Mufaddaliyat
Encyclopedia
The Mufaddaliyat or Mofaddaliyat (Arabic: المفضليات / ALA-LC: al-Mufaḍḍaliyāt), meaning "The Examination of al-Mufaddal", is an anthology of ancient Arabic
poems, which derives its name from al-Mufaddal, son of Muhammad
, son of Yal, a member of the tribe of Banu Dhabba, who compiled it some time between 762 and 784 CE in the latter of which years he died. It contains 126 poems, some complete odes, others fragmentary. They are all of the Golden Age of Arabic poetry (500—650) and are the best collection of poems of that period by different authors. There are 67 authors, two of them Christian
. The oldest poems in the collection date from about 500 CE. The collection is a valuable source concerning pre-Islamic Arab
life.
and Khalaf al-Ahmar, the famous collectors of ancient Arab poetry and tradition, and was somewhat the junior of Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala'
, the first scholar who systematically set himself to preserve the poetic literature of the Arabs. He died about fifty years before Abu Ubaida and al-Asma'i
, to whose labours posterity is largely indebted for the arrangement, elucidation and criticism of ancient Arabian verse; and his anthology was put together between fifty and sixty years before the compilation by Abu Tammam
of the Hamasah
.
Al-Mufaddal was a careful and trustworthy collector both of texts and traditions, and is praised by all authorities on Arabian history and literature as in this respect greatly the superior of Hammad
and Khalaf, who are accused (especially the latter) of unscrupulous fabrication of poems in the style of the ancients. He was a native of Kufah
, the northernmost of the two great military colonies founded in 638 by the caliph
Umar
for the control of the wide Mesopotamia
n plain. In Kufah and Basra
were gathered representatives of all the Arabian tribes who formed the fighting force of the Islamic Empire, and from these al-Mufaddal was able to collect and record the compositions of the poets who had celebrated the fortunes and exploits of their forefathers. He, no doubt, like al-Asma'i and Abu Ubaida, also himself visited the areas occupied by the tribes for their camping grounds in the neighbouring desert; and adjacent to Kufah was al-Hira (modern al-Kufah), the ancient capital of the Lakhmids
kings, whose court was the most celebrated centre in pre-Islamic Arabia, where, in the century before the preaching of the Prophet, poets from the whole of the northern half of the peninsula were wont to assemble. There is indeed a tradition that a written collection (diwan
) existed in the family of Nu'man III ibn al-Mundhir, the last Lakhmid king, containing a number of poems by the fuhul, or most eminent poets of the pagan time, and especially by those who had praised the princes of the house, and that this collection passed into the possession of the Umayyad
caliphs of the house of Marwan
; to this, if the tradition is to be believed, al-Mufaddal probably had access.
The date of al-Mufaddal's birth is unknown; but he lived for many years under the caliphs of the Umayyad line until their overthrow by the Abbasid
s in 749. In 762 he took part in the rising led by Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah, the Alid, called "The Pure Soul", against the caliph al-Mansur
, and after the defeat and death of Ibrahim was cast into prison. Al-Mansur, however, pardoned him on the intercession of his fellow tribesman Musayyab ibn Zuhair of Dabba, and appointed him the instructor in literature of his son, afterwards the caliph al-Mahdi
. It was for this prince that, at al-Mansur's instigation, al-Mufaddal compiled the Mufaddaliyat.
(988 CE) that in his time 128 pieces were counted in the book; and this number agrees with that contained in the Vienna manuscript, which gives an additional poem, besides those annotated by al-Anbari, to al-Muraqqish the Elder, and adds at the end a poem by al-Harith ibn Hilliza
. The Fihrist states (p. 68) that some scholars included more and others fewer poems, while the order of the poems in the several recensions differed; but the correct text, the author says, is that handed down through Ibn al-A'rabi. It is noticeable that this traditional text, and the accompanying scholia, as represented by al-Anbari's recension, are wholly due to the scholars of Kufah
, to which place al-Mufaddal himself belonged. The rival school of Basra
, on the other hand, has given currency to a story that the original collection made by al-Mufaddal included a much smaller number of poems. The Berlin manuscript of Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Marzuqi's commentary states that the number was thirty, but a better reading of the passage, found elsewhere, mentions eighty; and that al-Asma'i and his school added to this nucleus poems which increased the number to a hundred and twenty. It is curious that this tradition is ascribed by al-Marzuqi and his teacher Abu Ali al-Farisi to Abu 'Ikrima of Dabba, who is represented by al-Anbari as the transmitter of the correct text from Ibn al-A'rabi. There is no mention of it in al-Anbari's work, and it is in itself somewhat improbable, as in the time of the schools of al-Asma'i at Kufah and Basra were in sharp opposition one to the other, and Ibn al-A'rabi in particular was in the habit of censuring the interpretations of al-Asma'i the ancient poems. It is scarcely likely that he would have accepted his rivals additions to the work of his stepfather, and have handed them on to Abu 'Ikrima with his annotations.
