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ARABIC AUTHORS.
A MANUAL OF ARABIAN HISTORY AND LITERATURE.
BY
F.F. ARBUTHNOT, M.R.A.S.,
AUTHOR OF
"EARLY IDEAS" AND "PERSIAN PORTRAITS."
LONDON:
WILLIAM HEINEMANN.
1890.
PREFACE.
The following pages contain nothing new and nothing original, but they do contain a good deal of information gathered from various sources, and brought together under one cover. The book itself may be useful, not, perhaps, to the Professor or to the Orientalist, but to the general reader, and to the student commencing the study of Arabic. To the latter it will give some idea of the vast field of Arabian literature that lies before him, and prepare him, perhaps, for working out a really interesting work upon the subject. Such still remains to be written in the English language, and it is to be hoped that it will be done some day thoroughly and well.
It is gratifying to think that the study of Oriental languages and literature is progressing in Europe generally, if not in England particularly. The last Oriental Congress, held at Stockholm and Christiania the beginning of September, 1889, brought together a goodly number of Oriental scholars. There were twenty-eight nationalities represented altogether, and the many papers prepared and read, or taken as read preparatory to their being printed, showed that matters connected with Oriental studies in all their branches excite considerable interest.
England, too, has been lately making some efforts which will be, it is sincerely hoped, crowned with success. The lectures on modern Oriental languages lately established by the Imperial Institute of the United Kingdom, the Colonies, and India, in union with University College and King's College, London, is full of promise of bringing forth good fruit hereafter. So much is to be learnt from Oriental literature in various ways that it is to be hoped the day may yet come when the study of one or more Oriental languages will be taken up as a pastime to fill the leisure hours of a future generation thirsting after knowledge.
In addition to the above, a movement is also being made to attempt to revive the old Oriental Translation Fund. It was originally started in A.D. 1828, and did good work for fifty years, publishing translations (see Appendix) from fifteen different Oriental languages, and then collapsing from apathy, neglect, and want of funds. Unless well supported, both by donations and annual subscriptions, it is useless to attempt a fresh start. To succeed thoroughly it must be regarded as a national institution, and sufficiently well-off to be able to afford to bring out Texts and Indexes of
[Transcriber's note: Missing page in the source document.]
-cially An-Nadim's 'Fihrist,' a most valuable book of reference, ought to be done into English without further delay. Private individuals can hardly undertake the business, but a well-organized and permanent Oriental Translation Fund, assisted by the English and Indian Governments, could and would render extraordinary services in the publication of texts, translations, and indexes of Oriental literature generally.
For assistance in the preparation of this present volume my thanks are due to the many authors whose works have been freely used and quoted, and also to Mr. E. Rehatsek, of Bombay, whose knowledge of the Arabic language and of Arabic literature is well known to all Oriental scholars.
F.F. ARBUTHNOT.
18, Park Lane, W.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
HISTORICAL.
Arabia: its boundaries, divisions of districts, revenues, area, population, and history.—Tribe of Koraish.—The Kaabah at Mecca.—Muhammad.—His immediate successors: Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman, Ali.—The Omaiyides.—Fate of Hasan and Hussain, sons of Ali—Sunnis and Shiahs.—Overthrow of the Omaiyides by the Abbasides.—The Omaiyides in Spain; their conquests and government.—The Moors, and their final expulsion.—To what extent Europe is indebted to the Spanish Arabs.—Their literature and architecture.—The Abbaside Khalifs at Baghdad.—Persia, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia become detached from their government in the course of time.—Fall of Baghdad itself in A.D. 1258.—Dealings of the Turks with Arabia.—The Wahhabi reform movement.—Expeditions of the Turks and Egyptians to suppress it.—Various defeats and successes.—Present form of government in Arabia.—Its future prospects.—List of the Omaiyide Khalifs, preceded by Muhammad and his four immediate successors.—List of the Abbaside Khalifs.—List of the Arab rulers in Spain.
CHAPTER II.
LITERARY.
About the Arabic and Chinese languages.—The permanent character of the former attributed to the Koran.—Division of Arab literature into three periods: I. The time before Muhammad.—The sage Lokman; the description of three Lokmans; Arab poetry before the Koran; the seven suspended poems, known as the Mua'llakat, at Mecca; notions of the Arabs about poetry; their Kasidas; description of the Kasidas of Amriolkais, Antara, Labid, Tarafa, Amru, Harath, and Zoheir; the poets Nabiga, Al-Kama, and Al-Aasha. II. The period from the time of Muhammad to the fall of the Abbasides.—Muhammad considered as a poet; the poets who were hostile to him; his panegyrist Kab bin Zoheir; account of him and his 'Poem of the Mantle,' and the results; Al-Busiri's 'Poem of the Mantle;' names of poets favourable and hostile to Muhammad; the seven jurisconsults; the four imams; the six fathers of tradition; the early traditionists; the companions; the alchemists; the astronomers; the grammarians; the geographers and travellers; the historians; the tabulators and biographers; the writers about natural history; the philologists; the philosophers; the physicians; the poets; the collectors and editors of poems; the essayist Al-Hariri; many translators; special notice of Ibn Al-Mukaffa; support given to learning and literature by certain of the Omaiyide, Abbaside, and Spanish Arab Khalifs; description of Baghdad; reign of Harun-ar-Rashid; the Barmekides; the Khalif Razi-billah; Hakim II. at Cordova; his education; his accession to the throne; his collection of books; his library, and its catalogue; places of learning in the East at this time. III. Third period, from the fall of Baghdad to the present time.—Certain historians; Ibn Malik, the grammarian; Ibn Batuta, the traveller; Abul Feda, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Kesir, Ibn Hajar, Ibn Arabshah—all historians; Firuzabadi, Taki-uddin of Fez, Al-Makrisi, Sayuti, Ibn Kamal Pasha, Abu Sa'ud the mufti, Ibrahim of Aleppo, Birgeli, Abul Khair; celebrated caligraphers, past and present, Haji Khalfa, Muhammad al Amin of Damascus, Makkari. Decline of Arabic literature: its present form. About the printing-presses of Arabic works at various places.
CHAPTER III.
ABOUT MUHAMMAD.
A complete summary of the details of his life, from his birth to his death.—Remarks upon him as a reformer, preacher, and apostle.—The Hanyfs.—Muhammad's early idea of establishing one religion for the Jews, Christians, and Arabs.—His long struggle with the Koraish.—His failure at Mecca.—His success at Madinah.—Adapts his views to the manners and customs of the Arabs only.—The reason of his many marriages.—His love of women.—About the Koran.—Not collected and arranged until after his death.—Comparison of the Koran with the Old and New Testaments.—Superiority of our Bible.—Description of it by 'Il Secolo.'—Rev. Mr. Badger's description of the Koran.—Written in the purest Arabic, and defies competition.—Muhammad and Moses, Jesus and Buddha.—Remarks about Buddhism and Christianity.—Moses and Muhammad the founders of two nationalities.—Abraham the father of the Jewish, Christian, and Muhammadan religions.—Rénan's description of the gods of the Jews.—Joseph.—The Twelve Tribes.—Appearance of Moses as a liberator and organizer.—The reasons of his wanderings in the desert.—What the Jews owed to Moses, and the Arabs to Muhammad.—The latter as a military leader.—Resemblance of the warlike expeditions of the Jews and of the Arabs.—Similar proceedings in the Soudan at the present time.—Account of the dogmas and precepts of Islam as embodied in the Koran.—Other points connected with the institutions of Islam.—Faith and prayer always insisted upon.—Democratic character of the Muhammadan religion, excellent in theory, but doubtful in practice.—Muhammad's last address at Mina, telling the Muslims that they were one brotherhood.—His final remarks.
CHAPTER IV.
TALES AND STORIES.
The Kalilah wa Dimnah.—'Early Ideas.'—'Persian Portraits,'—Origin of the 'Arabian Nights.'—The Hazar Afsaneh, or Thousand Stories. Date of the 'Nights.'—Its fables and apologues the oldest part of the work.—Then certain stories—The latest tales.—Galland's edition.—His biography.—His successors, sixteen in number, ending with Payne and Burton.—The complete translations of these two last-named, in thirteen and sixteen volumes respectively.—Brief analysis of Payne's first nine, and of Burton's first ten volumes.—Short summary of twelve stories; viz.: The tale of Aziz and Azizah; the tale of Kamar Al-Zaman and the Lady Budur; Ala Aldin Abu Al-Shamat; Ali the Persian and the Kurd sharper; the man of Al-Yaman and his six slave-girls; Abu Al-Husn and his slave-girl Tawaddud; the rogueries of Dalilah the Crafty and her daughter Zeynab the Trickstress; the adventures of Quicksilver Ali of Cairo; Hasan of Busra and the king's daughter of the Jinn; Ali Nur Al-din and Miriam the girdle-girl; Kamar Al-Zaman and the jeweller's wife; Ma'aruf the cobbler and his wife Fatimah.—Remarks on Payne's three extra volumes, entitled 'Tales from the Arabic,' and on Burton's two first supplemental volumes.—Allusion to Burton's third supplemental and to Payne's thirteenth volume.—Burton's fourth, fifth, and sixth supplemental volumes. —Summing-up of the number of stories contained in the above two editions; from what manuscripts they were translated, and some final remarks.—The Kathá Sarit Ságara, a sort of Hindoo 'Arabian Nights'. —Comparison of the two works.—Brief description of the Kathá and its contents.—Gunádhya and Somadeva.—Final remarks on the stories found in the Kathá.—Antar, a Bedouin romance.—Its partial translation.—Its supposed author.—Brief description of the work, with some remarks upon it.—Both the 'Arabian Nights' and Antar rather long.—The press in England to-day.—Numerous writers of novels and story-books.—These take the place of the 'Nights,' and satisfy the public, always in search of something new, even if not true; something original, even if not trustworthy.—Final remarks.
CHAPTER V.
ANECDOTES AND ANA.
In Persian literature the Gulistan, Negaristan, and Beharistan contain many anecdotes.—In Arabic literature there are works of the same kind.—'The Naphut-ul-Yaman,' or Breath of Yaman.—Six stories translated from it.—The Merzuban namah, with newly translated extracts from it.—Remarks on this work.—The Al-Mustatraf, or the Gleaner or the Collector.—Two stories from it.—Two anecdotes taken from the Sehr-ul-oyoon, or Magic of the Eyes.—A philosophic discourse, translated from the Siraj-ul-Muluk, or Lamp of Kings.—The Ilam en Nas, or Warnings for Men.—Eighteen stories from Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary.—Seven anecdotes from various sources.—Verses from the Arabic about the places where certain Arabs wished to be buried.—Translation of the verses upon Alfred de Musset's tomb in Paris.
Appendix.
Index.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORICAL.
The Arabia of to-day is bounded on the west by the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez; on the south by the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea; on the east by the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf; and on the north by a portion of Syria. This last boundary would, however, be more clearly defined by drawing a line from Suez straight across to the western head of the Persian Gulf.
By the Greeks and Romans this country was divided into Arabia Petræa, Arabia Deserta, and Arabia Felix, or the Stony, the Desert, and the Happy. The Arabs themselves call it 'The Land of the Arabs,' while modern geographers give the Sinaitic peninsula as the first geographic district; the Hijaz, including the Haram, or sacred territory of Mecca, as the second; and Yaman, with the Tehamah, as the third. To these may be added the provinces of Hadramant and Mahrah, and of Oman and Hasa, to the south and east respectively, with Nejd, or Central Arabia, as the central plateau, and some large deserts scattered in different parts of the peninsula.
Of the revenues of Arabia it is almost impossible to form anything like a correct estimate. The area of the country covers about 1,200,000 square miles, and the population is said to be from five to six millions, of whom one-fifth consist of Ahl Bedoo, or dwellers in the open land, otherwise known as Bedouins; and four-fifths of settled Arabs, called Ahl Hadr, or dwellers in fixed localities.
The history of Arabia may be divided into three periods:
1st. The prehistoric period, full of tales of heroes, and giants, and wonderful cities.
2nd. The period which preceded the era of Muhammad.
3rd. That which followed it.
The first period is mythical to a certain extent; at all events, nothing can be stated positively about it. The second period is distinguished as one of local monarchies and federal governments in a rough and rude form; while the third commences with theocratic centralization, dissolving finally into general anarchy.
Of the many tribes in Arabia, the most celebrated is the family of the Koraish, still regarded as the noblest of the Arabs, partly because, at the beginning of the fifth century A.D., their chiefs had rendered themselves the masters and acknowledged guardians of the sacred Kaabah at Mecca, and partly because of their connection with the Prophet. The Kaabah, La Maison Carrée, or square temple, a shrine of unknown antiquity, was situated within the precincts of the town of Mecca, and to it, long before Muhammad's time, the Arabs had brought yearly offerings, and made devout pilgrimages. The tribe of Koraish, having once obtained the keys of the consecrated building, had held them against all comers till Muhammad's conquest of Mecca in A.D. 630, when he handed over the key to Othman bin Talha, the former custodian, to be kept by him and his posterity as an hereditary and perpetual office, and he further confirmed his uncle Abbas in the office of giving drink to the pilgrims.
Before entering into a somewhat lengthy description of Arabian literature, it is necessary to give a short and rapid sketch of Arabian history, beginning from the time of Muhammad, as his Koran was the foundation of the literary edifice. All Arab authors have looked upon that work as the height of eloquent diction, and have regarded it as the model standard to be followed in all their productions. Leaving, then, the two first periods of Arabian history, viz., the prehistoric, and the pre-Muhammadan, without any particular notice, the third period will be sketched as briefly as possible, and will be found excessively interesting, containing as it does the rise, grandeur, and decline of the Arabs as a nation.
Muhammad, on his death in June, A.D. 632, left the entire Arab peninsula, with two or three exceptions, under one sceptre and one creed. He was succeeded by Abu Bakr (the father of Ayesha, the favourite wife of the prophet), known as the Companion of the Cave, with the title of Khalifah, or successor. His reign only lasted two years, but during that period the various insurrections that broke out in Arabia in consequence of the death of the Prophet were promptly put down, after severe fighting, in various parts of the peninsula, and the whole country was subjugated. Foreign expeditions beyond the borders were also planned and started.
Abu Bakr, dying in August, A.D. 634, was succeeded by Umar, or Omar, the conqueror of Syria, Persia, and Egypt by means of his generals Khalid bin Walid (the best, perhaps, that Islam produced), Abu Obaida, Mothanna, Sád bin Malik, Amr bin al-Aasi, and others. Omar himself was an early convert of A.D. 615, and a sudden conversion like our Paul; but one made his converts by fanaticism and the sword, the other by preaching and the pen. After a glorious and victorious reign of ten years Omar was assassinated by a Persian slave in November, A.D. 644, and was followed as Khalif by Othman, son of Affan, of the noble family of Abd-esh-Shems, who also assumed the title 'Amir al-Momenin, or Commander of the Faithful, which had been first adopted by his predecessor Omar. Othman ruled for twelve years, when he was murdered in A.D. 656, some say at the instigation of Ali, nephew of Muhammad, and husband of his only daughter Fatima. Anyhow, Ali succeeded Othman as Khalif, but was defeated by Moawia, Governor of Syria, and assassinated in A.D. 660.
Moawia bin Abu Sofyan then established the Benou Umayya dynasty, called by Europeans the Omaiyides, or Ommiades, from the name of Umayya, the father of the race. This dynasty reigned for nearly ninety years, and numbered fourteen successive princes, with their capital at Damascus.
During the reign of Yazid I., the second prince (A.D. 679-683), Hussain, the younger son of Ali the Khalif, came to an untimely end. His elder brother, Hasan, a man of quiet disposition, had been previously murdered by one of his wives, at the instigation, it is said, of Yazid before he came to the throne. This happened in A.D. 669. Later on Hussain, with his followers, rose in rebellion, and was killed on the plain of Kerbela, A.D. 680. The descendants, however, of this faction continued the disturbances which eventually brought about the great Muhammadan schism, and the splitting up of the religion into two sects, known to this day as the Sunnis and Shias. The adherents of the legitimate Khalifate, and of the orthodox doctrine, assumed the name of Sunnites, or Traditionists. These acknowledge the first four Khalifs (the rightly minded, or rightly directed, as they are called) to have been legitimate successors of Muhammad, while the sectaries of Ali are known as the Shiites, or Separatists. These last regard Ali as the first rightful Imam, for they prefer this title (found in Sura ii., verse 118, of the Koran) to that of Khalif. The Turks and Arabs are Sunnis: the Persians, and most of the Muhammadans of India, Shias.
This division into two sects, who hate each other cordially, has done more to weaken the power of the Muhammadan religion as a power than anything else. The Shias to this day execrate the memory of Yazid as the murderer of their hero Hussain, whom they have ever regarded as a martyr, and given full vent to their feelings on the subject in their 'Passion Play,' translated by Sir Lewis Pelly, and described by Mr. Benjamin in his 'Persia and the Persians.'
Other insurrections against the reigning Omaiyide Khalifs were also put down, portions of Asia, Africa and Spain conquered, and even France invaded, so that at the close of the Benou Umayya dynastry, about A.D. 750, their empire consisted of many and large territories in Europe, Africa and Asia. Their colour was white, as opposed to the black of the Abbasides, and the green of the Fatimites, as descendants of Muhammad.
But the Benou Umayya dynasty succumbed, A.D. 749, under the blows of Ibrahim (great-grandson of Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet), and of his younger brother, Abul Abbas, better known in history as As-Saffah, or the Blood-shedder. A decisive battle was fought on the banks of the river Zab, near Arbela, and Marwan II. (A.D. 744-750), the last of the Omaiyide Khalifs, was defeated, and fled first to Damascus, and then to Egypt, where he was eventually killed by his pursuers, A.D. 750.
The history of the reign of the Abbasides now begins, and under them the power and glory of Islam reached their highest point. But it is first necessary to allude to the conquest of Spain by the Omaiyides, a branch of which family still retained for a long time in the West the power which they had totally lost in the East.
The most important achievement of the reign of Walid I. (A.D. 705-715), the sixth prince of the Omaiyide dynasty, was the conquest of Spain by his generals Tarik and Musa. The Arabs (known in Europe under the name of Saracens) first established themselves in Cordova about A.D. 711, and the two generals above named continued their victorious progress throughout the country in 712 and 713, until nearly nine-tenths of the peninsula was held by the Muhammadans.
