A Cultural History of The Arabic Language

A Cultural History
of the Arabic Language

ALSO BY SHARRON GU
Language and Culture in the Growth of Imperialism

(McFarland, 2012)
A Cultural History of the Chinese Language
(McFarland, 2012)
A Cultural History
of the Arabic Language
SHARRON GU
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Gu, Sharron.
A cultural history of the Arabic language / Sharron Gu.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-7059-4
softcover : acid free paper ♾
1. Arabic language—History. 2. Arabic language—Poetry.
3. Arabic language—Social aspects. 4. Language and
culture—Arab countries. I. Title.
PJ6075.G8 2014
492.709—dc23 2013035496
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE
© 2014 Sharron Gu. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
On the cover: Moroccan doorway (iStockphoto/Thinkstock)
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Preface 1
Introduction 4
Part One: The Sound and Rhythm of Poetry 15

1. Music and Poetry Before Arabic 18
2. Recording the Sound of Poetry 48
3. Rhythm from Poetry, to Prose, to Speech 83
Part Two: The Formation of Arabic Imagery 113

4. Imagery of the World: Poetry and Prose 115
5. Imagery of the Universe: Arts and Literature 145
6. Imagery of Man and His Feelings 175
7. The World in Arabic Fiction 203
Conclusion 228
Chapter Notes 231
Bibliography 238
Index 277
v
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my appreciation to my

editor Norman A. Christie. He not only edited most
parts of this book but also provided a valuable per-
spective, the perspective of my potential readers who
were born and educated in the English literary tra-
dition, have interests in Arabic poetry and literature,
yet do not read Arabic originals. Without his help it
would not have been possible to write a book that
adequately describes the evolution of a thousand-
year-old literary tradition in a single volume. I thank
Mr. Christie for his constructive criticism and sug-
gestions. All the shortcomings that you may find in
this book are mine.
vi
Preface
This is a brief yet wide-ranging study of the history of the Arabic lan-
guage. It is written for scholars and educated readers of Arabic and Islamic
culture whose first language is not Arabic. It also may be useful for native
Arabic speakers who are interested in knowing how their heritage is seen
from a global perspective. This work focuses on what is unique about Ara-
bic compared to other major languages of the world—Greek, Latin,
Hebrew, English, Spanish, and Chinese—and how the distinct character-
istics of Arabic took shape at various points of its history. It is intended to
provide a linguistic and cultural background for understanding social and
political institutions, religious belief and religious practice in the Middle
East.
Humans are cultural beings rather than linguistic, ethnical, or psy-
chological stereotypes because they are shaped by their immediate cultural
environment. Cultural history is a complex process during which various
forms of expression accumulate, interact, and transform. Each generation
born into a specific culture (or more precisely, a certain stage of develop-
ment of a given culture) inherits a distinctive repertoire of expressions in
its music, oral, literary, and artistic languages that shape its attitude, imag-
ination, and wisdom. To understand a people one must comprehend the
cultural inheritance that has allowed ideas and worldviews to evolve. Hope-
fully, this book inspires readers to regard Middle Eastern history and the
contemporary Muslim world in a different light.
The Arabian civilization is one of the most misrepresented and mis-
understood in the West. Besides the political propaganda fueled by inter-
national conflict, the language of social and political science, in whose
terms the world has been described and debated for the past two centuries,
has perceived other cultures and their people in foreign (English, German
or French) terms, disregarding the unique cultural and linguistic setting of
Arabic. As a result, the history of Arabic and Islam as written in English
1
2 Preface
has presented various distortions according to the fluctuation of self-image

of the cultures of Western Europe and North America. In this book, readers
will recognize many familiar characteristics in Arabic history shared with
their own cultural history and others that are beyond their horizons. That
has occurred not only because literary Arabic has a longer history compared
to modern European languages but also because it has produced a mature
literary canon, including writings of law, science, philosophy, and historical
narrative, centuries before the West.
One of the most illustrative examples of historical differences derived
from this gap in time between the Arabic and English cultures is the highly
developed and refined poetic expression in Arabic that has set it apart from
other languages in the world. This mature and refined poetry has excep-
tional capacity to cultivate and activate fluid emotions. Unlike in the West,
where poetry is the vocation and pastime of elite intellectuals, Arabic poetry
lives on the street (and in the coffee houses), in the mosques and in private
homes. Poetic imagery and rhythm derived from it remain in the ears and
minds, and on the lips, of Arabic speakers. There are not any people in the
world more readily attuned to and motivated by words than Arabs. This is
the reason why Islam, the youngest world religion, commands wide and
lasting influence throughout the world. The power of Islam lies in Qur’anic
poetry and the poetry of Arabic language.
My acquaintance with the Arabic language initially was an accident.
I was born in China during the Mao period, when every citizen’s life was
dictated by the state of politics, especially education and career. The begin-
ning of the Cultural Revolution marked the end of my academic dream (of
getting into the best universities to pursue whatever I pleased) because of
my family background. I was born into a “black” family, a Chinese term
referring to families of wealth and education under the communist regime.
My ancestors had many properties throughout the country and held high
positions in the old regimes because they were scholars and lawyers trained
in Western Europe, Japan, and North America. As a member of the now
undesirable part of society, I had to go to the countryside to wash off my
family (intellectual) heritage and wait for my turn to be reborn as an accept-
able revolutionary. After three years of gruesome hard labor, I thought that
I was reformed enough to go to university and pursue my delayed dream.
But it was not quite enough in the eyes of the regime, who believed that
poverty and ignorance were the best human virtues. As I enrolled in uni-
versity, I was not allowed to learn English, my first choice, because my
parents were English professors and translators. At first, it broke my heart
that I had to settle for Arabic.
What happened was that learning the Arabic language and its literature
Preface 3
became a positive influence in my life. Arabic equipped me with a vision

and sensibility that was beyond any of those provided by modern Western
languages and my native (Chinese) culture. In China, the sound of music
and poetry as an expression of true emotion had died long before I was
born. As poetic words lay frozen in books on dusty shelves, Chinese culture
and scholarship crystallized and became increasingly analytical. As feelings
were overly processed and eventually numbed by verbal reasoning, the
sparkle in the eye and body gesture disappeared in expression. Travel to
the Middle East provided much more than a breath of fresh air. The capacity
to perceive and comprehend a high degree of poetic sensibility that no
other language of the world can yet express was a blessing for my intel-
lectual growth and my later career as a researcher and writer in world cul-
tures.
After spending several years in the Middle East I had poetry in my
ears and was surrounded by people whose emotions often danced with
rhythm in front of my eyes. I became convinced that there was a connection
between poetry and the cultivation of human emotion and spirit. I saw a
similar display of fluid emotion in North America and Europe activated by
modern music; however, music could not carry meanings as specific, well
defined and eloquent as poetry. The lyrics in contemporary music, although
often representing some of the best modern poetry written in English and
Spanish, remain centuries behind contemporary Arabic poetry in terms of
formal maturity and refinement.
If one believes (as I do) that world literatures in various languages
share a common growth, maturity and aging process, reading and medi-
tating on Arabic literature, especially its poetry, can certainly open one’s
eyes to the direction that English poetry will follow as it evolves. If the
mighty river of literature will eventually grow cold and frozen as Chinese
has done, let’s jump into Arabic poetry to enjoy the warmth and vitality
that words create.
Introduction
This is an introductory history of the Arabic language. It differs from

those written by linguists and literary theorists in three main ways. First,
its perspective is global in nature. It does not portray the language and cul-
ture as completely opposite to those of the West nor suggest that it is a
divinely inspired and yet misunderstood civilization that seeks to challenge
and convert the world to its religious doctrine. Rather, it emphasizes that
which is unique about Arabic when it is compared to other languages; in
other words, the ways in which Arabic is similar to and differs from
Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, and Spanish and the types of historical
experience that cultivated its distinctive characteristics. This work illus-
trates how Arabic emerged from a hub of interaction and mutation of
ancient oral traditions of the Middle East that finally distilled it into an
exceptionally well developed poetic medium. It demonstrates how Arabic
prose expanded and regulated its poetic vision and created clear, penetrat-
ing, and comprehensive worldviews. It illustrates that Arabic literature
contained as well as elevated ancient poetry by embracing various non–
Arabic expressions (Greek, Persian, Hebrew, and Spanish), and that this
constantly enriched and reinvented literature further nurtured a variety of
regional traditions around world.
Second, this history deliberately transcends the boundaries of aca-
demic disciplines, such as language (as in speech), literature, music, the-
atrical performance, and visual arts. It sees various forms of non-literary
expression as inspiration that contributes to the evolution of literary lan-
guage. The degrees of refinement of the literary language shape the main
characteristics and historic development of the non-literary expressions.
In other words, this history considers the interaction and reciprocal trans-
formation between various verbal and non-verbal forms, other than abstract
ones, to be the main dynamic of the linguistic evolution of Arabic. Third,
it proposes an original theory of language through rewriting (or revision
4
Introduction 5
of) the history of a language that is much more refined and poetic than
those of European origin.
The history of the Arabic language is an experience beyond the hori-
zon of any linguistic and literary theories that have been produced by Euro-
pean languages. The most important and distinctive characteristic of Arabic
is its profound poetic form, which was cultivated and refined before Arabic
became a written language. Poetry, the oldest and most developed genre
of Arabic literature, laid the foundation for the sound, rhythm and structure
of Arabic prose, and it remains a dominant form in modern literature. This
poetry was deep-rooted in ancient Semitic traditions that evolved over
thousands of years and later formed the basis for several written traditions.
Although none of the ancient scripts have survived as a universal language
(of the Middle East), Semitic culture (very much like various Celtic tra-
ditions) kept evolving in many other forms: music, oral poetry, ritual per-
formance, and liturgical composition. Semitic written language was
discontinued and reoriented several times while its words continued to be
spoken; and its stories were told, recited, and performed for thousands of
years before the emergence of Arabic. This under-codified and under-sanc-
tioned oral poetry (in the absence of a continuing script to guide it) became
exceptionally fluid and expressive. Like highly fertilized soil waiting for
new seeds to grow, the pre–Islamic Middle East was ready for a new uni-
versal language, a language that could regulate and embrace its diverse
poetic traditions.
As the latest reincarnation of its ancient ancestral poetry, Arabic inher-
ited and reinvented these traditions and elevated them into a brilliant lit-
erature during an amazingly short period of time. Arabs needed only about
two hundred years to produce a highly sophisticated literary canon. In
comparison, seven to nine centuries (depending on how one defines form-
ative and mature literature) were required in English, French, and German,
and the Chinese process covered more than a millennium. Classical Arabic
rapidly codified and assimilated the ancient and diverse cultural expressions
of the Middle East and southern Europe as the Islamic cultural center trav-
eled from the Arabian Peninsula to Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Persia, southern
Spain, and Turkey. During this Islamic expansion, and as in the expansions
of Greek and Latin before it and English, Spanish, and American after it,
Arabic encountered many local cultural and linguistic traditions whose
influence left a remarkable impact on Arabic, further enhancing its literary
language.
Translating Greek literature into Arabic created a brand new universe of
general and abstract concepts that fostered the development of science, law,
arts, and philosophy. Like Latin ten centuries earlier, Arabic radically
6 Introduction
expanded and reinvented itself from a tribal poetic medium into a language
of high learning, linguistics, law, religion and political administration. How-
ever, with its deep Semitic roots in the Middle East, Arabic did not die with
the decline of the Islamic Empire. Like undying embers that fuel new fire,
it survived and kept burning because it managed to spark in the sound and
rhythm of its spoken and written poetry. Living on the lips and in the ears
of its speakers, Arabic maintained its backbone and inexhaustible resources
to create a highly diverse and vibrant culture.
The form of the Qur’an, the first rhymed prose in Arabic literature,
inherited the audibility and theatricality (in delivery) of its ancient poetry.
Unlike the commonly perceived concept of literature, especially literature
as opposed to speech, early Arabic literature was written to be read aloud
and heard (in public) rather than in solitude and silence. The word Qur’an
is derived from the Arabic verb qara’a (to read or to recite). An important
meaning of the word is that it is heard through the act of reciting. A great
portion of Hadith, the second canonical piece of literature in early Arabic,
was a collection of recorded sayings attributed to Muhammad and narrated
scenarios in which Muhammad’s words were uttered. The evolution of
Arabic that sounds similar to the formative history of Biblical Hebrew and
pre–Imperial Latin stops here. Arabic was unique in the sense that it did
not lose its oral roots as it evolved into a language of learning during and
after the Islamic period. There were always learned and popular branches
of Arabic that functioned at different levels of a given society, but they
never lost touch with each other. This unbreakable link was entrenched in
the language of the Qur’an, a literary language carried by the sound and
rhythm of a spoken tongue; a highly refined literary oral poetry.
This closeness between spoken and written language and between
poetic creation and public recitation can still be witnessed in mosques and
heard on the streets of the Arab world. Unlike the ritual of synagogues and
Christian churches, Arabic religious ritual does not include music because
its language is already musical in the ears of its speakers. The emotional
and rhetorical power of Arabic had emerged before the scriptural invention
of Islam, and this made Allah’s words extremely engaging and persuasive.
The parallel power of poetic metaphor in Arabic has only recently begun
to be seen in the poems of the best English and Spanish poets during the
twentieth century. But it has been common in the poems of Arabic poets
for centuries. This is because the Arabic literary language has been steeped
in poetic creation and recitation for thousands of years and has crystallized
in the poems of many generations of Arab poets. Most importantly, this
poetry belongs to every Arabic speaker.
The idea of recording spoken words with script promoted a revolution
Introduction 7
and rebirth for Arabic. As literature, the Qur’an was the first work in Arabic
of significant length (114 surat [chapters], which contain 6,236 ayat
[verses]); it had a far more complicated structure than earlier literary works.
It contains narratives, injunctions, dramatic dialogue, homilies, parables,
direct speeches, wordplays, and instructions, and even provides direction
on how it should be received and understood. The Qur’an is admired for
its layers of metaphor as well as its clarity. Like the religious literature of
Judaism and Christianity, the newly invented Arabic produced an impres-
sive body of literature devoted to complement the commentaries (tafsīr)
and interpretation of the words of the Qur’an. One of the most important
of this literature was Hadith, which recorded the words and deeds of
Muhammad. Research into the life and times of Muhammad, and determi-
nation of the genuine parts of the Sunna, were important early projects of
scholarship of Arabic language. This was also the motivation for the col-
lection of pre–Islamic poetry, as some of these poets were close to Muham-
mad, and their writings illuminated the times when these events occurred.
The Qur’an exegesis also led to preoccupation with Qur’anic lan-
guage, its grammar as external structure, and its interpretation as internal
understanding. Some of the earliest studies of the Arabic language were
conducted in the name of Islam and were patronized by the Islamic states.
Prose replaced poetry as the dominant literary form during the sixth and
seventh centuries. Arabic grammarians played an important role in codi-
fying the language in both oral and written forms. By the tenth century,
most of the language had been systematically codified and theories of
prosody, music and grammar were in place.
As Ionic prose had accomplished for Greek literature, Arabic prose
gave its language the discipline, organization, and sanction that were miss-
ing from its original loose and fluid poetic form. Now Arabic was not only
able to express feelings such as love, hate, praise, and condemnation. It
could introduce wisdom in the highly limited scale of life in the desert. It
could also expand its stories (narrative) to include a life, a village, a nation,
and even a world. It acquired the ability to form a worldview. The rapid
accumulation of biographical and travel literature and the emergence of
historical writing are only a few examples of this linguistic and literary
development. Arabic gradually grew into a complex literary, legal and
philosophical language with increasingly varied genres and with tighter
formal boundaries.
Tracing the emergence of Arabic in terms of its concrete interaction
with various sub-verbal idioms, music, theatre, and visual imageries is
only a part of the story of this language. The other part is how Classical
Arabic, the universal language of the Middle East, nurtured a variety of
8 Introduction
local literatures. The specific characteristics of the formation of each local

literature, Arabic or otherwise, are portrayed as a historic interaction
between Arabic and the local oral and literary tradition that carried a history
of its own. Local oral or literary traditions, each with its unique degree of
maturity and refinement, reacted differently to the Arabic influence, and
they competed with it on their own terms. In most cases, a variety of cul-
tural fusion was established as Arabic brought innovative expression to
reshape the old local traditions. In the cases of Iraq, Egypt and Arabian
Peninsula, Arabic provided a script or an alternative script for the mature
and distinct local traditions that had been articulated for centuries. These
ancient traditions flowed into the mainstream of Arabic as they were rewrit-
ten, enriching Arabic literature while substantially entrenching the conti-
nuity of the local tradition.
A major contributor for the formative Arabic literature was the ancient
civilization of Persia, whose poetic tradition was as old as Ancient Semitic.
Unlike Hebrew and Arabic, Old Persian was a fully alphabetic script that
contained 37 consonants and 16 vowels that presented the sound of its spo-
ken language more accurately than any of its contemporary Semitic scripts.
Pre-Islamic Persian poetic tradition had a more direct ancestor, Old and
Middle Persian (Pahlavi) that had been cultivated in oral tradition, religious
(Zoroastrian) chanting and recitation. Arabic revitalized the Persian poetry
that had become polarized into an elite literature (Avestan) and a vernacular
(Pahlavi) and unified these two seemingly mutually incomprehensible lan-
guages, channeling them into a single literature. The codification of Persian
poetry initiated an interaction between the emerging Arabic and the reviv-
ing Persian and contributed enormously to the formation of classical Arabic
poetry. The scope of this interaction as well as the distilled literary reforms
that emerged from Arabic are unique when compared to the evolution of
the major world language groups.
* * *
An understanding of the history of the Arabic language can be helpful
for students of Western culture because it presents an experience beyond
the horizon of contemporary speakers of Western languages, whose liter-
atures have just started to mature during modern times. The study of an
ancient language provides glimpses into the future of one’s own language.
A mature literary language is often overly inflated with codes of law and
diverse legal philosophy, and supports a political system maintained by
increasingly sophisticated media rhetoric. Western scholars of social sci-
ence and humanities may also benefit from this study. Within Arabic cul-
tural history, they can find explanations for many major issues that have
Introduction 9
been haunting historians and cultural theorists for decades. How does lan-
guage relate to worldview and political institution? What happens to law
after its language loses absolute boundary and binding power? How do
music, visual, and theatrical images influence literature, especially a mature
literature? How does an established language and ideology penetrate and
cultivate the collective consciousness and unconsciousness by creating
endless repetition of seemingly varied images and tones?
Part One, “The Sound and Rhythm of Poetry,” describes how the Ara-
bic language emerged from ancient Semitic traditions that were steeped in
music and poetry over thousands of years. It focuses on the historic culti-
vation and continuation of the sound and rhythm of ancient oral traditions
on the periphery of major literary traditions such as Akkadian, Babylonian,
Assyrian, or Hebrew. This voice of the old tongue is portrayed here as the
real source and dynamic of linguistic evolution that finally was distilled
into Arabic. Comparison with the careers of other ancient Semitic lan-
guages explains why Arabic is the first language and the only language of
the Middle East that could grow into a literary language without losing the
oral roots of its speakers.
Chapter 1, “Music and Poetry Before Arabic,” is a brief history of the
poetry of ancient Semitic languages. Like Ancient Greek and Ancient Chi-
nese, Semitic languages emerged intact with their music. The voice of the
poetry of ancient Mesopotamia was heard in religious rituals that took
place at the great temples, the center of cultural activities at the time. The
first poetry was sung, accompanied by drums and harp, and performed to
gods and goddesses. As musical ceremonies lengthened they incorporated
various instruments of percussion and wind as well as processional move-
ments of choirs. This type of religious performance rivals those Roman or
Anglican devotions that occurred much later.
Testifying to the influence of this elaborated musical culture are sev-
eral highly advanced poetic traditions that have evolved since the fourth
millennium B.C. Among the hymns of the great temples dated to the middle
of the third millennium is a tablet collection that contains 42 hymns of 545
lines. After the Ur III period (21st to 20th centuries B.C.), hymns were
longer and narratives more complex. As poetic narration developed, it sep-
arated from music and was uprooted from ritual performance. By this time,
poetry could sing, recount, and motivate with its words alone. Hymns
evolved into prologues inserted into mythology. Short prayers became long
laments that contained personal confession and even political commen-
tary.
Chapter 2, “Recording the Sound of Poetry,” is a brief history of how
the Semitic script was invented and how alphabetic script became the
10 Introduction
chosen writing form in the Middle East. Contrary to the established theory
that asserts that Akkadian, the first Semitic language, adopted a non–
Semitic script, this history considers Sumerian as the initial form of writing
of the ancient Semitic, which was graphic rather than phonetic. Like the
ancient Egyptian and Chinese pictographic scripts, early Sumerian cunei-
form emerged from a prehistoric tradition of visual and symbolic presen-
tation. Sumerian was unique only in the timing of its process of abstraction,
a process which took place earlier and in a more extreme fashion than it
did in Egypt and China. By the fourth millennium B.C., Sumerian cuneiform
had shed all of its pictorial elements, and it became completely phonetic
by the middle of the third millennium B.C. (at which stage it is called Akka-
dian by linguists). However, it took many more centuries and many lin-
guistic changes for the Semitic script to complete its transition from
syllabic to alphabetic. Babylonian, Assyrian, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew,
and Aramaic were the more important stages of this long evolution.
Qur’anic Arabic was the first Semitic language that codified its phonetic
presentation (a complete recording of its sound and rhythm), and this finally
brought linguistic stability to Semitic.
Chapter 3, “Rhythm from Poetry, to Prose, to Speech,” is a history of
the codification of the sound of the Arabic language. It demonstrates how
the Qur’an inherited and elevated pre–Islamic poetry into a rhymed prose
and engraved its rhythm into the memories of Arabic speakers, and how
Arabic grammarians accumulated a mountain of literature as an extension
to the Qur’an and Hadith to reinforce the correct reading and understanding
of the Holy Book. Unlike the Holy Books of other religions, the Qur’an
knew no institutional sanction (such as church, temple, or holy men); the
only sanction that it established was the sound and rhythm of its language,
which was and is accessible by all individual Muslims without a filter.
(The reformation movement of the Christian churches during the early
modern period made the same attempt.) This filter in each letter of the lan-
guage and in the mind of each speaker was the greatest success of Arabic
as a literary language because it became instantly oral, spoken, understood
and motivating.
Part Two, “The Formation of Arabic Imagery,” describes the evolution
and accumulation of imagery in Arabic literature. Islam gave the ancient
poetry a new voice to sing, new subjects to envisage, and a new devotional
life. As the Arabic vision expanded with its rapidly growing vocabularies,
its imagery became more precise, enlarged and more abstract during the
classical period. The boundaries between God and world, between God
and his believers and between believers and non-believers had to be estab-
lished. As this obsession for boundaries transformed into abstract art forms,
Introduction 11
it became a pattern of shapes and colors, a pure form of beauty without

any concrete figuration. It took several centuries for this broad vision to
refocus and fill with detailed and refined imageries that were fluid enough
to alter with changing mood. After imagery became more and more pol-
ished with individual variations, the world and God himself became per-
sonal and intimate again to the artists.
Chapter 4, “Imagery of the World: Poetry and Prose,” shows how the
imagery of early Arabic poetry painted a world narrow in scope yet refined
in depiction. Like later Chinese poetry (from the Song Dynasty), the num-
ber of subjects that were described in the poetry shrank while their portrayal
became more varied and the emotional engagement deepened and become
more subtle. Arab poets gave more attention to eloquence and wording
than to structure. They produced poetry of strong vocabulary and short
ideas in their loosely connected verses. The seemingly simple imagery
(such as a ruin that reminds the poet of his beloved) was pregnant with
layers of meaning that activated a real sense of vision, touch and smell in
the minds of readers.
Chapter 5, “Imagery of the Universe: Arts and Literature,” focuses
on the widening of literary vision and abstraction of its imagery. This
process is seen and analyzed in the emergence of Arabic prose that laid a
foundation for religious, philosophical and legal writing and the creation
of artistic and architectural patterning without figurative images. The best
example for this attempt to universalize language and thoughts is demon-
strated in Islamic arts and architecture that projected grand vision with
decorative motif. They presented a majestic unity, seemingly anti-image,
yet were open to increasingly detailed and refined individual expression
and creativity.
A similar attempt to create a majestic unity to juxtapose various lit-
erary genres was found in the maqāmā (assembly), a rhetorical style of
rhymed prose. It was used to tell basically simple and entertaining stories
in an extremely complicated and fictitious style. With no attempt to present
a realistic tale, maqāmā displayed the author’s eloquence, wit, and erudition
in a dramatic or narrative context to provide both social commentary and
moral enlightenment. The first collection of such writings was the maqāmā
of Al-Hamadhani (968–1008). It consisted of picaresque stories presented
in alternating prose and verse woven around two imaginary characters.
The genre was revived and finally established in the 11th century by Al-
Harīrī of Basra (Iraq), whose maqāmā is regarded as a masterpiece of lit-
erary style. Like artistic and architectural expression, the maqāmā became
increasingly refined, ornamental and even rigid in the hands of writers of
later generations.
12 Introduction
Chapter 6, “Imagery of Man and His Feelings,” describes the emer-

gence of Arabic poetry since the Islamic period. Arabic prose built a verbal
universe during the first two centuries of Islam, and its poetry began to
create a brand new world of emotion and desire during the second half of
the eighth century. By this time, the Bedouin poetry that eulogized the
harsh and simple desert life and was recited around a campfire ended,
although its theme could still find modern adaptation from time to time.
The more settled, comfortable and luxurious life in Arabian courts led to
a greater emphasis on poems of love (ghazal).
Like the European literature of courtly love, early Arabic love poetry
described distant and unobtainable love and a lover’s inner struggle
between his desire for immediate fulfillment and his awareness of the virtue
of striving for the unattainable; between the self-imposed state of submis-
sion and the overwhelming need to express pain and resentment. However,
while it took English, Italian, and French several centuries to overcome
the agony of these antitheses, Arabic poetry completed this transition from
idealistic or heavenly love to human emotion (regardless of social and reli-
gious morality), physical attraction, and even intoxication in one genera-
tion, within even the life a single poet (Abu Nuwās, 754–814).
Unlike modern European poetry that completely abandoned medieval
religious ideals and replaced them with modern notions of romantic love,
devotion, and desire, Arabic poets simply utilized the inherited repertoire
of imagery to enlarge the containment of the old images. They successfully
refocused and intensified the meanings of the worn-out images by enhanc-
ing and re-juxtaposing them. For example, the age-old recurring image of
wine was embracing the motif of ghazal (love) and nasib (elegiac prelude)
to gain the audience’s involvement. The nasib, an ancient device used by
pre–Islamic poets, depicted the poet stopping at an old tribal encampment
to remember the happiness he had shared there with his beloved and his
sorrow when they parted. The new wine poetry embraced elements of the
old poetry to serve two separate goals: the contrast of emotions, and the
narrative focal point of seduction. This combination tightened the structure
of narrative and cast a shadow on poetic language.
Chapter 7, “The World in Arabic Fiction,” shows how the ancient
poetic origins of Arabic literature determined that its narrative form did
not evolve separately from poetic and rhetorical expression as happened
in many younger languages that developed a phase of linear (realistic) nar-
rative. Arabic narration was always tangled with non-narrative themes that
displayed the author’s ideas, learning, and eloquence. For Arab writers the
form of the narration was as important as its content. Maqāmā was only
one of these examples. In a highly artificial manner the storytelling
Introduction 13
appeared to be fragmentary, held together in purposeful juxtaposition that

included lengthy prose and verse quotations, as well as many independent
essays and anecdotes instead of a story line.
There are three main reflections of the complex narrative traditions
in modern novels: the use of multi-leveled meaning in imagery (abstract,
symbolic, or concrete meanings), multi-dimensional plot movement and
characterization, and close connection between the author’s grand theme
and his detailed (sometimes realistic and powerful) depiction of everyday
events.
The Conclusion summarizes this work with the idea that the most dis-
tinct characteristics of the Arabic language are its exceptional fluidity and
the diversity of its origins and forms. The boundaries between words, lit-
erary genres, literature and philosophy, reality and fiction, have leveled
out and intermingled during its literary evolution. A literary mind that is
trained in its entire repertoire acquires a much larger and more multi-
dimensional perspective than one that emerges from a younger culture.
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PART ONE
The Sound and
Rhythm of Poetry
This part is a history of the evolution of the sound and rhythm of Ara-
bic. It first describes the cultural and linguistic context from which Arabic
emerged: the ancient Semitic traditions steeped in music and poetry over
thousands of years. It then focuses on how these ancient and active oral
traditions shaped the sound and rhythm of Arabic and how Arabic distin-
guished itself from other Semitic languages to become the most influential
and universal Semitic language in the Middle East since ancient times.
Arabic inherited from ancient Semitic languages not only vocabularies
and grammatical forms shared by many other Semitic languages, but also
its forms of expression, story-telling, and poetic performance. It was this
public performance that engaged the majority of speakers and kept the
sound and rhythm of the older language alive, thus providing a historic
vehicle to constantly reframe the meaning of the language and redefine its
social, political, religious, and spiritual functions. It was this dynamic artic-
ulation of poetic voice as manifested in composition, recitation, and public
reception that kept oral tradition alive even as the goals of the composer
and political and social significance of the message changed. This was also
the reason that poetry and its varied narrative frameworks could transcend
the dialectic and linguistic borders that emerged throughout the centuries
by oral transmission and public performance. As the poems of the poets
repeated and reworded the ancient stories, the lips of the audience were
reciting the words and recreating the old sounds while they became
installed in the hearts of all.
These continuing oral traditions (vernaculars) did not remain unde-
veloped or under-developed, as many scholars assume. Oral language does
not always naturally evolve into written, and written form does not always
guarantee linguistic survival. Compared to other ancient tongues, such as
15
16 Part One: The Sound and Rhythm of Poetry
Greek, Celtic, Chinese, Italic, and Hebrew, the transformation from Ancient
Semitic to Arabic is a unique case in linguistic history. Arabic poetry
evolved into increasingly sophisticated and polished expressions before
they finally crystallized into written form. The characteristics of ancient
Semitic traditions were carried into later literature through constant and
active reinvention. The repeated attempt to canonize well-articulated oral
languages and dialects (such as Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Aramaic,
and Hebrew) left distinct marks in the historic distillation of ancient Semitic
and its eventual transformation into modern languages. Arabic has pre-
served the largest number of features of the postulated proto–Semitic.1
This part focuses on the historic cultivation of the sound and rhythm
of the ancient oral traditions on the periphery of major literary traditions,
such as Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Hebrew. The voice of the old
tongue is portrayed here as the real source and dynamic of linguistic evo-
lution that finally crystallized into Arabic. By comparison with the pro-
gression of other ancient Semitic languages, it explains why Arabic is the
first language of the Near East that could grow into a literary tradition
without losing its oral roots, thus remaining on the lips and in the ears and
minds of its speakers.
This assessment of the development of Semitic languages may sound
speculative at a time when new data is discovered every day that requires
years of analysis to be thoroughly investigated. However, without an inno-
vative theoretical framework, these new discoveries could be easily swept
under the heavy rugs of established linguistic theories. This book aims to
demonstrate that the experience of Semitic, as a language group, is cur-
rently beyond the scope of any established linguistic and cultural theories
based on the bias of modern Western languages, the majority of which are
the youngest literary languages in the world. To squeeze the Semitic lin-
guistic experience that had accumulated over five thousand years into a
modern Western paradigm is impossible without the shoehorn of Greco-
Roman influence. This book is an attempt to convince scholars and edu-
cated readers that Arabic, the latest incarnation of Semitic language, has
walked far enough and experienced a long enough history to deserve its
own comfortable shoes.
To create a new paradigm for linguistic history, many general assump-
tions of language development based on western European languages have
to be put aside to give Semitic language enough space to evolve in flux
and reconstruct itself on its own terms. Language does not always require
a unified or codified phonetic system. Many Semitic languages survived
and flourished for a long time without such a system. In fact, phonetic
diversity (the lack of a unified standard of pronunciation) has been one of
Part One: The Sound and Rhythm of Poetry 17
the main reasons for the survival and maturity of the Semitic languages.
Modern English and Spanish also had this diversity, which is one of the
reasons for their popularity compared to French and German. The accu-
mulation of linguistic repertoire does not have to have anything to do with
migration. A language does not have to come from a single geographical
origin; in fact, many major languages (including many western European
languages) emerged from the periphery of a neighboring literary estab-
lishment after the latter peaked and passed its golden age. The linguistic
and cultural prominence in Europe that traveled from ancient Greece, to
Roman, to Southern Spain, to France, German, and to England is an exam-
ple of this historical cycle. Linguistic reorientation and reconstruction of
an older language almost always spawned a new and vibrant literary tra-
dition, the best example of which can be found in the history of European
vernaculars during the late Medieval to early modern times.2
Based on these new assumptions, the focus for historical study of the
Semitic and Arabic languages has to shift its perspective. It has to begin
with expressions beyond the rigid definition of language and at the bor-
derline between words and music when poetry was sung. It also has to
listen to the sound and rhythm of language before it became written and
to experience the meaning that lives beyond the paper margins. Literary
language has never lived on paper alone, because once it is no longer spo-
ken, it dies. (For additional details of an alternative paradigm applied to
the history of another ancient language, please refer to my A Cultural His-
tory of the Chinese Language.) Like other ancient languages, the Semitic
language emerged and evolved within the context of ancient and active
musical cultures. The long history of ancient musical culture is difficult to
substantiate because none of the earliest music or its notations have sur-
vived. However, the Semitic tradition of music can be verified through
four types of historic and archaeological findings. First, the Middle East
was the region where the oldest musical instruments were invented and
used in chanting and performance. Second, there was abundant evidence
of religious ritual that was carried and accompanied by music.3 Third, with-
out a continued literary tradition, poetry in various languages and dialects
could not have survived without music as a vehicle to retain poetic narrative
and recitation. Finally, the rhythmic quality of Arabic has illustrated that
it had absorbed the musical rhythm of its ancestor languages, as is the case
with Latin and Italian, pre-modern Greek, and ancient Chinese.4
CHAPTER 1
Music and Poetry

Before Arabic
The Arabic language emerged within the context of ancient Mesopo-

tamia starting in the third millennium B.C., when a well-established and
advanced musical culture evolved and nurtured several highly advanced
poetic traditions in Akkadian (Babylonian, Assyrian), Hebrew, and Ara-
maic.
There was abundant evidence of musical cultures in the ancient
Mesopotamia, where the first detailed attestation of instrumental music
was found.1 The simplest sound-making instrument was percussion made
to produce beat. At Kish (an ancient city of the early dynasties of Sumer,
located 80 km south of Baghdad) and Ur (an important coastal city-state
in ancient Sumer, located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar) certain
curiously curved blades of thin copper (in pairs) have been discovered.
With a fixed wooden handle, they were not weapons as some might assume,
but dancing sticks. A golden cylindrical seal unearthed at a royal tomb of
Ur illustrates how these sticks were clapped by dancers to measured
cadence of movement.2
The Sumerian word for drum was UB, which transfigured to uppur in
Akkadian. UB originally meant something “hollowed out” or “enclosed,”
which corresponded to Greek word lephes or lepis (a cup or limpet-shell).
It was used in solemn processions together with the double reed pipe, tim-
brel and other drums. The BALAG was a more interesting percussion instru-
ment. Initially it was presented with a pictorial sign in the third millennium
B.C. as an hour-glass-shaped instrument with two heads and a strap. Its
Akkadian and Assyrian name was balaggu, balangu, palagga or pelaggu.3
As in many other ancient cultures, the sound of drum initially was
juxtaposed with the sound of language and other kinds of expressions,
such as lamenting, wailing and singing. The drum speech of ancient
18
Mesopotamia (the harmonious sound of drum and spoken words) is

revealed in the original meaning of BALAG and DUB (without determina-
tive). They symbolized not only the instruments but also more abstract
ideas such as lamentation and wailing. A similar association occurred
between the names of the cross-strung harp (ZAG-SAL) (without a deter-
minative), which expressed the idea of “praise” where it accompanied the
human voice during worship. The universal implication of the drum was
often derived from its sound. The divine associated sound of the drum was
said to have filled the forecourt of Eninnu, the Lagash Temple, with joy.
When the king performed lustration and divine petition, the sacred drum
and horn made the musical offering perfect.4
The beating of the drums that created the simple rhythm was further
elaborated by the introduction of cymbals. This is illustrated on several
cylinder seals from Ur. Various combinations of percussion and other types
of instruments appeared. A harpist and two singers were seen clapping
their hands; also a lyre player, two cymbalists and a singer; elsewhere a
small orchestra complete with a conductor, with his baton on his shoulder
and six female performers: a lyrist, two cymbalists and three singers. In
all three cases, these musicians seem to entertain guests at a banquet.5
Last of the percussion group was a sort of rattle, a hard-baked clay
sphere, with clay pellets that clattered when was shaken. Drums of different
kinds were often used. They varied greatly in size, ranging from the large
bass drum to a small tabor or timbrel held by a woman with both hands.
Countless numbers of small figure-plaques of the time of Gudea or the
Third Dynasty of Ur popularized a latter arrangement that featured a female
musician (perhaps a temple slave or hierodule) who did not make any
attempt to veil her physical charms. The bass drums pictured on a vase on
a stele from Telloh and on the stele of Ur-Nammu from Ur must have
measured over three feet in diameter. The parchment stretched over the
circular frame was fastened to the rim with huge nails, which also served
to strengthen the frame, for the drum could only be moved by rolling it.
Two drummers were required for the instrument to produce its full effect.
On the Telloh vase is an enigmatic detail: the big drum is surmounted by
a human form with the head of an animal. This depiction of a hybrid being
has never been satisfactorily explained.6
Among the earliest musical instruments that have been mentioned
was a kind of flute (gu-di) on a cuneiform tablet that is currently in the
collection of the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin. The tablet was
unearthed in Sumer, the Southern Mesopotamian valley (present-day Iraq)
and dated to around 2600–2500 B.C. A pair of badly damaged silver pipes
that were excavated from a grave at Ur, dated to 2500 B.C., support the
written record. The pipes were crafted with what appear to be finger holes,
and it is believed that they formed a pair of tubes or “double-pipes,” which
were made of reeds. When reconstructed, it consisted of a pair of thin tubes
that had three finger holes on one tube and four holes on the other. It could
deliver a diatonic scale, possibly C-D-E-F-G-A.7
The most typical flute of these early ages was the vertically held sim-
ple reed-tub, sounded by blowing across one of the open ends. With three
finger holes it was called TI-GI in Sumerian and tigu or tegu in Akkadian,
and it was highly utilized during religious rituals. The TI-GI was also
called IMIN-E (“the seven notes”), and was attested in temple records.
Praise poetry of the Temple of Enki at Eridu (2200 B.C.) said that the musi-
cian on the seven notes brought forth a plaintive sound. Again, the account
of a festival at the Temple of Ninab (2000 B.C.) depicted that the sound of
the great drum, the “seven note” and the sacred drum was heard from far
away, even in the city.8 The most memorable instance for musical docu-
mentation came from the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Gilgamesh interred
a flute with Enkidu for his journey in the afterlife. It was made of carnelian,
a semi-precious reddish-brown stone that was mined and processed in the
East. It was used as early as 4000 B.C. in Mehrgarh, located in present-day
Pakistan and the site of one of the earliest centers of agriculture and herding
in South Asia (7000–5500 B.C.).9
Sections of the Gilgamesh tablet (three clay fragments) can be seen
in the British Museum. Another brown calcite (limestone) cylinder seal in
the same museum depicts a flute player. The long vertical flute, played by
a seated figure on a stone cylinder seal of the Akkadian period, is one of
the rare depictions of this kind of instrument from ancient Western Asia.
Rim-blown vertical flutes are shown in Egyptian wall paintings of the Old
and Middle kingdoms (2686–1690 B.C.E.), and this type of flute survives
in North Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. It may well have been
common in ancient western Asia, though perhaps of too humble association
to be depicted often.10
Wind instruments were invented by the early third millennium B.C. A
cylinder seal found in the royal cemetery of Ur illustrates a monkey, sur-
rounded by other animals, playing a long flute in the shade of a tree. The
tradition of a flute-playing monkey, whether with a single- or a double-
piped instrument, persisted for a long time. Actual flutes that were found
at Ur could substantiate the story. These flutes had four equidistant finger
holes in the silver tubing. It was certainly not until much later, doubtless
in the Seleucid period (312–63 B.C.), that the panpipe made its appearance
in Larsa (25 km north of Ur and near modern as-Senkereh). This instrument
is like a mouth organ whose pipes, though externally of the same length,
are actually stopped inside at different lengths so as to change the pitch of

the notes. A small plaque discovered in Larsa portrays a woman playing
this instrument, thus giving the earliest known demonstration of a method
of music-making destined to have remarkable developments in succeeding
ages. Although the trumpet was mentioned in Sumerian texts, the earliest
known image of the instrument is from the eighteenth century B.C., in a
wall painting found in the palace of Mari (an ancient Sumerian and Amorit
city at modern Tell Hariri, Syria). In the image, a horn is held in a curious
position between the thumb and fingers of the right hand by a bearded man
with long hair. In the Temple of Ishtar, another more positive image of a
trumpet was found. A statuette in a sanctuary represents a pair of musicians
playing horns with a group of temple staff.11
Harps were one of the oldest and most characteristic of ancient musical
instruments from Mesopotamia. The general name given to the harp was
GIŠ ZAG-SAL (“wooden cross-strung instrument”) because the strings had
to pass across from the upright arm to the horizontal sound box. ZAG-SAL
also had abstract connotations such as “glory” or “honor.” This type of
harp was also called AL (“sound” or “music”) and was ascribed to the
great god Enlil. The head of the instrument was made of lapis lazuli, and
its voice, with the deep tones of its strings, sounded like that of a horned
bull. It was used in the recitation of hymns of fate. It was considered holy,
as it glittered as the stars. It uttered speech by day and poured out songs
by night. It was said that the heroic god Ninurasha made it for Enlil, and
the goddess Nisaba tendered her advice, while Enki, god of music, sang
its praises. There was an old legend that a god, who was slain for the wel-
fare of his land and people, actually resided within the instrument and
spoke in its sounds. This was the reason that images of gods were repre-
sented on the body of the bronze kettledrum, which suggested that god,
music (sound), and its instrument became the holy one: music became a
part of god and the harp was his instrument.12
This verbal connection can be verified by the way in which the ancient
harp was made and decorated. In the royal graves at Ur (dated to the earlier
part of the third millennium B.C.) a large harp was found. Praise hymns
called it a great harp. It has a rectangular sound box embellished with an
edging of mosaic (lapis lazuli, shell and red stone). The front of the sound
box, deep and wide unlike the shallow resonance-chamber of the lyre, was
decorated with four superimposed panels representing mythological scenes,
and above these was a bull head of gold leaf over a wooden core, its hair
and beard made of lapis lazuli. There were eleven strings fastened to the
upright by gold-headed nails. The strings were of gut like the traces of
those found on the lyres; they were not tuned by revolving pegs, but passed
over metal guides (a typical Sumerian invention) that were twisted around
the arm and tightened or loosened by hand.13
In addition to this fine example of golden harp, simpler and smaller
specimens are also shown in the seal impressions of the early dynasties.
For example, images of performances illustrate a pear-shaped lute, with a
tiny body and a very long neck. The larger harp was either rested on the
ground or placed on a stand by the player; smaller instruments could be
carried and played in processions. A lyre figure was found on a Gudea
stele. In it a musician was seated behind with his right hand plucking a
seven-string harp. A similar or even identical type of instrument (with a
bull-head sound box) appeared in other tombs discovered several centuries
after the period of the “royal” cemetery of Ur. It became apparent that the
bull has more than a decorative meaning for the musicians; the figure-
head—bull, cow, calf or stag—symbolized the divine nature of music and
even designated the tone of the instrument.14
The association between music and animals went back to the very begin-
ning of Mesopotamian history. Early Mesopotamian beliefs and music
practices retained this prehistoric association between music and the voices
of spirit-animals. This association was reflected in Mesopotamian visual
art, wherein animals were portrayed playing musical instruments and gods,
kings, and priests were illustrated wearing animal body parts to symbolize
that the great men’s powers (effected through their vocal pronouncements)
were analogous to the powers of the sonically conceived spirit-animals.
Eventually, the voices of spirit-animals became the voices of gods. The
gods, in fact, were differentiated in terms of their voices. Ea (or Enki), the
god of the deep sea, was associated with the drum, the sound of which per-
sonified his essence. Ramman, who commanded the thunder and the winds,
was the “spirit of sonorous voice.” The goddess Ishtar was known as “the
soft reed-pipe.”15
This close and significant connection between gods and music in
Mesopotamia made musical performance an important part of everyday
life. Mesopotamians worshiped many gods, and they believed that their
gods were actually living in the great temples on earth. Keeping gods happy
became essential part of their lives and the world that they inhabited. The
worshippers played music several times a day as they served the gods a
sumptuous meal. The meal, which was often consisted many courses, was
set out before the statue of the god or goddess. It could include over a hun-
dred vessels of beer, two hundred loaves of bread, twenty rams, and two
bulls. Music was played, and incense was sprinkled. The musical perform-
ance in this ritual was as grand and lavish as the feast, and it was played by
large ensembles of singers and instrumentalists playing harps, flutes, reed
pipes, and other instruments. In a pre-biblical culture (before the words of

gods were invented and had evolved into holy script), music was the only
language that was believed to be able to reach the ears of gods. Thus, one
who had intimate knowledge of musical language would have the most
political power because he would know secret formulas and incantations for
reach the gods. Each chant had a special quality for communion with a
chosen deity or had a definite magical effect on specific god. In other
words, the musical language of ancient Mesopotamia became so sophisti-
cated that it was believed to have the ability to fine-tune the mood of gods
and alter their behavior.
By the middle of the third millennium B.C., religious musical rituals
developed into elaborate ceremonies wherein each god had acquired his
or her particular sound, tones, melody and preferred instrument. One of
the most ancient of the gods, Ea, the ruler of the deep, had his name written
with the sign balag (drum); the dreaded sound of the drum became the
personification of his essence. For Ramman, there was the spirit and sound
of sonorous voice because he commanded the thunder and the winds. Per-
haps because the breath of Ramman was imagined to resemble the sound
of wind, the reed-pipe tones often represented him. The soft reed pipe pre-
sented the goddess Ishtar, the virgin mother, while a gentle poetic vocal
was associated with her partner, Tammuz, the god of tender voice.16
The musical establishment in the temples consisted of liturgists and
psalmists who were charged with the proper conduct of the daily services.
In the great temple of Ningirsu at Lagash (one of the oldest Mesopotamian
cities, northeast of Ur), a special officer was responsible for training the
liturgists and psalmists while another officer was in charge of the choir.
The chanters and musicians, both male and female, were organized under
several titles. The NAR (Akkadian naru) was a musician, who played flute,
double-pipe, harp, lyre or drum or sang. The UŠ-KU, LAGAR or GALA
was a liturgical psalmist. In Akkadian the former appears to have been
also called zammeru and the latter kalu, but the names were not well
defined, and they often overlapped or were used interchangeably. In the
early period, the GALA was a liturgist who sang to win the favor of the
gods rather than a consecrated priest. Later on, the GALA or kalu often
carried a sacred drum (BALAB) associated with religious ritual. The Gudea
statue inscription recorded that in the city of cemetery and rituals, no corpse
was buried without the accompaniment of the beating of drums and the
wailing of the psalmists. There were different ranks of psalmists. The chief
psalmist (UŠ-KU Maң) was a permanent official of the temple with a high
salary. He had a thorough education because an Assyrian scriber once
called him the wisdom of Ear (god of letters).
Temple ritual was a lavish event. In the frontcourt a large drum (A-
LA) was set up and in some temples even a large bell (NIG-KAL-GA) was
placed. Ceremonies of libation and supplication were performed. In the
great temple at Lagash and probably also at Eridu (the ancient Sumerian
city in modern Tell Abu Shahrain, Iraq) drums and bells were accompanied
by the blowing of horns. Within the temple stringed instruments were
played to accompany the psalmists and chanters. Harps were also played,
especially during the oracular utterances of the high priest. This was the
reason why it was called the instrument of fate. Its sound was heard by
day and night, sometimes combined with the ritual flute. In a late record,
it led an orchestra composed of the seven-stringed lyre (sebitu), the “cov-
ered” pipe (kanzabu), the single-pipe of oboe type (malilu), the two-
stringed lute (sinnitu) and other instruments.17
Liturgical chanting was taught at the temple college. The presenters
were immersed in the mysteries of their sacred office, including a precise
knowledge of the cantillation (kalutu) which, like the prae-cantus of the
Christian church, was an art form of extensive training. The Sumerian lan-
guage, like the Latin in the Roman Church, was the language of the liturgies
although, later, an interlinear Akkadian version existed. As in Christian
lands, Mesopotamian presenters were well versed in science. Yet their most
important work was to copy and edit the temple liturgies, many of which
have survived.
Little can be verified about the actual music of the Mesopotamian
temples, although a vast treasure of liturgies, breviaries, psalms, and songs
are available to inspect. These records verify and express the mood and
sentiment of ancient temple music. Historians believe that a full index of
this musical material would rival that of the Roman or Anglican books of
devotion. Unlike the Roman and Anglican church music that inherited the
Jewish and Greek music repertoire, the public musical rite in Mesopotamia
evolved from a single psalm or hymn from Sumerian days. It began as a
lamentation (ersemma), which strictly meant a psalm or hymn set to a reed
pipe. Yet other instruments were also used to accompany the psalm: flute
(tig), drum (balag), kettledrum (lilis), and tambourine (adapa). Over time,
the music came to be known by the name of the complementary instrument.
This single psalm service was replaced by the kisub before the time of the
first Babylonian dynasty (1830 B.C.). The kisub, an ersemma accompanied
by a complete liturgical service, was compiled by the schools of liturgists
who had combined several of the ersemma type of psalms or hymns that
had a common appeal. By this time, they were extremely long services
composed of a succession of melodies with changing refrains and musical
motifs. Each liturgy was now called a “series” (iskāru), and each had as
few as five psalms or hymns and as many as twenty-seven. At a later period

the term ersemma was revived as an intercessional hymn at the end of a
kišub.18
The surviving literary record shows that the ancient liturgical per-
formance not only got longer but also became more varied in its vocal and
instrumental forms. It became a long assembly of various songs (named
by their first lines) and melodies with individual titles and alternating voice
and instruments. This is quite similar to early Latin and English liturgy, in
which a rubric might say: a song to the tune of “Thou wilt not cast me
down.” Another might signify a processional movement on the part of
choir. A choral march or a real recessional might follow at the end of the
litany (of the kisub). Interludes were also found in lengthy litanies, and
one may perhaps see in these an explanation of the much-discussed selah
of the Old Testament. Even antiphony (gisgigal) became fairly common.19
In ancient Mesopotamia, musical performance was not only a religious
affair. It was also regular public celebration to commemorate a victorious
military campaign. In this ceremony, a man holding a lyre with both hands
is accompanied by a woman singing behind him with her hands crossed
on her breast. Images of singing and dancing women existed as early as
the first half of the third millennium and are illustrated by the small statue
of Ur-Nina (The Great Singer) discovered at Mari. Besides the complete
statue, another damaged sculpture of the same singer was found. Only the
torso and parts of a hand holding a musical instrument remained. Ur-Nina,
then, played, sang and danced, no doubt with equal proficiency and to the
entire satisfaction of her sovereign.
By the time of the Akkadian Empire (2334–2154 B.C.), the word for
music that had been inherited from Old Sumerian religious ritual extended
to include other forms of entertainment. The Akkadian Nigūtu or ningūtu
(music) carried the connotation of joy and merrymaking. Alālu (singing)
was included in not only religious music but also popular activities. A seal
in the Louvre displays a peaceful scene in which a peasant plays a flute to
one of his herd. Music and singing apparently became a popular expression
of emotion by people of all walks of life. The toil songs (also known as
well songs) were mentioned in Exodus 21:17, and the story of singing Arabs
was told by an Assyrian annalist. It is recorded that some Arab prisoners
of war who were captured and enslaved by the Assyrians sang to relieve
their pain and sorrow. It was also recorded that royal musicians gave public
concert to gladden the hearts of the people.20
Babylonian and Assyrian cultures apparently inherited various forms
of musical performance that originated in Sumer and carried them into fol-
lowing millennia. The best example of this continuity was attested by the
archaeological discovery of the city of Nineveh, capital of the Neo-Assyr-

ian Empire on the eastern bank of the Tigris River. Assyrian culture
emerged originally as geographical and dialectical divisions of Akkadian,
and is believed to have contributed the first universal Semitic language of
the ancient Near East.21 Assyrian archaeological findings share many forms
with those of ancient Sumer. Unpainted pottery and metal vases have been
found throughout the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and are dated to the late 4th
millennium B.C. During the 2nd and 3rd millennia B.C., Nineveh was known
primarily as a religious center. The healing powers of its statue of the god-
dess Ishtar were renowned as far away as Egypt. The unpainted Ninevite
pottery dated around 3000 B.C. was similar to that discovered at other
Sumerian sites of approximately the same period. It contains a series of
attractively painted and incised ware known as Ninevite V, which is a home
product distinct from that of the south. Beads found in these strata may be
dated to c. 2900 B.C.22
The Assyrian bells were embossed with symbols of Ea, the divine
patron of music, while the skin head of the Babylonian drum (balag) was
made from the hide of a bull. For more than ten centuries, the Temple of
Ea (Luma) was the stage for musical ritual performance. The image of a
bull was also a prominent feature on the sound-chest of the grand kithara.
This depicts an association between animals that play musical instruments
and gods, kings, priests, and mummers, dressed in animal or fish-like garb.
Well-known art remains also show animals that listen to or attend musical
performances.23
Ample lithographic material of music and musical instruments sur-
vived from the time of Ashur-nasir-pall III (883–859 B.C.). Among these
were sculptured slabs illustrating two musicians playing the lower chested
harp (sagsal ). By now, musicians had lost their divine connection and had
become skilled employees (or slaves) of the court. For example, when Sen-
nacherib (Assyrian king, r. 705–681 B.C.) invaded Syria, he sent one of his
generals to lay siege to Jerusalem. To soften the wrath of the conqueror,
Hezekiah (716–697 B.C.), the king of Judah sent his wives and his daughter,
and male and female musicians as a gift to Sennacherib hoping that he
himself might be spared. A bas-relief carved circa 645 B.C. in Sennacherib’s
Southwest Palace at Nineveh shows a procession led by musicians playing
vertical harps of various sizes and a double-flute player. There is also bas-
relief from Karatepe (850 B.C.) showing lyre and double-flute players.24
Ashurbanipal (668–630 B.C.) was one of the few Assyrian kings who
had a scribal education and could read the cuneiform script in Sumerian
and Akkadian. He took it upon himself to learn the wisdom of Nebo, as
presented on clay tablets. During his reign he collected cuneiform texts
from all over Mesopotamia, and especially Babylon, in the library in Nin-
eveh.25 The Library of Ashurbanipal is perhaps the most compelling dis-
covery in the ancient Near East. There are over 30,000 clay tablets of
historical inscriptions, letters, and administrative and legal texts. There
were thousands of divinatory, magical, medical, literary and lexical texts
providing archaeologists with an amazing wealth of Mesopotamian literary,
religious, and administrative history. Among the findings was the Enuma
Elish, also known as the Epic of Creation, which depicts a traditional Baby-
lonian view of creation in which the god Marduk slays Tiamat, the per-
sonification of salt water, and creates the world from her body. In this
particular version, man is created from the blood of a revolutionary god,
Qingu, who led the battle against Marduk on behalf of the legion of minor
gods. The Epic of Gilgamesh, also found at Nineveh, is a compelling
account of the hero and his friend Enkidu seeking to destroy the demon
Humbaba. The gods punish the pair for their arrogance, however, by having
Enkidu die from illness. After Enkidu’s death Gilgamesh seeks Utnapishtim
in order to find out the secret of immortality. The library also included
hymns and prayers, medical, mathematical, ritual, divinatory and astro-
logical texts. Aside from the many other myths found in Nineveh, a large
selection of “omen texts” has been excavated and deciphered.26
During the Assyrian period, as the literature of ancient Mesopotamia
was read, edited, and preserved, the tradition of musical performance con-
tinued. Between a register of foot soldiers evidently singing (since they
are clapping their hands in time) as they file past and a scene of horsemen
and archers engaged in battle, the intermediate register shows a groom
leading four restive, unharnessed horses and behind him four musicians,
facing each other two by two. Their postures illustrate that they were on
the move, pacing back and forth alternately. Two men on one side are play-
ing a tabor and a lyre (or perhaps a psaltery); those on the other have cym-
bals and an eight-stringed lyre.
The best illustration of an Assyrian musical scene is the fine relief
carving called the Garden Party, from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal
(the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 668–627 B.C.). The king
is giving the queen an account of his Elamite campaign as they sit facing
each other and enjoying a banquet. A harpist is playing music in the shade
of a tree from which hangs the head of Teuman, the defeated king of Elam.
Elsewhere, returning from a successful hunting expedition, the Assyrian
monarch pours a libation over the dead animals to a musical accompani-
ment.
Several ivory pyxes discovered at Nimrud throw further light on the
music of ancient Mesopotamia. One of them is decorated with a banquet
scene. Seated on a throne is a woman, perhaps a goddess or a princess.

With a cup in her hand, she is about to do honor to the dishes set before
her on a high pedestal table. Behind her are five young musicians, two
playing the double pipes, two the psaltery and one the tabor. Here, then,
once again we have a small orchestra composed of all three families of
instruments (winds, percussion and strings) described above.27 From the
same period a large sculptured slab commemorates Ashurbanipal’s victory
over the Elamite king Teuman. Musicians followed by women and children
clapping their hands are celebrating the accession to the throne of Ummani-
gash, a refugee Elamite prince. Well in view are seven harpists, two dou-
ble-pipe players and a man with a tabor.
The musical tradition in forms of songs, musical tunes, and liturgical
performance continued through various languages in the Near East.
Although the sound of the music has not been preserved, literature provides
clues as how they were performed over time. For example, the later Akka-
dian word enū meant “answer,” “repeat.” It may have been derived from
the Sumerian en (siptu in Akkadian). A Babylonian antiphonal lamentation
in later Akkadian duplicated a Sumerian original of the time of Narām-
Sin (2280 B.C.), when it was sung by two groups of women from different
towns. Each half-chorus sang the lines alternately.28 The Liturgy and Prayer
to the Moon God was a more moving example of an antiphon; it dates from
the time of Dungi (twenty-first century B.C.). With its twin recurring
refrains, it appealed to the god Sin to care for flocks and harvests.29
The best example of public delivery of ancient poetry with musical
setting was the New Year’s Festival at Babylon. This celebration, the most
important holiday in the Mesopotamian calendar, lasted ten or eleven days,
and the entire population participated. According to the Sumero-Akkadian
belief, the struggle between order and chaos and the subsequent creation
of the world were not permanent acts carrying with them conclusion. This
struggle had to be re-enacted at the beginning of each year in order to
ensure the stability of the cosmos for the coming year. For this reason the
Creation Epic (enuma elish) was recited with due solemnity on the fourth
day of the New Year’s Festival. Kingship, which was considered a gift
from the gods, had to be renewed each successive year. On a certain day
of the New Year’s Festival the Babylonian king had to go through a cleans-
ing and humiliating ceremony. He was divested of all insignia of royal
power, was struck on the cheek, and was forced to make a negative con-
fession before Marduk that during the past year he had not been unmindful
of the gods, of the city of Babylon, and of his subjects. After the recitation
the door was open. All the ēribbīti priests entered and performed the tra-
ditional rites. Then the kalū-priests and the singers did the same.30
The ritual has to follow a specific procedure. Two hours from sunrise
as the trays of the god Bel and the goddess Beltiya have been set, the amas-
masu-priest began to purify the temple by sprinkling water on it. The water
was from a cistern of the Tigris and a cistern of the Euphrates. He then
beat the kettledrum inside the temple. He would always have a censer and
a torch with him while entering the temple. While the priest remained in
the courtyard he could not enter the sanctuary of the deities Bel and Beltiya.
When the purification of the temple was completed, he could now enter
the temple Ezida, into the sanctuary of the god Nabu, with censer, torch,
and vessel to purify the temple, and then he would sprinkle water on the
sanctuary. He was supposed to smear all the doors of the sanctuary with
cedar resin. In the court of the sanctuary, he placed a silver censer, upon
which he would mix aromatic ingredients and cypress. He called a slaugh-
terer to decapitate a ram, the meat of which the masmasu-priest would use
in performing the kuppuru-ritual for the temple. He was to recite the incan-
tations for exorcising the temple as he was purifying the entire sanctuary
including its environs, and he was to remove the censer after that. The
masmasu-priest and the slaughterer went out into the open country. As
long as the god Nabu was in Babylon, they were not to enter Babylon, but
to stay in the open country from the fifth to the twelfth day (of the month
Nisannu). The urigallu-priest of the temple Ekua was not supposed to view
the purification of the temple. If he did, he would no longer be pure. After
the purification of the temple, when it was three and one-third hours after
sunrise, the urigallu-priest of the temple Ekua was to go out and call all
the artisans. They brought forth the Golden Heaven from the treasury of
the god Marduk and to cover the temple of Ezida, the sanctuary of the god
Nabu and the foundation of the temple. As the urigallu-priest and the arti-
sans began to sing, ritual recitation went on.31
Like other Semites, the musical genes of Hebrew speakers came from
the centuries-long tradition of ancient Semitic culture from which Hebrew
evolved from a dialect to a language. The record of musical culture in the
biblical period is mostly from literary references in the Bible and post-
biblical sources. The Old Testament reveals how God’s ancient people
were devoted to the study and practice of music, which holds a unique
place in historical and prophetic books, as well as the Psalter.
The music of religious ritual was first used by King David, who is
credited with confirming the men of the Tribe of Levi as the custodians of
the music of the divine service. The twenty-four books of the Old Testa-
ment, and the 150 psalms in the Book of Psalms ascribed to King David,
have become the basic repertoires of Judeo-Christian hymnology. Figurines
and iconographic depictions reveal that people played chordophones and
frame drums, and that the human voice was essential, as women and men
sang love songs along with laments for the deceased. Data also describe
outdoor scenes of music and dancing in sometimes-prophetic frenzies,
often with carefully orchestrated and choreographed musicians and singers
within specially built structures.32
The Hebrews did not invent ritual music, but they inherited and
enriched the musical traditions of ancient Mesopotamia. By biblical times,
music had become able to express a great variety of moods and feelings
or the broadly marked antitheses of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, faith
and doubt. In fact, every shade and quality of sentiment is found in the
wealth of songs and psalms and in the diverse melodies of the people. The
highly sophisticated musical ritual in King Solomon’s Temple included 24
choral groups of 288 musicians and ran for 21 services a week.33
Antiphony (also referred to as responsorial singing), which was orig-
inally seen in ancient religious rites, became established as a common form
of liturgical performance and substantially influenced the form of poetry,
whose words were initially accompanied by music. The musical origins of
Semitic poetry determined the initial form of literary expression. For exam-
ple, the majority of Sumerian literature (with little or minimal Akkadian
rewriting) came from works of praise (to praise a deity, a temple or a hero
king). A speech was directed to someone or something that was cherished,
worshiped, but was now gone or had died. Eventually, invisible gods were
praised. The verbal praise derived ultimately from the form of incantations.
Praise hymns appeared to have roots in the language of spells that were
intended to make things happen, to glorify a thing or person, or to prolong
the effect of good and desirable qualities. Similarly, works of lament devel-
oped from spells to bring back what was gone through the power of spoken
words.34
The words of spells were spoken in different tunes, tone or rhythm.
Music brought extra effect and emphasis to spoken words through tone,
rhythm and duration. The lament for Dumuzi was performed in the mourn-
ing procession at the annual celebration of weeping for the dead god. The
lament of the temple was performed to induce gods to rebuild the destroyed
temple. In a way these words created a different kind of language or com-
munication that was higher than the ordinary spoken words. The words
were not simply spoken but were performed by singing, weeping, or
screaming them to the gods who held man’s fate.
Most scholars believe that the recorded words of Sumerian were trans-
lated and rewritten into Akkadian, and they began to attain the structure
and maturity of a written literature. For example, third-person narrative
began to develop, and storytelling became more coherent in the Babylonian
versions of epics. However, as Sumerian stopped being spoken (around Ur