The collection is one of the highest importance as a record of the thought and poetic art of Arabia during the time immediately preceding the appearance of the Prophet. Not more than five or six of the 126 poems appear to have been composed by poets who had been born in Islam. The great majority of the authors belonged to the days of Jahiliyyah
or Ignorance, and though a certain number (e.g. Mutammim ibn Nuwayrah, Rabi'a ibn Maqrum, Abda ibn at-Tabib and Abu Dhu'ayb), born in paganism, accepted Islam, their work bears few marks of the new faith. The ancient virtues of hospitality to the guest and the poor, profuse expenditure of wealth, valour in battle, faithfulness to the cause of the tribe are the themes of praise. Wine and the gambling game of maisir, forbidden by Islam, are celebrated by poets who professed themselves converts; and if there is no mention of the old idolatry, there is also little spirituality in the outlook on life.
The 126 pieces are distributed between 68 poets, and the work represents a gathering from the compositions of those who were called al-Muqillun, (authors of whom little has survived), in contrast to the famous poets whose works had been collected into diwan
s. At the same time many of them are extremely celebrated, and among the pieces selected by al-Mufaddal several reach a very high level of excellence. Such are the two long poems of 'Alqama ibn 'Abada
(Nos. 119 and 120), the three odes by Mutammim ibn Nuwayrah (Nos. 9, 67, 68), the splendid poem of Salama ibn Jandal (No. 22), the beautiful nasib (opening theme or prologue) of al-Shanfara (No. 20), and the death-song of Abd-Yaghuth (No. 30). One of the most admirable and famous is the last of the series (No. 126), the long elegy by Abu Dhu'ayb of Hudhail on the death of his sons; almost every verse of this poem is cited in illustration of some phrase or meaning of a word in the national lexicons. Only one of the poets of the Mu'allaqat
, al-Harith ibn Hilliza, is represented in the collection. Of others (such as Bishr ibn Abi Khazim, al-Hadira, Amir ibn al-Tufail, 'Alqama ibn 'Abada
, al-Muthaqqib, Ta'abbata Sharra and Abu Dhu'ayb) diwans or bodies of collected poems exist, but it is doubtful how far these had been brought together when al-Mufaddal made his compilation.
An interesting feature of the work is the treatment in it of the two poets of the Bakr bin Wa'il tribe, uncle and nephew, called al-Muraqqish, who are perhaps the most ancient in the collection. The elder Muraqqish was the great-uncle of Tarafa
of Bakr, the author of the Mu'allaqat
, and took part in the long warfare between the sister tribes of Bakr and Taghlib
, called the war of Basus, which began about the end of the 5th century CE. Al-Mufaddal has included ten pieces (Nos. 45–54) by him in the collection, which are chiefly interesting from an antiquarian point of view. One, in particular (No. 54), presents a very archaic appearance. It is probable that the compiler set down all he could gather of this ancient author, and that his interest in him was chiefly due to his antiquity. Of the younger Muraqqish, uncle of Tarafa, there are five pieces (Nos. 55–59). The only other authors of whom more than three poems are cited are Bishr ibn Abi Khazim of Asad (Nos. 96–99) and Rabi'a ibn Maqrum of Dabba (Nos. 38, 39, 43 and 113).
