Texts of Islam

Arabian Poetry: The Romance of Antar: How Antar Found the Sword Dhami

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is a prose narrative excerpt from the medieval Arabic heroic romance cycle of Antar (Antarah ibn Shaddad), presented in W. A. Clouston's 1881 anthology *Arabian Poetry*. The passage belongs to the tradition of Arabic chivalric epic, blending adventure, tribal honor, and providential destiny around the legendary warrior-hero Antar. The central episode follows Antar's chance intervention in a fight between two brothers over an extraordinary sword called Dhami — forged from a meteorite by a blacksmith whom the brothers' ancestor immediately killed upon completion, a detail that establishes the sword's violent, fateful character. A dying father had secretly bequeathed the weapon to his younger son to protect him from a tyrannical elder brother, describing it as valuable enough to enrich any king in the known world. Antar sides with the younger brother, kills the elder without hesitation, and then — sitting in the sand afterward — accidentally discovers the buried sword himself, which the narrative frames as divine confirmation of his singular destiny. The text's most distinctive quality is its matter-of-fact fusion of brutality and providence: killings are casual, yet each one advances a cosmic scheme in which Antar's glory is preordained by God.

Arabian Poetry: The Romance of Antar: How Antar Found the Sword Dhami

Related pages View as graph →