Human-Animal Interaction in the Ten Mu'allaqat

Abstract

Since the dawn of man's history, man realized that the land he lives on and the environment are shared by a group of animals which he haunts some and breeds others. He uses some to move from one area to another. In the world of ancient mythology, it has a prominent and noticeable presence. In anthropological and archaeological studies of ancient human societies, we find that animals are present in their sculptures and inscriptions. It even had a prominent presence in religious texts, sometimes in the form of a messenger bird, such as Solomon's hoopoe, and sometimes representing a miracle with which God Almighty established proof against the nations, such as the she-camel of Saleh. He employs some for chasing other animals and farming.

Poets donot draw things as they see and are not concerned to document events as they hear. In fact a poet creats his world far from the shackles of reality. The creative text which is full of aesthetic dimensions carries a touch of revolt against reality: though the poet does not announce a complete separation.

The poets of Mua'laqat personify animals who the talk about them and make them an objective correlative. Through an animal, a poet expression what he cannot express directly. Through this, the poet constructs a parallel reality that is not necessarily subject to the strict logic of lived reality, but rather transcends it, free from the frameworks and constraints imposed by social institutions. This research has undertaken the task of interrogating the texts and probing their depths, revealing their semantic contents, with the aim of clarifying the close relationship between the human poet and the animal, and examining the representations and images of this relationship that transcend the boundaries of environmental cohabitation or existential proximity. The research concludes with a summary of its most prominent findings.