Al-Khansā'’s mutaqārib poem, rhyming in -ālahā, is one of her most interesting marthiyas (“laments”). It is said to have been composed as a lamentation for her brother Muʿāwiya or, according to other sources, Ṣakhr. It was famous in Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid times: its verses were often quoted in philological literature and anthologies; Abū l-ʿAtāhiya (d. 211/826) modelled a poem of his on it,Footnote ¹ and, according to al-Iṣfahānī, Ibn Surayj used to sing it.Footnote ² This article will study two questions related to this poem: how was it changed through anthologisation and what is its relation to the Qur'ān and Surah 99?

Al-Khansā'’s life is sparsely documented and we know very little about her. The anecdotes in, for example, the Aghānī are of dubious historicity. All sources agree that she was a mukhaḍram poet, who started her career during the Jāhiliyya and continued it well into Islamic times. She is said to have met the Prophet, perhaps in 629, but the story is probably apocryphal. Whether al-Khansā' died in the 640s or in the 660s, or sometime in-between, is unknown, and the suggested dates for her death are based on anecdotes. In fact, one cannot do much more than agree with the sources that she was a mukhaḍram—to be more exact would be stretching the evidence.Footnote ³ Her Dīwān was collected by several philologists in the 9^th century.Footnote ⁴ Until at least the late 8^th century, her poems were also transmitted orally in her own tribe, the Sulaym.Footnote ⁵

In whatever decade al-Khansā' died, her poetry shows little influence of Islamic thought or Qur'ānic vocabulary.Footnote ⁶ Yet her poem, rhyming in -ālahā (translated in Appendix 1), seems to be an exception. In the Dīwān this poem is one the longest, consisting of 31 or 38 verses, depending on the version. It seems to exhibit some striking Qur'ānic influences. These can best be appreciated when comparing the excerpt of the poem in al-Mubarrad's Kāmil (iv, p. 50) to Sūrat al-Zalzala (Q 99: 1–5):Footnote ⁷

1. 1. a-baʿda bni ʿAmrin min Āli l-Sharīdi ḥallat bihi l-arḍu athqālahā (H2)

2. 2. la-ʿamru abīhi la-niʿma l-fatā idhā l-nafsu aʿjabahā mā lahā (H4)

3. 3. fa-in taku Murratu awdat bihī fa-qad kāna yukthiru taqtālahā (H18)

4. 4. fa-kharra l-shawāmikhu min faqdihī wa-zulzilat-i l-arḍu zilzālahā (H19)

5. 5. hamamtu bi-nafsiya kulla l-humūmi fa-awlā li-nafsiya awlā lahā (H6)

6. 6. li-aḥmila nafsī ʿalā ālatin fa-immā ʿalayhā wa-immā lahā (H7)

The following is a translation of these verses in this context. As will be seen later, when the verses are read in another context—that of the complete poem—some of them may have to be translated differently:

1. 1. Has earth embellished its burdens (i.e. the dead) after (the death of) the son of ʿAmr, from the family of al-Sharīd (i.e. by his death)?

2. 2. By the life of his father, he was an excellent youth, when the soul was delighted by what it has!

3. 3. The Murra may have killed him, but not ere he had massacred them over and over again!

4. 4. Mountains crumble because of his loss and the earth is shaken,

5. 5. but I tried every means—woe upon my soul, woe upon it!—

6. 6. to force my soul (to accept) any state, whether for or against it.

The Qur'ānic Surah 99 reads:

1. 1. idhā zulzilat-i l-arḍu zilzālahā

2. 2. wa-akhrajat-i l-arḍu athqālahā

3. 3. wa-qāla l-insānu mā lahā

4. 4. yawma'idhin tuḥaddithu akhbārahā

5. 5. bi-anna rabbaka awḥā lahā

1. 1. When earth is shaken

2. 2. and pushes out its burdens

3. 3. and man asks: “What ails it?”,

4. 4. then it will tell its tales,

5. 5. for your Lord inspires it.

According to Alan Jones, we find in these two sources “complex overlapping phraseology”,Footnote ⁸ and it would be difficult to argue that the striking similarities are accidental or insignificant. But if they are neither, what are they? To find an answer to this we have to sift through all the available evidence with some care, instead of rushing to premature conclusions about the two texts in the relation to each other.

