CC BY
17
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i tAjuiljj^l ^JJ^I illluiljjll
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14, July 2021
УДК 811.411.21
Original Paper Оригинальная статья
PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY AND THE EMERGENCE OF CLASSICAL ARABIC
Muhammad al-Sharkawi Wayne State University ev7829(a);wayne. edit
Received: April 28, 2021 Reviewed: May 29, 2021 Accepted: May 30, 2021
Поступила в редакцию: 28 апреля 2021 г. Одобрена рецензентами: 29 мая 2021 г. Принята к публикации: 30 мая 2021 г.
Abstract
This is the first of three articles. The general purpose of this series is to propose that Classical Arabic emerged from the grammarians' practice of using poetic tokens as the main source of linguistic data. The grammarians' choice of the tribal sources of the data, their geographical location and time period, the socio-demographic structures of the poets, and the process of transmission caused the Classical variety to resemble in structure the Najdi pre-Islamic dialects. In the first article, I will show the prevalence of the poetic data over other types, introduce the tribal and geographical tribal sources and the intensity of representation in the Kitab of STbawaihi. The entire article will be based on the collection of the numbers of poetic tokens in the Kitab and the distribution of tokens on tribal affiliations. The article concludes that the majority of the tokens came from eastern and northeastern Najdi tribe and from the pre-Islamic times, thus making Classical Arabic a close relative of the Najdi dialects.
Keywords: Medieval grammarians, Classical Arabic, pre-Islamic poetry, dialects, pre-Classical Arabic Najdi dialects, Hijazi dialects.
For citation: al-Sharkawi, M. (2021). Pre-Islamic poetry and the emergence of Classical Arabic. Eurasian Arabic Studies, 14, 38-56.
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
ДОИСЛАМСКАЯ ПОЭЗИЯ И ВОЗНИКНОВЕНИЕ КЛАССИЧЕСКОГО АРАБСКОГО ЯЗЫКА
М. Аль-Шаркави Государственный университет Уэйна ev7829@wayne. edu
Аннотация
Данная статья открывает серию публикаций, посвященных доисламской поэзии и появлению классического арабского языка. Цель этих трех научных исследований - предположить, что классический арабский язык возник из практики грамматиков, которые использовали поэтические токены в качестве основного источника лингвистических данных. Выбор грамматиками племенных источников, их географическое положение, временной период, социально-демографическое положение поэтов и процесс передачи привел к тому, что классический арабский стал по структуре похожим на доисламские диалекты Наджди. В первой статье показано преобладание поэтических данных над другими типами, представлены племенные и географические источники и количественная характеристика их репрезентации в трактате Сибавейхи «Алъ-Китаб». Также представлен весь массив, найденных поэтических символов в «Аль-Китабе», которые распределены по племенной принадлежности. В статье делается вывод о том, что большинство токенов пришло из восточного и северо-восточного племени Наджди и из доисламских времен, что привело к схожести классического арабского языка с диалектом Наджди.
Ключевые слова: средневековые грамматики, классический арабский язык, доисламская поэзия, диалекты, до классические арабские диалекты Наджди, диалекты Хиджази.
Для цитирования: Аль-Шаркави М. Доисламская поэзия и возникновение классического арабского языка // Арабистика Евразии. 2021. № 14. С. 38-56. (на английском языке)
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021 40
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ Y • \ 1 jjIjj И i (AjuiIjj^I ¡jjluiljjll
EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
INTRODUCTION
Between ideological perspectives and partial understanding among both Western and Arab scholars, the history of Classical Arabic,1 its function and even its very nature remain key open questions historians of Arabic have yet to deal with in a meaningful fashion. Oceans of ink and miles of paper went into these discussions to date, to which I will not add here/ Regardless of the individual perspective one takes as far as the history of Classical Arabic is concerned, poetry was always an integral feature therein. Fleisch (1947: 100), who assumes the existence of a literary variety separately from the vernacular in pre-Islamic times, describes it as a language of art made by poets and comprehended mostly by poets. It resembles Homeric Greek; a language of art that was not a spoken vernacular as well (Rabin 1955: 24). It was further suggested that despite the lack of speakers, the language of poetry must have had its origins in the Najd plateau (Zwettler 1978: 109 and al-Sharkawi 2016: 54-55), due to the structural similarity with the Najdi tribal dialects. The organic relationship between poetry and Classical Arabic and its limited functions are two basic assumptions I use here to forward the proposal that Classical Arabic was a product of the grammarians' use of the available poetic corpus.
