This short poem which seems to be pre-Islamic, is preserved in Abu Tammam's ?amasa. The attribution found in the ?amasa is probably false, and the only clues as to the poem's provenance would seem to be the features of the text itself. It is also an extremely short piece, and therefore one is faced with a more acute version of the same question one is always faced with in dealing with a piece that survives only in the ?amasa: do we have the entire piece as Abu Tammam knew it?
The answer, obviously, is that we don't know. It may well be that some material has fallen out after line 6. But the poem stands well as is.
Earlier on, this text had minor adjustments to the ordering of lines based on what seemed to me to make good sense, and what made for the strongest poem. The lines were in the order 1,2,3,4,5,8,7,6,9,10,11,12. Hiba Krisht has now convinced me to restore the original line ordering.
Like Arab commentators I find it difficult to shake the sense that the man being lamented is a ?u?luk. (The word is usually translated as "outlaw" though the term "desperado" conveys more of the Arabic word's flavor.) A ?u?luk was a man who had been exiled by his tribe and was forced to eke out a painful, empty-bellied and often short life on his own. If one is to believe the sources (and here the general picture seems to me more likely to have some truth to it than any specific instances), despite the terrible consequences of exile, it was not infrequent. Sometimes the man in question may have simply been an obnoxious and intolerable person too maladjusted for communitarian tribal life. In most cases, though, it would have been for serious crimes which made the man impossible to trust or a liability to retain, acts which might would bring shame upon, or even incur outside aggression against, the entire tribe if the individual responsible was not cast out. If, for example, a man were to kill a member of another tribe in a way that his community could not support, then he might have to be exiled. To keep him around would be to condone his action and therefore essentially an act of war.
A word on meter and rhyme is now in order, if only because it bears on how this poem is to be dated. Arab commentators take each rhyme to be a verse-end, with each verse so defined consisting of two hemistichs each with the metrical pattern ??- - ??-. This already falls outside of the canonical khalilian metrical scheme, although this poem is traditionally reckoned as being in a rare form of madid. (It would in fact be unique, not rare, as it is the only Early Arabic specimen of this peculiar meter.)
However, one need not even assume that the rhymes mark verse-ends. They could just as easily mark the boundary between hemistichs, and the rhymes could be a form of ta?ri? whose scope covers the entirety of the poem. A number of syntactic parallelisms do suggest to me that this was the division according to which this poem was composed. If one classifies the lines this way, then the end-rhyme need not necessarily be scanned as the pausal form -ak but as -aka and the lines could therefore have a metrical pattern ??- - ??- ??- ????, which is at an even greater remove from classical Arab metrical theory. The rhyming lines can be divided into internal hemistichs (as I do in my romanization and in my spacing of the translation), which to my mind gives it a very tense, disjointed and discombobulated texture.
Poems whose meter falls outside traditional Khalilian classification are usually quite early, and consistent rhyme across hemistichs seems to have been the norm in archaic Arabic as well as old south Arabian verse, as in the recently discovered rhymed Qanya inscription dating to the 1st century AD. This seems to me good reason to at least argue for an early composition, despite its late and - as with the rest of the ?amasa - rather suspicious attestation.
I have included Friedrich R�ckert's German translation of this poem after my romanization of the original. R�ckert's translations of Arabic poetry are impressive. Though not as celebrated as his translations from Persian, they deserve appreciation by anyone who enjoys poetry and can read German.
Lament for a Man Dear to Her
By an Unknown Woman (5th-6th century AD?)
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the Arabic
1 He roamed in search of refuge
From death and now has died
2 I want to know what happened,
What wrongly took your life
3 Were you sick with none to tend you,
Or slain asleep at night?
4 Or was your stroke of chance
The desert's lethal strike?
5 Wherever a young man roams
The Fates in ambush lie
6 What good that young men have
Did you lack in your life?
7 All things are murderous
When you come to your Time
8 Long did your every gain
Come at hardship's price
9 Disaster deafens you
To questions that I cry
10 I must steel myself for you
Will never again reply
11 Would that my heart could face
Your death for a moment's time
12 Would that the Fates had spared
Your life instead of mine
Notes:
L4: The word sulak in the original is only attested with the meaning "young partridge", which makes its presence in this context rather puzzling. R�ckert in the commentary following his German translation of this poem admits that it is a word "that I don't know how to explain" (das ich nicht erkl�ren wei�.) My reading takes sulak as a word derived from the root s-l-k (c.f. salaka "he traveled by road, made his way") with the hypothetical sense "wanderer, trekker" and assumes that the line refers to woes befalling a traveler in the desert.
