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An aspect of the forger's art in early Islamic poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

A study of the poetry of the Sīra shows that a high proportion of it is the work of more or less professional forgers who supplied narrators with poems especially prepared to suit the narrative and appeal to the audience whose outlook towards the events of early Islam had undergone considerable change. Two or three generations after the final victory of Islam and the death of the Prophet, the persons as well as the events of that era were becoming part of pasthistory. Past events had begun to take a different form and when viewed acrossthe years they appeared like a panorama in which only certain high points werevisible, and different landmarks were differently placed in relation to each other. Time had produced a shift of interest and a change in outlook, andcertainpersons were becoming more legendary and less human.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1965

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References

1 See the article Early critics of the authenticity of the poetry of the Sīra’, by the present writer, BSOAS, XXI, 3, 1958, 453–63.Google Scholar

2 Sīra (ed. Wüstenfeld), 534.

3 Both poems are in Sīra, 702–3. See also Dīwān of Hassān b. Thābit (ed. Hirschfeld) no. XIV, and (ed. Barqūqī, Cairo, 1929) p. 11.

4 The Sīra version is given here. Line 2 does not occur in the Dīwān of Hassān b. Thābit. Other differences between the version of the Sīra and that of the Dīwān are few and do not affect the argument.

5 Line 2 corresponds to 1. 3 in Ibn al-Ziba'ra'ãs poem.

6 One need not doubt that Yathrib was referred to as Madīna in the same way Mecca was balad or al-balad, but it is only after the coining of Islam that al-Madīna as a name ousted Yathrib.