Abu Tammam and the Poetics of the 'Abbasid Age

Foremost among the poetic accomplishments of the 'Abbasid age was the sudden flowering of a highly rhetorical and strikingly modern style of poetry , termed 'badi'.' It found its most radical and controversial exponent in the celebrated panegyrist to the courts of al-Ma'mun and al-Mu'tasim, Abu Tammam Habib ibn Aws Al- Ta'i.The present study offers a reevaluation of the Arabic literary dispute over Abu Tammam and badi'. It then proposes a redefinition of his diwan and of his major anthology, the Hamasah, as a metapoesis that served to decode the poetic tradition of the pre-Islamic desert for the Islamic 'Abasid caliph and his urbane and urban courtiers and subjects, and conversely, to encode contemporary Arab-Islamic political experiences in classical form.This book is extensively illustrated with original translations.