Chapter VII: Poetry, Literature, and Science in the ‘abbásid Period (1)

[Sidenote: The Pre-islamic poets regarded as classical.]

Pre-Islamic poetry was the natural expression of nomad life. We might therefore have expected that the new conditions and ideas introduced by Islam would rapidly work a corresponding revolution in the poetical literature of the following century. Such, however, was far from being the case. The Umayyad poets clung tenaciously to the great models of the Heroic Age and even took credit for their skilful imitation of the antique odes. The early Muḥammadan critics, who were philologists by profession, held fast to the principle that Poetry in Pre-islamic times had reached a perfection which no modern bard could hope to emulate, and which only the lost ideals of chivalry could inspire.[517] To have been born after Islam was in itself a proof of poetical inferiority.[518] Linguistic considerations, of course, entered largely into this prejudice. The old poems were studied as repositories of the pure classical tongue and were estimated mainly from a grammarian's standpoint.

[Sidenote: Abú Nuwás as a critic.]

These ideas gained wide acceptance in literary circles and gradually biassed the popular taste to such an extent that learned pedants could boast, like Khalíl b. Ahmad, the inventor of Arabic prosody, that it lay in their power to make or mar the reputation of a rising poet as they deemed fit. Originality being condemned in advance, those who desired the approval of this self-constituted Academy were obliged to waste their time and talents upon elaborate reproduction of the ancient masterpieces, and to entertain courtiers and citizens with borrowed pictures of Bedouin life in which neither they nor their audience took the slightest interest. Some, it is true, recognised the absurdity of the thing. Abú Nuwás († _circa_ 810 A.D.) often ridicules the custom, to which reference has been made elsewhere, of apostrophising the deserted encampment (_aṭlál_ or _ṭulúl_) in the opening lines of an ode, and pours contempt on the fashionable glorification of antiquity. In the passage translated below he gives a description of the desert and its people which recalls some of Dr. Johnson's sallies at the expense of Scotland and Scotsmen:--

"Let the south-wind moisten with rain the desolate scene
And Time efface what once was so fresh and green!
Make the camel-rider free of a desert space
Where high-bred camels trot with unwearied pace;
Where only mimosas and thistles flourish, and where,
For hunting, wolves and hyenas are nowise rare!
Amongst the Bedouins seek not enjoyment out:
What do they enjoy? They live in hunger and drought.
Let them drink their bowls of milk and leave them alone,
To whom life's finer pleasures are all unknown."[519]

Ibn Qutayba, who died towards the end of the ninth century A.D., was the first critic of importance to declare that ancients and moderns should be judged on their merits without regard to their age. He writes as follows in the Introduction to his 'Book of Poetry and Poets' (_Kitábu ’l-Shi‘r wa-’l-Shu‘ará_):--[520]

[Sidenote: Ibn Qutayba on ancient and modern poets.]

"In citing extracts from the works of the poets I have been guided
by my own choice and have refused to admire anything merely because
others thought it admirable. I have not regarded any ancient with
veneration on account of his antiquity nor any modern with contempt
on account of his being modern, but I have taken an impartial view
of both sides, giving every one his due and amply acknowledging his
merit. Some of our scholars, as I am aware, pronounce a feeble poem
to be good, because its author was an ancient, and include it among
their chosen pieces, while they call a sterling poem bad though its
only fault is that it was composed in their own time or that they
have seen its author. God, however, did not restrict learning and
poetry and rhetoric to a particular age nor appropriate them to a
particular class, but has always distributed them in common amongst
His servants, and has caused everything old to be new in its own day
and every classic work to be an upstart on its first appearance."

[Sidenote: Revolt against classicism.]

The inevitable reaction in favour of the new poetry and of contemporary literature in general was hastened by various circumstances which combined to overthrow the prevalent theory that Arabian heathendom and the characteristic pagan virtues--honour, courage, liberality, &c.--were alone capable of producing poetical genius. Among the chief currents of thought tending in this direction, which are lucidly set forth in Goldziher's essay, pp. 148 sqq., we may note (_a_) the pietistic and theological spirit fostered by the ‘Abbásid Government, and (_b_) the influence of foreign, pre-eminently Persian, culture. As to the former, it is manifest that devout Moslems would not be at all disposed to admit the exclusive pretensions made on behalf of the _Jáhiliyya_ or to agree with those who exalted chivalry (_muruwwa_) above religion (_dín_). Were not the language and style of the Koran incomparably excellent? Surely the Holy Book was a more proper subject for study than heathen verses. But if Moslems began to call Pre-islamic ideals in question, it was especially the Persian ascendancy resulting from the triumph of the ‘Abbásid House that shook the old arrogant belief of the Arabs in the intellectual supremacy of their race. So far from glorying in the traditions of paganism, many people thought it grossly insulting to mention an ‘Abbásid Caliph in the same breath with heroes of the past like Ḥátim of Ṭayyi’ and Harim b. Sinán. The philosopher al-Kindí († about 850 A.D.) rebuked a poet for venturing on such odious comparisons. "Who are these Arabian vagabonds" (_ṣa‘álíku ’l-‘Arab_), he asked, "and what worth have they?"[521]

[Sidenote: Critics in favour of the modern school.]

While Ibn Qutayba was content to urge that the modern poets should get a fair hearing, and should be judged not chronologically or philologically, but _æsthetically_, some of the greatest literary critics who came after him do not conceal their opinion that the new poetry is superior to the old. Tha‘álibí († 1038 A.D.) asserts that in tenderness and elegance the Pre-islamic bards are surpassed by their successors, and that both alike have been eclipsed by his contemporaries. Ibn Rashíq († _circa_ 1070 A.D.), whose _‘Umda_ on the Art of Poetry is described by Ibn Khaldún as an epoch-making work, thought that the superiority of the moderns would be acknowledged if they discarded the obsolete conventions of the Ode. European readers cannot but sympathise with him when he bids the poets draw inspiration from nature and truth instead of relating imaginary journeys on a camel which they never owned, through deserts which they never saw, to a patron residing in the same city as themselves. This seems to us a very reasonable and necessary protest, but it must be remembered that the Bedouin _qaṣída_ was not easily adaptable to the conditions of urban life, and needed complete remoulding rather than modification in detail.[522]

[Sidenote: Popularity of the modern poets.]

