Ibn Abi Hasina’s opposition to Abu Nuwas’ poem (And a town in which ‎there is a woman)‎

Abstract

Poetic opposition is one of the literary arts in which poets excelled, as the poet composes a poem that imitates another in terms of meter and rhyme, while presenting a new vision and adding his own touch. This art has clearly emerged in Arabic poetry, as opposition was a means of literary dialogue and artistic competition between poets. In this context, the comparison between the poems of Abu Nawas and Ibn Abi Hasina comes, as each of them wove his poem in his own style, inspired by the meanings of the previous, but with the presentation of linguistic and stylistic distinction that reflects his artistic personality.

The study addresses the importance of balancing poetic texts as a critical tool that highlights the stylistic and artistic differences between poets and reveals the diversity of their contents and innovations. I have chosen the poems of Abu Nuwas and Ibn Abi Hasina to balance between two different styles. Abu Nuwas’ poem is distinguished by various types of images that Ibn Abi Hasina’s poem lacked. Abu Nuwas included in the praise a historical, heroic specificity with a social specificity, while Ibn Abi Hasina’s images are limited and well-trodden, as his praise came with general images mentioned in the eulogies.

The problem addressed by the research revolves around the similarities and differences between the two poems in terms of themes, style and artistic structure, and how the personality of each poet is reflected in them, with the objectives of analyzing the structure of the two poems and their poetic style and highlighting the aesthetics of the language in them.

The research relies on the descriptive analytical approach, based on the original sources of the two poems, critical books and studies related to poetic structure and text analysis.

The study reached several results, the most prominent of which is that Ibn Abi Hasina's poem represents a prominent model in the art of poetic oppositions, as the poet preserved the artistic and thematic structure of the original poem, but presented his own vision through rhetorical methods and artistic depiction. Both used rhetoric to express certain qualities that distinguish their praised one, as Abu Nawas focuses on strength and courage, and Ibn Abi Hasina highlights the natural beauty and generosity of the praised one.