The verses come from a long poem, in which there are few, if any, other significant similarities to the Qur'ān. In general, the textual history of al-Khansā'’s Dīwān is by no means unproblematic. This poem in particular has been transmitted in widely divergent forms, with the number and the order of the verses differing greatly between the various recensions, not to mention variants within individual verses. This can be shown by a quick look at the verse order of the two main recensions of the Dīwān. In addition, the poem is often quoted in anthologies, again with varying verse orders. For the purposes of our discussion, the Kāmil and another of al-Mubarrad's works, Taʿāzī (pp. 96–99), are highly relevant. For comparison, I also give al-Iṣfahānī's Aghānī (xv, pp. 72–75):Footnote ⁹

H can be divided into three blocks of verses—H1-8, H9-20, and H21-31—which roughly correspond to similar blocks in S. The main difference between H and S is that the latter has these blocks in the order 1-3-2.

Another difference is that S has nine additional verses, although it does not have two that appear in H (H8, H19). T has one additional verse (T16: wa-muḥṣanatin min banāti l-mulūki qaʿqaʿta bi'l-rumḥi khalkhālahā).Footnote ¹² It is noteworthy that the additional verses in S are not found in the other sources listed above and they are rarely referred to elsewhere in literature.Footnote ¹³ The order of the verses in A and T comes closer to H than to S.Footnote ¹⁴ K is too short for its verse order to be analysed, but its third and fourth verses (H18-19) come before its fifth and sixth verses (H6-7). Only T has these verses in this order: in H, S, and A they are in the reverse order. Thus, there is a slight similarity between the two versions—K and T—transmitted by al-Mubarrad.

As may be seen from the table above, H2 is an integral part of the poem in whichever form it is quoted, whereas H19 is only found in the Kāmil and one of the Dīwān recensions and it is scarce in philological literature. Moreover, in Balāghāt (p. 260), it is given in the commentary as a variant of H20, which indeed it structurally resembles:

As repetition is one of the standard features of the marthiya, this however cannot be considered in any way decisive; two consecutive verses often have the same structure in a marthiya.

Nevertheless, it is disturbing that in the Taʿāzī, which quotes 22 verses (two- thirds) of this poem, all the other verses of the Kāmil are present, except for H19. In his detailed study of two other poems by al-Khansā', Bonebakker has shown that al-Mubarrad's version in the Taʿāzī is based on good sources.Footnote ¹⁵ All things considered, it is somewhat dubious that H19 belonged to the poem in the early phases of its transmission. One should not speak of authenticity, as in any case oral transmission will have modified the poems. What we can say, though, is that some versions are earlier than others and H19 may be suspected of being a relative latecomer.

Let us turn away from this philological problem for a while to study the question from another direction. What function do the Qur'ānic allusions have in the version of the Kāmil? Al-Mubarrad's selection of six verses looks almost like a muʿāraḍa (a poem written to match Sūrat al-Zalzala). The Qur'ānic vocabulary Islamises the short poem, which focuses on the verses that contain Qur'ānic echoes. The idea of resurrection reverberates in the poem because of the allusions to a passage which describes resurrection and then continues with individual judgement on Judgement Day.

This changes the focus of the whole poem. Whether verses H2 and H19 were composed by al-Khansā' or added by a later transmitter, they function differently in the long poem, with 16 verses in-between them. In the Dīwān version H, they may evoke the Qur'ān in general, but without drawing the attention of the reader or listener too closely to Q 99 and the resurrection.

Condensing a more than 30 verse-long marthiya into a short version of just six lines, in fact, makes a completely new poem out of elements that are found in the earlier one. In this case, shortening the poem has resulted in two radical changes to its tenor. The first is the severance of the poem from its pre-Islamic ritualistic background. Both long versions—H and S—exhibit many typical characteristics of a ritualistic dirge, with repetitions and emphasis on prowess in battle. Al-Mubarrad's version in the Kāmil, on the contrary, shows no signs of repetition and the belligerent side of the deceased is confined to a brief, although impressive and poignant, mention (fa-qad kāna yukthiru taqtālahā). In fact, it is merely stated that Ibn ʿAmr was an excellent man. Few particulars of this alleged excellence are given.

All of this is replaced by Qur'ānic allusions. Slightly more than a fifth (28 syllables out of a total of 133) of this short poem echoes the Qur'ān, letter for letter. This makes it impossible for even a casual reader not to notice the strong dependence of the poem on the Qur'ān. From another viewpoint, more than 40 per cent of Q 99: 1–5 (22 syllables out of 52) finds a parallel in the Kāmil version of the poem.

