The Mu'allaqat
Seven long odes from the generations before Islam, each halting first at an abandoned camp where the poet weeps over the traces of a tribe that has moved on, then turning to a night with a beloved, a crossing of the desert on horse or camel, and a boast for the tribe. Imru' al-Qays rides out a storm that scours the valleys and drowns the wild sheep; Zuhayr argues two clans out of a war begun over a racehorse. Tradition holds that they were hung in gold on the Kaaba, and the qasida shape they fixed governed Arabic verse for the next thousand years.
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- 56% · 10 shared
- 56% · 10 shared
- 56% · 10 shared
- 56% · 10 shared
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- 51% · 9 shared