Animal Description in the Poetry of Ibn Ḫafāǧa

Everyone who occupies himself with the Dīwān of the Andalusian poet Ibn Ḫafāǧa will be confronted with his animal descriptions. The reason, however, that I have occupied myself with a poem of Ibn Ḫafāǧa in which animal descriptions are prominent, is that I wanted to make a brief analysis of the structure of qaṣīdas by Ibn Ḫafāǧa and others, especially with regard to the succession of the different themes. The poem of Ibn Ḫafāǧa which will be analysed is a laudatory poem on Abū Yaḥyā (Poem No 2, p. 33, in his Dīwān, ed. by as-Sayyid Muṣṭafā Ġāzī, Alexandria 1960).