1Jeremy FarrellHistoriography 200J, W 2010

Morony

Historiography of Orality in Jhil Poetry

The formation of a body of works that constitutes a literature is a major step in

the crystallization of a social consciousness; within this context, the works of Arab

poetry composed before and concurrent to the advent of Islam have served as a literal

and "gurative reference point for researchers of all stripes regarding Arab history,

culture and identity. With such issues at stake, this body of literature has attracted

close academic scrutiny.

Owing to the alleged oral composition and transmission of these works - for the

latter a process which occurred over the better part of two and a half centuries, in some

cases - until their collection and redaction under the rwi ammd in the 2nd/8th

century, scholarly focus has over time become more and more attuned to the questions

of the reality of a transmission of this poetry and the historical value with which to

imbue the historical data contained therein. From the 1798 publication of Antoine

Isaac Silvestre de Scy's Mmoires sur l'histoire des Arabes avant Mahomet to the modern

works of anthropologists such as Saad Sowayan, four distinct categories of works may

be identi"ed when constructing a history of the scholarship of Jhil poetry concerning

its oral nature and historicity: 1) A rise in European interest for the use of Arab

2historical materials in order to construct foreign policy and the consequent rejection of

Jhil poetry as a satisfactory source material for such a purpose, as compared to the

privileging of works with con"rmed traditions of textual transmission (1798-1850s); 2)

An injection of European academic tendencies such as Romanticism, a scienti"c-

rationalization of the study of literature characterized by the emergence of statistical

analysis rooted in textual philology, and a strengthening of Christian-apologetic

comparative socio-religious criticisms of Islam and its attendant "elds of study. These

positions resulted in refutations of the possibility of an oral composition or

transmission of Jhil poetry and, at their strongest, denied the existence of such a

poetry, strengthening the criticism of such poetry as "corrupted" in comparison to the

standard of a "Golden Age" of Arabic literature and unworthy of being a historical

source (1870s-1940s); 3) A reaction against the more extreme positions of the previous

scholarship characterized by the continued use of more sophisticated statistical

analysis coupled with an emerging literary- and oral-theory to sanction the

authenticity of Jhil poetry in scholarship (1947-late 1970s); 4) A sea change in the

procedural analysis of ancient Arabic poetry heralded by the introduction of

"ethnopoetics" and new mobile recording technology which led to the abandonment of

text-based analysis of orality in ancient Arabic poetry. The result of such a movement

broadened the participation of academics from "elds such as linguistics, ethnography,

3anthropology and folklore and has broadly con"rmed the "ndings of the previous

generation of scholars in terms of the genuineness of Jhil poetry (1986-present).

By no means is this to assert that opinion was uniform throughout these

periods. Rather, one may categorize the point of view, style and general attitude of the

authors toward their subject; exceptions to the prevailing attitudes were a certainty, if a

rarity. Additionally, far from being a niche concern of Arabists and Orientalists, the

study of Jhil poetry has been shaped and reformed by advances in contemporary

research in the social sciences. The study of orality - particularly theories of oral

composition and transmission - in oral literatures and cultures outside the scope of

researchers concerned with Jhil poetry has, for 75 years, been used as the basis of

describing and shaping an oral theory for ancient Arabic literature.

This paper seeks to describe the course of the use and criticism of texts from the

Jhilya throughout the 200-plus years of Western scholarly attention they have

received. The process will track not only the arc of those four periods of scholarship

directly related to Jhilya texts but also concurrent development in oral theory related

to in non-Arab traditions as well as relevant historical circumstances and general

trends in contemporary scholarship.

Early Scholarship

4

The early attention paid by scholars to Jhil poetry was in the interest of what

Julie Scott Meisami might have called "mining for data".1 Little theoretical or technical

work was done in relation to the poetry itself, and initially, scholars looked skeptically

upon the documented poems as accurate and usable sources, with opinion turning ever

more mistrustful of that stance with the passage of time.

The political climate in which the works were written may help explain the

emergence of scholarly endeavor by French Orientalists at the outset of the 19th

century. With the waning of Ottoman power over parts of the eastern Maghreb, France,

in its pursuit of overseas interests, began to cast its eyes over the Mediterranean. What

would eventually become a colonial venture arose from the strained relations between

Louis XVI and the Dey of Algiers over grain payments; these would eventually devolve

into a sustained period of skirmishes lasting through the reign of Charles X (re.

1824-30). Naturally, interest in the history of the Arab people with whom the French

government was sparring was high and required undertaking.

Against this backdrop, two early "gures loom large. The "rst was Antoine Isaac

Silvestre de Scy, author of works such as Memoires sur l'histoire des Arabes avant Mahomet

(1785) and Chrestomathie arabe, ou extraits de divers crivains arabes (1806), early attempts

to use the Arab literary tradition in establishing a chronology of early Islam. After

1 Julie Scott Meisami. Persian Historiography to the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Press (1999), pp. 319.

5spending a great deal of time on the French diplomatic mission to Algiers, De Scy was

also the "rst modern European to compile a dialect-dictionary, using the Algerian

dialect to construct a primer in 1798. Most prominent amongst the works used by de

Scy was the Kitb al-Aghn, a 10,000-page tome of poems, songs and biographies of

singers and rws, as well as episodes of the cultural and court life of the early Islamic

caliphates redacted into its "nal form sometime in the 4th/10th century. De Scy

concerned himself primarily with the creation of genealogies and the construction of

familial relationships from the actors of K. al-Aghn's pages; the text itself was given no

critical treatment.

In addition to these works, de Scy was part of a grand tradition of producing a

translation the Muallaqt in a European tongue; his version appeared as "Les Sept

Moallakas" in 1816.2 The "rst edition of any translated muallaqah was that of Tarafa,

translated in 1742 by J.J. Reiske and thereafter cited as the basis for the interest in the

Muallaqt. Following him, noted British Orientalist Sir William Jones (d. 1794) penned

his English translation of Labd in 1780. The widespread publication of this translation

was delayed, however, and appeared at very nearly the same time as de Scy's.3 Unlike

in his previous works, however, de Scy left his work merely at the level of translation

2 The various individual muallaqahwere published beginning with that of Labid in 1816; M. Silvestre de Scy. Calila t Dimna ou Fables de Bidpai en Arabe et La Moallaka du Lebid en arabe et franaise. (1816) Paris, L'Imprimperie Royal.

3 The German academic Gnther Wahl also provided translations the muallaqahof Labid, but it seems his work has been long out of publication and generally regarded as of a low standard.

6and made no e&ort to contextualize the material historically. His publication of the

muallaqah of Labd in the same edition as his translation of Kallah wa Dimnah illustrates

his trepidation over using these works anything more than literature, a technique with

which he obviously felt more comfortable in his use of K. al-Aghn.

