Insight Editions · No. 105
Anthology of Classical Arabic Poetry
From Pre-Islamic Times to Ibn 'Arabi
Paul Smith · Translated by Paul Smith
A translated anthology traces Arabic poetry from pre-Islamic odes through courtly love, wine verse, panegyric, and the Sufi poetry of Ibn 'Arabi.
A study guide to Anthology of Classical Arabic Poetry by Paul Smith, translated by Paul Smith. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
Overview
It follows Smith's own order: his introduction to the forms, then thirty-four poets from Imra' ul-Qays to Ibn 'Arabi, each with a biographical note and translated poems. Verse is quoted sparingly and exactly as Smith prints it; everything else is paraphrase and commentary.
Argument Map
Chapter Map
| Part | Smith's sections | Big idea |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Introduction and forms | Classical Arabic Poetry; the Qasida, Qit'a, Ghazal, Ruba'i; bibliography | Poetry as the tribe's record; four forms; the ghazal as heart-and-mind spiral; two Winehouses |
| 2. Hanging Odes I | Imra' ul-Qays, Zuhair, Harith, Antara | The classic qasida: ruins, journey, message; peace, advocacy, worth earned by deeds |
| 3. Hanging Odes II | Tarafa, Amru, al-A'sha, Suhaym, Labid | Carpe diem, defiance, race and slavery; Labid gives up poetry for the Koran |
| 4. Threshold of Islam | Ka'b, Khansa, Hazrat Ali, Ali Ibn Husain, Omar Ibn Abi Rabi'a, Majnun | The converted panegyric; the human as larger than the universe; love unto madness |
| 5. Rabi'a and Baghdad | Rabi'a of Basra, Bashshar, Abu Nuwas, Abu Tammam | God loved for His own sake; one vocabulary of wine for saint and libertine |
| 6. Early Sufi masters | Dhu'l-Nun, Bistami, al-Nuri, Junaid, Sumnun, Hallaj | Gnosis, annihilation, sobriety versus intoxication; the price of speaking union |
| 7. Poet-princes and philosophers | Al-Mutanabbi, al-Ma'arri, Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali | The self-praising court poet, the rationalist sceptic, the soul's descent and return |
| 8. The great masters | Gilani, Abu Madyan, Suhrawardi, Ibn al-Farid, Ibn 'Arabi | Wine before the vine; love that demands the lover's death; the religion of Love |
Part 1. Smith's Introduction: Poetry and Its Forms
Paul Smith opens his anthology with a compact essay on what Arabic poetry was for and how it was built. Before any poem appears, he sets out four forms (the qasida, the qit'a, the ghazal and the ruba'i) and a thesis that runs through the whole book: the same shapes that served tribal boasting, court praise and wine songs became, in Sufi hands, vessels for longing after God.
Poetry as the Tribe's Public Record
In pre-Islamic Arabia the poet was historian, soothsayer and propagandist at once. Praise of one's own tribe and lampoons against rival tribes were among the most popular kinds of early verse, and a mock battle in poetry could stand in place of a real war. The market town of 'Ukaz, near Mecca, hosted a regular festival where poets displayed their craft.
Smith sorts the early poets into rough types:
- The renowned tribal poets, such as Imru' al-Qais, al-Nabighah al-Dhubyani, Tarafah and Zuhayr.
- The vagabond poets (Ta'abbata Sharran, al-Shanfara, 'Urwah ibn al-Ward), who attacked the rigidity of tribal life and praised solitude. Some of these attacks were ironic, teasing the audience only to endorse the communal values it held most dear.
- Wandering professionals such as al-A'sha, who travelled in search of anyone who needed a poem.
The best early poems were gathered in the 8th century into two collections: the Mu'allaqat, "the hung poems", said to have hung on or in the Kaaba, and the Mufaddaliyat, al-Mufaddal's anthology. The Mu'allaqat aimed to give one poem by each of the "seven renowned ones", although versions disagree on which seven; the Mufaddaliyat is a more random gathering.
From Suppression to Preservation
Early Islam treated these poems with suspicion. The poets were tied to the old religion, the Koran singled out the role of the poet for criticism, and the poems praised wine, sex and gambling. Satire against an idea or a leader was censured less. Poetry in praise of Islam took time to develop. Paradoxically, it was Islamic scholarship that saved the old poems: they illuminated life before and during early Islam and became the basis of the linguistic study whose summit was the Koran.
Smith then sketches three later currents:
- The court ghazal. Comfortable Umayyad court life pushed love poetry forward. Abu Nuwas spoofed the qasida and qit'a, praised wine and wrote ribald verse, some openly homosexual.
- Religious poetry, which grew alongside the risque.
- Sufi poetry, which read language allegorically. Under the guise of a love or wine poem the Sufi contemplated the mortal flesh and sought transcendence. Smith names Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, Bistami and Hallaj as the most significant, and notes that Hallaj was crucified for heresy.
Most Arabic poetry uses monorhyme. That may look poor to readers raised on English rhyme, but it suits a language with only three vowels, each long or short.
The Four Forms
| Form | Shape and rhyme | Typical use | Later life |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qasida | Often over 50 lines, sometimes over 100; one metre; every couplet on one rhyme | Panegyric (madih) to a king or noble; a single subject developed and concluded | Inherited by Persians, Turks, Afghans and Indian poets, sometimes longer than 100 lines |
| Qit'a ("fragment") | At least two couplets; monorhyme but the first couplet is not double-rhymed (ab, bb, cb...); any metre but the ruba'i's | Obituaries, witty complaint, insult, ethics, philosophy, personal experience, improvisation | Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Punjabi; masters include Abu Nuwas, Ma'arri, Anvari, Ibn Yamin |
| Ghazal | Usually 5 to 15 couplets; first couplet rhymes in both lines, then the second line of each | Conversation of lover and beloved; love of truth, love and beauty | Mature form by the 14th century; Hafiz, Ibn 'Arabi |
| Ruba'i | Four lines (two couplets), lines 1, 2 and 4 rhyme, special ruba'i metres | Epigram; the fourth line is sublime, subtle or clever | Claimed as the one native Persian form |
The Qasida's Three Movements
Smith relies on Ibn Qutaybah's 9th-century Book of Poetry and Poets, which describes the classic qasida in three parts:
A favourite nasib motif is the poet pursuing his beloved's caravan, only to find the camp already struck. Between the nasib and what follows comes a disengagement, which Smith links with the takhallus. Many poets bent the plan, yet it remains recognisable in most qasidas.
The Ghazal as a Spiral
Smith admits there is no English equivalent, though the Hafiz scholar Masud Farzaad thought the sonnet closest. Most scholars derive the ghazal from the qasida's prelude, isolated and reshaped. The root gazl means spinning or thread, and the form of the ghazal is a spiral. Smith takes Hazrat Ali's ghazal in this volume as evidence of an Arabic origin.
The first couplet (matla, "rising") sets the stage; the inner couplets turn the subject, viewing it from new angles; the last couplet (maqta, "point of section") usually carries the poet's pen-name, letting him step outside himself and comment, often with a pun on the name.
Adam, the First Poet
Smith gives the ghazal a sacred genealogy. Sufism, he writes, means getting to the essence of everything. Adam was the first poet, who named all things, invented the first alphabet and sang to Eve in the spiral form of the ghazal: songs of longing before union and of bliss after it. Tabari (d.923) and Masudi (d.957), he reports, say the first poem in history was Adam's lament for Abel. Its opening:
the face of the earth is torn and surrounded with gloom;
The Two Winehouses
Smith distinguishes the tavern of the grape from another "Winehouse" where the Wine of Divine Love is poured by the Winebringer, the Perfect Master. The drunkard there becomes mast, mad with longing for the Eternal One, whose beauty he sees in an earthly beloved. Human love is transmuted into divine love; his examples are Hafiz's love for Shakh-e Nabat and Ibn 'Arabi's for Nizam. A ghazal poet who sounds like a drunken outcast may be describing an inner state rather than a habit.
The Ruba'i
Many scholars call the ruba'i the one form original to Persian, deriving all others from Arabic; Smith says this can be disputed. Each ruba'i is a self-contained poem, not a stanza of a long work as FitzGerald made it in his Khayyam. The first three lines prepare the fourth. It served everyone: praise for royalty, homilies for commoners, epigrams for mystics, satire for reprobates and love poems for any passionate heart.
Smith closes with a select bibliography of standard histories by Nicholson, Gibb, Browne, Rypka, Arberry and Levy and several studies of the qasida and the nasib.
Part 2. The Hanging Odes I: Princes, Sages and Champions
The anthology proper begins with the poets of the Mu'allaqat. Each section follows the same pattern: a biographical sketch, a list of further reading, then a complete translated qasida. Smith's translations hold a single end-rhyme or refrain through the whole poem, imitating the Arabic monorhyme in English. This part covers four of the seven: Imra' ul-Qays, Zuhair, Harith and Antara.
