Al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt

The Mufaddaaliyyat or Mofaddaliyyat (Arabic: المفضليات / ALA-LC: al-Mufaḍḍaliyāt), meaning "The Examination of al-Mufaddal", is an anthology of ancient Arabic poems which derives its name from Al-Mufaddal, who compiled it some time between 762 and 784 CE in the latter of which years he died. It contains 126 poems, some complete odes, others fragmentary. They are all of the Golden Age of Arabic poetry (500—650) and are considered to be the best choices of poems from that period by different authors. There are 68 authors, two of whom were Christian. The oldest poems in the collection date from about 500 CE. The collection is a valuable source concerning pre-Islamic Arab life.

Along with the Mu'allaqat, Hamasah, Jamharat Ash'ar al-Arab and Asma'iyyat, the Mufaddaliyat are considered the primary source for early Arabic poetry.

The collection, in its present form, contains 126 pieces of verse, long and short; that is the number included in the recension of al-Anbari, who had the text from Abu 'Ikrima of Dabba, who read it with Ibn al-A'rabi, the stepson and inheritor of the tradition of al-Mufaddal. We know from the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim (988 CE) that in his time 128 pieces were counted in the book; and this number agrees with that contained in the Vienna manuscript, which gives an additional poem, besides those annotated by al-Anbari, to al-Muraqqish the Elder, and adds at the end a poem by al-Harith ibn Hilliza. The Fihrist states (p. 68) that some scholars included more and others fewer poems, while the order of the poems in the several recensions differed; but the correct text, the author says, is that handed down through Ibn al-A'rabi. It is noticeable that this traditional text, and the accompanying scholia, as represented by al-Anbari's recension, are wholly due to the scholars of Kufah, to which place al-Mufaddal himself belonged. The rival school of Basra, on the other hand, has given currency to a story that the original collection made by al-Mufaddal included a much smaller number of poems. The Berlin manuscript of Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Marzuqi's commentary states that the number was thirty, but a better reading of the passage, found elsewhere, mentions eighty; and that al-Asma'i and his school added to this nucleus poems which increased the number to a hundred and twenty. It is curious that this tradition is ascribed by al-Marzuqi and his teacher Abu Ali al-Farisi to Abu 'Ikrima of Dabba, who is represented by al-Anbari as the transmitter of the correct text from Ibn al-A'rabi. There is no mention of it in al-Anbari's work, and it is in itself somewhat improbable, as in the time of the schools of al-Asma'i at Kufah and Basra were in sharp opposition one to the other, and Ibn al-A'rabi in particular was in the habit of censuring the interpretations of al-Asma'i the ancient poems. It is scarcely likely that he would have accepted his rivals additions to the work of his stepfather, and have handed them on to Abu 'Ikrima with his annotations.

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