Early Islamic Poetry and the Environment An Ecocritical Reading of the Invocation of Non-Living Environmental Elements as Symbols of Faith

Abstract

This study aims to explore the relationship between Islamic literature and the non-living environment through a contemporary critical reading that seeks to analyze early Islamic poetry from an ecological perspective. This perspective views poetry as embodied in and connected to the environmental context, focusing on the concept of belonging that the creator attempts to instill within the community he lives in. Therefore, our ecological reading places special emphasis on the cultural elements: language and poetry, and their relationship with the environment, as well as revealing how early Islamic poetry utilized various environmental elements as symbols of faith. This reading relies on environmental criticism, a modern approach in literary criticism concerned with revealing the status of the environment and its various elements in literary texts, and how these elements are evoked to convey specific meanings. The study shows that there is an interaction between religion and the environment in Islamic perception, which is reflected in the invocation of various environmental elements by early Islamic poets as symbols of faith in their poetry, including: (water, fire, earth, mountains, sky, light, and dawn). The ecological reading proves that early Islamic poetry is not merely a religious discourse, but a text that interacts with the environment, carrying both intellectual and spiritual dimensions, deserving of multiple interdisciplinary approaches.