Texts of Islam

Arabian Poetry: The Romance of Antar: Antar Goes to Mecca

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This is an excerpt from *Arabian Poetry* (1881), W. A. Clouston's anthology of classical Arabic verse and narrative, drawing on the tradition of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic heroic romance — specifically the legend of Antar (ʿAntar ibn Shaddad), the celebrated warrior-poet hero. The passage combines prose narrative with embedded verse in the manner of the *Sirat ʿAntar*, a sprawling medieval Arabic epic, presenting Antar's night journey to Mecca alongside poems expressing his inner anguish. The central content is a tension between martial glory and romantic suffering: Antar is supreme on the battlefield yet despised in peacetime, and tormented by unrequited love for Abla (the "daughter of Malik"), whose tribe exploits his valor while denying him social standing. En route, he rescues a family from desert brigands in a brief chivalric episode, then declines marriage to the grateful daughters because his heart belongs entirely to Abla. The distinctive perspective is the interplay of the heroic and the elegiac — a peerless warrior undone not by enemies but by love and social humiliation, voicing his grievances in lyric verse while performing deeds of rescue. Someone interested in classical Arabic literary traditions, the intersection of poetry and prose romance, or the figure of the warrior-poet would find this worthwhile; it is less useful as scholarly analysis and more as a Romantic-era English rendering of the source material's emotional texture.

Arabian Poetry: The Romance of Antar: Antar Goes to Mecca

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