Muslim Studies

the tribes inhabiting Central Arabia, who, though also migrating northward—specifically those tribes who provided the ancient Arabs with their poets¹, from whose powerful poems we can mostly learn about the worldview of this group of Arabdom.

These products of the ancient Arab spirit, upon which Muhammad's preaching felt called to exert such a powerful influence, are now becoming increasingly accessible to us through thorough philological Philology is the study of language in historical sources; here it refers to the scholarly editing of ancient manuscripts. study. However, they leave us unsatisfied regarding the religious question. One is not wrong if one continues to draw a certain conclusion—even if this is now less readily conceded than in earlier times—from the "religious drought" that stares out at us from the realistic poetry of these poets. This is true at least for the period in which these poems were composed, the time immediately preceding Islam. This is the conclusion that Dozy Reinhart Dozy (1820–1883), a famous Dutch scholar of Arabic history and literature. drew from the lack of notable traces of a deeper religious sense in the poetry of the pagan Arabs:² namely, that "whatever kind their religion was, it generally took up little space in the life of the Arab, as he was immersed in the interests of this earth in battle, wine, gaming, and love."³

Certain outstanding individuals have indeed shown themselves accessible to deeper religious impulses. However, they did not draw these from the national spirit, but owed them to their particular contacts and relationships—these people traveled extensively to the north and south; one need only think of the wide-ranging travels of one of the later poets among them, Al-`Ashâ⁴. Yet, even in these individuals, the adopted religious thoughts do not prove to be organic elements of their inner life. They give the impression—as we can observe particularly with the poet Labîd—of entirely mechanically grafted-on sentences,⁵ which

1. Compare Nöldeke, The Semitic Languages: A Sketch, p. 46. Theodor Nöldeke was a foundational German scholar of Middle Eastern studies.
2. This would hold true even if the mere mention of pagan divine names were more frequent than it actually is (Nöldeke, Contributions to the Knowledge of the Poetry of the Ancient Arabs, p. IX, note 2). On the other hand, we wish to add one more to the examples of how traces of pagan elements were purged original: "hinauscastigirt," meaning censored or edited out for religious reasons. from the remains of pre-Islamic poetry. Zejd al-chejl mentions the Azdite idol ‘Â’im in a poem (Yaqut III, p. 17); however, the mention of this idol was not tolerated, and lâ wa ‘â’im original: "No, by 'A'im" was changed into wal ‘amâ’im original: "and the turbans" (Ag. XVI, p. 57, 2nd line from bottom).
3. History of the Moors in Spain, I, p. 15.
4. Thorbecke, Oriental Research, p. 235, and also Yaqut III, p. 86, 16.
5. One can be convinced of this simply by looking at the summary of the contents of his Dîwân A "Diwan" is a collected volume of a poet's work. in von Kremer’s treatise on the same (Reports of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Philological-Historical Class XCVIII — 1881 — p. 555 ff.).