History of Arabic Literature and Literary Figures
The periods you must be able to order
- الجاهلية: oral poetry, المعلقات; poets Imru' al-Qays, Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma, Amr ibn Kulthum; themes فخر، هجاء، رثاء، وصف، غزل.
- صدر الإسلام: the Qur'an and Hadith as models of prose; the diwan system.
- العصر الأموي: political poetry (Jarir, al-Farazdaq, al-Akhtal), ghazal (Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a), khamriyya.
- العصر العباسي: Ibn al-Muqaffa' (Kalila wa Dimna, translated from Pahlavi), al-Jahiz (al-Bukhala', Kitab al-Hayawan), Abu Tammam and al-Mutanabbi, al-Hamadhani (originator of the مقامة) and al-Hariri (its master), al-Ma'arri (Risalat al-Ghufran).
- الأندلس: muwashshah; Ibn Zaydun, al-Mu'tamid.
- العصر الحديث (النهضة): al-Barudi, Ahmad Shawqi (أمير الشعراء), Hafiz Ibrahim (شاعر النيل), Khalil Mutran, Taha Husayn, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Naguib Mahfuz (Nobel Prize 1988), Mahmoud Darwish.
Worked example
Question: من مبتكر المقامة ومن أشهر من أتقنها؟ Answer: ابتكرها بديع الزمان الهمذاني، وأتقنها الحريري في «مقاماته». Reasoning: the maqama is a short rhymed-prose narrative with a narrator and a trickster hero; the originator/master pair is a standard one-mark fact. Do not swap al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri, and do not attribute the genre to al-Jahiz.
Traps
- Placing a poet in the wrong era: al-Mutanabbi is Abbasid, not Umayyad.
- Giving titles in Bengali or English when the Arabic title is expected.
- Treating Ibn al-Muqaffa' as the originator of Kalila wa Dimna rather than its Arabic translator.