The issue of pre-Islamic Arabic Christian poetry revisited
Abstract
Why is so little distinctly Christian poetry preserved in Arabic from pre-Islamic times? While
distancing myself from Louis Cheikho’s (1859–1927) view that almost all pre-Islamic poets were
Christians, I contend in this article that some of them were indeed that. I begin by discussing the
current evidence (in particular, epigraphic record) on the existence of Arabophone Christians
before Islam. The documentation at hand suggests that Christianity had spread to all parts of
Arabia. At least hypothetically, I note that Christians formed the majority among Arabic-
speaking groups on the eve of Islam. I then proceed to discuss the surviving corpus of pre-
Islamic Arabic poetry and pinpoint (often overlooked but explicit) Christian themes in it.
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