"In the fifth century," says Goldziher--_i.e._, from about 1000 A.D.--"the dogma of the unattainable perfection of the heathen poets may be regarded as utterly demolished." Henceforth popular taste ran strongly in the other direction, as is shown by the immense preponderance of modern pieces in the anthologies--a favourite and characteristic branch of Arabic literature--which were compiled during the ‘Abbásid period and afterwards, and by frequent complaints of the neglect into which the ancient poetry had fallen. But although, for Moslems generally, Imru’u ’l-Qays and his fellows came to be more or less what Chaucer is to the average Englishman, the views first enunciated by Ibn Qutayba met with bitter opposition from the learned class, many of whom clung obstinately to the old philological principles of criticism, and even declined to recognise the writings of Mutanabbí and Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí as poetry, on the ground that those authors did not observe the classical 'types' (_asálíb_).[523] The result of such pedantry may be seen at the present day in thousands of _qaṣídas_, abounding in archaisms and allusions to forgotten far-off things of merely antiquarian interest, but possessing no more claim to consideration here than the Greek and Latin verses of British scholars in a literary history of the Victorian Age.

[Sidenote: Characteristics of the new poetry.]

Passing now to the characteristics of the new poetry which followed the accession of the ‘Abbásids, we have to bear in mind that from first to last (with very few exceptions) it flourished under the patronage of the court. There was no organised book trade, no wealthy publishers, so that poets were usually dependent for their livelihood on the capricious bounty of the Caliphs and his favourites whom they belauded. Huge sums were paid for a successful panegyric, and the bards vied with each other in flattery of the most extravagant description. Even in writers of real genius this prostitution of their art gave rise to a great deal of the false glitter and empty bombast which are often erroneously attributed to Oriental poetry as a whole.[524] These qualities, however, are absolutely foreign to Arabian poetry of the best period. The old Bedouins who praised a man only for that which was in him, and drew their images directly from nature, stand at the opposite pole to Tha‘álibí's contemporaries. Under the Umayyads, as we have seen, little change took place. It is not until after the enthronement of the ‘Abbásids, when Persians filled the chief offices at court, and when a goodly number of poets and eminent men of learning had Persian blood in their veins, that an unmistakably new note makes itself heard. One might be tempted to surmise that the high-flown, bombastic, and ornate style of which Mutanabbí is the most illustrious exponent, and which is so marked a feature in later Muḥammadan poetry, was first introduced by the Persians and Perso-Arabs who gathered round the Caliph in Baghdád and celebrated the triumph of their own race in the person of a noble Barmecide; but this would scarcely be true. The style in question is not specially Persian; the earliest Arabic-writing poets of Íránian descent, like Bashshár b. Burd and Abú Nuwás, are (so far as I can see) without a trace of it. What the Persians brought into Arabian poetry was not a grandiose style, but a lively and graceful fancy, elegance of diction, depth and tenderness of feeling, and a rich store of ideas.

The process of transformation was aided by other causes besides the influx of Persian and Hellenistic culture: for example, by the growing importance of Islam in public life and the diffusion of a strong religious spirit among the community at large--a spirit which attained its most perfect expression in the reflective and didactic poetry of Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya. Every change of many-coloured life is depicted in the brilliant pages of these modern poets, where the reader may find, according to his mood, the maddest gaiety and the shamefullest frivolity; strains of lofty meditation mingled with a world-weary pessimism; delicate sentiment, unforced pathos, and glowing rhetoric; but seldom the manly self-reliance, the wild, invigorating freedom and inimitable freshness of Bedouin song.

[Sidenote: Five typical poets of the ‘Abbásid period.]

It is of course impossible to do justice even to the principal ‘Abbásid poets within the limits of this chapter, but the following five may be taken as fairly representative: Muṭí‘ b. Iyás, Abú Nuwás, Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya, Mutanabbí, and Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí. The first three were in close touch with the court of Baghdád, while Mutanabbí and Abu ’l-‘Alá flourished under the Ḥamdánid dynasty which ruled in Aleppo.

[Sidenote: Muṭí‘ b. Iyás.]

Muṭí‘ b. Iyás only deserves notice here as the earliest poet of the New School. His father was a native of Palestine, but he himself was born and educated at Kúfa. He began his career under the Umayyads, and was devoted to the Caliph Walíd b. Yazíd, who found in him a fellow after his own heart, "accomplished, dissolute, an agreeable companion and excellent wit, reckless in his effrontery and suspected in his religion."[525] When the ‘Abbásids came into power Muṭí‘ attached himself to the Caliph Manṣúr. Many stories are told of the debauched life which he led in the company of _zindíqs_, or freethinkers, a class of men whose opinions we shall sketch in another chapter. His songs of love and wine are distinguished by their lightness and elegance. The best known is that in which he laments his separation from the daughter of a _Dihqán_ (Persian landed proprietor), and invokes the two palm-trees of Ḥulwán, a town situated on the borders of the Jibál province between Hamadhán and Baghdád. From this poem arose the proverb, "Faster friends than the two palm-trees of Ḥulwán."[526]

THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER.

"O ye two palms, palms of Ḥulwán,
Help me weep Time's bitter dole!
Know that Time for ever parteth
Life from every living soul.

Had ye tasted parting's anguish,
Ye would weep as I, forlorn.
Help me! Soon must ye asunder
By the same hard fate be torn.

Many are the friends and loved ones
Whom I lost in days of yore.
Fare thee well, O yeoman's daughter!--
Never grief like this I bore.
Her, alas, mine eyes behold not,
And on me she looks no more!"

[Sidenote: Abú Nuwás († _circa_ 810 A.D.).]

