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5474

Short Histories of the Literatures of the World

Edited by

Edmund

Gosse

A HISTORY OF

ARABIC LITERATURE
BY

CLEMENT HUART
SECRETARY-INTERPRETER FOR ORIENTAL LANGUAGES TO THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT, AND PROFESSOR AT THE fcOLE DES LANGUES ORIENTALES IN PARIS

NEW YORK
D.

APPLETON AND COMPANY

1903

Copyright, 1903

By D.

APPLETON AND COMPANY

reserved

All

7-ights

PuMisJied September, 1903

EDITORIAL PREFACE
This volume has been written
series
at

my

invitation for this

Short Histories of the Literatures of the World, and has been translated from the author's manuscript by Lady Mary Loyd. Professor Clement Huart, who is one of the most distinguished and most widely accomplished of living
of

was born in 1854. He is among the many eminent Eastern scholars who have proceeded from the Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes, and it is his rare distinction to have proceeded, from the first, at
Orientalists,

equal steps along the investigation of Arabic, Persian,

Turkish, and

Romaic

literatures.

He was

early

at-

tached to the service of the French Foreign Office, and exercised for several years the functions of chancellor He was ultiat the French Consulate at Damascus. mately called to Constantinople, originally as dragoman In i8go he to the French Embassy, then as Consul.
to Asia Minor to make a report on the Arabic epigraphy of that province, and he has made similar

was sent

investigations in
fill

Syria.

He was
of

recalled to Paris to

the responsible office

secretary-interpreter for

Oriental languages to the French Government.

The

publications of Professor Huart are numerous, and are

known

to all

Eastern scholars.

vi

EDITORIAL PREFACE

I have to thank Professor Huart for the kindness with which he has adapted his extraordinary stores of information to the scope of the volumes of the present series. As the system of literation used for the Arabic language in France is quite different from that employed by English scholars, it was necessary to transpose Professor Huart's spelling of proper names, and this task has been performed for me by Mr. Reynold A. Nicholson, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and now Lecturer in Persian to that University.

EDMUND
January
1903.

GOSSE.

CONTENTS
CHAP.
I.

PAGE

THE CLIMATE AND THE RACE ORIGINS OF ARABIC POETRY ITS PRIMITIVE FORMS
.
.

II.

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY

lo

III.

THE KORAN

33

IV.

THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY

THE 'ABBASIDS

46
63

V. VI.

THE

'ABBASIDS

[continued) [continued]

137

VH.
VIII. IX.

THE 'ABBASIDS THE 'ABBASIDS THE 'ABBASIDS

174

[continued]
[contimied]

216

2S0

X.

ARABIC LITERATURE FROM THE CAPTURE OF

BAGDAD DOWN TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

XI.
XII.

323
411

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE PERIODICAL PRESS

437

BIBLIOGRAPHY

447

INDEX

4SI

A HISTORY OF

ARABIC LITERATURE
CHAPTER
I

THE CLIMATE AND THE RACE ORIGINS OF ARABIC POETRY ITS PRIMITIVE FORMS
Range after range of grey serrated mountain peaks southward, again, huge plains, stretching to endless horizons, and strewn with blackish pebbles and, last of all, the sandy Desert, tinged with red, its rolling drifts blown hither and thither by the winds, to the unceasing terror of the traveller: such are the regions which part ArJtbia from the rest of the earth, and which made it for On every other side, so long a time a land of mystery. the sea. The Red Sea, with its depths peopled with myriad madrepores, its dangerous reefs just hidden beneath the surface of the waters. The Indian Ocean, with its periodical monsoons, and its wild hurricanes raging over the open. The Persian Gulf, whose wavelets die on the alluvia of two great historic rivers Euphrates and Tigris. In the centre of the Peninsula, tall, bare mountains rise once more. About their feet, where water springs are found, stand towns, with palm groves clus;

ARABIC LITERATURE

taring round them.

On

the sea coast are

many

ports,

where ships embark the produce of the country dates, coffee, gums, and balsams, while some small quantities of European exports are landed in exchange. From time immemorial, the nomad Arabs, owners of great flocks and herds, have wandered to and fro upon this territory, moving their camps of black camel's haircloth tents whithersoever the grass grows or a tiny rill of water tinkles journeying from one point to another
;

on single-humped camels the only steed the nature of the country will permit in endless caravans, which sometimes become warlike expeditions. What is this nation, which at one moment of its history leapt up before the world in sudden and amazing fortune, overthrowing the great Persian Empire of the Sasanians, and defeating the Roman Legions of the Lower Empire? One burst of enthusiasm it was but a flash sent forth these men (who had done naught, hitherto, but quarrel over a good camping-ground, or fight to avenge some wrong) to conquer the whole world. But the Bedouin fell back ere long into his primitive way of life. Lovingly has he clung to the native ignorance, which he never would cast off. As for the town-bred Arab, intercourse with Syrian and Chaldean merchants, before the days of Islam, and with the pilgrims who have gathered to venerate the Sacred Temple of Mecca, the Ka'ba and its Black Stone, ever since the times of Mahomet the Prophet, has done something, it may be but little enough towards his civilisation, and those vices which are the virtues of the primitive man cunning, greed, suspicion, crueltyreign unchecked, even to this day, in the hearts of the dwellers in these inaccessible towns.

THE CLIMATE AND THE RACE

The Arab
events.

of the Desert is a man of courage, at all His adventurous mode of life makes bravery indispensable. A perpetual traveller, he wanders to and fro seeking the necessary water-supply for his encampment, and the scanty herbage without which his flocks cannot exist. For a lengthened period his camel was his only steed. This animal is the only one mentioned in the Bible and the ancient classics. The introduction of the horse we know not the exact period provided fresh food for his moral qualities. The Arab became an excellent horseman and, from the fourth century of our era, Saracen cavalry makes its appearance. The Thamudites, an Arab tribe, numbered fighting men who brandished lances, and rode that pachyderm whose conquest was held by Buffon to be a noble thing. Often two warriors bestrode the same dromedary, as in those squadrons which General Bonaparte sent out to scout the Desert. When the scene of combat was reached, one rider would descend, and mount the charger he had Dressed in the coat of led, barebacked, to the spot. mail borrowed from the Persians, helmet on head, and waving the long bamboo lance which ships had brought up the Persian Gulf from India to Al-Khatt, these horsemen charged and then fled, ready to charge down again upon the enemy who should advance in their pursuit. This was war but the Bedouin was a robber too, a

bandit, a brigand.

The Gliazw the

Razzia, as the

borrowing an Algerian expression is, indeed, a primitive form of the struggle for existence, but, to us civilised folk, it is an act of brigandage flocks and herds driven off, women and children carried away into slavery, and now and again a general massacre. The poetry of these same brigands is by no means the
French
say,

ARABIC LITERATURE

least charming among that which has come down to us from the old days. Whence did this people spring? By language and

ethnological conformation, it certainly belongs to the great Semite group, which is scattered over the whole The Peninsula may possibly have been of hither Asia. populated by a migration of tribes from the lower

Babylonian plains. Yet its traditions betray some cross breeding with African races. At a very early period the slave-trade had carried negroes to Arabian soil. It is a curious fact that the Arabs themselves ascribe pure

Arab blood
and accept

to the
as

Yemen

populations,

whom we know

to be allied by race

and dialfct with the Ethiopians

nationality, a Semite emigration, led

more recent source of their own by Ishmael, son of

the issue of his marriage with

Abraham and Hagar, or

a daughter of Yemen. Be that as it may, it was the struggle between the descendants of Qahtan, King of Sheba, and the children of 'Adnan, of the house of Ishmael, and the wars of the tribes connected with them,
led them hither and thither across the mountains and over the wide sand wastes, which evoked the poetic genius of Arabia. The long caravan-marches across the monotonous

whose migrations

when the camel's steady swing bends the rider's body almost double, turning the unaccustomed traveller sick and giddy, soon taught the Arab to sing rhymes.
deserts,

He even noted, very soon, that as pace of his recitation the long string raise their heads and step out with This creature, stupid and vindictive
sensitive, to

he hurried the
of camels

would
be,
is

quickened pace.

though
all

it

some

extent, to music, or, at

events, to

rhythm.

Its

four heavy steps gave the metre, and the

ORIGINS OF ARABIC POETRY

alternations of long

and short syllables in the spoken language the successive pulsations of the said metre. This was the hidd, the song of the leading camel-driver of the caravan. And here we have the origin of the prosodic metre, unconsciously invented by the native genius of the Bedouin, springing from the necessities of the life in which his monotonous existence dragged
for which the theorists of a later date formulated laws. We know that the idea of Khalil's prosody came to him from hearing the hammers of the workmen in the bazaars ringing on their anvils with alternate cadenced strokes. Until the wise grammarian made this fruitful discovery, the Arabs had produced poetry with no knowledge of its rules, beyond their own innate feeling for poetic rhythm. Here, then, we see the Arab singing his way along his lengthy journeys, and weaving poems which celebrated a few restricted subjects the image of the best beloved, the remnants of a forsaken camp, or the struggles of some bloody feud. Not that his memories of the frays in which he had fought, the pillaged caravans, the quarrels over a spring of water, the contentions about stolen camels, had ever stirred an epic feeling in him. That wondrous appanage of the Indo-European
itself out,

races, their power of translating historic or legendar}' events into mighty poems, teeming with grandiose pictures,

for ever sought

whose superhuman heroes are types of an ideal and never realised, has no existence in

the brain of the peoples speaking the Semitic tongues.

The

for that

breath comes shorter, but it is none the less mighty and though its expression of thought may be
;

concise,

its

siderable,

on the human mind has been confrom since this inspiration have sprung the
effect

ARABIC LITERATURE

religious prose-poems which had their birth in Jerusalem and Mecca. It was from the Desert, then, that Arab poetry was to come for the towns were too much preoccupied with commercial matters to give literature any chance of growth. Southwards, the Himyarite populations, living on those trade routes which, from the most ancient times, had connected Egypt with India by the sea highway, had founded cities which grouped themselves into States amongst them that of Sheba, whose legendary Queen figures amongst the great folk who journeyed to
;

salute the glory of the children of Israel, the son of

mighty David, the wise King Solomon, and the existence

of which, in the first centuries of the Christian era, is

proved by monuments now in ruins, in Yemen and Hadramaut, and by inscriptions in Himyaric characters, surveyed by J. Halevy and Glaser. Northwards, Syrian civilisation had early reached the Arabian oases, and brought Syrian gods with it, as at Taima. On the frontiers of the Roman Empire, and on those of the Persian Empire of the Arsacids and Saslnians, little the princes of Ghassan, to the States had grown up west of the Syrian desert, the princes of Hira, not far from the Euphrates, ruled small kingdoms, centres of civilisation which shed their brightness farther than one would have thought. At Hira, notably, where a mixed population drawn from divers countries had settled, the 'Ibads, former slaves, who had been freed, and remained

clients of the reigning tribes, practised mercantile pur-

and travelled about Arabia, whither they carried grown on the banks of the great river and ripened in their own cellars. These Tbads were Christians, and we shall shortly see that it was these wine
suits,

the wines

ITS PRIMITIVE

FORMS

merchants who, when they sold the Bedouins the enchanting beverage their own oases did not supply,

brought

in

ideas

of

Christianity as well, and

made

proselytes such as would hardly have been expected, seeing the nature of the gospel they set out to preach.

The most ancient remnants of this primitive Arab poetry are fragments of poems relating to the Hijd
satire

which a superstitious feeling was attached, and a magic power ascribed. The poet properly speakwas called on ing, the sage, Skd'ir, a sort of soothsayer these satires, passed from which lip to lip to compose amongst tribes of a common origin, and were swiftly answered by other satires, sprung from the brain of the

to

poet of the tribal adversaries. Nothing now remains of the songs improvised according to a former Prefect of Constantinople, St. Nilus, who turned hermit about a.d. 400 by the Sinai Arabs, when they reached a spring after a long journey. Sozomen, a Greek author, who wrote an ecclesiastical

history in the

fifth

Mania or Mavia, Queen

century, reports that in A.D. 372 of the Saracens, defeated the

Roman troops in Palestine and Phoenicia, and that the memory of this victory was preserved by the Arabs in Human remembrance, unless set their popular songs.
is a very shortand the memory of bygone days soon fades away. We must not wonder, then, that the most ancient of the Arab poems only go back to the sixth century of our era, when Nabatean travellers brought the Estrangelo alphabet from Syria, and applied it to the Arab tongue an attempt of this kind may be noted in the bilingual inscription of Harran. It was to the Jinns, the mischievous rather than

down on

brick, or stone, or paper,

lived thing,

ARABIC LITERATURE
spirits

wicked

which inhabit
his

solitary places, that the

;

ancient poet ascribed

and the Jinn breathed into him the idea of bantering the tribal enemy, always with the underlying thought that the biting satire, repeated in the various camps, might work the foe some harm, might cast a spell upon him, as our own magicians of the Middle Ages used to say. The poet was the wise man, the learned in magic processes, the
inspiration
tribal

oracle,

inspired

by the

Jinn.

It

was

at

the

order of the old poet Zuhair ibn Janab that the encampment was moved, or set up, at whatever time and place he deemed best. On his advice wars were made, and when the booty was divided he was given his share,
Satire was his weapon, the portion of the bravest. wounding, tormenting, like the sharpest blade, driving the peoples to fall upon each other. But at the same

time
to

it was an incantation, threatening the foe, seeking harm him by stirring up the malevolent deities of the Desert, cursing him, dooming him to ruin and destruction, by the use of the fetish word known to the sage, the shd'ir, and to him alone. Unfortunately no text of any of these satires has come down to us. But we can easily imagine the subjects on which they turn, by a

reference to Balaam's famous curse.

it, such on one side of the head, and the wearing of one sandal only, and the trailing of the mantle on the ground. The formulas were first of all pronounced in rhymed prose, .r^"' this was replaced by the metre called rajaz, a sort of very simple chant, two long syllables, followed by a short, and then another long from that time Arab poetry had an actual existence, although this, according to native feeling, is not a

The Hijd had

special rites connected with

as the anointing of the hair

ITS PRIMITIVE
true prosodic metre.

FORMS

9
at all events

But the Arabs have

preserved

its

memory

as being their primitive metre,

from which all the rest have proceeded all, at least, For, as time went on, town used by the Desert poets. life, and the influence, of music and the dance, led to the
invention of other rhythms.

CHAPTER

II

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY

The most

the collection of the

poems are those forming seven muallaqdt literally " the suspended," a name given them at a much later date by Hammad-al-Rawiya, and on which is founded the absolutely untrue legend that these pieces, written with golden
ancient pre-Islamic

ink,

were hung up

the Ka'ba.

in the famous Temple at Mecca, in The name was merely intended as an allu-

sion to the place of

honour they hold on the Arabian

may be suspended in the midst of an apartment, or rather as a necklace may be worn hanging about the neck for they were also called al-SuniAt, " the necklaces of pearls." The poets whose masterpieces have received the honour of being thus
Parnassus, even as a chandelier

grouped together are

Imru'u'1-Qais, Tarafa, Zuhair, Labid, 'Amr ibn Kulthiim, 'Antara, and Al-Harith ibn Hilliza (according to some, the two last poets are Na-

bigha and A'sha). At this epoch, the qastda had already reached its definite form. According to the ancient rules quoted by Ibn Qutaiba, the author of a qasida must begin by a reference to the forsaken camping-grounds. Next he must lament, and pray his comrades to halt, while he calls up the memory of the dwellers who had
water-springs.

departed in search of other encampments and fresh Then he begins to touch on love-matters,

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY

bewailing the tortures to which his passion puts him, and thus attracting interest and attention to himself. He

recounts his hard and toilsome journeying in the Desert, dwells on the lean condition of his steed, which he lauds

and describes

and finally, with the object of obtaining those proofs of generosity which were the bard's expected meed and sole support, he winds up with a panegyric of the Prince or Governor in whose presence the poem
;

is

recited.

This

last rule is, of

course, not applicable in the case

whose works are believed to be the most ancient of the Seven, and whom fate had placed from birth upon a throne. Imru'u'l-Qais Hunduj, the wandering king, came of a southern race, the Kinda. His ancestors had built up a principality in Najd. His father, Hujr, a severe man, desiring to punish his son for the amorous passion which possessed him, sent him away to act as shepherd to his flocks. Hujr lost his life in the revolt of the Beni-Asad, and the poet began a career of adventure, living the life of a dethroned king, seeking means to re-establish his father's power, which he never recovered. He took refuge at last with Samuel, Prince of Taima, who owned the Castle of Ablaq, and professed the Jewish faith. Towards the year 530, the Roman Emperor Justinian, who had thought of utilising his services against the Persians,
of the poet

then threatening his frontiers, granted Imru'u'l-Qais leave, the request of the Prince of Ghass^n, who held the Syrian frontier for the Romans, to wait on him. He
at

journeyed by post (horse-post and camel-post) to Constantinople, and sojourned there a long time, expecting a place, which was slow in coming, from the Emperor, already an aging man. He was appointed Phylarch of

12
Palestine,

ARABIC LITERATURE
and was making
his

way back

to the Desert,

died at Ancyra, poisoned by the Emperor's order, and, as the legend runs, by a garment of honour

when he

as

robe of Nessus which covered his body with ulcers, punishment for the seduction of a royal lady. Mahomet held him to be the best of all the poets, and their chief; and according to tradition, he was the first to
a

make

fixed

rules

for

poetic

composition.

When

the

messengers came to tell him of his father's death, he was drinking wine and throwing the dice. He went on with his game, and not till it was finished did he cry " I will touch neither wine nor woman till I have slain a hundred men of the Beni-Asad, and shorn the forelocks, He as a trophy, from the heads of another hundred " was a bold spirit, and did not hesitate to cast the three arrows of fate at the idol called Dhu'l-Khalasa, in the town of Tabaia, because destiny forbade him to pursue
:
!

his

vengeance for his

father's death.

With the poet-king we must mention, as a creator of the qastda, Muhalhil, whose surname has generally been translated " the subtle poet," but it seems more probably to have been a nickname given him on account of his having used the expression halhaltu, in one of his lines, Only a very small number to denote " I made an echo."
of his verses are extant.

Nabigha DhubyanI, who belonged

find

to a tribe

from

the neighbourhood of Mecca, was a town-dweller.

him

at

Hira

a half-Persian, half-Arab cityduring

We

the reigns of the Kings Al-Mundhir III. and Al-Mundhir

This town became a literary centre whence poetry all over the Peninsula. The successor of the last-named King, Numan Ab{i QabCis, grew angry with
IV.

radiated

the poet,

who had used

too great freedom in

some

lines

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY

13

written to flatter the Queen. The exile departed to Damascus, to princes who were the rivals of the rulers of Hira, and clients of the Court of Constantinople, the

Ghassanids.

He was right well received by 'Amr ibn Harith, but, after that prince's death, he returned to

Hira and was taken back into favour.- When his patron he withdrew from the court of the usurper imposed on the State by the conquering Persians, returned to his own tribe, and there died, very shortly before Mahomet's preaching set Arabia aflame. Nabigha was a courtier-poet. He boasted that he kept his compositions for princes, but he made superb use of the liberal gifts his flatteries won him. He was at every feast, but he spent his money royally. In contrast, we have a true Desert poet, 'Antara,' son of Shaddad, whose name was later to serve the popular story-tellers of the Romance of 'Antar as the incarnate type of the virtues ascribed to the wandering paladins of the heathen tribes. The hero of the tribe of 'Abs was a mulatto, the son of an Abyssinian slave, and His personal bravery won him his lower lip was split. reputation as a warrior, and advanced him from his state of slavery to the position of Shaddad's acknowledged son. He took part in the terrible war arising out of the rivalry between the stallion Dahis and the mare Ghabra. Treachery alone prevented the famous courser from winning the race, and in his vengeance, Qais, chief
died,

of the tribe of 'Abs,

waged

bitter

war against

his enemies.

'Antara was the rhapsodist of these long fights. He sang the battle of AI-Farijq, at which the prowess of the
Absites saved their women from slavery. He had sworn he would never leave his enemy in peace "as long as they

waved a

lance."

'Antara perished while fighting against

14

ARABIC LITERATURE

the tribe of Tai. He had grown old, and his youthful He is said to have fallen activity had forsaken him. from his horse, and to have been unable to regain his
feet in time.

His death was the signal for peace, and

In spite of the

the end of the long-drawn hostilities.

tribe's desire to

avenge its hero and its bard, a compensation of a hundred camels was accepted for the murder of one of its scions, and the poets celebrated the close of the long struggle. 'Antara sang the praises of 'Abla, his mistress, but a good fight was always the
favourite subject of his lay.

He

it

was who
its

said,

"We

whirled as the millstone whirls on

axis,

while our

swords smashed upon the fighters' skulls." Another court-poet was Tarafa, whose name was 'Amr ibn al- Abd. He formed one of the circle about a king of Hira, 'Amr, the son of Hind. His uncle, Mutalammis, was called Jarir, the son of 'Abdal-Masih (or, according to Ibn Qutaiba, of 'Abdal-Uzza). He was surnamed Mutalammis, "he who seeks earnestly," because he had spoken, in a celebrated line, of the blue fly that pries everywhere. His sister Khirniq was also a
writer of verse.

Tarafa,

who was

of a thoughtless

and

ungrateful turn,

made game

of his uncle,

an improper expression in one of his tongue will be thy ruin," quoth the uncle.

who had used lines. "Thy

The nephew

ventured to make game of the king himself, who, to get rid of him, bethought him of sending him with his uncle Mutalammis on a mission to the Governor of Bahrain. The uncle opened his own letter of credentials, and discovered that the king therein commanded the governor to put him to death. Thinking his nephew's letter contained the same order, he counselled him to open it.

But Tarafa would not break the

king's seal.

The uncle

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY
took

15

fright, and fled into Syria. Tarafa continued his journey, and was buried alive as soon as he reached Bahrain. It is curious to note that his poetry gives

of judgment than did his behaviour. He is the almost only one of the ancient poets in whose work

more proof

we

find

some
All

signs of meditation, maxims, or apophhis

thegms.'

fellows

are

carried

away by the

exuberance of their own eager but childish nature. ZUHAIR ibn Abi Sulma, of the tribe of Muzaina, is, with Imru'u'1-Qais and Nabigha Dhubyini, one of the three great poets of the Arab tribes. It is hard to say which is to be preferred, but all critics agree in placing them far above the rest. Zuhair came of a family His father-in-law, Aus ibn possessing the poetic gift. Hajar, his sisters Sulmi and Al-KhansS, and his son,
Ka'b, the panegyrist of
reputations.

Mahomet,
seriousness,

all

made

themselves
;

He had
marked by

the moralist's temperament

his

by a sententious and He cared little, for praise, which didactic tendency. does not ensure immortality, and especially he shunned He would not borrow lines from untruthful praise. insert them amongst his own, or use to poets other understands difficult to Such is the opinion words Caliph 'Umar, who concerning him by the expressed avoidance of anyZuhair's careful admired specially
verses were

thing "hushi," that

guage.

is

to say, unintelligible, in his lan-

There is a story but probably a mere legend, like so many handed down from those ancient times that when Zuhair was a hundred years old, he met the prophet Mahomet, who prayed God to protect him from
the jinn that inspired his poetic effusions.

The

poet,

who was

a warrior, suddenly forsook his tribe, in consequence of some injustice done him in a division of booty,

i6

ARABIC LITERATURE

took refuge with the tribe of Ghatafan, and there remained. He sang the peaceful outcome of the long war of Dahis. Harim, his patron, had vowed to give him gifts on every occasion, whether he sang his praises, or sought a favour, or even made him a sign of salutation. Zuhair, ashamed of receiving slaves or horses in this fashion, made it a
rule,

when he met Harim

'

every one save him.

in any gathering, to greet These are scruples peculiar to thq

In later Desert, manners of a certain noble harshness. years Harim's descendants were to say, "The praise is noble indeed, but so also were our gifts " And the answer was to come, " Your gifts have vanished, but his
!

They are robes of honour which Time live on. cannot decay." His reputation was that of a high-born and wealthy man, of gentle manners, and remarkable for his scrupulous piety. His verses are preferred because they show superior beauty, and the least exiguity in thought they convey the largest number of ideas in the fewest words, their expressions of praise are the most, excessive, and they contain the largest number of proverbs. To Al-Khansa fell the melancholy duty of pronouncing the funeral oration over her brother. 'Alqama ibn 'Abada, surnamed Al-Fahl, was of the race of Tamim. He addressed a poem to Al-Harith ibn Jabala, Prince of Ghassan, in gratitude for his
poems
release of

some

prisoners, the poet's compatriots.

The
mere

story

of

his rivalry

with

Imru'n'1-Qais

is

His comparison of the camel-mare which was bearing him across the desert with a fleeing ostrich, is famous. He describes the huge, long-legged bird leavlegend.

ing

its

bitter seeds

nest to search for food, feeding quietly on the borne by the bashes growing in the sands.

