nadhîr in the Old Arabic poetry

To the pre-Islamic ("jahîlî") poet `Antarah the following poem is attributed:[1]

وكم من نذير قد أتانا محذّر

فكان رسل في آلسّرور يبشّر

"Wa kam min nadhîrin qad atânâ muHadhdhirâ

fa kâna rasûlan s-surûri yabaššira."

"And how many devoted [or dedicated or sacred] ones [meaning: ascetes, apostles, preachers or missionaries or people like that] have come to us frightening [us],

but he was a messenger in joy that he should announce."

The a bit unusual order of the words " s-surûri yabaššira" instead of " yabaššira s-surûri" is due to the necessity to fulfil the metre Tawîl.

Also here in this (alleged) Old Arabic poem there is no idea of nadhîr meaning "warner"!

The verse was most probably part of a Christian poem, praising Jesus as the messenger of joy (n. b. بشّر baššara "to announce a joyful message" and بشرى bušrâ or بشارة bišârah "Gospel"), in contrast to other preachers who have frightened people with awful messages.[2]



[1] I owe the hint to this poem to Asif Iqbal, who gave as source of the poem: Dîwân, p. 85, verse 5. Iqbal, who presented this poem first within the Yahoo!Group "Talking about Islam", now has repeated his erroneous arguments within the website “Bismika Allahuma” or more precisely at the site “The Furqan & “The Warner”: Correcting Christoph Heger’s Misinterpretation of Qur’an 25:1”. Whereas Iqbal in the meantime has corrected his defective and partly wrong transliteration, he insists on his "translation", which in its verbosity and fancifulness has no basis in the Arabic text: «How many times has a warner who has come to bid us be on our guard against something bad, Turned out ultimately to be a messenger of delightful things bringing a good news This his attempt to save the later Islamic alteration of the meaning of "nadhîr" from "voted thing", "voted gift", "sacrifice" to "warner" remains however futile.

[2] I owe thanks to Dr. Günter Lüling, Erlangen, for clarifying the matter.