2 - Pre-Islamic poetry

Summary

Poetry was the greatest mental activity of the Arabs and the summit of their artistic attainments. “It was,” said Ibn Sallām in the Jāhiliyyah, “the register of their learning and the final word of their wisdom (muntahāhukmi-him) which they adopted and which they followed.” The poet was like a prophet: often the priest, the soothsayer and the leader of the clan. The South Arabians had an ancient settled civilization, but their kinsmen, the northern Arabs, were nomads and dwellers in oases, dependent on caravan trade routes, pastoral use of an arid expanse of parched semi-desert, and in times of drought and famine raiding other tribes for booty. The nomadic tribes had no architecture but the tent with its three hearth-stones in front of it. Their pictorial art was limited to rock drawings. Their music was the chanting of their verses; the lyre and similar sophisticated stringed instruments were mainly associated with lands outside Arabia, such as Persia, as may be elicited from the poetry of al-A‘shā. The flute and the tambourine seem to have been their chief instruments of music. Their wild desert life was controlled by an overwhelming awareness of concepts of renown and prestige. A man acted always to protect his pride, this being the foremost item of personal honour. This individualism was both enhanced and tempered by the interactions of a universally observed inter-tribal code of behaviour, based on concepts of honour (sharaf), represented by blood-feud (thār), jealousy (ghayrah) for their womenfolk, hospitality (karam) and succour (najdah) of the weak, including women, orphans and combatants outnumbered by their foes.