BY A. 3. ARDERRY The Koran Interpreted Schehererade Sufism The Holy Koran The Seven Odes THE FIRST CHAPTER IN ARABIC LITERATURE A.J. ARBERRY Free Public Library, Newark, #22 LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY‘Inst PusLIsHED mV 1957 “isk is oy nt he Bene Coveon [at Se i ee aon fa ee Se te grat af eae a eh cn a Gy cen eal lett Tere, ae oe mito to PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN in 12 point Fournier type BYR. eR. CLARE, L3D,, EDINBURGH CONTENTS PROLOGUE The Golden Poems page 7 ONE The Wandering King 3 MU‘ALLAQA OF IMR AL-QAIS or Two Whom the Gods Loved? o MU‘ALLAQA OF TARAFA 83 THREE The Moralise 9° MU'ALLAQA OF ZUHAIR 14 FOUR . The Centenarian 119 MUTALLAQA OF LABID 142 FIVE The Black Knight 148 MUSALLAQA OF ‘ANTARA 179 SIX The Regicide 185 MU‘ALLAQA OF ‘AMR 204 SEVEN The Leper 210 MU‘ALLAQA OF AL-HARITH aaa EPILOGUE True or False? 228 INDEX 255PROLOGUE The Golden Poems O: 4 September 1780 William Jones, barrister, poet and linguist, wrote to his friend Edmund Cartwright: ‘The hurry of the general election to a professional man, has obliged me to suspend till another long vacation, two little works, which I hoped to finish in the remainder of this. The first is a teatise On the Maritime Jurisprudence of the Athenians, illustrated by five speeches of Demosthenes in commercial causes; and the second, a dissertation On the Manners of the Arabians before the Time of Makomer, illustrated by the seven poems, which were written in letters of gold, and suspended in the temple at Mecca, about the beginning of the sixth century. When they are printed, I shall be proud in submitting them to your judgment, as their excellence is well known.’ This is the earliest extant reference to Jones's intention to publish for the first time in print the poems which constitute the theme of the present book. Since men’s motives in the work they undertake are at least as interesting as what they eventually achieve, it will not be superfluous to consider briefly the back- ground to what a young Welshman, the son of a distinguished mathematician and the grandson of an Anglesey farmer, was Proposing to attempt in the summer of 1780 but found himself obliged to postpone, as he then thought, for another year. Cart: wright was among those who had persuaded Jones to stand for Parliament in the general election of 1780. Lord North’s Tory administration seemed at last to be tottering to its fall; Whig hopes were high; the war in America was going from bad to 7