[3] Along with the Mufaddaliyat, Jamharat Ash'ar al-Arab, Asma'iyyat, and the Hamasah, the Mu'allaqāt are considered the primary source for early written Arabic poetry.
The grammarian Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Nahhas (d. 949 CE) says in his commentary on the Mu'allaqat: "The true view of the matter is this: when Hammad al-Rawiya saw how little men cared for poetry, he collected these seven pieces, urged people to study them, and said to them: 'These are the [poems] of renown.
For this reason, some suppose he not only received into the collection a poem of the famous poet Tarafa, of the tribe of Bakr, but also that of another Bakrite, Harith.
The latter had been a prominent chieftain, while his poem could serve as a counterpoise to Harith's contemporary 'Amr, chief of the Taghlib, the rival tribe of the Bakr.
'Amr praises the Taghlib in glowing terms: Harith, in a similar vein, extols the Bakr ancestors of Hammad's patrons.
These are enumerated both by Ibn Abd Rabbih (860–940 CE), and, on the authority of the older philologists, by Nahhas; and all subsequent commentators seem to follow them.
The Jamharat Ash'ar al-Arab claims that two of the most competent ancient authorities on Arabic poetry, al-Mufaddal (d. c. 790) and Abu ʿUbaidah (d. 824 CE), had already assigned to the "Seven" (i.e. "the seven Mu'allaqat") a poem each of al-Nabigha and al-A'sha in place of those of 'Antara and Harith.
The learned Ibn Qutaiba (9th century), in his book Of Poetry and Poets, mentions as belonging to the "Seven" not only the poem of 'Amr, which has been reckoned among the Mu'allaqat (ed.
Ibn Abd Rabbih in the Al-ʿIqd al-Farīd ("The Precious Necklace") states, "The Arabs had such an interest in poetry, and valued it so highly, that they took seven long pieces selected from the ancient poetry, wrote them in gold on pieces of Coptic linen folded up, and hung them up (allaqat) [sic] on the curtains which covered the Kaaba.
[8] Another version of the legend, also given by Nahhas, is as follows: Most of the Arabs were accustomed to meet at Okaz and recite verses; then, if the king was pleased with any poem, he said, 'Hang it up, and preserve it among my treasures.
From this usage it became popular, even in ordinary prose, to refer to speech in rhythmical form as naqm "to string pearls."
He was a scion of the royal house of the tribe Kinda, which lost its power at the death of its king, Harith ibn ʻAmr, 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 ibn Khuzaymah.
This agrees with the fact that a grandson of the Qais ibn Khalid, mentioned as a rich and influential man in Tarafa's Muʻallaqah (v. 80 or 81), figured at the time of the Battle of Dhi Qar, in which the tribe Bakr routed a Persian army.
Ka'b bin 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.
In Al-Nabigha's poem sometimes reckoned as a Muʻallaqah, he addresses himself to the king of al-Hirah, al-Nu'man III ibn al-Mundhir, who reigned in the two last decades of the sixth century.
However, Abid's contemporary Imru' al-Qais, in a poem which in other respects also exhibits certain coincidences with that of 'Abid, also shows considerable licence in the use of the same rare metre.
Some of the poems exhibit great divergences (both in the order and number of the verses and in textual details) from their exemplars in other poetic anthologies.
[2] Johnson's detailed translation, published by the Bombay Education Society in 1893, includes an introduction and analysis by Arabic scholar Shaikh Faizullabhai.
[10] A notable commentary titled Ḥall al-ʿUqdah fī Sharḥ Sabʿ Muʿallaqah was written by Momtazuddin Ahmad.