Routes of Journeying in Early Islam Poetry

Abstract

In Arabic lexicons there are many uses of ‘journeying’ like ‘wayfaring man’ and ‘passer-by’ as well as the Quranic use ‘And those with impure bodies (for prayer) except for those journeying’. It was natural for the Arab poet to describe his journey and that of his tribe in his poems due to the close link between literature and society. In the light of this link, one can explain many things one of which is journeying whether on she-camels or other beasts of burden-the former being wide-spread in use respective to the spread of Arab tribes in the desert.Routes of journeying were many with the desert as the most important one-the desert whose dwellers and those traversing it described it in detail with all the hardships they suffered in it. The mountains also figured in their poems as they were described very delicately and beautifully, Added to these is the description of valleys, rivers and seas, and the present paper is but a summary of the poetic images of those ways and routes in Early Islam poetry.