Imra' ul-Qays (500-535 A.D.): The Wandering Prince
Imra' ul-Qays, son of Hujr, was a prince of the tribe of Kinda. His real name was Hunduj; his epithet means "the man of adversity". Smith reports that the Prophet called him "the wandering prince" and the best of the pre-Islamic poets, and that Hazrat Ali also praised him.
His life reads like a tragedy in five acts:
- Exile. A love affair with a girl of another tribe so angered his father that he was expelled. He lived for years a reckless desert life "like Majnun".
- The news. A messenger announced his father's murder while the poet was drinking and gaming. He let his companion finish the game, then said that the son his father had banished must now avenge him: "today we shall drink; to-morrow, sobriety".
- Failed revenge. His army of Taglib and Bakr could not reach the rebels, who sheltered under the king of Hira. Allies deserted, and a Himyarite prince who promised 500 men died.
- Broken arrows. Drawing divining arrows and getting "defence" three times, he broke them and threw them at the idol: if they had killed your father, you would not stop at defence.
- The poisoned robe. At Justinian's court in Constantinople an enemy turned the emperor against him. A poisoned garment was sent after him; he died in agony at Ankara.
Smith notes that non-Muslim scholars have argued the Koran borrows from his poetry, a charge Muslims refute; he holds that the poet helped shape the literary style of the age, that his thematic influence survives in Sufi love poetry, and that he is believed to have invented the qasida.
The Qasida
The poem is the model of the form. It opens at the ruins:
she stayed between Dahul and Howmal where sands are curving.
The nasib lingers: winds sweep the abandoned camp, deer dung lies "like peppercorns" in the empty yards, and friends tell him to bear his grief while he insists tears are the only cure. Memory then turns to earlier loves and to the famous day at Dara Juljul pool, where he slaughtered his camel to feed a group of young women and then climbed into Unaizah's litter. A long, frankly erotic passage follows: a night raid past hostile guards to reach a beloved, and a portrait built of desert similes (an ostrich egg, a white deer's neck, hair like clustered dates, a face that lights the night like a hermit's candle).
The rahil begins with the night itself as an adversary, heavy and slow, its stars "bound to a cliff". He answers a howling wolf as a fellow loser who gives away whatever he wins. Then comes the celebrated horse: fast, firm, a rock in a torrent, boiling like a cauldron, with "the loins of an antelope" and "thighs of an ostrich". The hunt ends in a feast.
The poem closes with a storm that floods the named hills and valleys, leaves no palm trunk standing in Taima and spreads its gifts over the desert "like a merchant of Yemen" displaying his bales.
Zuhair (520-609): The Gentleman-Philosopher
Zuhair ibn Abu Sulma, of the Muzayna tribe, came from a family of poets; his son Ka'b appears later in the book. Smith calls him "the gentleman-philosopher among early Arab poets": less satirical than his peers, clear in phrasing, wanting to teach high and noble ideas. He was among the last of the "hanged" poets. As an aged sage of a hundred he is said to have met Muhammad, who prayed God to protect him from the poet's witty tongue.
The Qasida: A Poem of Peace
The ode was written when two Bedouin tribes, Abs and Zubain (Dhubyan), ended a long war. Its structure is a clean three-step:
| Movement | Content |
|---|---|
| Nasib | Faint lines of Umm Aufa's camp, recognised only with difficulty after twenty summers; a procession of women in litters crossing the valleys |
| Praise | Oath by the temple at Mecca to praise the two chiefs who paid blood-money in camels to close the war; a warning not to hide secrets from God, who writes the punishment in a book kept to the Day of Judgement |
| War and its cost | War as a monster that grinds like a millstone and gives birth to twins, Ruin and Distress; the story of Husain son of Zamzam, who broke the peace to avenge his father |
| Maxims (hikam) | A chain of sayings on keeping promises, sharing wealth, self-respect, death and the limits of knowledge |
Smith's notes explain three references: the temple was built by Ishmael, whose descendants the Quraish married into the old keepers, Jurhum; the "perfume of Manshim" was used in a war oath whose takers fought to the last man, giving a proverb for ill luck; and Harith Ibn 'Awf settled Husain's private revenge by offering a hundred camels or his own son, and the Abs took the camels.
The maxims are the most quoted part. Two lines capture Zuhair's balance of humility and realism:
but… as to what will be happening tomorrow I confess my predicament.
He also sums up the human being in a couplet: half tongue, half heart, and the rest "only an image". He sees death "stumbling like a weak-sighted camel": whom it strikes falls, whom it misses grows ancient.
Harith (d. approx 570): Eloquence as Advocacy
Harith son of Hilliza was over a hundred when the Banu Bakr sent him to argue their case before 'Amr son of Hind, king of Hira, in a dispute with the Banu Taglib (represented by Amru, another of the seven). His qasida is the case for the defence. It worked: the king decided for Bakr and, as an honour, threw off the seven veils behind which he heard the speeches and seated Harith beside him. Smith adds that the king soon lost his life at Amru's hands, probably because of this verdict.
Smith frames the ode as a contrast between Harith's wisdom and the youthful imprudence of his rival. Harith flatters skilfully: his beloved shares the queen's name, Asoma (she listened from behind a hanging curtain), and he introduces a second love, Hind, because that was the king's mother's name.
The Argument of the Ode
- Brief nasib: Asoma's departure, the many places of their promises, a new passion for Hind whose fire he sees on far hills but cannot approach because of war.
- The charge: the Taglib family called Araqim ("the speckled snake") have slandered Bakr, confusing innocent and guilty.
- Rebuttal by rhetorical questions: should Bakr pay for the crimes of Kanda, Haneifa, Ateik, Ibad, Kodha or Iyaad? Each question insists that guilt belongs to whoever committed the act.
- Record of service: three signs of Bakr's merit known to the king, including breaking the chains of Imra' ul-Qays after his imprisonment, avenging Mondir king of Ghassan and redeeming captives with nine kings.
- Praise of 'Amr as a just ruler descended from Irem, who should be guarded by troops of jinn.
Antara (525-615): The Slave Who Became a Knight
'Antara Ibn Shaddad of the Banu Abs was the son of a respected tribesman and Zabaibah, an Ethiopian woman enslaved in war. The tribe classed the dark-skinned boy among the slaves. He won freedom when his father promised it in exchange for rescuing the tribe's captured women, which he did after slaying many of the enemy single-handed.
Taunted about his birth, he answered: "One half of me is of the purest blood and the other half is my sword." He loved his cousin Abla, who at first mocked him and later clung to him through glory and misfortune; to win her he faced trials such as fetching a special camel from a northern kingdom. He fought in the war of Dahis and Ghabra between Abs and Dhubyan, which began over a horse race. At 90, returning with camels taken from a clan of Tayyi', he was struck by a spear thrown by a pursuer and rode home to die.
Smith reports the Prophet's wish to have seen Antara above any Arab described to him. Later ages built a vast romance around him (published in 32 volumes at Cairo, 1889), comparable to Arthur for the English or the Cid for the Spaniards. He became the father of knighthood, champion of the weak and protector of women. Rimsky-Korsakov's Symphony No. 2 and Etienne Dinet's 1898 translation carried the legend to Europe.
The Qasida
The ode opens with a question about whether any theme is left unsung, then greets "the bower of Abla" in the valley of Jiwaa. Its texture alternates tenderness and violence:
- Abla's kiss smells of musk, like a meadow kept green by rain, where buzzing flies sound like a man singing with wine.
- She reclines on soft couches while he spends nights on a horse's back.
- His camel is compared to a male ostrich surrounded by chicks "like the black Yemeni camels" around their Ethiopian herder, an image with obvious personal resonance.
- He drinks old wine and spends freely, yet his renown remains whole; sober again, his generosity is unchanged.
- The battle passages are graphic: spears through chain mail, wounds that call the wolves, a warrior who grins in horror as Antara dismounts to meet him.
The emotional peak is his horse, wounded in the chest by lances, complaining "with gushing tears": if it had speech, it would have spoken.
| Poet | Dates (as printed) | Occasion of the ode | Signature image |
|---|---|---|---|
| Imra' ul-Qays | 500-535 | Love, exile, adventure | The horse like a rock in a torrent |
| Zuhair | 520-609 | Peace between Abs and Zubain | War as a millstone birthing twins |
| Harith | d. approx 570 | Plea before the king of Hira | Bakr as a dark rock that splits clouds |
| Antara | 525-615 | Love for Abla and battle glory | The weeping wounded horse |
Part 3. The Hanging Odes II: Rebels, Boasters and the Poet Who Fell Silent
The second group of pre-Islamic poets widens the cast. Tarafa and Amru complete the courtly drama at Hira; al-A'sha and Suhaym show the professional singer and the enslaved poet; Labid closes the age of "ignorance" by renouncing poetry for the Koran. Smith presents al-A'sha and Suhaym through short qit'as, the others through full qasidas.
