Lamiyyat al-'Arab

The Lāmiyyāt al-‘Arab (the L-song of the Arabs) is the pre-eminent poem in the surviving canon of the pre-Islamic 'brigand-poets' (sa'alik). The poem also gained a foremost position in Western views of the Orient from the 1820s onwards.[1] The poem takes its name from the last letter of each of its 68 lines, L (Arabic ل, lām).

The poem is traditionally attributed to the putatively sixth-century CE outlaw (ṣu‘lūk) Al-Shanfarā, but it has been suspected since medieval times that it was actually composed during the Islamic period. For example, the medieval commentator al-Qālī (d. 969 CE) reported that it was composed by the early anthologist Khalaf al-Aḥmar.[2] The debate has not been resolved; if the poem is a later composition, it figures al-Shanfarā as an archetypal heroic outlaw, an anti-hero nostalgically imagined to expose the corruption of the society that produced him.[3]

Notwithstanding its fame, the poem contains a large number of linguistic obscurities, making it hard to understand in Arabic today, let alone to translate reliably.[4] The major philological study of the work was by Georg Jacob.[5]

Summary

In the words of Warren T. Treadgold,

Shanfarā is being abandoned by his tribe, who have apparently become disgusted with his thievery (1-4). He says he would rather live in exile anyway, for he has a more faithful tribe in the wild beasts of the desert (5-9) and his own resources (10-13). Unlike his sedentary tribe, Shanfarā is unmoved by hardship and danger (14-20). He disdains hunger (21-25), like the gray wolf, whom he describes in an extended simile (36-41). As for thirst, he bears it better even than the desert grouse (36-41). After years of bearing the injustices of war, now he has to bear the pains of exile (44-48). But his endurance is limitless (42-43, 49-53). On the stormiest nights, he raids camps single-handed (54-61); on the hottest days, he goes bareheaded (62-64). Finally, he depicts himself standing on a hilltop after a day of walking across the desert, admired even by the wild goats (65-68).[6]

Example

A good example of the poem's style and tone is provided by distichs 5-7 (3-5 in some editions).

The original text:[7]

وَلِي دُونَكُمْ أَهْلُونَ سِيدٌ عَمَلَّسٌ
وَأَرْقَطُ زُهْلُولٌ وَعَرْفَاءُ جَيْأَلُ
هُمُ ٱْﻷهْلُ ﻻ مُسْتَوْدَعُ ٱلسِّرِّ ذَائعٌ
لَدَيْهِمْ وَﻻَ ٱلْجَانِي بِمَا جَرَّ يُخْذَلُ
وَكُلٌّ أَبِيٌّ بَاسِلٌ غَيْرَ أَنَّنِي
إِذَا عَرَضَتْ أُولَى ٱلطَّرَائِدِ أَبْسَلُ

Redhouse (1881):[8]

3. And I have (other) familiars besides you; — a fierce wolf, and a sleek spotted (leopard), and a long-maned hyæna.
4. They are a family with whom the confided secret is not betrayed; neither is the offender thrust out for that which has happened.
5. And each one (of them) is vehement in resistance, and brave; only, that I, when the first of the chased beasts present themselves, am (still) braver.

Treadgold (1975):[9]

I have some nearer kin than you: swift wolf,
Smooth-coated leopard, jackal with long hair.
With them, entrusted secrets are not told;
Thieves are not shunned, whatever they may dare.
They are all proud and brave, but when we see
The day's first quarry, I am breaver then.

Stetkevych (1986):[10]

5. I have closer kin than you: a wolf, swift and sleek,
a smooth and spotted leopard (smooth speckled snake),
and a long-maned one—a hyena.
6. They are kin among whom a secret, once confided, is not revealed;
nor is the criminal because of his crimes forsaken.
7. Each one is haughty-proud and reckless-brave,
except that I, when the first of the prey appear, am braver.

