{"collection":"Texts of Islam","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp019_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp019_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp019_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/arp019.htm","summary":"This is an English translation of the *Mu'allaqa* of Antara ibn Shaddad, one of the seven celebrated pre-Islamic Arabic odes (the *Mu'allaqat*) composed around the 6th century CE and collected in W. A. Clouston's 1881 anthology of Arabian poetry. The poem follows the classical *qasida* structure, opening with a love lament for Abla \u2014 a woman of a rival or inaccessible tribe \u2014 as the poet halts at her abandoned dwelling and mourns her absence. The middle sections shift to extended nature imagery: elaborate comparisons of camels, ostriches, rain-drenched gardens, and buzzing flies develop with striking sensory precision, functioning less as decoration than as a sustained demonstration of the poet's descriptive powers. The poem then pivots sharply to martial *fakhr* (self-praise), where Antara boasts of his battlefield ferocity \u2014 slaying armored knights, piercing hauberks, leaving bodies to wolves and lions \u2014 with graphic, unambiguous violence presented as proof of the valor that makes him worthy of Abla's love. A distinctive tension runs throughout: Antara, historically a warrior of mixed Arab-African descent who had to fight to prove his noble standing, frames both his love and his heroism as acts of self-assertion against those who would deny him. Readers drawn to pre-Islamic Arabic literature, heroic poetry in the tradition of the Iliad, or early lyric forms that braid erotic longing with martial identity will find this a canonical and rewarding example.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Arabian Poetry: The Moallak\u00e1t: The Poem of Antara","tradition":"Texts of Islam","translated_text":null,"word_count":2156}