Tarafa (543-568): Wine, Camels and Death at Twenty-Five
Tarafa ibn al-'Abd of the Bakr was born in Bahrain. Orphaned young, he was robbed of his inheritance by greedy uncles. Women, wine and gambling led his tribe to disown him, and he wandered between raids and oases where he meditated on life. He became a sha'ir, which Smith glosses as "one who knows".
At the court of Hira he quarrelled with his brother-in-law over the treatment of his sister, the poetess al-Khirniq, and satirised King 'Amr son of Hind and Prince Qabus. The king sent Tarafa and his uncle al-Mutalammis to the governor of Bahrain with sealed letters. The uncle read his own, found it a death warrant and destroyed it. Tarafa proudly refused to read his. The first governor, of Tarafa's own tribe, urged him to flee and declined to execute him; a replacement from a hostile tribe asked how he preferred to die. Tarafa's answer: fill him with wine to the throat, then bleed him. His sister composed a qasida in his memory.
The Qasida
Smith notes its debt to Imra' ul-Qays. After a short nasib (Khawla's camp, traces like tattoos on the back of a hand; the departing litters like ships), the poem gives its longest stretch to the camel, described limb by limb with architectural and craft similes: thighs like the gates of a castle, joints like a Greek bridge, cheek smooth as Syrian paper, lips like Yemeni leather, a neck like a ship's rudder on the Tigris.
Then the poem turns to the poet himself: generous, always found in the assembly or the tavern, surrounded by singing girls. His clan rejects him like a diseased camel smeared with pitch. His defence is a philosophy of carpe diem in the face of death:
- If no one can stop death, let him enjoy pain and pleasure first.
- Three things make youth worth living: early wine before the critics wake, riding to rescue a comrade, and love on a rainy day.
- The miser's tomb and the profligate's tomb look the same.
and… that which every day diminishes, soon perishes for ever.
A bitter section complains of his cousin Malec, who rebuffs him: "the cruelty of relations" wounds more deeply than an Indian sword. The poem ends with his sword, a camel-slaughter at a churlish owner's expense, an instruction to Mabed's daughter to mourn him, and a closing maxim that too much wisdom is folly, since time brings news you never asked for.
Amru, son of Kulthum (6th and 7th centuries): The Boast as Defiance
Amru was a prince of the 'Araqim branch of the Banu Taglib. Smith tells two stories of origin. His mother Layla was nearly buried alive at birth by her father Muhalhil, until a voice in a dream promised she would be the mother of heroes. Before Amru's birth she dreamed her son would be the bravest of warriors.
Taglib and Bakr had long feuded over the murder of Kulayb son of Rabi'a, and the dispute went to 'Amr son of Hind. Amru spoke for Taglib with the ode below, which Smith calls "little calculated to please the royal arbiter"; Harith won the verdict for Bakr. Amru later killed the king. Smith weighs three motives and prefers the third: the king's mother, Hind, tried to make Layla serve her by passing some keys; Layla refused, Hind insulted and struck her, and Amru seized the king's own sword and killed him in 569, months after Tarafa's death.
Dying at a hundred, Amru left advice that reads like a manual of conduct: whoever attacks will be attacked; it is better to refuse than to promise and break your word; listen attentively, speak briefly.
The Qasida
It opens not with ruins but with a call for the morning cup: the saffron wine of Enderin that makes the miser forget wealth. A brief love passage follows, and then a near-endless fakhr (tribal boast). War is a millstone that grinds small clans to flour; Taglib's scimitars are like children's sashes; enemies' heads roll like boys' balls. The ode challenges the king directly: "when were we ever slaves in your mother's pay?" It ends in hyperbole: "This world's ours", and the tribe's tents fill the earth while its ships cover the ocean.
| Harith (for Bakr) | Amru (for Taglib) | |
|---|---|---|
| Stance before the king | Deference and flattery | Defiance and threat |
| Method | Rebuttal by questions, precedent, treaty | Boast, intimidation, ancestry |
| Opening | The beloved's departure | A call for wine |
| Result | Won the verdict | Lost; later killed the king |
Al-A'sha (b. before 570 - d. after 625): The Travelling Professional
Maymun Ibn Qays from Manfuha, near Riyadh, travelled across Arabia and to Oman, Jerusalem, Ethiopia, Iraq and Iran "harp in hand", praising whoever paid. So feared as a satirist that few refused him, he took the name al-A'sha, "weak-sighted", after losing his sight. Smith ranks him in the first rank of Arabian poets.
Two qit'as appear. The first is a teasing dismissal of a lover: "leave", repeated through the poem, not for any offence but freely and still loved, each to "taste another". The second recalls the battle of Dhu Kar against the Persians: nobles with gold earrings and pearls, the women behind weeping with streaming kohl, and the Arabs charging "again... again" until the sun reached noon and the enemy faltered.
Suhaym (d. 660): The Slave Poet
Born a slave and brought to Medina as a child, Habba was nicknamed Suhaym, "little black". The caliph 'Uthman refused him as a gift because, well fed, he recited love poems to one's women and, hungry, satirised one. He was finally killed by his owners for flirting with their women.
His qit'as are short and sharp. Imprisoning him locks up the son of a slave woman; freeing him lets loose "a brown lion". He would rather herd camels than be ordered to carry a night-cup to a lady. In the third, women mock him for his black skin and threadbare cloak:
women, but He was ashamed of me and so it’s black I get!
Yet he insists he is not lessened by a slave mother who milked camels. Together with Antara, Suhaym gives the anthology a sustained voice on race, slavery and dignity.
Labid (560-661): From Ode to Scripture
Labid, son of Rabi'a of the Banu Amir, disgraced a hostile courtier at the court of Nu'man of Hira with an improvised satire while still a youth. He belongs both to "the time of the ignorance" and to Islam. His brother 'Arbad was killed by lightning soon after speaking against Islam's central doctrine; Labid then joined a deputation to the Prophet. His couplets in praise of God were unrivalled until Muhammad set the opening of the Koran's second chapter beside them. Labid tore down his own couplets, declared the passage divinely inspired, and became a Muslim. Thereafter he renounced poetry, composing, it is said, a single couplet.
Asked in Kufa for a poem, he recited the second chapter of the Koran: God had given him this in exchange for poetry. 'Omar raised his stipend. Mu'awiya planned to cut it, relented when Labid said he would not live long, and the allowance arrived after his death. His last words called death a novelty, "by no means agreeable".
The Qasida
Labid's ode is the most complete classical qasida in the book:
Three passages stand out:
- Ruins as writing. Floods strip the camps until traces show "like characters on solid rocks engraved", like a scribe's faded letters, like tattoos brought out by dust. He questions rocks that answer only by echo.
- The grieving cow. The poem's emotional centre is a wild cow whose calf was devoured by wolves the moment she let him go. She spends a night under a tree in the rain, her white coat shining "like pearls of a merchant when from string they're scattered", then fights off the hunters' hounds with her horns. The parallel to human loss and courage is unstated and powerful.
- The generous tribe. Labid hosts feasts, feeds orphans and widows, and praises a tribal hero who dispenses justice and gives up his own share. The ode ends with contentment with the Supreme Ruler, "He Who knows our nature best".
Part 4. The Threshold of Islam: Mantle, Mourning and Mad Love
With Ka'b and Khansa the anthology crosses into Islam. The poems that follow show three things the new faith did to the old art: it converted the panegyric (Ka'b's ode to the Prophet), it opened an inward, mystical register (Ali and his grandson), and it left the love lyric free to grow in Mecca and the desert (Omar Ibn Abi Rabi'a and Majnun).
Ka'b ibn Zuhair (d. 7th century): The Ode of the Mantle
Ka'b, Zuhair's eldest son, was one of six men who refused the Prophet's attempts to convert them. After the conquest of Mecca he went into hiding. Rebuked by his brother, he came to Medina in disguise and asked whether a repentant man would be forgiven. On hearing yes, he asked, "Even Ka'b ibn Zuhair?", then revealed himself and recited Banat Suad. The Prophet took off his mantle and laid it on Ka'b's shoulders.
The qasida keeps the full pagan frame and redirects it:
- Nasib: Su'ad has gone, and he is a slave "not ransomed". She is inconstant as a ghoul that keeps changing its clothes and holds love "like a sieve, water holding".
- Rahil: only a noble she-camel could reach her land; she is described in genealogy and limb, running through a heat that scorches the chameleon. Her forelegs move like the arms of a mother wailing for her dead first-born, an image that anticipates Ka'b's own fear.
- Crisis: detractors tell him he is as good as dead; trusted friends desert him. He answers that what the All-Merciful decrees will happen, and that every man will one day be carried on a bier.
- Submission and praise: he places his right hand in the hand of one "whose word is final", more awesome than a lion in its thicket. The Messenger is "a true light" and God's unsheathed Indian sword; his Quraysh companions are steady in battle and never shrink from death's troughs.
Khansa (575-640): The Voice of Grief
Smith gives Khansa (Tumadir) "the first place among Arabian women who excelled in poetry". Her best-known qit'as mourn her brother Sakhr, killed in battle: poignant, passionate, and nobly simple. In one she hears the messenger of death cry the news so loud it carries far and wide, and she staggers and falls "like a drunken man". In another she commands her eyes not to let their tears congeal for the generous Sakhr, who led his tribe before he grew a beard and took a glory beyond the reach of older men.
