The šawāʽir al-ǧāhiliyya: Grammar Don’t Matter Much

Discussion of the grammar used by the šawāʿir al-ǧāhiliyya is meaningful only within the framework of a much bigger context. For, though it would be easy enough to focus on interesting grammatical features in the šawāʿir al-ǧāhiliyya, that would be far too narrow a viewpoint and would do still further injustice to work that has been sadly mistreated over the centuries. Thus, the paper starts with a reappraisal of the scanty extant laments of the šawāʿir al-ǧāhiliyya. This was long overdue, for very little has been done on them since Cheikho’s Šawāʿir al-ʿarab. Further, the article handles the problems of their authenticity and the relationship between the poetic register and the language normally used by women poets, their own dialects. The paper is concluded by drawing attention to some of the more striking grammatical peculiarities of the women’s laments.