{"collection":"Texts of Islam","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp013_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp013_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp013_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/arp013.htm","summary":"This is a classical Arabic ode (qasida) from an 1881 English anthology of Arabian poetry, translated by W. A. Clouston. The poem follows the traditional pre-Islamic qasida structure: it opens with a lament over a departed beloved, transitions into an extended, technically detailed praise of the poet's camel, and then shifts to a boastful celebration of the poet's own virtues \u2014 his generosity, courage, and capacity for pleasure. The central sections are dominated by an extraordinarily elaborate anatomical description of the camel, rendered through a cascade of similes comparing her limbs, eyes, ears, and gait to ships, architecture, animals, and tools. A distinctive feature is the poem's frank hedonism: the speaker defends wine-drinking, erotic pleasure, and battlefield valor as the three justifications for life, arguing with philosophical directness that the miser and the libertine share the same grave. The poem also contains a personal grievance against the speaker's kinsman Malec, whose unexplained coldness is said to wound more than a sword \u2014 a note of injured pride that gives the boastfulness an undercurrent of vulnerability. Readers interested in pre-Islamic Arabic literary culture, the qasida tradition, or archaic English translation styles will find this a vivid if occasionally opaque example of the form.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Arabian Poetry: The Moallak\u00e1t: The Poem of Tarafa","tradition":"Texts of Islam","translated_text":null,"word_count":2758}