The Mu’allaqa of Imru’ al-Qays

“It is no exaggeration to say that [Imru al-Qays’] Mu’allaqa is at once the most famous, the most admired and the most influential poem in the whole of Arabic literature.”

-A.J. Arberry, The Seven Odes, p. 41

Why?

Originator of the nasib? First to mention the atlal and abandoned habitation?

First “to express certain ideas”? (Ibn Rashiq, d. 1064 CE)

First to use certain metaphors (women -> gazelles, wild cows and eggs, horses -> eagles, staffs)?

First to separate the erotic prelude from the rest of the ode?

Perhaps, but probably not.

From another qasida by Imru’ al-Qays:

Turn off the track towards the aged tracesSo that we can weep over abodes just like Ibn Khidham

From the mu’allaqa of ‘Antara bin Shaddad:

Have the poets left a single spot for a patch to be sewn?Or did you recognize the abode after long meditation?

Colocynth!

The Rite-of-Passage Ritual (as articulated by Edmund Leach based the work of Arnold van Gennep [1960]):

“[Rituals] which result in the change of ritual states of an initiate…always have a tripartite structure: (i) ‘a rite of separation,’ in which the initiate is separated from his/her original social role…is followed by (ii) a marginal state in which, temporarily, the initiate is outside society in a ‘tabooed’ condition which is ambivalently treated as dangerous-polluting or dangerous-holy. This is followed by (iii) ‘a rite of aggregation’ in which the initiate is brought back into society in his/her new social role.”

(adapted from Suzanne Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak, p. 56)

The Rite-Of-Passage paradigm in the Qasida?

Nasib: Movement away from society, separation, departure, youth, infertility, passivity, death, erasure, loss, memory

Rihla: Transition, “In-between-ness” (liminality), margins, the desert, solitude, hardship, activity and agency, “the teenage years,”danger

“Boast”: Self-affirmation, maturity, fertility, procreation, aggregation, self-sacrifice (for community), production, participation, social duties and rights