By Europeans who know him only through the _Thousand and One Nights_ Abú Nuwás is remembered as the boon-companion and court jester of "the good Haroun Alraschid," and as the hero of countless droll adventures and facetious anecdotes--an Oriental Howleglass or Joe Miller. It is often forgotten that he was a great poet who, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, takes rank above all his contemporaries and successors, including even Mutanabbí, and is not surpassed in poetical genius by any ancient bard.

Ḥasan b. Háni’ gained the familiar title of Abú Nuwás (Father of the lock of hair) from two locks which hung down on his shoulders. He was born of humble parents, about the middle of the eighth century, in Aḥwáz, the capital of Khúzistán. That he was not a pure Arab the name of his mother, Jallabán, clearly indicates, while the following verse affords sufficient proof that he was not ashamed of his Persian blood:--

"Who are Tamím and Qays and all their kin?
The Arabs in God's sight are nobody."[527]

He received his education at Baṣra, of which city he calls himself a native,[528] and at Kúfa, where he studied poetry and philology under the learned Khalaf al-Aḥmar. After passing a 'Wanderjahr' among the Arabs of the desert, as was the custom of scholars at that time, he made his way to Baghdád and soon eclipsed every competitor at the court of Hárún the Orthodox. A man of the most abandoned character, which he took no pains to conceal, Abú Nuwás, by his flagrant immorality, drunkenness, and blasphemy, excited the Caliph's anger to such a pitch that he often threatened the culprit with death, and actually imprisoned him on several occasions; but these fits of severity were brief. The poet survived both Hárún and his son, Amín, who succeeded him in the Caliphate. Age brought repentance--"the Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be." He addressed the following lines from prison to Faḍl b. al-Rabí‘, whom Hárún appointed Grand Vizier after the fall of the Barmecides:--

"Faḍl, who hast taught and trained me up to goodness
(And goodness is but habit), thee I praise.
Now hath vice fled and virtue me revisits,
And I have turned to chaste and pious ways.
To see me, thou would'st think the saintly Baṣrite,
Ḥasan, or else Qatáda, met thy gaze,[529]
So do I deck humility with leanness,
While yellow, locust-like, my cheek o'erlays.
Beads on my arm; and on my breast the Scripture,
Where hung a chain of gold in other days."[530]

The Díwán of Abú Nuwás contains poems in many different styles--_e.g._, panegyric (_madíḥ), satire (_hijá_), songs of the chase (ṭardiyyát_), elegies (_maráthí_), and religious poems (_zuhdiyyát_); but love and wine were the two motives by which his genius was most brilliantly inspired. His wine-songs (_khamriyyát_) are generally acknowledged to be incomparable. Here is one of the shortest:--

"Thou scolder of the grape and me,
I ne'er shall win thy smile!
Because against thee I rebel,
'Tis churlish to revile.

Ah, breathe no more the name of wine
Until thou cease to blame,
For fear that thy foul tongue should smirch
Its fair and lovely name!

Come, pour it out, ye gentle boys,
A vintage ten years old,
That seems as though 'twere in the cup
A lake of liquid gold.

And when the water mingles there,
To fancy's eye are set
Pearls over shining pearls close strung
As in a carcanet."[531]

Another poem begins--

"Ho! a cup, and fill it up, and tell me it is wine,
For I will never drink in shade if I can drink in shine!
Curst and poor is every hour that sober I must go,
But rich am I whene'er well drunk I stagger to and fro.
Speak, for shame, the loved one's name, let vain disguise alone:
No good there is in pleasures o'er which a veil is thrown."[532]

Abú Nuwás practised what he preached, and hypocrisy at any rate cannot be laid to his charge. The moral and religious sentiments which appear in some of his poems are not mere cant, but should rather be regarded as the utterance of sincere though transient emotion. Usually he felt and avowed that pleasure was the supreme business of his life, and that religious scruples could not be permitted to stand in the way. He even urges others not to shrink from any excess, inasmuch as the Divine mercy is greater than all the sins of which a man is capable:--

"Accumulate as many sins thou canst:
The Lord is ready to relax His ire.
When the day comes, forgiveness thou wilt find
Before a mighty King and gracious Sire,
And gnaw thy fingers, all that joy regretting
Which thou didst leave thro' terror of Hell-fire!"[533]

We must now bid farewell to Abú Nuwás and the licentious poets (_al-shu‘ará al-mujján_) who reflect so admirably the ideas and manners prevailing in court circles and in the upper classes of society which were chiefly influenced by the court. The scenes of luxurious dissipation and refined debauchery which they describe show us, indeed, that Persian culture was not an unalloyed blessing to the Arabs any more than were the arts of Greece to the Romans; but this is only the darker side of the picture. The works of a contemporary poet furnish evidence of the indignation which the libertinism fashionable in high places called forth among the mass of Moslems who had not lost faith in morality and religion.

[Sidenote: Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya (748-828 A.D.).]

Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya, unlike his great rival, came of Arab stock. He was bred in Kúfa, and gained his livelihood as a young man by selling earthenware. His poetical talent, however, promised so well that he set out to present himself before the Caliph Mahdí, who richly rewarded him; and Hárún al-Rashíd afterwards bestowed on him a yearly pension of 50,000 dirhems (about £2,000), in addition to numerous extraordinary gifts. At Baghdád he fell in love with ‘Utba, a slave-girl belonging to Mahdí, but she did not return his passion or take any notice of the poems in which he celebrated her charms and bewailed the sufferings that she made him endure. Despair of winning her affection caused him, it is said, to assume the woollen garb of Muḥammadan ascetics,[534] and henceforth, instead of writing vain and amatorious verses, he devoted his powers exclusively to those joyless meditations on mortality which have struck a deep chord in the hearts of his countrymen. Like Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí and others who neglected the positive precepts of Islam in favour of a moral philosophy based on experience and reflection, Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya was accused of being a freethinker (_zindíq_).[535] It was alleged that in his poems he often spoke of death but never of the Resurrection and the Judgment--a calumny which is refuted by many passages in his Díwán. According to the literary historian al-Ṣúlí († 946 A.D.), Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya believed in One God who formed the universe out of two opposite elements which He created from nothing; and held, further, that everything would be reduced to these same elements before the final destruction of all phenomena. Knowledge, he thought, was acquired naturally (_i.e._, without Divine Revelation) by means of reflection, deduction, and research.[536] He believed in the threatened retribution (_al-wa‘íd_) and in the command to abstain from commerce with the world (_taḥrímu ’l-makásib_).[537] He professed the opinions of the Butrites,[538] a subdivision of the Zaydites, as that sect of the Shí‘a was named which followed Zayd b. Alí b. Ḥusayn b. ‘Alí b. Abí Ṭálib. He spoke evil of none, and did not approve of revolt against the Government. He held the doctrine of predestination (_jabr_).[539]

Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya may have secretly cherished the Manichæan views ascribed to him in this passage, but his poems contain little or nothing that could offend the most orthodox Moslem. The following verse, in which Goldziher finds an allusion to Buddha,[540] is capable of a different interpretation. It rather seems to me to exalt the man of ascetic life, without particular reference to any individual, above all others:--

"If thou would'st see the noblest of mankind,
Behold a monarch in a beggar's garb."[541]

But while the poet avoids positive heresy, it is none the less true that much of his Díwán is not strictly religious in the Muḥammadan sense and may fairly be called 'philosophical.' This was enough to convict him of infidelity and atheism in the eyes of devout theologians who looked askance on moral teaching, however pure, that was not cast in the dogmatic mould. The pretended cause of his imprisonment by Hárún al-Rashíd--namely, that he refused to make any more love-songs--is probably, as Goldziher has suggested, a popular version of the fact that he persisted in writing religious poems which were supposed to have a dangerous bias in the direction of free-thought.

His poetry breathes a spirit of profound melancholy and hopeless pessimism. Death and what comes after death, the frailty and misery of man, the vanity of worldly pleasures and the duty of renouncing them--these are the subjects on which he dwells with monotonous reiteration, exhorting his readers to live the ascetic life and fear God and lay up a store of good works against the Day of Reckoning. The simplicity, ease, and naturalness of his style are justly admired. Religious poetry, as he himself confesses, was not read at court or by scholars who demanded rare and obscure expressions, but only by pious folk, traditionists and divines, and especially by the vulgar, "who like best what they can understand."[542] Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya wrote for 'the man in the street.' Discarding conventional themes tricked out with threadbare artifices, he appealed to common feelings and matters of universal experience. He showed for the first and perhaps for the last time in the history of classical Arabic literature that it was possible to use perfectly plain and ordinary language without ceasing to be a poet.

Although, as has been said, the bulk of Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya's poetry is philosophical in character, there remains much specifically Islamic doctrine, in particular as regards the Resurrection and the Future Life. This combination may be illustrated by the following ode, which is considered one of the best that have been written on the subject of religion, or, more accurately, of asceticism (_zuhd_):--

"Get sons for death, build houses for decay!
All, all, ye wend annihilation's way.
For whom build we, who must ourselves return
Into our native element of clay?
O Death, nor violence nor flattery thou
Dost use, but when thou com'st, escape none may.
Methinks, thou art ready to surprise mine age,
As age surprised and made my youth his prey.
What ails me, World, that every place perforce
I lodge thee in, it galleth me to stay?
And, O Time, how do I behold thee run
To spoil me? Thine own gift thou tak'st away!
O Time! inconstant, mutable art thou,
And o'er the realm of ruin is thy sway.
What ails me that no glad result it brings
Whene'er, O World, to milk thee I essay?
And when I court thee, why dost thou raise up
On all sides only trouble and dismay?
Men seek thee every wise, but thou art like
A dream; the shadow of a cloud; the day
Which hath but now departed, nevermore
To dawn again; a glittering vapour gay.
This people thou hast paid in full: their feet
Are on the stirrup--let them not delay!
But those that do good works and labour well
Hereafter shall receive the promised pay.
As if no punishment I had to fear,
A load of sin upon my neck I lay;
And while the world I love, from Truth, alas,
Still my besotted senses go astray.
I shall be asked of all my business here:
What can I plead then? What can I gainsay?
What argument allege, when I am called
To render an account on Reckoning-Day?
Dooms twain in that dread hour shall be revealed,
When I the scroll of these mine acts survey:
Either to dwell in everlasting bliss,
Or suffer torments of the damned for aye!"[543]

I will now add a few verses culled from the Díwán which bring the poet's pessimistic view of life into clearer outline, and also some examples of those moral precepts and sententious criticisms which crowd his pages and have contributed in no small degree to his popularity.

"The world is like a viper soft to touch that venom spits."[544]

"Men sit like revellers o'er their cups and drink,
From the world's hand, the circling wine of death."[545]

"Call no man living blest for aught you see
But that for which you blessed call the dead."[546]

FALSE FRIENDS.

"'Tis not the Age that moves my scorn,
But those who in the Age are born.
I cannot count the friends that broke
Their faith, tho' honied words they spoke;
In whom no aid I found, and made
The Devil welcome to their aid.
May I--so best we shall agree--
Ne'er look on them nor they on me!"[547]

"If men should see a prophet begging, they would turn and scout him.
Thy friend is ever thine as long as thou canst do without him;
But he will spew thee forth, if in thy need thou come about him."[548]

THE WICKED WORLD.

"'Tis only on the culprit sin recoils,
The ignorant fool against himself is armed.
Humanity are sunk in wickedness;
The best is he that leaveth us unharmed."[549]

"'Twas my despair of Man that gave me hope
God's grace would find me soon, I know not how."[550]

LIFE AND DEATH.

"Man's life is his fair name, and not his length of years;
Man's death is his ill-fame, and not the day that nears.
Then life to thy fair name by deeds of goodness give:
So in this world two lives, O mortal, thou shalt live."[551]

MAXIMS AND RULES OF LIFE.

