Sundry Observations on the Fate of Poetry in the Early Islamic Period

Medieval and modern critics have tended to represent the Mukhaḍramūn as breathing the same spirit as the poets of the Jāhiliyyah, as an uninterrupted continuation of the poetic practice of the latter, a practice unaffected by, indeed oblivious to, the (religious, social and ethical) irruption of Islam. However, ‘by analysing early Islamic texts from a literary point of view it has been established that famous Mukhaḍramūn, e.g. al-Aʿshā Maymūn, Labīd, Abū Dhuʾayb and al-Ḥuṭayʾa … deviated from tradition in several respects, both on the formal and on the conceptual level, thereby anticipating some of the innovative features attributed to Umayyad poets … The following aspects have been noted: (a) structural changes in the polythematic ode; (b) the emergence of ghazal poetry; (c) individual narrative units, sometimes introduced as similes; (d) a change of attitude towards love and the beloved; and (e) a new experience of time’. ¹