Following in de Scy's footsteps was M. Caussin de Perceval, the professor of

Arabic Language at the cole Speciale des Langues Orientales. This institution -now

known under the name "Institut National des Langues et Civilisationes Orientales" -

prided itself in producing scholarship that was of recognized utility for politics and

commerce, and produced many of the functionaries who would go on to serve in the

French colonial apparatus; the school continues in its aims to produce a class of capable

foreign o'cers for France to this day. Perceval was the son of a noted French

Orientalist, Jean Jacque Antoine Caussin de Perceval, and dedicated much of his life to

the acquisition of Turkic and Levantine languages and also specialized in Classics. He,

like de Scy, compiled French-Arabic dictionaries and worked as a dragoman in the

Ottoman imperial retinue. His contribution to the study of pre-Islamic poetry can be

found in the massive three-volume edition of Essai sur l'histoire des Arabes avant

l'Islamisme, pendant l'poque de Mahomet (1848), an extension of an earlier work that had

appeared under the same name in the 1837 edition of the Journal Asiatique. Again, we

7"nd the K. al-Aghani used as a "mine" of historical data, with references and

methodology drwng predominantly from the work of de Scy.

De Perceval's other major contribution to the "eld lay in his use of Roman

sources to corroborate the historicity of the poet Anar.4 The introduction of a

theoretical framework with a markedly comparative ethic - the use of a "trusted"

Roman source to validate a less reliable Arabic one - prefaced a turn toward

comparative studies that European scholarship would embark upon for the greater part

of the 19th century. This work was based o& of earlier e&orts of Elias Mnil, who

published his Latin treatment of the text in Antar poma Arabicum Moallaka (1816); the

work was considered lacking, and, as one commentator put it:

Nous regrettons qu'il n'ait pas t a meme de consulter le Kitb alagani, qui lui auroit fourni quelques materiaux pour le premier et le deuxieme paragraphe de ses prolgomenes. Au reste, il n'est prosque aucun de ces anciens poetes arabes dont l'histoire ne presente une multitide des problems di$ciles ou meme impossibles a resoudre, a cause de la varit des traditions que nous ont t transmises a leur sujet.5 [Italics mine]

The criticism is convincing commentary on the early state of scholarship on

pre-Islamic poetry on two accounts: "rstly, it privileges the historicity of the K. al-

Aghani, an association that fell to works with more wholly textual pedigrees such as

Tabari's Tarikh ar-rusul wa al-Muluk rather than the literary epics of poetry; secondly, it

4 M. Caussin de Perceval. "Notice et extrait de Roman d'Antar", Journal Asiatique (Auguste, 1833), pp. 84-128.

5 Gaston Bruno Paulis Paris. "Commentaire sur In Antar poma Arabicum Moallaka " Journal des Savans. Acadmie des inscriptions & belles-lettres (Auguste 1817), pp. 224.

8rejects the use of other ancient, atextual Arabic poets ("de ces anciens poetes arabes") as

ahistorical and un"t for scholarly use due to the variety of traditions that the author

knows to have been used in their transmission. Should one want to use poetry as a

basis for a historical narrative, it's historicity was doubted from the outset due to the

nature of its transmission and a comparison of that work with a more accepted history -

of either Muslim or non-Muslim origins - would not necessarily validate it. Despite a

very few early works supporting the historical e'cacy of the information contained

within the Muallaqt of authors such as Labid - such as J. Willmet's Commentatio de vita

Labidi (1814) - the prevailing wisdom until the time of de Perceval's death in 1848 held

that the Muallaqt were of little-to-no historical use and were better suited to the realm

of literary studies.

The Issue of Orality

By the middle of the 19th century, a growing polemic in the "eld of religious

studies came to dominate discourse surrounding Arabic literature. The rise of both

attempts at scienti"c-rationalization of "humanistic" sciences such as sociology and

literary theory and the rising colonial experiment in Islamic countries created a new

lens through which Islam was viewed by the academic establishment. By 1875, a full

generation after the death of de Perceval, the science of Comparative Religion had

9become attractive in explaining Christian-Muslim relations. This view colored the

perception of many academics and, consequently, their works:

"It has been remarked, indeed, by writer after writer, that Islam is less interesting than other religions, inasmuch as it is less original. And this is one of the favourite charges brought against it by Christian apologists. In the "rst place, I am inclined to think that the charge of want of originality, though it cannot be denied, has been overdone by recent writers [the scholarship] seems disposed to explain the whole fabric of Islam by the ideas that existed before Mohammed."6

That our speaker here cautions against the over-generalization of Islam in terms

of its intellectual contributions by Christian apologists is telling; in the interests of

defending Christianity, much academic thought adopted a comparative view of inter-

cultural/inter-religious dialogue which pursued a re*exive Christian apologetic tone in

its comparisons.7 Serving not merely as scholarly pursuit, both academic publishing

and works of "ction embraced views that upheld European colonialism and the

inherent superiority of Christian dogma when approaching issues of comparative

culture or religion, especially comparisons between Islam and Christianity. European

"ction, especially, began to borrow heavily on Orientalist imagery, tone and content,

eliciting a surge in the academic study of this phenomenon at the beginning of the 20th

6 Reginald Bosworth Smith. LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN, IX FEBEUARY Axd MAECH 1874. MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. LECTURE I. Delivered At The Royal Institution,February 14, 1874.

7 See Walter Devivier. Christian Apologetics; a defense of the Catholic faith. Cincinnati (1903), Benzinger Bros., pp. 661 for an overview of Christian apologetic writers during the latter half of the 19th century. Interest in the historical polemic between the Abrahamic religions also received scholarly attention; see: Moritz Steinschneider. Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden, nebst Anhngen verwandten Inhalts 1877, Hildenheim, G.g. Olms., pp. 478.

10

century.8 Theories of ethnic and racial inequalities based on social Darwinism and

evolutionary progressivism9 were used to further the divide between Europeans states

and Muslim colonies not purely on religious but also sociological terms. In addition, the

rise of the Romantic Movement, attendant with the idealization of Nature and

Simplicity, created fertile ground for apologists to attribute positive qualities to non-

Christian subjects of their work in the face of as a reaction against some of the negative

imagery caused by the comparative approach.

It is also in this time that the issue of orality in the scheme of Jhil poetry

became a chief concern for those who doubted the usefulness of pre-Islamic Arabic

poetry for historical purposes. Previous commentators, such as Paris above,

acknowledged the vicissitudes of the transmission of the Arabic poetry, but developed

no systematic approach for tackling the problem. Concurrent with the publication of

Smith's lectures, both Wilhelm Ahlwardt and Adolf von Kremer addressed the legacy of

orality in Jhil poetry aiming to apply rigor and measurable analysis to the "eld.