Some years later France even was invaded by the Arabs, and the banners of the Muslims were erected on the coasts of the Gulf of Lyons, on the walls of Narbonne, of Nimes, of Carcassonne, and of Béziers. The Arabs afterwards advanced as far as the plains of Tours, where their victorious progress was checked by Charles Martel, who gained a great victory over them near that town in October, A.D. 732, and completely defeated them, so that they were obliged to retire again to Spain. There successive viceroys and emirs ruled as the representatives of the Khalifs at Damascus until the fall of the Omaiyide dynasty in the East, A.D. 750.
But even after that Spain remained for many years under Arab domination. Anarchy almost prevailed from A.D. 750 to 755, but in that year the Arabs of Spain, weary of disorder, elected as their ruler Abd-ar-Rahman, grandson of the Khalif Hashim, tenth prince of the Omaiyide dynasty. At the time of his election, Abd-ar-Rahman was a wanderer in the desert, pursued by his enemies, when a deputation from Andalusia sought him out and offered him the Khalifate of Spain. It was gladly accepted. He landed there in September, A.D. 755, was universally welcomed, and founded at Cordova the Western Omaiyide Khalifate, which lasted up to A.D. 1031, under sixteen rulers, with certain interruptions during the reign of the last seven of them. On the extinction of the Khalifate, Spain was broken up into various petty kingdoms under kings and kinglets belonging to different Arab tribes and families. This continued from A.D. 1032 to 1092, when the Almoravides established themselves from A.D. 1092 to 1147, and were followed by the Almohades, who reigned up to A.D. 1232.
After this Cordova, Seville, and other places were taken by Ferdinand III. of Leon and Castile, between A.D. 1236 and 1248. On the fall of Cordova the Muhammadan power declined with great rapidity; and, though the celebrated kingdom of Granada was established by the Moors in A.D. 1232, it was their last refuge from the rising power of the Christians. Some twenty-one princes reigned there till A.D. 1492, when Granada itself was taken, and this last Muhammadan dynasty was driven out of Spain by Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabella of Castile. Thus ended the empire of the Arabs and the Moors in Spain, which had lasted nearly eight hundred years.
The Spanish Arabs were extremely fond of learning. Indeed, it is due to them to a very great extent that literature and science were kept afloat in Europe during the ages that followed the invasion of the Barbarians, as the Huns, Vandals, Goths, and Visigoths were generally called. That interval known as the 'Dark Ages' was kept alight by the Arabs alone. Abd-ar-Rahman II. established a library at Cordova during his reign, A.D. 822-852. Hakim II., the successor of Abd-ar-Rahman III., loved the sciences, founded the University of Cordova, and collected a library of great magnitude (A.D. 961-976).
The revival of learning in Europe is chiefly attributed to the writings of Arabian doctors and philosophers, and to the schools which they founded in several parts of Spain and Italy. These seats of learning were frequented even in the twelfth century of our era by students from various parts of Europe, who disseminated the knowledge thus acquired when they returned to their own countries. At that time many Arabic works were translated into Latin, which thus facilitated the progress of science. In the three last chapters of the second book of the 'History of the Muhammadan Dynasties in Spain,' translated by Pascual de Gayangos, the state of science and literature is detailed in the words of Makkari, the original Arab author of that work, and in it many once celebrated authors are mentioned, of whom not only their productions, but even their very names, have since perished. The distinguished writers whose works have come down to us will be more particularly alluded to in the next chapter. Europe is also indebted to the Arabs for the elements of many useful sciences, particularly that of chemistry. Paper was first made in Europe by them, and their carpets and manufactures in steel and leather were long unrivalled, while in the Arabian schools of Cordova mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, botany and medicine were taught with great success.
As Europe gradually emerged from darkness and ignorance, the Moors in Spain became so weak and powerless that in A.D. 1526 Charles I of Spain, and V. of Germany, ordered them to adopt the Spanish language. In A.D. 1566 an edict of Philip II. forbade them to speak or write in Arabic, and directed them to renounce all their traditional habits, customs and ceremonies. Philip III. completed the work which his father had left unfinished. In A.D. 1609 all the Moriscoes were ordered to depart from the peninsula within three days, with a penalty of death if they failed to obey the order, and from that time their existence as a nation finally ceased in Europe, and Spain thus lost a million of industrious inhabitants skilled in the useful arts. After their expulsion Arabic literature more or less disappeared. Much of it was destroyed, and a Spanish cardinal, it is said, once boasted that he had destroyed with his own hands one hundred thousand Arabic manuscripts! It is highly probable that the remnants of Andalusian libraries were brought to light by Casiri (b. 1710, d. 1791) during the past, and by Gayangos during the present century, and it is doubtful if much more will ever now be discovered.
There are two buildings still extant in Spain which have survived the Arabs, viz., their mosque at Cordova (now the Cathedral), and their palace of the Alhambra at Granada, both well worth a visit, and well described in Murray's and O'Shea's guides to Spain. During the reign of Abd-ar-Rahman III. (A.D. 912-961) the city, palace, and gardens of Medinatu-z-Ahra, three or four miles from Cordova, were constructed in honour of his favourite wife or mistress, Az-zahra, and cost an immense sum of money. At present no vestiges of them exist, and it is supposed that not only these, but many other Arab mosques and buildings, were intentionally destroyed by their conquerors, as the hatred between the Christian and the Muslim in those days was of the bitterest description.
And now to return to the Abbasides, established in the East on the downfall of the Omaiyide dynasty there in A.D. 750, and thus continue the main line of Arab history.
There were, in all, thirty-seven Abbaside Khalifs, of whom Abu Jaafar, surnamed Al-Mansur, the Victorious (A.D. 754-775), Harun-ar-Rashid (A.D. 786-809), and Al-Mamun (A.D. 812-833) were the most celebrated. Of these, the first, who was the second Khalif, founded Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasides, about A.D. 762; the second, who was the fifth Khalif, has been rendered immortal by the frequent illusions to him, and to members of the Barmeki family, in the 'Arabian Nights'; while the third, who was the seventh Khalif, was a great patron of literature and science.
As years rolled on the dynasty and its princes became weaker and weaker, and finally came to an end under the thirty-seventh and last Khalif Al-Mustaa 'sim Billah, with the capture of Baghdad in A.D. 1258 by Halaku Khan, the sovereign of the Mughals, and the grandson of Jenghiz Khan.
Long before this, however, the empire which the first of the Abbasides had conquered was already broken up. About A.D. 879, in Persia, Amr-bin-Lais founded the Suffary or Braiser dynasty, still subject to the Commander of the Faithful. But even this allegiance only lasted till A.D. 901, when the Samani and Dailami dynasties were established in the North and South of Persia respectively, and quite independent of the Khalifs of Baghdad.
In A.D. 909, the Fatimites, so designated from one Obaid Allah, a real or pretended descendant of Ali and Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad, established themselves in the North of Africa, and consolidated their power there. In A.D. 972 Al-Moizz, or Abu Tamim, a great-grandson of Obaid Allah, the founder of the Fatimite dynasty at Tunis, sent his general Jawhar with an army to invade Egypt. The country was conquered, the city of Cairo built, the seat of government was transferred there, and the title of Khalif assumed by the Fatimites. There they remained as reigning Khalifs until A.D. 1171, when Salah-ad-Din (Saladin) usurped the sovereignty, and founded the Ayoobite dynasty of Kurds, till its last ruler, Melik-al-Ashraf, was deposed in A.D. 1250 by the Mamlook El Moizz, who in that year founded the Baharite Mamlook dynasty, which lasted with variations in the families till A.D. 1377. But in A.D. 1260 Ez-Zahir Beybars, a Mamlook slave, secured the throne, and brought the then representative of the Abbaside Khalifs (the family having been dethroned by the Mughals at Baghdad in A.D. 1258) to Egypt, and recognised him as possessing spiritual authority alone, but nothing else. From that time until the taking of Egypt by Sultan Selim I. in A.D. 1517, the Abbaside Khalifs retained the spiritual power first under the Baharite, and then under the Circassian or Borgite Mamlooks. When Egypt became a Turkish pashalic, Selim, the conqueror, compelled the representative of the Abbaside Khalifs, by name Al-Motawukkel, to leave Cairo and reside in Constantinople; and on his death the Ottoman Sultans assumed the title of Khalif, which they hold to this day, and are recognised by the Sunnis as the head of the Muhammadan religion, and the successors of Muhammad.
As regards Syria and Palestine (two countries more or less closely connected, owing to their proximity and absence of distinct and defined boundaries), on the termination of the rule of the Omaiyides at Damascus in A.D. 750, they remained nominally under the Abbasides till A.D. 969, when Syria was conquered by the Fatimites, who were succeeded by the Seljuks, who captured Damascus about A.D. 1075, and Antioch A.D. 1085. The struggles with the Crusaders commenced in A.D. 1096, and continued until Saladin's famous victory at Hattin in 1187, when he became master of nearly the whole of Syria and Palestine. Fighting still went on in these countries between the Franks and others until A.D. 1518, when Selim I. conquered the country and incorporated it with the Turkish Empire. No Arab prince has since reigned in Egypt or Syria, though these countries have always exercised certain influences over Arabia.
In Arabia itself, towards the end of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh, A.D., the Karmathians had risen in revolt, and detached that country from the Abbaside dynasty to such an extent that she returned almost to her primitive independence. Indeed, it may be said that, in the whole of Arabia, the Hijaz, with the Haram, or sacred territory of Mecca, under the Shariff, or nobles, the lineal descendants of the tribe of Koraish, alone retained some kind of constituted authority, and paid allegiance sometimes to the government of Baghdad, and sometimes to that of Egypt.
As already stated above, in A.D. 1517 the Turkish Sultan Selim I. conquered Egypt, and obtained from the last real, or supposed surviving, Abbaside kinsman of the Prophet a formal investiture of the Muhammadan Khalifate. This was more religious than political in its bearing, but still many of the tribes in Arabia offered their allegiance to the Ottoman Government. From that time the Turks began their dealings with Arabia, which remained in a sort of independence under their own tribal Shaikhs, more or less according to the circumstances of different districts, until the rise of the Wahhabi movement, about the middle of the eighteenth century of our era.
The Wahhabi reform movement requires special mention. It began in Arabia about A.D. 1740. The reformer and originator of the movement was Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab, born at the town of Aïnah, in the centre of the Nejd district, A.D. 1691. He died in A.D. 1787, aged ninety-six. After some years spent in travel and in study, he began his preaching about A.D. 1731. Driven from Aïnah, his native place, as Muhammad was driven from Mecca, Abdul Wahhab established himself at ad-Diriyyah, where Muhammad bin Saood, the Shaikh of a sub-tribe of the Anizeh, gave him shelter, and eventually married his daughter. By preaching and fighting, his followers increased in number, and his reforms spread throughout the Nejd district, and many converts were made by him and his successors.
In A.D. 1797 a Turkish army from Baghdad attacked the Wahhabis, but were beaten, and two years later Saood II. took and plundered Kerbela, Taif, Mecca, and other places, and seems to have retained his power and his government for several years.
In A.D. 1811 the Turks, who had quite lost their authority in Arabia, requested Muhammad Ali of Egypt to put down the movement, and reconquer the country. The first expedition, commanded by his son Tussun, in its attempt to take Madinah, was nearly annihilated, but succeeded the following year. Later on the campaign was conducted by Muhammad Ali in person, and afterwards by his adopted son Ibrahim Pasha, with considerable success. The final stronghold, ad-Diriyyah, was captured in A.D. 1818, the Wahhabi chief captured, and sent first to Egypt and then to Constantinople, where he was beheaded in December of that year.
The Egyptian occupation of Arabia was followed by a renewal of the Wahhabi movement, which eventually succeeded, in A.D. 1842, in driving out the Egyptians, occupied as they were at the time with fighting the Turks in Syria and Anatolia. Wahhabism was then re-established in some parts, and independence in other parts, of the country; but on the whole Wahhabism has never been very popular either in Arabia or India, in which latter country it also has some followers. It may be regarded as the latest sect of Islam, but does not make much progress.
Arabia may now be said to be under three different kinds of government—i.e., partly under the Wahhabis, partly under the Turks, and partly under independent rulers, while Aden has been held by the English ever since its first capture in A.D. 1839. In other words, the present position of Arabia may be more definitely described as follows: Hasa, Hareek, the whole of Nejd, Kaseem, the provinces adjoining Yaman on the north, and Aseer, forming a broad belt, and stretching across the centre of the peninsula from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, remain under Wahhabi influences. The Hijaz and some sea-ports, such as Jedda and others, are at present absolutely under the Turkish Government; while Bahrein, Oman and its capital Muscat, and Yaman are more or less independent. Between Nejd and Syria a new and promising kingdom has sprung up under Telal.
The time perhaps may come, and perhaps not far distant, when the Turks will disappear altogether from Arabia, and Wahhabism and independent tribes will alone remain. Another Muhammad or another Abdul Wahhab may some day again appear, and bring together the tribes under one rule for a time. It is doubtful, though, if ever the Arabs will again have the power, talent, or enthusiasm to revive the glories of the Arabian Empire, which now lives in history only, and is well worth a study.
For ready reference the following is a chronology of the dynasty of the Ornaiyides, preceded by Muhammad and the first Khalifahs:
A.D.
Muhammad the Apostle 622—632
Abu Bakr 632—634
Omar I. 634—643
Othman 643—655
Ali 655—660
1. Moawia I. 660—679
2. Yazid I. 679—683
3. Moawia II. 683—683
4. Marwan I. 683—684
5. Abdul-Malik 684—705
6. Walid I. 705—715
7. Sulaiman 715—717
8. Omar II. 717—720
9. Yazid II. 720—724
10. Hashim 724—743
11. Walid II. 743—744
12. Yazid III. 744—744
13. Ibrahim 744—744
14. Marwan II. 744—750
The dynasty of the Omaiyides was followed by that of the Abbasides, who reigned as follows:
A.D. 1. Abul-Abbas As-Saffah 750—754 2. Al-Mansur 754—775 3. Al-Mahdi 775—785 4. Al-Hadi 785—786 5. Harun-ar-Rashid 786—809 6. Al-Amin 809—812 7. Al-Mamun 812—833 8. Al-Mo'tasim Billah 833—842 9. Al-Wathik 842—847 10. Al-Mutwakkil 847—861 11. Al-Mustansir Billah 861—862 12. Al-Mustain Billah 862—866 13. Al-Mo'tiz Billah 866—869 14. Al-Muhtadi Billah 869—870 15. Al-Mo'tamid 870—892 16. Al-Motazid Billah 892—902 17. Al-Muktafi Billah 902—908 18. Al-Muktadir Billah 908—932 19. Al-Kahir Billah 932—934 20. Al-Radhi Billah 934—940 21. Al-Muttaki Billah 940—944 22. Al-Mustakfi Billah 944—945 23. Al-Mutia Billah 945—974 24. Al-Taya Billah 974—991 25. Al-Kadir Billah 991—1031 26. Al-Kaim Billah 1031—1075 27. Al-Muktadi Billah 1075—1094 28. Al-Mustazhir Billah 1094—1118 29. Al-Mustershid Billah 1118—1135 30. Al-Rashid Billah 1135—1136 31. Al-Muktafi 1136—1160 32. Al-Mustanjid Billah 1160—1170 33. Al-Mustazi 1170—1180 34. Al-Nasir Billah 1180—1225 35. Al-Tahir 1225—1226 36. Al-Mustansir Billah II. 1226—1240 37. Al-Mustaa'sim Billah 1240—1258
He was killed at the taking of Baghdad by Halaku Khan, and the last of the dynasty, which continued, however, as a spiritual power in Egypt till A.D. 1517.
The empire over which the Abbasides began to rule in A.D. 750 had gradually dwindled away until little but Baghdad and its environs were left on the fall of the dynasty in A.D. 1258. Will history repeat itself in the same way as regards Constantinople, which in some years may be the only territory left in Europe to a people who once were conquerors, and whose arms even were carried to the walls of Vienna? As Persia, Egypt, Syria, parts of Africa and Arabia, by degrees, were severed from the Abbaside Empire, so the different provinces of Turkey in Europe appear to be slowly separating themselves from the Turkish Power, until finally there will be nothing left to them in Europe but that city whose splendid position will ever make it a bone of contention to both rising and declining States.
The following is a list of the Omaiyides who ruled in Spain a.d. 756 to 1031:
A.D. 1. Abd-ar-Rahman I. 756-788 2. Hisham I. 788-796 3. Al-Hakim I. 796-822 4. Abd-ar-Rahman II. 822-852 5. Muhammad I. 852-886 6. Al-Mundhir 886-888 7. Abd-Allah 888-912 8. Abd-ar-Rahman III. 912-961
He was one of the greatest of the rulers of Cordova. Under this prince, who at last assumed the title of Khalif and Commander of the Faithful, the unity of Muhammadan Spain was for the time restored.
A.D.
9. Al-Hakim II. 961-976
10. Hisham II. 976-1009
He was a Khalif only in name, while Muhammad Bin Ali Amir, surnamed Al-Mansur, was the real ruler or regent till his death in A.D. 1002. He was succeeded by his son, Abd-al-Malik, who ruled successfully till his death in A.D. 1008, and was followed by his brother, Abd-ar-Rahman, who was beheaded in A.D. 1009, Hisham II. having been previously deposed.
A.D.
11. Muhammad II. (Al-Mahdi-billah) 1009-1009
12. Sulaiman 1009-1010
Hisham II. for the second time 1010-1013
Sulaiman for the second time 1013-1016
(1) Ali bin Hammud, a Berber chief 1016-1018
13. Abd-ar-Rahman IV. 1018-1019
(2) Al Kasim bin Hammud 1019-1023
14. Abd-ar-Rahman V. 1023-1024
15. Muhammad III. 1024-1025
(3) Yabya bin Ali bin Hammud 1025-1027
16. Hisham III. 1027-1031
A complete list of all the Muhammadan rulers in Spain will be found in
Makkari's history of these dynasties, translated by Gayangos.
CHAPTER II.
LITERARY.
The oral communications of the ancient Egyptians, Medes and Persians, the two classic tongues of Europe, the Sanscrit of the Hindus and the Hebrew of the Jews, have long since ceased to be living languages. For the last twelve centuries no Western language has preserved its grammar, its style, or its literature intact and intelligible to the people of the present day. But two Eastern tongues have come down from ages past to our own times, and continue to exist unchanged in books, and, to a certain extent, also unchanged in language, and these are Chinese and Arabic. In China, though the dialects differ in the various provinces of the empire, still the written language has remained the same for centuries. In Arabia the Arabic language has retained its originality without very much dialectical alteration.
