Pre-Islamic Poetry is Praise in Nature

There is a bond and relation between praise and other poetic devices. Among these devices, praise is the origin and other artistic devices are, in fact, its branches. In a self-laudation, as a pre-Islamic form of poetry, a poet is motivated by admiration of himself and his claim of superiority over those around him. And his pride is of a tribal nature, dominated by a passionate spirit. Lamentation is of two types: personal and particular and tribal and general. The first type is more truly a lamentation, intertwined with the soul and being close to mankind’s temperament and nature. Crying over the fall of tribal heroes and the notion of accepting the determined fate became typical of the tribal general lamentations. Ghazal (‘Lyrics’), in the Ignorance Era (Pre-Islamic Arabia), was of three types: explicit lyrics which dealt with physical description of a woman, decent lyrics which dealt with the moral qualities of the woman, and artificial lyrics which meant to be an introduction to a qasida (‘ode’). So self-laudation, lamentation and lyrics largely or partly contain acclamation. For, in a lyric poem a woman or the beloved’s merits are stated and she is praised. In a self-laudation one’s personal qualities or his tribe’s merits are mentioned or they are praised. In a lamentation a dead person is praised and his/her merits are illustrated. The only difference they have is the one who is praised. When the praised one is the poet himself or his tribe, then this kind of praise is called ‘self-laudation’. If the praised one is the poet’s beloved, it is named ‘lyrics’. Accordingly, if the praised one is a dead person, it is called ‘lamentation’. And even the descriptions that a particular poet provides in his poetry, is actually acclamation of the phenomenon and manifestations he enjoyed perceiving by eyes or by heart. Satire, on the other hand, which is the opposite of acclamation, is naming the existing or claimed disadvantages of the satirized one. However, if we had the right to divide acclamation into two main types of positive and negative acclamation, we would call satire as negative acclamation. As a conclusion, we can say that the whole pre-Islamic poetry is acclamation and praise in nature.