Departure, Trial and Rebirth: Suzanne Stetkevych’s Analysis of Labīd’s Muʿallaqah
Ustadh Hamza Baig
Cut off your love from him whose bond is not secure,
For the best binder of affection's bond is he who breaks it.
Be generous to him who treats you well, but only the cutting of bonds remains
When affection falters and its foundation fails….
I attend my own heart's needs, not neglecting them for fear
that others will think ill of me or rebukers blame me.
Did Nawār not know that I am both
He who ties the knots in ropes and he who cuts them?
He who leaves a place that does not please him,
Unless his own soul's fate overtakes him there.
- Labīd b. Rabīʿah.[1]
The qaṣīdah (ode) has served as the most dominant form of Arabic poetry across centuries of Arabic literary history. At a surface level, the typical qaṣīdah appears to be a polythematic poem covering various scenes of bedouin campsites, desert fauna, and tribal society with little unifying the different sections. Classical scholars group the various scenes of the archetypal qaṣīdah into three main sections: the nasīb (nostalgic prelude), raḥīl (desert journey), and fakhr (tribal praise).[2] Some scholars present these sections as a narrative progression. The poet is on a journey and stops by an abandoned campsite full of memories of the beloved. He then continues his journey through the desert and eventually reaches his patron or tribe which he lauds with praise.[3] However, many early Orientalist literary critics denied the coherence and unity of the qaṣīdah, as they did of the Quran itself.[4]
In The Mute Immortals Speak, Suzanne Stetkevych presents an argument for the coherence and unity of the qaṣīdah by studying it through the lens of ritual theory. Rather than looking at the tripartite structure as purely narrative progression, Stetkevych identifies a deeper, non-narrative logic connecting the themes. She maps the three sections of the qāṣīdah onto the three phases of rites of passage, a framework from anthropological studies of rituals developed by Arnold van Gennep.[5]
Rites of passage, or rituals of transition, include three phases: separation, margin, and aggregation. The separation phase signifies the individual’s detachment from a set of cultural conditions or a place in social structure. The margin or liminal phase is an ambiguous, dangerous, and anti-social transition. The final phase of aggregation reincorporates the individual into a stable, clearly defined state in the social structure.[6] As a vivid example, imagine a society in which boys are expected to leave the tribe to undertake a set of dangerous trials in the wilderness and then return to be reborn and initiated into manhood. Less dramatic modern day examples are graduations, marriages, childbirth, retirement, death, and even the plot of The Lion King.
In Stetkevych’s analogy, the nasīb is separation, the raḥīl is liminality, and the fakhr is reintegration.[7] She demonstrates this through the “Muʿallaqah of Labīd”. Labīd ibn Rabīʿah was a master poet who is said to have accepted Islam at the hands of the Prophet (ﷺ).[8] Nearly all of his poetry was written in the pre-Islamic era. It is his line of poetry, “Certainly everything other than Allah is false (bāṭil)” that the Prophet (ﷺ) reportedly proclaimed as the most truthful line of poetry.[9]
Labīd’s Muʿallaqah is succinctly summarized by Stetkevych:
The poem… opens with a twenty-one-verse nasīb that comprises a description of the ruined abodes (verses 1-11), followed by the departure of the women, among them the poet's inamorata, Nawar. The raḥīl (22-54) exhibits the description of the poet's mount, the she-camel, through similes to the pregnant onager mare and her mate (28-35) and the oryx cow bereft of her calf and pursued by hounds and hunters (36-53). The fakhr (55-88) contains a drinking scene (57-61), a description of the poet's battle mare (63-69), the gambling over the slaughter camel and subsequent feast (73-77), to conclude with a boast about the political might of the poet's tribe (78-88).[10]
In what follows, I will summarize Stetkevych’s analysis of the motifs and key passages of each section in order to demonstrate the analogy. The translation of the verses below are all taken verbatim from Stetkevych.[11]
The Nasīb (Nostalgic Prelude): Departure
عفَتِ الدِّيارُ مَحَلُّها فمُقامُها
بمِنًى تأبَّدَ غَولُها فرِجامُها
1. Effaced are the abodes,
brief encampments and long-settled ones;
At Minā the wilderness has claimed
Mount Ghawl and Mount Rijām.
