Among Díwánsmention may be made of The Díwáns of the Six Poets, viz. Nábigha, ‘Antara, Ṭarafa, Zuhayr, ‘Alqama, Díwáns. and Imru’u ’l-Qays, edited with a full commentary by the Spanish philologist al-A‘lam (õ 1083 a.d.) and published in 1870 by Ahlwardt; and of The Poems of the Hudhaylites( Ash‘áru ’l-Hudhaliyyín) collected by al-Sukkarí (õ 888 a.d.), which have been published by Kosegarten and Wellhausen.

The chief Anthologies, taken in the order of their composition, are:—

1. The Mu‘allaqát, which is the title given to a collection of seven odes by Imru’u ’l-Qays, Ṭarafa, Zuhayr, Labíd, Anthologies. 1. The Mu‘allaqát. ‘Antara, ‘Amr b. Kulthúm, and Ḥárith b. Ḥilliza; to these two odes by Nábigha and A‘shá are sometimes added. The compiler was probably Ḥammád al-Ráwiya, a famous rhapsodist of Persian descent, who flourished under the Umayyads and died in the second half of the eighth century of our era. As the Mu‘allaqáthave been discussed above, we may pass on directly to a much larger, though less celebrated, collection dating from the same period, viz.:—

2. The Mufaḍḍaliyyát,255 by which title it is generally known after its compiler, Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbí (õ  circa786 a.d.), who 2. The Mufaḍḍaliyyát. made it at the instance of the Caliph Manṣúr for the instruction of his son and successor, Mahdí. It comprises 128 odes and is extant in two recensions, that of Anbárí (õ 916 a.d.), which derives from Ibnu ’l-A‘rábí, the stepson of Mufaḍḍal, and that of Marzúqí (õ 1030 a.d.). About a third of the Mufaḍḍaliyyátwas published in 1885 by Thorbecke, and Sir Charles Lyall has recently edited the complete text with Arabic commentary and English translation and notes.256

All students of Arabian poetry are familiar with—

3. The Ḥamásaof Abú Tammám Ḥabíb b. Aws, himself a distinguished poet, who flourished under the Caliphs Ma’mún 3. The Ḥamásaof Abú Tammám. and Mu‘taṣim, and died about 850 a.d. Towards the end of his life he visited ‘Abdulláh b. Ṭáhir, the powerful governor of Khurásán, who was virtually an independent sovereign. It was on this journey, as Ibn Khallikán relates, that Abú Tammám composed the Ḥamása; for on arriving at Hamadhán (Ecbatana) the winter had set in, and as the cold was excessively severe in that country, the snow blocked up the road and obliged him to stop and await the thaw. During his stay he resided with one of the most eminent men of the place, who possessed a library in which were some collections of poems composed by the Arabs of the desert and other authors. Having then sufficient leisure, he perused those works and selected from them the passages out of which he formed his Ḥamása.257 The work is divided into ten sections of unequal length, the first, from which it received its name, occupying (together with the commentary) 360 pages in Freytag's edition, while the seventh and eighth require only thirteen pages between them. These sections or chapters bear the following titles:—

I. The Chapter of Fortitude ( Bábu ’l-Ḥamása).

II. The Chapter of Dirges ( Bábu ’l-Maráthí).

III. The Chapter of Good Manners ( Bábu ’l-Adab).

IV. The Chapter of Love-Songs ( Bábu ’l-Nasíb).

V. The Chapter of Satire ( Bábu ’l-Hijá).

VI. The Chapter of Guests (Hospitality) and Panegyric ( Bábu ’l-Aḍyáf wa ’l-Madíh).

VII. The Chapter of Descriptions ( Bábu ’l-Ṣifát).

VIII. The Chapter of Travel and Repose ( Bábu ’l-Sayr wa ’l-Nu‘ás.

IX. The Chapter of Facetiæ ( Bábu ’l-Mulaḥ).

X. The Chapter of Vituperation of Women ( Bábu Madhammati ’l-Nisá).

The contents of the Ḥamásainclude short poems complete in themselves as well as passages extracted from longer poems; of the poets represented, some of whom belong to the Pre-islamic and others to the early Islamic period, comparatively few are celebrated, while many are anonymous or only known by the verses attached to their names. If the high level of excellence attained by these obscure singers shows, on the one hand, that a natural genius for poetry was widely diffused and that the art was successfully cultivated among all ranks of Arabian society, we must not forget how much is due to the fine taste of Abú Tammám, who, as the commentator Tibrízí has remarked, "is a better poet in his Ḥamásathan in his poetry."