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY
and then, as
running on
gives a
it

17

remembers

its

forsaken eggs, setting off

long, bare, black shanks. Elsewhere he striking picture of the whitened skeletons of
its

the camels dead of weariness upon the sands, the skin, dried and shrivelled by the sun, all blackened, and still

chnging, here and there, to the pale bones. The Muallaqat are not the only ancient poems preserved to us. There are also the Diwdns (collections
of

poems arranged according

to the alphabetical order

rhyme) of the six poets, brought together by the grammarian Al-Asmai, preserved in a revised form which we owe to the learned Spanish Arab, Yusuf al-Aiam of Santa Maria, who lived in the eleventh century and published by Ahlwardt the poems known as Mufaddaliyydt, so called after Al-Mufaddal al-Dabbi, who collected them into one volume for his pupil, Prince Al-Mahdi, in the eighth century a beginning of the publication of these was made by Thorbecke the Jamharat AsJi&r al- Arab (collection of Bedouin poetry), compiled under a fictitious name, but quoted as early as the eleventh century, by Ibn Rashiq, and the Hanidsa, or collection of warprinted at Bulaq like deeds, of Abii Tammam, published by Freytag, and translated into German by F. RiJckert a work of the same name and kind, compiled at the same period (ninth century), by Al-Buhturl, a single manuscript copy the Akhbdr al-Lusils (stories of of which is at Leyden brigands) by the grammarian Sukkari, a fragment of which has been published by Wright and the great Kitdb al-aghdni (Book of Songs) of Abii'l-Faraj 'All al- Isfahan}, published at the Bulaq printing-press in twenty volumes, to which M. Briinnow has added a twenty-first, from manuscripts discovered in European
of the

,;

ARABIC LITERATURE
This huge literary compilation
is

libraries.

our most

valuable source as to everything regarding the circumstances amidst which the poets of the first centuries of

Arab

literature

lived their

lives

and composed

their

In addition to these texts we should mention works. the poems of the Hudhailites the tribe of Hudhail which

dwelt to the south-east of Mecca, and which has

left

and Moslem times, which and studied and partially Sukkari, collected by has been Abicht, and Wellhausen. Kosegarten, translated by six thus grouped together with the poets Side by side find many warriors, we commentators, by their admiring their loves. Thabit ibn own exploits and singing their (one Ta'abbata-Sharran was surnamed jabir al-Fahmi was he seen carries evil under his arm), because who one day carrying a knife under his armpit. Like'Antara, he was a mulatto, like him, he was a wandering paladin, and if he has not attained a like celebrity, it is because no popular romance carried his name to distant lands. There is a tale that he brought a ram back with him out of the desert, and that this ram was really a Ghoul, a female jinn ; and another that he brought his mother back a sack full of vipers. These are mere explanations, made up at a later date, of his strange nickname. He was a robber he could run down the very gazelles.
us poetry both of pre-Islamic
;

In his poems, he mentions his adventures with the ghouls, and how he saw them, with their two eyes set
in the

middle of a hideous head,

like a cat's, their split-

up tongues and misshapen legs, looking like roasted dogs wrapped in a rough fustian garment. Abu Wahb, a man of Thaqif, who was a coward in spite of his inches, met the famous runner one day, when he himself was wearing a handsome cloak. He inquired how it was

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY
that

19

and

he could overcome every one, though he was short and stunted. " It is my name," replied the brigand. " When I meet a man, I say I am Ta'abbataSharran,' then his courage melts away, and he gives me whatever I demand." The questioner proposed that he should buy the other's name, the price to be the gorgeous
slight
'

and the right to bear the surname Ahil Wahb was struck, and the purchaser gave up his new garment, receiving rags and tatters in exchange. But the poet went from tribe to tribe, singing, "Though we may have exchanged names, who will give Abil
cloak,

the bargain

Wahb my
ning

patience in adversity,
?

my

indomitable courage
fertile in

in the face of all misfortunes

artifice,

"

He was

cun-

and

his sense of hearing

night he warned his was near at hand, and when they inquired on what he founded this opinion, he replied, " I hear men's hearts beating, here, under my feet." Are those fine lines in the Hamasa, on the death of the poet's " On the road "below Sal' a slain kinsmen, his work ? man lies, whose blood shall not be shed without due vengeance " Some Arab critics have ascribed them to
delicate.

One

was singularly camp companions

that the foe

Khalaf al-Ahmar.

The comrade

of Ta'abbata-Sharran's adventures,

Shan-

farA, "the man with thick lips," a very hard-featured personage, was one of those celebrated runners whom Hence the a horse at full gallop could not outstrip. than Shanfara." runner famous proverb, "A swifter During a war with the Beni-Saliman, he swore to kept his oath as follows. kill a hundred men, and Every time he came across a man of the tribe, he
In this shot an arrow and struck him in the eye. The tribe of fashion he piled up ninety-nine victims.

20

ARABIC LITERATURE
itself of this

the Beni-Salaman set about ridding

trouble-

Usaid, son of Jabir, one of his rivals in fleetness, lay in wait for him, and caught him one
night
his
us,

some enemy.

but, the legend tells one of his foes, passing later where his skull lay A splinter of bone on the ground, gave it a kick. ran into his foot, making a wound of which he died and so the full tale of victims was accomplished, and
thirst.
;

when he had gone down Thus he perished

into a gorge to slake

the

vow was

kept.

Shanfara,

if

we may

believe his

Hamasa, had himself requested " Bury me not for you that he might lie unburied. But thou, are forbidden to perform this duty for me. O Hyena, shalt rejoice when they carry off my head (and in my head the most of me resides)." Ta'abbataSharran pronounced his funeral oration in verse. He is famous for his great ode, the Ldiniyyat al-Arab, or poem rhyming in /, of which Silvestre de Sacy and Fresnel have given us fine translations. Doubt has been felt as to whether the famous poem was really written by Shanfara, and it has been pointed out that the ancient Arab philologists were not aware of its But if Shanfara was not the author, it is existence. certainly the work of some one who was thoroughly acquainted with Arab life in ancient times, and who
lines preserved in the
!

felt

the inspiration of the wild sons of the desert stirring

within him.

In this case

it

can have been written by no

other than Khalaf al-Ahmar. Besides the name of 'Antara, the tribe of "Abs may cite with pride that of 'Urwa ibn al-Ward he was, in
;

fact,

considered more as a poet, and 'Antara more as His father, whose praises 'Antara sang, had a hero. fought in the war of Dahis. He himself, like all his

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY
fellows,

21

was a warrior. He was called "''Urwa of the he had gathered a troop of poor plunderers, whose needs he supplied when they came in empty-handed from a foray. He sang of them " May God cast shame upon the poor man, when, wrapped in the darkness of the night, he crawls along
Needy," because
:

the soft earth, fumbling

among

the skinned camels.

But how noble-looking is the poor man when his cheek is reddened by the flame of fire borrowed from his neighbour, which casts light upon him If he meet
!

death,

made
young

a glorious death. himself worthy of them

it

is

If
!

he gain riches, he has

"

He had

carried off a

named Salma, given her her freedom, and married her. Ten years later, her family bought her back, snatching 'Urwa's consent in a moment of drunkengirl

Salma left him, extolling his generosity and valour but she had never learnt to endure being treated as a slave by the women of his tribe. His liberality knew no bounds. " As for me, I would cut up my body to feed my guests, and I am content to drink pure water." He has been compared with the famous Hatim, of the tribe of Tai.
ness.
;

DHtf'L-ASBA' al-AdwanI, whose proper name was Hurthan ibn al-Harith, owed his surname of " the man with the finger," to the fact that one of his fingers had

withered as the result of a viper's bite. The tribe of Adwan, to which he belonged, was powerful on account of its numerous fighting men, of the fame of 'Amir, son of Zarib, who was accepted by every Arab of Qais blood
as his

Hakam,

or supreme arbiter, and of

its

peculiar

prerogative, that of haranguing the pilgrims

on

their

return from Mecca, and granting

their tribes.

them

leave to rejoin

internecine quarrels, and

This prosperity died away, as a result of it was the downfall of his tribe

22

ARABIC LITERATURE
elegies of Dhu'1-Asba.

which inspired the

of the tribe of

"The props

'Adwan were like unto serpents crawling on the ground. They strove to rise one higher than the He reached other, and all they reached was emptiness." a very advanced age and his four sons-in-law, fearing he might fall into dotage, endeavoured to prevent him from dissipating his fortune but he made answer to them " If you assert that I have grown old, know ye
; ; :

have never been held to be a burden, nor a being Wherefore then do ye so " Marvel slander me ? " And in another piece of verse Fortune and Fate not, Umama, at these happenings. Umama was his daughter, have overwhelmed us!" herself a poetess, who mourned with him the decay of the power of 'Adwan. "They have passed a goblet round woe to those who have drunk They have perished, they have sought refuge in the desert!" In the counsels given to his son Usaid (the lion-cub), he " Use thy sets forth a noble ideal for the Arab warrior. goods nobly make thyself the brother of all generous men, whenever thou findest means of entering into brotherhood with them. However wide the distance, never forget the debt thou owest thy brother, and the
that
I

of dulness or imbecility.

poor.

Rush

into

battle

where the most intrepid

of

heroes shuns the charge, and

thee."

when thou
all

art

summoned
it

on an important matter, take

the burden of

on

QuTBA IBN Aus al-Hadira fell out with Zabban ibn Sayyar, and there was an exchange of satires between the two. It was Zabban who surnamed him Al-Hadira
(the thick, the squat),

"

One would

and the nickname stuck to him. think you were a woman, with big shoulders
!

and thin flanks

"

It

was when they had been out hunting

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY
together.

23

Zabban drew aside, in the evening, to roast Then H^dira called out " You forsake your comrade, you think of nothing but your own jaws out there in the darkness " Nettled by the speech, Zabb^n shot back the line, in which he compared him to a "big-shouldered woman," and so the duel went on.
the game.
:
!

'ABfD IBN al-Abras, of the tribe of Asad, dwelt

at

the court of Hira, and held habitual intercourse with

He is said to have been put to Nabigha Dhubyani. death, at an advanced age, by King Mundhir, the son of Maul-sama, sacrificed on the tomb of two of the king's former friends, whom he had caused to be buried alive, The king had sworn to slay the first in a fit of rage. person who entered his presence on the second day of annual mourning he had voluntarily imposed on himself, and to feed the ravens with his blood. The poet pleaded for leave to drink himself drunk before he died. This barbarous custom held sway until the king was touched by the nobility of a certain Hanzala, of the tribe of Tai, who, having asked a respite, and promised to return, came back in time to fulfil his promise and save his surety, who was just about to suffer in his stead. After that incident, Mundhir abolished all bloody 'Abid was a poor man, with no possessions sacrifices. One day he was leading the flocks belongof his own. ing to his sister Mawiyya to the well, when he was driven away by a man who struck him on the forehead. The poor wretch turned him about, crestfallen, and fell He rose from that asleep under some shady trees. slumber a poet. A genius had come to him in his sleep, and laid a poetic charm between his lips. Famous everywhere for his unbounded generosity is Hatim. of the tribe of Tai. When the "deaf month"

24

ARABIC LITERATURE

killed ten

by the pagans of Mudar, began, he camels a day, and fed his guests. The poets, Al-Hutai'a and Bishr ibn Abi Khazim, were both par(Rajab), observed

takers of his hospitality.

He had

lost his father in early

Sad ibn he played the sorry trick of presenting the herd of camels he had been sent out to keep, as a gift to a passing caravan of poets. His ambition to be considered the most generous of men had led him into this piece of extravagance. His grandfather could not foryouth, and was brought up by his grandfather,
al-Hashraj, on

whom

give the prank.

He struck his
girl

tents

and

left

Hatim

alone,

he had given him, his mare and her foal. Then it was that Hatim spoke the splendid lines " I suffered not when Sa d and his family departed, leaving me lonely in my home, parted from all my kin. By squandering my fortune I have won swift glory, just as War is baring her hideous twisted fangs." Hatim's tomb was set round with stones, standing facing each other, like mourners. Hither came Abu'l-Khaibari, calling upon the dead man, and praying him to provide a feast. Next morning he found his camel-mare slaughtered and his comrades feasting on her flesh. Shortly afterwards Hatim's son came to him, saying his father had appeared to him in a dream, and charged him to replace the camel he had been forced to slaughter to keep up his reputation for hospitality. *And there were many more. Laqit ibn Ya'mur, of the tribe of lyad, which haunted the wide Mesopotamian plains, composed a long ode, warning his fellow-tribesmen of the ambushes prepared by the Persian King, Chosroes, who was resolved to clear the banks of the Euphrates of these marauders but they would not believe their poet's warnings, and were all surprised and put to the sword. Aus ibn
with the slave
: ;

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY
Hajar, of the tribe of province of Bahrain.

25
to the far-off

Tamim, belonged

wandering bard, who travelled through Northern Arabia and the countries watered by the Euphrates, whither the court of Hira attracted him. His verses, mere fragments of which remain to us, are full of descriptions of hunting and warlike episodes of every kind. During one of his journeys he was thrown from his camel and broke both his legs. He was tended by Fudala ibn Kilda, who came and pitched his tent on the very spot where the poet lay, and by his daughter Halima, and, in his gratitude, dedicated poems to them, which we still possess. An interesting historical figure is that of Umayya, son of Abfi'1-Salt, a Meccan, born at Ta'if, " who had read the books and practised the doctrines of the Jewish Christians," and who, nevertheless, remained a pagan till he died, in 630, eight years after the Hegira. Towards the year 572, either he or his father had been one of a deputation sent by the Quraishites to wait on the King of Yemen, Saif ibn Dhi Yazan, and had offered him congratulations in verse on his victory over the Abyssinians. The subjects of Umayya's poetry, as a rule, were religious, and drawn from the common source of Jewish and Christian ideas. He may be looked on as a precursor of Mahomet. In one of his poems he called the Day of Judgment " the day of mutual disappointment," yaum al-takhdbun, an expression which has passed into

He was

the text of the

Koran (chap.

64).

He

applied strange

such as had never fallen on Arab ears before. Sometimes siltit, "the emperor"; sometimes, again, taghriw, " the crown-bearer " (Persian,
to the Deity,

names

iaka-bard).

He wore

a hair shirt to mortify his flesh.

In his

poems he
3

refers to the

Old Testament prophets,

26

ARABIC LITERATURE

and to the Hantfs, an Arab sect which held the tenets of Abraham's faith, and was the cradle of Islamism. He forbade the use of wine, and did not believe in idols. The Moslems asserted that he would fain have been chosen by God to be His prophet, and that on this account he was jealous of Mahomet, against whom he was still composing satires in 624. The real name of Al-A'sha was Maimun ibn Qais. He was born in the distant land of Yamama, south of Najd, which lies along the great trackless desert of Dahna. His tomb was to be seen there, in the village of Manfuha. With his eulogies, for which he took his fee, he fared all through Arabia, from Hadramaut to Hira, near the Euphrates. His mocking verses made him the terror of his foes. He was a monotheist, and believed in the Resurrection and the Last Judgment. His opinions had felt the influence of his Christian associates, whether of the'Ibads of Hira, who sold him wine, or of his friend the Bishop of Najran in Yemen. His verse is praised for the variety of its metre, and the art of its panegyric and its satire. His descriptions of wme and of the wild ass are much quoted. The ode in which he sang the Prophet Mahomet's mission is famous all over the East. His father, Qais, had been surnamed Qatil
al-pf

(dead of hunger) because, when he entered a cave for the sake of shade, a rock slipped down the
that he could not

mountain and closed the orifice, so get out, and was starved to death.

The son
of
'

takes front rank

among

the

Arab

poets.

Sil-

vestre de Sacy held

him

the Mu'allaqat, and

a worthy equal of the authors the Arabs, when reckoning up

their best pre-Islamic

poets, likened

him

to

Imru'u'l-

Qais, Nabigha,

and Zuhair.

His verses sing the praise

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY
of

27

She had a Huraira, his beloved, a black slave. and her master made her sing for his He went every year to the fair at "Ukaz, and delight.
beautiful voice,

was enabled, by the praises he addressed to a certain Muhallek, a poor man, in gratitude for his hospitality, to assist him in finding husbands for his eight daughters. Once when he was returning from the fair, laden with gifts, and feared he might be robbed by the Beni- Amir, ^through whose territory he had to pass, he begged Alqama, son of 'Ulatha, to protect him. 'Alqama underAl-A'sha took to defend him from men and jinns. inquired if he would promise to defend him from death as well, a request which 'Alqama refused. But "Amir, the son of Tufail, promised to protect him from death itself. " If death comes to thee " How so ? " asked Asha.

my protection," answered 'Amir, pay thy kinsfolk the fine which is the price of blood." This reply satisfied A'sha, but not his original and now ousted protector, who cried " If I had known what he was asking me, I would have granted his
whilst thou art under
"
I

will

desire."

the town poets we must mention Qais, son who lived at Yathrib, a town later called Al-Khatim, of which name it bears at the present day. He Medina, famous by his avenging pursuit of the made himself murderers of his father and grandfather, and by the war he thus caused between the Aus and Khazraj He was a handsome man, with eye-brows tribes. that met, great black eyes, red lips, and dazzlingly Hassan ibn Thabit had counselled the white teeth. poetess Al-Khansa to direct her satires against Qais. " I never attack a person I have never seen," she One day she went to see him, and found answered.

Amongst

28

ARABIC LITERATURE
floor of a

him lying on the

room.

She

stirred

him with

her foot until he rose, and then

made him
:

step back-

One would wards and forwards, till Qais exclaimed think she was examining a slave before she buys him Then he lay down and went to sleep in the market " " Never will I attack such a man as that " said again, Al-Khansa. He died in battle of an arrow wound. The custom of mourning over the dead, and the trade of professional female mourners, gave birth to the elegy in praise of the dead (rnarthiya), the composition of which, like the performance of this portion of the obseSuch poems open quies, was confided to women only. with a description of the feehngs of the bereaved, and the tears the mourner is unable to control. They go on
"
! !

to detail the virtues of the defunct,

and the poignant

regret the loss of

such

virtues of the

These eulogies are for pagan Arab, valour and generosity.

of
all

an individuality must cause. the most part based on the chief

Last

comes the appeal for vengeance. Al-Khansa won fame by her elegies in this style. Her name was Tumadir. The surname by which she is known signiShe was fies "The wild cow with a crushed muzzle." first married to Mirdas, the son of Abu 'Amir, and secondly, after his death, to 'Abdallah, the son of 'Abd al- Uzza. She sang the memories of her two brothers, Muawiya and Sakhr, the younger of whom, himself a poet, was killed in a foray.
Jewish and Christian Poets
In the towns in the north of Hijaz there dwelt Jews,

who may
of Titus

possibly have

left

Palestine during the wars

local tradition asserts that

and Hadrian.

But

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY

29

they came into the country soon after the death of Moses, and that at the time of the Roman Conquest, the Quraiza, Hadal, and Nadir tribes joined their co-

These colonies formed a nucleus of repropaganda, and Arab tribes associated themselves with them. Their religion was the only thing they had preserved. Their language had become purely Arab. Like other nomads, they began to chant
religionists.

ligious

verses,

and the greatest of their poets was Samaual (Samuel), the grandson of 'Adiya. He was a rich nobleman, who dwelt in the castle of Ablaq, called "the unique," close to the town of Tairaa. This castle had been built by his grandfather, who had digged a well within it. The Arabs came there, and held a market. Samaual is famous for his fidelity to his sworn oath, which led him to sacrifice his own son for Imru'ulQais. The poet-king, fallen from his high estate, had taken refuge with Samaual, and besought him to recom-

the

mend him to the Kings of Ghassan, who might interest Roman Emperor of Constantinople in his cause. He

was given a guide to conduct him into Syria. When Al-Harith ibn Zalim, sent by Al-Mundhir to seize the treasure confided by Imru'ul-Qais to Samaual's
care, laid siege to the castle, he seized the person of the Jewish prince's son, as he was hunting in the neighbourhood. " I will never give up the money which has been confided to my care," said the faithful guardian, and his cruel enemy caused the youth's body to be cut in two,

across the middle.

fully
faithful,

Then Samaual sang

traitors."

"I have

faithI

kept the breastplates of the

Kindite.

...

was
Al-

where so many are

Amongst Samaual's

co-religionists

we may

cite

RABf', son of Abu'l-Huqaiq,

who

fought valiantly at the

30

ARABIC LITERATURE

head of his tribe at Bu ath, and whose sons were fierce opponents of the Prophet. He strove with Nabigha in that poetic pastime in which the first poet spoke a hemistich, and the second had to complete both sense and rh5'me with another, dehvered impromptu.
Judaism, had made proselytes in Arabia. Syria, whither the Northern Arabs were continually leading caravans, was full of churches and convents in Mesopotamia the whole population was
Christianity,
like
;

Christian,

The Princes
The

of Ghass^n, at
at

Damascus, proHira, adopted

it

fessed the faith,

likewise.
Abi'1-Salt,

and the Lakhmites,

verses of such a poet as

Umayya

ibn

who, though not himself a Christian, propadrawn from JewishChristian books, had done much to spread these ideas about Arabia. In the town of Hira, peopled by a mixture of Aramean and Arab elements, the 'Ibads formed the very groundwork of the primitive population, side by side with the Arabs of the Tanukh tribe, half Bedouin, half husbandmen, who had seized the country, and the Ahldf, dependants or clients, who had taken refuge in the city from every corner of Arabia. Now these 'Ibads were Christians. Together with a few Jews, they had monopolised the wine trade of the Euphrates valley, and carried their wares across the deserts to the Arabs, all hard drinkers, in their towns and camps. 'Antara tells us of one desert hero who drank so deep that he " lowered the wine merchants' flags" an allusion to their habit of hoisting a flag over their tents when they had wine to sell, and lowering it when the supply was exhausted. The religious ideas of the poet Al-A'sha had already felt the influence of his talks with these wine merchants, who
gated, under the desert tents, views

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY
Christians,

31

brought the "good news" with them. Among these who were probably the first to apply the

characters of the Syrian alphabet to the Arab tongue, were several poets, of whom the most celebrated was'ADi

IBN Zaid.

He came

of an ancient family, holding a high

position in the city of Hira.

His father had been brought

Persian Sasanians.

up

at Ctesiphon, at the court of the

During the interregnum between the kings Numan I. and Al-Mundhir, he was chosen governor of Hira. He continued in this office under the last-named king.
'Adi, like his father, received his education in

Persia.

favoured by the king of kings, was sent on an embassy to Constantinople, and passed through DamasWhen he recus, where his first poem was written. turned, his father was dead. But the poet loathed
official trammels. He preferred to remain free and independent, oscillating betwixt Hira and Ctesiphon, and singing the praises of good wine. He helped to set Numin, son of Al-Mundhir, upon the throne, but

He was

whose candidate was ousted, vowed They accused him of having spoken disparagingly of the monarch, who partly owed his crown the king tempted him within his boundaries, to him and then cast him into prison. The King of Persia would have taken up his cause, but when his envoy
the Beni-Marina,
his destruction.
;

reached Hira, he found the poet murdered dungeon. 'Adi ibn Zaid's Bacchic verses were be the joy of the Omeyyad Caliph, Walid II.

in

his

later to

Prose

None of the prose of those ancient down to us. It was not written, and

times has

come

was, indeed, not

32

ARABIC LITERATURE

reckoned of sufficient importance to merit such an honour.

The researches

of the Arab philologists give us some idea of what this very primitive stage of literature must

have been like. There were evening tales {samar) told under the nomads' tents, stories which were already being carried from town to town by the professional story-tellers, such as Nadr ibn Harith, of Mecca, who

had

learnt the fine legends of the ancient Persian kings at

Hira,

and by them gained

that

fame which

at

one moment
the
of

counterbalanced
stories,

Mahomet owed to drawn from the Bible. The battle

this

an end to

dangerous competition.

Koran Bedr put There were also

;

the legendary and not at all trustworthy recitals of the Arab Days tales of the great desert battles proverbs,

and founded on forgotten incidents, frequently incomprehensible, and explained by purely imaginary comments and allocutions, whose makers flattered themselves they would impress the minds of their fellow-creatures. All these go to make up the elements of a literary art of which we possess no written specimen, but which was eventually
collected at a later date
philologists,

by

to

undergo a great development.

CHAPTER

III

THE KORAN
esteemed family, Mahomet (or Mohammed), who had begun life by travelling with caravans from Mecca into Syria, had acquired a fortune

Born

of a

poor and

lightly

by

his marriage with

ligious sects, distinct

Christianity,

the

In his days, two reKhiadija. from the believers in Judaism and growth of which we have already
in

noticed,

had taken root

Arabian

soil.

One

of these

was the Rakusiyya, the other the Hanifs. The first was undoubtedly descended from the Mandaites, or ChrisJohn Baptist, known in the Middle Ages under the name of Sabians, and of whom a community still exists in Lower Mesopotamia. They were Ebionites, who venerated the Forerunner, and were the predecessors of the Gnostic movement. The Hanifs were Essenians, who fancied themselves to be practising, under the name of the faith of Abraham, a kind of Judaism purified of all ritual observances, and which did not involve any perusal of the sacred writings. It was in the bosom of this sect of the Hanifs that Islamism came into Mahomet himself used to say that he was a existence. Hanif, like those known at Mecca, Ta'if, and Yathrib. Hanif stands for monotheist, a hater of idolatry and when Mahomet began to preach, the men of Mecca told him he had turned Sabian. These Hanifs carried
tian disciples of St.
;

33

34

ARABIC LITERATURE

about a book called the Suhuf, or scrolls, of Abraham. few years previous to the Prophet's mission, a missionary of the sect appeared in the Hijaz, preached the monotheism of Abraham, and found some followers. In later days Mahomet declared these scrolls to be forgeries. Now, were they really a book, as Sprenger believed, or must we accept the title as a vague one,

possibly describing the Israelitish Bible

However

that

John Baptist and the Hanifs had prepared the way, amid all the polytheism of the Arabian Peninsula, for the success of the preacher of the monotheism of Islam. As for the Jews who lived in the chief cities, and had converted certain tribal chieftains to their faith and the Syrians and Mesopotamian Christians whose propaganda had found a singularly useful supporter in such
be, the Christian followers of St.

may

a poet as

Umayya

ibn Abi'1-Salt,

who

told the

Bible

stories in the

Bedouin camps

their influence cannot be

denied.

The Koran was revealed in bits and scraps, and the we have received it gives us but a faint conception of the manner of its composition. For when it was finally edited, under Caliph "Uthman,
condition in which
the chapters or suras were, with the exception of the
first,

artificial

placed in order according to their length arrangement.

tells us,

a purely

was inspired by the Holy an angel, and whom he called, in later chapters, written at Medina, by the name of the Archangel Gabriel, which he pronounced Jabril. During the fits of ecstasy in which the inspiration came to him, he believed he beheld the archangel's face, and when he was asked what he was like, he always menGhost,

Mahomet, the Koran

whom

he held to

t)e

THE KORAN
tioned a

35

ibn Khalifa.
time.

young man of the tribe of Kalb, named Dihya The revelation was always imparted in

small instalments, only one verse, or a few together, at a When the revelation ceased, Mahomet called one
of his secretaries, generally 'Abdallah ibn

Sad

Sarh, to write the

words from

his dictation,

ibn Abi and had the

newly written sheet inserted at such or such a place. The word sura is Hebrew. It signifies a row of stones in a wall, and thus, by analogy, a line of writing Koran means reading. Furqan, another name given to the book, means (in Semitic languages other than the
Arabic) " liberation, deliverance" of the "revelation." The style of the Koran differs very much according to the periods of the Prophet's life at which the revelation

was

received.

Its

principal characteristic

is
is

that

it

is

altogether written in
verses,

rhymed

prose.

This

strongly

apparent in the earlier s{iras, which have very short and is only marked in the longer chapters inspired at Medina by the terminal fause of each verse, which rhymes assonantly with the other pauses. It must
further be borne in
of the chapters
is

mind
is

that the present

arrangement

quite artificial.

the

book was compiled

well

The manner in which known. The Prophet's

hearers had begun by trusting their memories to retain the words of the revelations they had received from him.
Later, those who could write traced them in ancient characters on palm-leaves, on tanned hides, or on dry

bones.

When

the Prophet died, and his followers per-

ceived that the hour of the Last Judgment seemed to grow farther and farther off (for the first Moslems, like
the
first

Christians, believed that the days

plished,

and

that the great Resurrection

that civil wars

and

frontier raids

were accomwas upon them), were increasing, and

36
that death
all

ARABIC LITERATURE
the Koran, or part of

was sweeping away numbers of those who it, by heart, fear fell on them lest the Word of God should be utterly lost, and Zaid all the scattered fragments were brought together. ibn Thabit, Mahomet's disciple, was charged by Abu

knew

Bekr, the

first

Caliph, to collect

all

that could be disit

covered

of

the

sacred

text,

and form

into

one

volume.

