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

FEUDS: NATIVE AND OUTSIDE VIEWS

Muslim and Western scholarly consensus on the character of pre-Islamic Arabia describes a society plagued by constant blood feuds and intertribal wars. For authors like Dayf and others this notion stems from the extensive body of poetry and ayyam literature collected and appreciated in the early Islamic cultural milieu. These sources transmit the voices of pre-Islamic poets and storytellers themselves, depicting their world and social reality as they perceived it. To heed what anthropologists term "native descriptions" alone, however, ignores the paradigmatic bounds that constrain a society's ability to accurately portray itself. (27) While anthropologists may not grasp all the important aspects of social function and structure, that society's self-image is not necessarily more comprehensive of impartial.

Case studies conducted on the nomadic tribes in Palestine, Libya and Najd portray groups that define crucial dimensions of their native identity in terms of feud and conflict but also realistically depend on peaceful relations and cooperation. Emanuel Marx states that Middle Eastern Bedouins "usually represent their society as a series of discrete and disputing groups ... torn by violent conflicts and by the relentless pursuit of revenge." The author later adds that the native identity of pastoral-nomadic society hinges on this notion of a warrior people. "The nomad, steeped all his life in this ideology, sincerely believes that this is the real essence of his society ... (28)"

Emrys Peters arrives as a similar but more specific conclusion in his study of Cyrenaicean Bedouins. Describing the nature of feuds between secondary tribal groups (29) Peters stresses the native insistence that any killing between such separate groups must be due to similar killings in the past. Drawing some real or imagined link between the latest killing and some distant act of violence, the pastoral-nomad affirms that such conflicts are ancient and endless. Peters explains this phenomenon by saying that exaggerated, timeless feuds between secondary tribal groups are essential for these groups to justify their existence as two distinct, corporate bodies. In the absence of some feud, how could the nomad explain why these two groups of relatives, joined by the sacred bond of blood, have parted ways or fallen out? (30)

In his study of oral historical narrative among the Shammar and c Anaza tribes in Najd, Saad Sowayan notices a similar phenomenon of anchoring disagreements in past conflict. He focuses on the manner in which story tellers recited tales (salfih) about the fight between a Shammari warrior and a hero of c Anaza as well as the subsequent attempts at revenge. Although this conflict occurred in approximately 1835 during the establishment of the Rashid dynasty in Jabal Shammar, poets and amateur storytellers still invoked it during 1960's. Despite the end of inter-tribal fighting with the consolidation of the Saudi state, minor disagreements over land still spark poetic and narrative exchanges between members of these two tribes. Both sides invariably refer to the victories they won and the slights they suffered in that distant feud. Even in 1968, the publication of a book that seemed to favor the c Anaza led Shammar bards and poets to disseminate their version of the conflict more actively. (31)