The Mufaddaliyat differs from the Hamasah
in being a collection of complete odes (qasida
s), while the latter is an anthology of brilliant passages specially selected for their interest or effectiveness, all that is prosaic or less striking being pruned away. It is of course not the case that all the poems of al-Mufaddal's collection are complete. Many are mere fragments, and even in the longest there are often lacunae; but the compiler evidently set down all that he could collect of a poem from the memory of the rawis, and did not, like Abu Tammam
, choose only the best portions. We are thus presented with a view of the literature of the age which is much more characteristic and comprehensive than that given by the brilliant poet to whom we owe the Hamasah, and enables us to form a better judgment on the general level of poetic achievement.
. In the British Museum
there is a copy made for C. J. Rich at Bagdad
of a manuscript with brief glosses; and at Vienna
there is a modern copy of a manuscript of which the original is at Constantinople
, the glosses in which are taken from al-Anbari, though the author had access also to al-Marzuqi. In the mosque libraries at Constantinople there are at least five manuscripts; and at Cairo
there is a modern copy of one of these, containing the whole of al-Anbari's commentary. In America there are at Yale University
a modern copy of the same recension, taken from the same original as the Cairo copy, and a manuscript of Persian origin, dated 1657, presenting a text identical with the Vienna codex. Quite recently a very interesting manuscript, probably of the 6th century of the Hegira
, but not dated, has come to light. It purports to be the second part of a combination of two anthologies, the Mufaddaliyt of al-Mufaddal and the Asma'iyat of al-Asma'i, but contains many more poems than are in either of these collections as found elsewhere. The commentary appears to be eclectic, drawn partly (perhaps chiefly) from Ibn as-Sikkit (died 858), and partly from Abu-Jafar Abmad ibn Ubaid ibn Nasih, one of al-Anbari's sources and a pupil of Ibn al-A'rabi; and the compilation seems to be older in date than al-Anbari, since its glosses are often quoted by him without any name being mentioned. This manuscript (the property of F. Krenkow of Leicester) appears to represent one of the recensions mentioned by Muhammad an-Nadim in the Fihrist (p. 68), to which reference has been made above.
In 1885 Heinrich Thorbecke
began an edition of the text based on the Berlin codex, but only the first fasciculus, containing forty-two poems, had appeared when his work was cut short by death. In 1891 the first volume of an edition of the text, with a short commentary taken from al-Anbari, was printed at Constantinople. In 1906 an edition of the whole text, with short glosses taken from al-Anbari's commentary, was published at Cairo by Abu Bakr bin Omar Daghistani al-Madani; this follows generally the Cairo codex above mentioned, but has profited by the scholarship of Thorbecke's edition of the first half of the work. A complete edition of al-Anbri's text and commentary, with a translation of the poems, was undertaken by Sir Charles James Lyall
.
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Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
poems, which derives its name from al-Mufaddal, son of Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
, son of Yal, a member of the tribe of Banu Dhabba, who compiled it some time between 762 and 784 CE in the latter of which years he died. It contains 126 poems, some complete odes, others fragmentary. They are all of the Golden Age of Arabic poetry (500—650) and are the best collection of poems of that period by different authors. There are 67 authors, two of them Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
. The oldest poems in the collection date from about 500 CE. The collection is a valuable source concerning pre-Islamic Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
life.
Al-Mufaddel
Al-Mufaddal was a contemporary of Hammad Ar-RawiyaHammad Ar-Rawiya
Hammad Ar-Rawiya [Abu-l-Qasim Hammad ibn Abi Laila Sapur ] , Arab scholar, was of Dailamite descent, but was born in Kufa. The date of hisbirth is given by some as 694 AD, by others as 714....
and Khalaf al-Ahmar, the famous collectors of ancient Arab poetry and tradition, and was somewhat the junior of Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala'
Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala'
Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala' al-Basri was the qari' of Basra, Iraq and an Arab linguist.He was the teacher of Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi and Yunus ibn Habib. He died in Kufa....
, the first scholar who systematically set himself to preserve the poetic literature of the Arabs. He died about fifty years before Abu Ubaida and al-Asma'i
Al-Asma'i
Al-Asma'i or Asma`i, Abd al-Malik ibn Quraib al-Asma`i was an Arab scholar of the Basra school of Arabic grammar.He was also a pioneer of Natural Science and Zoology...
