9 - ʿAbbasid poetry and its antecedents

Summary

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY

The difference between the formal ode (qaṣīdah) and the occasional poem (qiṭʿah) seems to have been already fairly well established in pre-Islamic poetry. Despite the difficulties inherent in discussing the texts of pre- Islamic poems – which were transmitted and perhaps in some cases composed orally, so that there is some degree of fluidity in their structure and wording – and despite the fact that in many instances we cannot be absolutely sure that what has come down to us as a qiṭʿah was not originally part of a qaṣīdah, it can be said, with due caution, that stylistically there is a discernible difference between the two types of composition. Apart from its obvious freedom from the relative external structural rigour of the polythematic qaṣīdah, the qiṭah is generally marked by the simplicity of its language. Examples are Imruʾ al-Qays's elegies on his father or ancestors, composed in a language considerably simpler than that of his Muʿallaqah or his “Umm Jundab” qaṣīdah, with its elaborate descriptions of his mistress Umm Jundab and of his horse, or Labīd's elegies on his half-brother Arbad, which may be contrasted with the much more formal and recondite diction of his Muʿallaqah. This simplicity of language is not just a feature of elegies, although these understandably tend to be closer to spontaneous and direct utterances of grief; it is also to be found in other types of poetic expression, as in Labīd's well-known lines on his old age or in the “religious” pieces attributed to Umayyah b. Abī ʾl-Ṣalt.