III period, 2100–2000 B.C.), cuneiform script began to transform from a
written language to a writing technology, which could be transformed to
write any language.35 This is somewhat similar to Latin, a verbal and written
language that functioned at various cultural and social levels (liturgical,
political, legal, philosophical, and religious) as it spread into vocabularies
of various European vernaculars, and eventually to alphabets that were
used to record different languages. Various Semitic and non–Semitic lan-
guages in the Near East, like the European vernaculars, had existed for
many centuries before Sumerian script fell out of favor. They were distinct
ancient languages. Like the European vernaculars, they evolved as local
dialects registered (written) in a borrowed alphabet, but the majority of
their speakers had never spoken Sumerian. The literature that they produced
did not share the same conceptual foundation as Akkadian.
In the pre–Biblical world, languages of religion had neither distinct
levels nor boundaries between them. The words that spoke to gods (hymns
and palms), words that described gods (myth) and the words that were spo-
ken by gods were from the same language, the language of storytelling,
private or public speech. Since the words that depicted the stories of gods
and their divine lives were the same as the words for men, Semitic epics
created deities who had much more human characteristics (as did the
ancient Greek myths). Like the Olympic gods, Semitic gods had human
images and lived among men. They had good and bad days, happiness and
sorrow, and they could die like men or suffer enormous hardship in their
pursuit of immortality. They had the full range of human emotions—jeal-
ousy, rage, and desire—and could feel pain. Semitic gods were close to
their worshippers and easy to see and to talk to because they shared a com-
mon language with humankind.
As written, Semitic languages did not completely register the sound
of the speaking voice (in other words, Semitic languages were not alpha-
betic writing in the sense of English or the Romance languages) until Ara-
bic; the prosody of neither Sumerian nor Akkadian were perceived as based
on rhyme in English sense. The written Semitic languages, unlike the typ-
ical European alphabetic script that registers every single sound, were con-
sonantal “skeletons” into which vowels had to be inserted and to which
prefixes and suffixes had to be attached.36 In this specific linguistic and
scriptural context, the study of poetic form had to focus instead on the pat-
terning of composition within individual lines of verse or between pairs
of lines, or groups of three or four on the basis of meaning and structure;
assonance, alliteration and rhyme are based on limited knowledge of their
original phonetic characteristics.37 As the sound of Semitic poetry is some-
what lost in the sands of time, the most prominent continuity of literature
will be revealed and adopted in poetic imagery and its organization that
moves from one language or dialect to another and from one literary canon
to another.
The poetic imagery (or metaphorical language) of ancient Semitic
was rich and complex because it had been developing within bilingual or
multi-lingual contexts and was revived and re-imagined many times
through many different languages and dialects, each of which brought in
something new and fresh.38 Unlike ancient Chinese or Greek, which were
enriched within a single language by imagery accumulating from a singular
textual tradition, Semitic imageries often were juxtaposed through trans-
lation, imitation, or both. Literal and figurative meanings intermingled as
different levels of expression flowed forward and away from each other.
The best example of the constantly accumulated and syncretized repertoire
of images is the names and images of the moon god. Nanna, the son of
Enlil and Ninlil, was the god of the moon in classical Sumerian myth. The
Semitic moon god Sue’n/Sin was in its origin a separate deity from the
Sumerian Nanna, but from the Akkadian Empire period the two underwent
syncretization and became one. The name of the Assyrian moon god
Su’en/Sin was usually spelled as DEN.ZU, which means “lord of wisdom.”
He was not regarded as the head of the pantheon even in the period (2600–
2400 B.C.) during which Ur exercised a large measure of supremacy over
the Euphrates valley. (The head of Sumerian pantheon was his father Enlil.)
However, it was at this time that mythology began to elevate Su’en/Sin
towards the godhead by describing him as the “father of the gods,” “chief
of the gods,” “creator of all things,” and the like. Nanna/Sin also accumu-
lated images associated with light. His chief sanctuary at Ur was named
E-gish-shir-gal (house of the great light). He became the national deity as
Enheduanna, the daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, played the powerful
role of En Priestess in the cult of Nanna/Sin.39
The first fourteen lines of Balbale depict a scene of rural life as well
as an impression of a religious rite. The moon god Su’en, the cowhead,
was bringing the milk to the table (altar) while many cows were calving
almost simultaneously. In this dark night, all the cows, bright, little, and
large were grazing at the brilliant risen moon. They could simultaneously
be the subjects of offering or the offerings themselves in the hands of the
moon god.40 Semitic poetics inherited these overlapping, vague and specific
images and reworked them into new poetry. The best example of the accu-
mulation and reconfiguration of images is the evolution of animal images.41
A good example of how literary narrative continued while language
itself changed is the rewriting of the Sumerian epic in Babylonian and the
Babylonian epic into Hebrew (biblical stories). Although scholars have

been debating the origins and specific transmission of the Semitic narra-
tives, they have never questioned the obvious continuity of the storyline,
narrative forms, and patterns of expression of these literatures.
The Sumerian epic was the forerunner of Babylonian epics. The
Descent of Istar, to take the obvious example, is nothing but a free rewriting
of the Sumerian Descent of Inanna. Even though the actual story is not
proven to be of Sumerian origin, the motifs and phraseology present strong
Sumerian influences.42
Figurative images were often clustered densely in Sumerian literature.
The word axes attracted many comparative and super-relative descriptions,
some exaggerated for emotional effect: “Stone which has no equal,” or
“The arm of the man who strikes it will never get tired.” A large number
of figurative speeches can be found, such as: “Nergal, great battle-net for
malefactors covering all enemies! Warrior, you are a great and furious
storm upon the land which disobeys your father! You terrify the walled
cities and the settlements as you stand in your path like a wild bull, smiting
them with your great horns!”43
Densely constructed string of images and fragmented stories became
more fluid and leveled out after centuries of rewriting. The best example
of this long process of re-framing and polishing is the textual history of
Gilgramesh, the most famous and influential narrative of Mesopotamia.
The story of the king of Uruk (biblical Erech, Gen. 10:10) began with five
independent Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh. Four of these poems were
used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian. The first, “Old
Babylonian,” version of the epic dates to the 18th century B.C. and is titled
Shūtur eli sharrī (Surpassing All Other Kings). Only a few fragments of
it survive. The later, Standard Babylonian, version dates from the thirteenth
to the tenth centuries B.C. and bears the title Sha naqba īmuru (He Who
Saw the Deep). Some of the best copies were discovered in the library
ruins of the seventh-century B.C. Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.44
The early literary language of ancient Mesopotamia was, like many
ancient languages such as Chinese and Greek, a written form of spoken
language (recorded dialogue) rather than a language of literature (in the
English sense). This is the reason why it did not include the same literary
genres as modern literary language. Sumerian literature was often catego-
rized according to performance rather than literary modes. For example,
the terms Sir-gida (long song) and ti-gi (drum) became written according
to the way in which they were originally performed. Like modern poetry,
Sumerian poetry was untitled, and is referred to by its initial lines.45
The term ŠU-ILLA (“the lifting of the hand”) means a prayer spoken
to god privately. Private prayer could also be accompanied by music. This

musical setting can be verified by a prayer said and recorded in a hymn
titled “Hymn to Ishtar” of the Isin Period (2100 B.C.). The suppliant says,
“With the strains of the lyre [AL-GAR], whose sound is sweet, I will speak
to thee.” The lament of a penitent, his crying is likened to the plaintive
sound of the reed pipe (NĂ), which was probably linked with his petition.
Since the time of ancient Sumer, musical accompaniment was required for
liturgy. The lute (TI-GI) and the square timbrel (A-DĂ P) were the
favorites, while Akkadian recitations and love-ditties rejoiced in the ten-
stringed harp (eširtu), the Syrian reed pipe (imbubu or malilu), the curved
pipe ( pĭtu) and the covered pip (kitmu).46
The words-to-music relationship in Mesopotamia liturgy was similar
to that of early modern Europe rather than to that of the Middle Ages
because similar linguistic reorientation took place in the ancient Near East.
The Christian liturgy of medieval Europe was initially sung in Greek and
Latin; the hymns were set to music by metrical terms (in alternating short
and long syllables). As European vernaculars gradually replaced Latin
liturgical singing, composers had to make an effort to suit the rhythm of
the emerging vernaculars, whose words and phrasing were different from
those of Latin. In the sixteenth century, verbal accentuation began to pro-
vide the main rhythm for music and song-writing. More and more prayers
were sung in non–Latin language. Musicians had to seize the rhythm of
the vernaculars to make song and music more expressive.47 The religious
liturgy of ancient Mesopotamia was in a similar situation because it had
already experienced linguistic reorientation. Music had been adapted to
accommodate the rhythm of poetry and poetry had begun to cultivate its
own rhythm independent of musical measure. Therefore, although many
literary languages and spoken dialogues came and went in the Near East,
their relationship with music remained constant. As their musical compo-
sition often was obsessed with words, verbal accentuation (rather than
quantitative measure) was the center of musical evolution, singing, and
performance.
In the rarely available example of musical accompaniment recorded
in the Sumerian “Hymn on Creation,” it is evident that most words were
sung in free recitative, the verbal accentuation giving the rhythm, which
was reinforced by the harp or the drum accompaniment. To render this
correctly and artistically required not only knowledge of a long-standing
oral tradition, but also incorporation of contemporary speaking rhythm. In
fact the continuation of this tradition, relayed from generation to generation
and from language to language, was dependent on more than just profes-
sional training in the modern sense; rather, it required the participation of
the majority of speakers. In other words, ritual singing and recitation kept
Semitic language alive and firmly on the minds, ears and lips of its speak-
ers.
Popular involvement in ritual singing is attested in many historical
records. A “Liturgy and Prayer to the Moon God,” written during the UR
III period, began with six lines, an introduction in which a single chanter
appeals to the god Sin, as watchman of the Temple of Enlil and patron of
the flocks and the harvest. Then it is followed by ten strophes of four lines
each in the manner of a litany. Lines one and three of each section have a
recurring refrain beginning, “O Nanna, God of Wisdom art thou” or “God
of Light are thou,” while the intermediate lines tell of some aspect of the
god in respect to the fields. This section would have been rendered by
chanter and chorus or by two semi-choruses antiphonally (sung alternately
by separate groups). Then there is a short recitative by the chanter describ-
ing Enlil’s orders to Sin with an appeal for his return to Ur. The liturgy
ends with a chorus rejoicing in the anticipated fulfillment of Enlil’s com-
mends. Another antiphonal use was presented in a lament written at Baby-
lon in 297 B.C. The lament, which is traced back to the last quarter of the
third millennium B.C., was said to be sung by women of various Sumerian
and Akkadian towns who were called upon to mourn their fate under the
Gutain oppressors. The singers came in two semi-choruses, each singing
alternate lines appropriate to their respective groups. It appeared that the
compositions in recitative form were preferably allotted to a solo singer
because she could perform more freely in tempo and accent than would be
possible in a choral rendering. In the transcription of the “Creation Hymn,”
however, the whole was set in fixed time by the use of crotchets. This
crude method has been adopted to indicate roughly the probable accentual
stresses placed on the original words.48
As time went on, the original music (measured in musical rather than
verbal terms) disappeared from the written records of liturgy. They were
replaced by syllabic signs, which had no connection with music. It took
many centuries for poetry to completely cultivate its own music and for
many poetic traditions in various languages to transform musical (strophic
or antiphonic) devices into verbal forms of repetition. Several literary lan-
guages appeared and disappeared in the Near East. Both the music and
sound of the poetry were forgotten, but the rhythm of the poetry and its
verbal structure remained.49
The most obvious verbal structures inherited from musical accompa-
niment are repetition of words and phrases (from notes or tones). The fol-
lowing section will depict the process in which the literary repetition (called
parallelism) was gradually cultivated and refined through various Semitic
languages.50 It often took many centuries to cultivate verbal repetition to

replace musical structure, and the repeated linguistic re-orientations (from
Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, to Hebrew) made it even more difficult.
Verbal repetition as an abstract concept had never been a formal idea for
the Semitic poets, just as an English poet would never meditate about his
own language (in general terms) during his composition. He simply opens
his mouth and ears. To say things several times without using the same
wording was an inherited linguistic habit for a Semitic poet. To create ele-
gant variations on a single idea was natural to a speaker of biblical Hebrew
in the same way that simple, direct speaking was natural for most European
languages in early modern times.51
This linguistic habit was cultivated by the linguistic history of the
Near East, and can be easily seen when reading Akkadian and Hebrew
poetry. The liturgical tradition continued even though the language of
recitation changed, and poetry began to create its own music prosody based
on verbal organization rather than musical measures. Similar prosodic his-
tory can be found in English poetry during the early modern and modern
periods after it departed from Latin or when it borrowed verse forms from
Romance languages, such as French and Italian. It can also be found in
Tang Chinese poetry. The first form of verbal prosody often was based on
stress, as demonstrated in Akkadian poetry.
After a century of research, scholars are still debating the metrics of
Akkadian poetry, but they have agreed that Akkadian meter was not based
on counting and measuring syllables as were Latin and Greek verses. Most
scholars recognize a “standard” verse that existed during various periods
of Akkadian poetry that was based on counting accentual peaks.52 It has
four accentual peaks that appear to balance each other (2/2) as in Enuma
eliŝ I:47–48:
Īpulma Mummu / Apsǔ Imallik
sukkalum lā magiru / milik mumīŝu
Mummu spoke up with counsel for Apsû—
“Hullligamma abī / alkata eŝīta;
urriŝ lū ŝupŝuhāt / mūŝiŝ lū şallāt.”
“Father, destroy that lawless way of life,
so you may rest in the day-time and sleep by night!”53
Similar stress-based rhythm can be also be heard in Babylonian epic:
1 iltam zumrā rašubti ilātim
2 litta’’id bēlet iššī rabīt igigī
3 ištar zumrā rašubti ilātim
4 litta’’id bēlet ilī nišī rabīt igigī
1 Sing ye of the goddess, the most fearsome of the gods,
2 Praise be upon the lady ruler of men, the greatest of the Igigi!
3 Sing ye of Ishtar, the most fearsome of the gods,

4 Praise be upon the lady ruler of the people, the greatest of the Igigi!
5 šāt mēles.im ruāmam labšat
6 za’nat inbī mīkiam u kuzbam
7 šāt mēles.im ruāmam labšat
8 za’nat inbī mīkiam u kuzbam
5 She who gets excited, clothed in sex appeal,
6 adorned with fruits, charm and allure.
7 She who gets excited, clothed in sex appeal,
8 adorned with fruits, charm and allure.54
The following Babylonian poetry illustrates how simple repetition or par-
alleled clauses worked in a long monologue before a formal and mature
parallelism began to be a dominant form of Semitic poetry.55
“The Righteous Sufferer (Ludlul bēl nēmeqi)” is a long monologue
in which a noble person told the story about how he met with every con-
ceivable calamity and was eventually restored to health and prosperity by
God. It was a written speech using compelling paralleling or contrasting
images to dramatize events and achieve emotional effect. For example,
“My god has forsaken me and disappeared,” “My goddess has failed me
and keeps at a distance.” “The benevolent angel who (walked) beside [me]
has departed.” “My sonorous shout is [reduced] to silence.” “My lofty head
is bowed down to the ground.” “Dread has enfeebled my robust heart.” “A
novice has turned back my broad chest.” “My arms, (though once) strong,
are both paralyzed.” It constructed verbal (rather than musical) repetition,
which was a repetition with varied and contrast images. It also used par-
alleled statements to reinforce the same sentiment: “If I walk the street,
ears are pricked”; “If I enter the palace, eyes blink.” “My city frowns on
me as an enemy”; “My land is savage and hostile.” “My friend has become
foe”; “My companion has become a wretch and a devil.”56
“The Dialogue of Pessimism” is a dialogue between a master and
slave. The master announces to his slave that he is about to do something,
and the discreet slave promptly agrees and points out the benefit of the
proposed course of action. But the master has already tired of the idea and
declares that he will certainly not do the thing, whereupon the slave equally
promptly mentions some of the unpleasant consequences that might have
followed the realization of the plan. When the master has thus disposed of
all the ideas that he can summon, he finally asks the slave what is worth
doing. Now the slave takes the initiative and declares that death is the only
desirable end.57 Here the repetition is followed by a contrary clause and
than back to repetition, revealing a verbal structure to be further polished
into more formal parallelism. A similar tendency can be observed in pre–
Islamic Arabic poetry, where lines were rhymed but not yet dominantly
parallelistic, because Arabic poetry at this stage was not an established

written poetry yet.58
As words and music departed from each other and became independ-
ent expressions, poetry began to cultivate its own music (prosody). In the
Near East this process began with the emergence of Akkadian, a much
more speech-friendly language than Sumerian. The written Akkadian was
more suitable to record speech. Therefore written language could more
closely reflect the original speech, which provided a vehicle for linguistic
continuity. However, it took Semitic languages many centuries and several
linguistic re-orientations (Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Ugarit,
Hebrew, and Aramaic) to overcome the inherited discrepancy between writ-
ten and spoken language. Arabic was the crystallization of this age-long
effort.
The path to verbal parallelism varied from language to language
among the ancient Semitics. The earliest parallelism in poetry that might
be considered similar to that of Hebrew appeared in Ugaritic texts (14th
century B.C.). Ugaritic became the first non–Akkadian Semitic script, as
the scribes of Ugarit wrote down their own vernacular using the traditional
Akkadian script. They exploited the alphabetic principle that had already
inspired the invention of the Canaanite alphabet farther south, but devised
signs using cuneiform impressions on clay, as in Akkadian. The Ugaritic
alphabet consisted of thirty simple cuneiform signs, each one representing
a consonant (except for three, which represent the same consonant—a glot-
tal stop—with three different vowels). Ugarit script survived in numerous
internal administrative records of the city government, many letters and
religious texts, and a few literary texts.
Ugaritic narrative poems were representative of a poetic tradition from
which the Hebrew Bible evolved. The Ugaritic versions of traditional tales
or motifs were later recast in Hebrew literature. Like Akkadian, Ugaritic
poetry was not metrical, and it consistently used parallelism and/or poetic
formulas. It juxtaposed phrases or clauses in usually two, sometimes three,
and occasionally more, poetic cola of similar syntactic structure and/or
semantic import. Poetic formulas included standard epithets for common
characters, including gods; standard expressions for the introduction of
direct speech, for a character’s arrival at or departure from a place, for the
passage of time, and so on; and standard pairs of words or phrases used in
parallel cola.59
Music left deep footprints in the composition of early Ugaritic poetry.
Gradually, a verbal measure emerged to organize the rhythm of poetry
without music. For example, the words in Ugaritic poetry were initially
defined as separate units by the word-divider, a small wedge, stroke or
point as inherited from cuneiform script. There were single syllable words
such as Ugaritic p for mouth (ph in Hebrew), I for not (I’ in Hebrew), and
k for surely (ky in Hebrew). However, when Semitic poetry was sung, the
singer could expand or contract as he pleased (within certain limits). This
free rhythm and phrasing gave poetry an enormous freedom and flexibility
when set to music. Free rhythm transformed when poetry departed from
singing, making it possible to combine stressed syllables with a consider-
able number of unstressed syllables and elongate one word into an entire
phrase. Thus, the foot of Ugaritic poetry, which had never had a fixed syl-
lable count, could be from two to five syllables.60
Ugaritic poetic texts showed a tendency to keep the number of stressed
syllables per colon approximately the same through a long poem. The num-
ber of stressed syllables had to reduce if it did not fit into the norm. The
basic component of Ugaritic verse was the verse-line, which could be
divided into two (parallel) half lines. A line could be relatively isolated or
clustered in sets that varied from two to seven couplets. The standard
strophic form was the couplet, although single lines or monocola occurred
very frequently. A stanza was a fixed or variable group of lines that were
organized into thematic, metrical, rhetorical, or narrative sections.61
Frequently used Ugaritic poetic features included three-clause sen-
tences, the very common appearance of repeated words or phrases in con-
secutive clauses, and the employment of a stock vocabulary of pairs of
words such as proper names and their epithets, standard synonyms or
antonyms, and commonly paired ideas, found again and again in consec-
utive clauses.62
Although Hebrew is believed to be highly indebted to Ugaritic, it
evolved into a unique literary tradition.63 The biblical poetry in Hebrew
marked the beginning of an important transformation of Semitic literature,
in which the form of poetry expanded from merely phonetic (based on
prosody) to literary parallelism. The most important of this transformation
was delivered by changing three-clause sentences in Ugaritic into basic
binary parallelism in Hebrew.64 This change condensed poetry and made
it more terse. Hebrew poetry demonstrated more variations than Ugaritic
poetry, which was limited by its relatively strict phonological length para-
meterization of its three beats and 2:2 units, somewhat reminiscent of mar-
tial meter in Hebrew. The dynamics of parallelism at the semantic and
syntactic levels in Ugaritic seems less supple and open to variation than
in Hebrew. On the other hand, the sound orchestration is much tighter in
Ugaritic than in Hebrew on account of the preservation of case endings in
the former. One can imagine the text’s prosody and a vocalization of the
text. Word stress in Ugaritic probably fell on the penultimate syllable, and
the poetry needs to be read accordingly in order to get a sense of its rhythm.
Both Ugaritic and Hebrew inherited the beginning of fixed pairs (stock
pairing words of semantic parallelism); Hebrew’s formulaic stock was
much richer and more flexible and could be substituted.65
Like ancient Akkadian and Arabic poetry, Hebrew poetry did not
include a rhythm based on the quantity of meters according to classical
prosodic theory. Hebrew poetry contained almost no regular rhyme in an
English sense. However, this did not mean that this poetry did not evolve
from song (with musical measures). It only meant that it had been separated
from song form for a long period of time during which musical forms had
gradually been verbalized and standardized into a literary canon.
First, the ancient texts preserved in the Hebrew Bible were written
over a period of at least a millennium, during which time the pronunciation
of the language had changed. Words that rhymed at the beginning of that
period might no longer rhyme at the end. Second, even in one and the same
period, different tribal groups or other Hebrew speakers pronounced words
differently. Similar phonetic changes took place in every single language,
both modern and ancient. For example, the open verses of Chaucer’s Can-
terbury Tales are hardly appealing to the ears if read to speakers of Modern
English. After considering the phonological alterations that obscure the
rhymes of Chaucer after only a few centuries, it is not difficult to imagine
what had happened to the sound of biblical Hebrew texts, which had a
much larger time span to mutate.66
An example of this history of departure from music can be found in
the first book of Psalms (1:41), which gives convincing evidence of its
origin from song and musical forms. The word for psalm is mizmor in
Hebrew, meaning “something that is sung,” and it cognates with the verb
zamer (“to sing” or “to hymn”). The overall structure and formal devices
of these poems demonstrate that the psalms were composed of a consistent
pattern of cantos (stanzas) and strophes, which originated from singing.
The formal devices include quantitative balance on the level of cantos in
terms of the number of verse lines, verbal repetitions and transition mark-
ers.67
There were many examples of rhyme and meter in the book of
Proverbs, 6:9 and 6:10. It is common in biblical Hebrew texts to observe
two verses, split into four lines of poetry, demonstrating both internal
rhyme (more common) and end-of-line rhyme (less common in Hebrew
but the norm in English rhyming poetry), as well as noticeable meter. The
last word of the first line (‘AD maTAI ‘aTZEL tishKAV) rhymes with the
last word of the last line (me’AT khibBUQ yaDAYM lishKAV). In the
third line, the second and fourth words create an internal rhyme with each
other (me’AT sheNOT, me’AT tenuMOT). Finally, the first word of the
second line (maTAI taQUM mishshenaTEksgha) is identical to the first
word of the first line, linking those two lines even without obvious rhyme.
It is also observed that ancient Hebrew texts demonstrate assonance more
often than rhyme. In fact, assonance is prominent in ancient Hebrew texts,
as are other forms of sound-matching. An example of assonance is found
in the first song of Exodus, 15:1–19, where assonance occurs at the ends of
the lines, as in “anwehu” and “aromemenhu” (15:2). Like in Arabic, the
consonance of “hu” (= “him”) can occur frequently in the Hebrew, because
the language allows speakers to affix the object-case as a suffix to verbs.68
Not all of the biblical texts had the same degree of musicality as pho-
netic repetition. The earliest poetry, The Song of Deborah (Judges 5), shows
a fondness for patterns of incremental repetition. So did the Psalms. Psalms
have relatively unified forms. They have two to four beats or stresses per
colon, two to three cola per verse, two to three verses per strophe, and two
to three strophes per stanza. Although this is far from a rigid structure, the
vast majority of poems are bicola while only twelve and a half percent are
tricola.69 As the original sound of poetry in biblical Hebrew had been lost
(it was composed about a thousand years prior) by the time that vowels
(which gave the poetry its complete rhythm) were re-injected into its texts,
this inherited inclination to repeat sound patterns required new inspiration.
This inspiration was the rhythm of contemporary spoken language, Rab-
binic Hebrew. Like Modern English poetry, especially the poetry of the
late twentieth century that emerged with music and song writing, biblical
Hebrew inherited an accentual rhythm, based on regulating accented and
non-accented syllables. The free and reflex rhythms produced lines with
two, three, four, and five accented syllables, between which one to three,
or even four, unaccented syllables could be inserted. The poet was unbound
from a set pattern. For example, in the lines of Psalm 2: “Serve the LORD
with fear” (“‘Ibdu et-Yhwh be-yir’ah,” 2:11), “rejoice with trembling” (“we-
gilu bi-re’adah”), equal length was not the basic formal rule. The majority
of biblical verses were naturally iambic or anapestic (two unstressed syl-
lables followed by one stressed syllable), as the words are accented on one
of the final syllables.
Parallelism can be found most commonly in the books of Psalms and
Proverbs, but also throughout the entire Hebrew Bible. Initially, parallelism
was used to express a single idea in two or more different ways (in order
to confirm or reinforce it). For instance, in Psalms 119:105, “Your word is
a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.” One sees two pairs that illustrate
one idea (“lamp”/“light” and “feet”/“path”). Another example is “My son,
my teachings you shall not forget and my commands your heart shall
guard” (Proverbs 3:1), in which “my teachings” is paralleled with “my

commands” and “you shall not forget” is paralleled with “your heart shall
guard.” However, Hebrew parallelism did not stop at verbal repetition, but
evolved into a creative dynamic. Psalm 88:12–13: “Will your kindness be
told in the grave / your faithfulness in perdition? // Will your wonder be
known in the darkness / your bounty in the land of oblivion?” The first set
of matched terms confirms and stabilizes the idea by linking a series of
the complementary concepts of kindness, faithfulness, wonder and bounty.
The second set, however, carries progressive imaginative realizations of
death; from the familiar grave to avendon (“perdition”), a poetic synonym
that is a mythic word that is grimly explicit about the fate of extinction
that the grave indicates, then to the word “darkness,” a sensory depiction
of the realization of death, then a poetic synonym of the underground
world, “the land of oblivion,” which summarizes the idea of death.70
As in music, where different tunes were designed to express specific
emotions, certain kinds of biblical poetry that expressed specific emotions
employed specific kinds of rhythm. A dirge (kinot) (somber song) was an
address to God seeking relief. It described suffering or anguish as a petition
for help and divine deliverance. The specific rhythm of these poems often
began with a longer line followed by a shorter one. Like in the Greek hexa-
meter and pentameter, this change of rhythm was intended to symbolize
the idea that a strenuous advance in life was followed by fatigue or reaction.
This sad rhythm, often called the “elegiac measure,” is found in Amos 5:2
and Jeremiah 9:20, 13:18. It refers here expressly to “the mourning women
who in the East still chant the death-song to the trembling tone of the pipe”
(48:36). They are found also in Ezekiel 19:1, 26:17, 27:2, 32:2, 32:16, and
32:19–20.71
Many pilgrimage songs that were sung and recited at the festivals of
Jerusalem were elevated into a special kind of rhythm called anadilosis.
It became a mode of speaking in poetry, wherein the phrase at the end of
one sentence was repeated at the beginning of the next, such as in the pas-
sages “They came not to the help of the Lord [i.e., to protect God’s people],
to the help of the Lord against the mighty” (Judges 5:23), and “From
whence shall my help come? My help cometh from the Lord” (Psalm 121).
Many similar passages can also be found in Psalms 15:120–134 and Psalms
120:5–7.72
Reading biblical texts is a journey through a language history in which
an increasingly sophisticated literary form gradually evolved as it outgrew
and integrated music and phonetic repetition, and cultivated literary rep-
etition. It assimilated many other types of rhetorical dynamics to elevate
its expressiveness. There were different rhetorical forms in the parallelism
of biblical poetry. With synonymous parallelism, the second hemistich

(half line of verse, or verset as some called it to distinguish it from the half
line in other languages) says much the same thing as the first one, with
variations. For example, Amos 5:24: “But let judgment run down as waters,
and righteousness as a mighty stream,” or Isaiah 2:4 or Micah 4:3: “They
will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
Antithesis is also found where the second hemistich directly contradicts
or contrasts with the first. As Proverbs 10:1 put it, “A wise son maketh a
glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.”73
Formal parallelism is used to balance hemistiches, clause for clause,
but it does not have to contain synonymy or direct antithesis. Psalms 14:2
says, “The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to
see if there were any that did understand and seek God.” Climactic paral-
lelism balances the two hemistiches by adding a thought or completing the
first hemistich with a second one. Psalms 29:1 states, “Give unto the LORD,
O ye mighty, give unto the LORD glory and strength.” An external paral-
lelism achieves balance by creating syntactic units across multiple verses.
Here, parallelisms can also arrive not within a line but also between lines.
Isaiah 1:27–28 reads, “Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her con-
verts with righteousness. // And the destruction of the transgressors and
the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the LORD shall be con-
sumed.”
There is a tendency among those scholars whose first language does
not inherit parallelism to confuse verbal parallelism and semantic syn-
onyms, because for them parallelism simply means “doubling up.” In this
case, they do not have the sensibility to see the difference between doubled
form and doubled meanings. Paralleling two words does not need to be
semantic repetition for a poetic tradition that has outgrown (or is ready to
outgrow) phonetic repetition. This was the case in biblical Hebrew. It was
in Hebrew that Semitic poetic parallelism began to transform by expanding
(rather than replacing) phonetic-based repetition into semantic repetition
in which new and dynamic meanings emerged.74
It was in Hebrew that Semitic phonetic parallelism extended to seman-
tic parallelism. This worked as a dynamic for creating and expanding the
literary repertoire of the language.75 One of the creative uses of parallelism
was to present opposite and contrary aspects of an idea, which could be
called negative parallelism as illustrated in Proverbs 11:19–20.
A1. Righteousness brings one to life

B1. Pursuit of evil brings one to his death
B2. a twisted heart is an abomination of YHWH
A2. a mature path is his pleasure
The basic principle of Hebrew poetry is the repetition, elaboration,

or variation on the sense of a line. This parallelism may be semantic and/or
grammatical. Hebrew poetry uses all the figures of speech of English
poetry: metaphors, similes, personification, etc.76
Synonymous parallelism repeats the thought in synonymous terms:
Hear O heavens, and I will speak;
Hear O Earth, the words of my mouth.
Let my teaching fall like rain
and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
like abundant rain on tender plants [Deut. 32:1–2].
A generous man will prosper
he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed [Prov. 11:25].
Antithetical parallelism contrasts the thought with another, usually
introducing the second line with “but”:
A wise son delights a father,
but a foolish son is a mother’s grief.
Ill gotten treasures will not avail;
but virtue saves from death [Prov. 10:1–2].
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous
but the way of the wicked will perish [Psalms 1:6].
Synthetic parallelism is a “catch-all” variety of forms. In completion
or internal parallelism, the second line completes the first:
Yet have I set my king Upon Zion my holy hill [Psalms 2:6].
comparison parallelism:
Better a meal of vegetables where there is love,
than a fattened calf with hatred [Prov. 15:17].
Climatic parallelism, in which a stairstep of lines adds thoughts to the first:
Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones,
Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name;
Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness [Psalms 29:1–2].
Chaiastic parallelism is similar to synonymous parallelism, only the second
line reverses the first:
Have mercy upon me O Lord, according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions [Psalms 51:1].
In emblematic parallelism the second line serves as an emblem to illustrate

the first without any words of contrast:
A gold ring in a swine’s snout
a fair woman without understanding [Prov. 11:29].
Cold water to a thirsty soul,

and good news from a far country [Prov. 25:25].
Frequently the first of two paralleled lines is a more “general” term,

and the following part uses more specific, extravagant, or explanatory terms
or figures of speech to intensify and strengthen emotions, sharpen images,
or make actions more powerful, real and concrete. The combination of this
dynamic parallelism with its vivid figurative language allows for the rich
development of themes, meaning, and ideas within the poetry.
The basic unit of poetry is the strophe or stanza. A wide variety of
larger parallel structures, refrains, alliterations, repetitions, acrostics or
other literary devices may be used to unite the parts into a larger unit.
There are distinct forms for some types of poems such as laments, thanks-
givings, and praise songs. There is a striking absence of any narrative sto-
rytelling in Hebrew poetry, but these poetic forms are often used in the
narrative and prophetic writings to make the images or descriptions of
events or judgments vivid. Hebrew poetry is also noted for its terseness,
as it frequently drops nouns or verbs, or omits conjunctions, temporal indi-
cators or logical connectors.
It should be clear that Hebrew poetry is readily translated, as it is the
thoughts and images that “rhyme,” not the words:
Praise the Lord, all nations!
Extol him, all peoples!
For great is his steadfast love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
Praise the Lord! [Psalms 117:1–2].
The rigidly symmetrical sound of verse of the early period was lost
as Hebrew poetry was composed in silence (writing) during the later
period.77 As phonetic parallelism expanded into literary parallelism the
very structure of the poem transformed from having linear connections in
sound or meaning to using multi-dimensional references in terms of sound,
meaning, imagery, and emotion. Psalms 137 is a good example of how
extra dimensions were being built to tighten literary vision. The song in
which “by the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down and wept” and hung
harps upon the willow also contains these lines: “If I forget you, O
Jerusalem, let my right hand wither; // Let my tongue cleave to the roof
of my mouth, if I do not remember you” (5–6). While the words “forget”
and “do not remember” have identical meanings, they are paralleled by
physical discomfort in three body parts, and reinforce the central connec-
tion between action and consequence even more tightly.78
While Hebrew poetry cultivated a more advanced literary parallelism
than did Ugaritic poetry, pre–Islamic Arabic poetry presented a more
mature, varied, and refined poetic tradition. This difference derived from
the specific history of contributing languages, the continuity and discon-
tinuity of their oral traditions, and the timing in which the oral traditions
became literature. When Hebrew was replaced by other vernaculars, it lost
not only its original sound but also the articulation of the language itself
(the very foundation of its linguistic evolution). Arabic, on the other hand,
was a continually active language since the fourth century.79 The most
important difference was that when Arabic became a written language, it
had already cultivated a mature poetic tradition with varied and sophisti-
cated forms. The continued, rich, and active oral tradition of poetry was
what set Arabic apart not only from biblical Hebrew, but also from other
Semitic languages. As a continually active language, Arabic had never
stopped being spoken as it evolved into its literary form.
Arabic poetry emerged from spoken language rather than literary lan-
guages, as did the majority of world literatures. It emerged not from the
minds of intellectuals and literary poets but rather from the lips of sooth-
sayers. It was recited, recreated and memorized by the minds and ears of
its speakers. It was the first Semitic poetry that completed its journey from
phonetic to verbal form, something that biblical Hebrew had attempted
more than a thousand years before. It was also the first Semitic language
that cultivated a literature without losing its vernacular roots. As a mature
poetic tradition, pre–Islamic poetry gave more attention to eloquence and
wording of verse than to the theme and structure of the poem as whole.
This was different from Ugaritic and Hebrew. As a result, its poems were
characterized by a strong vocabulary and short ideas in loosely connected
verses. In place of overall pattern, cultivated forms such as the romantic
or nostalgic prelude commonly opened pre–Islamic poems. In these prel-
udes, a thematic unit called a nasib, the poet would remember his beloved
and her deserted home and its ruins. This concept in Arabic poetry is
referred to as “standing at the ruins” because the poet would often start
his poem by saying that he stood at the ruins of his beloved. With this
seemingly uniform beginning, the poet would be focused on his creative
application of the form to express his personal sentiment.
This chapter has described the cultural context from which Arabic
emerged. The historical evolution of Semitic languages, especially their
repeated linguistic and literary re-orientations, seen as the formal founda-
tion of Arabic, defined some of the most basic features of the Arabic lan-
guage. The forms of poetry being constantly steeped in music, musical
recitation and performance made it possible to produce a highly sophisti-
cated oral poetry. The efforts of adopting and verbalizing musical repetition
into literary expression that had been pursued by generations of poets and
writers in many Near Eastern languages finally crystallized. As the young-

est offspring of a very old linguistic and literary family, Arabic inherited
characteristics of the Semitic languages: the sense of balance in the sound
and images of poetry, and the ability to repeat with original variations
through flexible compositions.
This chapter has illustrated all that Arabic shared with ancient Semitic
traditions. The next chapter describes what set Arabic apart from other
Semitic languages and how these unique characteristics were shaped within
the historical evolution of Arabic. It focuses on the evolution of Arabic
prosody: the creation of the music of poetry, from oral to written poetry.
CHAPTER 2
Recording the Sound

of Poetry
Arabic is the only continued literary tradition that remains active today
from the ancient Semitic literatures. All of the offspring of ancient Semitic
have disappeared (for centuries or forever), been reoriented (attempted to
be written in various scripts), or been assimilated as a part of a hybrid lan-
guage (Hebrew), losing many of their Semitic features.1 This chapter is the
history of the continuation and enrichment of Arabic poetry before, during
and after the classic period; it focuses on how Arabic, one of many Semitic
poetic traditions, evolved, matured, and eventually grew into a refined lit-
erature. The main theme of this history is the process of writing (recording,
mediating, and transforming) an oral poetic tradition by establishing a
poetic rhythm that can be written, read, recited, heard, memorized, and
performed by its speakers at large.
Alphabetic writing, the most efficient method to record a spoken lan-
guage, initially originated in the Middle East; Ancient Phoenician and
many other Semitic languages invented the world’s oldest phonetic (rather
than pictorial or mixed) scripts. However, none of the original languages
survived except Arabic. Meanwhile, the use of alphabetic scripts swept
the world, especially Europe. The linguistic transformation in the Middle
East from oral traditions to written language did not succeed without
repeated linguistic reorientation. It took Semitic languages (starting with
Akkadian) more than ten centuries to eliminate the visual (pictorial) and
syllabic elements inherited from Sumerian cuneiform, a system of pic-
tographs. This transformed the foundation of writing from visual symbols
to sound recording, first to syllables and then to single phones. Language
change made it possible for the syllabic script to be uprooted from its
speech, lose its semantic and visual meanings, and become abstract sym-
bols of single sounds.
48
The linguistic change from Sumerian to Akkadian narrowed the inher-

ited gap between the representation of the sound of language and that of
its meaning. However, Akkadian faced two related problems in its search
to become a lasting literary medium. These were to record the sound of
language as precisely as possible and to canonize the established sound
(pronunciation) of the language. As Akkadian script registered only the
consonants of speech, the close relationship with spoken language and
dialect allowed a continuing and relentless linguistic regeneration because
it made written language too sensitive and volatile to remain constant as
it interacted with highly innovative vernaculars. As new languages and
dialects kept being recorded and codified, new languages that initially
emerged as regional dialects of the given language quickly evolved into
distinct languages. As the older and written language became uprooted
from speech, it had to adopt different vernaculars, which completed a
never-ending circle that widened the gap between script and speech.
It took Semitic languages another millennium to invent a different
script to deal with the phonetic instability and ambiguity rooted in their
syllabic structure. During this time, many scripts appeared and disappeared
until a consonantal alphabet was created in the eleventh century B.C. by a
peripheral culture, Phoenician, a branch of Canaanite.2 The most important
innovation of consonantal alphabet was to separate the vowels from con-
sonants by written presentation. Thus, for the first time in its history,
Semitic languages successfully identified, isolated, and separated pho-
nemes, the smallest unit of speech, from syllabic script and established a
way for the transformation to alphabetic writing to proceed. The Phoenician
alphabetic script became capable of registering every single consonant free
from the entanglement of vowels in syllables. Compared to Akkadian
cuneiform, a consonantal alphabet was a more accurate and efficient way
to record Semitic speech.
Scribal reorientation in the Semitic languages proved to be much more
complex and difficult in the Middle East than it was in Europe. It took
European modern languages, which did not have a rich graphic and syllabic
inheritance, only a few centuries (between Italian, the closest to Latin, to
Germanic, the most distant from Latin), to produce and accumulate their
unique literary traditions. Carrying a much heavier burden of the past,
Semitic languages needed more than fifteen centuries to establish another
mature literary tradition (Arabic) after the death of Babylonian literature.
The long and drawn-out process, which spawned the emergence of Ara-
maic, Hebrew, Syriac, and eventually Arabic, now is reflected in the matu-
rity and sophistication of the well-developed narrative and polished
imageries that finally manifested in modern Middle Eastern languages.
The embryo of alphabetic writing emerged initially from a Semitic

language that recorded its speech in cuneiform. The Ugaritic alphabet,
which was the second alphabet after the Egyptian and the first within the
Semitic languages, was a consonantal alphabet in cuneiform style. The
Ugaritic language emerged from Ugarit, Syria, which was the center of lit-
eracy in the Middle Eastern world from 1500 to 1300 B.C. It combined the
most advanced features of the previously known hieroglyphic and
cuneiform scripts, each of which had been experimenting with more syl-
labic and less logographic writing systems, into an abjad (a consonantal
alphabet).3
The Ugaritic alphabet combined the principles of the Canaanite alpha-
bet with the technique of Akkadian cuneiform. It created Semitic alphabets
utilizing various types of simplified Sumerian wedges: the vertical wedge,↑,
the horizontal wedge, ←, the wedge in oblique position, , and the angle
wedge [winkelhaken], Δ.4 A similar process also produced other original
alphabetic scripts that evolved from Egyptian hieroglyphics. The best
examples of this older attempt were the Wadi el-Hol script (2000 B.C.) and
the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (1500 B.C.). The Wadi el-Hol (wadi al-hawl)
inscriptions were carved in stone along an ancient, high-desert military
and trade road linking Thebes and Abydos in a wadi in the Qena bend of
the Nile. The script was graphically very similar to the Proto-Sinaitic
inscriptions, but was older and further south, in the heart of literate Egypt.
The shapes and angles of the glyphs best matched hieratic graffiti from
2000 B.C. Most scholars believe that this presented a stage of evolution of
the alphabet, which was continuing to further eliminate pictorial features.5
Proto-Sinaitic script is best known from carved graffiti in Canaan
(Israel and Palestine) and the Sinai Peninsula. Like the Wadi el-Hol script,
the Proto-Sinaitic script has graphic similarities to the Egyptian hieratic
script, although it suggests a more or less abstract form. It is generally
accepted that the language of the inscriptions was Semitic, and that the
script had a hieratic prototype that was ancestral to the Semitic alphabets.
Proto-Sinaitic soon spread to Canaan; therefore, it carried the name of
Proto-Canaanite, or Old Canaanite script. It evolved locally into the
Phoenician script, and became a complete alphabetic writing system. For
instance, the glyph ‫נ‬, ancestral to the Latin N, derived from one of the
Egyptian glyphs meaning “snake.” The name of the letter was therefore
the Canaanite word for snake, nahas. It could be used acrophonically for
the phoneme n, but also logographically as the word nahas (snake). It
could also be used as a poly-consonantal rebus: for example placed with
the letter ‫ ת‬T (taw), as ‫נת‬, to represent nhšt (copper).
The Proto-Canaanite alphabet was a consonantal alphabet of twenty-
two glyphs. It evolved from the above-mentioned Middle Bronze Age

alphabets. It retained some of the original pictographic images. But unlike
Sumerian and Egyptian, the pictographs came to symbolize the sound alone
without the meanings of the word from which the letter derived. For exam-
ple, the first letter, alp (the ancestor of A in Greek, A in Latin, ‫ א‬in Hebrew
and ‫ أ‬in Arabic), was originally a symbol of an ox head referring to the
Aramaic word “alp” (ox). The fourth letter, digg (the ancestor of Δ in
Greek, d in Latin, ‫ ד‬in Hebrew, and ‫ ذ‬in Arabic), was a picture of a fish
and referred to the Aramaic word digg (fish). The two most obvious letters
that had pictographic origins were the letter mem and r’as. The former
was the ancestor of M in Greek and Latin, ‫ מ‬in Hebrew, and ‫ م‬in Arabic
and was a symbol for a wave of water, meaning “water” in Aramaic. The
latter was the ancestor of p in Greek, r in Latin, ‫ ר‬in Hebrew, and ‫ ر‬in Ara-
bic. This primitive Canaanite alphabet was first attested in Levantine texts
of the Late Bronze Age (from the 15th century B.C.). This endured until
1050 B.C., after which it is known as Phoenician according to established
chronology. About a dozen inscriptions written in Proto-Canaanite have
been discovered in modern-day Israel and Lebanon.6
The Canaanite alphabet was a much more powerful tool than the
Ugaritic alphabet because of its deep and wide roots in oral and local lan-
guages. The relationship between Canaanite and Ugaritic remains a con-
troversial topic today. Almost all of the alphabetic scripts west of Syria
seemed to have derived, directly or indirectly, from the Canaanite alphabet,
whereas the hundreds of alphabetic writings of the East apparently have
derived from the offshoots of the Aramaic alphabet. In general terms, the
direct and indirect descendants of the Aramaic alphabet can be divided
into two main groups: the scripts employed for Semitic languages and
those adapted to non–Semitic tongues. With regard to the Semitic offshoots,
six separate alphabets may be discerned: Hebrew, Nabataean-Sinaitic-Ara-
bic, Palmyrene, Syriac-Nestorian, Mandaean, and Manichaean.7
The Phoenician alphabet developed from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet
during the 15th century B.C., before which time the Phoenicians wrote with a
cuneiform script. The earliest known inscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet
came from Byblos and date back to 1000 B.C. The relationship between Phoe-
nician and Canaanite could be verified by the native name for the language:
Pōnnīm/Kana’nīm (Punic/Canaanite speech). With the active trade of its
merchants, Phoenician spread around the Mediterranean, particularly to
Tunisia, southern parts of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portu-
gal), Malta, and southern France and Sicily, and was spoken until the 1st
century A.D. A variant of Phoenician, known as Punic, was spoken in Carth-
age, a Phoenician colony in what is now Tunisia, until the 6th century A.D.
The Phoenician alphabet completely discarded pictographic content

and employed the same number of letters as the Canaanite alphabet, many
of which had several different forms. Like other Semitic languages, it did
not indicate vowel sounds. The current form of Phoenician letters is attested
to in the regions now encompassing Lebanon, Syria and Israel, an area
then known as Put in Ancient Egyptian, Canaan in Phoenician, Hebrew
and Aramaic, and Phoenicia in Greek and Latin, and is believed to have
emerged about the 11th century B.C.8
Another old Semitic alphabet that emerged from the Arabian Peninsula
was Southern Arabic, which remained confined to its region for most of
its early history.9 The Minaean (Madhabic) language was an Old South
Arabian (Sayhadic) language spoken in Yemen between 1200 B.C. and A.D.
100. The Sabaean (Sabaic) language was spoken from c. 1000 B.C. to the
6th century A.D. It was the language of the famous kingdom of Saba’a. It
was also used as a written language by some other peoples of ancient
Yemen including the Hashidites, Sirwahites, Humlanites, Ghaymanites,
Himyarites, and Radmanites. Historians are still debating its origin and its
relationship with the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet.10
Eventually, the increasingly complex and redundant cuneiform, like
the Egyptian hieroglyphs, could not possibly compete with the startling
simplicity and precision of alphabetic writing. These forms simply vanished
after centuries of co-existence, remaining only as religious or administra-
tive language, isolated from speech.11
However, in the homeland of alphabet script, literary languages were
not easily sustained. Aramaic became dominant as the official languages
of two powerful empires, the Achaemenid (500–330 B.C.) and the Arsacid
(247 B.C.–A.D. 224) on the land of non–Semitic speaking people. But its
dominance did not endure without living vernaculars. Aramaic, although
highly structured, had difficulty in keeping up with the active Semitic
vernaculars that emerged in different regions of the Middle East, where
locals not only spoke the language differently but also were inventing their
own distinct scripts. Aramaic’s unity as an international medium was short
lived.
Hebrew, unlike the highly versatile Aramaic, had an extraordinarily
stable early period when compared to various other Semitic languages.
After departing from Aramaic due to a vowel change in the Western Semitic
group, Hebrew remained essentially the same for many years to come,
undergoing changes that appreciably affected its vocabulary but not its
basic phonological or grammatical structure. It has been suggested that
Hebrew, like many ancient languages, was not a homogeneous linguistic
system but a multi-layered mixture in which it was possible to distinguish
an early Canaanite layer, very close to Akkadian, and another more recent
layer, closer to Aramaic and Southern Semitic.12
The reason that Hebrew survived while other Canaanite scripts such
as Phoenician and Aramaic did not was Hebrew’s constant reinforcement
through literary intervention, codification, interpretation, and re-interpre-
tation by religious writers. The pronunciation of Hebrew changed substan-
tially between the early 6th century B.C. Babylonian Exile and the 8th–11th
centuries A.D., when Masoretes (Tiberian) vocalized the text of the Hebrew
Bible, an attempt similar in principle to the codification of the Qur’an in
Arabic but on a much smaller scale. At its formative stage, Hebrew con-
stantly assimilated linguistic changes into script to keep pace with the
development of its various spoken forms, yet maintained its solid separation
from speech. In other words, it thrived as a religious and liturgical language
rather than a political, administrative or diplomatic language. Hebrew was
less reliant on government to sustain its influence.13
The second reason for the continuity and resilience of Hebrew was
the limited development and diversity of its spoken form. Compared to its
sister language, Aramaic, ancient Hebrew was a formative speech. As an
oral language it never spread outside of Israel. Without international expo-
sure (Israel was a tribal kingdom rather than a multi-ethnic and multi-lin-
gual empire comparable to other Mesopotamian empires), Hebrew never
had the opportunity to diversify into regional dialects until many centuries
later, when Jewish immigrants dispersed around the world. This oral lim-
itation was a blessing for Hebrew because it did not lose its unity during
ancient times, as did Akkadian and Aramaic.
Hebrew prose was utilized as the official language of the courts and
educated circles of Jerusalem during the reigns of David and Solomon.14
Like many ancient languages, Hebrew prose writing further defined its
grammatical and phonetic features. For instance, Hebrew was the first
Semitic language to create a precise and complex system of verbs that
indicated time and aspects of action. Prose writing also attempted to
redefine the changing vowel length and place of stress after the oral lan-
guage gradually discarded its final short vowels.15 However, Hebrew lost
its position as the dominant language of the religion in the 6th century
B.C., when Amaraic replaced it.
At this time, Hebrew entered a long-term competition with Aramaic
that ended when it lost its battle as a spoken language in the 2nd century
A.D. Aramaic was a language spoken in Jerusalem starting in the late 6th
century B.C. and may have been the city’s majority tongue. Many Hebrew-
speaking Jews in Judea would have had various levels of competence in
Aramaic as a second language. Since at least the mid–second century A.D.,
the transmitters of the reading and pronunciation traditions for both biblical
and Mishnaic Hebrew were speakers of Aramaic. By the time of the
Masoretes, Hebrew had not been spoken for 700 years and the tradition of
Hebrew had been overwhelmed by Aramaic linguistic pressure. This pres-
sure from Aramaic not only increased the impetus for change but also
determined many features of the Hebrew language.16
Hebrew miraculously survived all of these rivalries because of its
strength as a written tradition and the age-long persistent writing of its
religious scholars. The most important innovation for the development of
Hebrew writing was the introduction of a system of vowels into its script,
exactly the same issue that had been facing Semitic writing for twenty-
five hundred years. Hebrew scribes began to experiment with vocal pres-
entation in the tenth century B.C. The Mesha Stone inscription (850 B.C.)
illustrates clear presentation of vowels.17
Hebrew did not die, as did many of its Canaanite neighbors. It was
constantly rejuvenated by Rabbinical Hebrew to support the articulation
of biblical Hebrew, which remained an exclusive spoken language for the
Jews.18 However, Hebrew’s influence as a language never ventured beyond
the boundary of a minority group in the Middle East. The influence of its
ancient literature could only be extended through translation (to Greek,
Latin, and European languages). Repeated recycling through translation
eventually altered the language so much that Modern Hebrew has lost
many of its Semitic characteristics. Arabic, the next surviving Semitic lan-
guage, lived a completely different life and eventually became the first and
only universal language of the region.
The success of Arabic lies in its powerful living poetry, which main-
tained the musical and ritual heritage of the ancient Semitic. It was the
performance of oral poetry that made it possible for Arabic to mature before
it became a literary language during the seventh century. As the latecomer
to the Middle Eastern literary scene, Arabic had had enough time to develop
and achieve a far more advanced and sophisticated poetic form (compared
to those of ancient Aramaic and Hebrew) at the time when it became writ-
ten. The formal distance of degrees of maturity and sophistication resem-
bles the distance between ancient Latin and Greek as they initially adopted
alphabet writings, and can be easily observed by reading pre–Islamic Ara-
bic poetry and comparing it with the poetry of ancient Aramaic and Hebrew.
The maturity of Arabic poetry and its eloquence and artistic value became
a major source for classical Arabic language in grammar, vocabulary and
imagery.19
By the first few centuries A.D., the most prominent Semitic languages,
Akkadian (with its regional divisions of Babylonian and Assyrian), Ugaritic,
and Hebrew, had become extinct as spoken languages. Their voices had
been replaced by other Semitic languages and regional dialects. In the
north, the Aramaic cluster of dialects represented the dominant cultures of
the Mesopotamia. It had two main branches: Syriac, spoken by the early
Christians, and Nabataean, spoken by the pagan population centered in
Petra. In the south, Sabaic had been spoken since antiquity and had devel-
oped features similar to those of the southern Arabian dialect that eventu-
ally gave birth to Arabic.20
Before the sixth century A.D., the poetry of the Semitics was probably
only orally articulated and transmitted. There is little evidence of a written
literature. Even those attempting to keep written records managed to pro-
duce only scattered records of functional (not literary) writings. Unlike
the Syriac and Jewish branches of Amaraic that developed written litera-
ture, the oral language of the Arabian Peninsula left only graffiti, casual
scribbling of names, instructions, and simple messages. During the cen-
turies before Islam, several scripts began to emerge from the north, central,
and southern Arabian Peninsula.21
The Semitic group from which Arabic evolved was represented by
some forty thousand inscriptions mostly located in and around the oasis-
towns of northwest Arabia, the sandy desert of the Hisma (north of Tabuk,
Saudi Arabia), the basalt desert of the Harra, and the highlands of central
Arabia. These so-called north Arabian languages were all fairly close to
one another and were mutually comprehensible. The ancestor of classical
Arabic, referred to as Old Arabic by scholars, was found among these lan-
guages. Old Arabic was distinguished by its use of the definite article al
(other languages use h/han). The Greek historian Herodotus noticed that
the Arabs call Aphrodite Al-ilat (“the goddess”). Old Arabic was believed
to exist as early as the fifth century B.C., but was seldom recorded until a
century or so before the advent of Islam. In the very few examples found
it was committed to writing by borrowing local scripts. For example, at
Dedan near the Sabaean kingdom, a record of Old Arabic written in
Sabaean was found before the end of the first century B.C. During the mid-
dle of fourth century A.D., two texts of Umru al-Qays, the most celebrated
pre–Islamic Arabic poet, were found at the desert southeast of Damascus
and at Nemara. There were composed in Old Arabic and yet recorded in
the script of Nabataeans, which was a script with inadequate capacity to
present Arabic vowels and consonants.
Old Arabic (written Sabaean) was widely spoken throughout the Mid-
dle East, as its linguistic features often surface in texts written in other
north Arabian dialects or in Nabataean from various parts of Arabia. Nev-
ertheless it remained primarily a vernacular, employed by non-literate
people and by those who, for whatever reason, preferred to write in other
languages. Texts written entirely in Old Arabic are so rare that the com-
missioning of them must have been a conscious and deliberate choice. Pre-
sumably the intention was to make a statement about their ethnic and/or
cultural affiliation, and their Arab identity.22
Another branch of ancient scripts, the ancient Yemeni alphabet (mus-
nad ) evolved from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet around the 13th century B.C.
Its distinct form appeared in Babylon and near Elate of the Gulf of Aqaba
around the 8th or 7th centuries B.C. The South Arabian proper appeared
around 500 B.C. and continued to be used until around A.D. 600. It was
used for writing the Old South Arabic languages of the Sabaean, Qataban-
ian, Hadramautic, Minaean, Himyarite, and proto–Ge’ez (proto–Ethiose-
mitic) in Dmt (a kingdom located in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia that
existed during the 10th to 5th centuries B.C.). There were no vowels in the
alphabet. Instead it used the mater lectionis to mark them. This script
matured around 500 B.C. and expanded the range of its alphabet into 29
symbols with distinctive shapes in order to cope with the phonemic con-
sonantal repertory of the Southern Arabian languages.23
It seems that until the advance of Islam, the sustaining power of Arabic
lay less in its ability to keep written records than in its vibrant vernacular,
performed, heard, recited and therefore alive in the ears and on the lips of
its speakers. The survival of pre–Islamic poetry depended on its form of
poetic performance. One of the earliest accounts of this performance con-
cerns the illustrious poet Al-Nābighah (d. c. 604). He composed a poem
for the poetic competition held in the annual fair of the town of ‘Ukāz.
The tradition of the poetic competition, a metrical and verbal duel, con-
tinues today in several parts of the Middle East. It is performed in a variety
of local dialects and metric forms that reflect the journey of Arabic from
Arabia to North Africa, south Spain and the Levant. In the zajal tradition
of Lebanon, two poets, with their separate groups of musicians and cho-
ruses, pass the evening hours exchanging verses on the qualities of an
opposing pair of topics (such as black and white).24
Poetic performance also fulfilled a more ceremonial function in the
lives of Arabic speakers, such as in the venue of a tribal gathering, court
ceremony, or day of national remembrance. Such occasions would include
celebrations of victory in battle, prominent events in the lives of the ruling
dynasty (births, weddings, and funerals), and religious festivals. For the
most formal gatherings (majlis), the subject matter of these poems would
follow court protocol. Later in the evening when the ruler gathered with
his boon companions and slave-girls, the majlis would have a more intimate
atmosphere. The topics of poetic performance became considerably less
constrained, which was revealed by some of the accounts of the poets Abu
Nuwās and Abu al-faraj al-Isfahānī’s (d. 967). For example, Kitāb al-
Aghānī (The Book of Songs) contained both formal and informal accounts
of musical and poetic performances by illustrious singers on various occa-
sions.
In earliest times the occasion for a poetic performance could be a
tribal gathering, whether it involved the members of a single grouping
around an evening campfire or a larger annual gathering of tribal confed-
eracies. Current practice in countries such as Yemen may provide some
clues about what was going on during these occasions. As first-hand his-
torical recording is absent, the following is the closest depiction of the
events. Coffee is served to the noisy group. When the poet is ready, he
clears his throat to request silence and then begins his recitation. Each half
of the first verse of the poem ends with rhyming syllables, and the poet
may repeat the first line so that the audience has a clear sense of both
rhyme and meter. The audience is thoroughly familiar with the occasions,
motifs, and facets that make up the poetic craft and quickly express
approval for excellent lines (often requesting their repetition) and provide
criticism of less satisfactory efforts through silence or bodily gestures of
disapproval.25
Most historians agree that there were distinct forms of music in the
pre–Islamic Arabian Peninsula that played an important part in the forma-
tion of Arabic poetry. Arabic poetry, unlike the literary poetry of many
European languages that is written by literary writers, the Arabic poetry
was invented originally by Arab soothsayers (kahins). They used incanta-
tions of a rhythmic form of rhymed prose known as saj’ and a poetic meter
called rajaz. Arab soothsayers were also enchanters and prophets. It was
believed that the jinn (supernatural creatures) prompted the verses of the
poet and the melodies of the musician and connected music, poetry, and
magic.26
Music’s role in ancient Arabia was very similar to that of Akkadian
(both Babylonian and Assyrian), Aramaic or Hebrew during the formative
periods of their linguistic histories. The temples of Ishtar and Yahveh had
their specific chants, and Arabian shrines had theirs. Like the Assyrians,
Arab poets worked hard in composing their songs to express their feelings.
A performance of music similar to one at a Hebrew banquet would most
likely have taken place among the pagan Arabs. The main difference
between the Western chromatic scale and the Arabic scales is the existence
of many in-between notes, which are sometimes referred to as quarter
tones, to indicate finer distinction of sound. In some treatments of theory,
the quarter tone scale or all twenty-four tones should exist. According to
Yūsuf Shawqī (1969), in practice, there are many fewer tones. Many Islamic
formulaic pronouncements and ritual recitation were originally songs that
were chanted by pagan Arabs during pre–Islamic times. Encircling a stone,
they chanted. They sang tahlīl, a song for the moon god, and they honored
the god on his birthday with hymns. Music could be found in the private,
public, and religious life of the Arabs, as there were work songs, war songs,
songs of victory and songs of woe. Music and songs resounded around the
temples and shrines of the Arabs as it did the temples of Ishtar and Yahweh.
Music and song were with the Arabs from the lullaby at the cradle to the
elegy at the bier.27
Ancient religious ritual was very much alive in Arabia as pilgrims
indulged in chanting and hymn singing during hajj (pilgrim age). Some
fragments of the hymns that were performed and dramatized during the
ḥajj have been preserved in literature that describes how the Arabs chanted
a hymn while encircling the sacrificial stone. Musical rituals were dedicated
to Al-Lāt the goddess. Both Umru al-Qais and Labīd, pre–Islamic poets,
spoke of “maidens circling a pillar,” which would most likely be performed
in a dance, accompanied by music and singing.28
In ancient Arabia, if a poet appeared in the family, the other nearby
tribes would gather together with that family and congratulate them on
their good fortune. Feasts would be arranged, women of the tribe would
join together in bands, playing lutes, as they did at bridals. This was because
a poet was a defense of the honor of them all, a weapon to ward off insults
to their good names, and a means of perpetuating their glorious deeds and
of establishing their fame forever. At the time, Arabian tribal men fought
with words as well as swords. Poetry flew across the desert faster than
arrows and found the hearts and bosoms of all those who heard them.
Women sang war songs and laments for the slain while playing their tam-
bourines. Singing-girls could be invariably found in the household of every
Arab of social standing. It was also the time when music began to extend
its ritual and religious function into private entertainment, a tradition that
lasted until the beginning of Islam.29
Pre-Islamic music derived from the rhythm of the spoken language,
and it was little more than unpretentious psalming, varied and embroidered
by the singer, male or female, according to the taste, emotion, or effect
desired. The oldest form of poetical speech was rhyme without meter, saj’,
which was defined later as rhymed prose. Out of saj’ evolved the most
ancient of the Arabian meters, known as rajaz meter, a measure which is
believed to come from the rhythm of everyday desert life in particular, the
beat of the steps of a walking camel. The rajaz meter was an irregular
iambic cadence usually consisting of four or six beats. A poet would write
two or three feet to the line, which was a popular tune, the extemporaneous
song known as the ghinā’ murtajat. Untrained minstrels often used a qadīb
(wand) to mark the beat of the song. At this time, singing was designed to
carry the verses, prolonged interminably on a syllable word or hemistich
in such a way that the singing of a cantilena of two or three verses might
last for hours. The singer demonstrated his talent by the timbre of his voice
expressed in mobility and vibrations (the feeling that made it sound or
quaver) to please the audience. Sometimes, the singer might prolong the
final vowels with a high trill (tudrī ) and clearly enunciate the syllables
(tartīl) giving each its due measure and value. The familiar ways of singing
well-known in the West, such as singing in unison or in harmony, were
quite unknown. The only “harmony” was that supplied by the various
instruments of percussion such as the tabl (drum), duff (tambourine) and
the figuration of the melody by means of ornaments in the shape of trills
or turns which were called zawā’id. Skillful singers could sing antiphonally
with others while playing the resounding lute.30
In fact, the emergence of Arabic as a dominant literary language, like
the European vernaculars many centuries later, came with a musical ren-
aissance that cultivated innovative expressions in music and singing. The
center of this emerging music was in Al-Hijaz (a region in the west of
present-day Saudi Arabia) and later Mecca. Peripheral to older kingdoms
and major empires of the Middle East, Al-Hijaz initially had a minor musi-
cal tradition that had not advanced as had the Arab court of Al-Ḥīra (a city
of modern Iraq), a contemporary cultural center for musicians and poets.
By the close of the sixth century or beginning of the seventh, Al-Hijaz had
inherited only a few types of songs such as nasb and the nauḥ. Poet-min-
strel Al-NaĂDr ibn al-Ḥārith (d. 624) introduced several innovations from
Al-Ḥīra, one of which was ghinā’, a more sophisticated song. He also
learned to play a new type of wooden-bellied lute called the ‘ūd, which
apparently superseded the old skin-bellied mizhar. Ghinā’ was also a supe-
rior and more artistic song than nasb, of the old Arabian.31
Like the music of late medieval Europe, the emerging music had last-
ing influence in linguistic history because it separated music from words.
In pre–Islamic Arabia, the musical measure of songs was determined by
the prosodic feet of the verse, as in Latin liturgical music of the early Mid-
dle Ages. The formal sophistication of pre–Islamic poetry reveals that this
type of poetic chanting to a simple musical accompaniment had a long his-
tory and a well-educated audience. The singer-poet often impressed the
audience with an outstanding voice. When Ibn al-Ḥārith introduced the
new songs, he became the rival of the Prophet Muhammad for the ear of
the public.
Muhammad was initially perceived as a non-singing poet (in the Ara-

bic definition) because he appeared to be another poet-soothsayer (sha’ir)
or magician (kāhin) who possessed a powerful way with words. He
preached in the style of the saj’ (rhymed prose) as did the traditional poets.
He was in fact called a shā’ir majnūn (a crazy poet, or a poet-soothsayer
possessed of a jinn, a supernatural being). What made Muhammad original
was not his voice but rather his eloquence and his message of revelation
articulated with the familiar poetic rhythm.32 The importance of words
(rhymed prose) began to overpower music at a time when the two forms
of expression started to depart from each other. As oral tradition (both
poetry and prose) was elevated into literary canon, music became the ser-
vant of words. This has been a familiar separation in many world civiliza-
tions such as in late Medieval Europe and post–Tang China. The only
difference is that Arabic transformed from oral to written language while
European vernaculars replaced Latin literary tradition.
This apparent competition between forms of delivery of the same lan-
guage (song or speech, meter or rhyme) has been poorly interpreted by
some scholars as Islam’s opposition to or condemnation of music. This
assumption is understandable in the sense that historians were trying to
explain the non-liturgical nature of Islamic worship, as they did not observe
singing in the mosque that might parallel the musical rites seen in Judaism
and the Christian church. In fact the real reason for this difference lies not
in music or attitude towards music but rather in the degrees of maturity of
literary language in which various religions defined the forms of worship.33
There were variations of the language and singing skills throughout
the population of the pre–Islamic Arabian Peninsula, and this diversity
might be the reason for the richness of pre–Islamic culture. Nomadic cul-
ture was only one of many different pre–Islamic cultures. First, the oldest
musical and literary heritage came from the south (Al-Yemen), where sev-
eral popular musical instruments of Islam were first adopted. For many
centuries, the Arabs of Al-Ḥijāz recognized that the best real Arabian music
came from Al-Yemen, and Ḥadramī minstrels were considered to be supe-
rior.34 There were two types of singing, the Bedouin and sedentary singing.
Huda and nasb were the first types and were considered simple, naïve and
conservative. Their rhythms derived from and reflected the desert life, as
they broke the natural, infinite silence and provided comfort for the lonely
life of travelers. In the towns and oases, such as Medina, Ta’iif and ‘Ukāz,
new and more artistic types of music became entertainment. Singing girls
served as singers, performers, waitresses, or prostitutes. The songs of the
exotic singers were virtuosic and extraordinary. The most famous singers
(qainah) in Arabia were from Persia or Africa.35
Even well before the advance of Islam, music had begun to separate
from verse, and the social function of musicians transformed as well. There
were different kinds of music and different kinds of singing. Huda and
nasib, favored by the Bedouin nomads, were narrative and nostalgic, pre-
sented in repetitive, melodic phrase. They were governed by the prosodic
structure of poetry, where melody was enriched by the singer who held
long breaths, long notes, proper pronunciation, metrical measurement, and
grammatical inflection. The emerging city styles preferred lighter and more
varied rhythms and pure musical and vocal presentations. The diversity of
musical practice made it possible for music to depart from religious rituals
and social function and become performance for entertainment and pleas-
ure. Like in the later period of ancient Mesopotamia, the art began to be
associated with brightness and enjoyment. As the word zahara meant “to
shine brightly,” it indicated “brightness.” A similar transformation of the
function of music did not occur in the West until the early twentieth century,
when literature became a mature art.36
At the same time, Arabic poetry began to grow into an art form inde-
pendent from music (or singing), when it had cultivated its own prosody.
Unlike European languages, whose literature diversified into prose and
poetry (defined by presence or absence of rhyme), Arabic, whose spoken
form had already inherited a speaking rhythm, diversified into prose and
poetry by presence or absence of meter. In other words, Arabic prose from
the very beginning was rhymed (without meter) and poetry had both rhyme
and meter because rhyme represented smooth and eloquent speech. These
literary genres emerged from an already established and polished speech
equipped with both rhyme and rhythm. This is the reason why Arabic
poetry is the language of common speakers rather than the artistic language
of the cultural elite.37
Arabic was the first Semitic language that produced poetry in quan-
titative measure like the Greek and Latin. However, this quantitative meas-
ure occurred in Arabic much more naturally than it did in Latin and
Germanic languages. Arabic, by the time of Islam, had already inherited
a natural linguistic stress, which made a readily rhythmic foundation of
poetic prosody. Its grammatical features had already inherited a speaking
rhythm that employed stress and alternation of long and short vowels. With
this type of phonetic symmetry, it did not need a cumbersome prosody to
force a rhythm into the sound of poetry. The difference between Arabic
poetry and prose lies in the degrees of rhythmic repetition rather than the
presence of meter. For example, Arabic poetry requires a somewhat higher
ratio of long to short syllables than is usual in prose; it never allows more
than two short syllables in succession, whereas up to six or more occur in
prose. However, generally speaking, poetic meter in Arabic seldom imposes

