Arabic Folk Poetry: Style and Theme

Abdullah Muhammad Abdullah Al-Umari

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

"Folk Literature" is a relatively new term employed by modern Arabs in their studies. if it existed in any Arabic text from the pre-Islamic, early Islamic, or Umayyad periods, it would not signify the same thing we mean today.

Folk literature, according to the perspectives and definitions of those who have dealt with or studied it, refers to any written or spoken creative discourse that uses vernacular language and includes poetry and prose in all its forms.

Of course, each group of people has its own literature, which is typically entirely unique and distinct from that of other communities.

To avoid going off on a digression and prolonging the discussion on folk literature, I will limit myself to poetry as one of the types of folk literature, defining it as: written or spoken poetry in the vernacular dialects of Arab countries, that is comparable to poetry written in Modern Standard Arabic; which follows standard linguistic rules and syntax, and its first linguistic reference is the Holy Qur'an.