Columbia University Libraries is pleased to announce the launch of a new installment of “New and Featured Books”, a display of a set of circulating items from our collections curated around a topic of international relevance. Display themes rotate every semester, and feature books in three categories: newly-published titles, popular titles, and/or Columbia authors. You can check out the display in the Butler Library Lounge, Room 214, and then check out the books themselves at the Butler Circulation Desk (3rd floor) OR the Self-Check Kiosks (in the main lobby or on the 3rd floor) OR use Columbia Libraries’ new Self-Check app!
Selective list of books on Arabic poetry featured in the “New and Featured Books” display is available online.
Arabic poetry, with a special focus on Palestine is the current theme of the New and Featured Books in Butler 214.
Arabic poetry has a rich and complex history that spans many centuries, evolving through a variety of forms across distinct eras and reflecting the cultural, artistic, literary, political, and social changes in Arab societies. This book display celebrates the richness of forms and genres of Arabic poetry, a genre that remains a central form of expression and resistance for Arab peoples.
For Arabs, poetry begins with pre-Islamic Bedouin oral traditions. This era, often called al-Jahiliyya, or the “Age of Ignorance” to demarcate it from the rise of Islam, produced some of the most powerful, beautiful and revered Arabic literary expressions. It is characterized by meters and cadences peculiar to long standing pre-Islamic oral traditions. Its ultimate form is the long qasida— rhyming odes which celebrate tribal values, desert landscapes, nomadic lifestyles, loss and love, as well as courage, generosity, and heroic deeds. Many of these qasidas are still taught at schools across the Arab world, and constitute what has become known as the “register of the Arabs” (Diwan Al-Arab), a point of social and emotional reference that has captured the feelings, heartbreaks, longings, sacrifices, agency and resilience of a very diverse people, throughout centuries, and it still pins down and informs the way Arabic language is taught and spoken in its literary form across the Arab world.
For Arabs, poetry begins with pre-Islamic Bedouin oral traditions. This era, often called al-Jahiliyya, or the “Age of Ignorance” to demarcate it from the rise of Islam, produced some of the most powerful, beautiful and revered classical Arabic poetry. It is characterized by meters and cadences peculiar to long standing pre-Islamic oral traditions. Its ultimate form is the long qasida— rhyming odes which celebrate tribal values, desert landscapes, nomadic lifestyles, loss and love, as well as courage, generosity, and heroic deeds. Many of these qasidas are still taught at schools across the Arab world, and constitute what has become known as the “register of the Arabs” (Diwan Al-Arab), a point of social and emotional reference that has captured the feelings, heartbreaks, longings, sacrifices, agency and resilience of a very diverse people, throughout centuries, and it still pins down and informs the way Arabic language is taught and spoken in its literary form across the Arab world.
To take one example, the poetry of Imrūʾ al-Qays (496-565) is regarded as the epitome of pre-Islamic Arabian verse. His poetry was so revered, that one of his qasidas became known as one of the seven mu’allaqat, the suspended odes, which were hung on the Kaaba, in Mecca. Imrūʾ al-Qays’ qasida, entitled “Let us stop and weep” (قفا نبك qifā nabki) speaks of ruins, love, heartbreak and man’ s struggle under a harsh and hostile environment. His poetry was so influential that it established a poetic genre of “mourning the ruins”, which became known as bukaa ala el atlal. The poet would bemoan the abandoned nomadic tribes’ encampments, which they had to periodically evacuate, in search of more hospitable sites. The Qifa Nabki qasida still stands as one of the most beautiful expressions of love, longing, and humans’ longing and attachment to the land, and is part of the cultural education of all Arabs. The Moroccan poet Muhammad Bennis’ (b. 1948) traces his “lineage to the pre-Islamic poet Imru’ al-Qays.”, and identifies him as the al-‘Arabiyyah, the Arabic language. Bennis describes Imru Al Qays Buka ala al atlal as “ a canticle state, face to face with absence-death, as he halts to weep over a deserted campsite, alone in the desert which I cherish inside my study room. From this canticle, I derive my filiations as an Arab.” (cited in Muhsin J. al-Musawi. Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition. Routledge, 2006)
Islam brought a seismic cultural shift, transforming poetic themes and styles. The holy Quran’s unparalleled richness of language, its peculiar cadences and rhythms, deeply influenced Arab poets. Although secular themes continued to exist and flourish, the poetry during this period began to explore issues of morality and faith, and drew inspiration from the beauty of the Quranic language. Sufi poets like Mansur al-Hallaj (858-922) and Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273) took this further, blending mystical experiences with verses to express human longing and aspirations for divine love. Ibn Arabi’s (1165-1240) mystical poetry is said to have influenced Dante’s Divine Comedy, as did Abū al-ʻAlaʼ al-Maʻarri’s (973-1057) Risalat el ghufran. Menocal wrote:“Arabic poems of courtly love would influence the Provençal courtly traditions that would later have a significant impact on the styles of Dante (especially Vita Nuova) and Petrarch (Canzoniere).”
