Post-Islamic Poetry

POST-ISLAMIC POETRY Umayyad Period.—During the ist century after Mohammed there was little change in the general character of Arabic poetry. The four outstanding poets were Akhtal (q.v.), Farazdaq (q.v.), Jarir (q.v.), and Dhu'r-Rumma (ed. Macartney, Oxford, In the work of the last-named it is already obvious that the qasida is becoming a stereotyped and archaic exercise. In the partisan feuds which still rent, though on a wider scale, the Arab world, both major and minor poets carried on the traditions of tribal panegyric and satire. Yet at the same time, the new conditions of city life, both in the conquered lands and in the now metro politan cities of Arabia, brought about a change in Arab manners and pursuits, which led to the rise of new modes in poetry. The love-lyric was established as an independent art by `Omar ibn Abi Rabra of Mecca and his fellow-countryman Jamil. Simul taneously a sort of Platonic love became the theme of several poetic romances associated with the tribe of Udhra, and attribut ed to various poets and poetesses, of whom the most famous are Majnun Bani `Amir and Laila. The poems of the Caliphs Yazid I. (68o-683) and Walid II. ( were the precursors of the wine-songs and hunting-poems of the next period. An attempt to remodel the qasida in the freest of Arabic metres, the iambic rajaz, was made by `Ajjaj and his son Ru`ba. Although the ex periment failed, the rajaz metre was retained for impromptus and long descriptive poems.

`Abbasid Period.

While it is still an open question how far Persian influences contributed to these developments, there can be no doubt that the Persian atmosphere of the court of Baghdad after the establishment of the `Abbasid caliphs in 75o strongly favoured the new tendencies, which reached their apogee in Abu Nuwas (q.v.) and a brilliant company of poets contemporary with him. Henceforward Arabic poetry flows in a number of channels. The exponents of the classical tradition, such as Bub turi (q.v.), continued to imitate the subjects, mannerisms, and metres of the old desert poetry, with but one modification, the substitution for the old imaginative phrases of rhetorical tropes (bade), a fashion set by Muslim ibn Walid (d. 803), followed by Abu Tammam, and carried to the verge of excess by Mutannabi. On the other hand the school of Abu Nuwas used metres with much greater freedom and excelled in anacreontic and occa sional verse. Even for this later period the text or authenticity of many poems is far from certain. The only diwan hitherto pub lished in a critical edition is that of a comparatively unimportant. poet, al-Wa'wa of Damascus (d. 988; ed. Kratchkowsky, Petro grad (Leningrad), 1914, with a valuable introduction on the poetic art of the post-Islamic period). Generally speaking, the poets sought less after depth and originality than elegance in ex pression and brilliance in metaphor, and the polished and delicate productions of the later writers, such as Baha ad-Din Zuhair (d. 1258), recall in some measure English 17th century and Augustan verse. Nevertheless there were some who struck out new paths; Abu'l-Atahiya (d. 828), whose moralizing verse is expressed in unaffected popular language; Ibn al-Mu`tazz (d. 869), the author of a long historical poem and of other brilliant and original verse; Abu'l-`Ala Ma'arri (q.v.), in whose Luzumiydt Arabic poetry touches its deepest human note ; and the mystical poets Ibn `Arabi (q.v.) and Ibn Farid (q.v.).

Western Poetry.—In Spain and the West, Arabic poetry at first continued along traditional lines, represented by Ibn Hani of Seville (d. 973). In the following century Ibn Rashiq of Qayrawan (d. 1070), Ibn Zaydun of Cordova (d. 1071), Mu`tamid, king of Seville (d. 1o95) and his wazir Ibn `Ammar (d. 5078), with whom was associated also the most famous of the Arab poets of Sicily, Ibn Hamdis, were the principal among a galaxy of poets who released themselves from the old conventions, and made their verse a vehicle of self-expression. A still greater breach with tradition was the rise of strophic verse, which the stronger conservative influences had hitherto succeeded in re pressing in the East. In Spain strophic verse took the form called muwashshah ("the girdled"), marked by internal rhymes with a rhyming refrain. Though it was practically confined to erotic verse, it made great strides; on the one hand it exercised a strong influence on the nascent Provençal poetry, while in the other di rection it reached Egypt at the end of the I2th century and rapidly took root there. Several other popular forms of strophic verse were invented about the same time or shortly of ter, of which one, the zajal, in the colloquial language, was raised to literary rank by the troubadour Ibn Quzman (d. The number of anthologies of the later poetry is very large. Many were devoted to special genres, especially wine-songs; amongst those of more general scope the most noteworthy are the Yatimat ad-Dahr of Tha`alibi (q.v.) ; the Qala'id al-Iqyan of Fath b. Khaqan (d. 1134), a brilliant anthology of Spanish Arabic verse; and the Khizonat al-Adab of `Abd al-Qadir of Baghdad (d. 1682), professedly a commentary on the verses cited in an earlier work on grammar.