Mu'allaqat - The Poems

The Poems

The seven Mu'allaqat, and also the poems appended to them, represent almost every type of ancient Arabian poetry in its excellences and its weaknesses. Tarafa's long, for example, anatomically exact description of his camel had an extraordinary charm of its own for the Bedouins, every man of whom was a perfect connoisseur on this subject down to the minutest points. In the Mu'allaqat of 'Amr and Harith we can read the haughty spirit of the powerful chieftains, boastfully celebrating the splendours of their tribe. The song of Zuhayr contains the practical wisdom of a sober man of the world. The other poems are fairly typical examples of the customary qasida, the long poem of ancient Arabia, and bring before us the various phases of Bedouin life. In the Mu'allaqat of 'Antara, whose heroic temperament had overcome the scorn with which the son of a black slave-mother was regarded by the Bedouins, there predominates a warlike spirit, which plays practically no part in the song of Labid.

There is a high degree of uniformity in the Mu'allaqat in spite of the poverty of the country's inhabitants. For example, the poets use an extraordinary strict metrical system in spite of their lack of knowledge of theory or even an alphabet. In the most ancient poems the metrical form is as scrupulously regarded as in later compositions. The only poem which shows unusual metrical freedom is the above-mentioned song of 'Abid. It is, however, remarkable that 'Abid's contemporary Imru' al-Qais, in a poem which in other respects also exhibits certain coincidences with that of 'Abid, presents himself considerable licence in the use of the very same metre one which, moreover, is extremely rare in the ancient period. Presumably, the violent deviations from the schema in 'Abid are due simply to incorrect transmission by compilers who failed to grasp the meter. The other poems ascribed to 'Abid, together with all the rest attributed to Imru' al-Qais, are constructed in precise accord with the metrical canons.

The last poet in the Mu'allaquat is Hammad to whom is attributed the collection of the Mu'allaqat. He, at the same time, marks the transition of the rhapsodist to the critic and scholar. Hammad dealt in the most arbitrary fashion with the enormous quantity of poetry which he professed to know thoroughly. The seven Mu'allaqat are indeed free from the suspicion of forgery, but even in them the text is frequently altered and many verses are transposed. Some of the Mu'allaqat have several preambles: so, especially, that of 'Amr, the first eight verses of which belong not to the poem, but to another poet. Elsewhere, also, we find spurious verses in the Mu'allaqat. Some of these poems, which have been handed down to us in other exemplars besides the collection itself, exhibit great divergences both in the order and number of the verses and in textual details. This is particularly the case with the oldest Mu'allaqat—that of Imru' al-Qais—the critical treatment of which is a problem of such extreme difficulty that only an approximate solution can ever be reached. The variations of the text, outside the Mu'allaqat collection, have here and there exercised an influence on the text of that collection. It would be well if our manuscripts at least gave the Mu'allaqat in the exact form of Hammad's day. The best text in fact, we may say, a really good text is that of the latest Mu'allaqat, the song of Labid.

The Mu'allaqat exist in many manuscripts, some with old commentaries. They have also been several times printed. Special mention is due to the edition of Sir Charles James Lyall with the commentary of Tibrizi (Calcutta, 1894). The strangeness, both of the expression and of the subjects, only admits of a paraphrastic version for large portions of the work, unless the sense is to be entirely obliterated.