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Arabic Poetry

@arabicpoetry.bsky.social

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Translations of interesting passages from medieval and modern Arabic literature by Nathaniel Miller, PhD and author of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘳𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘤 𝘗𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺 (https://tinyurl.com/Penn-Press), get 30% off: PENN-NAMILLER30

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Anís del moro @anisdelmoro.bsky.social · 17h

B. Herin and E. Al-Wer, A Grammar of Jordanian Arabic, 2025 (Open Access).
www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

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sana w • who writes often … well, often-ish • is pure enthusiasm @herlog.com · 1d

“Names of the Lion” by Ibn Khālawayh, translated by David Larsen (2017)
www.wavepoetry.com/products/nam...
#poetry

Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 6d

Arabic has 348 words for "lion". Here is the cover of Ibn Khālawayh's (d. 980, Baghdad) book on the subject.

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Dr. Rachel Schine @rachelschine.bsky.social · 2d

Gonna just keep dropping my pubs on this 'ere pinned post.

Dr. Rachel Schine @rachelschine.bsky.social · 5d

My article shows how we can use postcolonial lenses to navigate something we as yet don't know how to acknowledge or talk about well: premodern, non-European people doing things that look a lot like what we now call blackface.
read.dukeupress.edu/jmems/articl...

Performing Blackness in the Medieval Muslim Metropolis: Arabic Literature and Tropicalization

This essay aims to chart a path between premodern blackface performance and postcolonial theory that escapes colonial teleologies. It analyzes moments from the Abbasid through Mamluk era (ca. 750–1517...

read.dukeupress.edu

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Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 2d

Majallat Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī, 1979, parts 3-4, p. 139

Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 2d

—Do I dare to eat a pomegranate—
🍑

I ate a red pomegranate
and someone
who thought it was his lover's cheek
scolded me.

He asked, are you eating
my beloved's cheek?
No, I said. Just a kiss
to suck out its juices.

— al-Khubzaruzzī (d. 938)

وقال أيضاً:
١- أكلت رمانةٌ فعاتبني فتى رٱها كخد معشوقه.
٢- فقال: خذ الحبيب تأكله؟ فقلت: لا؛ بل أمص من ريقه.

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Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 4d

It's interesting in that it seems to be derived from a compound? Maybe some Persian influence there

Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 4d

Majallat Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī, 1979, part 2, p. 165

Bio of the poet:

al-Khubzaruzzi (d. c.327/938)
Abū al-Qāsim Nasr ibn Ahmad al-Khubzaruzzi (Khubza'aruzzi, Khubzuruzzi, etc.), was an illiterate poet of Basra. He baked rice-bread (hence his name) in a shop in the Mirbad (camel market) of Basra, where Ibn Lankak and other élite poets of the city would visit him to hear his verse; for someone of such lowly social status to achieve such celebrity was clearly most unusual. He is said to have spent some time in Baghdad, and, according to a rather dubious rumour, was drowned by the military adventurer al-Barīdī after mocking him in a poem. He excelled primarily, however, in amorous verse (see ghazal), which was directed exclusively to males; the young men of Basra are said to have competed for his poetic attentions. His style is described as simple and unsophisticated, but delicate and effective. His dīwān, reportedly compiled by Ibn Lankak, survives in an unpublished Yemeni manuscript. His verses are also very widely quoted in later anthologies.Further reading
Fullest accounts, with selections, in al-Tha'ālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr, Cairo (1956), vol. 2, 366-9, and al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Ta’rikh Baghdād, Cairo (1931), vol. 13, 296-9.E.K. ROWSON

Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 4d

—Fate Complaint—
⌛

Our precarious age oppresses us
and what age leaves the free uninjured?

The lightest fate that I've suffered
would stop the heavens from turning.