The chapters were then arranged without any

regard to historical sequence, simply according to their length. First came the longest, preceded by the Fdtiha,.
short chapter of seven verses which opens the Now these short book, and then the shorter ones. They were revealed at Mecca, ones are the oldest. before the emigration, while the long ones placed at

or

the beginning of the the period

book belong
at

for the

most part
of the
of

to

when

the Prophet, then

Head

army
the

and the
troops

State,

was

Medina,

in

command

who were soon

to place

him

in possession of the

religious capital of

Islam.
final

This edition of Zaid's

may

be considered the
rat.her

one, for the revision of twenty

years later affected details of language

and grammar,

than the general arrangement of the text. The style of the Koran is not, and hardly could be, uniform. Its expression of thought is purely Semitic, and is closely allied with that long series of documents

emanating from Hebraic sources, which begin with the ancient verses of the Tora, pass through all the prophetic inspiration that gravitated round Jerusalem, and
so descend to the Gospels.

The sentences
first,

are cut up

into verses, very short verses at

then very long.

into

The rhymed prose

classes,

is

marked by the

alliterations at the
fall

close of each verse.

The chapters

two great

according as they were produced at Mecca or

THE KORAN
Medina.

37

The

first

belongs to the preaching period,

before the Hegira.

spiration
is

emigration.

The second came

is

after

the

At the outset the expression

speaks,

curt,
is

because the inpathetic.

powerful, the adjuration

falls

God

and the man

appears as the Prophet.

statesman, the
society to
life.

out of sight. Here Mahomet He has not yet become the

legislator,

who

calls

new

state

of

His object is not to give his fellowcountrymen a code of laws, but to teach them to worship the true God. There is no mention of ritual nor

any reference

to

social

laws.

hearers to believe the evidence of their

tion of the universe.

Mahomet calls on his own appercep-

bids them admire the marvels moon, the sun, " all of them signs of God's power, if you will understand them " or have befallen he recounts the misfortunes which else past generations who would not hearken to the prophets legends which are a mixture of the Rabbinic fables
of nature, the stars, the
;

He

with old national traditions concerning the vanished

tribes of

'Ad and Thamud.

have no regular prosodic forms occur but very seldom, and
sAras, the sentences

In the oldest of the

Meccan

a rhythmic connection, although

;

there

is

metre only in short passages. The expression of thought is very succinct, and generally exceedingly vague and inBut the address is bold and passionate. complete. One feels that the Prophet is straining every nerve to convince the careless that his mission is genuine. His

vehemence
dull pall

of expression

is

apparent even athwart the

cast

over
is

it

by

translation into our analytic

of the poet as of the preacher

tongues. There

as

much

in him, as Stanley

Lane-Poole accurately remarks.

His

38

ARABIC LITERATURE
do
right

great argument, in his exhortations to

;

and

fear

God, is the Day of Judgment and the behevers' reward, which he holds up glittering before their eyes, is the hope of Paradise. " When the heavens part, when the
the waters of the seas are mingled, when the tombs are overthrown, then shall The each soul behold its deeds, from first to last. just shall dwell in bliss, but the faithless shall be in hell." His imprecations against his foes are frightful, but it
stars

are scattered,

when

must not be forgotten that throughout the Koran it is God who speaks, while the Prophet merely transmits the revelation. The fierce feelings of the desert Arab are frankly unveiled, without a touch of hypocrisy to hide Mahomet's curse upon his uncle, Abu their cruelty. Lahab, is famous. " May the two hands of Abu Lahab perish, and may he perish himself likewise In a second category of the Mecca chapters, the adjurations "by the sun and its brightness, by the moon when it follows close uponit, by the sky and Him who built it," have almost disappeared. The formula "by the Koran " takes their place. The address opens with the declaration, "This is the revelation of God," and, so that there may be no doubt as to whence the words spoken by the Prophet proceed, he prefixes to them the divine order, in the word " Say " The history of the ancient Hebrew prophets, obtained from the Jewish Haggada, through his verbal intercourse with Jewish
!
!

forward by Mahomet.
full of

of his mission put Small wonder that the history, coming in so indirect a fashion, should be incorrect and

acquaintances,

is

the

chief proof

legends.
is

third period, that of argument,

more prosaic nature

of the language used.

marked by the The only

THE KORAN

39

novel feature is the Prophet's answer to the "wicked and adulterous generation" that presumes to demand a miracle in proof of the truth of his mission. Miracles, he says, are everywhere about us. " Wherefore ask for a miracle when the whole of nature is a miracle ? I am only sent to warn you " A special mention should
!

also be

made

of all the verses in

is

which the name applied

to the Deity

"al-Rahmin"

(the Merciful), the

name

borne by the pagan divinity of certain tribes. The second part of the Koran comprises the fourand-twenty chapters written during the ten years spent at Medina after the flight. Enthusiasm is less fierce
;

the preacher

is

giving place to the lawgiver, the states-

man.

He

teaches, he explains.

His object

is

no longer

to subjugate

and

to convince. believe,

are formed.

They

The ideas of his followers and the swelling multitude

to
its

of his disciples forces his unbelieving foes to the con-

viction that they will

soon have
style loses

reckon with his

poetic character.

growing power.

The

It becomes a lengthy prose, with constant repetitions, intended to drive certain simple ideas into even the most obtuse of brains. The sermons, which opened during the Meccan period with the formula " O men
!

O ye who believe " or, when the preacher now speaks to his enemies, "O Jews!" or even "O hypoThe general style is heavy and diffuse the crites " verses are very long. The chapters are made up of fragmentary harangues and detached sentences yet from time to time passages of a truly wonderful beauty and nobility of thought and expression occur. The principles of the religious, civil, and penal code of the newly formed society are nearly all contained in the the second, fourth, and fifth tliree longest chapters
begin "
! !

40
sacred volume.

ARABIC LITERATURE
of

which form almost a tenth part of the whole

the

The

text

of

the

Koran was
ibn Ka'b,

certainly

not

brought
of

together during the Prophet's hfetime.

his disciples,

Only four

ibn Jabal, Zaid Ubayy gathered more had Zaid Ansari, ibn Thabit, and Abu words. The struggle its or less complete collections of
with Musailima, the false prophet, had cost the lives of many of the chosen depositaries of the original text,

Muadh

when
end

Abij Bekr, impelled

by'Umar, who had seen

the

of

many

of these precious witnesses, ordered that

every written text to be discovered should be collected, and confided this task to Zaid, who had acted as

Mahomet's secretary. 'Umar, who supervised this ediwould only accept written passages supported by the declaration of two witnesses. Thus many fragments of the revelation, for which this twofold testimony could not be adduced, were not incorporated, though they may well have been authentic. This gave the Shi'ites ground for affirming, in later days, that the Sunnite text was incomplete, and that everything relating to the providential mission of 'Ali and his family had been expunged therefrom. The edition bore no official
tion,

character
died,
it

a proof of this

lies in

the fact that,

when'Umar

became

the property of his daughter, Hafsa.

During the wars in Armenia and Adharbaijan, the from 'Iraq wrangled v^rith those from Syria over the way in which the Koran should be read. Hudhaifa, their leader, laid the question before Caliph 'Uthman, who commanded Zaid ibn Thabit and some other Quraishites to draw up an authoritative text. They collected all the existing copies, but acknowledged that of Abfl Bekr, preserved by Hafsa, as their true basis.
soldiers

THE KORAN

41

and when the work was finished, "Uthmin had all the others done away with, except Abli Bekr's, which itself was shortly afterwards destroyed by Marwan, Governor of Medina. All the copies of the Koran now scattered
over the Moslem world, therefore, without exception, are reproductions of 'Uthman's edition.

Mahomet, who had no love for heathen poets, and was always afraid his followers might forsake him and go back to the rhythmic chants to which their cradles had been rocked, sought out bards to sing his own praises. One of the poems of Labid is included in
the Muallaqat. the Beni-Ja'far.

He

belonged to a prominent family of His father, Rabi'a, had earned by his

Rabfa of the needy." Born about 560, he lived to a great age, till the beginning of the Caliphate of Muawiya, towards 661. Legend asserts him to have been a hundred and forty-live years old when he died. He heard the Mecca sermons, and was not a whit impressed by them. When Mahomet had retired to Medina, Labid's uncle, 'Amir, whose prowess had earned him the surname of "Champion of the lance," fell sick, and sent his nephew to consult the Prophet as to his case. Labid then heard the Koran recited, and
these recitals, delivered with
all

generosity the sobriquet of "

the gravity

and

earnest-

made the deepest impression upon The passage which worked his final acceptance of the new faith is actually quoted "These are they who have bought error with the
ness of conviction,
his mind.
:

coin of truth, but their bargain has brought them no profit, they have not continued in the right way. They
are like unto a the
fire

man who
its

has kindled a
all
it,

fire.

When
it,

on God has suddenly quenched

has cast
light
4

that

is

about

and

leaving

men

in

dark-

42
ness, they

ARABIC LITERATURE
can see nothing
at
all.

Deaf, dumb, blind,

they are not able to retrace their steps. They are like unto those who, when a great cloud heavy with darkness

and thunder and

are
filled

lightning
fear

heaven,

with the

of

comes down from death, and stop

in the
infidels

their ears with their fingers to shut out the noise of

the thunder, while the

Lord hems

on

every

side.

The

thunderbolt well nigh blinds them.

its light.

When
it

the lightning flashes they walk by

When
God
so

leaves

them

in darkness, they stop short.

If

willed it, He would take sight and hearing from them, for He is all-powerful. O men worship your Lord,
!

who has created you and those who came Mayhap you will fear Him."
After his uncle's death Labid
of his tribe to

before you.

went with a deputation Medina, and was there publicly converted. Once a Moslem, he cared no more for his poems, and never mentioned them of his own will. What he specially valued in the new order of things was the social organisation which he saw taking the place of
the penury, the frays,

and

life

of general rapine,

which

had

hitherto been the lot

it

of

the

nomad

Arabs.

He

thought

an admirable thing that there should be "a public force established to protect men from each other, institutions out of which a servant bearing wallets brings support to those who need it, and a public treasury which pays each man the salary which is his due." This gives a vivid idea of the state of the Peninsula
before the Prophet's time.

Labid had a brother, Arbad, who was killed by lightning while on his way back from Medina, whither he had journeyed, it is said, in the hope of taking the Prophet by surprise and killing him. His sudden death wasattri-

THE KORAN

43

buted to the vengeance of heaven. The poet mourned long for his brother. He composed sad elegies about him, in vi^hich he sang of the emptiness of life. " Man is but a little flame. A little while after it has risen into the air, it turns to ashes." Before he died, he desired " Do not his two daughters to mourn him for one year. tear your faces nor shave off your hair. Say rather 'Our father was a man who never forsook a comrade, nor betrayed the trust of a friend.' Repeat these words till one year has gone by, and then go in peace. For he who has mourned a whole year through, has fulfilled his
:

and deserves no reproach." But for Hassan ibn Thabit was reserved the glory of acting as the Prophet's panegyrist, and singing his glories. He was born at Medina, visited Hira and Damascus in his younger days, and finally attached himself to Mahomet as his court-poet, whose duty it was to reply to the bards accompanying the deputations sent by the different tribes to make their submission. Beside the great heathen models, Hassan strikes us as But the subject colourless, and his style as very bald. of his work has ensured him undying renown amongst the Moslems. Ka'b ibn Zuhair, son of the poet of the Muallaqa, had begun by scoffing at the new Prophet. The conversion of the Muzaina tribe, of which he was a member, and even that of his brother Bujair, only increased the bitterness of his jests. This was displeasing to the Prophet, and threatened to be an ultimate source of danger to him, on account of the hold exercised by poets over the Bedouin mind. He decreed this poet's It was not easy to escape the execution of the death. terrible fiat. But Kab succeeded in doing so in very The encomiums he showered on the skilful fashion.
duty,

44

ARABIC LITERATURE
were so agreeable
to

victorious leader

him

that he pre-

sented their author with his own cloak (burdd), a gift that established the verse-maker's reputation, and for

which he expressed his gratitude in a poem, known by," which has its two opening words " Bdnat Sudd been read and admired all over the Moslem East. Celebrity has been won by the elegies, full of deep feeling, in which MUTAMMIM IBN NUWAIRA mourned the Malik was chief of the tragic fate of his brother Malik. He had emYarbu, a branch of the Tamim tribe. braced the Moslem faith, and had been appointed a tax After the Prophet's death, when the Arabs collector. ceased to feel the heavy hand which had kept them
. .
.

silent,

he,

with

others,

rebelled

against

Caliph

Abu

Bekr, the Prophet's successor, and endeavoured to cast off an authority they thought oppressive. My readers
are aware that this

speedily put down Malik was defeated, surrendered to Khalid, and, Moslem though he was, paid for his rebellion with his life. AbO Mihjan waited till the Thaqif tribe, to which he belonged, had been convinced by armed force of the truth of the Prophet's mission before he himself became a Moslem. But one of his heathen errors he always retained an immoderate love of wine. This earned him some term of imprisonment at the hands of the leaders of the new religion, who allowed no trifling on the point. Finding him incorrigible. Caliph 'Umar sent him away, at last, to the Abyssinian frontier, where he shortly died. He was a brave warrior, as he proved in the Persian war, at the battle of Qadisiyya. We only possess some fragments of his Bacchic verse. Jarwal ibn Aus had been surnamed the Dwarf, Al-

movement was
;

by the Caliph's generals

THE KORAN

45

Hutai'a. He was one of the masters of satire. A wandering troubadour, going from tribe to tribe, dwelling sometimes with the Beni- Abs, sometimes with other communities, he lived on the gifts bestowed on him by the rich and powerful, either to reward his panegyrics, or because they dreaded his bitter attacks. His talent in this direction stirred up such hot anger wherever he was that he was considered a dangerous man, whom Caliph 'Umar was obliged to put in prison in the interest of public safety and the general peace. Other poets, like Astr Dhu'aib of the Hudhailite tribe, had taken service in the conquering army. He accompanied 'Abdallah ibn Sa'd into Northern Africa, and was deputed by that general to announce the taking of CarthHe suffered the misforage to the Caliph 'Uthman.

tune of seeing his five sons swept away by the plague in Egypt, and devoted an elegy to this sad memory. With ABt>'L-AsWAD AL-Du'ALt we forsake the desert, for he was a town-dweller, a well-known citizen of Bassora, remarkable for the political part he played in connection with the Caliph 'Alt, whose partisan he was he fought at his side through that long battle of Siffin, which was the prelude to the misfortunes of the
;

'Alids.

To him is ascribed the invention of the Arabic grammar, and this has brought him a certain renown, which casts a reflected gleam on his poetry, itself someCritics regard the origin what mediocre in quality. of the poems ascribed to Abu Talib, Mahomet's uncle, as doubtful, and are still more convinced of this as
The
regards those bearing the name of the Caliph 'Ali. Shi'ite tendencies of these last quickly convinced
students that they were composed, at
time, to serve the interests of the' Alids.

some uncertain

CHAPTER
t

IV

THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY

The
Mu'awiya and the final disMedina Caliphate, whereby the capital of the new Empire was removed from the Arabian deserts to Damascus, a locality naturally inheriting an ancient Greco-Syrian civilisation, robbed the nomad tribes of their predominant position, and conferred it on
successful revolt of
of

appearance

the

the dwellers in towns.

imitation,

In literary matters,
still

we

find the

poets of this second period

sacrificing, in

on the

altar of the Qasida, the ancient

ode.

But we

find, at the

same

time,

clumsy Bedouin an ample harvest

the unexpected

of occasional poems,

inspired by
life

all

incidents of the political

of the

new Empire. 'Umar

IBN ABt Rabi'A was of the tribe of Quraish, to which Mahomet belonged, but which had not hitherto produced any poet. His father was a merchant, who had been sent by the Prophet to rule one of the southern provinces of the Peninsula, a duty which he performed till
the death of 'Umar, and
it

may

be even under Caliph

Uthman. He finally returned to his native country, and there the youthful poet grew to manhood. He never left the town till his death, except when he was taken, as a prisoner, to Damascus, and did not play any part in the wars waged by the Moslems on the frontiers of their growing Empire. A rich man and an idle,
46

THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY

47

he found opportunities of extolling the charms of many fair ladies, two princesses of the reigning house amongst them. His love affairs brought him into bad odour with the Caliph of Damascus, 'Uniar H., who had him bound with chains and brought into his presence, together with his friend Al-Ahwas. Al-Ahwas was banished to the Isle of Dahlak, in the Red Sea, and 'Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a was forced to take an oath to forswear his art, an oath he probably found it easy enough to keep, seeing he had already reached his seventieth year. He died, indeed, soon after, about the year 719, possibly by shipwreck, but this fact is not well established. His poems, set to music, and popularised

by professional Arab world.

In his turn,

singers,

made

their

way

all

over the
dis-

Abdallah ibn Qais al-Ruqayyat

tinguished himself by the share he took in the attempts He of 'Abdallah ibn Zubair to obtain the Caliphate.

accompanied 'Abdallah's brother, Musab, to Ir^q, of which country he had just been appointed governor, bore him company in the disastrous battle in which Musab lost his life (690), hid himself for a year after it, and then Caliph Abdal-Malik pardoned returned to Medina. him, but did not give him back the pension he had

Amongst other poets belonging to we may mention Qais ibn Dharih, 'Ali's unhappy son, martyred at Husain, foster-brother to certain Lubna, and made her name Kerbela, who loved a so famous by his verse that in later days every poem in which the name of Lubni figured was ascribed to him. The same thing happened in the case of the celebrated Majnljn, the madman of the tribe of Beni-Amir, whose His passion for real name was Qais ibn Mulawwah.
formerly enjoyed.

Medina

at this .period,

48

ARABIC LITERATURE
and
his

the lovely Laila had crazed his brain,

to

adven-

tures served the Persian poets as subjects with which

embroider the canvas of their mystic poems. Jamil ibn 'Abdallah loved Buthaina, even as Kuthayyir loved

Azza the Bedouin.

well received at

The last-named poet belonged

to

the Shi'ite sect of the Kaisaniyya, in spite of which he

was

Damascus by 'Abdal-Malik.

Within

the walls of the city also dwelt at that time a singer, of Persian origin, named Jonas (Yunus), and surnamed Katib (the secretary), who had learnt music from Caliph Walid, the Suraij ibn Muhriz and Al-Gharid. son of Yazid, brought him from Syria when he ascended
the throne in 742. This singer was an author too, and wrote a Book of Songs which was the original model of the famous Kitdb al-aghdni of Abu'l-Faraj alIsfahani.

In the person of

special bard of their brave deeds.

of the tribe of

Al-Akhtal, the Omeyyads found the He was a Christian, Taghlib, which had originally belonged to

Najd, but was then settled in Mesopotamia. His name was Ghiyath. Akhtal means, " one whose ears are flabby and hang down." Was the poet really afflicted with a blemish of this kind ? If so, his enemies would not have failed to mock at it, and they never did so. Other authorities aver that the word should be taken to mean
" chatterer," a signification
it

does also possess.

While quite young, Al-Akhtal attacked the reputation of Ka'b ibn Juail, a member of his own tribe, and the recognised poet of the nation, and the two waged a war of epigrams. He lost his mother, LailA, at an early age, and had to endure persecution from a cruel step-mother, who set him laborious tasks, and sent him out to herd the goats he avenged himself by tricking her out of a
:

THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY

jar of milk

49

and some dried fruit. Al-Akhtal's religion was one of purely formal and external observances. He wore a cross on his breast, and kept it there even within the Omeyyad Palace at Damascus, when the favour of the princes of that family called him thither. He occasionally endured somewhat severe penances, as when the priest of his tribe took him by the beard and trounced
him.
Caliph 'Abdal-Malik, though he cared httle for
religion, tried to convert

him
if I

to the

Moslem
1

faith.

"

consent," quoth the poet, "

am allowed

to drink

and exempted from fasting in Ramadan " the lines " Never will I go braying like an ass, Come to prayers,' but I will go on drinking the kindly liquor, and
: '

wine and he wrote

prostrating myself
interesting,

when
it

the sun rises."

The

last line is

because

shows

that the ancient primitive

Christian habit of gathering themselves together and turning towards the rising sun was still in force amongst

the Arabs of the Taghlib tribe, in the eighth century.

Ka'b ibn Juail bore Al-Akhtal no malice on account

was who recommended him to he was seeking a poet to compose diatribes, which were to be diffused about the deserts, and carried by the singers through all the towns
of his epigrams, for he
it

Yazid, son of

Mu awiya, when

of the Peninsula, thus serving the political ends of the

Omeyyads, and withdrawing the affections of the popufrom the Ansars, men of Medina who had been the Prophet's first defenders. Yazid's protection saved him from the spites stirred by his violent language. A subject of frequent argument at the Omeyyad Court was the relative merits of the three poets, Akhtal, Ferazdaq, and Jarir. The princes would amuse themselves by making their courtiers pronounce an opinion, and the courtiers, who dreaded the vengeance of the two poets
lace

so

ARABIC LITERATURE
be passed over
if

who must
third,

the palm was awarded to the

by taking refuge in " from a well," said one; water draws generalities. Jarir " Ferazdaq hews out of the rock as for Akhtal, he excels

would

get out of the difficulty

in

eulogy and in heroic verse." In later days, under the 'Abbasids,

when

passions

had cooled, grammarians ended by preferring Akhtal, because his verses were more finished and correct, and
because he had been able to produce the largest number

poems of a certain length which are irreproachable, from beginning to end, both in subject and in form. The qualities most valued in his work are fulness of We are told nothing afflatus and purity of expression.
of

But one famous as to the loftiness of his inspiration. line, which Harun al-Rashid loved to recall, proves the
occurs
It moral sentiments he enunciated. ode addressed to the Caliph 'AbdalMalik, in which, speaking of the Omeyyads, he says

nobility of
in

the

his

"Terrible in their rage if they are withstood, they are the most clement of men when victory is won." While Akhtal's fame was spreading over Mesopotamia

and

Syria, the

renown

of the

two other

poets, Jarir

and

Ferazdaq, was growing in 'Iraq. Ferazdaq was a pious and fervent Moslem, entirely devoted to the Prophet's family, and with it all a cynic,
a libertine, whose sport it was to attack women's honour, who made vile use of the terror his ribald verse inspired,
while he himself was a

mean coward, more timorous than

His name was

Such was the shabby Hammam, and he belonged to the tribe of Tamim. He was born at Bassora towards 641. Caliph 'All advised him to learn the Koran instead of running after poetry, and the young
a sparrow, spiteful and vindictive.

nature of this great poet.

THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY

51

man is said to have fastened chains to his own feet until he got the sacred Hnes by heart. But his father's death soon brought back all his poetic instincts. The hatred of the Beni-Nahshal drove him into exile. He betook himself to Kufa and Medina, vi^here he was kindly treated by Sa'id ibn al- As. His imprudent boast, in one of his poems, that he had entered the precincts of
a

harem by means

of a rope-ladder, stirred the rage of

He was banished by Marwan, and would have settled at Mecca if the death of his enemy Ziyad, Governor of 'Iraq, had not made it possible for him to rejoin his tribe. His adventures with
the worthy pharisees of Medina.
his cousin

Nawar (whom he

married,

who

sought to

divorce him, and

for

no one to bear witness was the dread of the the judge, so great her before
find

who could

took refuge with'Abdallah ibn Zubair, the Medina pretender, and at last obtained her husband's consent to a separation) have, like his strife with his adversary Jarir, been the subject of many poems. He died of a skin disease, contracted during a desert
poet's satires,

who

journey, towards the year 728. He was a determined supporter of the rights of the 'Alids, and the verses

which he acclaimed Zain al-'Abidin, 'All's grandson, brought him to a dungeon. Ferazdaq was then a man But satire is his special field, and it must be of seventy. acknowledged that in it he knew no limit, whether of decency or honour and further, that he was constantly and immoderately guilty of a sin with which Arab writers
in
;

are frequently charged

that of shamelessly stealing lines

He was
a plagiarist,
his

from

his neighbours' compositions.

forcing his competitors to leave

that took his fancy,

him

in possession of lines

and below which he wrote

own

name.

52

ARABIC LITERATURE
Born
in

the

Hijaz,

Kuthayyir was
a

famous

for

his

eccentricities.

He was

partisan

of the 'Alids,

and professed the most extreme reHgious views. His absurd affectations had won him the surname of "Antichrist." He was very short, too, which gave food for the scoffers' jeers. There was a joke it was Akhtal who first retailed it that, when he moved from the Hijaz

into Syria, he
relative

had been starved and numbed by the

of the last-named country.
in the south of Najd, was the He, too, was of the tribe of Tamim.

chilHness
of

But JarIr,

Yamama,

popular favourite.

He

dwelt in 'Iraq, and had opportunities of extolling

the terrible

governor of that province, at But the favour of whose severity all men trembled. the Omeyyad princes was not bestowed on him Akhtal had prejudiced 'Abdal-Malik against him. He had to wait till Umar II. ascended the throne before seeing himself preferred before his rivals. He was a mighty fighter, and his life was spent in poetic tournaments. The most famous of these was that with Ferazdaq, who was backed by Akhtal. 'Ubaid, who was called "the camel-herd," because he had written five lines describing these creatures, the nomad's inseparable comrades, had sided with Ferazdaq. Jarir could not forgive him, and poured sarcasms upon him till he drove him out of Bassora, and turned the anger of his own tribe against him. Jarir and Ferazdaq died in the same year, 728. The first-named poet had returned to his own tribe, the Yamama, towards the end of his life. At the same period, Ghailan ibn 'Uqba, surnamed DHtr'L-RuMMA, was carrying on, though with lowered vitality, the tradition of the desert poets. Ferazdaq complained that he was too fond, like the ancient
Al-Hajjaj,
;

THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY

authors, of

53

descriptions of

forsaken

encampments, of
himself, indeed,

camels, and the bird called qatd.

He

admitted that his comparisons might go on for ever. Nevertheless, his poems were long held in high admiration

by the

philologists,

more

especially, perhaps,

on

account of the uncommon words occurring in them. Beside these poets who carried on the classic tradition of the long rhythmic recitations, we find the simplest of prosodic metres, the rafaz, suddenly springing into considerable importance, and rising as high as The rajaz, deits fellows in the popular estimation. spised by the heathens, looked on as a sort of cadenced prose, only fit, at its best, for improvisations, had been softened and transformed by Al-Aghlab ibn 'Umar ibn Ubaida, who fell fighting gallantly at the Battle of Nehawend in 641, and reached its full development in
the

work
of

of

Abu Najm

al-Fadl ibn

Qudama

al-Tjli,

the

friend

the Caliph Hisham, Al-Ajjaj, and

his

son

Ru'ba.

The funeral elegies written by a woman, Laila ALAkhyaliyya, are famous, more especially those devoted
to the

memory

of

Tauba ibn al-Humayyir, who loved

by

her,

and

suffered the anguish of seeing her married

her father to a stranger, a mean and jealous fellow, who beat her. The story goes that one night, sick of ill treatment, she called an unknown guest who had joined
the tribe at nightfall
;

that he came,

under cover

of the

darkness, struck the husband three or four hearty blows

across the shoulders with a stick, and departed, the poetess having prevented his further interference in the

domestic broil. He went away unrecognised, and was never seen again. Laila saved her friend from many ambushes prepared for him by jealous rivals. He was

54
true to her
tribal
till

ARABIC LITERATURE
his death,

which took place

in an inter-

quarrel in 704.

