{"collection":"Texts of Islam","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp004_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp004_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp004_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/arp/arp004.htm","summary":"This is a scholarly introduction \u2014 part of an 1881 anthology of pre-Islamic Arabian poetry \u2014 that situates early Arab verse within its historical, geographical, and cultural context before presenting the poems themselves. Clouston surveys Arabia's five main provinces, dwelling especially on Yemen (praised for its fertile, spring-like climate as the cradle of pastoral poetry) and Hijaz (home to Mecca and Medina), and traces the two main lineages of Arab peoples back to Qahtan and Adnan through biblical genealogy. He draws on Gibbon, Sir William Jones, and Sir William Muir to characterize the Arabs' centuries-long resistance to conquest as rooted in the discipline of nomadic pastoral life, and describes their pre-Islamic religion as largely star and idol worship, with 360 idols housed in the Kaaba at Mecca. The text is notably interested in Arab social values as revealed through poetry \u2014 hospitality and generosity were paramount virtues, avarice a deep shame \u2014 while acknowledging that moral culture had degenerated into ferocity and excess by the generation before Muhammad. A distinctive thread runs throughout: the desert environment itself, along with the camel economy that sustained it, is presented as the material and spiritual foundation of Arab poetic sensibility.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Arabian Poetry: Introduction: I.\u2014The Ancient Arabs","tradition":"Texts of Islam","translated_text":null,"word_count":3510}