restraint on the normal patterns of speech.38
Without an established literary form to imitate (Latin poetry had
Greek), Arabic poetic language accumulated piecemeal. It did not begin
with an idealistic unity or overall structure, assembled one verse and a few
lines at a time for each subject, image, and mood. Several poetic genres
evolved with singular and independent themes. Like the early Semitic epic
poetry, it gradually became linked and grew into long and coherent form.
For example, qasīda, the only complete and most dominant pre–Islamic
poetic form, did not obtain its coherence until the late part of pre–Islamic
poetry. In Medieval Arabic the term qasida could be applied to any poem
composed in accepted meters of a certain length, perhaps from seven to
ten lines.39
During the early period on the pre–Islamic Arabian Peninsula, poets
did follow set rules of composition in theme or rhythm. They were exper-
imenting with different themes and forms. The poetry that survived from
this period mainly consisted of qit’a, short poems that highlighted a single
theme, and the longer, structurally complex qasida. A qit’a was addressed
to a specific person and expressed eulogy (marthiya, ritha), praise (madih),
or boasting (fakhr). The qasida was a polythemetatid form in which several
parts were joined without transition (takhallus) or without apparent reason
for their sequence. However, certain forms were more popular among the
poets of the Peninsula, and this promoted a sense of standardization.40
By the sixth century, the first two sections of qasida, the elegiac prel-
ude (nasīb) and the description of the camel (rahīl), were widely employed
by Arab poets. The concluding section that dealt with present intent was
less constant. It could include self-praise (fakhr), a message to an enemy
(hijā), or tribute (madīh) for a patron, tribal leader or king. By the end of
the pre–Islamic period, the three-part structure of the qasida was well
established and had a higher degree of coherence in its form.41
Although varied in thematic arrangement, qasida and qit’a shared the
characteristics of monorhyme and the use of a fixed set of meters based
on syllable length. The only difference was that the qasida’s overall struc-
ture was considerably more complex. Most qasida range between about
30 and 100 lines, containing up to thirty syllables each, and divided more
or less equally over two hemistiches. Within this structure, the range and
arrangement of themes and rhythmic patterns varies considerably.42 The
English word monorhyme reminds one of the sound of French, which is a
monotone language with fewer tonal variations, compared with other
romantic languages. However, the word monorhyme in reference to Arabic
poetry is misleading without qualification. First of all, if read silently, Arabic
poetry appears to be quite plain, with a rather unified end rhyme. When it
is read in the mind, its lack of intonation creates a false impression, similar
to the impression created when academics read and study Chinese Tang
poetry as if it is a more familiar form, such as Haiku. The soul of Arabic
poetry lies in its sound, its highly dramatized delivery of a variety of music-
like modulations of rhythm and tone. Different speakers could change the
tempo and gear in performance, and convey a variety of moods and con-
notations.43 The only way that a non–Arabic speaker can understand the
difference between various delivery forms for an Arabic poem is to imagine
a familiar song (with familiar lyrics) performed by different singers using
various musical arrangements.
If read silently (by following the superficial monorhyme), Arabic loses
its real rhythm. It was composed and meant to be read in cycles. Each
cycle contains a cluster of verses to deliver a climactic unity of emotion,
theme, and rhythm. Like a musical symphony, it often began with a point
of calm, and then it accelerates slowly or quickly to crescendo, finally cul-
minating in a fully expected resolution. A good poet could avoid monotone
and tedious rhythmic recurrence and inject emotional apex by manipulating
rhythmic cycles. Within this climactic structure, the tension and its reso-
lution recur constantly in the poem, leaving no time to fall into dull mono-
rhythm. In other words, without sound, Arabic poetry is void of bouncing
pulse and exciting appeal.44
This shared rhythmic cycle in poetry was and remains deeply rooted
in Arabic language. After centuries of performance and ritual recitation,
Arabic poetry had cultivated a double pattern of anticipation and resolution
in the ears and the minds of poets and their audiences. A poet had to com-
pose his lines in pairs because the audience, after hearing the first half of
a line, was led to expect the rhyme-syllable of the second half of the line
(its metrical twin). The conclusion of the line led the audience to expect
another line that followed the same rhyme pattern as the first.45
Although relatively close to speech, Arab poetry was an artistic and
artificial form distinct from spoken rhythm. Even before it became codified,
Arabic poetry employed a set of complicated meters based on syllabic
length. The two meters used by the well-known pre–Islamic poets Umru
a1-Qays, Ţarafa and Zuhayr, and in Labīd and ‘Antara were ţawīl (long)
and kāmil (perfect). The basic feet in ţawīl were u - - and u—u -, called
by the Arabs fa’ūlun and mafā’ilun. Kāmil only had one basic type of foot,
u u—u -, called mutafā’ilun. The feet are arranged with the permissible
alternatives noted directly below the variable syllables. Although the two
hemistiches (half-lines) are identical in basic form, variations that occur
in one hemistich need not be reflected in the other.46
The essential element in Arabic rhyme (qāfiya) was the final consonant
in the line (rawīy), which remained constant throughout the poem for as
many as 80–120 lines (often more for fajaz poems). The rhymes were usu-
ally feminine, such as sakhīrā, tulīnā, muhīnā; mukhlidī, yadī, ‘uwwadī;
rijāmuhā, silāmuhā, harāmuhā. Although Arabic inherited an extraordinary
array of rhymes, poets still needed a high degree of technical skill to render
a long poem in a single rhyme. The solution was to produce two basic
types of rhyme. One was verse-end rhyme in which the rawiy alone was
the last sound pronounced in reciting each verse. The other was verse-end
consonance and assonance in which the rawiy was pronounced with a final
long-vowel ū/ī/ā. The latter type was the more commonly used.47
The simplicity and plasticity of pre–Islamic poetic form gave poets
an exceptional degree of freedom as well as manipulative power to com-
pose in a variety of voices, themes, and moods. Arabic poetry was a well
developed and refined oral tradition at the time that it became written. Its
vivid imagery, sophisticated eloquence and multiple voices provided a rich
foundation for its literary poetry. It has long been deemed as the supreme
art form among Arabs, one that flourished even at times when other arts
were virtually unknown.48
Although it had been orally composed, transmitted, and preserved, it
only became selected and edited by Muslim scholars during the 8th and
9th centuries. A collection of Arabic poems is usually called a dīwān. The
early philologists who gathered poems into collections used a variety of
organizational categories. Some were named after the tribe under whose
protective umbrella the works had been conceived and performed. An
example of this is the poems of the Banu Hudhayl. Others were named
after their compilers. One of the most cherished was heroism, hamāsah,
providing the title for a number of collections of which the most renowned
was that of the poet Abu Tammām. However, the most favored organizing
principle for collections of Arabic poetry had been and remains the gath-
ering of the works of a single poet, The Dīwān of al-Mutanabbī, for exam-
ple.
It was not the practice to give Arabic poems descriptive titles until
recently. The majority of collections by early poets were organized in a
series of short statements, for example, a recounting of the occasion for
which the poem was composed and/or performed, upon the death of a
prominent person, or in celebration of a significant event in the life of the
community. A preferred mode of sequence for the collected poems was an
alphabetical one based on their end-rhymes. The most famous poems were
often referred to in this way. Thus, the vagabond-poet Al-Shanfarā’s most
famous ode is known as “The L-poem of the Arabs” (lāmiyyat al-Arab).
Another method of identification is through the opening of the poem. Imru

al-Qays’ mu’allaqah poem is instantly recognizable by its renowned begin-
ning: “Halt, you two companions, and let us weep...” (qifā nabki). As the
Arabic poetic tradition developed and particular genres came to be recog-
nized as separate entities, the dīwān of the poet was often subdivided into
categories. Abu Nuwas’ collected poetry, for example, contains large sep-
arate sections of love poems addressed to males and females (ghazal) and
wine poems (khamriyyah). In addition to the accepted sections on eulogies,
lampoons and elegies, there are also others gathered around the themes of
hunting, asceticism, and the reprimand. With Abu Tammām’s Dīwān we
find separate sections on eulogies, lampoons, elegies, love, chiding, descrip-
tion, boasting, and asceticism.
The collected poetry contained ample tribal and personal motifs por-
trayed in a highly personal and lyrical manner. Arabic poetry gave more
attention to the lyrical voice of the poet than to its story or subject matter.
In other words, the established form had begun to be formalized as a mood
setter, which made it possible for poets to move on to an exhibition of elo-
quence and poetic wording. An example of how different individual sen-
timents could be expressed in a seemingly highly formalized structure is
the comparison of a poem by Durayd ibn-a-imma (d. 630) and another by
As-Sanfarā (d. 550).
The first poem was a personal recollection of a raid on an enemy tribe.
The raid started well, and the poet’s party managed to escape with some
booty. On the way home, his tribal cohorts disregarded his good advice
about the strength of their well-armored enemy and stopped to divide the
spoils. They were overtaken and overrun by a detachment from the
offended tribe. Several men, including the poet’s brother, died as the result
of this foolish mistake.
The first five lines of the poem emphatically assert Durayd’s own acu-
men before proclaiming his tribal loyalty in strikingly jingoistic terms
(awīl/dī). What is the use to be a wise man, when one is nothing but one
of the group (tribe), which decides one’s destiny? Another poem expressed
an opposite sentiment of a rogue poet who relied not on the backing of his
tribe to survive, but on his own wits and hardihood (awīl/lū). He preferred
to face the world alone and take full responsibility for his actions.
No one serves as a better example of a highly individualized poet in
tribal society than Imru’ al-Qays, the most renowned of the pre–Islamic
Arabic poets. Imru’ al-Qays was born in A.D. 526, the youngest son of
Hujr, king over the tribes of Asad and Ghutfan in ancient Yemen. His rebel-
lious actions (writing poetry was one of them) against tribal code got him
expelled from his kingdom. In exile, he wandered from oasis to oasis, stopping
to drink wine, recite poetry, and enjoy the performance of the singing-
girls, sometimes lingering for days before packing up to wander again.
Ironically, the tribal law that he had rebelled against eventually bound him
to spend the rest of his life pursuing vengeance on his enemy for the death
of his estranged father. However, his hard traveling life and exceptionally
wide range of emotions (with his father, his lover, his friends, and enemies)
became an inexhaustible source material for a poem that praises their
graces, lambastes their cruelty, and laments their absence, and in so doing
explains the longing in his heart.
Between these roles of loyal compiler and discontented rebel of the
tribal code lay a wide range of human experiences for other poets to
explore. They left to posterity a treasury of love-songs, wine-songs, and
hunting-songs. Prominent of course were poems that praised tribes and
chieftains and celebrated glorious deeds with occasional elegies on the
death of heroes. But there was also praise for the peacemakers.49
During the codification process, the early Muslim scholars called any
of these single-themed poems on a single theme a qit’a piece, as if it was
a fragment detached from a larger unit. They reserved the term qasida for
a three-part ode. An example of this type of ode is a collection called
mu’allaqah (the suspended odes). The title derived from the legend that
they were purportedly written in gold and suspended inside the ka (the
cubical shrine), which was revered in Mecca even before it became the
focus of the Muslim pilgrimage. Some also interpreted the term as the
string that ties several themes together.
Through Islamic codification, Arabic poetry became much more for-
mulized and created the model of Arabic poetry for the following cen-
turies.50 A standard metrical system (‘arūd) was established to unify the
prosody of poetry. This standard remained relatively unchanged from the
end of the eighth century until the modern period.
The first part of a qasida was known as nasib or nostalgic prelude.
This was often a memorization or celebration of a lost love. Sometimes
what stirred the poet’s emotion was an apparition that he took to be the
specter of his beloved. More commonly, however, the entire poem started
with a situation so conventional and so well understood by the audience
that it was not explicitly described: The poet, traveling through the desert
with one or two companions, comes upon the traces of an encampment
where a woman he loved once dwelt, and he expresses what was known
as “weeping over the ruins.”
This prelude put both poet and his audience in a place where time was
compressed, emotion was frozen and memory lasted forever. Once inside
this intimate space, they entered the “abodes of the hearts” that used to be
shared by the poet and his loved one and were now also shared by the poet
with his audience. In the stillness of these motionless memories, the abodes
of the heart have become places of refuge and protection. They are therefore
not mere temporal points. They now possess a spacious material dimension.
In this private house of emotion and frozen memory lies a very special
piece of the past which has nothing to do with finite, historical time, and
which has a certain protective quality. This is the realm where flowers
become silent gardens of paradise. A poem that began with nasib was a
guided private tour. The poet invited the readers into his sacred domain of
(past) happiness, memory, and longing.51
Within the emotion of these memories, tribal enclosures and nightly
phantoms are transformed before our eyes into a melancholy garden. Awak-
ening in the morning as if from an ancient dream and then remembering
something of that dream, the narcissus sheds its dewy tears of sadness, the
same sadness that the poet senses awakening in his heart. It is only then
that an equation between the archaic abode and the garden sets in and the
metaphor of the poetic instant blends into the symbol of the archetype.
“The chill of morning stirred narcissus’ lid. A tear of dew first gleamed on
it and then rolled down.”52 Thus the “romantic,” melancholy garden
becomes the place where the memory of ancient abodes may be recaptured.
To the Arab poet this scene had nothing to do with nature or earthly par-
adise. Rather, it served as a background to express his yearning for the
scene that had been his native land and that was lost and then remembered
as fragrance, color, purity, joy and passion, all sensations and things of
beauty.
In the poetry of nostalgia it was characteristic for poets to create
images and expression by referring to what had been connoted in ancient
poems. This was illustrated by the effectiveness of the proverbial expres-
sion tafarraqu ayadiya Saba’ (they scattered in all directions) from the old
Yemeni. This expression was much echoed in the ‘Abbasid period, when
an antiquarian nostalgia revived. Abu Nuwas, for instance, employed the
fullness of his loss in a contemporary Islamic setting by turning to a much
more ancient expression of the Bedouin feeling of desolation. His depiction
of the place of prayer (musalla) read: “Musalla is no more, desolate....”
“Those places where once a prosperous life I led, Till youth’s down went
and gray hair came.” “At the hand of fretful time,” “they broke apart like
ancient Saba’s might” as they dispersed and each took a separate way.53
The elegiac tone setting of the nasib of qasida continued to be used
even after historical and Qur’anic references became part of the poetic
expression in Classical Arabic. The theme of nasib became more abstract
by shifting the original metaphoric meaning to a functional form of
composition. Abu Tammam (788–845) blended the semantic and symbolic

connotations of nasib with Islamic rites. In his nasib he was able to reduce
this pre–Islamic convention into functional abstraction by erasing the con-
crete meanings of words that were normally used in pre–Islamic Arabic
and injecting them with new Islamic connotations. In the emerging Islamic
idiom, the abode, the garden, the rich soil, the rain, and the mosque became
one, as did the question and the prayer, the search and the song. “Perpetual
dew surrounds the abode” and “the garden flowers quiver and lull in rich
soil.” Eventually, a “ruinous abode,” over which he stopped in supplication,
and its site almost became his “mosque.” In grief he sang in searching for
both his friends and his song.54
Here the “abode” may not be abandoned at all. The poet wishes it
well as if still at a distance, remembering. A number of images and ques-
tions emerge. Is it a desert or a garden? As long as it evokes memory, it
could be both, or which it was could become irrelevant. The poet’s tradi-
tional “questioning” of the silent ruins was also indirect. It was a call to
elicit an echo and a supplication—and thus a prayer; and with his prayer
the poet no longer stood before an abode or a ruin but before a mosque,
and his prayer was now his quest, which was also his song. All the familiar
concrete imagery had left the nasib and all that remained was the mood:
the feeling of emptiness. The loss and sadness had crystallized and weighed
down the hearts of poets.55
The conventional tripartite form of the ode provoked diverse inter-
pretations and analysis by both Muslim and Western scholars. Some sug-
gested that the prelude serves as some kind of introduction to establish a
rapport with his audience. The poet then complained about the hardships
he had endured on his way to his patron, and having thus implied a claim
for recompense, he finally launched into his eulogy. The second part
depicted the environment, and the third celebrated some of the qualities
that a man of the desert needed for survival. If one also takes into account
that the tripartite arrangement was a highly prized form but not a must for
every poetic outburst, one can see how it suits a special formal and com-
petitive occasion, such as a poetry fair, at which a poet would want to gain
the good will of his audience, display the range of his gifts and demonstrate
his relevance to the life of his contemporaries.56
However, there are deeper and more important reasons for this struc-
ture that made them indispensable in Arabic poetry even after the conven-
tional sections that described desert life had been gone for many centuries.
The real reason for the lasting relevance of the form of qasida lies in its
function as a ritual and ceremonial device that had accompanied Arabic
poetry, along with its Semitic ancestors, for thousands of years. Poetry has
been a dialogue and drama (sometimes highly refined and artistic) rather
than merely a form of personal expression. Many Western and Western-
trained Arab scholars have been trying to find an organic unity in pre–
Islamic and Classical poetry that qualifies as a good literary form in the
Western literary sense.57 They tend to overlook the major difference
between the Arabic and Western literature: the degree of maturity as a lit-
erary language. As a mature poetry, Arabic had already outgrown the visual
and philosophical unity of a literary form that sought to depict an idea or
a vision. This was developed by the literary ancestors of Semitic languages,
Akkadian, Babylonian, and Hebrew. Arabic poetry had allowed itself to
incorporate musical organization into its verbal arts in order to evoke emo-
tion and activate mood. Looking for linear narration or philosophical con-
sistency in Arabic poetry is similar to attempting to locate the musical
inspiration for modern jazz within the parameters of classical music, which
is a much more structurally rigid form.
Arabic poetry verbalized musical form to cultivate mood. It is on this
level that Arabic poetry equates to musical language, which gravitates
toward representing and apprehending the specific poetic moods. As mood
creation became the very center of poetic composition, visual and thematic
consistencies became less relevant. Like in the sonata, a popular form in
classical music, each movement of the piece is an independent unit and its
sequence of tempi obey no immediately evident logical consistency. In the
four-movement sonata or symphony and string quartet that developed in
later Romantic Europe, a sonata-allegro movement often was divided into
sections, each of which performed specific functions in the musical argu-
ment. The introduction was, in most times, slower than the main movement,
and it prepared for an upbeat before the main musical argument. The next
section, called the exposition, presented the primary thematic material for
the movement: one or two themes or theme groups, often in contrasting
styles and in opposing keys, connected by a modulating transition. The
exposition was followed by an exploration of the harmonic and textural
possibilities of the thematic material. This is followed by the recapitulation
in the tonic key, and for the recapitulation to complete the musical argu-
ment, material that has not been presented in the tonic key is “resolved”
by being played, in whole or in part. The movement may conclude with a
coda, beyond the final cadence of the recapitulation.58
However, unlike the sonata form, which was viewed as a model for
musical analysis rather than compositional practice, the qasida had been
a model of composition for Arabic poetry since the classical period. Com-
pared to music that expresses mood in the speed of the rhythm, qasida
added more dimensions to the depiction of emotion. It could extend the
curve of mood into lyrical details and express levels of meanings and con-
notations. It was the same attempt made by Baroque sonata, which had a
binary (A–B) ascending curve to a classical mode that amplified the mood
change by chaining contrasting movements and rhythmic speeds. It began
to sound like qasida with alternating changes between fast and slow, sad
and happy, elegiac and heroic. Arabic became an instrument in which a
large and waving curve flow with words was built.59
Like musicians of the late Romantic period, when the sonata began
to outgrow its own form after being polished by generations of composers,
Arab poets paid more and more attention to the rhetorical affects of their
words rather than to the structure of the piece. They often were exalted or
condemned on the strength of a single line or a short sequence of lines.
They focused on the balance of themes and the smoothness of transitions.
The length of a line made it possible for them to round off a thought, a
notion, an image, or a fancy. Indeed when, in early Islamic times, prosody
was codified, it was considered a fault if a line could not stand by itself,
in concept as well as grammatical structure. As monorhyme served as a
phonetic structure, the cohesion between lines did not have to be evident.
It became easy to drop some lines, incorporate others, or rearrange the
order. This flexibility gave poets (including the later rectors) the freedom
to amplify or distill imagery as they chose. Sometimes many sententious
lines irrelevant to the theme could be inserted in a poem.60
The lack of understanding of Arabic poetry among the Western and
Western-trained Arabic and Persian scholars derived from the fact that
they overlooked the fundamental differences between Arabic and European
languages, from which their poetics emerged. As a unique case in literary
history, Arabic poetry entered into literary history with an impressive cor-
pus of pre–Islamic poems that had firm structure, vivid characterization
and full conventions. The maturity of its form validated a long develop-
ment, which had no parallel before the later Middle Ages in Western
Europe. A similar development can be found in every literary language
after it outgrew its formative period. In Western literature, what is defined
as mannerism often indicated the beginning of this stage, where the atten-
tion of the writers turned to smaller elements (details) of composition and
their approaches became formally and thematically diversified.61 In this
specific sense, Arabic poetics have not been studied, analyzed, and com-
pared properly with other languages because the level of maturity of Arabic
poetry has gone far beyond that of its European contemporaries.
The refinement of structure only means that poets had to try harder
to be creative and invent something original instead of repeating their nat-
ural inheritance. For example, if an English speaker had read and heard
every single possible rhyme in the language and memorized them all (as
did the post–Tang Chinese intellectuals), it would be very challenging to
compose English verse. Much education and training would be needed to
achieve competency. In other words, a poet in a mature language like Ara-
bic had to pay attention to every single rhyme, word, line and image because
his audience, who had trained ears for poetry, expected and demanded it.
It is the same for Italian opera singers, whose most demanding audience
is that in Milan. Even the most prominent tenors can encounter audiences
who openly express dissatisfaction if they made a tiny mistake in tone or
lyrics. Therefore, Arabic poets had to be able to compose ear-pleasing
lines, verses, as well as blocks of verses that combined into long poems.62
This high degree of demand for increasingly sophisticated poetic
forms forced Arabic poets to invent more diverse forms. Arabic poetry
became written and codified in the 8th century by Al-Khalil bin Ahmad
(718–786) and has changed little until the modern period. By that time,
Arabic poetry had completely separated itself from speech by changing
from a rhythm of stress (similar to speech) to one of meter and rhyme. It
accumulated considerably more and complex forms compared to the Pre-
Islamic period. While maintaining the basic unit of a line (bayt) divided
into two hemistiches by a caesura, it had to be a syntactic and semantic
unit, and the parts could be enjambed with each other.63 The final conso-
nants of all the second hemistiches were determined and governed by one
rhyme-consonant. Now the poetic meter (wazn) came to be based on the
length of syllables rather than stress. A short syllable is a consonant fol-
lowed by a short vowel. A long syllable is a vowel followed by either an
unvowelled consonant or a long vowel. A nunation sign at the end of a
word also makes the final syllable long.
The system of Al-Khalil had fifteen meters that were various combi-
nations of long (—) and short (^) syllables. The patterns were not supposed
to be rigidly followed, and two short syllables might be substituted for a
long one, etc. Rhyme (qafiya) was basically determined by the last conso-
nant of a word. In rhyme-words, nunation was dropped, and sometimes
the final vowel. Where the final vowel was fatha (short “a”), it must be
used consistently each time the rhyme occurred. Kasra (short “i”) and
damma (short “u”) were interchangeable. If a long vowel preceded the last
syllable of a rhyme-word, it also became part of the rhyme. Similarly, ya
(long “i”) and waw (long “u”) were interchangeable, but alif (used as a
long “a”) was not. Because short vowels were generally considered long
when they occurred at the end of a line, the vowels that appeared short in
their written form also rhymed with their corresponding long vowels. It
was the pronunciation, not the writing, that counted.
During Islamic expansion, the poetic form of Arabic multiplied and

magnified as Arabic speakers scattered throughout a vast empire and their
language encountered other languages and cultural idioms. Arabic began
to be used by different ethnic groups who brought their own vernaculars
and expressions. In this substantially extended and widely differing context,
Arabic was injected with new blood. By the second half of the eighth cen-
tury, the gaps had widened substantially between standard Arabic and local
vernaculars. Even among Arabic speakers, Bashshār ibn-Burd (714–784)
was accused of using “Nabatean jargon,” and the next generation recorded
jokes built on misunderstandings between desert Arabs, who reportedly
still spoke inflected Arabic, and city dwellers, who did not. While non-
classical verses began to emerge, the literary establishment did not allow
any form of spoken Arabic into the canon.64
The codification of literary forms is as old and common as literature
itself, Arabian or not. The majority of literary languages had grown into
and then surpassed their established forms during various periods of their
history. What was unique about Arabic is the multi-lingual environment
in which Arabic evolved, transformed, and reinvented itself as its literary
identity evolved. Literary Arabic began to assimilate colloquial Arabic and
vernacular, non–Arabic languages. In other words, there were simultaneous
developments of poetic forms as codification (for cultural and political
control) and as deviation that tolerated and adopted local vernaculars.
Codification secured the continuity and conformity of Arabic tradition
while adaptation provided reinvention and enrichment. This was the main
reason that Arabic poetry did not die after its golden age, as did many other
ancient literary traditions. It continuously reshaped itself in a variety of
new vernacular-based traditions, Arabic and otherwise.
The widening gap between the classical establishment of literary
poetry and vernacular poetry was the main dynamic driving the poetic
change. Poetic performance constantly channeled and bridged the widening
gap, which initiated a variety of combined forms and styles. Scholars have
been passionately debating the history of various poetic forms. Most did
not come from a specific form because they combined multiple traditions
(sometimes more than one language) and multiple forms of the same tra-
dition. Such fusion differed at each time and location because of the local
interaction of various expressive forms; the only thing constant was that
the organization underlying these variations was open and multi-dimen-
sional. A good illustration of this multifaceted development in literary
poetry is observed in the Arabic fusions that occurred in Iran and Spain.
Persian was one cultural tradition that Islamic Arabic encountered
during its expansion that already had its own long and continually active
literary tradition. Persian poetry gave originality and passion to Arabic lit-
erature. Iberian literature provided energy and a sense of resource for Ara-
bic literature at a time when it had begun to decline in the Middle East
after centuries of expansion. The characteristics of the languages and the
timing of their influences rejuvenated a tiring Arabic.
It is held that there were two Old Iranian languages spoken since the
third millennium B.C. The oldest sacrificial liturgy is dated to around the
mid–thirteenth to tenth century B.C. It contains songs (gathas) of the
Zarathustra (poet-priest) in Avestan (which was originally an Eastern Iran-
ian language and became the scriptural language of the Zarathustran reli-
gion). Persian literature is rooted by surviving works of Old and Middle
Persian.
Old Persian did not descend from Avestan, but rather evolved from a
distinct dialect of Ancient Persian. No early sample of it has been found,
but significant phonetic differences from Avestan and a much simplified
case and verbal system suggest that Old Persian had a long history of devel-
opment. Old Persian texts date from the 6th to the 4th century and were
written in a cuneiform that was a more advanced form than Sumerian and
Akkadian. It used a small number of signs and was able to present vowels
as well as consonants. Therefore, it had a higher capacity to register spoken
language than Semitic. Old Persian had three vowel signs (a, i, u) and
thirty-three consonants.65
Semitic and Persian literary traditions shared many features, one of
which was that their poetry preceded prose because of constant scriptural
reorientation. As written languages came and went, oral poetry (including
those of regional dialects) lived on in the ears and on the lips of people,
poets and their audiences. Music, song, and poetry were evident in the
Iranian court before the Islamic conquest. Middle Persian (Pahlavi) script
took the Iranian language one step closer to the Semitic form. The Middle
Persian spoken between the 3rd century B.C. and 9th century A.D. adopted
Aramaic, another Semitic script. However, like the ancient Greeks who
embraced Phoenician script, Pahlavi presented more consonants than the
Aramaic script and had encountered difficulty with Aramaic’s lack of vowel
signs. Like pre–Islamic Arabia, pre–Islamic Iran was a culture of rich lin-
guistic and dialectic traditions, yet literature poor. Very few literary works
of Achaemenid Persia (559–330 B.C.) survived, but the legacy of Old Persia
can be found in many ancient languages outside of Iran. The rich Iranian
poetic tradition, like pre–Islamic Arabic poetry, waited centuries for a rich
and sophisticated literary language to revive it.66
The injection of Arabic script and literature into old Persian culture
accomplished the same as it did for the oral poetry of Arabic. It standardized
oral and literary expression and revived the ancient oral tradition. After
Islamic conquest, the old prestigious form of Middle Iranian (Pahlavi) was
replaced by a new standard dialect called Dari in the Iranian court, where
many of the poets, protagonists, and patrons of the literature flourished.
The Saffarid dynasty (861–1002) was the first of many to officially adopt
the new language (A.D. 875). Dari was heavily influenced by the regional
dialects of eastern Iran, whereas the earlier Pahlavi standard derived more
from the western dialects. This new official dialect became the basis of
Standard New Persian. Islam also brought with it the adoption of Arabic
script for presenting Persian, Pashto (an eastern Iranian language, spoken
in Pakistan and Afghanistan) and Balochi (a northwestern Iranian language
spoken in eastern Iran, Pakistan, and southern Afghanistan). All three
became written with the addition of a few letters. This development prob-
ably occurred sometime during the second half of the 8th century, as the
use of Old Middle Persian script began its decline.
Pre-Islamic Iran certainly cultivated its own poetry. The Parthian min-
strels (gōsān) enjoyed great fame, and Parthian (pahlavi) was considered
to be the language of “royal sessions,” such as court entertainment, while
Middle Persian (pārsi) was the language of “mobads [priests] and schol-
ars.”67 But there also was a poetry that was contained in the Middle Persian
tradition. Records suggest the names of several poets and musicians of the
Sasanian court (224–651). This body of work, evident only in minute traces,
was probably purely oral. There are, however, remnants left of pre–Islamic
poetry within the western Middle Iranian languages.
Middle Persian meter, like the Pahlavi, was governed by stress, with
a flexible number of syllables. Like the Akkadian, the Persian poems were
generally sung or chanted and were accompanied by musical instrument.
The Sasanian court extended generous patronage to its poet-musicians,
and Bahram V (r. 420–438) is said to have promoted them to one of the
highest social ranks in the courts. The Islamic conquest did not end the
minstrel poetry, and it continued particularly in the countryside, where cul-
ture was less susceptible to Arabic influence and court formality. Unfor-
tunately, few original Sasanian works have survived. Many were lost in
the course of the Muslim invasion and other foreign conquests, and others
were lost because of the religious zeal of the Muslim Persians themselves,
but mostly because of the change of script from Aramaic to Arabic as stan-
dard written language.
It appears that language change did the same thing to Persian poetry
that it had done to the Semitic poetic traditions. The sound of poetry altered,
and so did its form of presentation. However, the later poetry inherited the
metrical principles and sense of verbal balance of the earlier Persian poetry,
as did the Arabic from the ancient Semitic. The Pahlavi poetry was written
in prose; however, the poetic forms remained recognizable. Like the Arabic,
Pahlavi poetry consisted of two hemistiches or was divided into four stro-
phes in both distiches.68 We can nevertheless recognize that Draxt ī asūrīg
does not appear to be rhymed, but in other Pahlavi poems rhymes are not
infrequent. In Dārom andarz-ē, a rhyme in -ān appears in the first two
hemistiches and, afterwards, at the end of each verse, that is, twice per dis-
tich. In Kay bawād..., a rhyme likewise (in -ān) appears in each verse. In
“Hymn to Wisdom,” all the distiches, except for the first, end in a com-
parative in -tar. In Was raft hēm, the first four distiches have a rhyme in
-ag and the following four end in the word xrad. These rhymes differ from
those of classical Persian poetry in that the same word or the same suffix
is allowed to rhyme with it.69
Rhymes with this same structure and placement appear in almost all
the pieces of Arabic or Persian texts. For example, in the hymn of the Kar-
koy pyre, all the (very short) verses rhymed together (in ōš). The same is
true of the two poems quoted by Tohfat al-molūk, although the metrics were
the same as the classical model. In short, Iranian poetry, with or without
Arabic influence, had begun to cultivate its own prosody, distinct from that
of Classical Arabic. The poetry of the Sasanian period was unrhymed.
Later on, Pahlavi poetic forms developed regular or non-regular repetition
of the same syllable or the same word, either at the end of the verses or at
the end of the distiches. These rhymed forms continued in popular poetry
and also in Persian poems in classical prosody. The prosodic structure of
Middle Persian and Parthian was not based on the short or long quantity
of the syllables, as in classical Arabic and Persian poetry, but was syllabic.
Middle Persian poetry contained a range of variable number of syllables
(stressed and unstressed syllables) and its versification was based on stress.70
Light syllables are all short syllables, and those long syllables belong
to auxiliary words or words that are weak in positions (in prosthesis or
anaptyxis). Heavy syllables are all other long syllables. The stresses or
beats (ictus) that define the rhythm of a verse always fall on heavy syllables.
Analysis of the intact verses of the Manichean hymn cycles supports the
following rules. First, the stress often coincides with the accent on the
word, but not always. We may suppose that the accent and the stress are
characterized by different phonetic properties, for instance the accent by
a higher pitch and the stress by intensity or a length. Second, the basic
rhythmic unit (foot) is formed by a heavy syllable that carries the stress,
preceded by a variable number of heavy and light syllables; but for a given
poem the number of heavy syllables per foot is limited. The third, enclitics,
are treated in the same way as root words.
It appears that in the two hymn cycles in Parthian (published by

Boyce), the verse has four stresses and the foot contains a maximum of
three heavy syllables, including the one that bears the stress. The
Manichean poem in Parthian M 10, published by Henning (1933) and also
analyzed by Lazard (1985 and 2003), has four stresses per verse, but a
maximum of two heavy syllables per foot. Lazard also applied these prin-
ciples to some Pahlavi poems. In the “Hymn to Wisdom” (2001), and Was
raft hēm... (2002), he found four stresses per verse with a maximum of
two heavy syllables per foot. In the Draxt ī asūrīg (2003), there were four
stresses per verse with a maximum of three heavy syllables per foot.
On this linguistic foundation, classical Persian versification is different
from that of pre–Islamic Iran; it is based, as in Arabic versification, on the
arrangement of short and long syllables. It was for a long time believed
that this quantitative system was borrowed from Arabic poetry. This claim
will have to be seriously qualified. In fact, although the principle is the
same, the use that is made of it is not the same on both sides. The meters
most used in Persian are rare or nonexistent in Arabic, and vice versa. This
is not surprising, for, although any system of versification is more or less
artificial, it is nevertheless conditioned by the phonological properties of
the language. The phonology of Persian scarcely differs from that of Middle
Persian (and Parthian), for from Western Middle Persian to New Persian
the evolution is minimal. We merely need to take into account the massive
borrowing of Arabic words, which increased the proportion of short vowels.
Hence the natural rhythms of New Persian ought to be little different from
those of Middle Persian (and Parthian). One is thus led to believe that there
must be some lineal relationship between pre–Islamic Iranian meters and
those of Persian poetry.
Benveniste first expressed this idea: “The originality of the Persians
as regards poetic technique consisted of subjecting the syllabic Iranian
meter to Arabic quantitative prosody.” If we replace “syllabic” by “accen-
tual,” this formula preserves its value. This idea has also been expressed
by Utas: “The origin of many of the New Persian meters must be sought
in earlier Iranian rhythmic structures that were formally adapted to a quan-
titative structure.” Grunebaum has suggested that certain meters used by
Arab poets, “the ramal, the mutaqârib, and perhaps the khafîf, may be con-
sidered as adaptations of Persian (Pahlavi) meters to Arabic linguistic con-
ditions.”71
The method is as follows: The accentual meter is coded in a “structural
formula” containing all the syllables, required or optional (the latter shown
in parentheses), and indicating the stresses. Then one seeks among the
usual meters of classical Persian poetry one that has the same number of
syllables and in which the long syllables correspond to the stressed sylla-
bles of the accentual meter. For example, the meter of the “Hymn to Wis-
dom” is represented by the following formula (where the capital letters
symbolize the syllables bearing the stress): (x) (x) X (x) x X (x) (x) X x
X, with the condition that all optional syllables are never simultaneously
present or absent. Additionally, as mentioned above, there are no more
than two heavy syllables in a foot. It appears that this formula superimposes
itself exactly on the structure of the narrative motaqāreb; moreover, the
stress falls on those syllables where, in the motaqāreb meter, the word
accents are most frequently placed.72 Not only do the stresses of the accen-
tual meter correspond to some of the long syllables of the quantitative
meter, but also all short syllables of the quantitative meter correspond to
some of the optional syllables of the accentual meter.
Lineal relationships between pre–Islamic versification and Persian
versification have not been strictly proven. However, considering that all
the above-mentioned conditions about the number and nature of the syl-
lables on both sides are fulfilled, it may be thought that the correspondences
observed are not possible. It is true that the quantitative meter is always
longer than the corresponding accentual meter. But we know that New Per-
sian has more short syllables than Middle Persian does. Moreover, the
short syllables of the classical Persian meter are often merely the third
mora of an overlong syllable, that is, actually a phantom syllable.
It was not an accident that Persia produced the most eminent poets in
Arabic literature during and after the Islamic expansion. As the majority
of Persian writers and poets wrote in both Arabic and Persian, the bulk of
Persian literature after the Islamic conquest of Persia (A.D. 650) had an
Arabic version. After the Abbasids came to power (A.D. 750), the Persians
became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic empire and, increasingly,
also its writers and poets. They dominated literary circles. Persian poets
such as Ferdowsi, Sa’di, Hafiz, Rumi and Omar Khayyam are also known
in the West and have influenced the literature of many countries.
The Sufi tradition also produced poetry closely linked to religion.
Sufism is a mystical interpretation of Islam and it emphasizes the allegor-
ical nature of language and writing. Many of the works of Sufi poets appear
to be simple ghazal or khamriyyah. Under the guise of the love or wine
poem they would contemplate the mortal flesh and attempt to achieve tran-
scendence. Rabia al-Adawiyya, Abd Yazid al-Bistami and Mansur al-Hallaj
were some of the most significant Sufi poets, but their poetry and doctrine
were considered dangerous. Al-Hallaj was eventually crucified for heresy.
An important aspect of Arabic poetry from the start was its complexity,
but court poetry became an art form in itself, known as badi’. There were
features such as metaphor, pun, juxtaposing opposites and tricky theolog-

ical allusions. Bashar ibn Burd was instrumental in developing these com-
plexities, which later poets felt they had to surpass. Although not all writers
enjoyed the baroque style, with argumentative letters on the matter being
sent by Ibn Burd and Ibn Miskawayh, the poetic brinkmanship of badi’ led
to a certain formality in poetic art, with only the greatest poets’ words
shining through the complex structures and wordplay. This can make Arabic
poetry even more difficult to translate than poetry from other languages,
with much of a poet’s skill often lost in translation.
Arabic music and poetry reinvented itself in southern Europe where
they interacted with Iberian cultural forms. The muwashshah- and zajal-
type songs have their roots in the Arab east and in North Africa, but were
developed in Al-Andalus. When the Arabs moved westward into North
Africa they found a music that differed very little from their own. Some
historians even believe that pre–Islamic music in that part of the world
came from the Arabian Peninsula, carried by Arab tribes migrating through-
out the centuries to North Africa.
The vitality of the Arabic poetry that flourished in the periphery of
the Islamic kingdom derived from a rich and diverse musical culture. In
Persia and Andalusia, music played an important role in the formation of
poetic forms, while in Arabic courts it had been nothing but a form of
entertainment. An example of the musical activities in western Islamic
countries was the career of Abu 1-Hasan ‘Ali Ibn Nafi‘, nicknamed Ziryab
(789–857). Steeped in the refined music he had learned in Baghdad, he
reached his musical and literary potential in Islamic Spain. He improved
the oud (Laúd) by adding a fifth pair of strings and plucking it with an
eagle’s beak or quill instead of a wooden pick. Ziryab also dyed four strings
one color to symbolize the Aristotelian humors, and the fifth string another,
to represent the soul. He is said to have created a unique and influential
style of musical performance, and wrote songs that were performed in
Liberia for generations. He was a great influence on Spanish music, and
is considered the founder of the Andalusian music traditions of North
Africa. He also established the first conservatory of music in Cordoba and
later, others in the larger centers of Muslim Spain. By the eleventh century,
Moorish Spain and Portugal became the center for the manufacture of
musical instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence, influenc-
ing French troubadours and trouvères and eventually reaching the rest of
Europe.
The poetry of muwashshah was born in the musical culture of southern
Spain. Muqaddam Ibn Mu afa al-Qabri (a blind poet and singer of Cabra)
was the creator of the muwashshaha and its vernacular for zajal. During
the 11th and 12th centuries, muwashshah and zajal verse reached perfection
in Moorish Spain. In this period, first under the tawa’if (petty states), then
the subsequent Almoravid and Almohad dynasties, both of these forms of
music and song enjoyed a great popularity and were incorporated into the
Arab/Islamic art of entertainment.73
As early as the Abbasid period (750–1258), Arab poets began to exper-
iment with strophic poetry, which was imitated in other parts of the Muslim
world. They cut the relatively long lines of qasida into several segments
with internal rhyme (tarsi’). They made this practice (which was only used
in the opening lines of classical poetry) into a new poetic form called muz-
dawij, in which two or even three internal rhymes were employed (aa, bb,
cc or aaa, bbb, ccc, etc.). Muzdawij was similar to Latin sequentia (sequence)
due to its progressive repetition, but it differed in the way that Arabic
sequence went back to the same metrical form (Latin sequence introduced
a different metrical form). The end result of this innovation in Arabic was
musammat (string), which is a poem with independent changing rhymes
and ends with segments in common rhyme (aaa a / bbb a / ccc a). This new
form became popular during the tenth century and is said to be the inno-
vation of a poet who was half Arab and half non–Arab. Musammat devel-
oped the longest segmental forms in Persia and Andalusia.74
The word muwashshah came from the Syriac word musahta, and
began to appear as early as the 9th or 10th century. The full sense of the
word is thought to come from the Syriac word musahta, which means
“rhythm” or “a psalm verse.” As a musical genre, it refers to an ensemble
that includes the oud (lute), kamanja (spike fiddle), qanun (box zither),
darabukkah (goblet drum), and daf (tambourine). It was performed in Syria
sometimes as a solo with a few chosen lines of the selected text, or multiple
maqam rows (scales) and up to three rhythms (awzān).75
The earliest muwashshah, as poetry, appeared in the Levant, where it
is believed to have been heavily influenced by the Syriac sacral music. In
classical Arabic, it consisted of a multi-lined strophic verse poem, usually
consisting of five stanzas, alternating with a refrain with a running rhyme.
It was customary to open with one or two lines that matched the second
part of the poem in rhyme and meter. In North Africa, poets ignored the
strict rules of Arabic meter, while the poets in the East followed them. In
Southern Spain, muwashshah was written in classical Arabic except the
conclusion (called kharja), which was in vulgar Arabic or one of the
Romance languages found at the Moorish Iberian Peninsula. Similar to the
musammat, the muwashshah consisted of five parts presented in three- to
six-line stanzas in a same meter with a recurring rhyme, introduced at the
beginning. Each section of the poem is complete or autonomous in itself,
engraved by the refrain. It is said that the interwoven rhymes of the

muwashshah represent the exact auditory-rhythmic counterpart of the inter-
lacing arches in the Great Mosque of Cordoba. It was a disjunct arabesque
with many centers of tension, many successive parts, each as important as
every other one, only rejoined by a recurring beginning rhyme.76
The zajal is vernacular verse that developed from the muwashshaha,
which some believe is the oldest form of the muwashshah. It was a spon-
taneous form of short poem composed from whatever entered a performer’s
mind. The poet experimented with different themes and wove them in and
out of the current of the verse. It was often sung in stanzas, each following
a different rhyme. A popular form of entertainment, it was composed
entirely in the local tongues of the Iberian Peninsula. Zajal reached its
zenith under the adventurer and famous Cordovan poet Ibn Quzman (1080–
1160), one of the foremost poets of medieval Europe. Quzman used to boast
that his zajal was sung as far away as the eastern Arab world. He was the
greatest composer of this type of poetry, and wrote a book that included
150 zajals, which mused on love, wine and the other joys of life.77
Zajal, the voice of the ordinary man, survives even today. It is con-
stantly ironic, often tender, at times brutal but always full of good humor.
It still heard in the night spots of Lebanon, where the audience is captivated
for hours as the performers satirize or praise each other with flowery poetic
commentary. With their original and impromptu verse, they elevate or calm
the emotions of the audience, as did the Arab zajal poets in Moorish Spain
centuries earlier.
At first, the muwashshahat and zajal, both constituting a departure
from the tradition represented by classical poetry, existed side by side and
often overlapped. However, in the ensuing centuries, because of the long-
standing Arab tradition of not writing the vernacular, only some muwash-
shahat and a few zajals have survived in written form. Perhaps because of
their smooth flow and other literary Arabic qualities, the muwashshahat were
worthy of preservation. On the other hand, zajal remained only transmitted,
thus it was influenced by non–Arab speech or divergent Arabic dialects.
Zajal, in the vulgar Arabic and the Romance tongues, was sung by
everyone in both Christian and Muslim Spain. Chejne contends that there
is a striking similarity between zajal and early Spanish and Provençal
poetry in rhyme, theme, the number of strophes, the use of a messenger
between the lover and beloved and the duty of the lover toward the beloved.
He cites as an example Juan Ruiz’s El Libro de Buen Amor, known as The
Arcipreste de Hita, in which the author’s use of zajal is reminiscent of the
model created by the Arab Andalusians.
The kharjas of the muwashshahat, very similar to zajal, are believed
to be the oldest poetic texts of any vernacular in Europe. Hence, they very
well could have been the origin of lyric poetry in Romance literature. It is
believed that they gave rise to the 15th century villancico, a type of Chris-
tian carol to which they bear a close resemblance, and the coplas (ballads),
still found throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
Those who are familiar with Spanish music assert that it was from the
muwashshahat and zajal that the Spanish cantigas developed. In the Canti-
gas de Santa Maria compiled by Alfonso the Wise, the musical form of
the zajal is clearly evident. Some music chroniclers maintain that the major-
ity of Alfonso’s cantigas were direct translations of Arab zajal verses.
The cantigas had an immense impact on the Western medieval world.
They not only influenced the songs of Spain, but also gave impetus to the
evolution of all European music. Both muwashshah and zajal poetry is
clearly to be found in the early music and song of Europe. For centuries
Arab culture exercised a strong influence on the entertainment of the south-
ern part of that continent. E.G. Gómez, writing about Moorish Spain in
Islam and the Arab world, indicates that the muwashshah verse is probably
more interesting to Westerners than to the eastern Arabs (both ancient and
modern), who, although attracted by its sensuous qualities, regarded it
rather dimly as a cancer in the body of Arab classicism. This appeal to the
Western ear, no doubt, helped enormously in its incorporation into Euro-
pean music.
The early Provençal epic poems were modeled on the zajal. So strik-
ingly similar in form and content is the poetry of southern Europe to the
zajal that it cannot be regarded as a coincidence. The first known European
poet of courtly love, Prince William, Duke of Aquitaine, is said to have
spoken Arabic and is believed to have been familiar with both the muwash-
shahat and zajal. His poetry is a direct imitation of the Arabic rather than
an independent invention. The rhythm of his early verses is very similar
to songs still being recited in North Africa.
In Spain by the early Middle Ages, Arabic poetry diversified into three
distinct forms: that written in classical Arabic, that in colloquial Arabic,
and that in a mixture of Arabic and Spanish. Andalusian poets found them-
selves at a crossroads of two languages and two prosodic systems. The Ara-
bic system was based on consonants, although vowels might be involved,
while the Romance rhymes were based on the repetition of sound in one
or more end syllables of the line. The rhyming factor is often a stressed
syllable. What made things more complex was that in classical Arabic and
regionally defined vernacular, the Arabic had various rhyme rules.78
In tenth century Andalusia, presumably because it was not completely
Islamized or Arabized, a small breach was found in the fortified walls of
classicism. This innovation was an elaborate kind of strophic poem known

as the muwassa, composed entirely in the classical language except for the
closing line or couplet, which was in a mixture of Arabic and Spanish.
What is even more significant is that the muwassa was almost certainly
derived from a simpler form of folk poetry, the zajal, which was entirely
in the local vernacular. Although literary history records that the zajal
appeared later than the muwassa, this was because of the persistent reluc-
tance of the writers to record folk texts. Once it broke through the surface
of literary history, the zajal gained sufficient currency in Spain to earn
notoriety for one of its masters, Ibn-Quzmān (c. 1086–1160).79
Zajal eventually spread to other parts of the Arab world, the term
being sometimes loosely used for all verse compositions in the vernacular.
To it were added descriptions of several other non-classical verse forms,
including the mawāliyā mentioned above. It became customary to refer to
these departures from the classical monorhyme as “the seven arts,”
although they were more numerous, for it was not always the same seven
that were included in different collections. The first study of the kind was
by a well-established poet in Iraq, Afiyy-ad-Dīn al-illī (1278–c. 1349).
Characteristically, he confessed that he had composed a great deal in these
various forms during his misguided youth, but had retained only enough
of these immature efforts to illustrate his treatise. Some present-day col-
lectors of folk literature are equally apologetic about their efforts.
Following Al-illī, other reputable poets occasionally toyed with non-
classical verse forms involving colloquial usage, but these compositions
were regarded as curiosities or humorous sallies at best, and were usually
excluded from their collected works. This has been true even of major
modern poets such as Amadawqī (1868–1932). The latest compilation of
his poetry ignores his zajal altogether. And in a nine-volume edition of his
complete works, two of his zajal are relegated to the end of the last volume,
long after the focus has moved from his poetry to his prose and to his
plays. Moreover, in his introductory volume, the editor says of them and
of the poet: “They are not worthy of him, but such is one of the impositions
made by an environment in which the colloquial predominates.”
Turning oral poetry into written literature was a process that produced
a special kind of music: the music of poetry or song in words. There were
essentially two methods to verbalize the music: first, to sing without music
by creating musical rhythm with words (prosody); second, to compose
poetry as if it were music. In this verbal composition, unlike prose that
aimed at describing events and classifying concepts, poetry is intended to
create a mood and shared emotional space where feelings between the
poets and audience could be exchanged.
CHAPTER 3
Rhythm from Poetry,

to Prose, to Speech
This chapter is about how Arabic poetry, the first and the most impor-
tant form of its literary expression, defined the sound and rhythm of its
written and spoken language. To emerge from an ancient oral tradition, to
be elevated to literature and to create narratives of precision and abstract
logic are the main steps of literary development common to many lan-
guages. These steps are not unique to Arabic, because a score of Semitic
languages, from Akkadian to Hebrew, have done the same.1 Several ancient
Semitic traditions became highly advanced and polished and had no equal
in sophistication among their contemporaries. They have left their evidence
in over five thousand years of Middle Eastern history. However, all of these
rich literatures eventually lost their sound and uprooted themselves from
spoken languages after they became a vehicle of literary expression and
abstract reasoning (religion or philosophy). This did not happen to Arabic.
Arabic poetry with its various sounds, shapes and colors is very much alive
more than a thousand years after its emergence from the Arabian Peninsula.
Keeping the sound and rhythm of Arabic in the ears and on the lips
of its speakers while building a refined literature capable of precision and
abstraction is what separated Arabic from various ancient Semitic lan-
guages. Ancient Semitic languages depended on music and performance
to keep poetry alive by making their words heard and dramatized. Arabic
relied on the rhythm of its poetry (including verse and prose) to maintain
its appeal. A unique process made words sing not only in the ears of speak-
ers but also in their minds, hearts, and memory. This rhythm, initially cre-
ated by poetry, now became the rhythm of the language itself and resounded
in the imagination of its speakers. This chapter focuses on how Arabic cre-
ated and maintained its poetic rhythm on both literary and non-literary
levels by standardizing speech and publicizing poetry.
83
Arabic had an immediate and intimate relationship with its speakers

because of the way in which it had been recited, performed, and heard
throughout the centuries. Immediately after the rise of Islam, the pagan
songs of Arabia came to serve the new god. During the pilgrimage (hajj),
praising God in poetry was adapted and began to be accompanied by fife
(shahin) and drum (ṭabl ).2 As music pervaded poetry and prose, chanting
(talhīn) of the call to prayer (adhdān) became the standard for worship.
The Qur’an was naturally easy to sing and lent itself to being chanted
because of a prosodic structure that was now cultivated in pre–Islamic
poetry. Composed in rhymed prose (saj’), the assonance of the Qur’an
tempted the voice to use modulated sound when read. As Hadith pointed
out, Allah would listen more intently to a man with a beautiful voice read-
ing the Qur’an rather than the voice of a singing-girl. In short, Islam was
a literary civilization based on a preference for chanting words rather than
singing them because its language inherited a superior capacity to excite,
to convince and to persuade. The Arabic words that had been chanted day
and night for centuries cultivated an extraordinary capacity to touch and
arouse the emotions of the average man. This emotional effect, which was
deeply rooted in oral and ritual practice, made Arabic poetry extremely
intimate, personal, and constantly present.3
At the beginning of Islam, two kinds of verbal delivery competed
against each other in various kinds of singing: Qur’anic chanting with
melody (bi-naghma) and chanting without it (min ghayr naghma). The
former was highly melismatic and later adopted maqam modulation. One
of the first chanters of the Qur’an was ‘Ubaidallah b. Abi Bakr (fl. 669),
whose singing was described as dirge-like and quite different from ordinary
melody (lahn) in singing (ghina’). The distinction between reading aloud
and singing appeared to be exaggerated by Islamic legalists who, in their
opposition to music, looked upon this singing as improper and so discrim-
inated between “cantillation” (taghbīr, “raising the voice”) and singing
(ghina’).4
By the ninth century, even the melodies of popular ballads were being
used in the Qur’anic chant (tajwīd). Despite the violent opposition of the
purists to all music, the chanting of the Qur’an became one of the supreme
cultural accomplishments of Islam. While prosodic vocalization and punc-
tuation were strictly governed by rules, the chanting itself was not confined
to any fixed melodic contour. Therefore, the forms of chanting could be
heard in almost as many patterns as there were mosques. For the Muslims,
the familiar sound of Qur’anic recitation became the predominant and most
immediate means of contact with the Word of God. Heard day and night,
on the street, in shops, in mosques, and at homes, the sound of recitation
was far more impressive than the pervasive background music of daily life
in the Arab world. Qur’anic recitation, a public performance of poetry,
persists until today.5
The “call to prayer” (adhdhān) was initially instituted as a means of
summoning the faithful to their religious duties. At first it was merely a
simple announcement on the streets, and was performed by Bilāl, the first
“caller” (mu’adhdhin). Then, from the minaret of the mosque came a dirge-
like call for chanting of the Qur’an. This way of chanting continued until
the tenth century in Egypt. After that, it became the general practice to
chant the Qur’an in a melody proper, indistinguishable from ordinary
singing (ghina’). This singing performance was called taṭrīb.
The office of mu’adhdhin was initially hereditary, but before long the
duties became so onerous that there had to be several callers in each
mosque. By the ninth and tenth centuries, these callers took their turns to
make the first call, and later they would join in chorus to chant the second
call (iqāma) for their mosque. Bilāl Ibn Rabah or Bilāl Al-Habashi (580–
640), a Muslim who was born in Mecca and a companion of Muhammad,
was the first muezzin (caller for praying) chosen by the prophet himself.
Qur’anic recitation had to follow rules of pronunciation, intonation,
and caesuras that Muhammad established and was initially recorded in the
eighth century. During the post–Islamic centuries, many sets of rules were
codified, and ten schools of recitation developed that made Qur’anic recita-
tion a form of art. Qur’anic elocution (tajwīd) derived from trilateral root
j-w-d, meaning to make well, make better, or to improve. The most preva-
lent among the rules that governed how the Qur’an should be read was the
recitation of Imam ‘Asim as transmitted by Imam Hafs. Each melodic pas-
sage centers on a single tone level, but the melodic contour and melodic
passages were largely shaped by the reading rules, creating passages of
different lengths whose temporal expansion is defined through caesuras.
Skilled readers might read professionally for mosques in various cities.
There were many different schools and styles to chant the Qur’an, from
the plain, ingenuous, unaffected chant to highly flowery coloratura. The
methods of each school and style carried rigid transmission regulation. This
minimized mistakes and carefully preserved intonations, cadence, and punc-
tuation. The script in which the Qur’an was first recorded indicated only the
consonantal skeleton of the words. Oral recitation was an essential element
to define the form of textual transmission. Exact pronunciation was impor-
tant and took years to learn. Special schools were established to ensure
that no error would creep in, as the traditional chanting methods were
handed down from recitor to recitor and from one generation to the next.
Gradually, Qur’anic recitation became an elaborate science of expression.6
The musicality of the Qur’an derived from its linguistic and literary
structure, which combined the characteristics of both poetry and prose. It
made literature sound like a rhythmic speech. Unlike classical poetry, the
verses of the Qur’an were not restricted by one single rhyme; thus there
was more room for flexibility and freedom of expression. The Qur’an did,
however, maintain certain aspects of poetry, especially with respect to its
use of words with identical numbers of syllables. This “music” of language
was more noticeable in short verses such as surat 53 (al-Najm) where
words of similar length produced prose rhythm ending in the same sound
(the long a).
1. Wannajmi itha hawa

2. Ma dalla sahibukum wama ghawa
3. Wama yantiqu AAani alhawa
4. In huwa illa wahyun yooha
5. AAallamahu shadeedu alquwa
6. Thoo mirratin fastawa
7. Wahuwa bil-ofuqi al-aAAla
8. Thumma dana fatadalla
9. Fakana qaba qawsayni aw adna
10. Faawha ila AAabdihi maa wha
11. Ma kathaba alfu-adu maraa
12. Afatumaroonahu AAala mayara
There was another type of internal rhythm inherent in the structure of

the single sentence. This appeared when the length of words varied within
the same surat. A good example of this is Surat 19 (Maryam), which began
with short words and phrases, then changed to longer ones. The rhythm of
the various segments was enhanced by the use of two main rhymes through-
out the entire surat. These rhymes ended either in nun or mim preceded
by either ya’ or wa’w:
1. Kaf-ha-ya-AAayn-sad
2. Thikru rahmati rabbika Aaabdahuzakariyya
3. Ith nada rabbahu nidaankhafiyya
4. Qala rabbi innee wahana alAAathmuminnee washtaAAala arra /
su shayban walam akunbiduAAa-ika rabbi shaqiyya
5. Wa-innee khiftu almawaliya min wara-eewakanati imraatee
AAaqiran fahab lee min ladunkawaliyya
6. Yarithunee wayarithu min ali yaAAqoobawajAAalhu rabbi radiyya
7. Ya zakariyya innanubashshiruka bighulamin ismuhu yahya lam-
najAAal lahu min qablu samiyya
8. Qala rabbi anna yakoonu leeghulamun wakanati imraatee AAaqiran

waqadbalaghtu mina alkibari AAitiyya
This musicality of words in speech followed a regular beat. The

Qur’an was chanted in an acoustic realm where words and singing, message
and sound, combined to carry the significance of the revelation to even
higher levels of understanding and emotional appeal. The practitioner of
tajwīd was required to possess a beautiful and appealing voice, to give
emphasis to specific consonants and vowels through elongation. “N ” and
“m” were singled out for nasalization (ghunnah). As chanting used these
techniques to accentuate the assonantal features of passages such as Surat
17 (al-Baqarah) or the opening Surat 97 (al-Qadr), it blended the technical
repertoire into the rise and fall of traditional chant, and intensified the
effect for listeners. The chanting in fact transcended the verbal message.
Once the Qur’an was established and canonized in textual form, the
overwhelming bulk of learning devoted to its study was concerned with
its written form. However, unlike in the Latin and Hebrew traditions, the
oral dimension of Arabic continued to exert its enduring influence on the
formation of cultural expression. The ability of a devout Muslim to mem-
orize the entire text and to recite it at will has been and still remains a sign
of a complete Islamic education. This education begins at Qur’anic schools
around the Muslim world where the text is taught by rote. Recitation and
chanting of the Qur’an have been and still are daily occurrences in the
Muslim world. In this particular sense, chanting (rather than reading words)
became a ritual full of celebration of the sounds of the sacred text. It could
be heard and observed several times a day in the mosques and on the streets
where the often heavily amplified voice of lmu’adhdh filled the air with
his elaborate intonations as he summoned the faithful to prayer.
Qur’anic chanting was instrumental in the codification and spread of
the Arabic language. The status of the Qur’an as a canonical text served
as the basis for the initiation of a series of fields of study that were later
to develop into the Islamic sciences and into Arabic literary scholarship.
The need to write down the grammar and to clarify the phonology did not
come from a general desire for scientific research or abstract learning;
rather it emerged from the practical need to teach Muslims to read and
hear the Qur’an in absolute accuracy. A tradition has it that the caliph ‘Ali
(598–661), who was recognized as most knowledgeable in the Qur’an and
Sunna, initially refused to patronize a guild book for Qur’anic reading
until the day that he heard the Qur’an read inaccurately. Mistakes in reading
vowels gave the text a false meaning. He changed his mind and decided
to compile a book to avoid such errors. He commissioned a scribe to write
down every single sound as he chanted the text. He gave strict instruction
as how to mark the vowels. He asked the scribe to mark a point over a
letter when he pronounced it with an open mouth (aftahu); a mark before
the letter if he closed his mouth during pronunciation of it (adummuhu);
and a mark under it if he puckered (aksuruhu). Ali also instructed Abu al-
aswad al-Du’al (603–688) to prepare a work that would summarize Arabic
grammar. This initiative began with a process of codification and debate
that greatly expanded during the eighth and ninth centuries among the
intellectual communities in the rival Iraqi cities of al-Basrah and al-Kufah.7
The process of recording the sound of the utterances in written form
required that the alphabetic system be redefined to the point where it could
not only clarify the distinctions between sets of similar graphemes but also
incorporate symbols for vowels, elisions, and stops. Refinement of recita-
tion was developed by three disciplines: tajwīd, qira’at and tafsīr. Tajwīd,
as mentioned before, was a system that codified the sound of the divine
language and accent of Qur’anic recitation in terms of rhythm, timber, tex-
tual phrasing, and phonetics. It specified the very basis of reading and
identified marks of recitation. Qira’at characterized a different text system
to be used for recitation and verified various implications of various reg-
ulations of the tajwīd.
Tafsīr mainly dealt with textual issues. The word tafsīr is derived from
the root f-s-r (to explain, to expound) and it means “explanation” or “inter-
pretation.” The word tafsīr is used for explanation, interpretation and
commentary on the Qur’an including all the efforts to make its text com-
prehensible, such as proper understanding of it, explanations of its mean-
ings and clarification of its legal and moral implications. In a linguistic
sense, tafsīr worked its way into building a connection between words,
words that had similar meanings, distinct meanings and opposite meanings,
and words that had precise and ambiguous meanings and connotations. By
doing so, it created a verbal web of Arabic in which words built upon one
another according to logical principles. For example, a hierarchy of words
was established according to degrees of importance of the words of the
Qur’an. The best tafsīr was believed to be the explanation of the Qur’an
by the words of the Qur’an (in a different textual context); the second best
was the explanation of the Qur’an by the words of the Prophet Muhammad,
who acted according to his understanding of the words of God. If nothing
could be found either in the Qur’an or in the Sunna of the Prophet, one
had to turn to the reports from the sahaba (the companions of Muhammad).
If nothing could be found in the Qur’an, the Sunna and the reports from
the sahaba, one had to turn to the reports from the tabi’in (Muslims who
were born after the death of Muhammad but were students of his companions).
In short, tafsīr explained the “outer” (zahir) or apparent meanings of the

