The chief Anthologies, taken in the order of their composition, are:—

1. The Mu‘allaqát, which is the title given to a collection of seven odes by Imru’u ’l-Qays, Ṭarafa, Zuhayr, Labíd, Anthologies. 1. The Mu‘allaqát. ‘Antara, ‘Amr b. Kulthúm, and Ḥárith b. Ḥilliza; to these two odes by Nábigha and A‘shá are sometimes added. The compiler was probably Ḥammád al-Ráwiya, a famous rhapsodist of Persian descent, who flourished under the Umayyads and died in the second half of the eighth century of our era. As the Mu‘allaqát have been discussed above, we may pass on directly to a much larger, though less celebrated, collection dating from the same period, viz.:—

2. The Mufaḍḍaliyyát,[255] by which title it is generally known after its compiler, Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbí († circa 786 a.d.), who 2. The Mufaḍḍaliyyát. made it at the instance of the Caliph Manṣúr for the instruction of his son and successor, Mahdí. It comprises 128 odes and is extant in two recensions, that of Anbárí († 916 a.d.), which derives from Ibnu ’l-A‘rábí, the stepson of Mufaḍḍal, and that of Marzúqí († 1030 a.d.). About a third of the Mufaḍḍaliyyát was published in 1885 by Thorbecke, and Sir Charles Lyall has recently edited the complete text with Arabic commentary and English translation and notes.[256]

All students of Arabian poetry are familiar with—

3. The Ḥamása of Abú Tammám Ḥabíb b. Aws, himself a distinguished poet, who flourished under the Caliphs Ma’mún 3. The Ḥamása of Abú Tammám. and Mu‘taṣim, and died about 850 a.d. Towards the end of his life he visited ‘Abdulláh b. Ṭáhir, the powerful governor of Khurásán, who was virtually an independent sovereign. It was on this journey, as Ibn Khallikán relates, that Abú Tammám composed the Ḥamása; for on arriving at Hamadhán (Ecbatana) the winter had set in, and as the cold was excessively severe in that country, the snow blocked up the road and obliged him to stop and await the thaw. During his stay he resided with one of the most eminent men of the place, who possessed a library in which were some collections of poems composed by the Arabs of the desert and other authors. Having then sufficient leisure, he perused those works and selected from them the passages out of which he formed his Ḥamása.[257] The work is divided into ten sections of unequal length, the first, from which it received its name, occupying (together with the commentary) 360 pages in Freytag's edition, while the seventh and eighth require only thirteen pages between them. These sections or chapters bear the following titles:—

I.The Chapter of Fortitude (Bábu ’l-Ḥamása).
II.The Chapter of Dirges (Bábu ’l-Maráthí).
III.The Chapter of Good Manners (Bábu ’l-Adab).
IV.The Chapter of Love-Songs (Bábu ’l-Nasíb).
V.The Chapter of Satire (Bábu ’l-Hijá).
VI.The Chapter of Guests (Hospitality) and Panegyric (Bábu ’l-Aḍyáf wa ’l-Madíh).
VII.The Chapter of Descriptions (Bábu ’l-Ṣifát).
VIII.The Chapter of Travel and Repose (Bábu ’l-Sayr wa ’l-Nu‘ás.
IX.The Chapter of Facetiæ (Bábu ’l-Mulaḥ).
X.The Chapter of Vituperation of Women (Bábu Madhammati ’l-Nisá).

The contents of the Ḥamása include short poems complete in themselves as well as passages extracted from longer poems; of the poets represented, some of whom belong to the Pre-islamic and others to the early Islamic period, comparatively few are celebrated, while many are anonymous or only known by the verses attached to their names. If the high level of excellence attained by these obscure singers shows, on the one hand, that a natural genius for poetry was widely diffused and that the art was successfully cultivated among all ranks of Arabian society, we must not forget how much is due to the fine taste of Abú Tammám, who, as the commentator Tibrízí has remarked, "is a better poet in his Ḥamása than in his poetry."

4. The Ḥamása of Buḥturí († 897 a.d.), a younger contemporary 4. The Ḥamása of Buḥturí. of Abú Tammám, is inferior to its model.[258] However convenient from a practical standpoint, the division into a great number of sections, each illustrating a narrowly defined topic, seriously impairs the artistic value of the work; moreover, Buḥturí seems to have had a less catholic appreciation of the beauties of poetry—he admired, it is said, only what was in harmony with his own style and ideas.

5. The Jamharatu Ash‘ári ’l-‘Arab, a collection of forty-nine 5. The Jamhara. odes, was put together probably about 1000 a.d. by Abú Zayd Muḥammad al-Qurashí, of whom we find no mention elsewhere.