Wilhelm Ahlwardt became a leading voice in the denial of the authenticity of

pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, thanks in no small part to the later commentary on his work

Bemerkungen ber die Aechtheit der alten arabischen Gedichte (Griefswald, 1873) by the

8 Mark T. Day. Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations in English on Arabic-Western Literary Relations, 1902-1997. Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 48 (2000), 167-219.

9 Herbert Spencer. Progress: It's Law and Cause. Westminster (1857), Chapman's Westminster Review. This work, published Before Darwin's most influential treatises, is often described as the foundation of social Darwinism.

11

Scotsman William Muir, who was to become President of the Royal Asiatic Society of

Great Britain and Ireland. In this work, Ahlwardt would lay the foundation for a

methodological approach that would go on to in*uence scholarship in the "eld of the

authenticity and oral qualities of Jhil poetry for the next century.

As a professor at Griefswald University, chairing the study of Arabic literature,

his "ill-received"10 translation of the Diwan of Ruba (1853) led him to swear o&

translations of classical poetry until his e&ort at the The Diwans of the Six Ancient Arab

Poets (1870), after which he labored over a metrical and historical analysis which would

become the basis his dismissal of the authenticity of Jhil poetry. The thrust of his

argument lay along two lines: the poor reputation of early rws as faithful transmitters

of Jhil poetry after the establishment of Islam, and the internal inconsistencies of the

rhyme scheme of rajaz poems. In regards to the former, he especially lays blame at the

feet of the rw ammd (b. 694 or 714?) for his invention of verse and in the latter

concentrates on irregularities in hemistich rhyme in the "rst line of passages within

each rajaz.

This theory found enthusiastic support in the hands of the British Classicist

turned Orientalist William Muir (d. 1905), who was an avid researcher on the origins of

10 Fritz Krenkow. "Obituary Notices: Wilhelm Ahlwardt." The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Apr. 1910), pp. 553-556; p 554.

12

Islam and Quran11, a polemicist against Hinduism and Islam12 and a staunch Anglican.

He presented a 20-page encapsulation of Ahlwardt's work in the Winter 1879 edition of

the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.13 Along with Prof.

Ahlwardt's arguments, he added a lengthy introduction replete with heavily Romantic

portrayals of Bedouin life:

- "An indescribable charm surrounds the poetry of the Arabs." " you roam with the poet over the varied domain of Nature in all its freshness, artlessness, and freedom" "The needs of the nomad life are few and simple"14

For all the high regard with which Muir holds this model Bedouin, he likewise

holds a point of view borne out the comparative religio-cultural tradition that

characterized much of the Orientalist academic landscape at that time. Though the

Arab is close to Nature he possesses a limited range of thought, succumbs to "petty

jealousies" and possesses no "advancing civilization" to speak of.15 Arab civilization is

generally held to be in an irrevocable state of decline where "pure" poetry is "reduced"

to writing and the function of the rw is "to repair past neglect, [and] regain possession

11 William Muir. A Life of Mahomet and History of Islam to the Era of the Hegira. (1877), London; The Coran, its Composition and Teaching (1885), London.

12 William Muir. The Beacon of Truth; or, Testimony of the Coran to the Truth of the Christian Religion. (1894) London; William Muir and J. Murray Mitchell. Two Old Faiths: Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans. (1901). New York: Chautauqua Press.

13 William Muir. "Ancient Arabic Poetry: It's Genuineness and Authenticity." The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan. 1879), pp. 72-92.

14 Ibid., 72-3.

15 Ibid.. 73-75.

13

of the poetical inheritance from the [previous] nation".16 This characterization of the

Jhilya as a "Golden Age" of Arab literature - ever after degrading into less pure forms -

became a hallmark of this Romantic, comparative approach over the succeeding

decades.

At the end of his essay in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Muir draws the

reader's attentions to an extension of Ahlwardt's works written by Adolf von Kremer.

Von Kremer, a career foreign service o'cer in Egypt and Syria with the Austrian

government, was a philosopher and translator; late in life, he was also a prominent

Christian apologist, "ghting attempts to Slavicize the Bible in southern regions of

Austria (Schrift Die Nationalittsidee und der Staat, Vienna,1885). His early career

comprised a series of books based on a philosophical rendering of Islamic thought17,

bringing him much into line with the comparative religion camp. His two-volume

Kulturgeschichte des Orients unter den Kalifen (Vienna, 187577) addressed, in part, the

issue of poetry, its oral nature and its transmission. Coming from a standpoint of

textual criticism, he observed metrical irregularities within the muallaqah of Labd,

which he deemed irreconcilable with the purity of language the ancient composers of

poetry possessed. He concluded that the irregularities must have come from a later and

16 Ibid., 83.

17 Adolf von Kremer. ber die sdarabische Sage. (Leipzig) 1866; Geschichte der herrschenden Ideen des Islams. (Leipzig) 1868; Kulturgeschichtliche Streifzge auf dem Gebiet des Islams. (Leipzig) 1873.

14

less-perfect rendering of the language, as seen in the development of the written

qasdah under the Umayyid caliphate. Consequently, the Muallaqt that were passed

down to the present were not a pure, oral form but rather largely 2nd century, well-

disguised fabrications. Von Kremer's work helped solidify the use of a quantitative,

methodological approach to questions of authenticity surrounding Jhil poetry "rst

initiated by Ahlwardt, and retained the "Golden Age" conception of the rise of Arabic

literature.

The transition into the 20th century saw one of Muir's closest associates, C.J.

Lyall, whom he had served with in India, take the lead in the debate over the question

of Jhil poetry's authenticity and oral quality. He published widely in the "eld of

Arabic poetry, including many translations, and his contribution to the debate

surrounding the genuineness of Jhil poetry came from his short essay, Ancient Arabian

Poetry as a Source of Historical Information.18 Lyall's approach both complemented and

contrasted with that of his mentor, Muir. He retains much of the Romantic notion of

Jhil poetry as a "pure" form, lamenting that, "we have no means of knowing how

much [of the original poetry] was lost";19 he does, however, essentially maintain the

authenticity and historical value of pre-Islamic poetry, in opposition to Muir's line of

18C.J. Lyall. "Ancient Arabian Poetry as a Source of Historical Information." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1(Jan., 1914), pp. 61 -73.

19

15

thought.