The unchangeable character of the Arabic language is chiefly to be attributed to the Koran, which has, from its promulgation to the present time, been regarded by all Muhammadans as the standard of religion and of literary composition. Strictly speaking, not only the history, but also the literature of the Arabs begins with Muhammad. Excepting the Mua'llakat, and other pre-Islamitic poems collected in the Hamasas of Abu Tammam and Al-Bohtori, in Ibn Kutaiba and in the Mofaddhaliat, no literary monuments that preceded his time are in existence. The Koran became, not only the code of religious and of civil law, but also the model of the Arabic language, and the standard of diction and eloquence. Muhammad himself scorned metrical rules; he claimed as an apostle and lawgiver a title higher than that of soothsayer and poet. Still, his poetic talent is manifest in numerous passages of the Koran, well known to those able to read it in the original, and in this respect the last twenty-five chapters of that book are, perhaps, the most remarkable.
Although the power of the Arabs has long ago succumbed, their literature has survived, and their language is still more or less spoken in all Muhammadan countries. Europe at one time was lightened by the torch of Arabian learning, and the Middle Ages were stamped with the genius and character of Arab civilization. The great masters of philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics, viz., Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn-Sina, Ibn-Rashid, Ibn Bajah, Razi, Al Battani, Abul Ma'shar, Al-Farghani, Al-Jaber, have been studied both in the Spanish universities and in those of the rest of Europe, where their names are still familiar under the corrupted forms of Alchendius, Alfarabius, Avicenna, Averroes, Avempace, Rhazes, Albategnius, Albumasar, Alfraganius, and Geber.
Arabic literature commenced about half a century before Muhammad with a legion of poets. The seven poems suspended in the temple of Mecca, and of which more anon, were considered as the chief productions of that time. The Mussulman era begins with the Hijrah, or emigration of Muhammad from Mecca to Madinah, which is supposed to have taken place on the 20th of June, A.D. 622; and the rise, growth, and decay of Arab power, learning, and literature may be divided into three periods as follows:
1. The time before Muhammad.
2. From Muhammad and his immediate successors, viz., Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman, and Ali, through the Omaiyide and Abbaside dynasties, to the end of the Khalifate of Baghdad, A.D. 1258.
3. From the fall of Baghdad to the present time.
First Period.
Although the proper history of Arabian literature begins from the time of Muhammad, it is necessary to cast a glance upon the age that preceded him, in order to obtain a glimpse of pre-Islamitic wisdom. The sage Lokman, whose name the thirty-first chapter of the Koran bears, is considered, according to that book, to have been the first man of his nation who practised and taught wisdom in all his deeds and words. He was believed to have been a contemporary of David and Solomon; his sayings and his fables still exist, but there is not much really known about him, as the following extracts will show:
'Lokman, a philosopher mentioned in the Koran, is said to have been born about the time of David. One tradition represents him as a descendant of the Arab tribe of Ad, who, on account of his piety and wisdom, was saved when the rest of his family perished by Divine wrath. According to another story he was an Ethiopian slave, noted alike for bodily deformity and a gift for composing fables and apologues. This account of Lokman, resembling so closely the traditional history of Æsop, has led to an opinion that they were the same individual, but this is now generally supposed not to be the case. The various reports agree in ascribing to Lokman extraordinary longevity. His extant fables bear evident marks of modern alteration, both in their diction and their incidents. They were first published with a Latin translation of the Arabic by Erpenius (Leyden, 1615). Galland produced a French translation of the fables of Lokman and Bidpay at Paris in 1724, and there are other editions by De Sacey, 1816, Caussin de Perceval, 1818, Freytag, 1823, and Rodiger, 1830.'
Burton, in a footnote to page 118, of Volume X. of his 'Arabian Nights,' however, says that 'There are three distinct Lokmans. The first, or eldest Lokman, entitled Al-Hakim (the Sage), and the hero of the Koranic chapter which bears his name, was son of Ba'ura, of the children of Azar, sister's son to Job, or son of Job's maternal aunt; he witnessed David's miracles of mail-making, and when the tribe of Ad was destroyed he became king of the country. The second Lokman, also called the Sage, was a slave and Abyssinian negro, sold by the Israelites during the reign of David or Solomon, and who left a volume of proverbs and exempla, not fables or apologues, some of which still dwell in the public memory. The youngest Lokman, of the Vultures, was a prince of the tribe of Ad, who lived 3,500 years, the age of seven vultures.'
This accounts for the different ideas as regards the tradition of one
Lokman in the preceding paragraph.
Before the era of the Prophet poetry had attained some degree of excellence. At the annual festival of Okatz the poets met and made public recitations, and competed for prizes. Of prose literature there was none, and the irregular, half-rhythmical, half-rhyming sentences of the Koran were the first attempts in the direction of prose.
Passing over the host of pre-Islamitic poets, the disputed time and order in which they appeared, as well as the ranks they respectively occupied, it will only be necessary here to describe the Arabic idyll or elegy (Kasida), and to notice the authors of the seven famous Mua'llakat, or suspended, or strung-together poems of the temple of Mecca, already alluded to above. As these poems were written in letters of gold, they were also called Muzahhibat, or "gilded." According to Arab notions, the subjects of a poet are four or five. He praises, loves, is angry, mourns, or describes either female beauty, animals, or objects of nature. Poems comprising one of these subjects only are short, but those treating of several are longer, and contain eulogies of chiefs, rulers, distinguished men and women, etc. The poet touches on the valour, liberality and eloquence of the hero, on the beauty and virtues of the woman, and describes the nearest surroundings, which are of the greatest interest, such as the horse, the camel, the antelope, the ostrich, the wild cow, the cloud, the lightning, wine, the vestiges of the tent of the beloved, and the hospitable camp-fire.
The Kasidas of the Mua'llakat are a series of smaller poems, composed on various occasions, and then strung together in one piece. Among them the two Kasidas of Amra-al-Kais (Amriolkais), and of Antara, are the most brilliant and romantic, on account of the sentiments of love they breathe towards the three beauties—Oneiza, Fatima, and Abla. The Kasida of Labid is famous for his description of both the camel and the horse; that of Tarafa for the delineation of the camel; that of Amru for the picture of a battle; while Harath chanted the praises of arms, and of the King of Hirah, and Zoheir produced a poem full of wise maxims. The whole seven contain a great deal about the personal feelings, the personal courage, the heroic deeds, and the wonderful adventures of the authors themselves—to which may be added descriptions of various animals, of hunting scenes, and of battle, the conventional lament for the absence or departure of a mistress, the delight of meeting her, and other bright sketches of Arab life in camp and on the march, with its joys, its sorrows, and its constant changes.
Sir William Jones first brought these poems to the notice of the West, and published a translation of them in A.D. 1782. 'They exhibit,' he says, 'an exact picture of the virtues and the vices, the wisdom and the folly, of the early Arabs. The poems show what may constantly be expected from men of open hearts and boiling passions, with no law to control, and little religion to restrain them.'
The above translations, with notes and remarks, have been reprinted by
Mr. W.A. Clouston, in his 'Arabian Poetry for English Readers,' at
Glasgow in 1881, and is a work well worthy of a perusal by any persons
who may be interested in the subject.
The names of the three ancient Arab poets considered to have been possessed of equal talent with the authors of the Mua'llakat, are Nabiga, Al-Kama, and Al-Aasha, and some specimens of their composition, as also of those of other pre-Islamite poets, are to be found in the fifteenth volume, No. 39, pages 65-108, of the 'Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,' translated by Mr. E. Rehatsek in 1881.
Second Period.
From Muhammad and his immediate successors (Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and
Ali), through the Omaiyide and Abbaside dynasties, to the end of the
Khalifate of Baghdad, A.D. 1258.
The legislator of Islam, whose era began on the 16th July, A.D. 622 (though his actual departure from Mecca has been calculated to have taken place on the 20th June, A.D. 622), is here to be considered not from an historical, but from a poetical point of view. Although Muhammad despised the metres in which the bards of his nation chanted their Kasidas, and himself gave utterance in the name of Heaven to the inspirations of his genius only in richly-modulated and rhymed prose, nevertheless, according to the Oriental idea, he was regarded as a poet. Those who declare that he was not a poet overlook the circumstance that he was vehemently assailed by contemporary poets, who attempted to degrade his heaven-inspired Surahs into mere poetical fables. He himself protested against this insinuation, and declared at the end of the 26th Surah, entitled 'The Poets,' that those are in error who believe poets, as follows:
'And those who err follow the poets; dost thou not see how they roam (as bereft of their senses) through every valley (of the imagination) and that they say things which they do not perform? … Except those who believe, and do good works, and remember God frequently, and those who defend themselves after they have been unjustly treated by poets in their lampoons, and they who act unjustly shall know hereafter with what treatment they shall be treated.'
These lines are important as far as the history of literature is concerned. They are written against inimical poets, but distinguish the friendly ones, who, taking the part of Muhammad, repaid the lampooning poets in their own coin.
Some of the hostile poets, such as Hobeira and the woman Karitha, were killed at the taking of Mecca, whilst Zibary and the woman Hertlemah saved their lives only by making a profession of Islam. Muhammad had, however, also his panegyrists, the chief of whom was Ka'b bin Zoheir, the composer of the celebrated Kasida called 'The Poem of the Mantle,' as a reward for which the Prophet threw his own cloak over him, under the following circumstances, as related by Mr. J.W. Redhouse in the preface to his translation of the poem published in the 'Arabian Poetry for English Readers'[1] alluded to above.
[Footnote 1: In this same work will also be found a
translation by Mr. Redhouse of another poem, also called
'The Poem of the Mantle,' but written by Sharaf-uddin
Muhammad Al-Busiri, who was born A.D. 1211, and died between
A.D. 1291 and 1300.]
Ka'b was a son of Zoheir, already mentioned as the author of one of the pre-Islamite poems known as the 'Mua'llakat.' He had a brother named Bujeir, and, like their father, both brothers were good poets. Bujeir was first converted, and embraced the faith of Islam. Ka'b was angry at this, and composed a lampoon on his brother, on the Prophet, and on their new religion. This he sent to his brother by the mouth of a messenger. Bujeir repeated it to Muhammad, who commented on it as favourable to the new faith and to himself, but at the same time passed a sentence of death on the satirist.
Bujeir well knew that his brother's life was in danger, and warned him accordingly, advising him at the same time to renounce his errors, and come repentant to the Prophet, or to seek a safe asylum far away. Ka'b found out that his life would really soon be taken, and set out secretly for Madinah. There he found an old friend, claimed his protection, and went with him next morning to the simple meeting-house where Muhammad and his chief followers performed their daily devotions. When the service was ended, Ka'b approached Muhammad, and the two sat down together. Ka'b placed his own right hand in that of the Prophet, whom he addressed in these words: 'Apostle of God, were I to bring to you Ka'b, the son of Zoheir, penitent and professing the faith of Islam, wouldst thou receive and accept him? The Prophet answered, 'I would.' 'Then,' said the poet, 'I am he!'
Hearing this, the bystanders demanded permission to put him to death. Muhammad ordered his zealous followers to desist, and the poet then, on the spur of the moment, recited a poem improvised at the time, probably with more or less premeditation. It is said that when Ka'b reached the fifty-first verse: 'Verily the Apostle of God is a light from which illumination is sought—a drawn Indian blade, one of the swords of God,' Muhammad took from his own shoulders the mantle he wore, and threw it over the shoulders of the poet as an honour and as a mark of protection. Hence the name given to the effusion, 'The Poem of the Mantle,' A.D. 630.
Moawia, the first Khalif of the Omaiyides, endeavoured to purchase this sacred mantle from Ka'b for ten thousand pieces of silver, but the offer was refused. Later on it was, however, bought from Ka'b's heirs for twenty thousand pieces of silver, and it passed into the hands of the Khalifs, and was preserved by them as one of the regalia of the empire until Baghdad was sacked by the Mughals. The mantle, or what is supposed to be the self-same mantle, is now in the treasury[2] of the Sultan Khalif of the Ottomans at Constantinople, in an apartment named 'The Room of the Sacred Mantle,' in which this robe is religiously preserved, together with a few other relics of the great prophet.
[Footnote 2: Apropos of this treasury, it is much to be regretted that a complete catalogue of its contents has never been prepared along with a brief historical account of them. It is difficult to obtain the order, which comes direct from the Sultan, to visit the collection; and even then visitors are hurried through at such a pace that it is impossible to examine with minuteness the many curiosities collected there.]
Ka'b has thus come to be considered as one of the friendly poets, and the names of two others are also mentioned, viz., Abd-Allah bin Rewaha and Hassan bin Thabit. On the other hand, the most celebrated antagonists who attacked Muhammad, not only with their verses, but also with their swords, were Abu Sofyan, Amr bin Al-'A'asi, and Abd-Allah bin Zobeir. These three became great political characters, but later on made profession of Islam, and were the staunchest supporters of it, rendering the greatest services to the Prophet during his life, and to the cause after his death. But Muhammad's greatest triumph over the poets was the conversion of Labid, who, after the perusal of the commencement of the second Surah of the Koran, tore down his own poem, which was hung up in the Kaabah, and ran to the Prophet to announce his conversion, and to make his profession of Islam. Even Ali, the cousin, son-in-law, and first convert of Muhammad, was a poet, but it is uncertain which of the Diwans attributed to him are genuine, and how many of his maxims of wisdom, over a hundred in number, are his own.
During the period under review the number of Arabic authors was legion. Some idea of the number of writers, and of the subjects on which they wrote, can be gathered from the Fihrist of An-Nadim, from Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, and from Haji Khalfa's Encyclopædia. With such a mass of information as is contained in the above-mentioned works, it is difficult to deal in a small work. To put them together in an intelligible form, the idea of classing the authors, according to the subjects on which they principally wrote, naturally presented itself. This plan, therefore, has been followed, and a few details of the most celebrated writers will be given, classified under the following heads:
Jurisconsults.
Imams and lawyers.
Traditionists.
Alchemists.
Astronomers.
Grammarians.
Geographers and travellers.
Historians.
Lexicographers, biographers and encyclopædists.
Writers on natural history.
Philologists.
Philosophers.
Physicians.
Poets.
Collectors and editors of poems.
Translators.
The Omaiyide Khalifs.
The Abbaside Khalifs.
The Spanish Khalifs.
During the latter part of the first century of the Hijrah (July, 622—July, 719), the first persons of note in the Muhammadan world after Muhammad and his immediate successors were probably the seven jurisconsults, viz., Obaid Allah, Orwa, Kasim, Said, Sulaiman, Abu Bakr and Kharija, who all lived at Madinah about the same time; and it was from them, according to Ibn Khallikan, that the science of law and legal decisions spread over the world. They were designated by the appellation of the Seven Jurisconsults, because the right of giving decisions on points of law had passed to them from the companions of Muhammad, and they became publicly known as Muftis. These seven alone were acknowledged as competent to give Fatmas, or legal decisions. They died respectively A.D. 720, 712, 719, 710, 725, 712 and 718.
The jurisconsults were followed by the doctors of theology and law, or, as they were styled, Imams, or founders of the four orthodox sects. Now, among the Sunni Muslims an Imam may be described as a high-priest, or head, or chief in religious matters, whether he be the head of all Muhammadans—as the Khalifah—or the priest of a mosque, or the leader in the prayers of a congregation. This title, however, is given by the Shias only to the immediate descendants of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, and they are twelve in number, Ali being the first. The last of them, Imam Mahdi, is supposed to be concealed (not dead), and the title which belongs to him cannot, they conceive, be given to another.
But among the Sunnis it is a dogma that there must always be a visible Imam or father of the Church. The title is given by them to the four learned doctors who were the exponents of their faith, viz., Imams Hanifa, Malik, Shafai and Hanbal. Of these, Imam Hanifa, the founder of the first of the four chief sects of the Sunnis, died A.D. 767. He was followed by Imam Malik, Imam Shafai, and Imam Hanbal, the founders of the other three sects, who died A.D. 795, 820 and 855 respectively. From these four persons are derived the various codes of Muhammadan jurisprudence. They have always been considered as the fundamental pillars of the orthodox law, and have been esteemed by Mussulmans as highly as the fathers of the Church—Gregory, Augustine, Jerome and Chrysostom—have been appreciated by Christians.
Of these four sects, the Hanbalite and Malikite may be considered as the most rigid, the Shafaite as the most conformable to the spirit of Islamism, and the Hanifite as the wildest and most philosophical of them all.
In addition to the four Imams just mentioned, there was a fifth, of the name of Abu Sulaiman Dawud az Zahari, who died A.D. 883. He was the founder of the sect called Az-Zahariah (the External), and his lectures were attended by four hundred Fakihs (doctors of the civil and of the ecclesiastical law), who wore shawls thrown over their shoulders. But his opinions do not seem to have secured many followers, and in time both his ideas, and those of Sofyan at Thauri, another chief of the orthodox sect, were totally abandoned.
The third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 816-913) is noted for the six fathers of tradition, viz., Al-Bukhari, Muslim, At Firmidi, Abu Dawud, An-Nasai and Ibn Majah, with whom others, such as Kasim bin Asbagh, Abu Zaid, Al-Marwazi, Abu Awana and Al-Hazini, vied in great works on tradition, but these last-named could never acquire the authority of the six previously mentioned, who died A.D. 870, 875, 892, 889, 916, 887 respectively.
In the beginning of Islam the great traditionists were Ayesha, the favourite wife of the Prophet, the four rightly directed Khalifs, viz., Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and Ali, and some of the companions[3] known as the Evangelists of Islam. But besides these well-qualified persons who had lived with or near Muhammad during his lifetime, many others who had perhaps only seen him or spoken to him claimed to be considered as companions, who handed down traditions; and when these were all dead they were followed by others, who, having known the companions, were now designated as the successors of the companions.
[Footnote 3: The names of these companions, and the kings, princes, and countries to which they were sent by Muhammad, are given in full detail in 'The Life of our Lord Muhammad, the Apostle of God,' the author of which was Ibn Ishak; and it was afterwards edited by Ibn Hisham. In the same work a list is given of the disciples sent out by Jesus.]
Under these circumstances it can easily be imagined that many of the traditions were of doubtful authenticity. Al-Bukhari, whose collection of traditions of the Muhammadan religion holds the first place, both as regards authority and correctness, selected seven thousand two hundred and seventy-five of the most authentic out of ten thousand, all of which he regarded as being true, having rejected two hundred thousand as false. His book is held in the highest estimation, and considered both in spiritual and temporal matters as next in authority to the Koran. He was born A.D. 810, and died A.D. 870.
The Shiahs do not accept the collection of traditions as made by the Sunnis, but have a collection of their own, upon which their system of law, both civil and religious, is founded.
