Jabal ibn Jawwal ( ar, جبل بن جوال بن صفوان بن بلال الذبياني الثعلبي اليهودي) was a Jewish poet who wrote in the

Arabic language Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

during the

7th century The 7th century is the period from 601 ( DCI) through 700 ( DCC) in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Common Era. The spread of Islam and the Muslim conquests began with the unification of Arabia by Muhammad starting in 622. After Muh ...

. He was a contemporary of

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...

. According to

ibn Hisham Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Hishām ibn Ayyūb al-Ḥimyarī al-Muʿāfirī al-Baṣrī ( ar, أبو محمد عبدالملك بن هشام ابن أيوب الحميري المعافري البصري; died 7 May 833), or Ibn Hisham, e ...

(''Kitab Sirat Rasul Allah,'' ed. Wüstenfeld, pp. 690, 713) and Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani ("Kitab al-Aghani," viii. 104), Jabal was a Tha'alabite (Abu al-Faraj gives the whole genealogy), but neither of them mentions the fact that he was a Jew. Ibn Hajar, however, in his biographical dictionary "Kitab al-Ashabah fi Tamyiz al-Shahabah" (ed. Sprenger, i. 453), relying on

ibn al-Kalbi Hishām ibn al-Kalbī ( ar, هشام بن الكلبي), 737 AD – 819 AD/204 AH, also known as Ibn al-Kalbi (), was an Arab historian. His full name was Abu al-Mundhir Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al-Sa'ib ibn Bishr al-Kalbi. Born in Kufa, he spent ...

and on al-Marzabani, declares that such was the case and that Jabal subsequently embraced

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...

. Yaqut ("Mu'jam," i. 765), quoting a verse of Jabal, calls him erroneously "Jamal ibn Jawwal al-Taghlabi." Jabal is sporadically cited by the above-mentioned Arabic authors. Abu al-Faraj (l.c. p. 101) quotes two verses of Jabal's, apparently from a poem which he addressed to al-Shammakh, himself a Tha'alabite poet, in reference to a quarrel that arose between them. This is probably the same incident as that related by Abu al-Faraj (l.c. p. 104); namely, that al-Shammakh fell in love with Jabal's sister Kalbah, and when, shortly afterward, al-Shammakh went on a journey she married his brother, giving rise to a poetical contest between the disappointed lover and Jabal. Eleven other verses by Jabal, indicating sufficiently the poet's Jewish religion, are quoted by ibn Hisham (l.c. p. 713). They are an elegy on the death of

Huyayy ibn Akhtab Huyayy ibn Akhtab ( ar, حيي بن أخطب; he, חי בן אחיטוב) was a chief of the Banu Nadir, a Jewish tribe of Medina in pre-Islamic Arabia. Biography Family His ancestry was Huyayy ibn Akhtab ibn Sa‘yah ibn Tha‘labah ibn ‘Ubay ...

(according to Sprenger's punctuation in ibn Hajar, l.c., "Jubayy"), chief of the

Banu al-Nadir The Banu Nadir ( ar, بَنُو ٱلنَّضِير, he, בני נצ'יר) were a Jewish Arab tribe which lived in northern Arabia at the oasis of Medina until the 7th century. The tribe refused to convert to Islam as Muhammad had ordered it to d ...

, and on the defeat by Muhammad of this tribe and of the Banu Qurayza. These verses were a reply to the poet

Hassan ibn Thabit Ḥassān ibn Thābit ( ar, حسان بن ثابت) (born c. 563, Medina died 674) was an Arabian poet and one of the Sahaba, or companions of Muhammad, hence he was best known for his poems in defense of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He was b ...

. They apparently do not form a complete poem; for ibn Hajar (l.c.) quotes a verse of Jabal's not appearing in the quotation of Ibn Hisham, but having the same meter and the same rhyme, and therefore probably from the same poem.

Resources

Gottheil, Richard and M. Seligsohn. "Jabal ibn Jawwal".
''

Jewish Encyclopedia ''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on th ...

''. Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Jabal Ibn Jawwal Jewish poets 7th-century Arabic poets

See also

Resources

References