Texts of Islam

Arabian Poetry: The Romance of Antar: King Zoheir and His Brother, Asyed

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This is a prose narrative excerpt from W. A. Clouston's 1881 anthology *Arabian Poetry*, drawn from the pre-Islamic Arabic romance cycle of Antar — a genre blending heroic epic with lyrical love poetry. The passage recounts how King Zoheir's learned brother Asyed, upon revisiting a valley of tamarisk trees, is overcome by grief and recites a mournful love poem before confessing a youthful secret: decades earlier, he had impulsively married a shepherd's daughter in that same valley, then lost her when she disappeared before his messenger could bring her home. The embedded poem itself is notable for its classical Arabic motifs — the apostrophe to trees as witnesses to lost love, tears as a flooding lake, the owl and raven as emblems of desolation — illustrating how the anthology uses verse as an emotional pivot within prose narrative. The tale resolves with a melodramatic recognition scene: the warrior Antar captures a young chief whose wrist bracelet reveals him to be Asyed's unknown son, leading to the family's reunion. The excerpt is most useful for readers interested in pre-Islamic Arabic literary conventions, the interplay of poetry and prose in the *Sirat Antar* tradition, or 19th-century Western anthologizing of Arab literary culture.

Arabian Poetry: The Romance of Antar: King Zoheir and His Brother, Asyed

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