During the first and second centuries of the Hijrah (A.D. 622-816), of all the physical sciences alchemy was studied most. The greatest scientific man of the first century was undoubtedly Khalid, a prince of the Omaiyide dynasty, and the son of Yazid I. His zeal for knowledge and science induced him to get Greek and Syriac works translated by Stephanus into Arabic, especially those which treated on chemistry, or rather alchemy. Khalid, having been once reproached for wasting all his time in researches in the art of alchemy, replied: 'I have occupied myself with these investigations to show my contemporaries and brothers that I have found in them a recompense and a reward for the Khalifate which I lost. I stand in need of no man to recognise me at court, and I need not recognise anyone who dances attendance at the portals of dominion either from fear, ambition, or covetousness.' He wrote a poem on alchemy, which bears the title of 'Paradise of Wisdom,' and of him Ibn Khallikan says: 'He was the most learned man of the tribe of Koraish in all the different branches of knowledge. He wrote a discourse on chemistry and on medicine, in which sciences he possessed great skill and solid information.' He died A.D. 704.
Later on Jaber bin Hayam, with his pupils, became a model for later alchemists, and he has been called the father of Arabian chemistry. He compiled a work of two thousand pages, in which he inserted the problems of his master, Jaafar as Sadik, considered to be the father of all the occult sciences in Islam. Jaber was such a prolific writer that many of his five hundred works are said to bear his name only on account of his celebrity, but to have been written in reality by a variety of authors. His works on alchemy were published in Latin by Golius, under the title of 'Lapis Philosophorum,' and an English translation of them by Robert Russell appeared at Leyden in A.D. 1668. Jaber died A.D. 766, and is not to be confounded with Al-Jaber (Geber), the astronomer, who lived at Seville about A.D. 1190, and constructed there an astronomical observatory.
Astronomy appears to have been always a favourite science with the Arabs from the earliest times. In A.D. 772 there appeared at the court of the Khalif Mansur (A.D. 754-775), Muhammad bin Ibrahim bin Habib al Fezari, the astronomer, who brought with him the tables called Sind Hind, in which the motions of the stars were calculated according to degrees. They contained other observations on solar eclipses and the rising of the signs of the zodiac, extracted by him from the tables ascribed to the Indian king, Figar. The Khalif Mansur ordered this book to be translated into Arabic to serve as a guide for Arab astronomers. And these tables remained in use till the time of the Khalif Mamun (A.D. 813-833), when other revised ones bearing his name came into vogue. These, again, were abridged by Abul Ma'shar (Albumasar, died A.D. 885-886), called the prince of Arabian astrologers, who, however, deviated from them, and inclined towards the system of the Persians and of Ptolemy. This second revision was more favourably received by the Arab astronomers than the first, and the Sind Hind was superseded by the Almagest of Ptolemy. Better astronomical instruments also came into use, though previously the Al-Fezari above mentioned had been the first in Islam who constructed astrolabes of various kinds, and had written several astronomical treatises.
Mention might be made of about forty mathematicians and astronomers who wrote books on these subjects. The best of them, such as Al-Farghani (Alfraganius) and others, lived at the court of Mamun, who built an astronomical observatory in Baghdad and another near Damascus, on Mount Kasiun. He caused also two degrees of the meridian to be measured on the plain of Sinjar, so as to ascertain the circumference of the earth with more precision. In A.D. 824 there were held philosophical disputations in his presence. Al-Farghani was the author of an introduction to astronomy, which was printed by Golius at Amsterdam in 1669, with notes.
Between the years A.D. 877 and 929 there flourished the famous calculator and astronomer, Muhammad bin Jaber al Battani, Latinized as Albategnius. He was the author of the astronomical work entitled 'The Sabæan Tables,' and adopted nearly the system and the hypothesis of Ptolemy, but rectified them in several points, and made other discoveries, which procured him a distinguished place among the scholars whose labours have enriched astronomical science. Al-Battani approached much nearer to the truth than the ancients as far as the movements of the fixed stars are concerned. He measured the greatness of the eccentricity of the solar orbit, and a more correct result cannot be obtained. To the work containing all his discoveries he gave the name of 'As-Zij-as Sabi,' which was translated into Latin under the title 'De Scientiâ Stellarum.' The first edition of it appeared at Nuremberg in A.D. 1537, but it is believed that the original work is in the library of the Vatican. He was classed by Lalande among the forty-two most celebrated astronomers of the world. He died A.D. 929-930.
Another celebrated astronomer, Ali bin Yunis, was a native of Egypt, and appears to have lived at the court of the demented tyrant of Egypt, Al-Hakim bramrillah, and under his patronage to have composed the celebrated astronomical tables called, after his name, 'The Hakimite Tables.' Ibn Khallikan states that he had seen these tables in four volumes, and that more extensive ones had not come under his notice. These tables were considered in Egypt to be of equal value to those of the astronomer Yabya bin Ali Mansur, who had in A.D. 830, by order of the Khalif Mamun, undertaken astronomical observations both at Baghdad and Damascus. Ibn Yunis spent his life in the preparation of astronomical tables and in casting horoscopes, for it must be remembered that with the Muslims astronomy and astrology were synonymous, and their most learned astronomers were also their most skilful astrologers. His character for honesty was highly esteemed, and he was also well versed in other sciences, and displayed an eminent talent for poetry. He died A.D. 1009, and is not to be confounded with his father, Ibn Yunis, the historian, who died A.D. 958.
Yet another name must be mentioned, viz., the Spanish-Arab astronomer Ibn Abd-ar-Rahman Es-Zerkel, Europeanized as Arzachal. He first resided at Toledo, at the court of its sovereign, Mamun, for whom he made an astrolabe, which he called in his honour the Mamunian. He then went to Seville, where he wrote for Motamid bin Abbad (A.D. 1069-1091) a treatise on the use of certain instruments. During his residence at Toledo he constructed two clepsydras, the waters of which decreased and increased according to the waning and growing of the moon, and these two basins were destroyed only in A.D. 1133 by Alphonse VI., when he took Toledo. Arzachal left a work on eclipses, and on the revolution of years, as well as the tables of the sky, to which the name of Toledan tables have been given. His writings, but especially the last, which must have been consulted by the editors of the Alphonsine tables, were never translated, and exist only in manuscript in libraries where but few scholars can consult them. Arzachal made many observations in connection with the sun, and was also the inventor of the astronomical instrument called after his name, Zerkalla. He died A.D. 1080.
Before leaving this subject it may be mentioned that Makkari, in his great encyclopædia of Spain, enumerates fifteen astronomers of Andalusia, all more or less known in their time. Also that Bedei-ul-Astrolabi and Ibn Abdul-Rayman distinguished themselves as makers of astronomical instruments, and inventors of new ones. While Arzachal was the greatest representative of Arab astronomy in the West, Umar Khayam, the astronomer, mathematician, freethinker, and poet, was its greatest representative in the East, in Persia, where he died A.D. 1123.
A great deal in Arabic literature has been written about grammar, and, until its principles were finally laid down and established, it was always a source of continual controversy between different professors and different schools. Abul Aswad ad-Duwali has been called the father of Arabic grammar. It is said that the Khalif Ali laid down for him this principle: the parts of speech are three, the noun, the verb, and the particle, and told him to form a complete treatise upon it. This was accordingly done; and other works on the subject were also produced, but none of them are apparently now extant. Muhammad bin Ishak has stated that he saw one of them, entitled 'Discourse on the Governing and the Governed Parts of Speech;' and the author of the 'Fihrist' also alludes to this work. Abul-Aswad died at Busra in A.D. 688, aged eighty-five, but some years later his two successors in this branch of literature (viz., Al-Khalil and Sibawaih) far surpassed him in every way.
Al-Khalil bin Ahmad, born A.D. 718, was one of the great masters in the science of grammar, and the discoverer of the rules of prosody, which art owes to him its creation. He laid the foundation of the language by his book 'Al-Ain' (so called from the letter with which it begins), and by the aid he afforded thereby to Sibawaih, whose master he was, in the composition of his celebrated grammatical work known by the name of 'The Book.' In the work called 'Al-Ain,' Khalil first arranged the stock of Arabic words, dealing with the organ of speech and the production of sounds, and then dividing the words into classes, the roots of which consisted of one, two, three, four, or five letters. It is still a matter of dispute whether the book 'Al-Ain' was wholly composed by Khalil himself, or completed in course of time by his pupils. A copy of this celebrated lexicon and work on philology is in the Escurial Library. Khalil also wrote a treatise on prosody, and other works on grammar, and a book on musical intonation. He died A.D. 786, at Busra. 'Poverty,' he said, 'consists not in the want of money, but of soul; and riches are in the mind, not in the purse.'
Sibawaih, the pupil of Khalil, has been called the father of Arabic lexicography, and the lawgiver of Arabic grammar. Ibn Khallikan says that he was a learned grammarian, and surpassed in this science every person of former and later times. As for his 'Kitab,' or 'Book,' composed by him on that subject, it has never had its equal. The great philologist and grammarian, Al-Jahiz, said of the book of Sibawaih, that none like it had ever been written on grammar, and that all writers on this subject who had succeeded him had borrowed from it. When Al-Kisai was tutor to the prince Al-Amin, son of Harun-ar-Rashid, Sibawaih came to Baghdad, and the two great grammarians (Sibawaih, the chief of the school of Busra, and Al-Kisai, chief of the school of Kufa) had a long dispute about a certain expression of Arabic speech, and an Arab of the desert was called in to arbitrate between them. The man first decided in favour of Sibawaih, but when the question was put in another form, the Bedouin asserted that Kisai was right. As Sibawaih considered that he had been unjustly treated in the matter, he left Baghdad for good. The year of his death has been given differently by various authors, the earliest date being A.D. 787, and the latest A.D. 809.
The most celebrated grammarians of the third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 816-913) were Al-Mubarrad, who died A.D. 898, and Thalab, who died A.D. 903. They were also great antagonists to each other. Al-Mubarrad, the author of thirty works, was the chief of the school of Busra, and Thalab of that of Kufa, both founded during the preceding century by Sibawaih and Kisai. Thalab was the first collector of books in Islam, and those left by him were very valuable.
Mention must also be made of Al-Farra, the grammarian, and distinguished by his knowledge of grammar, philology, and various branches of literature. He died A.D. 822, at the age of sixty-three, and preceded both Mubarrad and Thalab, the latter of whom used to say: 'Were it not for Al-Farra, pure Arabic would no longer exist; it was he who disengaged it from the ordinary language and fixed it by writing.' At the request of the Khalif Al-Mamun he drew up in two years a most elaborate work, which contained the principles of grammar, and all the pure Arabic expressions which he had heard. It was entitled 'Al-Hudûd' (the Limits or Chapters), and directly it was finished he commenced another in connection with the Koran, which is spoken of as a most wonderful production. He wrote besides several other works on grammar, and acted as tutor to the two sons of the Khalif Mamun.
Though many other grammarians could be named, such as Al-Akhfash al Ausat, Abu Amr as Shaibani, Abu Bakr al Anbari, etc., none can be considered so celebrated as the persons above mentioned, who are regarded as the founders of the principles on which Arabic grammar has been established.
In the middle of the third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 816-913), the Arabs first began to distinguish themselves as travellers and geographers. When Muslim Homeir was, in A.D. 845, ransomed from his captivity among the Byzantines and returned to his country, he wrote a book with the title of 'Admonitions on the Countries, Kings and Offices of the Greeks.' Forty years afterwards Jaafar bin Ahmed al Mervezi produced the first geographical work under the title of 'Highways and Countries,' which was followed by those of Ibn Foslan, Ibn Khordabeh, Jeihani, Al-Istakhri, Ibn Haukul, Al-Beruni, Al-Bekri and Idrisi. The great historian, Masudi, was also a writer of travels and an ambassador. Ibn Foslan was sent by the Khalif Muktadir (A.D. 908-932) to the King of the Bulgarians. Abu Dolaf, who accompanied an ambassador from China to the frontiers of that country, made, on his return, a report which Yakut afterwards embodied in his voluminous geographical Dictionary.
A few details will be given about the six chief geographers and travellers of this period, viz., Ibn Khordabeh, Al-Istakhri, Ibn Haukul, Al-Beruni, Al-Bekri and Idrisi.
As regards the first-named, it would appear that he has been the object of considerable controversies among the Orientalists of Europe. After employment in the post and intelligence departments in the provinces, he subsequently came to the court of the Khalif Motamid (A.D. 870-892), and became one of his privy councillors. He is the author of several works on various subjects, but his 'Geography,' says Sir H.M. Elliot, is the only work we possess of this author, and of this there is only one copy in Europe, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. He died about A.D. 912.
Al-Istakhri, who flourished about the year A.D. 951, obtained his name from Istakhar (i.e., Persepolis), where he was born. He was a traveller whose geographical work has been translated into German by Mordtmann. When Istakhari was in the Indus Valley he met another celebrated traveller, Ibn Haukul, whose book Sir William Ouseley translated in A.D. 1800 into English, under the title of 'The Oriental Geography of Ibn Haukul.' Haukul, who died A.D. 976, had travelled for nearly twenty-eight years in the countries of Islam with the works of Ibn Khordabeh and Jeihani in his hands, and his work, which bears the generally approved title of 'Highways and Countries,' is based on the book of Istakhri.
But the greatest geographer and naturalist of this period is Abu Raihan Al-Beruni (born about A.D. 971), who accompanied Mahmud the Ghaznavide on his invasions to India. He was to Mahmud of Ghazni what Aristotle was to Alexander, with the difference, however, that he actually accompanied the conqueror on his Indian campaigns. He travelled into different countries and to and from India for the space of forty years, and during that time was much occupied with astronomy and astronomical observations, as well as geography. His works are said to have exceeded a camel-load, but the most valuable of all of them is his description of India. It gives an account of the religion of India, its philosophy, literature, geography, chronology, astronomy, customs, law and astrology about a.d. 1030, and has been edited by Edward Sachau, Professor in the Royal University of Berlin. An English edition, containing a preface, the translation of the Arabic text, notes and indices, has also been published. Al-Beruni died at Ghurna A.D. 1038. He used to correspond with Avicenna, who was his contemporary, and who gives in his works the answers to the questions addressed to him by this famous geographer, astronomer, geometrician, historian, scholar, and logician.
Some years later Abu O'beid Abd-Allah Al-Bekri distinguished himself as one of the greatest geographers, with whose labours Quatremere and Dozy and Gayangos have made us better acquainted. He was, by birth, from Andalusia, whence also many others travelled to the East, either for instruction or for trade or as pilgrims, and of whom about a couple of dozen are mentioned by Makkari. Some of these gave descriptions and topographies, to which class of literature also the poetical laudations of celebrated towns belong. Not only Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Fez, Morocco and Khairwan were praised or satirized, but also Cordova, Seville, Granada, Malaga, Toledo, Valencia and Zohra were described in Arabic poems. Al-Bekri died in A.D. 1094-1095, and was followed by Idrisi, the author of a work on Arabian geography of some celebrity, and which has been translated into Latin. He died A.D. 1164.
Of historians in Arab literature there are many, but only the most celebrated will be noted. Muhammad bin Ishak, who died about A.D. 767, produced the best and most trustworthy biography of the prophet Muhammad. His work was published under the patronage of the Abbaside princes, and was, in fact, composed for the Khalif Al-Mansur (A.D. 754-775). It was used as the chief source of information by Ibn Hisham, the next historian of note, in his life of the Prophet, which work has been edited by Dr. Wustenfeld, and translated into German by Dr. Weil, and into English by Mr. E. Rehatsek, whose manuscript, however, has not yet been printed. Ibn Hisham, who died in A.D. 828, was the father of Arabic genealogy, and Abu-el-Siyadi, who died in A.D. 857, is next to him.
But the real father of Arabian history was Al-Wackidi, a good and trustworthy historian, thirty-two of whose works are known, all relating to the conquests of the Arabs, and other such subjects. He died A.D. 822. With him generally has been associated his secretary, Muhammad bin Saad, a man of unimpeachable integrity, and of the highest talents, merit, and eminence. He has left us some most interesting works, full of valuable information relating to those times. He died at Baghdad A.D. 844.
Al-Madaini, who died A.D. 839, was the author of two hundred and fifty historical works, of which, however, nothing has yet been discovered, except their titles as given in the 'Fihrist.'
Passing over many other historians, two more only will be mentioned, viz., Abu Jafir at-Tabari and Al-Masúdi.
Tabari (whose annals are now being edited by a company of European Orientalists) was born A.D. 838, at Amol, in the province of Tabaristan. He travelled a great deal, and composed many works on history, poetry, grammar and lexicography. His work on jurisprudence extends to several volumes, and his historical works stamp him as one of the most reliable of Arab historians, while his numerous other works also bear witness to the variety and accuracy of his acquirements. He died at Baghdad A.D. 923, and has been called by Gibbon the Livy of the Arabians.
Al-Masúdi, a contemporary of the great historian Tabari, died thirty-four years after him, in A.D. 957. His great work, 'Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems,' with the Arabic text above and a French translation below, has been published in nine volumes (1861-1877) by Barbier de Meynard, in connection with Pavet de Courteille, at the expense of the French Government. Dr. A. Sprenger (who translated one volume of the work into English for the Oriental Translation Fund, London, 1841) calls the author of it the Herodotus of Arabian history, because he had, like his Greek prototype, undertaken extensive travels, and had like him made the description of countries and nations his chief occupation. The titles of ten of his works are known to us, but the principal one is that named above, in the composition of which he used eighty-five historical, geographical, and philological works, as he himself informs us in the first chapter of his history. The work itself contains one hundred and thirty-two chapters.
Ibn al Athir al Jazari, born A.D. 1160 and died A.D. 1233, was also an historian of note, and a personal friend of Ibn Khallikan, who writes of him as follows: 'His knowledge of the Traditions, and his acquaintance with that science in its various branches, placed him in the first rank; and his learning as an historian of the ancients and moderns was not less extensive; he was perfectly familiar with the genealogy of the Arabs, their adventures, combats and history; whilst his great work, "The Kâmil or Complete," embracing the history of the world from the earliest period to the year 628 of the Hijrah (A.D. 1230-1231), merits its reputation as one of the best productions of the kind.' Another of Ibn Al Athir's works is the history of the most eminent among the companions of Muhammad, in the shape of a biographical dictionary.
As the development of Arab letters proceeded, in the course of time various authors began to tabulate the different branches of knowledge and science, and these, with the biographies of many of the writers, and the lists of their works, formed a distinct branch in the literature of that day.
