Mu’allaqat
The Muʻallaqāt (Arabic: المعلقات, [ʔalmuʕallaqaːt]) is a compilation of seven long pre-Islamic Arabic poems. The name means The Suspended Odes or The Hanging Poems, they were named so because these poems were hung in the Kaaba in Mecca. Some scholars have also suggested that the hanging is figurative, as if the poems “hang” in the reader’s mind.
Along with the Mufaddaliyat, Jamharat Ash’ar al-Arab, Asma’iyyat, and the Hamasah, the Mu’allaqāt are considered the primary source for early written Arabic poetry. Scholar Peter N. Stearns goes so far as to say that they represent “the most sophisticated poetic production in the history of Arabic letters.”
