A Literary History of the Arabs

by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

[257] Ibn Khallikán, ed. by Wüstenfeld, No. 350 = De Slane's translation, vol. ii, p. 51.

[258] See Nöldeke, Beiträge, p. 183 sqq. There would seem to be comparatively few poems of Pre-islamic date in Buḥturí's anthology.

[259] Ibn Khallikán, ed. by Wüstenfeld, No. 204 = De Slane's translation, vol. i, p. 470.

[260] Many interesting details concerning the tradition of Pre-islamic poetry by the Ráwís and the Philologists will be found in Ahlwardt's Bemerkungen ueber die Aechtheit der alten Arabischen Gedichte (Greifswald, 1872), which has supplied materials for the present sketch.

[261] Aghání, v, 172, l. 16 sqq.

[262] This view, however, is in accordance neither with the historical facts nor with the public opinion of the Pre-islamic Arabs (see Nöldeke, Die Semitischen Sprachen, p. 47).

[263] See Wellhausen, Reste Arab. Heidentums (2nd ed.), p. 88 seq.

[264] Ḥamása, 506.

[265] Ibid., 237.

[266] Díwán of Imru’u ’l-Qays, ed. by De Slane, p. 22 of the Arabic text, l. 17 sqq. = No. 52, ll. 57-59 (p. 154) in Ahlwardt's Divans of the Six Poets. With the last line, however, cf. the words of Qays b. al-Khaṭím on accomplishing his vengeance: "When this death comes, there will not be found any need of my soul that I have not satisfied" (Ḥamása, 87).