Qur’an while tajwīd pursued the inner or concealed meanings of the
Qur’an.8
With the development of Qur’anic interpretation, Arabic as a literary
language expanded rapidly and substantially. The early Qur’an contained
many words and phrases that reflected the linguistic and religious envi-
ronment of the Arabian Peninsula in the pre–Islamic era. These words had
to be codified, and their meanings and origins had to be investigated. The
search for precedents for the language of the Qur’an gave birth to Arabic
lexicography. The principal sources that are believed to have been the foun-
dation of Qur’anic language were the sayings of the pre–Islamic sooth-
sayers lodged in an ornate variety of the language known as saj’ (rhyming
prose) and the highly refined poetry that had been orally transmitted for
many generations.9
Once the revelations of the Qur’an had been committed to writing,
the process of studying and interpreting the text began. Codification was
easier, as the issues of the Qur’an carried extensive and explicit rulings in
matters such as family law, debt, and inheritance. The Qur’an also had
injunctions concerning God’s will and the obligation of the Muslims to
him. These texts formed the five “pillars” of Islam: the statement of belief
(shahādah); the five daily prayers (salāt); almsgiving (zakāt), fasting dur-
ing the holy month of Ramadān (sawm); and pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj).
Jihad became another obligation, and the individual and community needed
to make efforts to spread the word of Islam to other peoples and defend
the religion against its opponents.
The more difficult part of the codification rested beyond these well-
defined rituals and obligations. There are many topics on which the Qur’an
remains silent. Muslim scholars had to resort to another source for guid-
ance, records of the Prophet’s own conduct during his lifetime, the Sunna.
This in turn initiated another process of gathering information, as accounts
of Muhammad’s actions (Hadith) and sayings were collected and organized
by category. As the Hadith accumulated and was compiled and established
as an addition to Islamic laws and ethics, a new tradition of textual criticism
specific for the Hadith developed. This was designed to validate the authen-
ticity of the Hadith and if it was truthful, who witnessed it, how it was
described and scribed. The processes of sifting through accounts and
authenticating sources also initiated the search for detailed information on
the reliability of individuals, the history of family groups and tribes.
Genealogy was thus added to the list of fields with which the Islamic com-
munity concerned itself, as scholars investigated the histories of prominent
families and their tribal affiliations. Like in Qur’anic interpretation, the
search for authentic Hadith also involved linguistic precedents to the lex-
icon and style of the Qur’an, and pre–Islamic poetry that shared the same
linguistic foundation of the prose. At a later date, the reports that were
believed to be the most reliable were collected into volumes called Sahīh
(“genuine and correct”). The two most famous collections were those of
al-Bukhārī (d. 870) and Muslim (d. 875). This process of collecting and
sorting the Hadith also marked the initial stages in the tradition of Qur’anic
exegesis (tafsīr), since the accounts often included discussions of prob-
lematic passages that had been recorded from earliest times. It was the
great historian Al-Tabarī who was the first to compile a commentary on
the Qur’an that incorporated within it the labors of his predecessors.10
The codification of all the sacred texts (the Qur’an and the Hadith)
did not eliminate textual ambiguity and diversity as intended because the
accumulation of exegete literature actually expanded the textual repertoire
from which even more diverse interpretations emerged. The accumulation
of commentaries established a path for further division and contradiction
of opinions and perspectives. Although holding the intention to classify
and unify the reading and understanding of scripture, Muslim scholars dis-
covered that the Qur’an accumulated several levels of meanings. There
were meanings (exegesis) known to scholars, meanings (language) known
by Arabic speakers, meanings (the allowed and forbidden) that believers
could not afford to ignore; and hidden meanings that needed to be inter-
preted. The Qur’an referred to particular and general issues: the references
particular to Muslims, those particular to polytheists, and those general to
all mankind. The Qur’an also contained accounts about the hearts of the
believers and accounts of what was in the hearts of the unbelievers who
acted against the Islamic faith. There were ambiguous and univocal pas-
sages, explained and unexplained passages, and deletions as well as explicit
utterances. There were connective items, abrogating and abrogated verses.
There were similar utterances with many different aspects, and passages
that continued in a different surat. There were commandments, laws, ordi-
nances, and parables by which God refers to Himself, parables by which
He refers to unbelievers and idols, and parables by which He refers to this
world, to resurrection and to the world to come.
Multi-leveled reading of the Qur’an and the Hadith texts made it pos-
sible to develop contrary opinions among Muslim scholars and eventually
founded divisions of various linguistic and legal schools and political fac-
tions. Just like any other religious texts composed in a formative prose,
the meaning of the Qur’an was not always transparent and explicit. Clar-
ification and commentary of the Qur’an and the Hadith were constantly in
demand as Islamic civilization rapidly expanded around the world. A clear
vision was needed for the newly established Islamic order as the Muslim
community that had just converted to Islam was eager to reshape itself
according to the commandments of the new religion. However, a poetic
language did not make this transition easy, because of its inherited rich
and multi-dimensional linguistic capacity. The more language was used to
define meanings by juxtaposition, the less it could clarify, unify and restrain
meanings.
Muslim leaders and scholars were well aware of the power of the Ara-
bic language (including its power to generate diversity and even dispute)
and of the challenges that they faced in the development of a unified canon
(or perfect copy) to bind the community. They closed the canonical corpus
of the Qur’an only twenty years after the death of the Prophet in an attempt
to make the Qur’an a fixed text that could not be modified.11 However, as
soon as the door of the codification closed, the war of competing commen-
tators and readers of the Qur’an began. Muslim scholars differed not only
in their Qur’anic readings and interpretations, but also in their approaches
to the holy text. For example, textual interpretation was held with respect
in Kufa (a prominent center of Qur’anic scholarship in early Islam),
whereas in Basra there was a tendency to ridicule the Kufan interpretations
because of lack of insight in linguistic matters. There were many Basran
reports about Qur’anic readers making mistakes in their grammatical analy-
sis of the Qur’an, and there must have been a general feeling among Basran
grammarians that they themselves represented a new approach to the study
of speech.
The science of Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr) proper remained one of the
pillars of the Islamic sciences. In later commentaries we still find linguistic
remarks on the text of the Qur’an, but these no longer represent an inde-
pendent development within exegesis. Commentators received extensive
linguistic training from professional grammarians, and it was from them
that they borrowed their technical apparatus for the description of Qur’anic
usage. Exegesis explored various directions without losing the connection
with its earliest roots and its original aim, which was the elucidation of
God’s intention. Because of the accumulation of Qur’anic scholarship,
commentators usually specialized in one aspect of exegesis. Thus we find
commentaries whose main purpose is to discuss textual variants, others
that concentrate on the grammatical and syntactic analysis or the analysis
of the narrative parts of the text. Still others are mostly interested in the
legal aspects of the text.
The distinction between the local traditions of Basra and Kufa was
extended by later generations into formal schools. This development
occurred at a time when the representatives of the two traditions started to
meet each other much more frequently in the new capital of the ‘Abbasid
Empire in Baghdad. They both felt the need to define their own ways. Rep-
resentatives of the Basran tradition became far superior to those of Kufa
in the development of technical grammar. Consequently, the exegetical
approach to linguistics was abandoned by all grammarians and, eventually,
the Basran approach prevailed.12
It took only a century for the majority of Muslim scholars to realize
the limitation of textual research of the Qur’an. Sibawayh (760–796?) was
the first to write on Arabic grammar and to explain Arabic grammar from
a non–Arabic perspective (he was born in Iran). Much of the impetus for
this work came from the desire for non–Arab Muslims to understand the
Qur’an properly and thoroughly. The Qur’an, which was composed in a
poetic language that even native Arabic speakers had to study with great
care in order to comprehend thoroughly, was even more difficult for those
who did not grow up speaking it. In addition, as written Arabic did not
necessarily mark all pronounced vowel sounds, even native Arabic speakers
could mispronounce the Qur’an’s text. This created a problem, as the
Qur’an was regarded by Muslims as the literal word of God to man. This
severe frustration made even the best scholars dejected. It was said that in
Baghdad, the ‘Abbasid minister Yahya ibn Khalid held a debate on standard
Arabic usage between Sibawayh, representing the Basra school, and Kisa’i,
the leading scholar of the rival school of Kufa. Sibawayh became so
depressed after being misread and misinterpreted that he left his beloved
Baghdad and went back to Iran after the contest.13
The scholars in Basra focused their research in the structure of lan-
guage rather than on the structure of the Qur’anic text. They were still
active as specialists of Qur’anic exegesis but extended their investigations
to general phenomena of Arabic language. This development culminated
in the first dictionary, Kitab al-Ayn, by Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farāhīdī
(718–786). Since then, there has always been a correlation between
Qur’anic scholarship and that of linguistic tradition. Abd-Allāh ibn Abī
Ishāq al-Hadramī (d. 735) was the earliest known grammarian of the Arabic
language. He compiled a prescriptive grammar that referred to the usage
of the Bedouins, who were considered to be the purest Arabic speakers.
Two students of Abi Ishaq’s were ‘Isa ibn Umar al-Thaqafi (d. 767) and
Abu ‘Amr ibn al-‘Alā’ (d. 773). Al-Thaqafi had a more prescriptive
approach while Al-Ala’s was more descriptive. Their differences further
evolved to the late division of Arabic grammar into the schools of Kufa
and Basra and Qur’anic interpretation.14
Al-Khalil was the most famous philologist from Basra. His best
known contribution is Kitab al-’Ayn, the first dictionary of the Arabic
language, the current standard for Harakat (vowel marks in Arabic script),
and the invention of al-’arud (the study of Arabic prosody). Sibawayh, the
founder of Arabic grammar, was among his students.15 The Kitab al-‘Ayn
departed from the established exegete tradition and introduced a radically
different concept of lexicography. It aimed at the collection of all roots in
language, rather than at just recording rare words from Bedouin poetry. In
this book, words were ordered around the permutations of their radicals.
In Arabic, as in all Semitic languages, the root consonants of the word
carry the semantic load, whereas the vowels and auxiliary consonants pro-
vide information about derivational and declensional morphology. For
instance, the root k-t-b produces the lexical items kataba (he wrote), yak-
tubu (he writes), kutiba (it was written), yuktabu (it is written), katib
(writer), maktub (written), kitab (book), plural kutub (books); mukataba
(correspondence), ’aktaba (he made someone else write), istaktaba (he
asked someone to write), takataba (he corresponded with someone), mak-
taba (library), and so on. In all of these words the radical consonants k-t-
b convey the notion of “writing,” whereas the auxiliary consonants (m, t,
y, etc.) indicate the morphological categories. To represent the pattern of
a word grammarians used a notational device in which the letter /f/ indi-
cated the first radical of a word, the letter /’a/ the second, and the letter /1
/ the third. The pattern of maktaba, for instance, is maf‘ala, that of istaktaba
is istaf‘ala, and so on.
Al-Khalil’s system first assembled words by roots, putting together
all of a word’s derivates, for example the root k-t-b. All roots containing
these same consonants were organized in a hierarchy. The root k-t-b was
entered in one section together with the roots k-b-t, b-k-t, t-b-k, and b-t-
k. This represented a step forward compared to the arrangement of the pre-
vious word list, which either followed the order of the text being explained,
or arranged words semantically. Although the structure of his book pro-
vided assurance that it was very easy to find a word, it remained in fact a
cumbersome arrangement. The book made an attempt to organize words
at least in an ordering principle, although this did not mean that one could
know in advance exactly where a word was to be found. There is no indi-
cation that al-Khalil’s system was intended to reflect a higher semantic
unity between the permutated roots, although some later grammarians
looked for such common meanings.16
The second remarkable feature of Al-Khalil’s arrangement was his
linguistic (rather than textual) approach to Qur’anic language, which was
manifested in the consonantal categorization. He did not use the normal
alphabetical order of the Arabic alphabet, but applied a phonetic criterion
and began with the guttural consonants, then the velars, until he reached
the bilabials. The reason for this order was his reluctance to start with the
element ‘alif, because it is a weak consonant. Actually, in the phonological
theory of Arabic grammar the ‘alif has a special status. It is a glide like /y/
and /w/, but unlike these it is never realized on the phonetic level and
serves only as an abstract phonological element (represented here as /’/).
The long vowels that we distinguish in Arabic were not acknowledged by
the Arabic grammarians. They regarded long vowels as combinations of a
vowel and a glide (/w/, /y/, /’/), i.e., /uw/, /iy/, /a’/, which are realized as
/ū/, /ī/, /ā/. The only difference between /w/, /y/, and ‘alif is that the latter
either disappears at the phonetic level, or is realized phonetically as a
glottal stop /’/ or as one of the two other glides.
Kitab al-‘Ayn usually provided information about some derivations
of a root and was illustrated, sometimes, with a quotation from a poem or
the Qur’an. The intention of the dictionary was to include all current roots
from each combination of radicals, not necessarily all words derived from
these roots. Common words were supposed to be known by the native
speaker, so the lexicographer did not feel the need to elaborate on them.
Primary distinction was made between those roots that were musta‘mal
(“used”) and those that were muhmal (“neglected”), such as those that were
“not occurring in Arabic.” When words derived from a root were men-
tioned, it only demonstrated that the root actually existed in the language.
The development of Arabic linguistic scholarship illustrates how the
study and interpretation of a single book (the Qur’an) led to the codification
of the entire repertoire of a language. For lexicographers the wish to include
all Arabic words increased. Usually they copied all available information
from earlier lexicographers and then added their own observations on rare
words that they had found in other sources. In this way the dictionaries
continually expanded.
Al-’Azhari’s (895–980) Tahdhīb al-lugha the lemma ‘-sh-q was
already much larger than the original lemma in the Kitâb al-‘ayn. The
chapter on the consonants /‘/, /q/, /sh/ found in the Kitâb al-‘ayn contained
the same root under the same heading, but with the addition of ‘-q-sh and
sh-q-‘. The following debate about the additional roots demonstrates how
much work and reasoning had been involved in making the additions.
’Abu 1-‘Abbās ‘Ahmad ibn Yahyā was asked whether love or passion was more
praise worthy. He said: “Love, because passion includes a degree of exaggera-
tion.” Ibn al-’A’râbî said: “‘Ushuq are the men who trim the sets of sweet-
smelling plants; when said of a camel ‘ushuq means one that keeps to its mate and
does not desire any other.” He said: “‘Ashaq is the lablab-tree; its singular is
‘ashaqa.” He said: “‘Ashaq is also the arak-tree. An ‘āshiq ‘lover’ is called thus
because he withers from the intensity of his passion in the same way as the
‘ashaqa [lablabtree] when it is cut.”
‘Abu ‘Ubayd said: “Imra’a ‘ashiq ‘a woman in love,’ without the feminine end-
ing -a, and likewise rajul ‘âshiq ‘a man in love.’” I say: The Arabs delete the
feminine ending from the feminine attribute in many words, e.g., [in the expres-
sion] “you regard her as stupid, since she is bakhis ‘deficient.’” They also say
imra’a baligh [a nubile woman] when she has reached puberty, and they call a
female slave khadim [servant]. In these words the masculine form is the same.
Al-Layth said: “The expression is ‘ashiqa [imperfect], ya‘shaqu [verbal noun],
‘ishq ‘to love.’” This is what he said, but ‘ashaq is the verbal noun and ‘ishq is
the noun. Ru’ba said in describing a male and female ass: “and he did not lead her
astray between loathing and passion.”17
The later Arabic lexicographers inherited this method and incorporated

the entire past scholarship. Ibn Manzur (1233–1311), the author of the Lisān
al-‘Arab (The Arab Tongue), the best known and most comprehensive dic-
tionaries of the Arabic language, used the Tahdhīb al-Lugha as one of his
most important source. The Lisān al-‘Arab’s 20 volumes followed the
arrangement of the roots. The head words are not arranged by the alpha-
betical order of the radicals as usually done today in the study of Semitic
languages, but according to the last radical, which makes finding rhyming
endings significantly easier.
The Qur’an’s success as the Bible of the Arabic language established
it not only as the authority of religious thinking but also as a literary stan-
dard. From here, prose began to emerge and became increasingly important
as a literary form. This took Arabic from the margins of Middle Eastern
literature to the cultural center.18 Prose became the vehicle for philosophical
and scientific development for Islam. The first generation of Arabic scholars
(by language as well as by education) made substantial contributions to
the development of Islamic culture. First, they entered into passionate and
fruitful discussions about the issues of religion and its philosophy. For
example, Al-Jahiz (781–868) was the first Muslim biologist to develop a
theory on evolution, almost ten centuries before Charles Darwin (1809–
1882) did. His book Al-Hayawan (Book of Animals) was an encyclopedia
of seven volumes of anecdotes, poetic descriptions and proverbs describing
over 350 varieties of animals. As the first environmental determinist, he
wrote on the effects of the environment on the likelihood of an animal to
survive, and he first described the struggle for existence. However, unlike
Darwinism, which later developed into a theory opposing the religious
notion of creation, Al-Jahiz attempted to unify nature, God, the natural
world, and social morality through a promotion of eloquence (debate,
Kalam) and reasoning.19
As soon as descriptive language provided adequate imagery and
chronological cohorts in writing, a new scholarship of Arabic science
emerged. The best known early Arab scientist was Al-Kindi (801–873). He
wrote at least two hundred and sixty books, mainly concerning geometry,
medicine, philosophy, logic, and physics. His influence in the fields of
physics, mathematics, medicine, philosophy and music was far-reaching
and lasted for several centuries.20 As the language of science became
increasingly specific and abstract through writing, Islamic science flour-
ished in many different directions, including in medicine, mathematics,
algebra, physics, and philosophy.21
The emergence of Islamic or Arabic science has been portrayed as a
result of Greek influence, the fact of which has been well verified. However,
the scientific mode of thinking did not have a single origin or belong to
any particular language or culture. It simply occurred during certain periods
of linguistic evolution for every language in the world, although during
this period the subject culture tended to be more open to scientific influence
and the achievements of other cultures. The development of Islamic science
was a case in point. Interaction between cultures had existed in the ancient
Mediterranean for thousands of years before the emergence of Islam. The
Arabic Middle East was not ready for science and abstract reasoning until
its language developed the capacity to classify, specify, and distill its accu-
mulating knowledge. The large-scale efforts of the Arabic philologists and
lexicographers during the eighth and ninth centuries paved the way for the
birth of Islamic science. The availability of the Greek material on science
and philosophy was translated with great effort by Arab scholars.22
While the language of religion (the Qur’an) inspired universal vision
and the descriptive language of science, the writing about the life of
Muhammad accumulated the vocabulary and narrative framework of biog-
raphical literature in Arabic. The genre of tabaqat (biographical diction-
aries) thus emerged. The narrative language of both geography and history
also made it possible for the evolution of historical writing and travel lit-
erature. The greatest of all Arabic historians was Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406),
whose history Muqaddimah focused on society and is a founding text in
sociology and economics. After Ibn Khaldun’s sweeping historical and
sociological account, Arab historians began to concentrate on a smaller
scope of history and regional histories such as the history of Mecca and
Baghdad.23
Narrative style remained one of the most creative innovations of the
Qur’an, and it profoundly influenced and enriched the Arabic language.
The style of storytelling seen in pre–Islamic poetry was relatively crude
and primitive because its subject matter was narrow and limited. The
Qur’an, as a religious manifesto that dealt with universal issues, had to
substantially widen its formal scope and develop more diverse storytelling
techniques. The Qur’an innovated remarkably highly developed narrative
presentations. Some of these included beginning a story with a short sum-

mary, followed by the details from beginning to end (as in Surat 18, Al-
Kahf ), and beginning a story by presenting the conclusions first, describing
the lesson to be learned from it, and then telling the story from beginning
to end (the story of Moses in Surat 28, Al-Qasas). Other innovations included
the presentation of the story directly without introduction, as in that of
Mary following the birth of Jesus (in Surat 19, Maryam), and the story of
King Solomon and the ants (in Surat 27, Al-Naml ). The last, perhaps most
innovative, was to present the story through dramatization. This technique
gives only a brief introduction signaling the beginning of the scene, fol-
lowed by a dramatization of the story with a dialogue among the various
characters, as in the story of Abraham and Ismail (in Surat 2, Al-Baqarah).
The Qur’an uses elements of surprise to dramatize the storytelling.
In some cases the anticlimax was kept from the main players and spectators,
and was unfolded for both simultaneously towards the end, as in Surat 18
(Al-Kahf ) (in the story of Moses and the scholar). Another use of the ele-
ment of surprise reveals the unexpected ending to the audience but conceals
it from the characters, who act in total ignorance. The Qur’an commonly
uses this technique in situations where satire is intended (satire which is
directed at the actors and their behavior) as in the story in Surat 68 (Al-
Qalam). A third technique reveals part of the conclusion to the audience
while keeping part of it concealed from both the audience and the charac-
ters, as in the story in Surat 27 (al-Naml). In short, the Qur’an integrated
dramatic presentation and plotting (which took Greek, Latin, and English
playwrights centuries to craft on the stage) into Arabic prose. It did not
take much time for a rich and mature literature to develop dramatic nar-
ration and highlight its expression. Arabic, a mature literature in form, had
an experience similar to Chinese literature of the thirteenth century and
modern English, which developed post-literary dramatic writing.24
The structure of Qur’anic narrative displays some well-developed ele-
ments of an integrated literary work. One of these is the change of scenery
to dramatize the story. For example, readers are presented with a series of
scenes, each of which leads to the next, picking up the main thread of the
story, in Surat 12 (Yūsuf ). Joseph’s life story is told here in twenty-eight
scenes, which are organized in a sequence maintaining the organic unity
of the entire narrative. All the scenes are in the form of dialogues in which
characters who play a role (good or bad, rightly or wrongly) in Joseph’s
life, tell their versions of the events of the story. These scenes are opposing
and contrary insights portraying the experiences, involvement, and personal
interests of the characters. These contradictory perceptions and presenta-
tions dramatize the story line by repeating details and ideas.
Joseph’s story engages the reader with narrative every step of the way,
moving effortlessly from one scene to another. The reader is effectively
drawn through a coherent series of events (sometimes contradictory), which
sustain his curiosity and interest as he learns about Joseph and the life les-
sons contained in the story. For example, in one scene, one of Joseph’s
brothers enters the king’s court in Egypt where Joseph is the keeper of the
storehouse of the land. In this scene, Joseph stipulates to his brothers that
they should bring their younger brother to the king’s court in order to
receive provisions. The next scene portrays the brothers deliberating among
themselves. This is followed by a scene in which they have returned to
face their father, Jacob. The next scene takes the brothers back to Egypt
to confront Joseph. In this sequence, the story is told effortlessly as the
drama is unfolded before the eyes of the reader, who certainly knows more
about the plot than each of the characters knows. The brothers do not know
that Joseph, whom they believed had been thrown into the well, has sur-
vived; the father does not know what has happened to Joseph for many
years. These diverse perspectives and various levels of awareness are pro-
duced in the Qur’an with dialogue. This makes the scenes more vivid and
lifelike and allows a variety of conclusions according to one’s perspective.
This innovative art of dramatic presentation is common to many established
literatures in the world, especially in dramatic writing, but it is only in
Arabic that it was introduced in its first book of prose.
The Qur’an also set a precedent for the portrayal of literary personae.
The depiction of personalities in the various narratives managed to convey
to the reader the precise dimensions of these characters and the changes
in their emotions and attitudes. This was done through the words and
actions of the personalities that were portrayed from various angles. In the
story of Moses, for example, the reader is readily able to discern, through
Moses’ actions, the type of aggressive yet emotionally sensitive person he
was meant to be. Conversely, the Qur’an also carefully portrays a calm,
peaceful, and patient Abraham in his story. This terse yet detailed and accu-
rate delineation of characters was effected largely through dialogue, which
skillfully brought out the characteristics of its personalities. The dialogue,
in turn, was rendered even more effective by a very careful choice of
words.25
The following section of Surat 26 (Al-Shu‘arā’) vividly depicts how
Moses was persuaded by God and changed his feelings about his commis-
sion as a messenger of God. Initially, Moses felt diffident about speaking
against the pharaoh, begging God to send someone else. “O my Lord!” he
said, “I do fear that they will accuse me of lying.” “My heart would fail
me, and my tongue will cleave to my mouth, and they had already accused
me of murder.” “I am afraid that they would kill me” (12–14). Moses was
afraid that his speech would be impeded because he believed that his life
was in danger if he took on this task.
Moses was brought to the palace of the pharaoh, as narrated in his
personal story in Surat 20 (taha). While growing up in Egypt he witnessed
how Egyptians oppressed his own people. This made him very angry. After
he saw an Egyptian smiting an Israelite, he rebelled. He slew the Egyptian
and fled to the Sinai Peninsula, where he received the divine commission.
But the charge of slaying the Egyptian was facing him. He was also (appar-
ently) irascible. But God’s grace made him wise. God’s assurance also
cured him from impediment in speech and he could stand and speak boldly
to the pharaoh. He announced that he was the messenger of God, the Lord
of the heavens and the earth, and all in between. When the pharaoh replied,
“If you dare to worship any God other than me, I will certainly put you in
prison!” and “Cut off both hands and both feet, and I will make you die
on the cross!” Moses answered: “I don’t care, no matter what, we shall
return to our Lord!”26
The high quality of Qur’anic prose illustrates how it turned a local
poetic tradition into an international media and why it was quickly
accepted, embraced, and eventually absorbed in the new countries that
converted to Islam. This achievement, comparable to those of Greek and
Latin in the past and English and Spanish at the present, has been explained
in terms of the work’s association with the religion of Islam. However, the
real reason behind the spread and the sustaining influence of Islam lies in
Arabic, the language in which the Islamic message was and is delivered
to millions of converts, as it communicate their needs and cultivates their
consciousness. Arabic, which was initially preached as the words of God,
became the language of the people because non–Arabic speaking Muslims
have decided either to adapt to the new language or modify their native
languages according to Arabic. This is because they found that Arabic
helped them to see, express, and think about their world more than their
native language ever could. By speaking, writing, or imitating Arabic
expression, they learn more of wisdom, think more deeply, and express
emotions and moods more accurately. The desire on the part of the new
converts to identify with the resourceful pioneers of the Arabian Peninsula
was yet another factor in their adoption of the language.
Qur’anic prose added immeasurably to the beauty of the Arabic lan-
guage by introducing new styles, forms of expression, figures of speech,
and complex structures. The Qur’an also enriched and expanded the vocab-
ulary of the Arabic language by employing hundreds of words of foreign
origin, thus demonstrating the legitimacy of lexical borrowing as a linguistic
device. The Qur’an presented Arab scholars with a higher criterion of lit-
erary excellence and set new and more detailed standards for literary com-
position for subsequent generations of scholars. The model that the Qur’an
provided, while remaining inimitable, has sharpened the literary skill and
kindled the talent of generations of scholars in their attempts to emulate
the style and literary excellence of the Qur’an. Within this multi-lingual
context, the Arabic language also underwent drastic changes in its structure,
content, and status due to its association with Islam.
Among many literary forms that were inspired by Qur’anic prose and
the narrative form of the Hadith was the frame tale (called fantasy fiction
by some). This type of prose fiction, as the forerunner of fiction writing,
framed unrelated tales or episodes in an overarching story that provided a
context for storytelling. Although many of the stories derived from non–
Arabic sources, such as those from Persia and India, it was literary Arabic
that successfully strung them together into collections of short stories or
episodes framed into a long tale. The One Thousand and One Nights (Ara-
bian Nights), easily the best known of all works of Arabic literature, became
the model of narrative for the European fiction writers.27
It took about four centuries (from the 10th to the 14th century) for the
modern versions of the Arabian Nights to be written down and reach final
form. During the process, the number and type of tales varied from one
manuscript to another. Included were fables of animals, fables of jihad or
propagation of the faith, proverbs, humorous tales, accounts of the wily
con-man Ali Zaybaq, and tales about the prankster Juha. Various characters
from these tales have become cultural icons in Western culture (Aladdin,
Sinbad and Ali Baba). Remnants of Arabian and Persian mythology
remained common themes even in modern fantasy (such as genies, baha-
muts, magic carpets, magic lamps). However, the most important contri-
bution of Arabic literature to world fiction writing was its innovative
narrative structure, the string that hold the pearls together, so to speak, to
make a beautiful necklace. Many important works of Western literature
adopted this narrative structure: Dante’s Divine Comedy, Chaucer’s Can-
terbury Tales, and Boccaccio’s Decameron.28
Scholars have debated and will continue to debate the origins of
episodic fiction as a literary form. These fictions did not come from a single
language or single tradition but rather sprouted from a single episode of
literary evolution that was shared by almost every literary language, except
those did not survive and grow into maturity.29 Arabic prose wrote the ear-
liest fictional narrative simply because it had been writing episodic stories
for centuries before it came to produce standards (of fantasy tales) such
as The Thousand and One Nights.30 By the same token, European vernaculars
developed their own versions of episodic fictions when their language

transformed from formative storytelling and linear narrative to multiple
plotting and dramatic presentation. In short, mature literary language often
produces more complex narrative forms. Arabic happened to be older and
more mature than the majority of the literary languages of medieval West-
ern Europe.
Qur’anic literature and its studies also played an unprecedented role
as transmitters and bridges between poetry, prose and speech. It is well
known that Qur’an marked the beginning of Arabic prose. However, most
people have less knowledge about the significance of Qur’anic prose in
the development of Arabic language because the English concept of prose
falls short of the exact meaning of Arabic prose in both concept and his-
torical significance. The majority of English words emerged from a pair
of opposites, so prose means the opposite of poetry. If poetry has rhyme,
prose does not; poetry is meant to be read aloud, prose is to be read silently;
poetry is a form somewhere between oral and written presentation, prose
belongs to the latter. But in the history of Arabic language, prose is an
extension of poetry. It is not only that the Qur’an emerged from a highly
developed and polished poetic language, but also that Qur’anic prose inher-
ited many characteristics of pre–Islamic poetry, especially poetic and dra-
matic delivery and sophisticated rhythm.
The most important function of Qur’anic prose is to bridge the written
and spoken language by imposing and advertising an accent-based meter
that is close to speaking rhythm. Unlike poetry that followed the rule of
syllabic counting and restriction, saj’s meter is based on the balance of
length of words and linguistic rhythm.31 Although grammatical codification
is common to many languages, Arabic was the only language whose gram-
matical codification had an extraordinary oral dimension. What the Qur’an
codified was much more than grammar or a form of writing. It standardized
the sound, the rhythm and the articulation of the Arabic language. As recita-
tion of the Qur’an has been and remains a daily phenomenon, practiced
by the faithful, linguistic repetition accomplished much more than the
transmission of a religious message. It allowed the short paralleling phrases
and repetitive rhyme to become a habit of speaking and model of eloquence.
As these features transferred from the purely textual to the acoustic realm,
a gradually upgraded spoken language obtained literary quality. In the form
of words and chant, message and sound combined to carry the significance
of the revelation to even higher levels of understanding and emotional
response.
The practitioner of tajwīd was required to possess a beautiful voice.
Emphasis could be given to specific consonants and vowels through elon-
gation and by singling out “n” and “m” for nasalization (ghunnah). These
techniques were used to accentuate the assonantal features of passages
such as Surat 2 (Al-Baqarah), “summun bukmun ‘umyun’ fahum la yub-
siruna” and Surat 97 (Al-Qadr), “inna anzalnāhuf ī laylati 1-qadri,” and
to blend this technical repertoire into the rise and fall of traditional chant.
The effect on the listener transcended that of words alone. This specific
chanting technique was very similar to the early Hebrew chanting, which
later evolved into melody-driven cantillation. The Babylonian biblical
manuscripts from the Geonic period contain no cantillation marks in the
current sense, but small Hebrew letters were used to mark significant divi-
sions within a verse. Up to eight different letters are found, depending on
the importance of the break and where it occurred in the verse. These cor-
respond roughly to the disjunctives of the Tiberian system. Nothing is
known of the musical realization of these marks, but it seems likely that,
if any of these signs were associated with a musical motif, the motif was
applied not to the individual word but to the whole phrase, ending with
the break. A somewhat similar system is used in manuscripts of the Qur’an
to guide the reader in fitting the chant to the verse.
This system is reflected in the cantillation practices of the Yemenite
Jews, who now use the Tiberian symbols, but that system tends to have
musical motifs only for the disjunctives and renders the conjunctives in a
monotone. It is notable that the Yemenites have only eight disjunctive
motifs, clearly reflecting the Babylonian notation. The same is true of the
Karaite mode for the haftarah. In the Sephardi haftarah different disjunc-
tives often have the same or closely similar motifs.
The ritual chanting of the Qur’an clearly has a powerful effect on lis-
teners. As numerous accounts show, that effect will often assume an
enhanced form in the rituals of the Sufi community. The gathering of a
brotherhood (a hadrah) will include not only recitations from the Qur’an
but also texts in praise of God (dhikr) and mystical poems such as the Bur-
dah of Al-Busrīī (d. 1296). It is the heightened intensity brought about by
this kind of experience, and in particular in Sufi orders, whose rituals make
full use of it, that has led to an uneasy tension between popular practice
in many Muslim communities and the orthodox conservative scholars who
have always viewed the impact of music on believers with suspicion.32
The form of Qur’anic recitation played an increasingly important role
as Islam expanded into the non–Arabic-speaking world. As the majority
of Muslims did not understand Arabic, Qur’anic language became an
abstract religious message rather than a living communication. This is par-
alleled by the impact of Latin on speakers of European vernaculars. The
language of the Qur’an became an expression that its listeners could not
understand (they might know the general idea of it but not word for word),
but they could sense a oneness of faith as Arabic poetry beat out a perfect
measured cadence.33
Unlike Hebrew and Latin languages, which lost their sound after
ascending to a language of literature and religious ritual, Qur’anic reading
and recitation remained a science and an art throughout Islamic history.
Ibn al-Jazari (1350–1429) was a distinguished and prolific scholar and ulti-
mate authority in the field of the reading (qira’at) of the Qur’an. He learned
the art of Qur’anic recitation at an early age and memorized the Qur’an
by the age of 13. In Damascus, Al-Jazari founded and headed a school that
specialized in Qur’anic science (Dar al-Qur’an). He compiled more than
ninety works on Qur’anic reading, the Hadith, and Islamic history while
traveling around the Middle East.34
As the Qur’an was chanted throughout the world, it became a (word-
less) music or universal language to deliver messages, as Arabic words
were not understood by non–Arabic-speaking Muslims. As an important
part of Islamic ritual, music (in notes and/or words) brought a sub-verbal
and multimedia type of conformity to Islamic culture that Arabic, as a lit-
erary language, could not produce as it ventured into other parts of the
world. Musical modulation that accompanied words (in different lan-
guages) provided a more universal and more flexible medium to transmit
meanings. The best example of the formation and function of this cross-
lingual media is the evolution and transplantation of a form of Arabic
music, maqam.
Arabic maqam is the system of melodic modes used in traditional
Arabic music. The word maqam means place, location or rank. In this
specific context, the best English translation for maqam is scale or hierarchy
(or system) of notes. In Arabic music, a maqam is a set of notes with tra-
ditions that define relationships between them, habitual patterns, and their
melodic development. Maqāmā are best defined and understood in the con-
text of the rich repertoire of Arabic music. The nearest equivalent in West-
ern classical music would be a mode (major and minor). Arabic scales are
not even-tempered (the difference in pitch between each note is not iden-
tical), unlike the chromatic scale used in modern Western music. Instead,
5th notes are tuned based on the 3rd harmonic. The tuning of the remaining
notes entirely depends on the maqam (modulation). The reasons for this
tuning were historically determined by the kinds of musical instruments
used in Arabic music. Instead of the organ and piano, which derived their
scale from physical dimensions, string instruments such as the oud created
more varied pitch by vibration. A side effect of not having even-tempered
tuning is that the same note (by name) may have a slightly different pitch
depending on which maqam it is played in, as maqam is “a technique of

improvisation” that defines the pitches, patterns, and development of a
piece of music. This is unique to Arabian art music. There are seventy-
two heptatonic tone scales of maqāmāt, which are constructed from major,
medium, and minor seconds. Each maqam is built on a scale, and carries
a tradition that defines its habitual phrases, important notes, melodic devel-
opment and modulation. It also determines the tonic (starting note), the
ending note, and the dominant note. It also determines which notes should
be emphasized and which should not. Both compositions and improvisa-
tions in traditional Arabic music are based on the maqam system. Maqam
can be realized with either vocal or instrumental music, and do not include
a rhythmic component.35
An essential, decisive factor in maqam performance is that each
describes the “tonal-spatial factor” or set of musical notes and the rela-
tionships between them, including traditional patterns and development of
melody, while the rhythmic-temporal component is subjected to no definite
organization. A maqam does not have a so-called established, regularly
recurring bar scheme or an unchanging meter. A certain rhythm does some-
times identify the style of a performer, but this is dependent upon his per-
formance technique. There has never been a universal maqam as understood
in Western music. The compositional or rather pre-compositional aspect
of the maqam is the tonal-spatial organization, including the number of
tone levels and the improvisational aspect. Together (as understood by
Europeans) these form the rhythmic-temporal scheme.
Maqam initially originated in Sassanid Persia (224–651), where modal
music was developed by a highly significant court musician, Barbad, the
khosravani. Persian music made the most important contribution to Arabic
music. This might be the reason why many Arabic maqāmāt can trace their
names to the Persian language, such as Nikriz, Farahfaza, Suzidil, Suznak,
Rast, Sikah (from Se-Gah), Jiharkah (from Chehar-Gah) and Nairuz (from
Nowruz). The reverse is also true, with Persian Goosheh names taken from
Arabic: Hejaz (from Hijaz), Hoseyni (from Husayni), Oshshagh (from
‘Ushshaq) and Hodi. Similarly, many Arabic maqam names come from
the Turkish Makam, Sultani Yekah, Buselik and Bastanikar, while the fol-
lowing Turkish Makam names trace their origin to Arabic: Hicâz, Irak,
Hüseynî, Sünbüle and Uşşakpuselik.36
Arabic maqam was based on a musical scale of seven notes that repeat
at the octave. Some maqam had two or more alternative scales (for exam-
ple, Rast, Nahawand and Hijaz). Maqam scales in traditional Arabic music
were microtonal, not based on a twelve-tone, equally-tempered musical
tuning system. Most maqam scales included a perfect fifth or a perfect
fourth (or both), and all octaves were perfect. The remaining notes in a
maqam scale might or might not exactly fall on semitones. For this reason
maqam scales were mostly taught orally, and by extensive listening to tra-
ditional Arabic music.
Maqam scales are made up of smaller sets of consecutive notes that
have a very recognizable melody and convey a distinctive mood. Such a
set is called jins (pl. ajnas), meaning “gender” or “kind.” In most cases, a
jins is made up of four consecutive notes (tetrachord), although ajnas of
three consecutive notes (trichord) or five consecutive notes (pentachord)
also exist.
Ajnas are the building blocks of a maqam scale. A maqam scale has
a lower (or first) jins and an upper (or second) jins. In most cases maqam
are classified into families or branches based on their lower jins. The upper
jins may start on the ending note of the lower jins or on the note following.
In some cases the upper and lower ajnas may overlap. The starting note
of the upper jins is called the dominant, and is the second most important
note in that scale after the tonic. Maqam scales often include secondary
ajnas that start on notes other than the tonic or the dominant. Secondary
ajnas are highlighted in the course of modulation.
Like modern jazz, maqam was a more refined music that combined
composition and improvisation. Performers had greater freedom to create
various moods. Each maqam evokes a specific emotion or set of emotions
determined by the tone row and the nucleus. Different maqāmāt sharing
the same tone row but differing in nucleus create different emotion. Maqam
rast evokes pride, power, soundness of mind, and masculinity. Maqam
bayati conveys vitality, joy, and femininity, Sikah portrays love, Saba
expresses sadness and pain while Hijaz presents the distant desert.37
Emotion is evoked in part through changes in the size of an interval
during a maqam presentation. Maqam saba, for example, contains in its
first four notes D, E-quarter-flat, F, and Gb, two medium seconds, one
larger (160 cents) and one smaller (140 cents) than a three-quarter tone,
and a minor second (95 cents). Further, E-quarter-flat and G-flat may vary
slightly, causing a “sad” or “sensitive” mood.38
Generally speaking, each maqam evokes a different emotion for the
listener. At a more basic level, each jins conveys a different mood or color.
For this reason maqams of the same family share a common mood since
they start with the same jins. There is no consensus on exactly what the
mood of each maqam or jins is. Some references describe maqam moods
using very vague and subjective terminology (e.g., maqams evoking love,
femininity, pride or distant desert). However there has not been any serious
research using scientific methodology on a diverse sample of listeners
(whether Arab or non–Arab) proving that they feel the same emotion when
hearing the same maqam.
Attempting the same exercise in more recent tonal classical music
would mean relating a mood to the major and minor modes. In that case
there is a wider consensus that the minor scale is sadder and the major
scale is happier. Attempting the same exercise in older modal classical
music with Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixolydian modes would prob-
ably produce similar results.
Modulation was a technique used during the melodic development of
a maqam. In simple terms it means changing from one maqam to another
(compatible or closely related) maqam. This involves using a new musical
scale. A long musical piece can modulate over many maqāmāt but usually
ends with the starting maqam (in rare cases the purpose of the modulation
is to actually end with a new maqam). A more subtle form of modulation
within the same maqam is to shift the emphasis from one jins to another
so as to imply a new maqam.
Modulation made music more interesting and varied, and is present
in almost every maqam-based melody. When modulation took place from
one maqam to another, there are two possible scenarios. One was that the
new maqam had the same tonic as the original maqam (e.g., modulation
from Rast on C to Nahawand on C). The other was that the new maqam
was based on a note from the original maqam other than its tonic (e.g.,
modulation from Rast on C) to Bayati on G (Bayati Nawa). Modulations
that were pleasing to the ear were created by adhering to compatible com-
binations of ajnas and maqāmāt long established in traditional Arabic
music. Although such combinations were often documented in musical ref-
erences, most experienced musicians learn them by extensive listening.
The Arabic scales on which maqāmāt are built from are not even-
tempered, unlike the chromatic scale used in Western classical music.
Instead, fifth notes are tuned based on the third harmonic. The tuning of
the remaining notes entirely depends on the maqam. The reasons for this
tuning are probably historically based on string instruments like the oud.
A side effect of not having even-tempered tuning is that the same note (by
name) may have a slightly different pitch depending on which maqam it
is played in.39
There is no absolute reference for the Arabic scale. In 1932, the Arabic
Music Conference in Cairo established that regional variations existed in
the intonation of Arabic maqāmāt. Within each region, oral traditions con-
tinued and created de facto standards, although these standards converged
to some extent with the advent of recording and broadcasting.
The phenomenon that greatly influenced intonation in Arabic music
was the introduction of even-tempered instruments (some of which were

altered to produce quarter tones), mostly in the second half of the 20th
century. The accordion, electric guitar, electric (fretted) bass, piano, guitar,
electric keyboard, electric organ and synthesizer were gradually introduced
to the Arabic ensemble. The main incentive behind this change was inno-
vation, modernization, and the desire to add harmony to Arabic music.
When Arabic maqāmāt are performed on even-tempered instruments,
they sound different in subtle ways for the following reasons:
The intonation of the same quarter tone can vary with each maqam.
For example, the E in maqam Rast has a higher tuning than the E in maqam
Bayati. Even-tempered instruments eliminate these subtle variations, pro-
ducing dry and rigid quarter tones.
Moreover, the Arabic maqam has regional variations. For example,
the E in maqam Rast has a higher tuning in Aleppo than in Cairo. Even-
tempered instruments eliminate these regional variations, reducing the Ara-
bic maqam to its base.
Even semitones in the Arabic scale often include microtonal variations.
A prime example are the 2nd and 3rd notes in the Hijaz tetrachord, which
are played closer together so as to shrink the 11⁄2 tone interval. These variations
cannot be performed on even-tempered instruments. In case of harmonic
music, microtonal variations are undesirable since they reduce harmony.
The original tuning of maqam Hijaz has been lost except in a handful
of new recordings, and is replaced with what is called “piano Hijaz” (a
derogatory term). Equally bad is the “piano Ajam,” where the 3rd note
should be slightly lower and more mellow. Maqāmāt such as Jiharkah are
rarely played on even-tempered instruments, even on ones that have been
altered to produce quarter tones.
In conclusion, the new generation of Arabic musicians, singers and
listeners is losing touch with the traditional intonation of the 1920s and
’30s largely because of the introduction of even-tempered instruments and
harmony in Arabic music.
By the time that the maqam musical model was adopted by literature,
it (now called maqāmā, “assemblies”) became a skeleton to hold words
that could do whatever they pleased. It became an Arabic literary genre of
rhymed prose with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is
dominant. The 10th century author Badī’ al-Zaman al-Hamadhāni is said
to have invented the form, which was extended by Al-Harīrī of Basra in
the next century. Both authors’ maqāmāt center on trickster figures whose
wanderings and exploits in speaking to assemblies of the powerful are con-
veyed by a narrator. The protagonist is a silver-tongued hustler, a rogue
drifter who survives by dazzling onlookers with virtuoso displays of rhetorical
acrobatics, which include a mastery of classical Arabic poetry (or of biblical

Hebrew poetry and prose in the case of the Hebrew maqāmāt), and classical
philosophy. Typically, there are 50 unrelated episodes in which the rogue
character, often in disguise, tricks the narrator out of his money and leads
him into straitened, embarrassing, and even violent circumstances. Despite
this serial abuse, the narrator-dupe character continues to seek out the
trickster, fascinated by his rhetorical flow.40
In the year 1111, Al-Harīrī read his maqāmāt to some of men of letters
and allowed them write down his words, exchange notes about what they
heard, and correct mistakes. This was the common way to publish literature
at the time. The manuscript that was created in this conference was brought
back to Europe and introduced to different readers and writers who rewrote
their versions.41
In contrast to the third-person narratives of epic and romances,
maqāmā stories were first-person accounts. As the protagonist told his
story, readers could judge his veracity. This form created various layered
expressions, as found in Western theatrical performance. For example, the
performer could do or say one thing, and simultaneously reveal other feel-
ings. He could greet a person whom he hated with a smile on his face. This
vividly manifested a chasm between appearance and concealed reality. The
rhetorical device served to highlight the contrast between highly embel-
lished rhetoric and revealed faulty morality. From this contrast emerged a
different character, opposite to the epic and romances: antiheroes. The
writer did not intend to teach the reader a moral lesson but rather wished
to illustrate how and why characters behaved in certain manners. Thus,
fiction became far more interesting than a morality play, as readers had to
be prepared for different tricks that might or might not deceive the victim
or culminate in a surprise ending.42
Each maqāmā dealt with a separate topic in each episode, the whole
being unified by the characters of the narrator and the traveler, as in Abu’l-
Fatb in Al-Hamadhani’s (967–1007) maqāmāt, Abu Zayd of Saruj in those
by the later Al-Harīrī (1054–1122). The story had also departed from geo-
graphic and temporal continuity. In one maqāmāt the protagonist could be
in China and in the next Baghdad, without any explanation in between. In
maqama narrative, storytelling did not have to be linear and changed nar-
rative perspective by putting words into its character’s mouth, providing
a distinct view of the described issue.43
If in the Qur’an, prose tells the (divine) truth, while pre–Islamic poetry
does not, in maqāmā the person speaking poetry was often the deceiver.
Manuscripts of al-Harīrī’s maqāmāt, anecdotes of a roguish wanderer
Abu Zayd from Saruj, were frequently illustrated with miniatures. Al-
Harīrī far exceeded the rhetorical stylistics of the genre’s innovator, Al-
Hamadhani, to such a degree that his maqāmāt was used as a textbook for
rhetoric and lexicography (the cataloging of rare words from the Bedouin
speech of the 7th and 8th centuries) until Early Modern times.
By now the characteristic features of Arabic literary prose writing had
prevailed under the Persian influence. The terse, incisive and simple expres-
sion of early days had disappeared forever, and it was supplanted by an
ornate and elegant style, rich in elaborate similes and replete with rhymes.
The whole period was marked by a predominance of humanistic over sci-
entific expressions. Intellectually it was a period of decline that supported
a literary proletariat, many of whose members, with no independent means
of livelihood, roamed from place to place ready to engage others on lin-
guistic issues and grammatical technicalities or flash their poetical swords
over trivial matters with a view to winning favors from wealthy patrons.
The maqāmā emerged as a preferred medium for these encounters.
This style enabled the authors to display all the brilliance of their eru-
dition, rhetoric, and wit. The maqāmā became well-known and highly
appreciated as literary works of later times among the Arabs. In particular,
Al-Harare’s maqāmāt were praised highly and remained a favorite in the
Muslim world. Finding imitators all over its sphere of influence, including
Spain, were the maqāmā of the Jewish thinker Al-Harizi (thirteenth cen-
tury). The influence of maqāmā exemplified a literary form that could tran-
scend language and religion and succeed in several cultures for centuries.44
The maqāmā genre was also adopted in Hebrew. The later Hebrew
maqāmāt made more significant departures, structurally and stylistically,
from the classical Arabic maqāmāt of Al-Hamadhānī and Al-Harīrī. Joseph
ibn Zabara (end of 12th–beginning of 13th centuries A.D.), a resident of
Barcelona and a Catalan speaker, wrote the Sēfer sha‘ashū‘īm (The Book
of Delights), in which the author, the narrator, and the protagonist are all
Ibn Zabara himself, and in which the episodes are arranged in linear, not
cyclical, fashion, in a way that anticipates the structure of Spanish pica-
resque novels such as the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes (1535) and
Guzmán de Alfarache (1599) by Mateo Alemán.
Arabic music has the ability to uplift listeners from their current state
and take them somewhere else on an emotional journey. You can easily
find all forms and degrees of tarab in all genres and forms of Arabic music.
Each one would have a unique characteristic style, sound, and feel. How-
ever, out of all the styles, in my opinion Classical Arabic music, or what
is also called Tarab music (both old and new) allows one to experience
tarab at its finest. Those who want to understand Arabic music on a deeper
level must first understand the concept of tarab. The way that tarab is
expressed in Arabic music is what separates it from many different cultures

that share a similar concept in their music. This makes it an intriguing art
form that is starting to attract many ears in the West.
Like Western classical music, the most important influence of Arabic
music upon literatures of non–Arabic language is much more than its emo-
tional appeal. It is the historical association or even obsession with words
which inspired the long-time interaction and mutual influence between
words and music. This close relationship between words made it possible
for literary expressions to constantly adopt and assimilate musical forms
of expression. Literature attempted to be as expressive, individualistic, and
emotionally effective as music, yet was more precise and terse in its exe-
cution. This association also elevated literary expression from merely a
pursuit of meaning, precision, and definition to a rhetorical form and elo-
quence through which meanings were conveyed and suggested.
In world history, only a few musical traditions evolved into maturity
that could exercise cross-lingual influence upon the music and literature
of other languages and extend their influence beyond religious ritual. Arabic
was one of those languages. To illustrate how and why it happened to Ara-
bic rather than Hebrew or Latin, one has to understand the distinct char-
acteristics of Arabic maqam in comparison to Hebrew and Latin cantillation
and the way cantillation was codified and transplanted.
Hebrew ritual chanting had a longer history and deeper roots than that
of Arabic. Cantillation signs guide the reader in applying a chant to biblical
readings. This chant is technically regarded as a ritualized form of speech
intonation rather than as a musical exercise (like the singing of metrical
hymns). For this reason, Jews always speak of saying or reading a passage
rather than of singing it. (In Yiddish the word is leynen, “read,” derived
from Latin legere, giving rise to the Jewish-English verb “to leyn.”)
The musical value of cantillation signs serves the same function for
Jews worldwide, but the specific tunes vary between different communities.
The most common tunes are cantillation signs that guide the reader in
applying a chant to biblical readings. The most common tunes were Ashke-
nazic melodies from central and Western Europe (the most common tunes
both in Israel and the diaspora), the Jerusalem Sephardic melodies (with
relations such as Greek/Turkish/Balkan, Syrian and Egyptian melodies),
Yemenite melodies, and two Iraqi melodies.45 However, unlike the Arabic
tradition in which Qur’anic text was marked for reading and recitation, the
diversity of biblical cantillation became codified music in which the Bible
could be recited and chanted. However, in biblical chanting of the Baby-
lonian period, Hebrew was marked according to grammar and syntax rather
than musical tune.
Maqam flourished in North Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe,

and central Asia with hundreds of variations geared to its native and local
languages and dialects. Music, rather than cantillation melody, became a
universal medium because it was free from an entanglement with words.
A similar revolution took place in early modern Europe when Christian
musical ritual dissyndicated and inspired (separately) a musical tradition
and an array of vernaculars in Europe.
To illustrate the historical consequence of the association of music
and literature in Arabic and its defining influence on the development and
maturity of other languages is to observe what has happened to contem-
porary music and literature in the West after centuries under the influence
of classical music. Classical music did not stop at an accumulated repertoire
of compositions and masterpieces of performance similar to the melodic
repertoire of Hebrew music in various Jewish communities of the world.
Rather, it inspired and generated the emergence of a modern music that
established a variety of relationships with modern languages in Europe.
The separation between music and words provided a cultural revolu-
tion that made it possible to transplant forms of expression beyond lan-
guage, similar to the revolution of late Medieval Europe when Latin
produced and inspired several European vernacular cultures. The same
process had taken place in the Middle East and Islamic countries in south
Asia.
Conclusions
Literary Arabic evolved within the context of interaction with non-
literary expressions, such as oral language and music. As oral poetry
migrated to prose writing, this substantially widened the vision of Arabic
and made it possible to tell stories, deliver arguments, express opinions,
and eventually to create a world that was depicted in detailed images,
organized in specific sequences, and explained in profound logic. Thus,
the Qur’an, the first prose writing in Arabic, initiated much more than a
religious belief or worldview; it opened the minds and eyes of the Muslim
community and provided it with the ability to explore, to create, and to
communicate with other linguistic communities.
What distinguished Arabic scholars from those of other ancient tra-
ditions was their ability to outgrow exegete tradition and textual interpre-
tation, and expand linguistic study as a part of literary development. This
linguistic dimension kept Arabic standing fast on the ground as its poetic
imagination and abstract reasoning soared with literary creation. As a result,
Arabic civilization spread into the world at large, not simply as literary or
religious tradition as did the Latin and Hebrew texts, but also as living
utterance, rhythmic sound and cultural performance.
The interaction between literary language and music was a constant
dynamic driving the growth and maturity of both music and literature. As
musical language matured through composition, recitation, and improvi-
sation, literature followed a similar evolutionary path. Arabic poetry came
to express more individualistic and intimate feelings and to present more
personal visions and voices. With an inherited, exceptional intimacy with
words, Arabic music traveled further than the Arabic language itself. Words,
tones, and rhymes were carried by a rhythm shared by music and poetry
that could be comprehended by different languages, recited in different
songs, and performed as different cultural rituals.
PART TWO
The Formation
of Arabic Imagery
Part Two describes the formation, transformation, accumulation and

refinement of imagery in Arabic literature. The emergence of Arabic prose
marked a new beginning for Arabic literature and Islam provided the
ancient Arabic poetry a new voice to sing, new subjects to envisage, and
a new devotional life to cultivate. As post-Islamic Arabic vision expanded
rapidly with its new religious beliefs and growing vocabularies, its imagery
enlarged and it became more varied, precise, and abstract during the clas-
sical period. When these fresh images were rendered in the established
rhythm of pre-Islamic poetry and articulated in spoken language, they
became easily adopted into prose writing. A brand new literary world
emerged.
Arabic images that had never been restrained by the vision of the
naked eye or limited by philosophy quickly overrode the moral boundaries
and closed the gap between God and world and between God and believers.
Unlike the early Latin literature where Christian imagination had to accu-
mulate images from scratch and meditate in words alone, the Arabic sense
of visual distinction quickly transformed into abstract art forms. It became
a pattern of shapes and colors, a pure form of beauty without any concrete
figuration. It took several centuries for this broad vision to refocus and fill
with detailed imageries that were fluid enough to adapt with changing
moods. As imagery acquired more individual variations, the world and
God became personal and intimate again to the creative mind.
The best example of this personal and intimate relationship between
poet, world and God can be found in Sufi poetic tradition. Sufi poetry cul-
tivated a richly textured vocabulary in Arabic and provided the needed
template for the language of the individual soul. This vocabulary created
a loving world that no longer needed a concrete image of the relationship
113
114 Part Two: The Formation of Arabic Imagery
between man and God. A love for God and also for one’s self juxtaposed
into a unified imagery. Sufi images are famous for conveying various levels
of meaning. With these interlinked images and connotations, the line
between real and unreal, lyrical and mystical, emotional and intellectual,
divine and human, natural and supernatural quickly disappeared. In that
world, words could signify a lover courting a beloved, a politician address-
ing his devoted followers, and a believer receiving spiritual wisdom.
Modern Arabic poetry portrays a world of words that change color,
shape, and mood according to the feelings of its creator. In contemporary
poetry, the richly textured and inclusive language of love has substantially
widened from that of Sufi poetic tradition. The subject of love expanded
into an increasingly broader horizon, to encompass a nation or a world.
Love is mystical, but at the same time very personal and sensual. In this
new linguistic context, everyday images such as a woman who enters my
life like a dagger, the eyes of a rabbit and innocent as children’s bibs carry
the centuries old tradition of Arabic love poetry, updated with modern
experience, and echo the rhythm, intonation, and idioms of everyday lan-
guage.
CHAPTER 4
Imagery of the World:

Poetry and Prose
This chapter depicts the expansion and transformation of Arabic

imagery from pre–Islamic poetry, Qur’anic prose, to classical literature. It
focuses on how the scope of this repertoire of images evolved through the
creativity of Arab and non–Arab writers. It illustrates how the mature and
complex pre–Islamic language of poetry expanded in reaction to its ever-
changing environment and new challenges, and how this expansion
enriched the newborn Arabic literature. After centuries of accumulation
and distillation until the rise of Islam, Arabic poetry had become too sym-
bolic, terse and narrow for an urban and international civilization. The
imaginative horizon of pre–Islamic Arabic was very limited; its repertoire
of vocabulary was suggestive, ambiguous and pregnant with overlapping
levels of meanings. Most important of all, the poetic form was compacted
and refined to the point that it restrained imagination. Emotional expression
was tightly locked by worn-out symbols and allusions, and poetry was
gradually losing its vitality and flexibility. Arabic language not only needed
to revitalize its poetry, but also had to invent more varied forms of expres-
sion.
Prose writing introduced more precise and clear images and expanded
the descriptive horizons of the Arabic language. Post-Islamic Arabic also
reconstructed the Muslim community according to a simplified division
between believers and non-believers. It was a community where one’s
pious virtue (the relationship with God) and social behavior were regulated
by Islamic law. As the Muslim community expanded into more diverse
ethnical and cultural territories the law had to be constantly redefined,
codified and interpreted. The language of law rapidly cultivated levels of
meanings and connotations as legal scholarship evolved and judicial insti-
tutions established. The accumulation and enrichment of literary Arabic
115
also paved the way for the development of science and philosophy. It forced
the emerging Arabic civilization to grow and mature at an unprecedented
speed until it became the most advanced civilization in the medieval world.
The imagery of pre- and early Islamic Arabic painted a world narrow
in scope yet refined in expression. Like the Chinese poetry of late medieval
period (Song Dynasty), the number of subjects that were described in the
Arabic poetry shrank while their portrayal expanded with variety and
details. The emotional engagement deepened and became more subtle.
Arab poets gave more attention to describing and provoking a certain mood
with verbal eloquence rather than specific narrative. They produced a
focused poetry with distinct vocabulary and brief ideas in their loosely
connected verses. The seemingly simple imagery (such as a ruin that
reminded the poet of his beloved) had layers of meaning that activated a
sensibility of vision, touch and smell in the minds of readers.1
Qasida, the most important poetic form of pre–Islamic poetry, often
began with a scene of an abandoned campsite: charred firewood, blackened
hearthstones, shards of pottery, shreds of wool, camel dung, traces in the
sand from rain trenches and tent pegs. It was a ruin (atlal) left by the tribe
(often that of the poet’s beloved) that reminded the poet of his past emo-
tional loss. These were silent scenes that inspired anguished riffs on love
and sorrow. The visual prelude served as an emotional background from
which poetry would emerge and express an emotional release. The poet
who created the intended mood hoped to invoke a demand for release and
designed response from his reader and audience.
With familiar visual cues, the poems were highly personal as remem-
brance took different forms and created different images. For instance, the
sleepless night reminded the poet of his happy moment with his lost love.
The ruffled beds evoked the memory of her changing mood and affection;
her absence evoked the scene of her departure with her tribal mates in their
richly embroidered camel litters; the sorrowful moaning of the dove echoed
the hoariness of glances back at lost youth. These themes and sub-themes
recurred from poem to poem with slight variants and ritual solemnity. How-
ever, each required a new configuration according to a subtle and newly
discovered logic of sorrow. Each new realization of loss generated a new
poem with its own circumstance, undertone, and personality.
Minute distinctions were conveyed in every different descriptive
image, seemingly isolated and yet recollected and chained into a necklace
of similes. The beloved’s mouth could be compared to wine as fresh as the
cold stream, her eyes to the eyes of white onyx, and her grace to that of a
gazelle. The evoked images of spring rain, running streams, flowering
meadows, and desert animals nursing in idyllic tranquility were overrun
4. Imagery of the World 117
by the flow of emotion that changed constantly but refused to be pinned

down. All of these mental images and fluid emotions were set to contrast
a backdrop of the dry, empty and silent desert. With his beloved gone, the
poet was left by himself. He was alone on a journey marked by swarming
locusts in the heat, the death call of an owl at night, the wasting away of
a camel, and the disorientation and terror of a mirage. As night fell, the
solitary rider’s image was enveloped by darkness.
The final movement of qasida often took the form of a wine song
wherein the writer moved away from his lonely journey to boast of a more
settled state of mind. A singing girl was presented as consolation for the
lost love. The more wine the poet consumed, the more he could proclaim
how well he had gotten over his past loss and the more he proclaimed, the
more he believed himself. This bacchic antinomy was at the heart of the
poem. However, much of the nasib was now only remembrance, and denial
haunted the poem.2
Naqa (female camel) sacrifice often was the dramatic center of the
movement of boasting. The naqa, as distinct from its more cumbersome
male counterpart, was prized in Bedouin society for its versatility. It was
swift and it provided sweet milk. Bedouin mothers often washed their
infants in its urine. It was even an object of ritual sacrifice. Should it outlive
its owner, the naqa was tethered to his tomb and left to die. Hence in
Labid’s Mu’allaqa we read, “To the shelter of my tent-ropes comes every
forewearied woman / starved as a tomb-tethered camel, her garments tat-
tered and shrunk.” Precisely because of naqa’s symbolic role in the life of
the tribe, its proper name was rarely used in the pre–Islamic poetry, but it
appeared steadily as with the poet’s horse (or faras), as a wide array of
connotative epithets and synonyms.
In the naqa-sacrifice scene, which usually occurs toward the end of
the rahil (journey) section, the animal was offered up not to any god or
spirit but rather to the tribe itself, as a token of cohesiveness and plenitude.
Labid (560–661), perhaps the gentlest and most prudent of the pre–Islamic
poets, pledged meat to the poor. Imru al-Qays (526–565?) was irreverently
playful as he turned the scene into a titillating game of catch as the meat
was tossed about by young girls. On the other hand, Tarafa (543–569), the
most rascally of the seven pre–Islamic poets, did not sacrifice his own
camel but that of an “old stick man,” and thereby incurred the wrath of the
tribe. It appeared to be a “sacrifice gone wrong,” and Tarafa’s ensuing
boast was tinged with the anxiety of being misrepresented, and of having
his reputation tarnished: “Don’t make me a man / whose resolve wasn’t
my own / who could never replace me / or cast my shadow.”
The exchanging of boasts and taunts between opposing tribes reflected
an ironically common meditation upon the fate and absurdity of humanity

and the personal struggles with in tribal society. Beyond the seemingly
agitated antagonism there was suspicion that both war and required tribal
loyalty were nothing personal at all but rather events guided and predeter-
mined by fate. Fate determined everyone’s allotted timing to fight, win,
lose and die. As the battle boast intensified, the hierarchy of tribal society
and its moral of vengeance began to unravel within. At the moment of
death, the poet/warrior looked into the eyes of his slain enemy, where he
saw his own reflection.3
Among the pre–Islamic poets, Zuhair (520–609) perhaps was the best
at presenting muruwwa (manliness). Meticulous, clear-voiced, terse, and
the most sententious of the seven poets, Zuhair was also called Abid al-
Shi’r (the slave to poetry). He wrote his great qasida after the cessation
of war between the tribes of Abs and Dhubyan (believed to have lasted
forty years). As a spokesman for the tribe of Ghatafan, he praised the peace-
makers, Harim and Al-Harith. He described the ritual circling of the Ka’ba
and the swearing of the oath “by the Holy House about which circumam-
bulate / men of Koraish and Jurhum.” He spoke strongly against the horrors
of war, and offered a series of gnomic sayings with balanced and languid
movements. Those who keep their promise escape blame, while those who
direct their hearts to the calm resting-place of integrity will never stammer
in the assemblies of his nation. Those who tremble at all possible causes
of death, fall in their way; even though they desired to mount the skies on
a scaling-ladder. Those, who continually debase their minds by suffering
others to ride over it, and never raise it from so abject a state, will at last
repent of their meanness.
Committed to an ethos of tribal survival and moral rectitude, the pre–
Islamic poets used qasida for celebrate the delicate social fabric of nomadic
life. This might explain the darker and more transgressive side of the pre–
Islamic poetry. Time and again, particularly in the rahil, the poet/warrior
presented himself not only as a clan leader but also as a rebel and trouble-
maker, a reviler, a man on the run or companion to a band of outlaws.
When deviance dominated the qasida, we have a su‘luk (sa’alik) (brigand)
poem. In fact, the very vitality of the qasida lies in its incorporation of
gangster-like elements. A good example is the life and poetry of Imru al-
Qays. He was banished by his royal family for composing verses and lived
as a poor fugitive for most of his life. His night journey, “wolf scene,” and
description of bedding another man’s wife portrayed the life of an ancient
version of the modern Bohemian poet of the age of rebellions.4
Regardless of its rebellious spirit, a profound fatalism lied at the heart
of the qasida, while the poet’s bravado was asserted more often than not
while facing death. The poetic boast was a testament to the glorification
of the poet-hero, who would conclude his poem by boasting of his lyric
and martial prowess. At the end, the poetic memory expressed a personal
confession as well as a tribal mythopoeia. Unlike modern poetry, in which
oppositions often battle one another, the qasida’s fluidity allowed for both
an individual and a collective voice to be heard. Like in Labid’s poetry,
personal bragging was juxtaposed with extravagant praise of the clan.
Islamic expansion substantially widened the worldview of the Arabs,
and extended both vertically, like an artist accustomed to painting minia-
tures given a canvas as large as the eyes could see. In this much grander
world, the story of man became more than a history of one hero, one’s
ancestors, a tribe or the entire desert community. It expanded into the his-
tory of man (the human race) as created by God. Therefore, poetry and its
poets needed more vocabulary, language skills, and thus were required to
play a more significant role. He was no longer the chief speaker of his
nomad life, noble representative of his culture, and defender of his justice.
He was obliged to defend God, his creator, His divine kingdom on the
earth, and justice for the entire universe. Under this heavy obligation, the
ancient language of poetry appeared to be extremely inadequate, and its
vocabulary was too limited. Arabic language needed new vocabularies to
cultivate worldview and new images to portray an ideal vision. It needed
a new kind of writing to serve its new God.
The emergence of prose writing rescued poetic language that had,
through its long accumulation and elaboration, become stale to the point
where imagery and meaning were distilled into fixed associations which
imprisoned each other. The language of the Qur’an not only brought an
abundance of new words and new images into Arabic, but also re-envisaged
the pre–Islamic world, assisting the old language to serve a completely
different conceptual purpose. An example of this drastic change in literary
imagery was the vivid depiction in the Qur’an in verse 31 of Surat 22 (Hajj):
Being true in faith to God, and never assigning partners to Him. If anyone dares
to assign partners to God, he would fall from the heaven and be snatched up by
birds. As if the wind has swooped (like a bird on its prey) and thrown him into a
far away place [The English translation is retrieved from Qur’an Online Project
with minor change of wording].
This surat illustrates what would happen to a man if he fell from the wor-
ship of the One and True God. He would fall from heaven and halfway
down be picked up by birds of prey. A fierce blast of wind, the Wrath of
God, would come and snatch him away, and then throw him to a place far,
far away from any place he could imagined, the hell of those who dared
to defy God.
This vivid and terrifying imagery was well-established and articulated

in pre–Islamic poetry. The word tayr (vultures) was used by Imru’ al-Qays
to describe what had happened to his tribesmen. They were slaughtered as
the carrion birds and vultures gathered, to wait their turns to tear away
their eyes and brows. “Their dirty heads were drenched in their own
blood.”5 A similar violent death was also envisaged by ‘Antara (525–608)
as “I left him (my intimate companion) with carrion and vultures circling
over” him “like maidens rallying to escort the bride to her chamber.” But
they would be held up from “dining on his flesh, by a hand or leg that
stirred with life!” The carrion birds and vultures following and hovering
overhead marching troops, hoping to feast on the bodies of fallen warriors,
was a common image in battle scenes of pre–Islamic poetry. Nabighah
(535–604) provided one of the most vivid images: a “group of carrion
birds and vultures hover over the troops,” thirsting for their blood. They
were sitting behind the hosts “waiting with greedy eyes” like “old men
squatting in black garments.”6
This was a typical way for Arabic prose to rework the imagery and
connotations of pre–Islamic poetry. The expression khatf al-tayr clearly
meant violent death. However, death now had different associations other
than a physical condition in which someone was left to be eaten alive after
war. The Qur’an described the fate of the people who shirked in their
respect to God: as if they had fallen from the sky to the ground, died, and
become the prey of vultures. Therefore, imagery of violent death became
associated with religious belief after disassociation from tribal war. The
short expression fa takhtafuhu ‘t-tayr did not need to explicitly mention
death and falling, because it was used as a catchword to activate an image
already stored in the memory of Arabs. Then a reference to any part of that
image would bring the entire scene to the mind of listeners and readers,
allowing the author to leave unmentioned some of its elements and leave
its completion to the listener’s imagination.
Brevity of expression depends on the actual capacities of a language
and its inventory of catch phrases. Here the connotations of words and
expressions merge and convey meanings not made explicit, or, to be more
precise, they convey the contextual situation. This is the very heart of
brevity, and it is identical to literary eloquence (al-ijaz huwa al-balaghah).
The Qur’anic succinctness of expression rests on the actual possibilities
of the Arabic language, and prose simply extends the link between words
and imagery that are inherited in the minds of Arabic speakers since the
pre–Islamic period.
The Qur’an has made remarkable contributions to the structure and
style of the Arabic language, and it substantially enriched the repertoire
of Arabic images by using abundant figures of speech in place of simple

words. Arabic poetry allowed the Arabic language to sing to please the
ears. Qur’anic prose allowed Arabic to paint and to please the eyes. With
extensive use of illustrations, imagery, and metaphor it added beauty, life,
and color to plain words of the newborn literature. The preference for
figures of speech over plain words, a general trend that permeates the entire
Qur’anic text, can be demonstrated in the following passages. This is the
typical way in which the Qur’an illustrated the different fortunes of the
believer and non-believer at the divine judgment: heaven and hell.
To those who reject Our signs and treat them with arrogance, the gates of
heaven will not open, nor will they enter the garden, unless the camel can pass
through the eye of the needle. This is Our reward for those who have sinned.
For them there is Hell, as a couch [below] and folds and folds of covering
above: this is Our requital of those who do wrong.
But those who believe and do right, no burden do We place on any soul, but
that which it can bear, they will be Companions of the Garden, where they will
dwell [for ever].
And we shall remove any lurking sense of injury [pain of past life and its
painful memory], from their hearts and rivers shall flow beneath them. They shall
say: “Praise be to God, who hath guided us to this [felicity]: never could we have
found guidance, had it not been for the guidance of God. Indeed it was the truth,
that the messengers of our Lord brought unto us.” And they shall hear the cry:
“Behold! The garden before you! Ye have inherit its [heaven], for your deeds [of
righteousness].”7
There were many more figurative narratives to illustrate the same idea
of distinct retribution according to moral righteousness:
The parable of those who reject their Lord is that their works are as ashes on
which the wind blows furiously as on a tempestuous day [14: 18].
The lightness and un-substantiality of the ungodly doing is described as
ashes, useless rubbish that remains out of the faculties and opportunities
that they have misused (by burning them up). The ashes blown about by
the wind are envisioned as ungodly works that have no compass, direction,
or purpose. The wind that blows the ashes is not ordinary wind. It is the
Wrath of God, a furious gale blowing things that have neither internal
peace nor external gain. In the scattering of the ashes they lose control
even of such things as they might have earned but for their misdeeds. Their
whole nature is contaminated. All their wishes go astray. They are carried
far, far away from what was on their minds. What did they aim at, and
what did they achieve?8
The spirit and wisdom of the Qur’an have never been abstract, and
were always argued and affirmed with vivid imagery. The Qur’an likens
those who worship gods other than Allah to spiders building a web, the
spider’s house, the flimsiest of houses (29: 41). The horrors of Doomsday
are envisioned as the day when every nursing mother will forget her suck-
ling-babe, and every pregnant woman will deliver her load. All of mankind
is in a drunken riot without drinking (22: 2).
The anthropomorphic style breathes life into every one of the simplest
natural phenomena. Dawn is breathing away the darkness (78: 10); the
night conceals the sun and veils the day. The wind fecundates and makes
the rain fall (15: 22). The sea is likened to ink that, if used and wasted, will
not suffice to write the words of God:
If the ocean were ink with which to write out the words of my Lord, sooner
would the ocean be exhausted, even if we added another ocean like it [18: 109].
If slander is eating another person’s flesh, don’t speak ill of each other behind
their backs, you wouldn’t like to eat the flesh of his dead brother, would you? [49:
12].
Qur’anic imagery became a rich source for allusion and citation by

writers for generations. When the caliph-poet Ibn al-Mu’tazz (d. 908) wrote
his Kitab al-badf (Book of Figures of Speech) with the purpose of codifying
poetic devices, the Qur’an was a principal source for examples of imagery.
Qur’anic imagery and allusion appeared not only in religious genres such
as poems of asceticism (zuhdiyyah) and the inspirational odes of Sufis, but
also in the more overtly political poetry, such the odes in praise of the
caliphs and their entourages. The quest for forgiveness and the depiction
of paradise provide thematic links between the message of the Qur’an and
the tradition of love poetry (ghazal) that emerged as an independent genre
in the early decades of Islam. Early Islamic poets adopted the stock images
of love poetry and of wine poetry to provide a symbolic representation of
the believer’s aspiration for closer contact with the Almighty.9
The first human images that Islamic Arabic invented were of the
Prophet Muhammad and his community, the Muslims. The revelations of
God to Muhammad included a number of different narratives. Some, par-
ticularly during the Meccan period, included many rhyming passages
replete with colorful imagery that was frequently confused with the dis-
course used by soothsayers and other popular preachers. The recording of
the revelations in textual form marked the beginning of a lengthy and elab-
orate process whereby such a huge amount of information was preserved,
sifted, and studied. Among categories of text recorded in this way were
some of the earliest samples of Arabic prose.
The oldest and most basic mode by which information was transferred
was known in Arabic as the khabar (pl. akhabar). The distinct characteristic
of akhbar from the earliest times was that they announce clearly their status
as narratives by recording in detail the series of sources through whose
mediation the information has become available, working back from the
present into the past and finally to the alleged point of origin. This structure
(known in Arabic as the isnad, “chain of authorities,” took a form similar
to the following: “X told me that he had heard Y telling a story that he had
heard from Z, to the effect that he had been present when the following
occurrence happened....” The actual account that follows the chain of
authorities is termed the matn (“the report itself”). The placing of such
information regarding the narrative act and its sources at the beginning
of the report is characteristic of a large number of narrative genres in Ara-
bic.
A series of accounts, as much a mirror of the intertribal rivalries of
the early stages in the development of the Muslim community as they are
a reflection of the spirit of the pre–Islamic era itself, are the akhbar known
collectively as the ayyam al-’arab. These are narratives of the wars and
battles in pre–Islamic times when the fighting men of the clan avenged
wrongs and resolved their conflicts with other tribes. The War of Basus,
for example, set in an atmosphere fraught with tribal rivalries and family
tensions, began with the slaying of a prized she-camel and degenerated
into a prolonged period of intertribal strife.
Another characteristic mode of expression from the pre–Islamic period
was the rhyming utterances of the soothsayers, with terse phraseology and
prolific use of parallelism and colorful imagery. This particular style of
composition and delivery is found not only in the sura (chapters) of the
Qur’an but also in a variety of examples of composition from early Islamic
history. There were testaments (wasaya), proverbs, sermons, and orations
(khutab). Along with the extant examples of early legal texts, treaties, and
the beginnings of official chancery documents, they form part of the
recorded legacy of the early period in the development of the Muslim com-
munity in the seventh century.
When the third caliph, ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan (r. 644–656), declared a
single version of the revelations to Muhammad to be the only authorized
Qur’an, he may have resolved the issue of the canon of the central source
of divine guidance for his community, but there remained numerous other
areas of conduct and belief on which the Qur’an was silent. Faced with
these many situations, the community resorted to reports on what the
Prophet had said and done. By the end of the seventh century it was clear
that, in order to disambiguate the sources for the code of belief and behavior
for the Muslim community in a number of areas, it was necessary to make
a record of the statements and actions of Muhammad during his lifetime.
The movement thus set in motion provided Arabic literature with two
important types of text that were to have a significant influence on the
development of a tradition of prose discourse: the Hadith, a report of a
statement by Muhammad on a particular issue or occasion, and the Sirah,

the record of the Prophet’s life.
When the collection of accounts concerning the life and conduct of
the Prophet was organized into a hierarchy, the isnad segment of each
account (described above) now assumed an increased significance. It pro-
vided religious scholars with the evidence needed to check the authenticity
of a report. The Hadith accounts themselves vary widely in both length
and degree of elaboration. Among the lengthier ones were those that elab-
orated on references found in the Qur’an. The slander Hadith (hadith al-
ifk), for example, provided considerable detail on the incident in which the
Prophet’s wife, ‘Ahah, the daughter of Abu Bakr (later to become the first
caliph), was slandered. The account dwelled on her emotions as the events
unfold and on the tensions that inevitably arose between Muhammad and
his loyal companion until the entire issue was resolved.
The process of compiling the vast collection of reports that make up
the Hadith collections (the second major source on matters of doctrine and
behavior, after the Qur’an itself) occurred in several stages, each employing
different principles. The first stage (at the end of the seventh century)
involved the collection of materials preserved by companions and followers
of the Prophet (named Suhuf, sing. Sahfahi). By the mid–eighth century,
collections were being organized by category (musannaf ). The best-known
example is Al-Muwatta’ by Mālik ibn Anas (d. 770), the founder of one of
the four major schools of Islamic law. However, this mode of compiling
such a large corpus of materials did not address the increasing problem
regarding Hadith of dubious authenticity. By the end of the eighth century,
scholars were beginning to pay closer attention to the issues raised by the
isnad: the type of compilations that they produced, and arranged according
to the names of the Prophet’s companions (who served as the source of the
account), was termed musnad (from the same verbal root as isnad). One
of the most famous examples of this kind of Hadith collection is from
another founder of a school of law, Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855), whose Al-
Musnad consists of some 30,000 Hadith. By the ninth century, the science
of Hadith scholarship had refined a critical process that permitted the com-
pilation of the two most famous collections, those of Al-Bukhari (d. 870)
and Muslim ibn al-HajJāj (d. 875). The combined collection of their works
called Al-Jami al-sahih (“authentic or correct collection”) was the Hadith
that conformed with criteria of the most authenticated reports.10
Accounts of Muhammad’s life were among the best Arabic writing
during the early Islamic period. Under the title Al-sirah al-nabawiyyah
(The Biography of the Prophet) numerous works were compiled. The most
famous work to appear under this title was that of Muhammad ibn Ishaq
(704–767?), as edited by Ibn Hisham (d. c. 833). The biography focused

on Muhammad’s life, with accounts of his contacts with family, compan-
ions, and adversaries, descriptions of battles and negotiations, and citations
of correspondence. The collections (and segments of larger works) com-
prised a mixture of anecdotes, battle narratives, miraculous tales, and
poetry. Also included were elaboration on incidents, tales concerning the
lives of prophets that were mentioned in the Qur’an, and discussion of the
genealogy of Arabian tribes.11
Arabic biography and history writing went far beyond the achievement
of Christian hagiography. Arab writers created a “scientific” foundation of
the religious history. In fact, from the “scientific” writing about Muham-
mad, a secular historiography emerged. The implication of this method
went far beyond any writer’s expectation. First, it cultivated an identity
based on religious belief by creating history for the Muslim community,
incorporating all Arabs, Bedouins, and Iranians into one large Muslim
community. Second, recording the words of God and his prophet estab-
lished a hierarchy of words whose authority and binding power were main-
tained by a legal system.
The writing of the life and teachings of Muhammad marked the begin-
ning of narrative tradition and history writing in the Arabic language. Ilm
ar-Rijal (“science of biography”) emerged and was applied to the codifi-
cation of the life of the prophet, Muhammad, and then to the lives of the
four Rightly Guided Caliphs. The writer had to search for isnad to validate
stories and events. Isnad originally meant support and referred to a list of
authorities upon which the narrative was based, and it traced the chain of
transmission that led to the written texts. It was like a medieval version of
the research footnotes of modern non-fiction writing. The researcher or
non-fiction writer had the obligation to look for reliable sources and sort
out facts from accusations and bias from evidence. The “science of Hadith”
was the process by which Muslim scholars evaluated the source and content
of Hadith, the second most important document of Islam. They classified
the source of Hadith into sahih (correct), Hasan (good) and da’if (weak)
and established the standard of integrity of the writings. This method later
applied to various kinds of research and writing and came to be called
“science of biography,” “science of hadith” and “Isnad” (chain of trans-
mission).12
History writing reached its greatest scholarly level in the hands of Ibn
Khaldun (1332–1406), who has been considered the forerunner of modern
historiography and sociology. The study of Ibn Khaldun’s life and the
chronology of his writings illustrate the steady widening of Arabic lan-
guage, perspective and worldview. He wrote his first book at the age of
nineteen. Lubabu l-Muhassal, a commentary on the Islamic theology of

