Imruʾ al-Qays

Arabic poet of the first half of the sixth century CE; Muslim-era litterateurs consider Imruʾ al-Qays to be one of the earliest and most celebrated of all pre-Islamic Arabic poets.

Akin to most central Arabian figures of the early sixth century CE, there is no contemporary record about the poet Imruʾ al-Qays. We rely on Arabic literary sources from the ninth and tenth centuries, and these texts contain evident expansions, variations, and disagreements. The poet’s biography in Arabic literature was also reshaped by heroic narrative conventions; the history is thus tentative, and this entry outlines the main elements of the Arabic traditions.

‘Imruʾ al-Qays’ means ‘Worshiper of the Qays’, Qays either a deity in its own right or an attribute of the goddess Manāt. It may have been the poet’s nickname, as he is sometimes ascribed various given names, ʿAdī, Mulayka or Ḥunduj. There is disagreement over the identity of his father too, but most sources name him Ḥujr ibn al-Ḥārith, king of Kinda, whose reign commenced in 528 CE, and Imruʾ al-Qays’s birth is posited as shortly before that date.

The young prince adopted a libertine lifestyle of poetry, women and wine, and the narratives state he was banished from court for breaching accepted morality (the precise offense differs between versions). Imruʾ al-Qays is then depicted as travelling about Arabia in the companionship of vagabonds, until he was informed that his father had been killed by the Asad tribe. The biography here exhibits a transformation: Imruʾ al-Qays becomes a warrior and mobilises other tribes into taking revenge. Though initially successful, he was later abandoned by his allies, and so he travelled to Byzantium to engage the Emperor’s support to continue his war on the Asad. Accounts of his reception in Constantinople are varied; some say he never reached the city, and no sources suggest an alliance was agreed. Most narrate that Imruʾ al-Qays died after wearing a poisoned mantle given to him as a present by the Byzantine emperor. Arabic literature thus bestows two further nicknames on Imruʾ al-Qays: al-malik al-ḍalīl (‘the king who lost his kingdom’) and dhū al-qurūḥ (‘the scabby one’), a reference to the effects of the poisoned mantle on his skin (or indication that the poet died of the plague? [compare Shahid (1997) and Montgomery (2006: 61–62)]). His death is not dated in Arabic sources (Ibn Qutayba, al-Shiʿr 1:125 offers an approximation); modern scholars vary between 540-560.

Scholars debate whether the vengeance-seeking poet-prince Imruʾ al-Qays is one and the same as the “Kaisos” who was “phylarch of the Saracens” and appointed to lead both Kinda and Maʿadd as identified in the histories of Nonnosus (b.c. 500?) and Procopius (c. 500-570), contemporary Greek writers who attended the court of the Emperor Justinian (r. 525-548). The Greek sources’ Kaisos may be too old to fit the poet Imruʾ al-Qays, and the wide sovereignty associated with Kaisos is not reflected in Arabic-language memories of Imruʾ al-Qays, suggestive that the two are different figures (Procop. Pers. 1.20.9; for a translation of Nonnosus and discussion see Edwell et al 2015: 238–40; see also Robin 2012: 42–44).

Imruʾ al-Qays is recognised as one of the greatest Arabic poets, and Muslim-era Arabic poetry specialists identified him as the innovator of classic poetic conventions (Ibn Sallām Ṭabaqāt, 1:51-53, al-Sijistānī, Fuḥūlat 106, Ibn Qutayba, al-Shiʾr 1:107). Imruʾ al-Qays apparently had become proverbial with the art of poetry at an early period: several hadith ascribed to the Prophet allude to him as the “leader of the poets” and/or “the poet’s banner-bearer in Hell” (Ibn Qutayba, al-Shiʿr 1:126–128). Imruʾ al-Qays was often regarded as the very best pre-Islamic poet, but this claim was debated amongst Arabic poetry specialists (Ibn Sallām, Ṭabaqāt 1:53–56, al-ʿUmarī, Masālik 14:17–20).

Imruʾ al-Qays’s poetry is extant (Dīwān ed. al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm), but its authenticity is unclear. Poems ascribed to Imruʾ al-Qays were collected by late eighth-century Iraqi poetry specialists and the written traditions date to the ninth century; there are claims of forgery and false ascription of poems, and the late eighth-century poetry expert al-Aṣmaʾī considered that “many poems” associated with Imruʾ al-Qays were actually composed by his vagabond coterie (al-Sijistānī, Fuḥūlat 109). Certain poems, however, including his famous ode that opens the Muʿallaqāt collection, are widely agreed as genuine.

Peter Webb

References and suggested reading

Sources

• Al-Aṣbahānī, Abū al-Faraj. 1992. Kitāb al-Aghānī. Ed. by A.A. Muhannā and S. Jābir. 27 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya.
• Ibn Qutayba, ʿAbd Allāh. 2006. al-Shiʿr wa-l-shuʿarāʾ. Ed. by Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir. 2 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Ḥadīth.
• Ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥī. 1974. Ṭabaqāt fuḥūl al-shuʿarāʾ. Ed. by Maḥmūd Muḥammad Shākir. 2 vols. Cairo: al-Madanī.
• Imruʾ al-Qays. 1958. Dīwān. Ed. by Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm. Cairo: al-Maʿārif.
• Procopius, History of the Wars. Ed. and Trans. H.B. Dewing, 1914. Cambridge MA: Loeb.
• Al-Sijsitānī, Abū Ḥātim. 1991. Fuḥūlat al-shuʿarāʾ. Ed. by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir Aḥmad. Cairo: al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya.
• Al-ʿUmarī, Aḥmad, Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār. Ed. by K. Jabbūrī and M al-Najm. 27 volumes, 2010. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya.

Studies

• Edwell, P. et al. 2015. Arabs in the Conflict between Rome and Persia AD 491-630, in G. Fisher (ed.) Arabs and Empires before Islam: 241–275. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Fassberg, T. 2020. The Greek Death of Imruʾ al-Qays. JAOS 140: 415–433.
• Montgomery, J.E. 2006. The Empty Ḥijāz, in J.E. Montgomery (ed.) Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy: From the Many to the One. Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank: 37–97. Leuven: Peeters.
• Robin, C. 2012. Abraha et la reconquête de l’Arabie déserte. JSIA 39: 1–93.
• Shahīd, I. 1997. The Last Days of Imruʾ al-Qays: Anatolia, in I.J. Boullata & T. DeYoung (eds) Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Literature: 207–222. Fayetteville: Arkansas University Press.
• Al-Tahir, A.M. 2005. Imruʾ al-Qays, in M. Cooperson & S. Toorawa (eds) Arabic Literary Culture: 212–224. Farmington Hills MI: Thompson Gale.

_{Alternate spellings: Imru’ al-Qays, Imru al-Qays, ʾmrwʾ ʾl-Qys}