Bedouin Poetry

Chapter VI

[59] Contemporary Arab Poetry, Bedouin and Urban

"It should be known that poetry is not restricted exclusively too the Arabic language. It exists in every language, Arabic and non-Arabic. There were poets among the Persians and among the Greeks. (The Greek poet) Homer was mentioned and praised by Aristotle in the Logic. The Himyarites, too. had their poets in ancient times. (op. cit., ibid., Vol. III, p. 412)

Poem in the Vulgar Language

Poem in the vulgar language with explicatory notes, From MS. B (Yeni Cami 888, fols. 265b-266a) © Bollingen Foundation Inc., New York, N. Y.

"Later on, corruption affected the language of the Mudar, whose forms, and whose rules governing the vowel endings, had been systematized (as the pure Arabic language). The various later dialects differed according to the (more or less close) contact with (non-Arabs) and the (larger or smaller) admixture of non-Arab (elements). As a result, the Bedouin Arabs themselves came to speak a language completely different from that of their Mudar ancestors with regard to vowel endings, and different in many respects with regard to the (conventional) meanings and forms of words ..." (op. cit., ibid., Vol. III, p. 412)

Poem in the vulgar language with explicatory notes, From MS, B (Yeni Cami 888, fols. 265b-266a) © Bollingen Foundation Inc., New York, N. Y.

Conntemporary Arab Bedouins who gave up the language of their Mudar ancestors under non-Arab influence, produce poetry in all the meters used by their Arab ancestors. They make long poems in (those meters). (Their poems) represent all the ways and purposes of poetry, the erotic (nasîb), the laudatory, the elegiac, and the satirical (parts of the ancient qasîdahs). They switch from one subject to another in their speech(as was done in the ancient qasîdahs). They often brusquely states what they want to say at the beginning of the poem. Most of their poems bein with the name of the poet.Then, they pass on to the erotic part (nasîb). The Western Aeabs call those poems Asma'îyât, after al-Asma'î, the great transmitter of Arab poetry. The Eastern Arabs call it Baddâwî (Bedouin) and Hawrânî and Qubaysî (?) poetry. In connection with it, they often use plain melodies which are not artistic musical compositions. They sing the (poems). They call such songs Hawrânî songs, after the Hawrân, a section of the 'Irâq and Syria where Bedouin Arabs used to live and are still living at this time ..." (op. cit., ibid., Vol. III, p. 413-414)

Abstract: The Journey of the Hilâl to the Maghrib

"The poems of (the Arabs) show all the methods and forms of (true) poetry. They lack only the vowel endings. Most words have no vowel after the last consonant, and the subject and object of verbal sentences as well as the subject and predicate of nominal sentences are distinguished from each other by syntactic means (qarâ' in), and not by vowel endings ..." (op. cit., ibid., Vol. III, p. 415)

"Another such poem deals with the journey of (the Hilâl) to the Maghrib and how they took it away from the Zanâtah. (It runs:)

What a good friend have I lost in Ibn Hâshim!

(But) what men before me have lost ood friends!

He and I had a proud (quarrel) between ourselves,

And he defeated me with an argument whose force did not escape me.

I remained (dumbfounded), as if (the argument) had been pure and

Strong wine, which renders powerless those who gulp it down.

Or (I could be compared) with a gray-haired woman who dies consumed by grief

In a strange country, driven out from her tribe,

Who had come upon hard times and finally was rejected

And had to live among Arabs who disregarded their guest.

Like (her), I am as the result of humiliating experience