Umayya ibn Abi Salt

Umayyah ibn Abī as-Ṣalt was a pre-Islamic Arabian poet who advocated for monotheism instead of the worship of idols. He was thought to be a member of the Banu Thaqif tribe, with Qurayshi descent on his maternal side. During the rise of Islam, Umayya was an older contemporary of Muhammad that is said to have become a claimant to prophethood and rivalled Muhammad, which earned him a controversial position in Islamic tradition.

Biography

Genealogy According to tradition, Umayya was born in Taif. His full name is Umayya ibn Abi as-Salt al-Thaqafi, and his full lineage is Umayya ibn Abi as-Salt ibn Abdullah ibn Abi Rabi'ah ibn 'Awf ibn Thaqif. Hence, his lineage is traced back to the tribe of Banu Thaqif.

Religion and prophethood Umayya is said to have been a pre-Islamic Arabian monotheist that rejected contemporary idol worship. He is recorded to have visited Jews and Christians and becoming familiar with their scripture, learned that a prophet was coming to the Arabs. However, upon becoming familiar with Muhammad, he rejected him out of jealousy. Because of this, he is sometimes mentioned as a candidate in tafsir (Quranic exegesis) for the referent of Quran 7:175.

Umayya and Muhammad Several reports talk about the relationship between Umayya and Muhammad, in many cases depicting a positive relationship. One day, Umayya recited a verse of his poetry to Muhammad. Muhammad, hearing it, asked him to continue reciting more verses, until one hundred had been reached. Hearing these, a variety of reports attribute a different statement to Muhammad, but common to all of them is the notion that his poetry resembled the poetry composed by a Muslim though Umayya himself was a pagan.

Reliability of biography Historians today consider the biographical information recorded about Umayya as bereft of historiographical value.

Poetry

Themes As a poet, Umayya wrote poems on the pre-Islamic wars, such as the wars between the Aws and Khazraj and the Basus War between the Banu Bakr and Banu Taghlib. In his Diwan, the poetry featured there focuses on themes of wisdom and beauty. The earliest compilation of Umayya's poetry was in the diwān of the ninth-century scholar Musammad b. Ḥabīb (d. 859), about 250 years after Umayya died. Furthermore, several scholars have argued that the poetry attributed to Umayya has been contaminated by influence from the Quran and tafsir (Quranic exegesis). Therefore, since the time of Theodor Noldeke, most scholars have concluded that the poetry is forged and not genuinely pre-Islamic. In recent years, several scholars have been more ambivalent about the presence of genuine material in the work attributed to Umayya, opting to see some of it as genuine. Nicolai Sinai has argued for the authenticity of verses related to the she-camel of Thamud story, although Hawting is reserved concerning whether Sinai's argument is convincing.

Editions In 1934–1936, the Lebanese scholar Bashir Yamut collected several poems attributed to Umayya, compiling them in a book known as the Dīwān Umayyah ibn Abī al-Ṣalt. Another Diwan has also been published in Beirut, Lebanon by Dar Sadr in 1998.

Relationship to the Quran The similarities between the poetry of Umayya and the Quran have long been noted. Since Clement Huart in 1904, it has been noticed that Umayya deals with biblical stories found in many parts of the Quran, and that there is a terminological overlap between his poetry and the Quran, such as their use of tannūr ("oven") in the flood myth narrative, which is a hapax legomenon in the Quran.

Both Umayya and the Quran treat similar prominent topics in the domains of creation, eschatology, and episodes of biblical prophetology. Both treat the story of the tribe of Thamud and the she-camel, describe an ascent by demons/jinn to the firmament where they are pelted by heavenly defence systems, and contain a similar story of the Annunciation to Mary. Both contain a flood narrative. Both texts use the word tannūr in their flood narratives, which appears as a hapax legomenon in the Quran.