Texts of Islam

Arabian Poetry: Extracts From The Lay of the Himyarites: Notes

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These are editorial footnotes from W. A. Clouston's 1881 anthology *Arabian Poetry*, appended to his edition of a Kasideh (a formal Arabic ode) tracing the lineage of the ancient Himyarite kingdom of Yemen. The notes gloss proper names and allusions in the poem that would be opaque to general English readers, drawing on the Quran, classical Islamic commentators, and 18th-century European scholarship like the *Ancient Universal History*. The bulk of the content unpacks Quranic stories of divine punishment — the destruction of the tribe of 'Ad for rejecting the prophet Hûd, and the annihilation of the Thamûd after they slew a miraculous she-camel produced by the prophet Sâlih — explaining how these episodes became proverbial expressions in Arabic literature. A substantial note on Queen Bilkîs (identified with the Queen of Sheba) recounts the Islamic legend of Solomon's hoopoe-messenger, the queen's conversion to Islam, and their subsequent marriage, while noting that Muslim theology retrospectively claimed all Biblical patriarchs as Muslims. The notes are scholarly but accessibly written, aimed at readers who know neither Arabic nor Islamic tradition, and they illustrate how a 19th-century British editor mediated classical Arabian poetry for a Victorian audience by layering Orientalist sources atop the text.

Arabian Poetry: Extracts From The Lay of the Himyarites: Notes

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