This is crucial for the interpretation of the poem. It has often been noted that the new Islamic world view did not affect al-Khansā'’s poetry. This is most certainly true and the world view in al-Khansā'’s poems differs little from that of her predecessors. The long versions of this poem draw the reader's attention to the manly Bedouin virtues—the muruwwāt—of Ibn ʿAmr. Read in translation, the poem has almost nothing that reminds one of the Qur'ān.

Al-Mubarrad's short version changes the situation radically. It is unlikely that this happened accidentally. The consciousness of the mind behind the Kāmil version, be it al-Mubarrad's or someone else's in the course of the poem's transmission,Footnote ¹⁶ may be seen at its clearest in the variant to H4. In al-Mubarrad's version, the second hemistich reads idhā l-nafsu aʿjabahā mā lahā, whereas the Dīwān recension and T have taḥushshu bihi l-ḥarbu ajdhālahā : “On his account many wars flared up” (H4 = S7 = T4).Footnote ¹⁷ A hemistich full of Jāhilī ethos is, in a sense, spiritualised. The connection of idhā and nafs is also reminiscent of the Qur'ān, especially Q 81: 7 (idhā l-nufūsu zuwwijat).Footnote ¹⁸

The Islamisation of the Kāmil version becomes clearer when we compare it to the same author's version in the Taʿāzī. Here the poem is much longer—22 verses in all—but it lacks H19 and has the “un-Islamic” Dīwān variant in H4. Despite the presence of H2, the poem remains pagan in tenor and vocabulary, with less than 3 per cent of the text possibly alluding to the Qur'ān.

All Qur'ānic allusions (Q 99: 1–3; Q 81: 7; Q 75: 34–35) in the Kāmil version refer to passages which speak of resurrection and the final judgement. This will not have gone unnoticed by a Muslim reader of al-Mubarrad's book. It may be somewhat overstating the case, but I remain uncertain whether the final verse (H7), with its reference to the condition of the soul—“whether for or against it”—might also have rung a bell and reminded the reader of the continuation of the Surah, Q 99: 6–8. Here it is stated that after the resurrection, people will see all their deeds, whether good or bad. Or, in other words, whether their deeds be for or against them.

Whatever the case may be, the version in the Kāmil is a fully Islamic poem, exhibiting a world view that would have been new in the early 7^th century and that al-Khansā' herself might have found alien. Instead of listing the muruwwāt of the deceased, the Kāmil version keeps these to the strict minimum of one hemistich, while turning the reader's, or listener's, attention towards resurrection and the Qur'ān. The other versions ignore life after deathFootnote ¹⁹ and focus on the muruwwāt. There is a clearly visible new spirit in the Kāmil version.

The change in the poem's meaning may also be seen in H2. According to the commentaries, there are basically two different ways to understand this verse (a-baʿda bni ʿAmrin min Āli l-Sharīdi ḥallat bihi l-arḍu athqālahā). In the version above, the verse has been translated following the opinion of Abū ʿAmr (al-Shaybānī)Footnote ²⁰ and others (S, pp. 79–80), and the strong Qur'ānic context of the Kāmil version favours this way of understanding it. In Q 99: 2 athqālahā refers to the dead—the other explanation given in commentaries is less probable: athqāl = treasures. Whichever athqālahā means, the Qur'ān describes them as something “pushed out” and the Qur'ānic allusion here excludes the interpretation suggested by al-Aṣmaʿī and others for the verse in the complete poem, where athqāl refers to more abstract burdens which Ibn ʿAmr's death sets aside (“the earth has set aside its burdens through him (i.e. his death: his constant raids no more disturb the earth”).)Footnote ²¹ Thus, in the version of the Kāmil, ḥallat must be understood as coming from ḥallā (“to embellish”), not ḥalla (“to unpack; to open”). This is also how al-Mubarrad explains the verse.Footnote ²²

It seems, however, that the expression originally derived from ḥalla, not ḥallā. The evidence from early poetry favours this interpretation, and the other, ḥallat < ḤLY, may have arisen as a misunderstanding, whether based on Q 99: 2 or not. In, for example, al-Aʿshā, DīwānFootnote ²³ V: 9 (aḥalla bihi l-shaybu athqālahū) we have, unequivocally, the fourth stem of ḤLL in a similar expression. Bravmann argues for understanding the second hemistich of this verse as “after the earth has laid down its baggage on Ibn ʿAmr”.Footnote ²⁴ Whichever interpretation we prefer, the verb has to be derived from ḥalla, not ḥallā. Even though not even a letter has been changed in this verse, the new Qur'ānic context caused it to be understood differently.