I will make this argument in a series of articles. In this first of three articles. I will approach the history of Classical Arabic from the available poetic data in the medieval Arabic grammatical cannon. I will focus on the most important source of data from which Classical Arabic emerged, namely pre-Islamic and Early-Islamic poetry within the grammatical scholarship. In general, however, the three articles started here will not consider, the form, function or even the linguistic content of the poetic production of the period between the 6th and the 9th/2lld centuries. Information such as numbers of poetic tokens, geographical locations and the socio-demographic structure of the authors of the lines of poetry used in the Arabic linguistic tradition in its inception will be solely used here to shed light on the nature of this corpus and its role in the formation of a standard. The underlying assumption here is that poetic tokens are the only reliable source for pre-Classical/Classical Arabic.
1 The designations of Classical Arabic are discussed in al-Sharkawi (2016a: xiii-xiv and 207-216). The ideological perspectives of the nature and functions of this variety are also summarized in al-Sharkawi (2010: 57-86).
2 For that see the educational discussions presented and summarized hi Versteegh 2014 and Miller 1986.
3 On pre-Classical Arabic, see al-Sharkawi (2016b).
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
There are three aspects of the utilization of pre-Islamic poetry and its major poets in the early grammatical tradition that may have shaped our perception of the nature, structure and the degree of uniformity of Classical Arabic, hence our determination that there was a pre-Classical variety that we presumed may have existed in parallel to the pre-Islamic dialects. In this introductory article, I will put forward the initial claim that the corpus of pre-Islamic poetry was biased in favor of a relatively homogeneous socio-demographic group of dialects which lived in a relatively limited area of the Najd Plateaued at a particular time in the late antique pre-Islamic Arabia. I claim further that since poetry formed a large, if not the largest, portion of the linguistic data available to medieval Arab grammarians from the pre-Islamic and early Islamic period, if not the bulk thereof, since there seems to have been a tendency among Arabs in the first three centuries of the Islamic era to prefer a particular group of poets, and the language of these poets may have eclipsed other linguistic material during the same period. In the standardization process, this corpus effectively became the image of what Arabic was. To these factors, I will add the special interest and position the earliest of medieval grammars enjoyed in terms of study and commentary.
The argument of this article will be made, after this introduction, in two sections. In section two, I will discuss the geographical location of the tribes to which the authors of most pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetic tokens belonged. I will show, in this section, that the numerical majority of these authors lived in a defined particular geographical area on the peninsula and in a close time period. They were not disbursed over the whole peninsula and in different centuries. The regions of Yemen and Oman and the extensions of the Najdi tribal affiliations in Iraq and the Levant were dark spots in terms of the production of major poets. Or, they were not admitted into the cannon from which medieval scholars took poetic data. A point of caution is in order here. In the discussion of section two below, I will only use representative tribes and authors as examples. A comprehensive process of tracing every and each author or tribal affiliation is beyond a reasonable space consideration. In the following section, however, I will provide some preliminary remarks on the relevance of poetry beyond its artistic status in the medieval Arabic linguistic scholarship as the main source of data. The remarks below are both anecdotal and numerical for reasons of space. They should only serve as an illustration for the prominent position of poetry and not as a comprehensive study of its function in the argumentation methods of Arab grammarians. Even the numerical data used for analysis in this article are not comprehensive. A wide inclusion of the poetic tokens
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
in the grammatical tradition can no doubt shed more light on the role of pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry in the evolution of Classical Arabic and more informative to the argument suggested here. It is however not possible due to reasons of space. The data is based on the study of STbawaihi only. More grammarians are not included here.
