• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Archetype and Attribution in Early Arabic Poetry: Al-Shanfarā and the Lāmiyyat 'Al-Arab
  • Contributor: Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney
  • imprint: Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1986
  • Published in: International Journal of Middle East Studies
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1017/s0020743800030518
  • ISSN: 0020-7438; 1471-6380
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: <jats:p>The premier position of the<jats:italic>Lāmiyyat al-'Arab</jats:italic>among the poetry of<jats:italic>al-shu'arā' al-Ta'alīk</jats:italic>(the brigand-poets) of the Jāhiliyya is undeniable. Among scholars and philologists, both Arab and Orientalist, it has remained over the centuries the object of the most minute philological commentaries. Its Arab commentators number more than 20, among them the foremost names in classical Arabic literary scholarship: al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), the doyen of the Basran school, whose commentary is said actually to have been taken from his Kufan archrival, Tha'lab (d. 291/904); the renowned poetic commentarist al-Tibrīzī (d. 502/1109); and the famed grammarian and Qur'anic commentator, al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1143). Its European popularity—a phenomenon that Blachére attributes to its appeal to the sensibilities of nineteenth-century Romanticism—dates to Sylvestre de Sacy's study and translation of 1826, followed by Rückert's German translation in his<jats:italic>Hamāsa</jats:italic>of 1846. In philological studies, of note are the more than 20 pages of his<jats:italic>Beiträge</jats:italic>that Nöldeke devotes to lexical matters and Jacob's extensive two-part<jats:italic>Schanfará-Siudien</jats:italic>.</jats:p>