The

celebrity

won by

these

compositions encouraged their authoress to persevere. She paid visits to princely courts, vi^aited on Caliph 'Abdal-Malik, and on the Governor of 'Iraq, Al-Hajjaj, to whom she offered eulogies. She died in 707, while on her way to visit her cousin, Qutaiba ibn Muslim, the Moslem general then governing the province

touching

Al-Khansa is the only Arab poetess who can be considered her superior. She was a tall woman with great black eyes. .Laila waged a war of epigrams with Nabigha al-Ja'di, who hotly answered her, concerning the attacks of a certain Sawar ibn Aufa, called Ibn al-Haya, after his mother, who had spoken evil in his verses of the tribe of Azd. Nabigha had replied, and all this happened at Ispahan. The verses circulated through the desert, and the censured tribes threatened an appeal to the Governor of Medina, or even to the
of Khurasan.
Caliph.

Amongst the desert poets who were Christians must be mentioned 'Abdallah ibn al-Mukhariq, called the Nabigha of the Beni-Shaiban, who swore by the Gospels, the monks, and all the usual Christian oaths. He was fond of leaving his Syrian steppes to recite his well-paid eulogies in the presence of the Caliphs at Damascus. 'Abdal-Malik and Walid were his patrons. Hisham, on the contrary, could not endure him, and kept him at a distance. The poem beginning " Mine eyes have shed
tears

...

at

the sight of the traces

. . .

left

at

Hafir

dying away in solitude sorrowful like the verses of the Psalms," long maintained its popularity. 'Umair ibn Shuyaim, of the tribe of Taghlib, and nephew to AlAkhtal,

was another

Christian, but he eventually turned

THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY

55

Moslem. He was called Al-Qutami, the Sparrow-hawk, on account of a simile which he had rendered famous, and also Sari' al-Ghawani the victim of the fair an expression of his own invention, and on which Muslim in

later

days conferred celebrity. He died in 728. Beside these poets we must also place AshA Hamdan,

a Koran-reader and lawyer, belonging to Kflfa, who forsook his legal studies to declaim poetry, and fought
against the heathens of Dailam,

among

the mountains

south-west of the Caspian Sea. He fell into their hands as a prisoner of war, was saved by the love of a young girl of that country, and took up the cause of 'Abdal-Kahman ibn al-Ash'ath, who had ventured to proclaim the deposition of 'Abdal-Malik, and whom some held to be the

Qahtanid expected by the Moslems as a precursor of the Last Judgment, but who was vanquished by Al-Hajjaj

The poet shared his leader's sad fate. Herded with a crowd of other prisoners, he was put to death by the terrible Governor of Traq, who could not forgive
in 702.

he had made on him in his poems. Ahmad al-Nasibi, with whom he had entered into bonds of brotherhood, after the fashion of the
the imprudent attacks
desert Arabs, was a musician, written by his friend.

who sang

the

lines

Al-Hajjaj

had a

sister,

Zainab,

who was

beloved

But the governor thought the poet's praise compromised the reputation of his family, and Numairi had to seek refuge Zainab, who had been with the Caliph of Damascus. sent to the same city at the time of Al-Ash'ath's revolt, died there of an accident a fall from her mule. Nuby Numairi
of Ta'if, a writer of erotic stanzas.

mairi

found consolation

in

singing

elegies

over her

tomb.

S6

ARABIC LITERATURE

a huge ascendency Arab tongue, and literary efforts by men whose native language was not Arabic were already beginning to appear. It would be impossible, were it only on
to the

The Moslem Conquest had given

account of

the Persian origin of

surname, Al-A'^jam, not to recognise ZiYAD IBN SULAIMAN, who was "client" of an Arab tribe (by client must be underhis

stood either a freed slave or a

lived

man who

voluntarily

under the

aegis of a

patronage which raised him

that period, of a vanquished foe, even of

above the singular humiliations which were the lot, at one who had
faith) dwelling at Persepolis,

embraced the Moslem

was

born, according to some, at Ispahan, and died in Khu-

rasan in 689. His funeral eulogium of Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra won universal praise. "Tell the caravans that valour and generosity have been buried at Merv, in
the clearest fashion." His poetic talent rose above an inconvenient impediment in his speech. He was accused of pronouncing like a peasant. He could not articulate the letter Ain the peculiar onomatopoeia of the Arab tongue, which reproduces the grunt of the camel as it is being loaded pronounced the sad or emphatic s

wrong, and could not produce the guttural h at all. Another Persian who became an Arab poet was Ismail ibn Yasar, a client of an Arab tribe, and a partisan of the Zubairids. He accompanied 'Urwa, the son of Zubair, on his journey to the court of the Caliph Walid, and wrote an elegy on the death of his patron's son, who fell off a roof among a drove of horses, and was kicked to death by them. Later he paid a second visit to Walid, when the Caliph was
at the

Syrian Rusafa, built to the west of Raqqa by There, and during that prince's time, he Hisham.

THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY

began chanting the praises
extolling
his
host.

57

of the Persians instead of

fell

The Caliph

into

violent

rage and had him thrown into a pond, out of which he was dragged half dead, and banished to the Hijaz. He had two brothers, Muhammad and Ibrahim, both of them poets, and descended from slaves taken in the province of Fars. Ismail is the earliest instance of
these ShuAbiyya, fanatical adherents of their

own

race,

who, notwithstanding their Arab education, openly declared themselves to be of a different origin from that of their barbarous conquerors.

Amongst other poets

of

foreign

birth

whom

the

ascendency of the conquering race and of the desert bards converted to the language of the Koran, we must His not omit to mention Abu 'Ata Aflah ibn Yasar. father was an Indian from the banks of the Indus. The chances of life so fell out that the child was born at Kufa, but he never spoke Arabic well, a remark we have already made as to the Persians who had adopted the dominant tongue. He was the chartered panegyrist of the Omeyyads, and was obliged to direct
the shafts
lived

of

his

satire

against

the 'Abbasids.

He

long enough to see these last victors, thanks to the help of the Persian Shi'ites found the city of Bagdad on the banks of the Tigris, for his death only occurred when Mansur was Caliph in 774. So faulty was his pronunciation that he was obliged to have his stanzas recited by a Barbary slave who had a fine voice. The eulogies he offered to Mansur were not well received by that Caliph, who could not forget that he had written verses mourning the death of Nasr ibn Sayyar,

the adversary of

Abu Muslim.

The

poet, thus repulsed

by

the 'Abbisid prince, took vengeance on

5

him

in his

58

ARABIC LITERATURE
the decree

satires, jeering at

whereby the populace was

the chosen colour of

commanded

to

dress in

black,

the 'Abbasids.

The Caliph Walid was a poet, a musical composer, and a singer. A born artist, he early plunged into the greatest excesses, and drank wine during his pilgrimage to Mecca. He lost the affection of the people, and was killed by the Yemenites in 742, just a year after the death of his uncle Hisham. He modelled his drinking songs on the works of 'Adi ibn Zaid, and his successor in this line was the great poet, Abu Nuwas. This Caliph, brilliant though he was, and full of showy qualities, necessarily displeased the Moslems by his shameless debauchery, and they accused him of having entered into a compact with Persian teachers, and of being a secret believer in their faith. He composed numerous airs, could play the lute, mark the rhythm on cymbals, and walk in cadenced step to the sound of the tambour he denied this, it is true, and forbade his comrades to speak of it. At Mecca his chief care was to send for the best singer of the locality, Yahya, surnamed the Elephant {Fil), and take lessons from

him.

Yahya, transported with

admiration,
a

besought

the Caliph to receive

that he might profit
artist,

him amongst his by the teaching of

followers, so

renowned

he acknowledged his superior. Al-Kumait was acquainted with the different Arabic dialects, and knew the history of the various Arab wars. He was a fierce partisan of the Mudar tribes, celebrated their exploits, and scoffed at the southern tribes. He had attached himself to the family of Hashim, descended from the Prophet, and to it his finest panegyrics are addressed. His friendship with the poet Tirimmah has

whom

THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY

become
opposed
a

59

proverb, and was

all

the

more phenomenal

because the views of the two friends were diametrically

was a Shi'ite, and championed the Tirimmah was a Kharijite, and supported the men of Damascus, his native city. " How can you agree," it was asked, " seeing you differ in every

Kumait

men

of

Kufa, while

respect?" "We have one thing in common," replied Kumait, "our hatred of the vulgar." Odi profanum vulgus et arceo : every poet is an aristocrat. His attacks on the reigning dynasty earned him arrest and imprisonment at the hands of Hisham, who would have cut out his tongue and cut off his hand but he was saved by the devotion of his wife, who lent him her own garments Maslama, the to enable him to escape from durance. Caliph's son, afterwards obtained the poet's pardon as a reward for a funeral eulogy of his grandfather, Muawiya which is asserted to have been really improvised. He died a violent death in 743 killed during
;

a riot

by the
this

soldiery.
also,

At

period,

flourished

a very remarkable

man,

Hammad

ibn Sabiir, surnamed Al-Rawiya, or the

Quoter because his extraordinary memory held thousands of ancient Arab stanzas and complete poems. To

him

poetry
father,

the preservation of great part of the pre-Islamic is due, and to him we owe the collection into one
of

volume

the Muallaqat.

He was

an Iranian.

His

taken prisoner in war, belonged to that redoubtable race of the Dailamites, which braved the Arabs and maintained its indeSabilr (Sapor),

who was

pendence in the inaccessible mountains of Gilan, and which was later, under the name of Buwaihids, to seize Bagdad, and reduce the Caliph's power to a purely This early commentator and spiritual sovereignty.

6o
scholar,
origin,

ARABIC LITERATURE

whose linguistic blunders bewrayed his foreign was also born at Kilfa. The favour shown him by Yazid had displeased Hisham. When he succeeded, Hammad was fain to hide himself a whole year in his own house, never leaving it, save to pay secret visits to trusted friends. But the new Caliph soon summoned him to Damascus. He is said to have died either in
771 or 774. His learning extended over the legendary history of the pre-lslamic Arabs, their poetry, their genealogies,

and

their dialects.

He
;

could distinguish the

he boasted that he could recite long odes, belonging to the heathen times, rhyming on every letter of the alphabet. He was a living encyclopedia. He had begun by being a thief and a rogue. Some verses which he found on the person of a man he had robbed in the middle of the night stirred his vocation in him. He wrote poetry himself. AlMufaddal al-Dabbi accused him of interpolating his
ancient from the
style

modern

own
it

lines amongst those of the ancient poets, so that was impossible to detect the difference, and it is even said that, when pressed by Caliph Al-Mahdi, Hammad

confessed his fraud.

the
first makes an appearance under the sway of Omeyyads. We are told that Ziyad, brother to Muawiya, and his lieutenant, wrote a book on the pretensions of the Arab families, which was intended to serve as a weapon in the hands of his own descendants, in case their origin should be attacked (he was the son of Abu Sufyan, Mu awiya's father, by a slave) but this is by no means a certainty, though the assertion is supported by the authority of the Fihrist. 'Abid ibn Sharya was an Arab from the South he was summoned to Damascus from Sana, by Muawiya, to whom he

History

THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY

used to recite the
728), a
stories of the kings of biblical legends, as also did

6i

Wahb

ibn

Jew by

origin,

and

either a

Yemen, and Munabbih (638Moslem convert, or,

possibly, a Sabian, or
Baptist.

Christian follower of St. John His surname, Abnawi, indicated his descent

from the Persian colony left in Southern Arabia by the troops sent by Chosroes I. Antjshirwan against the Abyssinians. He played an important part in the elaboration of Moslem jurisprudence and theology, which are based, after the Koran, on the hadith, or traditions of the Prophet. Wahb was one of the most ancient and popular of the traditionists. He was born at Dhimar, near San'a. Abu Mikhnaf Lut ibn YahvS. wrote three-and-thirty treatises on different persons and events.

They

deal more especially with the history of the conquest of 'Iraq, a subject on which he was, in the earliest

days, the uncontested authority.

Muhammad
Shihab, after

ibn Muslim al-Zuhri,

He died in 774. who was called

Ibn-

one of his ancestors, was one of the learned men who devoted themselves to the study of the tradiHe belonged to Medina, but was not tions of Mahomet. a member of the irreconcilable party which regarded the Omeyyads of Damascus as usurpers. He went to Syria, was chosen by the Caliph Hisham to be his children's His tutor, and became a magistrate under Yazid II. connection with the Omeyyad dynasty stirs some mistrust as to the tendency, unconscious no doubt, of his
Caliph 'Umar theological studies. the various provinces of the Empire,
II.

sent letters into

al-Zuhri should be consulted in "for no man," he says, "is better acquainted with the

recommending that any legal difficulties,

customs of the past days." When at home, he was so absorbed in the study of his books that he forgot every-

62
thing
are
else,

ARABIC LITERATURE
and
his wife

one day exclaimed

"

These books

than the three other wives the law permits him, though he has but one!" He died, aged
trying to
seventy-three,

more

me

on

his

farm

at

Adama,

in Arabia,

between

Syria and the Hijaz.

The conquest

of Syria,

as the seat of the capital, Christians into close

and the selection of Damascus had brought Moslems and contact. St. John of Damascus,
at the court of 'Abdal-Malik,

whose

father

was received

wrote a defence of the Christian religion against the In 'Iraq, the great theologian Hasan doctrine of Islam. Ba.sri, who died in 728, held uncontested sway as a The elegance and purity of his doctrinal instructor. Arabic are famous even now. He had been singularly handsome, but he fell when riding, broke his nose,

and was

disfigured for

life.

His

father,

who

lived

in

Maisan, was made a prisoner and carried into slavery when Khalid conquered that province in 633. His
disciple,

Wasil
a burr

ibn

'Ata,

left

him, and

founded the

Mutazilite school,

He had
with the

professed a kind of rationalism. in his speech, and as he never could

all

who

correct this defect, he obliged himself to avoid

letter r in

words

a long neck, and was somewhat gibed at on this account. He died in 748. But the theological works of those days have not come

them.

He had

down

to us.

The

collection of the

Arab proverbs now

attention. began to Prince Khalid, the son of Yazid, practised alchemy, a science taught him by a monk of the name of Marianus. He wrote three treatises, the first of which deals with his teacher and the instruction he bestowed on him.
attract

some

CHAPTER V
THE 'ABbAsIDS
battle of the great Zab was the Persians' revenge on the Arabs^a very incomplete revenge, for it did not come till a whole century had rolled by, and by that time Persia bore indelible marks of the Arab domination, both in religion and in language. The religious code of the Sasanian dynasty, the Avesta, a revival of the old worship of Ahura-Mazda, had disappeared, and was only preserved round the very few fire-altars the
still permitted to exist. The Persian all the language was nothing but a spoken tongue All Persians literary character had departed from it. now wrote in Arabic, and so strong was the impression made by the Semitic tongue that it has maintained But Persia possessed another and an itself to this day.

The

victors' tolerance

intangible force, the

native,

and

creative

Aryan genius, the powerful, imagimind of the great Indo-European

artistic, philosophic, and intellectual brain this period onward, so mightily affects from which, Arab literature, enabling it to develop in every quarter of the Caliphs' realms, and to produce that enormous aggregate of works, of which many, no doubt, were lost But in the destruction attending the Mongol conquest. the chief specimens have been preserved, and their effect on the Europe of the Middle Ages has been far

family, the

greater than

many have

imagined.
6%

ARABIC LITERATURE

When
on the

the 'Abbasids founded

right

the city

of

Bagdad,

bank

of

the Tigris, they seem to have

sought for a site which would be a compromise between the Arab creators of the Caliphs' Empire

and the Persian authors of the revolution which had placed the sons of 'Abbas on the throne. To the right
of the Tigris lies Mesopotamia, a Semitic country from times immemorial, and overrun, since the fall of the ancient empires, by the nomad Arabs. To the left, Iranian territory begins at once. The very name of

the

city is Persian, and signifies given by God. The Bagdad of the Caliphs now lies in ruins only a very small number of the buildings remain modern Bagdad, which stands, as my readers are aware, on the left bank of the Tigris, being still inhabited by many Persians.
;

From

the very outset of the eighth century, Persian

in

influence
sin's

was so strong Mansur did not hesitate to

hand, of

political

matters

that

by the assasAbu Muslim, the leader who had overrid himself,

just as

thrown the Omeyyad dynasty,

Harun

al-Rashid,

Persian Barmakides, who had supplied him with two powerful ministers. In literature, this Persian influence is immense. It per-

at a later date, rid himself of the

vades everything poetry, theology, jurisprudence the Arabs had ceased to write all posts, administrative, court,
:

and
this

legal,

were held by men who were not Arabs, and

all

the same applies to

the literature of the time.

From

became the language, and the sole language, of the huge Empire of the Caliphs. But it was Arabic spoken and written by men who were Arabs by education, not by blood. All races, Persians, Syrians, Berbers from Maghrib, were melted and amalgamated in this mighty crucible. The most Intelperiod onward, Arabic

THE 'ABBASIDS
lectual parts of this
;

65

medley were finally to recover their the Persian tongue, which was never to drop the cloak cast upon it by the Semite domination, was
identity

once more

to

become

a literary language,

and

to have

the glory of giving

birth

to other literatures, such as

;

Hindu but in the west, Arabic was only to be driven out of Spain together with the Moors, and the Maghrib was to keep the language of its conquerors, now become its native idiom, for ever. Poetry now began to alter. The lengthy qasidas of the desert, held up as models for students by the theorists, found no more original exponents. This form
and hence to platitude. appeared on the banks of the Tigris, whither the imperial splendour was attracting
servile imitation,

the Ottoman-Turkish and the

was doomed to But a new kind

of poetry

the most brilliant talents.

A family from Palestine produced MuTi' IBN AyAs. His father had been with Al-Hajjaj when that general went into the province of Mecca to reduce the pretender 'Abdallah ibn Zubair to submission, and also when he defeated another pretender, Ibn al-Ash'ath, who came out of the distant land of Arachosia and very nearly succeeded in overthrowing the Caliphate. Mutf ibn Ayis himself took service, first of all, with Caliph Walid ibn Yazid, but after the fall of the Omeyyads he appealed to Jafar, son of Caliph Mansur, who took him into his service, and kept him till he died, thereby greatly displeasing the Caliph, his father. His poems are marked by elegant expression and deep feeling. His description of the two palm-trees at Hulwan would in itself suffice to make him famous. Under an apparent indifference in religious matters, he seems to have concealed heretical leanings. He was

66

ARABIC LITERATURE

accused of not being really a true Moslem. He denied the imputation of being a Zindiq (Manichean), but he was caught in the act of reciting suspicious verses. Men fought shy of his company, for he was a debauchee. His verses were very loose. One day he told a woman she was just as fit as the Caliph Al-Mahdi to mount the preacher's pulpit, which caused the sovereign to laugh

most heartily. As a maker of jokes and court

at

jester,

we must glance

ABtJ

who

ibn al-Jaun, an Abyssinian negro, had fought against the Omeyyads, and was per-

DULAMA Zand

mitted to entertain the Caliphs

Mansur
to

and

He was
tainly

the

favourite

of

Mansur,

whom

Mahdi. he cerin

rendered good service by praising him,

panegyric, for having put

the populace found
sids

Abu Muslim

to death.

For

it hard to understand why the 'Abbarewarded the great general who had set them on the throne in such ungrateful fashion. He mocked at the Caliph's order that his subjects should wear black, the 'Abbasids' colour, and a witty sally earned him

leave, alone of all the population, to disregard the edict.

When Musa ibn Da'ud made his pilgrimage to Mecca, he promised the jester 10,000 drachmas if he would travel with him. Abu Dulama pocketed the cash and disappeared into the villages, whither he went to drink wine. Mdsa, fearing to miss the pilgrimage season, started on his journey, came across the toper, had him
bound and thrown into a palanquin. But so impudent were the fellow's repartees that he was fain to get rid of him, and leave him to spend the rest of the money he had given him. Abu Dulama died in 778. He suggested to a physician to
his son, that, to secure

whom

payment

he owed money for curing of the debt, he should

THE 'ABBASIDS

67

bring a suit against a certain rich Jew, he himself offering to bear false witness to prove the claim. The judge well knew the real value of the demand, but such was his dread of the negro's wicked tongue that he preferred to

pay the sum claimed out

of his

own

pocket.

Thus Abu
day,

Dulima got

his doctoring for nothing. in verse to a

One

when

supposed relationship between himself and the Caliph, Al-Mahdi, greatly enraged, inquired to whom he traced this kinship. "To Adam and It Eve," replied the jester, and the Caliph laughed. was said of him that he would make the very devil laugh. Al-Mahdi once ordered him, on pain of death, to satirise
every
peril.

he had alluded

member

of the

numerous company

present.

Abil
of

Dulama's presence of mind saved him

in this

hour

He

attacked himself, called himself " monkey-face,

forerunner of the Last Judgment," with other amenities, which vastly amused the gathering. On another occasion, out hunting, the Caliph killed a gazelle with an arrow, whilst his companion, 'Ali ibn Sulaimin, only hit one of the
with a turban
it,"

upon

"

Abfi Dulima summed up the hounds, which died. " The Caliph kills a incident in comical fashion.

Bravo Each shall feed and 'Ali kills a dog on the provisions he has provided for himself." Whereupon Al-Mahdi laughed till he nearly fell out of his
gazelle
!
!

saddle.

Bashshar ibn Burd (693-783) was

in the

of Persian,

and

possibly even of royal race, as he himself asserted.

He

was born his grandfather father had been carried into slavery war in Tukhiristan, far had been made a prisoner of away in Khurasan. He was a skilful worker in clay, although he was born blind. Later in life he obtained
;

neighbourhood

of Bassora, whither his

68
his

ARABIC LITERATURE

freedom from the Arab woman whose property he was, and lived partly at Bassora, his birthplace, and partly at Bagdad. He made the acquaintance of the theologian

Wasil ibn 'Ata, the founder of the school of the Mutazilites, who ascribed the demoralisation of Bassora to his poems, and remained a free-thinker. He had broken through the rule of saying his prayers five times a day;

he was
of

really a Zindiq, that

is

to say a secret believer

in the Avesta, while preserving the

Islamism.

He was

panegyric of Caliph Caliph contented himself with forbidding him to make any mention of women in future poems. But he imprudently wrote against the minister Yaqub ibn Da'ud, who revenged himself by the infliction of seventy lashes, and of these the poet died at the age of ninety.

outward appearance always a suspected man. His Mahdi saved him once. The

He was ugly, for besides his congenital infirmity, which had left him with two pieces of red flesh instead of eyes, he was deeply pitted with smallpox. Bashshar held the element of Fire to be superior to that of Earth, and justified Satan, who was created out of Fire, for having refused to bow down before Adam, who was made of clay, as the Koran relates. He even wrote a stanza which strongly betokens his Zoroastrian views. "The Earth is dark, and Fire is brilliant. Ever since it has existed men have worshipped it." He was a misanthrope, who thanked God for having made him blind, "so that I need not see that which I hate." When he was about to recite a poem he would clap his hands, cough, and spit right and left. But when once he opened his mouth he won the admiration of his hearers. He had begun to compose verses before he was ten years old, and boasted that he had known

THE 'ABBASIDS
Jarir,

69

and had even satirised him, but the great desert poet had thought him too young to deserve his notice.
" If

he had answered me," Bashshar would say, " I should have been the greatest man of my time." What the grammarian Asma'i thought most admirable in his work was that his lines were the evident production of a natural genius, which would not submit to any lengthy process of polishing before publication they were, so to speak, almost improvised. When the poet was questioned as to the source of his purity of expression he ascribed all the credit to the old men and the women of the Bedouin tribe of the 'Uqail, with which he was connected as a freed slave. Yet he was
;

accused of carrying his use of expletives to the greatest excess and of introducing into his lines names of men and places which had never existed. He had dubbed several chambers in his house with poetic surnames, a source of gentle astonishment to the uninitiated persons to whom he would recount their beauties. Marwan ibn Ab! Hafsa (721-797) was the son of a Khurasan Jew who was taken by Marwan ibn alHakam, then Governor of Medina, to Yamaraa in Arabia, as tax-collector, and there married an Arab

woman

of

free

blood.

He was

strangled in private
directed
against

vengeance for some

political

verses

The criminal's confessionthe claim of the 'Alids. discovered is still in existence. he himself was never Marwan was an imitator of the ancient desert poets. According to Ibn Khallikan, he was great-grandson

Abu Hafsa, Marwan's freedman, whose liberty had been granted as a reward for service rendered during the siege of Caliph 'Uthman's house at Medina-^he had saved his life. Some say he was a
to

70

ARABIC LITERATURE

Jewish physician who turned Moslem. But at Medina he was believed to have been the freedman of Samaual,
the famous Syrian
told that
sepolis

nobleman and

poet.

We
for

are also

Abu Hafsa was made

in

prisoner

when Per-

was taken under 'Uthman.

As
his

who was born

dad,

Yamama, he made

composed panegyrics in honour Harun al-Rashid, and wrote satires

of

Marwan, to BagAl-Mahdi and

way

directed

against
is

the descendants of "All.

a qasida,

His most celebrated work

Governor

rhymed in /, of Yemen,

in praise of Ma'n,

son of Za'ida,
his

in

which

he

lauds
is

inex-

haustible generosity.

"When

a favour

asked of him,

Man will not speak the word No, for this seems a forbidden word to him." The poet was very stingy, and came to the Caliph's court dressed in a sheepskin and the coarsest cotton garments. So thrifty was he that he never bought any meat except sheep's heads, and on these he lived, winter and summer alike. It was " Marwan has no zeal of him that the line was written for pleasure the only jealousy he feels concerns the
:

cooking-pots."

by risk, of the dedicated their powers to politics, we find the far more kindly productions of the love poet, Abu'lBeside the work, not unattended
poets

who
al-

Fadl

Abbas IBN AL-Ahnaf, a descendant

Khurasan,
of
allied

of

Arab

settlers in

with Iranian families.

He

Caliph Harun al-Rashid, followed him in his campaigns, and died at Bagdad (807 or 813). The grace and elegance of his diction made him the

was

comrade

delight of men of taste. He was a man of fine manners, with nothing of the debauchee about him. Polished though he was, he never went beyond writing love

poems.

He was no

artist

either

in

satire

or

in

THE ABBASIDS
panegyric.
Mu'tazilite

71

His

only

theologian,

known enemy was the great Hudhail al-AUaf, who accused

him

of having written a stanza affirming the doctrine

this group,

of predestination.