In the following articles of the series, I will introduce the social networks in which the authors of these pre-Islamic poetic and early Islamic tokens moved and functioned. It will become clear to the reader that they were not only geographically and chronologically close, these authors also moved and functioned within the same social circles. The articles will focus on two main points. Tirst, more often than not, their narrators shared the same tribal affiliations and were even blood related in some cases. The transmission of pre-Islamic poetry to the age of standardization is the second main focus of the second article in this series. Poets were themselves narrators and transmitters of previous poets. Transmission was a period of apprenticeship that most poets must have gone through before their talent was acceptable enough to the world around them. The second article will show that narrators and transmitters served to amplify the poetic form and language by reproducing it, and provided grammarians with a fairly homogeneous linguistic corpus for analysis. 1 On Poetry as a Tool
From the earliest days of the Arab Muslim civilization poetry enjoyed a unique status as a pre-requisite in almost all sorts of the available human knowledge, especially in the language and Qur'an related fields. Ibn Faris (a§-$ahibT, p. 43) claims that: Man 'arifa daqa'iqahu wa-'asrarahu wa-xafayah 'alima 'annahu yurba 'a la gami' ma yabgahu bihi ha 'ula '-I-adlna yantahilUna ma 'rifata haqa 'iqa-l- 'asya' He who knew its details, secrets and intricacies knew that it is more elevated than everything those who claim knowing the truth about things claim. Poetry was therefore used in the language related fields in various roles: as a tool for linguistic explanation, illustration and even justification/apology in so far as the semantic aspects of Arabic are concerned. Al-ZamaxsarT, for instance, advised the public to resort to poetry in order to understand the Qur'an when its overall meaning evades us (al-Kassaf, II, p. 568). In al-'Itqan (1, p. 432), we are reminded that poetry is also a resort when a dialectal form in the Qur'an is difficult to understand. The resort to poetry recommendation extended to lexical matters as well. In the same previous al-Kassaf recommendation, there is an anecdote in which 'Umar asked for the meaning of the noun taxawwuf in (Q 16:47). The meaning was explained to him as 'shortage' in the dialect of Hudayl, and was given a line of poetry from Abu Kablr
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
al-hudall as a verification for the provided explanation (II, p. 568). The use of poetry in an evidentiary capacity went beyond language-related fields. Although the use of poetry was limited in the early historical writings in Arabic in comparison to the linguistic fields, it was by no means absent (Al-Azmeh 2014: 101-102). In these historical writings, however, the use of poetry was confined to the small details in the narrative or contextual information. It does not seem to have been used for chronology (Al-Azmeh 2014: 109).
For the sake of illustration on the relevance of poetry in grammatical arguments, I will use the tokens of poetry in the Kitab of Slbawaihi (148/765-180/796) as my starting point to establish the numerical aspect of the argument. In addition, the Kitab has represented the ideal model for the Arabic linguistic tradition and its material the most reliable and reused (Olivirei 2020: 6). I will also show later in this section that the Kitab of Slbawaihi is unique among medieval grammars in so far as the number of scholarly works written about it as a whole or some of its particular elements. An initial indicative number is that of the Qur'anic verses in the Kitab in comparison to poetic tokens. Table one below shows that the sheer percentage of Qur'anic tokens represents only 41.19% of the Poetic tokens. Simplistic as it may sound, the below numbers indicate the primacy of poetry at least during the times of Slbawaihi in the 2nd/8th and 3rd/9th centuries as a source of data.
Table One: Qur'anic and Poetic tokens
Type of the sahid Number of tokens
The Our 'an 435
Poetry 1056
These sheer primary numbers indicate that poetry was probably as a trustworthy source of data as the Qur'an, if not more. In addition to these numbers, the material of the Kitab, including its poetic tokens, received the ample scholarly and documentary attention alluded to above (which amplified its effect) in the six centuries following the death of Slbawaihi. The relevance of this scholarly activity to our purpose here is that it established and fortified the primary position of poetic tokens in linguistic analysis and emphasized the particular priority of a group of poets.
This attention is represented by titles of scholarly works kept in the medieval Arab Muslim archives. Some of these titles exist now in print, some in manuscript only
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021 44
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ Y • \ 1 jjIjj И i (AjuiIjj^I ¡jjluiljjll
EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
still and some others exist only in other books as titles but their manuscripts were lost. In table two below, I will introduce these titles as they appear in Harnun (1988: 37-45):
Table Two: The Literature on al-Kitab
Genre Number of titles Range of time
Explanation (sarh) 23 3rd/9tii_8th/14th
Critical Readings 11 3rd/9th-8thT4th
A sarh of the Poetry 14 3rd/9th_7th/13th
Summaries 2 3rd/9th
Summaries of sarh 1 8*714*
Criticism 2 3rd/9th_6th/12th
Defense 2 5tb/nth_7th/13th
Table two above shows that not only the arguments of the Kitab, but also its poetic tokens were amplified simply as a function of using the same material. The sarh works and critical readings were in large number, given their dedication to a single work, and were also a product of scholarly activity that extended along eleven centuries. In addition, 14 of these work titles were dedicated solely to the classification and explanation of the poetic tokens of the Kitab, second only to the general sarh work titles. Regardless of the purpose of a particular title, the discussion of the poetic tokens used as evidence in the Kitab must have solidified the poem and the poet's position in the Arabic linguistic field. The number and frequency of poetic tokens are not the only relevant factor here. It is also my conviction that the manner by which poetic tokens were ascribed in the Kitab is also indicative, particularly in so far as it relates to the Arabs' scholarly culture in the first three centuries of the Islamic era. Table three below shows three significantly different manners of ascription.
