Archetype and Attribution in Early Arabic Poetry: Al-Shanfarā and the Lāmiyyat 'Al-Arab

Abstract

The premier position of theLāmiyyat al-'Arabamong the poetry ofal-shu'arā' al-Ta'alīk(the brigand-poets) of the Jāhiliyya is undeniable. Among scholars and philologists, both Arab and Orientalist, it has remained over the centuries the object of the most minute philological commentaries. Its Arab commentators number more than 20, among them the foremost names in classical Arabic literary scholarship: al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), the doyen of the Basran school, whose commentary is said actually to have been taken from his Kufan archrival, Tha'lab (d. 291/904); the renowned poetic commentarist al-Tibrīzī (d. 502/1109); and the famed grammarian and Qur'anic commentator, al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1143). Its European popularity—a phenomenon that Blachére attributes to its appeal to the sensibilities of nineteenth-century Romanticism—dates to Sylvestre de Sacy's study and translation of 1826, followed by Rückert's German translation in hisHamāsaof 1846. In philological studies, of note are the more than 20 pages of hisBeiträgethat Nöldeke devotes to lexical matters and Jacob's extensive two-partSchanfará-Siudien.