But the most famous of

tradiction,
is

beyond

all

con-

AbC Nuwas,

the lyric and Bacchic poet

par excellence, whose works have been studied by Noldeke and Alfred von Kremer. He was born at AlAhwiz in the heart of Susiana (about 756), where his
mother, of Persian origin, laboured as a washerwoman in a fuller's yard. But it was at Bassora that he received the teachings of his master, the poet Waliba, who made

Barmakides, and had cause, later, to by reason of his pupil's ingratitude. He spent a year wandering about the desert, to study the pure Bedouin tongue. At Bagdad, in spite of his loose life, he was valued by the Caliphs Harun and Amin. When he grew old, he relinquished his bad habits, and His jests gave himself up to religious observances. Beni-Naubakht clan earned him about a member of the rough treatment, of which he died, about 810. Ab{i Nuwas practised every form of Arabic poetry. Not only did he sing the praises of the grape, after the manner Like his foreof 'Adi ibn 2aid and Walid ibn Yazid. runners, he composed elegies, amatory poems, satires, panegyrics, humorous verses, and hunting scenes, in which last he reproduced the style of the ancient and intrepid hunters of the desert, and he also wrote the
to the

him known

regret his kindness,

devout poems which mark the last stage of his career. His memory was extraordinary, and, what is no less remarkable, he possessed no library. Nothing was found after his death save a book cover, within which lay The a manuscript containing notes on grammar.

72
Caliph cast

ARABIC LITERATURE
kill

you

him into prison, and the poet wrote " If Abu Nuwas, where will you find another ?
:

The only woman he

ever really loved was a slave, She was well taught and witty, learned both Janan. in history and poetry. She started on pilgrimage to

Mecca, and the poet followed her. There it was that he spoke the lines " Do you not see that I spend my life in pursuing her a difficult enterprise ? We made the pilgrimage together. This journey alone it was which could unite us." Janan did not care for him at first, but the lover's persistence broke down the severity of
:

the cruel

fair at last.

He was

the

first

poet

who employed

bold metaphor to describe the different parts of the beloved one's person. Amongst others, he has this line "She taps the rose with jujubes" that is, "her cheek

with her finger-tips."

ever athirst,

Scenes in which deep drinkers, turn deaf ears to the muezzin's call to prayer,

refusing to forsake their serious business, praise of

good

wine, purchased with gold from Jew or Christian merchant, and grown mellow in its cobwebbed jar, the heat

which cheers and warms the darkness of the night such are the themes of Abu Nuwas' most famous poems.
of

Here and there we catch a note of sadness, a sudden of past days and comrades now no more, dark thoughts, swiftly washed away by a fresh draught of

memory

the divine juice.

surname of Sart al-Ghawdni, "the victim of the fair," which had been bestowed on him by Hirun al-Rashid, was client
ibn
el-Walid, the
of

Muslim

known by

a family of Ansars or auxiliaries

otherwise
757.

those

dwellers in Medina

who had

attained noble rank by their

support of the Prophet against his enemies.

He was
His

born

at Kiifa,

somewhere between 747 and

THE 'ABBASIDS
father

7%

was a weaver, and Ibn Qanbar later cast cruel reproach on the poet concerning his parent's handiwork. " Where could I find a being more degraded than thy father ? Nay, I was mistaken One yet lower there is For many a day he wove his cloaks as ill as thyself thou now weavest thy verse " No one knows who Muslim's teachers were. He may proceed directly from the great poets of the heroic period, whose works he
! !

studied. He was a careless wanderer, a spendthrift, who gave no thought to the morrow, and often, lacking any

other shelter, slept under the starry sky, wrapped in his only cloak. His patrons, the valiant General Yazid

Mazyad, Muhammad, son of Caliph Mansur, and Fadl ibn Sahl, the minister, lifted him out of this parlous state. The latter, indeed, went so far as to give him a post about the Court of Justice of the Province of Jurjan, and then promoted him to the delicate functions But he of director of the horse-post in the same place. steward to receive from the farms appointed a the income he had given the poet near Ispahan, to put aside the sum
ibn

necessary for his daily expenses, and invest the rest in the

purchase of more land. Muslim was a great admirer of the produce of the vines grown by the Zoroastrians at "The Tizanabad, and has sung the praise of wine. daughter of the Magians turned Moslem by her union with the guests. We have asked her in marriage, and the negotiator who leads her to us walks with grave and solemn step." The whole of this poem is worth reading, in the charming translation given us by M. Barbier de Meynard. His enemies scoffed at his passion 'Abbas Ibn al-Ahnaf derisively called him "the victim of the sorceresses," and others "the victim of the brimming
;

cup."

But
6

his intoxication

was

elegant,

and

his style

was

74
followed, even

ARABIC LITERATURE
the ancient authors

classic, like that of

whom

he closely

when he gave new metaphors

to the world.

His amorous poetry is less sincere, and he himself acknowledged that he sang of the object of his thoughts
because fashion demanded
it,

but that his personal taste

As a satirist, he seems to have been inferior to his opponents. His dispute with the poet Ibn Qanbar was violent, but the advantage, as Abu'l-Faraj al-lsfahani and Al-Mubarrad have estabHe died in 803, lished, remained with his adversary. while still holding his appointment, a stranger in Jurjan, like the palm-tree he sang in the last stanza he composed. When at the point of death, he caused the rough copy of all his poems to be cast into the river, as a proof of penitence on account of his Bacchanalian compositions. Abu'l- Atahiya Ismail ibn Qasim (748-828) belonged He was born in the Hijaz, to the tribe of 'Anaza. lived at Kufa, took his way to Bagdad, when his poetry had already made him a name, and there fell in love with one of Mahdi's slaves, named 'Utba. The prominent characteristic of his style is his use of simple expressions which every one can understand, because his poems are sermons in verse on the instability of the things of this world. On this account he is the ancestor of that long series of hortatory works which flourish more especially in Persian literature. He avoided all studied forms of expression, so that he might be underwas
for less exalted ladies.

stood by the populace.

He was surnamed Al-Jarrar, "the jar-seller," because he had originally plied that trade. Men used to go and listen to his verses, and wrote them, at his dictation, on the fragments of broken pottery they picked up on the ground.

THE 'ABBASIDS
said into verse,

75

Abu'l- Atahiya boasted that he could put everything he

prosody, he would reply: "

invention,

and when he was asked if he understood As I am above all prosody."

a matter of fact he did use certain metres of his

own

which do not follow the classic rules. 'Umar ibn al- Ala, Governor of Tabaristan, rewarded him richly for some verses written in his honour, and the jealousy of the other poets ran high. The governor called them together, and made them the following speech " It is strange that you poets should be so jealous of each other. When one of you comes to us with a qasida
:

written in our honour,

praise of her

fifty

lines are

devoted to the
till

celebration of his mistress' charms, and not

is

all

his

exhausted does he enter on the real

subject

of

his

poem.

Now

Abu'l- Atahiya,

on

the
of

contrary, devotes only a few lines to his beloved, and at

once begins

his

panegyric.

Why

are

you envious

he sent for Mukhariq, the great singer, that he might hear him sing the lines he had himself written "When my life closes, the sorrows of the women who weep me will be short. My mistress will cease to think of me. She will forget my love, and will soon find another lover." His last desire was that the following words should be inscribed " A life which ends in death is a life filled on his tomb with bitterness." Abu Nuwas found fault with his extreme facility, which permitted Abu'l-Atahiya to produce one or two hundred lines a day. He, too, gave up writing poetry, in his old age, probably from pious motives, but this step led to his being thrown into prison among malefactors, and then haled before Al-Mahdi, who gave him his choice between carrying on his art or suffering death. " I would rather write poetry," quoth the bard.
at the point of death,
:

him

? "

When

he was

76

ARABIC LITERATURE

and forthwith regained

his freedom. He was said to have adopted the views of the Greek philosophers, because in his lines he spoke of death, and made no mention of the

Resurrection. He was also taxed with avarice, which was all the more incomprehensible because he had amassed great wealth. The surname by which he is known, which probably signifies " the Intriguer," was given him by Caliph Al-Mahdi. He made some

enemies, such as'Abdallah, the son of Ma'n,

who caught

him
light

in a trap,

and gave him a hundred lashes, but very ones, seeing he dreaded the poet's vengeance.

Nevertheless Abu'l-Atahiya took advantage of this forbearance to abuse his foe yet more roundly, and likened him to a woman with eunuchs all about her. " She struck me with her hand, the daughter of Ma'n. She hurt her hand, and I felt nothing at all " He declared that most men spoke in verse without being conscious of it, and that all would be poets if they only knew how to comThe grammarian Alpose their speech correctly. Asma i said of Abu'l-'Atahiya " His lines are like the public square in front of the King's palace, whereon fall
!
.

pearls,

and

gold,

and

dust,

and potsherds, and

fruit-

kernels."

Abu'l-Atahiya himself regarded the line in which he said, " Men lie in apathy, while the mill of Fate grinds on," as his masterpiece. Harun al-Rashid also cast him into prison when he would have plunged into
asceticism, so as to force
'All ibn Jabala,

him

to

compose

erotic

poems.
(the

who was surnamed Al- Akawwak

crop-eared) (776-828), was born in the class of freed slaves. His family had originally belonged to Khurasan.

He was either born blind, or became blind when he was seven years old, from an attack of smallpox. His skin was blackish and stained with leprous patches. Caliph

THE 'ABBASIDS
verses

jj

Ma'mfln was very wroth with him because of a set of composed in honour of Humaid al-Tusi, in which the sovereign detected excessive eulogies such as should only be offered to Divinity, and also because he had asserted that all the Arabs on the earth borrowed their finest qualities from Abtj Dulaf, without making any exception in favour of the Caliph himself. The poet, who was in the mountains of 'Iraq 'Ajami, was forced to flee. He was taken in Syria and carried to Bagdad, where his tongue was torn out, and he died of hemorrhage. Abii Dulaf, whom Al-'Akawwak had extolled, was passing, one day, through a town in'Iriq, when he heard " That is Abu Dulaf, of one woman say to another whom the poet said: 'Abll Dulaf is the whole world, nomad or of the cities. If he turns out of his road, all And the great man wept, rethe world follows him.' " penting that he had not rewarded Al- Akawwak accord:

ing to his deserts.

IBRAHIM AL-MAUSiLt and and were incomparably superior to all their competitors as singers and musical composers. The father was not born at Mosul, as his surname would seem to imply, but ran away to He first saw the light at that place, to study music. Kufa, and was the son of a high-born Persian, Mahan (whose Iranian name was corrupted to Maimun), who had emigrated from the province of Fars, in 742. Caliph Al-Mahdi was the first to appreciate his music, and he rose in favour under each of his successors.
of Persian origin,

Two men

his son ISHAQ,

won

celebrity as poets,

When Harun

al-Rashid

fell

out with his slave Marida,

and Ja'far the Barmakide, whose post of Grand Vizier has been made so famous by the Thousand and One Nights,

78
desired
to

ARABIC LITERATURE
bring about a reconciliation

between the

sovereign and his favourite, he caused the impassioned stanzas which brought the lovers together again to be written by the poet 'Abbas Ibn al-Ahnaf, and set to music

by Ibrahim.

who was born

to say
:

Ibrahim was succeeded by in 767. Of him the Caliph

his

son Ishaq,

seem

to

When Ishaq sings, the borders me enlarged." He was as proficient

"

Mu tasim used of my Empire

in the tradi-

and scholastic Al-Ma'mun said of him: "If theology, as in music. Ishaq were not such a famous singer I should have made
tions of the Prophet, in jurisprudence

him

a judge.

He

deserves

it

better than our present

and his uprightness surBut his talent for music outshines all the rest." He was the second author to produce a Book of Songs (Kitab al-Aghani), in which the various pieces he sang were collected together. Al-Mahdi had forbidden Ibrahim to go and see his sons, Mdsa (al-Hadi) and Harun (al - Rashid) he disobeyed, was punished by the infliction of three hundred lashes and cast into prison. In later years Al-Hadi was so lavish in his gifts to Ibrahim that Ishaq was able to say that if the Caliph had lived they might have rebuilt the walls of their house with silver and gold.
qddis,

and

his conduct, his piety,

pass theirs.

Amongst the 'Bagdad

of

poets of Arab, or at

all

events

we must also mention Di'bil ibn 'All AL-Khuza'! (765-860), who was born either at Kufa or at Karkisiya (Circesium). For some time he
Semitic
extraction,

discharged administrative functions as governor

of a

small town in Tukhiristan, in North-Western Persia. He died in Babylonia. He was a satirist, who employed
himself in collecting a volume of biographies of the
poets.

He had

a spiteful tongue which spared no one,

THE 'ABBASIDS

79

not even the Caliphs. He was consequently in a constant condition of flight and concealment. So great was the terror he inspired that, when he came one day

on an

epileptic writhing in convulsions

on the ground,

he only had to shout his

ear to effect a cure.

own name
fell

into the sufferer's

He had

yet other sins

conscience.
just

One

night he

upon his upon a money-changer

going to his home, and whom he believed to be carrying his purse as usual. But all the poor man had in his sleeve that day was a rag wrapped round three pomegranates. The victim lay stone dead, and justice pursued the assassin, who, after long hiding, was fain to quit Kufa altogether. He wrote his satires beforehand, and when he had a vengeance to wreak, would insert his enemy's name in a ready-made set AI-Buhturt preferred Di'bil to Muslim, beof verses. cause, according to Arab taste, his language and the character of his work were superior. In his old age he would say: "For more than fifty years I have borne my cross on my shoulder, but nobody has been able to nail me to it yet." He was a friend of Muslim, who had given him useful counsel. Yet, when Muslim was appointed governor of a Persian town, he refused to acknowledge him, an affront avenged by Di'bil in a biting satire. He was an earnest Shi'ite, and supported the claim of 'Ali to the Caliphate. He it was who wrote that verse, which stings like a whip, on Caliph Mu'tasim "The 'Abbasids number seven, according to the books, which do not tell us of an eighth. Unless, indeed, like the Seven Sleepers in their cave, they are seven brave fellows, with an eighth who was a dog " It is true he denied having written
: I

this, in later days.

8o

ARABIC LITERATURE
habitual guest and

companion of Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, 'ALt ibn al-Jahm, surnamed Al-Sami, because he was descended from a branch of the Quraishites which bore that name, was born in Khurasan, whence He opposed Al-Ma'mun summoned him to Bagdad.
he wrote many lines against the claim of the 'Alids he also heaped insults on the Christians, amongst others on the famous physician Bokhtyishu, and on the Mu tazilites. For a satire which displeased his patron, already greatly irritated by his perpetual accusations against his comrades, he was imprisoned and exiled. He went back to his own country, then governed by Tahir, and, by order of the Caliph, was fastened naked to a cross for a whole day, as he has himself related. " It was no unknown man, nor person of inferior merit, who was crucified at Shadhiyakh on Monday evening.
the Shi'ites
; ;

The

By this execution they satisfied their vengeance. But, thanks be to God their victim was a man of honour,
!

and worthy

of respect

He
'Iraq

proceeded into Syria, and while from Aleppo, fell in a fight with

travelling

towards

(in 863).

When

Bedouin Gliazzv help reached him, he was found to be

a

dying, but
of night

" Has the darkness still whispering verses. been deepened ? or has the torrent swept

away the morn ? I think of the folks in the street of Dujail in Bagdad but how far am I from there!" The Orientals admire the following delicate thought: "The enmity of a man without honour or religion is an affliction which has no equal, for he leaves you his own reputation, while he assails yours, which you have

guarded with such care."

He

has himself related that his poetic vocation

itself

first

manifested

when

his father

had him detained

in the

THE 'ABBASIDS

8i

He wrote to his mother, school he was attending. complaining of his father's inhumanity: "All the pupils have left school, and I stay here in prison, without
having committed any fault." Whereupon his mother obtained his enlargement. But such was his reputation
for lying that

written

many people asserted the when he was sixty, and could not,

stanzas were

consequently,

have been composed while he was at school. Under the rule of Mutawakkil, an artist prince, who loved games and buffoonery, and was the first to introduce them into the Palace of the Caliphs, music and the dance reached a development far beyond that of the
old days.

Among

the court poets of this period

we

find

Arabian blood, who led a somea;t Bagdad. Her liaison with Said ibn Humaid, a poet of Persian birth, and exceedingly orthodox opinions, who was head of the despatch office under Caliph Musta'in, whereas his mistress was a Shi'ite, fills up the whole story of her life. She used to be summoned to the Caliph's harem, to delight his fair favourites. She was a quick-witted woman, ready in repartee, and skilled in penmanship. Her lover. Said, perceived, at last, that he was dropping into unconscious imitation of her She went to see him when she chose. One day, style. as she entered, Sa'id rose eagerly, greeted her, and begged her to remain with him. She replied " A messenger from the Palace; has just been at my house, so I cannot stay. But I came up, because I could not bear to and Sa id pass thy door without coming in to see thee " " Thou art like the sun that lights the world its replied rays seem close to us, but who can reach it ? " Sa'id's devotion did not prevent the inconstant Fadl from accepting the suit of Bunan, a young singer. But at all
of Central
; ; :

Fadl, a woman what loose life

82

ARABIC LITERATURE

events she was swayed by a genuine and sincere feeling. How different from the female slave-musicians, who, as
the poetess herself
truth), "receive a
tells

us (and other testimony proves her

!

poor man as if he were a dog, and never ask for less than a gold-mine " When at the point of death, Fadl desired to see her lover once more, and found " My patience is worn out, and strength to write to him. house is near thee, it is true, My increase. my sufferings " This happened under off still long way but thou art a
!

the Caliphate of

Mu tamid,

in 873.

In Mutawakkil's

own

harem, a singing-woman named MAHBtrBA, born at Bassora, but of foreign blood, was greatly admired. She composed stanzas which she sang, accompanying herself on the But her verses were thought better than her singing, lute. which was mediocre. When Mutawakkil was murdered, Mahbuba put on mourning and forswore all pleasure
till

she died.

This persistent

fidelity

displeased

the

new owner
Caliph's

into

whose hands she passed when the

but an officer of Turkish her free, and bade her wherever she chose. She died at
:

harem was dispersed

and
settle

birth asked for her as a

gift, set

quit Samarra

Bagdad, in the deepest seclusion. Ibn AL-RtiMi, "son of the Greek," a surname he owed to his grandfather, Juraij, or George, was born at Bagdad in 836, and was poisoned by Abu'l-Husain Qasim ibn 'Ubaidallah, Caliph Mutadid's vizier, who dreaded his satires. The minister suborned a servant, who served the poet with a poisoned biscuit. When Ibn al-Rlimi had eaten it, he perceived he had been " poisoned, and rose to depart. "Where are you going ? " Whither you have sent me." " Very said the minister.
good," replied the vizier. " Present my duty to my father." " I am not on my road to hell " answered the poet, who
!

THE 'ABBASIDS
forthwith retired to his

83

own

house, sent for a physician,

who

is

said to have used the

wrong

drugs, so that the

patient died within a few days.

His Hnes are admirable, both for beauty

and was

originality of conception.

The

of expression novelty of his ideas

for dyeing the beard.

especially praised. "

He derided the Eastern mania When a man's hair remains black,

although his youth has gone by, it must of necessity be artificially dyed. How can any old man believe that jetty colour will be thought natural, and he himself considered

young

"

poet of the tribe of Tai,

Al-Buhtur! (Walid

ibn

'Ubaid),

was born at or near Manbij in 820. He was first of all the comrade of his fellow-tribesman Abil Tamm^m, and finally travelled to Bagdad, where he long lived, as the panegyrist of Mutawakkil and his courtiers, and
of the heads of his civil administration.
either
at

He

his

native

town or

at

Aleppo.

died in 897, Like Abti

Tammim, whose
of the

chief claim to glory lies in his collection

of the

Hamdsa, Al-Buhturt made a book

same

description.

And

his poetry, too,

is

written in imitation

He often mentions Aleppo and that country had grown dear plain, for surrounding the Tammam who, hearing him recite was Abu It to him. composition, at Hims, divined his a poem of his own poetic gift, and, as he knew him to be poor, wrote a letter
of the ancient style.

recommending him Nu man. As a result

of four
Abii'l-'Ala.

to the inhabitants of Ma'arrat al-

of this letter, he
first

was given a pension

thousand dirhems, the

al-Ma'arri

money he ever earned. considered Abu Tammim and

Mutanabbi moralists, while he took Al-Buhturi to be a Al-Buhturt was very avaricious, wore genuine poet. dirty garments, and starved the brother and the servant

84

ARABIC LITERATURE
lived with him.

who

He left very few satires behind His son related that his father charged him on his deathbed to burn everything he had written in anger, or with a desire for revenge, so as to save his descendants from any inconvenience caused by other men's resentment. But Abu'l-Faraj al-Isfahani has proved Al-Buhturi's inferiority in this department, by means of fragments of satires admitted to be his. Even the sons of kings dabbled in poetry. 'Abdallah IBN al-Mu'tazz, the son of Caliph Al-Mutazz (86i908), led the unfettered existence of a poet and man of learning under the reign of Al-Mu tadid. After the death of that Caliph, he was mixed up in court intrigues. The party which was discontented with the policy of Muqtadir, who was ruled by women and eunuchs, chose Abdallah to be Caliph, under the title of Al-Murtadi (December 17, 908). But the reigning Caliph's guard overcame 'Abdallah's partisans. His sovereignty lasted one day only. He fled to the house of a jeweller, but was soon discovered and strangled (29th December) by the Caliph's chamberlain and treasurer, Mu'nis, a His poetry, which resembled that of Abu eunuch. Nuwas, contained no imitation of the ancient styles. He wrote charming little occasional poems, full of aristocratic grace. Besides this, he took an interest in literature, and was the author of the first great Arabic work on rhetoric {Kiidb al-badi), now preserved at the Escurial. His verses are marked by lucidity and ease
him.
of style.

following dictum
end,

formulated the rule for healthy rhetoric in the " Eloquence is the accurate expression of ideas, in few words." Some poets wept his tragic
:

He

among them

the refined and subtle 'Ali ibn

Muham-

THE 'ABBASIDS
mad
ibn'Ali, the blind poet of Naliraw^n,

8s

Ibn Bassim, and his friend Ibn aI-A114f Hasan who, to avoid persecution, wrote a celebrated elegy on a cat, his pet, which was in the habit of climbing into his neighbours' pigeon roosts and devouring their denizens, whose owners ruthlessly destroyed it. "Thou hast left us, puss Thou wast as {hirr), and thou wilt return no more
!

my own
thee,

child to me.

How

could

we

cease to love
!

thou

who wast

so sure a protection to us

"

Ibn

al-Mu'tazz was fond of drinking wine of a morning in the

meadows
at

of Matira, near Samarra, not far

Christian Convent of 'Abdun.

"

How

often have

from the I been

at their

wakened
!

prayers black, they chanted matins, girt with their rope-girdles, and with a crown of hair about their shaven heads." The 'Abb&sid administration may also claim the honour of numbering Ibn AL-Hajjaj, a Muhtasib, or commissioner in charge of the markets, weights and measures, and popular morals of Bagdad, among its servants. He was ultimately deprived of his office, and died in the year looo. His light poetry earned him conIts ease and gaiety were siderable fame and applause. highly praised. He has been likened to Imru'ul-Qais, inasmuch as that, like him, he created a new style, in which he never was surpassed. He was a fervent Shi'ite, and ordered in his last will that his body should be laid at the feet of that of the Imam Musa, whose tomb is not far from Bagdad. With him we must also mention Sharif Muhammad al-Rida, a descendant of the Prophet. His father, Tahir, had performed the functions of inspector of the descent of 'Ali, or judge of that final Court of Appeal known as al-Mazalim, and leader of the

dawn by Robed in

the voices of the

monks

86

ARABIC LITERATURE

life,

He began to write verses very early in and went on producing them in considerable numbers till he died. He also took an interest in Koranic exegesis, and wrote works dealing with the rhetoric of the
Pilgrim Caravan.

Sacred Book.

He

died at

Bagdad

in 1015.

One

of his pupils,

verted to Islam by his

MlHYAR IBN MarzDya, was conmeans. He had been a Zoroastrian,

born in Dailam, the mountainous region south of Gilan, on the Caspian coast. He died at Bagdad in 1037. He acted as Persian secretary, and studied poetry with His Shi'ite opinions were abhorred by Sharif Al-Rida. " Mihyar, the Sunnites, one of whom said to him, at last shift from when you were converted, all you did was to one corner of hell into another!" The delicacy of thought and remarkable sweetness of expression characterising his verses were greatly admired.
:

The Provinces
All the poetic genius of the

country was not attracted

of the

to the capital.

From one end

Empire

to the other,

we

find

poetical

works produced.
point,

Their authors, for

political or religious, or

other more personal reasons,

remained

far

from the central

and were content

with the patronage of the provincial governors. Ismail, the HiMYARiTE Sayyid, born at Bassora about 729, was driven by his Shi'ite opinions to leave that town
for Kufa.

He acknowledged
fell,

Abu'l-

Abbas Saffah when

but he held apart from him and his successors on perceiving that they persecuted the'Alids, and died at Wasit in 789. His poetry, like that of AbLi'l- Ataliiya and Bashshar ibn Burd, is remarkable for
that
city
its

simplicity of diction.

THE "ABBASIDS
This poet,
gloi'ies of

87

who came

of Kharijite parents, belonging

to the 'Ibadite sect, spent forty years in celebrating the

the house of 'Ali in numberless poems, and

with a talent which compelled the admiration even of his enemies. He himself has related that it was a dream

which converted him

partisans of

to the tenets of the Kaisanites, the

son of the Hanafite woman. His bronzed complexion bore witness to the many crossings of races which had taken place in Southern Arabia. He was tall and well proportioned, with fine teeth and luxuriant hair. His fecundity of language and boldness of conception were remarkable. The Bedouins themselves highly esteemed his style. His drunken habits led to his being arrested one night, in a state of intoxication, in the streets of Al-Ahwaz, in Susiana. In his satires, which are full of the most violent hatred of the companions of the Prophet, he goes so far as to compare 'A'isha to " the serpent which seeks to devour its young."
Abu'1-Shis
as

Muhammad,

Muhammad ibn 'Abdallah attached himself panegyrist to the service of the Amir of Raqqa,

"Uqba

ibn Ja'far ibn al-Ash'ath al Khuzai, wrote Bacchic poetry and elegies on the loss of his own eyesight, which overtook him in old age, and died in 811. He was cousin to Di'bil al Khuzai, and his reputation

was overshadowed by those of Muslim ibn al-Walid, and Abii Nuwas. The Amir of Raqqa was both rich and generous, and his largess kept the poet near him. He was a quick thinker, and composed with great
Ashja',
rapidity.

No more
Peninsula.

poets are to be discovered in the Arabian

It
is

scarcely worth while to mention Ibn

Harma

Ibrahim

ibn

'Ali

(685-767),

who

dwelt

at

88

ARABIC LITERATURE

lover of wine.
"brilliant

Medina, was a hot partisan of the 'Alids, and a great Syria, however, continues to shine with
splendour.

