Mufaddaliyat in the context of Jamharat Ash'ar al-Arab

The Kufan School of Arabic Grammar, also the Grammarians of Kufa, was a school of thought that dominated amongst grammarians in Kufa during the Islamic Golden Age.

Al-Kūfah began as a military base ca. 638 near Ḥīrah on the western branch of the Euphrates river and grew, as had its counterpart at Al-Basrah also grown, from an encampment into a town that attracted the great intellectual elites from across the region. The first grammarian of al-Kūfah was Al-Ru'asi who lived in the eighth century, whereas the earliest scholars of the School at Baṣrah, lived during the seventh century. The great intellectual project that developed out of both schools of philology, created the sciences of Arabic grammar and lexicography. What emerged from an impetus to interpret the sacred texts of the Qu’rān and Ḥadīth, by humanists of al-Baṣrah and al-Kūfah, led to a communal quest for the purest, least corrupt, Arabic source material, for which they turned to the Pre-Islamic oral poetry as recited by the rāwī. The compositions of famous poets were collected, arranged, and committed to writing. The grammarians of al-Baṣrah and al-Kūfah collected the ancient Arabian poetry and arranged the material into “Dīwān” (pl. Dawāwan) according to certain principles; either by classes of individuals, tribal groupings, selected qaṣīdas, or by themes of fragments, and edited into anthologies. Examples of their works are the Mu’allaqāt, and the Mufaḍḍaliyāt by al-Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbī.

The Muʻallaqāt (Arabic: المعلقات, [ʔalmuʕallaqaːt]) is a compilation of seven long pre-Islamic Arabic poems. The name means The Suspended Odes or The Hanging Poems, they were named so because these poems were hung in the Kaaba in Mecca. Some scholars have also suggested that the hanging is figurative, as if the poems "hang" in the reader's mind.

Along with the Mufaddaliyat, Jamharat Ash'ar al-Arab, Asma'iyyat, and the Hamasah, the Mu'allaqāt are considered the primary source for early written Arabic poetry. Scholar Peter N. Stearns goes so far as to say that they represent "the most sophisticated poetic production in the history of Arabic letters."