“Arabian fairs were in some sort the centre of old Arabian social, political and literary life” Discuss in detail.

The poets at Al Ukaz

All around the Peninsula every settlement had its market day once a week; larger towns had theirs every month. Since 'Ukaz was the last of the market towns before the holy site of the Black Stone,the pilgrims had one last opportunity to indulge in the worldly pleasures of good conversation, the display of fine camels and hard bargaining. Its informal trade in time evolved into an annual fair preceding the pilgrimage season, and no man who wanted to know what his distant allies and enemies had been doing during the previous year—as who did not?—could afford to miss the fair. For there, in the perfect safety of the four months of "holy truce," men laid aside their weapons, listened to petitions, redeemed prisoners, heard poems in their praise (in return for silver and golden rewards in exact proportion to the ingenuity of the poet), and resolved feuds which in another place, another time, would have left brave men dead upon the ground.
Heralds of powerful men would go through the dusty streets, proclaiming their readiness to help their fellow pilgrims. "Whosoever be in need of food—I will feed him," one could cry. "Whosoever be afraid—I shall protect him," shouted another, and a third, "Whosoever be without means to go to Mecca—my camels will bear him." The luxuries of desert life were few, and the shaikhs could think of no better expenditure of their money and effort than the acquisition of a reputation for generosity among their fellowmen. Then, even as in recent times, men worked hard and took enormous risks to become rich, only to pauperize themselves in magnificent entertainments and banquets open to all who could fight their way to the board. At 'Ukaz during the season of the "holy truce," many a reputation was created for open-handedness which outlived by generations the benefactor himself.
But there was yet another way to become celebrated, available to the most humble man, guaranteeing fame at once painless and permanent. This was the creation of a poem of such vigor, beauty and irrepressible rhythm that the hearers would absorb it as it stood, wear it like a rich robe, carry it to the far horizons of Arabia, and pass it down from father to son as part of their own legacy. Prose invention, primarily in the form of stories instructive or martial, underwent a constant metamorphosis, improving with each telling or dying in the process. Poetry was immutable. Either it survived in its original form or it died stillborn. Its rhythms and its rhymes made possible committing it to memory—an important consideration, since writing generally was still centuries in the future. And the incentive to remember was there, for poetry was the transportable substitute for painting, architecture, sculpture, music, history, moral instruction and the daily newspaper—all wrapped into one.

Who were these great poets of Ukaz? We know some of them and their poetry from the sixth century. Later literary critics agreed (to the extent that critics can) on seven, at least, whose odes they put together in one collection. They were called the "Golden" or "Suspended" Odes. The name comes from stories which were told of each victorious ode having the honor of being painted in gold on fine linen and hung on the building of the holy shrine in Mecca.

'Antar, the Black Knight, was one: no one better at describing the excitement and terror of the battlefield. Tarafa was another, from the lands around al-Hasa; he went to Hira around A.D. 564 to seek his fortune, antagonized the ruler there with a satirical line and was poisoned for his pains. There is Zuhayr the Moralist from northern Najd, who dwelt on the iniquities of war rather than its glories. His sisters wrote poetry also; his son Ka'b, upon his conversion to Islam, wrote a famous ode entitled "The Cloak," about the Prophet. Imr al-Qays, the Himyarite prince, found patronage for both his politics and his poetry in Damascus, while al-Harith, reputedly a leper, found his at Hira. Hira also attracted 'Amr ibn Kulthum, long-lived leader of the Taghlib tribe and Labid, the Man with the Crooked Staff. With Labid ends the seven, and rightly so. Labid's life spanned the birth and death of the Prophet. He died in 662, a weary old man of 140. (On his 120th birthday he wrote, "I have grown tired of life, of the length of my days dragging on, and of men forever asking, 'How is Labid today?'") At about 102, he converted to Islam, whereupon he swore never to write pagan poetry again. A new time had begun for the Peninsula

Not only in the development of poetry, but in the evolution of the Arabic language itself, 'Ukaz played a significant role. Limited by custom to nonviolent argument, the merchant-poets engaged in friendly controversy over the relative merits of the many regional dialects they spoke. The result was an informal, Arabic version of the Academie Francaise, in which many of the individual dialectical distinctions disappeared by common consent, replaced by terminology everybody could agree on. The fair at 'Ukaz thus gave a powerful impetus to the unification of the Arabic language, a process carried to its logical fulfillment by Muhammad in the revelation of the Koran.
It is still remembered with affection by everyone who recalls that the ancient attributes of the perfect Arab were articulation together with proficiency in archery and horsemanship, and that "the beauty of man lies in the eloquence of his tongue."