The seven Mu-Allaqat consist of 60 verses for the short ones, and up to 100 for the longest. Each of which belong to a different poet. During the pagan era, the arabs wrote them in golden letters and suspended them on the inside walls of the Kaaba, like pieces of jewellery suspended to a chain. These poems had been transmitted orally for nearly 150 years before they were written. These masterpieces reflect the very rare finesse of observation coupled with the astonishing capacity to exemplify the richness and sounds of the arabic language to the service of a poetry project. They transport us to the facinating and unusual world of the bedouins of the arab peninsula of the 5 th century. T’arafa Ibn al-‘Abd, Amr ibn kulthum, Antar ibn cheddad have one Mu-allaqa each.

Antar, who was originally a slave, was particularly famous for his courage and "Ghazl" for Aabla his beloved. Ghazl was a special kind of poetry for serenating women, and it is believed that Antar excelled in Ghazl, beyond any reasonable belief. It is also believed that his Mu'allaqa was the last to be hang in the Kaaba.

The Mu-allaqat are widely available in Arabic.

This is a good reference I believe: Les Suspendues (Al-Mu allaqât) Traduction et présentation par Heidi Toelle.

If you need this book (in French) I can send it to you in PDF format.

Thank you so much for the response, Mohamed. Are these poems still in place or wee they removed when the Prophet Mohammad cleared the Ka'aba of the idols? I want to include more information for my world literature students next semester since everyone so enjoyed Antar this spring. Although my French is rusty, I would appreciate the book when you have time. Thank you again,

Aysha Bey

Dear Aysha,

There has been much speculation about whether they were taken down or not. Historical records have all asserted that the idols were removed, with no mention of the muallagat. Perhaps it would be inadequate to associate idolatory with the unique talent of poetry which was highly recognised and praised by the prophet itself as a faculty.

This is a fantastic site dedicated to Al muallagat

http://www.almuallaqat.com/map.do

Dear All,

Are there translations of these poems?

Dear András Bozsik

There is a translation of these poems.

Please find the attached files.

Regards

Thank you,Mohammad, for the file on the translation.  I have translations from the website Sacred Texts, but the only problem is that I can't be sure of the accuracy of the translation. Most were made in the late 19th century when the West and Orientalists began to take an interest in the literature and politics of the Middle East. Although I know that the late 19th century was the time of the greatest translations of Ancient Germanic texts (Norse, Saxon, and Anglo-Saxon), I can't be sure of that in relationship to Arabic texts.

I did not with some humor in the translation that the author makes special note that Arabic writing of these poems and literatures did not begin until the sixth century, one century before the birth of the Prophet  Muhammad. In the West, the earliest dating of Beowulf, probably the most comparable hero to Antar, is the first quarter of the eighth century, perhaps 725 CE.  Others date the poem as late as 1000 CE (I personally believe that to be much too late). But the greatest of the Viking stories were not recorded until about 12th and 13th centuries, centuries after the introduction of Christianity into the northern Germanic regions (The Vikings and Saxons fought for a millenia against conversion; meanwhile the Catholic Church destroyed most of the literature of the Saxons, Goths, and other tribes on the Continent).

One question: Since the Qur'an was collected and put together during 'Umar's caliphate, doesn't that mean that Arabic writing was known by the scholars and available long before the sixth century?  I have beautiful facsimile copies of the pages of the 'Umar Qur'an.  I would love to know an answer to this point about written Arabic for my students and myself.

When I teach World Lit, we read Qur'an especially the stories of Moses, Jesus, Mary, the celibate birth and life of Christ, etc.  We also look at jihad and the actual Arabic words used; we also look at some hadith on "rules of engagement" from the major collections.  My kids are always shocked to find so much written text in the middle of Arabia when in the West, there is little to know from the third to the sixth centuries.  Was written Arabic known, at least, to scholars long before the sixth century?  Is there a good text about the ancient history of the written word in the Middle East?

