Ibn Salam’s Critical Criteria in his Layers: Fifth Class Poets as a Model

Abstract

      Pre-Islamic Arabia-based critics used to judge the sub-types of poems and poetry-like works following different norms, conventions, and styles, with some of these varied as to poets, poems, lines, or even sub-lines. Some judgements were concerned with the poet as a character, figure, or author, with the poem as a literary work, creative piece, or an objective form, and with the lines as graphic, linguistic, or verbal strings of ideas. Some of these pre-Islamic era judgements were later labelled as layers and sublayers. In medieval, traditional Arab criticism, a layer is a biography-like account of a poet or writer. Additionally, most of these layered poets had been identical with two main poetic purposes, satire and eulogy. Such poets had a great position among peers and contemporaries, which made their lines widely famous and popular. Ibn Salam, c. 846 A.D., thus, strove to gather these poems, classified poets, and finally authored the well-known The Layers of Poets.