H2 is well attested. It is, however, rarely quoted in religio-philological works to explain Q 99: 2, which seems to imply that the verse was not fabricated to explain this Qur'ānic verse. Thus, for example, Ibn Qutayba does quote it, but he does so in order to explain the use of the term al-thaqalān, not Q 99: 2.Footnote ²⁵ In short, there is nothing to indicate that H2 was a latecomer in al-Khansā'’s poem. Thus, what is new is the way in which the verse was understood, not the verse itself. It should also be noted that expressions similar to H2 are also found in several other early poems,Footnote ²⁶ which makes it probable that the expression was part of poetic diction and came to al-Khansā' from this tradition, not from the Qur'ān.Footnote ²⁷ Hence, with H19 being a probable latecomer and H2 independent of the Qur'ān, there is little in the original poem that can be taken as evocative of the Qur'ān.

A small, but significant change was made in H6. In the Kāmil version, the following verse begins with li-aḥmila, instead of the standard sa-aḥmilu. The change involves only one letter, but it does away with the suicidal thoughts of H6. In the Dīwān these verses could freely be translated as “I was about to take my own life (…) but I will take whatever may come (…)”. The variant li-aḥmila becomes syntactically subordinated to hamamtu in H6 and, consequently, gives the aim of this action: “I did my best in order to carry on despite my misery”. The standard variant sa-aḥmilu, on the other hand, begins a new sentence and introduces a contrasting new thought, which is further reinforced by H8, which takes up the theme of ṣabr (patience against misfortunes). Left to itself, H6 is suicidal and definitely un-Islamic.Footnote ²⁸ According to the commentary attributed to Thaʿlab (S, p. 85), the variant li-aḥmila comes from al-Khansā's own tribe, the Sulaym.Footnote ²⁹

There is also another way the poem has changed when anthologised by al-Mubarrad. The short poem in the Kāmil turns inwards, which emphasises its psychological aspects. External things, such as the many examples of Ibn ʿAmr's prowess, generosity, and his other muruwwāt, are almost completely missing, while the feelings of the poet take centre stage—the word nafs is repeated four times. Even the cosmos shares in her grief: the earth shakes and mountains crumble. These verses are, of course, also found in the long versions and such imagery is not rare in pre-Islamic marthiyas, but here they become more prominent as the tangible deeds of the deceased have been omitted. The focus changes from the actions of the deceased to the feelings of the poet, which are mirrored in the reactions of the world around her. The focus changes from the outward and material to the inward and spiritual. Again, there is a modern spirit in the short version of the Kāmil.

Ibn Dā'ūd's anthology Kitāb al-Zahra, in a sense, takes the process begun by al-Mubarrad even further.Footnote ³⁰ Ibn Dā'ūd has a special chapter on Qur'ānic expressions used by poets (Mā staʿānat bihi l-shuʿarā' min kalām Allāh taʿālā).Footnote ³¹ Al-Khansā's poem in -ālahā dominates this chapter, which consists of three verses from this poem, together with three verses by al-Kumayt, and one by Jarīr.

Ibn Dā'ūd first quotes the two most “Islamic” verses of the poem—H2 and H19—and then, separately, adds a third verse, H6, “from this qaṣīda”. In so doing, he distils the Qur'ānic element even further, now quoting a 2 + 1 fragment, where slightly more than 40 per cent of the syllables (27/67) echo the Qur'ān, in contrast to the 3 per cent in H and roughly 20 per cent in the Kāmil versions. He does not give these three verses as an independent unit, but as a selection from a longer poem, yet his point is clear and unavoidable: al-Khansā' imitated the Qur'ān in her poem. Interestingly, elsewhere in his book Ibn Dā'ūd quotes seven verses from the same poem, but here any allusions to the Qur'ān are avoided.Footnote ³² In a third place in the same book, he attributes to al-Khansā' a fragment of two verses rhyming in -aCrū with a strongly Qur'ānic flavour, using technical terms such as al-ajr and al-ḥashr.Footnote ³³ Not surprisingly, these verses are not to be found in the Dīwān nor are they quoted in philological literature. They are most unlikely to be genuine.

