Reflections on Arabic Poetry in the Mamluk Age (MSR I, 1997)

Arabic poetry composed during the Mamluk Empire (1250-1517) is a vast and rich resource for the study of Arabic and Islamic cultures. Yet it is a resource that is seldom tapped due largely, I suspect, to its raw state, for the majority of this verse is to be found only in manuscript form. Brockelmann, for example, lists approximately twenty d|wa≠ns from this period, most of which are still in manuscript today, and this number grows substantially when one includes additional holdings at Cairo's Da≠r al-Kutub and the Arab League Manuscript Institute; other collections, such as those in Damascus and Istanbul, will undoubtedly add to the total. From among these many manuscripts, about a dozen have been edited and published over the last century. In addition, a substantial number of edited Arabic poems from the Mamluk period may be found in a wide variety of published sources including chronicles, such as Ibn Taghr|bird|'s al-Nuju≠ m al-Za≠ hirah, biographical works, such as alS ̨afad|'s al-Wa≠ f| bi-al-Wafaya≠ t, and several poetic works and anthologies, including Ibn H̨ijjah al-H̨amaw|'s Khiza≠ nat al-Adab wa-Gha≠ yat al-Arab. Some poems from these and other published works have been collected by ‘Umar Fa≠ru≠q in volume three of his Ta’r|kh al-Adab al-‘Arab|. Fa≠ru≠q's encyclopedic work is arranged chronologically and includes brief biographies, bibliographical information, and samples of verse by over seventy-five poets of the Mamluk era. Yet even these many published poems have received scant attention from Western scholars. This continued neglect may reflect the lingering influence of older surveys of Arabic literature which, if they discuss Mamluk Arabic poetry at all, usually dismiss it in a few pages. For instance, at the turn of the century R. A. Nicholson noted that while Mamluk Arabic poetry had yet to receive extensive study, its best poets were "merely elegant and accomplished artists, playing brilliantly with words and phrases, but doing little else."