The most noteworthy of them all was Abul Faraj Muhammad bin Ishak, who is generally known by the name of Ibn Ali Yakub al Warrak the copyist, surnamed An-Nadim al Baghdadi, the social companion from Baghdad, and the author of the 'Fihrist.' It may be truly said that this writer, along with Ibn Khallikan, laid the foundations of the records of the edifice of encyclopædical and biographical works, which was afterwards completed by Haji Khalfa and Abul Khair. Without the work of Ibn Khallikan it would be as impossible to give a history of Arab scholars, as without the work of An-Nadim to give an account of Arab literature.
The 'Kitab al-Fihrist' was written by An-Nadim in A.D. 987, and is divided into ten sections, dealing with every branch of letters and learning. It gives the names of many authors and their works long since extant, and shows the enormous amount of writings produced by the Arabs during the periods under review, up to A.D. 987, the date of the author's work. A short account of this ancient and curious book has been given in the Journal Asiatique for December, 1839, and from the work itself Von Hammer Purgstall has been able to gather that the 'Thousand and One Nights' ('Arabian Nights') had a Persian origin. In the eighth section of the 'Fihrist' the author says that the first who composed tales and apologues were the kings of the early Persian dynasties, and that these tales were augmented and amplified by the Sasanians (A.D. 228-641). The Arabs then translated them into their own language, and composed other stories like them.
Ibn Khallikan, the most worthy of biographers, must also be mentioned here, though he died in A.D. 1282, twenty-four years after the fall of Baghdad, having been born in A.D. 1211. This very eminent scholar and follower of Shafa'i doctrines, was born at Arbela, but resided at Damascus, where he had filled the place of Chief Kadi till the year A.D. 1281, when he was dismissed, and from that time to the day of his death he never went out of doors. He was a man with the greatest reputation for learning, versed in various sciences, and highly accomplished. He was a scholar, a poet, a compiler, a biographer and an historian. By his talents and writings he merited the honourable title of the most learned man and the ablest historian. His celebrated biographical work, called the 'Wafiat-ul-Aiyan,' or Deaths of Eminent Men, is the acme of perfection. This work was translated from the Arabic by Baron MacGuckin de Slane, a member of the council of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and printed by the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland in A.D. 1842, 1843, 1868 and 1871. For all those who wish to gain a knowledge of the legal literature of the Muhammadans it is a most valuable work, as the Baron has added to the text numerous learned notes, replete with curious and interesting information relating to the Muhammadan law and lawyers. Ibn Khallikan died, aged seventy-three lunar years, in the Najibia College at Damascus, and was buried in the cemetery of As-Salihiya, a well-known village situated on the declivity of Mount Kasiun, a short distance to the north of Damascus, and from which a splendid view of the town and its surrounding gardens is obtained. When lately there I made inquiries about the tomb of this great Arab littérateur, but without success. His tomb has quite disappeared, and his name seemed to be forgotten; but his work still lives, an everlasting monument of his industry and his intelligence.
It will be remembered that the early Arab poets described men, women, animals, and their surroundings in their effusive Kasidas before prose-writing was established. Later on grammarians and philologists began to write books on the different objects of nature and on the physiology of man; also treatises on the horse, the camel, bees, mountains, seas, rivers, and all natural phenomena. There were thus laid down, though not a scientific, at least a philological basis, for the future development of the natural sciences and geography. Such monographs were only in later times collected in encyclopaedic works, in which they were inserted in such a manner as to constitute various chapters only, and no longer separate treatises.
Khalef-al-Ahmer (whom Suyuti declared to be a great forger, because he pretended that some poems written by himself had been composed by ancient Arab poets) wrote the first book on Arab mountains, and about the poems recited concerning them. Ahmed bin-ud Dinveri wrote, in addition to several grammatical and mathematical works, a book on plants, and after him the grammarian Al-Jahiz wrote the first treatise on animals, but more from a philological point of view than from that of natural history. He wrote, moreover, on theology, geography, natural history, and philology; but his most celebrated work is his 'Book of Animals,' in which he displayed all his knowledge of the Arabic tongue. He was frightfully ugly, and obtained the surname of Jahiz on account of his protuberant eyes. He himself informs us that the Khalif Mutwakkil intended to appoint him as tutor to his sons, but was deterred by his ugliness, and dismissed him with a present of ten thousand dirhems. Al-Jahiz died A.D. 869, over ninety years of age.
Philology is a term now generally used as applicable to that science which embraces human language in its widest extent, and may be shortly called 'the science of language.' But in earlier times philology included, with few exceptions, everything that could be learned—many and various subjects, without particular reference to the meaning now generally adopted concerning it.
There will be found among the Arab authors of this period many philologists who also wrote upon other matters, but have been recorded here as having particularly excelled in this particular branch of learning.
Al Kasim bin Ma'an was the first who wrote on the rarities of the language and on the peculiarities of authors, and, according to the 'Fihrist,' he surpassed all his contemporaries by the variety of his information. Tradition and traditionists, poetry and poets, history and historians, scholastic theology and theologians, genealogy and genealogists, were the subjects on which he displayed the extent of his acquirements. He died A.D. 791.
Abu Ali Muhammad bin-al Mustanir bin Ahmad, generally known by the name of Kutrub, was also a grammarian and philologist, and wrote books and treatises on these subjects, as also on natural history. He died A.D. 821.
Philology and Arabic poetry were the special objects of the studies of Abu Amr Ishak bin Mirar as Shaibani, and in these two branches of knowledge his authority is of the highest order. He composed a number of works and treatises, and wrote with his own hand upwards of eighty volumes. He died A.D. 825.
But the two earliest, and perhaps the two most celebrated, philologists were Al-Asmai and Abu Obaida, who outshone their successors for all time to come, and were distinguished—the former by his wit, and the latter by his scholarship.
Abu Said Abd-al Malik bin Kuraib al-Asmai was born A.D. 739 or 740, and died A.D. 831. He was a complete master of the Arabic language, an able grammarian, and the most eminent of all those who transmitted orally historical narrations, anecdotes, stories, and rare expressions of the language. When the poet Abu Nuwas was informed that Asmai and Abu Obaida had been introduced at Harun's court, he said that the latter would narrate ancient and modern history, but that the former would charm with his melodies. Ibn Shabba was informed by Asmai himself 'that he knew by heart sixteen thousand pieces of verse composed in the measure called Rajaz, or free metre,' and Ishak al Mausili asserted 'that he never heard al-Asmai profess to know a branch of science without discovering that none knew it better than he.' No one ever explained better than Al-Asmai the idioms of the desert Arabs. Most of his works, which amount to thirty-six, treat of the language and its grammar; but he also wrote a book on the horse and different treatises on various other animals, such as the camel, the sheep, wild beasts, etc., and their physiology.
Al-Asmai's contemporary, Abu Obaida, was an able grammarian and an accomplished scholar. He was born A.D. 728, and died at Busra A.D. 824, leaving nearly two hundred treatises, of which the names of many have been given by Ibn Khallikan, and most of them are of a purely philological character. There are many anecdotes about him, and many sayings of clever men regarding him. Abu Nuwas took lessons from Abu Obaida, praised him highly, and decried Al-Asmai, whom he detested. When asked what he thought of Al-Asmai, he replied, 'A nightingale in a cage,' meaning probably that a nightingale in a cage is pleasing to hear, but there is nothing else good about it. Abu Obaida he described as 'a bundle of science packed up in a skin.'
Abu Zaid al-Ansari was a philologist and grammarian, and a contemporary of the two persons just described. He held the first rank among the literary men of that time, and devoted his attention principally to the study of the philology of the Arabic language, its singular terms and rare expressions. Of him Al-Mubarrad said: 'Abu Zaid was an abler grammarian than Al-Asmai and Abu Obaida, but these two came next to him, and were near to each other. Abu Obaida was the most accomplished scholar of the day.' Abu Zaid composed a number of useful philological works, and titles of thirty-one of them are given in the 'Fihrist.' He died A.D. 830, over ninety years of age.
Abu Othman Bakr bin Muhammad bin Habib al-Mayini, briefly called Abu Othman, was celebrated as a philologer and grammarian, as also for his knowledge in general literature. He learned philology from Abu Zaid, Abu Obaida, Al-Asmai, and others, and had for pupil Al-Mubarrad, who learned much from his master, and handed down many pieces of traditional literature obtained from him. Abu Othman, once being asked his opinion about various men of science, curtly summarized them as follows: 'The Koran-readers are deceitful administrators, the traditionists are satisfied with superfluities, poets are too superficial, grammarians much too heavy, narrators deal only in neat expressions, and the only real science is jurisprudence,' He died A.D. 863.
Abul Aina was a philologist, but also a great joker, anecdote-teller, and poet. His memory was equal to his eloquence, and, being quick-witted, he was never in want of a repartee when the occasion required it; indeed, he ranked among the most brilliant wits of the age. To a vizier, who said that everything current about the liberality of the Barmekides was only so much exaggeration and invention of leaf-scribblers, he replied: 'Of you, O vizier, the leaf-scribblers will certainly report nothing and invent nothing.' There are many other anecdotes and stories told about him. Being asked how long he would continue to praise some and satirize others, he replied: 'As long as the virtuous do good and the wicked do evil, but God forbid that I should be as the scorpion which stingeth equally the prophet and the infidel.' He had a most wonderful memory, which he applied, however, not to the preservation of interpretations and their vouchers, but to that of anecdotes, drolleries, and witty sayings, wherefore his name has been perpetuated as that of a joker. He died A.D. 896.
Mention must also be made of Abdullah bin Muslim bin Kutaiba, who was a philologist and grammarian of eminent talent, and noted for the correctness of his information. He was the author of many works, such as 'The Book of Facts,' 'The Writer's Guide,' 'Notices on the Poets,' and 'A Treatise on Horses,' and others, all of which were more or less celebrated in their time. He was born A.D. 828, and died, some say, in A.D. 884, others in A.D. 908.
Ibn Duraid, whose many other names are given by Ibn Khallikan, is described by that author as 'the most accomplished scholar, the ablest philologer, and the first poet of the age.' Masudi and other men of learning also speak of him in the highest terms. He composed several works on natural history, and produced also a complete Dictionary of this kind, after the model of the books 'Al-A'in' and 'Al-Jim,' the two letters of the alphabet with which Khalil, the grammarian, and Abu Amr as Shaibani respectively began their works. Ibn Duraid died at Baghdad A.D. 933. The celebrated Motazelite divine Abu Haslim Abd-as Salam Al-Jubbai died the same day, and this caused the people to say that 'To-day philology and dogmatic theology have ceased to exist.'
In the East, by philosophy not only logic and metaphysics are meant, but also all ethical, political, mathematical, and medical sciences. Indeed, it may be said that nearly all learned men were in those days called philosophers, a term which included mathematicians, astronomers, physicians, encyclopædists and others.
From the mass of Arab authors all laying claim to the title of philosopher, it is perhaps an invidious task to select a few only, and even those selected by one person might be rejected by another. But public opinion will probably agree in naming three persons as having claim to the highest rank in Arab learning. They are Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, and Ali-ibn Sina, commonly called Avicenna. Ali-bin Ridhwan, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Bajah (Avempace), and Ibn Rashid (Averroes) have also their claims to be considered, while Thalab bin Korra, Kosta bin Luka, Al-Tavhidi, and Al-Majridi were also all eminent men. A few details will be given about the first seven of the names just mentioned.
Yakub-bin Ishak Al-Kindi, the philosopher of the Arabs, known in Europe by the corrupted name of Alchendius, possessed an encyclopædic mind, and being himself a living encyclopædia, he composed one of all the sciences. He divided philosophy into three branches, the mathematical, the physical, and the ethical. He declared the nullity of alchemy, which Ibn Sina had again brought to honourable notice, till the physician Abdul Latif declaimed against it. But Al-Kindi was not sufficiently advanced to write against astrology, which is still in full force all over the East even in our own times. Only one of his works has as yet been published in Europe, and that treats on the composition of medicines, though we possess the titles of not less than two hundred and thirty-four works composed by him on a variety of subjects. He died A.D. 861.
Abu Nasr Al-Farabi (Alfarabius), called by the Arabs a second Aristotle, is generally considered to be the second Arab philosopher; Avicenna, who always quotes him in his works, the third; the first place being assigned to Al-Kindi. Al-Farabi studied Arabic (he was a Turk by birth) and philosophy in Baghdad, where he attended the lectures of Abu Bishr Matta bin Yunus, who possessed, and also imparted to his pupils, the gift of expressing the deepest meanings in the easiest words. From Baghdad he went to Harran, where Yuhanna bin Khailan, the Christian philosopher, was teaching logic, and after his return he made all the works of Aristotle his special study. It is related that the following note was found inscribed in Al-Farabi's handwriting on a copy of Aristotle's treatise on the soul: 'I have read over this book two hundred times.' He also said that he had read over Aristotle's 'Physics' forty times, and felt that he ought to read it over again. Abul Kasim Said, of Cordova, says in his 'Classes of Philosophers' that 'Al-Farabi led all the professors of Islam to the right understanding of logic by unveiling and explaining its secrets, as well as by considering all those points which Al-Kindi had neglected, and by teaching the application of analogy to all occurring cases.' In his enumeration and limitation of the sciences, Al-Farabi embraced the whole system of knowledge as it then existed. He went to Egypt, and afterwards to Damascus, where he died in A.D. 950. During his residence at Damascus he was mostly to be found near the borders of some rivulet, or in a shady garden; there he composed his works and received the visits of his pupils. He was extremely abstemious, and entirely indifferent to wealth and poverty. The list of his works on philosophical and scientific subjects amount to sixty-one. Mr. Munk's 'Mélanges de Philosophie Juive et Arabe' (Paris, 1859) contains good articles on Al-Farabi and Al-Kindi.
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) was a great philosopher and physician. At the age of ten years he had completed the study of the Koran in Bukhara, where afterwards a certain Natili became his tutor, with whom he first studied the 'Eisagoge' of Porphyry, and afterwards Euclid, and lastly the 'Almagest' of Ptolemy. Natili then departed, and an ardent desire to study medicine having taken possession of Ibn Sina, he commenced to read medical books, which not being so difficult to understand as mathematics and metaphysics, he made such rapid progress in them that he soon became an excellent physician, and cured his patients by treating them with well-approved remedies. He began also to study jurisprudence before he was thirteen. At the age of eighteen he entered the service of a prince of the Beni Saman dynasty, Nuh bin Mansur, at Bukhara, a paralytic, who entertained many physicians at his court, and Ibn Sina joined their number. There he composed his 'Collection,' in which he treated of all the sciences except mathematics, and there also he wrote his book of 'The Acquirer and the Acquired.' He then left Bukhara, and lived in various towns of Khurasan, but never went further west, spending his whole life in the countries beyond the Oxus, in Khwarizm and in Persia, although he wrote in Arabic. It would be superfluous to follow all his changes of fortune, but it may be mentioned that when he was the first physician and vizier of Mezd-ud-daulah, a sultan of the Bowide dynasty, he was twice deposed and put in irons. He also appears to have acted treacherously towards Ala-ud-daulah, a prince of Ispahan, who was his benefactor. He was four years in prison, but at last succeeded in deceiving his guardians, and escaped. His dangerous travels, and the depression of mind inseparable from reverses of fortune, however, never interrupted his scientific pursuits. His taste for study and his activity were such that, as he himself informs us, not a single day passed in which he had not written fifty leaflets. The list of manuscripts left by him, and scattered in various libraries of Europe, is considerable, and though many of his works have been lost, some are still in existence. The fatigues of his long journeys, and the excesses of all kinds in which he indulged, abridged the life of this celebrated scholar, who died in A.D. 1037, at the age of fifty-six, at Hamadan, where the following epitaph adorns his tomb: 'The great philosopher, the great physician, Ibn Sina, is dead. His books on philosophy have not taught him the art of living well, nor his books on medicine the art of living long.'
A brief notice must be given of the celebrated physician and philosopher, Ali bin Ridhwan, who died A.D. 1067. He was such a prodigy of precocious learning that he began to lecture on medicine and philosophy at Cairo from his fourteenth year. He afterwards also taught astronomy. At the age of thirty-two he had attained a great reputation as a physician, and was a rich man at sixty. He left more than one hundred books which he had composed, and he himself says: 'I made abridgments of the chief philosophical works of the ancients, and left in this manner five books on philology; ten on law; the medical works of Hippocrates and Galen; the book of plants of Dioskorides; the books of Rufus, Paulus, Hawi, and Razi; four books on agriculture and drugs; four books for instruction in the 'Almagest' of Ptolemy, and an introduction to the study of it, and to the square of Ptolemy; as also to the works of Plato, Alexander, Themistios, and Al-Farabi. I purchased all these books, no matter what they cost, and preserved them in chests, although it would have been more profitable to have sold them again rather than have kept them.' Ibn Batlan, a clever physician, was a contemporary of Ibn Ridhwan, and travelled from Baghdad to Egypt only for the purpose of making his acquaintance, but the result does not appear to have been satisfactory to either party. He died A.D. 1063, leaving a number of works on medical and other subjects.
Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali was born A.D. 1058. He was considered chiefly as a lawyer and a mystic, but here he will be noticed chiefly as a philosopher and the author of 'The Ruin of Philosophers,' noticed at length by Haji Khalfa in his 'Encyclopædical Dictionary,' under No. 3764. But Ghazali's most celebrated work is 'The Resuscitation of Religious Sciences,' which is so permeated by the genius of Islam that, according to the general opinion of scholars, the Muhammadan religion, if it were to perish, might again be restored from this work alone. Orthodox fanatics, nevertheless, attacked his works as being schismatic, and they were even burnt in the Mugrib. He was born at Tus (the modern Mashad), in Khurasan, and passed his life partly there, also at Naisapur, Baghdad, Damascus, Egypt, and finally returned to Tus, where he died A.D. 1111. His works are very numerous, and all of them are instructive.
Ibn Bajah (known to Europeans under the name of Avempace) was a philosoper and a poet of considerable celebrity, and a native of Saragossa, in Spain. He was attacked by some people for his religious opinions, and represented as an infidel and an atheist, professing the doctrines held by the ancient sages and philosophers. Ibn Khallikan defends Ibn Bajah, and says that these statements were much exaggerated, but adds: 'God, however, knows best what his principles were,' Abul Hassan Ali al-Imam, of Granada, was of opinion that Ibn Bajah was the greatest Arab philosopher after Al-Farabi, and places him higher than Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali. He left numerous logical, grammatical and political works, and died at Fez in A.D. 1138.
