Antar, properly Antarah, an Arabian prince and poet of the 6th century, author of one of the Moallakat, the seven poems suspended on the Caaba at Mecca. A copy of a work called "Antar," celebrating the exploits of the prince, is in the imperial library of Vienna; and in the catalogue of the books written by Von Hammer there is some account of this romance. The legends of his exploits appear to have been embodied in a book and considerably enlarged by Asmai or Osmay, at the court of Haroun al-Rashid. He appears to have been aided in this by Yohainah and Abu Obeidah. The copy translated by Mr. Terrick Hamilton, oriental secretary to the British embassy at Constantinople, was procured at Aleppo, and is comprised in a smaller form than any other as yet sent to Europe. The voluminous work had, it appears, been curtailed of many of its repetitions and much of its poetry by some learned inhabitants of Syria, and was therefore called the Shamiyeh or Syrian Antar, in contradistinction to the original large work, which was called the He-jaziyeh or Arabian Antar. Though usually written in a continuous form, the story may very properly be divided into three parts.

The 1st reaches to the marriage of Antar and Ibla; the 2d includes the period when the hero suspends his poem at Mecca; the 3d comprises the death of Antar and most of his comrades and relatives. Von Hammer, who twice read through the original, declared it to be "more interesting than the celebrated 'Thousand and One Nights;' " and Sir William Jones says: " I have only seen the 14th volume of this work, which comprises all that is elegant and noble in composition. So lofty, so various, and so bold is its style, that I do not hesitate to rank it among the most finished poems." With the Arabs it is a standard work. It is certainly one of the most ancient books of Arabian literature. Its language is uncommonly pure, equally remote from the harshness of the earlier or the conceits of the later authors.