DESCRIPTIONS OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS IN THE MUALLAQAT

The Arabic poetry which displays the most distunguished samples of preislamic era literature, particularly eulogies (qasidah) called "muallaqa", were read in different fairs in front of people and became popular in society after the appreciation of the literature autorities. Muallaqat, the best of them, were hanged on Kabe wall so as to be seen by visitors. These poems represented ordinary desert life and revealed the most important customs of Arabs living in that time. On the other hand, these poems, flawless in a litarary sense, handled migration places, pastures and description of desert animals, wild or domestic, foremost among them the camel and desert plants. Poetry, which was preserved by being memorized was appreciated more than prose due to its easiness to be memorized. Such that the period's poems have been transfed via memorisation for ages. Ancient Arab poetry is one of the most important resources of Arabic. There is no consensus on which poems consist Muallaqat, the number of Muallaqat and the poets who composed them. Some limit their number to seven, some think they were nine and some think they were ten. But the number seven is the consensus number of majority. According to this consensus these muallaqa potes are: Imru'l-Kays, Tarafa b. el-Abd, Zaheyr b. Ebi Sulma, Antera b. Seddad, Amr b. Kulsum, Lebid b. Rebia ve Haris b. Hillize. As in many Arabic poetry of the pre-islamic era, in muallaqa poems we see mostly the description the migration places, the camels without which a migration can not be imagined, the desert animals, some desert plants and trees.