The Most Romantic Arabic Poems

The Arabs were naturally poets; the tribe celebrated its poet's genius as it was the highest social status alongside knighthood. They were sensitive to words and meanings; their poetry market festival "Okad" testified to the glorification of poems, as did their famous poems which were hung on the walls of the most noble place, the sacred Kaaba in Mecca. The poet of Arab civilization was like the media arm of his tribe; the true poet knew how to produce musical poetry and create deep and precise meaning. Love was the famous theme for which Arab poets competed and excelled in describing its states. This emotion deeply affected these poets to the point that they began their other genres of poems by lamenting for their beloved. Great love stories, where the heroes were great poets, produced memorable poems over time. The famous Qais and Leila, Abu Sakhr and his beloved, Jamil and Buthaina, and many others whose tragically ended stories have been perpetuated. Beautiful courteous or gallant poetry, compliments addressed to a beauty, verses expressing the lover’s feelings, showing true emotion and lamenting her coldness and inaccessibility, while abstaining from any physical sensual aspirations in this sublime lover. This kind of poetry and its history present the following characteristics: The poet’s beloved is unique and lasts throughout his life, even if the story never ends in marriage. Truthfulness: sincere emotions and truthful verses without excess or fiction. Modesty: the poet-lover always avoids sensual descriptions of the beloved; his love is a strong, true emotion surpassing sexual needs and physical beauty. Love sorrow: an eternal life of sadness and desolation, as the poet-lover will never marry his beloved; he mentioned her in his poetry, and the Arabs, as a sanction, never married their daughters to such defamatory individuals!