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Unusual Lampoons and their Historical Background

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

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Extract

Two short lampoons ostensibly directed against al-'Awwām, father of the more illustrious al-Zubair b. al-'Awwām, of the tribe of Asad, a branch of Quraish, follow an unusual method of achieving their object. Apart from general abuse, the chief characteristic of both poems is the deliberate attempt, unparalleled in the poems attributed to Ḥassān b. Thābit, to play on the term al-'awwdm ‘floater or swimmer’. From the idea of floating or swimming, the poet conjures up fish, and crocodiles, which obviously bring to his mind by a feat of the imagination the Nile (though it is not mentioned by name) and hence the Copts and the Egyptian town Qahqā'.

Type
Notes and Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , October 1967 , pp. 681 - 684
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1967

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References

1 Modern Qahā. In Mu'jam al-buldan Yāqūt gives the name as .

2 Roman numerals refer to the poems in Hirschfeld's edition of the Dī;wān of Ḥassān b. Thibit (‘E. J. W. Gibb Memorial’ Series, XIII), Leyden and London, 1910. No. CCII in the new edition of the Dī;wān (ed. 'Arafat, now printing in the same series).

3 Jamharat nasab Quraish wa akhbāruhā, ed. Shākir, M. M., Cairo, 1381/1962, 284.Google Scholar

4 Quraish, Nasab, ed. Lévi-Provençal, Cairo, 1953, 247.Google Scholar

5 Jamharat ansāb al-'Arab, ed. Hārūn, A. S., Cairo, 1962, 124.Google Scholar

6 A direct descendant of Hishām b. al-Walī;d b. al-Mughī;ra, one of the most prominent men of the Makhzūm clan, and a leader of Quraish. Ibrāhī;m b. Hishām was the maternal uncle of the Caliph Hishām b. 'Abd al-Malik, and his father served in the same position under 'Abd al-Malik. See Nasab Quraish, 48, 328, et passim; Ibn Bakkār, Jamhara, 83; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara, 148; Aghānī;, I, 165 ff.

7 Ibn Baklār, op. cit., 83; Aghānī;, loc. cit.; Ibn Sa'd, Ṭabaqāt, v, 94 (Beirut, v, 126).

8 Aghānī;, I, 166.Google Scholar

9 ibid.

10 Al-H.ārith was interested in poetry and philology, and he and his brother 'Abd al-Raḥmān both wrote poetry. See Nasab Quraish, 312, 314; Ibn Ḥazm, Jamhara, 146; Aghānī;, III, 110ndash;13.

11 Nasab Quraish, 327.