, to whose labours posterity is largely indebted for the arrangement, elucidation and criticism of ancient Arabian verse; and his anthology was put together between fifty and sixty years before the compilation by Abu Tammam
Abu Tammam
Abu Tammam was an Abbasid era Arab poet and Muslim convert born to Christian parents.- Biography :...
of the Hamasah
Hamasah
Ḥamāsah is a ten-book anthology of Arabic poetry, compiled in the 9th Century by Abu Tammam. Poems are grouped by subject matter....
.
Al-Mufaddal was a careful and trustworthy collector both of texts and traditions, and is praised by all authorities on Arabian history and literature as in this respect greatly the superior of Hammad
Hammad Ar-Rawiya
Hammad Ar-Rawiya [Abu-l-Qasim Hammad ibn Abi Laila Sapur ] , Arab scholar, was of Dailamite descent, but was born in Kufa. The date of hisbirth is given by some as 694 AD, by others as 714....
and Khalaf, who are accused (especially the latter) of unscrupulous fabrication of poems in the style of the ancients. He was a native of Kufah
Kufah
Kufah may refer to:* Ovophis okinavensis, a.k.a. the Okinawa pitviper, a venomous pitviper species found in the Ryukyu Islands of Japan.* Alternative English spelling for Kufa, a city in modern Iraq....
, the northernmost of the two great military colonies founded in 638 by the caliph
Caliph
The Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the ruler of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. It is a transcribed version of the Arabic word which means "successor" or "representative"...
Umar
Umar
`Umar ibn al-Khattāb c. 2 November , was a leading companion and adviser to the Islamic prophet Muhammad who later became the second Muslim Caliph after Muhammad's death....
for the control of the wide Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
n plain. In Kufah and Basra
Basra
Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...
were gathered representatives of all the Arabian tribes who formed the fighting force of the Islamic Empire, and from these al-Mufaddal was able to collect and record the compositions of the poets who had celebrated the fortunes and exploits of their forefathers. He, no doubt, like al-Asma'i and Abu Ubaida, also himself visited the areas occupied by the tribes for their camping grounds in the neighbouring desert; and adjacent to Kufah was al-Hira (modern al-Kufah), the ancient capital of the Lakhmids
Lakhmids
The Lakhmids , Banu Lakhm , Muntherids , were a group of Arab Christians who lived in Southern Iraq, and made al-Hirah their capital in 266. Poets described it as a Paradise on earth, an Arab Poet described the city's pleasant climate and beauty "One day in al-Hirah is better than a year of...
kings, whose court was the most celebrated centre in pre-Islamic Arabia, where, in the century before the preaching of the Prophet, poets from the whole of the northern half of the peninsula were wont to assemble. There is indeed a tradition that a written collection (diwan
Diwan (poetry)
-Etymology:The English usage of the phrase Diwan Poetry comes from the Arabic word diwan , which is loaned from Persian means designated a list or register. The Persian word derived from the Persian dibir meaning writer or scribe...
) existed in the family of Nu'man III ibn al-Mundhir, the last Lakhmid king, containing a number of poems by the fuhul, or most eminent poets of the pagan time, and especially by those who had praised the princes of the house, and that this collection passed into the possession of the Umayyad
Umayyad
The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the four major Arab caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. It was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, whose name derives from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph. Although the Umayyad family originally came from the...
caliphs of the house of Marwan
Marwan
Marwan is an Arabic male name. It may refer to:-Given name:*Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik I Saadi, King of Morocco *Marwan I, Umayyad caliph...
; to this, if the tradition is to be believed, al-Mufaddal probably had access.
The date of al-Mufaddal's birth is unknown; but he lived for many years under the caliphs of the Umayyad line until their overthrow by the Abbasid
Abbasid
The Abbasid Caliphate or, more simply, the Abbasids , was the third of the Islamic caliphates. It was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who built their capital in Baghdad after overthrowing the Umayyad caliphate from all but the al-Andalus region....
s in 749. In 762 he took part in the rising led by Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah, the Alid, called "The Pure Soul", against the caliph al-Mansur
Al-Mansur
Al-Mansur, Almanzor or Abu Ja'far Abdallah ibn Muhammad al-Mansur was the second Abbasid Caliph from 136 AH to 158 AH .-Biography:...