The Original:
Amari?un lam tu?ad
am ?aduwwun xatalak
Wal-manaya ra?adun
lil-fat� ?ay?u salak
Kullu �ay'in qatilun
hina talq� ajalak
Ayyu �ay'in hasanin
lifat�n lam yaku lak
Inna amran fadihan
?an jawabi �a?alak
Layta qalbi sa?atan
?abrahu ?anka malak
The answer, obviously, is that we don't know. It may well be that some material has fallen out after line 6. But the poem stands well as is.
Earlier on, this text had minor adjustments to the ordering of lines based on what seemed to me to make good sense, and what made for the strongest poem. The lines were in the order 1,2,3,4,5,8,7,6,9,10,11,12. Hiba Krisht has now convinced me to restore the original line ordering.
Like Arab commentators I find it difficult to shake the sense that the man being lamented is a ?u?luk. (The word is usually translated as "outlaw" though the term "desperado" conveys more of the Arabic word's flavor.) A ?u?luk was a man who had been exiled by his tribe and was forced to eke out a painful, empty-bellied and often short life on his own. If one is to believe the sources (and here the general picture seems to me more likely to have some truth to it than any specific instances), despite the terrible consequences of exile, it was not infrequent. Sometimes the man in question may have simply been an obnoxious and intolerable person too maladjusted for communitarian tribal life. In most cases, though, it would have been for serious crimes which made the man impossible to trust or a liability to retain, acts which might would bring shame upon, or even incur outside aggression against, the entire tribe if the individual responsible was not cast out. If, for example, a man were to kill a member of another tribe in a way that his community could not support, then he might have to be exiled. To keep him around would be to condone his action and therefore essentially an act of war.
A word on meter and rhyme is now in order, if only because it bears on how this poem is to be dated. Arab commentators take each rhyme to be a verse-end, with each verse so defined consisting of two hemistichs each with the metrical pattern ??- - ??-. This already falls outside of the canonical khalilian metrical scheme, although this poem is traditionally reckoned as being in a rare form of madid. (It would in fact be unique, not rare, as it is the only Early Arabic specimen of this peculiar meter.)
However, one need not even assume that the rhymes mark verse-ends. They could just as easily mark the boundary between hemistichs, and the rhymes could be a form of ta?ri? whose scope covers the entirety of the poem. A number of syntactic parallelisms do suggest to me that this was the division according to which this poem was composed. If one classifies the lines this way, then the end-rhyme need not necessarily be scanned as the pausal form -ak but as -aka and the lines could therefore have a metrical pattern ??- - ??- ??- ????, which is at an even greater remove from classical Arab metrical theory. The rhyming lines can be divided into internal hemistichs (as I do in my romanization and in my spacing of the translation), which to my mind gives it a very tense, disjointed and discombobulated texture.
Poems whose meter falls outside traditional Khalilian classification are usually quite early, and consistent rhyme across hemistichs seems to have been the norm in archaic Arabic as well as old south Arabian verse, as in the recently discovered rhymed Qanya inscription dating to the 1st century AD. This seems to me good reason to at least argue for an early composition, despite its late and - as with the rest of the ?amasa - rather suspicious attestation.
I have included Friedrich R�ckert's German translation of this poem after my romanization of the original. R�ckert's translations of Arabic poetry are impressive. Though not as celebrated as his translations from Persian, they deserve appreciation by anyone who enjoys poetry and can read German.
Lament for a Man Dear to Her
By an Unknown Woman (5th-6th century AD?)
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the Arabic
1 He roamed in search of refuge
From death and now has died
2 I want to know what happened,
What wrongly took your life
3 Were you sick with none to tend you,
Or slain asleep at night?
4 Or was your stroke of chance
The desert's lethal strike?
5 Wherever a young man roams
The Fates in ambush lie
6 What good that young men have
Did you lack in your life?
