Al-Waleed B. 'Uqba and His Political Poetry
Nabeelah Akef and Irsan Ramini, Department of Arabic Language,Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan.
Abstract
This paper deals with a significant political figure in the early times of Islam, who also left for us a large poetic material centered almost entirely on the murder of the third Rashidi Caliph 'Uthman b. 'Affan—that's al-Waleed b, 'Uqba b. Abi Mu'ait. The purpose of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of al-Waleed's political and administrative career as well as his poetry output and, eventually, to get more informed on the hitherto historical realities and the importance of poetry in clarifying them. The paper comprises two sections. The first one is devoted to al-Waleed's administrative profile; the other one examines his poetry. In more details, the first section discusses two cases dominating al-Waleed's records: the claim by Qur'an expositors that it was he who is referred to by the defaming word "fasiq" in the sura of al-Hujurat, and the accusation against him that he led the dawn prayer, as a governor of Kufa, while he was drunk. The other section, for it's part, examines the murder of 'Uthman incident as presented in al-Waleed's poetry and attempts to figure how the Umayyds viewed it as against those common historical accounts affected by religious division.