al-Mutanabbi | Andras Hamori (essay date 1981)
Andras Hamori (essay date 1981)
SOURCE: Hamori, Andras. “Reading al-Mutanabbi's ‘Ode on the Siege of al-Hadat.’” In Studia Arabica et Islamica: Feststchrift for Ihsan ‘Abbas on his Sixtieth Birthday, edited by Wadad al-Qadi, pp. 195-208. Beirut, Lebanon: American University of Beirut, 1981.
[In the following essay, Hamori explores aspects of al-Mutanabbi's poetry that would have appealed to his contemporary audience.]
Among the classical Arabic poems that treat specific events, many are strongly linear.1 The composition of the work at hand2 is best understood as an occasionally intricate variation on an implicit linear sequence. Al-Mutanabbī's mastery of sound and phrase are evident in it throughout, but the design is largely responsible for the power.
The poem—a panegyric—opens with a two-line moral generalization (“what seems great to the mean seems mean to the great,” etc.) that is...
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