Boook Review: Discovering Traditional Arabic Poetry

Arabic speakers have long been proud of the poetic power of their language - which is no more evident than in the Qu'ran.

The expansion of Islam after 622 led to the eventual scattering of the Arabic language from Morocco to Mesopotamia described in essay service. Within this enormous region, it gradually displaced many other languages.

Nevertheless, Arabic literature did not originate with the Qu'ran (Koran), the holy book of Islam. In the ka'aba (the "cubic" temple in Mecca that was preserved as the central shrine of Islam long after other religious statues had been removed), there were several poems displayed on the walls. A number of these "hanged poems" were permitted to remain after Muslim rule was established, and now allow us a degree of insight into the literature of pre-Islamic Arabia.

The cultural blossoming of Islam began during a time when Europe was in a state of disintegration - now known as Dark Ages. When the continent finally began to emerge from this dull and uncreative period, it was helped considerably by Muslims, who had gathered and translated a great many ancient Greek philosophical and scientific works into Arabic.

While many of us are aware of the Koran; the Thousand and One Nights (or Arabian Nights); the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and the 20th-century works of Khalil Gibran, the fertile heritage of Islamic literature is hardly known in the West.

Classical Arabic poetry was constructed on the principle of the monorhyme, and the single rhyme was used throughout a poem, regardless of its length. Within the rhyming pattern, there were 16 standard meters in five groupings. However, the poet was not permitted to alter the meter in the sequence of a poem. The fundamental literary examples, each one a poetic form conforming to traditional rules, were the qasida, the ghazel, the qitah, the masnavi, and the roba`i.

The trouble being that we are biologically and socially programmed to react in a certain way. In order to be true to ourselves we must de-programme ourselves as to be more spontaneous and thus to look at poetry and life more deeply.

Poetry being a literature of depth and thus strikes at the very root of our existence. Let us look at poetry in a fresh way. I will use an example of my verse for such an exposition

Art is a mirror in which the reader looks at her/his own soul. Please look at the structure of poem, the words chosen to make the poem, the music of the language, the music of the words and lastly at its contents. It might open a new panorama of things beyond words.

Language is not a dead entity, it is alive. Poetry does not always lives in the past, it belongs to the very present, beyond our stereotyped views and hackneyed phrases. Thus looked at, a new beauty is born, reflecting deeper springs of life.

Ordinarily we say that trees are green but what is green-ness? It is wider than colour of the trees. You cannot describe it, it has to be experienced. Experience being individual, experience of so called ‘green-ness’ will be different for each person and hence the experience of whole poem. One might say that it is beyond physics, it is meta-physical.

I have tried to give you a small hint, a little pointer but you have to travel on the road yourself and thus taste the reality yourself. It is just a signpost. Try to travel through the entire poem in such a way.

I'm an extravert in that I'm driven by connections with others, but I'm more an introvert in my need to recharge often in familiar environments. My home is important to me, and when it comes to relationships, I'm looking for people who give me a sens