Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ʻAbbāsid Age

Foremost among the poetic accomplishments of the "Abbasid age was the sudden flowering of a highly rhetorical and strikingly modern style of poetry, termed "badī'." It found its most radical and controversial exponent in the celebrated panegyrist to the courts of al-Ma'mūn and al-Mu'tasim, Abū Tammām Habīb ibn Aws Al- Tā'ī. The present study offers a reevaluation of the Arabic literary dispute over Abū Tammām and badī'. It then proposes a redefinition of his diwan and of his major anthology, the Hamāsah, as a metapoesis that served to decode the poetic tradition of the pre-Islamic desert for the Islamic 'Abasid caliph and his urbane and urban courtiers and subjects, and conversely, to encode contemporary Arab-Islamic political experiences in classical form. This book is extensively illustrated with original translations. This study deals with the most radical of the badi' ("novel") poets of the 'Abbasid period, Abu Tammam. After a critique of classical badi' theory it proposes a redefinition of the new poetry as an exegetical metapoesis and on that basis provides analyses, accompanied by original translations, of five of Abu Tammam's most celebrated political odes and of extensive selections from his renowned anthology, the Hamasah. By Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.