Hazrat Ali (598-661): The Seed of Everything That Follows
The Prophet's nephew and son-in-law was the first Imam of the Shi'ites and fourth caliph of the Sunnis. Sufi Masters count him among the "Seven Great Ones" of the first generation, and many dervish orders trace their lineage to him. His sayings fill the Nahj al-Balagh. Smith reports the tradition that Ali wrote the original Koran in his own blood and that it secretly survives, to be revealed with the Imam Mahdi.
Smith's claim for Ali's single ghazal is the strongest in the book: it should be memorised and meditated on by all Muslims, Sufis and Dervishes because it contains the essence of all that follows. The poem addresses the human being:
you cause the sickness, but this you don’t see.
The rest unfolds the claim: the person thinks himself a small form but is larger than any universe; he is the book whose letters spell out the mystery; he is "the very Being", containing what cannot be contained.
Ali Ibn Husain (d. 663-71)
The grandson of Ali, Imam Zainul Abiden, is represented by one quatrain that names the danger of mystical speech: if he told the knowledge he has, he would be called an idol-worshipper, and Muslims would think it right to kill him, calling evil what they once held good. The theme returns with Hallaj.
Omar Ibn Abi Rabi'a (644-719): The Meccan Seducer
Son of a rich Meccan merchant, Omar spent his life pursuing noblewomen, above all the singer Jamila. Smith credits him with qit'as and perhaps the first ghazals in Arabic. The devout called his verse "the greatest crime ever committed against God", yet the Prophet's cousin 'Abdullah, an authority on the Koran, could not help memorising his couplets.
His poems turn the pilgrimage itself into a stage for flirtation: men are struck down at Mina as girls stroll at the Stoning Place. Others show his comic touch: a woman bathing asks her friends whether his poem about her is true, and they answer, laughing and envious, that to a lover's eye beauty is everything; a lady "of the silver donkey" tells him to die of his agony or endure it, since his yearly pestering at the Pilgrimage drives her mad. His final qit'a confesses that all his poems to other women were a joke: Zaynab alone reigns.
Majnun (664-688): Love Unto Madness
Qays ibn al-Mulawwah, a Bedouin of the Bani Amir in Najd, loved Layla of his own tribe and named her in his poems. Her father refused the match because of the scandal, and Layla married another. Qays fled into the desert, where his family left food for him; he was seen reciting to himself or writing in the sand. Layla moved to Iraq and died. Qays was found dead in 688 near an unknown woman's grave, with three verses carved on a nearby rock.
Smith traces the legend's journey: from Arab folklore and Abulfaraj al-Isfahani's Kitab al-Aghani (a chapter of over ninety pages) into Persian, known since Rudaki and made famous by Nizami, then imitated by Fuzuli in Turkish and by Urdu poets.
The qit'as trace love's escalation into total absorption:
| Stage | What the poems say |
|---|---|
| Displacement | He kisses Layla's walls, not for love of the house but of the one who dwells in it |
| Dream of union | Two gazelles, two doves, two fish; even the tomb unites them, and resurrection makes the universe one |
| Love as cure and disease | He treats his passion for Layla "with more of Layla", as a drunkard treats a headache with wine |
| Prayer redirected | Pilgrims ask forgiveness; he asks only for Layla. At prayer he faces her, even if the qibla is behind him, though he insists he believes in one God |
| Beyond madness | Asked why he is insane: love is worse, since a madman raves only in fits and a true lover never recovers |
| Loss of self | Talking with others, his mind holds only her; he sleeps in the road "like an owl's brother" with broken wings |
and now I’m kissing this wall, this wall Layla…
Part 5. Rabi'a and the Poets of Baghdad
This part sets the founding woman saint of Sufism beside the wildest libertines of Abbasid Baghdad. The juxtaposition is deliberate: Rabi'a and Abu Nuwas use the same vocabulary of wine, cup, beloved and longing, one pointed at God, the other at the tavern. Bashshar and Abu Tammam complete the picture of the new urban poetry.
Rabi'a of Basra (717-801): Love for God's Own Sake
Rabi'a's master was Hasan Basri. She owned little beyond a broken jug, a rush mat and a brick for a pillow, spent nights in prayer and scolded herself for sleeping. She refused all marriage offers, including, tradition says, one from the Amir of Basra and one from Hasan himself.
Smith stresses that her real significance is doctrinal. She was the first to teach that God should be loved for God's own sake, not out of fear. Repentance itself is God's gift, since no one repents unless God has already accepted him. Fear of Hell and hope of Paradise are self-interest, veils that hide the vision of God.
Smith then quotes at length from Margaret Smith's study. Its argument:
- In early Islam the dignity of saintship was conferred on women as on men; in rank among the friends of God the sexes were equal.
- Sufism gave women their great opening, because the goal of union with the Divine leaves no room for distinctions of sex.
- 'Attar justifies placing Rabi'a among the men: God does not look upon outward forms, and if two thirds of the faith can be taken from Aisha, benefit can be taken from one of her handmaids.
- Some theologians name Fatima as the first Qutub. Below the Qutub are four Awtad and forty Abdal; asked why he said "forty souls" rather than "forty men", one answered that there have been women among them.
- The Sufis themselves give a woman, Rabi'a, the first place among the earliest mystics.
Her Poems
Rabi'a's verses are short, direct addresses to God:
- The two loves. She loves God in two ways: a selfish love, in which she thinks only of Him, and a worthy love, in which He raises the veil so she can see Him. No thanks are due to her for either.
- Body and heart. Her body is friendly to guests; her heart's Beloved is with her soul alone.
- The divine tavern. "My cup, my wine and the Friend make three", and she, full of longing, makes four. This is Smith's "other Winehouse" in its first Arabic form.
- Solitude. In her ghazal she tells her brothers that her pleasure is in solitude because the Beloved is always with her; when she contemplates His beauty, He is her prayer-niche and her direction.
selfishly, and a love that is true!
Bashshar (714-784): Blind Modernist
Bashshar ibn Burd, of Persian descent and son of a freed client of the Uqayl, is counted among the first "modern" poets and a pioneer, with Abu Nuwas, of the badi' or new poetry. Blind from birth and said to be very ugly, he grew up in Basra, where Malik ibn Dinar and Hasan Basri condemned his licentious verse. In Baghdad the caliph al-Mahdi banned his love poems and satires; he broke the ban, and with suspicions of Zoroastrian and Manichaean belief, he was charged with heresy, beaten to death and thrown into the Tigris.
His qit'as include a reflection on blindness as insight ("From the womb I was blind, from blindness I had insight"), a mock trial in the court of Love in which the judge orders the complainant to pay compensation, and the claim that lovers see with the heart, not the eye. One poem voices the protest of a woman he forces himself on; Smith includes it without comment, and its brutality is part of the record.
Abu Nuwas (757-814): The Glory of Debauchery
Abu Nuwas, born in Ahwaz of an Arab father and Persian mother, was sold into slavery in poverty and freed by a benefactor. In Baghdad his long hair earned him the name "Father of Ringlets". He joined Harun al-Rashid's court and his less reputable pastimes. He is said to have ended his life as an ascetic or Sufi.
Smith sets out his method:
- He wrote about how he lived: wine, and heterosexual and homosexual encounters. Later Persians used wine as metaphor; for Abu Nuwas it was literal.
- He admitted his sins with frankness, refused to repent while warning others not to imitate him, and joked that he was too unimportant for God to notice.
- Arab poets care more for clever formulation than for content, so exaggeration is to be expected.
- He was the first great master of the qit'a and wrote some 16,000 couplets across praise, mockery, jokes, complaint, love of men and women, wine, hunting, lament and asceticism.
Smith's selection is long and covers the whole range: the tavern-keeper woken at night, a thousand dirhams for a month of freedom, "my religion has fled"; demands to drink in the open, since hidden pleasures are worthless; obscene satires and boasts; love lyrics to boys and women; a dirge for his wasting body.
Running through it, though, is a second voice. A prayer argues that if only the pure may hope for mercy, the sinner has nowhere to turn. A poem from prison mocks his own forced piety, rosary on his arm and prayer marks on his brow. Late poems turn grave: desire God, not the body that runs "from youth to old age" to manure; all that is stored wastes away and nothing remains but God; death has an arrow that will strike you.
I understand that Your forgiveness... is far greater!
Abu Tammam (788-845): The Anthologist
Born in Jasim in Syria, Abu Tammam may have sold water at a Cairo mosque as a boy. He failed to make a living as a poet in Egypt, moved through Damascus and Mosul, was supported by the governor of Armenia, lived at the caliph Mo'tasim's court in Baghdad after 833, and died in Mosul in 845, having met al-Buhturi shortly before.