7 All things are murderous
When you come to your Time
8 Long did your every gain
Come at hardship's price
9 Disaster deafens you
To questions that I cry
10 I must steel myself for you
Will never again reply
11 Would that my heart could face
Your death for a moment's time
12 Would that the Fates had spared
Your life instead of mine
Notes:
L4: The word sulak in the original is only attested with the meaning "young partridge", which makes its presence in this context rather puzzling. R�ckert in the commentary following his German translation of this poem admits that it is a word "that I don't know how to explain" (das ich nicht erkl�ren wei�.) My reading takes sulak as a word derived from the root s-l-k (c.f. salaka "he traveled by road, made his way") with the hypothetical sense "wanderer, trekker" and assumes that the line refers to woes befalling a traveler in the desert.
The Original:
???? ????? ???????? ??? ??????? ??????
????? ?????? ??????? ??? ???? ???????
??????? ?? ?????? ??? ????? ???????
?? ??????? ???? ?? ???? ?? ??????? ????????
???????? ?????? ??????? ???? ?????
???? ?? ?? ????? ?? ????? ????? ??????
???? ????? ????? ???? ????? ??????
??? ??? ?????? ????? ?? ???? ???
????? ????? ??????? ???? ????? ???????
????????? ??????? ?? ?? ?????? ??? ??????
???? ???? ????? ???????? ????? ?????
???? ?????? ???????? ???????? ???????
Romanization:
?afa yab?i najwatan
min halakin fahalak
min halakin fahalak
Layta �i?ri ?allatan
ayyu �ay'in qatalak
ayyu �ay'in qatalak
Amari?un lam tu?ad
am ?aduwwun xatalak
Am tawall� bika ma
?ala fi al-dahri al-sulak
?ala fi al-dahri al-sulak
Wal-manaya ra?adun
lil-fat� ?ay?u salak
?ala ma qad nilta fi
?ayri kaddin amalak
?ayri kaddin amalak
Kullu �ay'in qatilun
hina talq� ajalak
Ayyu �ay'in hasanin
lifat�n lam yaku lak
Inna amran fadihan
?an jawabi �a?alak
Sa'u?azzi al-nafsa i�
lam tujib man sa'alak
lam tujib man sa'alak
Layta qalbi sa?atan
?abrahu ?anka malak
Layta nafsi quddimat
lil-manaya badalak
Die Mutter des Ta'abbata Scharran
Rettung suchend schweift' er um
vor dem Tod, dem nichts entflieht.
W��t ich, was den Untergang
dir gebracht, und welch Gebiet!
Ob du Kranker unbesucht
starbtest; ob dich Feind verriet;
Oder dich ein Unfall traf,
der die Bente stets ersieht.
Schicksal lauert �berall
auf den Mann, wohin er zieht.
Was ist sch�n an einem Mann,
welches Gott nicht dir beschied!
Doch den Tod bringt Alles dir,
wo dich dein Verh�ngnis zieht.
Lange Zeit geno�est du
deinen Wunsch durch nichts bem�ht.
Schwere Hindrung ist's, die nun
deine Antwort mir entzieht.
Dein entschlagen will ich mich,
weil weil mich deine Antwort flieht.
Ich das einen Augenblick
Ich des Grams um dich entriet'!
Ich da� dich vom Tod mein Leben
l�ste, des ich gerne biet'
lil-manaya badalak
Die Mutter des Ta'abbata Scharran
Rettung suchend schweift' er um
vor dem Tod, dem nichts entflieht.
W��t ich, was den Untergang
dir gebracht, und welch Gebiet!
Ob du Kranker unbesucht
starbtest; ob dich Feind verriet;
Oder dich ein Unfall traf,
der die Bente stets ersieht.
Schicksal lauert �berall
auf den Mann, wohin er zieht.
Was ist sch�n an einem Mann,
welches Gott nicht dir beschied!
Doch den Tod bringt Alles dir,
wo dich dein Verh�ngnis zieht.
Lange Zeit geno�est du
deinen Wunsch durch nichts bem�ht.
Schwere Hindrung ist's, die nun
deine Antwort mir entzieht.
Dein entschlagen will ich mich,
weil weil mich deine Antwort flieht.
Ich das einen Augenblick
Ich des Grams um dich entriet'!
Ich da� dich vom Tod mein Leben
l�ste, des ich gerne biet'
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