The Arabian Peninsula: The umayyad era 661AD-750AD

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The Arabian Peninsula The umayyad era661AD-750AD
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The Arabian Peninsula the Abbasid Dynasty750AD
- 10th cen AD
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The Arabian Peninsula The Ottoman Era16th cen.
ad-1914 ad
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Nabati Poetry

• A poetic genre that describes a semi-nomadic,
  tribal lifestyle in polythematic, monorhymed odes
  (qasîdas)
• Characteristic of the Arabian Peninsula and the
  Sinai Peninsula
• Composed in idiom akin to bedouin vernacular
  Arabic, not Classical Arabic (with case endings)
• Occasional poetry, not sentimental
• Meaning of word nabati lt Nabateans?

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Why is nabati poetry considered more
authoritative and trustworthy than other modes of
storing and communication information?
In Arabia, the power of the spoken word, used
subversively or in a counter-revolutionary way,
is infinitely greater than the written word. We
have the clumsy term oral poetry for this
phenomenon. The Saudi simply call it rhyme,
invention, chant or words. This shows that
they see poetry as a normal part of life. -
Kurpershoek p. 13
Nabati poetry is a reflection of a conventional
world view and a refister of recurring
eventsConformity to convention establishes a
continuity between poetry and the cultural
tradition of the audienceThe delivery of a poem
is in a sense a ritual enactment with each
performance the participants and and audience
strengthen their ties with their society and find
further confirmation of its fundamental values. -
Sowayan p. 18-19
I could trust only the poems, warned Mnif,
because they were set immutably in metre and
rhyme. If Khaled were to mess about with those,
he would be exposed immediatelyLike the stones
inside dates, the poems sit like hard kernels of
truth in the trnasient jacket of the
stories. -Kurpershoek p. 45
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What tensions exist between nabati poetry and the
modern Saudi state?

• In Arabia, poetry is an everyday activity of
  everyday people. At least, that was the situation
  before the government decided that every
  self-respecting country should have a Ministry of
  Culture and before the Ministry decided that
  Saudi Arabia would remain a rich parvenu in the
  eyes of its Arab brethren until it participated
  in the modern custom of organizing poetry
  festivals at which poets from all corners of the
  Arab world would sing the praises of their hosts,
  in return for some pocket money. That language
  of the urban festival poets a variant of the
  exalted pulpit rhetoric in the Friday mosque,
  spoken in the pure Arabic of classical
  antiquity is unknown to my desert friends.
  (Kurpershoek, p. 13-14)
• Though they do not not consider themselves
  ikhwan, many conservative Muslims in Saudi Arabia
  see literature written in dialect as a remnant of
  the second jahilia, the period of pagan
  intolerance that preceded the triumph of
  WahhabismIn the eyes of the power theologians,
  the study of that literature is therefore an
  absurd and dangerous pastime, at odds with their
  aspiration of uniting the country and the Arab
  world under the banner of the Koran with the help
  of classical Arabic. The government basically
  takes the same view, and with good reason,
  because the old tribal poetry does not just
  consist of a few attractive verses. This
  literature is living chronicle of the history of
  Arabic before the Sauds gained the monopoly of
  power. In order to keep the peace the
  powers-that-be prefer not to rake up this
  history. (Kurpershoek, p. 20)

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Poets and Poetry in the Qurân And the poets,
It is those straying in Evil, Who follow
them Seest thou not that they Wander distracted
in every Valley? And that they say What they
practice not? Sûrat al-Shuaraa (The Poets)
224-226 trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali
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Why do the Bedouin compose nabati poetry?
Like the poetry of ancient Arabia, the vernacular
poetry of premodern Arabia is a register of
social events and a codification of the moral
principles and cultural values that made life in
the desiccated Arabian wastes, though harsh and
weary, meaningful and worthy of pursuit. Nabati
poetry is an articulation of the collective
sentiment and a cognitive model for the
organization of sociocultural realities. When
the Nabati poet responds to a given event, wheher
it is a collective issue or a personal affair,
his main convern is not merely to record its
concrete manifestation but also, perhaps more
importantly, to draw from it general principles
which he can relate to the traditional value
system of his society. - Sowayan, p. 17-18