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The Muʻallaqāt (Arabic: المعلقات, [ʔalmuʕallaqaːt]) is a compilation of seven long pre-Islamic Arabic poems.[1] The name means The Suspended Odes or The Hanging Poems, they were named so because these poems were hung in the Kaaba in Mecca,[2] Some scholars have also suggested that the hanging is figurative, as if the poems "hang" in the reader's mind.[3]
Along with the Mufaddaliyat, Jamharat Ash'ar al-Arab, Asma'iyyat, and the Hamasah, the Mu'allaqāt are considered the primary source for early written Arabic poetry.[4] Scholar Peter N. Stearns goes so far as to say that they represent "the most sophisticated poetic production in the history of Arabic letters."[5]