The social context of pre-Islamic poetry: poetic imagery and social reality in the Mu c allaqat

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Summer, 2003 by Jonathan A.C. Brown

INTRODUCTION

THE CORPUS OF JAHILI POETRY compiled during the first two-hundred years of Islamic history is the product of a creative and selective process that spanned centuries of historical and religious change. It is at once the result of a pre-Islamic poetic tradition, the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Near East and the religious vision of a nascent Muslim orthodoxy. Hobbled by a dearth of historical sources for comprehending pre-Islamic Arab society, how should scholars contextualize the poetry and shed light on the Jahili worldview? (1) The classic collection of seven qasida's (al-Mu c allaqat al-sab c al-tiwal) offers an arguably reliable sample of pre-Islamic work. The anthropological study of pastoral-nomadic societies in the Middle East provides a useful lens for interpreting the social content of these Jahili odes and its relevance to the culture that composed them. Applying this approach to the themes of feud and food sharing prominent in the Mu c allaqat suggests that common scholarly views on these two issues may reflect pre-Islamic Arabian society's perceptions of itself rather than a more methodical and precise understanding of that society. When cast in the light of well-documented societies, the singularly hyperbolic language of the Jahili literary world reveals its realistic underpinnings in their common pastoral-nomadic lifestyle. Moreover, placing the seven odes in a pastoral-nomadic setting helps reconcile the dissenting social messages within the poems. This paper suggests that scholars can utilize these anthropological methods to augment historical and comparative poetic approaches in describing Jahili society and determining poetry's place in it.

THE PROBLEM OF LITERARY AND HISTORICAL SOURCES

Studies of pre-Islamic Arab society and its poetry rarely occur separately. Indeed this era presents a field in which literary and socio-historical study often intertwine to the detriment of their respective methodologies. Although the sources that inform modern scholarship about pre-Islamic life and culture originally drew on varied traditions such as akhbar (as in al-Isbahani's use of al-Baladhuri's works), eighth and ninth century genealogists such as al-Kalbi, Ibn al-Kalbi and Ibn Yaqzan, collection of proverbs and hadith as well as the explanations that later Muslim scholars such as al-Zawzani provided for the poetry, much of our information about the society that produced the poetry comes from the poetry itself. (2) Ibn Sallam al-Jumahi's (d. 232AH / 846CE) Tabaqat fuhul al-shu c ara', one of our earliest works in the tabaqat genre, demonstrates the early roots of this reliance on poetry for information about the poets and their lives. The akhbar that the author includes to reconstruct the personalities of early Arab poets are little more than commentary on verses of their poetry. Ibn Sallam's confidence in the biographical value of poetry appears even more clearly when he identifies poets by their literary claims. He thus calls Labid b. Rabi c a "he who fed [the hungry] when the cold Eastern wind blew," referring to the poet's description of his own generous behavior.(3)

An examination of the case of maysir provides a useful example of this reliance on poetry. Western studies of Jahili poetry and society have taken the definition and social functions of maysir for granted.(4) They share these notions with well-known Arabic works seeking to illuminate the nature of Jahili society such as Ahmad al-Hufi's al-Haya al c arabiyya min al-shi c r al-jahili, Shawqi Dayf's al- c Asr al-jahili and Mahmud Shukri al-Alusi's Bulugh al-arab fi ma'rifat ahwal al- c arab. (5) All three of these works rely heavily on poetry to describe life in pre-Islamic Arabia. (6) Al-Hufi states that his study focuses on poetry as a "powerful echo of Arab life" and thus avoids relying on "tarikh" (a vague term presumably subsuming the above mentioned sources) alone as a source for representing the Jahili world. Yet his study consists of little more than using the amorphous body of a priori statements about Jahili society found in these un-cited "tarikh" sources to confirm or interpret the meaning of poetic verses. (7) In fact, in his illustration of maysir he either cites poetry of defers to the work of al-Alusi, who in turn relies heavily on poetry as well as Ibn Qutayba's unique book, al-Maysir wa al-qidah. As a result both their explanations of maysir and its social uses either turn directly to poetry of duplicate Ibn Qutayba's writing.

Ibn Qutayba himself, however, admits that his quest adequately to define the rules and social uses of maysir as well as the manner in which it was played hinges on pre-Islamic poetry. He states that one cannot find such detailed information either among scholars or narrated reports, for "God cut it [maysir] off with Islam, and all that remains of it among the Bedouins is the trifling word 'yasir'." As a result, he resorts to collecting and examining all the verses of poetry concerning maysir, a methodology that he himself criticizes. Meter and rhyme, he states, not factual accuracy, truly determine the shape of poetry. (8) It is thus clear that the extra-textual information employed (in the case of most scholars to explain poetic references to maysir and, in al-Hufi's case, using poetry to affirm presupposed impressions of Jahili culture) descend to a large extent from the poetry itself.