Al-Ḥārith ibn Ḥilliza al-Yashkurī ( ar, الحارث بن حلزة اليشكري) was a pre-
Islamic
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the mai ...
Arabia
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...
n poet of the tribe of
Bakr, from the 5th century. He was the author of one of the seven famous pre-Islamic poems known as the ''
Mu'allaqat
The Muʻallaqāt ( ar, المعلقات, ) is a group of seven long Arabic poems. The name means The Suspended Odes or The Hanging Poems, the traditional explanation being that these poems were hung in the Kaaba in Mecca, while scholars have also ...
''. Little is known of the details of his life.
The story of the ''mu'allaqa'' which al-Harith composed is as follows. A dispute had arisen between the men of Taghlib and those of Bakr after a number of young Taghlib men had died in the desert. The men of Taghlib chose their prince,
Amr ibn Kulthum
ʿAmr ibn Kulthūm ibn Mālik ibn ʿAttāb ʾAbū Al-ʾAswad al-Taghlibi ( ar, عمرو بن كلثوم; 526–584) was a poet and chieftain of the Taghlib tribe in pre-Islamic Arabia. One of his poems was included in the ''Mu'allaqat''. He is t ...
, to plead their cause before
Amr ibn Hind
Amr III ibn al-Mundhir ( ar, عمرو بن المنذر, ʿAmr ibn al-Mundhir; gr, Ἄμβρος ὁ ἱός τοῦἈλαμουνδάρου), more commonly known by the matronymic Amr ibn Hind ( ar, عمرو بن هند, ''ʿAmr ibn Hind''), w ...
(d. 569), the king of
al-Hirah
Al-Hirah ( ar, الحيرة, translit=al-Ḥīra Middle Persian: ''Hērt'' ) was an ancient city in Mesopotamia located south of what is now Kufa in south-central Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of I ...
in southern Iraq. Ibn Kulthum pleaded the Taghlib's cause by reciting the sixth of the ''mu'allaqāt''. A quarrel then broke out between Ibn Kulthum and al-Nu'man, the Bakr spokesman, as a result of which the king dismissed them both and asked al-Harith to act as spokesman for the Bakr tribe instead of al-Nu'man. Whereupon, al-Harith recited the seventh ''mu'allaqa''. It is said that al-Harith was an old man by this time, and afflicted with leprosy, so that he was required to recite his poem from behind a curtain. He is said to have been of noble birth and a warrior.
Although the ''mu'allaqa'' is mostly a plea, interspersed with flattery of King Amr, it begins conventionally in the usual style of a ''
qasida
The qaṣīda (also spelled ''qaṣīdah''; is originally an Arabic word , plural ''qaṣā’id'', ; that was passed to some other languages such as fa, قصیده or , ''chakameh'', and tr, kaside) is an ancient Arabic word and form of writin ...
'' with a brief section of regret for a lost love and a description of a flight by camel. The metre is ''khafīf''.
Of al-Harith's other poems only a few fragments remain.
[Arberry, A.J. (1957) ''The Seven Odes'', p. 211.]
References
External links
Translation of al-Harith's mu'allaqaby Anne and Wilfred Blunt, with introduction and notes.
Arabic text of al-Harith's mu'allaqaChanted recitation of the mu'allaqa
by Adil bin Hazman
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harith Ibn Hilliza Al-Yashkuri
6th-century Arabic poets
5th-century Arabs
Banu Bakr