Sources of Poetic Imagery and Their Rhetoric in Classical Desert Poetry: Muhammad ibn al-Talaba as a Model

Abstract

This study attempts to shed light on classical desert poetry in Tiris, Morocco, through the model of the poet Muhammad ibn al-Talaba, by examining the sources of poetic imagery in his work and recalling the key foundations that contributed to its formation. These are linked to the desert and Bedouin environment, as well as to the social structure through the presence of the poet’s group, the Ya‘qūbiyyīn, in addition to the importance of his cultural formation and his extensive familiarity with the poetry of the ancients. This renders his texts as ones that engage in dialogue with earlier poetic eras. The study adopts an aesthetic approach through rhetorical analysis grounded in the concepts of classical Arabic rhetoric. The study concludes with significant findings, namely that the poetic imagery in Muhammad ibn al-Talaba’s work represents an authentic extension of pre-Islamic poetic imagery and the recurring images found in classical poetry. It also concludes that the poet Ibn al-Talaba constitutes a major pioneer and a true founder of the discourse of revival and the reanimation of classical poetic imagery within an environment that closely resembles the well-known Arab desert setting of the Arabian Peninsula. This underscores the need for Arab scholars to give serious attention to desert poetry, study it closely, and properly situate it within the development of classical Arabic poetry across different regions of the Arab world.