Narrative Technique in the Qur’ān and in Early Poetry

It is one of the ironies of Arabic literature that the commentators on the Qur’ān found themselves having to lean heavily on the corpus of early poetry when they came to elucidate the more arcane phrases of the Qur’ān. This was, of course, due to necessity, for virtually all the material in the literary registers nearest to the Qur’ān had either disappeared or had been modernized. The result was the gathering of šawāhid, lines of poetry that were thought to elucidate various aspects of Qur’ānic grammar and lexicography.

There is at least one field in which a non-traditional approach to the links between the Qur’ān and early poetry appears to help our understanding, and it is this to which the major part of this article is devoted. The treatment is suggestive rather than exhaustive. It is intended to encourage the reader to think further about these links. The article makes a stylistic comparison between al-Aʿšā’s narrative poem titled Qiṣṣatu s-Samawʾal and three Qur’ānic passages (37:101-111, 12:11-20, and 20:80-98).