Studies such as Thomas Bauer's Altarabische Dichtkunst and James Montgomery's Vagaries of the Qasida have highlighted the artistry of pre- and early-Islamic poetry over and against its "Bedouin" character, assumptions about which perhaps implicitly underpin more anthropological approaches such as those of Suzanne Stetkevych. One relevant neglected aspect of early Arabic poetry lies in its detailed representation of migrational patterns, both animal and human, textually marked by depictions of vegetation, rain-stars [al-anwāʾ] and topography. Daniel Varisco has provided a detailed consideration of the anwāʾ, drawing largely on Ibn Qutayba's (d. 276/ 889) Kitāb al-Anwāʾ, which in turn, draws heavily on the poetry of Dhū al-Rumma (d. 117/ 735-6), who is famous for both his artistry and his depictions of desert life. Varisco concludes that the exact details of the anwāʾ are probably unknowable, and that adab texts of Ibn Qutayba's type are more concerned with philological schematizations than lived reality. A more detailed analysis of the imagery of migration patterns in a corpus of pre- and early-Islamic poetry can verify to what extent any schematization of Ibn Qutayba actually distorts tribal migrational patterns as represented in early poetry. Two of the best suited tribes for such a corpus are Hudhayl and Tamīm, which represent both sides of the much-noted linguistic divide between Ḥijāzī and Tamīmī dialects, as well as relatively different geographical areas, since the two tribes hailed from the western and eastern areas of the Arabian peninsula respectively. Hudhayl has the singular characteristic of providing the only surviving tribal collection, extant in a well-edited redaction by al-Sukkarī (d. 275/ 888). The surviving pre-Islamic poetry of Tamīm has also been collected from scattered citations in other works by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Muʿīnī. To Ibn Qutyaba's depiction we can thus add two layers which will throw our results more carefully into relief: any contrasts between the Umayyad Dhū Rumma and his pre-Islamic kinsmen, and any any contrasts between Tamīm and Hudhayl. Such an analysis demonstrates, following Bauer, that aesthetic complexity and Bedouin identity were not incompatible. Moreover if our texts demonstrate numerically significant variations in terms of tribal representations of migration, perhaps at variance with Abbasid reconstructions such as that of Ibn Qutayba, this will contribute significantly to the discussion of early Arabic poetry's authenticity and the relationship of literary and aesthetic values with nomadic social reality.