Poetry
المقصورة الدريدية
Not translated into English
Ibn Durayd · 907
Synopsis
The poet first addresses a gazelle, more beautiful than the oryx of the dunes, then meditates on old age, the whiteness that spreads through his hair as fire spreads through brushwood, and on time, night and day that wear out everything new. The poem mingles amorous lament, travel narrative, personal experience and the events of history, scatters proverbs and maxims, and sings the praises of the Mikalid governor of Fars and his son.
Context
Composed in Fars, at the court of the Mikalids, the poem owes its name to its rhyme, built on the alif maqsura, and is regarded as one of the oldest maqsuras in the rajaz metre. It earned its author ten thousand dirhams, and it is seen as a work for teaching language, history and proverbs. More than thirty scholars have commented on it, among them Ibn al-Sarraj and Abu Sa'id al-Sirafi, others have imitated it, and it has been translated into Latin and Turkish. The orientalists Haitsma, Scheidius and Boyesen published editions of it in 1773, 1786 and 1828.
Who it is for
For reading a great didactic poem of the Abbasid age, in which verse also serves to teach the language.
Prizes and reception
A saying reported by his biographers calls him the most poetic of scholars and the most learned of poets.
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