are pretty accurately known to us; we have also a mass of
information about the affairs of Mecca at the time when the
Prophet arose; but no trace of this or anything like it is found
in really good and ancient authorities. We hear, indeed, of
a Meccan hanging up a spoil of battle on the Kaʽba (Ibn Hishām,
ed. Wüstenfeld, p. 431). Less credible is the story of an important
document being deposited in that sanctuary (ibid. p. 230),
for this looks like an instance of later usages being transferred
to pre-Islamic times. But at all events this is quite a different
thing from the hanging up of poetical manuscripts. To account
for the disappearance of the Moʽallaqāt from the Kaʽba we
are told, in a passage of late origin (De Sacy, Chrestom. ii. 480),
that they were taken down at the capture of Mecca by the
Prophet. But in that case we should expect some hint of the
occurrence in the circumstantial biographies of the Prophet,
and in the works on the history of Mecca; and we find no such
thing. That a series of long poems was written at all at that
remote period is improbable in the extreme. Up to a time when
the art of writing had become far more general than it was
before the spread of Islam, poems were never—or very rarely—written,
with the exception, perhaps, of epistles in poetic form.
The diffusion of poetry was exclusively committed to oral
tradition. Moreover, it is quite inconceivable that there
should have been either a gild or a private individual of such
acknowledged taste, or of such influence, as to bring about a
consensus of opinion in favour of certain poems. Think of the
mortal offence which the canonization of one poet must have
given to his rivals and their tribes. It was quite another thing
for an individual to give his own private estimate of the respective
merits of two poets who had appealed to him as umpire, or
for a number of poets to appear at large gatherings, such as
the fair of ʽOqāẓ (Okad) as candidates for the place of honour
in the estimation of the throng which listened to their recitations.
No better is the modifications of the legend, which we find,
at a much later period, in the Moqaddima of Ibn Khaldūn
(A.D. 1332–1406), who tells us that the poets themselves hung
up their poems on the Kaʽba (ed. Paris iii. 357). In short,
this legend, so often retailed by Arabs, and still more frequently
by Europeans, must be entirely rejected.[1] The story is a
pure fabrication based on the name “suspended.” The word
was taken in its literal sense; and as these poems were prized by many above all others in after times, the same opinion was attributed to “the [ancient] Arabs,” who were supposed to have given effect to their verdict in the way already described. A somewhat simpler version, also given by Naḥḥās in the passage already cited, is as follows: “Most of the Arabs were accustomed to meet at ʽOqāẓ and recite verses; then, if the king was pleased with any poem, he said, ‘Hang it up, and preserve it among my treasures.’ ” But, not to mention other difficulties, there was no king of all the Arabs; and it is hardly probable that any Arabian king attended the fair at ʽOqāẓ. The story that the poems were written in gold has evidently originated in the name “the golden poems” (literally “the gilded”), a figurative expression for excellence. We may interpret the designation “suspended ” on the same principle. It seems to mean those (poems) which have been raised, on account of their value, to a specially honourable position. Another derivative of the same root is ʽilq, “precious thing.” A clearer significance attaches to another name sometimes used for these poems—assumūṭ, “the strings of pearls.” The comparison of artificially elaborated poems to these strings is extremely apt. Hence it became so popular that, even in ordinary prose, to speak in rhythmical form is called simply naẓm—“to string pearls.”
The selection of these seven poems can scarcely have been the work of the ancient Arabs at all. It is much more likely that we owe it to some connoisseur of a later date. Now Naḥḥās says expressly in the same passage: “The true view of the matter is this: when Ḥammād ar-Rāwiya (Ḥammād the Rhapsodist) saw how little men cared for poetry, he collected these seven pieces, urged people to study them, and said to them: ‘These are the [poems] of renown.’ ” And this agrees with all our other information. Ḥammad (who lived in the first three quarters of the 8th century A.D.) was perhaps of all men the one who knew most Arabic poetry by heart. The recitation of poems was his profession. To such a rhapsodist the task of selection is in every Way appropriate; and it may be assumed that he is responsible also for the somewhat fantastic title of “the suspended.”
