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

The Arabian Peninsula: the Abbasid Dynasty 750AD - 10th cen AD

The Arabian Peninsula: The Ottoman Era 16th cen. ad-1914 ad

Nabati Poetry

• A poetic genre that describes a semi-nomadic, tribal lifestyle in polythematic, monorhymed odes (

qas îdas

) • 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” < Nabateans?

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 events…Conformity to convention establishes a continuity between poetry and the cultural tradition of the audience…The 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 immediately…Like the stones inside dates, the poems sit like hard kernels of truth in the trnasient jacket of the stories.

-Kurpershoek p. 45

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 Wahhabism…In 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)

Poets and Poetry in the Qu ’ rân: 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-Shu’araa’ (‘The Poets’): 224-226 trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali

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