Ibn Maymun
Muntaha al-Talab min Ashar al-Arab
- Author died
- 597 AH
- Editions
- Muntaha al-Talab min Ashar al-Arab
Muntaha al-Talab min Ash'ar al-Arab (Arabic: منتهى الطلب من أشعار العرب, The Ultimate Quest from the Poems of the Arabs) is an expansive anthology of classical Arabic poetry compiled by the Baghdadi man of letters Ibn Maymun (d. after 589 AH / 1193 CE; also recorded as d. 597 AH) .
Author and Attribution
The compiler's full lineage is Muhammad ibn al-Mubarak ibn Muhammad ibn [Muhammad ibn] Maymun al-Baghdadi, bearing the kunya Abu Ghalib . In bibliographic works such as Hajji Khalifa's Kashf al-Zunun, the work was erroneously ascribed to the North African Maliki scholar 'Ali ibn Maymun ibn al-Husayn al-Fasi (d. 917 AH) . However, the author was the 6th-century AH literary scholar who studied under teachers such as Ahmad ibn 'Ali ibn al-Samin, from whom he read poems with transmission chains linking back to al-Khatib al-Tibrizi in 542 AH .
Purpose and Scope
Ibn Maymun states in his introduction that his aim was to assemble one thousand complete odes (qasidahs) composed by Arab poets whose linguistic usage serves as authoritative evidence (yustashhad bi-ash'arihim) . He sought to encompass all pre-Islamic (Jahiliyyah) and early Islamic (Islamiyyun) poets recognized as normative linguistic references, excluding only those whose collected diwans were unavailable to him in endowment libraries (khizanat waqf) or private holdings . For every poet included, he deliberately selected what he deemed their most eloquent and superior compositions (afsaha ma qal wa-ajwadahu) . Bibliographic records note that the collection totals roughly forty thousand lines of verse, excluding short poetic fragments (maqati') .
Structure and Sources
The work is divided into ten parts (ajza'), each comprising exactly one hundred poems . Alongside the poetic texts, Ibn Maymun added marginal glosses explaining difficult and rare lexical items (sharh ba'd gharibiha) .
In compiling the anthology, Ibn Maymun integrated several well-known canonical collections and anthologies:
- The poems of al-Mufaddaliyyat compiled by al-Mufaddal al-Dabbi .
- The poetic selections of al-Asma'i (al-Asma'iyyat) .
- The flytings (naqa'id) between Jarir and al-Farazdaq .
- The odes cited by Abu Bakr Ibn Durayd in his work al-Shawarid .
- The finest poems from the diwan of the Hudhayl tribe .
- The poets categorized by Muhammad Ibn Sallam al-Jumahi in Tabaqat Fuhul al-Shu'ara' .
Manuscripts and Modern Editions
Manuscript portions and volumes of Muntaha al-Talab survive across several international repositories, including the Laleli and Feyzullah Efendi libraries in Istanbul, Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya in Cairo, and Yale University Library .
The complete work was edited and annotated by Muhammad Nabil Tarifi and published in nine volumes by Dar Sader in Beirut (1999) . Another edition was prepared by Muhammad Mustafa Mahmud Zahran and published by Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya (Beirut, 2008) .
Answer updated