Abu Tammam Habib ibn Aus, near the Lake of Tiberias in 807, the son of a Christian named Tadus (Thaddeus) the In his youth he was druggist, was a great traveller. at Hims, where, when the poet Al-Buhturi met him, who was born

he already enjoyed considerable reputation as a poet. But some authorities aver that, as a child, he carried
Certain it is that Egypt water in the mosques of Cairo. was the country in which his literary efforts first found favour. He went to Damascus, and failing to find a patron there, seized the opportunity offered by a journey into Syria, undertaken by Al-Ma'mun, to wait on him, Having reached but could not obtain an audience. Mosul, he travelled into Armenia, where rich gifts from

The death him to Bagdad, where he was received into favour by Al-Mu tasim, and to this prince or to his courtiers many of his poems are dedicated. The increasing renown of 'Abdallah ibn Tahir, then well nigh independent in his government of Khuthe governor, Khalid ibn Yazid, awaited him.
of

Caliph Al-Ma'mun recalled

rasan, attracted the poet thither.

On

his return, being

Hamadhan by a snowstorm which had choked the Zagros passes, he made the acquaintance of the learned Abu'1-Wafa ibn Salama, who made him free
delayed at

him with a taste for searching out and collecting the old Arab poets, and thus enabled
of his library, inspired

to compose, among other works, his Hatndsa which has preserved the knowledge of a great number of poets and poetical works of the early Arab times to us. His own verses might, perhaps, have been swiftly

him

forgotten

but his celebrity as

the

compiler of

the

THE 'ABBASIDS
HamAsa has endured, and
collected this anthology,
his

89

has been able to declare that " Abii

commentator, Tabrizi, Tammam, when he

proved himself a better poet Yet he is also said to have surthan in his passed his contemporaries in purity of style, in the intrinsic merit of his work, and the excellence of the way in which he could handle a subject. Ibn Khallikan has ascertained that Abii Tammam spent the close of his life at Mosul, whither Hasan ibn Wahb, secretary to the chief of the Chancery, had sent him as director of the horse post. This, under the Arab Empire, was a most confidential position, for, apart from his public functions, the director had to keep the central authority informed

own

verse."

of all that
this

was happening

in the provinces.

He

died in

town, about the year 846. In DIk AL-Jinn ("the Cock of the Genii," thus surnamed because he had green eyes and was very ugly) 'Abdal-Salam ibn Raghban, we have an instance of that
interesting intellectual movement which stirred all the vanquished races just beginning to raise their heads, and find rhetoricians to defend their (purely imaginary) rights against the Arabian Arabs' pretensions to superiority and nobility of race. These rhetoricians were

as shiiikbiyya. One thing they forgot that they could only express their patriotism in the Arabic tongue, and that the use of that tongue was the indelible symbol The Cock of the Genii was of their vanquished state. He was born at Hims in Syria, a a famous Shuubi. country he never left, and he asserted the superiority

known

of the Syrian race.

elegies

He was also a Shi'ite, and wrote on the sad death of Husain, son of 'Ali, at
Kerbela.

the battle of

seventy years of age.

7

He died in 849, when over He had squandered his whole

go
patrimony

ARABIC LITERATURE
in pleasure

and dissipation. He had a slave Dunya, of whom he was passionately enamoured and to whom he wrote many poems. But in a fit of wicked passion and jealousy he put her to death, suspecting her of loose conduct with a slave called Wasif. He lived to repent his crime most bitterly. To his outpourings of sorrow we owe verses in which
of the

name

of

he vents his lamentation.

tion has fallen
!

"

cluster of dates, destruc-

have watered the earth upon thee I ." with thy blood. Her form used to appear to him " After she was buried she came to my couch, at night. and I said to her 'Joy of my eyes, art thou restored to me ? But how ? Can it be possible ? and she
. . :

'

yonder, but this, my soul, is come to visit thee.' " My readers will note the expression of regret. There is no expression of remorse.
replied
'
:

My

corpse

lies

poet's conscience was easy. In committing the murder, he had done no more than use the right conferred on him by law. The rule of the Hamdanids at Aleppo engendered a most important literary movement in that city, and it soon spread to every Arabic-speaking country. Saif al-daula, who established himself at Aleppo when the sovereignty of Bagdad was being disputed by military leaders of Turkish or Persian origin, was forced to defend the state he had set up against many external foes, and especially against the Roman troops of Byzantium. Notwithstanding this, he saw several poets flourish about him, the most famous being Mutanabbi and Abii Firas al-Hamdani. The son of a water-carrier, MutanabbI was born at Kufa in 905 he spent his boyhood in Syria and
;

The

amongst the desert Arabs.

As

young man, he fancied

THE 'ABBASIDS
himself a prophet, founded a

91

round the

little

town

of

new religion in the plains Samawa on the Euphrates,

manner
of

received revelations after the

the

Koran,

and collected a few followers about him. But in a very short space of time he was overthrown by Lu'lu', the Ikhshidite general in command at Hims, and was Thence his surname of MutanabbJ, cast into prison. "he who counts himself a prophet." His prison, which did not open its doors till he had acknowledged the
Faith, revealed his poetic gift to him. In 948 he reached Saif al-daula's court, and composed such beautiful poems in his honour that the names of poet and patron are thereby indissolubly united. This good understanding only lasted for nine years. After a dispute with the Persian philologist, Khalawaih,

true

of Susiana,
his

who

so far lost his self-control as to strike

adversary in the face with a key, the poet quitted

Aleppo and offered his services to foes of the Hamdanid dynasty, Kafur, a negro eunuch, and Anujur, both
of them ministers of the Ikhshidite princes, who had made themselves independent in Egypt. But this attempt ended in disappointment, and Mutanabbi, in a rage, fled to Bagdad, where the real ruler was the Vizier Al-Muhallabi, who would fain have been the object of the illustrious poet's praise. But this honour the poet would not grant him, and so departed to Shiriz in Persia, to 'Adud al-daula, the Buwaihid, who heaped generous rewards upon him. On his way back from Persia, Mutanabbi fell amongst a marauding band of Bedouins, and was killed, not far from Bagdad
(965).

criticised,

Mutanabbi's poems have been inordinately praised and both in the Arab and the European world.

92

ARABIC LITERATURE

Qidi Abu'l-Hasan boasted that he kept the golden mean between the poet's admirers, who preferred him to every other of his time, and set him above all his rivals, and his detractors, who declared his dissertations to be empty chatter and his expressions mere barbarisms.
Tha'alibi, the
this division of

author of the Yatimat al-Dahr, justly held opinion to be an evident proof of the
superiority.

poet's merit

and

He

also praised his

skill.

"

Rhythm

is

subject to his will,

and
in

thoughts are his

slaves."

close examination of Oriental criticism

it

shows
the

us that the qualities

most values

Mutanabbi's work
neglect of

are his refinement of

expression, his

antique simplicity in favour of affected mannerisms, and his accumulation of fantastic imagery. Thus he was the

compose lines in the style of the following " He marched at the head of an army which raised a cloud of dust that darkened the sight. It was as though the soldiers saw with their ears." And this because the darkness was so great that nobody could see with his
first

to

These regrettable inventions of the pseudoprophet and his contemporaries won so much success that they reigned supreme over Oriental poetry, which we shall now see drop deeper and deeper into bombast and false imagery. In proof of Mutanabbi's popularity, Ibn Khallikan quotes the fact that more than forty commentaries have been written to explain his works. This is because the uncommon and far-fetched expressions he used so much too freely needed explanation before they could be understood. Avarice was the only vice with which he could be taxed. His moral conduct stood out in remarkable contrast to the looseness and debauchery
eyes
1

of the

life at

Saif al-daula's court.

One

stern

Moslem
fast,

actually

remarked that though he did not

nor

THE 'ABBASIDS
the Koran, he never told a
lie.

93

recite the canonical prayers five times a day, nor read

AbO FirAs al-Hamdani, who was of the princely family, and cousin to Saif al-daula, who appointed him
him
governor of the town of Manbij, and had him with all through his wars with the Domesticus, generalin-chief of the
different temper.

Roman troops in He was made

commanded
During
to
this

Asia,

was a man

of a

prisoner in 959,

when

the

fortress

he

Constantinople, and there remained

liberty
elegies
in

965.

conveyed to he was set at captivity he wrote many

fell,
till

was

addressed

various

members

of

his

family.

One, which is celebrated, to his mother, at Manbij, has been translated into German by Ahlwardt. When Saif al-daula died, in 967, Abii Firas claimed the sovereignty of Hims, but perished fighting with the troops sent He was a valiant against him by Saif al-daula's son. quite his poems, devoid of any pedantic and soldier,
brave and straightforward feeling, elevated language. They form noble and expressed in
affectation, breathe

a diary of his eventful

life.

With these two masters

of

the Arabic tongue,

may mention
as Al-Sari

member

of Saif al-daula's circle

in his

we known

Al-Raffa, because
stuffs at

youth he had been a

After Saif al-daula's

patcher or darner of

Mosul.

death, he went to Bagdad, to the Vizier Al-Muhallabi He had Tha'alibt accuses him of many plagiarisms.

chosen Kushajim, then famous in the East, to be his model, and to increase the volume of the copies he made from that author's works, he contracted the habit
of inserting lines of his
(Abfi'l-

own

composition.

Al

Nam!

Abbas Ahmad), who succeeded Mutanabbi as died at Aleppo between 980 and 1008. He poet, court

'94

ARABIC LITERATURE
Al-Missisi,
in Cilicia.

was called Mopsuesta

bald pate.

because

his

family came from

We

possess witty lines from his

pen, addressed to the solitary black hair remaining on his " I say to my white hairs, which are terrified
this

by

stranger's

you.

presence Respect her, I entreat black African spouse will not tarry long in a
'
:

house where the second wife has a white skin!" Abii'l Faraj, surnamed AI-Babbagha (the parrot) because of After a defect in his speech, belonged to Nasibin. his patron's death he betook himself to Mosul, and thence to Bagdad, where he died in 1007. Al-Zahi temporary visitor 'All ibn Ishaq was only a at Aleppo. He usually lived at Bagdad, where he was born, and where he kept a shop for cotton stuffs. In Bagdad he wrote poems in honour of the 'Abbasids and of AlMuhallabi he died in 963. He was famed for his descriptions. His lines on the violet " azure blossom, whose stalk seems too weak to hold up the flower," on wine "so transparent in the goblet that it seems luminous," and the fair "whose eyes seem to brandish swords and unsheathe daggers, whose faces, veiled, recall
;
: : :

the crescent,

and unveiled, the moon

at the full," are

frequently quoted.

Egypt was slipping more and more out of the sphere Bagdad Caliphate. The Tulunids and the Ikhshidites had established their independence, and the African Fatimids was soon to establish a Shi'ite With a glance at the k&tib Caliphate on the Nile.
of influence of the

Rishid ibn Ishftq, who flourished about and has left a diwdn filled with obscenities behind him (now in the Berlin Library), we may notice Sharif Abfl'l-Qisim IBN TabAtabA, who performed the duties
(secretary),

850,

of inspector of the descendants of 'Alt.

He

died in 956

THE 'ABBASIDS

95

His poems are mostly of the ascetic and mystic type. Yet his description of a long night is often quoted "To-night the Pleiades seem to have travelled all day long, and to have been weary when they reached their evening station. They have set up their tents, so that their caravan may rest. Not a planet moves in its orbit, not a star hurries over its nocturnal course (so dark is the
:

night)."

Abu'l Qasim Muhammad ibn Hani' al-Andalusi was born at Seville, but his father came from a village near Mahdiyya, in Tunis. He was driven out of his native town at the age of seven-and-twenty, because the dissipation into which he had plunged had earned him the reputation of being tainted with the opinions of the Greek

This roused popular hatred against him, who dreaded being accused of sharing his views, to beg him to depart for a season he attached himself to Jauhar, a general who served Al-Mansur, the Fatimid, and later to the general's son, Al-Mu'izz, who replaced his father in 953, and was with him when he went forth to conquer Egypt in 969. After some time he returned to the Maghrib to seek his family and conduct it into Egypt. In the course of his journey he was murdered at Barqa in the ancient Cyrenaica, in He was still a young man, not over forty-two. 973. Al-Mu izz heard of his protege's death when he reached Egypt, and was deeply affected by it. " We had hoped," he said, "to see this man compete with the Oriental poets, but this pleasure has been denied to us." Abu'l'Ala al-Maarri, who did not like Ibn Hani"s poetry, compared it to wheat grains crushed in the mill, because of its harsh phraseology.
philosophers.

and forced

his patron,

TamIm, the second son

of

the Fatimid Caliph, Al-

96
brother,

ARABIC LITERATURE
dithyrambs
in

Muizz (948-985), composed

his

praise

of

CaHph

Al-Aziz, and died in

Egypt.

Al-

'Aziz,

who

succeeded

Al-Muizz, having
in

been desig-

nated
poet.

heir-presumptive

was also a Tamim wrote amorous poetry, and imitated

his
lifetime,

the desert poets in his

gazelles.

descriptions of thirst-stricken

who was born

refer to Ibn Wakf, near Damietta, and died in His originality of thought the same town, in 1003. was a remarkable compiler, was much admired. He and devoted a whole volume to the plagiarisms ascribed to Mutanabbi. A defect in his pronunciation had procured him the surname of Al-Atis (he who sneezes). He has sung the delights of a love which has cooled down. " My heart, once so fond, is now rid of thy love, and feels neither inclination nor desire for thee.

With

him we may

at Tinnis,

Thy

cruelty has reconciled

me

to thine absence. of

parent
child."

may

cease to

mourn

the death

position fulfils

rank.
is,

His ambition was a modest one. "An my desires, which shrink from exalted Not that they do not know how sweet greatness

froward obscure

but they prefer health." ABtJ'L-RAQA'MAQ was a man of Antioch. He settled in Egypt, sang the praises of the Fatimid rulers and the

men of that country, and died there in 1008. AlTlHAMt (Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali ibn Muhammad) only produced a small volume of poems, but the greater part are
great
exquisite, after the Oriental pattern, that
is

to say, full of

exaggerated and unexpected comparisons. In his eulogy of an open-handed vizier, he exclaims " Compared with
:

his magnificence, the

heavy rain-cloud is but a vapour, and the seas mere brooks!" But he wrote a very beautiful elegy on the death of his own child, a youth,

THE 'ABBASIDS
and
such
it

97

was asserted that

in

reward for having written

had been forgiven him. His He came secretly to political action proved his ruin. Egypt, bearing letters from Hassan ibn Mufarrij, chief
fine verses his sins

of the tribe of Tai, to the Beni-Qurra, a tribe dwelling in the province of Barqa, the ancient Cyrenaica,

which

had

just risen

against

the Fatimids, in

support of a

descendant of the Omeyyad line. He was arrested, cast into prison at Cairo, and executed secretly, in 1025. Abii Isma'il al-Hasan TughrA'1 was of Persian origin, and was born at Ispahan. He was at once a poet, a man of learning, and a statesman. His surname signifies "he who traces 'Cn^' tughi'A," a kind of design formed of interlaced letters, which figures at the head of diplomas and official documents, and stamps them as
authentic.
reality

The
State

caligrapher

who

traces this sign

in / of the

is

in

the

Chancellor.

Tughra'i composed, at

Bagdad, the Ldmiyyat al-Ajam (Ode

al-Arab.
It is

Non-

Arabs), in opposition to Shanfara's celebrated Ldmiyyat

an elegy on the misfortunes of the times. Seljilqid Sultan Mas'ud appointed him his minister, in his capital, Mosul. When Mas'ild was defeated in the Battle of Hamadhan (11 21) by his brother Mahmiid, the poet was taken prisoner, and put to death, on the advice of the vizier, Sumairami, who accused him of atheism. His diwdn contains numerous panegyrics of Sultan Sa'id, the son of Malikshah, and At a
later date, the

of

the great minister,

Nizam al-Mulk.

The

Oriental

scholars Pococke and Golius have exercised

a Latin translation of Tijghra'i's Ldmiyya.

their skill in

copyist

Sa'd al-HazIrI (died

and bookseller of Bagdad, Abu'l-Ma'ali 1172), surnamed Dallal al-Kutub

(the book-broker), collected his poems, in alphabetical

98
order, into
a

ARABIC LITERATURE
book called Luinah al-mulah, and
also

made

preserved at Cairo. His Zinat al-dahr, an anthology of the poets of his own day and those before it, enriched with biographies, and his numerous compilations, have all disappeared. Graceful thoughts, very elegantly expressed, abound in his
a collection of enigmas,

now

compositions.

Mu in al-Din Ahmad ibn 'Abd al-Razzaq AL-TANTARANt wrote his Echo Ode {tajjt) which Silvestre de Sacyhas made known, and translated for his Chrestomathie Arabe

in

honour
this

of the great vizier of the Seljuqid dynasty,

Nizam
At

al-MuIk.

period Syria saw the birth of a philosopher

the last of the great poets of the Arabic tongue,
finely expressed in verse, stirred

who was

and whose pessimism,

the admiration of

many

generations.

Abu'l-'Ala ALin

who was born at Northern Syria, in 973, came of

Ma'arrI,
the Yemenite tribe of Tanukh.

Ma'arrat al-Nu"man,

a family descended from

When
lost

four years old, he

had an attack

of smallpox,

and

a later date his healthy eye, too,

one of his eyes. At was destroyed, and he

became stone
father,

blind.

In spite of this he received a

careful education, under the superintendence of his

own

whose memory he has immortalised

in

an elegy.

After continuing his studies at Aleppo, he made a first journey to Bagdad, but this visit did not prove a success, for he felt himself a stranger in the place, and longed for his native town. Nevertheless he returned the following year, to make the acquaintance of 'Abdal-salam of Bassora, who was at the head of one of the great libraries of the city. Every Friday 'Abdal-salam gathered about him a circle of freethinkers, of which Abu'l- Ala soon became a member. Some of these men were rationalists, like the

THE 'ABBASIDS

99
Their

Mu tazilites

others were downright materialists.

powerful influence on the poet's opinions. When, however, he was recalled to Ma'arra, at the end of a year and seven months, by the news of his mother's illness, and arrived too late to see her draw her last breath, he mourned her departure in verses full of the deepest feeling, and never left his native town again. His youthful poetry has been collected under the title of Siqt al-zand (Sparks from the Tinder), and his later poems under that of LuzAm md lam yalzam (Obligation which is not Indispensable), an allusion to his conquest of the difficulty of a double or triple rhyme, which is not indispensable in prosody. He left a collection of letters, and a treatise on asceticism and preaching, in rhymed prose He was said to have written a Koran, an and verse imitation of the Prophet's, and possibly the mere banter of a freethinker. When somebody complained to him that, though his work was well written, it did not produce the same impression as the true Koran, he replied " Let it be read from the pulpits of the mosques for the next four hundred years, and then you will be delighted with it IBN KUSHAJIM Mahmtid also left a diwdn or collecHe was tion of poems arranged in alphabetical order. grandson of an Indian from the banks of the Indus, and lived at Ramla. He died about 961. Abu'l-Faraj Muhammad al- Wa'wa', of Damascus,
society exercised a
!

was a dainty and euphuistic poet, who over-indulged He wrote the famous in description and metaphor. stanza, " She made the narcissus rain down its pearls, watered the rose, and bit the jujubes with her hailstones," a description which might be taken for that of a cloud, but this would be quite wrong. It is applied to a woman

lOO

ARABIC LITERATURE

the pearls her

first

tears, the rose her cheek, the hailstones her teeth, and the jujubes no other than her rosy lips. These jests seemed charming, no doubt, when they were

invented, but in later

days, repeated

by thousands

of poetasters, in Persian, Hindustani,

ad nauseam and

Turkish, they constitute the most wearisome repetition Alof empty formulas that can well be imagmed.

Wa'wa' died
died, at

at the

end

of the tenth century.

born, and lived, and Bagdad. This last event took place towards His poems, some of which are preserved at the 1183. British Museum, unite tenderness of feeling with There were not many of them, but artificiality of style. they were widely read. Musicians took possession of them, and sang them to old airs. They pressed about him and begged him to write more. His lines were recited to the author of the Kliarida, Katib 'Imad al-Din, in 1160. The surname Al-Ablah signifies "the fool," but it is questionable whether it was not bestowed on him in irony as the Arabs will call a negro "Kafur" (Camphor), and we ourselves will dub him " Boule de Neige" (Snowball). Ibn AL-TA'AWiDHi (Abii'l Fath Muhammad) was the son of 'Ubaidallah, a freed Turkish slave, whose real
;

Abu 'Abdallah al-Ablah was

name was
nal
side,

Nflshtakin.
of

He was

the

celebrated

ascetic

grandson, on the materIbn al-Ta'awidhi,

and hence his surname. He was born at Bagdad in 1 125, was brought up by his maternal grandfather, and became a secretary in the Office for the Administration of Fiefs. In 11 83 he lost his eyesight many of his poems lament this deprivation, and regret the days of his active youth. Before the calamity befell him, he had collected his verses into a dtwdn, which he afterwards completed
;

THE 'ABBASIDS

loi

by adding what he entitled ZiyddAt, or Additions. When he became blind he was still holding his administrative post. He obtained the favour of having his sons' names registered instead of his own on the list of officials. They seem, however, to have been ungrateful, and did

who addressed so touching a Caliph Nasir-Lidinillah, pleading for a pension for himself, that the Caliph granted his request. " If that poem had been recited to a rock it would
not support their father,

poem

to

have touched
graceful
style

it,"

says Ibn

Khallikan.

His easy and

was much admired.

Correctness and

sweetness of expression are therein allied to subtlety of thought, and all were considered to possess extraordinary

charm. Al-Ta'awidhi's death occurred in 1188. Ibn al-Muallim (the Professor's Son) was the surname of Abu'l-GhanA'im Muhammad al-Hurthi, who came from Hurth, near Wisit, was born in 1108, and Pathetic sentiment is the dominant died in 1196.
quality of his verse,

and with
His poetry
sty'e,

it

delicacy of thought.

is

of the

we note a natural amorous and

in fancy.
It

panegyric orders, easy in

and apt

met with considerable

success, spread far

and wide, and

earned its author the public esteem, an easy fortune, It was much learnt by and an influential position. heart, and preachers would quote it in their sermons. Every ode he wrote was immediately committed to memory by the Dervishes of the religious order of the Rifaiyya, who sang them at their gatherings, in order
to

work themselves

into their

mystic ecstasies.
to the divine.

The

There was a mutual jealousy between Ibn al-Muallim and Ibn

songs of carnal love led
al-Ta'AwidhI,

them up

who

addressed satires to each other.

One

day,

when

the first-named poet

was passing a spot

I02

ARABIC LITERATURE
Abil'l-Faraj

Ibn al-Jauzi was wont to saw a crowd blocking the street, inquired the reason, and was told that Ibn alHe contrived Jauzt was about to preach a sermon. to push through the press, and come near enough to " Ibn al-Mu allim has the preacher to hear him say expressed a very fine thought in this stanza The re-

where Shaikh

deliver pious exhortations, he

'

putation of thy
of

name renews,

in

my

ear, the pleasure

it

hearing

it,

and he who repeats

seems to

me

delightful.'"

To

hear himself thus quoted

made an

exquisite

impression upon the poet, but neither the preacher nor any of that assembly knew of his presence.
"Isa

ibn

Sinjar
in

AL-HAjlRt

served,

like

his

father,

as a soldier
Irbil.

He

Khallikan,

born at was the close friend of a brother of Ibn named Diya al-din Isa when the Arab
;

the Turkish

army.

He was

biographer
the citadel
relate "
;

was detained in reasons too lengthy to he lightened the dulness of his captivity by
left

Irbil

in 1229, the poet

of

the town, "for

it. At a later period he obtained and entered the service of Muzaffar al-din Kilkburi (the Blue Wolf), who had reigned at Irbil since 1190 he supported the Siifis, and wore their dress. When his patron died in 1232, he left the town, and did not return till Batikin, an Armenian slave, had been appointed to rule it in the Caliph's name. He was stabbed, one day, as he was leaving his house, by an assassin who had been dogging his steps for some time. He expired before night, in June 1235, after writing,

writing

poems on

his liberty,

in

spite

of

his

terrible

wound, a poetic appeal

barely
to
fifty

to

Batikin's vengeance.

He was

years of age.
village

The surname
in the

Al-Hajiri
It

refers

Al-Hijir, a
;

Hijaz.

was not

his birthplace

he was born

THE "ABBASIDS
at
Irbil
;

103
of his

the

name was bestowed on account

constant references to the locahty in his poems. Here we have a telling instance of the artificiality of the poetry of that period, the authors of which, from pride

would refer to places they had never seen, which they had never set foot, and their only knowledge of which was drawn from the ancient Arab poets. Greece played the same part in the work of the French seventeenth century poets. Al-Hajiri's diwdn has been collected and set in order by 'Umar ibn al-Husainl of Damascus, who has arranged it in seven chapters the
of learning,
in

ghazals, or love-poems

the verses written in prison

;

the mukhammasdt, or five-lined stanzas

verses
;

the isolated

the satires

the popular poetry, called mawdli;

and,

last of all,

the quatrains, or dil-bait.

The volume

was printed at Cairo in 1888. Another poet of Turkish origin, Aidamir al-Muhyawi, surnamed Fakhr al-Turk (the glory of the Turks), was a freed slave of Muhyi al-din Muhammad ibn Sa'Id.
during the first half of the thirteenth the poet of the garden and of flowers. He also wrote popular poems, known as inuwashshah. Another writer of the same type is Ibn al-Hal^wi of Mosul (Ahmad ibn Muhammad), born in 1206, who was court poet to Badr al-din Lu'lu', atdbek of Mosul, and
flourished

He

century.

He

is

He was one of the dandies of the city, and good-natured companion, but very His odes celebrate the Caliphs and frivolous-minded. Kings of that epoch, such as Malik-Nasir Da'ud, the When the Prince of Mosul went to lord of Karak. Persia to meet Hulagu, the grandson of Jengiz Khan, then marching to the conquest of Bagdid, his favourite poet accompanied him. But he fell ill on the journey,
died in 1258.
pleasant
a

I04

ARABIC LITERATURE
outset,

and died near SalmSs, aged nearly sixty. At the Badr al-din Lu'lu', far from treating the poet

as his

close confidant, did not even admit him to his board or to his own society. He merely employed him

on

feast
;

days, to recite

the

panegyrics he had com-

posed

but, pleased with the poet's witty sally

on the
ill

subject of his nag, which the prince had found

in a

garden, he adopted
meals, and gave
If

him

as one of his daily circle at

of 'Izz al-din

'Abd poet (died 1258), author of seven poems called al-sab' al-Alawiyydt, on the glories of the Prophet, the taking of Khaibar and of Mecca, the death of Husain, son of 'Ali, and a panegyric of Caliph Nasir-Lidinillah a manuscript
cite, in

we

addition, the

him a pension. names

al-Hamid Ibn Abi'l-Hadid, the

Shi'ite

Leyden of Jamal al-din Yahya al-Sarsari, of Sarsar near Bagdad (died 1258), who performed the feat of composing a poem in honour of Mahomet, every line of which contains all the letters in the alphabet, and of summing up Hanbalite law in lines written in the tawil metre of Majd al-din al-Wa iz alcopy
of

which

exists

at

Witri, a preacher at Witr (died 1264), the author of lines

in praise of of

Mahomet and on
aged eighty,
in

the merits of pilgrimage

(a

Shams
died,

al-din

al-Waiz al-Kufi

preacher

at

Kufa),

who

and whose manuand of Majd al-din Ibn script poems are at Gotha Abi Shakir of Irbil, who was alive in 1277, and one of whose poems, Tadhkirat al-arib, is now in the Biblio1276,
;

in Paris, we shall have reviewed the whole of the poetic movement of which Bagdad was

theque Nationale
the scene.