, and after the defeat and death of Ibrahim was cast into prison. Al-Mansur, however, pardoned him on the intercession of his fellow tribesman Musayyab ibn Zuhair of Dabba, and appointed him the instructor in literature of his son, afterwards the caliph al-Mahdi
Al-Mahdi
Muhammad ibn Mansur al-Mahdi , was the third Abbasid Caliph who reigned from 158 AH to 169 AH . He succeeded his father, al-Mansur....
. It was for this prince that, at al-Mansur's instigation, al-Mufaddal compiled the Mufaddaliyat.
The collection
The collection, in its present form, contains 126 pieces of verse, long and short; that is the number included in the recension of al-Anbari, who had the text from Abu 'Ikrima of Dabba, who read it with Ibn al-A'rabi, the stepson and inheritor of the tradition of al-Mufaddal. We know from the Fihrist of Ibn al-NadimIbn al-Nadim
Abu'l-Faraj Muhammad bin Is'hāq al-Nadim , whose father was known as al-Warrāq was a Shia Muslim scholar and bibliographer. Some scholars regard him as a Persian, but this is not certain. He is famous as the author of the Kitāb al-Fihrist...
(988 CE) that in his time 128 pieces were counted in the book; and this number agrees with that contained in the Vienna manuscript, which gives an additional poem, besides those annotated by al-Anbari, to al-Muraqqish the Elder, and adds at the end a poem by al-Harith ibn Hilliza
Harith Ibn Hilliza Ul-Yashkuri
Al-Harith Ibn Hillizah Al-Yashkuri, Arabic الحارث بن حلزة اليشكري pre-Islamic Arabian poet of the tribe of Bakr, from the 5th century. He was famous as the author of one of the poems generally received among the Mo'allakat. Nothing is known of the details of his life....
. The Fihrist states (p. 68) that some scholars included more and others fewer poems, while the order of the poems in the several recensions differed; but the correct text, the author says, is that handed down through Ibn al-A'rabi. It is noticeable that this traditional text, and the accompanying scholia, as represented by al-Anbari's recension, are wholly due to the scholars of Kufah
Kufah
Kufah may refer to:* Ovophis okinavensis, a.k.a. the Okinawa pitviper, a venomous pitviper species found in the Ryukyu Islands of Japan.* Alternative English spelling for Kufa, a city in modern Iraq....
, to which place al-Mufaddal himself belonged. The rival school of Basra
Basra
Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...
, on the other hand, has given currency to a story that the original collection made by al-Mufaddal included a much smaller number of poems. The Berlin manuscript of Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Marzuqi's commentary states that the number was thirty, but a better reading of the passage, found elsewhere, mentions eighty; and that al-Asma'i and his school added to this nucleus poems which increased the number to a hundred and twenty. It is curious that this tradition is ascribed by al-Marzuqi and his teacher Abu Ali al-Farisi to Abu 'Ikrima of Dabba, who is represented by al-Anbari as the transmitter of the correct text from Ibn al-A'rabi. There is no mention of it in al-Anbari's work, and it is in itself somewhat improbable, as in the time of the schools of al-Asma'i at Kufah and Basra were in sharp opposition one to the other, and Ibn al-A'rabi in particular was in the habit of censuring the interpretations of al-Asma'i the ancient poems. It is scarcely likely that he would have accepted his rivals additions to the work of his stepfather, and have handed them on to Abu 'Ikrima with his annotations.
The collection is one of the highest importance as a record of the thought and poetic art of Arabia during the time immediately preceding the appearance of the Prophet. Not more than five or six of the 126 poems appear to have been composed by poets who had been born in Islam. The great majority of the authors belonged to the days of Jahiliyyah
Jahiliyyah
Jahiliyyah is an Islamic concept of "ignorance of divine guidance" or "the state of ignorance of the guidance from God" or "Days of Ignorance" referring to the condition in which Arabs found themselves in pre-Islamic Arabia, i.e. prior to the revelation of the Qur'an to Muhammad...
or Ignorance, and though a certain number (e.g. Mutammim ibn Nuwayrah, Rabi'a ibn Maqrum, Abda ibn at-Tabib and Abu Dhu'ayb), born in paganism, accepted Islam, their work bears few marks of the new faith. The ancient virtues of hospitality to the guest and the poor, profuse expenditure of wealth, valour in battle, faithfulness to the cause of the tribe are the themes of praise. Wine and the gambling game of maisir, forbidden by Islam, are celebrated by poets who professed themselves converts; and if there is no mention of the old idolatry, there is also little spirituality in the outlook on life.
