Arabian Poetry: The Romance of Antar: Editor's Preface

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This is a scholarly introduction, from W. A. Clouston's 1881 anthology *Arabian Poetry*, to *Antar* — a vast pre-Islamic Arabic heroic romance attributed to the 8th-century philologist El-Asma'ee, tracing the warrior-poet Antar ibn Shaddad through tribal wars, a celebrated love story, and death. Clouston describes Terrick Hamilton's partial English translation (1819–1820) and summarizes the romance's three-part arc, emphasizing that the work is the primary literary record of Arab life and values before Islam — hospitality, bravery, vindictiveness, honor — and is interwoven throughout with natural, emotionally powerful poetry. The essay's central argument is that *Antar* likely served as the model for early European chivalric romance, with Clouston tracing a possible transmission route through Saracen Spain and Crusade-era contact between Asia and Europe, and drawing explicit parallels between the Arabic romance's incidents and those in medieval Gothic romances. He further situates *Antar* within a broader debate about the origins of popular fiction, arguing that European medieval tales can largely be traced back through Arabian, Persian, and ultimately Indian (Buddhist and Sanskrit) sources, while also suggesting that *Antar* itself may owe some material to lost pre-Islamic Persian romances. The piece is notable for its comparative sweep — linking a specific Arabic text to Sanskrit fables, Pali Buddhist sources, the *Thousand and One Nights*, and Carolingian-era diplomacy — and for the frank admission that Hamilton's translation failed commercially because English readers were conditioned by shallow French-adapted Eastern imitations rather than genuine Oriental literature.

Arabian Poetry: The Romance of Antar: Editor's Preface

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