The Pre-Islamic genre of Arabic invective poetry known as naqa’id (flytings) pitted poets of opposing tribes in a contest that often “took the place of, or formed preliminaries for, a fracas or battle” (Van Gelder). The winner of this contest established the superiority of his clan or tribe and gained concomitant benefits; the loser paid the consequences, which could include physical injury or even death. Umayyad-era naqa’id, on the other hand, was transitioning away from a contest that decided the outcome of tribal disputes, to one which concentrated on the performance itself. Scholars dismiss this poetry as entertainment without function, produced out of a “need to secure a living” (cf. Badawi 1980). But if Umayyad naqa’id had lost its function, how did it survive? What strategies did poets use to adapt it to the new context? In order to answer these questions I analyze a selection of naqa’id poetry from Umayyad-era poets Jarir and al-Farazdaq. I propose that they, rather than engaging in the serious poetic battles (or sometimes actual battles) that characterized pre-Islamic naqa’id poetry, “colluded” to maintain interest in their poetry by keeping their audience in suspense. An examination of their poetry will show the extent to which their performance was a “collusive” effort. I deliberately draw on Erving Goffman’s concept of “team collusion” (1974) to explain Jarir and al-Farazdaq’s approach to lampoon performance. The conventions of lampoon poetry dictated that competing poets work against each other to win a contest, but I argue that Jarir and al-Farazdaq worked together behind the scenes to craft their poetry. They were in what Goffman terms “secret communication” that “placed [them] in a collusive relationship to one another vis-a-vis the remainder of the participants [i.e. the audience].” The effect was a performance that appeared spontaneous and unrehearsed to the audience, a “team collusion,” which Goffman defines as “any collusive communication which is carefully conveyed in such a way as to cause no threat to the illusion that is being fostered for the audience.” By applying Goffman’s theory to Jarir and al-Farazdaq’s naqa’id I illustrate themes, techniques and devices the poets deployed in order to “collude.” This demonstrates how Jarir and al-Farazdaq were able to maintain the illusion of spontaneity while presenting to their audience a carefully crafted performance-oriented lampoon, thereby providing the poets a tool to maintain interest in their performance over a decades-long span.

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.

My research paper undertakes a reading of al-Shanfará’s Lamiyyat al-ʿArab inspired by two broad areas of inquiry, one investigating the way that literary texts articulate theoretical positions, and the other seeking to expand ways of analyzing classical Arabic poetry in order to address contemporary questions of language and meaning. My study situates al-Shanfará in the pre-Islamic Arabian context and elucidates his status as a suʿlūk poet. I posit that these mythical-historical circumstances frame the suʿlūk as an outsider positioned to critique tribal structures and values including the traditional qasida. My central claim is that al-Shanfará’s exilic position was not merely reflected or represented in his qasida but that it was a constitutive force in his poetics. More specifically I argue that al-Shanfará’s qasida embraces the death sentence that his status represents as a positive site of productivity in order to explore the possibility of thinking identity outside inherited structures of thought and society. I engage Deleuze and Guatarri’s concept of minor literature to foreground how al-Shanfará’s qasida makes subversive use of language and works within and against the conventions of the classical Arabic qasida to articulate a destabilized model of identity as becoming. I argue that al-Shanfará’s ode pushes poetic form to its limit, using language and images to stage a crisis wherein the power to represent and draw relations on the model of resemblance breaks down. Further, I trace a series of displacements that follow from the poet’s choice to forego/invert the nasib, a rejection of origins and points of reference that I assert de-centers notions of subjectivity and signification. Likewise, I elucidate how al-Shanfará disrupts the traditional trajectory of the qasida, one of development and progress toward reintegration, such that the transformative aspect of the rahil, the modality that dominates his qasida, becomes an end in itself. Overall, I attempt to show that the ode stages the collapse of foundational concepts of poetry, including the capacity for language to represent stable identities and the centrality of the human for structures of meaning and belonging. I attempt to show that at the conclusion of Lamiyyat al-ʿArab, the highest treasure of tribal culture, the qasida, becomes a vehicle for a destabilized vantage point that is no longer strictly the space of the human.

