Al-Anbari's Approach to the Narration of Old Arabic Poetry: Al-Muthaqqib’s Noniyya Poem as a Case Study
Mohammad K. Alzoubi, Dept. of Arabic, Faculty of arts, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan.
Abstract
The celebrated poem of al-Muthaqqib's, called "the Noniyya", was narrated or transmitted through different sources, including al-Anbari, which stands out for this poem. This paper aims to hold a comparison between these narrations to prove that al-Anbari's one is the most reliable. The paper then moves on to reveal al-Anbari's theoretical approach to the narration of poetry, one which he mentions in the introduction to his book of "Diwan al-Mufaddaliyyat". The paper asserts the distinction and accuracy of this approach, highlights its significance and demonstrates how al-Anbari applied it to the Noniyya. It also shows to what extent al-Anbari is committed to his approach; some methodological irregularities in Al-Anbari's narration are in the meanwhile detected and explained and some conflicting accounts between him and other scholars and narrators are revealed as well. Finally, the paper brings the phenomenon of multiple narrations of the same verse into discussion, in an attempt to explain al- Anbari's keenness to record them, pointing out the importance of these narrations in enriching the poetic text, on the one hand, and in revealing the Arab literary taste and ways of receiving the poetic text, on the other.