However _Mu‘allaqa_ is to be explained, the name is not contemporary with the poems themselves. In all probability they were so entitled by the person who first chose them out of innumerable others and embodied them in a separate collection. This is generally allowed to have been Ḥammád al-Ráwiya, a famous rhapsodist who flourished in the latter days of the Umayyad dynasty, and died about 772 A.D., in the reign of the ‘Abbásid Caliph Mahdí. What principle guided Ḥammád in his choice we do not know. Nöldeke conjectures that he was influenced by the fact that all the _Mu‘allaqát_ are long poems--they are sometimes called 'The Seven Long Poems' (_al-Sab‘ al-Ṭiwál_)--for in Ḥammád's time little of the ancient Arabian poetry survived in a state even of relative completeness. [Sidenote: Difficulty of translating the Mu‘allaqát.] It must be confessed that no rendering of the _Mu‘allaqát_ can furnish European readers with a just idea of the originals, a literal version least of all. They contain much that only a full commentary can make intelligible, much that to modern taste is absolutely incongruous with the poetic style. Their finest pictures of Bedouin life and manners often appear uncouth or grotesque, because without an intimate knowledge of the land and people it is impossible for us to see what the poet intended to convey, or to appreciate the truth and beauty of its expression; while the artificial framework, the narrow range of subject as well as treatment, and the frank realism of the whole strike us at once. In the following pages I shall give some account of the _Mu‘allaqát_ and their authors, and endeavour to bring out the characteristic qualities of each poem by selecting suitable passages for translation.[207] [Sidenote: Imru’u ’l-Qays.]