Arabian Poetry: Extracts From The Lay of the Himyarites: Notes on the Poem of Amru

This is a set of scholarly annotations from W. A. Clouston's 1881 anthology *Arabian Poetry*, accompanying English translations of classical pre-Islamic Arabic odes (the Mu'allaqat) by poets including Amru, Tarafa, Zohair, and Lebeid. The notes explain cultural and literary context — Arabic customs around morning wine-drinking, the use of "Days" (Ayyām) as a term for battles, the symbolism of the Judas-tree, and the significance of tribal pasture rights — drawing comparisons to Persian literature (Hafiz, the Anvári Suhaili) and to the Romance of Antar. A notable corrective argument runs through the notes: Clouston explicitly pushes back against the European assumption that Eastern poets idealized large, fat women, pointing out that classical Arabic poetry consistently praises slender waists alongside full hips, with the palm, cypress, and spear as standard similes for feminine grace. The notes also include an extended passage on Arabian military culture, arguing that the tribal raiding economy — where women were prized captives and protectors earned honor — gave rise to the romantic and chivalric dimensions of Arabic war poetry, and even to the practice of women accompanying armies. Throughout, Clouston cross-references Lane's *Thousand and One Nights*, Richardson's dissertation on Eastern manners, and multiple Arabic and Persian sources, positioning the work as a rigorously comparative philological commentary for a Western readership encountering these poems for the first time.

Arabian Poetry: Extracts From The Lay of the Himyarites: Notes on the Poem of Amru

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