Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period (The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature)
Language: English
Pages: 568
ISBN: 0521126215
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Originally published in 1983, The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature was the first general survey of the field to have been published in English for over fifty years and the first attempted in such detail in a multi-volume form. The volumes of the History provide an invaluable source of reference and understanding of the intellectual, literary and religious heritage of the Arabic-speaking and Islamic world. This volume begins its coverage with the oral verse of the sixth century AD, and ends with the fall of the Umayyad dynasty two centuries later. Within this period fall major events: the life of the Prophet Muhammad, the founding of the Islamic religion, the great Arab Islamic conquests of territories outside the Arabian Peninsula, and their meeting, as overlords, with the Byzantine and Sasanian world. Contributors to this volume discuss an array of topics including the influences of Greeks, Persians and Syrians on early Arabic literature.
roughness and irregularity. Vellum was extremely expensive and used only for copying the Qur'an; but its surface did permit the evolution of a calligraphic style, commonly referred to as "Kufic", though it is now believed not to have any special connection with Kufa, but more probably to have originated in Medina. It is a solid and fine, though rather stiff, style; its use persisted in Qur'an codices for several centuries, thereafter (and until the present day) being relegated to the status of a
material exceptionally difficult to read. However, it is used for architectural decoration, monumental inscriptions, and for decorative headings in books. ARABIC METRICS The corpus of pre-Islamic and early Islamic verse exhibits very well-marked metrical structures, which were analysed and codified by the second/eighthcentury grammarian KhalTl b. Ahmad. As with other grammatical work of that period,1 what had been originally designed as a descriptive analytical account rapidly became a
description of an onager and its four mates. 109 Taking aim at them, the hunter shot them one by one: So among them all he scattered bane - one fled as best life's last remains gave strength, another in stumbling died. Their legs beneath slipped where the blood from the cruel shafts dyed deep the ground, as if clad in striped stuff from Tazld. (C. J. Lyall) Then follows the description of the oryx — a strong young oryx. First the hounds coursed and attacked it, then appeared their master with bow
arms-bearing tribes and their chiefs, secular or religious, who formed the class politically and socially dominant in the settled agricultural areas containing the bulk of the inhabitants. The arms-bearing tribes may have been sedentary, sometimes even farmers, or nomadic, or have had both settled and nomadic sections. However, were they sedentary or nomadic, the noble arms-bearing tribes shared a common social code with its concepts of high chivalry; they formed, and indeed continue to form, the
you wish, for we are with you."45 The second ' Aqabah pact does seem to imply the transfer of protection of Muhammad from his own kin to that of strangers, so there is nothing inherently improbable in the role attributed to his uncle al-'Abbas, that of attending and holding a watching brief for the house of Hashirn and defending Muhammad's interests. The act of hijrah whereby Muhammad abandoned protection by Quraysh to take up that of the Supporters fAnsar) at Yathrib was not, of course, a