فمَدافعُ الرّيَّانِ عُرِّيَ رسمُها
خَلَقًا كما ضَمِنَ الوُحِيَّ سِلامُها
2. The torrent channels of Mount Rayyān,
their tracings are laid bare,
Preserved as surely as inscriptions are
preserved in rock,
…
وجلا السُّيولُ عن الطُّلولِ كأنّها
زُبُرٌ تُجِدُّ متونَها أقلامُها
8. The torrents have exposed the ruins,
as if they were
Writings whose texts pens have
inscribed anew
أو رَجعُ واشمةٍ أُسِفَّ نَئورُها
كِففًا تَعرَّضَ فوقَهنَّ وِشامُها
9. Or like the tattooer sprinkling lampblack
again and yet again
Over hands on which
tattoos appear.
فوقفتُ أسألُها، وكيف سؤالُنا
صُمّا خوالدَ ما يُبينُ كَلامُها؟
10. Then I stopped and questioned them,
but how do we question
Mute immortals whose speech
is indistinct?
Labīd’s qaṣīdah begins like many others with the poet longing over the past. He looks on to the abandoned ruins of his past abode (aṭlāl) and describes the erasure of his past life. Over time, nature and wilderness have effaced and overtaken what was once a civilized and cultured society. The permanence of the natural is juxtaposed to the temporality of culture. What remains are but cryptic marks and inscriptions that must be deciphered. The ruins, in their silence, send a clear message — that of the poet’s own mortality: Memento mori.[12]
شاقَتْكَ ظُعْنُ الحيِّ حينَ تَحَمَّلوا
فتكنَّسُوا قُطُنًا تَصِرُّ خِيامُها
12. The clanswomen departing stirred your longing
when they loaded up their gear,
Then climbed inside their howdah frames
with squeaking tents,
…
حُفِزتْ وزايلَها السَّرابُ كأنّها
أجزاعُ بِيشةَ أثلُها ورِضامُها
15. They were urged on, and the mirage
dissolved them till they were like
The windings of the riverbed of Bīshah,
its tamarisks and boulders.
بل ما تَذَكَّرُ من نَوارِ وقدْ نأَتْ
وتقطَّعَتْ أسبابُها ورِمامُها؟
16. What then do you remember of Nawār
when she has gone far off,
And her bonds, both firm and frayed,
are cut asunder?
مُرِّيّةٌ حَلَّتْ بفَيدَ وجاوَرَتْ
أهْلَ الجِبالِ، فأينَ منكَ مَرامُها؟
17. A Murrite woman who alit in Fayd,
then dwelled nearby the people of Ḥijāz,
How then could you hope
to meet with her again?
بمَشارقِ الجبلينِ أو بمُحجَّرٍ
فتضمَّنتْها فَردةٌ فرُخامُها
18. On the eastward slopes of'Ṭayy's two mounts
she alighted, or on Muḥajjir's mount,
Then a lone peak contained her,
and its foothills,
فصُوائقٌ إنْ أيمَنتْ، فمَظِنَّةٌ
مِنها وِحافُ القَهْرِ أو طِلحامُها
19. Then in Ṣuwāʾiq if she headed toward the Yemen,
so that by now
She is most likely in its Wiḥāf al-Qahr,
or in Ṭilhām.
In the second half of the nasīb, the poet laments the departure of the tribe and especially the beloved, Nawār. In Stetkevych’s reading, this serves as an implicit acknowledgement that it was not just the ravages of time and nature that were responsible for the decay of what once was, but more directly the “failure of the polity, destruction of the social order, and the dispersal or scattering of its members.”[13] The poet is cut off from the tribe and left with only the distant vision of the beloved, unsure of which direction the tribe has gone.
فاقطَعْ لُبانةَ مَن تَعرَّضَ وصلُهُ
ولَـخَيرُ واصلِ خُلَّةٍ صَرَّامُها
20. Cut off your love from him
whose bond is not secure,
For the best binder of affection's bond
is he who breaks it.
