Abū l-Ḥārith Ghaylān b. ʿUqba, generally known as Dhū ar-Rumma was a Bedouin poet and a rāwī of al-Rā'ī al-Numayrī. In the assessment of Nefeli Papoutsakis, 'he stands at the end of a long poetic tradition which, for the most part, expressed the ethos and intellectual preoccupations of the pre-Islamic tribal society of Bedouin Arabs—a fact reflected in the saying of Abū 'Amr b. al-'Alā' that "poetry was closed with D̲ū r-Rumma" '.
Life
Little reliable information about Dhu ar-Rumma's life is available, but various later sources suggest the following: his mother was called Ẓabya and of the Asad tribe. He himself belonged to the ʿAdī tribe, which was part of the Ribāb confederation, and therefore probably lived in Al-Yamāma and its vicinity. He had three brothers, who also composed poetry: Hishām, Masʿūd, and Jirfās. He seems to have spent part of his life in the cities of Iraq, notably Basra and Kufa, where it seems he spent time with such poets as al-Farazdaq, Jarīr ibn 'Atiya, Ruʾba, and al-Kumayt, and the scholars Abū ʿAmr b. al-ʿAlāʾ, ʿĪsā b. ʿUmar al-Thaqafī, and Ḥammād al-Rāwiya. He may have been a professional poet. He fell in love with and later marrieda woman called Mayya, from the Banū Minqar, but his odes also celebrate one Ḥarqā', of the 'Āmir b. Ṣa'ṣa'a.
Work
His extensivediwan is widely studied. Its themes and forms included love poetry, self-praise about himself and his tribe, eulogy, invective, and riddles. In the assessment of Nefeli Papoutsakis,
Contemporary views of his poetry were generally negative: he is said to have been incompetent in satire and eulogy, an unjustified criticism, due to the prevalence of travel fakhr in his poetry. He is, nevertheless, regarded as the best poet, in Islamic times, at drawing comparisons. Despite all the reported criticisms, his poetry never ceased to be studied and was often quoted in lexicographical and grammatical works, as well as in adab literature, which speaks for its high artisticquality and popularity. Many prominent figures in Arabic letters—such as the poets al-Ṣanawbarī and al-Maʿarrī, who wrote commentaries on his work, and literati, including the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd —admired his talent. Dhū l-Rumma’s poetry represents a mature phase in the development of the Bedouin poetic tradition but also marks the end of its supremacy. This is succinctly expressed in Abū ʿAmr b. al-ʿAlāʾ’s saying that “poetry came to an end with Dhū l-Rumma”.