Thanks again for the translations; I will use them in my next class.  And if there is an answer to the written word, that would mean a great deal to me on a research level.  Thanks,

Aysha

Thank you so much! If I could write as well in Arabic as you do in English, I would be thrilled, so please, don't concern yourself with any errors.  I do have some questions, however, pertaining to Arabic writing.  The Arabs like most early peoples kept their literature alive through oral transmission (my graduate studies focused on the heroic tradition, oral narrative in ancient Europe and West Africa); I took up more studies regarding Arabic and Islam more than 25 years ago.  But there are fewer scholarly studies available in English, translated from excellent Arabic sources, so my abilities to find out information I would love to have have remained limited. 

So, questions.  Isn't there a Coptic style writing of the Qur'an done during 'Umar's caliphate? I had a facsimile copy of some of the pages and seem to recall it was done in 'Umar's time frame.  But since even mid-7th century is quite early for carefully written texts of any sort, I have been trying to find out when the Arabs became so accomplished in the written text.  Since I always compare what we know about European literature to what I don't know about Arabic culture, I date from the earliest date given to the Anglo-Saxon "Beowulf," usually about 725 CE.  At the same time, one of the Old Saxon documents (European Continent) "The Heliand," is dated from about the time of Charlemagne, who wasn't crowned until 800 CE. His son didn't take over the throne until about 830 CE so we can date "The Heliand" from that time period.  That is still quite early for vernacular languages in Europe.

I have all sorts of available information about the development of the written text dating from the Sumerian kingdom about 2740 BCE with Gilgamesh through the Assyrians, Egyptians, etc.  Is there a similar development from something like the Western hieroglyphics and cuneiform to the much later specific alphabetic letters done in Arabic as well?  I'm fascinated by the record of the complex writing down of the Qur'an in the early years after the Prophet's death.  That and the absolute accuracy involved is unlike anything I know of in the West.  Where did this writing come from?  Obviously, there were scholars available long before the Qur'an was written down but that would seem to indicate that the written language of Arabic was established during the Jahillyah and did not suddenly appear.  i have accounted for the fact that in the West, Latin was the language of the scholars, just as classical Arabic was the language of scholars and the written word. But the sudden explosion of the legal scholars and collectors of Hadith--all with written texts interests me greatly and I have no way to find a history of this entire process.

Is there any text I can read about the early development of writing in Arabic? Or the early history of the schools of law and Hadith?  I have taken specific classes in Islamic jurisprudence, hadith and sunnah, development of fiqh and some other classes all related to these materials.  But because these texts focus on the law, they don't relate as much about the history of the written text.

Thank you again so much for your response on the "Hanging Poems." The opposing views to the likelihood of the poems in the Ka'aba make sense in light of the oral tradition but I had no way to evaluate how true or false the tradition of these poems might be. When I teach, I focus on the poetry of Anbar and the story of Anbar and Aabla, his beloved.  But so many of my students are immediately fascinated by the abilities of the early Muslims to record so much and track the transmissions of the Prophet to evaluate the hadith.  Again, thank you so much for your insight and information!

Dear Mohammad,

Many thanks for the translations. These poems are interesting for me mainly from cultural point of view. Unfortunately, I was not able to experience the original structure and rhythm.

This article is fantastic! I intend to study it carefully because the earliest script I've seen is Kufic, and I know little about earlier scripts or the early development of writing in the Hijaz, in particular. One of my major research interests lies in the early recording of the Qur'an, an unusual feat to be done so early in Islamic history (especially when we look at orally preserved texts in general). My graduate studies focused on oral tradition in Europe and West Africa; Over the years, I've been working on more of the history of the Qur'an and its recording.  I appreciate so much your active interest in this quest of mine  and look forward to sharing more information.  I do have some questions about the new Qur'anic pages found in the UK. Your response answered some major points for me but since my Arabic terminology is weak, I will send a few questions about some terms.  My major studies have been in Qur'an, Hadith/Sunnah as sources of Islamic jurisprudence; my studies in hadith are much stronger than those in Qur'an.  I look forward to learning more.  And please, forgive me for forgetting about your celebration of 'Eid - Eid Mubarak!  Around here, celebration of Eid is a large celebration within the Muslim community but it is not done much in public but more quietly in the mosques.

