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1882
Volume 13, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2031-5937
  • E-ISSN: 2295-9041

Abstract

Abstract

Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry communicates to us a plethora of place names. They ostensibly demarcate space that was important to the poets: the many mountains, riverbeds and campsites through which nomads passed on their seasonal migrations. However, poets only infrequently mention places more than once, and the majority of the poets’ toponyms are simply names: neither we nor medieval Muslim-era scholars who collected the material can ascertain precisely where these places were. To explain the lack of geographical precision, it has been proposed that the poets marshalled the many place names as metaphors-mood-setters to paint mental images of desert space, and not as real points on a map. But poetry’s toponyms have not yet been the subject of concerted study to test the many questions about their meaning, and this paper, via a case study of three pre-Islamic poets and the collected poetry of the Huḏayl, suggests what detailed analysis can yield. In the main, poets likely did intend real locations by many (if not the majority) places named in their verse, and hence the seeming obscurity of these places for later audiences offers valuable windows into the nature of pre-Islamic Arabian societies and the major changes to society and identity that occurred after the rise of Islam.

Abstract

La poésie arabe préislamique nous transmet une pléthore de noms de lieux. Ils délimitent ostensiblement l’espace qui était important pour les poètes : une quantité de montagnes, lits de rivières et lieux de campements parmi lesquels les nomades passaient leurs migrations saisonnières. Cependant, les poètes ne mentionnent que très rarement un lieu plus d’une fois, et la majorité des toponymes des poètes sont de simples noms : pas plus que les érudits de l’époque musulmane médiévale qui ont collecté ce matériel, nous ne pouvons déterminer où se trouvaient précisément ces lieux. Pour expliquer ce manque de précision géographique, il a été suggéré que les poètes ont rassemblé ces nombreux noms de lieux comme des métaphores - des modificateurs pour peindre des images mentales de l’espace désertique, et non comme des points réels sur une carte. La signification des toponymes de la poésie n’ayant pas encore fait l’objet d’une étude concertée pour mettre à l’épreuve les nombreuses questions sur leur signification, cet article, par une étude de cas de trois poètes préislamiques et de la poésie recueillie du Huḏayl, esquisse ce qu’une analyse détaillée peut produire. Dans l’ensemble, les poètes semblent avoir eu à l’esprit des lieux réels dans beaucoup de cas (sinon la majorité) où ils ont nommé des lieux dans leurs vers, et l’apparente obscurité de ces lieux pour un public ultérieur offre des aperçus précieux sur la nature des sociétés arabes préislamiques et sur les changements majeurs de société et d’identité qui s’opérèrent après l’arrivée de l’Islam.

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2020-01-01
2025-12-06

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