingen, 1863). Among these early poets are found one Jew of repute, Samau’al (Samuel) ibn Adiyā (cf. Th. Nöldeke’s Beiträge, pp. 52-86; art. s.v. “Samuel ibn Adiya” in Jewish Encyc. and authorities there quoted), and some Christians such as ʽAdīʽibn Zaid of Hira, who sang alike of the pleasures of drink and of death (ed. by Louis Cheikho in his Les Poètes arabes chrétiens, pp. 439-474, Beirut, 1890; in this work many Arabian poets are considered to be Christian without sufficient reason). One poet, a younger contemporary of Mahomet, has attracted much attention because his poems were religious and he was a monotheist. This is Umayya ibn Abi-ṣ-Ṣalt, a Meccan who did not accept Islam and died in 630. His poems are discussed by F. Schulthess in the Orientalische Studien dedicated by Th. Nöldeke, Giessen, 1906, and his relation to Mahomet by E. Power (in the Mélanges de la faculté orientale de l’université Saint-Joseph, Beirut, 1906). Mahomet’s relation to the poets generally was one of antagonism because of their influence over the Arabs and their devotion to the old religion and customs. Kaʽb ibn Zuhair, however, first condemned to death, then pardoned, later won great favour for himself by writing a panegyric of the Prophet (ed. G. Freytag, Halle, 1823). Another poet, Aʽsha (q.v.), followed his example. Labīd (q.v.) and Hassān ibn Thābit (q.v.) were also contemporary. Among the poetesses of the time Khansa (q.v.) is supreme. In the scarcity of poets at this time two others deserve mention; Abū Mihjan, who made peace with Islam in 630 but was exiled for his love of wine, which he celebrated in his verse (ed. L. Abel, Leiden, 1887; cf. C. Landberg’s Primeurs arabes, 1, Leiden, 1886), and Jarwal ibn Aus, known as al-Ḥuṭaiʽa, a wandering poet whose keen satires led to his imprisonment by Omar (Poems, ed. by I. Goldziher in the Journal of the German Oriental Society, vols. 46 and 47).
Had the simplicity and religious severity of the first four caliphs continued in their successors, the fate of poetry would have been hard. Probably little but religious poetry would have been allowed. But the Omayyads (with one exception) were not religious men and, while preserving the outward forms of Islam, allowed full liberty to the pre-Islamic customs of the Arabs and the beliefs and practices of Christians. At the same time the
- ↑ On the subject of transmission cf. Th. Nöldeke’s Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber (Hanover, 1804); and W. Ahlwardt’s Bemerkungen über die Aechtheit der alten arabischen Gedickte (Greifswald, 1872).