واحبُ الـمُحاملَ بالجزيلِ وصُرمُهُ
باقٍ إذا ضَلعَتْ وزاغَ قوامُها
21. Be generous to him who treats you well,
but only the cutting of bonds remains
When affection falters
and its foundation fails,
These final lines of the nasīb are referred to as the takhalluṣ (disengagement or departure). The poet reacts to this loneliness and the realization that life is short by resolving to embark on the raḥīl, a desert journey or “heroic quest.” The ultimate goal (qaṣd) is the fakhr, recognition of the poet’s and tribe’s accomplishments in a way that perpetuates their legacy. Through his poetry, the poet seeks an everlasting voice that cannot be silenced.[14]
Suzanne Stetkevych analyzes it succinctly:
In verse 21 the poet reaffirms in aphoristic terms the necessity of cutting (ṣarm) failed bonds of affection, the necessity of separation. The tone, however, has changed from the melancholy yearning of the abandoned encampment and the equally abandoned poet, the passive victim of others' departure. The poet's reflection has revealed to him the nature of mortality (of "the human condition") and the fickleness of the bonds and relationships that he has established up until now. In verses 21 and 22 the poet begins to take the initiative, becomes the actor, not the victim, of separation, and takes his own departure. The journey he undertakes is not like the dispersal and ultimate doom symbolized by the abandoned encampment and departed tribe; rather, it is a well-directed quest, a quest, I believe, for an alternative to the nature/culture dialectic, to doomed mortality, to the temporal and temporary. It is the quest for the permanent abode, for what ultimately could be termed immortality. Thus in the end the poet is not expelled from his lost paradise but, making a virtue of necessity, opts to depart.[15]
It is this separation that Stetkevych maps onto the first phase of the rite of passage.
The Raḥīl (Desert Journey): Trial
بطليحِ أسفارٍ تركنَ بقيّةً
مِنها، فأحنقَ صُلبُها وسنامُها
22. With a camel mare jaded by journeys
that have reduced her to a remnant,
Till she is emaciate
of loins and hump.
فإذا تغالَى لحمُها فتحسَّرتْ
وتقطَّعَتْ بعدَ الكَلالِ خِدامُها
23. When her flesh has dwindled
and she is exhausted,
And after great fatigue her leathern shoe thongs
are cut through,
فلها هِبابٌ في الزمامِ كأنَّها
صهباءُ راحَ مع الجَنوبِ جَهامُها
24. Yet is she as nimble in the reins
as if she were a rose-hued cloud,
Rain-emptied, running with the south wind,
sprightly.
Line twenty two is the beginning of the raḥīl (desert journey) which corresponds to the liminal stage. Through a series of similes for the she-camel — the first and shortest of which is presented above — the poet indirectly describes the trials, hardship, and danger of his journey. The she-camel serves as the poet’s sole remaining connection to prosperity and human culture. It is through its sacrifice that the poet can reach his goal and be reintegrated into the tribe.[16] The poet departed on his journey in order to face and overcome his mortality. By doing so, he risks permanently succumbing to this liminal state of perpetual loneliness and danger, as we see in the genre of ṣuʿlūk (bandit) poetry in which the poet never reintegrates into the tribe.[17]
The Fakhr (Tribal Praise): Rebirth
أقضي اللُّبانةَ أنْ أُفرِّطَ رِيبةً
أو أن يَلومَ بحاجةٍ لُوَّامُها
54· I attend my own heart's needs,
not neglecting them for fear
that others will think ill of me
or rebukers blame me.
أوَلم تكنْ تدري نوار بأنّني
وصَّالُ عقدِ حبائلٍ جَذّامُها؟
55· Did Nawār not know
that I am both
He who ties the knots in ropes
and he who cuts them?
تَرَّاكُ أمكنةٍ إذا لم أرضَها
أو يَعتلق بعضَ النّفوسِ حِمامُها
56. He who leaves a place
that does not please him,
Unless his own soul's fate
overtakes him there.
The raḥīl concludes and the fakhr begins with the above verses which hark back to the takhalluṣ that closed off the nasīb. Stetkevych notes that the connection of these verses to the end of the nasīb suggests that the entire raḥīl itself may have merely been an inner journey of the self. With these verses, the poet reaffirms his right to depart but also alludes to his reintegration into society through the tying of knots in ropes — referring to the knotting of social bonds.[18] Having already “established his independence and his willingness and ability to strike out on his own should he feel slighted or wronged,” the poet is proclaiming that his submission and contribution to society in the madīḥ is not forced on him but is a decision made with autonomy and nobility.[19]
وغداةِ ريحٍ قد كَشفتُ وقرَّةٍ
إذْ أصبحَتْ بيدِ الشَّمالِ زِمامُها
62. And many a bitter morn of wind and cold
I curbed,
When its reins were in the hand
of the north wind.
ولقد حميتُ الحيَّ تَحملُ شِكّتي
فُرُط، وِشاحيْ إذْ غدوتُ لِـجامُها
63. I defended the tribe, my battle gear borne
by a winning courser,
Her reins my sash when I
went forth at dawn.