In the medieval Islamic Abbasid age (750-1258), poetry, influenced by the multicultural environment of the Abbasid court, became even more refined and took on a cosmopolitan bent. Poets of the Abbasid era thrived in the courts across the Abbasid Caliphate. Figures like Abu Nuwas (756-c. 814) and al-Mutanabbi (915-965) infused their works with urban sophistication, philosophical musings, and a keen awareness of their socio-political environments. But most of all, they took the beauty of Arabic poetry to new heights. Al Mutanabbi earned the title of the “greatest Arab poet of all times” for his ability to express human emotions and for the beauty of his language, and a statue of al-Mutanabbi still stands in Baghdad on a popular street where cafes and booksellers line up, a living testimony to the continued love and reverence his poetry bears in every cultured Arab speaker’s heart. Abu Nuwas’ poetry is famous for his khamriyyat (wine poems). His Diwan, or collected poems/compendium, counts around 1,500 works that explore hedonism, sexuality, longing, love and religion. While Abu Nuwas died in Baghdad around 814, his poetry is still recited across the Arab world today, and stands as an exemplar of innovation, creativity, and humor.
In the modern period, Arabic poetry had to grapple with the challenges of modernization, colonization and the subsequent quest for identity, as well as with loss, wars, dispossession and repressive political regimes. Free verse emerged, breaking away from the rigid classical meters, allowing poets to express themselves more freely. Innovators like Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008) , Adunis, (1930- ) ,Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998) revolutionized the form, merging classical structures with free verse, and tackling contemporary issues of deep resonance for Arab societies—nationalism, political struggles, gender issues, personal freedom, community, social justice, modernist experimentation, loss, and the quest for a dignified life.
In the history of modern Arabic poetry, poetry from and about Palestine holds a special place, both as a way to address the ongoing injustice and colonization of Palestine and the thwarted aspirations and hopes of Palestinians across geographic locations, but also as a symbol for all Arabs’ quest for justice and a dignified life in their homelands, against colonialism, exploitation and erasure. Poetry around and from Palestine serves as a powerful form of expression for a people whose identity, history and struggles have been shaped by displacement, occupation, and resistance. The centrality of the place Palestinian poetry occupies in the Arab world, and its import to the world as a powerful expression of the ability of the medium to touch people’s minds and hearts was on full display on November 25th at the National Book awards ceremony, where Fady Joudah’s new poetry book [Ellipsis] was a finalist in the Poetry section, and where Lena Tuffaha Khalaf’ s work, Something About Living won the National book award for poetry this year. We also wish to mention Mosab Abu Toha’s works, including his debut book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear which won the Palestine Book Award and an American Book Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Walcott Poetry Prize. His new volume of poetry entitled Forest of Noise is on display here. Mosab Abu Toha is the founder of the now destroyed Edward Said library in Beit Lahia City in Gaza.
I dedicate this post and the Arabic poetry book display to the memory of Hiba Abu Nada, Refaat Alareer and all the poets who were killed in Gaza: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/new-yorkers-gather-pay-tribute-gaza-slain-poets-writers Refaat Alareer was a prominent Palestinian writer, poet and teacher from the Gaza Strip and one of dozens of poets, writers and intellectuals who were killed by the Israeli strikes on Gaza. Alareer’s poem If I must die is included in the poetry collection Poems for Palestine . The collection features Palestinian poets including Hiba Abu Nada, Fady Joudah, Ghassan Zaqtan, Olivia Elias and others.
Peter Magierski
Middle East & Islamic Studies Librarian
[email protected]
Research Guides: https://guides.library.columbia.edu/mideast
Librarian for Middle East and Islamic Studies is responsible for collecting print and electronic publications from and about the Middle East. Faculty and students at Columbia have access to one of North America’s largest research collections in Middle East and Islamic Studies—both in the vernacular languages of these regions, as well as in English and Western European languages.