"Mere falsehood by its face is recognised,
But Truth by parables and admonitions."[552]

"I keep the bond of love inviolate
Towards all humankind, for I betray
Myself, if I am false to any man."[553]

"Far from the safe path, hop'st thou to be saved?
Ships make no speedy voyage on dry land."[554]

"Strip off the world from thee and naked live,
For naked thou didst fall into the world."[555]

"Man guards his own and grasps his neighbours' pelf,
And he is angered when they him prevent;
But he that makes the earth his couch will sleep
No worse, if lacking silk he have content."[556]

"Men vaunt their noble blood, but I behold
No lineage that can vie with righteous deeds."[557]

"If knowledge lies in long experience,
Less than what I have borne suffices me."[558]

"Faith is the medicine of every grief,
Doubt only raises up a host of cares."[559]

"Blame me or no, 'tis my predestined state:
If I have erred, infallible is Fate."[560]

Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya found little favour with his contemporaries, who seem to have regarded him as a miserly hypocrite. He died, an aged man, in the Caliphate of Ma’mún.[561] Von Kremer thinks that he had a truer genius for poetry than Abú Nuwás, an opinion in which I am unable to concur. Both, however, as he points out, are distinctive types of their time. If Abú Nuwás presents an appalling picture of a corrupt and frivolous society devoted to pleasure, we learn from Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya something of the religious feelings and beliefs which pervaded the middle and lower classes, and which led them to take a more earnest and elevated view of life.

With the rapid decline and disintegration of the ‘Abbásid Empire which set in towards the middle of the ninth century, numerous petty dynasties arose, and the hitherto unrivalled splendour of Baghdád was challenged by more than one provincial court. These independent or semi-independent princes were sometimes zealous patrons of learning--it is well known, for example, that a national Persian literature first came into being under the auspices of the Sámánids in Khurásán and the Buwayhids in ‘Iráq--but as a rule the anxious task of maintaining, or the ambition of extending, their power left them small leisure to cultivate letters, even if they wished to do so. None combined the arts of war and peace more brilliantly than the Ḥamdánid Sayfu ’l-Dawla, who in 944 A.D. made himself master of Aleppo, and founded an independent kingdom in Northern Syria.

[Sidenote: Tha‘álibí's eulogy of Sayfu ’l-Dawla.]

"The Ḥamdánids," says Tha‘álibí, "were kings and princes, comely of
countenance and eloquent of tongue, endowed with open-handedness and
gravity of mind. Sayfu ’l-Dawla is famed as the chief amongst them
all and the centre-pearl of their necklace. He was--may God be
pleased with him and grant his desires and make Paradise his
abode!--the brightest star of his age and the pillar of Islam: by
him the frontiers were guarded and the State well governed. His
attacks on the rebellious Arabs checked their fury and blunted their
teeth and tamed their stubbornness and secured his subjects against
their barbarity. His campaigns exacted vengeance from the Emperor of
the Greeks, decisively broke their hostile onset, and had an
excellent effect on Islam. His court was the goal of ambassadors,
the dayspring of liberality, the horizon-point of hope, the end of
journeys, a place where savants assembled and poets competed for the
palm. It is said that after the Caliphs no prince gathered around
him so many masters of poetry and men illustrious in literature as
he did; and to a monarch's hall, as to a market, people bring only
what is in demand. He was an accomplished scholar, a poet himself
and a lover of fine poetry; keenly susceptible to words of
praise."[562]

Sayfu ’l-Dawla's cousin, Abú Firás al-Ḥamdání, was a gallant soldier and a poet of some mark, who if space permitted would receive fuller notice here.[563] He, however, though superior to the common herd of court poets, is overshadowed by one who with all his faults--and they are not inconsiderable--made an extraordinary impression upon his contemporaries, and by the commanding influence of his reputation decided what should henceforth be the standard of poetical taste in the Muḥammadan world.

[Sidenote: Mutanabbí (915-965 A.D.).]

Abu ’l-Ṭayyib Ahmad b. Ḥusayn, known to fame as al-Mutanabbí, was born and bred at Kúfa, where his father is said to have been a water-carrier. Following the admirable custom by which young men of promise were sent abroad to complete their education, he studied at Damascus and visited other towns in Syria, but also passed much of his time among the Bedouins, to whom he owed the singular knowledge and mastery of Arabic displayed in his poems. Here he came forward as a prophet (from which circumstance he was afterwards entitled al-Mutanabbí, _i.e._, 'the pretender to prophecy'), and induced a great multitude to believe in him; but ere long he was captured by Lu’lu’, the governor of Ḥims (Emessa), and thrown into prison. After his release he wandered to and fro chanting the praises of all and sundry, until fortune guided him to the court of Sayfu ’l-Dawla at Aleppo. For nine years (948-957 A.D.) he stood high in the favour of that cultured prince, whose virtues he celebrated in a series of splendid eulogies, and with whom he lived as an intimate friend and comrade in arms. The liberality of Sayfu ’l-Dawla and the ingenious impudence of the poet are well brought out by the following anecdote:--

Mutanabbí on one occasion handed to his patron the copy of an ode
which he had recently composed in his honour, and retired, leaving
Sayfu ’l-Dawla to peruse it at leisure. The prince began to read,
and came to these lines--

_Aqil anil aqṭi‘ iḥmil ‘alli salli a‘id
zid hashshi bashshi tafaḍḍal adni surra ṣili._[564]

"_Pardon, bestow, endow, mount, raise, console, restore,
Add, laugh, rejoice, bring nigh, show favour, gladden, give!_"

Far from being displeased by the poet's arrogance, Sayfu ’l-Dawla
was so charmed with his artful collocation of fourteen imperatives
in a single verse that he granted every request. Under _pardon_ he
wrote 'we pardon thee'; under _bestow_, 'let him receive such and
such a sum of money'; under _endow_, 'we endow thee with an estate,'
which he named (it was beside the gate of Aleppo); under _mount_,
'let such and such a horse be led to him'; under _raise_, 'we do
so'; under _console_, 'we do so, be at ease'; under _restore_, 'we
restore thee to thy former place in our esteem'; under _add_, 'let
him have such and such in addition'; under _bring nigh_, 'we admit
thee to our intimacy'; under _show favour_, 'we have done so'; under
_gladden_, 'we have made thee glad'[565]; under _give_, 'this we
have already done.' Mutanabbí's rivals envied his good fortune, and
one of them said to Sayfu ’l-Dawla--"Sire, you have done all that
he asked, but when he uttered the words _laugh_, _rejoice_, why did
not you answer, 'Ha, ha, ha'?" Sayfu ’l-Dawla laughed, and said,
"You too, shall have your wish," and ordered him a donation.

