Recovering voices from a forgotten past

Oman has long been an integral part of the Arabian Peninsula, contributing to Arab culture through its scholarship, literature and intellectual traditions. Poetry has always been one of the strongest expressions of this cultural legacy. Yet much of Oman’s earliest poetry has disappeared because, unlike many neighbouring regions, Omanis did not begin systematically recording their history and literature until a relatively late period.
As a result, only scattered fragments of pre-Islamic and early Islamic Omani poetry have survived. These verses are preserved not in dedicated Omani collections but in classical Arabic sources such as biographical dictionaries, anthologies and literary histories, including Al Isabah fi Tamyiz Al Sahabah, History of Mosul, The Concordant and Discordant Names of Poets, Dictionary of Poets and Abu Tammam’s celebrated Hamasa.
The earliest major Omani source is Al Ansab (Genealogies), written by Abu Al Mundhir Salamah bin Muslim al Awtabi al Suhari in the eleventh or twelfth century. More than a genealogy, it documents Oman’s early history, tribes, scholars and notable figures, becoming the foundation for later historians and genealogists. Omani historian Shaikh Ahmed bin Saud al Siyabi described it as the primary source for anyone studying Oman’s early history or tribal heritage.
Modern scholars have devoted considerable effort to recovering this lost poetic tradition by searching through old Arabic manuscripts and literary works. One of the earliest contributions was A Memorandum on Omani Poetry by Dr Ismail bin Hamad al Salmi, published in 1997. Rather than offering literary criticism, the book brings together the names of early Omani poets and the surviving fragments of their poetry from numerous scattered sources.
Al Salmi explains in his introduction that his aim was simply to gather these poets into a single volume instead of leaving them dispersed across many references. The book also includes the surviving poems of Abu Ali al Kafi, whose collected works Al-Salmi later edited separately.
The author observes that while the wider Arab literary tradition preserves a rich record of early poetry, many readers have assumed that Oman produced few, if any, poets before Islam. His research challenges that misconception by demonstrating that Oman possessed an active poetic tradition extending from the pre-Islamic period into the early centuries of Islam. He also broadened the scope of his study to include later poets from the Yaaruba and early Al Busaid periods.
A second important contribution came from Emirati researcher Dr Ahmed Mohammed Obaid, whose book Omani Poets in the Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Periods was published in Abu Dhabi in 2000. In fewer than one hundred pages, Obaid introduces a region that received little attention from early Arab historians. He reconstructs the biographies of eighteen Omani poets and collects the surviving verses attributed to them from a wide range of Arabic literary sources.
More recently, Khalid bin Mohammed al Riyami expanded this work in Omani Poetry in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic Periods: Documentation and Study, published in 2024. Combining historical documentation with literary analysis, the book traces the surviving poetry through both Omani and Arabic sources while examining the artistic features of the poems themselves.
Al Riyami asks a central question: why has so much early Omani poetry disappeared? His conclusion is that the poetry certainly existed, but historical circumstances — including the late development of written documentation — led to the loss of much of this heritage.
The first half of his book gathers scattered poems preserved in historical records, literary anthologies and accounts of Arab tribal gatherings and markets. The second half analyses their themes, language and artistic qualities. Altogether, Al Riyami documents the work of twenty-two Omani poets and preserves around 330 surviving verses.
Collecting these scattered fragments is only the first step. Scholars must also examine them critically, since ancient literary traditions often combine history with legend. Separating authentic poetry from later additions requires careful historical and literary analysis.
One important study in this field is Dr Mohammed al Mahrouqi’s Early Omani Poetry: Reflections on Its Origins. Al Mahrouqi re-examines the poems attributed to Malik bin Fahm al Azdi, the legendary leader traditionally credited with leading the Azd migration from Yemen to Oman.
Many scholars classify Malik bin Fahm among the poets of the pre-Islamic era. Al Mahrouqi, however, argues that he lived much earlier, probably in the second century CE — almost two centuries before the period generally recognised as the beginning of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. Since Al Awtabi recorded these poems roughly a thousand years later, Al Mahrouqi questions whether they could have survived unchanged for such a long period without being written down.
He reaches a similarly cautious conclusion regarding poems attributed to both Malik bin Fahm and Mazin bin Ghadubah. In his view, many of these verses were probably composed by later storytellers rather than by the historical figures themselves.
Despite decades of valuable research, early Omani poetry remains an open field of study. Each newly discovered manuscript, historical source or literary reference adds another piece to a much larger puzzle. Although many voices from Oman's earliest centuries have been lost to time, ongoing scholarship continues to recover fragments of that forgotten heritage, gradually restoring an important chapter in the history of Arabic literature.
Hassan al Matrooshi is an Omani poet and writer. This is an adapted translation of the original Arabic article published in the print edition of the cultural supplement of the Oman newspaper on June 25, 2026.

Translated and adapted by Badr al Dhafari