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, was written under the supervision of his Tunisian
teacher. His book on Sufism, Sifa’u l-Sa’il, was written around 1373 in Fes,
Morocco. While at the court of Muhammad V, sultan of Granada, Ibn Khal-
dun composed a work on logic, ‘allaqa li-l-Sultan. So far, his writing
career did not show any difference from that of a traditional Muslim scholar
of his time. His writing on history started out as a history of Berbers with
a long title, Book of Lessons, Record of Beginnings and Events in the His-
tory of the Arabs and Berbers and Their Powerful Contemporaries. It con-
tained two volumes of detailed history of the Berber peoples and the
Maghreb based on his own research and observation. However, by the time
he completed the book, it became a “universal history,” which consisted
of seven volumes. The first volume, Muqaddimah (Introduction), was a
book of historiography. It can also read as a book of sociology as it deals
with politics, urban life, economics, and knowledge.
As he was writing himself out of the rigid domain of history (as past
facts), Ibn Khaldun went out on a tangent about some of his most original
observations about human conditions. ‘Asabiyyah was the new concept
that Ibn Khaldun coined to describe the group solidarity underlying social
and political behavior. He illustrated how kinship feelings, which could
be intensified and enlarged by a political and religious ideology, drove
social and political changes. This feeling of belonging could carry a social
group to power but also undermine it when this feeling of belonging shifted,
replacing an old establishment with a new group. Civilization rose and
declined in the same fashion, according to Ibn Khaldun. When a society
became a great civilization (the dominant culture in its region), its high
point was followed by a period of decay. This means that the next cohesive
group that conquered the diminished civilization was, by comparison, a
group of barbarians. Once the barbarians solidified their control over the
conquered society, they became attracted to the more refined aspects of
the conquered civilization, such as literacy and arts. They learned to appro-
priate such cultural practices and became assimilated by them. Eventually,
the former barbarians were conquered by a new set of barbarians, who
repeated the process.
Ibn Khaldun refined the scientific method of history writing several
centuries before the modern concept of historiography ever emerged, and
he also coined his specific terminology for this “new science” of history.
He was also the first scholar to articulate the role of the state and its politics
and ideologies in imposing bias upon historical writing. He was the first
scholar to recognize the historical distance between the time in which his-
tory occurred and the time in which it was written, and he proposed a
critical standing towards historical data. Based on this critical distance, he

promoted critical study of historical records and necessary rules for truth
comparison.13
However, to identify Ibn Khaldun’s idea of historiography as social
science is a mistake, as modern social science ignores the linguistic and
cultural distinctions between Arabic and English or German. The Arabic
concept of science, ‘alm, inherited different connotations from those of
modern sciences. First of all, Arabic science within the context of medieval
Islamic civilization was distinct but not contrary to religion. In Medieval
Arabic, history was a philosophical science, a method to study the past.
The distance that Ibn Khaldun created in Arabic was much narrower or
shallower than the gap that exists in German or English between history
(science) and religion, a conceptual gap that has existed in Western Europe
and North America since the Enlightenment. Ibn Khaldun’s science of his-
tory was more scientific only in comparison to the uncritical acceptance
of historical data when history was written and read. In other words, to
recognize the distance between culture and political conditions of history
as it occurred and the history that was being written did not lead to the
English concept of objectivity of modern social science. Ibn Khaldun rec-
ognized the limitations of historians without claiming universal validity
for his own words, as do the modern social sciences. Ibn Khaldun still
believed his God, while modern historians are playing God in the name of
“objectivity.”
What Ibn Khaldun proposed in his writing was to abstract rational
principles and underlying logic from historical phenomena. He did not
stop at knowing what had happened but was also interested in why it hap-
pened. Through comparison of data, he made original observations about
the historical role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic
bias. It can be regarded as the earliest attempt made by any historian to
discover a pattern in the changes that occur in man’s political and social
organization. Rational in its approach, analytical in its method, encyclo-
pedic in detail, it represented an almost complete departure from traditional
historiography, discarding conventional concepts and clichés and seeking,
beyond the mere chronicle of events, an explanation, and hence a philos-
ophy of history.14
Abstraction of language and deepening of observation and logical
thinking did not occur in history writing alone. It was more prominent in
the field of Islamic law and jurisprudence. Islamic law did not become a
legal system, in the modern sense of the word, until many years after
Muhammad’s death. Qur’anic messages that contained legal matters were
confusing and fragmentary at the best. Another reason why the Qur’an
alone could not be used as a code of law was that its language was too
terse and sometimes abrupt; it did not deliver a clear line of thought and
argument, a very important aspect of legal presentation.
Sharia (Islamic law) was gradually cultivated by the writings of
Islamic scholars during the early centuries of Islam. As divine expression,
the specific rulings of Sharia had to derive from the exact wordings of
either the Qur’an or the Hadith and constituted a system of duties that are
incumbent upon a Muslim by virtue of his religious belief. Islamic law
covered all aspects of life, from stately matters such as politics and foreign
relations to many issues of daily living. The Qur’an and Sunnah contained
laws of inheritance, marriage, and restitution for injuries and murder, and
defined punishments for five specific crimes: unlawful intercourse, false
accusation of unlawful intercourse, consumption of alcohol, theft, and
highway robbery. There were rules for fasting, charity, and prayer. How-
ever, these prescriptions and prohibitions were described in broad and gen-
eral terms, and when applied to specific legal cases, their precise wording
and lack of flexibility made it a challenge to adopt to practical variations.
Islamic scholars spent centuries to elaborate systems of law on the basis
of these rules and their interpretations.15
The consequence of centuries of scholarly writing in order to classify,
elaborate, and interpret Qur’anic rulings was legal Arabic, distinct from
the languages of poetry and prose. Clarity was the main achievement of
legal Arabic, which tightened conceptual boundaries between words and
their associations. It began with making necessary distinctions by defining
the exact meaning of a word, then safeguarding the boundary by excluding
the possibility of contamination and fluidity of meaning. To eliminate over-
lapping words, legal Arabic established conceptual boundaries and specific
relationships among similar words. To exclude verbal contradictions, it
built a hierarchy that granted certain words more arbitrary and overriding
capacity. With these changes, Islamic legal theorists took Islamic law from
a collection of sporadic rules found in religious texts to a coherent system
specific enough to draw judgment and flexible enough to adopt complex
legal practice. According to Islamic legal theory, law had four fundamental
roots which were given precedence in the following order: the Qur’an, the
Sunnah (the practice of Muhammad), the consensus of the Muslim jurists
(ijma), and analogical reasoning (qiyas).16
As the Qur’an and Hadith were silent about some important issues,
Muslim jurists (fuqaha) attempted to arrive at legal conclusions by other
means. For example, Sunni jurists accepted and used analogy (qiyas) and
historical consensus of the community (ijma) as rules of law. The rulings
that were produced through these additional methods constituted a wider
array of law than the Sharia, and they were called fiqh. Fiqh covered two
main areas, rules concerning actions (’amaliyya) and those concerning the
circumstances surrounding actions (wadia’). Unlike rulings of the Sharia,
fiqh was not regarded as sacred, and the schools of thought have different
views on its details, without viewing other conclusions as sacrilegious.
This division of interpretation in more detailed issues formed different
schools of legal thought (adh’hab). Each school had its distinct ideas and
interpretations of law and was further divided into several areas built into
another hierarchy according to degrees of certainty obligations (fardh),
recommendation (mustahabb), permissions (mubah), disrecommendation
(makrooh), and prohibition (haraam). The rules concerning the circum-
stances comprised: condition (shart), cause (sabab), preventer (mani), per-
mitted/enforced (rukhsah, azeemah), valid/corrupt/invalid (sahih, faasid,
batil) and on time/debt/repeat (adaa, qadaa, i’ada).
There were also different approaches to the methodology used in fiqh
to derive law from the Islamic sources. The main accepted Sunni schools
were Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’I, and Hanbali. The Shi’a fiqh was called Jafari
figh (also called the twelver), and there were many minor schools of law.
Each school of thought had its place in legal history because it contributed
to the general repertoire of legal language. Although the importance and
the degrees of influence of these ideas varied from time to time, the com-
bination (not exclusion) of these became the ultimate source of future
laws.17
As legal Arabic explored the principles of Islamic law, another branch
of Arabic began to explore the coherence and logic of the world and
beyond. The first Muslim scholar in this pursuit was Al-Kindi (801–873).
Unlike Islamic jurisprudence, which was deeply rooted in Arabic and pre–
Islamic customary law, Arabic philosophy had great input from Greek.
Arabic philosophy began with where Greek philosophers ended and went
far beyond. Al-Kindi’s first task was to oversee the translation of Greek
philosophical works into Arabic, a mission supported by the House of Wis-
dom, an institute of translation and learning patronized by the Abbasid
Caliphs. Through translation, he built a complete arsenal of philosophical
vocabulary by borrowing from the Greeks. This philosophical vocabulary
in standard Arabic was instrumental for the later development of Arab phi-
losophy without which the work of philosophers such as Al-Farabi, Avi-
cenna, and Al-Ghazali might not have been possible.18
Although Greek philosophical language provided clarity and precision
that formative Arabic needed, it was a struggle for Al-Kindi to reconcile
two different languages with various conceptual boundaries. Greek philo-
sophical terms were less fluid and tighter than those of Arabic, such as for
some crucial concepts of philosophy (reason, philosophy, and its relation-

ship with religion). Although his philosophy was not always original, and
was even considered clumsy by some, he successfully established a dia-
logue between two languages and philosophical traditions and incorporated
Aristotelian and neo–Platonist thought into an Islamic philosophical frame-
work. This dialogue continued for the next centuries between two distinct
philosophical traditions, until it became heated debate as they moved fur-
ther away from each other. However, Al-Kindi provided the linguistic
bridge that made the debate and controversy possible.19
When Arabic encountered Greek, it was possible to think as Al-Kindi,
who believed that prophecy and philosophy were two different paths to
truth. He described the difference between philosopher and prophet in an
interesting way. The philosopher had to endure a long period of training
and meditation to arrive at the truth in his own mind, while the prophet
had God to reveal the truth to him. Bestowed by God, divine prophecy was
more clear and comprehensive, so the prophet had a better ability to express
the truth to ordinary people than did the philosopher. Al-Kindi might sound
overly simplified and naïve to modern ears, but his writings reflected the
linguistic distinctiveness of Arabic and Greek of the ninth century. In Ara-
bic, universal truth (as perceived in philosophical Greek) was one and the
same as it was recorded in the Qur’an and Sunnah. At the time, Arabic had
yet to cultivate an abstract and specialized language for philosophers. So
knowledge and reasoning were called wisdom and could be taught and
conveyed to any who listened and read.20
This situation changed after the generation of Al-Kindi, when Arabic
developed its philosophical language based on the debate between Falsafa
(philosophy in Arabic) and Kalam (theological dialectic). They both cul-
tivated specialized language for philosophical and theological discourses,
as did the scholars of jurisprudence, who had their own language distinct
from that of legal practitioners. However, the language of early philoso-
phers laid a conceptual foundation upon which philosophy and theology
could interact, dispute and influence one another. For example, Al-Kindi
adopted a naturalistic view of prophetic vision, arguing that, through the
faculty of imagination as conceived in Aristotelian philosophy, certain pure
and well-prepared souls were able to receive information about future
events. He did not attribute such vision to revelation from God, but instead
explained that imagination enabled a man with a purified soul to receive
divine vision. Gray areas or inconsistencies such as this became the field
wherein constant philosophical debate in Arabic germinated, thus contin-
uing the effort of classification and clarification.
While Al-Kindi attempted to mediate Greek and Arabic philosophical
thinking, Al-Farabi (872–950) spent his life pursuing the unification of theory
and practice, and philosophy and religion. Despite his contribution to many
different philosophical disciplines and traditions, Al-Farabi was a more
coherent philosopher than Al-Kindi was. His great service to Islamic phi-
losophy was to continue Al-Kindi’s work and illustrate how Greek philos-
ophy could be adopted to answer questions that still puzzled Muslims. He
had the vision to realize that philosophy had ended in other parts of the world
but had a real chance for new life in Islam. He was a step ahead of Al-Kindi
in believing that the religion of Islam needed a philosophy because human
reason was superior to revelation. He had nothing against divine truth but
based his argument upon the various ways in which religion and philosophy
could both communicate truth. Religion provided truth in a symbolic form
to non-philosophers who were not able to comprehend pure philosophy.
Al-Farabi’s writing was mainly devoted to politics and state order.
Like Plato, he believed that a philosopher, the most perfect kind of man,
should rule the state, leaving God to rule the universe. He believed that
the contemporary political upheavals were due to the absence of a philoso-
pher leader. However, in contrast to Plato’s philosopher-king, he believed
that the best state should be ruled by the prophet-imam.21
By the time of Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037), philosophical Arabic
had evolved to a point where religion and philosophy could be combined
into a coherent and comprehensive system. The philosophy of Ibn Sina,
one of the most significant philosophers in the Islamic tradition and
arguably the most influential philosopher of the pre-modern world, created
a space for God in philosophy as the Necessary Existence. This argument
provided the foundation for his theories of soul, intellect and cosmos. He
was the first Islamic philosopher to refuse to apologize for his attempt to
forge peace between philosophy and religion. He rejected Neoplatonic
epistemology and the theory of pre-existent soul, although he adopted
some key aspects such as an emanationist cosmology. Avicennan meta-
physics became the foundation for discussions of Islamic philosophy and
philosophical theology.
Ibn Sina wrote extensively on early Islamic philosophy, especially
the subjects of logic, ethics, and metaphysics. Most of his works were writ-
ten in Arabic, the de facto scientific language of the time in the Middle
East, and some were written in the Persian. Ibn Sina’s commentaries often
corrected Aristotle, encouraging a lively debate in the spirit of ijtihad (per-
sonal effort to make decision). With Avicenna’s successful reconciliation
of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism along with Kalam, Avicennism even-
tually became the leading school of Islamic philosophy by the 12th century.
Ibn Sina became a dominant central authority on Islamic philosophy.22
His idea of the nature of the soul and the distinction between existence
and essence became very influential in medieval Europe because it was
the same issue that troubled Christian minds for centuries. Arabic was the
only language at the time that possessed the degree of maturity and subtlety
to construct a conceptual unity by leveling the gap between the divine and
the human. These were the same issues European scholars wrestled with
for centuries because of the linguistic re-orientations (Hebrew, Greek,
Latin, and European vernaculars). Ibn Sina’s psychology and theory of
knowledge influenced William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, and Albertus
Magnus, while his metaphysics had an impact on the thought of Thomas
Aquinas. However, his increasing influence appeared to be in modern times
when the West began to pursue the knowledge of human psychology.23
Linguistic subtlety eventually made it possible for Islamic philosophy
to surpass the Greek tradition of speculate thinking through the writings
of Al-Ghazali (1058–1111) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–1198). The Arabic
in which Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd wrote was different from that of Al-
Kindi and Al-Farabi, as Arabic concepts had completely replaced Greek
concepts and connotations in philosophical, scientific and legal writing.
Philosophical Arabic differed from philosophical Greek (and French, Ger-
man and English during the modern period) in the following ways. First,
it became a philosophical and scientific mode of expression, but was not
totally uprooted from concrete, metaphorical and poetic idioms. For exam-
ple, the language of philosophers had departed from literary and religious
expression, especially compared to that of Al-Kindi’s time. However, it
still shared many concepts and connotations with the language of religion
and poetry from which Arabic originally derived. Second, because of the
shared repertoire of verbal resources, religious, scientific, and philosophical
arguments often went back and forth among these disciplines without apol-
ogy. Third, Arabic, a mature and diverse literary tradition, had the capacity
to explore deeper human thoughts and emotions. This was not possible in
the languages of Western Europe until modern times. In this specific sense,
while the West discovered psychology in the early modern period, Arabic
had been depicting and exploring the inner being of humanity for cen-
turies.
The implication of these linguistic differences did not lead to the con-
struction of an Arabic philosophy distinct from Greek philosophy. Rather,
it became a discourse and ongoing debate among different schools of
thought in Arabic whose arguments, based on various shades of meaning
and connotations, derived from the Greek that had been constantly
redefined in Arabic. In other words, the Arabic discourse had less and less
to do with Greek philosophy than with the evolution of philosophical,
religious, and legal Arabic. Islamic philosophy had completely assimilated

Greek philosophy and integrated the latter into the Arabic discourse of
kalam and Islamic theology.24
Al-Ghazali’s book The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-
Falasifa) marked a major transition in Islamic philosophy, bringing to a
head the conflict between kalam (speculative theology) and falsafa (phi-
losophy). He condemned certain Arab philosophers who had been so
impressed by “high sounding names such as Socrates, Hippocrates, Plato,
Aristotle and their likes” that they became imitators of Greek philosophy.
Without thoughts of their own, these philosophers used Greek philosophy
to rationalize their disregard for the rituals and obligations of their Islamic
belief. Tahafut was to illustrate the incoherence of the philosopher’s beliefs
and the contradictions of their metaphysical statements.
However, Al-Ghazali’s discourse was not a philosophical one between
religion and natural philosophy as it was in Western Europe during early
modern period. The discourse in Arabic was about the definition of phi-
losophy and the connotation of God as pre-existing eternally. Arabic the-
ologians, even the most conservative, were not against science, because
the Arabic notion of philosophy included scientific principles, such as those
of mathematics, astronomical science and logic. In fact, Al-Ghazali, while
discussing astronomy, firmly expressed his support for a scientific method-
ology based on demonstration and mathematics. After describing the sci-
entific facts of the solar eclipse resulting from the Moon coming between
the Sun and Earth and the lunar eclipse resulting from the Earth coming
between the Sun and Moon, he wrote: “Whosoever thought that to engage
in a disputation for refuting such a [scientific] theory was a religious duty
would harm religion and weakens it. For these [scientific] matters that
were rested on demonstrations, geometrical and arithmetical, left no room
for doubt.” Therefore, in his mind, it was fatal for religion to fight against
science, and religion should leave experimental science alone.
His quarrel with philosophy was a philosophical statement in Arabic
that was contrary to Islamic doctrine as it claimed that the world was eternal
(as it went against God’s will and act of creation). He pointed out that
philosophers could not demonstrate the creation of the world by God, or
the spiritual substance of the human soul. In particular, he argued that
philosophers become infidels on three issues: the eternity of the world, the
impossibility of God’s knowledge of particulars, and the denial of bodily
resurrection and mortality of the individual souls. Al-Ghazali stressed the
fact that it was God who created the linkage among the phenomena. In
God there was an Essence (haqiqah), and this Essence was equivalent to
his Existence, namely that God was free from non-being and privation.
God was able to overturn the rules of natural eventualities and submitted
the functioning of nature to completely new laws.25
Al-Ghazali found his logical certainty in God; his opponent, Ibn
Rushd, found his in philosophy. Their discourse followed the traditional
Arabic method of debate by challenging and redefining the meanings of
the basic concepts in order to achieve logical consistency. Ibn Rushd’s
most important original philosophical work was The Incoherence of the
Incoherence (Tahafut al-tahafut), in which he defended Aristotelian phi-
losophy against Al-Ghazali’s claims in his The Incoherence of the Philoso-
phers (Tahafut al-falasifa). Al-Ghazali argued that Aristotelianism,
especially as presented in the writings of Ibn Sina, was self-contradictory
and an affront to the teachings of Islam. Ibn Rushd’s rebuttal was a two-
part argument. First, Ibn Sina’s interpretation of Aristotle departed from
the original meaning of the Greek philosophy, and therefore, second, Al-
Ghazali’s arguments were mistaken because he was aiming at the wrong
target.
Like most Arabic philosophers, Ibn Rushd’s works were spread over
20,000 pages covering a variety of different subjects, including early
Islamic philosophy, logic in philosophy, medicine, mathematics, astronomy,
Arabic grammar and Islamic theology, law, and jurisprudence. He wrote
commentaries on most of the surviving works of Aristotle; however, these
were based not on Greek originals, but rather on Arabic translations. This
could be the reason for Ibn Rushd’s free reinterpretation of many Aristotle
ideas: he was not restrained by the boundaries of the Greek originals. He
offered some new interpretations of philosophy, law and physics. He turned
Aristotelian ideas into an Arabic enterprise. Ibn Rushd completely redefined
Aristotle’s philosophy by making him speak Arabic. Like Al-Ghazali, who
forced philosophers admit that their concept of God was contrary to that
of Islam, Ibn Rushd reinterpreted Aristotle by putting his own words into
Aristotle’s mouth. For Arab philosophers, agreement and disagreement
were employed in philosophical discourse to create intriguing works of
language.26
The debate between Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd happened to take place
during the last few generations before philosophy as a discipline completely
disappeared from Islamic discourse. The fact that Al-Ghazali’s ideas
became the mainstream for Islamic theology while philosophy declined
used to be interpreted as the victory of religion (of Islam) over Greek or
Western philosophy. In fact, the victory of Islam lies in Arabic literary lan-
guage, which had the capacity to assimilate Greek philosophical terms and
integrated them into Arabic rational thinking. Religious thought became
rationalized and philosophized. This process of assimilation was quite
similar to Latin philosophy during the later Middle Ages, when philosophy
could not be distinguished from Christian theology. By the same token,
modern Islamic philosophy never evolved into an independent thought
(without the entanglement with religion or politics), contrary to the rela-
tively clear divisions between religion and philosophy, religion and science
in Western Europe.27
The distinct path through which Islamic thinking traveled was deter-
mined by its medium, literary Arabic, which carried a religious evolution
and scientific revolution without the linguistic reorientation that occurred
in Western Europe. During linguistic reorientation, religion used its own
language (Latin) for centuries. The languages of science and religion were
influenced by many vernaculars throughout Europe. Without the re-orien-
tation, Arabic speculative thinking evolved sharing a common repertoire
of words and basic assumptions with traditional religious thought. Emerg-
ing as a branch of theology, rationalism in many ways could not separate
itself or make a clean break from the mainstream theology.
The rationalization of Islamic thought began before the introduction
of Greek philosophical terms and ideas. As the rationalization of ideas
often came after verbal classification, the development of Islamic philos-
ophy was well underway when Greek philosophy began to be translated.
Greek input accelerated (rather than caused) the existing rational tendency
in Islam. The first systematic attempt to build a rational foundation of Islam
was made by the Mu’tazilah school, a speculative theology that emerged
during Umayyad and flourished in the cities of Basra and Baghdad during
the 8th to 10th centuries. The adherents of the Mu’tazili school are best
known for their assertion that, because of the perfect unity and eternal
nature of Allah, the Qur’an must therefore have been created, as it could
not be co-eternal with God. From this premise, the Mu’tazili school of
Kalam proceeded to posit that the injunctions of God were accessible to
rational thought and inquiry because knowledge was derived from reason,
and reason was the final arbiter in distinguishing right from wrong. There-
fore, sacred precedent was not an effective means of determining what
was just, as what was obligatory in religion was only obligatory by virtue
of reason.28
The emergence of the Mu’tazilis movement reflected the ways in
which Islamic ideas took their original form. Meditation on words, first
the words of the Qur’an and words of Hadith, then interpretations of the
sacred texts by leading intellectuals, generated volumes of reasoning. In
a way, Arabic Kalam (speech, word) had much wider and more active con-
notation than the word as used in Greek philosophical tradition because it
meant more than word as written or divinely given. It also meant a continued
argumentation that could generate more words and more diverse reasoning.
In the views of early Mu’tazilis, the speech of God and that of man came
from the same genus as human speech. At the time, there was not any sep-
aration or unbridgeable gap between the words of God and those of man.
The difference between the divine and human speech was defined by ‘Abd
al-Jabbar’s (935–1025) argument that acting immorally or unwisely stems
from need and deficiency. One acts in a repugnant way when one does not
know the ugliness of one’s deeds because of a lack of knowledge, or when
one knows, but has some material or psychological need. Since God is
absolutely self-sufficient (from the cosmological “proof” of His existence),
all-knowing, and all-powerful, He is categorically free from any type of
need and, consequently, He never does anything that is ridiculous, unwise,
ugly, or evil.29
The Mu’tazilis had a theory regarding reason, divine revelation, and
the relationship between them based on arguments about speech. They cel-
ebrated the power of reason and human intellectual power. To them, it was
the human intellect that guided a man to know God, His attributes, and the
very basics of morality. Once this foundational knowledge was attained
and one ascertained the truth of Islam and the divine origins of the Qur’an,
the intellect then interacted with scripture such that both reason and rev-
elation would come together to be the main source of guidance and knowl-
edge for believers.30
‘Abd al-Jabbar’s student Al-Ash’ari (d. A.D. 935), the head of the Bas-
ran school of Mu’tazilis rebelled against Mu’tazila. In taking this step he
capitalized on popular discontent with the excessive rationalism of the
Mu’tazilites, which had been steadily gaining ground since their loss of
official patronage half a century earlier. After his conversion, Al-Ash’ari
continued to use the dialectic method in theology but insisted that reason
must be subservient to revelation. It is not possible to discuss Al-Ash’ari’s
successors in detail here, but it should be noted that from the second half
of the twelfth century onwards, the movement adopted the language and
concepts of the Islamic philosophers whose views they sought to refute.
Ash’arite’s separation between the eternal speech of God and the created
words of the Qur’an was the earliest attempt to set up a barrier between
God’s will and human knowledgeability of it, which later germinated into
Islamic mysticism championed by some of the most significant thinkers
of the later Ash’arites, such as Al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149–
1209).31
The mystic turn of Islamic theology was not contrary to the develop-
ment of Islamic science because it was actually conditioned by the culti-
vation of the established linguistic capacity in Arabic. One of the important
linguistic differences between Arabic and Latin was Arabic’s increasing

repertoire of concrete (non-abstract) and technical vocabulary. This did
occur in Europe but in vernaculars, such as French, English and Italian,
rather than Latin. The language of observation, description, and experiment
that was conceptually connected to abstract language of theories provided
the linguistic foundation of scientific method; empirical, experimental sci-
ence; and quantitative research.
Arabic produced a scientific revolution several centuries before West-
ern Europe. Most importantly, Arabic science expanded simultaneously in
both theory and practice. There was a gap of centuries between Greek sci-
entific theories and European experiment. Between the 8th and 13th cen-
turies, science was practiced on a unprecedented scale.32
Like the European science of the early modern period, Muslim science
derived from curiosity and study of religion, and the problems that pre-
sented in Qur’anic script. For example, Al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (Alha-
zen, 965–1040), who made significant contributions to physics, optics and
mathematics, was a devout Muslim. For him, the pursuit of God and the
true knowledge of science were one and the same. Based on his Islamic
faith, he doubted and criticized the findings of Greek science. In his Al-
Shukūk ‛alā Batlamyūs (Doubts Concerning Ptolemy), Alhazen criticized
many of Ptolemy’s works, including the Almagest, Planetary Hypotheses,
and Optics, pointing out various contradictions he found in these works.
He considered that some of the mathematical devices Ptolemy introduced
into astronomy, especially the equant, failed to satisfy the physical require-
ment of uniform circular motion, and wrote a scathing critique of the phys-
ical reality of Ptolemy’s astronomical system, noting the absurdity of
relating actual physical motions to imaginary mathematical points, lines
and circles. Alhazen criticized Ptolemy’s model on empirical, observational
and experimental grounds by saying that if a man were to imagine a circle
in the heavens with planets moving in it, this did not cause the specific
motion of the planets.33
The reason Arab scientists could override Greek science lay in their
ability to demonstrate their theories, observe further detail and adjust their
theories accordingly. Alhazen was among the first scientists to pioneer
quantitative research as experiment, and he helped shift the emphasis from
abstract theorizing to systematic and repeatable experimentation, followed
by careful criticism of premises and inferences. As Alhazen put it, God did
not prevent the scientist from error and had not safeguarded science from
man’s shortcomings and faults. Therefore, religion for the Muslims was a
general inspiration that set up the goals of their inquiries and motivated
their efforts. But scientists still had to work hard to reveal the endless
secrets of the world that God had created. For example, it is known that
certain advances made by medieval Muslim astronomers, geographers and
mathematicians were motivated by problems presented in Islamic scripture.
Examples are Al-Khwarizmi’s (780–850) development of algebra in order
to solve Islamic inheritance laws; and developments in astronomy, geog-
raphy, spherical geometry and spherical trigonometry in order to determine
the direction of the Qibla, the times of Salah prayers, and the dates of the
Islamic calendar.34
The increased use of dissection in Islamic medicine during the 12th
and 13th centuries was influenced by the writings of the Islamic theologian
Al-Ghazali, who encouraged the study of anatomy and the use of dissec-
tions as a method of gaining knowledge of God’s creation. In Al-Bukhari’s
and Muslim’s collection of sahih Hadith it is said: “There is no disease
that Allah has created, except that He also has created its treatment” (7–
71:582). This culminated in the work of Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), who dis-
covered pulmonary circulation in 1242 and used his discovery as evidence
for the orthodox Islamic doctrine of bodily resurrection. Ibn al-Nafis also
used Islamic scripture as justification for his rejection of wine as self-med-
ication. Criticisms against alchemy and astrology were also motivated by
religion, as orthodox Islamic theologians viewed the beliefs of alchemists
and astrologers as superstitious.35
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149–1209) redefined the conception of physics
and the physical world and opened the door for a new Islamic cosmology.
He criticized the Aristotelian geocentric notion of the Earth’s centrality
within the universe, and explored the concept of the existence of a multi-
universe. His theory was based on the Qur’anic verse, “All praise belongs
to God, Lord of the Worlds.”
It is established by evidence that beyond this world there was a void without a ter-
minal limit [khala’ la nihayata laha]. It had been established and validated that
God Most High had power over all contingent beings [al-mumkinat]. Therefore
He had the power [qadir] to create worlds beyond this world. Each one of those
worlds was bigger than this world; it had the same things that this world had: the
throne [al-arsh], the chair [al-kursiyy], the heavens [al-samawat], the earth [al-
ard], the sun [al-shams] and the moon [al-qamar].
He pointed out that the arguments of the philosophers who believed in the
uniqueness of this world were weak and flimsy arguments founded upon
feeble premises.
This criticism arose from Fakhr al-Din’s affirmation of atomism, as
advocated by the Ash’ari school of Islamic theology, which entailed the
existence of vacant space in which the atoms move, combine and separate.
He discussed more extensively the issue of the void, the empty spaces
between stars and constellations in the universe, which contained very few
or no stars. He argued that there was an infinite outer space beyond the
known world, and that God had the power to fill the vacuum with an infinite
number of universes.36
Cosmology was studied comprehensively in the Muslim world. There
are exactly seven verses in the Qur’an that specify that there are seven
heavens. One verse says that each heaven or sky has its own order (law).
Another verse mentioned similar earths with the seven heavens.
Astronomy was one of the oldest sciences that had been practiced in
ancient Mesopotamia. Unlike the Babylonians, Greeks, and Indians, who
had developed elaborate systems of mathematical astronomical study, the
pre–Islamic Arabs relied entirely on empirical observations. These obser-
vations were based on the rising and setting of particular stars. This area
of astronomical study was known as anwa. Anwa continued to be developed
by the Arabs after Islam. Islamic astronomers added mathematical methods
to their empirical observations.37
The rise of Islam and the need to accurately locate the qibla (direction
to Makkah) inspired more study in astronomy. Arab scientists had
researched the subject since the early half of the eighth century. They began
with the assimilation and consolidation of earlier Hellenistic, Indian and
Sassanid astronomical findings. The first astronomical texts that were trans-
lated into Arabic were from India and Persia. The most notable of the texts
was Zij al-Sindhind, an 8th-century Indian astronomical work that was
written under the supervision of an Indian astronomer who visited the court
of caliph Al-Mansur in 770. Another translated text was the Zij al-Shah,
a collection of astronomical tables (based on Indian parameters) compiled
in Sassanid Persia over two centuries. Fragments of texts from this period
indicate that Arabs adopted the sine function (inherited from India) in place
of the chords of arc used in Greek trigonometry.38
Before Arab scholars invented their own astronomical theory, the Ptole-
maic system was accepted and contributed to the development of Arabic
investigation. The first major Muslim work of astronomy was Zij al-Sind-
hind by Al-Khwarizmi (780–850), a Persian mathematician, astronomer
and geographer who was a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.
The work contained tables for the movements of the sun, the moon and
the five planets known at the time. The work was significant as it introduced
Ptolemaic concepts into Islamic sciences. This work also marked a turning
point in Islamic astronomy. Ever since, Muslim astronomers adopted an
approach primarily based on research, translating works of others and
learning already-discovered knowledge. Al-Khwarizmi’s work marked the
beginning of nontraditional methods of astronomical study and calculations.
In 850, Al-Farghani (9th century) wrote Kitab fi Jawani (A Com-

pendium of the Science of Stars). While giving a primary summary of
Ptolemic cosmography the book also corrected Ptolemy based on findings
of earlier Arab astronomers. Al-Farghani provided revised values for the
obliquity of the ecliptic, the processional movement of the apogees of the
sun and the moon, and the circumference of the earth. This was probably
the first attempt since the time of Eratosthenes (276–194 B.C.) to measure
the length of a degree. Although there are no surviving eyewitness accounts
of the experiment, later sources have shown how it was conducted. Two
locations were identified whose latitudes, determined astronomically, dif-
fered by one degree. A north-south baseline connecting them was carefully
laid out by sighting along pegs, and the length of that baseline was meas-
ured. In the experiment in which Al-Farghani took part, two pairs of loca-
tions were actually chosen, one pair in northern Iraq, on the plain of Sinjar,
and the other near Kufah. These areas appeared to be as flat and featureless
as possible. The results were then compared, and the length of a degree
established as 562⁄3 miles. Al-Farghani subsequently wrote a thin yet very
influential book on astronomy; a number of copies of this Arabic text sur-
vive. The title was Compendium of the Science of the Stars and Celestial
Motions. This book was twice translated into Latin in Spain during the
Middle Ages, was widely circulated in Europe and remained a standard
authority almost to the time of Galileo; it was first printed in 1493, the
same year that Columbus returned from his first voyage.39
During the period between 825 and 1025 a distinctive Arabic system
of astronomy flourished. The period began as the Muslim astronomers
began questioning the framework of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy.
These criticisms, however, remained within the geocentric framework and
followed Ptolemy’s astronomical paradigm. This effort has been described
as “a reformist project intended to consolidate Ptolemaic astronomy by
bringing it into line with its own principles.”40 Between 1025 and 1028, Ibn
al-Haytham wrote his Al-Shuku ala Batlamyus (Doubts on Ptolemy). While
maintaining the physical reality of the geocentric model, he criticized ele-
ments of the Ptolemaic models. Many astronomers took up the challenge
posed in this work, to develop alternate models that resolved these difficul-
ties. In 1070, Abu Ubayd al-Jūzjānī (980–1037), a student of Ibn Sīnā, pub-
lished Tarik al-Aflak (The Arrangement of the Spheres). Jūzjānī expressed
his abiding interest in astronomy and his difficulty in comprehending the
equant and the components of motion in latitude (inclination, twisting, and
slant of the epicycle). He turned to Ibn Sīnā for guidance and was told: “I
came to understand the problem after great effort and much toil and I will
not teach it to anybody. Apply yourself to it and it may be revealed to you
as it was revealed to me.” Jūzjānī was skeptical of Ibn Sīnā’s claim, for
he states: “I suspect I was the first to achieve an understanding of these
problems.” Jūzjānī’s issue with the equant was that “we know that the
motions of celestial bodies cannot be nonuniform, so that they are at times
faster and at times slower. Jūzjānī proposed to solve the equant problem
with a model in which all spheres (the deferent, the epicycle, and a sec-
ondary epicycle) moved at uniform speeds around their centers. However,
the model is unworkable.
The significance of Jūzjānī’s critique of the equant lay not in his
unworkable solution but rather in the fact that his contribution was inde-
pendent of the critique of the equant in the work of his elder contemporary
Ibn al-Haytham. These represented the earliest known critiques of
Ptolemy’s equant hypothesis, which ultimately led to alternative models
formulated by Nas.īr al-Dīn al-T.ūsī and others (sometimes referred to as
the Marāgha School) regarding planetary motion that did not resort to the
equant. While Ibn al-Haytham’s critique seems to have been more influen-
tial, the Marāgha astronomers were aware of Jūzjānī’s contribution. There
had been widespread discussion about the same issues that troubled Jūzjānī
among Arabic scholars on both sides of Mediterranean.41
Ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (973–1048) was regarded as one of the greatest
scholars of the medieval Islamic era and was well-versed in physics, math-
ematics, and astronomy. He wrote 95 books about astronomy, representing
more than a half of his lifetime’s work. Biruni wrote an extensive com-
mentary on Indian astronomy in the Kitab ta’rikh al-Hind (The History of
India) in which he claims to have resolved the matter of Earth’s rotation
in his work Miftah-ilm-alhai’a (The Key to Astronomy), which did not sur-
vive. Biruni repeatedly attacked Aristotle’s celestial physics: he argued by
simple experiment that vacuum must exist. He was amazed by the weakness
of Aristotle’s argument against elliptical orbits on the basis that they would
have created vacuum. In his major extant astronomical work, the Mas’ud
Canon, he regards heliocentric and geocentric hypotheses as mathemati-
cally equivalent but heliocentrism as physically impossible. Yet he approved
the theory that the earth rotated on its axis. He utilized his observational
data to disprove Ptolemy’s immobile solar apogee. More recently, Biruni’s
eclipse data was used by Dunthorne in 1749 to help determine the accel-
eration of the moon, and his observational data has entered the larger
astronomical historical record and is still used today in geophysics and
astronomy.42
Muslims also combined the disciplines of medicine and astrology by
linking the curative properties of herbs with specific zodiacal signs and
planets. Mars, for instance, was considered hot and dry and so ruled plants
with a hot or pungent taste, such as hellebore, tobacco and mustard. These
beliefs were adopted by European herbalists such as Culpeper right up
until the development of modern medicine. They also developed a system
called Arabic parts, by which the difference between the ascendant and
each planet of the zodiac was calculated. This new position then became
a “part” of some kind. For example, the “part of fortune” is found by taking
the difference between the sun and the ascendant and adding it to the moon.
If the “part” thus calculated was in the 10th House in Libra, for instance,
it suggested that money could be made from some kind of partnership.43
Another notable astrologer and astronomer was Qutb al-Din al Shirazi
(1236–1311). He wrote critiques of Ptolemy’s Almagest and produced two
prominent works on astronomy: The Limit of Accomplishment Concerning
Knowledge of the Heavens in 1281 and The Royal Present in 1284, both of
which commented upon and improved on Ptolemy’s work, particularly in
the field of planetary motion. Al-Shirazi was also the first person to give
the correct scientific explanation for the formation of a rainbow.
Mathematics was another area of Arabic scientific experimentation,
and it flourished under the caliphate established across the Middle East,
the Iberian Peninsula and Southern Asia. The most important contribution
of Islamic mathematicians was the development of algebra after combining
Indian and Babylonian material with Greek geometry. Al-Khwarizmi (800–
847) was considered the father of modern algebra. He wrote the first book
that designated algebra as a separate discipline: Al-Kitab al-jabra wa’l-
muqabalah (The Book of Completion and Balancing). The word al-jabra
means “restoration,” referring to the transposition of subtracted terms to
the other side of the equation or adding equal terms to both sides of the
equation to eliminate negative terms. The word muqabalah means “bal-
ancing,” referring to the reduction of positive terms by subtracting equal
amounts from both sides of the equation.44
It was only through mathematics that Arabic became a true global
language, in which logic and verbal expressions were elevated (or reduced)
to symbols (such as x, y or z) for numbers in order to solve mathematical
problems. It is to Al-Khwarizmi that Arabic owes the widespread use of
Arabic numbers, positional notation in base 10, and the free use of irrational
numbers. These innovations provided not only a method of calculation,
but also an abstract way to represent relationships and their underlying
logic in simple and precise terms that were versatile and variable.
Further developments in algebra were made by Al-Karaji (953–1029).
In his treatise Al-Fakhri, he extended the methodology to incorporate inte-
ger powers and integer roots of unknown quantities. Something close to a
proof by mathematical induction appears in a book written by him around
A.D. 1000 that verified the binomial theorem, Pascal’s triangle, and the sum
of integral cubes. A historian of mathematics, Al-Karaji was praised as
“the first who introduced the theory of algebraic calculus.” Also in the 10th
century, Abul Wafa translated the works of Diophantus into Arabic. Ibn
al-Haytham was the first mathematician to derive the formula for the sum
of the fourth powers, using a method that readily determined the general
formula for the sum of any integral powers. He performed an integration
in order to find the volume of a paraboloid, and was able to generalize his
result for the integrals of polynomials up to the fourth degree. He came
close to finding a general formula for the integrals of polynomials, but he
was not concerned with any polynomials higher than the fourth degree.45
Omar Khayyám (1038–1123) wrote Explanations of the Difficulties in
the Postulates in Euclid’s Elements. The book consists of several sections
on the parallel postulate (book 1), on the Euclidean definition of ratios and
the Anthyphairetic ratio (modern continued fractions) (book 2), and on the
multiplication of ratios (book 3). The first section is a treatise containing
some propositions and lemmas concerning the parallel postulate. This could
be considered the first treatment of the parallels axiom, which was not
based on petitio principii but on more intuitive postulates. Khayyám refuted
the previous attempts by other Greek and Persian mathematicians to prove
the proposition. He also refuted the use of motion in geometry and therefore
dismissed the attempt by Ibn Haytham as well. In a sense, he made the
first attempt at formulating a non–Euclidean postulate as an alternative to
the parallel postulate. This philosophical view of mathematics had a sig-
nificant impact on Khayyám’s celebrated approach and method in geomet-
ric algebra and in particular in solving cubic equations. In this case, his
solution was not a direct path to a numerical solution but rather made use
of line segments. In this regard Khayyám’s work could be considered the
first systematic study of cubic equations and the first exact method of solv-
ing them.46
Regarding more general equations, he stated that the solution of cubic
equations required the use of conic sections, and that they could not be
solved by ruler and compass methods. A proof of this impossibility was
plausible only 750 years after Khayyám died. It wasn’t until 600 years later
that Giordano Vitale made an advance on Khayyám in his book Euclide
restituo (1680, 1686), in which he used the quadrilateral to prove that if
three points are equidistant on the base AB and the summit CD, then AB
and CD are everywhere equidistant. Saccheri himself based the whole of
his long, heroic, and ultimately flawed proof of the parallel postulate around
the quadrilateral and its three cases, proving many theorems about its prop-
erties along the way.
In the 13th century, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–1274) developed a novel

approach to the investigation of cubic equations, one that entailed finding
the point at which a cubic polynomial obtains its maximum value. He made
advances in spherical trigonometry and wrote an influential work on
Euclid’s parallel postulate. Al-Tusi was the first to write a work on trig-
onometry that was independent of astronomy, in his Treatise on the Quadri-
lateral. It was in the works of Al-Tusi that trigonometry achieved the status
of an independent branch of pure mathematics distinct from astronomy, to
which it had been linked for so long.
Conclusions
As Arabic evolved from poetry to prose, from oral to literary language,
from the language of literature to that of law, science, and philosophy, its
vision rapidly expanded from a narrow world of tribal man to the entire
world and universe. When Islam advanced across the continents, Arabic
embraced and assimilated the lands, the people, their languages and their
worlds. Arabic became the home of world civilizations.
An increasing number of Western scholars, orientalists and otherwise,
have been debating how much Arabic and Islamic civilization have influ-
enced the modern cultures of Western Europe. The reason for this debate
is the fact that more and more scholars, especially historians, have discov-
ered that many literary forms and ideas that we called modern were in fact
present in the medieval Islamic world. Does this mean that modern Euro-
pean culture, poetry, narrative, historiography, science, sociology, and even
psychology originated in the Middle East?
Not necessarily so, because the ideas did not come from a single origin
but rather sprouted during the evolution of language, as thought acquired
a means of expression and creation. The reason why medieval Islam cul-
tivated many ideas that are considered modern to Western Europe was
because Arabic language was a much older and established literary lan-
guage compared to European vernaculars. For example, Ibn Khaldun’s the-
ory of history attracted the attention of Western scholars only when English,
French, and German began to develop abstract concepts and ideas during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Only during the last couple of
decades have Western scholars begun to pay attention to the mystical side
of Islam and appreciate Sufi poetry. In short, everything has to do with
time; specifically, the timing of literary evolution in each specific language.
CHAPTER 5
Imagery of the Universe:

Arts and Literature
This chapter focuses on the widening and deepening of Arabic vision

through visual abstraction and sharpened variations. This process is seen
and analyzed in terms of creating artistic and architectural patterning with-
out figurative images as Arabic prose was building general and abstract
vocabulary for religious, philosophical and legal writing. The non-verbal
expression is demonstrated here in Islamic arts and architecture that pro-
jected a grand vision with increasingly sophisticated decorative motifs.
These images embodied a majestic and penetrating unity; seemingly anti-
image yet open to increasingly detailed and refined individual creativity.
They portrayed a universe beyond its appearance, free from the lens of the
naked eye, that was defined not only by line and shape but also by rhythm,
the same rhythm that is heard in Arabic poetry, seen by gazing at a mosaic
and felt by meditating on a piece of calligraphy. Arabic became one of the
very few languages in the world that could envision rhythm without
imagery, provoke thinking without words and activate emotion without
definite meaning. Arabic visual language, like its literary counterpart, pos-
sessed the ability to communicate and induce emotions with its sound and
flowing line.
Unlike most historical studies that interpret Islamic arts in terms of
religion and/or philosophy, this chapter sees Islamic arts as one of many
forms of expression. This visual expression interacted with the develop-
ment of literary language, and inspired and enriched its literary vision.
Rather than being a slave to serve codified meanings (religious, scientific
or philosophical), the abstract form of expression is portrayed as precon-
ditioned, inspired, and envisioned by worldviews in Arabic. It attempts to
demonstrate the distinctive development of visual expression in specific
periods of Islamic civilization in terms of specific evolutionary phases of
145
the Arabic language. It explores variant meanings that are expressed in

both words and arts. For example, the recreation and transfiguration of
Byzantine arts and architecture and the invention of uniquely Islamic forms
are narrated as a part of a widening and focusing of Arabic imagery that
was manifested in prose writing as well as artistic and architectural expres-
sion. The emergence of muqarnas, a three-dimensional architectural form,
is portrayed as a part of an expansion and refinement of Arabic vision that
is manifested both in increasingly personal religious poetry and in more
creative visual forms in architecture, art and calligraphy.1
Like Arabic literary language, grown in the rich soil of ancient Semitic
literature, Arabic art forms inherited a wealth of visual vocabulary that
had been articulated in the Middle East through the ancient civilizations
of the Greeks, Romans, Persians, and Byzantines. After the Islamic con-
quest, and unlike the spoken voice of the region, which had been mostly
replaced by the emerging Arabic language, the old images remained to be
seen and touched by the new conquering culture and naturally served as
constant inspiration for the emerging Islamic arts. In a seemingly mirac-
ulous birth of Islamic art occurring only a century after Muhammad’s death,
a complex visual language appeared in architecture and ornamental art
from Arabia, a land of relative poverty of visual expression. The accelerated
formation and development of Islamic art have been described as super-
saturation and final crystallization driven by the expansion of a new religion
assimilating the existing art forms of the ancient Middle East. Islam pro-
vided a much-needed unity to reproduce and re-canonize the unevenly
inherited Greco-Roman and indigenous Semitic and non–Semitic arts and
craftsmanship.2
The history of development of architecture has always been closely
geared to literary development in both Western and Eastern civilizations.
However, the degrees of refinement of the given literary language and its
environment of artistic expression (the available and accumulated artistic
vocabulary at the time and place where certain literature emerged) deter-
mined what types of visual language a literary language would adopt, con-
ceptualize and crystallize. At the time when Islam began to emerge, it
inherited its contemporary visual language accumulated by Byzantine art
and architecture, which represented a much more developed visual lan-
guage compared to that of the classic Roman. Byzantine art had outgrown
the form based on natural imitation and developed an internal dimension.
Emerging cultures germinating from a mature poetic tradition, such as Ara-
bic and Russian three centuries later, were more likely to be drawn to the
more complex and refined Byzantine form.3
The architectural form that Arabic/Islamic architecture inherited from
5. Imagery of the Universe 147
the Middle East was not as formative as the early Roman construction.
Until the beginning of Justinian, most church buildings were basilicas, a
timber roofed halls with or without aisles, originating from the second or
third century B.C. in Italy. The theme had developed variations such as gal-
leries, apses, multiple aisles, narthices, and atria. They were simply designed
to adopt new functions. New architectural vocabulary, capitals, colonnades,
arcades, mosaic and vaults began to emerge over time. Prior to the pen-
dentive development, the device of corbelling or the use of the squinch in
corners of a room had been employed. Pendentives were commonly used
in Orthodox churches, with a drum with windows often inserted between
the pendentives and the dome. The pendentives were originally used in the
Roman dome, initially in the 2nd to 3rd centuries A.D. It took several cen-
turies for the form to completely develop into the 6th century Hagia Sophia
at Constantinople. The diameter of Hagia Sophia’s central dome was unsur-
passed until the completion of the Renaissance cathedral of Florence.4
Hagia Sophia is one of the greatest surviving examples of Byzantine
architecture. Of great artistic value was its decorated interior with mosaics
and marble pillars and coverings. It was to remain the world’s largest cathe-
dral for the next ten centuries, until the completion of the cathedral in
Seville in Spain. Sophia was the first complex building with a vast interior.
The nave is covered by a central dome, which at its maximum is 55.6 m
from floor level and rests on an arcade of 40 arched windows. At the west-
ern entrance side and eastern liturgical side, there are arched openings
extended by half domes that are identical in diameter to the central dome,
carried on smaller semi-domed exedras. A hierarchy of dome-headed ele-
ments was built up to create a vast, oblong interior crowned by the central
dome, with a clear span of 76.2 m.
The dome of Hagia Sophia was carried on four concave triangular
pendentives, which served as a transition from the circular base of the
dome to the rectangular base below. These were reinforced with buttresses
during Ottoman times, under the guidance of the architect Mimar Sinan.
The weight of the dome remained a problem for most of the building’s
existence. The original dome collapsed entirely in 558; in 563 a new dome,
slightly taller than the original, was built including ribbing. Larger sections
of the second dome collapsed as well, in two portions. The present dome
consists of two sections at the north and south that date from the 562 recon-
struction. The north section covers 8 ribs of the entire dome’s 40, while
the south section includes 6 ribs.
Forty windows were around base of the dome, and they made Hagia
Sophia famous for the mystical quality of light that reflects everywhere in
the interior of the nave. This exceptional light, which gave the dome the
appearance of hovering above the nave, was made possible by the special
design with ribs that extend from the top of the dome down to the base to
form a scalloped shell shape. These ribs allowed the weight of the dome
to flow between the windows, down the pendentives, and ultimately to the
foundation.5
The Hagia Sophia and other Byzantine buildings exhibited enormous
architectural craftsmanship. This attention to detail was apparent even in
smaller buildings. The largest columns of granite were about 20 meters
high and at least 1.5 meters in diameter. The largest, weighing well over
70 tons, used to build Hagia Sophia were disassembled from Baalbek,
Lebanon, and shipped to Constantinople for the construction. Semitic artists
and craftsmen contributed to the construction of Byzantine architecture
long before the Islamic movement. Although historians have and will con-
tinue to debate how to define the architectural revival of the Mediterranean
region (Graeco-Roman or Byzantine) the fact remains that there was a
continuing architectural tradition and craftsmanship in the region that later
was assimilated into the formation of Islamic architecture.
The first Islamic city (medina) was defined and built by the Prophet
Muhammad. Rashidun Caliphate (632–661) was the first state to build
Islamic architecture and use Islamic forts and administration systems (Dar
al-Imara). It provided the foundation for future Islamic cities. The first
garrison town of Islam was khitat in Kufa, Basra, Fustat and Qayrawan.6
The Muslim conquests found two cities on their way to ancient Meso-
potamia to shelter their troops: Basra (636), near the mouth of two rivers,
and Kufa (637–638) on the Euphrates, where the desert met cultivated
plain. It held the first free-standing mosque that Muslims built during their
conquest. It was simply a space fenced with reeds. It later was replaced
by a building of sun-dried bricks (labin) with a thatch ‘ushb (roof) during
the third quarter of the seventh century.7
The mosque ‘Amr ibn al-’As at Fustat is said to be the oldest mosque
in Egypt and even Africa. In 641, the army, led by Caliph ‘Amr, was on its
way to conquer Alexandria, the capital city of Egypt. Although impressed
by Alexandria, ‘Amr decided to look for a new location for his Islamic
nation for security reasons. He needed a place in the center of Egypt that
could not be easily reached by water. One day he pitched his tent near the
site of the battle of Babylon, about a quarter of a mile northeast of the fort.
Next morning, as the men began to pull down the tents and pack them for
the journey, they found that a dove had nested on one of the tents and had
laid eggs. ‘Amr ordered that the tent be kept standing in the plain of Baby-
lon while the army marched away. In this unusual incident ‘Amr saw a
divine sign. He decided that Muslims should build their city where the
dove had nested. As ‘Amr’s tent was to be the focal point of the city, the
city was called Fustat (tent). The first structure to be built was the mosque,
which later became famous as the Mosque of ‘Amr ibn al-’As. Over time,
Fustat was extended to include the old town of Babylon. It grew to become
a bustling city and the commercial center of Egypt.8
The original layout of the Mosque of ‘Amr was a simple rectangle
(29 ¥ 17 meters). It was a low shed with columns made of split palm tree
trunks, stones and mud bricks, covered by a roof of wood and palm leaves
(not much more “modern” than Mohammad’s house/mosque). The floor
was gravel. Inside the building the orientation toward Mecca was not noted
by a concave niche like it would be in all later mosques. Instead, four
columns were used to indicate the direction of Mecca; they were inserted
on the qibla wall. It was large enough to provide prayer space for Amr’s
army, but had no other adornments or minarets.
The mosque was completely rebuilt in 673 by Mu’awiya (602–680),
the first Umayyad Caliph, who added four minarets to each of the mosque’s
corners, doubling its size. The addition of these minarets allowed the call
to prayer to be heard from every corner and taken up by other nearby
mosques. Its size was doubled again at the end of the seventh century, and
a concave prayer niche was added to replace the flat one in 711. About a
hundred years later, seven new aisles were built, parallel to the wall of the
qibla. Each aisle had an arcade of columns, with the last column in each
row attached to the wall by means of a wooden architrave carved with a
frieze. It expanded twice to the size of 120 by 112 meters. The minarets
were rebuilt during the early Fatimad period. However, the only part of
the old structure of the mosque that can still be seen are some of the archi-
traves, which were added during the reconstruction in 827.9
The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was completed in 691, and it is
the earliest remaining Islamic monument. The major characteristics of the
Dome of the Rock appeared to be Christian during late antiquity, a style
similar to that of the great Christian sanctuaries in Jerusalem. Most of the
construction technique used in building the Dome derived from Byzantine
church architecture: the arches on piers and columns with wooden domes,
grilled windows, stone and brick masonry and the carefully thought-out
and intricate system of proportion. The decoration also reflected an artistic
theme of Byzantine origin: the crowns and the jewels. Compared to early
Roman Christian architecture, Byzantine buildings increased in geometric
complexity. Brick and plaster were used in addition to stone in the deco-
ration of important public structures, classical orders were used more freely,
mosaics replaced carved decoration, complex domes rested upon massive
piers, and windows filtered light through thin sheets of alabaster to softly
illuminate interiors. Most of the surviving structures are sacred in nature,

with secular buildings mostly known only through contemporaneous descrip-
tions.
The Dome of the Rock, as the first Islamic architecture, departed from
the Byzantine themes and model techniques in several ways. The first was
the nature of its decoration. The mosaic decoration on a huge area of about
280 square meters did not contain a single image of man or beast, which
was deliberately inconsistent with the Byzantine vocabulary at the time.
The mosaic was completely ornamental or abstract as seen in later Islamic
buildings. Trees, leaves, flowers, and fruits were portrayed in both realistic
and artificial manners and a mixture of jewels, crowns, and breastplates
were portrayed, the remnants of Christian, Jewish, and Sassanian motifs.
The second was its inscription, a trademark of Islamic art running
below the ceiling of the octagons. The inscription was both decorative and
symbolic. It served as a border for the rest of the ornamentation and it con-
tained carefully selected Qur’anic passages concerning Christianity. Along-
side classical motifs the mosaics also had palmettos, wings, and composite
flowers.
The mosaic of the Dome of the Rock introduced Islamic decorative
principles of non-realistic portrayal of natural shapes and artificial com-
bination of realistic images. This tendency was going to develop further
and cultivate more and more abstract and refined forms. Muslim artists
would not hesitate to transform the trunk of a tree into a bejeweled box.
They would completely ignore the restraints of classical naturalism and
combine images freely as they saw fit. Although using very few designs
(mainly the acanthus scroll, the garland, the vine scroll, the tree, and the
rosette), they were able to fill the entire building with brilliant variations
without exact repetition. Each variation within a theme represented an indi-
vidual interpretation of some general principle of the design.
The Dome of the Rock established a new relationship between archi-
tecture and decoration. Until the pre–Islamic period, Classical principles
of decoration, especially ornamental decoration, had been the dominant
feature of Mediterranean architecture and arts. Decorative art had been a
servant of architecture to emphasize parts of the latter and seldom sup-
pressed the essential values of construction. The builders of the Dome
changed this established relationship. They hid almost all of their clearly
defined, classically based structure with brilliant marble and mosaic. The
most striking was one of the soffits of the arches of the octagon, where
three bands of design spread over the entire surface. The composition of
the decoration was asymmetrical with various widths of bands. Only one
motif continued on to the vertical surface of the spandrel to emphasize one
curve of the arch against the other arch. The inherited motifs were not dis-
carded, and they were selectively used to decorate the areas provided by
the architecture: tall trees to decorate high rectangular surfaces and scrolls
for square spaces. These inherited motifs were also organized and recon-
structed into an Arabic textile design. An expensive shell around the struc-
ture, which reminded one of the language of Ma’aba in Mecca, covered
the outside with multicolored textile hangings and was filled inside with
a huge number of images and treasures. It represented a formative stage
of the creation of pure geometric shape.10
The concept and original shape of a mosque was Arabic in origin:
masjid, meaning a place where one prostrates one’s self (in front of God).
Masjid later became a holy building, masjid Allah (God’s sanctuary) and
masjid al-Haram (a place forbidden for but Muslims). The general concept
of masjid as a place of worship had its first material and visual realization
in Muhammad’s house in Madina, where he prayed and lived. As the empire
extended, it became impossible to combine worship and dwelling, but the
idea of the combination remained. Early mosques were usually set next to
the governor’s palace and included within their boundaries a small structure
serving as the treasury of the Muslim community (examples survived in
Damascus and Hama, Syria). They remained not only the religious build-
ings but also the main social and political centers as implied by the name
of al-masjid al-jami’ (congregational mosque). This was further established
as typological architecture by early buildings at Madina, Jerusalem, Dam-
ascus, Basra, Kufa, and Wasit. As Islam successfully expanded, mosques
began to incorporate non–Arabic shapes and structures such as Persian
apadanas (large halls with many columns) or Egyptian temples, just to
accommodate the increasingly large population of believers and their reli-
gious activities.11
However, practical needs alone would not automatically lead to archi-
tectural creativity. Without Byzantine visual language, it would have taken
Muslims many more centuries to develop Islamic architecture from
Muhammad’s zulla, a shelter made of palm tree trunks with a roof of palm
leaves and mud, to the magnificent masterpieces that we know today.
Islamic architecture took the formal innovation begun by the Byzantine
artists and reinvented it in a distinctive form. During the process of this
reinvention, Islam’s concentration on geometric patterns drew attention
away from the physical world to one of pure form, poised tension and
dynamic equilibrium. Ironically, this type of imagery is now used by mod-
ern atomic physics to confirm the essential mathematical and geometric
patterns occurring in nature.
The reason that Islamic architecture took geometrical form as the
foundation of visual presentation many centuries before Western Europe

did (in the modernism of the twentieth century) is consistent with the early
maturity of the Arabic language. Arabic expression was no longer looking
for inspiration from national forms; rather, it became able to recognize and
comprehend the essential relationships that lie beneath the visual surface
of the world. The significance from the Islamic standpoint is that, to trace
the origins of creation, the direction to search is not backwards but inwards.
In other words, as the intuitive mind of an individual seeks sources and
reasons for its existence it is led inward and away from the three-dimen-
sional world toward fewer and more comprehensive ideas and principles.
Muslim artists had different goals in minds, to project their inner wisdom
and harmony in concrete visible forms instead of imitating beauty per-
ceived in nature.12
The best way to illustrate the evolution of Byzantine architecture into
Islamic architecture is to investigate the specific decorative forms of
Islamic building and illustrate how the representations of the mosaic were
transformed. The fantastic trees, plants, fruits, jewels, chalices and crowns
gradually departed from uniformity throughout a building and exclusively
focused on the inner face of the octagonal colonnade and of the drum. As
Christian churches began to be converted to mosques, the scenes from the
Old or New Testaments or devotional images of Christ, the Virgin or saints
disappeared. As symbolic arts were transferred from one religion to another
and from one language to another, they naturally became abstracted. For
example, when symbols changed from Christianity to Islam, they became
emptied of their specific meanings. As a result, instead of glorifying a par-
ticular God, they came to represent a sense of holiness, an abstraction of
divinity.13
Although the Dome of the Rock had many Islamic features such as
the strengthened support for the cupola and extended inner space, the inte-
rior seemed to be more Byzantine and Roman than Islamic. As Islam had
not established its own architectural style, it had to adopt the methods of
Byzantine arts, its workmanship, and its architectural tradition. The floor
plan reflected the synthesis of circles and squares, movement and repose,
time and space. Heavenly and earthly spheres were shared by Byzantine
and Islamic theologies. To claim its Islamic origin and primacy over its
religious rival (Christianity), Qur’anic inscription was installed on a mosaic
frieze on the walls of the building. There was a rounded, continuous arcade
over a row of alternating pillars and columns, and the walls were embel-
lished with splendid gold-based glass mosaics. It had patterns of trees,
grapevines, and crowns that illustrated an early stage of Islamic art before
it developed geometric arabesque.14
A further step into abstraction was illustrated on Mshatta, the façade

