Classy Arabic Poetry
Arabic poetry translations by Nathaniel Miller PhD Arabic Lit ex-Cambridge University, ex-NYU Pre-order The Emergence of Arabic Poetry 👇out August 13, '24
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A passage from a 10th-c. poem that gives a glimpse into (male) children's education in medieval Baghdad. It’s a bit long so this is a thread 🧵. If you persevere there’s eventuall...
"But your love won’t pay my bills…" 💰 They’re criticizing Ignorance trampling her rights and making light of what she says in polite company. She holds wealth in the palm of her...
"On a terrible doctor" 🩺🩹 There’s a doctor-poet whose eyelid’s inverted, relieve us, God, of his person! In the morning he visits a patient— that evening he’ll mourn him in verse...
TIL that ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān could kill flies with his bad breath. I also learned, if you read below, that you did not want to be married to ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. https://...
Black poet boasts of his skin color: ⚔️ A raven-black scabbard does you no harm when there’s a bone-slicing steel sword within. —Abū Isḥāq Ibrahīm al-Kānimī (Andalus and Mar...
One of the biggest defects in the English language is the lack of a sexy word for the saliva of another person you get in your mouth when you kiss them. Like the Arabic ruḍāb, th...
Arabic translation challenge: Translate the pun on "mithla" and "mathal, amthāl" in these two lines from the flyleaf of a 9th/15th c. manuscript. My literal translation is below...
“On a flea” 🛌 A roan camel the size of a black caraway seed, jumpier than a panther on a gazelle fawn— his frisking will be the death of me, keeping me up with his scratching til...
The penis problems of a medieval Arabic poet, Iraqi Ibn Aflaḥ al-ʿAbsī (d. 1142, Arabic text and some biographical notes in the thread): https://t.co/q1hAxCrTrw
“On a basket” 🧺 With two ears he hears nothing and holds your effects in his belly. He does the whole family’s work, carries around the kids’ food, at the market you tell him yo...
Sir William Jones (d. 1794) is super interesting. He was an orientalist and judge in Kolkata in East India Company-era Bengal and he owned this collection of Arabic poetry. Threa...
“Feeling Misunderstood" 😒 So many people attack you when you say something right— their feeble comprehension is what ails them. —al-Mutanabbī (d. 965, Kufa, Aleppo) https://t.co/...