The method by which he arrives at this conclusion hearkens back to de

Perceval's use of a Roman source to authenticate the events recounted in the muallaqah

of 'Antar. The focus of Lyall's paper lies in the century of poetry before the Arab

conquests of Byzantine and Persian lands, relying exclusively on poems of the

Mufaaliyt, which he himself translated.20 This comparative approach allows him to

use the "established" Greek and Pahlavi texts as a backdrop of evaluation of the

historical value merited by the Mufaaliyt. In the same vein of the earlier works of de

Scy and de Perceval, he is focused on the contributions to genealogical knowledge that

these poems provide, as well as explicating the content "from whence Mohammed drew

the narratives"21 the Quran shared with the Old and New Testaments.

While Lyall admits to the fabrication of certain parts of the poems in question,

he does overall assert the "proof of their genuineness and authenticity", a direct

refutation of Muir's claims; this inability to assert a method of transmission for Jhil

epics in their unadulterated entirety has been passed down to the present. Tellingly,

Lyall falls short of calling the Mufaaliyt a "history" proper, emphasizing the epic -

that is to say, non-narrative - quality that tends toward "exaggeration" and therefore

20 Lyall, Ancient Arabian Poetry, 64.

21 Ibid., 68.

16

lack of complete credibility.22 He supplied further proofs of the "genuineness and

authenticity for the publication of the Diwan of bid ibn al-Abras, mir ibn Tufail and

Amar ibn Qami'a23 by means of a statistical metrical analysis, much as Ahlwardt and von

Kremer had done. Therein, he refuted the analysis of Ahlwardt and von Kremer,

arguing for the overall metrical unity of the works by the aforementioned authors; the

grammar used to claim this metrical unity would later be criticized by Franz Krenkow.24

Lyall, at this time, would stand alone in this assertion of the historical

authenticity of Jhil poetry and its utility in furthering the historical record. His death

in 1920 temporarily closed the door on dissent to the generally held position of casting

aspersions on the authenticity of Jhil poetry. Within "ve years of his death, the work

of David Margoliouth rea'rmed the consensus; additionally, aha Hussein's Pre-Islamic

Poetry (1926) - in agreement with Ahlwardt, von Kremer and Muir - raised the pro"le of

the debate to unprecedented heights both within and outside the Arabic-speaking

world and would mark the point of highest in*uence for those who denied an authentic

oral tradition of Jhil poetry.

David Margoliouth, a trained Classicist and Orientalist during his time at Oxford,

22 Ibid., 70

23 C.J. Lyall. "Diwan of 'Abid bin al-'Abras, 'Amir ibn Tufail and 'Amar ibn Qami'a," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 3 (Jul. 1913).

24 Franz Krenkow. "Notes on the Editions of "Diwan of 'Abid bin al-'Abras, 'Amir ibn Tufail and 'Amar ibn Qami'a, by Charles J. Lyall", The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1. (Jan. 1922), pp. 43-48.

17

followed closely in the footsteps of his predecessor William Muir. The two could in fact

best be compared by their similar educational backgrounds, professional placement

within the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, dedication to the Anglican

Church- Margoliouth serving as a minister for a short time - and attitudes toward the

oral nature and transmission of Jhil poetry. He stands at the apex of the tradition of

text-based, rationalized, Christian polemic critical of the oral nature and transmission

of Jhil poetry and outdid even Muir in his dismissal of the oral characteristic of Jhil

poetry in his most dedicated piece on the subject, The Origin of Arabic Poetry.25 The basis

of his argument against even an initial oral stage to Jhil poetry was twofold: "rst, the

tradition of written material in Arabic allowed for a initial written composition, as

opposed to the notion that Jhil poetry was "rst composed as an oral form; second, the

rws as sources are completely unreliable for modern analysis and the whole of what

was purported to be a pre-Islamic form was "clearly an Islamic fabrication."26 As such,

he calls into suspicion all Jhil poetry and almost all of the pre-Umayyad body of poetry

that has come down to the present.27

He bases the "rst point on a bulk of textual evidence pointing to the early

presence of writing in Arabic society; the precedent of poetic writing before the prose

25 D.S. Margoliouth. "The Origins of Arabic Poetry," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 3 (Jul., 1925), pp. 417-449.

26 Ibid., 426.

27 Ibid., 448.

18

found in the Quran, the Quran's mention of the practice of writing (68:37), and 2nd/

8th century extra-Quranic references to poets whose works were written down in early

stages all suggest the likelihood of a tradition of written composition by the period of

the Muallaqt or Mufaaliyt. Indeed, he gives no con"dence to any material except

the textual narrative tradition which he expands to include not only the K. al-Aghani,

but also the Irshd and works of Tabari.28 As regards the lack of trust he invests in the

reports of the early Muslim community Margoliouth, like Muir, describes the

shortcomings of the rws Hammd and Khalifa al-Amar as charlatans - he at di&erent

points characterizes them as "shameless" forgers, "corrupt[ors] of poetry beyond the

hope of recovery, and wishes that someone "more respectable" than Hammd could

have brought the art of poetry back to the fore. Margoliouth bases these arguments for

the invention of impostor verses on claims made in the K. al-Aghani.29 Likewise, the

2nd/8th century patrons of works of poetry are as much to blame, awarding heavy

purses - as much as 10,000 dirhems, in the case of Hrn ibn al-Rashd30 - for the "nding

of ancient or lost Arabic poety. In Margoliouth's eyes, these rewards created the

impetus to lie and distort or fabricate poetry for material bene"t.

Once "nished with his historical criticisms of the transmission of Jhil poetry,

28 Ibid., 427.

29 Aghani, V.172; cf. Margoliouth, 428.

30 Aghani, XI.129.

19

Margoliouth turns to criticism of thematic elements within the poetry itself. Using the

methods of comparative religion found in Ahlwardt Muir, Margoliouth compares the

literary traditions of Christianity and Islam. He asserts that the comparison of the

Christian literature known to be widely available in the Arabian peninsula, with its

elements of psalms, the Gospels and hymns, and Arabic poetry, with its obvious

elements of Islamic religious texts - to the point that "the pre-Islamic bard *aunts his

Mohammedism somewhat excessively"31 - is su'cient to assert the in*uence of

religious forms on other literary forms. Most troublesome to Margoliouth are the

constant references to Allah, as the polytheistic religion of the Arabian peninsula would

have merited a wider range of deity names. Likewise, the uniform nature of the dialect

used in the poems - the same as used in the Quran - is treated as suspicious, due to the

known origins and whereabouts of the poems composers being so disparate.

Margoliouth sees this as an Islamic attempt to universalize the concepts of Allah and

the dialect of Muhammed in the years after the completion of the Quran. Additionally,

the absence of any reference in the Quran to "music" or "singing" undermines the basis

of the creation of poetry in other traditions; the patterns and meter of singing are the

precursor to poetry in the pagan Greek and Roman tradition, to say nothing of the

Christian one.