فعَلوتُ مرتقَبًا على مرهوبةٍ
حرَجٍ إلى أعلامِهنَّ قَتامُها
64. Then I mounted a lookout post
on a narrow, wind-blown peak
Whose dust rose to the banners
of the foe
حتّى إذا ألقَتْ يدًا في كافرٍ
وَأجَنَّ عوراتِ الثُّغورِ ظلامُها
65. Until when daylight dipped its hand into
the all-concealing night,
And darkness veiled the crotches of
each mountain pass,
أسهَلتُ وانتصبَتْ كجِذعِ مُنيفةٍ
جرداءَ يحصَرُ دونَها جُرَّامُها
66. To the plain I descended and my mare
held erect her neck
Like the date palm's stripped trunk at which
the picker's courage fails.
The fakhr section of the poem corresponds to the final stage of the rite of passage: aggregation and reintegration. The poet describes various scenes of tribal life that demonstrate his own willing participation in society and the sacrifice of his own self for the lasting good of the tribe.[20] The above verses are one half of one of those scenes wherein he boasts of the battle horse he controls in the defense of the tribe. This imagery alludes to “the essential principle of aggregation: man curbing nature to the service of society.”[21]
وكثيرةٍ غُرَباؤها مجهولةٍ
تُرجَى نوافلُها ويُخشَى ذامُها
70. And many a chiefs domed tent,
where unknown strangers sojourn,
Its favor hoped for,
its displeasure feared,
غُلْبٌ تَشذَّرُ بالذُّحولِ كأنّها
جِنُّ البَديِّ رواسيًا أقدامُها
71. Its men burly-necked, lionlike,
braced for revenge,
As if they were the Jinn of al-Badī,
their feet fixed in the earth.
أنكرتُ باطلَها وبُؤتُ بحقِّها
عندي وَلم يفخَرْ عليَّ كِرامُها
72. Their false claims I denied,
their due rights recognized,
And no nobleman among them could vaunt
his glory over me.
In this scene of the fakhr section, the poet boasts of the respect and authority he is afforded in front of and by rivaling tribes. Following ethical standards and structured societal expectations of rights and obligations, which are alluded to here, is an essential part of the aggregation phase of the rite of passage.[22] Just as the poet defended the tribe’s rights in war with his horse, he defends their rights in council with his speech.
إنّا إذا التقَتِ المجامعُ لم يَزلْ
منَّا لِزازُ عظيمةٍ جشَّامُها
78. When tribal councils gather
there is always one of us
Who contends in grave affairs
and shoulders them,
ومُقسِّمٌ يُعطي العشيرةَ حقَّها
ومُغذمِرٌ لِحقوقِها هضَّامُها
79. A divider of spoils who gives
each clan its due,
Demanding their rights for the worthy,
the rights of the worthless refusing
فضلًا وَذو كرمٍ يُعينُ على النّدى
سَمْحٌ كسوبُ رغائبٍ غَنَّامُها
8o. Out of superior might; a man munificent,
who with his bounty succors,
Openhanded; a winner and plunderer of all
that he desires,
مِن مَعشرٍ سَنّتْ لهمْ آباؤهمْ
ولكلِّ قومٍ سُنّةٌ وَإمامُها
81. From a clan whose fathers set for them
their law-
For each tribe has its leader
and its law.
لا يَطبَعون ولا يبورُ فعالُهمْ
إذْ لا تميلُ مع الهوَى أحلامُها
82. Their honor is not sullied, their deeds
not without issue,
For their judgment is not swayed
by passion's flights.
فاقنَعْ بما قسمَ المليكُ، فإنّما
قسَمَ الخلائقَ بينَنا عَلّامُها
83. Be then content, O enemy, with what the sovereign
allotted you,
For virtues were allotted us
by him who knows them.
وإذا الأمانةُ قُسِّمَتْ في معشرٍ
أوفَى بأعظمِ حظِّنا قَسَّامُها
84. When trusts were apportioned
to the tribes,
The apportioner allotted us
the greatest share.
فبنَوا لنا بيتًا رَفيعًا سَمكُهُ
فسمَا إليهِ كهلُها وغلامُها
85. He built for us a high-roofed
edifice,
To which the tribesmen mount,
both youths and full-grown men.
وهمُ السُّعاةُ إذا العشيرةُ أُفظِعَتْ
وهمُ فوارسُها وهمْ حُكَّامُها
86. They are the first to act
when the tribe is stricken;
In war, its horsemen;
in disputes, its arbiters.
وهمُ ربيعٌ لِلمجاوِرِ فيهمُ
والمُرمِلاتِ إذا تطاولَ عامُها
87. They arc a springtime
to those that seek refuge
And to indigent women, their food stores exhausted,
while the year stretches long.
