Oral Poetry and Narratives from Central Arabia, Volume 1 Poetry of Ad-Dindan

This work presents the complete collection of oral poetry by ad-Dind?n, a bedouin poet of the Duw?sir tribe in southern Najd, transcribed and translated on the basis of taped recordings. The text is representative of a poetic tradition which has remained remarkably close to the desert poetry of the early classical age. An extensive glossary, including detailed cross-references to the classical Arabic vocabulary, completes this edition.
The introduction describes Dind?n's somewhat anomalous position in local society as a result of his stubborn attachment to nomadism, his fierce artistic temper, and his unreconstructed bedouin ethos. It also discusses the composition of oral poetry, the "d?w?n's themes and its place in the Najdi tradition, the impact of literacy on the poet's oral work, and the prosodic and linguistic features of the text.

P. Marcel Kurpershoek studied Arabic language and literature at the University of Leiden and has served in several Arab countries as a member of the Netherlands Foreign Service. He is the author of The Short Stories of Yūsūf Idrīs (Brill, 1981) and Deep Inside Arabia (1992, in Dutch), a travelogue and account of his fieldwork among the Bedouins of Saudi Arabia.