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Classy Arabic Poetry

@ClassyArabic

Jul 10, 2022

@RachelSchine

Here is a tutorial about how to format classical Arabic poetry properly in Microsoft Word.

Many journals' copy editors don't know how to do this. Tahera Qutbiddin taught me and @RachelSchine a way and I routinely forget. I'm writing it down so I won't again, and neither will you

First, make a table with four columns

Put in your Arabic text.

Justify Low from the Paragraph thing and choose Right-to-Left text (red circle).

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Classy Arabic Poetry

@ClassyArabic

May 12, 2022

RUMI vs IBN AL-RUMI

Why does the famous Persian poet Rumi's name mean “the Roman”?

Read this 🧵 to find out you will forever stop mixing him up with the famous *Arabic* poet Ibn al-Rumi, the “son of [a totally different] Roman.”

By the time that Islam emerged in the 620s, the Roman Empire = the eastern empire based in Constantinople.

We often call them Byzantines, because they built Constantinople on top of a village called Byzantion.

But they kept calling themselves Romans ("Romaioi" or "Romioi")>

The main bit of Byzantium the Muslims couldn’t conquer is Anatolia (basically = present-day Turkey), which they continued to call “the country of the Romans” bilād al-Rūm or just Rūm.

Anyone who came from there was called Rūmī.>

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Classy Arabic Poetry

@ClassyArabic

Apr 13, 2022

Fun fact: parts of the Quran scan metrically as poetry.

In fact, each of Arabic poetry’s 16 canonical meters can be found in the Quran.

E.g. “Do not kill a soul that God has declared sacred” (6:151) scans as ṭawīl meter. I explain in the 🧵

This half-line of poetry is ṭawīl. It means

“Long is the separation from the one I loved.”

ṭawīlu madā l-hijrāni man kuntu ahwāhū

The syllable options are:

Open syllable with short vowel, like ṭa = SHORT ˘
Open syllable with long vowel, like wī = LONG ¯
Closed syllable, hij = LONG ¯

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Classy Arabic Poetry

@ClassyArabic

Apr 5, 2022

Muslim poet’s infatuation with Christian women
⛪️
Men of ʿĀmir, pay a visit
to the Christian ladies for me.

There’s a reem gazelle
of the rite of Rome
whose covert is convents.

I crave her—love is blindness—
among the monasteries and chapels.

—Ibn al-Ḥaddād (Spain, 1087)
🧵

This is part of a longer poem. It's an interesting subject but there's a lot of wordplay.

The reference to the tribe ʿĀmir is part of the conventional bedouin setting of Arabic love poetry, the speaker is asking travellers to find out about or bring a message to the beloved.

The word for "Christian women" is unusual, ʿĪsawiyyāt, the feminine adjectival plural of Jesus's Islamic Arabic name, ʿĪsā. I wanted to render it something like "Jesusettes" but that's visually kind of hard to process.

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Classy Arabic Poetry

@ClassyArabic

Apr 3, 2022

The Arabic word for “post/mail” (barīd بريد) comes from the Greek bérēdos (βέρηδος). Here’s a seventh-century example:

Bring Muʿāwiya ibn Ṣakhr a sign
that the swiftest courier (al-barīd al-aʿjal) will fly to him with.

—Abū l-ʿIyāl al-Hudhalī
short 🧵

That is from a poem addressed to the caliph, Muʿāwiya (r. 661–680). The poet is apparently complaining he's been captured by the Byzantines after a major defeat.

The expression he uses (al-barīd al-aʿjal) resembles a calque on the Roman Cursus Velox (the express “swift route,” i.e. faster than the Cursus Publicus).

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Classy Arabic Poetry

@ClassyArabic

Mar 27, 2022

Seventh-century Meccan warrior-woman and poetess ʿĀʾisha al-ʿUthmāniyya.
🧕
I’ve translated an account of her personality and a 12-line poem by her, apparently lamenting the siege of Mecca in 692, when Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf bombarded the city, setting fire to the Kaaba.

🧵...

I saw ʿĀʾisha al-ʿUthmāniyya on a noble, saffron-colored camel, fighting fiercely in one of the wars of the Ṭālibids, charging against groups of warriors and scattering them. She was a resident of Mecca and a supporter of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. I have never seen a more ...

beautiful or intelligent woman. She was exceedingly poetic, articulate, and eloquent in both her accent and language. She told amusing, erudite, and astonishing stories. She was a gifted and capable poet, composing poems as a diversion and setting them to music...

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