Orality and Literacy in Early Arabic Criticism

Mark Pettigrew

Excerpt: "In a seminal article on the development of Arabic poetry, "From Primary to Secondary Qasida: Thoughts on the Development of Classical Arabic Poetry," M.M. Badawi draws a distinction between the pre-Islamic qasida (the 'primary qasida') and the later qasida of the caliphal era (the 'secondary qasida'), based mainly on the changing social function of poetry. Islamic court poets were primarily panegyrists, dependent on their patrons, and self-consciously aware of the earlier poetic tradition. The development of the secondary qasida was paralled by that of the qit'a, especially the occasional piece tailored for love and wine poetry. Badawi proposes that these trends can be identified quite early in the caliphal era, and concludes that, "the major changes which occurred in Arabic poetry since Pre-Islamic times and which decisively determined its subsequent course right through the Abbasid era, occurred in fact in the Umayyad period." But this conclusion raises another question: if the decisive changes took place in the Umayyad period, why did medieval critics perceive them to be products of the 'Abbasid era?"

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