Table Three: Ascription
Classification Number of tokens
Ascribed to a poet 739
Ascribed to a tribe 47
anonymous 317
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIjj И î Àya\jJ*l\ i-lL^lj^ll
Eurasian Arabie Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
Table three above shows that 786 of the total number of poetic tokens was ascribed either to a poet or to a tribal community in the Kitab itself, which indicates the possible wide circulation of these lines in the particular field of Arabic grammar, if not in the wider linguistic field. The majority of the anonymous tokens were ascribed by other authors to poets either in one of the aforementioned 14 works on the poetic tokens or elsewhere in Kitab literature, namely 134 tokens. These tokens were known in the field but may not have been known to the author of the Kitab. Only 108 remain
v -4
anonymous to our time (Gum'a 1989: 214). Their poets or tribes may have been unknown to STbawaihi himself and others in his field, but were, nevertheless, in some form of circulation in the field during his time.
Taking into account the two principles about poetry mentioned in the introduction and detailed elsewhere in the literature, the 739 tokens ascribed to poets become especially interesting. This number is an indication that the majority of the data in the Kitab of Stbawaihi followed a strictly regulated and highly formulaic art form that was not used as a vernacular in pre-Islamic or early Islamic times. Not only did the language of poetry belong to a closed set, it also belonged to a limited well-known pool. Table four below talks to the aforementioned circulation of poetry. These tokens and their poets, it seems, went beyond the scholarly community and were common knowledge in a wider social domain.
Table Four: Sources of Tokens Heard from mentors Heard from Arabs
It seems to me that the tokens STbawaihi heard from whom he called one of the Arabs were widely known lines and were probably in circulation among grammarians as well as the general public, whereby no documentation or verification justification was needed or warranted.
I will also venture to conjecture here that the tokens he claimed he heard from his mentors were ones that were not in wide circulation among grammarians and other scholars and he needed to justify their use or authenticity by ascribing them to an authority in the field.
4 For a detailed analysis of how Slbawaihi and his commentators handled the anonymous poetic tokens, see Gum'a (1989).
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
The number of the lines from outside that well-known pool is limited in comparison to the total number of lines. Table five below shows that SIbawaihi ascribes only 40 poetic tokens to his mentors. They are most probably the only ones that were not publicly available and accepted among the scholars of the time. They are as follows:
Table Five: Heard from Mentors
Poet Tokens
Yünus Bin Habib 17
Al-Xalïl 9
Al-'Axfas 8
'Isa Bin 'ami 4
Al-'asma'I 2
Given the previous distinction between what was heard from an expert mentor or a colleague and what was heard from an anonymous layman Arab, one can further conjecture that what was ascribed was not common knowledge or available to everyone in the field. Or, the ascribed material was probably new to the grammatical discussion of the day. Judging, however, by the available biographical information for each of these mentors, they all died in the third quarter of the second century of the Islamic era. In addition all five of them were active and connected in Iraq, especially Basra, except Al-'Axfas who was born in Bahrain. But He also lived in Basra. All these mentors were, however, neither poets nor narrators of poetry ( aZ-Zubaydl, 40, 47 and 51). As I will show later in this article, he demographic and time features of the lines heard from mentors are almost identical to the majority of poetic tokens in the book.
Table Six: Heard from the Arabs
Directly Indirectly
43 11
In total, these vaguely ascribed tokens are 54. They seem to me not common tokens that were probably available to students in the field, but at the same time were rather taken from non-experts in grammar or any of the relevant fields. It is difficult, therefore, to make any prediction as to their geographical affiliation, although they must have belonged to the same circles in which SIbawaihi operated and to the period
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
in which the arguments of the book were originated. In any case, comparatively, these 54 tokens are a small number in comparison to the rest of the tokens in the book. Fortunately, the majority of the tokens were ascribed at least tribally, which affords us an idea as to the relative geographical weight of the Najdi tries in the formation of Classical Arabic. We have seen so far that the poetic data in the Kitab of Stbawaihi is the numerical majority of data, it was amplified in the Arabic grammatical canon through the commentaries and explanations, mostly it came mostly from professional poets, and was selected from circulating and well-known data in the field. In addition, table seven below will show that the geographical location to which these tokens belong was more drawn from a particular geographical location than from others in the Peninsula.
