War Songs. 'Antarah ibn Shaddad

      INTRODUCTION

      Belligerent, defiant, brutal, uncompromising, unsettling—the voice of ʿAntarah ibn Shaddād, legendary warrior and poet of clan ʿAbs, rings loud and clear today, some fifteen hundred years after he lived, loved, and fought.

      ʿAntarah’s life and exploits are legendary. Many are the tales of his valor, of how he single-handedly held the line against marauders and saved the day. But in fact we know next to nothing about him, and what we do know seems at best amplified and larger than life, if not fantastical. As with Arthur of Camelot, we encounter ʿAntarah the legend, not ʿAntarah the man.

      From the moment in the third/ninth century that ʿAntarah appears, charging full tilt against the record of history, he is cloaked in uncertainty, having already become the stuff of legend.¹ There are, however, points where all versions of the legend converge: that ʿAntarah was black and born a slave to a black mother, herself a slave; that he belonged to the tribe of ʿAbs; that he lived in the second half of the sixth century; that he was the most ferocious and accomplished warrior of his age; that he won his freedom in battle; and that he excelled as a poet.

      ʿAntarah is an elemental force of nature. The name “ʿAntarah” (also “ʿAntar”) is variously explained.² One suggestion is that it is onomatopoeic and means “the blowfly, bluebottle” (Calliphora vomitoria) because the word replicates the sound the blowfly makes. Another that it means “valorous, valiant.” There is also a verbal form (ʿantara) that means to “thrust,” i.e., with a spear or a lance. The name “ʿAntarah” is thus polyvalent. It conveys an adeptness with the lance and valor in battle as well as skin color: the blowfly, with its loud buzz, red eyes, transparent wings, and black body, is often found around carrion and dead meat.

      ʿAntarah was one of the three “Arab ravens” of the pre-Islamic era (a time known in Arabic as the Jāhiliyyah), that is, black poet-warriors born to black women. The mother of this raven (or was he a blowfly?) ʿAntarah was an Ethiopian woman called Zabībah, whose name means “black raisin.”³ According to one source, he was given the nickname “Cleftlip,” an epithet that denotes a deformity of the lip.⁴ And one version of the story of his death has him killed not by human hand, but by a rainstorm.⁵ After all, how could a human hand kill someone who identified so closely with death that he could claim, “Death I know—it looks like me, grim as battle”?⁶

      Even ʿAntarah’s lineage, a topic of such importance to both pre-Islamic Arabs and the scholars who recorded and studied pre-Islamic lore, is enveloped in uncertainty. Was he ʿAntarah son of Shaddād, or son of ʿAmr son of Shaddād, or son of Muʿāwiyah son of Shaddād? If his father’s name was ʿAmr or Muʿāwiyah, why had this name been eclipsed in ʿAntarah’s lineage by that of Shaddād? And was Shaddād his grandfather or paternal uncle?⁷ Whatever solution they offer to this conundrum, the sources agree that Shaddād was a famous knight and that he was known as “the Rider of Jirwah.” In other words, Shaddād is a paragon of the northern Arab elite cavalryman. While we may not know for sure who ʿAntarah’s father was, all our sources agree that it was his father who gave ʿAntarah his freedom after ʿAntarah had distinguished himself in battle.

      Some of ʿAntarah’s poems mention his love for a woman named ʿAblah.⁸ Legend has it that she was his cousin, and that he asked for her hand in marriage but was refused. As “ʿAntar and ʿAblah,” this story of unrequited and doomed love enchanted and captivated subsequent centuries and continues to weave its spell today.

      ʿAntarah’s poetry breathes a spirit of indomitability, pride, and loyalty to kith and kin. It can seem inward-looking, solipsistic even, consumed by its own world and isolated from events beyond the pasture lands of ʿAbs, caught up in the hurly-burly of the squabbles, battles, and power politics of his clan. There are, however, indications that ʿAntarah and ʿAbs were not completely cut off from the wider world: he charges into battle with bamboo lances from India, wields curved Indian blades, brandishes broadswords from Yemen and sabers from Mashārif in Syria, shoots arrows as thin as strips of leather from Ḥimyar, and rides Mahrah camels from South Arabia.

      ʿAntarah may have lived in an isolated region, the highlands of Arabia, but his poetry is the poetry of a society in turmoil. The myriad clan conflicts that his verses so fiercely evoke were not isolated phenomena, but were a part of wider unrest among the tribes of the peninsula. And the unrest among the tribes of Arabia was not isolated from the turbulence in the world that surrounded Arabia, as the superpowers of Rome and Iran continued to wage war on one another, and the kingdoms of Axum and Ḥimyar spiraled into decline.

      THE ARABIAN PENINSULA

      The Arabian peninsula (or Arabia) extends today from the deserts of modern Syria and Jordan in the north to Yemen in the south, from the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia in the west to the Gulf states and Oman in the east. It is the largest peninsula in the world, occupying a landmass about as big as the Indian subcontinent. Its terrain slopes from west to east, and is characterized by two great ergs, or sand-dune deserts: the Empty Quarter (al-Rubʿ al-Khālī) in the south, stretching from Yemen to the Gulf states, and the ʿĀlij (or al-Nafūd) in the north. These ergs are connected by a long strip of sand known as the Dahnāʾ (see Maps, pp. lxvii–lxviii). The heights of Yemen and Dhofar in Oman are blessed in summer with monsoon rains, but the rest of the peninsula receives little rain. Settlement patterns are therefore largely dictated by access to groundwater in the form of oases and wells, and by the need to travel to such sources of water or in search of areas of rainfall. In the pre-Islamic era, survival often depended on a group’s skill in gaining access to water.

      Thus, the Arabian peninsula of the sixth century was geographically hemmed in, caught between the landmass of Iran to the east, Rome (Byzantium) to the northwest, and Africa to the west. It survived on the periphery of the two world superpowers of Late Antiquity: Sasanian Iran and Rome. And as a peninsula, an “almost-island,” it was both connected to and somewhat separated from this world on its three sides (by sea and desert). Culture and society were also peninsular, they mimicked geography—prior to the advent of Islam, Arabia both formed part of, and was independent of, the world of Late Antiquity, characterized by a curious combination of belonging to, and differing from, this world.

      ROME AND IRAN

      The Roman Empire and Sasanian Iran were not friends: at best their relations comprised an uneasy stasis characterized by mutual mistrust. Both shared a conception of universal empire and their sovereigns presumed a claim to universal authority, which was often expressed in the form of religion.

      For the Romans, who had become Christian under the emperor Constantine (r. AD 305–37), this conception of empire was the universal establishment of Christian rule, including forced conversion and the eradication of paganism—in other words,