He is best known for the Hamasah ("exhortation"), compiled while snowbound in Hamadan with access to a fine private library: ten books of early poems classified by subject, one of the great treasuries of Arabic verse. His own poems broke with oral convention, treated historical events and people, and have been linked to Mutazilite thought. Three qit'as appear: a girl weeping at tomorrow's parting, with the maxim that the sun is loved for its daily visits but would not be if it stayed; an elegy for a warrior of Tayy who planted his feet in "death's quicksand" rather than retreat; and a warning that a traitor's walls become his prison.
| Poet | Dates (as printed) | Stance toward wine and love | Fate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rabi'a | 717-801 | Divine wine; God loved for Himself | Died of old age, celibate |
| Bashshar | 714-784 | Licentious love; love as a court case | Beaten to death for heresy |
| Abu Nuwas | 757-814 | Literal wine; frank confession; late piety | Said to end as an ascetic |
| Abu Tammam | 788-845 | Heroic and elegiac | Died in Mosul |
Part 6. The Early Sufi Masters: Gnosis, Ecstasy, Sobriety, Martyrdom
Between the 9th and 10th centuries, Smith's selection traces how Sufi poetry found its own voice. Each master adds a distinct idea: Dhu'l-Nun gnosis, Bistami ecstasy and annihilation, Nuri war on the false self, Junaid sobriety, Sumnun the lover's vow, and Hallaj union spoken aloud, at the price of his life.
Dhu'l-Nun al-Misri (b. 859): The Gnostic
Born at Akhmim in upper Egypt, Dhu'l-Nun was regarded as patron saint of physicians and is credited with introducing gnosis into Islam. Sufi chronicles rank him with Junaid and Bayazid. Arrested for heresy and sent to Baghdad, he was released by the caliph and died in Cairo in 859. (Smith prints "b. 859" in the heading and gives 859 as the year of his death in the text.) Legend made him an alchemist who could read hieroglyphs. None of his writings survive; his poems and sayings live on in oral tradition and stress knowledge over fear or love.
His "Hymn of Creation" is the longest Sufi poem so far. Its argument is theological:
- God is the Highest, unknown to the world, yet knowing every being; questions of why, whence and whither cannot reach Him, and no measure limits Him.
- He made everything from nothing and stays unchanged; creating added nothing to His power, and He needed no help.
- He knows every secret of the heart, every insect's path, every wandering cloud and drying pool. Near and far do not apply to Him.
- A creation narrative follows: light divided from darkness, the seven heavens built as a roof, the human made "the closest image to Himself", four bearers at the Throne in the forms of bull, eagle, man and lion, shooting stars thrown at eavesdropping satans.
- It ends: all created things will die, "even death shall die", and only God remains.
His qit'as are more intimate. The hearts of the Sufis live in a heavenly meadow beyond which hang the Lord's veils; their thirst is for a cup of His love. In his ghazals the lover will die, "but this ardent love in me for You, will not die", and the last poem returns to negative theology: not where, not how, not why can know Him, and every attempt to praise Him fails.
Bayazid Bistami (d. 875): The Drunkenness of Union
Bistami's grandfather was a Zoroastrian convert; his father and uncles were ascetics. Where Dhu'l-Nun built a system of gnosis, Bistami emphasised ecstasy, which he called drunkenness, as the means of annihilation in the Divine Presence. Before him, Smith says, Sufism rested mainly on piety and obedience; he placed divine love at the centre of Sufism and was the first to speak openly of annihilation of the self in God and subsistence through God. Asked his age when over seventy, he said he was four: for seventy years he had been veiled.
Two short poems: one wonders at anyone who says "I remember my Beloved", since remembering implies forgetting, and he has drunk cup after cup without the wine ending or himself being filled; the other defends the dance of those who, not having found the Truth, beat the ground in His valley.
Al-Nuri (d. 907): The Man of Light
A Baghdadi friend of Junaid, Nuri gave away his bread each morning and prayed until noon without eating. Frustrated that desire still buffeted him, he resolved to confront every part of himself. He discovered that the carnal mind claimed a share of everything the heart touched, even of divine insight, and from then on thwarted it at every turn, even stopping a good work if the false self found satisfaction in it.
His qit'as include the festival robe that God lent him (poverty and patience, the finest garment to greet the Friend), a denial that he fears God's wrath, since one cannot fear the best Friend, and the paradox that his remembrance became ecstasy and then even ecstasy vanished.
Junaid (830-910): The Sober Master
Junaid of Baghdad laid the groundwork for sober mysticism, against the God-intoxicated way of Bistami and Hallaj. Smith records his verdict at Hallaj's trial, when the caliph demanded the death of his former disciple: outwardly he must die, "we judge according to the outward appearance and God knows better."
His poems guard the secret. Souls arrive under God's glory "trailing robes of Unification", and what follows is best left untold. In another he is united with the Beloved in one way and separate in another: awe hides God from his eyes, while ecstasy brings Him into his innermost self.
Sumnun (d. 915): The Lover
Sumnun of Baghdad, another friend of Junaid, was called al-Muhibb, "the Lover". His poems are vows: may separation be his payment if he finds joy in anything but God; may his eye never receive the Gift if it ever wept for another. One qit'a states the doctrine of annihilation crisply: the existence of the seer is obliterated by what is seen, and he swims in the ocean of Divinity, existing only in God.
Mansur al-Hallaj (859-922): "I Am the Absolute Truth"
Born in Shiraz of Persian descent but writing only in Arabic, Hallaj spent a year at Mecca in fasting and silence facing the mosque, travelled to India and Central Asia gathering followers, and settled in Baghdad. A disciple of Junaid and Amr al-Makki, he was rejected by both. He was an anomaly: where other masters kept their inner experiences from the masses, he shared them openly. In trance he said Anal-Haqq, "I am the Absolute Truth", and pointed to his turban and cloak: there was nothing inside but God.
Eleven years of imprisonment followed, then torture and public crucifixion (in some accounts beheading and mutilation) for "theological error threatening the security of the state", on March 26, 922. Accounts stress his calm and his forgiveness of his killers; legend says his ashes, thrown into the Tigris, spelt out Anal Haqq. Smith calls his influence on all later Sufis impossible to overestimate.
The Poems
Smith gives Hallaj more space than any Sufi before Ibn al-Farid. The themes:
| Theme | How Hallaj puts it |
|---|---|
| Identity | "I'm the One I love, the One I love is me": two spirits in one body; asked "Who are You?", the Lord answers "You!" |
| The "I" between | An "I AM" stands between him and God; he asks God to remove it with His own |
| Near and far | Separation and nearness are the same; absence has become presence |
| One root of religions | Studying religions, he found one root with many branches; do not force a religion on anyone lest it cut him off from the root |
| Limits of intellect | Whoever seeks God with reason as guide is sent far off, crying "I know not if You are" |
| Death as life | "Kill me… my faithful friends": his life is in his death |
| Foreknowledge of his fate | His ship has gone down far offshore; by the Holy Cross he goes to his death |
we are two spirits that live... in one body.
Part 7. Poet-Princes and Philosophers: Mutanabbi, Ma'arri, Ibn Sina, Ghazali
The middle of the anthology steps outside Sufism to show the summit of classical Arabic verse and its encounter with philosophy. Al-Mutanabbi perfects the court qasida; al-Ma'arri turns poetry into a blind sceptic's moral meditation; Ibn Sina sings the soul's descent and return; al-Ghazali leaves a deathbed poem that answers them all.
Al-Mutanabbi (915-965): The Would-Be Prophet
Born in Kufa, son of a water carrier said to be of ancient southern Arabian descent, educated in Damascus and trained among the Bedouin of Banu Qalb, Abu 'l-Tayyib earned the name al-Mutanabbi, "one who wants to be a prophet", after leading a revolt in his home town in 932 at seventeen. He was imprisoned and began writing poems. All his life he sought political office and never got it.
His career is a map of patrons:
| Patron | Where and when | How it ended |
|---|---|---|
| Saif al-Daula | Aleppo, 948-957 | Lost favour through his political ambitions; fled |
| Kafur, a former black slave turned ruler | Egypt | Fled in 960 after satirising him |
| Adud al-Daula | Shiraz, until 965 | Left; killed by bandits near Baghdad, poems in his bag |
Smith cites Nicholson (splendid rhetoric and imagination, less pleasing in translation), notes that plagiarism charges now seem untrue, reports that al-Ma'arri could never improve a word of his, and quotes Arberry: greatness thrives on controversy.
The Qasidas
Smith includes six qasidas and two qit'as, which together show every register of the court poem:
- An early ode: love for veiled women whose eyelashes shoot arrows, then pride. One should live gloriously or die nobly among lances. He finds no honour in his kin; "they've found it in me". He ends as a stranger "like Salih, when Thamud him rejected".
- Praise of his Sufi master, Abu 'Ali al-Auraji, a clerk: hyperbole stretched to the limit, the patron so generous that rain falls on him only as an ocean is rained on.
- Praise of 'Ali al-Antaki, which opens with one of his great boasts: fighting a cavalry that controls fate; glory lies in the sword, not in the wineskin and singing-girl.
