Marife Turkish Journal of Religious Studies

Abstract

The Status and Importance of “Jamharat Ash‛ār al-‛Arab” Among the Earliest Arabic Anthologies An anthology of ancient Arabic poetry “Jamharat Ash‘ār al-‘Arāb” (The Gathering of Ar- abs' Verses) contains forty-nine “qasīdahs” (full poems) belonged to the forty-nine poets who lived during the Jāhiliya (pre-Islamic) and Islamic periods. This anthology is one of the important works through which Arab poetry heritage is transferred to coming gen- erations. In terms of poems selection method it completed al-Mufaddaliyyāt and al- Asma‛iyyāt. It has a sistematic partitioning and is divided into two main sections being Muqaddima (Introduction) and selected poems. In the Muqaddima, which is quite long, criticism of poetry takes place. The section of selected poems is divided into seven sub- divisions each containing seven poems of seven poets. These are listed under the headings "sumūt" (mu‘allaqāt), "mujamharāt" (collected poems), "muntaqayāt" (selected poems), "mudhahhabāt" (gilded poems), "marāsī " (elegies), "mashūbāt" (the poems touched by Islam as well as pre-Islamic unbelief), "mulhamāt" (strong poems). Chronological ranking of poets is observed. There are also poems which are not located in other sources but just in Jamhara. The only shortcoming about this anthology is that we do not have any bio- graphical data of its compiler