THE 'ABBASIDS
Persia

ios

which enjoyed a period and learning during the Middle Ages, and the unexplored ruins of which now lie in the desert stretching between Persia and Afghanistan, gave birth, in 971, to Abu'1-Fath 'Alt AL-Bust1, who, in
of Bust in Sijistin,

The town

of brilhant prosperity

his youth, acted as secretary to Batyur, the

chief

of

the town, and passed into the service of the Turkish chief, Sabuktakin, father of the -celebrated Mahmud
the Ghaznevid, when he defeated the ruler of Bust. Al-Busti died at Bukhara during Mahmud's reign, in
loio. His works, poetic and prose, were especially admired on account of his use, or, let us say, abuse, of alliteration. An extract from his diwdn is preserved at Leyden. His most famous qasida, know as Qasidai al-Busti, on which several commentaries have been written, is pretty frequently found in European libraries. Abu Mansfir 'Ali ibn al-Hasan is known by the surname of SuRR-DuRR (Purse of Pearls), bestowed on him for his poetic talent, whereas his father was dubbed Surr-Ba'r (Purse of Dung) on account of his avarice. This we learn from Abu Ja'far Mas'iid al-Bayadl's But he had the bad taste to add: satirical verses. "What your father had garnered, you, ungrateful, have squandered. And you call it poetry " This is not
!

just, for

Surr-Durr's verses are charming.

life.

We know

scarcely anything about his

1009.

He

was born before

Wasit when Fakhr al-daula Muhamwas made vizier, and congratulated mad Jahir appointment. He was killed by an accident him on his in 1072. A pit to catch lions had been dug close to a village on the road to Khurasan, and he fell into it.

He was

at

ibn

io6

ARABIC LITERATURE

The study of Shaffite law did not hinder the development of the poetic powers of Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali alBakharzI. He practised the art of penmanship, and was occasionally employed in the offices of the State Secretary. He was born at Bakharz, the chief town of a district between Nishapur and Herat in Khurasan. His life was spent in alternate wealth and poverty, and he went through extraordinary vicissitudes during his journeys to, and sojourns in, various towns. Besides his own dtwdn he wrote a continuation, carried up to
the 450th year
Palace). of

the Hegira, of Tha'alibi's

title of

al-Dahr, under the

Yatimat Duniyat al-qasr (Statue of the

it

This, like the

work

carried on,
in the

was a

poetical

anthology.

He was murdered

midst of a pleasure
of 1075,

party in his native

town during the summer

and

the crime remained unpunished.

A member of the sacred family of Hashim, a descendant of Ibn 'Abbas, Sharif Abu Ya'la Muhammad, better known as IBN al-Habbariyya, was born at Bagdad. His talent was great, and his tongue bitter.
Nobody escaped
Seljuqid vizier.
his satire.

He was one
Nizam

of the circle

of poets which surrounded

al-Mulk, the great

His favourite forms of composition were and humorous and obscene poems. "When he condescends to respect decency, his poems are of
satires

a high order of beauty," writes

KatibTmad

al-din in his

him with the most excessive indulgence. A spirit of hatred and jealousy had grown up between the vizier and Taj al-Mulk
Kharida.
treated

Nizam al-Mulk

Ibn Darest, secretary to Turkan-Khatun, Malik-Shah's who, indeed, succeeded him when he died. This secretary asked Ibn al-Habbariyya to compose a satire on Nizam al-Mulk, promising him a rich reward and
wife,

THE 'ABBASIDS
all
I

107
"

the weight of his favour and support.

How

can

attack a

man

to

whose kindness

owe everything

I see in my house ? " asked the poet. Nevertheless, being pressed by Ibn Direst, he wrote the following hnes "What wonder is it that Nizam al-Mulk should rule, and that Fate should be on his side ? Fortune is like the water-wheel which raises water from the well none but oxen can turn it " When the vizier was told of this spiteful attack he only remarked that the poet had simply intended to allude to his origin he came from Tiis in Khurasan, and, according to the popular saying, all the men of Tus are oxen (we should say asses, nowadays) not only did he abstain from inflicting any punishment on the poet he even rewarded him, and took him into higher favour than before. This noble behaviour and proof of extreme indulgence on account of its rarity, greatly admired by the is, Orientals, who, irascible and prone to vengeance as they are, are little accustomed to anything of the kind. As a specimen of the poet's humorous efforts, the following lines are quoted " When Abu Sa'id perceived
:

that

had abstained from wine

for

whole year, he
I

said to

me
is

'

Who
!

is

the Shaikh
of

who
'

has converted you

replied
: '

to a

more honourable way

Poverty
"
'

life ?

and

That

Shaikh

One of his most original productions is a collection of apologues, fables, and moral maxims, on the plan of Kaltla wa-Dimna ; this work bears the title oi Al-sddih

wd l-bdghim (He who

Speaks

in verse, in the rajas metre,

Low and Whispers) it is two thousand lines in all,

;

and the author spent ten years in writing it. He dedicated it to Abij'l-Hasan Sadaqa al-Mazyadi, the lord of Hilla, a town on the site of the ancient Babylon, and

lo8

ARABIC LITERATURE

sent him the manuscript by his son's hand, with an apology for being unable to bring it himself. A liberal gift was his reward. This book is also known under the name of Nataij al-fitna (Results of Discord). The poet relates that once, when on a journey, he woke up in the night, and heard a Hindoo and a Persian discussing the pre-eminence of their respective countries. Each quoted fables and apologues to support his arguments. Such is the general plan of the work, a considerable part of which has been translated by Hammer into German verse, and published in the Wiener Jahrbucher. It was printed at Cairo and at Beyrout. As for Ibn al-Habbariyya, he died in iiio, at Kirman, where he spent the closing years of his life, after having resided for a considerable time at Ispahan. Although Abu'l-Muzaffar Muhammad AL-Ab1ward1 came into the world on Persian soil, at Kufan, a small village in Khurasan, some six leagues from Abiward, he was a man of pure Arab blood and of a noble family, that of the Omeyyad Caliphs, belong-

ing to the tribe of Quraish.

as

He won

great celebrity

but he was also a student, learned in His poetical works are classed tradition and genealogy. ''Irdqtydt under three headings (poems touching
a
poet,
:

'Iraq),

youthful

effusions,
;

and
poet)

their

ministers

and panegyrics of Caliphs Najdiydt (poems in praise of

Najd, or Central Arabia, the Arcady of the Oriental and Wajdiydt (erotic poems). His History of the Cities of Abiward and Nasd is unfortunately lost. His illustrious origin had inspired him with excessive He habitually prayed vanity, pride, and arrogance.
;

in

these

of the East

" Almighty God words make and the West of the earth "
:
! !

me

king

Now

and

THE 'ABBASIDS
again the scion of the
poetry.

109

Omeyyads

betrays himself in his

reigned over the kingdoms of the earth," he says, " and their great men submitted themselves to us, whether they would or no." His life was virtuous,

"We

and

his

conduct exemplary.

He

died of poison, at

Ispahan, on the afternoon of the 4th of September 1113. Ibn al-Khayyat (the Son of the Tailor) was of Syrian
origin.

He was born

at

Damascus

in 1058.

He had

title of Shihab al-din (Luminary of and was a Government servant until he began to travel, A wandering troubadour, he composed eulogies on the great dignitaries he met on his travels, and thus made his way into Persia, where he died in 1123. At Aleppo he met the poet Abu'l-Fityan Ibn Hayyils, and presented him with his poems. This elicited from the elder poet the remark that the young man's arrival betokened his own approaching death, because it was a rare occurrence in any profession when the appearance

earned the honorary

Religion),

of a first-rate master did not

of the oldest of his peers.

portend the speedy demise Al-Khayyit's diwdn, which

was

collected within a year of his death,

is

and was expreserved at

ceedingly widely read in the Middle Ages,

the Escurial

and at Copenhagen. At the same period, the town of Gaza, in Palestine, also produced its poet, in the person of Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Yahya al-KalbJ al-Ghazz1, born 1049. He went to Damascus to study law, in 1088, thence proceeded to Bagdad, and lived there some years, in the Nizamiyya College, composing elegies and panegyrics. At last he departed to Khurisan, where he found matter for the praise of princes who rewarded his eulogies most Here it was that his work first found generously.
admirers.

He

himself

made

a selection of his best

no

ARABIC LITERATURE

poems, and collected them into a volume containing about five thousand lines. Al-Ghazzi travelled a great deal, went as far as Kirm&n, and sang the praise of the governor of that country, Nasr al-din Mukram ibn
al-'Ala.

He

died in 1130, on the road between

in the latter town.
:

Merv and Balkh,

he
felt

and was buried

When
I

the

approach of death he exclaimed give me, for three reasons. I

al-Shafi'i,
I

"

hope God
the
I

will for-

am

compatriot of
far

am

an old man, and

am

from

my

own

kin."

family which traced

Nasih al-din AL-ARRAJANt (1068-1149) belonged, to a its noble descent from the Ansars, or Medina auxiliaries, who championed the Prophet's cause against the Meccans. He was a magistrate, assistant $'^/' at Shustar and at 'Askar-Mukram, was born at Arrajan near Al-Ahwaz in Susiana, and studied at the Nizamiyya College at Ispahan. He began to write some years subsequent to 1087, towards the period of the death of Nizam al-Mulk, and continued till his own. His position as assistant to the regular qddis was a source of amusenaent He mentions it in his lines "That I should to him. act as assistant in such a profession is one of fortune's It is a miracle that I have enough patience to tricks. endure such changes;" and again "I am without con:
:

most poetic jurist of my time, and at least I am the most learned Doctor of Laws amongst its His diwdn, which is principally composed of poets " rather lengthy apologues, was collected by his son. 'Amid al-din As' ad ibn Nasr AL-Abarz1, born at Abarz in the province of Pars, was vizier to the atdbek Muztradiction the
!

affar al-din Sa'd ibn Zangi ; in the time of Abu Bakr, the patron of the poet Sa'di, he was dismissed, and im-

THE 'ABBASIDS

II

prisoned as a traitor in the state prison at Ushkunwan, one of the three fortresses which crown the site of
Persepolis (this was at the close of 1226), and there died

within a few months.

During his incarceration, he composed an ode which was preserved by his son Taj al-din Muhammad, and is still famous throughout It is remarkable for its involved and diffuse Persia. style, and is full of conventional expressions learnt at school, traversed, here and there, by a breath of true and genuine poetry. It has been published and translated into French by the writer of these pages. Among the Persian poets who wrote in Arabic, Sa'dI, the charming author of Gulistdn and BAstdn, those twin blossoms of Iranian poetry, must not be forgotten. Sa'di composed Arabic qasidas, the first of which is an elegy on the taking of Bagdad by the Mongols and the death of the last 'Abbasid Caliph. He wrote the language as if it were his own, with that wonderful simplicity and inimitable artlessness which distinguish him from all his Persian fellow-poets. At the same time his lines are full of touching and pathetic feeling. His odes are twenty in number. He was born at Shiriz, the capital of Fars, about 1184, lost his father, who was in the service of the atdbek Sa'd ibn ZangJ, at an early age, went to Bagdad to attend the Nizamiyya University
course,

made

the

Mecca pilgrimage

several times over,

acted, out of charity, as a water-carrier in the markets of

Jerusalem and the Syrian towns, was taken prisoner by the Franks, and forced to work with Jews at cleaning out he was ransomed by the moats of Tripoli in Syria who gave him his daughter in marriage. Aleppan, an his visits to Kashgar in mentions himself Turkestan, He Minor. He travelled about India, to Abyssinia, and Asia
;

112

ARABIC LITERATUKE
way down
there.

passing through Afghanistan on his

closed his wandering career by settling

He

in a hermit-

age outside the town of Shiraz, close to the source of the Rukn-Abad canal. There he died, over a hundred years old, in 1291, and there, too, he was buried.

Arabia
Arabia
is

no longer that which she was

in the olden
is

days, the cradle of poetry, yet the sacred torch

not

wholly extinguished. In Yemen we discover, in 1058, a native poet, 'Abd al-Rahim AL-BUR't, whose verses are A hundred years full of mystic and religious feeling. later, and in the same region, another Sufi poet, Abu'lHasan Ibn Khuraartash, the Himyarite, composed, when twenty-two years of age, a mystic ode on which commentaries were afterwards written. In the province of Bahrain we find a poet named 'Ali ibn Muqarrab ibn Mansur al-Ibr3.himi, who belonged to the family of the 'Uyflnids, which, after the expulsion of the Carmathians, founded a State held in fief from the Caliphs of Bagdad. After living at the court of his great-uncle, Muhammad, and his son, Mas'ud, he quarrelled with the last-named ruler, and fled to Mosul, where the geographer Yaqut met him in 1220, and thence to Bagdad, where he died, probably in 1234. His panegyrics were successively addressed to his 'Uyunid kinsmen, to the 'Abbasid Caliph Nasir-Lidinillah, and to Badr al-din Lu'lu', Prince of Mosul. To conclude, a poet of Syrian birth, Amin al-daula Abu'l-Ghana'im Muslim, who came from

on the Orontes, dedicated his poetical anthology, Jamharat al-isldm, to the last of the Ayyubite princes of Yemen, Malik Mas dd Salah al-din.
Shaizar
entitled

THE 'ABBASIDS
Egypt

113

Alexandria saw the birth, in 1137, of Ibn Qalaqis (Aba'l-Futuh Nasr-allah), also called Al-Qddi al-aass (the most illustrious Judge), whose beard grew so thin that his face looked quite smooth, a peculiarity for which

he was greatly ridiculed. Yet he was a talented poet. Leaving Egypt, in consequence of the disturbances following on Saladin's establishment there, he proceeded to Sicily, where he made the acquaintance of a Moslem
chief

named

Abil'l-Qasim
II.,

ibn

al-Hajar

proof that

under William
the

the third

Norman

king of that island,

Moslem leaders continued to hold exalted positions. Being generously treated by him, he dedicated a work, now lost, called Al-zahr al-bdsim (the Flower that Smiles), to his benefactor. At that time there was an Egyptian Ambassador in Sicily. Ibn Qalaqis desired to take advantage of his return journey to get back to Alexandria, but, it being the winter season, contrary winds drove the vessel on which the travellers had embarked back to her starting-point. Later the poet went to Yemen, and lived for some time at Aden. Then he tried to go back to Egypt, but his ship was wrecked near the Isle of Dahlak, in the Red Sea, and he was fain to get him back to Aden, having lost his whole fortune, the fruit of the generosity shown him by AbQ'l-Faraj
Yasir, minister to the ruler of that city.
his patron almost naked,

He

returned to

nth August

1168.

He
29th

died at 'Aidhab, a small port

near Jedda,

on

May
I

1172.

He

said of himself, referring to his

many
but

journeys: "There are

many men

in this world,
sailors

am

fated to have

no companions save

and

camel-drivers."

114

ARABIC LITERATURE
of

Yet another Egyptian magistrate whose serious avocations did not prevent his successful cultivation
polite literature

was Hibat-Allah Ibn Sana al-Mulk, sur(the lucky Judge).

named Al-Qadi al-sd-id

in
1

He was born
to Syria, of
his

150,

and
his

in

March 1176 he proceeded

whither
Ascalon,

patron, Al-Qadi al-Fadil

Mujir al-din

minister to Saladin, had accompanied master, and where his reputation had already preceded him. Here the Katib 'Imad al-din, author of the

Kharida, met him, and thought his intelligence marvellous. His merits and talents alone carried him to the high position he held, and earned him fortune's favours.

He
the

died at Cairo in 1211.

of his

The one diwdn

which has come down

to us,

Ddr

al-tirdz

(Storehouse of Embroideries), consists

in large measure of popular poems, known as muwashshahdt ; the Fusus al-fusiil is an anthology of scattered verse and prose extracted from his literary correspond-

At Cairo he was one of a circle of poets who had meetings in the course of which they held pleasant converse gratuitous academies, which, if properly organised,
ence.

would possibly have become quite as famous

another.

as

many

Ibn al-Nabih was the panegyrist of the At a later date he entered the service of Al-Malik al-Ashraf Musft, Prince of Nasibin, in Mesopotamia, as his secretary, and he died in that town in 1222. His diwdn was printed at Beyrout in 1882. One of his poems, translated into English, appears in Carlyle's Specimens of Arabian Poetry. His lighter work is full of afifectation and play on words. The greatest mystic poet of the Arabs, 'Umar Ibn alFarid, was born at Cairo in 1181, and died in that city
al-din

Kamal

Ayyubite

princes.

THE 'ABBASIDS
ill

115

was

His diwdn 1235, after a prolonged sojourn at Mecca. collected and arranged by his grandson 'Ali. His

Arabic works are a perfect model of the style used by the Siifis to describe their ecstasies. These pantheistic

my readers know, sang the praises of the love of the Divine, and the longing for absorption into the great All, borrowing the most burning imagery
philosophers, as

from human life, and even going so far as to seek, in the use and abuse of wine, a state of exaltation which, as they believed, carried them closer to the Supreme Being. Hence one of Ibn Farid's odes is devoted to the praise
of wine.

secretary in the Egyptian Government,

and court

poet to the Ayyubites,

hallabi, died ih

Baha al-Din Zuhair al-Mu-

1258, leaving a diwdn whicli was puband translated into English by E. H. Palmer. In his work we realise how supple the Arab tongue had grown, and how fitted to the apt expression of the innumerable refinements of feelings polished by the brilliant era of civilisation which followed on that of Saladin. Sharaf al-din Muhammad AL-BusiRt (1211-1294) has earned universal renown in the Moslem world by his ode to the Prophet's mantle {Qasidat al-Burdd), an imitation of Ka'b ibn Zuhair's panegyric. Many commentators have expounded the beauties of this Monsieur R. Basset has translated it into work. French, and there are also German translations, and Moreover, poets have entertained one into English. themselves by writing paraphrases of it, called takhmis three couplets of padding, which, with two more of the original Arabic, make up five. Other panegyrics of the Prophet are also due to Biisiri's inspired pen an ode called Unini al-Qurd (the Mother of Cities,

lished

ii6
a

ARABIC LITERATURE
to

surname applied

Mecca), and four others of

a'

similar nature.

Jamil al-din Yahyi IBN MatrOh was born at Siout Upper Egypt, on the 8th of June 1196. There he spent his early years, and pursued the studies which enabled him to enter the civil department of the Government. After filling various posts, he was taken into the service of the Ayyubite Prince Al-Malik alSalih Najm al-din, son of Malik-Kamil, and his lieutenant in Egypt, and accompanied the prince when his father sent him to govern his newly acquired Eastern possessions in 'Iraq and Mesopotamia (1231) he was also in attendance on him when he returned to Egypt in 1240, and was appointed Steward of the Treasury. When his master was invested, for the second time, with the Principality of Damascus, Ibn Matruh was appointed to govern the city and surrounding district, with the title of vizier. Then he received orders to march with an army and retake the town of Hims, which had While the siege fallen into the hands of Malik-Nasir. was proceeding, the Sultan learnt that the Crusaders were collecting at Cyprus, with a view to attacking Egypt. He hastily recalled his troops into that country, and Ibn Matruh, for certain acts which had displeased the ruler, fell into disfavour. Yet in spite of his disgrace he continued to perform his duties about his master's person. Damietta had been captured by St. Louis on AI-Malik al-Salih encamped at the nth of June 1249. Mansura, and died there on 23rd November of the same Then Ibn Matruh went back to Old Cairo, and year. dwelt there in his own house till he died on 19th He was the friend of Ibn Khallikan, October 1251. who describes him as a man of great powers and
in
;

THE 'ABBASIDS
most estimable
qualities of the heart.

117

amiable temper, who, with these merits, possessed the

They kept up

correspondence when they were apart, and when they

met they spent their time in literary discussions and Ibn Matrlah recited his verses to his amusing talk. friend, who inserted some of them in his Biographical
Dictionary.

When,
life,

from public

he retired heavily weighed occupation his want of

after his patron's death,

upon him. He suffered from a disease of the eyes which became incurable, and finally deprived him of his sight. When quite young, in Upper Egypt, he had known Baha al-din Zuhair they were like two brothers. Later Ibn in life, they kept up a correspondence in verse.
;

was published at Constantinople in poem on the Battle of Mansura, which was won by Malik-Muazzam, and in which St. Louis was taken prisoner.
Matruh's
1881.

diwdn

It

contains a

Syria

The

filiation of

IBN al-Sa'at1 leads us

an Iranian
in 1161.

origin, for his father's

to assign him name was Rustam and

his grandfather's Hardiiz.

Owing

to

He was born at Damascus some unknown circumstances, he

life in Egypt, sang the praises of that country poems, and died there, at Cairo, in March 1208. He left two collections of verses behind him a large one, still preserved in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and a smaller, bearing the title Muqattadt al-NU (Fragments touching the Nile), in which, amongst other descriptions, he gives us one, in elegant and much admired language, of the delights of a day and night spent at His verses are full of ideas Siout, in Upper Egypt.

spent his
in his

ii8

ARABIC LITERATURE
exquisite, but

which Orientals think finical and affected.

which

strike us as

ibn

volumes, of Shihab al-din Yusuf Aleppo, surnamed Al-ShawwA (the Cookshop-keeper), has disappeared. He was born in
in four

The dtwdn,
Ismail,
in

of

Aleppo

1166,

the art of versification.

and acquired great technical skill in He was fond of introducing

;

he composed little poems of two or three lines, containing original and carefully studied ideas. He was on terms of friendship with the biographer Ibn Khallikan, who liked to discuss the difficulties and subtleties of Arab grammar with him.

grammatical expressions into his verses

They were

inseparable from 1236,

till

Al-Shawwa

died,

in the following year.

He belonged

section of the Shi'ite sect,

most extreme and believed 'Ali and the imams,

to the

his descendants, to be incarnations of Divinity.

'Abdal-Muhsin ibn Hamud al-Tanukhi (i 174-1245) had learnt much in many journeys, and entered the service of the Mameluke 'Izz al-din Aibek, Prince of Sarkhad. He was first of all his secretary, and then his minister, which last position he held till the prince was murdered in 1229. He left, amongst other works, the Miftdh al-Afrdh fi'mtiddh al-rdh (Key of Delights,
Praise of Wine), a collection of Bacchic poetry in the
al-Is'irdi (i 222-1 254), born at was one of the poets most favoured by Malik al-Nasir, the Ayyubite Prince of Aleppo, to whom he had specially attached himself, and to whom, too,

manner of Abu Nuwas. Nur al-din Muhammad

Seert,

he dedicated
Escurial.

his

Ndsiriyydt,

panegyrics,

now

at

the

odes is Ibn al-Saffar (the Son of the Coppersmith) (1179-

bold and shameless. One of his devoted to the defence of wine against hashish.

He was

THE 'ABBASIDS
1260),

1.19

of

Maridin,

otherwise

called Jal^l al-din

'Ali

Yusuf, was secretary in the service of the Urtuqid Prince al-Malik al-Mansur, and perished at the taking of the fortress by the Mongols. His poems,
ibn
loose
at

and

erotic, are

among

the manuscripts preserved

Isra'il

Gotha.

Najm al-din
ibn

Abu'l-Ma'ali Ibn

(Muhammad

Sawwar) (1206-1278) was born at Damascus, and died in the same city. He was a dervish, who retired His dtwdn is in from the world and travelled about.
the Escurial.

al-TarAbulusI (Abu'l-Husain Ahmad) (1080-1153) was the son of a wandering singer, who
Ibn Munir
recited

poems

in the
;

market-places of Tripoli in Syria,

where he was born as he grew up, he learnt the Koran by heart, studied grammar and philology, and began He went to to write poetry on his own account. Damascus and settled there. His religious views were Shi'ite. His satires were so many, and his language so caustic, that Biari, son of the atdbek Tughtakin, and Prince of Damascus, cast him into prison for some time, and would have had his tongue cut out, but influential intervention saved the poet from this torture, and he was banished from the city instead. He went to Aleppo, where he died, and was buried on the hill of Jaushan, outside the town, where the biographer The atdbek 'Imad al-din Ibn Khallikan saw his tomb. Zangi was laying siege to the Castle of Jabar when he heard his musician singing some lines by Ibn Munir which took his fancy he gave orders that their author should attend him with all haste but on the very night of the poet's arrival in camp, the atdbek was murdered, and his army retired to Aleppo, carrying the discomfited
;
;

I20

ARABIC LITERATURE

poet along with it. His enemy, Ibn al-Qaisarani, at whom he had so often scoffed, declaring he had the
evil eye, sent

him

ironical congratulations

on

his ad-

Ibn Munir's poetry is eminently refined. His qasida al-Tatariyya, an ode in ninety-one lines on his slave Tatar, whom he sent with presents to Sharif AlMusawi, and who was by him detained, is preserved He gives it to be understood in the Berlin Library. in this poem that he would be ready to renounce his profession of Shi'ite opinions if only he might regain
venture.

possession of his servant.

of the chief of a tribe of desert Arabs, and surnamed Al-Amir, IBN HayyOs was born His real name at Damascus on 27th December 1003. Hayyus was Abil'l - Fityan Miihammad ibn Sultan. was his grandfather. He was on terms of intercourse with many princes and great personages, who rewarded him richly for the praises he heaped upon them but he attached himself more particularly to the BeniMirdis, then the reigning family of Aleppo, to which Mahmud ibn Nasr, one of town he went in 1072. had presented him with a dynasty, of this the princes

The son

therefore

When Mahmud died in 1075, thousand gold pieces. the poet sought the presence of his son and successor, Jalal al-daula Nasr, to offer him compliments and In the course of his poem he condolence in verse. " Mahmud gave me one thousand pieces of gold said
:

out of his treasury

know

for a

certainty that his

This elegy so deNasr will do the same." lighted Nasr that he exclaimed " If, instead of saying he would do the same, he had said Nasr would double the sum several times over, I should certainly have done it " The benefits conferred on him by the Mirdas

son

THE 'ABBASIDS

121

family enabled the poet to build himself a house at Aleppo, over the door of which he set up odes of his own composition, praising " the goodness of those who

had delivered him from adversity and the tyranny of fortune." In this house he died, in 1081. Ja'far ibn Shams al-Khilafa al-Afdali (i 148-1225) was surnamed after Al-Afdal Amir al-juyush, the Egyptian minister, in whose service he had been. He was a clever copyist, and his transcriptions were much sought after, for the sake of the beauty of their penmanship and their
correctness, qualities which, in the East, hardly ever

works are compilations, in which we can only praise the good taste with which he has
coexist.