of a winter residence south of Amman, Jordan. Built at the end of the
Umayyad (661–750), it departed from the classical and Byzantine form
and represented a much more varied and lively design. For example, the
zigzag shape was a new static element supporting the roof. It took on a
dynamic and rhythmic decorative role. Mshatta was not yet an Islamic art
but it initiated a tendency to combine different plans of decor and large
reliefs of zigzag molding. Decorative triangles and geometrical rosettes
were superimposed on the facets of bastion towers and later became a gen-
eral trademark of Islamic art.15
The most celebrated Umayyad desert complex in Jordan was centered
on the bathhouse at Qasr ‘Amra, a diminutive structure nestled in a broad
depression about 85 kilometers east of Amman. Though the limestone and
basalt building was not particularly impressive from the outside, ‘Amra’s
interior walls and ceilings displayed a dazzling array of painted frescos
from the mid–eighth century, with less well-preserved fragments of
mosaics, carved stone and marble cladding. The fresco art is important not
only for the information it provides about the culture and tastes of the nota-
bles who built these complexes; it also shows the Umayyad dynasty’s clear
links with both the classical and Byzantine traditions it had inherited, as
well as demonstrating contemporary cultural influences from Mesopotamia,
Persia and other Asian civilizations.
‘Amra marked the transition from Byzantine to Arabic expression. It
is thought to have been built during the reign of the Caliph Walid I (705–
715), builder of the great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, although some
scholars believe it may be the work of his uncle, Walid II (743–744). The
complex comprised the baths, an attached audience hall and domestic
rooms. It had a hydraulic system (all within a walled area) and a small,
square, fort-like residential building (caravanserai) and nearby watchtower
in the hills to the northwest, where the staff and troops of ‘Amra’s patron
probably lived. There were also traces of what some scholars believe to
be an ancient dam, and enclosure walls that delineated an agricultural area
of some 62 acres. It was a remarkable eighth century water system that
had a 40-meter circular well, and remains of the saqiya (water-lifting appa-
ratus). Even the circle marks made by the animal that drove the water mill
(to raise the water and send it through ceramic pipes to the baths or the
adjacent outdoor tank) remained visible.
The walls and ceilings of the spacious, rectangular, three-aisled audi-
ence hall were covered in relatively well-preserved frescos. They depicted
a variety of scenes that were typical Umayyad decoration: hunting scenes,
bathing scenes, and the famous Fresco of the Six Kings. There were Greek
and Arabic inscriptions under busts of Caesar (as the Byzantine emperor
was then called); the Sassanian king Kisra; Roderic, the last Visigoth king
of Spain, who was killed by Walid I in 711; the Negus of Abyssinia; and
two other busts thought to depict the emperor of China and the king of the
Turks. The audience hall also had frescos of Victory, attended by servants
and flanked by peacocks, heavy-set wrestlers, flying angels, pacing lions,
dancers and musicians. There were also an enthroned Byzantine emperor,
saluki hounds energetically chasing some hapless onagers, and a lion
attacking a horse. Three female figures personify Poetry, History and Phi-
losophy, as described in the accompanying Greek inscriptions, and 32 indi-
vidual panels depict craftsmen in various stages of the construction process,
including blacksmiths, carpenters, and masons.
The bath was typical of the period and consisted of a changing room
(apodyterium), a warm room (tepidarium), with its raised floor to allow
warm air to circulate beneath the bathers, and a hot room (calidarium)
close to the furnace. The frescos in the bath displayed a wide variety of
motifs and styles, including three busts thought to represent the three ages
of humankind—childhood, youth and old age—and pastoral scenes remi-
niscent of those in Byzantine mosaics of churches in the region several
centuries before and during the Umayyad era.
The dome above the hot room was considered to be ‘Amra’s most
pleasing combination of architecture and art. The Dome of Heaven was
painted with the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere accompanied
by the signs of the zodiac. It is believed to be the earliest surviving attempt
to represent the vault of heaven on a hemispherical, rather than a flat sur-
face, as had been frequently done by preceding civilizations. As a key
monument of Arabic art, it marked a transitional phrase between Byzantine
imagery and newly discovered Arabic inspiration.16
New Arabic concepts and architectural plans were developed and put
into practice in both religious and secular buildings. The “Arab plan,” with
court and hypostyle prayer hall, became a dominant functional type.
Located near Jericho in the Jordan Valley, Khirbat al-Mafjar was and
remains one of the most highly sophisticated Umayyad palaces in the region
for its elaborate mosaics, stucco carvings and overall sculptural magnifi-
cence. Built mainly of sandstone highlighted at times with baked brick,
the complex encompassed three main areas: a two-storied palace, a mosque
accompanied by a small courtyard, and a bath with an audience hall (throne
room), all of which were enclosed by an outer wall. To the east, bordering
the length of the site, extended a forecourt with a centrally featured foun-
tain. The main gate of the compound was centrally located on the southern
façade of the palace and was flanked by two buttress towers at either edge
of the front of the structure. The palace itself featured a central courtyard
in which two pathways guided a visitor to either the side forecourt to the
east or to a small courtyard to the north.
The excavation of Khirbat al-Mafjar uncovered some of the most stun-
ning artwork of the early Islamic period. Khirbat al-Mafjar was one excep-
tional example of the settlement of marginal lands by the early Muslims
employing the bounty from their conquests. An aqueduct brought water
from springs to irrigate about 150 acres of gardens enclosed in a long
boundary wall. The principal building held the great hall and bath, a recep-
tion hall not unlike the Sassanian palace at Firuzabad in Iran. It is not
difficult to imagine the mosaics and see Persian carpets spread over the
hall floors. Perhaps the most extraordinary element is the ceremonial entry-
way. The porch exhibits a high central niche carrying a standing figure
with a sword on two lions, very likely the caliphate patron himself, Hisham.
The palace is more typical of Umayyad residences, wonderfully decorated
with stuccoes and frescoes.
The plan of the palatial complex reveals the height of sophistication
reached during late Umayyad architecture. The whole design scheme was
incorporated in a rectangular enclosure protected by strong walls supported
by circular towers at equal intervals. There was a domestic section and the
palace proper, a two-story structure occupying the southern side of the
complex. It had a symmetrical plan ordered around a large courtyard which
contained a succession of rooms that were arranged in pairs along the east-
ern and western sides. At the eastern end, the center rooms were trans-
formed into an entrance hall connecting with the porch.
At the opposite side of the courtyard was a single room of barrel vault
of brick. At the center of the southern enclosure was a rectangular structure
composed of five equal rooms. The central room had a niche (mihrab) in
the southern wall, behind which was a square minaret. This was a domestic
mosque and was most likely reserved for the household of the prince. At
the northern end of the domestic section there was a large room equal in
size to the five rooms of the southern wall. In the center of this room were
the remains of six piers which may have provided the support for six
arcades of two arches each, which in their turn must have supported the
vaults of the roof. In the cloister of the west side was a double-landing
staircase leading down to a sunken court preceding a vaulted crypt lit by
triple windows. This was the so-called serdab (literally “cold water” in
Persian), a room for keeping cool on summer days.
Next to the north was another section containing the main mosque
and its courtyard. The mosque, occupying the eastern side, was made of a
large room of two aisles raised by eight piers arranged parallel to the
mihrab wall (qibla). At the back was a small section in the form of a narthex
accessed by three doors. The third section encompassed one of the largest
and most magnificent baths found in the Muslim world. A richly decorated
porch approached the structure from the west. The most significant feature
of the porch was a statue of the caliph standing over a platform of two
symmetrical lions fitted in a concave above the center of the portal. The
design of the hall showed that Al-Walid II indeed lived in a lavish and lux-
urious style. The bath’s main room, the frigidarium, was a hall of generous
proportions carried on sixteen composite piers supporting the domes and
barrel vaults. The bath was believed to have been adequately lit by cleres-
tory windows as in a Byzantine building. The other important feature was
the presence of the so-called exedrae, semicircular apses flanked by a pair
of engaged columns that were inserted in the four external walls. These
exedrae were crowned with semi-domes. This theme was also reflected in
the lobed corners of the pier plans. The center of the bath was crowned by
a great dome rising above the eight surrounding vaults, which in turn rose
higher than the apsidal walls. The huge space was subdivided into three
functional sections.
An oblong pool, about 20 meters in length, was set along the southern
side of the bath, and was approached by steps in the western corner indi-
cating that it might have been for the private access of the prince. Behind
these was a hall that had a ceremonial function, which may also have served
for banquets, a hypothesis confirmed by a picture of a knife, gourd, and
leaf depicted in a mosaic at its focal point. The diwan (the audience hall)
was richly decorated and was located in the area of the palace where the
caliph could separate himself from political pressures by meeting his advi-
sors in a relaxing atmosphere. He also could screen his visitors by keeping
them away from the entrance of the palace.
The bath proper was situated behind the ceremonial hall and was con-
nected with the hot and cold rooms through doors in its northern wall.
Excavations revealed the existence of two cold rooms that were next to
the frigidarium and were equipped with benches all around the walls. There
were also two hot rooms (furnaces) facing each other and connected
through a door. The most peculiar of these was the second room on the
north side of the first furnace. It was a circular chamber made of eight
horseshoe-shaped apses with semi-domes. The furnace was placed under
the niche accessible only from the exterior. The hot air was carried up the
walls by a connection of short pottery pipes hidden by marble paneling.
Khirbat al-Mafjar is renowned for the mosaics and stucco carvings
that adorn the audience hall and bathhouse. Geometrically decorated
mosaics of the highest standard cover the floor of the bathhouse. In the
audience hall, another famous mosaic panel displays an apple tree provid-
ing cover on its right side for two gazelles that chew at its foliage while
to the left a lion is shown attacking another gazelle from behind.17
The Great Mosque of Damascus was the first monumental work of
architecture in Islamic history. The building served as a central gathering
point after Mecca to consolidate Muslims in their faith so that they could
continue to rule the surrounding territories under the Umayyad Caliphate.
This Umayyad mosque, which was built at the site of the temple of the
thunderstorm and rain god, Hadad-Ramman, was erected by the Aramaean
state Aram-Damascus (from the late 12th century to 734 B.C.). After the
Romans came in A.D. 64, the Temple of Hadad-Ramman continued to serve
in its primary role as a temple to worship the storm and rain god, but for
the Latin God of thunder, Zeus (Jupiter). The temple was expanded yet
preserved its Semitic design. An image of the god stood in the cellar in
the center of the courtyard. There was one tower at each of the courtyard’s
four corners. The towers were used for rituals of ancient Semitic religious
traditions where sacrifices were made on high places. The Roman temple
combined the pagan gods affiliated with heaven that were worshiped in
the region (such as Hadad, Ba’al-Shamin and Dushara) into the “supreme-
heavenly-astral Zeus.” The Temple of Jupiter would attain further additions
during the early period of Roman rule of the city, mostly initiated by high
priests who collected contributions from the wealthy citizens of Damas-
cus.18
By the 4th-century A.D., the temple was renovated for its size and
appearance. It was separated from the city by two sets of walls. The first,
wider wall spanned a wide area that included a market, and the second
wall surrounded the actual sanctuary of Jupiter. It was the largest temple
in Roman Syria. Towards the end of the 4th century, the Temple of Jupiter
was converted into the Cathedral of Saint John by the Christian Byzantine
emperor Theodosius I. After the Muslim conquest in 634, the sixth Umay-
yad caliph, Al-Walid I, commissioned the construction of a mosque on the
site of the Byzantine cathedral in 706. The construction of the mosque
completely altered the layout of the building. The new house of worship
was meant to serve as a large congregational mosque for the citizens of
Damascus and as a tribute to the city. It was completed in 715.19
It consisted of a courtyard surrounded on three sides by porticoes on
piers alternating with two columns. The fourth side is the qibla (direction
of Kaaba) facade. It had three wide aisles, parallel to the southern wall,
cut in the center by a perpendicular (axial) nave over whose second bay
rose a high dome. The aisles had large monolithic columns taken from
older buildings, surmounted by capitals, impost blocks, and arches. Above
the arches an additional small arcade lifted the gabled roof even higher. In
the qibla wall were four niches known as mihrabs (semicircular niches),
symmetrically arranged with the central one located precisely in the middle
of the axial nave. Just as in the Dome of the Rock, practically all the ele-
ments of construction derived from the traditional architecture of Syria,
but there were two innovations, the floor plan and the introduction of the
mihrab.20
The layout of the mosque was a 97 m ¥ 156 m rectangle with the sahn
(courtyard) on the northern side. The sahn was punctuated by three major
elements: the ablution fountain, covered with a dome that was supported
by columns; the Khazne Dome on the western side, supported by eight
Corinthian columns; and the Zein al-Abidin Dome on the eastern side, also
supported by eight columns. Alternating stone columns and piers with one
pier between every two columns supported the riwaq (arcade) surrounding
the sahn. Three riwaqs, parallel to the qibla, were supported by two rows
of stone Corinthian columns. Each riwaq had two levels, the first with
large semicircular arches and the second with double arches.
The exterior walls of the mosque were built in the Roman period when
the building functioned as a temple. Four defense towers were built at each
corner, but only the two southern ones remained when Al-Walid began his
project. These towers were used as foundations to erect the eastern and
western minarets. Then a third square minaret tower known as the Arus
Minaret (The Minaret of the Bride) was built near the northern gate. The
lower part of this minaret is still in its original form, but the middle part
is an Ayyubid addition built after the fire of 1174. The eastern minaret, Eesa
Minaret (Minaret of Jesus), is also a pastiche of different architectural
styles that correspond to changing political environments. It has a Mamluk
lower part and an Ottoman top due to its renovation after the earthquake
of 1759. The western minaret is the most articulated; its stone carvings and
inscriptions record its restorations in 1488 and after Timur’s conquest in
1401.
The two main materials used for cladding were fusayfusa’a mosaic
and marble. The fusayfusa’a fragments were mixed with colored glass par-
ticles and others of glass covered with gold and silver leaf. In addition,
bits of stone and marble were included to create a unique reflective material
that highlighted its geometric and floral patterns. The fusayfusa’a was orig-
inally used to cover the top parts of the walls on both the interior and exte-
rior sides in the haram, riwaqs, and the arches and undersides of the vaults.
The painted patterns formed scenic panels that symbolized the magnificent
natural landscapes of Damascus. The Barada River flowed alongside the
great Umayyad palaces and orchards of fruit-bearing trees that were
thought to be an image of heaven. Heavily veined marble was used to clad

the lower parts of the walls, as it is a stronger, more enduring material than
the mother-of-pearl mosaics. The veins of the marble were used to create
patterns because of the way that the panels were joined and attached to the
walls. Nothing is left of these panels except for small holes where the mar-
ble masons attached them to the walls. A highly ornate band of carved
marble separated these materials on the walls. The vegetation-inspired
designs were known as the “great golden vines” because of their resem-
blance to the intertwined grape vines that were common in the Classical
(Roman and Byzantine) periods. Some fragments of this famous band still
remain today in the mosque. Additional ornamentation included the Otto-
man blue clay tiles that replaced the missing marble panels in the sahn.21
The vegetal mosaic of Damascus reminds one of the Dome of the
Rock except that they are more realistic in their depiction of specific plants
and include fewer mixtures of forms from different origins. The scope of
its painting was massive. On the façade of the axial nave and some of the
spandrels of the northern and western porticoes, buildings of all types
appear in the foliage. In the richly framed panel on the wall of the western
portico, a large composition depicts a number of small rivers flowing into
a body of water along which stand splendid tall trees that provide a frame
for a series of small buildings. Small houses are clustered around a church;
vast piazzas are surrounded by porticoes, and stately palaces on the banks
of a river illustrate a variety of styles that are realistic, fantastic and com-
posed from unrelated elements.22
While these images invited various scholarly interpretations, they
definitely do not belong to mainstream Islamic arts. The first sign of change
in style was seen in Iraq, the site of the second Islamic kingdom, in the
Abbasid caliphs. Compared to Syria, Egypt, and Jerusalem, the ancient
inheritance of Iraq was almost purely Sumerian and Semitic. It represented
the original home of the Sufi fraction of Islam, nurtured in its timeless
poetic tradition. The mosque of Samarra was built in 836, after it became
the capital city of the Abbasid caliphs. It was replaced in 849–852 by a
new mosque built on a grand scale, which for a long time was the largest
mosque of the Islamic world. It continued to be used until the end of the
11th century.
Abbasid mosques were mainly decorated very soberly. At Samarra
there was almost no applied ornament, and in the mosque of Ibn Tulun
stucco was used only to emphasize the major architectural lines. The major-
ity of decoration developed within identifiable frames, most commonly in
long bands, but sometimes in simple rectangles or polygons. Its typical
feature was the vine leaf, its parts always sharply outlined, with four deeply
sunken eyes and often with incised veins. These were the same motifs used
in Umayyad except for more striking special contrast. Gradually the deep
grooves between motifs (leafs or flowers) were covered by small notches
and dots, and the outline was simplified into an almost abstract shape.
Although not as appealing as the naturalist motifs at the Dome of Damascus
or the façade of Mshatta, the new abstract shape, which acquired its sig-
nificance only in relation to other units of decoration, was peculiarly
appealing because of its symmetrically arranged patterns that constantly
contrasted inner tension and movement with the rigidity of geometric bor-
ders.
Abbasid architecture introduced many original forms to Islamic arts.
Muqarnas had enduring implications for centuries to come. The brick mau-
soleum of Imam Dur (1085) incorporated the first Iraqi muqarnas dome.
Bastions projected from the four corners to support this square structure.
Its exterior was plain with layered sections on each façade of geometrically
patterned, raised brick near the top of the structure. The inner chamber
was also square, featuring a domed room with four corner niches that
formed the support for the octagonal structure from which the five-tiered
muqarnas dome climbs. The dome concluded at a great height with a small,
fluted cupola. The tomb’s interior was adorned with stucco ornamenta-
tion.23
Compared to the earlier decorative form, muqarnas had freer lines
and evoked endless rhythmic repetitions of curved lines with spiral endings
that at times included additional notches, slits, or pearl borders. More
importantly, the line became beveled to meet the surface obliquely, giving
the wall surface a strongly plastic quality. This abstract and almost three-
dimensional style could erase the traditional boundaries between themes,
motifs, and traditional geometric vegetal or animal themes and their back-
ground. The background had disappeared and the entire surface of the wall
became ornament. In short, the main characteristics of this new style were
repetition, beveling, abstract themes, total covering and symmetry. It was
the first instance of a more sophisticated art experience that later was called
muqarnas. This will be analyzed in detail later in the chapter.24
The Samarra style of mosque was carried to Egypt by Ahmad ibn
Tulun (835–884), the governor of Egypt of Abbasid and later the inde-
pendent ruler of Egypt. Ibn Tulun founded his own capital, Al-Qatta’i,
north of the previous capital Fustat, and built a new mosque to replace the
old Mosque of ‘Amr. The Mosque of Ibn Tulun was built entirely of well-
fired red brick faced in carved stucco. It had ziyadas and a roof supported
by arcades on piers. The mosque was constructed around a courtyard, with
one covered hall on each of the four sides. The largest hall was on the side
of the qibla. The original mosque had its ablution fountain (sabil) in the
area between the inner and outer walls. A distinctive sabil with a high
drum dome was added in the central courtyard at the end of the thirteenth
century.
Historians have been debating the date of construction of the famous
spiral minaret of the Ibn Tulun Mosque. It featured a helical outer staircase
similar to that of the famous minaret in Samarra. Legend has it that ibn
Tulun himself designed the structure. However, many architectural features
of the building suggest otherwise. The ablution fountain and dome were
built on the site of the fawwara (fountain) and destroyed by fire in 986.
The fawwara, which was purely decorative, was housed in a pavilion com-
prising a dome carried on gilded marble columns. The original ablution
facilities and a clinic were housed in the ziyada for hygienic reasons.25
The Fatimid architecture followed Tulunid techniques and used similar
materials, but also developed those of their own. In Cairo, their first con-
gregational mosque was the Al-Azhar mosque (969–973). Among the archi-
tectural innovations applied to the building was the first use of dressed
stone, instead of brick. The façade’s various motifs were carved in the
stone to replace the previous simple façades, similar to those in the mosques
of ‘Amr and Ibn Tulun. The pride of Fatimid architecture was its attractive
and beautiful ornament. Decorated Kufic inscriptions and stucco ornament
attained a high standard in their beautiful motifs, balanced distribution and
varied designs. They were most highly developed in mihrabs, and they
formed borders for arches and windows. Egyptian craftsmanship was not
confined to stucco decoration alone; it also excelled in the art of wood
carving. Doors of minbars, movable mihabs and wooden tie-beams all
bore witness to the great skill of the period.
Al-Azhar became the spiritual center for Ismaili Shia with its adjacent
institution of higher learning, Al-Azhar University. The original structure
of the mosque was 85 ¥ 69 meters and comprised three arcades situated
around a courtyard. The original prayer hall was built in a hypostyle, five
aisles deep to the southeast of the courtyard measuring 79 ¥ 23 meters.
The marble columns supporting the four arcades that made up the prayer
hall were reused from sites extant at different times in Egyptian history.
There were originally three domes, but none of them have survived
Al-Azhar’s constant renovations. The original mihrab has a semi-dome
with a marble column on either side. Stucco decorations were a prominent
feature of the mosque. The mihrab had two sets of Qur’anic verses
inscribed in the conch; these were the only surviving pieces of decoration
that was dated to the Fatimids. Five keel-shaped arches were supported by
cylindrical columns. Above each arch was a large circular inscribed stucco
decoration, and above each column was a large inscribed stucco decoration
that mirrored the shape of the arch and columns. It appeared that muqarnas
had been established and widely spread in Egypt, and its decoration can
be seen in several minarets and wall decorations.
For political reasons, the Mosque of Al-Azhar lost its prestige with
the later Sunni caliphates. In the 12th century, Sultan Saladin, the founder
of the staunchly Sunni Ayyubid Dynasty (1170–1250), converted Al-Azhar
to a Shafi’ite Sunni center of learning. The Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517)
made restorations and additions to the mosque, overseeing a rapid expan-
sion of its educational programs. Among the restorations was a modification
of the mihrab, with the installation of polychrome marble facing.26
The Madrasa Gawhariyya, built in 1440, contained the tomb of Gawhar
al-Qanaqba’i, a Sudanese eunuch who became treasurer to the sultan of
Egypt. The floor of the madrasa was marble and the walls were lined with
cupboards, decoratively inlaid with ebony, ivory, and nacre. The tomb
chamber was covered with a small arabesque dome. The minaret of Qayt-
bay, built in 1483, had three balconies, supported by muqarnas that pro-
vided a smooth transition from a flat surface to a curved one. The first
shaft was octagonal, decorated with keel-arched panels on each side, with
a cluster of three columns separating each panel. Above the shaft was the
second octagonal shaft, which was separated from the first by a balcony
and decorated with plaiting. A second balcony, which separated this shaft
from the final cylindrical shaft, was decorated with four arches. Above this
was the third balcony, crowned by the finial top of the minaret. The minaret
is thought to have been built earlier as Fatimid-era brick is apparent, sug-
gesting that the minaret had been rebuilt several times.
The Bab al-Gindi (Gate of Qaytbay) was built in 1495 directly across
the courtyard from the entrance of the Bab al-Muzayinīn. This gate led to
the court of the prayer hall. The double finial minaret was built in 1509 by
Qansah al-Ghuri. It was an ornate carved stone octagonal minaret with a
carved stone railing around the central balconies. Above the second balcony
the minaret split into two rectangular shafts, each tipped by railing and a
bulb-shaped finial.27
The reign of the Mamluks (1250–1517) witnessed a breathtaking flow-
ering of Islamic art. Compared to previous periods, the Mamluk architec-
tural designs in Cairo were more diverse and individualistic because they
were mainly sponsored by wealthy individuals who erected their own
memorials according to their personal tastes. All of the sponsors of the
mosques of Baibars, Al-Nasir Muhammad, Faraj, Al-Mu’ayyad, Barsbay,
Qaitbay and Al-Ghawri preferred to build several mosques instead of focus-
ing on one colossal monument. They decorated each dome and minaret
with distinct patterns as symbols of commemoration and worship. Patterns

carved on domes ranged from ribs and zigzags to floral and geometric star
designs. The best example of this stylistic diversity was the four domes of
the funeral complex of Sultan Barsbay. The dome of Barsbay’s own mau-
soleum was made of three distinct levels of patterns, with eight-pointed,
seven-pointed and six-pointed stars arranged from the bottom up. The
north dome, the Janibak, had a row of halves of twelve-pointed stars radi-
ating from the base of the dome and ten-pointed stars above them, posi-
tioned in a zigzag pattern. The eastern dome had eight-pointed stars
supporting and seven-pointed stars towards the top. It showed a much
higher degree of consistency in form and harmony. The period of Qa’itbay
(r. 1468–96) introduced new ideas in dome building and decoration. Instead
of beginning from the bottom, the geometrical pattern moved from apex
to base. Thus the dome of Ba’itbay consisted of a pattern of sixteen-pointed
stars at the top center of the dome, covering the upper half of the space,
with the lines continuing to form a row of irregular seven-pointed stars.
The bottom part was decorated with halves of twelve-pointed stars. The
pattern covered the entire space to conceal any apparent irregularities.28
The Mamluk sultans competed with each other in the construction of
mosques, schools, mausoleums, sabils, palaces and wikalas. Muslim archi-
tecture in Egypt began to establish itself during this period, gaining a spe-
cial individuality that laid down its own standards and characteristics, as
demonstrated in the floor plan of mosques, dignified façades and huge and
beautiful portals. Stucco work was used with increasing skill and variation
as decoration. Gradually, marble began to replace stucco. Mihrabs and
dadoes were made with marble of different colors and in beautiful designs,
distinguished by careful craftsmanship and harmony of color. At the same
time, woodworking was developed and refined quickly. Decoration with
ivory inlay work, ebony and zarnashan appeared side by side with fine
carving on minbars, doors and windows. The design of wooden ceilings
underwent a great development and refinement with richly gilded decora-
tion. Progress in metal work was also evident in the copper-plated doors,
showing skill in the engraving, piercing and inlaying of copper.
The Mamluk period produced superb domes and minarets. Domes
were built of stone instead of brick. Their substructure took various forms,
and faience was introduced for decorating their drums. The decoration of
the external surface of domes varied from ribbing to chevrons, until they
reached a high standard in the days of the Circassian Mamluks (1382–
1517), when they were ornamented with geometrical and arabesque designs.
Minarets, keeping pace with domes, rose gloriously to a great height,
attracting attention with their remarkable beauty. The upper caps of some
of them were covered with tiles of faience, apparent in the minarets of the
Khanqa of Baybars al-Gashankir and the mosque of An-Nasir Muhammad
at the Citadel. Sometimes the middle storey was decorated with marble
inlay as seen in the minarets of the mosques of Barquq and the Qadi-Yahya.
Decoration increased in variety and richness towards the beginning of the
sixteenth century. The cruciform-plan madrasas also evolved during this
period. They were composed of an open sahn (courtyard), surrounded by
four iwans (rectangular halls). Mausoleums for the founders were annexed
near these madrasas, while sabils (water fountains) and kuttabs (schools)
were annexed to some of them. Towards the end of the period, madrasas
(schools) were built to a smaller scale, compared with earlier periods, and
their sahns were covered with highly decorated wooden roofs.29
Like its poetry, Iran possessed a rich repertoire of visual vocabulary
that drew upon over 3,000 years of architectural development from various
civilizations of the Iranian plateau. Islam initiated a new wave of remark-
able religious buildings in which the arts of stucco, mosaic, and calligraphy
evolved. Post-Islamic architecture drew ideas from its pre–Islamic pred-
ecessor, and had geometrical and repetitive forms, as well as surfaces that
were richly decorated with glazed tiles, carved stucco, patterned brickwork,
floral motifs, and scripture. The dome structure of muqarnas was utilized
to construct the ceilings of the brick buildings. To place a circular brick
dome on a square-plan building, squinch arches needed to be inserted into
the four corners of the room in order to create an octagonal shape that
approximated a circle. As a way of aesthetically unifying the horizontal
layers formed by the continuation of these squinch arches, muqarnas,
which link a square room to a circular dome, are thought to have developed
from Persian brick architecture predating the Seljuk Empire. The wall pat-
terns in 11th century Iranian tombs faithfully reproduced the image of dec-
orated squinch arches. The lower section of the wall patterns illustrated a
square room and the upper part a circular dome, with a complex succession
of small arches between the two.
Persian architecture from the 15th through 17th centuries was the pin-
nacle of post–Islamic architectural achievement. Various buildings such
as mosques, mausoleums, bazaars, bridges and palaces have survived from
this period. Safavid Isfahan tried to achieve grandeur in scale; Isfahan’s
Naghsh-i Jahan Square was the sixth largest square worldwide. The great
mosques of Khorasan, Isfahan and Tabriz each used local geometry, local
materials and local building methods to express, each in its own way, the
order, harmony and unity of Islamic architecture. Persian architecture often
revealed complex geometrical relationships, a studied hierarchy of form
and ornament, and great depths of symbolic meaning.
Persian artists also built the most impressive dome in the Islamic
world. The Sassanid Empire initiated the construction of the first large-
scale domes in Persia, with such royal buildings as the Palace of Ardashir
and Ghal’eh Dokhtar. After the Muslim conquest, the Persian style became
a major influence on Muslim societies and the dome also became a feature
of Muslim architecture.
The innovations of dome building in the Il-Khanate period made it
possible for the Persians to construct much taller buildings. These changes
later paved the way for Safavid architecture. The pinnacle of Il-Khanate
architecture was reached with the construction of the Soltaniyeh Dome
(1302–1312) in Zanjan, which measures 50 m in height and 25 m in diam-
eter, the 3rd largest and the tallest masonry dome ever erected.
The renaissance in Persian mosque and dome building came during
the Safavid dynasty, when Shah Abbas, in 1598, initiated the reconstruction
of Isfahan, with Naqsh-e Jahan Square as the centerpiece of his new capital.
Architecturally these works borrowed heavily from Il-Khanate designs,
but artistically they elevated the designs to a new level. What distinguished
Persian domes from domes created in the Christian world or the Ottoman
and Mughal empires was the use of colorful tiles that covered the exterior
of the domes much like the interior. Dozens of these were erected in Isfa-
han, and the distinct blue shape dominated the skyline of the city. Reflecting
the light of the sun, these domes looked like glittering turquoise gems and
could be seen from miles away by travelers following the Silk Road through
Persia.
This very distinct style of Iranian architecture was inherited from the
Seljuq dynasty (11th to 14th centuries), who for centuries had used it in
their mosque building, but it was perfected during the Safavids (1501–1722)
when they invented the haft- rangi (seven-color style of tile burning), a
process that enabled them to apply more colors to each tile, creating richer
patterns that were more pleasing to the eye. Persians favored gold, white
and turquoise patterns on a dark blue background. The extensive inscription
bands of calligraphy and arabesque on most of the major buildings were
carefully planned and executed by Ali Reza Abbasi, who was appointed
head of the royal library and master calligrapher at the Shah’s court in
1598, while Shaykh Bahai oversaw the construction projects. Reaching 53
meters in height, the dome of Masjed-e Shah (Shah Mosque) became the
tallest in the city when it was finished in 1629. It was built as a double-
shelled dome, spanning 14 m between the two layers and resting on an
octagonal, domed chamber.30
Islamic art and architecture in Andalusia developed their own char-
acteristics and styles like in Iran. The construction of the Great Mosque at
Cordoba (Mezquita), which began in 785, marked the beginning of Islamic

architecture in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. The site was orig-
inally a pagan temple, then a Visigothic Christian church, before the Umay-
yad Moors converted the building into a mosque. The Mezquita is regarded
as the one of the most accomplished monuments of Islamic architecture
and is most noted for its arcaded hypostyle hall, with 856 columns of jasper,
onyx, marble, and granite. These were made from pieces of the Roman
temple that had occupied the site previously, as well as other destroyed
Roman buildings, such as the Mérida amphitheatre. The Moorish builders
introduced double arches that allowed higher ceilings than would otherwise
have been possible with relatively low columns. The double arches con-
sisted of a lower horseshoe arch and an upper semicircular arch. The
famous alternating red and white voussoirs of the arches were inspired by
those in the Dome of the Rock and also resemble those of the Aachen
Cathedral, which were built at almost the same time. A centrally located
honeycombed dome had blue tiles decorated with stars.
The mosque also had richly gilded prayer niches, and its mihrab
(prayer niche in the qibla wall) was a masterpiece of geometric and flowing
floral designs. Other prominent features were an open courtyard surrounded
by arcades, screens of wood, minarets, colorful mosaics, and windows of
colored glass. The walls of the mosque had Qur’anic inscriptions. Like
earlier Islamic mosques, it had a rectangular prayer hall with aisles arranged
perpendicular to the qibla. The prayer hall was large in size, flat, with tim-
ber ceilings held up by horseshoe-shaped arches. These arches, described
as countless pillars, are believed to portray rows of palm trees in the oases
of Syria, the homeland of the exiled Umayyad rulers who came to Europe
to escape Abbasid execution. Until the eleventh century, the courtyard was
unpaved earth with citrus and palm trees irrigated at first by rainwater cis-
terns and later by aqueduct. Excavation indicates that the trees were planted
in a pattern with surface irrigation channels. Cordoba became the political
and legal center of the Islamic kingdom in Spain.
Moorish architecture, which began in Cordoba, reached its peak with
the construction of the Alhambra, the magnificent palace/fortress of
Granada, with its open and breezy interior spaces adorned in red, blue, and
gold. The walls were decorated with stylized foliage motifs, Arabic inscrip-
tions, and arabesque design work, with walls covered in glazed tile. Other
smaller examples such as the Bab Mardum in Toledo, or the caliphate city
of Medina Azahara, survived. Moorish architecture has its roots deeply
established in the Arab tradition of architecture and design established dur-
ing the era of the first caliphate of the Umayyad in the Levant, circa A.D.
660. In Damascus there are very well preserved examples of fine Arab
Islamic design and geometric, including the carmen, which is the typical
Damascene house, opening on the inside with a fountain as the house’s
centerpiece.
Even after the completion of the Reconquista, Islamic influence had
a lasting impact on the architecture of Spain. In particular, medieval
Spaniards used the Mudéjar style. One of the best examples of the Moors’
lasting impact on Spanish architecture is the Alcázar of Seville. The square
lattice pattern of surface decoration in Cordoba also reached its apex in
Alhambra Palace. The decorations within the palaces typified the remains
of the Moorish dominion within Spain and ushered in the last great period
of Andalusian art in Granada. Since then, artists repeatedly reproduced the
same forms and trends until they developed a new style during the Nasrid
Dynasty. The Nasrids freely adopted and integrated all the stylistic elements
that had accumulated during the eight centuries of Muslim rule in the
Peninsula. They included the Caliphate horseshoe arch, the Almohad sebka
(a grid of rhombuses), the Almoravid palm, and unique combinations of
them, as well as innovations such as stilted arches and muqarnas. Like in
the Alhambra, columns, honeycombed domes (with thousands of tiny cells),
walls decorated with arabesques and calligraphy, and muqarnas appeared
in chambers and the interiors of many Andalusian palaces.31
The arabesque, a form of artistic decoration consisting of surface
stylings based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing
foliage tendrils, was very popular in Islamic architecture from the 9th cen-
tury on, and was adopted by European decorative art during the Renais-
sance. Islamic arabesques derived from the Late Antique and Byzantine
types of scrolling vegetal decoration, and were relatively unchanged in
early Islamic art. The plants most often used were stylized versions of the
acanthus, with its emphasis on leafy forms, and the vine, with an equal
emphasis on twining stems. These forms evolved into a distinctive Islamic
type by the 11th century. Thereafter it was used very widely across the
Islamic world as local variants in Arab and non–Arab areas were assimi-
lated, and it continued to develop further through regional enrichment. In
the process of development the plant forms became increasingly simplified
and stylized.32
As early as in the art of Samarra (Abbasid period), the relatively nat-
ural tendencies in decorative arts gave way to an abstract form of orna-
mentation known as spiraloid form. In these abstract forms, ornamental
art almost shed natural forms and presented only distant likenesses to the
plants from which they originally derived. Now only rhythmic patterns
remained, representing movement and rhythm. Although almost unrecog-
nizable as natural objects, the movement was conveyed with contracting
and expanding lines and waves having different degrees of consonance.

The designs were not symmetrical, but did have a certain repetition and
balance. This art allowed rhythm, normally only heard, to be visual through
the spiral undulations of lines. Compared to its Greco-Roman contempo-
raries, which embraced a naturalistic form, arabesque interlacing had a
geometrical complexity and rhythmic quality that escaped the Roman arts.
The shape of arabesque often is built on one or several regular figures
inscribed in a circle, then developed according to the principle of the star
polygon, meaning that the proportions inherent to the basic figure are
repeated in each and every level of development.33
There were two modes to arabesque art. The first recalled the princi-
ples that govern the order of the world. These principles were manifested
in the bare basics of what made objects structurally sound and visually
beautiful. In the first mode, each repeating geometric form had a built-in
symbolism ascribed to it. For example, the square, with its four equilateral
sides, was symbolic of the equally important elements of nature: earth, air,
fire and water. Without any one of the four, the physical world, represented
by a circle inscribed in the square, would collapse upon itself and cease
to exist. The second mode was based upon the flowing nature of plant
forms, the rhythm of movement or the life of the universe itself. This mode
represented natural evolution. With shape and movement of nature as illus-
trated in the two modes, an art that combined them into one would be the
highest form of arabesque beauty. This combination is Arabic calligraphy.
The reason calligraphy became the highest form of Islamic art is that it
not only presents the words of God, but also illustrates the essence of the
universe, its shape and rhythm as well as its voice (God’s words). The
coming together of these three forms creates the arabesque, and this is a
reflection of unity arising from diversity (a basic tenet of Islam).
At first glance, there was great similarity between arabesque artwork
from very different geographic and linguistic regions. In fact, the similar-
ities are so pronounced that it is sometimes difficult for experts to tell
where a given style of arabesque comes from. The reason for this is that
Arabic language after the classical period has absorbed the language of
precision and technology that was distilled from science and mathematics
and that was required to construct arabesque artwork. Thanks to the poetic
side of Arabic, a universal and precise vision could be easily seen through
the eyes of individual artists. Therefore, for most Muslims, the best artwork
that could be created by man for use in the mosque was artwork that dis-
played the underlying order and unity of God’s nature and a glimpse of
the spiritual world, the place where the only true reality exists.34
The evolution of Arabic calligraphy progressed in a similar fashion
to that of the arts. Its emphasis began with geometric shape and proportion,
then incorporated rhythmic movement and harmony. The earliest Arabic
calligraphy shared the geometric form of Islamic arts. Kufic, a script con-
sisting of straight lines and angles, was a cleaner, more geometric style,
with a very visible rhythm and a stress on horizontal lines. It originally
did not have consonant pointing to distinguish, for example, b, t, and th.
It is still employed in Islamic regions, although it has undergone a number
of alterations and often displays regional variations. The difference between
the Kufic script used in the Arabian Peninsula and that employed in North
African states is very marked. Sometimes, vowels were noted as red dots;
consonants were distinguished with small dashes to make the texts more
readable. A number of Qur’ans written in this style have been found in the
mosque at Kairouan, in Tunisia. Kufic writing also appears on ancient
coins.35
The Maghribi script and its Andalusi variant became less rigid versions
of Kufic, with more curves. For the writing of Qur’ans and other docu-
ments, Kufic was eventually replaced by the cursive scripts. It remained
in use for decorative purposes: In “Flowering Kufi,” slender geometric let-
tering was associated with stylized vegetal elements. In “Geometric Kufi,”
the letters are arranged in complex, two-dimensional geometric patterns
(for example, filling a square). This aims at decoration rather than read-
ability. Naskh script appeared in an Egyptian Qur’an from the 14th–15th
centuries. Cursive styles of calligraphy appeared during the 10th century.
They were easier to write and read and soon replaced the earlier geometric
style, except for decorative purposes.
The canonical “six cursive scripts” (al-aqlam al-sittah) were pio-
neered by the Persian Ibn Muqla Shirazi (d. 939) and were reformed and
refined by Ibn al-Bawwab (d. 1022) by developing a system of proportional
measurement so that each letter could be measured by its height and width
in dots. Yaqut al-Musta‘simi (d. 1298) refined the six scripts set down by
Ibn al-Bawwab by giving the letter shapes new dimension by emphasizing
the slanted cut of the pen. He also further systematized the method of pro-
portional measurement with dots.36
The straight, angular forms of Kufic were replaced in the new script
by curved and oblique lines. Tulut (thuluth) was a more monumental and
energetic writing style, with elongated verticals. It was used by Mamluks
in mosque decorations during the 14th–15th centuries. With some slight
changes, tulut was used to write the headings of sura (Qur’anic chapters).
Some of the oldest copies of the Qur’an were written in tulut. Later copies
were written in a combination of tulut and either Naskhi or Muhakkak,
while after the 15th century Naskhi came to be used exclusively. More
Qur’anic texts have been written in Naskh than in all the other scripts com-
bined. Naskh appealed particularly to the ordinary person because the script
was relatively easy to read and write. It is usually written with short hor-
izontal stems and with almost equal vertical depth above and below the
medial line. The curves are full and deep, the uprights straight and vertical,
and the words generally well spaced.
Naskh or naskhi was a simple cursive writing that was used in corre-
spondence before the calligraphers started using it for Qur’an writing. It
is slender and supple, without any particular emphasis, and highly readable.
It remains among the most widespread styles. The most famous calligrapher
of this genre was Hâfiz Osman, an Ottoman calligrapher who lived during
the 17th century. Naskh is the basis of modern Arabic print.
Islamic Mosque calligraphy can be found in and out of mosques, typ-
ically in combination with arabesque motifs. Arabesque is a form of Islamic
art known for its repetitive geometric forms creating beautiful decorations.
These geometric shapes often include Arabic calligraphy written on walls
and ceilings inside and outside of mosques. The subject of these writings
can be derived from different sources in Islam. It can be derived from the
written words of the Qur’an or from the oral traditions relating to the words
and deeds of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.
There is a beautiful harmony between the inscriptions and the func-
tions of the mosque. Specific surahs (chapters) or ayats (verses) from the
Qur’an are inscribed in accordance with functions of specific architectural
elements. For example, on the domes you can find the Nour ayat (the divine
stress on light) written. Above the main entrance you find verses related
to the entrances to paradise. On the windows the divine names of Allah
are inscribed so that reflection of the sun rays through those windows
reminds the believer that Allah manifests Himself upon the universe in all
high qualities.37
Among the most important contributions of non–Arabic architecture
to the Islamic tradition was the addition of brilliant colors. The Persian
poet Nizami Ganjavi (1141–1209) was the first person to add more colors
into the established palette of Arabic hues, which was limited to green,
white, black, and gold, colors that were closely associated with religious
meanings. The green is used in the decoration of mosques, bindings of
Qur’ans, silken covers for the graves of Sufi saints, and in the flags of var-
ious Muslim countries. For the Arabs, green symbolizes nature and life.
They envision paradise as green and its inhabitants as clothed in green silk
garments. White symbolizes purity and peace. Muslims wear white while
attending Friday prayers and hajj (pilgrimage). Black means mourning and
reminds believers of their religious martyrs. Persian poetry, architecture
and illustrative arts brought color from heaven to earth and to everyday
life. In his Haft Paykar (Love, Color and the Universe), Nizami used seven
colors to structure his classic poem. The central theme of the book was the
tale of the Sassanian prince Bahram Gur, who had seven pavilions built in
seven colors for his seven brides. He visited them one by one on each of
the seven days of the week, wearing the appropriate color. Other than being
a bedazzling exploration of the pleasure of love, the poem portrayed seven
stages of human life, the seven aspects of destiny, or the seven stages of
the mystical path.38
From here, color was liberated from the domain of philosophy and
religion (as symbols of abstract meanings), and became alive. Color
became visible and touchable as it played a crucial role in the surface
design of architecture, metal-works, enameling on metals and glass, espe-
cially the glazes used by potters and textile works. In architecture, colorful
decorations in the form of tiles, glass mosaics or painted walls and ceilings
were mostly found inside buildings. There appeared to be regional differ-
ences in the use and display of color in the Islamic world. In India builders
and patrons used natural red sandstone for their buildings. In Iran, where
the buff-colored brick did not afford the same kind of opportunity, they
were forced to incorporate colors in other ways, as in colorful tile deco-
rations. Finally, the passion for color was extended from buildings to lav-
ishly colorful gardens.
The Islamic garden turned nature into a captured and beautified space
full of colors, details and patterns. Only during this stage of maturity could
visual art produce so many concrete, fresh, and stylish images of an idea
as old as paradise. The underlying theme of the Islamic garden is the con-
cept of the chahar-bagh or four-fold garden. Classically, the chahar-bagh
is constructed around a central pool or fountain, with four streams flowing
from it, representing the four main elements of life. The Prophet Muhammad,
describing his miraculous journey to heaven, mentions four rivers: flowing
with wine, milk, honey and water. The number four has an inherent sym-
bolism reflecting the natural world. The symbolism of an Islamic garden
represents a universal theme, the understanding of nature and the universe.39
This concept, which was deeply rooted in religions for thousands of
years, finally came to life in the hands of Islamic designers and architects.
Like the Qur’anic scriptures on the walls of mosques that provide verbal
meanings of the buildings, Qur’anic uses of the garden as an analogy for
paradise significantly influences garden design. Traditionally, an Islamic
garden is a cool place of rest and reflection, and a reminder of paradise.
The Qur’an has many references to gardens, and the garden is used as an
earthly analogue for the life in paradise that is promised to believers:
Allah has promised to the believers gardens beneath which rivers flow, wherein
they abide eternally, and pleasant dwellings in gardens of perpetual residence; but
approval from Allah is greater. It is that which is the great attainment [Qur’an
9.72].
Paradise (janna) promised the pious and devout streams of water that would
not go rank and rivers of milk whose taste would not change, rivers of
delectable wine, streams of pure honey, fruits of every kind, and forgive-
ness from the lord.40
The literary images of paradise described in the Qur’an did not auto-
matically result in inspirations in garden design and building. During the
first four centuries of Islam, hardly any consciously designed gardens (with
four quadrants and four water channels) were built to imitate the paradise
scene. The gardens that were built were void of religious meaning. As
Islamic civilization evolved, its ideas and concepts began to be realized in
artistic forms, such as architecture and visual art. Like the mosques, which
developed from functional buildings to monuments demonstrating a
builder’s ideas, viewpoints and artistic capacities, the Islamic garden pro-
jected the Muslim vision of the universe. In other words, an Islamic garden
had little to do with nature (wild or enclosed) in the English sense of the
word, although water, trees and plants were its components. The Islamic
garden, more like the Chinese and Japanese classical garden, projected a
sense of order, balance and rhythm that were much grander and deeper
than the natural world visible to the naked eyes.
Unlike the English concept of enclosed (or artificial) nature, where
human eyes and hands impose control, the Islamic garden was designed
by and projected a divine order that Muslims believe to be God given and
shared by man and nature. Abstract arts and design were the typical means
to present this sense of order, balance, and rhythm (of the universe). Geom-
etry, symmetry, shape, surface, proportion, and movement of lines all
reflected a natural process, an inherent organization. This sense of balance
was revealed in the design of the garden, which often was divided into
four large green areas surrounding a centrally located palace or pavilion.
This stood in complete contrast to a courtyard within a palace, dwelling,
fort, mosque or madrasa. There were trees, flowers and/or grass in the gar-
den while the surface of a courtyard was predominantly hard, made of
stone, marble, or mosaic. The contrast often was softened by water. The
buildings, walls, arcades, axial pathways, steps, straight canals, and parter-
res were in complete contrast to the background bushes, shrubs, and flowers
hanging on the edges of support structures.41
Like many other civilizations, Arabic literature developed a rich sym-
bolic relationship with water, as projected in Islamic architecture, especially
its garden designs. Water was the symbolic center and basis of garden
design. It divided a garden into intended shapes and it flowed through nar-
row canals, implying the passage or flow of time. Since paradise had to
overflow with water, fountains, tanks, and canals in Islamic gardens always
flowed over the rim. Water was also used imaginatively in the garden plan,
and it creatively contributed to architecture and landscape. Pools often
contained fish, ducks, and water plants. Water tanks led to fountains that
delighted both the eyes and ears. The falling spray of water generated ever-
expanding ripples so that when looking at the basin one wondered if the
water was motionless or the marble was rippling. In short, water was used
as an element of design to contrast with the stability and stillness of the
architecture.
The water’s edge was one of the most attractive areas in the Islamic
garden. Although canals had hard edges, the sides of the pools often
extended over the surrounding ground with elaborately carved edges. The
water in the pools was normally shallow; but when deliberately left murky,
it appeared to be infinite. The reflection on the pool of still water introduced
light and the illusion of space, while the passing cloud symbolized tran-
sience. The pool of shallow water could also be strewn with rose petals,
or bore candles set adrift on tiny rafts to provide a sense of peaceful beauty
and profound satisfaction.42
In the gardens of Moorish Spain, fountains were everywhere. Large
pools were included in the designs of gardens in the Arabic Middle East,
Iran and India. The layout of the gardens was strictly geometric, confined
by walls of masonry or hedges. The geometric shape was also confirmed
by irrigating parterres. The gardens were small in size. Even the large ones
were partitioned into small and linked enclosures. Andalusian gardens were
urban and well attended, as they were filled with fragrant flowers and
seemed to be covered by a floral rug. In the flat sites of Cordova and Seville
the garden was considered to be an outdoor room, an extension of the
building. High walls of white stuccoed masonry cast a welcome shadow.
Conclusions
The world that Arabic created had been substantially widened both in
scope and depth with the evolution and accumulation of its descriptive
forms. From the small world of a desert tribal community to the Islamic
nations and to the universe that created by God, this leap of faith was car-
ried each step of the way by Arabic reading, writing, and painting. Words
did not only paint a larger world, they also penetrated beyond it as Arabic
became further distilled into more abstract forms. Arabic became able to
describe visions beyond what was seen by the naked eye: the logic under-
lying natural evolution, principles that governed the movement of the uni-
verse and social conditions, and most importantly the divine wisdom that
made life comprehensible.
The abstraction of language is not unique to Arabic. Almost every
language in the world encountered a classical period through internal evo-
lution or external influence. What was unique in the Middle East was that
Arabic, because of its deep rooting in poetry and ritual and linguistic per-
formance, managed to keep its feet on the ground. The multitude and diver-
sity did amount to a gap between the seen and unseen, abstract and concrete
and between written and spoken. Arabic vision remained unified and free.
CHAPTER 6
Imagery of Man
and His Feelings
This chapter is a brief history of the evolution of Arabic imagery of

man (a general and collective concept of human) and his feelings. It traces
the creation and transformation of ideal images in terms of the accumula-
tion of the vocabulary of love. Without a language reorientation, as seen
in medieval Europe, language of love in Arabic enjoyed a remarkable con-
tinuity that is rarely found in world literature. This vocabulary has been
used to express love, friendship, affection, and worship to ideal images
both human and divine. This language of love (for man, woman or God)
also shared a similar pattern of formation and transfiguration. In the
process, images (ideal and concrete, of worship and worshiper) were con-
stantly redefined in literature, especially in poetry. For example, the primal
concept of Godhead that Arabic inherited from ancient Semitic began with
a notion of God as opposite to man. Descriptive language evolved in
hymns, God gradually retained many images. So did the concept of man
as it was transfigured by the accumulation of a diverse language of praying
and ritual of worship. When God was revealed in various faces, sought in
various signs, worshipped in various objects of worship, and pursued in
the visible and invisible, he appeared different to every pair of eyes gazing
upon him. Each of his believers could find and unite with Him on his own
personal terms. Increasingly personalized poetry would create a variably
perceived Divine that was communicated in a highly individualized lan-
guage to each and every writer, reader, and believer.
Man began to cultivate a concept of individuality only after a culture
had developed a language of love capable of perceptual and emotional sen-
sibility. This linguistic evolution took place in many cultures at different
stages, the later medieval period in Western Europe and the post–Tang
period in China, for example. The language of love was not a stranger to
175
the Middle East even before the emergence of Arabic and Islam. Akkadian
love poetry followed Sumerian prototypes. The ancient Mesopotamians
began their love affair with Inanna when they sang to her in prayers and
hymns. At the time, Istar was the “lady of heaven” who was in charge of
love and sexual attraction. An Old Babylonian hymn, composed for King
Amiditana (1683–1647 B.C.), represented love in a rather coarse language
with poor and limited imagery. It was that the goddess was “clothed with
love and joy, and adorned with seduction, grace and sex-appeal.” She was
described having “honey-sweet lips” and “vibrant mouth.” Her eyes were
“shining and bright” and she gave “life, power, and protection” wherever
she looked. She “subdued the four corners of the world.”1
Without a more abstract word for love or affection, the face of the
Divine retained clumsy images from the standard Sumerian epithets of the
goddess. As a personification of beauty, love and charm, she was illustrated
with the word inbu, taken from horticultural terminology. Inbu (Akkadian)
derived from the Sumerian word bilga (fruit), which extended its meaning
to refer to male ancestors and symbolized a connection to human sexual
intercourse. The Akkadian word kuzbu was the closest to the Sumerian
word hi-li (sex appeal and irresistible attraction); voluptuousness and
orgasm were also the common renditions of the story of God.2
Similar to the Greek mythologies, whose language became less violent
and vulgar over time, the Babylonian tale of love was much less graphic,
even though some Sumerian verbal remnants remained. King Amiditana
(1683–1647 B.C.) was the lover of the goddess Innana, but his sex appeal
was not mentioned. His praise and love for her were a part of his pious
duty. He was subject to her command. Thus, the tone of love was altogether
formal, polite and distanced. He demonstrated his love for the goddess by
sacrifice and prayer, hoping to be rewarded with military success (dominion
around the world) and long life.
The relationship between the ruler and the gods was described in a
manner quite different from the royal hymns of the Ur III/Isin-Larsa period.
Old Babylonian royal inscriptions generally emphasized the humanity of
the king rather than his claims to divine status. The gods did indeed rec-
ognize the king as their representative, but he was also qualified as an able
administrator and purveyor of earthly justice. Rather than blurring the
distinctions between king and gods, as in the Ur III royal hymns, the Baby-
lonian royal ideology highlighted the gulf between them. All the mytho-
logical trappings of kinship between ruler and the gods disappeared from
the texts. There was no more of the king’s divine birth, of him being suckled
by the mother-goddesses. The symbolic sexual union between ruler and
the goddess also lost currency, because, like the metaphors of divine kinship,
it contradicted the spirit of this separation and the sense of propriety con-
cerning gods’ affairs.3
Istar was not the only goddess who was associated with sexuality. Lit-
tle is known about the origins of Nannâ (or Nanaya), who appeared in
Sumerian texts from the Ur III period onwards. She received offerings at
the portals of the Giparu at Uruk during the Neo-Sumerian period. She
was a daughter of An, and like Inanna, a sister of Utu. She was also a man-
ifestation of the planet Venus. There was a royal hymn to Išbi-Erra of Isin,
which described the relationship between Inanna and Nannâ (Sin in Akka-
dian), her lover who was available at her command. In an Old Babylonian
royal hymn composed for Samsuiluna (1749–1712 B.C., the son and succes-
sor of Hammurabi), Inanna was described in terms of the sun and the moon
of her people. Her shadow was filled with splendor and she was rich of
fertility, glory, sweetness and sex appeal and full of joy, laughter and love.4
Divine love affairs now were portrayed in less vulgar terms, focusing
more on the couple’s desire for each other and the reflection of love and
sex rather than the sexual act itself. “She fills his heart with happiness.”
“Your love-making is sweet and your erotic ability was sated with honey.”
“He was thirsting for her as he did for water.”5 In contrast to the Sumerian
love-dialogues, where the king himself was the lover, and where the lovers
were described in detailed imagery of love-making, this was a composite
text, where the king was clearly dissociated from the amorous preoccupa-
tion of the divine couple, the deities Nannâ and Muati. Their dialogue was
a collage of hackneyed erotic phrases, a rather formal recitation, which
was interspersed with references to the king who was seeking the blessings
of the goddess. This was not a personal love-poem in a modern sense, but
rather a specially commissioned text, dedicated to the statue of the goddess.
As personal feelings were not expressed in divine dialogue, the language
of love became a passionate exchange between gods and goddesses, when
divine marriage ceremonies between Nabû and Nannâ were celebrated in
Babylon during the first millennium. The love and sexual relationship of
Nannâ, an Istar-type goddess, and her consort Muati became a divine affair.
Unlike the Sumerian ruler, who dedicated himself to satisfying the erotic
demands of his goddess, the Babylonian king abdicated this task to another
god, who was more capable of providing the goddess with sensual enjoy-
ment. The Babylonian literature said that the “robust” (šamha, actually
“voluptuous,” “potent”) Muati would be equal to the task. The king, how-
ever, still expected the blessings that the goddess usually bestowed on her
lover; but now her new husband, Muati, interceded for him and asked his
spouse “to let him live forever,” a favor that Nannâ alone could grant.6
The language of love and passionate speech remained mainly among
the immortals and within the context of divine marriage. The love of mor-
tals for the goddess was described as a burning heart and lust crying out
in agitation; they would “reminisce on their former bliss” and “the marriage
they had experienced in the now ruined temple.” Although on rare occa-
sions, the Babylon texts seemed to continue the address to the male lover,
providing more details about intimacy and the act of love-making, such
as “The beating of your heats is joyful music,” and “Rise and let me make
love to you!,” this love affair became a ritual form without any personal
meaning. It became a part of ritual performance in which quoted, passionate
speech formed a part of the composition of the ceremonial performance.7
There were striking similarities between Akkadian and Sumerian love
songs in tone and imagery. They both used the first-person plural suffix
“our” for the women’s parts. (Some scholars suggested that this could
imply her sharing them with her lover.) This was presented as a female
voice of seduction, calling from her perfumed bed. The noticeable differ-
ence from the Sumerian poems was in the directness of her speech and
details of description. Only in bridal songs did the young woman speak of
her own genitals, where she pointed out the visible signs of nudity (“now
our parts have grown hair ... now our breasts stand up”).8 However, in
Akkadian love-songs, the male lover sometimes described the vulva as
being as sweet as honey or beer, but even in the most intimate situations
the woman did not talk of her bodily parts except in poetic allusions. The
whole tenor of the Babylonian fragment had none of the intense intimacy
of the Sumerian courtly love poem. When the setting was no longer a tête-
â-tête between human lovers, but rather a symbolic act of a divine couple,
the nuances and subtleties disappeared and the language became corre-
spondingly stronger. They magically created and activated vivid imagery
of divine lovemaking.
The development distinction between Sumerian and Babylonian love
poetry was similar to that between Latin classical poetry and the early
Troubadour poetry in France. For example, the poetry of Guillem IX, duke
of Aquitaine, was rather direct and earthy in contrast to that of Ovid. The
erotic poetry in Akkadian was popular and much admired in the old scribal
center of Kiš, which was active throughout the preceding Isin-Larsa period.
However, unlike in Provence, there was not a great development of courtly
poetry in post–Old Babylonian poetry, although there was a tendency to
write Akkadian love-songs, to some extent imitating Sumerian court poetry.
The reason was that the Akkadian disappeared as a popular language, and
it gradually became replaced by other regional vernaculars and literatures
while its written form was still used. Even after the Greek invasion under
Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C., Akkadian was still a contender
as a written language; but like Latin, spoken Akkadian was likely extinct
by this time, or at least rarely used.9
The linguistic reorientation of ancient Mesopotamia (from Akkadian
to mushrooming regional vernaculars) put an end to the abstraction ten-
dency of the language of love, which evolved from Sumerian to Akkadian
literatures. Emerging vernaculars breathed new life into the expression of
feelings in Semitic languages. Similar to what happened in late medieval
Western Europe where vernaculars spread the words of love from the
church into villages, cities and the streets, a highly personal and sensitive
poetry of feelings emerged and was cultivated in pre–Islamic poetry. The
ancient gods gradually became forgotten as the voice of hymns diminished,
the memory of their myth was lost, and temples of worship were abandoned
after new and diverse deities were cultivated in various regional languages.
Thus, the authority and royalty of gods and goddesses was transformed to
human authorities such as tribal kings and chiefs, while poets took different
roles as the leaders and lips of the community.
Ancient Arabic emerged from diverse cultural and regional societies.
The South Arabians had an ancient, settled civilization, while the northern
Arabs were nomads and dwellers in oases, dependent on caravan trade
routes and the pastoral use of an arid expanse of parched semi-desert. The
nomadic tribes had neither architecture (only the tent, with three hearth-
stones in front of it) nor pictorial art, except rock drawings. However,
music was played on the lyre and similar sophisticated stringed instruments,
and verses were chanted at social functions. In the company of flute and
tambourine their seemingly wild desert life was organized by tribal social
convention. Here men were measured by the qualities of their personality
rather than their relationships with gods. They had to be loyal to their tribal
community and do everything that they could to defend its interests and
pride. However, the awareness of honor went beyond social and collective
codes; it was engraved in man’s character that had been cultivated by the
sound and rhythm of poetry for generations. An ideal man had to be
honorable (sharaf ), generous and hospitable (karam), and give succor (naj-
dah) to the weak (women and children). His manhood should be judged
by his prowess, bravery or even personal sacrifice in tribal war to defend
its honor.
Swords and words were vehicles of social mobility in tribal Arabia,
where persons from lower social and ethnical backgrounds could distin-
guish themselves as heroes. For example, Antara Ibn Shaddad (525–608),
one of the most renowned pre–Islamic poets, was the son of Shaddad, a
well-respected member of the Arabian tribe of Banu Abs; his mother was
Zabibah, an Ethiopian slave. Initially both his father and his tribe neglected
Antara as he was growing up in servitude. He was considered one of the

