Arabic poetry
In addition to the eloquence and artistic value, pre-Islamic poetry constitutes a major source for classical Arabic language both in grammar and vocabulary, and as a reliable historical record of the political and cultural life of the time.
[2] Poetry held an important position in pre-Islamic society with the poet or sha'ir filling the role of historian, soothsayer and propagandist.
The sha'ir represented an individual tribe's prestige and importance in the Arabian Peninsula, and mock battles in poetry or zajal would stand in lieu of real wars.
At some periods there have been unbroken chains of illustrious poets, each one training a rawi as a bard to promote his verse, and then to take over from them and continue the poetic tradition.
Not only did the poems illuminate life in the early years of Islam and its antecedents but they would also prove the basis for the study of linguistics of which the Qur'an was regarded as the pinnacle.
[7] Naqa'id or flytings, where two poets exchange creative insults, were popular with al-Farazdaq and Jarir swapping a great deal of invective.
The corpus suffered large-scale destruction by fire in 1499 when Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros made a public auto-da-fé in Granada, burning 1,025,000 Arabic volumes.
His works had continued the themes and style of the pre-Islamic poets particularly eulogising the harsh but simple desert life, traditionally recited round a campfire.
The caliph himself could take on the role of court poet with al-Walid II a notable example, but he was widely disliked for his immorality and was deposed after only a year.
In ninth century Spain, Paulus Alvarus complained that Christian youths preferred Arabic poetry to Latin works.
As such, the eleventh century Andalusi abu 'qasim ibn Al-Hayyat, originally a Muslim theologian, wrote a poem in defence of his conversion to Christianity.
[20] The collection consists of over 3,000 lines loosely structured in 97 qaṣīdas which deal with biblical, theological, ascetical, and personal themes such as the persecution Palestinian Christians suffered under caliph al-Hakim.
[22] The 10th century Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity features a fictional anecdote of a "prince who strays from his palace during his wedding feast and, drunk, spends the night in a cemetery, confusing a corpse with his bride.
Biting satirical poetry was dreaded for its power to immortalize its subjects in insulting ways, and could include sexual, scatological, and religiously profane material.
Court poets like Abu Nuwas also employed satire, lampooning political figures like the vizier Ja'far ibn Yahya.
[28] Abu Nuwas, in the 9th century, once responded to an insult from Hashim bin Hudayj, a philosopher, by composing verses sarcastically praising his wisdom, then imploring him to use his knowledge to explain how the penis functions.
While this may seem a poor rhyme scheme for people used to western literature it makes sense in a language like Arabic which has only three vowels which can be either long or short.
Beginning in the 19th century, as part of what is now called "the Arab Renaissance" or "revival" (al-Nahda), some primarily Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian writers and poets Rifa'a at-Tahtawi, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Butrus al-Bustani, and Francis Marrash believed that writing must be renewed towards modern style and themes.
Political views in poetry were often more unwelcome in the 20th century than they had been in the 7th, and several poets faced censorship or, in the case of Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati, exile.
The "Romanticism" (partly coincident with western neo-romanticism) was another Arab literary movement from the early 20th century, floureshed during the 1930s–1940s, that sought inspiration from French or English romantic poetry.
Romantic poets, denouncing blind imitation of one-rhime system in classical poetry and its recurring themes, imaged individual experiences via powerful love ghasal and other genres.
[49][35] Most famous part of Arab Romanticism or outstand movement related to it[50] is the Mahjar ("émigré" school) that includes Arabic-language poets in the Americas Ameen Rihani, Kahlil Gibran, Nasib Arida, Mikhail Naimy, Elia Abu Madi, Fawsi Maluf, Farhat, and al-Qarawi.
[60][61] The Symbolist school of poetry, close to Romanticism, was represented in the Arab world by the Lebanese poets Adib Mashar (1889–1928), Yusuf Ghusub (b.
After World War II, there was a largely unsuccessful modernist movement[64][65] by several poets to write poems in free verse (shi'r hurr).
[66][67][68][55][69] Thus, in 1947 the two Iraqi poets, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Nazik al-Malaika initiated a break in the stanza form (bayt) for free verse.
[79][80] Adunis from 1968 published his own journal Mawakif for literary innovations[55][81] as follows: To a father who died, green as a cloud with a sail on his face, I bow.
Between the years 1938–1948, the Surrealist Cairo-based anti-fascist artistic Art et Liberté group was active, under the leadership of the poet Georges Henein.
[85] Besides that, poets of "commitment" (iltizam), among them Abd al-Wahhab Al-Bayati, Khalil Hawi, and Mahmoud Darwish, played an important role in politics of the Arabian people along with an establishment of national states, revolutions, and the 1967 Six-Day War.
[86][87][88][89][55] Iraqi poet Abd al-Wahhab Al-Bayati faced exile, due to his revolutionary ideas and advocacy for oppressed people, as in the following poem: Why are we Lord?
And here is an instance of political poetry of another Palestinian, Tawfiq Ziad: In Lydda, in Ramla, in the Galilee, we shall remain like a wall upon your chest, and in your throat like a shard of glass a cactus thorn, and in your eyes a sandstorm.