A medieval Arabic poem is usually conceived of as an undertaking of one individual. Indeed, even if we take into account the role of the audience during performance in inducing certain changes, the ultimate responsibility and authorship still remains the poet’s. There are Arabic poetic forms, however, that are established completely on interaction and collaboration between individuals. These forms have thus far received only scant scholarly attention. My paper focuses on ijaza (“completion”) and tamliT (“finishing”), two almost-identical poetic forms in which two or more individuals participate in the composition process either as an assignment from the higher in rank to the lower or as a consensual peer endeavor. The most important medieval work collecting numerous examples of these forms is Badai' al-bada`ih, compiled by 'Ali b. Zafir (d. 613/1216), the key source on which this paper relies. In court settings of the medieval Islamic world interactive and collaborative poetry was a favorite entertainment activity at informal sessions held by patrons with their protégés. Composition of this poetry entailed full command of prosody, improvisatory skills, and quick wit, and was driven by a strong spirit of competition. To engage in composition of this sort, a patron had to be confident in his poetic skills. A failure on his part would certainly harm his reputation as a whole in a society that attached great importance to excellence in language and poetry. Aside from its entertaining value, the chief goal of the patrons initiating extempore collaborative composing was to demonstrate their excellence and superiority over other skilled individuals in order to gain societal prestige. The accounts reporting about the patrons’ outstanding performances were propagated orally and in a written form, perpetuating their name as highly skilled leaders and contributing to their political legitimacy and legacy. In this paper, I will emphasize collaborative-interactive composition at the courts of two well-known literary patrons of the Islamic world: the Buyid vizier al-Sahib Ibn 'Abbad (326-385/938-995) and the king of Seville al-Mu'tamid Ibn 'Abbad (reg. 461-84/1069-91). I will show how the upper hand in this type of composition was the patron’s as the initiator, the one who could choose the content and form of the composition, determine the length of each participant’s contribution, change it during the performance, and decide on its closure. I will also demonstrate how the protégés, despite being lower in rank, could manipulate the composition process to their advantage.

Satire against wives is a rather common theme in classical Arabic poetry. In the Ḥamāsa-collections, for example, there are sections called madhammat al-nisā’; the majority of the censured women are supposedly the poets’ wives (van Gelder 1985). There is also satire against wives in the chapters on hijā’. As a matter of fact, however, the early Arabic tradition also embraces numerous invective epigrams in verse or sajʿ by women censuring their husbands (dhamm al-zawj). Many of these epigrams are parts of invective exchanges between spouses. This corpus of matrimonial satire shares a stock of formulas that can be used against wives as well as husbands, although many invective expressions are gender-specific. In this paper, I examine the corpus of early-Islamic and Umayyad satire against husbands and invective exchanges between spouses as to its gender-specific features as well as the correlation between female experiences and poetic expressions, which is sometimes composed of formulas. In addition, my study addresses the transmission of the corpus and its inclusion in Abbasid anthologies. Instances in which women use their poetic skills in order to defend themselves and their interests, more often than not with excellent results, seem to have been favored and perhaps elaborated upon by the transmitters. This tendency is noticeable in Balaghāt al-nisā’ by Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Tayfūr (d. 280/893), the main source for this study. Some of the examples in this book, I suggest, can be read against the background of the competitive milieu of the Abbasid imperial center, opening new possibilities as well as challenges for the ambitious individual, equipped with nothing but intelligence and eloquence. Possibly, for the Abbasid audience, the women in Balaghāt al-nisā’, who often succeed in turning disadvantages to their advantage only by help of their wit and eloquence, demonstrated the capacity of the individual in an uncertain existence.