31 Margoliouth, Origins of Arabic Poetry, 438.

20

Upon reading, one notes the absence of the statistical use of meter in the

argument relating to the authenticity of Jhil poetry in Margoliouth's work. It appears

as though by the time of this writing - the mid 1920s - the metrical criticisms of

Ahlwardt and von Kremer concerning the inconsistencies of the hemistiches were more

or less universally accepted in the "eld. Margoliouth's importance in the study of the

oral nature of Jhil poetry is the further expansion of the body of textual evidence cited

by Ahlwardt and von Kremer in the debate over the reliability of transmission of Jhil

poetry until its collection by ammd. He does di&er, however in his tone - both the

overall negative tone he associates toward the actors of all stripes in the transmission

of the poetry contrast with the reverence with which Muir holds the "simple nomad".

The rei"cation of a "Golden Age" - an Islamic body of literature actually composed

shortly after Mohammed and corrupted by ammd and Khalifa al-Ahmar - is,

however, still a stamp of his argument.

No less forceful in his claims, and quite similar in style and content, was the

Egyptian writer aha Hussein. Published in the same year as Margoliouth's Origins of

Arabic Poetry, Hussein rocked the Muslim world with the "rst edition F 'l-Sh'ir al-Jhil

(1925) and caused signi"cant protests in Egypt and elsewhere. Like Margoliouth, he

denied the existence of pre-Islamic poetry and attributed its perpetration and

dissemination to Umayyad-era literati and also criticized the transmission legacy and

21

seemingly Islamic content of much of the poetry. After the book's hasty withdrawal

from publication in 1926, Hussein released a second edition - Fi 'l-Adab al-Jhil (1927) -

in which some of the material deemed more objectionable by the Islamic readership

was excised, but which retained the overall thrust of his argument.

Oral Theory and Reaction

It should here be noted that little, if any, criticism directed back against previous

works was articulated by authors up to this point in the study of Jhil poetry and the

question of its oral nature. To a large extent the similar methods and, Lyall excepted,

conclusions utilized by the aforementioned scholars left little room for the assessment

of the methods used in previous analysis still less re*ection the implication of these

approaches on those works results. The rejection of the Jhil poetry's authenticity -

with Margoliouth and Hussein touting the rejection of even its existence - went

unchallenged due to strength of the argument the comparative textual tradition allowed

them and also the lack of a competitive theory of oral literature. While Ahlwardt, von

Kremer and Margoliouth were challenging the oral nature and transmission of ancient

Arabic poetry, similar arguments were advanced for other ancient poetic traditions,

notably related to the ancient Greek epics of Homer, with notably di&erent assumptions

22

being made of its authenticity and the likelihood of its oral transmission. 32

The introduction of a theory of oral literature even in the midst of the most

strenuous objections concerning the authentic oral nature of ancient poetry would go

on to change the perspective of scholarship into pre-Islamic epic poetry. Ferdinand de

Mongin de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, "rst introduced the Western academic tradition

to the systematized study of languages with his woks A General Course in Linguistics and

Mmoire sur le systme primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-europeene.33 In them, he

posited a structuralist theory of language based on a data-set called primate

coe'cients, common elements of all languages found throughout the world. This

universalization of the basic units of human speech allowed for far-reaching

comparisons between linguistic traditions to be made.

The researcher who made greatest use of this conceptual device as it applied to

orality was Millman Parry, a graduate in Classics from the University of California

Berkeley who was working at the Sorbonne in Paris during the 1920s and 30s. Along

with his student, Albert Lord, he embarked on research in the Balkan Mountains to

study the oral poetry of the Serbo-Croat tradition. As a result, he arrived at a theory of

oral formulation, wherein the formulation of repetitive metrical units - even entire

32 For the type of assumptions common to Homeric studies in the early 20th century, including assertions of its forgery and inauthentic nature, see: Samuel Butler. A Prose Translation of the Odyssey. (1900)

33 Ferdinand de Saussure, A General Course in Linguistics. (1916, posthumous), London.

23

phrases or stanzas - served not only to maintain the metrical continuity of the poem

but to aid the memorization and acquisition of such poems. The "eldwork was

groundbreaking and applied "rst by Parry to Homeric epic34, then by Lord and his

associate Francis Peabody Magoun to Old English verse such as Beowulf.35 Its academic

popularization and wide application toward the study of all manner of oral traditions

continued and would come to win it a prominent place in the study of Jhil poetry.

Further advancements in literary theory followed, most notably from the work

of Structuralists such as Claude Lvi-Strauss. The publication of the Millman & Parry

papers at the beginning of the 60s led to a renewed interest in the subject of oral theory

and led to what Erick Havelock has termed the "Modern Discovery of Orality",

concentrated in a group of publications across 1964-1965. The phenomenon featured

the near-simultaneous publication of books concerning the advancement of society

from oral to written including: La Pense Sauvage (Levi-Strauss), "The Consequences of

Literacy" (Goody and Watt), The Gutenberg Galaxy (Marshall McLuhan), Animal Species and

Evolution (Ernst Mayr) and Preface to Plato (Erick Havelock). It was no mere coincidence

that "ve such authors should publish such remarkably similar texts within the space of

12 months - McLuhan, Goody and Havelock were all very well acquainted with one

34 Millman Parry and Albert Lord. The Collected Papers of Millman and Parry. Oxford, Clarendon Press (1971), pp. 438.

35 Francis Peabody Magoun. "The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry". Speculum 28, 1953 (446-67).

24

another, and the torch of Structuralist theory was at this time being passed from Levi-

Strauss, its greatest 20th century proponent, to McLuhan, who went on to form the

notably structuralist Toronto School. All had backgrounds in the development of

critical thought, though from di&erent approaches: Havelock the Classicist, Levi-Strauss

and Goody the Social Anthropologists, and Ernst the Evolutionary Biologist. The

authors especially concerned themselves with the dichotomy between oral and literate

societies and couched the relationship between the two as a positivist progression from

the oral, non-rational societies of the past to the literate, logical societies. Due to this

lack of critical functioning in non-literate societies, they argued, authenticity and

"trueness" of meaning cannot be assumed until the development of textual traditions.

Walter Ong would be the inheritor of this group in terms of impact on

structuralist literary criticism. A Jesuit priest who spent the better part of his career at

the Jesuit St. Louis University, Ong's dedication to the study of literacy was deep-seated.

Trained in the deeply textual Latin tradition and ordained into the Jesuit ranks - for

whom programs for the promotion of literacy throughout the world are a major focus -

Ong's association with the Jesuits a&ected him to the point where he would have "view

[ed] literacy as desirable and even necessary."36

36 James Van Horn Melton. "From Image to Word: Cultural Reform and the Rise of Literate Culture in Eighteenth-Century Austria," The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 95-124; p. 100.

