MO`ALLAQAT (or Mv`ALLAQ?T). Al-Moiallaqat is the title of a group of seven longish Arabic poems, which have come down to us from the time before Islam. The name signifies "the suspended" (pl.), the traditional explanation being that these poems were hung up by the Arabs on or in the Kaeba at Mecca. Against this we have the testimony of the grammarian Nahhas (d. 949), who says in his commentary on the Mocallaciat: "As for the assertion that they were hung up in [sic] the Ka`ba, it is not known to any of those who have handed down ancient poems." (Ernst Frenkel, An-Ncilzhcif Commentar zur Mueallaqa Imruul-Qais [Halle, 1876], p. viii.) This cautious scholar is unquestionably right in rejecting a story so utterly unauthenti cated.
That a series of long poems was written at all at that remote period is improbable in the extreme. Up to a time when the art of writing had become far more general than it was before the spread of Islam, poems were never—or very rarely—written, with the exception, perhaps, of epistles in poetic form. The diffusion of poetry was exclusively committed to oral tradition. The legend that the poems were written in gold evidently originated in the name "the golden poems" (literally "the gilded"), a figurative expression for excellence. We may interpret the designation "sus pended" on the same principle. It seems to mean those (poems) which have been raised, on account of their value, to a specially honourable position.
The selection of these seven poems can scarcely have been the work of the ancient Arabs at all. It is much more likely that we owe it to some connoisseur of a later date. Now Militias says expressly: "The true view of the matter is this: when Hammad ar-R5.wiya (Hammad the Rhapsodist) 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.' " And this agrees with all our other information. Hammad (who lived in the first three quarters of the 8th century A.D.) was perhaps of all men the one who knew most Arabic poetry by heart. The recitation of poems was his profession. To such a rhapsodist the task of selection is in every way appropriate; and it may be assumed that he is responsible also for the some what fantastic title of "the suspended."
There is another fact which seems to speak in favour of Hammad as the compiler of this work. He was a Persian by descent, but a client of the Arab tribe, Bakr ibn Wail. For this reason, we may 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, who, though not accounted a bard of the highest rank, had been a prominent chieftain ; while his poem could serve as a counterpoise to another also received— the celebrated verses of Harith's contemporary 'Amr, chief of the Taghlib, the rival brethren of the Bakr. (Amr praises the Taghlib in glowing terms : Harith, in a similar vein, extolls the Bakr ancestors of Hammad's patrons. The collection of ljammad appears to have consisted of the same seven poems which are found in our modern editions, composed respectively by Amra'al Qais, Tarafa, Zuhair, Labid, 'Antara ibn Shadd5.d, 'Amr ibn Kulthum, and Harith ibn Hilliza. These are enumerated both by Ibn 'Abd-Rabbihi, and, on the authority of the older philologists, by Nahhas; and all subsequent commentators seem to follow them. We have, however, evidence of the existence, at a very early period, of a slightly different arrangement. Certainly we can not now say, on the testimony of the Jamharat ash'ar al 'Arab, that two of the most competent ancient authorities on Arabic poetry, Mofaddal (d. c. 79o) and Abil eUbaida (d. A.D. 824, at a great age), had already assigned to the "Seven" (viz. "the seven Mocallaqat") a poem each of Nabigha and A'sha in place of those of 'Antara and Harith. For meanwhile it has been discovered that the compiler of the above-mentioned work—who, in order to deceive the reader, issued it under a false name—is absolutely untrustworthy. But the learned Ibn Qotaiba (9th century A.D.), in his book Of Poetry and Poets, mentions as belonging to the "Seven" not only the poem of 'Amr, which has invariably been reckoned among the Moeallaqat (ed. de Goeje, p. 12o), but also a poem of 'Abid ibn Abras (ibid. 144). In place of which poem he read this we do not know; and we are equally ignorant as to whether he counted other pieces than those indicated above among the seven.