Diwan Al-Shanfari

Author's name: Al-Shanfari, Al-Sulayk ibn Al-Salka

In this book, Professor Talal Harb sheds light on the phenomenon of vagabonds that spread in the pre-Islamic era, from which emerged poets who attacked the miserly rich in a society not subject to law, and they felt that they were the rightful owners. Among these was “Shanfari,” who was one of the most famous vagabonds in the pre-Islamic era and one of their most brilliant poets. However, narrators differed on his name. It was said that he was Thabit ibn Aws al-Azdi, or Amr ibn Malik al-Azdi. What concerns us in this area is what Shanfari left behind in poetry, but most of it was lost, as Professor Talal Harb says, and only a little of it remained. This reduction indicates his unique poetic talent. If Urwah ibn al-Ward led the vagabond groups, then Shanfari was their leader poetically without a competitor. This is because Shanfari not only informed us of the secrets of the vagabonds’ lives, their goals, and the methods of their vagabondage... but he also rose in his depiction of this life to the level of talented artistic creation, until his Lamiyyah became one of the most important documents of art and life expressing the model of living. In this context, the book presents the narrators’ disagreement over the attribution of “Al-Lamiyyah” to a pre-Islamic poet from the vagabonds, whether it was Al-Shanfari, Ta’abbat Sharran, or other pre-Islamic poets, with a presentation of the collection of poems by Al-Shanfari and two other vagabond poets: Al-Shilak bin Al-Salka and Amr bin Baraq, with a selection of their poems.