Arabic Poetry Resources

 

Learning Arabic

Commercial sites for learning Arabic include: babel, shariahprogram, al-bab egyptian arabic, mulilingual books unrv and arabic school software.

Free information can be found on ukindia, hikyaku, learn arabic, hejleh, search language and academicinfo.

Online Arabic-English-Arabic dictionaries are at: websters, applied language, almisbar, yourdictionary, Arabic dictionaries and etcaco.

Some useful language exchanges: friends abroad, xlingo, mylanguage exchange, polyglot learn language, and lingozone.

Arabic Poetry

Arabic is very different from the Indo-European languages in its letter forms and structure. Its poetry is quantitative, and builds on rich oral traditions of pre-Islamic Arabia. General introductions can be found at britannica, simawe, Arabic poetry, muslim philosophy, new criterion and islamcity.

A very readable introduction is still R.A. Nicholson's A Literary History of the Arabs (CUP, 1956). More specialist is Julie Scott Meisami's Orient Pearls: Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Poetry (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).

Al Mutanabbi

The greatest of classical Arabic poets, Al-Mutanabbi (the prophet: 915-965) was also a political firebrand. The poet was the master of the exuberant panegyric, arousing the greatest enthusiasm in native speakers. His Diwan (collected poems) are famous for their long-lived qasida and madin. The classical period ended with the 1258 sack of Baghdad by the Mongols, but Al-Mutannabi has been an inspiration to poets trying to recapture an earlier vigour and purity.

Translations can be found at oldpoets, arberry etc.

 

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