Averroes, whose full and correct name is Abul Walid Muhammad bin Rashid, was a celebrated Arab scholar, born at Cordova A.D. 1126, and the author of many writings. He taught in his native town philosophy and medicine, two sciences which appeared for a long time to be inseparable, and the vulgar considered those professing them to be of almost supernatural attainments. The period of Averroes is that of the decadence of Arab dominion in Spain, a period when this great nation also lost the taste for sciences which it had brought to Europe. Considering the prodigious number of works composed by Averroes, who filled at the same time the offices of Imam and Kadi, his entire life must have been one of labour and meditation. He is the author of an Arabic version of Aristotle, but it is not the first which existed in that language, as some of his biographers assert, because this work had been produced already at Baghdad during the brilliant Khalifate of Mamun. There are various manuscripts of Averroes extant treating on physics, pure mathematics, astronomy and astrology, from which it would appear that, in spite of their encyclopædic attainments, the celebrated men of these times still believed in some popular errors. Science was at that time surrounded by a kind of superstitious halo of respect, to which Averroes, like so many others, is indebted for a good part of his renown. He died A.D. 1198, in the city of Morocco; his corpse was transferred to Cordova and there interred.
Medical science had already, under the second Khalif of the house of Abbas (A.D. 754-775), enjoyed the highest honours, which it ever afterwards retained. Great physicians were brought from the Persian hospital of Jondshapur, and between the years A.D. 750 and 850 the number of physicians was considerable, but only the most celebrated will be noticed.
Georgios (Jorjis) bin Bakhtyeshun, of Jondshapur, lived at the commencement of the Abbaside dynasty, and was the author of the book of Pandects. When Al-Mansur was building the city of Baghdad he suffered from pains in his stomach and from impotency, and Georgios, the director of the medical college at Jondshapur, was recommended to him as the most skilled physician of the time. Accordingly, the Khalif directed Georgios and two of his pupils, Ibrahim and Serjis, to come to Baghdad, appointing Gabriel (Jebrayl), the son of Georgios, as director of the hospital in the place of his father. Georgios cured Al-Mansur, and received from him three thousand ducats for his reward, along with a beautiful slave girl; the latter was, however, returned to the Khalif with thanks, and the remark that, 'being a Christian, he could not keep more than one wife.' From that moment the physician attained free access to the harem, and enjoyed high favour with the Khalif, who greatly pressed him in A.D. 770 to make a profession of Islam; but this he refused to do, and died shortly afterwards, in A.D. 771. Before his death Georgios asked to be allowed to return to Jondshapur, to be buried there with his ancestors. Al-Mansur said, 'Fear God, and I guarantee you paradise.' Georgios replied, 'I am satisfied to be with my ancestors, be it in paradise or be it in hell.' The Khalif laughed, allowed him to return home, and presented him with ten thousand pieces of gold for his travelling, expenses.
Gabriel (Jebrayl), the son of the above-named Georgios (Jorjis), was also a celebrated physician. He enjoyed great favour with Harun-ar-Rashid, who used to declare that he would not refuse him anything. When, however, this Khalif fell ill at Tus, and asked Gabriel for his opinion, the latter replied that if Harun had followed his advice to be moderate in sexual pleasure, he would not have been attacked by the disease. For this reply he was thrown into prison, and his life was saved only by the chamberlain Rabi'i, who was very fond of him. Amin, the son and successor of Rashid, followed the advice of Gabriel more than his father did, and would not eat or drink anything without his doctor's sanction. In A.D. 817 Gabriel cured Sehl bin Hasan, who recommended him to Mamun; but Michael, the son-in-law of Gabriel, was his body physician. In A.D. 825 Mamun fell sick, and, as all the medicines of Michael were of no use, Isa, the brother of Mamun, advised him to get himself treated by Gabriel, who had known him from boyhood; but Abu Ishak, the other brother of Mamun, called in Yahya bin Maseweih, and when he could do nothing, then Mamun sent for Gabriel, who restored him to health in three days, and was handsomely rewarded in consequence. When Mamun marched, in A.D. 828, against the Byzantines, Gabriel fell sick and died, whereon the Khalif took Gabriel's son with him on the campaign, he being also an intelligent and skilled physician.
The works of Gabriel are:
(1) A treatise on food and drink, dedicated to Mamun.
(2) An introduction to logic.
(3) Extracts from medical Pandects.
(4) A book on fumigatories.
Isa bin Musa, who flourished about A.D. 833, was also one of the most distinguished physicians of the period. He left the following works:
(1) Book on the forces of alimentary substances.
(2) A treatise for a person who has no access to a physician.
(3) Questions concerning derivations and races.
(4) Book of dreams, indicating why medicines should not be given to pregnant women.
(5) Book of the remedies mentioned by Hippocrates in his treatise on bleeding and cupping.
(6) Dissertation on the use of baths.
Without giving any details about Maseweih, Yahya bin Maseweih, Honein bin Ishak, and Kosta bin Luka, all of whom were distinguished for medical knowledge, some fuller mention must be made of Abu Bakr Ar-Razi (Rhases), who has been described as 'the ablest physician of that age and the most distinguished; a perfect master of the art of medicine, skilled in its practice, and thoroughly grounded in its principles and rules.' He composed a number of useful works on medicine, and some of his sayings have been handed down to us, and are still worthy of record, such as:
(1) When you can cure by a regimen, avoid having recourse to medicine.
(2) When you can effect a cure with a simple
medicine, avoid employing a compound one.
(3) With a learned physician and an obedient
patient sickness soon disappears.
(4) Treat an incipient malady with remedies which will not prostrate the strength.
Till the end of his life he continued at the head of his profession, finally lost his sight, and died in A.D. 923. A new and much improved edition of Razi's 'Treatise on the Small-Pox and Measles' was published in London in A.D. 1848 by Dr. Greenhill, and an article on him will also be found in Wüstenfeld's 'History of the Arabian Physicians.'
Poetry flourished to a very great extent during the reigns of the early Abbaside Khalifs, and, as all Arab littérateurs were more or less poets and writers of verses, it is somewhat difficult to select the most celebrated.
The first collection of Arabic poems was compiled by Al-Mofadhdhal in the work called after him—'Mofadhdhaliat.' He was followed by Abu Amr as Shaibani, by Abu Zaid bin A'us, Ibn-as Sikkit, Muhammad bin Habib, Abu Hatim es Sejastani, and Abu Othman al Mazini. Abu Tammam and Al-Bohtori, the collectors of the two Hamasas, are considered to be the two greatest poets of the third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 816-913). And it may here be observed that in the great bibliographical dictionary of Haji Khalfa, who enumerates seven Hamasas, the names of Ibn-ul Marzaban and of Ibn Demash, each of whom composed one, are not mentioned.
Zukkari made himself a reputation by editing several of the
Mua'llakat, as also the poems of the great pre-Islamite bards,
Al-Aasha and Al-Kama, whilst Abu Bakr as Sauli likewise acquired great
merit by publishing ten of the master-works of Arabic poetry.
From the many poets of this period some of the most celebrated have been selected—viz., Farazdak, Jarir, Al-Akhtal, Abul-Atahya, Bashshar bin Burd, Abu Nuwas, Abu Tammam, Al-Otbi, Al-Bohtori, Al-Mutanabbi, and An-Nami, and a few biographical details about them will be given, as also some remarks about Al-Mofadhdhal, the first collector and compiler of Arab poetry, and of Abul Faraj-Al-Ispahani, the collector of the great anthology called 'Kitab-ul-Aghani,' or the Book of Songs.
Jarir and Al-Farazdak were two very celebrated poets, who lived at the same time and died in the same year, A.D. 728-729. Ibn Khallikan has given their lives at considerable length, and says that 'Jarir was in the habit of making satires on Al-Farazdak, who retorted in the same manner, and they composed parodies on each other's poems.' Jarir always used to say that the same demon inspired them both, and consequently each knew what the other would say. On all occasions they seem to have been excessively rude in verse to each other, and did not at all mind about having recourse to actual insult. The lives of Al-Akhtal, Al-Farazdak, and Jarir, translated from the 'Kitab-ul-Aghani' and other sources, have been given by Mr. Caussin de Perceval in the Journal Asiatique for the year 1834. Prom this it would appear that the verses of these three poets were much discussed during their lifetime, and often compared with the productions of the other poets who followed them. Some writers are in favour of one and some of the other, but the general opinion of them is that their effusions resembled the Arab poetry written before the period of Muhammad much more than any poetry that was written during the reign of the Abbasides. Al-Akhtal belonged to a Christian tribe of Arabs, and was much patronized by the Omaiyide Khalif Abdul Malik (A.D. 684-705), in whose glory and honour he composed many verses, and, indeed, such good ones, that Harun-ar-Rashid used to say no poet had ever said so much in praise of the Abbasides as he (Akhtal) had written in praise of the Omaiyides. He died at an advanced age some years before Jarir and Farazdak, who were much younger men, but the exact year of his death does not appear to have been recorded.
The blind Bashshar bin Burd and Abul-Atahya were two of the principal poets who flourished in the first ages of Islamism, and ranked in the highest class among the versifiers of that period. The former was put to death, or rather beaten, by the orders of the Khalif Al-Mahdi, for certain satirical verses which the poet is said to have written, and from the effects of these strokes of a whip he died in A.D. 783. Abul-Atahya wrote many verses on ascetic subjects, and all his amatory pieces were composed in honour and praise of Otba, a female slave belonging to the Khalif Al-Mahdi, and to whom he appears to have been devotedly attached. He was born A.D. 747, and died A.D. 826.
Abu Nuwas was a poet of great celebrity. His father, Hani, was a soldier in the army of Marwan II., the last Omaiyide Khalif, and the poet was born in A.D. 762, some say in Damascus, others at Busra, and others at Al-Ahwaz. His mother apprenticed him to a grocer, and the boy became acquainted with the poet Abu Osâma, who discovered his talent, and induced him to accompany him to Baghdad. There Abu Nuwas afterwards became celebrated as one of the chief bards at the court of the Khalif, and his most famous Kasida is that which he composed in praise of Amin, the son of Harun-ar-Rashid. According to the critics of his time, he was the greatest poet in Islam, as Amriolkais had been before that period. When Merzeban was asked which he considered the greater poet, Abu Nuwas or Rakashi, he replied, 'A curse of Abu Nuwas in hell contains more poetry than a laudation of Rakâshi's in paradise.' He was a favourite of Amin, whom his brother Mamun reproached for associating with him, because Abu Nuwas enjoyed the reputation of being the greatest libertine of all the poets.
Sulaiman, the son of Al-Mansur, complained to the Khalif Amin that Abu Nuwas had insulted him with lampoons, and desired him to be punished with death; but Amin replied: 'Dear uncle, how can I order a man to be killed who has praised me in such beautiful verses?' and thereupon recited them.
Mamun, the son of Harun, states that he asked the great critic Yakut bin Sikkit to what poet he gave the preference. He replied: 'Among the pre-Islamite ones to Amriolkais and Al-Aasha, among the older Muslim poets to Jarir and Farazdak, and among the more recent to Abu Nuwas.'
Otbi, having been asked who was the greatest poet, replied; 'According to the opinion of the people, Amriolkais, but according to mine, Abu Nuwas.'
Al-Khasib, the chief of the revenue office in Egypt, once asked Abu Nuwas from what family he came. 'My talents,' replied he, 'stand me instead of noble birth,' and no further questions were asked him. He was a freethinker, who joked about the precepts of Islam. Once a Sunni and a Rafidhi desired him to be the umpire in their quarrel, as to who occupied the most exalted position after the Prophet. He said: 'A certain Yazid,' and on their asking who this Yazid might be, he replied: 'An excellent fellow, who presents me with a thousand dirhems every year.' He used to say that the wine of this world is better than that of the next; and, being asked for the reason, replied: 'This is a sample of the wine of paradise, and for a sample the best is always taken.'
Ismail bin Nubakht said: 'I never saw a man of more extensive learning than Abu Nuwas, nor one who, with a memory so richly furnished, possessed so few books. After his decease we searched his house, and could only find one book-cover containing a quire of paper, in which was a collection of rare expressions and grammatical observations.'
He died on the same day as the mystic Al-Kerkhi, whose corpse was accompanied to the grave by more than three hundred persons, but that of Abu Nuwas by not one. When, however, one of the three hundred exclaimed: 'Was not Abu Nuwas a Muslim? And why do none of the Muslims recite the funeral prayer over his body? all the three hundred who had assisted at the interment of Kerkhi recited the prayer also over the corpse of Abu Nuwas.
He is considered to have been an equally good narrator, scholar, and poet; and, being asked by Sulaiman bin Sehl what species of poetry he thought to be the best, replied: 'There are no poems on wine equal to my own, and to my amatory compositions all others must yield,' He used to boast that he knew by heart the poems of sixty poetesses, and among them those of Khansa and Leila, as also seven hundred Arjuzat, or poems in unshackled metre, by men. He said that he could compose nothing except when he was in a good humour, and in a shady garden. He often began a Kasida, put it away for several days, and then took it up again to rescind much of it.
According to Abu Amr, the three greatest poets in the description of wine are Aasha, Akhtal, and Abu Nuwas. Abu Hatim al Mekki often said that the deep meanings of thoughts were concealed underground until Abu Nuwas dug them out.
His end was tragic. Zonbor, the secretary, and Abu Nuwas were in the habit of composing lampoons against each other; whereon the former conceived the idea of propagating a satire against Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, in the name of Abu Nuwas; and this became the cause of his death. In an already half-drunken circle Zonbor recited the satire on Ali as the work of Abu Nuwas; on which all fell upon the poet, ripped open his belly, and pulled his entrails about till he expired. Others assert that Ismail bin Abu Sehl administered a poisonous potion to Abu Nuwas, because he had composed a lampoon against him; but its operation was so slow that he died only four months after he had drunk it. His death took place at Baghdad in A.D. 810.
Al-Otbi was a poet of great celebrity, and taught traditions to the people of Baghdad; but was more generally noted for drinking wine and composing love verses about his beloved Otba. Being of the tribe of Koraish, and of the family of Omaya, he and his father held a high rank, and were regarded as accomplished scholars and elegant speakers, Otbi both composed and collected poems. One of his verses has now acquired the force of a proverb: 'When Sulaima saw me turn my eyes away—and I turn my glances away from all who resemble her—she said: "I once saw thee mad with love;" and I replied: "Youth is a madness of which old age is the cure."' He died in A.D. 842.
Abu Tammam Habib, the celebrated poet, according to Ibn Khallikan, 'surpassed all his contemporaries in the purity of his style, the merit of his poetry, and his excellent manner of treating a subject. He is the author of a Hamasa, a compilation which is a standing proof of his great talents, solid information, and good taste in making a selection.' He wrote several other works connected with poets and poetry, composed many Kasidas, and knew by heart, it is said, fourteen thousand verses of that class of compositions called Rajaz, or free metre. The poetry of Abu Tammam was put in order for the first time by Abu Bakr as Sauli, who arranged it alphabetically, according to the rhymes, and then Abul Faraj Ali bin Husain Al-Ispahani classed it according to the subjects. He died at Mosul A.D. 845, about forty years of age, and was buried there; but his verses have survived, and rendered him one of the immortals.
The mantle of the poet Abu Tammam appears to have fallen on Abu Abada Al-Bohtori, who was born in A.D. 821, and, like his predecessor, is also the author of a Hamasa. He appears to have received his first encouragement to persevere as a poet from Abu Tammam, and later on he says: 'I recited to Abu Tammam a poem which I had composed in honour of one of the Humaid family, and by which I gained a large sum of money. When I finished he exclaimed: "Very good! You shall be the prince of poets when I am no more." These words gave me more pleasure than all the wealth which I had collected.' On being asked whether he or Abu Tammam was the better poet, Al-Bohtori replied: 'His best pieces surpass the best of mine, and my worst are better than the worst of his,' Abul-Ala al Maarri, a great philologist and poet (born in A.D. 973, died A.D. 1057), was asked which was the best poet of the three, Abu Tammam, Al-Bohtori, or Al-Mutanabbi; he replied that two of them were moralists, and that Bohtori was the poet. He died A.D. 897. His poems were not arranged in order till Abu Bakr as Sauli collected them and classed them alphabetically by their rhymes, while Abul Faraj Ali bin Husain Al-Ispahani collected them also, and arranged them according to their subjects. A copy of his 'Diwan' is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
Al Mutanabbi, or the pretended prophet, a rôle to which he aspired, but in which he did not succeed, comes next to the two great poets—Abu Tammam and Al-Bohtori—though some critics consider him to be superior to them. He is, however, generally acknowledged to be a great lyric poet, while many of his best Kasidas refer to the exploits of Saif ad Dawlah, a prince of the Benou Hamdan dynasty in Syria. After leaving him he went to Egypt, then to Persia, Baghdad, and finally Kufa, his native place, near which he was killed in a fight in A.D. 965. It is stated that in this contest Mutanabbi, seeing himself vanquished, was taking to flight, when his slave said to him, 'Let it never be said that you fled from a fight, you who are the author of this verse: "The horse, and the night, and the desert know me (well); the sword also, and the lance, and paper and the pen."'
Upon this he turned back and fought till he was slain, along with his son and his slave. His 'Diwan,' or collection of poems, is well known, and much read in our times, even in India. It has been translated into German.
An-Nami was one of the ablest and most talented poets of his time, but inferior to Mutanabbi, with whom he had some encounters and contests in reciting extemporary verses when they were at the court of Saif ad Dawlah together. He died A.D. 1008 at Aleppo, aged ninety.
Abul-Abbas Al-Mofadhdhal, the collector of the celebrated selection of Arabic poems called the 'Mofadhdhaliat,' which served as a model for the Hamasas, was the first editor of the seven suspended poems, the Mua'llakat, and also one of the earliest of the Arab philologists. He was a native of Kufa, and adhered to the faction of Ibrahim bin Abdallah; who rebelled in A.D. 761 against Al-Mansur, the second Abbaside Khalif. Al-Mansur, however, pardoned Al-Mofadhdhal, and attached him to the household of his son, Al-Mahdi, by whose orders Mofadhdhal made a collection of the most celebrated longer poems of the Arabs, one hundred and twenty-eight in number, under the title of the Mofadhdhaliat. This, the oldest anthology of Arabian poets, was first commented upon by his disciple, Al-Aarabi; then two hundred years later by the two great philologists and anthologists, Al-Anbari and An-Nahas; by Merzuk; and lastly by Tibrizi, who is sufficiently known in Europe as the editor and commentator of the Hamasa, published by Freytag with a Latin translation. Mofadhdhal supported himself as a copyist of the Koran, and spent the last portion of his life in mosques doing penance for the satires which he had composed against various individuals. His other works were a book of proverbs, a treatise on prosody, another on the ideas usually expressed in poetry, and a vocabulary. He was held to be of the first authority as a philologist, a genealogist, and a relator of the poems and battle-lays of the desert Arabs. He died A.D. 784.
