The Mollakat, or Seven Arabian Poems, which were suspended on the Temple at Mecca
Translated by Sir William Jones, Knight, The Mollakat, or Seven Arabian Poems, which were suspended on the Temple at Mecca, Calcutta: J Ghose & Co.; London: Trübner & Co.; Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie, 1877. Golden Edition. Republished by Jogendranath Ghose
[iv], 128 pp. Finely printed with decorative borders enclosing text on each page. Title in bold capitals. Bound in contemporary cobalt-blue cloth boards, richly decorated with gilt arabesque ornamentation, with a gilt-lettered spine.
28 x 19 cm
THE SUSPENDED ODES OF ARABIA (MOALLAKAT) - CALCUTTA ‘GOLDEN EDITION’ OF SIR WILLIAM JONES’S TRANSLATION, 1877
The Moallakat, or “Suspended Odes”, are a group of pre-Islamic Arabic qasidas, celebrated as masterpieces of early Arabian literature and traditionally said to have been displayed, written in gold, upon the Kaaba in Mecca. They embody the quintessential Bedouin poetic ethos of the jahiliyya (“age of ignorance”), weaving together themes of love, tribal honour, warfare, exile, and the stark imagery of desert life. These poems—attributed to the great poets Imru’ al-Qais, Antara ibn Shaddad, Tarafa ibn al-‘Abd, Zuhair ibn Abi Sulma, Amru, Lebeid, and Hareth—were transmitted orally for centuries and came to symbolise the highest standard of Arabic eloquence and moral wisdom.
The English rendering presented here is by Sir William Jones (1746–1794), judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, polymath Orientalist, and founder of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, who was instrumental in introducing Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit literature to a European readership. Jones’s translation, first published in London in 1783, represented one of the earliest direct engagements between European scholarship and the classical Arabic canon. His work sought to demonstrate the literary sophistication of Arabic poetry to a European audience, thereby challenging prevailing prejudices about “Oriental” culture and aligning Arabic literary heritage with the great traditions of Greece and Rome (Cannon, The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones, 1990).
The present volume is the Golden Edition republished in Calcutta in 1877 by Jogendranath Ghose, one of the most ambitious Indian printers of the late nineteenth century. It is distinguished not only by its bibliographic rarity but also by its remarkable material presentation. Every page is framed with ornamental borders, emulating illuminated manuscript traditions, while the binding—cobalt-blue velvet elaborately stamped in gilt with arabesque motifs—reflects an unmistakably Orientalist aesthetic, blending Islamic design with the tastes of the colonial book collector. The extraordinarily high retail price, noted on the title page as “Rupees One Thousand”, underscores its status as a prestige object intended for an elite audience, whether Indian aristocrats, wealthy Bengali intellectuals, or European administrators and Orientalist scholars residing in Calcutta.
This edition occupies an unusual place in the history of Indo-British print culture: it represents a moment when Indian publishers asserted their own role in producing not only scholarly texts but also objects of bibliophilic luxury that rivalled metropolitan imprints in London and Paris. At the same time, it attests to the enduring cultural authority of Jones in nineteenth-century Bengal, where his translations of Arabic and Persian poetry and his celebrated studies of Sanskrit literature continued to shape the intellectual landscape.
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