“Arab crows” (Al-aghribah al-’Arab) because of his jet-black complexion.
Antara eventually gained attention and respect for himself by his remark-
able personal qualities and courage in battlefield, and he became an accom-
plished poet and a mighty warrior. He earned his freedom after a tribe
invaded Banu Abs when his father promised, “Defend your tribe and you
are free.” Antara fought many great tribal wars and eventually died as a
hero for the cause.
Antarah’s poetry is well preserved, and often presented chivalrous
values, courage and heroism in war, as well as his love for Abla, his cousin.
He was immortalized when one of his poems was included in the Hanged
Poems. The poetry’s historical and cultural importance derives from its
detailed descriptions of battles, armor, weapons, horses, the desert and
other themes from his time.10
His boast, running to over thirty lines, reads as a danse macabre, a
grim display of courage that devolves into unconstrained bloodletting. And
yet it was precisely here, “as the whirl of death / dragged champion after
champion down,” and the poet was facing the flying arrows and swards,
that he abandoned for a moment all posturing and deflected his helpless
anguish onto his poetry. As he pushed his spear into his enemy’s breast
and clothed him in blood, he saw tears in his eyes. “Had he known how
to speak he would have protested. Had he known to use words, he would
have spoken to me now.” These closing lines forced a powerful image of
life and death in the minds of readers.
Antara’s poetry provided vivid imagery of the Arabian hero, especially
his extremely diverse personalities and fluid emotions. He was gentle and
mild by nature when his rights were not violated. He loved his life and his
woman; he often gazed at and dreamed of her naked and exquisite neck
and he wept at her absence. When he was injured, however, his resentment
became firm and bitter as coloquintida to the taste of the aggressor. The
enemy had sought his blood, the blood of his kinsmen, who never had
wronged them; he had to go to war for sweet revenge. He put himself as
a shield between his loved one and hostile spears; he well recognized the
danger at the place where he fixed his foot, which was too narrow to admit
a companion. “Go on, Antara!” the exulting warriors cried. Against the
coming tide of the enemy he pressed forward. With a nimble and double-
handed stroke, he prevented the enemy’s attack. He rapidly struck him to
the heart with an Indian scimitar, with the blade of bright water, till streams
of blood gushed out of the wound. He defied war’s terrors by silencing his
enemies. He left them dead like sacrificed victims, to the lions of the forest
and ravenous vultures hovering over their heads. “Well done,” his kinsmen
cheered. His wounded pride healed and his anger dispersed and he felt like
he was on the top of the world.
The cruelty of war affected women poets differently than it did men.
Women’s poetic expertise was to lament for the dead and express grief in
moving metaphors and similes. Al-Khansa’ (575–646) was considered by
many the best Arabic poetesses. Her life was full of tragedies and a chain
of wounds that never healed, as she lost not only her brothers, but also her
four sons in war. Her elegy for her brother Sakr made her well-known
even before Islam as she won competitions for poetic performance. Her
elegy (al-ritha’) “Lament of Sakr” expressed her grief in vivid metaphors:
as if time had gnawed at her, bit and cut her. The lost of her brother had
wounded and harmed her so badly that for years she still saw the riders,
the broad swords and grey spears, which turned faces deathly white and
cut bodies. Yes, her tribe won the war and the praise of people, but her
brother was dead and gone forever. She herself melted into tears that flowed
endless and would never dry. She would weep for his death as long as
there were mountain peaks, watered earth, and morning clouds.
Unlike the elegiac tradition of the western language that mainly
depicted characterizations of the departed, Arabic elegy focused on the
experience of suffering and expression of the emotion of the mourner,
which made the poetry moving and effective. In her elegy for Sakr, Al-
Khansa’ presented only one image of Sakr; the spear point whose bright
shape lights up the night. She promised that she would cry for him and
mourn as long as the dove sang and the stars shined. She would never for-
give the enemies who killed him. Poetry here became an act, a performance
in public by a group of women during pre–Islamic or early Islamic periods.
The intensity of the expression attempted to matched the finality of death
and turn mourning into a heroic deed, as heroic as the death of men in the
battle.11
Al-Khansa’ was a contemporary of Muhammad, who often came to
her recital performances and listened to her poetry. In 629 she converted
to Islam and sent her four sons to the war of Islamic conquest with her
words: “Remember the great merit of fighting to defend your faith. Recite
the verses of Qur’an about patience in the midst of distress. Tomorrow
morning, rise from your bed hale and hearty and join the battle with fearless
courage. Go into the midst of the thickest battle, encounter the boldest
enemy and die as martyrs if you have to.” They joined the war with fearless
courage, with the words of their mother ringing in their ears. They plunged
themselves heroically into the battle and put many enemies to the sword.
They were killed one after the other. When the news of the death of her
sons reached her, she asked the messenger about the outcome of the battle.
When she was told that the Muslims had won, she thanked God for the
martyrdom of her sons, and asked, “Who dies, if Islam lives?”
She found new meaning in her sacrifice: for Allah and Islam. Now,
she no longer shed tears or lamented the blind twist of fate. Pagan imageries
in her verses had disappeared. Her suffering from the loss of her sons was
more serene and congruent with her new faith. However, her poetry still
sang with the same poignant immediacy and touching emotions.
When she saw the dead bodies of her sons, she did not weep. She
burst into an elegy: “My sons, I have borne you with pain and brought you
up with great care. You have fallen today for the cause of Islam. Who says
you are dead? No, you are very much alive. You are alive with honor.”
When Al-Khansa’ returned to Madina, Caliph Omar Bin al Khattab went
to her house to express his condolence over the death of her sons. She
merely said: “Please congratulate me, commander of the faithful. I am
proud to be the mother of martyrs.”
The passion to die for glory in the battlefields came with the same
passion for life. The warrior/poet lived for the moments of pleasure that
might not be there tomorrow. He enjoyed music, wine and the company
of singing girls. He loved his woman as a companion, the only warmth in
a cold and cruel life; he remembered her as white as a star, in her striped
gown or her saffron robe with widely open collar showing her tender skin.
As a lonely traveler with no luggage or invitation, he enjoyed the faces
that lit up like novas, the smiles that mirrored marigolds and the joy in
shortening a cloudy day, lying with a well-fleshed lady under a firmly
pitched tent.12
No early Islamic poet has ever injected more fresh blood into the
stream of love poetry of Arabic than Abu-Nuwas (756–814) did. He used
new words, unconventional (often un–Islamic) topics such as wine and
self-indulgence, and vernacular expressions to reinvent the language of
love. The imagery of Abu Nuwas was rooted in pre–Islamic poetry, and
his composition was grammatically sound and based on the old Arab tra-
ditions of layered textual allusions. His themes and imagery, however,
were drawn from urban life, not the desert. He was particularly known for
his poems on wine and exotic pleasure. His verse was laced with humor
and irony, reflecting the genial yet cynical outlook of the poet whose life
was caught in contemporary politics although all he had ever been inter-
ested in was poetry and personal happiness.13
Abu Nuwas was outspoken, blunt and heedless of consequence. He
had exhausted the expression of lover’s grievance and turned the entire
horizon of speech inside out. His imagination was absolutely free and bound-
less; it could shatter all strictures of decorum and derail all complacency
in ways that were either scandalously graphic or almost imperceptibly

slight. This was how he described one of his personal divines: idealized
man and lover. He was a gazelle whose eyes dealt out among the people
their allotted time. Even the mystic prophet Khidr would answered his
prayer and ransom himself for him. “If we were ever to deny God we
would worship him instead. I don’t need anything else in life except that
the darkness of night envelop us, him and me. When he appeared, I thought
that I saw the crescent moon walking.”14
However, the poetry of Abu Nuwas was still two and a half centuries
a way from the poetry of Rumi (1207–1273), a Sufi poet who embraced
God and united with Him with his poetry. At the moment, Abu Nuwas sim-
ply established a subject of love (and worship) and created a game between
the subject and its worshiper in which the relationship remained fluid and
volatile at times. His subject of love was an idealized and perfected human
image that could be admired, pursued, dominated and even abused. The
act of love, therefore, could be tender, loving, sensitive, or cruel, which
evoke longing, suffering, doubt, fear (of being scorned), and resentment
(after rejection). Unlike the pre–Islamic poetry that mainly focused on sor-
row, Abu Nuwas portrayed a mosaic of feelings that could be calmed,
stirred or agitated by a glance of the eye, a touch of a finger or the utterance
of a word.15
In order to understand the complexity and historical significance of
Abu Nuwas’ language of love, one has to comprehend what he had inherited
from ancient and pre–Islamic love poetry. By the Abbasid period (the mid-
dle of the eighth century), Arabic love poetry had developed in two or
three principal forms, newly detached from a complex multi-themed and
ritualized pre–Islamic ode (qasida). Two independent genres, ‘udhri (chaste
or platonic) love poetry and ibahi (sensual or erotic) love poetry, began to
evolve in the seventh century. They both remained quite dependent on a
common stock of descriptive imagery and certain standard motifs (for
instance, those of the bestiary of love: the gazelle-like aspects of the para-
mour). ‘Udhri took its name from the Banu ‘Udhra, an Arab tribe from a
valley in the northern Hijaz most associated with this kind of expression,
while the Ibahi in Arabic simply meant “permissive.”16
‘Udhri poetry proper, which was essentially a phenomenon of the
desert, was relatively short-lived, unlike the idealistic and unattainable
love of medieval Europe. Courtly love did have a far-reaching influence
through the ages upon Arabic classical poetry, but it was far from being
the most dominant tendency of Arabic love poetry during and after the
classical period. Ibahi poetry, associated mainly with the Meccan dissolute
‘Umar ibn Abi Rabi‘a (d. 712), was a poetry of seduction that originated
from Arabian Bedouin context, and had not yet become entirely urbanized.
There had been some precedents for the intensity of ‘udhri poetry in pre–
Islamic Arabia. The influence of Islam could be felt in the language and
imagery of the new genre (assimilating religious practice into a quasi-spir-
itual enterprise), reflected significantly in its changed perspectives of time
and reality. The ‘udhri poet was an introspective individual; he had an
individual view of the world, which he observed through the prism of his
love and suffering. The outer world, according to the way he viewed its
landscape and fauna, was internalized in psychological harmony with him.
The poet devoted himself faithfully and exclusively to the one beloved.
When love was blighted by time and separation, the pre–Islamic poet
tended to “cut the ropes of affection” (to cut losses in a heroic posture);
the ‘udhri poet, by contrast, projected his love into the future opened up
by the new religion: toward death and what lay beyond. The ibahi poet too
had precedents for some essential features in early and late pre–Islamic
verse. The philandering ‘Umar ibn Abi Rabi‘a modeled himself partly on
Imru’al-Qays. ‘Umar’s animated poem, in which he described a nocturnal
visit to his beloved’s tribe (stealing into her tent, spending the night and
oversleeping, and having to escape the encampment at dawn draped in a
woman’s robes, trailing them behind him to erase his tracks), expanded
upon a short passage in Imru’al-Qays’ poetry. Abu Nuwas inherited this
essential dichotomy of love poetry, and he combined the characteristics of
both udhri and ibahi expressions.17
Abu Nuwas did not invent the image of wine, which was rooted in
pre- and early Islamic poetry. As early as the first half of the seventh cen-
tury, the motif of wine (khamr) appeared in nasib of the qasida to console
the poet’s despondent love. It was used either as a fleeting description of
the beloved, or as a boast of hedonistic pleasure directly addressing the
beloved. The poets attempted to console despondent love in a vaunting
manner. However, the image of the beloved and the wine motif were simply
juxtaposed and static, without a narrative focal point. There was not any
contrast of emotions or feminine imagery in the descriptive topics of the
wine. In this sense, the wine simply dissipated rather than condensed the
emotions. The poem of Abu Dhu’ayb al-Hubhali (d. 649), a forerunner of
the ‘udhri poetry, represented a depth of emotion that was rarely seen in
pre–Islamic poetry. His expression of love was spirited and went beyond
the monochrome austerity of the usual pre–Islamic poetry. Wine became
an object of sanctification and pilgrimage as he described and celebrated
a love that threatened to kill the poet.
Another example was the poetry of ‘Umar ibn Abi Rabi’a, who was
one of the inventors of ghazal (love poetry). Not a specific form of poetry,
ghazal was defined as a poetic expression of love, specifically an illicit

and unattainable love. The love was always viewed as something that would
complete a human being, and if attained would lift him into the ranks of
the wise, or will bring satisfaction to the soul of the poet. In this genre,
love was a rather broad concept; it might or not have an explicit element
of sexual desire in it. As an abstract love, it could be directed to either a
man or a woman, and it also could be spiritual, which made it possible to
apply to the love to God. The ghazal was always written from the point of
view of the unrequited lover whose beloved was portrayed as unattainable.
Most often either the beloved did not return the poet’s love or returned it
without sincerity, or else the societal circumstances did not allow it. The
lover was aware of and resigned to this fate but continued loving nonethe-
less. The lyrical impetus of the poem that derived from this tension did
not demand long elaboration and consistency of thought, but it took years
and years of distillation. Representations of the lover’s powerlessness to
resist his feelings often included lyrically exaggerated violence. The
beloved’s power to captivate the speaker could be portrayed in extended
metaphors about the “arrows of his eyes,” or by referring to the beloved
as an assassin or a killer of the soul of the lover. In style and content it
was a genre that proved capable of an extraordinary variety of expression
around its central themes of love and separation. Abi Rabi’a often depicted
a dialogue of himself with his own heart.18
The treatment of wine survived into the poetry of Al-Akhṭal (640–
710), the Umayyad court poet, and also was used by early Abbasid poets.
Their images of wine were sharpened and intensified but they remained
within the pre–Islamic tradition.
Abu Nuwas celebrated wine by juxtaposing elements of nasib and
ghazal into single poems of a composite but cohesive texture. In his tighter
structure the wine motif illustrated the contrast of emotions and also carried
the narrative of seduction. Thus, the new perspectives of love affected
wine poetry as well as ghazal. A sense of the future certainly had a growing
role to play in the rebellious Bacchism of the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid peri-
ods. As Islam added a temporal dimension to the inspiration of these poets,
it also brought a new tension, for both love and wine were set against the
strictest of religious cautions. Both the love poet and the wine poet came
to defy Islam, either by assimilating its imagery or by adopting a rebellious
stance.
The most significant developments of Umayyad love poetry were rep-
resented by Abi Rabi’a and the ‘udhri poets. Their poems combined erotic
narrative and descriptive images (both male and female) with dialogue in
which a hedonistic episode was followed and prefaced by what came close
to a motif of censure. For example, the lover’s eyes had already slain the
poet and left him drunk before the attack of the wine and the taste of wine
in lover’s mouth revived the dead poet, indicating complete harmony
between the effect of love and that of the wine. The poetry of Al-Walid b.
Yazid (d. 744) particularly marked the point where Abu Nuwas inherited
from this poetic tradition. Al-Walid had consciously developed the imagery
and language of both ghazal and khamriyah so that they became in certain
respects interchangeable. His language was light and lyrical, and his mood
was consistently one of incitement.19
Al-Walid’s initial imperatives also set a keynote after which the brief
depictions of wine, women or men, and song followed. In the poetry of
wine, love and wine existed side by side without the contrived contrast of
emotions. “If I am unlucky in love, I would have the advantage of having
once fasted and prayed!” “I call upon God to be my witness, I desire music,
song and like to drink wine and to bite the cheeks of nubile youths.” This
was how Al-Walid channeled his various passions into a humorous counter-
testament of religious faith. In a similar sentiment and attitude, Abū Nuwas
adopted the structure and yet gave wine poetry (khamriyyāt) relative com-
plexity. Abu Nuwas simply juxtaposed love, wine, and women or men in
one sentence: “I love the song, the drinking, the intimacy of women and
the Lord of the Suras.”20
Abu Nuwas further assimilated religious language in a variance of
exotic interpretation to warp the idealistic tone into poetic lyricism. His
description of love was idealistic and sensual at the same time. For exam-
ple, among the motifs rendered bland with repetition was that of the
beloved depicted as the full or crescent moon and the sun (one and the
only like God) and as beauty inscribed upon his forehead: the true love;
there was no comely one other than him. “Sweet one! Love for you pos-
sesses me; I cannot have two hearts: one preoccupied, the other one blithe.”
Sometime the failure of human language to describe the sacred subject of
love was portrayed as if the tongue were flagging. Here the inability to
delineate was meant to evoke not human failing but a quasi-numinous inef-
fability: the poet contemplated a divine darling who produced ethereal
light. Therefore, human failure to grasp godly perfection despite being
captivated by an image was illustrated by poetic inability.21
Unlike religious and scientific prose, Arabic poetry flourished with
the use of contrary tones, moods, and dramatic play of various seemingly
incoherent elements. Abu Nuwas’ originality within this repertoire could
be surreal, at once intense and amusing, and had both earnest and playful
aspects. He would announce that he saw the sun walking about on Friday
night while the people were stirred and collapsed to the ground in terror,
assuming that the Apocalypse was coming. His expression of profound

feeling, although alluring, could be enigmatic; no more so than when he
stole a look into his sweetheart’s face and glimpsed his own. Was it the
beauty of a burnished complexion that was suggested? Or the threats of
violence, a spying glance being caught and returned at the poet’s expense?
Abu Nuwas’ poetry was replete with kaleidoscopic contrasts. It gave a
sense of apparently endless variety: moods and themes coiled around each
other in diverse, sometimes antithetical configurations, managed with either
abrupt or discreet transitions.
While Nuwas produced risqué but beautiful poems, many of which
pushed the limit of what was acceptable under Islam, others produced more
conventional and religious poetry. The works of Sufi poets, which appeared
to be simple ghazal or khamriyah (wine poetry) continued Abu Nuwas’
attempt to combine emotional experience under the guise of love or wine
and pursuit of divine. (In the context of poetic evolution, the language that
pursued God or the perfect woman or man was one and the same, at least
initially.) However, unlike bacchist poetry, which defied Islamic morality
and its rules of conduct, Sufi poetry attempted to contemplate the mortal
flesh to achieve transcendence. However, their works, like Nuwas’ uncon-
ventional behavior, were initially considered heretical or dangerous.22
If Abu Nuwas represented a sensitive side of poetic sentiment, the
poetry of Al-Mutanabbi (915–965) championed the traditional man and his
chivalry as inherited from the pre–Islamic Arabic poetry. Al-Mutanabbi’s
best topics were courage, bravery (in battlefields) and the philosophy of
life. He did in fact excel in all that was expected of a poet in his day. He
composed love poetry and he praised rich and powerful rulers. But two
things distinguished him from other poets: his verse had a rhythmic sweep
that is not easily accounted for by the standard scansion, and a powerful
personality shines through even when he deals with impersonal themes.
He did not have an amiable personality; he was one whose ambition puffed
his ego and sharpened his mouth. It was life’s cruelty that he was destined
to sing the praises of wielders of power—rabbits who happened to be
kings—many of whom he despised.23
With this inflated ego, his love poetry addressed women in a different
tone. He was more a picker in the arena of love than a beggar. He even
mildly protested against the fact that every eloquent poet of his time had
to be enslaved by love and expected to plead for the favors of beautiful
women. For a proud man like himself, he needed to include a love theme
as a prelude to a hero’s journey that would test his mettle. In an early poem,
Al-Mutanabbi described in extravagant terms the beauty of his beloved
and then went on to expound his own valor. “My lifeblood is in your hands,
do whatever you please, to abate its torment or else increase it, or put it
to death,” he said to the beloved. “You can’t drink someone’s blood only
if the blood of a bunch of grapes. Pour this to me, then, my soul would be
ransom for your eyes. All my possessions of my entire life, my whitened
hair, my self-abasement, my emaciation and my tears are witnesses to my
passion.” For whatever the response from this plea, he was vowed to live
proudly or else die honorably amid the thrusting lances and the fluttering
pennants, for spearheads, the best for dispelling rage or quenching the
thirst of rancorous breasts.24
The best-known of Al-Mutanabbi’s compositions were panegyrics for
men who wielded various degrees of authority. Unlike ‘Antara, Al-Mutan-
abbi was not a warrior; perhaps the only way in which he could obtain
glory was to gain the favor of the glorious rulers who could get with swords
what he could never get in words. However, he was not a permissive fol-
lower, as he always declared that his station was higher than the sun or the
moon, especially the subject of his praise. His best years, from 948 to 957,
during which he wrote his greatest and most famous poems, were spent in
the service of Sayf-ad-Dawla (916–967), the founder of the Amdani dynasty
at Northern Syria. Sayf-ad-Dawla was a hero and prince that Al-Mutanabbi
had never and would never be. He often engaged in border battles with the
Byzantine Empire while maintaining a brilliant court that attracted many
of the leading intellects and artistic talents of the day. Al-Mutanabbi was
abundantly rewarded with money, but he remained a suppliant. Like a
delinquent schoolboy he had to plead illness when he failed to deliver a
poem that had been expected of him, and he had to take part in drinking
parties that he heartily disliked. But his panegyrics resounded far and wide,
and he seldom failed to embed in them a few lines singing his own praises
as a doughty warrior and a supreme poet. In a poem declaimed on the occa-
sion of a religious feast, Al-Mutanabbi praised his master Sayf-ad-Dawla:
“You surpass all others in judgment and wisdom and you outrank them in
virtue, status, and lineage. Your good deeds are so subtle for ordinary minds
to perceive who concede only what is clear.” He begged him: “Fortified
my wrist wields a sword with your favor, my wrist wields a sword that
lops off many heads while still in its sheath.” He told him: “Nothing am I
but a lance, which you carry: It adorns on parade and strikes terror when
pointed.”
His comparison of himself to a lance was particularly felicitous, as
the occasion was marked by a military parade, but the lines that followed
could scarcely have won him many friends. Eventually, he roused animosi-
ties among so many that he had to depart in haste. Al-Mutanabbi’s next
destination was Egypt, and his next patron was the exact opposite of all
that Al-Mutanabbi admired in Sayf-ad-Dawla. This was Abu al-Misk Kāfūr

(905–968) the vizier of the Ikshīdid dynasty. Kāfūr was originally an
African slave belonging to the founder of the Ikshīdid dynasty, Muhammad
ibn Tughj. Muhammad recognized Kāfūr’s talent, made him tutor to his
children, and promoted him to an officer. Kāfūr showed outstanding mil-
itary abilities in the campaigns in Syria and the Hejaz. On his deathbed
Muhammad appointed Kāfūr guardian of one of his two sons, and thus
Kāfūr became the real ruler of Egypt during the reign of Unujur (946–961)
and his brother and successor, ‘Ali (961–966). Kāfūr ruled in his own name
thereafter, but soon after his death in 968, Ikshīdid power in Egypt was
overturned by the Fatimids.
Kāfūr was an able ruler, but the fact that he accomplished his purposes
without spectacular feats of arms did not catch Al-Mutanabbi’s imagina-
tion. More importantly, Kāfūr recognized Al-Mutanabbi’s political ambi-
tion and considered it a threat. He made sure that Al-Mutanabbi could not
get what he wanted. Al-Mutanabbi was angry and claimed that the poems
he had composed in Kāfūr’s praise were meant to be ironic. After four
years, which Al-Mutanabbi claimed he spent as a virtual prisoner in Egypt,
he managed to leave. As soon as he was out of Kāfūr’s reach he composed
a vitriolic satire in which he dwelt rancorously not only on his former
patron’s ethnical background, but also on the physiological features of
eunuchs.25
In Al-Mutanabbi’s poetry one witnessed a transformation of the poetic
persona of the Arabic language. With increasingly lavish imagery and reck-
less audacity of imagination, he turned panegyrics of his patrons from a
means to gain support or livelihood into self-validation and promotion.
Not only did he manage to capture the attention of Arab audience and their
rulers with short abrupt verses, which are still quoted today, he also enjoyed
a broad sphere of admirers and exercised more lasting influence than did
their patrons. Openly swollen with pride from his supremacy as a poet,
Al-Mutanabbi often sang his own praises with well known sentences such
as, “The desert knows me well, the night and the mounted men, the battle
and the sword, the paper and the pen.” For him, time was but a reciter of
his necklace-like poems: when he strung them together, ages would recite
them. He believed that his poetry could move a tone-deaf man and make
him sing with a trill. He told his patrons, reward me for all the poems you
hear, for it is my poems that bring all your eulogists. Ignore the voice of
others because only mine is the one that soars and is being copied and
echoed.
Al-Mutanabbi’s pride often bordered on arrogance, which was the
foundation of much of his brilliant writings. In a sense, Al-Mutanabbi was
a very controversial figure of his time. His poetry achieved much success
with its opulently metaphorical and skillfully attacking or slyly praising
qasida. His subject matters always bring to mind the time-honored and
accepted Arab intrinsic values of reliability, respect, companionship, cour-
age, and gallantry. During Al-Mutanabbi’s lifetime and till the present day,
his poetry attracted and attracts a great deal of interest. As with many con-
troversial figures in history, the censure he received at times gave him pop-
ularity and opened the doors of his patrons in the cultural centers of the
Arab world in the tenth century. Finally he achieved with his words what
his patrons did in deeds.26
By the beginning of the 11th century, Arabic had cultivated many
human images of perfection: those of man (of characters), woman (of
beauty and seduction), and rulers (of wealth and power). In the words of
writers they became present in vision, acts, and sound. Most important of
all, Arabic poetry had found a medium to communicate with these idealized
persona and built a verbal path to pursue them. However, gaps remained
between human and divine images, between ideal and reality, between
divine and profane, and between beloved and lover. How could they find
and touch each other without contradictions or barriers? Sufi literature,
which began to emerge at this time, was going to fill these gaps and make
the divine unity possible as a part of human experience and reality.27
The language to depict an invisible subject (love and devotion) and
to invoke feeling in the audience was cultivated by poetry. It took Arabic
many centuries to refine and polish the image, theme, mood and diction
of love that eventually provided the basic medium for early Sufi poetry.
The language of Arabic spirituality began with nasib, the first part of pre–
Islamic qasida. Nasib was a remembrance of a lost love, which was trigged
by an abandoned campsite, the parting of the beloved, and recalling of the
secret experience between the poet and the beloved. Through meditation
on the empty site (the ruin), the poet envisioned the lost love affair. It was
never a whole story or complete picture, but pieces, isolated snapshots, a
faint song, languor in the eyes, a wide smile, a draught of wine, a cold
wind, a back slope, night rain and white flowers. The poet kept holding on
to the images, hoping to see more, and his gaze followed the parting of
the beloved until she disappeared from the horizon of sandscape. It was
not a song, but an inner whisper of memory that was just loud enough to
bruise the heart and senses.
The unattainable love (seen but impossible to reach, remembered but
not present) was initially heightened into a mad vision in which the poet
could see and feel things that were not there. Both love madness and per-
ishing imagery later became the key Sufi motifs. The motifs were combined
by Sufis with the bewilderment of reason on contact with ultimate reality

and in annihilation of the human in mystical union with God. Through this
prism, God sees, hears, walks, and touches while saying, “Glory to me,”
in Sufi poetry. It reminded one of the familiar story of Layla and Majnun
in which Majnun (a man driven lovesick) sees and calls everything (includ-
ing mountains, rivers, and wild animals) “Layla.” He even replies “Layla”
when asked what his name is. In this specific sense, words in poetry could
make poets as well as readers envision anything, including God. The idea
that God is everywhere one turns and looks first appeared in the Qur’an
(2:115): Whichever way you turn, there is the Face of God. However, to
know that God is everywhere is one thing and to actually be able to see
Him with one’s own eyes is quite another. Sufi poetry provided the vehicle
to transform an idea to imagery visible to Muslims.
Sufi poetry first emerged from two pieces of ancient land fertile with
poetry even before Arabic or any modern language was spoken: Iraq and
Greater Persia, including ancient Khorazan, which was the medieval name
of northwestern Afghanistan, and also parts of today’s Tajikstan and Uzbek-
istan. Although the ancient deities were forgotten and temples became
ruins, the imaginative capacity that was cultivated by poetic rituals remained
and was transmitted from language to language and from generation to
generation. Like any of the great religions of the world, whose inner dimen-
sion could be explored only through a mature poetry, Sufi poetry in Arabic
and the Persian emerged as Islam became mature in its scriptural meditation
and religious (ritual) experience.28
Rābia al-Basrī (717–801) was one of the earliest Sufi mystics whose
poetry was recorded by later Sufis. In her poetry, she created a higher con-
cept of a divine that should be worshiped not out of fear or hope (for
reward) but for love alone. She was the one who expressed feeling of inti-
macy with God, and of his constant presence as her lover in her heart. In
her poetry, Sufi became a way of worship and a way of life. The identifi-
cation of God with the beloved became the ground for a personal relation-
ship with God for Sufi worshipers.29 The dream that Al-Mutanabbi wished
and pursued in his entire life, to be a wali (saint or spiritual leader of Mus-
lims) was realized by some the most distinguished Sufi poets. Unlike the
Roman Catholic Church, which had an ecclesiastical hierarchy to canonize
sainthood, Islam had never had a system to cultivate its saints. The word
wali, which was used as “saint” in Islam, was derived from the Qur’an (2:
257): God was the wali of whoever believes and he takes them from dark-
ness to light. Also: the walis of God have neither fear nor grief (10: 62).
At the time, wali meant “protector, protected friends, and ally” where God,
Muslim community and its leaders did not inherit a conceptual gap. This
was because in the Arabic of the seventh century, wali referred to a patron
or guardian of the community. As God declared that he was the protector
or friend of the wali, he meant that he was the ally of the Muslim commu-
nity. It was only during the ninth century that wali became a title for select
Muslims who were believed to possess God-given spiritual power
(barakah), which was verified by their ability to personally reach God and
perform miracles (karamat).
The language of love for God was further invented and elaborated by
Abu Sa’id Kharraz (d. 899), one of the well-known members of the Sufi
circle in Baghdad at the middle of the ninth century. In his book The Book
of Truthfulness (Kitab al-Sidq) he described the feeling and reaction of the
God-seeker as he was rendering God’s recollection into a perpetual act:
he gained a quick understanding, his thoughts became clear, and light
lodged in his heart. The love of God lurked deeply hidden in his inmost
heart, cleaving his mind and never leaving it. Kharraz gave more detailed
depiction of the Sufi intimacy with God in his five epistles, which survived
in a single manuscript, The Book of Light (Kitab al-Diya’a). He portrayed
the moment when people were face to face with the essence of divine
reality (‘ayn al-‘ayn) and became possessed by an absolute confoundment
of spirit (ahl tayhuhiyya wa-hayruriyya).30
Abu al-Husayn al-Nuri (d. 907–8) provided more vivid imagery of
God’s presence in the heart of Sufis in his book Stations of the Hearts
(maqāmāt al-gulub). God built a house inside the believer called the heart.
Then he sent a mighty wind into the house to clean all the doubt, idolatry,
and hypocrisy; he sent rain to the house so all kinds of plants could grow,
such as trust, hope, and love. Then he placed a couch of unity at the center
of the house and covered it with a rug of contentment; he planted a tree of
knowledge opposite to the couch with roots in the heart and branches in
the sky. God also opened a door to the Garden of His mercy and sowed
there various fragrant herbs of praise, glorification and commemoration.
He let the water of guidance shower the plan through a river of kindness.
He hung a lamp of grace high on the door and lighted it with oil of purity.
Then he locked the door to keep out the wicked. He held onto the key and
did not trust any creature with it. He said, this is my treasure on my earth.
This is my home of unity on earth.
Al-Nuri spent most of his life in Baghdad and had nicknames such
as “prince of the hearts” (amir al-gulub) and “the Moon of Sufis” because
his enlightening teachings. Al-Nuri was called by his caliph to explain his
statement, “I love God and He loves me,” because the official preacher did
not like the talk of passionate love for God. Al-Nuri replied that he heard
God saying it (he quoted verses of Qur’an): He loves them and they love
Him (Qur’an 5: 59). He also told that passionate love (‘ishq) was not greater
than serene love (mahabba), except that the passionate lover (‘ashiq) was
kept away, while the serene love enjoy his lover (muhabb).31
Sufism would have remained a faction of religious ritual instead a
system of thoughts and practice if the later Sufi writers had not produce
abundant writing to cultivate a theory of worship. One of the most impor-
tant of the early scholars was Junayd of Baghdad (830–910). Among many
of Junayd’s contributions to Sufism was his set of basic ideas dealing with
a progression that led one to “annihilate” oneself (fana) in order to be in
a closer union with the Divine. As he put it, people needed to relinquish
natural desires, to wipe out human attributes, and to discard selfish motives,
so as to cultivate spiritual qualities and to devote themselves to true knowl-
edge. This started with the practice of renunciation (zuhd) and continued
with withdrawal from society, intensive concentration on devotion (ibadat)
and remembrance (dhikr) of God, sincerity (ikhlas) and contemplation
(muraqaba) respectively; contemplation produces fana. This type of
“semantic struggle” recreated the experience of trial (bala) that was key
in Junayd’s writings. This enabled people to enter into the state of fana.
Junayd divided the state of fana into three parts. The first was the passing
away from one’s attributes through the effort of constantly opposing one’s
ego-self (nafs); the second was passing away from one’s sense of accom-
plishment; and the third was passing away from the vision of the reality.
Once that has been attained, a person would be in the state of remaining
(baqa), through which one was able to find God—or rather, have God find
him or her. Reaching baqa was not an easy thing to do, though; getting
through the three stages required strict discipline and patience.32 Within
this civil (rather than political and institutional) structure of sainthood, the
majority of recognized Islamic saints were poets who excelled in writing
love poetry to God. Many Sufi saints lived through their writings and
attained reputation and influence far beyond that of state-sponsored schol-
ars and politicians. Shaykh Umar Ibn al-Farid (1181–1235), whose verses
were considered by many to be the pinnacle of Arabic mystical poetry,
was one of the best examples. Ibn al-Farid was a master of Arabic poetic
tradition and composed in quatrain, ghazal, qasida and khamriyah. His
lyrical and complex poetry was highly regarded and admired. The Sultan
al-Malik al-Kamil (r. 1218–1238) was so impressed by his writing that he
sent a gift of money to him. Unlike the Abbasid court poets, Al-Farid
declined the gift (and other similar gifts from amirs of the court) because
he refused to be tainted by money or power.
Al-Farid’s sanctity was closely tied to his beautiful poetry, which
expressed his love for God and depicted the way to unite with Him. Al-Farid’s
Wine Ode (Al-Khamriyah) was a beautiful meditation on the “wine” of

divine bliss. The invisible God was portrayed like the sun in a moon glass
decorated with stars; the memory of the Divine was like the fragrance of
the wine, a breath, hidden in the heart and mind of the believer. The fra-
grance of the divine wine alone could intoxicate man without drinking,
cure the sick and revive the dead. The Poem of the Sufi Way (Al-Ta’iyah
al-Kubra), perhaps the longest mystical poem composed in Arabic, was a
profound exploration of spiritual experience along the Sufi Path. Both
poems transformed the love of woman and of wine to an intimate Sufi view
of life and devotion to God.33
Umar was born in Syria to the family of a knowledgeable scholar who
gave his son a good foundation in belles letters. Ibn al-Farid began to go
on extended spiritual retreats among the oases, specifically the oasis outside
of Cairo, starting in his youth. However, as he felt that he was not making
deep enough spiritual progress, he abandoned his spiritual wanderings and
entered a school of Islamic law. One day Ibn al-Farid saw a greengrocer
performing the ritual Muslim ablutions outside the door of the school, but
the man was doing them out of the prescribed order. When Ibn al-Farid
tried to correct him, the greengrocer looked at him and told him that he
could not learn anything in Egypt. You will be enlightened only in the
Hijaz, in Mecca, he said.
Umar was stunned by this statement, and realized that this seemingly
simple-minded greengrocer was not an ordinary man. But he argued that
he couldn’t possibly make the trip to Mecca right away. Then the man gave
Ibn al-Farid a vision of Mecca at the very moment and on the spot. Ibn al-
Farid was so transfixed by this visual experience that he left immediately
for Mecca. In his own words, “Then as I entered it, enlightenment came
to me wave after wave and never left me.” Al-Farid ended up staying in
Mecca for fifteen years. He eventually returned to Cairo when he heard
his mentor the greengrocer calling him back to attend his funeral. He came
back and wished him farewell at his deathbed.
Upon Ibn al-Farid’s return to Cairo, he was treated as a saint. He
would hold teaching sessions with judges, viziers and other leaders of the
city. While walking down the street, people would come up to him and
crowd around him, seeking spiritual blessings (barakah) and trying to kiss
his hand. He became a scholar of Muslim law, a teacher of the Hadith, and
a teacher of Arabic poetry. Like many Sufi saints, Ibn al-Farid’s worship
was physical as well as poetic. During the later part of his life, he was
known to enter into spiritual raptures (jadhabat), a common practice in
Sufism. It was said that when a mystical state overcame him, his face would
increase in beauty and brightness. Sweat would pour from his body and
collect on the ground beneath his feet, which was a result of jumping and
dancing. During the ritual, Ibn al-Farid claimed to see many things happen
that could be considered to be out of this world. He described a lion kneel-
ing down before him, asking him to ride. He also wrote about seeing a
man descending a mountain, floating without using his feet. He claimed
that a “great green bird” came down at the funeral of the greengrocer and
“gobbled up his corpse.” He also depicted his meeting and conversation
with Mohammed in a dream. It was said that his ecstasies or trances some-
times lasted ten consecutive days without eating, drinking, moving, speak-
ing or hearing outside noises. He would alternately stand, sit, lie on his
side or “throw himself down on his side.” When he came to, his first words
would be a dictation of the verse God had given him.34
A similar journey, from begging, seeing, to embracing God was also
described by Ibn ‘Arabi (1165–1240), a Sufi from Andalusian Spain. He
wrote over 350 works including the Fusus al-Hikam, an exposition of the
inner meaning of the wisdom of the prophets in the Judaic, Christian, and
Islamic religions. His Futuhat al-Makkiyya, a vast encyclopedia of spiritual
knowledge that unites and distinguishes the three strands of tradition, rea-
son and mystical insight was a “spiritual resume” of Islam, covering the
whole 560-year period from the beginning of the Islamic era to his own
birth. In his Diwan and Tarjuman al-Ashwaq he wrote some of the finest
poetry in the Arabic language. These extensive writings provide a beautiful
exposition of the unity of being, the single and indivisible reality, that
simultaneously transcends and is manifested in all the images of the world.
Ibn ‘Arabi illustrated how man, in perfection, was the complete image of
this reality and how those who truly knew their essential selves would
know God. Ibn ‘Arabi gave expression to the teachings and insights of the
generations of Sufis after him. This accumulated knowledge recorded for
the first time, systematically and in detail, the vast repertoire of Sufi expe-
riences and oral tradition, by drawing on a treasury of technical terms and
symbols greatly enriched by centuries.35
Like many of his follow Sufis, Ibn ‘Arabi’s writing was deeply rooted
in Arabic love poetry, and it began with a familiar tone of a desperate lover
addressing an unattainable beloved: “I have called you so often,” but you
haven’t “heard me,” “you haven’t smelled” me after I made myself fragrant;
“you haven’t tasted me,” “savorous food.” “Why? Why, you do not see
me?” However, this time, the lover’s faith was no longer blind; he could
see marvelous scenes under the influence of his poetic meditation. He could
see a “sea of sand as fluid as water.” There were “stones, both large and
small, that attracted one another like iron and a magnet. As the stones came
together and joined, they formed a ship.” The “stone vessel with two hulls”
had two sides, behind which were raised two enormous columns higher
than a man’s head. The rear of the ship was at the same level as the sea,
and was “open to the sea without a single grain of sand coming inside.”36
Beyond this typical example of a miracle (aja’b), ‘Arabi deliberately
constructed the story by borrowing key terms from a specific Arabic liter-
ature. Bahr (sea) was the word commonly used for the ocean, but it was
also the word that, in the language of Arabic poetry, denoted the meter of
a poem. Ramal, which ordinarily referred to sand, was the name for one
of the sixteen meters in classical Arabic prosody. From this point of view,
the story of the stone vessels sailing over a sea of sand was beyond physical
image and it had nothing to do with the dream state of a delirious mind.
The vessel (safina) in fact represented the qasida, the classical Arabic
poetry. The inseparable (magnefed) stones are kalimat, the words that,
when joined together, form the verses that, when arranged together, make
up the poem. The two sides of the boat were the hemistiches of each line
of verse, while the two columns referred to the two “pillars” (watid) of
Arabic meter. Thus, with slightly encrypted language, Ibn ‘Arabi indicated
that poetry is the privileged way to “travel” in the ‘alam al-khayal, whose
haqa’iq (spiritual realities) it carried, although spiritual realities, by their
very nature, were supraformal.
On this stone vessel (poetry), Sufi poets went on a journey, one they
believed man had been on ever since God created him. By now, however,
for the Sufis the journey was no longer a collective one, the traditional
way as described by early Sufis such as Abû Nasr al-Sarraj or Qushairy,
nor was it based on the relationship of a shaykh and a student. Beyond the
simplified language of paradise/hell or love/hate, Sufi poetry had cultivated
a vast vocabulary for highly personalized spiritual experiences. The rich-
ness and diversity of Sufi poetry made it possible for an individual wor-
shiper to take an individual journey to pursue his beloved. The journey
took one of various levels/stations of the mystical experience through var-
ious ways (maratib). The seeker of divine love had to progress step by
step, finding his own way to unite with God.
The path to God varied with each and every worshiper because the
relationship of the man to the Divine Presence was an individually defined
situation, which occurred directly and without any intermediary. In other
words, God loved Man in pre-eternity, and since the love of Man for God
was also ultimately from God, there was originally a possibility of a direct
relationship to God through the heart of Man. However, God related to
each man in different ways because of the nature of each person’s heart.
These specific conditions of hearts were believed to be the foundation of
the relationship of the Divine to the human and vice versa. Each person
might come to recognize the Divine according to his own nature, and the
Divine also recognized each person according to these forms that were
carried within each heart.
From a psychological perspective, the manifestations of God formed
an entirely different Divine form for the person’s innermost consciousness.
Metaphysically, this relationship to the Divine occurred at the level of the
Oneness (wahidiyyah) and not at that of the Uniqueness (ahadoyyah); the
manifestations witnessed by the seeker were thus those of his own rabb
and not of Allah. Accordingly, such recognition of the Divine was limited
to the rabb al-khas (the particular Lord). Each person knows Him accord-
ing to the form that he desires and loves, and to the extent of his ideals
and readiness to see (istidad). In other words, the manifestation of divine
reality, which was impossible to see through the eyes of an individual
human, was seen only according to personally perceivable level or station
as put in poetry: in each heart God kept a different secret, and to each heart
He told a different secret. To know his God-defined secret, each person
had to experience God in his own way.
The mystical journey was the form of practice of the Sufi way (tariqa).
Every person who felt awakened and had begun to marvel at Being
(hayrah) accordingly felt called to follow the way of the transcendent. And
this was only the beginning. The Sufi learned first to know himself, since
an insight gained without knowledge of who he was could not be a true
witnessing of the Divine. For this the adept sought a shaykh (or was
“called” by the shaykh) who could help him to change his inner structure
by means of re-education, to conform to the Unseen and to develop the
taste (zauq) required for the long journey. It began with love, with which
the steps of journey would be counted and by which he would find the
strength to continue on the way. The deeper he swam in this ocean, the
greater became his yearning for realization of the Holy. This in turn would
precipitate more love. Regardless of which of the ways he took, whether
by the degrees (maratib) or by direct and immediate inrush (warid) of the
Divine, the eye of the heart (‘ayn al-qalb) now saw the contours of that
which was sought, and made it possible for him to have a relationship with
the Highest.
Ibn ‘Arabî’s legacy provided a detailed description of the Way, which
was like a map of the inner journey through the beautiful names of God
and their manifestations (tajalli) in existence. These were signs and mile-
stones for the particular seeker, by which he was led to step from one
station (maqāmā) to the next. When the seeker had reached the point at
which he could enjoy the Divine Gentleness (lutf ) in its totality, he became
worthy to appear before the throne of the All-Compassionate (sarir
ar-rahman), in obliteration (mahw) and veiled from himself, such that no

trace of existence remained in him. This was the highest point that he could
reach. Then the All-Compassionate would endow him with the name of
the living (hayy) and he would be returned to existence. From this moment
he remained forever in this state of baqa’ (subsistence).37
Poetry was the vehicle for the mystic journey. To deepen his love for
God, the seeker had to keep prayer and dhikr (remembering the words of
God) as constant companions and repeat the divine names until they
became internalized in his own being. Only when these became a part of
him did the seeker arrive in a position to undergo the process of realization
of the Divine insight. The love then lended the seeker a deep feeling of
security and closeness to God, without which the seeker would loose his
way. In this way, words massaged, activated and eventually enlightened
the mind.38 Sufi was the first religious order that succeeded to embody lan-
guage (words) into the human body and divine into its persona. Other reli-
gions did it either through physical or ideological connections. The Sufi
order began its human divination through traditional religious linkages
(saints, their disciples, and brotherhood) as did Judaism, Christianity and
Buddhism. However, Sufi teachings eventually cultivated sacred identity
by words alone. Derived from the historical panegyric tradition of poetry,
which associated the Prophet Muhammad with God, Sufis elevated verbal
divination to a new height.
They applied a method of derivation of a certain meaning from each
and every letter of a word (ishtiqaq kabir). Therefore, the name of Muham-
mad or any personal name that they attempt to divinate would consist of
a number of words. Muhammad would be glory (majid), mercy, (rahma),
kingdom (mulk), and everlasting (dawam), based on mhmd. The elabora-
tion of the symbolic characteristics of the name of Muhammad was under-
taken by many Muslim scholars during the early Islamic period. However,
Sufis turned this method into a science. Mansul al-Hallaj (858–922) was
the first Sufi to take on the symbolic meaning of Muhammad by letters.
He pointed out that the shape of the letters from which the name of Muham-
mad consisted shared the shape with a human figure. Ibn ‘Arabi continued
to argue that mim represented the head, the world of the supreme sover-
eignty (‘alam al-malakut al-‘ala) and general intellect (al-‘agl al-‘akbar).
The breast and arms under the ha represented the number of the angels
who carry the throne. The second mim represented the stomach, which
was the world of the kingdom. The hips, the legs and the feet were from
the dal, which was the stable composition by means of eternal writ. Many
Sufi scholars kept reworking the same symbolic meanings derived from
letters of names for the next centuries.39
Poetry not only worshipped religious leaders and politicians, it also

divined the poets themselves. The divine quests transformed the believers
as well as their spiritual leaders. They reinvented their attitudes and knowl-
edge through learning and meditation. Brand new personality and moral
characteristics began to radiate out of their characters. This radiance of
wisdom affected and was perceived by people around them. For example,
in the year 608, Ibn ‘Arabi visited Baghdad, the city of Sufi saints. ‘Arabi
met with the famous Sufi Shihabuddin Suharwardi (d. 632). In this meeting,
they stayed together for a while; they both sat with lowered heads and
departed without exchanging a single word. Later Ibn ‘Arabi explained
the silence. He (Suharwardi) was impregnated with the Sunna from tip to
toe, while Suharwardi commented about Ibn ‘Arabi: “He was an ocean of
essential truths [bahr al-haqaiq].”40
For the majority of Sufi scholars, the self-divination did not come as
an intended result of composition but as a consequence of the lifelong pur-
suit of unity with God. In a historical sense, the distance (or conceptual
gap) between the subject of worship and the worshiper was naturally nar-
rowed down by the efforts of generations of poets. A popular metaphor of
sight and its mirror can illuminate the evolution of this relationship. As a
poet put it in a compact verses: “I am a sight to see,” and “You [God] are
the mirror of the glance” and “the axis of time.... Encompassed in you is
what is dispersed throughout time.” The you that is the mirror of the glance
(the glance being, by definition, a momentary act) was also called the axis
of time, holding within itself all that time had dispersed. Similarly, these
verses formed a momentary poetic glance within the expression of Arabic
love poetry through which the Sufi understandings of mystical states of
consciousness had kept unfolding over several centuries. The journey in
poetic language (the stone vessel) changed the lives and characters on it.
As the Sufi seeker was pursuing divine unity, he himself disappeared while
his poetry became a ghost dialogue between a speaker and hearer (you and
I). As the space between two voices and two persons diminished, it became
a monologue. There is “nothing like me, I am one.”41
Sufi poetry cultivated a richly textured vocabulary in Arabic and pro-
vided the needed template of the language of soul, in which individual and
universal, worshipers and worshiped could interflow and be transfigured
freely. Sufi poetry transfigured love from that for another to one of both
God and self; they juxtaposed the two in one unified image. Arabic love
for the Divine went much further than the Latin notion of man’s passionate
and yet uncontainable love for God. It was virtually impossible to draw a
clear line in Nizami’s poetry between the mystical and the erotic, between
the sacred and the profane.42
This inclusive yet sensitive love survived into the modern period. It
was revived in the hands of modern poets such as Nizar Qabbani (1923–
1998). For him, love was something mystical, but at the same time very
personal and sensual. However, his concept of love had substantially broad-
ened. In his early poems, he combined the erotic depiction of attractive
women with the chauvinist attitudes of men towards women. Later he also
portrayed the complex relationships between men. In the 1950s, Qabbani
was, with ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati, among the pioneers who started to
use the simple language of everyday speech in verse, such as, “Who are
you, a woman entering my life like a dagger?” You are “mild as the eyes
of a rabbit”; “innocent as children’s bibs and devouring like words?”
Qasa’id min Nizar Qabbani (1956) was his most outstanding early collec-
tion, in which he assumed a female persona in three poems, “Pregnant,”
“A Letter from a Spiteful Lady,” and “The Vessels of Pus.” Qabbani’s
poems continue the sixteen-centuries-old tradition of Arabic love poetry,
but they were updated with modern experiences and echo the rhythm, into-
nation, and idioms of everyday language.
During the 1960s, he devoted his love poetry to his country and the
Arab world with the same passion. He told the world that he had written
love poetry to his country: “You have transformed me / from a poet of love
and yearning / to a poet writing with a knife.” In a poem written immedi-
ately the June defeat, Qabbani expressed his frustration and despair towards
the politics of Arab countries: “My master Sultan, / You have lost the war
twice / because half of our people have no tongues.” “What is the worth
of a voiceless people?” His words spoke of dictatorship with bitter lines:
“O Sultan, my master,” “my clothes are ripped and torn” because “your
dogs with claws are allowed to tear me.” He labeled the betrayal of an
Egyptian politician as an agent of Israel who was “mad” and who had
“raped” Egypt. His abundant love poetry became a major source of hope
that the human heart could finally transcend pain and fear and dare to assert
its capacity to summon joy and engage passion. His poetry brought freedom
from tension, liberation from gloom, and a refreshing release of laughter
and gaiety. It proudly proclaimed a new reverence for the body and it
washed away the traditional embarrassment, now many centuries old, that
was linked to woman’s physical passion.
Iraqi poets redirected their love to their country and the Arab world
and became the political and social spokesmen of their time. Political,
social and national issues in turn rejuvenated Arabic poetry, in its diction,
style, and emotion.43 For example, Zahawi’s poem is cast in the framework
of a dream, although that is only revealed in the closing verses. The poet
dreams he is dead and buried, and describes his encounter with Munkar
and Nakeer, two angels whose duty it is to interrogate the dead by asking
a series of specific questions. From a theological perspective, Munkar and
Nakeer can be seen as superfluous, as doubtless their interrogative roles
have no effect on the final state of bliss or punishment, which is already
determined for the dead. Their roles in the poem, however, as with other
characters from the Qur’an, are pivotal to Zahawi’s portrayal of a highly
superficial and mythologized Islam, to which the poet was obviously
exposed. This is primarily evident in the conversations that take place
between Zahawi and the angels, who bombard the poet with a barrage of
questions that are explicitly concerned with the intricate details of Islamic
practices. Gradually, Zahawi starts to become impatient with the irrele-
vance of the questions, and begins to enumerate his accomplishments in
his lifetime, like his ceaseless promotion of humanist ideals and his support
for women’s rights. Yet verses that illustrate Zahawi’s egoism are as abun-
dant as those that typify his self-pity. The general temper of the poem is
that of an elitist irony, where intellectualism is victimized, religious super-
stition is prevalent, and revolution against the inhabitants of paradise is
the only recourse.
The satirical zenith of the poem lies in Zahawi’s description of para-
dise, once he is taken there by the two angels to give him a glimpse of the
absolute ecstasy that he has been denied. The description is highly depen-
dant on Qur’anic imagery but not devoid of Zahawi’s humorous tone in
listing the inventory of scrumptious food items and vintage wines that are
provided for the inhabitants of heaven, not to mention the overt sexuality
of the holy maidens, as well as the divinity and youthful beauty of the
ghulman boy servants, which implies an acceptable homoeroticism in the
afterlife. Zahawi’s description of hell, on the other hand, while continuing
to borrow from the similes of the Qur’an, serves as the ontological dimen-
sion of the poem, with the poet employing a concise, yet forceful style in
order to express his philosophy of rationalism, and his passionate belief
in the ideal of reason.
While in hell, Zahawi is met by Leila, a character with recurring roles
in many of the poet’s other works, who symbolizes persecuted womanhood
and alludes to the oppressed state of the nation. Also, traces of his appre-
ciation of Sufi philosophy can be read in a number of verses, specifically
those that narrate Mansur al-Hallaj’s post-martyrdom self-elegy. Zahawi
is then met by a number of notable poets, scientists, and philosophers, who
have contributed to the development of humankind: Socrates, Dante,
Shakespeare, Umar al-Khayyam, Mutanabbi, Ibn Sina, Voltaire, and Dar-
win, to name a few. After a few scattered conversations that the poet holds
with the characters, a triumphant revolt against the angels is planned and
led by poet Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma’arri, despite his blindness. The ironic sequel
to the vividly illustrated revolt is a deliberately designed anticlimax that
reveals itself as the abrupt awakening of Zahawi from a bad dream, one
which he blames on his indulgence of watercress before going to sleep.44
Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri (1899–1997) was no doubt the greatest
Iraqi poet of his time.
Like Sufi poetry, modern Arabic poetry created a universe made of
words, in which every word regardless what it means has an active and
animated life. The sea, like a little boy, dreams; night, like woman, gets
pregnant. The house grows old, the earth writes, the season tells; days,
clouds, fire and voice live and die. Every Arabic word, including abstract
words, has a face, a body, and a pair of hands, and it could speak, act and
transform before the very eyes of its readers. Time has eyelashes; the life
(of a person) looks, signs, and light up like lanterns; she also stares, ponders
and holds one’s hands to the future. The physics (nature in an abstract
sense) of things walks the abbeys, tall as the wind. He comes alive when
stone becomes a lake and shadows a city; he carried a continent and moved
the sea; he borrows the shoes of night and waits for what never comes. He
also peels human beings as an onion.45
CHAPTER 7
The World in
Arabic Fiction
Literary Arabic took a path of evolution distinct from that of English

and other European languages because of its rich poetic tradition and refined
literary sensibility, which were cultivated by an advanced literature. Before
the majority of European literary languages began to mature (during the mod-
ern period) Arabic had reached its creative apex (in the pre-modern period)
and began to retract after producing some of the best lyrical poetry of the
world and large volumes of prose literature in a wide range of subjects. Arabic
imagination had gone to the moon, traveled through the space and came back
to the earth, leaving a universe full of ideas, images, allusions, and symbols.
Thus, modern Arabic literature was facing a challenge different from that
of formative languages, which just started to search for ways to build their
universe of words. Arabic writers had to learn to deal with the heavy burden
of the past and build a new life with old words, imagery and symbols.
Modern Arabic writers had different kinds of audiences and readers
whose pride and sensibility were highly attuned by words and whose emo-
tions were exceptionally fluid. Unfortunately, modern life was not kind to
the Arabs of the nineteenth and twentieth century, whose daily reality was
slipping farther and farther away from the ideals that their words had built
in volumes. The bottom line was the question of how to write about a low
life, a life that had fallen off from the heyday of collective memory with
a highly sophisticated language of rich repertoire of symbols; how to medi-
ate between a glorious past and high opinion of oneself and a depressive
life full of poverty, corruption and war that one was trying to escape. New
ideas needed to be imagined and conceptualized into a literature that was
as attractive and moving as that in the past. Life had to be celebrated and
love had to be freely expressed, and words had to be able to make readers
laugh, cry, sing, and/or be entertained as they had done for centuries.
203
The main challenge of Arabic narrative was to bridge two ends of the
literary expression: high moral ideals and universal symbols on the one
hand and the everyday lives and personal feelings of common men on the
other. As has often happened in history, human failure and even misery
always generate the most brilliant literature. The turbulent life in the mod-
ern Middle East, which was filled with sharp contrast and emotional roller
coasters, provided fertile soil and demanding tests for Arabic writers. This
was the reason why they produced some of the best fiction and poetry in
the modern world.
Arabic narrative began during the pre–Islamic period when stories
were told about battles, kings, heroes, paupers, traveler, and lovers as well
as their colorful adventures. However, as it emerged from poetry, a highly
formulated and refined language, early Arabic prose inherited many char-
acteristics of pre- and early Islamic poetry: its meter, rhyme and economy
of words. During this early period, khabar (news) became the most com-
mon form of narrative, with a condensed and terse style. Later, two most
important developments occurred in Arabic storytelling: complexity in
structure and fluidity in presentation. Unlike poetry, which became shorter
and more compact in form and closer to spoken language, narrative prose
gradually gained scope and depth.1
The first written narrative of Arabic language was Hadith, which
depicted the life events of the Prophet Muhammad. However, due to its
religious and political significance, it had been heavily edited and scruti-
nized because it claimed to be a piece of history rather than literature.
Everything Muhammad had said and done had to be verified to make sure
that it was consistent with the memories of his companions. In addition,
Arabic narrative that freshly emerged from a poetic language tended to be
more suggestive than descriptive. It often focused on creating an atmos-
phere surrounding the beloved and worshiped hero than portraying the
image of the hero himself. Thus the activities of Muhammad came to be
portrayed in a manner that illustrated his character rather than giving a
specific description of his life story. For example, he was shown as praying
with a small child or avoiding waking up a sleeping cat. These all suggested
a sense of intimacy and friendliness in his presence.2
It was in the Umayyad period (661–750) that prose writing gained
more importance, although it remained the poor cousin to poetry for the
next centuries. A storyteller was designated for every major mosque (al-
Masjid al-Jami’) to preach to the populace. Moreover, storytellers were
sent to accompany soldiers in the battlefield of Islamic conquests. During
the ‘Abbasid caliphate (750–1258), storytelling developed an immensely
wide range of types and styles. The most important two types of storytellers
were eloquent scholars who used stories for preaching and teaching, and
professional storytellers who made a living entertaining the public. The
best known story was Kalila wa Dimna, which Ibn al-Muqffa’ (721–756)
translated from Persian literature.3
Kalila wa Dimna was considered by some the first masterpiece of
prose narrative in Arabic. It was originally composed in Sanskrit as the
Panchatantra in India around A.D. 300 and was later translated into a col-
lection of animal fables in Middle Persian. For the first time, writing was
done for the purpose of storytelling rather than as religious, political or
didactical rhetoric. It was also constructed in the form of a conversation
between a teacher and student, and between a storyteller and his audience.
In the context of formative Arabic, the work was created for a live per-
formance, and it was not written down until five centuries after Al-Muqffa’s
death. As it aimed at an oral presentation, the stories were told in simple
diction and plain syntactical structure. The events were arranged by nar-
rators, who provided a beginning and end to each performance. In short,
it was a work marked by formative and performative language free from
religious and political meanings and rhetorical functions.4
The translation of Kalila was instrumental in opening innovative
avenues in Arabic prose narrative. The introduction of episodic narrative
paved the way for later authors of maqāmā (assemblies), such as Badi al-
Zaman al-Hamadhani (969–1007) and the original inventor Al-Harīrī
(1054–1122). Al-Harīrī’s Maqāmāt consisted of a series of fifty seemingly
independent episodes narrated by an unreliable and sometimes inconsistent
narrator, who was also the main character in each narration. In every
episode, the narrator encountered an eloquent rogue, usually with a shabby
appearance. The rogue might appear as a young boy, an old man, a drifter,
or a sheikh. In the course of each narrative, the rogue dazzled the narrator
with his eloquence and relieved him of his money and/or property. The
relationship between narrator and character was an inversion of the stu-
dent/teacher roles played by the lion and the jackals in Kalila. In the former,
the characters narrated tales of the short-sightedness and gullibility of oth-
ers. In Al-Harīrī’s Maqāmāt, the teacher/rogue consistently deceived the
student/narrator.5
The episodic structure of the maqāmā (assemblies) was derived from
an oral narrative contrary to more linear works such as the Byzantine novels,
which had many centuries of literary tradition. Badi al-Zaman al-Hamad-
hani was said to compose his narration publicly as oral improvisation. The
maqāmā continued to be performed as a traditional form of scholarly read-
ing, even after it was canonized as a written literary form by Al-Harīrī.
For instance, the earliest manuscript of maqāmā recorded thirty public
readings, the primary means of transmission of the work at the time. The
tradition of maqāmā combined aspects of the picaresque that were demon-
strated in the relationship between narrative, the characters and their sur-
roundings.6
Al-Jahiz’s (776–868?) Al-Bukhala (The Book of Misers) illustrated
his ability to observe and depict details in human conditions. His precise
portrayal and description were unprecedented in Arabic narrative.7 The
following section from the “Tale of Harithi” demonstrates that Arabic nar-
rative combined the language of poetry with descriptive precision of prose
to create vivid and provocative human images.8
You prepared a good meal, which contains an abundance of food. It is very
expensive. You have spent lavishly on a baker, a cook, a roaster, and a confection
maker. Now, you don’t have an enemy to annoy, a friend to please, a stranger to
befriend, and a visitor to invite home, people who should be grateful (for your
generosity).... You don’t want to do that because you will realize they are not
what you think. As soon as your eyes are off them and you turn your back, they
will gobble all the foods, shared out, or even steal from you. It would be worth-
while for you and better than eating alone, and will save the food for yourself, if
you invite someone whose presence will benefit you. He will make good conver-
sation to entertain you and make your mealtime pleasant. He will be grateful and
tell all his friends about his gratitude to you for years to come.
Why on earth would you let someone share your personal table if he is ungrate-
ful, does not even thank you, or did thank you but did not do it in a proper man-
ner? If he could not even tell the difference between foods that curb hunger from
delicious food, and a good meal from the bad?
....
I can put up with a guest or an uninvited person who is accompanying him, but
I can tolerate neither a glutton who stuffs meat into his mouth nor a Jardabil [per-
son who eats with a wrong hand] who claps his hands over meat to hold it when
he cuts it. I found it easier to deal with an uninvited guest in a drinking party than
someone who just showed up and gobble everything in front of him.... If I have to
share food with somebody, I would prefer someone who does not take all the
brain (of poultry) to himself, ignoring me, or snatch the egg off baqila [a dish of
beans], someone who does not bolt down the chicken liver, race to get the brain of
the sullaha [bird], grab the kid’s kidneys, quickly swallow the stork’s stomach,
tear at the haunch of the lamb, fillet the stomach of shisan [fish], eye the sheep’s
head, seize the chicken breast, push ahead to run for the young chicken’s wing-
tips.
The narrative inherited a portion of poetic parallelism and had exces-

sive wording. However, it appeared to have gained precision and sharpness
in description. The development of this initial narrative came in the form
of speech, which was able to portray vivid human images and personalities.
At this stage of linguistic development, the art of storytelling for the Arabic
writers focused on a good plot that was delivered in a good speech (nish-
war).9
Arabic prose at this period used many metaphors (isti’ara) and similes
(tashbih). There was an obvious balance of sentence against sentence,

phrase against phrase, and word against word. Again, there were recognized
subdivisions, depending partly on whether similar or contrasting meanings
were involved. Among the terms used were isdiwaj and tibaq. The device
called jinas was the use of two or more words from the same or similar
roots, producing an effect akin to a combination of alliteration and asso-
nance.10
With this new technique and vocabulary, Arabic narrative continued
to develop by widening its depiction of various characters and themes.
There were stories about lovers and political chaos. Consistent with
Qur’anic and Hadith literature, narrative often had a tone of morality and
self-discipline.
By the time of the One Thousand and One Nights, all of the established
forms of literature had been adopted in fictional writing: poetry, prose, and
proverbs. There was an abundance of poetry in which characters spoke in
verse or recited poetry in various settings. They recited poetry to express
their feelings as if they were performing monologues to an audience. For
example, poetry was used in praising the God and royalty, pleading to God
for mercy and forgiveness, lamenting wrong decisions or bad luck, pro-
viding riddles, laying questions or challenges, or expressing feelings of
happiness, sorrow, anxiety, surprise or anger. Poetry appeared to be the
most useful when it described mixed emotions battling each other, as in
the description of Queen Bodour when she saw the ring of Prince Qamar
al-Zaman that was delivered by the servant announcing his arrival. She
was overwhelmed by joy and began to chant: I am “so happy that I am
crying,” “Oh tearing eyes, you cry with joy and cry in sadness” (Tale 203).
The prince responded with his verse to express his feeling of happiness
(Tale 205).
Like Arabic poetry, the One Thousand and One Nights was a string
of pearls, each of which could be picked up and would shine on its own.
Many pearls were shining, dramatic writings that vividly presented a play
unfolding in front of the eyes of its readers, who were witnessing a drama
without a stage. One of the examples was the “Tale of the Three Apples”
(also called “The Tale of the Murdered Young Woman”). In this murder
mystery, a caliph (the king) discovered a chest, which, when opened, con-
tained the body of a young woman. He ordered his vizier, Giafar, to find
the murderer in three days or he himself would be executed.
The vizier Giafar returned home in the greatest distress. “Alas!” he
thought, “How is it possible, in so large and vast a city like Bagdad, to
find a murderer, who no doubt has committed this crime secretly and alone,
and now has possibly fled the city?”
He ordered police officers and justice to make a strict search for the
criminal. They sent out their underlings, and exerted themselves personally
in this affair. But all their diligence came to nothing; they could discover
no traces that might lead to the murderer’s capture. The vizier concluded
that, unless heaven interposed in his favor, he could not solve this murder.
His death was inevitable.
On the third day, an officer of the caliphate came to the house of the
unhappy minister, and summoned him to his master. The vizier obeyed,
and when the caliph demanded of him the murderer, he replied, with tears
in his eyes, “O Commander of the Faithful, I have found no one who could
give me any intelligence concerning him.”
The caliph reproached Giafar in the bitterest words, and commanded
that he should be hanged before the gates of the palace, together with forty
of the Barmecides.
While the executioners were preparing the gibbets, and the officers
went to seize the forty Barmecides at their different houses, a public crier
was ordered by the caliph to proclaim, in all the quarters of the city, that
whoever wished to have the satisfaction of seeing the execution of the
grand vizier Giafar, and forty of his family, the Barmecides, was to repair
to the square before the palace.
When everything was ready, the judge placed the grand vizier and the
forty Barmecides each under the gibbet that was destined for him, and
cords were fastened round the neck of the prisoners. The people who
crowded the square could not behold such a spectacle without feeling pity
and shedding tears, for the vizier Giafar and his relations the Barmecides
were much loved for their probity and liberality, not only in Bagdad, but
throughout the whole empire of the caliph.
Everything was ready for the execution of the caliph’s cruel order,
and the next moment would have seen the death of some of the worthy
inhabitants of the city, when a young man, of comely appearance and well
dressed, pressed through the crowd till he reached the grand vizier. He
kissed Giafar’s hand, and exclaimed, “Sovereign vizier, chief of the emirs
of this court, the refuge of the poor! You are not guilty of the crime for
which you are going to suffer. Let me expiate the death of the lady who
was thrown into the Tigris. I am her murderer! I alone ought to be pun-
ished!”
Although this speech created great joy in the vizier, he nevertheless
felt pity for the youth, whose countenance, far from expressing guilt, indi-
cated nobility of soul. He was going to reply, when an old man, who had
also pushed through the crowd, came up and said to the vizier, “My lord,
do not believe what this young man has said to you. I alone am the person
that killed the lady! I alone am worthy of punishment. In the name of God
I conjure you not to confound the innocent with the guilty.”
“O my master,” interrupted the young man, addressing himself to the
vizier, “I assure you that it was I who committed this wicked action, and
that no person in the world is my accomplice.”
“Alas! My son,” resumed the old man, “despair has led you hither,
and you wish to anticipate your destiny. As for me, I have lived for a long
time in this world, let me sacrifice my life to save yours. My lord,” he con-
tinued, addressing the vizier, “I repeat it, I am the criminal, sentence me
to death, and let justice be served.”
The contest between the old man and the youth obliged the vizier to
bring them before the caliph, with the permission of the commanding
officer of justice, who was happy to have an opportunity of obliging him.
When he came into the presence of the sovereign, he kissed the ground
seven times, and then spoke these words, “Commander of the Faithful, I
bring to you this old man and this youth, each of whom accuses himself
as the murderer of the lady.”
This dramatic visualization was typical of the narrative of the One
Thousand and One Nights, in which characters or scenes were presented
with an abundance of descriptive detail, mimetic gestures and vividly
recorded dialogue. It was like presenting a scene on a stage imaginatively
to an audience.11
Another example of this dramatization was the story of “The Lover
Who Pretended to Be a Thief.” The governor of Basra Khalid one day con-
fronted a man of a family who had caught a handsome young man breaking
into his home. He accused the young man of theft, and the prisoner fully
cooperated and willingly confessed the crime. In the eyes of Khalid, the
young man appeared to be too well-spoken and good mannered to be a
thief. He suspected that the youth was concealing the truth. As the young
man insisted on admitting the guilt of stealing, the governor had no choice
but to comply with the law, which was to cut his hands off in public.
In the morning everybody, each man and woman, in Basra came to
see the youth’s hand cut off; no one would miss the action of punishment.
Khalid came riding up and with him the Basran dignitaries. Then he sum-
moned the judges and called for the young man to be brought. So he
approached, stumbling in his chains. Everyone at the scene was weeping
for him. Voice of women in the crowd rose up in lamentation.
The judge ordered the women to be silenced and he asked him: “These
people believe that you have entered their home and stole their possessions.
Perhaps you stole an amount less than the quantity that made this punish-
ment necessary by law?” “No, on the contrary, I have stolen precisely the
amount necessary for this punishment.” He asked again, “Maybe you are
co-owner of some of these possessions with them?” He replied, “No, on
the contrary, these things are entirely theirs and I have no legal claim to
any of them.”
At this moment Khalid became angry. He came over to the young
man and struck his face with whip and recited the verses loudly: “Man
wishes to be given his desire and God refused to give all save what He
desires.” He called up the butcher, who would be the one to cut off the
young man’s hand. The butcher came with a knife. He stretched his hands
and put the knife on the top of them.
At this moment suddenly a young woman rushed forward from a group
of women. She screamed and threw herself upon him. She drew back her
veil to reveal her face, which was as beautiful as the moon, and raised the
outcry of the people. Now the beloved is willing to sacrifice her reputation
and secret love to save her lover from punishment.12
The plots of many stories of the One Thousand and One Nights were
built on a contradiction between what appeared to be inevitable and what
was actually happened. It had little to do with fate or destiny but everything
to do with the writer, who played games with the assumptions of the audi-
ence/reader and manipulated them to create attention to the story.13 If this
technique adopted reverse logic, the foreshadowing took advantage of a
linear logical to prepare the reader for the progress of the narrative. It con-
tained repeated references to some character or object that appeared
insignificant when first mentioned but reappeared later to intrude suddenly
in the narrative. The tale of “The Three Apples” was one of the most notice-
able examples. The clue for the murder mystery was dropped earlier to
prepare the reader for the happy ending. Another early foreshadowing tech-
nique was formal patterning, where the organization of the events, actions
and gestures constituted a narrative and gave shape to a story; when done
well, formal patterning allowed the audience the pleasure of discerning
and anticipating the structure of the plot as it unfolded. This technique
would become commonplace in modern fiction writing, but it was
employed in the One Thousand and One Nights many centuries earlier.14
The first attempt to combine Arabic literary tradition with contempo-
rary life was made by Syrian and Lebanese writers during the nineteenth
century. Nasif al-Yaziji (1800–1871) made an effort to revive Arabic tradi-
tional narrative maqāmā and wrote his modern narrative in maqāmā style
(majma’ al-Bahrayn). Salim al-Bustani (d. 1884) laid foundation of histor-
ical novel in Arabic as his novels were published in the periodical Al-
Jinan. They dealt with the history of the Middle East from Arab conquest
of Syria after the death of Muhammad to the beginning of the twentieth
century. In 1864, Francis Marrash (1836–1873) published Ghabat al-haqq

