An Outline of a Plagiarism Controversy from the Abbasid Era: Al-Sarī l-Raffāʾ vs. the Khālidī Brothers

One of the bitterest plagiarism controversies recorded in the medieval Arabic sources concerned the poet al-Sarī l-Raffāʾ and the two poets known as the Khālidī brothers. Based on the surviving evidence, this article examines closely the dispute between both parties in Iraq and Syria of the fourth/tenth century and the various ways in which it engaged others, including very prominent figures of the Abbasid era. Attention is paid to the development of the dispute and to the steps taken by each side to prevail over the other. The present article shows how the victory of the Khālidī brothers was structurally facilitated by the absence of formal legal mechanisms and procedures to address plagiarism allegations in the Abbasid period.