— al-Khubzaruzzī (d. 938)

١- جار الزمانُ على الأحرارِ في تصرفه
وأيُّ دهرٍ على الأحرارِ لم يَجرِ؟
٢- عندي من الدهرِ ما لو أن أيسرَهُ
يُلْقَى على الفلكِ الدوَّارِ لم يَدُرِ

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Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 6d

An Arabic Wikipedia article provides the list:

ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%82%...

قائمة أسماء الأسد في اللغة العربية - ويكيبيديا

ar.wikipedia.org

Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 6d

Arabic has 348 words for "lion". Here is the cover of Ibn Khālawayh's (d. 980, Baghdad) book on the subject.

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Kristof D'hulster @kristofdhulster.bsky.social · 7d

Either coincidence or a very attentive publisher... The author copies of my attempt at translating two #Ottoman texts on 16th-century #poetics arrived at my doorstep right on #InternationalTranslationDay!

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Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 16d

Farrūkh, Tarīkh al-adab al-ʿArabī, 2:393

Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 16d

—On a beautiful song—
🎶

A song more delicious
than an eye
beginning to sleep —

sweeter and lovelier
than a soul's wishes
and its attainment of its dreams.

— Abū ʿUthmān al-Nājim (Iraq, d. 926)

Arabic text

قال في وصف الشدو (الغناء):
شدُوّ ألذّ من ابتدأ العينُ في إغفائها،
أحلى وأشهى من مُنى نفَسٌ ونَيلُ رُجائها.

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Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 18d

—These Days—
📅

Real people are gone, there's no one.
Greed's been replaced by despair.

The lowest rule over everyone;
the head is under the tail.

— Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd al-Jarrāḥ (Iraq, d. 909)

قد ذهب الناس فلا ناس وصار بعد الطمع الياس

وساس امر الناس الاناهم وصار تحت الذنب الراس

Quoted in Farrūkh, Tarīkh al-adab al-ʿArabī, 2:382

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Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 20d

The author was a Shafi'i legal scholar. A transcription of the Arabic is in the alt text. Information on the manuscript can be found here, my source:

t.me/konashaadel/...

Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · 20d

I hope to live while every hour
on swaying biers the dead pass by.

But aren't I just like them? Except that
I still must live through my remaining nights.

—ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī ʿAṣrūn (Iraq, Syria, d. 1189)

Manuscript image

الحمد لله
للإمام عبدالله بن أبي عصرون صاحب المصنفات الجليلة في الفقه على مذهب الإمام الأعظم محمد بن إدريس الشافعي قدس الله روحهما ونور ضريحهما وأعاد علينا من بركتهما بمنه وكرمه

أؤمِّلُ أن أحيا وفي كل ساعةٍ
‏تَمُرُّ بي الموتى تُهَزُّ نُعوشُها

‏وهل أنا إلا مثلُهمْ غيرَ أن لي
‏بقايا ليالٍ في الزمان أعيشُها

———

مخطوط (143) مجموعة حضرت خالد بالمكتبة السليمانية

مستفاد من أخي/ عبدالصمد السلمي

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Safaitic @safaitic.bsky.social · Sep 5

#New on #OCIANA, perhaps the first rhymed Dhofari text: an expression of weeping out of lovesickness, themes in Safaitic and in Jāhilī poetry.

'here, he has wept; in him is much weeping; because of his excess love (صبه), he is silent'

Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

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Arabic Poetry @arabicpoetry.bsky.social · Sep 8

Classical Arabic proverb of the day:

أبطأ من قاضٍ

abṭaʾu min qāḍin

"Slower than a judge"

A page from the the chapter on the proverb أبطأ من قاض

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Dr. Rachel Schine @rachelschine.bsky.social · Sep 2

The Cairene underworld of Ibn Daniyal's shadow plays, loaded with references to beer-soaked, hashish-addicted entertainers and ne'er-do-wells, was anticipated by a couple centuries in the Cairo Geniza by this Judeo-Arabic legal document about the policies at Dammūh, a shrine at the edge of Fustat...