Rithā’ ( ar, رثاء) is a genre of Arabic poetry corresponding to

elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

lament A lament or lamentation is a passionate expression of grief, often in music, poetry, or song form. The grief is most often born of regret, or mourning. Laments can also be expressed in a verbal manner in which participants lament about somet ...

. Along with elegy proper (''marthiyah'', plural ''marāthī''), ''rithā’'' may also contain ''taḥrīḍ'' (incitement to vengeance).

Characteristics

The genre was used by both male and female poets, and is one of the main genres in which ancient and medieval Arabic female poets are known to have composed. Almost all known pre-Islamic women's poetry is in this form. The subjects of the ''rithā’'' are (almost) invariably dead male warriors (''fursān'') and lords (''sādah''), predominantly those who fell in battle. The genre is prominent in the corpus of the earliest surviving Arabic poetry; it 'provides some of the most moving examples of the poetic voice, as in the poems of al-Khansā' (d. ca. 644) for her brother, Ṣakhr, killed in tribal combat': :I was sleepless and I passed the night ::keeping vigil, as if my eyes had ::been anointed with pus, :For I had heard--and it was not news ::to rejoice me--one making a report, ::who had come repeating intelligence, :Saying, 'Sakhr is dwelling there in a ::tomb, struck to the ground beside ::the grave, between certain stones' Alongside al-Khansā', major female exponents of the ''rithā’'' poems of whose survive include the pre-Islamic Janūb Ukht ‘Amr dhī-l-Kalb,

Laylā al-Akhyaliyya Layla bint Abullah ibn Shaddad ibn Ka’b al-Akhyaliyyah () (d. c. AH 75/694×90/709 CE), or simply Layla al-Akhyaliyyah () was a famous Umayyad Arab poet who was renowned for her poetry, eloquence, strong personality, and beauty. Nearly fifty of h ...

(d. 706 CE), and

Laylā bint Ṭarīf Laylā bint Ṭarīf (Arabic: لَيلْى بنت طريف, d. 815 CE) was a female warrior and poet and one of the Khawarij, a group known for its members' fanaticism and violent opposition to the established Caliphate, believing that leadership ...

(d. 815 CE). Their style was characterised by 'uninhibited expression of sorrow coupled with praise for the deceased'. 'Most of the elegy composed by men, however, resembled the eulogistic ''

qaṣīdah 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 ...

'' in general pattern'.''Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period'', ed. by A. F. L. Beeston, T. M. Johnstone, R. B. Serjeant and G. R. Smith, The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)

References

Arab culture Literary genres Arabic and Central Asian poetics Pakistani poetics Arabic poetry forms Love in Arabic literature Women in pre-Islamic Arabia {{poetry-stub

Characteristics

See also

References