Poetics of Stones in Examples of Early Islamic and Umayyad Eras poetry

Abstract

Stones and rocks and their different cultural codes shed light on the philosophy of nature contemplation. The stones and rocks represented several connotations and affected the creative space of the poem. In a careful reading of the poetry of early Islamic and Umayyad eras poetry, we find the image of the stone in abundance, which raises a question about the relationship between the rock and the poet. The rocks, as it represents the power of nature, conveying its age, and the carrier of its mystery and secret. So, the stability and hardness of the rock constitute the meaning of “eternity”, “immortality”, “power”, “endurance” and other meanings of everlasting and permanence. The poet resorts to stones and rocks because of their natural properties and metaphorical connotations, from which we derive the culture of the poetic text and the poet’s relationship with the natural world, as well as the relationship between the spirituality of the text and the materiality of nature. Their impact was silent and noisy at the same time, as is life itself. Stones and rocks turned into historical books that preserve memories, the treasury of the spiritually restored past, and the lost paradise. The poet attended interrogating them as the faithful saving memory in a deep mythological relationship, complaining to them his suffering, fragility and weakness, as it represented an essential and sacred mediator between the self and the other, between the past and present, and the presence and absence.