Preparation of Interment

Last updated: April 30th, 2025 at 11:58 am · Est. Reading Time: < 1 minute

Corpses underwent preparations before being interred in pre-Islamic Arabia. One poet, imagining himself dead, describes how his kin “closed his eyes and said in sorrow, ‘he’s gone,’ combed his hair, clad him in clothes that bore no sight of wear, sprayed sweet odours on him and said lamenting ‘how goodly a man he was,’ wrapped his form in a white sheet closely folded around, and some men of gentle descent lay him in a deep dug grave out there in dust.”¹

‘Abd al-Razzaq, a 9th-century writer, mentions that funerary banquets were part of rites after death.²

Poets used to write eulogies for the deceased.  One eulogy written by Nabigha (Nābighah نابِغَه) for Nu’man (Nu’mān نُعمان), the Lakhmid kinglet is preserved.³ 

Further Reading

History of Islam, Social Structure of Pre-Islamic Arabs, https://historyofislam.org/social-structure-of-pre-islamic-arabs/

Footnotes

1. Al-Mufaḍḍal son of Muhammad. The Mufaddaliiyat: An Anthology of Ancient Arabian Odes.   Vol. II, ed. and trans. Charles J Lyall  (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918), 239, Ode no. 80, poet:  Sha’s ibn Nahār al-Mumazzaq.
2. ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-San’ani. Muṣannaf, ed. Habīb al-Rahmān al-A’zami (Beirut: al-Majlis al-‘Ilmi, 1970 – 72), 500, vol. III.
3. Nābigha, Dīwān al Nābigha al Ḍubyāni, ed. Ibrahīm, (Cairo. 1977), 115 – 22.