Problem autentičnosti prijeislamske poezije: Prema djelu“Studije orijentalista o autentičnosti prijeislamske poezije”
The problem of the authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry: on the work ‘the studies of orientalists on the authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry’

Summary/Abstract: The solution to the mystery of the authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry began with the first attempts to write down the poetry that was spread by word of mouth, and culminated in the works of Arab philologists and Orientalists at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries. This paper deals with the attitudes of the European Orientalists Nöldeke, Ahlwardt, Krenkow, Braünlich and Margoliouth, and the main source is the work Dirasāt al-mustašriqīn hawla sihha al-ši‘r al-ğāhilī (“Orientalsits’ Studies of the Authenticity of pre-Islamic Poetry”). These Studies present, except for Margoliouth’s, rather moderate views and a relatively founded doubt. The main point of these views is that the poetry of the South Yemen tribes cannot be regarded as authentic because their language is not the language in which that poetry was spread, while the poetry of the north and middle parts of the Arabian Peninsula is islamicized to a certain extent, so that there is a possibility of inserting or deleting verses by rhapsodes or philologists. The final judgement is elusive because there is no sharp line between the apocryphal and authentic in the pre-Islamic poetry.

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