in Southern Arabia
Left: The poet ’Awdat bir ’Ali ’Awdat from Qishn. Right: The poet, Hâjj Dâkôn (center), improvising a couplet of verse–called regzît– that will be collectively chanted by the men to either side of him. Regzît couplets are improvised and chanted by squads of men, each representing a different family or clan, whenever the entire tribe gathers to celebrate a wedding. Formerly, regzît were exchanged for all issues that concerned the tribe as a whole. Nowadays, they are restricted to friendly encounters.
to his recently divorced wife and insisted on taking care of the infant on his own. After a sleepless week, the man still refused to compromise with his wife. When Bir La’teyt spotted him, the man was on his way to his parents’ home to have them raise the child. In response, Bir La’teyt improvised the following couplet: gema de-skôyâ kell/be-bdên de-mekhkhelîq/faqh hîsen we-tbôb hâd egism we-tbât/edwêsen thêm/lâ shrâyeb w-lâ ktôb For all of the complaints/in the body of a mortal/there is wisdom and medicine for them. Except for stupidity and human nature/their cure does not exist/neither in folk medicine nor in reading the Qur’ân.
I find couplets like these attractive since they, rather than the longer tribal odes, reflect the quotidian practice of poetry that saturates everyday life in Arabia. Bir La’teyt’s tribal odes are important, solemn affairs and their transmission is restricted to the “connoisseurs” amongst the Mahra. His couplets are a source of mirth and are traded around by nearly everyone I met. In order to reconstruct the social environment that gave rise to the Arabic qasîda roughly 1500 years ago, it is important to keep in mind that poetic “zingers” like these represented the bulk of poetic composition. As these couplets became overshadowed by the literate qasîda, they ultimately dropped from the written record. All students of Arabic eventually encounter the masterpiece qasîda composed by the great preIslamic poet, Imru’ al-Qays. One of Imru’ al-Qays’ contemporaries, however, may have been more familiar with the poetic couplet that poked fun at him. O
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