Hamasah

Ḥamāsah (from Arabic حماسة exhortation) is a ten-book anthology of Arabic poetry, compiled in the 9th Century by Abu Tammam. Poems are grouped by subject matter.

The name is taken from the title of the first book, which contains poems about endurance, strength in battle and resistance to temptation. The anthology contains a total of 884 poems, most of which are extracts of longer poems. The ten books are as follows:

(1) Al-Ḥamāsah;

(2) Al-Marāthī, “Dirges”;

(3) Al-Adab, “Manners”;

(4) An-Nasīb, “Love poems”;

(5) Al-Hijāʿ, “Satires”;

(6) Al-Adyāf wa al-madīḥ, “Hospitality and Panegyric”;

(7) Aṣ-Ṣifāt, “Various descriptions”;

(8) As-Sayr wa an-Nuʾas, “travelling and tiredness”;

(9) Al-Mulah, “Pleasantries”;

(10) Madhammāt an-nisaʾ, “Critique of women.”

The poems range from pre-Islamic times to up to AD 832. The Ḥamāsah was probably compiled around AD 835, while Abū Tammām was staying at Hamadan in Iran, where he had access to a very good library. It quickly acquired the status of a classic work. Saladin is said to have known it by heart.

External links

• Article in Britannica

Fruther reading

"Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ʿAbbāsid Age". - Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych (1991)