This folder glossary is a shelf-specific slice from the central Good Works Glossary. The central glossary remains the source of truth.

Arabic & Pre-Islamic Terms

Poetic & Literary Terms

Mu'allaqat (معلقات) — "The Suspended Ones" or "The Hanging Poems." The seven (sometimes ten) supreme masterworks of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, traditionally said to have been written in gold on Egyptian linen and hung on the walls of the Ka'ba in Mecca. Composed in the sixth century CE during the Jahiliyyah, they represent the highest achievement of the qaṣīda form. First compiled by Hammad al-Rawiya (d. 772 CE). The canonical seven poets are Imru' al-Qais, Tarafa, Zuhayr, Labid, Antara, Amr ibn Kulthum, and al-Harith ibn Hilliza.

Qaṣīda (قصيدة) — The classical Arabic ode — a long poem in monorhyme (a single end-rhyme sustained through every verse) composed in one of the established quantitative metres (buḥūr). The standard qaṣīda opens with a nasīb (erotic prelude at the ruins of a beloved's campsite), transitions to a raḥīl (desert journey), and culminates in the poet's main theme: praise, boast, satire, or wisdom. The Mu'allaqat are the supreme examples of the form.

Bayt (بيت) — A single verse-unit in Arabic poetry, divided into two hemistichs (ṣadr and 'ajuz) separated by a caesura. The bayt is the fundamental building block of the qaṣīda. Each bayt is metrically self-contained and carries a single end-rhyme (rawiyy) that remains constant throughout the poem.

Rawiyy (روي) — The rhyme-letter. In classical Arabic poetry, the single consonant that ends every verse in a qaṣīda. The rawiyy is chosen at the poem's opening and maintained without variation through every subsequent bayt — sometimes for a hundred verses or more. The discipline of monorhyme is one of the most demanding features of Arabic prosody.

Nasīb (نسيب) — The erotic prelude of a qaṣīda. The poet stops at the ruins of a beloved's abandoned campsite, weeps over the traces, and remembers. This conventional opening — the "standing at the ruins" — is one of the oldest and most recognizable gestures in Arabic poetry. All seven Mu'allaqat begin with some form of the nasīb.

Jahiliyyah (جاهلية) — "The Age of Ignorance." The pre-Islamic period of Arabian history, before the revelation of the Quran to Muhammad (c. 610 CE). Despite the pejorative name (applied retrospectively by Islam), the Jahiliyyah produced Arabic literature's most celebrated poetry. The Mu'allaqat poets lived and composed during this era. The term does not imply barbarism — it refers specifically to ignorance of monotheistic revelation.

Cultural & Social Terms

Dīwān (ديوان) — A collected edition of a poet's works. Also used for a gathering-place or council. In Arabic literary tradition, each major poet's surviving works are collected in a dīwān.

Qāfiya (قافية, "rhyme, rhyme-letter") — The rhyme-letter that governs an Arabic poem. In Classical Arabic poetics, poems are classified and arranged by their qafiya — the final consonant that recurs at the end of every line. A poet's dīwān is traditionally organized by qafiya in the order of the Arabic alphabet: poems ending in hamza (ء) come first, then ba' (ب), ta' (ت), and so on through ya' (ي). This arrangement — the "qafiya system" — is the standard structure of Arabic collected poetry from the pre-Islamic odes through the Sufi diwans. Al-Hallaj's Diwan follows this arrangement: the poems of the hamza rhyme, then the ba' rhyme, then the ta' rhyme, through nineteen rhyme-sections in total. The qafiya is not merely a technical constraint but a generative principle: the poet composes into and through the rhyme-letter, which shapes vocabulary, imagery, and meaning.

Muruwwa (مروءة) — "Manliness" or "virtue." The pre-Islamic code of honour encompassing courage, generosity, loyalty to kin, protection of the weak, endurance of hardship, and eloquence. The Mu'allaqat are essentially dramatic demonstrations of muruwwa. The concept predates Islam and was partially absorbed into Islamic ethics.

Ḥamāsa (حماسة) — "Valour" or "bravery." Both a personal virtue and a genre of Arabic poetry celebrating martial courage. Antara's Mu'allaqah is the supreme example of ḥamāsa poetry, with its vivid battle-scenes and warrior's boast.

Selected Islamic & Sufi Terms

Ana al-Haqq (انا الحق, "I am the Truth") — The most famous and controversial utterance in Sufi history, spoken by Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj (c. 858–922 CE) in Baghdad. Hallaj declared "I am the Truth" — that is, "I am God," since al-Haqq is one of the ninety-nine divine names — and was tried and executed for blasphemy. Sultan Walad's Valadnama (Section 83) retells the story in seventy-one couplets: Hallaj explains that his existence is like a house in which guests from the Unseen arrive moment by moment, and sometimes the King Himself enters and speaks — "He makes the claim of divinity; what fault have I in this?" The people counsel silence; he refuses. He is raised on the gallows, surrenders his soul to the Beloved "without pain," his face becoming fresh like a rose, and the inscription "I am the Truth" appears upon the fire, upon every ember, upon the ashes cast into the sea — until all who had been enemies became lovers from heart and soul. The Sufi interpretation holds that Hallaj spoke not from ego but from complete annihilation (fanā): the self had been emptied so thoroughly that only God remained to speak. The phrase remains the definitive test case in Islamic theology for the limits of mystical speech.

Tawhid (Arabic/Persian: توحید, "divine unity, the oneness of God") — The central doctrine of Islam: the absolute unity and uniqueness of God. In Sufi metaphysics, tawhid goes far beyond monotheistic confession — it becomes the assertion that only God truly exists, that all multiplicity is illusion, and that the mystic's journey is the progressive realization of this fact. Al-Sari al-Saqati famously told three hundred seekers who claimed to have realized tawhid: "You are all idolaters" — because anyone who can say "I have realized unity" has preserved the self that unity dissolves. Attar devotes the first five chapters of the Mokhtar-nama to tawhid in ascending intensity: from theological affirmation (Chapter One) through paradox (Chapter Four) to the divine first person (Chapter Five), each chapter peeling back another layer of the illusion of separation.

Adab (Arabic: أَدَب, "manners, discipline, etiquette") — The cultivation of proper inner and outer conduct; the art of training the soul in right action and right feeling. In Islamic ethics, adab encompasses both social etiquette and spiritual discipline — the manners of the body (how one eats, speaks, sits) and the manners of the soul (how one relates to God, to desire, to anger). Al-Muhasibi's Adab al-Nufus ("Manners of Souls") treats adab as the foundation of the spiritual path: without disciplined conduct toward both God and the self, no higher station can be reached. The term carries the sense of literary refinement as well — the educated person is adīb, and the entire tradition of Arabic belles-lettres is al-adab. In Sufi usage, adab with the master (adab maʿa al-shaykh) is the first prerequisite of the path.