Abul Faraj Ali bin Husain Al-Ispahani is the collector of the great anthology called 'Kitab-ul-Aghani' (the Book of Songs). This work, which surpasses all former ones of this name, he produced after a labour of forty years, and presented it to Saif ad Dawlah, who gave him a thousand pieces of gold for it, but excused himself at the same time for the smallness of this honorarium. In spite of his other works, and the long string of names given him by Ibn Khallikan, he is best known as Al-Ispahani, and as the author of the Aghani. His family inhabited Ispahan, but he passed his early youth in Baghdad, and became the most distinguished scholar and most eminent author of that city. He was born A.D. 897, and died A.D. 967, in which year also died the great scholar Kali, and the three greatest of his patrons, namely, Saif ad Dawlah, the sovereign of the Benou Hamdan in Syria; Moiz ud Dawlah, the sovereign of the Benou Bujeh in Irak; and Kafur, who governed Egypt in the name of the Akhsid dynasty. The 'Book of Songs,' notwithstanding its title, is an important biographical dictionary, treating of grammar, history and science, as well as of poetry.
Mention can here be made of Abu Muhammad Kassim Al-Hariri, who was one of the ablest writers of his time, and the author of the 'Makâmat Hariri,' a work consisting of fifty oratorical, poetical, moral, encomiastic and satirical discourses, supposed to have been spoken or read in public assemblies. Poets, historians, grammarians and lexicographers look upon the 'Makâmat' (Assemblies or Séances) as the highest authority, and next to the Koran, as far at least as language is concerned. It contains a large portion of the language spoken by the Arabs of the desert, such as its idioms, its proverbs, and its subtle delicacies of expression; and, according to Ibn Khallikan, any person who acquires a sufficient acquaintance with this book to understand it rightly, will be led to acknowledge the eminent merit of the author, his extensive information, and his vast abilities. A great number of persons have commented on the 'Makâmat,' some in long and others in short treatises, and many consider it to be the most elegantly written, and the most amusing, work in the Arabic language. Hariri was born A.D. 1054, and died at Busra A.D. 1122. He left some other good works in the shape of treatises, epistles, and a great number of poetical pieces, besides those contained in his 'Makâmat.'
There are two translations of the 'Makâmat' into English. One by the Reverend Theodore Preston, printed under the patronage of the Oriental Translation Fund, London, 1850. It contains only twenty of the fifty pieces in verse, with copious notes, while an epitome of the remaining thirty pieces is given at the end of the book. The other by the late Mr. Chennery, which ends with the twenty-sixth assembly or séance. The whole work was edited in Arabic, with a select commentary upon it in French, by Baron Silvestre de Sacy, and this was reprinted in 1847. Ruckert also made a very free translation of it in German verse, which reached a third edition in 1844, but this differs widely from the contents of the original, though it is said to be more pleasing and attractive to a general reader.
After the Muslim legal sciences had been established upon the fourfold foundations of the Koran, tradition, general consent of communities, and the analogies derived therefrom, then philosophy and mathematics began to flourish by translations made either directly from the Greek or through Syriac and Persian.
In former times, during the reign of Nausherwan, a Persian monarch of great renown (A.D. 530-578), there was some intercourse between Persian and Byzantine philosophers; several books on logic and medicine had been translated from Greek into Persian, and from these Abdullah Ibn Al-Mukaffa made translations into Arabic. The literary career of Ibn Al-Mukaffa, who presumed to vie with the eloquence of the Koran, and was considered to be a freethinker, and eventually slain, falls into the reign of Al-Mansur (A.D. 754-775), the second Khalif. But Ibn Al-Mukaffa rendered such services to Arabian literature, that a short sketch of his life will presently be given.
During the reign of Mansur (A.D. 754-775) Greek works were translated, not yet from the original, but from the Persian. During the Khalifate of his son, Mahdi (A.D. 775-785), Abd-Allah bin Hilal translated the celebrated animal fables of Bidpay from Persian into Arabic, under the title of 'Kalilah wa Dimnah,' and they were afterwards versified by Selil bin Nubakht. In Persian they are known under several titles, such as 'Kalilah wa Dimnah,' the 'Anwar-i Suheli,' and the 'Ayar Danish,' and in Turkish as the 'Humayan-namah.'
Eight years before the seventh Khalif, Mamun (A.D. 812-833), ascended the throne, many Greek and Syrian manuscripts had been collected in Baghdad. These were all preserved there in the library, which was called 'The House of Wisdom,' until Mamun began to utilize them by means of translations. The Khalif appointed the scholars Al-Hajjaj, Ibn Máttar, Ibn ul-Batrik, and Selma, to superintend the work, while the three brothers, Muhammad, Ahmed, and Hasan, sons of the astronomer Shakir, were directed to search for and to buy manuscripts. Mamun also sent the two physicians, Yohanna and Kosta, into the Byzantine dominions to bring manuscripts from thence to Baghdad. A new class of scholars was then formed, in the shape of translators, who were employed in translating works from the Greek, the Syriac, and the Persian languages into Arabic. The translators from the Persian were Musa and Yusuf, the two sons of Khalid, Hasan bin Sehl, and afterwards, Al-Baladori; from the Sanscrit, Munkah the Indian; from the Nabataean, Ibn Wahshiyah. Science became hereditary, as it were, in the families of the most celebrated scholars; medical science in the family of Bakhtyeshun; translations from Greek works in that of Honein bin Ishak, the most famous of all translators, and a prolific author besides. Maseweih and his son Yahya, Syriac Christians, were both celebrated as physicians and translators of ancient Greek works into Arabic; while Kosta bin Luka, who died in A.D. 932, was also one of the most fertile translators from Greek into Arabic, and, being born a Greek, he was able to correct the translations of Honein bin Ishak and others.
The number of translators, which amounted to about one hundred, might have been increased if Arab literature had further developed itself by incorporating works from other languages; but, as such was not the case, translators appeared very few and far between after the literature had attained to its highest perfection, at the end of the third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 913).
The celebrated Ibn Al-Mukaffa was one of the earliest and best translators. His full name is Abd-Allah Ibn Al-Mukaffa, but before he made his profession of Islam he bore that of Ruzbeh. He was a native of Har, a town in the province of Fars, and first served as secretary to Daud bin Hobeirah, and then to Isa bin Ali, the uncle of the two first Khalifs of the house of Abbas. He was an excellent poet, letter-writer, and orator, equally skilled in his mother-tongue, the Persian, as in the Arabic language, from the former of which he left the splendid translations of—
(1) 'The Khodanamah,' a legend.
(2) 'The Amirnamah,' or prince-book.
(3) 'Kalilah wa Dimnah.'
(4) 'Merdak.'
(5) 'Biography of Nausherwan.'
(6) 'The Great Book of Manners.'
(7) 'The Small Book of Manners or Good Habits.'
(8) 'The Book of Epistles.'
So far the 'Fihrist'; what follows is from Ibn Khallikan. Ibn Al-Mukaffa was the secretary and most confidential servant of Isa bin Ali, with whom he dined the day before he made his public profession of Islam. Having sat down, he began to eat and to mutter according to the custom of the Magians. 'How,' said Isa, 'you mutter like the Magians, though resolved to embrace Islamism!' to which Ibn Al-Mukaffa replied that he did not wish to pass a single night without being of some religion. In spite of his conversion, he was always suspected of freethinking, like Muti bin Iyas and Yahya bin Zaad, and one day, when Al-Jahiz, the philologist, made the remark that they were persons the sincerity of whose religious sentiments was doubted, one of the learned, on hearing this, said: 'How is it that Al-Jahiz forgets to count himself?'
When Khalil the prosodist was one day asked his opinion about Ibn Al-Mukaffa, he said, 'His learning is greater than his wit;' and the latter, being asked the same question concerning Khalil, replied, 'His wit is greater than his learning.' Being a favourite with the Khalif, he took great liberties with Sofyan, the Governor of Busra, and insulted the memory of his mother. One day Sulaiman and Isa, the uncles of the Khalif Mansur, desired to obtain a letter of amnesty from him for their brother Abd-Allah, and they instructed Ibn Al-Mukaffa to compose one in the strongest terms, which he did, and added to it the following clause, 'Should the Prince of the Believers ever act treacherously towards his uncle Abd-Allah, then may he be divorced from his wives, may his slaves be free, and may his subjects be solved from obedience!' The Khalif's dignity was shocked, and he ordered the writer of this letter of amnesty to be forthwith executed, and the Governor of Busra, whom Ibn Al-Mukaffa had many times insulted, very gladly undertook the duty. Al-Madaini narrates that when Ibn Al-Mukaffa was brought before Sofyan, the latter asked him whether he remembered the insults he had heaped upon his mother, and added, 'May my mother really deserve those insults if I do not get you executed in a manner hitherto unheard of!' He also recalled Ibn Al-Mukaffa's joke about Sofyan's big nose, because he had one day asked the governor, 'How are you and your nose?' On another occasion, when the governor remarked that he never had reason to repent keeping silence, Ibn Al-Mukaffa replied, 'Dumbness becomes you; then why should you repent of it.' Accordingly Sofyan ordered the members of Ibn Al-Mukaffa's body to be chopped off, one after the other, and thrown into a burning oven, into which, last of all, the trunk of his body was also thrown. There are other accounts of his death, viz., that he was strangled in a bath, or shut up in a privy. One opinion, however, generally prevails, that the execution was not a public one. The date of it is uncertain—A.D. 756, 759, and 760, are all given; but the victim was only thirty-six years of age at the time.
A few remarks may be made about the support given to learning and men of letters by the Omaiyide and Abbaside Khalifs, as also by those of the Spanish or Western Khalifate.
The Omaiyide Khalifs, with their capital at Damascus, were generally patrons of science, poetry, architecture, song, and music. But all these branches of knowledge were at that time merely rudimental; and, of the fourteen sovereigns of the dynasty, only five really deserve the name of protectors of learning; and of these Abdul Malik (A.D. 684-705), and his son Walid I. (A.D. 705-715), were the most distinguished.
During the period of their Khalifate there were not only male, but also some female poets. All their poems are mostly short, and confined to amatory, laudatory, or vituperative compositions, called forth by the momentary circumstances in which the authors happened to be placed. These pieces do not represent either deep thought or profound wisdom, but they show the feelings of the people, and their state of civilization at the time in question.
During this Khalifate were also produced the earliest germs of stylistics, epistolography and mysticism, all of which were more fully developed under the Abbasides. The originator of the first two was the Katib Abd Al-Hamid, secretary to the last Omaiyide Khalif, and he is designated in an old Arabic rhyme as 'the father of all secretaries.' Epistolary writing, it was said, began with Abd Al-Hamid, and finished with Ibn Al-Amid. As regards mysticism, the origin of its doctrines is sometimes assigned to Oweis Al-Kareni, the Prophet's companion, who disappeared mysteriously in A.D. 658. But mysticism and Sufism were subsequently much developed by Muhi-uddin Muhammad, surnamed Ibn Al-Arabi, a most voluminous writer on these subjects. He was born at Murcia, in Spain, A.D. 1165, and after studying in that country, went to the East, made the pilgrimage, visited Cairo and other cities, and died at Damascus A.D. 1240. He is the author of many works, but the most remarkable of them are 'Revelations obtained at Mecca' and 'Maxims of Wisdom set as Jewels.' Both Makkari the historian, and Von Hammer Purgstall, in his history of Arabian literature from the earliest times, give a long account of him.
Of the Khalifs of the house of Abbas, the second, third, fifth and seventh, viz., Al-Mansur (A.D. 754-775), Al-Mahdi (A.D. 775-785), Harun-ar-Rashid (A.D. 786-809), and Al-Mamun (A.D. 812-833) were the most distinguished as patrons of art, science and literature. But after the translation of the 'Arabian Nights' into European languages, the name of Harun-ar-Rashid became the best known in Europe as the representative of the most brilliant period of the Eastern Khalifate, and as the great protector of Arabic literature.
Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasides, was founded by their second Khalif, Al-Mansur, in A.D. 760, finished in four years, and raised to a high degree of splendour by Harun-ar-Rashid. Originally it was considered only as a great strategic point, and its garrisons were to keep the surrounding country in subjection. Eventually it became the centre of learning and civilization, and an Arab author wrote of it as follows: 'Baghdad is certainly the capital of the world, and the mine of every excellence. It is the city whose inhabitants have always been the first to unfurl the banners of knowledge, and to raise the standard of science; indeed, their subtlety in all branches of learning, their gentle manners and amiable disposition, noble bearing, acuteness, wit, penetration and talent are deservedly praised.' Baghdad, at the beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era, was the centre of all that was grand and brilliant in the Muhammadan world. Art and commerce, literature and science, were cultivated to a high degree, and the luxury and extravagance of court life exceeded almost the imagination of temperate European minds.
Everything curious, romantic and wonderful, narrated in the 'Nights' is connected with Harun-ar-Rashid's name, or supposed to have happened in his reign. Thus, his vizier, Jaafar, the Barmekide, the superintendent of his harem, Mesrur, and his spouse, Zobeida, were first made known to novel-readers, and their importance as historical personages were duly appreciated afterwards, when Erpenius, Pococke, Herbelot, and Reiske elucidated the history of the Khalifate by translating the works of the Arab chroniclers Abul-Faraj, Al-Makin, and Abul-feda. Later on still further information was made public about the translations made from Greek and Syriac into Arabic during his reign, as also concerning his position, not only as a lover of tales, but as a promoter of jurisprudence, a patron of the medical and mathematical sciences, and a builder of magnificent and useful edifices. His court was also well attended by poets and singers.
Harun was not, indeed, the first prince who made arrangements for translations from the Greek and the Syriac. In this he had been preceded, as already mentioned, by the Omaiyide prince, Khalid, the alchemist. But during the reign of Harun the business of translation was carried on to a much greater extent than it was under his predecessors, the Khalifs Mansur and Mahdi, during whose time translations were undertaken from Greek into Syriac, from Indian (Sanscrit) into Persian, but not yet into Arabic. The translators were mostly Christians and Jews. Theophilos of Edessa, the Maronite translator of Homer and of other Greek classics into Syriac, was an astronomer and an historian. Both he and the physician Georgios, son of Bakhtyeshun, from the university of Jondshapur, were Christians. Nubakht, the astronomer of the Khalif Mansur, was a Magian (Zoroastrian), Yahya bin Maseweih, Harun's physician, translated medical works. Hajaj bin Yusuf bin Matta dedicated his first edition of the elements of Euclid to Harun, and the second to Mamun.
As the family of the Barmekides played an important part, not only in politics, but also in literature, until its chief members were annihilated by Harun's orders, a brief notice of them may here be given.
Khalid bin Barmek was the son of a priest at the fire temple of
Nevbehar in Balkh, and became in course of time vizier of the first
Abbaside Khalif, and was retained in that office by the second Khalif,
Al-Mansur, and by the third, Al-Mahdi. He died A.D. 780.
Yahya, the son of Khalid, not only himself became the vizier of Harun, but also his two sons, Fadhl and Jaafar. Yahya was very liberal, and gave away sometimes considerable sums of money for very small services, or, indeed, for no service at all. After his son Jaafar had been executed, Yahya was thrown into prison, along with his other son, Fadhl, at Old Rakka, where he died in A.D. 805, at the age of seventy or seventy-four.
Fadhl, the son of Yahya, was more liberal but less eloquent than his brother Jaafar. Harun esteemed the two brothers so highly that he entrusted his son Muhammad to the care of Fadhl, and his son Mamun to the care of Jaafar. Afterwards he made Jaafar his vizier, and sent Fadhl to be Governor of Khurasan. There Fadhl built mosques, reservoirs of water and caravanserais, augmented the army, and attracted numbers of emigrants to the country, whereby he gained the approval of Harun, who ordered his poets to sing his praises. After the execution of Jaafar, Harun took Yahya, with his son Fadhl and all the Barmekides, to Rakka, giving Yahya the option to go where he liked; but he preferred to be imprisoned with his son in Rakka. There Fadhl died in A.D. 809, and when Harun was informed of his death, he said: 'My own is not far,' and died a few months afterwards in Tus, the modern Mashad. The death of Fadhl, as a generous patron, was bewailed by several poets, such as Abul Hojna, Otbi, Abu Nuwas, and others. Fadhl was also notable for his filial piety, and when the use of cold water injured the health of his father whilst they were in prison, he used to warm the water by placing a pot of it on his own stomach.
Jaafar (the brother of Fadhl and a son of Yahya), who was slain A.D. 802, is to be mentioned here, not for his tragic fate, which is well known, but rather for his literary attainments, especially his oratory and his style, in both of which he excelled. From his long biography, written by Ibn Khallikan, there will be given here only some extracts relating to science and literature. He was a great master of speech, and expressed his thoughts with much elegance. In one night he endorsed more than a thousand petitions addressed to the Khalif with his decisions, all of which were in perfect concordance with the law. His instructor in jurisprudence had been Abu Yusuf the Hanifite, whom his father Yahya had appointed to teach him. The favour enjoyed by Jaafar with Harun-ar-Rashid was so great that this Khalif caused one robe to be made with two separate collars, which they both wore at the same time. Ibn Khallikan narrates the traditions relating to the fall of Jaafar and his family; the one refers to his amours with Abbasa, the sister of Harun, and to the birth of a child; the other to the escape of a member of Ali's family entrusted to Jaafar's guardianship by Harun. The true cause was probably the Khalifs envy of the power, wealth, and generosity of the Barmekides, along with the backbitings of their enemies. Jaafar was slain at Al-Omr in the district of Al-Anbar, his head and the trunk of his body were set up opposite to each other on the two sides of the bridge of Baghdad, and his death was lamented by various poets.
After Mamun (A.D. 812-833) the most intellectual Khalif appears to have been Radhi-billah (A.D. 934-940). His poems were collected in a Diwan. He was the last Khalif who presided not only over the Government as a sovereign, but also over the pulpit as Imam; indeed, he may be said to be the terminal point of the power, brilliancy and independence of the house of Abbas, which henceforth gradually declined till its final extinction with the conquest of Baghdad by the Mughals in A.D. 1258.