The role of the anthologist is not always restricted to selecting and abbreviating. Even when they make very few changes to the text itself, they may create a new poem that has to be read in a completely different way from the original. In al-Khansā'’s case, this Islamisation was done with a light touch, but other poets were modified more freely, as in the case of a poem by another mukhaḍram poet, al-Ḥuṣayn ibn al-Ḥumām al-Murrī.Footnote ³⁴

Al-Khansā'’s poem has been completely rewritten without more than a few words of the earlier text being changed. This has been achieved by reorganising and selecting the material from the original poem in a way that has produced a work of art radically different from the original.Footnote ³⁵ Some anthologists work rather mechanically and cannot properly be called authors in their own right, but, especially in the earlier stages of transmission, significant changes were often made by transmitters and anthologists, to both verse and prose. Sometimes the changes are deliberate and creative, and the anthologist can be seen as a second author continuing the work of the first.Footnote ³⁶

This also means that if we are to understand Arabic literary history, we cannot restrict ourselves to modern Dīwān editions, as many medieval authors will not have read their predecessors’ poems in this format but only as short fragments in more commonly used books and anthologies. In studying, for example, the relation of later marthiya authors to al-Khansā', we have to remember that they did not have Cheikho's editions to hand.

The mutual influence of the Qur'ān and early poetry has been discussed in a number of studies. In a recent article, I discussed the possible relations between the Qur'ānic descriptions of Paradise and the nature descriptions in pre-Islamic poetry.Footnote ³⁷ On a general level the latter seems to have influenced the former, although it is difficult to show direct and specific similarities between the Qur'ān and an individual poem. The case of Umayya ibn Abī l-Ṣalt has been studied in several articles, but it seems highly unlikely that his poems could genuinely date from the early 7^th century.Footnote ³⁸ Likewise, the poets around Muḥammad, most notably Ḥassān ibn Thābit, are too close to the Prophet to be above suspicion of later modifications, as there was a constant need for material to fill in the biography of the Prophet by inventing verses referring to the main events of his life. [7] The clearer the similarities, the more likely it is that a poem was considerably modified, or even forged, during its transmission.

The case of al-Khansā' is less problematic. The poem has no connection to the Prophet and his biography, and there was no vested interest in changing the poem in any particular direction. This does not mean, though, that we can be sure the text was not tampered with.

As far as I can see, there is no inherent reason to doubt the authenticity of the poem as a whole, but what seems to have happened is that the Qur'ānic diction in verse H2 (ḥallat bihi l-arḍu athqālahā) induced a later transmitter, either consciously or not, to strengthen the Qur'ānic ‘flavour’ by adding H19 (wa-zulzilat-i l-arḍu zilzālahā), which is not as securely transmitted as H2. This happened only after the two Dīwān recensions—H and S—were already separately transmitted. After this, the poem also started circulating in an abbreviated form where seemingly Qur'ānic echoes are prominent. The addition of H19, whether originally a variant of H20 or not, in turn helped to change the understanding of H2 in a Qur'ānic direction.

The poem in -ālahā is not the only case of Qur'ānic influence superimposed on al-Khansā'’s poems. To take another example, Alan Jones discusses, translates, and prints al-Khansā's short poem rhyming in -āCiyah (H, pp. 99–100; S, pp. 58–62). He states that the poem's final verse (fa-aqsamtu lā yanfakku damʿī wa-ʿawlatī / ʿalayka bi-ḥuznin mā daʿā llāha dāʿiyah) “surely shows the influence of Islam”.Footnote ³⁹ Indeed, it does, but one should note that both this verse and Jones's v. 5, rhyming in zabāniyah, are missing from S, although they are present in H and Aghānī, xv (pp. 71–72). The poem would merit a separate study, but the first impression is that it, too, has been Islamised by adding these verses.Footnote ⁴⁰ In general, where we seem to find Qur'ānic or Islamic vocabulary in al-Khansā'’s poems, on closer inspection, the poems or verses in question tend to be found only in some, or even none, of the Dīwān recensions. It seems possible that H has undergone more Islamising changes than S.

Are there, then, any Qur'ānic echoes in al-Khansā's poem ending in -ālahā? Reading the Kāmil version, the answer would clearly be in the affirmative, but if we turn our attention to the Dīwān versions, we have reason to hesitate. The clearest proof of al-Khansā'’s dependence on the Qur'ānic text is H19 and, as we have seen, it is not particularly well documented and seems to be a later addition.Footnote ⁴¹ H2 is more securely attested, but here we may well ask whether the similarity in the expressions wa-akhrajat-i l-arḍu athqālahā in Q 99: 2 and wa-ḥallat bihi l-arḍu athqālahā (H2) is, after all, a sign of Qur'ānic influence or not. As we have seen, similar expressions are found elsewhere in early poetry. It may well be that al-Khansā' got her line from contemporary poetic diction, not from the Qur'ān, and we should consider the poetic attestations to be a priori independent of the Qur'ān.