There is another fact which seems to speak in favour of Ḥammād as the compiler of this work. He was a Persian by descent, but a client of the Arab tribe, Bakr ibn Wāīl. For this reason, we may suppose, he not only received into the collection a poem of the famous poet Ṭarafa, of the tribe of Bakr, but also that of another Bakrite, Ḥārith, who, though not accounted a bard of the highest rank, had been a prominent Chieftain; while his poem could serve as a counterpoise to another also received—the celebrated verses of Ḥārith’s contemporary ʽAmr, chief of the Taghlib, the rival brethren of the Bakr. ʽAmr praises the Taghlib in glowing terms: Ḥārith, in a similar vein, extolls the Bakr—ancestors of Ḥammād’s patrons. The collection of Ḥammād appears to have consisted of the same seven poems which are found in our modern editions, composed respectively by Amra’al-Qais, Ṭarafa, Zuhair, Labīd, ʽAntara ibn Shaddād, ʽAmr ibn Kulthūm, and Ḥārith ibn Ḥilliza. These are enumerated both by Ibn ʽAbd-Rabbihi, and, on the authority of the older philologists, by Naḥḥās; and all subsequent commentators seem to follow them. We have, however, evidence of the existence, at a very early period, of a slightly different arrangement. Certainly we cannot now say, on the testimony of the Jamharat ashʽār al ʽArab, that two of the most competent ancient authorities on Arabic poetry, Mofaḍḍal (d. c. 790) and Abū ʽUbaida (d. A.D. 824, at a great age), had already assigned to the “Seven” (viz. “the seven Moʽallaqāt”) a poem each of Nābigha and Aʽshā in place of those of ʽAntara and Ḥārith. For meanwhile it has been discovered that the compiler of the above-mentioned work—who, in order to deceive the reader, issued it under a false name—is absolutely untrustworthy. But the learned Ibn Qotaiba (9th century A.D.), in his book Of Poetry and Poets, mentions as belonging to the “Seven” not only the poem of ʽAmr, which has invariably been reckoned among the Moʽallaqāt (ed. de Goeje, p. 120), but also a poem of ʽAbīd ibn Abraṣ (ibid. 144). In place of which poem he read this we do not know; and we are equally ignorant as to whether he counted other pieces than those indicated above among the seven.
Now Nābigha and Aʽshā enjoyed greater celebrity than any of the poets represented in the Moʽallaqāt, with the exception of Amra’al-Qais, and it is therefore not surprising that scholars, of a somewhat later date, appended a poem by each of these to the Moʽallaqāt, without intending by this to make them an integral part of that work. This is clear, for instance, from the introductory words of Tibrīzī (d. A.D. 1109) to his commentary on the Moʽallaqāt. Appended to this he gives a commentary to a poem of Nābigha, to one of Aʽshā, and moreover one to that poem of ʽAbid which, as we have just seen, Ibn Qotaiba had counted among the seven. It is a pure misunderstanding when Ibn Khaldūn (loc. cit.) speaks of nine Moʽallaqāt; and we ought hardly to lay any stress on the fact that he mentions not only Nābigha, and Aʽshā, but also ʽAlqama, as Moʽallaqa—poets. He was probably led to this by a delusive recollection of the Collection of the “Six Poets,” in which were included these three, together with the three Moʽallaqa-poets, Amra’al-Qais, Zuhair and Ṭarafa.
The lives of these poets were spread over a period of more than a hundred years. The earliest of the seven was Amra’al-Qais (q.v.), regarded by many as the most illustrious of Arabian
- ↑ Doubts had already been expressed by various scholars, when Hengstenberg—rigid conservative as he was in theology—openly challenged it, and Sprenger (Das Leben des Mohammad, i. 14, Berlin, 1861) declared it a fable. Since then it has been controverted at length in Nöldeke’s Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber (Hanover, 1864), p. xvii. sqq. Ahlwardt concurs in this conclusion; see his Bemerkungen über die Aechtheit der allen arabischen Gedichte (1872), pp. 25 seq.