Table Seven: Tribal Affiliation Tribe Number of Poets
Tamlm 44
Hawazin 27
Bakr/Taglib
'Asad
Al-'Azd
24 22 17 15 14 12 9 8 7 6 5 5 4 2 2 2 2 2 2
Gatafan
Qurays
Madgah
Quda'a
Hudayl
Tayyi'
aR-Rabab
Salim Kinana
'Abdul-Qays
Bahila Dub ay' a Ganiyy
Muzayna
'Anmar Kin da
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIjj И î Àya\jJ*l\ i-lL^lj^ll
Eurasian Arabie Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
Hamadan
Tyâd
Dabba
'Udwân
'Àmila
In table seven above, the geographical source from which the majority of poetic tokens in the Kitab of Slbawayhi becomes obvious. A word of caution about the reliability of tribal affiliation is in order here. Later medieval Arab scholars defined the Arabs strictly in terms of tribal affiliation. That correlation was less strict in the
2nd/8th century (Ulrich 2019: 1). In pre-Islamic times, tribal affiliation was loose and fluctuating (Schiettecatte and Mounir 2016: 182). Although tribal identities existed from pre-Islamic times, their meaning shifted constantly shifted across time and space. However, modern research into the history of Arab tribes seems to indicate that despite fluctuation and change the larger tribes and tribal confederations seem to have started to consolidate in the 6th century, only to mature in early-Islamic times (Ulrich 2019: 2-3). The point of caution here is that despite the fact that the very notion of tribe was in evolution in pre-Islamic times and the territorial dominion of these evolving entities was not quite stable a general allocation certainly exists and is therefore used here.
From the mere above numbers, however, we can see that the majority of the poets/author come from non-Hijazi tribes, especially from Central, Northeastern and eastern Arabia. Qurays, for instance, produced 14 poets/authors in the Kitab. Most of the Hijazi tribal affiliations in turn contributed single digit poets/authors in the Kitab. Tribes that occupied a buffer position between the Hijaz region and the Najd Plateau, namely Hudayl, Tayyi' and Muzayna contributed 8 and 7 and 2 poets in the Kitàb, respectively. Northern and Northeastern tribal affiliations contributed a total of 48 poets/authors to the Kitab. Interestingly, Eastern tribal affiliations such as 'Abdul-Qays contributed a small number of poets to the tokens/authors of the Kitab. From the above table one can understand that the density of choice intensifies the more northeast one moves. This geographical gradual intensification will be explained in the following section.
The number of poets/authors in a tribe is not the only relevant factor here that we can glean from the data, quite indicative as it is. The numbers of tokens per each author is also important. If we focus on the tokens from the Qurays authors for the sake of illustration, we can see that 12 of them contributed single lines, only one contributed two tokens and only two of them contributed more than two tokens. They are the two
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
Islamic poets, Ibn Qays-r-Ruqayat (d. 85/704) and 'Umar Bin 'Abi Rabi'a (23/64493/711), who are also the only professional poets in that group. By the same token, Kinana, another Hijazi tribe, contributed five names of authors, three of whom were professional poets, namely Hunayy Bin 'Ahmar, Nusayb Bin Rabah and Qays Bin Darlh. Each of the first two poets contributed one token. The third poet contributed two tokens. One of these three poets, is pre-Islamic, Hunayy Bin 'Ahmar. The other two names from Kinana also lived in Islam and were not poets, 'Abu-l'Aswad-d-Du'ali (16/603-69/688) and 'Amir Bin Wa'ila (3/587/-), both of whom died in the first century of the Islamic era. Between them, they contributed five tokens., which is one token more than the three professional poets of the tribe combined. One more example along the same lines is the tribe of Salim, which also contributed five names with a total of 11 line tokens. Four of them were professional poets, who were contemporaries to the Prophet, and one of them was an Islamic personality and not a poet, namely 'Anas Bin-l-'Abbas. Each of them contributed one token except 'Abbas Bin Mirdas who contributed 7 tokens. 'Abbas Bin Mirdas (d. 18/639) belonged to a poetic family. His mother was al-Xansa', who contributed one token to the Kitab, and died immediately after the emergence of Islam. The Bin Mirdas family is one case study for the next article in this series.
To conclude this part, it is worthwhile to recapitulate. From the poetic tokens in the Kitab of Slbawayhi we can see that the number of authors and the number of the tokens per author were disproportionate and uneven. Generally speaking, the tribes of the Hijaz, western Arabia and northwestern Arabia were less represented and less numerous than the tribes of Najd and northeast Arabia. In addition, the following section will also show that the concentration of authors was not evenly distributed over Najd and the buffer areas between Najd and the Hijaz. It was rather concentrated to the east and northeast of the plateau and away fiom Hijaz. For reasons of space, I will focus on the coming discussion on a representative sample of the Arab tribes of Najd.
The Geographical Domains of Pre-Islamic Poets
The purpose of this paragraph is to show that the tribes listed in table seven above fiom which the majority (as shown in table eight below) of contributing authors descended resided in a relatively close and flat geographical area. The geographical argument here aims to be an indication that these tribal affiliations and their poets/authors must have been in constant and continuous language contact, which I claim must have partly contributed to the linguistic homogeneity of pre-Islamic poetry. The below listed tribes resided in Najd. In medieval Arabic geographical
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
scholarship, Najd extended from the north from the southern borders of the alluvium of Iraq when the land starts to rise southwards to form a plateau (al-Bakri, Mu 'gam, vol. I, p. 14). The plateau remains relatively low in the north and northeast but begins to elevate noticeably towards the west and southwest closer to Hijaz (aN-Nuwayrl, Nihaya, vol. I, p. 200). From the west and southwest, Najd extended eastwards from the desert east of the Sarat mountain (al-Hamadani, §ifa, p. 48). From the south, the Najd plateau ends between the Empty Quarter and southern Hijaz, and northern Yemen begins (Yaqut, Mu 'gam, vol. VIII, p. 258).