Aysha Bey, the definitive work on the development of the Arabic script has been done by Beatrice Gruendler: The Development of the Arabic Scripts: From the Nabatean Era to the First Islamic Century. The direct evidence for writing in the period you are talking about is rather scant — mostly epigraphic inscriptions that contain Arabic words and names. We have nothing from Western Arabia at all from the time just before the Prophet through the first decades after him.

The practice of "publishing" important documents on the temple walls goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks, who posted contracts and agreements in that fashion. So it is a very old practice that predates even the oldest indications of writing in Arabia by several centuries and was likely imported along with the culture of literacy more generally.

The tale of the Muallaqat, however, is somewhat problematic, because you must keep in mind that the Arabic script of the time was inadequate for preserving poetry precisely, and likewise the Qur'an. It consisted of the rasm (literally: "skeleton"), or unmarked consonantal forms, which did not distinguish between letters of similar shape but different sounds. It was, therefore, a mnemonic device used to aid in the recitation of what one had already memorized. (Note that one translation for the word qur'ān in Arabic is "recitation".)

Whatever was published on the walls of the Kaʿba could not have been more than an indication as to how to recite the poem for someone who already knew it. As one of your responders has pointed out, memorization was a Big Deal for the Arabs of the time.

Likewise, this complicates the ḥadīth narrative about the collection of the Qurʾān. If the traditional account is to be believed, Abu Bakr did indeed cause the parts of the document that had already been written down to be collected into a version he could use for his own purposes as caliph, and he did hand this musḥaf on to his daughter. The ḥadīth accounts, however, do not clearly indicate whether this included those portions of the text that had been preserved only by oral memorization. Maybe, maybe not. But again, all that was preserved was the consonantal forms to remind the reciter of what he theoretically already knew. This first round of the story reflects the early Islamic community being concerned with the fragility of exclusively oral transmission.

The second stage, as others here have indicated (again, if the ḥadīth are to be believed), was when Uthman brought together the best reciters under the direction of the Prophet's secretary to put together a definitive edition of the text. This is the community being worried about the imprecision and divergence that can take place with purely oral transmission. And again, this panel of experts could only have put together a "definitive" aide-de-memoir.

Thus the idea that Uthman produced the Qurʾān we know today is an oversimplification. He probably did not have anything like the authority or capacity he would have needed to actually replace all other versions of the text with his own: the empire now stretched from Khurasan in the east to beyond Egypt. (The very fact that he was murdered by malcontents from Egypt shows that his power was often contested — all the more so, one would think, where religious matters were concerned.) Certainly the script in use at the time was simply not adequate to preserve the text with the kind of precision that is often assumed.

And we see this in the documentary evidence. Some of the earliest surviving Qurʾānic passages have small variations that suggest that the "Uthmanic" text was still not definitive even a century later. Moreover, variant readings of the text were still common as late as the latter half of the 10th century, when these became codified in the idea that there are 6 "authentic" readings (that is, pronunciations) of the text.

So the tale of the emergence of Arabic into fully literate society is a complex and interesting one. Study it enough, and one learns to be cautious about overly simple, confidently precise explanations.

I am interested in Pre-Islamic poetry. I found some manuscripts that include verses not published in Arabic. I have published some papers on the influence of Antara on Shakedpeare, among other English poets.

I recommend looking for Imru'u al Quais, one of the famous poet that some of his poems are mentioned in Quran.

It's strange why you are researching in this regard and didn't mention anything about him?

Thank you

I recommend that you have a look at this book:

Book Eastern Luminaries Disclosed to Western Eyes: A Critical Eva...

It has a whole chapter that answers your question.

Good luck!