25

Ong's most notable work, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word37,

more fully developed his previous work on the shift from oral to literate culture; in this

instance most concerned with the impact of the introduction of print culture on an oral

world. References to his structuralist-positivist bent abound this work:

"I have never heard of an oral culture that did not want to achieve literacy as soon as possible""Abstract truth is impossible without writing or reading.""Technologyenhances life."38

In addition to such exemplary quotes, Ong's frequent metonymy of the word

"primitive" with "oral" and his citation of the French theoretician Lucin Levy-Bruhl's

term "pre-logical" for oral societies con"rms the platform of progress that Ong pursues

for the reader. Far from negating the e'cacy of oral communication, however, Ong

identi"es nine characteristics of the oral form that render it more easily memorable

and suitable for reproduction.39 Despite this acknowledgement to the role of orality in

both literate and non-literate societies, the privileging of the bene"ts of the textual

tradition are the foremost aim of the work, leading critic Myron Tuman to characterize

Ong's work thusly: "There is a mythic, eschatological sweep to Ong's conception of the

development not only literacy but of human consciousness."40

37 Walter Ong. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London, Routledge (1982).

38 Ibid., p. 23, 64, 103.

39 Ong, Orality and Literacy, Ch. 3.

40 Myron C. Tuman. "Review:Words, Tools, and Technology," College English, Vol. 45, No. 8 (Dec., 1983), pp. 769-779; p. 769.

26

Through examination of such works, one could gain a "rm grasp on the

direction and interest of oral theory from the period of Lord & Parry through Ong

(1935-1982). Works tended to emphasize a structural universality of oral traditions and,

with time, developed a dialectic between the oral and written forms, positing a

positivist evolution of not only literature and culture, but also of human consciousness

from a "primitive" oral basis to a "rational" textual ethic.

The bridge between the general theoretical works on orality in the 20th century

and the adoption of a more theoretical framework for the study of Jhil poetry was

formed by a small batch of works marking the beginning of the reaction to the works of

Ahlwardt, von Kremer and Margoliouth. Di&erent not only in conclusion but also in

style, they form an odd departure from the acceptance of statistical analysis of texts

and criticism of content made so popular in the 19th, privileging the advancement of

more abstract theory over a more simpli"ed statistical analysis.

The collection is headed by A.J. Arberry's The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in

Arabic Literature41, a translation of the works plus commentary and the "rst monograph

to be published solely on the subject of orality in Jhil poetry since Ahlwardt's work

three-quarters of a century before. The author's diametric opposition to the thrust of

previous academic treatment of Jhil literature is made clear in his introduction to the

41 A.J. Arberry. The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in Arabic Literature. London, Allen & Unwind (1957), pp. 346.

27

one of the pieces:

The sophistry - I hesitate to say dishonesty - of certain of Professor Margoliouth's arguments is only too apparent, quite unworthy of a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest erudites of his generation.42

Abandoning the counting of hemistiches, Arberry sought to give voice to the

poets who spoke "to [his] ear a natural, even at times colloquial language."43 By

prefacing each muallaqah with a historical pro"le of its author and a listing of

rhetorical *ourishes attendant to the poem's performance, an account of the

traditional time and place of its "rst known recitation, and various other historical

attractions, Arberry very much presents the works in question as genuine, rooted in

historical fact and of utmost importance to the development of Arabic literature and

the shaping of an Arab consciousness as a whole. He credits Tor Andrae's comparative

literary typology of Su" mystic poetry with Christian and Jewish forms (Der Ursprung

des Islams und das Christentum, 1926), G.E. von Grunebaum's encouragement of the

application of literary theory to Arabic ("Literary Theory: The Problem of its

E'ciency", Arabic Poetry, Theory and Development), Francesco Gabrieli's work in the

transmission of Greek philosophical texts from Arabic into Latin ("Estetica e Poesia

araba nell'interpre-tazione della Poetica Aristotelica presso Avicenna e Averroe" RSO 12

1930) and Ren Blachre's analysis of the transmission of Christian and pre-Islamic

42 Ibid., pp. 236-237.

43 Ibid., p. 22.

28

proverbs into the Ummayad literary tradition ("Contribution l'tude de la littrature

proverbiale des Arabes l'poque archaque," Arabica T.1 Fasc., 1 1954) as major

in*uence for his work.

Other than their various European identities, it is truly di'cult to classify this

subset of authors into a coherent whole: they were Orientalists (von Grunnebaum,

Blachre), a Lutheran bishop (Andrae) and a Classicist (Gabrielli) and their treatment of

Jhil poetry within these works was tangential at best. All did, however, work on modes

of authentic and coherent transmission of information to or through Islamic texts

dating back from pre-Islamic times (Gabrielli, Blachre) or the application of literary

theory to Islamic texts to further their study (von Grunnebaum, Andrae). Arberry's

stated indebtedness to these men is somewhat strange for as Charles Pellat notes in his

critique of the work:

"Abandonnant le ton rebarbatif de l'rudition pure, ngligeant meme d'indiquer ses rfrences (ce que l'on regrettera peut-etre) et donnant 'a son oeuvre une allure toute littraire qui la rapproche des travaux des arabisants du siecle dernier, l'auteur rhabilite en quelque sorte la vieille poesie"44

The lack of any systematization in his approach or application of literary theory

is quite bizarre considering his statement of gratitude for the aims of those authors

mentioned above who championed increased rigor and emphasized the development of

theory in approaches to Arabic literature. The 31 year period between Andrae's and

Arberry's publications (1926-1957) is certainly an outlier in this respect, as the only

44 Chales Pellat. "Bulletein Critiqu", Arabica T.4, Fasc. 2 (May, 1957), pp. 194-197; 195.

29

work dedicated to the subject of the authenticity of Jhil poetry eschews the method

and conclusions of earlier works in the "eld, but also defends the method of other

tangentially related authors while refusing to adopt their style and utilizing a an

approach that has little in the way of concrete evidence to prove or disprove any oral

component in the Muallaqt.

The marriage of the dedicated statistical analysis of Ahlwardt and von Kremer

and the introduction of Lord-Parry's Oral-Formulation theory occurred in the 1970s

with a trio of works comprising very nearly the same approach, methodology and

conclusions. Taken together, James Monroe's "Oral Composition in Pre-Islamic

Poetry"45, Mary Bateson's Structural Continuity: Linguistic Study in Five Pre-Islamic Odes46

and Michael Zwettler's The Oral Tradition of Classical Arab Poetry: Its Characteristics and

Implications47, published between 1972 and 1978 form the most assured answer to the

skepticism of the Margoliouths and Husseins of Jhil poetry scholarship.

