Nasīb (poetry): History and Key Facts

Nasīb (Arabic: النسيب) is an Arabic literary form, 'usually defined as an erotic or amatory prelude to the type of long poem called a qaṣīdah.' However, although at the beginning of the form's development nasīb meant 'love-song', it came to cover much wider kinds of content: 'The nasīb usually is understood as the first part of the qaṣīdah where the poet remembers his beloved. In later ages the nasīb stood alone, and in that sense the meaning came to be understood as erotic and love poetry.'

Early and prominent examples of the nasīb appear in the Mu'allaqāt of the sixth-century poets Antarah ibn Shaddad and Imru' al-Qais. To quote from Imru' al-Qais's Mu'allaqah:

Stay! let us weep, while memory tries to trace

The long-lost fair one's sand-girt dwelling place;

Source and attribution

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