Mu'allaqat - The Seven Renowned Ones

The Seven Renowned Ones

The lives of these poets were spread over a period of more than a hundred years. The earliest of the seven was Imru' al-Qais, regarded by many as the most illustrious of Arabian Mu'allaqa poets. His exact date cannot be determined; but probably the best part of his career fell within the midst of the 6th century. He was a scion of the royal house of the tribe Kindah, which lost its power at the death of its king Harith ibn 'Amr in the year 529. The poet's royal father, Hojr, by some accounts a son of this Harith, was killed by a Bedouin tribe, the Banu Asad. The son led an adventurous life as a refugee, now with one tribe, now with another, and appears to have died young. The anecdotes related of him which, however, are very untrustworthy in detail as well as his poems, imply that the glorious memory of his house and the hatred it inspired were still comparatively fresh, and therefore recent. A contemporary of Imru' al-Qais was 'Abid ibn al-Abras, one poem of whose, as we have seen, is by some authorities reckoned among the collection. He belonged to the Banu Asad, and is fond of vaunting the heroic dead of his tribe the murder of Hojr in opposition to the victim's son, the great poet.

The Mu'allaqa of 'Amr hurls defiance against the king of Hira, 'Amr son of Mundhir, who reigned from the summer of 554 until 568 or 569, and was afterwards slain by our poet. This prince is also addressed by Harith in his Mu'allaqa. Of Tarafa, who is said to have attained no great age, a few satirical verses have been preserved, directed against this same king. This agrees with the fact that a grandson of the Qais ibn Khalid, mentioned as a rich and influential man in Tarafa's Mu'allaqa (v. 80 or 81), figured at the time of the battle of Dhu-Qar, in which the tribe Bakr routed a Persian army. This battle falls about 610 CE.

The Mu'allaqa of 'Antara and that of Zuhayr contain allusions to the feuds of the kindred tribes 'Abs and Dhobyan. Famous as these contests were, their time cannot accurately be ascertained. But the date of the two poets can be approximately determined from other data. Ka'b, son of Zuhayr, composed first a satire, and then, in the year 630, a eulogy on the Prophet; another son, Bujair, had begun, somewhat sooner, to celebrate Muhammad. 'Antara killed the grandfather of Al-Ahnaf Ibn Qays, who died at an advanced age in 686 or 687; he outlived 'Abdallah ibn Simma, whose brother Duraid was a very old man when he fell in battle against the Prophet (early in 630 CE); and he had communications with Ward, whose son, the poet Urwah ibn al-Ward, may perhaps have survived the flight of Muhammad to Medina. From all these indications we may place the productive period of both poets in the end of the 6th century. The historical background of 'Antara's Mu'allaqat lies somewhat earlier than that of Zuhayr's.

To the same period appears to belong the poem of 'Alqama ibn 'Abada, which, as we have seen, Ibn Khaldun reckons amongst the Mu'allaqat. This too is certainly the date of Al-Nabigha, who was one of the most distinguished of Arabic poets. For in the poem often reckoned as a Mu'allaqat, as in many others, he addresses himself to No'man, king of Hira, who reigned in the two last decades of the 6th century. The same king is mentioned as a contemporary in one of poems of 'Alqama.

The poem of al-A'sha, sometimes added to the Mu'allaqat, contains an allusion to the battle of Dhu Qar (under the name "Battle of Hinw", v. 62). This poet, not less famous than Nabigha, lived to compose a poem in honour of Muhammad, and died not long before 630 CE.

Labīd is the only one of these poets who embraced Islam. His Mu'allaqat, however, like almost all his other poetical works, belongs to the pagan period. He is said to have lived until 661, or even later; certainly it is true of him, what is asserted with less likelihood of several others of these poets, that he lived to a ripe old age.