وهمُ العشيرةُ أَن يُبطِّئَ حاسدٌ
أو أَن يَلومَ مع العدوِّ لِيَامُها
88. They form a band so tight that none of them
impedes it out of envy,
Nor, out of treachery,
leans toward the foe.[23]
In these final verses of the fakhr and the qaṣīdah itself, the poet transitions to boasting about the virtues of the tribe and its members, with a few lines addressing less virtuous rival tribes. The power, ethics, and bounty of the tribe represents the poet’s goal of perpetuity and a lasting legacy.[24] These verses celebrate a plethora of societal values of the members of the tribe: responsibility, generosity, justice, accountability, adherence to tradition, wisdom, bravery, compassion, contentment, honor, trust, discipline, chivalry, and loyalty. The underlying thread between these is the concept of murūʾah.[25] At the same time, the poet pities and consoles rival tribes whose members are lacking in those same virtues.
With these select passages of the nasīb, raḥīl, and fakhr, we have seen how the poet transitions between the three stages of the rite of passage framework: separation, liminality, and reintegration. For a more comprehensive analysis, refer to the first chapter of Stetkevych’s The Mute Immortals Speak. The themes of culture versus nature and temporality versus permanence are two of many that can be derived. The beauty of literature is in its infinite possibility for meaning and interpretation. The lens we have explored the poem through is just one interpretation presented by Suzanne Stetkevych through the prism of ritual theory. Labīd’s Muʿallaqah serves as a lucid example of her analogy and framework for the structure of the archetypal qaṣīdah, but it is in no way universal. Many famous qaṣīdahs, including the other muʿallaqāt, diverge in their structure while still maintaining coherence in their own way. For example, the final fakhr section is often replaced with an alternate purpose (gharaḍ), such as madīḥ (court panegyric) or hijāʾ (satire).[26] Similarly, in the Abbasid era, the middle raḥīl section was increasingly omitted from the poem.[27] Yet despite the variances, many of these themes and motifs are persistent, timeless aspects of the qaṣīdah that resonate beyond tribal society to royal courts, family life, and even corporate drama.
Notes
[1] Suzanne Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual, (Cornell University, 1993), 11.
[2] Renate Jacobi, “Qaṣīda” in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, ed. Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, (Routledge, 1998), 630–633. For Ibn Qutaybah’s description of the qaṣīdah conventions, see Ibn Qutaybah, Kitāb al-Shiʿr wa-al-Shuʿarāʾ, (Dār al-Ḥadīth, 2002), 1:75. The third section is sometimes referred to more broadly as the gharaḍ or main purpose of the poem.
[3] Renate Jacobi, “Qaṣīda” in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature,631.
[4] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 5.
[5] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 6.
[6] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 7.
[7] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 8.
[8] Ibn Qutaybah, Kitāb al-Shiʿr wa-al-Shuʿarāʾ, 1:266–268. Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals, 8–9, 51–52.
[9] ِAbū Bakr al-Ḥumaydī, al-Musnad, (Dār al-Saqā, 1996) 2:237. Ibn Abī Shaybah, al-Muṣannaf, (Dār al-Tāj, 1989) 5:272.
[10] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 9.
[11] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 9–18. For a study comparing three English translations of the poem, see Alfred Naddaff, “Translating to Inspire: A Case Study of Three English Translations of Labīd’s Muʿallaqah” (Master’s Thesis, American University of Beirut, 2022).
[12] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 19–22.
[13] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 23
[14] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 23
[15] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 26
[16] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 28–29
[17] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 26, 87–89.
[18] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 33
[19] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 34
[20] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 34
[21] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 36
[22] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 37
[23] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 9–18.
[24] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 40
[25] James E. Montgomery, "Dichotomy in 'Jahili' Poetry," Journal of Arabic Literature, no.17 (1986): 2, 20. Despite Labīd’s Muʿallaqahbeing a product of pre-Islamic times, Stetekevych argues that the values and virtues expressed therein are “distinctly proto-Islamic… perhaps simply Islamic.” Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals 42–46.
[26] Stetkevych, Mute Immortals Speak, 4.
[27] Renate Jacobi, “Qaṣīda” in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature,630–33.
Ustadh Hamza Baig is an instructor in the Qalam Seminary’s Alimiyyah program, teaching students how to research and navigate classical fiqh texts and hadith commentaries. He is also a graduate of the Qalam Alimiyyah program. He holds an MA in the Humanities and an MA in Divinity with a focus on Islamic Thought and History from the University of Chicago, as well as a BA in International Political Economy from the University of Texas at Dallas. He has been teaching Arabic and Islamic Studies in various capacities since 2012.
