Manifestations of Renewal in the Umayyad Era: Quarrelsome Poetry

من ظواهر التجديد في العصر الأموي: غزل المشاكسة

Abstract

The Umayyad era was a fertile environment for poetry, where ancient arts thrived, and new forms of art emerged in response to social, economic, and political factors that deeply affected the literature and culture of this period. This era is considered the golden era of Arabic love poetry, as it witnessed a remarkable increase in the number of love poets, especially in the Hijazi environment, with various trends and schools that developed in their styles, meanings, and imagery, acquiring new connotations. Love poetry in this era also witnessed new artistic phenomena, such as the emergence of independent love poems, after being a part of preambles in the previous eras, as well as the blossoming of chaste love poetry and the emergence of political love poetry.

One of the unique artistic phenomena in the poetry of this era was "mischief love poetry," which has no equivalent in literary works from other nations or periods. Although this type of love poetry was prevalent among the various trends and schools that excelled in the poetry of the Hijazi cities, its prominent poet was Al-Ahwas, whose poetry reveals his skills and excellence in this field. Political and social factors, as well as the poet's personal circumstances, contributed to the formation of his quarrelsome poetic persona, which tended towards reproach, anger, mischief, and aggression, and hence, towards this art form.

Examining the models of this rare type of love poetry and analyzing them confirms the absence of a real love relationship or any emotional bond between the poet and the beloved, rather, the study of some of these models reveals that the poet never saw the woman he was praising, nor did he have any political enmity with her people. Any enmity that arose was due to the incomprehensible nature of the love poetry and the embarrassment it caused to her family.

The poet uses quarrelsome love poetry to arouse and provoke the beloved, intending to flirt, tease, and be mischievous, as well as to vent the feelings of rebellion and anger that he experiences. The aim may also be to annoy and provoke her family, for the same reasons, or if the goal is political, it could be categorized as political love poetry.

The quarrelsome ghazal poems reveal something of the heat of passion, the ardor of love, and the qualities of chastity, so that these features deluded some scholars that it was a kind of virginal flirtation, so they followed it in its path, and other scholars did not hesitate to describe it as sentimental and virginal (), and there is no doubt that these features come to it like The ability to represent the lover's experience, and the ability to perform good poetry.

The naughty poetry is devoid of persuasion, obscenity, and vulgarity, and therefore counting it as satirical flirtation is a matter of error, and if the poet relied on persuasion in it, he would not have achieved his goal. As he follows the course of familiar flirtation and adopts its meanings, with the aim of appearing as real flirtation, and any deviation from that takes him out of the goal of teasing and tampering with the artificial sweetheart.

In order to establish the quarrelsome character of the poem, it must occur in the context of an incident, or its association with an occasion, or its reference to a specific woman, or its name included, and in the absence of that, the poem is a real or virginal flirtation or the like.

And while the poet's goal is camouflage, in order to highlight his claim of love, and to achieve continuity with the beloved (the victim), he is mesmerized by harnessing his ingenuity in his courtship.