The 126 pieces are distributed between 68 poets, and the work represents a gathering from the compositions of those who were called al-Muqillun, (authors of whom little has survived), in contrast to the famous poets whose works had been collected into diwan
Diwan (poetry)
-Etymology:The English usage of the phrase Diwan Poetry comes from the Arabic word diwan , which is loaned from Persian means designated a list or register. The Persian word derived from the Persian dibir meaning writer or scribe...
s. At the same time many of them are extremely celebrated, and among the pieces selected by al-Mufaddal several reach a very high level of excellence. Such are the two long poems of 'Alqama ibn 'Abada
'Alqama ibn 'Abada
'Alqama ibn 'Ubada , Arabic علقمة بن عبدة generally known as 'Alqama al-Fahl علقمة الفحل , an Arabian poet of the tribe Tamim, who flourished in the second half of the 6th century....
(Nos. 119 and 120), the three odes by Mutammim ibn Nuwayrah (Nos. 9, 67, 68), the splendid poem of Salama ibn Jandal (No. 22), the beautiful nasib (opening theme or prologue) of al-Shanfara (No. 20), and the death-song of Abd-Yaghuth (No. 30). One of the most admirable and famous is the last of the series (No. 126), the long elegy by Abu Dhu'ayb of Hudhail on the death of his sons; almost every verse of this poem is cited in illustration of some phrase or meaning of a word in the national lexicons. Only one of the poets of the Mu'allaqat
Mu'allaqat
The Mu‘allaqāt is the title of a group of seven long Arabic poems or qasida that have come down from the time before Islam. Each is considered the best work of these pre-Islamic poets...
, al-Harith ibn Hilliza, is represented in the collection. Of others (such as Bishr ibn Abi Khazim, al-Hadira, Amir ibn al-Tufail, 'Alqama ibn 'Abada
'Alqama ibn 'Abada
'Alqama ibn 'Ubada , Arabic علقمة بن عبدة generally known as 'Alqama al-Fahl علقمة الفحل , an Arabian poet of the tribe Tamim, who flourished in the second half of the 6th century....
, al-Muthaqqib, Ta'abbata Sharra and Abu Dhu'ayb) diwans or bodies of collected poems exist, but it is doubtful how far these had been brought together when al-Mufaddal made his compilation.
An interesting feature of the work is the treatment in it of the two poets of the Bakr bin Wa'il tribe, uncle and nephew, called al-Muraqqish, who are perhaps the most ancient in the collection. The elder Muraqqish was the great-uncle of Tarafa
Tarafa
Tarafa , was a 6th century Arabian poet of the tribe of the Bakr.After a wild and dissipated youth spent in Bahrain, left his native land after peace had been established between the tribes of Bakr and Taghlib and went with his uncle Al-Mutalammis to the court of the king of Hira, 'Amr ibn-Hind ,...
of Bakr, the author of the Mu'allaqat
Mu'allaqat
The Mu‘allaqāt is the title of a group of seven long Arabic poems or qasida that have come down from the time before Islam. Each is considered the best work of these pre-Islamic poets...
, and took part in the long warfare between the sister tribes of Bakr and Taghlib
Taghlib
Banu Taghlib or Taghlib ibn Wa'il were a large and powerful Arabian tribe of Mesopotamia and northern Arabia. The tribe traces its lineage to the large branch of North Arabian tribes known as Rabi'ah, which also included Bakr, 'Anizzah, Banu Hanifa and Anz bin Wa'il .The tribe's ancestral...
, called the war of Basus, which began about the end of the 5th century CE. Al-Mufaddal has included ten pieces (Nos. 45–54) by him in the collection, which are chiefly interesting from an antiquarian point of view. One, in particular (No. 54), presents a very archaic appearance. It is probable that the compiler set down all he could gather of this ancient author, and that his interest in him was chiefly due to his antiquity. Of the younger Muraqqish, uncle of Tarafa, there are five pieces (Nos. 55–59). The only other authors of whom more than three poems are cited are Bishr ibn Abi Khazim of Asad (Nos. 96–99) and Rabi'a ibn Maqrum of Dabba (Nos. 38, 39, 43 and 113).