Editions
  • Muhammad ibn 'Umar al-Zamakhshari, A'jab al-'Ajab fi Sharh Lamiyyat al-'Arab, in al-Shanfara, Qasidat Lamiyyat al-'Arab wa yaliha (Istanbul: Matba't al-Jawa'ib, 1300H).
  • al-Zamakhsharī, A‘jab al-‘Arab fī Sharḥ Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab (Dār al-Warāqa, 1972) (includes al-Zamakhsharī's commentary, and that attributed to al-Mubarrad)
  • al-Mullūhī, al-Lāmiyyatān: Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab, Lāmiyyat al-‘Ajam (Damascus, 1966)
  • Badī‘ Sharīf, Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab (Beirut, 1964)

Translations
  • A. I. Silvestre de Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe, 2nd edn, 3 vols (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1826), II 134 ff.
  • F. Rückert, H.amāsa I (Stuttgart, 1846), pp. 181-85
  • J. W. Redhouse, 'The L-Poem of the Arabs', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 13 (1881), 437-67. (Prose translation.)
  • M. Hillman, 'Lāmīyat al-‘Arab', Literature East and West, 15 (1971). (Prose translation.)
  • Warren T. Treadgold, 'A Verse Translation of the "Lāmīyah" of Shanfarā', Journal of Arabic Literature, 6 (1975), 30-34, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4182935. (Verse translation.)
  • Michael Sells, 'Shanfarā's Lamiyya: A New Version', Al-'Arabiyya, 16 (1983), 5-25, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43192551. (Free verse translation.)
  • Classical Arabic Poetry: 162 Poems from Imrulkais to Ma‘rri, trans. by Charles Greville Tuetey (London: KPI, 1985), pp. 106–7 [no. 10].
  • Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, 'Archetype and Attribution in Early Arabic Poetry: Al-Shanfarā and the Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986), 361-90 (pp. 378–81), https://www.jstor.org/stable/163382. (Prose translation.)

References
  1. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, 'Archetype and Attribution in Early Arabic Poetry: Al-Shanfarā and the Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986), 361-90 (p. 361), https://www.jstor.org/stable/163382.
  2. Michael Sells, 'Shanfarā's Lamiyya: A New Version, Al-'Arabiyya, 16 (1983), 5-25 (p. 6), https://www.jstor.org/stable/43192551.
  3. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, 'Archetype and Attribution in Early Arabic Poetry: Al-Shanfarā and the Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986), 361-90, https://www.jstor.org/stable/163382.
  4. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, 'Archetype and Attribution in Early Arabic Poetry: Al-Shanfarā and the Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986), 361-90 (p. 361), https://www.jstor.org/stable/163382; Warren T. Treadgold, 'A Verse Translation of the "Lāmīyah" of Shanfarā', Journal of Arabic Literature, 6 (1975), 30-34 (p. 30), https://www.jstor.org/stable/4182935.
  5. Georg Jacob, Schanfarà-Studien, I. Teil: Der Wortschatz der Lâmîja nebst Ubers. und beige- fügtem Text; II. Teil: Parallelen und Kmt. zur Lâmîja, Schanfara-Bibiliographie (Munich, 1914-15).
  6. Warren T. Treadgold, 'A Verse Translation of the "Lāmīyah" of Shanfarā', Journal of Arabic Literature, 6 (1975), 30-34 (p. 30), https://www.jstor.org/stable/4182935.
  7. 'The L-Poem of the Arabs', in Arabic Poems: A Bilingual Edition, ed. by Marlé Hammond (New York: Knopft, 2014), pp. 62-77 (p. 62).
  8. J. W. Redhouse, 'The L-Poem of the Arabs', in Arabic Poems: A Bilingual Edition, ed. by Marlé Hammond (New York: Knopft, 2014), pp. 62-77 (p. 63), repr. from Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 13 (1881), 437-67.
  9. Warren T. Treadgold, 'A Verse Translation of the "Lāmīyah" of Shanfarā', Journal of Arabic Literature, 6 (1975), 30-34 (p. 31), https://www.jstor.org/stable/4182935.
  10. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, 'Archetype and Attribution in Early Arabic Poetry: Al-Shanfarā and the Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986), 361-90 (p. 378), https://www.jstor.org/stable/163382.
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