{"collection":"Texts of Islam","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp145_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp145_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_isl_arp_arp145_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/arp145.htm","summary":"This is a scholarly introduction, drawn from W. A. Clouston's 1881 anthology *Arabian Poetry*, to the 12th-century Yemeni scholar and poet Neshw\u00e2n ibn Sa'\u012bd (d. 1177 CE). The piece profiles him as a Himyaritic nobleman based in rural Hamd\u00e2n whose learning drew on both classical Arabic texts and oral peasant tradition, and whose major lexicographical work, the *Shems el-'Ul\u00fbm*, was considered historically and geographically valuable by contemporary Orientalists. The text then introduces his best-known poem, the *Lay of the Himyarites*, an elegy on the fall of the ancient Himyarite dynasty of Yemen whose central theme is the universal decay of power and glory \u2014 a meditation the author acknowledges is philosophically commonplace. The distinctive argument is that the poem's real scholarly value lies not in its moral reflections but in its function as a compressed historical record: it preserves the names of otherwise unattested Yemeni kings and princes. Clouston's framing positions the *Lay* as evidence that the elaborate genealogies found throughout early Arabic literature are not invented fictions but rest on genuine historical tradition, with the poem serving as corroboration when read alongside the *Shems el-'Ul\u00fbm*. The text is aimed at a reader interested in classical Arabic literature and its use as a source for pre-Islamic South Arabian history.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Arabian Poetry: Extracts From The Lay of the Himyarites: From the Translator's Preface","tradition":"Texts of Islam","translated_text":null,"word_count":538}