Margaret Larkin: Mütenebbî ve Abbasî Şiir İdealinin Sesi

Abstract

This book review presents Margaret Larkin’s work, Al-Mutanabbī: Voice of the Abbasid Poetic Ideal. The work is a belles-lettres critique of a literary genre, the poetry of Al-Mutanabbī, which discusses the function of poetry in the Abbasid ideal. Larkin's interpretation of history, particularly medieval Islamic history, reveals the significance of contextualizing poetic activity in the 10th century Islamic court authority, as it is a disseminated media power and has an iconoclastic impact in the community, centralizing institutionalized power and supremacy. The author discusses several aspects of the poetic material in relation to the poet's life story, plight, and identity crisis, but also indicates its derivation from the political substructure, i.e., the Abbasid ideal. The political ideal is not a monolithic project; it requires an aesthetic vision and an attractive public image. According to Larkin's discernment, in achieving an Islamic empire discourse, the mobility of state power is grounded on the factor of charisma, the realm of which is poetry in the medieval Arab world. Larkin fills a scholarly gap in current literary studies.