It also seems that earlier scholarship has all too easily assumed that al-Khansā' was familiar with the Qur'ānic text. The biographical material—itself admittedly unreliable—gives us the impression that al-Khansā' was not too deeply influenced by the new religionFootnote ⁴² and an analysis of her poems points in the same direction: there is little in al-Khansā'’s poetry that reminds one of the Qur'ān. Furthermore, she lived neither in Mecca nor in Medina, and Q 99 was not a centrally important text that would have been given priority when teaching new converts. The more urgent material to be taught to the new community would have been short credos as well as ritualistic and legal passages rather than early Meccan apocalyptic Surahs. This, of course, remains mere speculation, but I cannot see why we should presuppose that al-Khansā' knew Q 99 in the first place. The idea that a poet should know his or her Qur'ān comes much later.

The remaining phrases that the poem shares with the Qur'ān are short and not very significant (awlā li-; mā lahā). The outcome, as it stands in the Dīwān, is that there is very little to be interpreted as Qur'ānic echoes in the poem and, presumably, in the form it was given by the poet herself.

Should we, on the contrary, consider contemporary poetic diction to have influenced the Qur'ān? This is a question which we must tackle, albeit briefly.

The ease with which allusions to Q 99 were inserted in later poems in mutaqārib arises from the metrical structure of Q 99: 1–5.Footnote ⁴³ The metre of mutaqārib is:

Read according to the Royal Cairene edition, the first five verses of Q 99 scan (I add the division into mutaqārib feet to ease the comparison, but this division is not a feature of the Qur'ānic text itself. Parts that can be read as mutaqārib are marked in bold):

1. 1. u_ _ u / u_ _ / u_ _ / u_

2. 2. u_u / u_ _ / u_ _ / u_

3. 3. u_ _ _ _ u_ / u_

4. 4. _uu_ / u_u / u_ _ / u_

5. 5. u_ / u_u / u_ _ / u_

Verses 1, 4–5 have three feet in perfect mutaqārib, preceded by an irregular first foot. Verse 2 is in perfect mutaqārib, and verse 3 is irregular, except for the last foot.Footnote ⁴⁵

This is not to imply that Q 99 uses Arabic metres. The similarity is most probably accidental in the sense that the early Meccan Surahs tend to have strong rhythmic patterns, and if one verse (for whatever reason) resembles mutaqārib, the rest will more or less automatically follow. However, the mutaqārib is a strong metre that easily catches the ear, which may be why it was “used” in Surah 99.

The rhymes -āh, -ā, -āhā, -āḥā, and -ālahā are often used in marthiyas Footnote ⁴⁶ and seem to have been onomatopoeic representations of lamentation and, if we trust our material, well known and often used in pre-Islamic marthiyas. Thus, the Qur'ānic text shares some features with earlier marthiyas, and the contemporary audience of Q 99 would have been reminded by the first five Qur'ānic āyas of the elegies with which they were familiar. It should not be dismissed that some of the lexical similarities between al-Khansā' and the Qur'ān may be due to the latter using the poetic vocabulary of marthiyas. The Qur'ān, after all, used contemporary language and spoke to the Arabs in “clear Arabic”.

What this experiment has taught us is that we should be very careful in saying anything about early 7^th-century poetry before we have examined all the evidence. On closer examination, the clear Qur'ānic echoes in al-Khansā's poem in the Kāmil version turn out to be the result of transmission and selection processes. There are Qur'ānic echoes in the poem, as found in the Kāmil, but that version cannot properly be called a 7^th-century poem. Although most of the poem's verses do come from that century, the anthologised poem as such is much later.

On the other hand, the analysis seems to open up a possibility that the Qur'ān's first audience may well have recognised in Surah 99 features familiar to them from marthiyas. What this means for the literary analysis of the Qur'ān cannot be discussed here, but to the first audience it would, in any case, have made Sūrat al-Zalzala a radical departure from the familiar model of the marthiya, the muruwwāt themes of which are replaced by references to the resurrection and the Last Judgement.