4. The Ḥamásaof Buḥturí (õ 897 a.d.), a younger contemporary 4. The Ḥamásaof Buḥturí. of Abú Tammám, is inferior to its model.258 However convenient from a practical standpoint, the division into a great number of sections, each illustrating a narrowly defined topic, seriously impairs the artistic value of the work; moreover, Buḥturí seems to have had a less catholic appreciation of the beauties of poetry—he admired, it is said, only what was in harmony with his own style and ideas.

5. The Jamharatu Ash‘ári ’l-‘Arab, a collection of forty-nine 5. The Jamhara. odes, was put together probably about 1000 a.d. by Abú Zayd Muḥammad al-Qurashí, of whom we find no mention elsewhere.

Apart from the Díwánsand anthologies, numerous Pre-islamic Prose sources. verses are cited in biographical, philological, and other works, e.g., the Kitábu ’l-Agháníby Abu ’l-Faraj of Iṣfahán (õ 967 a.d.), the Kitábu ’l-Amálíby Abú ‘Alí al-Qálí (õ 967 a.d.), the Kámilof Mubarrad (õ 898 a.d.), and the Khizánatu ’l-Adabof ‘Abdu ’l-Qádir of Baghdád (õ 1682 a.d.).

We have seen that the oldest existing poems date from the beginning of the sixth century of our era, whereas the art of writing did not come into general use among the The tradition of Pre-islamic poetry. Arabs until some two hundred years afterwards. Pre-islamic poetry, therefore, was preserved by oral tradition alone, and the question arises, How was this possible? What guarantee have we that songs living on men's lips for so long a period have retained their original form, even approximately? No doubt many verses, e.g., those which glorified the poet's tribe or satirised their enemies, were constantly being recited by his kin, and in this way short occasional poems or fragments of longer ones might be perpetuated. Of whole qaṣídas like the Mu‘allaqát, however, none or very few would have reached us if their survival had depended solely on their popularity. What actually saved them in the first place was an institution resembling that of the Rhapsodists in Greece. Every professed poet The Ráwís. had his Ráwí(reciter), who accompanied him everywhere, committed his poems to memory, and handed them down, as well as the circumstances connected with them, to others. The characters of poet and ráwíwere often combined; thus Zuhayr was the ráwíof his stepfather, Aws b. Ḥajar, while his own ráwíwas al-Ḥuṭay’a. If the tradition of poetry was at first a labour of love, it afterwards became a lucrative business, and the Ráwís, instead of being attached to individual poets, began to form an independent class, carrying in their memories a prodigious stock of ancient verse and miscellaneous learning. It is related, for example, that Ḥammád once said to the Caliph Walíd b. Yazíd: "I can recite to you, for each letter of the alphabet, one hundred long poems rhyming in that letter, without taking into count the short pieces, and all that composed exclusively by poets who lived before the promulgation of Islamism." He commenced and continued until the Caliph, having grown fatigued, withdrew, after leaving a person in his place to verify the assertion and hear him to the last. In that sitting he recited two thousand nine hundred qaṣídas by poets who flourished before Muḥammad. Walíd, on being informed of the fact, ordered him a present of one hundred thousand dirhems.259 Thus, towards the end of the first century after the Hijra, i.e., about 700 a.d., when the custom of writingpoetry began, there was much of Pre-islamic origin still in circulation, although it is probable that far more had already been irretrievably lost. Numbers of Ráwísperished in the wars, or passed away in the course of nature, without leaving any one to continue their tradition. New times had brought new interests and other ways of life. The great majority of Moslems had no sympathy whatever with the ancient poetry, which represented in their eyes the unregenerate spirit of heathendom. They wanted nothing beyond the Koran and the Ḥadíth. But for reasons which will be stated in another chapter the language of the Koran and the Ḥadíth was rapidly becoming obsolete as a spoken idiom outside of the Arabian peninsula: the 'perspicuous Arabic' on which Muḥammad prided himself had ceased to be fully intelligible to the Moslems settled in ‘Iráq and Khurásán, in Syria, and in Egypt. It was essential that the Sacred Text should be explained, and this necessity gave birth to the sciences of Grammar and Lexicography. The Philologists, or, as they have been aptly designated, the Humanists of Baṣra and Kúfa, where these studies were prosecuted with peculiar zeal, naturally found their best material in the Pre-islamic The Humanists. poems—a well of Arabic undefiled. At first the ancient poetry merely formed a basis for philological research, but in process of time a literary enthusiasm was awakened. The surviving Ráwíswere eagerly sought out and induced to yield up their stores, the compositions of famous poets were collected, arranged, and committed to writing, and as the demand increased, so did the supply.260