The total number of poets/authors from the Najd plateau is 115 from a total number of 234 authors from the Peninsula as a whole, almost half the number. Only 10 of the Najdi authors come from a Qaysi tribal affiliation and resided in the vast central and southern area of the plateau between Taqlf in the west and the coastal strip controlled by the eastern Arabian tribe of 'Abd-l-Qays (see al-'Asfahanl, Bilad-l-'Arab, p. 27 and 79-80). Numbers from 5 to 9 in table eight below belong to that Qays affiliation (Ibn Hazm, Gamhara, p. 480-483). The rest of 105 authors come from northern and northeastern Najd tribes. One can add to these tribes the authors from 'Abd-l-Qays as they resided in eastern Arabia and were connected with Tamlm, 'Asad and Bakr Ibn Wa'il on more than one level. There is, therefore, a noticeable underrepresentation for western and southwestern Najd tribes, where Qays territories formed a buffer zone between the rest of Najd and the Western Hijazi tribes (Gamhara, p. 479-483), and an overrepresentation of northern and northeastern Najd tribes. It is important to note in this context that despite the fact that poets/authors from Quda'a (9) and Al-'Azd (17) appeared in the Kit ah, they are represented in Najdi and non-Najdi region alike, but Slbawayhi did not specify from which geographical area a particular token is taken.
Table Eight: The Najdi tribes
Number Tribe Number of poets
1 Tamlm 44
2 Bakr/Taglib
24 22 15 5 2 1
3 'Asad
4 Gatafan
5 SalTm
6 Ganiyy
7 Dabba
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
8 'udwan
9 :Amila
1 1
The Kitab of Stbawayhi also contains tokens from border tribes other than Qays, ones that extended into parts of Hijaz and the Sarat mountains in the west from their main Najdi territories in the east. Tayyi' (7) in the northeast, Hudayl (8) and Hawazin (27) in the southeast contribute 42 author together, thus forming the second largest group of author contribution. North and northeastern Najdi tokens are more than western and southwestern tokens, but both were more represented than the Hijazi dialects. The territories of Tamlm, where the majority of poetic contributions to the Kitab come from, extended through Eastern Najd, which was a desert area (TarTx aR-Rusul wal-Muluk, vol. II, p. 169). In the north and north east, it controlled the territories of Basra and Yamama (§ubh, vol. I, p. 347). From the east, Tamlm controlled the area between Hagar in the south and Yamama in the north and also the area to Oman in the south and southeast (Mu'gam ma-sta'gam, vol. I, 88). Its territories in the east were in direct contact with the Qaysi and Hawazin tribes, and in the northwest with 'Asad and Tayyi', respectively.
As for 'Asad, it was between Kufa and the Samawa dissert in the north and northeast (al-'istaxrl, al-Masalik, p. 25), and Tamlm in the northeast and east (§ifa, p. 130). In the west and southwest of Tamlm, south of 'Asad and south east of Tayyi' the tribes of Qays resided. Their territory was central Najd, separated from Yemen only by the east-to-west horizontal strip of the tribe of Hawazin (Mu'gam ma-sta'gam, vol. Ill, p.59). Hijaz borders Qays from the west and northwest. The borders between the territories of these tribes were not marked by topographical barriers. In fact, a quick look at these tribes in the references used here, it is common to find that their territories mixed and their clans coexisted in the same areas.
It seems that the Kitab of Sibawayhi Did not only favor a particular tribal/geographical source for its poetic tokens. It also seems to have favored tokens from a particular time period, namely the pre-Islamic and early-Islamic period, as can be seen in table nine below. Again, I will use only a sample of the highest represented tribes in Najd as an illustration.
