Abstract
The Prophet Muhammad's Attitude Towards Poetry
Poetry took an important place in the life of Prophet
Muhammad and He uttered many words about poetry.
Looking at the place of poetry at His life, we can see three
different levels. In His daily life, depending on His mood,
He sometimes sang the songs gently and sometimes let
somebody sing and He listened. We see that He gave
importance to the usage of poetry during wars. This was
seen both as the defense and criticism against the poets who
committed shirk to Allah, and also as the encouragement
of Muslims. When there was no war, poetry was not only
used as part of time spending and chatting, but also it was
used as part of spreading and teaching erudition.
While the attitude of Prophet Muhammad to the poet
was very positive, He did not encourage poems that were
written against Islam and Islam’s belief system, poems
including belief and words attacking to Him and Muslims
as well as poems encouraging undeserved gains.
In this study the prophet Muhammed’s attitude towards
the poetry and his knowledge of poetry was studied
through His life and hadiths, and in which situations he
acted positively and in which situations he acted negatively
is tried to be found out.
Keywords
Poetry and Prophet Muhammed, poetry in Islam, poetry in Arabs.