عنترة
ʿAntara
Person
A pre-Islamic poet-warrior and the hero of an Arab epic.
What it means
Antara ibn Shaddad (late sixth century) was the son of an Arab chief and an Ethiopian slave mother. He rose by courage to become a poet of the Muʿallaqāt, the seven celebrated odes of pre-Islamic Arabia, and the hero of the later romance Sīrat ʿAntar.
What the sources say
The pre-Islamic poets matter to Muslims for the Arabic they preserve, against which the Quran’s language was measured by its hearers. Early commentators such as Ibn Abbas quoted such poetry to explain rare words in the Quran.