Important developments in the history of early Arabic literature are closely related to the poetic tradition of al-Ḥīra, an urban center in late antique Iraq with an ethnically and religiously diverse population and strong political, economic and cultural ties with Arabia as well as the Sasanian and the Byzantine Empires. The works of ʿAdī Ibn Zayd al-ʿIbādī (6th century), a major Christian-Arab poet from al-Ḥīra, preserve some of the earliest texts of Arabic wine poetry. The paper will discuss the origins of this poetic genre, their historical context and theoretical aspects.
Kirill Dmitriev is Lecturer in Arabic at the University of St Andrews, UK. His research focuses on the study of classical Arabic language and literature, the historical semantics of the Arabic language and the religious history of the Arab world. He also has a strong interest in comparative literary and cultural studies, as well as Digital Humanities. He is co-founder of the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities and Principal Investigator in the research project “Language-Philology-Culture. Arab Cultural Semantics in Transition” (European Research Council). Kirill Dmitriev holds a PhD degree in Classical Arabic Literature from the Free University Berlin, Germany.