James Monroe was a Harvard trained Orientalist whose main interests lay in the

Muallaqt and Mufaaliyt. His lengthy article "Oral Composition in Pre-Islamic

Poetry" was conceived as a direct response to Margoliouth and Hussein, and he gives

45 James Monroe. "Oral Composition in Pre-Islamic Poetry," Journal of Arabic Literature, Vol. 3 (1972), pp. 1-53.

46 Mary Bateson. Structural Continuity: Linguistic Study in Five Pre-Islamic Odes. Paris, Ecole Pragique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne (1972).

47 Michael Zwettler. The Oral Tradition of Classical Arab Poetry: Its Character and Implications. Columbus, Ohio State University Press (1978).

30

credit to Arberry for leading the response to their works. Monroe bemoans lack of

rigor in the works of Margoliouth and Hussein and accuses them of cherry picking and

their data for the advancement of an argument. According to Monroe, the only way to

remedy this intellectually dishonest selectivity was to apply metrical theory to the

totality of the work and form a theory out of a complete data set. His method utilized

Lord-Parry to characterize the unit of poetry as a formal structure - a sort of matrix -

into which words can be added or subtracted and is not necessarily dependent on

repetition. Inheritance of tradition was seen to be unbroken and stable, with a high

degree of continuity, "though no two Bedouins will recite the same poem in exactly the

same way."48

In the same year, Mary Bateson, an linguistic anthropologist from Berkeley,

entered the discussion with her book Structural Continuity: A Linguistic Study in Five Pre-

Islamic Odes. In it, she chose "ve of the Muallaqt as a means to extend oral-structuralist

theories to Jhil poetry. Her emphasis in this respect lies on the assumption that texts

stand for a "structural continuity of poetry" that exists across time and space and

applies in"nitely to other texts. She criticized Monroe for substituting method for

theory, arguing that his analysis had no real applicability in a structuralist context, as

the results were individual to the researcher and could not be reliably replicated across

48 Monroe, Oral Poetry, 31.

31

other literatures. Likewise, she cautions against the over-extension of the Lord-Parry

hypothesis in an e&ort to contextualize Jhil poetry. Her methodology attempts to

de"ne and di&erentiate universal elements of repetition, regularity, and patterning,49

"nding her greatest di'culty in achieving a coherent predictive model for the poetry

due to the "extremely large" sample size.50 Despairing of doing so, she resorts to

"impressionistic thematic analyses" to describe the purpose of repetition, regularity

and patterning within the selected poems.

The reception of the work was cold. With distance from the time of publication

supporting her, Suzanne Stetkevych writes:

"M. Bateson's Structural Continuity in Poetry, which attempts a linguistic structuralist analysis of "ve of the Muallaqt, barely warrants discussion.' To be meaningful and to command scholarly attention such analyses of morphological repetition, phonological deviation, and criterion of order must be based on: 1) a knowledge of Arabic morphology and its intimate relation to meaning; 2) the semantic signi"cance or onomatapoetic qualities of particular sounds or letters, as discussed in Ibn Jinni's classic Al-Khasadi's or more recently in works such as an-Nuwayhl's Ash-shi'r al-Jhil; 3) the semantic structure of the poem, that is, the archetypal, mythic, and ritualistic underpinnings that determine the poem's structure, the metaphorical signi"cance of its parts and their relationship to one another; and 4) a clear concept of the compositional tradition, as dealt with by J. T. Monroe in his "Oral Composition" and M. Zwettler in The Oral Tradition, an aspect which Bateson misunderstands and dismisses. Far from measuring up to these criteria, Bateson demonstrates inadequate acquaintance with the Arabic language or its literature. The only Arabic work cited in the book is az-Zawzan's Sharh al-Muallaqt al-Sabt. Her "impressionistic thematic analyses" are nothing more than a summary of the poem at the most

49 Bateson, Structural Approach to Arabic Poetry, 33.50 Ibid. 201.

32

super"cial level; there is nothing analytical about them. In brief, Bateson's work cannot be considered a scholarly contribution to the understanding of pre-Islamic poetry."51

The "nal work within this arc was Michael Zwettler's The Oral Tradition of Arabic

Poetry: Its Character and Implications. Zwettler, himself a Berkeley product, aligns his

sympathies with Monroe, though like Bateson also criticizes the lack of rigor used in

the latters analysis. His three-part book "rst covers his justi"cation for approving the

oral composition of Jhil poetry - which is borrowed almost wholesale from Lord and

Parry - followed by the nature of the transmission of the works and "nally a discussion

of the linguistic situation of Arabia at the time of the composition of several of the

Muallaqt; it seems this last section is designed to answer the doubts which

Margoliouth put forward about the unity of dialect found throughout the Muallaqt.

He proposes to prove all of this through the examination of a single ode, that of Imru

al-Qays, though he also does make room for several "textual" sources, most notably Ibn

Sallam's abaqt Fl ash-Shir.

When one compares this development of general oral theory with works

concerning the orality of Jhil poetry, it is striking how little of this theory crossed

over; virtually the only strain of though which made an impact on the study of the oral

nature of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry was Lord-Parry's Oral-formulaic hypothesis and the

51 Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych. "Structuralist Interpretations of Pre-Islamic Poetry: Critique and New Directions," Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Apr., 1983), pp. 85-107; pp. 85-6. She lauds the structuralist theory of Kemal Abu-Deeb, "Toward A Structural Analysis of Arabic Poetry", International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975), pp. 148-84, but this work seems to have garnered little traction outside of Stetkevych's praise for it.

33

argument for its universal applicability. The assertion of a positivist evolution of form

and function by 1960s era theoreticians, which would have suited the text-driven works

of Margoliouth and Hussein, was mostly ignored by its contemporaries in the study of

Jhil poetry, who viewed textualization as a "loss" for the purity of ancient Arabic

poetry, much as Muir would have viewed it. When it was introduced by Mary Bateson,

it was received poorly by the Orientalist community. Once again, Lord-Parry's attitude

of the pristine nature of the oral tradition - Parry had purposefully sought out the Serb

singers who were based in the remotest villages on account of the "purity" of their

recital - appealed to the Orientalist, Golden Age ethic of later researchers in the Arab

tradition. The selective nature of these authors put the study of Jhil poetry in an odd

time-warp, so to speak: the latest theoretical innovations were not even addressed in

the works of the 1970s, all of which found their sole theoretical basis in Lord-Parry.

