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Arab Poet and Arabic Philologist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

H. A. R. Gibb
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Extract

Among the many contributions by which Ignaz Goldziher. deepened and enriched western understanding of Arabic culture, one of the most familiar to all students is his study of the conflict of ancient and modern in Arabic poetry.1 Devoted in the main to an analysis of the attitude taken up by literary critics towards modern, i.e. post–Islamic and later poets, the study traces the gradual shift in the criteria of judgment from the older philologists view of the unapproachable superiority of the pre–Islamic poets to the later aesthetic appreciation of modern and contemporary poetry. At the same time, it is pointed out that the older view not only continued to find support amongst the reactionaries, but remained the generally accepted view of the whole learned society of the Muslim, and particularly of the Arab, East.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of SOAS , Volume 12 , Issue 3-4 , October 1948 , pp. 574 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1948

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References

page 574 note 1 “Alte uud Neue Poesie im Urtheile der arabischen Kritiker”, Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie, Erster Theil (Leiden, 1896), pp. 122–174. His argument has been summarized by R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, beginning of Chapter VII.Google Scholar

page 574 note 2 Op. cit., p. 140. The italics are in the original

page 574 note 3 These are, indeed, quite insufficient. One is a boast of al–Khalīl b. Ahmad that he could make or unmake the reputation of poets (Aghānā, xvii, 16), but Goldziher omits to add that the poet to whom it was made at once challenged the claim and did so with conspicuous success; the other that the same poet once besought Abu Ubaida to judge his poetry without parti pris.

page 576 note 1 The most elaborate is to be found in the poem beginning: (ed. Dahan, Beirut, 1944, No. 92), which I suspect to be a pastiche. It is explicitly described as a muhabbara (see Goldziher, op. cit., p. 129) and addressed to the memory of Abū Tammām (TT. 24–5).

page 576 note 2 Op. cit., pp. 126–7.

page 577 note 1 Hachette, 1947. Cf. also Hourani, A. H., Syria and Lebanon (1946), p. 64: Islam gave the traditional society of Syria its dominant creed, its explicit moral code, and its political organization. Its language and literature and its images of heroism and human grandeur came from the Arabian desert.Google Scholar

page 577 note 2 It should be remarked in this connection that the sallies of Abū Nuwas against the Mudarite tribes and his deliberate gamineries in parody of the nasīb (Goldziher, op. cit., 144–5) are to be found in his wine–songs and judged accordingly. In vino veritas is not a very safe principle to apply to poets.