Mufaddaliyat


The Mufaddaliyyat, meaning "The Examination of al-Mufaḍḍal", is an anthology of pre-Islamic Arabic poems deriving its name from its author, Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbī, who compiled it between 762 and his death in 784 CE. It contains 126 poems, some complete odes, others fragmentary. They are all of the Golden Age of Arabic poetry and are considered to be the best choices of poems from that period by different authors. There are 68 authors, two of whom were Christian. The oldest poems in the collection date from about 500 CE. The collection is a valuable source concerning pre-Islamic Arab life.
The Mufaḍḍaliyāt is one of five canonical primary sources of early Arabic poetry. The four others are Mu'allaqat, Hamasah, Jamharat Ash'ar al-Arab and the Asma'iyyat.

Historical background

A story about the circumstances behind the collection of the Mufaddaliyyat is found in the works of the 10th century scholar Ibn al-Nadim. In this narrative, the circumstances occurred in the Abbasid royal court of Caliph al-Mansur. According to this account, al-Mufaddal al-Dabbi, already then a reputed expert of pre-Islamic poetry, was a personal tutor of al-Mansur's son, al-Mahdi. One day, al-Mansur noticed and listened in on his son reciting an ode by the pre-Islamic poet al-Musayyab to his tutor. Pleased by the situation, he asked al-Mufaddal to produce a collection of these poems for the benefit of his son. Obliging him, al-Mufaddal did so, leading to the birth of the Mufaddaliyyat.

Description

The collection is a record of the highest importance of the thought and poetic art of Pre-Islamic Arabia in the immediate period before the appearance of the Prophet Muhammad. The great majority belonged to the days of Jahiliyyah no more than five or six of the 126 poems appear to have been by Islamic era poetsand though a number of Jahiliyyah-born poets had adopted Islam, their work bears few marks of the new faith. While ancient themes of virtue; hospitality to the guest and the poor, extravagance of wealth, valour in battle, tribal loyalty, are praised yet other practices forbidden in IslamWine, gambling, etc.,are all celebrated by poets professing adherence to the faith. Neither the old idolatry nor the new spirituality are themes.
Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbī gathers works by 68 poets in 126 pieces. Little of these poets, known as al-Muqillun, survives, unlike those poets whose diwans have ensured their enduring fame. Yet many pieces selected by al-Mufaddal are celebrated. Several, such as 'Alqama ibn 'Abada's two long poems, Mutammim ibn Nuwayrah's three odes, Salama ibn Jandal splendid poem, al-Shanfara's beautiful nasib, and Abd-Yaghuth's death-song, reach a high degree of excellence. The last of the series, a long elegy by Abu Dhu'ayb al-Hudhail on the death of his sons is one of the most admired; almost every verse of this poem is cited in illustration of some phrase or meaning of a word in the national Arabic lexicons. Al-Harith ibn Hilliza is the only poet included also in the Mu'allaqat. Although diwans, it is unclear how many were compiled before al-Mufaddal's anthology of forty-eight pre-Islamic and twenty Islamic-era poets.

Number of poems

The collection contains 126 long and short pieces of verse in its present form. This number is included in the recension of al-Anbari, who received the text from Abu 'Ikrima of Dabba, who read it with Ibn al-A‘rābī, al-Mufaḍḍal's stepson and inheritor of the tradition. We know from the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim that the original book, as transmitted by Ibn al-A‘rābī, contained 128 pieces and began with the poet Ta’abbaṭa Sharran Thābit ibn Jābir; this number agrees with the Vienna manuscript, which includes an additional poem, poems annotated by al-Anbari, al-Muraqqish the Elder, etc., and a poem by al-Harith ibn Hilliza. The Fihrist states that some scholars included more and others fewer poems, while the order of the poems in the several recensions differed. It is noticeable that this traditional text, and the accompanying scholia, as represented by al-Anbari's recension, derive from al-Mufaddal's fellow philolgists of the Kufan school. Sources from the rival school of Basra claimed however that al-Mufaddal's original dīwān was a much smaller volume of poems. In his commentary, Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Marzuqi gives the number of original poems as thirty, or eighty in a clearer passage,; and mentions too, that al-Asma'i and his Basran grammarians, augmented this to a hundred and twenty. This tradition, ascribed by al-Marzuqi and his teacher Abu Ali al-Farisi to Abu 'Ikrima of Dabba, who al-Anbari represented as the transmitter of the integral text from Ibn al-A'rabi, gets no mention by al-Anbari, and it would seem improbable as the two schools of Basrah and Kufah were in sharp competition. Ibn al-A'rabi in particular was in the habit of censuring al-Asma'i's interpretations of the ancient poems. It is scarcely likely that he would have accepted his rivals' additions to the work of his stepfather, and handed them on to Abu 'Ikrima with his annotations.

Editions

  • Die Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, ed. H. Thorbecke. 1. Heft. Heinrich Thorbecke based this edition on the text of the Berlin Codex, He began this work in 1885 but had only completed the first fasciculus, with forty-two poems, when he died.al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt Vol.I text, with short commentary from al-Anbari.
  • al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, ed., Abū Bakr b. ʿU. Dag̲h̲istānī.; complete text, with short glosses from al-Anbari's commentary; based generally on the Cairo codex, with references to Thorbecke's scholarly edition in the first half of the work.
  • The Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, an anthology of ancient Arabic odes, ed. C.J. Lyall; complete edition of al-Anbārī's text and commentary; poems translated by Charles James Lyall: ; ;, compiled by A. A. Bevan, paralleled by his Arabic-language edition: , ed. by Kārlūs Yaʻqūb Lāyil.al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, ed., Ahmad Mohammad Shakir; Abdassalam Mohammad Hârun, Cairo, Dar al-Ma`ârif 1942.
  • S̲h̲arḥ Ik̲h̲tiyārāt al-Muf, ed. F. Ḳabāwā, i-ii ; containing 59 poems and commentary by al-Tibrīzī.
  • S̲h̲arḥ al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, ed. A.M. al-Bid̲j̲āwī, i-iii.