Ethnopoetics

The most recent phase of scholarship on Jhil poetry has witnessed radical

change in the nature of the material studied, the justi"cation for its study and the

diversi"cation of the disciplines from which the scholars come from. In some ways, the

study of Jhil poetry before the mid-1980s had been rather monolithic: the case made

for or against the oral origins of the Muallaqt or Mufadhiliyat had been entirely text-

based; likewise the justi"cation for the research had been a philological determination

34

of the usefulness of information in the odes for modern historical purposes; and the

pool of scholars from which research had been produced was limited, almost to the

point of exclusivity, to Orientalist schools in Britain or Germany, Harvard or Berkeley.

The creator of the theory of ethnopoetics was Dennis Tedlock, an anthropologist

specializing in folklore who "rst exhibited its principles in his work The Spoken Word and

the Work of Interpretation (1983).52 While working within the context of universals

inspired by Structuralism, Tedlock stressed the need for "eldwork in the analysis of oral

theory as opposed to text-based approaches was most e&ective in developing usable

theory; most rewarding was the study of "traditional" societies where literacy was still

rare. In examining these cultures, Tedlock saw the opportunity to witness patterns of

oral composition and transmission as they would have been practiced in the distant

past - the "traditional" quality of the cultures studied allowed for the assumption of

continuity in content and method in oral traditions. The "authenticity" of these

"traditional" societies and their ability to retain the cultural and linguistic continuity to

the past, as well as lending support to their use as viable sources of history, in Tedlock's

view. Additionally, the ability to witness the oral tradition in its societal context, and

not merely as a text, allowed for a more expansive conception of the place of oral

traditions within a given society. To complete this requisite "eldwork, Tedlock called

52 Dennis Tedlock. The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation.

35

for the involvement of a diverse array of specialists including linguists,

ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, and folklorists and the inclusion of mobile

recording devices to make the research lasting and available to non-"eld based

researchers. Tedlock's own "eldwork led him into Central America to study the Zuni

and Mayan Indians and their traditions of narrative epic.

The "rst work to apply ethnopoetics to the Arabic oral culture in a "traditional"

society was Leila Abu Loghad's Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in Bedouin Society.53

Although she did not link her "ndings to Jhil poetry, her work is signi"cant as the

entrypoint of ethnopoetics into the "eld of an oral theory of Arabic. Abu Loghad

resided with a Bedouin community in Eastern Egypt for nearly a year, recording the use

of poetry in societal context particularly as it applied to women's social interaction -

issues of ancestry, familial ties, maternity, hierarchy, and sexuality. In the work,

instances of the use of poetry - the Bedouin ghinawa - are typi"ed as bridging a

continuity of generations, if not hundreds of years.54

Following on this work, the 1989 issue of the periodical Oral Traditions55 marked

the true beginnings of the use of ethnopoetics in relation to the study of Jhil poetry.

Of that issue's 14 articles, 10 dealt with topics of early systems of poetry or oral-

53 Leila Abu Loghad. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in Bedouin Society. Berkeley, UC Press (1986), pp. 317.

54 Ibid., pp. 171-179.

55 Oral Traditions Journal, Vol. 3 (Jun. 1989).

36

transmission in Arabic, and 8 of the authors , coming from exactly the "elds Tedlock

called upon for participation, used ethnopoetics as a basis for the advancement of their

theses. Established anthropologists such as Adnan Haydar (Ethnomusicology, Harvard)

and Frederick Denny used the tenets of ethnopoetics to great e&ect and several

younger scholars such as Saad Sowayan (Tonight My Gun is Poetry, University of

Toronto), Terraid Ash-Sherif ("Bani Halba Classi"cation of Poetic Genres", Comparative

Literature) and Dirgham Sbait ("Palestinain Improvised Sung-Poetry", Folklore)

established their names in the "eld.

Saad Sowayan would quickly become the rising star of the Arabic ethnopoetics

camp. Receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, where the star of Marshall

McLuhan's Structuralist in*uence was still shining bright, Sowayan brought a dedicated

structuralist approach to his research combined with an unparalleled level of initial

respect to his subject of study. Having grown up in a Bedouin camp in Saudi Arabia,

Sowayan's mastery of the intricacies of the language and its societal uses made him a

model "ethnopoet". His 1993 work, The Bedouin Oral Historical Narrative as Literary Product

and Historical Source, followed the prescriptions of Tedlock's theory to a "T". Recording

the oral tradition of the Nabati Bedouin, Sowayan recorded a "composite" of 11 versions

of the same poem to achieve a "master copy" of the work; this was, in his view, the way

that oral poetry would have been composed in the "rst place, by selection of the "nest

37

components of individual reciters of poems into the best possible ode. He identi"ed

this as the "slow process of change as they [poems] are passed from one reciter to

another. In such a way, he deems that we may reliably connect present practices in the

"traditional" Nabati society with the practices of their ancient, though little changed,

ancestors.

His second purpose in the book, to con"rm the historicity of such an oral

tradition, was approached from the position of equating narrative and epic traditions in

terms of historicity. Whereas even the earliest writers on Jhil poetry had

distinguished between the narrative function of history as opposed to the epic, or - if

one prefers Lyall's term, "exaggerated" - quality of poetry, Sowayan refused to

acknowledge the categories as such. The repetitions and departures from linear story

lines were not indicators of defective transmission or information, Sowayan argued, but

of a social function. As these poems were designed for oral performance, the lexical

keys, redundancies and other textual "imperfections" were aids and acquiescences to

the listeners. Sowayan continued this line of argument in his 1996 publiction, The

Bedouin Historical Narrative.

Sowayan's good friend Marcel Kurpershoek - the two frequently dedicated their

books to one another - was a Dutch diplomat who ended his career in Saudi Arabia and

obtained permission to perform ethnographic research in the Northeast desert region.

38

These constituted an important series of works, uniquely compiled by a trained

Orientalist from Leiden who embraced the ethnopoetics ethic. His four-volume Oral

Narratives and Poetry of Central Arabia56 work on contemporary oral literature, published

over a period from 1994-2003, follows much the same form as Sowayan's, and certainly

carries with it the echoes of Orientalist "Golden Age" treatment; in vol. 3, Kurpershok

describes his rw as "the living representative of some past I was trying to uncover,"57

and describes the process of tracking further and further into the desert in an e&ort to

"nd the remotest, purest dialect - reminiscent of Millman Parry and his search for the

purest of Serb-Croat bards. He sees the role of modernity as a destructive force in the

life of the "modern" nomad, and argues contemporary Najdi society is much as it was.

Over the course of the four volumes, he addresses themes of the poetry, modern poets,

and the existential threat posed to the Bedouin of Saudi Arabia's rapidly modernizing

state.

56 . Marcel Kurpershoek, Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia: The Desert Knight vol. 1 (1994); Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia: The Poetry of Dindan, Bedouin Bard in the Southern Najd, vol. 3 (1999); Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia: 5 Voices from the Desert, vol. 3 (2002),Brill Academic Pu

57