Mutanabbí was sincerely attached to his generous master, and this feeling inspired a purer and loftier strain than we find in the fulsome panegyrics which he afterwards addressed to the negro Káfúr. He seems to have been occasionally in disgrace, but Sayfu ’l-Dawla could deny nothing to a poet who paid him such magnificent compliments. Nor was he deterred by any false modesty from praising himself: he was fully conscious of his power and, like Arabian bards in general, he bragged about it. Although the verbal legerdemain which is so conspicuous in his poetry cannot be reproduced in another language, the lines translated below may be taken as a favourable and sufficiently characteristic specimen of his style.

"How glows mine heart for him whose heart to me is cold,
Who liketh ill my case and me in fault doth hold!
Why should I hide a love that hath worn thin my frame?
To Sayfu ’l-Dawla all the world avows the same.
Tho' love of his high star unites us, would that we
According to our love might so divide the fee!
Him have I visited when sword in sheath was laid,
And I have seen him when in blood swam every blade:
Him, both in peace and war the best of all mankind,
Whose crown of excellence was still his noble mind.

Do foes by flight escape thine onset, thou dost gain
A chequered victory, half of pleasure, half of pain.
So puissant is the fear thou strik'st them with, it stands
Instead of thee, and works more than thy warriors' hands.
Unfought the field is thine: thou need'st not further strain
To chase them from their holes in mountain or in plain.
What! 'fore thy fierce attack whene'er an army reels,
Must thy ambitious soul press hot upon their heels?
Thy task it is to rout them on the battle-ground;
No shame to thee if they in flight have safety found.
Or thinkest thou perchance that victory is sweet
Only when scimitars and necks each other greet?

O justest of the just save in thy deeds to me!
_Thou_ art accused and thou, O Sire, must judge the plea.
Look, I implore thee, well! Let not thine eye cajoled
See fat in empty froth, in all that glisters gold![566]
What use and profit reaps a mortal of his sight,
If darkness unto him be indistinct from light?

My deep poetic art the blind have eyes to see,
My verses ring in ears as deaf as deaf can be.
They wander far abroad while I am unaware,
But men collect them watchfully with toil and care.
Oft hath my laughing mien prolonged the insulter's sport,
Until with claw and mouth I cut his rudeness short.
Ah, when the lion bares his teeth, suspect his guile,
Nor fancy that the lion shows to you a smile.
I have slain the man that sought my heart's blood many a time,
Riding a noble mare whose back none else may climb,
Whose hind and fore-legs seem in galloping as one;
Nor hand nor foot requireth she to urge her on.
And O the days when I have swung my fine-edged glaive
Amidst a sea of death where wave was dashed on wave!
The desert knows me well, the night, the mounted men,
The battle and the sword, the paper and the pen!"[567]

Finally an estrangement arose between Mutanabbí and Sayfu ’l-Dawla, in consequence of which he fled to Egypt and attached himself to the Ikhshídite Káfúr. Disappointed in his new patron, a negro who had formerly been a slave, the poet set off for Baghdád, and afterwards visited the court of the Buwayhid ‘Aḍudu ’l-Dawla at Shíráz. While travelling through Babylonia he was attacked and slain by brigands in 965 A.D.

The popularity of Mutanabbí is shown by the numerous commentaries[568] and critical treatises on his _Díwán_. By his countrymen he is generally regarded as one of the greatest of Arabian poets, while not a few would maintain that he ranks absolutely first. Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí, himself an illustrious poet and man of letters, confessed that he had sometimes wished to alter a word here and there in Mutanabbí's verses, but had never been able to think of any improvement. "As to his poetry," says Ibn Khallikán, "it is perfection." European scholars, with the exception of Von Hammer,[569] have been far from sharing this enthusiasm, as may be seen by referring to what has been said on the subject by Reiske,[570] De Sacy,[571] Bohlen,[572] Brockelmann,[573] and others. No doubt, according to our canons of taste, Mutanabbí stands immeasurably below the famous Pre-islamic bards, and in a later age must yield the palm to Abú Nuwás and Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya. Lovers of poetry, as the term is understood in Europe, cannot derive much æsthetic pleasure from his writings, but, on the contrary, will be disgusted by the beauties hardly less than by the faults which Arabian critics attribute to him. Admitting, however, that only a born Oriental is able to appreciate Mutanabbí at his full worth, let us try to realise the Oriental point of view and put aside, as far as possible, our preconceptions of what constitutes good poetry and good taste. Fortunately we possess abundant materials for such an attempt in the invaluable work of Tha‘álibí, which has been already mentioned.[574] Tha‘álibí (961-1038 A.D.) was nearly contemporary with Mutanabbí. He began to write his _Yatíma_ about thirty years after the poet's death, and while he bears witness to the unrivalled popularity of the _Díwán_ amongst all classes of society, he observes that it was sharply criticised as well as rapturously admired. Tha‘álibí himself claims to hold the balance even. "Now," he says, "I will mention the faults and blemishes which critics have found in the poetry of Mutanabbí; for is there any one whose qualities give entire satisfaction?--

_Kafa ’l-mar’a faḍlan an tu‘adda ma‘áyibuh._

'Tis the height of merit in a man that his faults can be numbered.

