Abu Tammam
its edge marks the divide between earnestness and jest.
Abu Tammam (أبو تمام; c. 796/807 - 845) was an Arab Muslim poet. He is well known for compiling the Hamasah, which is considered to be one of the greatest anthologies of Arabic poetry ever assembled.
Quotes
[edit]- If poetry could be exhausted, then it would already have been so
by the collected water in your cisterns, in past times.
Rather, it is the rainfall of the mind: some clouds
may vanish, only to be followed by more clouds.- Translated by Geert Jan van Gelder and Gregor Schoeler, The Epistle of Forgiveness, Vol. 1: A Vision of Heaven and Hell (NYU Press, 2013) p. 265
- The sword gives truer tidings than do scriptures;
its edge is what tells zeal from vanity;
White blades, not the black letters on the page — these
reveal misguided doubts for what they are.- "Ode on the Conquest of Amorium", ll. 1-2, translated by Julia Bray, "Al-Mu'taşim's 'bridge of toil' and Abū Tammām's Amorium qaşīda", in Studies in Islamic and Middle Eastern Texts and Traditions in Memory of Norman Calder, edited by G. R. Hawting et al., Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 12 (Oxford UP, 2000) p. 49
- The sword is more truthful than books,
its edge marks the divide between earnestness and jest.- James E. Montgomery and Tahera Qutbuddin, in The Life and Times of Abu Tammam, edited by Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā l-Ṣūlī and Beatrice Gruendler (NYU Press, 2015) [1]
- The sword is more truthful than books,
- "Ode on the Conquest of Amorium", ll. 1-2, translated by Julia Bray, "Al-Mu'taşim's 'bridge of toil' and Abū Tammām's Amorium qaşīda", in Studies in Islamic and Middle Eastern Texts and Traditions in Memory of Norman Calder, edited by G. R. Hawting et al., Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 12 (Oxford UP, 2000) p. 49
- A victory at which Heaven threw wide its gates,
which Earth put on new dress to celebrate:
O battle of Amorium, from which
our hopes returned engorged with milk and honey,
The Muslims hast thou fixed in the ascendant,
pagans and pagandom fixed in decline!- "Ode on the Conquest of Amorium", ll. 12-14, translated by Julia Bray (2000) p. 50
- A victory in honour of which the gates of heaven open and earth comes forth in her new garments.
O day of the battle of 'Ammūriya, (our) hopes have returned from you overflowing with honey-sweet milk;
You have left the fortunes of the sons of Islam in the ascendant, and the polytheists and the abode of polytheism in decline.- A. J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students (Cambridge UP, 1965) p. 52
- A victory in honour of which the gates of heaven open and earth comes forth in her new garments.
- "Ode on the Conquest of Amorium", ll. 12-14, translated by Julia Bray (2000) p. 50
