Studies in Pre-Islamic Literature

This book comprises a collection of studies and research on pre-Islamic literature, prepared for students of Arabic Language and Literature departments in faculties of arts. At the beginning of these lectures, we attempted to present a concise, yet comprehensive, overview of the most prominent aspects of the environment of Arabic literature before Islam, and to examine the political, social, spiritual, and intellectual life of that era. We then followed this with a discussion of literary life in the pre-Islamic period, focusing primarily on the essential and important issues of literary life in that era, while omitting less significant details that are generally agreed upon by scholars or unknown to researchers. Among these important issues is the antiquity of pre-Islamic poetry and its representatives that is, the early pre-Islamic poets. There was almost a consensus that the pre-Islamic poetry we study and understand today predates Islam by no more than 150 years, according to al-Jahiz and those who followed his lead, both ancient and modern. However, we will see that this view is incorrect. We have found texts of pre-Islamic poetry whose authenticity is considered likely, dating back four hundred years before Islam. This means that the pre-Islamic poetry known today is two hundred years older than the period al-Jahiz estimated.