(The Forest of Justice), which was an allegorical novel written as a dialogue
about ideas of peace, freedom and equality. Through this work, Marrash
became the first Arab writer to reflect the optimism and the humanistic
view of 18th century Europe. This view projected the hope that education,
science and technology would resolve such problems of humanity as slav-
ery, religious discrimination, illiteracy, disease, poverty, and war, and it
gave utterance to his hope for brotherhood and equality among peoples.
In 1872, he published Durr al-sadaf, a novel in which he described the
contemporary Lebanese society and its customs.15
Between the years 1898 and 1902 Muhammad Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi
(1858–1930) serialized his narrative work Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham (Isa ibn
Hisham’s Account). He used the maqāmā form with its rhyming prose,
episodic structure, and highly rhetorical style to depict the story of an
Egyptian pasha of Turkish origin. The pasha came back to life after being
dead for many years to witness the astounding social changes that had
taken place in Egypt, especially in Westernized Cairo.
Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham was a modern novel that took contemporary
Egypt and its people as a subject and scrutinized them in an intense and
humorous manner. However, his modern world was narrated by a neoclas-
sical style of revived maqāmā. The narrator, a writer named ‘Isa ibn
Hisham, met the dead pasha in a dream, and chatted with him about many
relevant social, political, and cultural topics, explained to him the many
changes in Egypt in the last few decades, and tried to justify the ludicrous
incongruities of his compatriots. After many episodes, some of which were
very funny, the story of ‘Isa and his dream stopped abruptly without ever
reaching a conclusion. The writing of this work was substantially more
developed compared to the previous attempts of modern writers, and it
became a classic and a model for the Egyptian novel as a modern genre.16
As in other earlier literary works of the period, Al-Muwaylihi reserved
a big section of his book for serious and elaborate discussions of the pos-
itive and negative characteristics of both European and Arab civilizations.
These strained and poorly motivated debates definitely harm the structure
of this work and prevented it from achieving the status of one of the truly
great novels in Arabic literature. Were it not for the author’s wit and humor,
and his lexical abilities and stylistic skills, Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham would
not have become so popular, and would not have taken its place in the
canon of classical literature in Egypt.
Hafiz Ibrahim’s (1872–1932) Ibrahim’s Layali Satih (The Nights of
Satih, 1906) was modeled after Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham. Ibrahim made use
of encounters between his narrator and a variety of contemporary Egyptians
to comment on current political issues. This poorly structured narrative

work consisted of seven essays that were encompassed by a clumsy framing
story which, like its model, had no logical ending. Ibrahim created a few
artificial and unconvincing incidents only to be used as a springboard for
discussing serious social, political, and philosophical issues, such as the
abolition of the veil, the establishment of universities and specialized
schools, pollution, and the judicial immunity granted to Westerners living
in Egypt. The author’s highly rhetorical style, which resembled that of the
maqāmā, his inclusion of lengthy prose and verse quotations, as well as
many independent essays and anecdotes, made the book even more frag-
mentary, and it eventually had to be regarded merely as a shallow precursor
to the more serious novelistic attempts that occurred later.17
Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914) decided to write for the mass of the popula-
tion rather than the cultural elite. He wrote twenty-three historical novels
dealing with crucial phases in Arab history, attempting to imbue the com-
mon Arabic-speaking population with knowledge of their own history. To
make history interesting and entertaining, his novels usually revolved
around a love story that was filled with adventure and intrigues, and ended
with happiness ever after. Zaydan researched all the historical facts and
yet “wrote down” to his readers’ level of interests and understanding. He
constructed each of his novels in an almost identical frame yet with dif-
ferent topics and timelines. He then would imagine a romance between
fictitious characters and a mystery of some sort to weave into the historical
facts in order to engage the readers. His plots were often weak and linear,
relying mostly on convenient coincidences to drive the love story and mys-
tery. His characters were unsophisticated and often one-dimensional with-
out any information about their background, point of view, or social status.
Their character traits and personalities were described in the first instance,
but never developed throughout the story. The plain and straightforward
style derived not so much from his lack of skills as from his commitment
to educate, inform, and enlighten the majority of Egyptian populace ninety
percent of which was illiterate.18
As most historians and literary critics of Arabic literature who are
writing in English are Western-trained, they inevitably judge Arabic novels
against the yardstick of English or French novels. They often miss the
most important and distinctive character of the Arabic novel: its rhetoric
tendency and moral or political tone. Arab writers rarely wrote just stories,
as most English writer insisted was the case for their fiction writing. They
wrote to express themselves, their worldviews, social ideas, and sentiments
and they were not shy about it. As Mahfouz put it, readers always find pol-
itics in all of his writings. As the very axis of their thinking, Arabic novelists
always had a political or ideological theme, inherited from traditional Ara-

bic narrative. Just like maqāmā, which was a display of incredible stylistic
feast by a complete master of Arabic language, writing represents who
they are as human beings and intellectuals. This is the ultimate reason why
maqāmā had been the preferred mode of literary expression ever since the
post-classical period.19 In this specific sense, for the Arabic novel, it is not
about whether there was a moral or political message but rather about how
the author delivers the message through skillful storytelling. It is rather
concerned with whether the ideas are seamlessly woven into the story lines
and expressed in an engaging and moving manner or disjoined and sim-
plistically written by writers who had high opinions and low creative tal-
ent.
It took many generations of Arabic writers to polish the narrative com-
bining rich literary tradition and tangible contemporary life. It began with
two separate streams of writing: the elite and popular writing for different
readerships. During the nineteenth century, Egyptian novels were written
by theologians, linguists, intellectuals, and poets and related to old Arabic
literary forms such as qasas and maqāmā. Authors of traditional narratives
did not pay much attention to either plot or characters. Instead, they dealt
mainly with cultural, political, historical, and philosophical questions,
clung to conventional issues and conservative topics, and used a highly
ornamental and rhetorical prose (which relied heavily on internal or end
rhyme). On the contrary, the innovative writers and translators used a much
simpler style and were more interested in narrating suspenseful events,
placing dramatic characters at the center of their works. They dealt with
themes and motifs that were unfamiliar to their traditional compatriots,
such as free love, adultery, and women’s emancipation. It is obvious from
their writings that the first group was mainly interested in educating and
enlightening their readers, while the second group was aiming primarily
at entertaining their readers and capturing the mass market. It took a long
time for these two ends to mingle into one in the works of a single writer
and single piece of work.
It took Arabic fiction several decades to find a narrative language that
integrated the styles and techniques inherited from the traditional storyteller
with those of modern fiction. This was accomplished gradually in several
steps. Arabic writers initially introduced the reading public to their own
cultural and historical heritage as a subject through historical novels that
focused on events and simple stories, as did Zaydan and others. Then,
modern fiction began to depict contemporary life and its pressing social
and national issues. Eventually, Arabic writers attempted to cultivate a
popular taste for high and sophisticated forms, which was enjoyed by less
than 10 percent of its citizens for centuries. It was an effort working its
way simultaneous from two ends: dealing with everyday issues and clear
language (writing down) to the level of the majority, and assimilating ver-
nacular and regional dialects into the literary canon (writing up).
The first Arabic fiction in English concept was Zaynab (1913) by Muham-
mad Husayn Haykel (1888–1956). The story described contemporary Egypt-
ian life and featured dialogue in the vernacular. For the first time, an
Egyptian novel told an unglamorous story of a young peasant girl named
Zaynab and the three men who at one time or another strove for her affec-
tions. At the end, none of them could have a life with his or her true love.
Egypt had to wait for more than a decade for another modern novel to be
published. During the 1920s most writers turned to short stories, except
Teha Husayin (1889–1973).20
Arabic developed mature first-person narrative before the modern
period. Biographic narrative of Muhammad’s life evolved into autobiog-
raphy beginning from Sufi lives, such as Al-Ghazali’s Al-Munqid mina al-
Dalal (Deliverance from Error and Mystical Union with the Almighty).21
Taha Husayn’s (1889–1973) Al-Ayam, (The Days), his famous autobiogra-
phy, made a major contribution to the development of prose literature.
Husayn’s third-person narrative gave the traditional narrative mode of
autobiography a touch of gentle irony by the sense of detachment from his
protagonist. Each memory was given its appropriate emotional atmosphere
in which his silent sorrow could be read within his mind and deeply felt.
His moving and graceful storytelling flew so easily that it sharply con-
trasted with the forceful rhetoric morality plays that were so commonly
produced in the Arabic literature of the early twentieth century. It was no
accident that it has remained one of the most enduring masterpieces in a
modern Arabic prose literature.22
Like Taha Husayn, many writers’ first attempt to write a novel initiated
from their own life stories. Ibrahim Mazini (1889–1949) was one of them.
He published his first novel, Ibrahim al-Katib, in 1931. It was a disjointed
account of the love of a man for three different kinds of women: a nurse,
his cousin, and his real love, whom he was not allowed to marry. Although
the novel did not have the same success as did Zaynab or the same literary
claim as did Al-Ayam, it showed Mazini’s skill in creating vignettes of
characters and provided some amusing moments.23
A novel that successfully portrayed an Egyptian family life within the
restricted environment of traditional culture was Tawfiq al-Hakim’s (1898–
1987) Awdat al-ruh (Return of the Spirit, 1933). It was story of a patriotic
young Egyptian and his extended family ending with events surrounding
the 1919 revolution. Muhsin was a young student living with his relatives
in Cairo. All of the male members of the family were fascinated by the
charm of the daughter of a neighbor, Saniyyah, while Zannūbah, the spin-
ster of the family, spent all her money and time to become beautiful in
order to attract the attention of men and to find a husband. While the poten-
tial of this mixture of characters was well exploited in the first part of the
book, the atmosphere was shifted when Muhsin returned to his parents’
country estate for a vacation. This allowed Al-Hakim to elaborate on the
theme, which provided the novel with its title: Egypt’s awareness of its
ancient heritage. However, to tie the traditional idea of eternal Egypt and
its reaction to foreign occupation and nationalist revolution to a realistic
portrayal of everyday life in the first part of the novel was less successful,
and the forced fusion made the work lose a sense of balance. However,
the dramatic role of dialogue in character portrayal that had been convinc-
ingly demonstrated in Al-Hakim’s novel paved the way for the emergence
of the Arabic novel in its full maturity.24
Tawfiq al-Hakim succeeded in creating one of the most memorable
works of early modern Arabic fiction, Yawmiyyāt nāib fī al-aryāf (Diary
of a Public Prosecutor in the Provinces, 1937). It was an Egyptian comedy
of errors, which took the form of the journal of a young public prosecutor
posted to a village in rural Egypt. Imbued with the ideals of a European
education, he encountered a world of poverty and ignorance where an
imported legal system, both alien and incomprehensible, was applied to
the beliefs and customs of rural Egypt. The vivid picture of country life
was filtered through the vision of an outsider. The chronology was inter-
twined with the story of Rim, the stunning village beauty who was initially
thought to be involved in a murder, but then disappeared only to be dis-
covered, towards the end of the story, as a corpse in a canal. It was a story
that was told in sophisticated mix of irony and description, both touching
and savagely funny.25
The effort to modernize the Arabic language and to combine tradi-
tional symbolism, modern issues and high literary form did not witness
consistent success until the works of Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006). Mah-
fouz was the first novelist to successfully widen traditional symbolism to
include modern issues and bring new perception into Egyptian contempo-
rary life experience. He discovered deeper meanings in modern life by
exploring the inner world of his characters.26
Mahfouz was regarded one of the most influential Arabic authors. He
published over 50 novels and over 350 short stories during a career of over
70 years. Mahfouz’s writing began with an ambitious plan to cover the
entire history of Egypt in a project of 30 books, a plan similar to but grander
than that of Zaydan. Mahfouz’s early works were a part of this plan: Abath
Al-Aqdar (Khufu’s Wisdom) (1939), Rhadopis (Rhadopis of Nubia) (1943),

and Kifah Tibah (Thebes at War) (1944) were historical novels. However,
after the third volume, Mahfouz decided to shift his subject from the past
to the present, the contemporary psychological impact of social change on
ordinary people. From that time on, tradition became a form and vehicle
(rather than a subject) to depict the social conditions of modern Egypt and
to express his ideas about socialism, religion and sexuality, which were
forbidden topics at the time.
Mahfouz’s central work in the 1950s was the Cairo Trilogy, a monu-
mental work of 1,500 pages, which the author completed before the July
Revolution. The novels were titled with street names such as Palace Walk,
Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street. Mahfouz set the story in the parts of
Cairo where he had grown up. They depicted the life of the patriarch El-
Sayyed Ahmed Abdel Gawad and his family over three generations, from
World War I to the 1950s, when King Farouk I was overthrown. Mahfouz
ceased to write for some years after finishing the trilogy. Disappointed in
the Nasser régime, he started publishing again in 1959, now prolifically
pouring out novels, short stories, journalism, memoirs, essays, and screen-
plays.
The Children in the Alley (1959), one of Mahfouz’s best known works,
bluntly expressed his ideas about world religions and their relationships.
It portrayed the patriarch Gebelawi and his children, average Egyptians
living the lives of Cain and Abel, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Gebelawi
had built a mansion in an oasis in the middle of a barren desert; his estate
became the scene of a family feud, which continued for generations. When-
ever someone was depressed, suffering or humiliated, he would point to
the mansion at the top of the alley leading to the desert, and say sadly,
“That is our ancestor’s house, we are all his children, and we have a right
to his property. Why are we starving? What have we done?” The story
referred to the related history of the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions
(Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), allegorized against the setting of an
imaginary 19th century Cairene neighborhood. Gebelawi symbolized reli-
gion in general while the first four sections retold the stories of Adam
(Adham): how he was favored by Gebelawi over the latter’s other sons,
including Satan/Iblis (Idris), Moses (Gabal), Jesus (Rifa’a), and Muham-
mad (Qasim). Families of each son settled in different parts of the alley,
metaphors for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which spread to different
parts of the world. The protagonist of the book’s fifth section is Arafa, who
represented modern science and, significantly, came after all prophets. All
the followers of the established families claimed Arafa as one of their own,
as modern religions attempted to interpret science in their own terms. In
the 1960s, Mahfouz further developed this theme, that humanity was mov-
ing further away from God, in his other novels. In The Thief and the Dogs
(1961) he depicted the dark thought and deed of a revolutionary anarchist
(the thief), who had been released from prison and planned revenge against
the people who had betrayed him.27
In the 1960s and 1970s Mahfouz developed a form of multiple first-
person narrative to construct his novels and to use interior monologues.
Miramar (1967) was set in 1960s Alexandria with an attractive servant girl,
Zohra. The story followed the interactions of the residents of the pension,
his Greek mistress Mariana, and her servant. As each character in turn
fought for Zohra’s affections or allegiance, tension and jealousies arose.
The story was retold four times from the perspective of a different resident
each time, allowing the reader to understand the intricacies of post-revo-
lutionary Egyptian life. The character Zohra symbolized the ideal modern
Egyptian or Egypt. She was hard working and honest but uneducated, and
constantly being pulled by different forces. Among those pulling her and
Egypt were Europeans, Egyptian nationalists, the wealthy upper class, the
Abdel Nasser regime and its followers, and the Muslim Brotherhood.28
Tharthara Fawq Al-Nīle (Adrift on the Nile) (1966) was one of his
most popular novels. The story criticized the decadence of Egyptian society
during the Nasser era, narrated through the eyes and consciousness of its
main character, Anīs Zaki. The story was set on a houseboat, a symbol of
detachment from the world of the city, society and its problems, a means
of retreat from the alienation of modern life itself. The boat was moored
to the land, which constituted the venue of a crushing and disillusioning
reality. The symbol of water, the river on which the boat floated, allowed
for a lulling sense of detachment from the unpleasant aspects of the life
of Zaki which was forced to confront every day in his office. It was from
this environment that he escaped to his houseboat, wafted by the cool eve-
ning breezes, and to the circle of companions who joined him in the evening
for encounters with drugs and sex. The symbolism implicit in this escape
was further underlined by ‘Amm ‘Abduh, the houseboat’s general factotum.
He was a huge man who arranged all the necessary equipment for the eve-
ning parties: procuring girls for Anīs Zaki and the company, in addition,
who also served as imam for a local group of Muslims. Although silent at
most times, he was the houseboat, because he was the ropes and lanterns.
If for a single moment he did not do his job, the boat would sink or be car-
ried away by the tide.
The group that came to the houseboat was from a variety of profes-
sions: a lawyer, a university-graduated feminist, a short story writer, a civil
servant, an art critic and a celebrated film actor. The one person who provided
a distinct angle to view the activities on the houseboat was the girlfriend
of the actor, Samarah. As she was introduced to the group one by one at
her first visit, she was shocked and amazed at the blatant way in which the
company indulged in illegal activities.
“Aren’t you scared of the police?” she asked.
“We’re scared of the police,” replied ‘Alī al-Sayyid, “not to mention
the army, the English, the Americans, the overt and the covert. By now it’s
gone so far that nothing can scare us.”
“But the door’s wide open!”
“‘Amm ‘Abduh’s outside. He can keep intruders out.”
“Don’t worry, gorgeous,” Rajab said with a smile, “the government’s
so preoccupied with building things, and it doesn’t have any time to bother
us.”
“Why don’t you give this brand of fortitude a try?” asked Mustafa
Rashid, offering her the hashish pipe.29
It took the group a while to assimilate the new girl, whose impressions
and criticism of the group were expressed by the main character, who took
and read her diary. Her premonition came to reality when the group piled
into a car for a crazy ride in the desert at night. They knocked down and
killed a peasant on the road but drove away without stopping to face the
consequences. The incident shattered their collective illusions and forced
them back to the harsh reality that they had been trying to escape. On the
night that Zaki was arrested, the group met in an entirely different atmos-
phere; it was tense. Samarah insisted that they should go to the police,
whereas everyone else was afraid of being exposed. Eventually none of
them could muster enough dignity and courage to face the responsibili-
ties.30
While Mahfouz portrayed the imagery of death (both in physical and
spiritual sense) in life, Ghassan Kanafani (1936–1972) and Palestinian writ-
ers accumulated a repertoire of stories of survival (the constant struggle
against death). Mahfouz criticized the moral decadence of Egyptian society
and hung his hopes on the evolution of human spirit. On the contrary, the
Palestinians promoted courage and hope for a hopeless political situation.
They represented different sides of the same spirit in Arabic, which had
triumphed, been defeated, suffered, struggled, died, and been reborn. It
will continue to reinvent itself with the increasingly widened and diver-
sified repertoire of expressions.
No modern Arab novelist has been able to project the tragedy of the
Palestinian people in fiction with greater impact than Ghassan Kanafani
has. Of all his works of fiction, Rijāl fī al-shams (Men in the Sun) (1963)
was undoubtedly the most famous. The story was about three Palestinian
refugees who attempted to travel from the refugee camps in Lebanon to

Kuwait, where they hoped to find work as laborers in the oil boom. The
three men each arranged with a clerk at a local store to be smuggled to
Kuwait by a driver. The men were treated gruffly and humiliated in the
process. Once the travel deal was finalized, they found that they had to
ride in the back of a truck across the desert on their way to Kuwait. At sev-
eral checkpoints, the men hid in a large, empty water tank in the stifling
mid–day heat as the driver arranged paperwork to get through. After the
last checkpoint, within easy driving distance of the travelers’ ultimate goal
of Kuwait, the driver finally opened the tank to let the men out only to find
they had died. Khanafani’s excellent use of imagery and brilliant plot con-
struction made the impact of the symbolism very clear and powerful, some-
times too forceful for the sensibility of the readers.31 Khanafani’s second
novel, Ma tabaqqa la kum (All That’s Left to You), was considered one of
the earliest and most successful modernist experiments in Arabic fiction.
Like Mahfouz, he adopted multiple narrators, two of which were inanimate
objects. It was the story of a young man, Hamid, who was separated from
his mother after they both fled to different areas. Hamid tried desperately
to find his mother but he became lost in the desert, crossing paths with an
Israeli soldier. He was compelled to desert his original plan of looking for
his mother and had to confront his enemy instead. He died before locating
his mother. In death he was reunited with his lost land, and the very act of
confronting his fears constitutes a symbolic victory. The vivid descriptions
of Hamid’s unremitting anger and shame for the tragedy that fell on his
people symbolized the Palestinian attachment to land and family.
Khanafani made some interesting experiments to develop and clarify
his imagery. The five heroes of this novel, Hamid, Maryam, Zakariyyā,
Time and the Desert, did not move in parallel or conflicting directions from
the beginning. Rather, they intersected in a manner that was so compact
that they all seemed to consist of just two separate threads. This juxtapo-
sition also affected both time and place, to such an extent that there was
no specific dividing line between places that were far apart or between dif-
ferent time frames, and occasionally between time and place at one and
the same time. However, the juxtaposition did not deny the time that played
a pivotal role in narration. The events took place over an interval of some
eighteen hours, mostly during the night. In addition to generous episodes
of flashback, time was represented in two objects that told time: a wall
clock whose ticking punctuated the life of those who lived in the Palestinian
home which was the major focus of the action, and a watch which Hamid
eventually discarded as useless on his journey across the desert at night.
The earth as a symbol was another example. Like in Men Under the Sun,
when Abu Qays was lying on the ground and felt the heartbeat of the earth
beneath him, in All That’s Left to You, Hamid threw himself to the ground
“and felt it like a virgin trembling beneath him, as a beam of light silently
and softly swept across the folds of sand.” In another telling juxtaposition,
the beats of the earth beneath Hamid’s prostrate body find themselves asso-
ciated with the fetus inside his sister’s womb. Even the desert and time
emerged as characters through whose mouths Khanafani spoke. The story
was steeped in a powerful symbolism. Place and time, represented by the
passing of the hours and the relentless heat of daytime sun, became active
contributors to the plot of the story.32
Al-Tayyib Salih’s (1928–2009) Season of Migration to the North
(1969) was considered by many the most important Arabic novel of the
20th century. It was one of the distinguished novels dealing with cultural
contact, confrontation, and their impact on humanity. The contrast between
different cultures that was perceived by the Arab intellectuals returning to
the Middle East after spending sometime in Europe had been a common
theme. Their experience and the impact of the European cultures have been
written about since the nineteenth century. What was refreshing about
Salih’s work was the penetrating complexity with which he explored the
theme, the construction of narrative form and the use of imagery. Instead
of a superficial and orientalist portrayal of the story of West v. East, Europe
v. Africa, the story had many layers, each of which invited different inter-
pretations.
The young narrator returned to his native Sudanese village on the
banks of the Nile after seven years in England to pursue his education. On
his arrival home, he encountered a strange new villager named Mustafa
Sayd. Mustafa initially appeared to be aloof and distant, and exhibited
none of the curiosity about life in Europe that the other villagers did. The
narrator found out later that Mustafa had good knowledge of English lit-
erature and became curious about his past and especially his experience
in England. As the narrator asked Mustafa about his past, he was very
reluctant to tell. He simply told him, “I am no Othello, Othello was a lie.”
Struck by his mystery and fascinated by his past experience of European
education that might be similar to his own, the narrator decided to inves-
tigate. He discovered that Mustafa used to be a precocious student who
had a distinguished career in Sudan, Cairo, and eventually England as a
scholar and teacher. He also learned that Mustafa had a violent, hateful
and complex relationship with his perceived identity as an Arab African
in the eyes of the English.
Mustafa’s troubled past in Europe and in particular his love affairs
with many British women formed the center storyline of the novel. The
Mustafa in England was a person who was perceived and therefore acted,
compelled or chosen, according to the imagery of Europeans about Black
Africa. In the process, he became that image: an Arab African man, exotic
and savage, an image that led to his self-destruction. Like the young nar-
rator, Mustafa used to be a student who had a mind that was as sharp as a
knife. He had a successful career in England as well as being a shark in
the social scene. With his acute intelligence, he realized the difference
between who he was and who he was perceived and expected to be in the
minds of the white English. He decided to manipulate the English illusion
about the exotic African man and turned it to his advantage in social
encounters. Instead of being a victim, as commonly assumed for a person
from a British colony, Mustafa was a warrior and conqueror, “the invader
who came from the South (means the East)” to defeat the English with
deep seated anger and hatred. He also had the vision that in the process,
he “would never make a safe return from the icy battlefield of the North
(means the West).” His English experience transformed him from intelli-
gent to insane and from a scholar to a murderer. He lost his own humanity,
African, Arab, or otherwise.
He manipulated the English perception of the African man and turned
it into his weapon to destroy the white English. About his homeland, dark
Africa, he told British women what they wanted to hear: tropical climes,
cruel sun, purple horizons to seduce them. He told them lies about deserts
of golden suns and jungles where non-existent animals called out to one
another. Pretending to be the exotic lover, he became an invader into their
hearts and expressed his anger though cold and loveless sexual acts. He
eventually went insane from his own lies and hatred. He killed his English
wife and drove two more women to suicide. As he wished to confess his
crimes and take the punishment of law, the same misunderstanding that
made him do what he did in the social scene saved his life. He was let off
with a reduced sentence. His defense lawyer argued in the court that the
girls (English women) were killed not by Mustafa, but by the germs of a
deadly disease that had assailed the people of the colony a thousand years
ago. As cruelty and hatred were the European disease, Mustafa was less
responsible for his crimes.
To his discomfort and fear, the narrator discovered that Mustafa had
awakened in him great anger and despair, as if Mustafa were his doppel-
ganger. The stories of Mustafa’s past life in England, and the repercussions
on the village around him, took their toll on the narrator, who was driven
to the very edge of sanity. In the final chapter, the narrator was floating in the
Nile precariously between life and death; he made a decision not to drown
and rid himself of Mustafa’s lingering presence, and to be his own person.
The story was about the perception and misconception between Arabs
and the Europeans. However, unlike the writers before him, Al-Tayyib
Salih conveyed these misunderstanding at the broadest cultural level in
concrete imagery in a highly personal and honest tone. The main imagery
was of two rooms of Mustafa’s, symbolizing two sides of his personality
and heritage. In Sudan, Mustafa set up an English scholar’s study, filled
with books and memorabilia, perfect in every pedantic detail, but a place
isolated from the life and experience of the countrymen of his homeland.
In London, on the other hand, he established a room that served as a
grotesque parody of the worst excesses of European notions (or fantasies)
concerning the exotic Oriental: a place of fatal couplings, steeped in decep-
tion. The author himself has commented on this dimension when he notes:
“I had in mind the idea that the relationship between the Arab world and
west European civilization ... was based on illusions both on our part and
theirs.”33
In this novel, for the first time, two cultures with their own illusions
about themselves and about other cultures were woven into the life and
consciousness of a single person, with its various incidents, love or lust
partners, marriages, and murders that reflected the turbulent coexistence
and clashes. The author not only succeeded in handling the complex time
frame of the narrative with great skill, but also managed to sprinkle into
the various sections a number of clues, which can recalled later and be
made on a purely realistic level between the characters. The narrative con-
stantly shifted between past, present, and occasionally future throughout
the work. For example, the following: “I had loafed around the streets of
Cairo, visited the opera, gone to the theatre, and once I had swum across
the Nile. Nothing whatsoever had happened except that the waterskin had
distended further, the bowstring had become tauter. The arrow will shoot
forth towards other unknown horizons.” This process of switching between
the different time frames, not to mention the levels of narrative and symbol,
was most effective in showing the way in which the tension implicit in the
memories of the past constantly impinges upon the present in the con-
sciousness of Mustafa and the narrator.34
Mustafa’s relationships with all the female participants represented
the evolution of the character within various cultural environments and
demonstrated how transplantation brought out different sides of his per-
sonality. As a young person traveled to Europe he uprooted himself from
his native country, where he was an African Arab as reality, and trans-
planted himself into the illusionary double that had been living in the imag-
ination of Europeans. In order to succeed in England, he was compelled
to act the part designed for him (a black man in a white society) by the
illusion of the host culture. As a brilliant man acting his part too well, he
lost himself and eventually became the illusion. He was a somewhat “nor-
mal” teenager who was brought up by an emotionally detached mother
and was hungry for affection. Even his Oedipal feelings towards the wife
of the British school teacher would have been replaced (as for millions of
youngsters of his age) by his love of his Sudanese wife and “mother of his
children” if he had not gone to England. However, living in a foreign land
where he had to act (to succeed as he did in school) according to the expec-
tations of the society, he was forced to play a part. He did very well to play
the illusion in white women’s minds, maybe too well. He lost his humanity.
His relationship with a fourth English woman pushed him off the edge of
his illusion. She steadfastly refused to succumb to the mysterious and
vicious allures that Mustafa had so craftily set up to dangle in front of his
victims. By this time, Mustafa would have done anything to maintain his
part, which had become the foundation of his existence in Europe. He mar-
ried her hoping to remain in control. As she continued her own outrageous
conduct, she activated the deeply seated anger within him. It turned to
hatred, not just for her, but for himself too. Mustafa admitted later, “I was
the pirate sailor and Jean Morris the shore of destruction.” He had to kill
her to save himself, his sailing career, which was the part that he had to
play in this foreign land and the imagination of its inhabitants.
This highly personal struggle was so well constructed that it attempted
to convince the reader by the words of Mustafa, “I am a desert of thirst. I
am no Othello.” A brilliant career and scholarly achievement obviously
did not satisfy that thirst because to conquer, to defeat, and to equalize
became his lifeline, like water. Although Mustafa found the argument of
his defense lawyer, which portrayed him as a victim of the political struggle
between two worlds, unpalatable and hypocritical, he had to surrender to
it because it managed to secure him a relatively light prison sentence of
seven years for his wife’s murder. He had the opportunity to do some trav-
eling, eventually to his native Sudan, and settle in a village on the Nile.
However, he did not belong to Africa anymore. Facing different kinds of
expectations and social environments, Mustafa had to construct his suicide
to escape.35
During the late 1980 and 1990s, Arabic writers began to experiment
with new narrative forms as they began to get rid of two restraining burdens
of the past, native literary tradition and the Western influence. The Arabic
novel came into its own as an art form with or without a political message.
The novels were not anti-tradition, anti-modern, anti–West or formless,
but simply claimed the authority to reproduce the totality of all these estab-
lished forms to serve the new purpose of creativity. What Arab writers had
learned during the past decades remained visible in the experiential works,
such as episodical framework, realistic depiction, usage of dialogue, stream
of consciousness, imagery and time as narrative form and multidimensional
characterization. However, they reconstructed them in much lesser linear
and deeper narratives.36
Elias Khoury’s (b. 1948) novel The Little Mountain (1977) presented
a leap in terms of formal complexity in fictional writing. It was about a
fifteen-year civil war in Lebanon. It was composed in five chapters, every
one of which was represented by a very different voice. Each was an exam-
ination of the explosion of hope, love, life, and death that surrounded the
chaos of war. The story was told from the perspectives of three characters:
a Joint Force fighter; a distressed civil servant; and an idealistic young
man, part fighter, part intellectual. The first chapter was about the change
from peace to war. It began with a collection of imagery of the Little Moun-
tain suburb prior to the war. A violent scene interrupted the peace when a
group of solders marched into a house to look for a young man and harass
his mother. It was a short scene depicted in short and sharp sentences to
create a sense of urgency in contrast to the calm atmosphere of a community
before it was torn down by war. The second chapter was the war story told
by a Christian fighter. There was not any personal history about why he
entered the war except that he was content with his choice. The entire
country was in war and chaos; people still had to live and deal with death
every day. The narrator was able to relate horrific events in a matter-of-
fact tone, calm and collected and unsentimental. While fighting to stay
alive, he still wanted to have slices of life between deaths: to talk with
friends, love pretty girls and be happy when he could.
While the first two chapters were about physical war and actual
fighters, the remaining three chapters were more introspective and analyt-
ical. They were about the feelings and thoughts of more intelligent char-
acters about war. Although as citizens they did not have to fight every day,
war had even greater and more terrifying impacts on their lives. Bombshells
whistled as though they were coming out of their ears. They could not
sleep in or out of their beds because bombs were falling and people were
dying outside of their front doors. This story of war was illustrated through
the eyes of five people who lived through it and had to cope with it. Little
Mountain was not about plot or characters so much as a place and its people
living, more specifically surviving, in its warzone environment.37
In this book one can find many techniques inherited from Arabic lit-
erature up to Khoury’s time from episodic narration, multi-level storytelling,
interior monologue, at times approaching a stream of consciousness, and
elements of colloquial Arabic. The use of dialect forms added to the credibility
and immediacy of the narrative voice. Although the use of dialogue was
relatively common in modern Arabic literature, Khoury was the first to
write an entire novel in the form of a one-sided conversation. His book
Gate of the Sun was a touching story composed entirely in a monologue.
The main character, Khalil, went to visit his friend Yunes, who was a Pales-
tinian freedom fighter who fell into a coma after injury. The “discussion”
gradually revealed the history of a friendship where nothing was withheld.
The two men “discuss” everything and nothing, but always they return,
with respect and wonder, to the women in their lives. Early on, Khalil
recalled that the novelist Khanafani had interviewed Yunes but had decided
not to write about him because “he was looking for mythic stories, and
yours was just the story of a man in love. Where would be the symbolism
in this love that had no place to root itself? How did you expect he would
believe the story of your love for your wife? Is a man’s love for his wife
really worth writing about?”
Unlike in Little Mountain where the location was depicted only in
scattered images, the love story of Gate of the Sun rooted itself in Bab al-
Shams (gate of the sun), a cave where Yunes and his wife, Nahilah, met
secretly over the decades of their marriage. Bab al-Shams was where they
made love, shared meals and discussed their children. It was also the scene
of Nahilah’s loving exposure of Yunes’s self-delusion, an inspired mono-
logue that chastened and enlightened him. The cave was the novel. At one
point, Khalil explained this to Yunes: “We’ve made a shelter out of words,
a country out of words, and women out of words.”
Historical events were not absent from Khoury’s fiction; in fact, they
covered a wide range of history. But he confined them to the conversation
between Khalil and Yunes. Speaking about the Holocaust, Khalil told his
friend: “You and I and every human being on the face of the planet should
have known and not stood by in silence, should have prevented that beast
from destroying its victims in that barbaric, unprecedented manner. Not
because the victims were Jews but because their death meant the death of
humanity within us.” On the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich
Olympics, Khalil told Yunes: “I know what you think of that kind of oper-
ation, and I know you were one of the few who dared take a stand against
the hijacking of airplanes, the operations abroad and the killing of civil-
ians.” On Palestinian identity before 1948, Khalil admitted to Yunes: “Pales-
tine was the cities—Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem and Acre. In them we could
feel something called Palestine. The villages were like all villages.... The
truth is that those who occupied Palestine made us discover the country as
we were losing it.” Asking why the Palestinians fled their land, Khalil
demanded: “Tell me about that blackness. I don’t want the usual song about
the betrayal by the Arab armies in the ’48 war—I’ve had enough of armies.
What did you do? Why are you here and they’re there?”38
Khoury said that his aim in Gate of the Sun was to write a great love
story. Dr. Khaleel, a paramedic in the makeshift Galilee hospital in Beirut’s
Shatila refugee camp, kept vigil by the bedside of Yunis, a comatose Pales-
tinian resistance fighter of his father’s generation. Khoury was astonished
that no Palestinian novelist had ever written a novel about love. For Khoury,
Yunis was heroic because he crossed the border for love, not for a country
(Palestine). He also believed that creating and closing borders was one of
the most stupid ideas of modern times. Yet, counter to what Khoury saw
as a tendency in Palestinian literature—particularly poetry—to extol heroes
in the service of the cause, his novel questioned the notions of heroism
and martyrdom. This led to a painful honesty about humiliation and defeat.
As he put it, “I am writing about human beings, not heroes. I don’t feel
literature can serve any cause. Art was to serve art. Writing was to travel
towards discovering others; it’s a way to listen to and love them.” As
Khoury’s writing was about life, love, fear, and humiliation, it went beyond
physical borders and politics. In one scene, a refugee encounters the Jewish
woman who now lived in her house and who had her own painful history.
Khoury wrote, instead of for the Palestinian cause, to contest the dominant
national ideology, and his way to contest it was to write stories contrary
to history, which he believed always was written and would be written by
winners.
Little Mountain was one of the most lyrical novels ever written in
Arabic; it was a story as well as a song: the words were short, piercing,
repeated, and chanted. The narrative was carried by words, as well as by
the atmosphere that they created and the rhythm they took. It was a story
of the unbearable pain of war yet tuned into a beautiful music of words.
It could only be done in Arabic.
Conclusions
Arabic literature had cultivated mature narrative forms before the
modern period. Unlike the narrative of the modern European languages,
which was created by formative vernaculars, Arab writers had to transform
the inherited repertoire of traditional narration into a modern framework.
Once transformed, Arabic narrative cultivated an incomparable command
of language and imagery and created increasingly varied and individualized
visions of the world punctuated with social commitment and personal con-
victions.
The main achievement of modern Arabic fiction lies in its ability to
use imagery for rhetorical rather than descriptive purposes. Instead of paint-
ing a world in front of their readers, the Arabic modern fiction writers cre-
ated personal visions through the eyes of their characters. For example,
imagery was used in order to heighten the impact of the cultural interactions
and social confrontations found in this novel: murders, infatuations, love-
less sex. These symbolic enactments of cultural tensions were portrayed
through images of violence and penetration. The bow and arrow, the climb-
ing of the mountain peak, the driving of the tent-peg into the soil, all these
were employed to describe character’s callous and defiant posture, brilliant
yet cold. As images gradually became internalized and carried more emo-
tional weight in narration, fiction began to obtain the capacity of poetry.
Conclusion
The aim of this book is to initiate a multi-disciplinary and non–West-

ern centered approach to the understanding of Arabic literary language.
Arabic, like many non–European languages, has been studied and
analyzed based upon established Western literary and cultural theories.
These theories have failed to acknowledge Arabic as a literary language
that combines a rich poetic heritage, an extremely sensitive readership,
and a literary refinement that is almost alien to English speakers. Therefore
this book encroaches upon the familiar boundaries of literature, language
(as speech), theatre, and music, and it defies the Western dichotomies of
literature/society, language/reality, form/formless, and modern/post-mod-
ern. It illustrates that one of the most important features of Arabic expres-
sion is its exceptional diversity, which derived from its long term
accumulation of various forms of sub-literary and literary expressions that
contributed to the maturity and refinement of the Arabic language. As the
language evolved, Arabic retained its old heritage as it adopted the new.
This allowed for the constant expansion of the scope and ability of literary
Arabic to enrich itself.
Literary Arabic attained a formal complexity that European languages
did not see until later times. Therefore, a judgment on Arabic based upon
the theories of European languages is improper. However, the history of
Arabic language may provide a way for scholars to analyze and compre-
hend contemporary and emerging tendencies in English and other European
languages.
In Arabic, the distinction and relationship between form and content
differ from those in Western literatures. Formalism became prominent dur-
ing the pre–Islamic and early Islamic periods. English formalism did not
emerge until the pre-modern period. Spanish, Italian and French formalism
initiated during the late Renaissance and Baroque.
In the Arabic world, the influence of mature poetics and inherited literary
228
Conclusion 229
sensibility of its readership have never allowed the art of composition to

be separated from its content. By the same token, the act and art of writing
has always been central to storytelling. Traditions, with their distinct forms
and shapes, can be rewritten, reimagined, and redefined. To understand
Arabic is to appreciate its form of expression, a form which has enormous
power to activate the minds and emotions of its speakers.
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Chapter Notes
Part One 12. Galpin, 1939, 26–27, 55–57.

13. Woolley, 1934, 1: 249–273, 2: 258–259;
1. Abbott, 1957, 1967; Brockelmann, 1982, Cheng, 2009, 163–178.
6–7; Chejne, 1969, 69–70; Gilliot, 2006, 41– 14. Galpin, 1939, 27–28.
58; Diakonoff, 1988, 24–30, 63, 81; Owens, 15. Farmer, 1957a, 231–232; Galpin, 1939,
2006, 8–13. 6–10.
2. Rubio, 2005, 321–323; 2007, 7–8; En- 16. Farmer, 1957a, 231–238; Kramer and
glund, 1998, 81; Braun, 2002, 8–35; Galpin, Maier, 1989, 1–21; Black, Green, and Richard,
2011, 13–37; Sendrey, 1969, 262–275; Norborg, 1989, 173–174; Rogers, 1998, 9–28.
1995, 1–126; Qassim, 1980, 5–12, 103–144; 17. Galpin, 1939, 53–55; Farmer, 1957a,
Rimmer, 1969, 1–36; Woolly, 1934, 249–273. 232–233.
3. Cross, 1973, 3–43, 112–144; Gordon and 18. Langdon, 1909, xi–x, 70–71; Langdon,
De Moor, 2005, 45–70; Heidel, 1963, 1–16; 1913, viii–xli, Langdon, 1927, v.
Levine, 33–56; Sáenz-Badillos, 1993, 1–24, 19. Farmer, 1957, 231–234; Langdon, 1913,
45–49; Werner, 1976, 1–36; 1984, 73–126. 1; Langdon, 1921a, 169–191; 1927, 48–53; Cum-
4. Aitkon, 1990, 4–24; Der Meer and De ming, 2007, 74–76.
Moor, 1988, 1–61; De Moor and Watson, 1993, 20. Farmer, 1957, 236–237.
186–234; Liebhaber, 2010, 163–182; Pardee, 21. Deutscher, 2007, 20–21; Michalowski,
1984, 121–137; Pardee, 1988, xv–21; Reiner, 2008, 33–45; Van de Mieroop, 2007, 4–6, 68–
1985, ix–3; Sasson and Kramer, 1983, 1–353; 70; Woods, 2006, 91–120.
W.G.E. Watson, 1994, 15–44. 22. Madhloom, 1967, 76–79; Madhloom,
1968, 45–51; Madhloom, 1969, 43–49; Thomp-
Chapter 1 son, 1929, 103–148; Thompson and Hutchin-
son, 1931, 79–112; 1932, 55–116; 1933, 71–186.
1. Braun, 2002, 47–188; Duchesne-Guille- 23. Gadd, 1972, 36–40; Galpin, 1929, v–vii;
min, 1980, 5–26; 1984, 1–26; Farmer, 1939, 1937, 2–7.
[PAGES]; Farmer, 1957a, 228–254; Galpin, 24. Collon, 2008, 47–65; Farmer, 1957,
1937, 1–37; Kilmer, 2007, 24–37; Sendrey, 237; Lukenbill, 1924, 2: 11–12.
1964, 244–266; 1969, 13–26; 1974, 62–66. 25. Roaf, 2004, 191; Van de Mieroop, 2006,
2. Clayton, 1992, 141–155; Galpin, 1939, 1; 263.
Woolley, 1934, 127; Wu and Dalley, 159–165. 26. Dalley, 1989, 50–135, 233–281.
3. Farmer, 1957a, 231–233; Galpin, 1939, 27. Reade, 2009, 97–101.
2–3. 28. Galpin, 1937, 62; Langdon, 1913, xix;
4. Galpin, 1939, 6–7. 1973, 176; Farmer, 1957, 235.
5. Duchesne-Guillemin, 1981, 287–297. 29. Langdon, 1913, 70–73; Farmer, 1957,
6. Galpin, 1939, 5–12. 234–235.
7. Gross, 2012; Krispijn, 2008c, 125–150; 30. Mendelsohn, 1955, 129.
Lawergren, 2008, 121–132. 31. Mendelsohn, 1955, 129–130.
8. Galpin, 1939, 13–14, 39, 54, 61. 32. Burgh, 2006, 106–145; Hesk, 1994, 41–
9. A.R. George, 1999, 51–58; Alain George, 42; Hockyer, 2004, 5–8; Steiner, 157–175.
2003, 67–68; Sharif, 1999, 128–137. 33. Shiloah, 1992, 87–130; Schwadron,
10. Rimmer, 1969, 19. 1983, 284–306.
11. Hickman, 1988, 114–147; Lawergren, 34. Jacobsen, 1997, xiii–xiv.
2008, 83–88. 35. Civil and Rubio, 1999, 254–266; Gelb,
231
232 Notes—Chapter 2
1960, 258–271; Thomason, 2001, 17; Woods, 62. S. Parker, 1974, 283–294; 2000, 228–
2006, 92–99. 231; W.G.E. Watson, 1999, 165–194.
36. Rubio, 2005, 33–66; 2007a, 89–90. 63. Avishur, 1974, 508–525; 1975, 13–47;
37. Alster, 1972, 1992b, 23–69; Veldhuis, 1994, 67–71; Margulis, 1970, 332–346; Pardee,
1990, 27–44; Ferrara, 1995, 81–117; Michalow- 1988, 6–29, 168–201.
ski, 1981, 1–18; Black, 1998, 8–13. 64. Kugel, 1981, 25–27.
38. Rubio, 2009, 34–42; Woods, 2006, 91– 65. Alter, 2011, 12–13; Blau, 1998, 308–332;
120. Hetzron, 1987, 654–663; Isaksson, 1989–1990,
39. Hall, 1985, 227. 54–70; Rainey, 1971, 151–164.
40. Black, 1998, 12–15; Mindlin, Geller, and 66. Alter, 1983a, 71–101; 1984, 615–637;
Wansbrough, eds., 1987, 1–12, 77–102; Micha- 1985, 4–6, 6–7; John Hobbin, personal web
lowski, 1981, 1–18; 1996, 179–195. site, http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/
41. Black, 1998, 14–19. about.html, posted March 9, 2012.
42. Lambert, 1960, 6. 67. Alter, 2007, xx; Van der Lugt, 2006,
43. Black, 2004, xxii–xxiii. 28–34, 445–489, 446–448.
44. A.R. George, 1999, 51–58; 2000, 2: 101– 68. Cross and Freedman, 1997, 31–45; Po-
208; Tigay, 1982, 3–13, 23–54. lak, 2001, 2–31; I. Young, 1998, 74–83.
45. Black, 2004, xxiv–xxv. 69. Alter, 2007, xx–xxi, Fokkelman, 2001,
46. Galpin, 1939, 60–61; Klein, 1982, 295– 37–40.
306. 70. Alter, 1985, 14–15; Hurvitz, 1972, 130–
47. Buttner, 2006, 3–22. 52; 2003, 281–285.
48. S. Smith, 1932, 295–308; Galpin, 1939, 71. Coogan, 2009, 370; Cross, 1973, 100–
62. 122; Cross and Freedman, 1997, 9–14; Rosen-
49. Langdon, 1921b, 12–13; Galpin, 1939, baum, 1977, 132–148; Naudé, 2000, 46–71;
64–65. Rosenberg, 1987, 105–106, 184–206.
50. Berlin, 1985, 1–17, 53–59; Kugel, 1981, 72. Albright, 1922, 284–285; 1936, 26–31.
1–16; 1984, 107–117; Geller, 1979, 3–15; 1982, 73. Rabin, 1981, 117–136.
6–12; O’Connor, 1980a, 24–37; Segert, 1979, 74. Alter, 1985, 12–15.
729–738; Segert, 1983, 295–306, 697–708; 75. Alter, 1985, 15–24.
Gu, 2011, 53–86. 76. Auffret, 1977; Avishur, 1974, 1977;
51. Kugel, 1981, 8. Chatman, 1960, 1971, 1973; Berlin, 1978, 1982,
52. West, 1997; Dalley, 1989, 39–135; An- 1983; Bronznickin, 1979; Fokkelman, 2001,
nus and Lenzi, 2010. 60–61; Geller, 1979, 1982, 1983; P.J. Miller,
53. Quoted in West, 1997, 175. I have made 1980a, 1980b, 1983; Pardee, 1988, 8–13.
minor change to the English version to make 77. Cross, 2000, 145–146.
it read better. 78. Fokkelman, 2001, 61–63.
54. The Epic of Gilgameš, Old Babylonian 79. Nebes and Stain, 2003, 454–487; Ko-
Version, Tablet II, lines 1–38, read by Antoine gan and Korotayev, 1997, 157–183.
Cavigneaux, Oriental Studies London, http://
www.soas.ac.uk/baplar/recordings/the-epic- Chapter 2
of-gilgame-old-babylonian-version-tablet-
ii-lines-1-38-read-by-antoine-cavigneaux. 1. Albright, 1932, 15–20; 1948, 6–22; Bachra,
html. 2001, 9–16; Beeston et al., 1983, 1; Abu-Deeb,
55. Foster, 1975, 14–15; Kugel, 1981, 25. 1975, 148–184; Agha, 2007, 107–127; Sáenz-
56. Lambert, 1960, 33–34. I have made Badillos, 1993, 3–14, 29–49, 170–171.
minor changes in the English version. 2. Woodard, 2008, 365–390; Hetzron,
57. Lambert, 1960, 139–147. 1977, 59–63; Versteegh, 1997, 9–36.
58. Nicholson, 1930, 74; Beeston, 1974, 3. Segert, 1985, 13–38; Danielas and Bright,
134–146. 1996, 92–93; Healey, 1990, 20–48; Schniede-
59. M.S. Smith, 1997, 181–196; Berlin, wind and Hunt, 2007, 20–45.
1983b, 7–16; Der Meer and De Moor, 1988, 1– 4. Segert, 1985, 19–20; De Moor, 1987, 7–
61; Rainey, 1971, 151–164. 10; Diringer, 1968, 210–220; Healey, 1990, 197–
60. De Moor, 1987, 119–139; Der Meer and 258; Dietrich, Loretz and Sanmartín, 1995.
De Moor, 1988, 1–3. 5. Albright, 1966, 1–8, 29–33; Colless,
61. Berlin, 1983, 7–16; S. Parker, 1989, 7– 1990, 1991, 1998, 26–46; Darnell and Dobbs-
98; Parder, 1981, 116; Dobbs-Allsopp, 2001a, Allsopp, 2005; G.J. Hamilton, 2006.
219–239; 2001b, 370–395; Geller, 1979; Le- 6. Cross, 1979, 97–111; Ginsberg, 1970,
Mon, 2005, 375–394; Segert, 1979, 729–738; 102–124; Healey, 1990, 201–224; Naveh, 1982,
1983a, 295–306; Sivan and Yona, 1998, 399– 15–51; Quakenin and Bacon, 1999, 11–34.
407; W.G.E. Watson, 1982a, 311–312; 1988, 7. Healey, 1990, 49–56.
181–187. 8. Daniels and Bright, 1996, 93–95; Jensen,
Notes—Chapter 2 233
1969, 118–123; Coulmas, 2004, 137–178; Hock steegh, 1997a, 26–35; Zwetller, 1978, 110–134;
and Joseph, 1996, 71–87; Markoe, 2000, 108– Holes, 16–17.
114. 39. Jacobi, 1996, 26–27.
9. Abbott, 1939, 9–14; Grundler, 1993, 7– 40. Jacobi, 1996, 21.
28, 231–236; Ryckmans, 2001, 223–235. 41. Jacobi, 1996, 23.
10. Beeston, 1981, 178–186; 1984; Koro- 42. Starkey, 2006, 11.
tayev, 1995. 43. Jayyusi, 1996, 7–8.
11. Van Soldt, 1991, 519–520; 1995, 183; 44. Jayyusi, 1977, 565–573, 594–595; Jay-
Cooper, 1999, 74–5; Rensburg, 2003, 71–77. yusi, 1996, 8–9.
12. Driver, 1936, 151; Kutscher, 1976, 1977; 45. Scheindlin, 1974, 174–175.
Saenz-Badillos, 1993, 50–55. 46. Arberry, 1957; Bateson, 1970, 22–24;
13. Schniedewind, 2004, 35–47; Dalley, Nicholson, 1956, 75–78; Grunebaum, 1955, 32;
1998, 57–66; Millard, 1987; Niditch, 1996; 1969, 281–300; 1942, 147–153; 1944, 121–141;
Young, 1998. 1973, 212–215.
14. Rabin, 1979. 47. Nicholson, 1956, 77; Zwettler, 1978,
15. Kutscher, 1976, 41. 103–104.
16. Stevenson, 1962; Kutscher, 1957, 1971a, 48. Jayyusi, 1996, 1–20; Cachia, 2002, 1–5;
1977b, 1982. Gunther, 2005, 15; R. Allen, 2002, 65–66.
17. Dearman, 1989; Mykytiuk, 2004, 95– 49. S.P. Stetkevych, 2010, 4–5.
110, 265–277; Hoffman, 24–34; Herr, 1978, 50. Allen, 1998, 126; Cachia, 2002, 4; J.
26–29; Gibson, 1971, 72; Naveh, 1982, 101. Stetkevych, 1993, 50–58.
18. Kutscher, 1971a; Rabin and Yadin, 1958; 51. J. Stetkevych, 1989, 5.
Saenz-Badillos, 1993, 166–167. 52. Quoted in J. Stetkevych, 1989, 12.
19. Baklava, 1984; Batten, 2003; Bellhop 53. Quoted in Stetkevych, 1989, 13.
and Hare, 1997; Blab, 1988; Stetkevych, 1993, 54. Quoted in J. Stetkevych, 1989, 15–16.
3–54; Kennedy, 1997; Sperl, 1989; Weipert, 55. J. Stetkevych, 1989, 16.
2002; Mumayiz, 2006; Sumi, 2004. 56. Cachia, 2002, 5–8; Johnstone, 1972,
20. Avazini, 2006; Beeston et al., 1983, 1– 90–95.
3; Korotayev, A. 1995; Stein, 2002, 4–5; 2004. 57. Jaroslav Stetkevych, 1993b, 9–49;
21. Beeston, 1983, 2–4. Toorawa, 1997, 759–762.
22. Hoyland, 2001, 201–208; Versteegh, 58. Rosen, 1988, 1–12; Caplin, 2000, 17–34;
1997, 12–18. Hepokoski and Darcy, 2006, 14–22.
23. Beeston et al., 1983, 10–15; Beeston, 59. J. Stetkevych, 1993, 16–25.
1984; 1992, 2: 223–226; Stein, 2005b, 181– 60. Abu-Deeb, 1975, 148–184; Cachia,
199. 2002, 10; Hillman, 1971, 11–21; 1972, 1–10; 1976;
24. Haydar, 1989, 159–212. Van Gelder, 1982; Von Grunebaum, 1961, 97–
25. R. Allen, 2000, 71–72. 101; Lewis, 1993, 142–156; Montgomery, 1997,
26. Farmer, 1929, 6–7; Shilhoah, 1995, 6–8. 33–36; Scheindlin, 1974, 31–36.
27. Farmer, 1929, 16–18; Touma, 1996, 4–7, 61. Curtius, 1979, 71–73.
76. 62. Schiendlin, 1974, 174–175.
28. Nicholson, 1969, 73; Stetkevych, 1993, 63. Van Gelder, 1982, 35–56.
3–54. 64. Zwartjez, 1997, 125–126.
29. Nicholson, 1969, 71–73. 65. Beekes, 1988, xxi–xxii, 1–4; Browne,
30. Farmer, 1929, 3–14; Farmer, 1988, 134– 2009, 78–80; Gershevitch, 2008, 3–12; Hum-
142; Nicholson, 1969, 74–75; Termanini, 2004; bach, 1991, 1–22; Skjærvo, 2006a; 2006b, 13–
Touma, 1996, 4–5. 15; Boyce, 1984, 134–144.
31. Farmer, 1929, 15–18; Power, 2005, 9; 66. Arbarry, 1953, 200; Browne, 2009, 1:
Maafouf, 2002, Touma, 1996, 5–6. 12–19, 83–85; Farhat, 2004, 2–4.
32. Allen, 1998, Farmer, 1929, 18–21. 67. Boyce, 1954, 1–12; Lazard, 1971, 361–
33. Farmer, 1929, 22–36; Saoud, 2004, 2– 62, 385.
3; Mahdi, 2002, 28; Touma, 1996, 4–6. 68. Boyce, 1954, 1–13; 1957, 45–52; Hen-
34. Kogan and Korotayev, 1997, 157–183; ning, 1950, 641–648.
Nebes and Stein, 2003, 454–487; Korotayev, 69. Elwell-Sutton, 1975, 75–97.
1995, 4–5. 70. Benveniste, 1930, 193–225; 1932a, 245–
35. Touma, 1996, 2–3; Farmer, 1957, 423; 93; 1932b, 337–80; Boyce, 1954, 46–47; De
Shiloah, 1995, 6. Blois, 2000, 82–95; Henning, 1950, 641–648.
36. Shiloah, 1995, 7–8, 11–16. 71. Benveniste, 1930, 193–225; 1932a, 245–
37. Allen, 1998, 104; Cantarino, 1975, 41. 93; 1932b, 337–80; Grunebaum, 1955, 18; Utas,
38. Angoujard, 6–7; Bateson, 1970, 30–32; 1994, 140.
Weil, 667–677; Blachere, 1960, 225–236; 72. Rypka, 1936, 200–201; cf. Lazard, 1994,
Moscati, 1964, Yushmanov, 1961, 3–5; Ver- 87.
234 Notes—Chapters 3, 4
73. Jayyusi, 1992–94, ii: 117; Reynold, 2000, al-quran.info/. I have made minor changes in
60–82. the English version to make it less formal.
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Index
Abu Nuwas 12, 57, 65, 67, 182–187 European languages 5, 16, 17, 36, 54, 57, 61,
accumulation 7, 10, 17, 32, 90, 91, 113, 115, 70, 203, 226, 228
119, 173, 175, 228 evolution (linguistic) 4, 9, 16, 46, 96, 175
Akkadian 9, 10, 16, 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, exegesis 7, 90–92
28, 30–36, 38, 40, 48–50, 53, 54, 57, 69,
73, 74, 83, 176–179, 243, 245, 247, 248, French 1, 5, 12, 17, 36, 62, 78, 132, 137, 144,
251, 256, 260, 261, 263, 270, 273–275 212, 228
Al-Ghazali 129, 132–134, 136, 138
Al-Khansa’ 181, 182 Gate of the Sun 225, 226; see also Khoury
Al-Mutanabi 64, 187–189, 191 German 1, 5, 17, 127, 132, 144
alphabet 31, 38, 49–52, 54, 56, 93, 247, 248, ghazal 12, 65, 77, 122, 184–187, 193
254, 264, 266 grammar 7, 54, 87, 88, 92–94, 101, 110, 134
‘Antara 63, 120, 188 Greek 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 16–18, 24, 31, 32–34, 36,
Assyrian 26, 27, 32, 33, 38, 54, 57, 241, 42, 51, 52, 54, 55, 61, 62, 96, 97–99, 110,
242, 246, 247, 251, 252, 266, 275 129–135, 137, 139, 142, 143, 153, 154, 176,
178, 217
Babylonian 9–10, 16, 18, 24–28, 30, 32, 33,
36–38, 49, 53, 54, 57, 69, 102, 110, 142, Hadith 6, 7, 10, 84, 89, 90, 100, 103, 123–
176–178, 232, 238, 240, 243, 245, 247– 125, 128, 135, 138, 194, 204, 207, 211
249, 251–253, 257, 258, 260, 275 Hebrew 1, 4, 6, 8–10, 16, 18, 29, 33, 36, 38–
balag 18, 19, 23, 24, 26 46, 48, 49, 51–55, 57, 69, 83, 87, 102, 103,
Bible 29, 38, 40, 41, 53, 95, 110 108–112
horizon 5, 8, 114, 115, 182, 190
civilization 1, 4, 8, 84, 90, 111, 115, 116, 126,
hymn 24, 25, 34, 35, 40, 58, 75–77, 176, 177
127, 144, 145, 172, 179, 222, 239, 258, 261,
262, 264, 266
Ibn Rushd 132, 134
composition 5, 15, 31, 34, 36, 38, 62, 68, 69,
idioms 7, 72, 114, 132, 200
70, 82, 100, 105, 112, 123, 150, 159, 178,
imagery 2, 10–13, 32, 45, 54, 64, 68, 70, 95,
182, 198, 199, 229
113–204, 218–222, 224, 226, 227
cultural theories 16, 228
imagination 1, 83, 111, 113, 115, 120, 130, 182,
drama 69, 98, 207 189, 203, 222, 223
dramatic writing 97, 98 inheritance 1, 49, 70, 89, 128, 138, 159
dramatization 97, 209 inscription 23, 54, 150, 152, 165
interaction 4, 7, 8, 72, 96, 110, 111, 112
Egypt 5, 8, 10, 26, 50, 85, 98, 99, 148, 149, intonation 63, 85, 106, 107, 110, 114, 200
159, 160, 162, 163, 188, 189, 194, 200, 211, Iran 72–74, 76, 92, 155, 164, 165, 171, 173
212, 214–217 Iraq 5, 8, 11, 19, 24, 59, 82, 140, 159, 191
Egyptian 10, 20, 50–52, 99, 110, 151, 161, 169, Islam 1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 12, 55, 56, 58, 60, 61, 74,
200, 211–215, 217, 218 77, 81, 84, 89, 91, 95, 96, 99, 100, 102, 113,
English 1–6, 12, 17, 25, 31, 33, 36, 40, 41, 44, 115, 122, 125, 128, 131, 134–136, 139, 144,
62, 70, 71, 97, 99, 101, 103, 119, 127, 132, 146, 148, 151, 152, 159, 164, 168, 170, 172,
137, 144, 172, 203, 212, 214, 218, 220, 221– 176, 181, 182, 184, 185, 187, 191, 195, 201,
223, 228 216
277
278 Index
Islamic Law 115, 124, 127–129, 194 painting 21, 119, 159, 173, 227
Italian 12, 17, 36, 49, 71, 137, 228 parallelism 35, 37–45, 123, 206
Persian 4, 8, 70, 72–77, 100, 104, 109, 131, 139,
Khoury, Elias 225, 226; see also Gate of the 143, 151, 155, 164, 165, 169, 170, 191, 205
Sun; Little Mountain philosophy 2, 5, 8, 13, 83, 95, 96, 108, 113,
116, 127, 129, 130
Latin 1, 4–6, 17, 24, 25, 31, 34, 36, 49–52, poet 12, 36, 41, 46, 55–60, 63–68, 71, 73, 74,
54, 59, 60–62, 79, 87, 97, 99, 102, 103, 78–82, 113, 116, 117–119, 122, 170, 180, 182–
110–113, 132, 135, 137, 140, 157, 178, 179, 190, 199–202
199 poetic expression 2, 67, 185
law 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 66, 89, 115, 124, 127–129, poetry 2–12, 15–122, 125, 128, 132, 144–146,
134, 139, 144, 194, 209, 221 154, 170, 174–176, 178–187, 189–191, 193–
Lebanon 51, 52, 56, 80, 148, 219, 224 200, 202–204, 206, 226, 227; literary 57,
legal language 129 64, 72; oral 5, 6, 46, 54, 73, 82, 111; writ-
linguistic reorientation 17, 34, 48, 135, 179 ten 6, 38, 47
literature 2–13, 16, 27, 28, 30–33, 38, 39, 46, prose 4–7, 10–13, 53, 57, 58, 60–62, 73, 75,
48, 49, 54, 55, 58, 61, 69, 70, 72–74, 77, 82–87, 89–91, 93, 95, 97–101, 103, 105,
81–83, 86, 90, 95–97, 100, 101, 103, 107, 107–109, 111, 113, 115, 119–123, 128, 144,
108, 110–113, 115, 121, 123, 144–146, 172, 145, 146, 186, 203–207, 211–214; Qur’anic
175, 177, 190, 196, 203–205, 207, 211, 212, 99–101, 115, 121; rhyming 89, 211
214, 220, 224–226, 228; mature 5, 9, 97 psalm 24, 40–42, 79
Little Mountain 224–226; see also Khoury,
Elias Qabbani 200
qasida 62, 66–70, 79, 116, 117, 118, 183, 184,
maciama 11, 12, 103, 107–109, 197, 205, 206, 190, 193, 196
210–213 Qur’an 6–7, 10, 53, 84–92, 96–103, 119–124,
Mahfouz 212, 215–219 127, 128, 130, 135, 136, 139, 169–172, 181,
melodies 24, 25, 30, 57, 84, 110 191, 193
Mesopotamia 9, 19, 21, 23–25, 27, 30, 33, Qur’anic language 7, 89, 93, 102
34, 55, 61, 139, 153, 179
Middle East 1, 3–7, 9, 10, 15, 17, 20, 48, 49, refinement 3, 4, 8, 70, 88, 113, 146, 163, 228
52, 54–56, 59, 73, 96, 102, 111, 131, 142, repertoire 1, 12, 13, 17, 24, 32, 43, 87, 90, 94,
144, 146, 147, 174, 176, 204, 210, 220 102, 103, 111, 115, 120, 129, 132, 135, 137,
Moorish Spain 78–81, 166, 167, 173 164, 186, 195, 203, 218, 226
Muhammad (Prophet) 6, 7, 59, 60, 85, 88, repetition 9, 35–37, 41–44, 46, 57, 61, 75,
96, 122–123, 125, 128, 170, 171, 181, 189, 79, 81, 101, 150, 160, 168, 186
198, 204, 210 rhymes 40, 64, 75, 79, 80, 81, 86, 109, 112
music 1, 3–7, 9, 15, 17–19, 21–31, 33–43, 45– rhythm 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 15–17, 19, 20, 22, 24,
47, 57–61, 69, 73, 78, 79, 81–86, 96, 102– 26, 28, 30, 32, 34–36, 38–42, 44, 46, 48,
107, 109–112, 178, 179, 182, 186, 226, 228 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 61–64, 66, 68–72,
music of poetry 47, 82 74–76, 78–114, 145, 167–169, 172, 179, 200,
musical culture 9, 17, 18, 29, 78 226
musical instruments 25, 74 ritual 5, 6, 9, 17, 22–27, 29, 30, 35, 54, 58,
musical performance 2, 25, 27, 78 63, 68, 84, 87, 102, 103, 110, 111, 116–118,
musical scale 104, 106 174, 175, 178, 191, 193–195
musician 19, 20, 22, 23, 57, 104 Roman 9, 16, 17, 24, 146–149, 152, 157–159,
muslim 1, 64, 66, 68, 74, 78, 79, 80, 85, 87, 166, 168, 191
89–92, 95, 102, 109, 111, 115, 123–126, 128, Rumi 77, 183
129, 137–140, 148, 150–152, 156, 157, 163,
165, 167, 170, 172, 190, 192, 194, 198, 217 Salih (al-Tayyib) 222
myth 31, 32, 179 script 5, 6, 8–10, 23, 26, 31, 38, 39, 48–56,
73, 74, 85, 93, 137, 169, 170
narrative 2, 7, 11–13, 15 I7, 30, 32, 33, 38, Semitic language 10, 15–17, 26, 35, 46, 50,
39, 45, 49, 61, 77, 91, 96–98, 100, 101, 108, 53, 54, 61
116, 123, 125, 144, 184, 185, 204–207, 209– sensibility 3, 43, 116, 175, 203, 219, 229
214, 217, 220, 222–226 sound 3, 5, 6, 8–10, 15–24, 26, 28, 30, 31,
nasib 12, 46, 61, 62, 66–68, 117, 184, 185, 190 32, 34–36, 38–42, 44–84, 86–88, 90, 92,
94, 96, 98, 100–104, 106, 108–110, 112, 130,
One Thousand and One Nights 100, 207, 145, 168, 179, 182, 190
209, 210 Spanish 13, 4–6, 17, 78, 80–82, 99, 109, 167,
orchestra 19, 24, 28 228
Index 279
Sufi 77, 102, 113, 114, 144, 159, 170, 183, 187, vision 3, 4, 10, 11, 45, 69, 91, 96, 111, 113, 116,
190–199, 201, 202, 214 119, 130, 131, 144–146, 168, 172, 174, 190,
Sufism 77, 126, 193, 194 193, 194, 215, 221
Sumerian 10, 18, 20–22, 24–26, 28, 30–36, visual expression 145, 146
38, 48–51, 73, 159, 176–179 visual presentation 152
Sunna 7, 87–89, 199 voice 9, 10, 15, 16, 19, 21–23, 25, 30, 31, 59,
Syria 5, 21, 26, 50–52, 79, 151, 157–159, 166, 60, 65, 80, 84, 87, 101, 113, 119, 146, 168,
188, 189, 194, 210 178, 179, 189, 202, 209, 224, 225
tafsir 7, 88–91 worldview 7, 9, 111, 119, 125

tone 22, 30, 42, 57, 63, 67, 71, 85, 104, 105, written language 5, 6, 31, 38, 46, 48, 49, 52,
107, 176, 207, 212, 222, 224 60, 74, 179
tune 23, 25, 59, 110
Zahawi 201, 202
Umru al-Qays 55, 63 zajal 56, 78–82

A Cultural History of The Arabic Language

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A Cultural History

of the Arabic Language

Language and Culture in the Growth of Imperialism

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

© 2014 Sharron Gu. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

On the cover: Moroccan doorway (iStockphoto/Thinkstock)

Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Part One: The Sound and Rhythm of Poetry 15

Part Two: The Formation of Arabic Imagery 113

I would like to express my appreciation to my

has presented various distortions according to the fluctuation of self-image

became a positive influence in my life. Arabic equipped me with a vision

This is an introductory history of the Arabic language. It differs from

local literatures. The specific characteristics of the formation of each local

it became a pattern of shapes and colors, a pure form of beauty without

Chapter 6, “Imagery of Man and His Feelings,” describes the emer-

appeared to be fragmentary, held together in purposeful juxtaposition that

Music and Poetry

The Arabic language emerged within the context of ancient Mesopo-

Mesopotamia (the harmonious sound of drum and spoken words) is

are actually stopped inside at different lengths so as to change the pitch of

pipes, and other instruments. In a pre-biblical culture (before the words of

few as five psalms or hymns and as many as twenty-seven. At a later period

archaeological discovery of the city of Nineveh, capital of the Neo-Assyr-

scene. Seated on a throne is a woman, perhaps a goddess or a princess.

versions of epics. However, as Sumerian stopped being spoken (around Ur

Babylonian epic into Hebrew (biblical stories). Although scholars have

to god privately. Private prayer could also be accompanied by music. This

languages.50 It often took many centuries to cultivate verbal repetition to

3 Sing ye of Ishtar, the most fearsome of the gods,

parallelistic, because Arabic poetry at this stage was not an established

guard” (Proverbs 3:1), in which “my teachings” is paralleled with “my

of biblical poetry. With synonymous parallelism, the second hemistich

A1. Righteousness brings one to life

The basic principle of Hebrew poetry is the repetition, elaboration,

In emblematic parallelism the second line serves as an emblem to illustrate

Cold water to a thirsty soul,

Frequently the first of two paralleled lines is a more “general” term,

writers in many Near Eastern languages finally crystallized. As the young-

Recording the Sound

The linguistic change from Sumerian to Akkadian narrowed the inher-

The embryo of alphabetic writing emerged initially from a Semitic

two glyphs. It evolved from the above-mentioned Middle Bronze Age

The Phoenician alphabet completely discarded pictographic content

Muhammad was initially perceived as a non-singing poet (in the Ara-

prose. However, generally speaking, poetic meter in Arabic seldom imposes

Another method of identification is through the opening of the poem. Imru

composition. Abu Tammam (788–845) blended the semantic and symbolic

During Islamic expansion, the poetic form of Arabic multiplied and

It appears that in the two hymn cycles in Parthian (published by

features such as metaphor, pun, juxtaposing opposites and tricky theolog-

engraved by the refrain. It is said that the interwoven rhymes of the

classicism. This innovation was an elaborate kind of strophic poem known

Rhythm from Poetry,

Arabic had an immediate and intimate relationship with its speakers

1. Wannajmi itha hawa