Then I will proceed to speak of his beauties and to set forth in due order the original and incomparable characteristics of his style.

The radiant stars with beauty strike our eyes
Because midst gloom opaque we see them rise."

It was deemed of capital importance that the opening couplet (_maṭla‘_) of a poem should be perfect in form and meaning, and that it should not contain anything likely to offend. Tha‘álibí brings forward many instances in which Mutanabbí has violated this rule by using words of bad omen, such as 'sickness' or 'death,' or technical terms of music and arithmetic which only perplex and irritate the hearer instead of winning his sympathy at the outset. He complains also that Mutanabbí's finest thoughts and images are too often followed by low and trivial ones: "he strings pearls and bricks together" (_jama‘a bayna ’l-durrati wa-’l-ájurrati_). "While he moulds the most splendid ornament, and threads the loveliest necklace, and weaves the most exquisite stuff of mingled hues, and paces superbly in a garden of roses, suddenly he will throw in a verse or two verses disfigured by far-fetched metaphors, or by obscure language and confused thought, or by extravagant affectation and excessive profundity, or by unbounded and absurd exaggeration, or by vulgar and commonplace diction, or by pedantry and grotesqueness resulting from the use of unfamiliar words." We need not follow Tha‘álibí in his illustration of these and other weaknesses with which he justly reproaches Mutanabbí, since we shall be able to form a better idea of the prevailing taste from those points which he singles out for special praise.

In the first place he calls attention to the poet's skill in handling the customary erotic prelude (_nasíb_), and particularly to his brilliant descriptions of Bedouin women, which were celebrated all over the East. As an example of this kind he quotes the following piece, which "is chanted in the salons on account of the extreme beauty of its diction, the choiceness of its sentiment, and the perfection of its art":--

"Shame hitherto was wont my tears to stay,
But now by shame they will no more be stayed,
So that each bone seems through its skin to sob,
And every vein to swell the sad cascade.
She uncovered: pallor veiled her at farewell:
No veil 'twas, yet her cheeks it cast in shade.
So seemed they, while tears trickled over them,
Gold with a double row of pearls inlaid.
She loosed three sable tresses of her hair,
And thus of night four nights at once she made;
But when she lifted to the moon in heaven
Her face, two moons together I surveyed."[575]

The critic then enumerates various beautiful and original features of Mutanabbí's style, _e.g._--

1. His consecutive arrangement of similes in brief symmetrical clauses, thus:--

"She shone forth like a moon, and swayed like a moringa-bough,
And shed fragrance like ambergris, and gazed like a gazelle."

2. The novelty of his comparisons and images, as when he indicates the rapidity with which he returned to his patron and the shortness of his absence in these lines:--

"I was merely an arrow in the air,
Which falls back, finding no refuge there."

3. The _laus duplex_ or 'two-sided panegyric' (_al-madḥ, al-muwajjah_), which may be compared to a garment having two surfaces of different colours but of equal beauty, as in the following verse addressed to Sayfu ’l-Dawla:--

"Were all the lives thou hast ta'en possessed by thee,
Immortal thou and blest the world would be!"

Here Sayfu ’l-Dawla is doubly eulogised by the mention of his triumphs over his enemies as well as of the joy which all his friends felt in the continuance of his life and fortune.

4. His manner of extolling his royal patron as though he were speaking to a friend and comrade, whereby he raises himself from the position of an ordinary encomiast to the same level with kings.

5. His division of ideas into parallel sentences:--

"We were in gladness, the Greeks in fear,
The land in bustle, the sea in confusion."

From this summary of Tha‘álibí's criticism the reader will easily perceive that the chief merits of poetry were then considered to lie in elegant expression, subtle combination of words, fanciful imagery, witty conceits, and a striking use of rhetorical figures. Such, indeed, are the views which prevail to this day throughout the whole Muḥammadan world, and it is unreasonable to denounce them as false simply because they do not square with ours. Who shall decide when nations disagree? If Englishmen rightly claim to be the best judges of Shakespeare, and Italians of Dante, the almost unanimous verdict of Mutanabbí's countrymen is surely not less authoritative--a verdict which places him at the head of all the poets born or made in Islam. And although the peculiar excellences indicated by Tha‘álibí do not appeal to us, there are few poets that leave so distinct an impression of greatness. One might call Mutanabbí the Victor Hugo of the East, for he has the grand style whether he soars to sublimity or sinks to fustian. In the masculine vigour of his verse, in the sweep and splendour of his rhetoric, in the luxuriance and reckless audacity of his imagination we recognise qualities which inspired the oft-quoted lines of the elegist:--

"Him did his mighty soul supply
With regal pomp and majesty.
A Prophet by his _diction_ known;
But in the _ideas_, all must own,
His miracles were clearly shown."[576]

One feature of Mutanabbí's poetry that is praised by Tha‘álibí should not be left unnoticed, namely, his fondness for sententious moralising on topics connected with human life; wherefore Reiske has compared him to Euripides. He is allowed to be a master of that proverbial philosophy in which Orientals delight and which is characteristic of the modern school beginning with Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya, though some of the ancients had already cultivated it with success (cf. the verses of Zuhayr, p. 118 _supra_). The following examples are among those cited by Bohlen (_op. cit._, p. 86 sqq.):--

"When an old man cries 'Ugh!' he is not tired
Of life, but only tired of feebleness."[577]

"He that hath been familiar with the world
A long while, in his eye 'tis turned about
Until he sees how false what looked so fair."[578]

"The sage's mind still makes him miserable
In his most happy fortune, but poor fools
Find happiness even in their misery."[579]

[Sidenote: Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí (973-1057 A.D.).]

[Sidenote: His visit to Baghdád.]

