1877.] 
61 
The Mo'allaqah of Lebid, with the life of the poet as given in the Kitab-el- 
Aghdni. — By C. J. Lyall, C. S. 
Note. It is proposed to publish a translation of the seven 31o l allaqat ) or “ Suspen¬ 
ded poems” of the Arabs, together with a rendering into English of the notices of their 
authors contained in the famous Kitub-el-Aghani, or “ Book of the Songs of the Arabs,” 
by Abu-l-Faraj el-Isfahani. The following version of the fourth Mo ( allaqah , that of 
Lebid, with its accompanying notice, is here printed as a specimen of the work. 
The book will consist of four parts : I. An Introduction, giving a sketch of the 
history of Arabia during the century before the Hijrah to which the poems belong, a 
brief account of early Arabian poetry generally, some information regarding the mode 
in which the poems have been handed down and the early rawis or traditionists to 
whom their preservation and illustration are due, together with an examination of the 
historical data afforded by the Kitdb-el-Aghuni regarding the lives of their authors. 
II. Translations from the Kdmil-et-tawdrifch of Ibn-el-Athir and the Kitub-el-Aghani , 
giving the history of the Wars of Basus and Dahis. III. Notices of each of the seven 
poets (except Tarafeh, who is not mentioned in the work) translated from the Kitdb- 
el-Aghuni. The account of Tarafeh will be filled in from extracts from Ibn Quteybeh 
and others supplied by Beiske’s edition of his Mo i allaqah. IY. Following each 
notice, a translation of the poet’s Mo^allaqali in English prose, line for line with the 
original. Parts II, III, and IY will be illustrated where necessary by notes append¬ 
ed. 
The renderings of the poems will be taken from the text of Arnold (Leipzig 1850), 
those of the Kitub-el-Aghani from the Bulaq edition (in 20 volumes) of that work, and 
those of passages from the Kamil from Tornberg’s edition. 
It is hoped that an accurate translation of the most ancient and authentic poems of 
the Arab race—poems which have for ages been regarded with the highest admiration as 
models of style and composition, and which undoubtedly present a fresh and faithful 
portraiture of the people among whom they appeared—illustrated by the oldest 
and most trustworthy traditions regarding the circumstances under which they were 
composed and the valiant stock to which their authors belonged, will not be found 
unacceptable. 
The system of transliteration applied to Arabic words when they occur in Persian 
and Hindustani which has been adopted by the Asiatic Society, though well suited for 
the purposes of those languages, is not appropriate when the object is to represent in 
English Arabic words as uttered by Arabs. In the following pages, therefore, a sys¬ 
tem has been followed which is believed to agree closely with the best standard of pro¬ 
nunciation current in Arabia; it is mainly that adopted by Mr. E. W. Lane in his 
great Arabic-English Lexicon, the only differences being that among the consonants 
^ is represented by the old-English £> (with which it exactly agrees), Ji by D (to mark 
clearly its relation to ^ D), by Q, hemzehby ’, and ^ by ‘ , and in rendering the 
vowels the circumflex instead of the acute accent has been used to indicate length, and 
i and u substituted for ee and oo. In the use of the imdleh of the Fethah (giving the 
vowel a the e-sound) and the Dammeh (change of u to o) an endeavour has been made 
to follow as closely as possible the rules laid down by Mr. Lane in his paper at pp. 171— 
186 of the 4th volume of the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft . 
