The Vagaries of the Qasidah by J. E. Montgomery

This book is an investigation of the multiple versions (the textual tradition) of early Arabic poems which exist in various Abbasid collections. The role of the collector has been scrutinised with a view to determining his editorial involvement in the presentation of the text (Chapter One). It also revises long-cherished assumptions concerning the impact of Islam on early Arabic poetry (the literary-historical tradition) and demonstrates that poetry of both pre-Islamic and Islamic stamp co-existed and flourished during the reign of the Four Rightly-Guided Caliphs (Chapter Six). The practice of the pre-Islamic Qasidah is investigated in Chapters Two to Three, with studies of desert fauna (Chapter Four) and seafaring in poetry and the Quran (Chapter Five). This book offers a corrective to many of the more exaggerated claims concerning this poetry and revises some hitherto fundamental attitudes by advancing an individual, philologically driven vision of the period. This book was the winner of the Abdullah Moubarak Literary Award 1998.