Abdul Malik Ibn Marwan: A Connoisseur and Critic of Poetry

Abstract

This paper examines the case of the Umayyad Caliph Abd Al-Malik bin Marwan with poetry and poets: it traces his attitudes towards the poetic text, his stories with poets, the nature of his interaction with them, and the impact of his responses.  And reading that is an analytical descriptive reading in three sections. The first topic: the value of literature to him, and the status of poets.  Through this, he showed us his appreciation for literature and the beautiful word, and his interest in the eloquence of his speeches, the quality of the delivery, and the consideration of the recipients, and we noticed that about him: theorizing, practicing, encouraging and correcting. The second topic: his critical qualifications: There are things that were achieved in Abd al-Malik in a way that made him an affair with poetry, and made his attitude towards it distinct, and thus made it to be discerned about him with poetry a right and a specificity, among those critical qualifications: Poetic experience and erudition, or what may be called urgent poetic presence.  He was a connoisseur of poetry, knowledgeable about it, abundantly memorized his texts, was an expert on the history of Arabic poetry and its environments, and was well-known to those who were well known. This gives Abd al-Malik's relationship with the poetic text specificity: the strength of his response to the poetic text, and the speed of his interaction with it. The third topic: his critical guidelines: We have seen that they are based on: Politics: He is a founding ruler of a state, he is concerned with employing all energies to serve his country.

Religious, moral and social values.

Personal artistic taste: this criterion or directed is affixed to criticism, and in it it is more intense; for the absence of external motives, and the absence of the utilitarian aspects (pragmatism).  It foretells the nature of the author's relationship with the poetic text, and the level of his critical perception.

There are two approaches followed in this study: the retrospective and the descriptive analytical were the most appropriate for the nature of this research.