Poetry and Literature in Society

Poetry and Literature in Society

Poetry, literature, and overall artistic expression had monumental impacts on the shaping of the early Islamic identity in multiple ways.

Poetry from the early Islamic societies provides insight on internal thoughts, feelings or emotions regarding how beauty, virtues, and goodness were expressed through words and phrases that would make up a cohesive sequence of literature. Elias nightlights that beauty is correlated with moral goodness and virtue, meaning that if you had pure religious virtues and lived through the message of God, you were considered physically beautiful for that purpose. This ideology proves the importance of poetry on Islamic culture. To Muslims, poetry meant more than a beautiful sequence of words, they represented the character and devotion of a person. Poetry was also a unification of social and cultural practices. Poetry was recited orally at public gatherings and was preached in religious contexts as well. The significance of poetry is another contribution to the shaping of Islamic identity and differentiation.

Course material (Beauty, Goodness, and Wonder)

10th-12th Century

Al-Jurjani stresses the importance of harmony as a universal criterion of beauty and its appreciation as manifested in the construction of structural relationships. "[Beauty] is manifest in all crafts and artistic activities which are associated with subtlety, fineness, and skill. In the images produced in such crafts it is always the case that the more widely different the shape and appearance of their parts are and then the more perfect the harmony achieved between these parts is, the more fascination the images will possess and the more deserving of praise for their skill their creators will be."s8 Al-Jurjani uses a piece of jewelry as an example of an object that is beautiful on account of the harmonious composition of its elements. Significantly, his notion of harmony does not imply similitude, since al-Jurjani maintains that beauty lies in contrasts or "the affinity of contraries" (shiddat i'tiläf fi shiddat ikhtilaf) (161).