Classical Arabic poetry is one of the longest continuous literary traditions in the world. It begins in the sixth century CE with the pre-Islamic odes — the mu'allaqat — and runs in an unbroken inherited form, with the same meters and the same nasib-rahil-fakhr architecture, through the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Andalusian and Maghrebi schools, the Mamluks and Ottomans, and into the early twentieth century.
The single most quoted figure across the entire tradition is al-Mutanabbi, the tenth-century court poet whose Diwan is still memorised by educated Arabic speakers everywhere. Abu Nuwas is the wine and love poet of the early Abbasid court; al-Ma'arri the blind sceptical philosopher-poet of Ma'arrat al-Nu'man.
The Andalusian tradition — Ibn Zaydun, Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, Ibn Khafaja, Ibn al-Khatib, Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib — produced a distinctive lyrical voice that fed back into the eastern tradition through Sufism and the muwashshah strophic poem.
For readers approaching the tradition for the first time, A.J. Arberry's Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students remains the standard English-language introduction, with Arabic facing pages and metrical notes; for translations, the Library of Arabic Literature's bilingual editions of al-Mutanabbi, Abu Nuwas, and al-Ma'arri are now the best available in English.
