Seven Hanged Poems

The Mu‘allaqāt (Arabic: المعلقات, [al-muʕallaqaːt]) is a group of seven long Arabic poems that are considered the best work of the pre-Islamic era. The name means The Suspended Odes or The Hanging Poems, the traditional explanation being that these poems were hung on or in the Ka'ba at Mecca. The name Mu‘allaqāt has also been explained figuratively, as if the poems "hang" in the reader's mind.

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

The grammarian Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Nahhas (d. 949 CE) says expressly in his commentary on the Mu'allaqat: "The true view of the matter is this: when Hammad Ar-Rawiya (Hammad the Rhapsodist) saw how little men cared for poetry, he collected these seven pieces, urged people to study them, and said to them: 'These are the [poems] of renown.'" This agrees with all our other information, firstly the recitation of poems was his profession. Hammad (who lived in the first three quarters of the 8th century) was perhaps of all men the one who knew most Arabic poetry by heart. To such a rhapsodist the task of selection is in every way appropriate; and it may be assumed that he is responsible also for the somewhat fantastic title of "the suspended".

There is another fact which seems to speak in favour of Hammad as the compiler of this work. He was a Persian by descent, but a client of the Arab tribe, Bakr ibn Wa'il. For this reason, we may suppose, he not only received into the collection a poem of the famous poet Tarafa, of the tribe of Bakr, but also that of another Bakrite, Harith, who, though not accounted a bard of the highest rank, had been a prominent chieftain; while his poem could serve as a counterpoise to another also received the celebrated verses of Harith's contemporary 'Amr, chief of the Taghlib, the rival brethren of the Bakr. 'Amr praises the Taghlib in glowing terms: Harith, in a similar vein, extols the Bakr ancestors of Hammad's patrons.

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