One Qaṣīda with Several Chaste Love Affairs in Light of al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt and al-Aṣma‘iyyāt

Abstract

Old Arabic poetry is acquainted with two main types of love affairs: erotic escapades and sincere or chaste affairs. In the first, the poet-protagonist boasts of his ability to conduct sexual escapades with one woman or more. In the second, the poet-lover tells of a sincere and heart-breaking love affair. In this, the latter instance, the lover may recall some romantic encounters with his beloved; nonetheless, such encounters play only a marginal role. The main subject here is the separation between the lovers, the deep suffering of the lover, and sometimes his attempts to recover. The two kinds of affairs are well represented in the Mu‘allaqa of Imru’al-Qays.1 Mentioning more than one beloved in an erotic poem is reasonable. However, it is expected that a lover with a sincere love experience deals—in a certain poem—with only one beloved. But this is not always the case. Some old Arabic poems do include a mention of two or more sincere love affairs experienced by the same lover. The present article aims to shed some light on such a phenomenon in poems composed by pre-Islamic and mukhaḍram poets. This article is a preparatory paper to a forthcoming article that discusses the same issue in the poetry of the mukhaḍram Mulayḥ b. al-Ḥakam who, in our opinion, was unique in describing this phenomenon. 1The affair with Fāṭima (verses [vv.] 18–22) is a good example of a chaste affair; the escapades presented in vv. 11–17 and 23–41 are a good example of the sensual or erotic escapades. See the poem in az-Zawzanī, Sharḥ al-Mu‘allaqāt as-sab‘ (Beirut: Maktabat al-Ma‘ārif, 1972), 10–60.