- Reproach to Saif al-Daula for preferring a rival poet: "I am known by the horsemen and the desert knows me", and the night, the sword, the lance, the pen and the paper.
- The satire on Kafur, written the day before he left Egypt, savage and openly racist, mocking a ruler born a slave.
- His last known poem, a farewell to Adud al-Daula recited in August 965: he is "nothing… but an arrow in the air" that will return.
the night knows me and sword and lance and pen and the paper!
Al-Ma'arri (973-1058): The Blind Sceptic
Blinded by smallpox at four, Abu'l-'Ala of Ma'arra, south of Aleppo, memorised manuscripts in Aleppo, Antioch and other cities, spent 18 months in Baghdad and returned home to lecture to hundreds of students. His early qasidas were gathered in Saqt az-zand ("The Tinder Spark"); his more original Luzumiyyat ("Necessities"), 1,592 poems mostly in qit'a form, takes its name from a self-imposed, unnecessarily complex rhyme. He also wrote Risalat al-ghufran, a visit to paradise to meet forgiven heathen poets, and a book of rhymed homilies that has been called a parody of the Koran.
Smith's portrait:
- He denied being an ascetic: he gave up worldly pleasures only because the best of them withdrew from him.
- He apologised for writing moral poetry: the proper end of poetry is falsehood, and his aim was truth.
- He was a rationalist who valued reason above tradition or revelation, sarcastic toward Muslims, Jews and Christians alike, and saw religion as a human institution serving its founders' power and income.
- He believed in the sanctity of life, became vegetarian and opposed killing animals or wearing their skins.
The Poems
A long qasida praises Emir Sa'id, his horse and his sword. The qit'as and ruba'is carry the real Ma'arri:
| Theme | Representative thought |
|---|---|
| The world | An unburied carcass with dogs barking around it; whoever leaves it hungry wins |
| Religion | All religions were contrived by people; a preacher forbids wine in the morning and reaches for it at night |
| Rulers | Governors are devils who drink while their people starve |
| Reason | The wise man looks in the cup of Reason; reason pulls one way, nature drags another |
| Diet and harm | Do not eat fish or meat, take milk meant for the young, steal birds' eggs or rob bees of honey |
| Birth | He blames his father for begetting him and gave his own unborn children the bliss of never existing |
| Death | Death is the great leveller; the bier is a boat wrecked in a sea of death |
and we are dogs on each side, around it barking.
Yet the sceptic also kneels. His prayer begins "Yours is the Kingdom: if You pardon me, it's Your grace"; a ghazal counsels vigil, simple food, a clay jug, no office of judge or preacher, and hearing the raven and cricket praising God. One ruba'i Smith includes declares that church, temple, Kaaba, Koran and Bible are all bearable to a heart whose religion is "only love". After any poem without sin, he says, he turns "like Labid" to ask forgiveness.
Ibn Sina (981-1037): The Ode of the Soul
Avicenna, born in Bukhara, mastered Koranic knowledge, mathematics, medicine, surgery and philosophy in a life of 56 years, and wrote poems in Arabic and Persian; some of his ruba'is were later ascribed to Khayyam. Hounded as a heretic, he left work that the world is "still trying to catch up to". His Arabic qasida on the soul is counted among the greatest Arabic poems.
The poem tells the soul's story as a dove:
The dove came unwillingly from on high, grew used to "this desolated debris" and forgot its gardens. It weeps when it remembers home, held by thick nets and a strong cage. When the hour of flight comes, the veil lifts and it sees what waking eyes cannot, and it returns aware of all hidden things. Why was it cast down? For a reason hidden even from the most questioning Sufi: it must learn what it has not yet heard. The poem ends with a life that flashes like lightning over meadows and is gone.
Al-Ghazali (1058-1112): The Letter Under the Pillow
Born in Tus, "the Proof of Islam" changed Islamic philosophy for good; Suyuti said that if there could have been another prophet after Muhammad it would have been al-Ghazali. Best known for The Alchemy of Happiness, he wrote Persian ruba'is and Arabic poems scattered through his prose, and embraced Sufism late in life. The qit'a Smith prints was found under his pillow by a follower after his death.
It is a message from the dead to the mourners. The corpse is not him; the body was a dwelling, a cloak, a dusty talisman, a shell around a pearl, a cage for a bird now flown. He converses with the saints, sees God face to face, and reads on the Tablet all that was, is and will be. Death is not death but life, a longer sleep, a homecoming; what he has become, they will become.
now I’ve flown, I leave it, as something to see!
Part 8. The Great Masters: Gilani to Ibn 'Arabi
The last five poets bring the anthology to its summit. A founder of an order boasts of his rank, a master of the Maghreb hymns the creative command, a philosopher of light dies like Hallaj, and two of the greatest mystical poets in Arabic close the book: Ibn al-Farid, singer of the primordial Wine, and Ibn 'Arabi, interpreter of desire and teacher of the "religion of Love".
Before Gilani, Smith adds one ruba'i to al-Ghazali's section: curls falling on the moon of the Beloved's cheek, where the poet has often seen the moon in Scorpio, but rarely "the Scorpion in the moon". The scholar of the deathbed poem could also turn an astrological conceit.
Gilani (1074-1166): The Chief of the Poles
'Abdul Qadir Gilani, "the most influential Sufi after Al-Ghazali who composed qasidas in Arabic", left Gilan at eighteen to study in Baghdad. After traditional studies he met the saintly Abu'l-Khair Hammad ad-Dabbas, then abandoned the city for twenty-five years of wandering in the deserts of Iraq. Returning past fifty in 1127, he preached with such effect that his school had to be enlarged, and his residence and guesthouse were built by donations. His Qadiriyya order is still widespread.
Of his 16 qasidas only the Qasida Ghausia is well known. Smith notes that most are ecstatic, often using wine, and that Gilani claimed to be not only a Qutub but the chief Qutub of the age.
The poem is the most extreme self-proclamation in the book:
- Love served him the wine of union; he tells the other "Poles" to drink his leftovers, since their station is high but his is higher.
- God dressed him in a robe of honour and crowned him with perfection; his drums are beaten in sky and earth; his foot is on the necks of saints.
- His secret placed on fire would put it out, on the dead would raise them, on mountains would smash them.
- To his disciples: do not fear; "do what you like for the great Name is here, helping!"
- Yet he follows in the Prophet's footsteps, and the poem ends with his name and lineage.
Abu Madyan (1126-1198): The Teacher of Teachers
Born near Seville and buried in Tlemcen, where his mausoleum and mosque are masterpieces of Merinid art, Abu Madyan is called by some the most important founder of Sufism in the Maghreb and Andalusia. He lived in Ceuta, Tangier and Marrakesh, studied in Fez under influences Smith traces to Gilani, Abu Yaza and al-Ghazali, made the pilgrimage, and taught at Bougie. Ibn 'Arabi called him "the teacher of teachers".
His qasida is a hymn of divine sovereignty and mercy:
- Fate was established before creation. God raised the heavens and restrained them from burying the earth, set sun, moon and stars as ornaments, and formed the human from moistened clay with intellect, hearing and sight.
- The striking couplet on mercy: if there were no sinners, God would create sinful ones in order to forgive them.
- It closes with blessings on the unlettered Messenger, his family and companions.
Suhrawardi (1153-1191): The Master of Illumination
Born at Suhraward near Zanjan, Suhrawardi founded the School of Illumination and was executed at Aleppo at 38, meeting the same fate as Hallaj, whom he admired from youth and often quotes. His philosophy criticises Ibn Sina and departs from him through a symbolic language. Its essence is pure Light, unfolding from the Light of lights in emanations of diminishing intensity, which give rise to arrays of lights that govern the world. He also developed the idea of an independent intermediate imaginal world. His masterpiece is Hikmat al-ishraq.
His qasida Haiya is a defence of the lovers who could not keep the secret:
| Movement | Content |
|---|---|
| The predicament | Lovers try to veil their love but their tears betray them; if they tell, "it's lawful to be shedding their blood" |
| The light | God's Light shows bodies as niches and hearts as lamps, echoing the Koran's verse of light |
| The defence | The lovers did not sin when overpowered by desire; they saw that profit lay in giving their lives |
| The journey | They boarded "the ship of faithfulness": their tears the ocean, the intensity of their love the sailor |
| The wine | Not the wine the farmer treads but the ancient wine of love for the Eternal One, the wine that intoxicated Adam in Paradise and Noah in his boat |
Ibn al-Farid (1182-1235): The Wine Before the Vine
Born in Cairo to a father from Hama, Ibn al-Farid studied Hadith and law but preferred solitary devotion in the desert and on a mountain east of Cairo. After a long stay in Mecca he returned to Cairo and was venerated as a saint. He married and had children, and was said to be handsome and awe-inspiring yet sociable. His grandson's introduction to the Divan filled it with fantastic tales, perhaps, Smith suggests, to shield him from accusations of heresy against the "pantheistic tendencies of certain Sufis".
