Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT Is only very little Arabic Christian poetry extant from pre‐Islamic times? While distancing myself from Louis Cheikho's (1859–1927) view that almost all pre‐Islamic poets were Christians, I contend in this article that some of them indeed were. I begin by discussing the current evidence (in particular, epigraphic record) on the existence of Arabophone Christians before Islam. The documentation at hand suggests that Christianity had spread to most parts of Arabia and had an important foothold among Arabic‐speaking groups, though some were Jews and others remained ‘pagan.’ I then proceed to discuss the surviving corpus of pre‐Islamic Arabic poetry and pinpoint (often overlooked but explicit) Christian themes in it.
DOI: 10.1111/aae.70000
Author: Ilkka Lindstedt
Institution: University of Helsinki
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,820
Funder: Helsingin Yliopisto
OpenAlex ID: W4415452657