Mu'allaqat

Group of old Arabic poems

The Muʻallaqāt (المعلقات, ) is a compilation of seven long pre Islamic Arabic poems. The name means The Suspended Odes or The Hanging Poems, they were named so because these poems were hung in the Kaaba in Mecca, Some scholars have also suggested that the hanging is figurative, as if the poems "hang" in the reader's mind. Along with the Mufaddaliyat, Jamharat Ash'ar al Arab, Asma'iyyat, and the Hamasah, the Mu'allaqāt are considered the primary source for early written Arabic poetry. Scholar Peter N. Stearns goes so far as to say that they represent "the most sophisticated poetic production in the history of Arabic letters."

The original compiler of the poems may have been Hammad al Rawiya (8th century). The grammarian Ahmad ibn Muhammad al Nahhas (d. 949 CE) says in his commentary on the Mu'allaqat: "The true view of the matter is this: when Hammad al Rawiya 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.'" Hammad was a Persian by descent, but a client of the Arab tribe, Bakr ibn Wa'il. For this reason, some suppose he not only received into the collection a poem of the famous poet Tarafa, of the tribe of Bakr, but also that of another Bakrite, Harith. The latter had been a prominent chieftain, while his poem could serve as a counterpoise to Harith's contemporary 'Amr, chief of the Taghlib, the rival tribe of the Bakr. 'Amr praises the Taghlib in glowing terms: Harith, in a similar vein, extols the Bakr ancestors of Hammad's patrons. Nabigha and A'sha were more famous than any of the poets represented in the Mu'allaqat, with the exception of Imru' al Qais, so it could be that scholars of a somewhat later date appended a poem by each of these to the Mu'allaqat, without intending by this to make them an integral part of that work. This is indicated by the introductory words of Yahya ibn Ali Tibrizi (d. 1109 C. E.) to his commentary on the Mu'allaqat. Appended to this he gives a commentary to a poem of Nabigha, to one of A'sha, and moreover one to that poem of 'Abid which Ibn Qutaiba had counted among the seven. Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406 CE), in his Muqaddimah, speaks of nine Mu'allaqat, but this was probably due to a misunderstanding.

The lives of these poets were spread over a period of more than a hundred years. The earliest of the seven was Imru' al Qais, regarded by many as the most illustrious of Arabian Muʻallaqah poets. His exact date cannot be determined; but probably the best part of his career fell within the midst of the sixth century. He was a scion of the royal house of the tribe Kinda, which lost its power at the death of its king, Harith ibn ʻAmr, in the year 529. The poet's royal father, Hojr, by some accounts a son of this Harith, was killed by a Bedouin tribe, the Banu Asad ibn Khuzaymah. The son led an adventurous life as a refugee, now with one tribe, now with another, and appears to have died young. A contemporary of Imruʻ al Qais was Abid ibn al Abras, one poem of whose is by some authorities reckoned among the collection. A notable commentary titled Ḥall al ʿUqdah fī Sharḥ Sabʿ Muʿallaqah was written by Momtazuddin Ahmad.