Table nine: Time Period
Tribe Pre-Islamic The eve Islamic
Tamim
17
12
15
(Шл АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021 Y t Y 1 jjIjj И Î iA^ljjVl iliLuiljûll Eurasian Arabie Studies, № 14. July 2021 52
Bakr/Taglib 13 2 9
'Asad 9 6 8
Hawâzin 9 6 12
From the left column in table nine, one can see that pre-Islamic poets from the sixth century were numerically more prevalent than poets from the post-Islamic era in individual tribes, in the column on the right-hand side. This is the case except in Hawazin, where post-Islamic era authors were more numerous. In aggregate, however, pre-Islamic poets used in the Kitab of SIbawayhi are 48, while post-Islamic poets are 44. The middle column, in its turn, contains the poets/authors during whose lifetime and poetic career Islam and the Arab state emerged. These are 26 names in number. For reasons of limited space, I will group them with the pre-Islamic poets without much justification,5 thus confirming their status as majority. They together become 74 in number.
In table ten below, I will separate the professional poets from those who were known in the grammatical circles in the second half of the 2nd/9th century to have composed few lines of poetry, one or few of which were used in the Kitab. A brief comparison between the number of poets and the total number of authors again in the highest four Najdi tribes will show that professional or expert poets were the numerical majority, except in the case of 'Asad.
Table ten: Professional Poets
Tribe Poets Total
TamTm 13 15
Bakr/Taglib 7 9
'Asad 4 8
Hawazin 10 12
The fact that the majority of the authors in the Kitab in general and in the top four non-Hijazi tribes in particular were expert poets allows us to assume that they adhered to the same standards and methods as their pre-Islamic predecessors. Poetry, according to Monroe (1972: 1-53), Zwettler (1978) and al-Sharkawi (2010: 82-86), was a craft of a particular strict nature as its themes, diction and structures indicate.
51 adopt the general conception adopted by al-Sharkawi (2016,2018, 2020a and 2020b) that it is only after the establishment of Islam that a standardized uniform set of structural features emerged from a multitude of pre-Islamic and early Islamic dialects.
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
If this was the case, the language difference of the craft between post-Islamic poets and pre-Islamic poets must not have been considerable. In effect, the difference in time periods between pre-Islamic and post-Islamic poets should not be a factor in our consideration. CONCLUSION
In this rather introductory first of three articles I used the poetic data in the Kitab of Sibawayhi to advance the first point of my general argument, namely that Classical Arabic was a product of the early grammatical scholarship's use of poetry as the main source of data for analysis, justification, examples and analogy. This article focused on the number, geographical distribution, authors and period of the poetic tokens in the Kitab to make the point that Sibawayhi in his book used more tokens from Najd, especially eastern and northeastern Najd, than from Hijaz and the buffer tribal areas. Bearing in mind the geographical openness and tribal territorial mixture the Najd area further east from Hijaz can be considered a one linguistic area (al-Sharkawi 2016: p. 8-10 and 13-15).
The poetic tokens in the Kitab were selected for analysis in this article because the number of books about the theory and tokens and the historical width of this scholarship had an amplifying effect for the influence of the impression that the number and geographical distribution of the poetic tokens must have produced. A total of 55 works was listed above according to Harun's bibliographical research. 14 of these works, which extended over the period of seven centuries, were dedicated entirely to the poetic tokens.
The fact that Sibawayhi used a majority of his tokens from expert poets and given the long established nature of pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry as highly formulaic allow us to assume that these experts followed the traditions of their craft, not only in style, themes and metric structures, but also in the choice of diction and linguistic features.
As summarized in Zwettler (1978) and al-Sharkawi (2010) poetry was marked by verbatim, near verbatim and partial verbatim structural and lexical repetition. Linguistic and or structural innovation, including any that is caused by borrowing, is not easy to penetrate the poetry of pre-Islamic and early Islamic times. The geographical distribution and Socio-Demographics of Pre-Islamic and early Islamic Poets on the one hands and the manner by which their poetry was transmitted are the topic of the following two articles in the series. In the second article, I will discuss the transmission of poetry from one generation to another as a craft, and
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i tÄjiüljjVl
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
IEРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
move to a case study. I will introduce the Bin Mir das family of poets, which extended from pre-Islamic to early Islamic times.
I will argue in the third article that the transmission of poetry up until the emergence of Islam and immediately thereafter depended on a socio-demographically defined group of professionals and/or expert transmitters or ruwät who did not only maintain the poem, but its style and linguistic features as well. I will also further argue that the emergence of Islam and the rise of the Arab Muslim civilization must have allowed members of this closed set of professionals to migrate to different parts of the new realm, thus further their poetic art and its language.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
Primary Sources
1. al-'Asfahäni, Biläd-l-'Arab, eds. Hamad al-Gäsir and §älih al-'AH, Riyadh: Dar at-Tibä'a.
V
2. al-'istaxrl, al-Masälik wal-Mamälik, ed. Muhammad Gäbir 'Abd-L'äl, Cairo: Dar al-Qalam, 1961.
