RESOURCESkanakis as Der Diwan des 'Ubaid-Allah Ibn Kais ar-Rukajjat (Vienna,
1902). The poems of the Christian Ghayath ibn Ghawth al-Akhral (d.
92/710) in praise of contemporary rulers were edited by Houtsma as
Encomium Omayyadarum (Leiden, 1878), and his Dfwiin was edited
by A. SalhanI et al. (Beirut, 1891). The Dfwiin (Beirut, 1960) of Jadr
ibn 'Ariyya al-Khatafa (d. 114/732) and that of I:Iammam ibn Ghalib
ibn Sa'~a'a al-Farazdaq (641-728) contain references to events and
circumstances in Iraq which supplement the prose accounts and ex-
press a point of view. The text of al-Farazdaq's dfwiin was published
with a French translation by R. Boucher as Divan de Ferazdak (Paris,
1870). J. Hell's Divan des Farazdaq (Munich, 1900) is a facsimile of
the Istanbul manuscript. 'A. a~-Sawi's Sharl? dfwiin al-Farazda~ (Cairo,
1354/1936) is a useful aid. The scurrilous poetic competition between
the latter two poets was published by A. Bevan as The Na~ii'id of
Jarfr and al-Farazda~ (Leiden, 1905-12) and contains informative
prose passages as well as variants of the poems in the dfwiin. The
Naqii'id alone were translated into English by A. Wormhoudt (Os-
kaloosa, Iowa, 1974). F. Krenkow's edition and translation of The
Poems of Tufail ibn 'Auf al-Ghanawf and at-Tirimmii~ ibn Ijiikim
al-Tii'yf (London, 1927) is also worth consulting. There are many
more, but the single most efficient introduction to them is through the
Kitiib al-aghiinf of Abu I-Faraj al-I~bahanI (al-I~fahanI, 284/897-360/
967). The twenty-volume Bulaq (1285/168-69) edition of this text is
the classic one, but there have been many more since then. This work
contains biographical information about pre-Islamic and early Islamic
poets, samples of their poetry and incidental historical references in
anecdotal form, which means that such information should be weighed
critically against everything else.
Historiographical Problems
There is a difference between being critical and being skeptical. The
authenticity of the entire Arabic literary corpus, when it deals with
matters concerning the first one and one-half centuries of Islamic his-
tory, has been undermined by the skepticism of Western scholars based
on its internal contradictions, on the partisan biases of the transmitters,
on the anachronous retrojections of later issues and legal theories back
on to an earlier period, on the fictional and legendary qualities of its
anecdotal elements, and on assumptions about the nature of oral com-
position and transmission. Such criticism has led to views that Islamic
historical composition originated in commentaries on the Qur'an or