Poetry
ديوان أبي مسلم
Not translated into English
Abu Muslim al-Bahlani · 1928
Synopsis
The collection, which runs to more than five hundred pages, consists mainly of religious poetry of praise, glorification and supplication. To it are added patriotic poems calling for unity against colonialism, eulogies addressed to imams and sultans, a few pieces on love, friendship or tea, and imitations of classical poems. His nuniyya, nearly four hundred lines long, calls on the tribes of Oman one by one, recalls their past glories and urges them to act.
Context
His poems were collected by his nephew and disciple Salim ibn Sulayman al-Bahlani, and the diwan was printed in Cairo in 1928 under the care of Yusuf Tuma al-Bustani: the review Nizwa regards it as the first Omani diwan to be printed. Other editions followed in 1957, in 1980 at the Ministry of National Heritage in Muscat, and in 1986. Nizwa notes his imitations of the classics, among them a maqsura of 398 lines rivalling that of Ibn Durayd, sees him as the head of a Bahlani school and compares him with Mahmoud Sami al-Baroudi.
Who it is for
For discovering an Omani poet settled in East Africa, at once mystic, patriot and assiduous reader of the Arabic classics.
Prizes and reception
He was nicknamed “the poet of scholars and the scholar of poets”, and the review Nizwa makes him the pioneer of the country's modern poetry.
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