11 - Political poetry

Summary

If poetry in which the beliefs or acts of the leaders of a particular sociopolitical system are supported or opposed can be defined as political poetry, then there is no doubt that this type of verse flourished in Arabia well before Islam. Indeed, whatever the subject treated, the ultimate aim of the sizeable surviving body of pre-Islamic poetry was the glorification or criticism of the tribe, the nucleus of the system on which the contemporary social structure was based. In an earlier volume, the political verse, tribal or otherwise, of Jāhilī Arabia and of Arab society in the early Islamic period, has been treated in broad outline.1 It is, however, necessary to retrace some steps in order fully to comprehend the background of the later political verse covered in the present chapter. In ancient bedouin poetry, selfglorification (fakir) celebrated tribal exploits, and satire (hijāʾ) rebuked the tribe or individuals for unworthy behaviour. Poetry of a quasirevolutionary type was composed by the ṣʿātīk the so-called brigandpoets, who attacked not this tribe or that, but the entire social order. The advent of Islam impelled a change in these types of political poetry. The Prophet recognized the important political function of poetry, and employed poets to respond in kind to the attacks of the pagan poets of Quraysh; the weapons were still those of fakir and hijāʾ, but the new way of life gave far greater prominence to the religious element than had been found in old bedouin verse. This was the beginning of a process by which political themes, in the theocratic Islamic states which evolved later, came to be conceived and expressed in confessional terms.