Texts of Islam

Arabian Poetry: The Moallakát: The Poem of Tarafa

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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 — 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 — 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.

Arabian Poetry: The Moallakát: The Poem of Tarafa

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