3. Al-Bakrl, Mu'gam mä-sta'gam, ed. Mustafa aS-Saqä, Beirut: 'Älam al-Kutub.
4. Al-Hamadänl, §ifat-Gazirat-l-'Arab, ed. Muhammad Bin 'Ali al-'Akwa', Riyadh: Dar al-Yamäma, 1974.
5. Al-Qalqasandi, §ubh-l- A 'sä, Cairo: al-Mu'asasa al-Misriyya al-'Äma lit-Ta'llf wa-Tibä'a wan-Nasr.
V
6. aN-Nuwayri, Nihäya al- Arab, ed. Ibrahim Sams-d-Dm, Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'ilmiyya.
V
7. a§-§uyütl, al-'Itqän, ed. Mustafa Sayx, Beirut: Mu'asasa ar-Risäla, 2008.
8. AT-Tabari, TärTx aR-Rusul wal-Mulük, ed. Muhammad Abü-l-Fadl Ibrahim, Cairo: Dar al-Ma'ärif, 1960.
9. aZ-Zamaxsariyy, al-Kassäf, Beirut: Dar al-Kitäb al-'Arabiyy, 2009.
10.AZ-Zubaydl, Tabaqät aN-Nahwiyin wal-Lugawiyin, ed. Muhammad Abü-l-Fadl Ibrahim, Cairo: Dar al-Ma'ärif.
ll.Ibn Färis, as-sähibiyy fifiqh al-luga wa sunani al-'Arab ß kalämihä, ed. Ahmad hasan bäsig, Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'ilmiyya, 1997.
12.1bn Hazm, Gamhara, ed. 'Abdu s-Saläm Härün, Cairo: Dar al-Ma'ärif.
13.STbawayh, al-Kitäb, ed. 'Abdu s-Saläm Härün, Cairo: al-Hay'a al-
Misriyya al-'ama lit-Ta'lif wan-Nasr.
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIJJ И i iAjuiljj^l
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
LBРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
14_Yaqut, Ми 'gam al-Buldan, Beirut: Dar Sadir.
Secondary Sources
1. Al-Azmeh, A. 2014. The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People. London: Cambridge University Press.
2. Al-Sharkawi, M. 2010. The Ecology; of Arabic: A Study of the Development of Arabic. Leiden: Brill.
3. Al-Sharkawi, M. 2016a. History and Development of the Arabic Language. London: Routledge.
4. Al-Sharkawi, M. 2016b. "Pre-Classical Arabic", Encyclopedia of Islam . Leiden: Brill, online.
5. Fleisch, H. 1947. Introduction a 1'etude des langues semitiques: Elements de Bibliographies. Initiation a l'Islam4, Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve.
6. Gum'a, X. 1989. Sawahid aS-Si'r JT Kitab STbawayh. Cairo al- Dar aS-
7. Miller, A. 1986. "The Origin of the Modern Arabic Sedentary Dialects: An Evaluation of Several Theories", al- 'Arabiyya 19, pp. 47-74.
8. Monroe, J. 1972. "Oral Composition in Pre-Islamic Poetry", Journal of Arabic Literature 3, p. 1-53.
9. Olivieri, S. 2020. "The Formation of Arabic grammatical Terminology: The case of Vrab", ZAL 72, pp. 5-25.
1 O.Rabin, C. 1955. "The Beginnings of Classical Arabic", SI 4, pp. 19-37.
1 l.Schiettecatte, J and Mounir, A. 2016, "The Political Map of Arabia and the Middle East in the Third Century AD Revealed by a Sabaean Inscription", Arabian Archeology and Epigraphy 27, p. 176-196.
12.Ulrich, B. 2019. Arabs in the Early Islamic Empire: Exploring Al-Azd Tribal Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
13.Versteegh, K. 2014. The Arabic Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
14.Zwettler, M. 1978. The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry: Its Character and Implications. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
V
Sarqiyya.
Арабистика Евразии, № 14, Июль 2021
Y • \ 1 jjIjj И Î Äya\jJ*l\ ll^lj-Jl
Eurasian Arabic Studies, № 14. July 2021
АРАБИСТИКА ЕВРАЗИИ EURASIAN ARABIC STUDIES
IEРАЗИЯ АРАБИСТИНАСЫ
Information about the author
Ph.D., Associate Professor Muhammad al-Sharkawi Wayne State University Detroit, USA ev7829@wayne. edu
Информация об авторе
Ph.D., доцент M. Алъ-Шаркави
Государственный университет Уэйна Детройт, США ev7829@wayne. edu
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0519-6853
ORCIDID: 0000-0002-0519-6853
Conflicts of Interest Disclosure: The author declares Conflicts of Interest Disclosure.
Раскрытие информации о конфликте интересов: Автор заявляет об отсутствии конфликта интересов.