The great chess-player, Abu-bakr as Sauli, bears witness, in Masudi's 'Meadows of Gold,' to the great accomplishments of Radhi-billah, and to his love of the sciences. Of games, chess and nerd[4] flourished during his reign, and although the perfection of song and of lute-playing had already passed away, singers and musicians are still mentioned. Of the amusements of the court, hunting appears to have flourished most, and the learned poet Koshajim, who wrote on the game of nerd, also left instructive poems on the chase. Radhi-billah appears to have been fond of books of travel and of natural history, and of the society of men of letters and of science, and liked listening to recitals on the history, politics, and glory of the old Persian kings.
[Footnote 4: Nerd.—This game is mentioned as early as the Shah-Namah, the author of which, Firdausi, was of opinion that it is of genuine Persian, and not of Indian origin, like chess, but this assertion is not necessarily correct. Hyde has described the game in his 'Historia Nerdiludii,' and it resembles somewhat the German puff and triktrak, and the English backgammon. It is played on a board divided into black-and-white compartments, with a black and a white house in the centre. The moves are made according to the numbers that come up on the throw of two dice.]
Of the Spanish Khalifs, mention only will be made of the ninth sovereign of the Benou Omaiyide dynasty in Andalusia, viz., Hakim II., who died A.D. 976. Among the five Arab rulers of Spain—viz., three Abd-ar-Rahmans and two Hakims—who have acquired everlasting fame in history as special friends of science and patrons of learned men, Abd-ar-Rahman III. and Hakim II. are the greatest and most prominent. They stand in the Arab literary history of the West as high as Harun and his son Mamun do in the history of the literature of the East. As Mamun was the greatest of the Benou Abbas Khalifs of Baghdad who promoted science and art, so Hakim II. was the greatest of the Benou Omaiyides in Cordova. From his earliest youth he had received a most careful scientific education, and applied his energies to study, as he could not devote them to public affairs on account of the long duration of his father's reign, from A.D. 912 to 961. Hakim's father, Abd-ar-Rahman III., invited the learned Abu Ali Ismail Al Kali, the philologist and author, from the court of Baghdad, where he enjoyed the greatest consideration with the Khalif Mutwakkil, to Cordova, and entrusted him with the education of his son, who, later on, composed a Diwan (collection of poems), divided into twenty parts, bearing, like the Surahs, or Chapters of the Koran, the most sublime objects of nature as titles, such as 'Heaven,' 'the Stars,' 'the Dawn,' 'the Night,' etc. Hakim pursued his studies under Kali for twenty years, with as much pleasure as advantage, and after ascending the throne, science and art still remained his companions. When his father died, and he assumed the Government, he led the funeral procession, surrounded by his Andalusian, Slavonic, and Mograbin body-guard, and interred the corpse with the greatest pomp in the mausoleum of Rozafa, and after that accepted the homage of his Viziers, Amirs, Kayids, and Kadis. Astrologers and poets heralded at Cordova and in the whole of Andalusia the continuation of the father's prosperous reign by his son, and spoke the truth this time.
Hakim, who had already as a youth been fond of books, now, when he became sovereign, fully satisfied this predilection, which had grown to be a passion. He spared neither trouble nor expense in collecting in his Merwan palace the rarest and most costly books in every branch of science from all countries. He sent special commissioners to Egypt, Syria, Irak, and Persia to purchase books. At Baghdad, Muhammad bin Turkhan was charged with the business of purchasing books, or getting them copied, for which purpose he had an establishment of calligraphers and stenographers; because of some books beautiful, and of others rapidly made, copies were required. He procured all the genealogies, all the histories, and all the poems of the Arabs; all works on law and jurisprudence, on grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, philology, mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic and geography, composed in Arabic. Thus the library of the Merwan palace became not only the richest in Islam, but also the best arranged, by the care which he bestowed on it. The catalogue consisted of forty-four fascicles, each of fifty leaves, so that the whole constituted a volume of two thousand two hundred leaves, two-fifths of which were filled with titles of poetical works only. In this catalogue the titles of the books were inserted, with the names of their authors, their descent, birth-place, the year of their birth and of their decease, in the most accurate manner, to serve as a model for other libraries, of which Spain contained so many. This library alone is said to have consisted of six hundred thousand volumes, a number never surpassed by any earlier or later libraries in Islam.
To his two brothers, who loved the sciences as ardently as himself, Hakim entrusted the care of the libraries, and of public instruction, appointing Abdul Latif to be the chief librarian, and another man to be the director of studies. He kept up intercourse with the great scholars of the East and of the West, with sundry persons in Syria, with learned men in Egypt, and with Abul Faraj Al-Ispahani (author of the great anthology 'Kitab-ul-Aghani') in Irak, giving houses and salaries to those who chose to reside at his court.
A few words must be said about the establishment of places of learning which were celebrated at the time. The first university, in the sense in which such an institution is at present understood, was flourishing in Syria long before any seat of learning of this kind had been established in Europe; and there was another in Egypt. The first institution was called 'The Society of the Brethren of Purity,' and the second (opened at Cairo on the 24th May, A.D. 1005) was founded by Al-Hakim-bramrillah, and bore the name of Dar-ul Hikinat, or Abode of Wisdom. It was under this same name that the library of the Khalifs was formerly known at Baghdad. Later on the great vizier Nizam-ul-Mulk founded a high school at Baghdad, in A.D. 1066. It was not the first that had been established in Islam, but it eclipsed all others of the kind by the abilities of the professors who worked there, viz., the Imam Abu Ishak Shirazi, Al-Ghazali, and others. With the Society of the Brethren of Purity, mentioned above, there were two men closely connected, viz., Al-Tavhidi, who died A.D. 985, and Al-Majridi, who died A.D. 1004, the former in the East, the latter in the West, and both of them are deserving of the general name of philosopher. So much for the Eastern Khalifates. As regards the Western Khalifate, still greater attention was paid to education and learning there. The schools and lectures were attended by many Europeans, who were not, perhaps, sufficiently grateful to the Arabs for keeping up a progress in literature and science while Europe itself was struggling for emancipation from the dark ages which followed the higher cultures of Greece and of Rome.
THIRD PERIOD.
From the fall of Baghdad, in A.D. 1258, to the present time.
The conquest of Baghdad by the Mughals is a most remarkable period, not only in the literature, but also in the history, of the Arabs. It marks the final extinction of the Abbaside dynasty, from whom the ancient power and glory had vanished to such a degree that the authority of the Khalifs may almost literally be said to have been confined to the city only. Halaku Khan, the brother of the grand Khan Kubilai, and grandson of Jenghiz Khan, took and sacked Baghdad, keeping the Khalif imprisoned for some time, but slaying him at last, with his sons and several thousand Abbasides. Al-Mustaa'sim was the thirty-seventh and last Khalif of the house of Abbas, which had reigned over five hundred years, and was now extinguished.
Halaku Khan attacked Baghdad by the advice of Khojah Nasir-uddin Tusy, the great Persian astronomer and mathematician. Nasir-uddin had entered the service of the last prince of the Assassins only for the purpose of avenging himself on the Khalif, who had disparaged one of his works. When, however, he became aware of Halaku's power, he not only betrayed his new master to him, but led the Mughal conqueror also to Baghdad. After the burning of the library at Alamut (the stronghold of the Assassins, where they kept their literary treasures) and the sacking of Baghdad by Halaku Khan, the erection of the astronomical observatory at Maragha, under the direction of Nasir-uddin Tusy, was the first sign that Arab civilization and the cultivation of science had not been entirely extinguished by Tartar barbarism. The learned viziers who stood by the side of the conqueror, such as the two brothers Juvaini, were Persians, and therefore hardly belong to the history of Arab literature. But the fact that one of these two historians now wrote 'The Heart Opener,' also implies that the invasion of the barbarians had not quite put an end to literary activity.
More than ten historians flourished at the beginning of this period whose names terminated with 'din,' such as Baha-uddin, Imad-uddin, Kamal-uddin, etc., and they were contemporaries of the Arab Plutarch Ibn Khallikan, already mentioned and described in the preceding period.
The 'Alfiyya,' or Quintessence of Arab Grammar, was written in verse by Jamal-uddin Abu Abdallah Muhammad, known under the name of Ibn Malik. The author died in A.D. 1273-1274; but his work has lived, and it is looked upon as a good exponent of the system. The Arab text has been published, with a commentary upon it in French, by Silvestre de Sacy, A.D. 1834.
During the eighth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1301-1398), there lived three distinguished men, one famed as a geographer and traveller, and the other two as historians, viz., Ibn Batuta, Abul Feda, and Ibn Khaldun. The first-named left his native town, Tangiers, in A.D. 1324, and travelled all over the East, performing his pilgrimage to Mecca in A.D. 1332. The travels of Ibn Batuta were translated by the Rev. S. Lee, and published by the Oriental Translation Fund, as their first work, in A.D. 1829. This traveller has been noticed by Kosegarten in a Latin treatise, and his travels have been also translated into French, with the Arabic text above, by C. Defremery and R. Sanguinetti, at the expense of the French Government (1874-1879).
Abul Feda Ismail Hamawi is well known as an historian, and is frequently mentioned by Gibbon as one of his authorities. He wrote an account of the regions beyond the Oxus, and also an abridgment of universal history down to his own time, and as he is supposed to be very exact, and his style elegant, his works are very much esteemed. He died A.D. 1345, having succeeded his brother Ahmad as King of Hamat in Syria, A.D. 1342.
Ibn Khaldun, the African philosopher, was born in Tunis, A.D. 1332, and passed his youth in Egypt. He served a short time as Chief Justice at Damascus, and returned to Egypt, where he became Supreme Judge, and died there A.D. 1406. His principal and most remarkable work is the 'History of the Arabs, the Persians, and the Berbers.'
During the ninth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1398-1495) Arabian literature can still boast of a few great names. Ibn-Hajar was not only the continuator of Ibn Kesir's universal history, called 'The Beginning and the End,' but also the author of biographies of celebrated men who had lived during the preceding century, and of other works besides. He died A.D. 1449. Ibn Arabshah was the writer of a history of Timour, or Tamerlane, which has some celebrity, and has been translated into Latin and French. He was a native of Damascus, and died there A.D. 1450.
Majr-uddin Muhammad Bin Yakub, surnamed Firuzabadi, a learned Persian, was the author of the largest and most celebrated Arabic dictionary in existence at the time, called the 'Qânûs,' or Ocean, a standard work to this day, and always greatly praised, and also used by European lexicographers.
Taki-uddin, of Fez, composed the best history of Mekka, and A'ini, who died A.D. 1451, wrote two celebrated historical works. But the greatest historian of this time was Al-Makrisi, whose proper name was Taki-uddin Ahmad, and who was born at Makris, near Baalbec, in A.D. 1366. He early devoted himself to the study of history, geography, astrology, etc., at Cairo, and his Egyptian history and topography is still an important work, describing the state of the country and its rulers. He died at Cairo, A.D. 1442. Some of his works have been translated into French and Latin, and are still referred to.
In honour of Sayuti, that colossus of learning, who cultivated, according to the spirit of his times, so many sciences, and dealt with them practically, this might be called the poly-historical and poly-geographical period. Julal-uddin Sayuti is said to be the author of some four hundred works, and he died in A.D. 1505, some twelve years before the conquest of Egypt by Selim I, the Sultan of Turkey, when independent Arab literature under Arab sovereigns came to an end. It is true enough that not only in Egypt and Syria, but also in Turkey and Persia, Arabic books were written afterwards, but more under foreign protection, although in the two first-named countries Arabic is the language of the people, while in the last two it occupies nearly the same position that Latin does in European universities and in the Roman Catholic Church.
In the tenth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1495-1592) the generally prevalent belief that the world would, at the completion of it, come to an end, contributed much to the gradual decay of science and literature. The case is somewhat analogous to the superstition in Europe some six hundred years previously, when the Christian era attained its millennium, which was considered to carry with it the same catastrophe. This prophecy, believed to be true, contributed in some measure to slacken authority as well as exertion, and the power of Islamitic countries really sank; but this might have been predicted without any prophetic foresight. In one part of Islam, the ruin of Muhammadan countries thus prophesied was accomplished twenty-one years before the end of the thousandth year, that is in the 979th year of the Hijrah, A.D. 1571, by the total expulsion of the Moors from Spain. Granada itself had succumbed already, seventy-nine years before, and the unwieldy palace of the kings, of Spain (still unfinished) had risen by the side of the lofty arcades of the Alhambra, still a lovely specimen of Moorish artistic design and architecture.
The tenth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1495-1592), which was the first of the decay of Arab literature, is to be considered as the period when the political importance of Turkey culminated in the reign of Sulaiman the Law-giver. There were, however, four authors of celebrity who wrote both in Arabic and in Turkish. Ibn Kamal Pasha, the surname of Mufti Shams-uddin Ahmad bin-Sulaiman, who died A.D. 1534, wrote on history in Turkish, and on law in Arabic; the Mufti Abu Sa'ud acquired great renown by his numerous Fetwas (legal decisions), approving of the political institutions of Sulaiman; Ibrahim of Aleppo is the author of the 'Molteka' (Confluence of Two Seas), which embodies the essence of Muslim law, according to the Hanifi ritual; and lastly, Birgeli, otherwise known as Mulla Muhammad Ibn Pir Ali ul-Birkali, was equally great as a dogmatist and as a grammarian. He wrote in Arabic 'The Unique Pearl; or, The Art of Reading the Koran,' and died A.D. 1573. Special mention, too, must be made of Mulla Ahmad Bin Mustafa, the celebrated Arabian, whom Haji-Khalfa always calls by the more euphonious name of Abul-Khair (Father of Wisdom). This author is worthy of notice, on account of the Arabic works he wrote on biographical, historical, and especially encyclopædic subjects. His 'Key of Felicity' will remain for ever the best encyclopædia of Arabian sciences, representing as it does their division among the Arabs, with notices of the works of scholars in every branch of them in a most compact and comprehensive manner. He died A.D. 1560.
The three most celebrated calligraphers of this century were Hamdallah, who died A.D. 1518; Mir Ali, who died A.D. 1544; and Muhammad Hussain Tabrizi, who died A.D. 1574. Their names are just as celebrated for Thuluth and Talik writing as were formerly those of Ibn Bawwab, of Ibn Hilal, and of Yakut are for Naskhi. In Egypt and Syria the characters used were always more beautiful than those of Andalusia, which survived in the Mugrib (North of Africa).
Here, perhaps, it may be stated that the art of Arabic writing came into existence but a very short time before Muhammad. 'It was Abu Ali bin Mukla who first took the present system of written characters from the style of writing employed by the people of Kufa, and brought it out under its actual form. He had, therefore, the merit of priority, and it may be added that his handwriting was very elegant. But to Ibn Al Bawwab pertains the honour of rendering the character more regular and simple, and of clothing it in grace and beauty.' In other words, Ibn Mukla was the first who changed the Kufic into the new Naskhi character, which Ibn Bawwab improved after him by imparting rotundity and clearness to the new letters, and which Ibn Yakut Al-Mausili brought afterwards to the greatest perfection in A.D. 1200.
Ibn Mukla, who was born in A.D. 885, and died A.D. 941, was vizier to the Khalifs Al-Kahir-billah and Al-Radhi-billah; but, falling into disfavour through the intrigues of his enemies, he first had his hand cut off in A.D. 937, and eventually his tongue was torn out, and he was allowed to perish in the dungeon without any assistance being offered to him.
Ibn-al-Bawwab, the Penman, is said to have possessed a skill in penmanship to which no other person ever attained in ancient or modern times. He died at Baghdad A.D. 1032, and the following verses were composed as his elegy:
'Thy loss was felt by the writers of former times, And each successive day justifies their grief. The ink-bottles are therefore black with sorrow, And the pens are rent through affliction.'
During the eleventh century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1592-1689) there lived Mustafa bin Abdullah Katib Jelaby, otherwise known as Haji Khalfa, and commonly called Mustafa Haji Khalfa, a man of science as a Turkish historian and geographer, but an Arabic encyclopædist and bibliographer. He was the compiler of a work containing many thousands of titles of Arab, Persian, and Turkish books, with the names of their authors. Fluegel edited this great work under the title of 'Lexicon Enciclopædicum et Bibliographicum,' with a Latin translation in seven bulky volumes, and it is an extremely valuable work of reference, put together with the most astonishing and persevering care, and consulted by all who desire information on Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literature. This was printed by the Oriental Translation Fund between A.D. 1835 and 1850, and will always remain as one of the most valuable works printed by that most useful society, whose extinction must ever be regretted by all Orientalists and persons interested in Oriental literature. Haji Khalfa wrote another interesting work, giving a detailed account of the maritime wars of the Turks in the Mediterranean and Black Sea and on the Danube, which has been translated by Mr. James Mitchell. The date of Haji Khalfa's death is uncertain. He is known to have been alive in A.D. 1622, and still in 1652, and he is supposed to have died in A.D. 1657.
The works of Abul Khair, previously mentioned, and of Haji Khalfa, embody a mass of information, and constitute the top of the pyramid of encyclopædical and biographical works, after which nothing worthy of mention has been written on these subjects. The basis of this pyramid had been already laid by An-Nadim, the author of the 'Fihrist,' who flourished A.D. 987, and by Ibn Khallikan, who died A.D. 1282.
During this century (A.D. 1592-1689) of the most sanguinary wars, revolutions and dethronements, the condition of Arab literature in the Ottoman Empire was neither progressive nor satisfactory. Nevertheless, the study of the sciences, and especially the linguistic and juridical branches of them, were fostered not only in Constantinople, but also in Syria and Egypt, in consequence of the institution of the body of Ulema, established by Muhammad II., the Conqueror (A.D. 1451-1481), and improved by Sulaiman I., the Law-giver (A.D. 1520-1566), which sheltered the cultivation of science from the storms of war within the inviolable precincts of religion.
Mention may be made of Muhammad-Al-Amin, the learned philologist and lawyer of Damascus, who was born in that town about the middle of the eleventh and died the beginning of the twelfth century of the Hijrah, and produced a dozen respectable works, the principal of which bears the title of 'The Biographies of the Celebrated Men of the Eleventh Century,' A.H. He gives an account of a couple of hundred scholars, who represented in Egypt and in Syria the last rays of the setting sun of Arabian literature.
Next to Muhammad-Al-Amin another author of about a dozen works is to be noticed, namely, Ahmad-Al Makkari, whose principal work was a history of the Muhammadan dynasties in Spain, which was translated from the copies in the library of the British Museum, and illustrated with critical notes on Spanish history, geography and antiquities, by Pascual de Gayangos, and printed for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland in A.D. 1840-43. Makkari also wrote a history of Fez and Morocco, as well as an account of Damascus. He died at Cairo A.D. 1631.