The Divan is slim and dominated by love. Its poems can be read as love lyrics but are meant as mystical yearning; even the famous wine poem uses intoxication as a symbol of union with the Divine Beloved. Almost half the Divan is a single qasida of 761 couplets, The Poem of the Mystic's Progress, the "Greater Ode Rhyming in T".
The Wine-Song (Khamriyya)
Smith links it with Hafiz's Book of the Winebringer and Nizami. It opens with the most famous line of Arabic mystical poetry:
that made us intoxicated before the creation of the vine.
The Wine is the sun, the full moon its cup. Its powers are listed in a long catalogue of miracles: its seal alone would intoxicate; sprinkled on a grave it would raise the dead; it would make the paralysed walk, the blind see and the deaf hear; it improves the character of all who drink it. Asked to describe it, he answers by negation: pure but not watered, subtle but not air, bright but not fire, spirit without body. It preceded everything that exists. In the key couplet on the human being, "our souls are a Wine and our bodies are, a vine." Those who live sober and die without its intoxication have missed "Wisdom's path".
The Poem of the Mystic's Progress (opening 116 couplets)
Smith translates the first section, a dialogue between lover and Beloved:
The lover describes drinking love's wine from the Beloved's face, a love so consuming it wasted his body until he was invisible, so that "horrible death" could not find him. He swears by the covenant made before his soul took bodily form and claims he has thrown off all modesty for her sake: his true family are those in love. The Beloved's answer is the turning point. He has sought her with a soul still full of its own desire; "one of my proofs for this is that 'you' still keep on existing". Since he has not passed away in her, he cannot see her form in himself. Union requires death. The lover accepts: what he hopes others will say of him is "He died of love!"
A short ghazal follows, in which the lover swears that at the moment of farewell "the Last Day's terror was revealed to me".
Ibn 'Arabi (July 28th 1165-November 10th 1240): The Interpreter of Desires
Born in Murcia, raised in Seville from age eight, Ibn 'Arabi left Spain for good at thirty-five intending the hajj. He lived near Mecca three years, began Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya (The Meccan Illuminations), and in 1204 left for Anatolia with Majd al-Din Is'haq, whose son Sadr al-Din Qunawi became his most influential disciple. He completed the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq (The Interpreter of Ardent Desires) in 1215, settled in Damascus in 1223 and died there at 76; his tomb is still a place of pilgrimage. Known in the West as Doctor Maximus and in Islam as Muhyi al-Din and al-Shaykh al-Akbar, he is regarded as the prime exponent of what was later called "Unity of Being", although he did not use the term. His emphasis was on the human potential to become the Perfect or complete man. Hundreds of works are attributed to him; only some are authenticated.
The Tarjuman Qasida
The poem from the Tarjuman replays the pre-Islamic nasib almost note for note: a halt at the ruins, the departed caravan, a lover too mad with love to have noticed them leave. He calls to the four winds; the East, North and South winds answer that every evil is good in the passion the beloved inspires. The portrait of the beloved (scorpion curls, sunrise smile) leads to the poet naming himself, "O son of al-'Arabi", as a ghazal poet signs his pen-name. His heart is like the Samiri who followed Gabriel's footprints, and like Dhu'l-Qarnayn seeking the far ones.
The Doctrinal Qit'as
Here Smith gathers short, dense statements of metaphysics:
| Idea | Ibn 'Arabi's formulation in the anthology |
|---|---|
| Mutual need | "He is praising me, and I am praising Him"; he helps God's knowledge and manifests Him |
| Comparable and incomparable | Look only at Reality and you miss creation; look only at creation and you miss Reality; hold both |
| One Essence, many relations | A thing has many relations but the Essence is one; who cannot recognise the Creator in idols cannot see Him in visions |
| Imagination | Everything created is imagined, and also a kind of reality |
| Lord and servant | You are servant and Lord at once; each relation dissolves into the other |
| Jesus | The Spirit from Mary's water and Gabriel's breath, who raised the dead and made birds from clay |
| Inner prayer | Ablution with "the waters of the Beyond"; the dawn prayer in the middle of the afternoon |
The Religion of Love
The final ghazals return to the doves of the arak and ban trees, whose cooing doubles the lover's sorrow. Smith prints Ibn 'Arabi's own glosses: shih means inclination and ban absence; Jam means union in the station of nearness; Dhat al-Athl means becoming the essence of the Beloved and disappearing. The last ghazal contains the anthology's most famous declaration. The heart has become capable of every form:
Love’s camels travel is my religion, the faith of me!
The heart is a pasture for gazelles, a monastery for monks, a temple for idols, the pilgrim's Kaaba, the tables of the Torah and the Koran. The examples he cites are the old Arabian lovers: Bishr and Hind, Mayya and Ghayan, Qays and Layla.
After the Last Poem
The remaining tenth or so of the e-book is a publisher's catalogue of Smith's other translations (Hafiz, Sadi, Rumi, Nizami, Obeyd Zakani, the world anthologies of the ghazal, ruba'i and qasida) and his own poems in praise of Meher Baba. It contains no further anthology content and is not summarised here, though it explains Smith's constant references to his other volumes and his insistence that every translation keeps "the correct rhyme-structure of the originals".
Synthesis
Seven centuries of verse, thirty-four poets, four forms. This section pulls the threads together: what to remember, which frameworks the book offers, where it is weak, who is who, and what the tradition can teach a modern reader working in technology and finance.
Key Takeaways
- Poetry was public infrastructure in pre-Islamic Arabia: the poet was historian, soothsayer and propagandist, and a verbal battle could replace a real one.
- Four forms carry almost everything: the long monorhymed qasida, the fragmentary qit'a, the spiral ghazal and the four-line ruba'i.
- The classic qasida moves in three steps: nostalgic prelude at the ruins, a hard journey, then a message of praise, satire or maxims.
- "Standing at the ruins" is the founding image of the tradition, and it is still the opening of Ibn 'Arabi's qasida six centuries later.
- Early odes value the couplet over the whole: strong words, loosely connected verses, intensity of image over argument.
- Zuhair already joins ode and ethics: peace bought by sacrifice of wealth, and a God who sees hidden intentions.
- Verse could be advocacy: Harith's ode wins a legal dispute by rebuttal, precedent and flattery of the judge.
- Worth is earned, not inherited: Antara's "half of me is my sword" and Suhaym's protest against the contempt for his colour show this.
- Tarafa's hedonism is an argument: since miser and spendthrift share one grave, value lies in the use of time.
- Islam first suspected poetry, then preserved it, because the old odes became the basis of the linguistic study of the Koran.
- Labid's silence marks the threshold: the best poet of the old order recognised a higher speech and stopped writing.
- Ka'b's mantle ode shows conversion of a form, not its abolition: same frame, new patron, pardon as the reward.
- Ali's ghazal is the anthology's seed: the human being, apparently small, contains what cannot be contained.
- Majnun supplies the psychology of mystical love: prayer turned toward the beloved, madness higher than sanity, longing as its own cure.
- Rabi'a changed the motive: God is loved for His own sake, not from fear of Hell or hope of Paradise.
- Saint and libertine share a vocabulary: cup, pourer, beloved and night belong to both Rabi'a and Abu Nuwas; only the object differs.
- Smith's "two Winehouses" are the key to reading Sufi wine poetry: the drunkard of the ghazal may be describing an inner state.
- Dhu'l-Nun introduced gnosis; Bistami, ecstasy and annihilation of the self in God.
- Nuri found that the false self takes a share of everything, even of divine insight, and must be thwarted at every turn.
- Sobriety and intoxication are two Sufi ways; Junaid's verdict on Hallaj shows the sober position at its harshest.
- Hallaj was punished for publishing union, not merely for experiencing it; Ali Ibn Husain and Suhrawardi frame the same danger.
- Ma'arri is the counterweight: reason over revelation, contempt for hypocrisy, refusal to harm animals, and still a prayer for pardon.
- Ibn Sina and al-Ghazali share the caged bird; the philosopher asks why the soul fell, the Sufi reports from beyond the cage.
- Ibn al-Farid's Wine precedes the vine: love is older than creation, and only the death of the self wins the Beloved.
- Ibn 'Arabi's "religion of Love" makes the heart capable of every form, and names Majnun among its examples, closing the book's circle.