The sceptical and pessimistic tendencies of an age of social decay and political anarchy are unmistakably revealed in the writings of the poet, philosopher, and man of letters, Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí, who was born in 973 A.D. at Ma‘arratu ’l-Nu‘mán, a Syrian town situated about twenty miles south of Aleppo on the caravan road to Damascus. While yet a child he had an attack of small-pox, resulting in partial and eventually in complete blindness, but this calamity, fatal as it might seem to literary ambition, was repaired if not entirely made good by his stupendous powers of memory. After being educated at home under the eye of his father, a man of some culture and a meritorious poet, he proceeded to Aleppo, which was still a flourishing centre of the humanities, though it could no longer boast such a brilliant array of poets and scholars as were attracted thither in the palmy days of Sayfu ’l-Dawla. Probably Abu ’l-‘Alá did not enter upon the career of a professional encomiast, to which he seems at first to have inclined: he declares in the preface to his _Saqṭu ’l-Zand_ that he never eulogised any one with the hope of gaining a reward, but only for the sake of practising his skill. On the termination of his 'Wanderjahre' he returned in 993 A.D. to Ma‘arra, where he spent the next fifteen years of his life, with no income beyond a small pension of thirty dínárs (which he shared with a servant), lecturing on Arabic poetry, antiquities, and philology, the subjects to which his youthful studies had been chiefly devoted. During this period his reputation was steadily increasing, and at last, to adapt what Boswell wrote of Dr. Johnson on a similar occasion, "he thought of trying his fortune in Baghdád, the great field of genius and exertion, where talents of every kind had the fullest scope and the highest encouragement." Professor Margoliouth in the Introduction to his edition of Abu ’l-‘Alá's correspondence supplies many interesting particulars of the literary society at Baghdád in which the poet moved. "As in ancient Rome, so in the great Muḥammadan cities public recitation was the mode whereby men of letters made their talents known to their contemporaries. From very early times it had been customary to employ the mosques for this purpose; and in Abu ’l-‘Alá's time poems were recited in the mosque of al-Manṣúr in Baghdád. Better accommodation was, however, provided by the Mæcenates who took a pride in collecting savants and _littérateurs_ in their houses."[580] Such a Mæcenas was the Sharíf al-Raḍí, himself a celebrated poet, who founded the Academy called by his name in imitation, probably, of that founded some years before by Abú Nasr Sábúr b. Ardashír, Vizier to the Buwayhid prince, Bahá’u ’l-Dawla. Here Abu ’l-‘Alá met a number of distinguished writers and scholars who welcomed him as one of themselves. The capital of Islam, thronged with travellers and merchants from all parts of the East, harbouring followers of every creed and sect--Christians and Jews, Buddhists and Zoroastrians, Ṣábians and Ṣúfís, Materialists and Rationalists--must have seemed to the provincial almost like a new world. It is certain that Abu ’l-‘Alá, a curious observer who set no bounds to his thirst for knowledge, would make the best use of such an opportunity. The religious and philosophical ideas with which he was now first thrown into contact gradually took root and ripened. His stay in Baghdád, though it lasted only a year and a half (1009-1010 A.D.), decided the whole bent of his mind for the future.

Whether his return to Ma‘arra was hastened, as he says, by want of means and the illness of his mother, whom he tenderly loved, or by an indignity which he suffered at the hands of an influential patron,[581] immediately on his arrival he shut himself in his house, adopted a vegetarian diet and other ascetic practices, and passed the rest of his long life in comparative seclusion:--

"Methinks, I am thrice imprisoned--ask not me
Of news that need no telling--
By loss of sight, confinement to my house,
And this vile body for my spirit's dwelling."[582]

We can only conjecture the motives which brought about this sudden change of habits and disposition. No doubt his mother's death affected him deeply, and he may have been disappointed by his failure to obtain a permanent footing in the capital. It is not surprising that the blind and lonely man, looking back on his faded youth, should have felt weary of the world and its ways, and found in melancholy contemplation of earthly vanities ever fresh matter for the application and development of these philosophical ideas which, as we have seen, were probably suggested to him by his recent experiences. While in the collection of early poems, entitled _Saqṭu ’l-Zand_ or 'The Spark of the Fire-stick' and mainly composed before his visit to Baghdád, he still treads the customary path of his predecessors,[583] his poems written after that time and generally known as the _Luzúmiyyát_[584] arrest attention by their boldness and originality as well as by the sombre and earnest tone which pervades them. This, indeed, is not the view of most Oriental critics, who dislike the poet's irreverence and fail to appreciate the fact that he stood considerably in advance of his age; but in Europe he has received full justice and perhaps higher praise than he deserves. Reiske describes him as 'Arabice callentissimum, vasti, subtilis, sublimis et audacis ingenii';[585] Von Hammer, who ranks him as a poet with Abú Tammám, Buḥturí, and Mutanabbí, also mentions him honourably as a philosopher;[586] and finally Von Kremer, who made an exhaustive study of the _Luzúmiyyát_ and examined their contents in a masterly essay,[587] discovered in Abu ’l-‘Alá, one of the greatest moralists of all time whose profound genius anticipated much that is commonly attributed to the so-called modern spirit of enlightenment. Here Von Kremer's enthusiasm may have carried him too far; for the poet, as Professor Margoliouth says, was unconscious of the value of his suggestions, unable to follow them out, and unable to adhere to them consistently. Although he builded better than he knew, the constructive side of his philosophy was overshadowed by the negative and destructive side, so that his pure and lofty morality leaves but a faint impression which soon dies away in louder, continually recurring voices of doubt and despair.

Abu ’l-‘Alá is a firm monotheist, but his belief in God amounted, as it would seem, to little beyond a conviction that all things are governed by inexorable Fate, whose mysteries none may fathom and from whose omnipotence there is no escape. He denies the Resurrection of the dead, _e.g._:--

"We laugh, but inept is our laughter;
We should weep and weep sore,
Who are shattered like glass, and thereafter
Re-moulded no more!"[588]

Since Death is the ultimate goal of mankind, the sage will pray to be delivered as speedily as possible from the miseries of life and refuse to inflict upon others what, by no fault of his own, he is doomed to suffer:--