Literature of Pre-Islamic Era

Course Main Objective

To introduce students to the concept of literature in the pre-Islam era and its most important issues and figures.

Course Learning Outcomes

• 1. Knowledge and Comprehension
•    1.1 Explain history of pre-Islam literature, its approaches, issues, features, different sources, its prose and poetic arts and most prominent figures.
• 2. Skills 
  
•    2.1 Analyze aesthetics in the pre-Islam literary texts. 
•    2.2 Use communication and information technology and learning resources upon conducting research and performing assignments on the pre-Islam literature.
• 3. Values 
•   3.1 Abide by individual, collective and leading work with colleagues upon tackling issues or texts of the pr-Islam era. 
•   3.2 Observe scientific integrity and ethics as a responsible citizen upon performing the pre-Islam literature assignments and projects.

Course Content

1. An introduction to the course and its requirements.
2. The concept and importance of literature on the cultural level of nations; history of literature, subject of literature and this will be applied practically through a brief study of the pre-Islam age.
3. The relation between (history) and (literature) and difference of each one's characteristics.
4. Disagreement of the Arabic literature historians on how to divide (division into ages, division into arts and genres, division into artistic schools and movements).
5. Advantages of each approach and which approach most prominent researchers have adopted.
6. The most important issues raised by history of literature (periodization, theory of literary ages, poetry collection and recording, the issue of the old and the modern, the issue of exploring ancient literature and explaining which original and which intruder).
7. Literary genres and their relation to their historic and cultural context.
8. Denotation of the word "the pre-Islam era" in the literary, religious and historic contexts of our Arab and Islamic heritage.
9. Antecedents of the pre-Islamic poetry and its composition and recording.
10. Sources of the pre-Islamic poetry: individual diwans and tribes diwans, poetic collections (such as Al-Mu'allaqat "the Hanging poems", Al-Mufaddaliyat, Al-Asmaiyat, and others) literary blogs of poetry and prose (such as Kitab Uyun Al Akhbar "Eye on News", Al-Kamel "the Perfect", Kotob Al-Amali "the Dictations", kitab Al-Majalis wa Al Akhbar "Assemblies and News")
11. The issue of doubt (plagiarism) in the Jahili poetry for the ancients and the modernists.
12. Definition of the Mu'allaqat "the Hanging Poems" and their poets, subjects, and a study of two different genres as a model.
13. The artistic attitudes and subjects in the Pre-Islam Era
14. Introducing the artistic structure of poem
15. The concept of brigandage and its reasons, the brigand poetry and its attributes through studying some of its texts.
16. Speech genres: speech (political, social, religious), disparity, pride, will, stories, rhymed sayings of the soothsayers.

Textbook (s) 

- Nabawei, Abdel Aziz. Studies on Jahili Literature. Al-Mukhtar, Cairo, 1st ed., 2002.
- Daif, Shawky. The Pre-Islam Era. Dar Al-Ma'aref. Egypt, 42nd ed., 2018.

Course ID: ARAB 203