Frameworks at a Glance
| Framework | Source in the book | Elements | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qasida plan | Ibn Qutaybah via Smith | Nasib, disengagement, rahil, message (fakhr, hija, hikam) | Reading any long ode's structure |
| Ghazal spiral | Smith's introduction | Matla sets the stage; inner couplets turn; maqta with pen-name; free line (heart) and rhymed line (mind) | Seeing why the ghazal suited mystical tension |
| Two Winehouses | Smith's introduction | Tavern of the grape versus Winehouse of divine love with the Perfect Master as pourer | Deciding how to read wine imagery |
| Motive ladder | Rabi'a | Fear of Hell, hope of Paradise, love for God's own sake | Classifying devotion by motive |
| Two loves | Rabi'a's qit'a | Selfish love (thinking only of Him) and worthy love (He lifts the veil) | Distinguishing effort from grace |
| Sober and intoxicated | Junaid, Bistami, Hallaj | Union and separation together versus speech from inside union | Placing any mystic on the spectrum |
| Annihilation and subsistence | Bistami, Sumnun, Ibn al-Farid | The seer obliterated by the seen; living through God | Understanding the "death" the Sufi seeks |
| Soul's circuit | Ibn Sina | Descent, cage, remembrance, return with knowledge | A model of the purpose of embodied life |
| Saintly hierarchy | Rabi'a section, Gilani | Qutub, 4 Awtad, 40 Abdal; "there have been women among them" | Reading claims of spiritual rank |
| Comparable and incomparable | Ibn 'Arabi's qit'as | See God neither only in creation nor only beyond it; hold both | Avoiding both pantheism and abstraction |
A closer look
Arrangement does the arguing. Smith writes a short introduction and brief biographies; the thesis of the book emerges from the order of poets. That is elegant but leaves the reader to infer connections the editor never states.
The translations are Smith's English, rhyme first. Every poem is forced into one English end-rhyme or refrain ("-ing", "-ay", "-er"). That honours Arabic monorhyme but produces padding, inverted syntax and words chosen for sound. Readers should treat details of phrasing with caution, especially in the long odes.
Biographies mix history and legend. The anthology reports the ashes of Hallaj spelling Anal Haqq, Ali's Koran written in blood, Adam's ghazal on Abel, and a dream that saved Amru's mother, alongside dates and places, with little separation of the two. Smith's statement that Sufism means recognising "God in human form as the Qutub or the Rasool or the Christ" reflects his own spiritual commitment, which the closing catalogue (poems for Meher Baba) makes plain.
Internal inconsistencies. Dhu'l-Nun is headed "b. 859" while the text says he died in 859. Amru's birth story says he was born before Tarafa's death, yet his section refers to Harith as "to follow" after Harith has already appeared. Abu Madyan's teachers are said to include "the great Ibn 'Arabi", who was younger and called him "the teacher of teachers". Al-Ma'arri receives a ruba'i whose content (church, temple, Kaaba, Koran, "my religion's only love") closely matches the "religion of Love" lines given to Ibn 'Arabi at the end of the book.
What is left out. The selection jumps from Abu Tammam to the Sufis with no Andalusian love poets other than the Sufi masters, few women beyond Khansa and Rabi'a, and no prose. Several sections (Ali Ibn Husain, Sumnun) have a single short poem. The Kafur satire and Bashshar's poem of sexual violence are printed without editorial comment.
Strengths. Within these limits the book achieves something rare: it lets a reader hear the continuity from the Hanging Odes to Ibn 'Arabi in one voice and one form system, and it places the libertine and the saint side by side so that the double meaning of Sufi imagery becomes obvious rather than asserted.
Who's Who
Dates are exactly as printed in Smith's headings.
| Name | Dates (as printed) | Role in the book |
|---|---|---|
| Imra' ul-Qays | 500-535 A.D. | "Wandering prince" of Kinda; said to have invented the qasida |
| Zuhair | 520-609 | Gentleman-philosopher; ode on the peace of Abs and Zubain |
| Harith | d. approx 570 | Advocate for Bakr before the king of Hira |
| Antara | 525-615 | Slave-born knight, lover of Abla |
| Tarafa | 543-568 | Hedonist executed at twenty-five |
| Amru | 6th and 7th centuries | Boasting advocate for Taglib; killed the king of Hira |
| Al-A'sha | b. before 570 - d. after 625 | Travelling professional poet and feared satirist |
| Suhaym | d. 660 | Slave poet killed by his owners |
| Labid | 560-661 | Gave up poetry for the Koran |
| Ka'b | d. 7th century | Ode of the Mantle to the Prophet |
| Khansa | 575-640 | Elegist of her brother Sakhr |
| Hazrat Ali | 598-661 | First Imam, fourth caliph; the seed ghazal |
| Ali Ibn Husain | d. 663-71 | Imam Zainul Abiden; the danger of mystical speech |
| Omar Ibn Abi Rabi'a | 644-719 | Meccan love poet; perhaps the first Arabic ghazals |
| Majnun | 664-688 | Qays, mad lover of Layla |
| Rabi'a of Basra | 717-801 | First teacher of love for God's own sake |
| Bashshar | 714-784 | Blind modernist executed for heresy |
| Abu Nuwas | 757-814 | Wine poet of Harun's Baghdad |
| Abu Tammam | 788-845 | Compiler of the Hamasah |
| Dhu'l-Nun | b. 859 (text: died 859) | Introduced gnosis; Hymn of Creation |
| Bayazid Bistami | d. 875 | Ecstasy and annihilation |
| Al-Nuri | d. 907 | "Man of Light"; war on the false self |
| Junaid | 830-910 | Founder of sober mysticism |
| Sumnun | d. 915 | "The Lover" |
| Mansur al-Hallaj | 859-922 | "I am the Absolute Truth"; executed |
| Al-Mutanabbi | 915-965 | Supreme court poet |
| Al-Ma'arri | 973-1058 | Blind rationalist and moralist |
| Ibn Sina | 981-1037 | Philosopher; Ode of the Soul |
| Al-Ghazali | 1058-1112 | "Proof of Islam"; poem under the pillow |
| Gilani | 1074-1166 | Founder of the Qadiriyya; chief Qutub |
| Abu Madyan | 1126-1198 | Founder of Maghrebi Sufism |
| Suhrawardi | 1153-1191 | Master of Illumination; executed |
| Ibn al-Farid | 1182-1235 | The Wine-Song and the Mystic's Progress |
| Ibn 'Arabi | July 28th 1165-November 10th 1240 | Interpreter of Desires; religion of Love |
Glossary of Key Terms
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| Abdal | The forty "Substitutes" in the saintly hierarchy, "pivot of the world"; women have been among them |
| Anal-Haqq | "I am the Absolute Truth", Hallaj's utterance in trance |
| Awtad | Four saints below the Qutub, from whom his successor is chosen |
| Badi' | The "new poetry" pioneered by Bashshar and Abu Nuwas |
| Beyt | A couplet or "house": a line split into two halves scanning alike |
| Fakhr | Praise of the tribe, one possible message of a qasida |
| Ghazal | Love lyric of usually 5 to 15 couplets in spiral form; root gazl, spinning |
| Hamasah | "Exhortation", Abu Tammam's anthology of early poems in ten books |
| Hija | Satire against other tribes |
| Hikam | Moral maxims closing a qasida |
| Ishraq | Illumination; Suhrawardi's school of Light |
| Jahiliyyah | The pre-Islamic "time of ignorance" |
| Khamriyya | Wine-song; Ibn al-Farid's famous qasida |
| Kun | "Be!", the creative command, written with the letters Kaf and Nun |
| Madih | Praise qasida for a king or noble |
| Ma'rifa | Gnosis, the knowledge Dhu'l-Nun introduced |
| Mast | One "mad with longing" for the Eternal One, drunk on divine wine |
| Matla | "Rising": the ghazal's opening couplet, rhymed in both lines |
| Maqta | "Point of section": the ghazal's last couplet, often with the pen-name |
| Mu'allaqat | "The hung poems", the seven great pre-Islamic odes said to hang at the Kaaba |
| Mufaddaliyat | Al-Mufaddal's more random anthology of early poems |
| Nasib | Nostalgic prelude of the qasida: the beloved and her ruined camp |
| Qasida | Long monorhymed ode, often over 50 lines, with a single subject |
| Qit'a | "Fragment": short monorhymed poem whose first couplet is not double-rhymed |
| Qutub | "Pole": the Perfect Master at the top of the saintly hierarchy |
| Radif | Refrain following the rhyme word |
| Rahil | The journey section of the qasida |
| Ruba'i | Quatrain rhyming lines 1, 2 and 4, in its own metres; a complete poem |
| Sha'ir | Poet, glossed by Smith as "one who knows" |
| Sukr | Drunkenness or ecstasy, Bistami's means of annihilation |
| Takhallus | Pen-name; also the disengagement after the nasib |
| Tarjuman al-Ashwaq | Ibn 'Arabi's "Interpreter of Ardent Desires", completed 1215 |
| Tassawuf | Sufism, "to get to the essence of everything" |
| Unity of Being | Later name for Ibn 'Arabi's teaching; he did not use the term |
| 'Ukaz | Market town near Mecca with a regular poetry festival |
| Winebringer | The cup-bearer; in Sufi poetry the Perfect Master who pours divine love |
About this book
Anthology of Classical Arabic Poetry: From Pre-Islamic Times to Ibn 'Arabi by Paul Smith, 2010. This is a chapter-by-chapter study of the book, with summaries, maps, tables and diagrams; short quotations keep their page references. It is shared free for personal study, is not for sale, and is not endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.
Insight Editions · rajeshrmahapatra.com/insight-editions