The Mufaddaliyat differs from the Hamasah
Hamasah
Ḥamāsah is a ten-book anthology of Arabic poetry, compiled in the 9th Century by Abu Tammam. Poems are grouped by subject matter....
in being a collection of complete odes (qasida
Qasida
The qaṣīdaᵗ , in Arabic: قصيدة, plural qasā'id, قــصــائـد; in Persian: قصیده , is a form of lyric poetry that originated in preIslamic Arabia...
s), while the latter is an anthology of brilliant passages specially selected for their interest or effectiveness, all that is prosaic or less striking being pruned away. It is of course not the case that all the poems of al-Mufaddal's collection are complete. Many are mere fragments, and even in the longest there are often lacunae; but the compiler evidently set down all that he could collect of a poem from the memory of the rawis, and did not, like Abu Tammam
Abu Tammam
Abu Tammam was an Abbasid era Arab poet and Muslim convert born to Christian parents.- Biography :...
, choose only the best portions. We are thus presented with a view of the literature of the age which is much more characteristic and comprehensive than that given by the brilliant poet to whom we owe the Hamasah, and enables us to form a better judgment on the general level of poetic achievement.
Manuscripts
The Mufaddaliyat is not well represented by manuscripts in the libraries of the West. There is an imperfect copy of the recension of al-Marzuqi (died 1030), with his commentary, in the Berlin collection. A very ancient fragment (dated 1080) of al-Anbari's recension, containing five poems in whole or part, is in the Royal Library at LeipzigLeipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
. In the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
there is a copy made for C. J. Rich at Bagdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
of a manuscript with brief glosses; and at Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
there is a modern copy of a manuscript of which the original is at Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, the glosses in which are taken from al-Anbari, though the author had access also to al-Marzuqi. In the mosque libraries at Constantinople there are at least five manuscripts; and at Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
there is a modern copy of one of these, containing the whole of al-Anbari's commentary. In America there are at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
a modern copy of the same recension, taken from the same original as the Cairo copy, and a manuscript of Persian origin, dated 1657, presenting a text identical with the Vienna codex. Quite recently a very interesting manuscript, probably of the 6th century of the Hegira
Hijri year
The Hijri year is year numbering system used in the Islamic calendar. It commemorates the Hijra , or emigration of Muhammad and his followers to the city of Medina in 622 CE. In Arabic, AH is symbolized by the letter هـ...
, but not dated, has come to light. It purports to be the second part of a combination of two anthologies, the Mufaddaliyt of al-Mufaddal and the Asma'iyat of al-Asma'i, but contains many more poems than are in either of these collections as found elsewhere. The commentary appears to be eclectic, drawn partly (perhaps chiefly) from Ibn as-Sikkit (died 858), and partly from Abu-Jafar Abmad ibn Ubaid ibn Nasih, one of al-Anbari's sources and a pupil of Ibn al-A'rabi; and the compilation seems to be older in date than al-Anbari, since its glosses are often quoted by him without any name being mentioned. This manuscript (the property of F. Krenkow of Leicester) appears to represent one of the recensions mentioned by Muhammad an-Nadim in the Fihrist (p. 68), to which reference has been made above.
In 1885 Heinrich Thorbecke
Heinrich Thorbecke
Heinrich Thorbecke was a German Arabic scholar. His studies were directed mainly to the poetry of the Bedouin and the history of Arabic.-Biography:He studied at Munich and Leipzig...
began an edition of the text based on the Berlin codex, but only the first fasciculus, containing forty-two poems, had appeared when his work was cut short by death. In 1891 the first volume of an edition of the text, with a short commentary taken from al-Anbari, was printed at Constantinople. In 1906 an edition of the whole text, with short glosses taken from al-Anbari's commentary, was published at Cairo by Abu Bakr bin Omar Daghistani al-Madani; this follows generally the Cairo codex above mentioned, but has profited by the scholarship of Thorbecke's edition of the first half of the work. A complete edition of al-Anbri's text and commentary, with a translation of the poems, was undertaken by Sir Charles James Lyall
Charles James Lyall
Sir Charles James Lyall, KCSI, CIE, FBA was an English civil servant working in India during the period of the British Raj, and also an Arabic scholar.-Life:...
.
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- In the dhail or supplement to the Amali of al-Qali.