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The original sin in Arabic poetics1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Extract
Scholarly assemblies in the Arabic intellectual tradition served as forums not only for entertainment butalso for spectacular events of both literary and historical significance. Al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/979) related how at one such literary seance, which was organized at the instance of Ibn Durayd (d. 321/933), a participant read these verses, attributed to Adam, the progenitor of mankind, lamenting the murder of Abel by Cain:
The land and all those on it have altered the face of the earth has turned dusty and vile. Anything of beautyand splendour has altered and the smile of the lovely face has waned.
The observation that the rhyme letter carries, in breach of the standard rule, different desinential vowels, namely, ḍamma in one line and kasra in the other, provoked a reaction from Ibn Durayd who said ‘This is a poem said at the beginning of the world, yet iqwā' was committed in it.’
But of course in Arabic historical lore, Ishmael, the son of Abraham, is said to have been the first to speak Arabic; and Adam is believed to have spoken Syriac. Factors which encouraged false ascriptions and the outright forgery of poetry have been discussed in various published works and the subject need not detain us here: suffice it to say that the foisting of these lines on Adam, and indeed the entire anecdote, might well be seen in terms of myth, in the sense defined by Jolles (Wahrsage), invented for the sake of a historical perspective.
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- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , February 1992 , pp. 9 - 15
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- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1992
References
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7 What is doubtless certain is that these faults had become fully formalized by the beginning of the third century. This is confirmed by following verse, cited by Abū Ḣātim al-Sijistānī (d. 250/865).
Accept it as a gift from a poet,
for which presentation no reward is sought
The composition of a writer who chose the best of his
poetry, the splendour of which is not effaced by ikfā.
He committed no iqwā' therein, nor sinād,
nor īṭd', which will thus enervate its structure.
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‘I compose (poetry), not committing iqwā’ in it, many a Tenderer of poetry commits iqwā’, thus solecism’.
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