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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
A Few months ago I endeavoured to give to an audience in this room some account of an ancient Arabian poet, 'Abīd of Asad, whose remains, recently recovered from the oblivion of the past, are now being printed. I explained the great position which the poet occupied in old tribal Arabia: how his championship in verse was as important to the interests of the clan as the prowess in arms of its men of war; and how in the southern deserts he held a place scarcely inferior to that of the prophet in tribal Israel. It was his business to extol the deeds of the warriors, to inspire the members of the tribe with fortitude and devotion to its interests, to maintain its cause in all contentions, to strike its enemies with biting satire, and to uphold the heroic ideal of conduct to which all should aspire by praise of the worthy, and especially by consecrating the memory of the valiant dead in those noble laments which form the most beautiful and touching monuments of old Arabian verse.
page 133 note 1 See JRAS., April, 1911, p. 581. The paper was not printed, because the information contained in it will shortly be published in an edition of the poems now in the press.
page 136 note 1 'Abīd, , Dīwān, i, vv. 35–45Google Scholar.
page 139 note 1 Labīd, , Mu'allaqah, vv. 25–35Google Scholar.
page 141 note 1 Mu'allaqah, vv. 36–52.
page 142 note 1 Mufaḍḍalīyāt, No. cxx.
page 142 note 2 Dhu-r-Rummah's, bā'īyah, vv. 119–30 (Smend's edition)Google Scholar.
page 144 note 1 The quotations from Job are taken from the Revised Version.
page 145 note 1 Lāmīyah of ash-Shanfarà, vv. 26–35 (Constantinople ed., 1300, with commentaries of az-Zamakhsharī and al-Mubarrad).
page 146 note 1 The passage will be found in the Khizānat al-Adab, vol. i, p. 544.
page 147 note 1 Reading ḥādhimah (or khādhimah) for the unsuitable khādimah of the text, as suggested by Professor Bevan.
page 148 note 1 Mu'allaqah, vv. 71–82. The version is quoted from my Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry, published in 1885.
page 150 note 1 The passage is in Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, i, p. 105.
page 150 note 2 The Religious Attitude and Life in Islam, Chicago, 1909, p. 23Google Scholar.
page 150 note 3 See p. 16.
page 152 note 1 See the preface to Tibrīzī's commentary on the Ḥamāsah, p. 1, 11. 12–19; also Maidānī, Proverbs, i, 1.
page 152 note 2 Chap, xxv, vv. 221–7.