Most

of his

selected the

poems they

contain.

He

has, indeed, left

compositions of his own. Hajl Khalfa The lines in which he says mentions his diwdn. " Suffering is followed by joy. Consider that the evil which has ceased is better than the joy that is passing from us," have been much admired. Saif al-din al-Mushidd (1205-1258), of Cairo, was of Turkoman extraction. His name was 'Ali ibn 'Umar
poetical

some

ibn

Quzal ibn Jildak

el-Yariiqi.

He was

called

to

Damascus
there.

as inspector {mushidd) of the Office of Public

Administration by Al-Malik al-Nasir Ydsuf, and died He was an agreeable social companion, and a

His diwdn may be seen both witty conversationalist. at the Escurial and in the British Museum.

The only

other

names

of this period

worthy

of recol-

who died before he was forty, in 1134, and is well known for his muwashshah&t ; Zafir al-Haddad of Alexandria, who
lection are those of Ibn al-Zaqqaq al-Bulqini,

died at Cairo in 1135, and whose diwdn, largely composed of elegies and panegyrics, is preserved at Berlin
9

122
*A1J

ARABIC LITERATURE

praise of the Prophet, a

at

al-Hamadhani al-Sakhawi, author of seven odes in commentary on which, written a later date by 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Ismail ibn al;

Maqdisi, is now in Paris Zain al-din Katakit, who belonged to Seville, was born in 1208, and died at Cairo in 1285 his poetry is now in the Gotha Library; Nasir al-din Ibn al-Naqib al-Nafisi, who died at Cairo in 1288 he wrote fragmentary verses, some of which will be found in Al-Kutubi's Fawdt al- Wafaydt, and an anthology entitled Mandzil al-Ahbdb, a copy of which may be consulted in the Nuri-Osmanieh Mosque at Constantinople and of Siraj al-din al-Warraq, a copious and prolific poet, born 1218, died 1296, who was a caligrapher and

copyist in the service of the Governor of Cairo, and

whose exceedingly numerous poems, filling some thirty volumes, were reduced by himself into a diwdn of seven bulky tomes none of these, save an extract made by

Safadi in 1346, are

now

in existence.

(Muhammad ibn Yusuf) His panegyrics on the Mosul, at Prince Malik-al-Ashraf did not prevent his banishment from that city, on account of his addiction to games of chance, which the Moslem law forbids. The money bestowed on him. by his patron was forthwith gambled away. He betook himself to Aleppo, and was at first well received by the prince, till he earned his displeasure by the same vice. It became necessary to make it known by the public crier, that any one seen gambling with him would have his hand cut off. He was not more fortunate at Damascus, where, after gambling away the money he wormed out of various great people, he was obliged to sleep on the stoves
Shihab al-din
al-Talla'fari

(1197-1277) was born

used to heat the public baths.

Then we come on him

THE 'ABBASIDS

123

again at the court of the Princes of Hamat, and in that town he died. His poems are in the Escurial and at

he occasionally abandoned the classic metres, and wrote popular songs called inuwashshahdt. 'Afif al-din Sulaiman al-Tilimsani (1213-1291) lived at Cairo and at Damascus, at one time as a Siifi, at another as an author, and died in the latter town. His family belonged to Kdfa. He claimed to be a mystic, and was fond of using the expressions peculiar to the Sijfis he was even suspected of leanings towards the beliefs of the Nusairis or Ansiris. When he was dying, " He who knows God cannot he uttered these words dread Him. the contrary, rejoice to go to be I, on with Him." At Damascus he acted as bailiff to the His son, Muhammad Collector of the Public Revenues. ibn Sulaiman, the gentle poet, of whom it was said that he reached men's hearts before he touched their ears, wrote elegant verse, which was the admiration of Damascus. He was surnamed al-Shdbb al-Zarif (the Born in Cairo in 1263, he died Witty Young Man).
Berlin
;
;
:

at

Damascus
If

in 1289.

to

these
(died

names we add those

of 'Abdallah

al-

Khafaji
great

Amir
ibn
to
at

Madan
known
served
in

Munqidh of whose work is us, save some panegyrics and elegies preGotha of Prince Bahram-Shah ibn Far-

1074), Sa'd al

who sang
daula
'Alt

the ibn
of

praises

of
;

the

Kathir

al-Balisi,

none

rukh-Shih, Saladin's great-nephew,

1

who

ruled Baalbek

consisting of love
in

and was murdered in 1230, leaving a dtwdn poems and poems of chivalry, now of Sadr al-din al-Basri, the Bibliotheque Nationale
182,
;

who

al-Basriyya to MalikNasir Abii'l-Muzaffar Ytisuf, Prince of Aleppo; of Taj

dedicated

his

Hamdsat

124
al-din

ARABIC LITERATURE
of Sarkhad,
at

law

born in 1201, who taught Hanafite Damascus, where he died in 1275 and of Shams
;

al-din al-Khaffaf, a panegyrist of the Prophet,

we

shall

have reviewed
this period.

all

the lesser Syrian poets belonging to

Sicily
a poet belonging to that town, and died born in Qairawin in Tunis, was there in 1061. He wrote poems on his native place which are now in the Escurial, and has left us three, anthologies of different sizes the Zahr al-Addb (Flowers of Literature), printed at Bulaq, on the margins of Ibn 'Abd-Rabbihi's Iqd al-Farid ; the Kitdb al-mas-Cin (Well-guarded Book), and the Nilr al-tarf (Light of
al-Husri,

Abu Ishaq Ibrahim

the Glance).

A prince who likewise was the poet of a day was Al-Muizz Ibn Badis, a member of the Zairid dynasty, who propagated the Malikite, to the exclusion of the Hanafite rite, which had hitherto held exclusive sway in Northern Africa. He felt himself strong enough to break the bonds of his vassalage to the Egyptian Fatimids, and
publicly recognised the

Caliph of

Bagdad
in 1007,

as his purely nominal suzerain.

He was born

and died

in 1061, after having reigned for

many

years.

To
the

celebrate his declaration of independence as regards

Fatimids he composed an ode entitled Nafahdt Qudsiyya (Sacred Odours), now preserved at the Es-

curial.

Ibn Sharaf al-Qairawani al-Judhami had only one He carried on a literary duel with Ibn Rashiq, who wrote several satires against him. He died in 1068.
eye.

In the Escurial there

is

a literary Lecture of his, dealing

The 'abbAsids
with the most famous poets.
line

125

He

wrote
;

a
:

graceful

on the wood of which a lute was made " When it was green, birds sang in its branches now it is dry, men sing to their own accompaniment upon it."
Abli 'Abdallah
in

Muhammad
in

al-Shuqratisi,

who
of an

died

Jarid (Tunis)

1072,

was the author

ode

in praise of the

Prophet, frequently noticed by comal - Munfarija,

(1041-1113) wrote which has been the subject of many commentaries, and has been much amplified and imitated Abu'l-Hasan Hazim al-Qartajini (1211-1285) composed several odes in honour of the Hafsid sovereign of Tunis, Al-Mustansir-Billah. These three close our list of Northern African poets from the
mentators
another,
;

Abu'1-Fadl al-Tuzari

called

eleventh to the thirteenth century.

'Abd al-jabbar Ibn Hamdis (1048-1132) was born in while still young he made his name as a poet. He had reached his thirtieth year when the Normans took the island from the Arabs. He fled to the court of the Spanish Caliph Al-Mutamid, was kindly received by him, and accompanied him when he was carried into captivity by the African Prince Yilsuf ibn Tashifin in 1091. At the end of four years the Caliph died, and the poet remained at Mahdiyya in Tunis. Later on we find him at Bijaya, where he Some authorities died, blind and over eighty years old. His diwdn has assert he died in the Island of Majorca. been published at Palermo, by Moncada, and his songs at Rome, by Schiaparelli.
Sicily
;

126

ARABIC LITERATURE
Spain

the Arab first century following on Spain the victors successfully cultivated the art of poetry, but not till the eleventh do we find any sufficient information as to the literary life of that country. We first come upon Yusuf ibn
in

Even

the

conquest of

Harun al-Ramadi, a Cordovan

in

poet,

1013, after gaining great glory.

who He was

died there

noted for

fecundity of production and the swiftness with which he expressed his thoughts ; yet all we now
his
is a few scattered lines in various and one ode, composed to pass the idle hours when he was shut up in prison. After him we have 'Abdallah ibn 'Abd al-Salam, who wrote the Durr al-manzAm (Pearls ranged in Order), a diwdn arranged in alphabetical order and composed of panegyrics Abu'l Fath Ibn aland New Year congratulations Hasina {circa 1048) 'Ali al-Mayurqi, who came from the Balearic Isles, and died at Bagdad in 1048 the

possess of his works

anthologies,

'Abbadid Caliph of Seville, Al - Mu tamid, a friend and patron of men of letters, and himself a poet Ahmad al-Numairi (early in the twelfth century) and al-Tutili al-A'ma, the blind poet of Abu'l -'Abbas Tudela, who died young in 11 26, sang the glories of "All ibn Yfisuf ibn Tashifin the Moravid, and wrote
;

several inwwashshahdt.

Ibn Zaidiin (Abu'l- Walid Ahmad) belonged to a prominent family in Cordova, where he was born in The prominent position he occupied when still 1 103. quite young brought him to the notice of Wallada, daughter of the Omeyyad Caliph Al-Mustakfi, who was murdered in 1025. Their loves were crossed by AbCi'l-

THE 'ABBASIDS
;

127

Hazm i'bn Jahwar, then master of Cordova, who cast the poet into prison he escaped, but his longing to see
Wallada tempted him back
recalled Ibn Zaidiln,
to

the

city.

When

the

tyrant died, his son, Abii'l-Walid, ascended the throne,

and made him

his vizier.

When

sought Wallada's hand in marriage, Ibn Zaidfln, in her name, sent him a famous epistle refusing his request. His relations with Idris H., Prince of Malaga, a lover of the arts, stirred the susibn
picions of his patron, Abfl'l-Walid,
exile.

AbO 'Amir

'Abdus

He went

to Seville,

who sent him into where Al-Mu tadid was then

in power. This monarch gave him a brilliant reception, and shortly afterwards appointed him to the twofold position of Prime Minister and commander of his troops. So well did he perform these functions that Mu'tadid's successor, Al-Mu'tamid, continued him in His letter to Ibn 'Abdus his post till he died, in 1070. was translated and published by Reiske in 1755. In later years his work occupied the attention of the Dutch Orientalist, Weijers, and yet more recently his life has been studied, and his letter to Ibn Jahwar published, by M. Besthorn. 'Abd al-Majid Ibn 'Abdun, who was born at Evora, early attracted the notice of 'Umar ibn Aftas, then When 'Umar succeeded his governor of that town. sent for the poet to Badajoz, and brother Yahya, he

made him
territory

his

secretary.

When

the

prince lost his

and his life, in the Moravid irruption (1092), Ibn 'Abdun entered the service of Sir ibn Abt Bakr, commander of the African troops, in the same capacity. Then he went on to Morocco, where the son of Yusuf He ibn Tashifin also employed him as his secretary. died in his native town, whither he had returned to

128
visit his

ARABIC LITERATURE

kinsfolk, in 1134. His ode on the disappearance of the Aftas family has become celebrated. Commentaries on it have been vsrritten by Ibn Badrun and Ismail Ibn Athir.

Between Jativa and Valencia lies the village of Jucar, which the Arabs called an island, because it was surrounded by the waters of a river of the same name. Here was born, in 1058, Ibn Khafaja (Abti Ishaq Ibrahim), and here he dwelt, without seeking to pay court to the kinglets who had divided up the country amongst them, and who, nevertheless, prided themselves In spite of this, as we on being patrons of letters. perceive on consulting his dhvdn, published in Cairo in 1869, he did address numerous panegyrics to Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Yiisuf ibn Tashifin. The Almerian Spaniard who entered the service of the Seljuqid Sultan Mahmud ibn Malikshah in 11 27, and provided him with a campaigning hospital, transported on forty camels, was both a physician and a poet. His name was'Ubaidallah ibn Muzaffar. Born in 1093, he made the Mecca pilgrimage in 1122, sojourned at Damascus and Alexandria, spent some time as a teacher at Bagdad, and finally returned to Damascus, where he died in 1154. With the exception of such of his verses as are quoted in various anthologies, scarcely anything remains to us except a poem in the rajas metre, called Mdarrat al-bait, the manuscript of which
is

preserved at Berlin.
Abft

Bakr

Muhammad

Ibn Quzman, a wandering

troubadour, travelled from town to town, singing the praises of the great, and living on the rewards he thus obtained. He wrote popular poetry in the form called zajal, till then left entirely to improvisators, but which

THE "ABBASIDS

129

he raised to the dignity of a literary form. Indeed he has been regarded by some as the inventor of this particular style of poetry. He even adopted it to sing the praises of princes, whereas until his time the lordly qasida had been solely devoted to this use. The unique manuscript belonging to the Asiatic Museum in St. Petersburg has been published by M. D. de Gunzbourg. Abu Ishiq Ibrahim Ibn Sahl, a Sevillian Jevir, ultimately became a Moslem convert. He was drowned, with Ibn Khallas, Governor of Ceuta, in 1251 or 1260. He was a little over forty years of age. He lived much with Moslems before he was converted, and even wrote a poem in honour of Mahomet before he actually joined his followers. Yet some, noting that he continued to drink wine, were sceptical as to his conversion. He wrote verses in the popular metre known as muwashshah, which have been collected by Hasan ibn Muhammad al- Attar, and lithographed at Cairo. The Spanish Government might also reasonably claim Abu Zaid 'Abdal - Rahman Ibn Yakhlaftan, who, after having acted as secretary to various Arab princes, was banished by the Almohad Al-Ma'mun. He took refuge in Morocco, and made his peace with the Sultan in 1230, yet this served him but little, seeing he was dead within three months. One of his pupils collected his complete works, in prose and verse, into a volume, which is now at Leyden, and which treats of edification and asceticism. The poems included in a manuscript now at the Escurial
are of the

same

type,

and

to these

we must add

a certain

number

of odes in praise of the Prophet.

Spaniard,

Abu'l Husain 'Ali al-Shushtari, born at Shushtar, in the district of Wadi-Ash in Andalusia, who died at Damietta
in 1269,

wrote

Siafi

poems

in the

popular form known

I30

ARABIC LITERATURE

A native of Malaga, Abu'l Hakam Malik Ibn al-Murahhal, wrote a panegyric of the Prophet in popular form.
as muwashshah.

Cultured Rhymed Prose The same period witnessed the appearance of prose works worthy to rank with those of the poets. Rhymed prose, of which the Koran is the masterpiece, had fallen out of fashion before the days of Islam, and was utterly
neglected

when

a recrudescence of this style occurred in

art, and poetic grown famous under the name

the form of sermons (Khutba), epistolary

compositions, which have

of Lectures (Maqamat).

A preacher at the court of Saif al-daula at Aleppo was Ibn Nubata (946-984), who was born at Mayyafariqin in Mesopotamia, and died in his native town. He is called Al-Khatib, the preacher, to distinguish him from Ibn Nubata the poet, who also lived at Saif al-daula's court. A large number of Ibn Nubata's sermons are devoted to the duty of prosecuting the Holy War. They were intended to stir the courage of the populace, and excite it to support the prince, to whose perpetual struggle with the Roman troops of Byzantium reference has been already made. The most famous of these sermons is one known as the Sermon of the Dream, or Vision. It was composed during a dream in which the preacher believed he had seen the Prophet in person. This has been translated and published by MacGuckin de Slane, in ih^ Journal Asiatique for 1840. As for Ibn Nubata the poet, he wandered from one country to another, reciting poems extolling their greatness to the various princes and great lords on whom he happened. He was born in 938, and died at Bagdad

THE 'ABBASIDS
in

131

1015.

curious incident, related by Ibn Khallik^n,

befel him.

He was

bule of his house,

"

taking a siesta one day in the vestiwhen a man lately arrived from the

East came to inquire whether he was author of the lines He who does not die by the sword will die in some other fashion. The manner may be different, but the misfortune never changes." And before the end of that same day, a native of Tahart (Tiaret) in Algeria appeared and put the same query. What greatly surprised Ibn Nubata was that the fame of this stanza should have
ties of

simultaneously reached the eastern and western extremithe Moslem world.

The mother
sister to

of

Abu Bakr al-KhwarizmI was own

the historian Tabari.

first

He was born

in 935,

and

was the
him.
to
tures.

author

who

left

a collection of letters behind

He was a letter-writer who had seen many advenHe was of Persian origin. Flis father belonged Khwarizm, now the Khanate of Khiva, and his mother

Mazandaran, in Northern Persia. In youth he spent some time at Saif al-daula's court at Aleppo, then went to Bukhara, to that of Abu 'Alt al-Bal'ami, but soon left it, and sojourned both at Nishapur in Khurasan, and in Sijistan, where he lay a long time in prison, because be had written a satire against Returning from the governor, Tahir ibn Muhammad. Nishapflr, he settled, after a certain amount of travelling, His mania for satire earned at Ispahan and at Shiraz. him confiscation and imprisonment at the hands of Al-Utbl, minister of Mahmud the Ghaznevid. Then he departed into Jurjan, whence he was recalled,
to Tabaristin or his

'Utbi's assassination, by his successor, Abu'lTowards the end of his life his Husain al-Muzani. was somewhat overshadowed by that of reputation
after

132

ARABIC LITERATURE
He
died
either
in

Hamadhani.

993
his

or

in

1002.
in his

Tha'alibI has preserved extracts

from

poems,

Yatimat al-dahr ; but his Rasdil, or letters in rhymed prose on every possible literary topic, have made his name famous. When he went to wait on the Vizier Ibn 'Abbad, he was told by the chamberlain that no man of
letters

was admitted

to his master's presence unless he

knew by
Arabs.

heart twenty thousand lines written by desert " Twenty thousand lines written by men or by
"

He was recognised at can be no one but him," said the vizier. him come in " The welcome this personage bestowed on Al-Khwarizmi did not save him from the " Praise not Ibn 'Abbad, poet's jeers at a later date. even if he showers so many benefits that the very raincloud is ashamed. For with him such actions are the suggestions of his fancy. When he gives, it is not out of liberality, nor is it from avarice that he denies." " God's curse on the ungrateful fellow " cried the vizier. One of his fellow-countrymen has left us this
women
once. " Let
?

inquired the poet.

!

"

It

unflattering

sketch

of

the
talent,

poet's

character
is

"Abu

Bakr has learning and

his

but he

not faithful to

engagements. His friendship lasts from morning till the darkness, but no later." Badi' al-zaman al-HamadhanI (the Wonder of his Time) was still a young man when he left his native town He travelled through the same o Hamadhan in 990. countries as Al-Khwarizmi, made a stay at Nishapur, held an oratorical duel in that town with the said Al-Khwarizmi, an older and better known man than himself, and seems to have finally settled at Ghazna, in Afghanistan, and to have died at Herat, aged forty, in the year 1008. He was actually buried prematurely, while he lay in a state of

THE 'ABBASIDS
lethargy.

133

His screams were heard

in the night,

and the

tomb was opened, but he was found to have died of terror, with his hand clutching his beard. His memory was so prodigious that he could recite four or five pages of a book correctly after having read them over once, and he could
repeat any

heard

it

poem without hesitation after having once declaimed. He composed with the same ease,
and improvised
at will

either in prose or verse,

subject he was given.

Any poem

put into his

upon any hand he

once read in prose, and vice versa; and, yet more astonishing, he would sometimes answer a question addressed to him, writing his answer backwards, from He translated what should have been its last line.
could
at

Persian
fashion.

verse into

Arabic poetry in

the

same rapid

While

at

Nishapur he wrote

his Lectures, in

which he introduces us to a fictitious character called Abu'1-Fath Iskandari, and which contain anecdotes about mendicants and other topics. These lectures are, in fact, tales, the Aryan origin of which is at once
evident.

They

are rather short, but written in a brilliant

and
hero

difficult style,

the words of which are, for the inost

part, the rarest in the Arabic dictionary.

is

The

fictitious
off

a chevalier dindustrie,

who

passes himself

now
he,

as a Nabatean,

now

and again

as a

Moslem
!

as an Arab, then as a Christian, " I am the chameleon," says :

"and am

perpetually changing

my

hue.

Be not
!

deceived by reason

Madness

is

the only real reason

had long been used to describe the gatherings of the learned men and poets clustered about the Caliphs and Governors, at which they exchanged ideas on grammatical points, and vied with one another in wit and erudition. Ibn Outaiba But to mentions them in his "^Uylln al - Akhbdr.
(lecture or stance)

The word inaqdma

134

ARABIC LITERATURE
credit of having
literature,

volume of short stories of the comic adventures of beggars and rogues, painted in the most brilliant colours by a learned
to create a

Hamadhani belongs the new form of

been the
a

first

by making

author, thoroughly acquainted with the

the

homonymy

of

Arab tongue. The masterpiece in this particular style was to be the celebrated Lectures of Hariri, which

appeared at a later date. The Berlin Museum has preserved a lecture in the same style, and written at the same period, by 'Abdal-Aziz ibn 'Umar al-Sa'di (9391015), who was born at Bagdad, was a court poet at Aleppo in the days of Saif al-daula, and afterwards at Rai, under the governor, Muhammad ibn al-'Amid, and

died in his native town.

At the same period we may cite, as authors of literary correspondence, Abu'l-Husain al-Ahwazi, and that Hellenising pagan belonging to Harran, a member of the sect which preserved the ancient Syrian religions, with their
strong tincture of

Islam

viras

in full

Greco-Roman syncretism, long after power, and which were believed to be de-

rived from the Sabians, or disciples of St. John Baptist,

formerly included by the Koran among the Men of the Book I refer to Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Hilal, sur-

al-Sabi, who was head of the Official Correspondence Office under 'Izz al-daula, the Buwaihid, and whom, in his hatred, 'Adud al-daula would have caused to be trampled by elephants, when Bagdad was taken in He was fortunate enough to be imprisoned instead, 977. and was pardoned, on condition of his writing a history

named

of the Buwaihids.

He

died in want, in 994.

The honour of writing the most brilliant literary work in rhymed prose was reserved for Abu Muhammad
al-Qasim al-Hariri (1054-1122), author of the famous

THE 'ABBASIDS
Lectures.

135

He was born at Bassora. His family belonged to Mashan, a small unhealthy village hidden in the palm groves near the great commercial city. His country property ensured him an income which allowed him to lead an independent life, and devote himself with a quiet mind to his studies, linguistic and literary. His collection of Lectures, coming as they did after Hamadhani's, was modelled on it, but he excelled his predecessor in wealth of fancy, and in his vocabulary, which is even more full and studied. Like his predecessor, he brings a fictitious hero on the scene, a vagabond, nursed on literature, called Abu Zaid of Saruj, whom he meets in the most extraordinary The name is not altogether imaginary. situations. Hariri's son has told us of the circumstances under which it was adopted. A stranger of poverty-stricken appearance, but who expressed himself in elegant
language, had

come

into the

mosque.
:

To

every question

" I am Abu Zaid of addressed to him he replied Saruj." This town in Mesopotamia had been seized by the Christians during the First Crusade, and sacked by the captors. Abii Zaid's daughter had been carried into captivity, and he himself, stripped of everything he possessed, was fain to live on public charity. But tlie richness of the style is even more wonderful than the

delicate

web which connects

the

fifty stories

of

which

this collection consists.

The great Oriental scholar, Silvestre de Sacy, the chief master of Oriental study at the beginning of the nineteenth century, has published the Arabic text of alHariri's work, with a preface and commentary of his own, also written in Arabic. This is not the least feat performed by this master mind.

136

ARABIC LITERATURE

In addition to this famous book, Hariri has also left other works, such as the two letters in which every word begins either with an i- or a sh, a puerile trick, of considerable
difficulty, in

which Western writers

;

of

the

Middle Ages also took delight a grammatical work dealing with the mistakes in language generally made by educated persons, which he entitled The Pearl of the Diver into the False Notions of Alen of the World (Durrat al-Ghawwas fi auham al-Khawass) and Grammatical al-Trab), didactic Recreations (Mulhat a poem, which has been translated into French by M. L. Pinto.
;

CHAPTER
'

VI

THE ABB ASIBS Continued

GrammarThe Schools of KOfa and Bassora
Meanwhile,
grammar,
the

study of

the

Arabic language and

arising out of the exegesis of the Koran,

and

destined to supply the needs of the constantly increasing

number
was

of nations

of the conqueror's

and individuals to whom a knowledge tongue was an absolute necessity,

It is

steadily proceeding.

to the Aristotelian logic

taught in the Syro-Persian school of Gundishapur that,

Renan has demonstrated, we must trace back Arab research into the construction of the national language. The interpretation of the Koran, and the
as Ernest

necessity for explaining the difficulties of

rise to inquiries ultimately continued for

its text,

gave

the sake of
in the final

their intrinsic interest,

and which resulted

organisation of the lexicography of the language, and the

restoration of
its

ancient literary monuments.

the
limits

criticism of the ancient texts sprang

themselves, within

Thus the from these texts permitted by Oriental

erudition, always incomplete, because Easterns can very

seldom go beyond the range of their native tongue. schools of grammarians simultaneously appear, on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris. At Bassora, founded in 636 by one of Caliph 'Umar's generals, and

Two

10

37

138
the centre
of

ARABIC LITERATURE
a mixed

speaking two different languages

of the striking
of the real
literature,

Arab and Persian population, not only on account difference between the two idioms, but

though less striking variation of the Arabic derived from the Quraishite dialect of the Koran, and from the others spoken in the Arabian
Peninsula

a school, the
had
arisen.

origin of which

is

obscurity,
as
its

Some go back
more
certain

to

wrapped in Abu'l-Aswad

founder, but to be
to 'IsA

we must come
;

down
of the

IBN 'Umar

al-Thaqafi, died 766, the master

famous grammarians Khalil and Sibawaih he had Near him his a reputation as a reader of the Koran. born at in 689, died alAla, Mecca friend Abu 'Amr ibn had from come back a journey at Kufa in 766, just as he It is to Damascus, collected the ancient Arab poets. said that in a fit of religious fervour he put his whole collection into the fire, so that he might devote himself exclusively to the study of the Koran. He is recognised, indeed, as one of the seven authoritative readers of the sacred book. He had a pupil, Yunus ibn Habib, the freed slave 01 an Arab tribe, possibly of Persian, more probably of Aramean origin, and born at Jabbul, a small town on the Tigris, between Wasit and Bagdad.

He busied himself in collecting the rare peculiarities occurring in the language, dialect words, and proverbs, and studied syntax. The great master of this school was an Arab frora'Uman, KhalIl ibn Ahmad, to whom
is is

ascribed the invention of the rules of prosody (he

said to have discovered

them by hearing a smith's who was the author of the first known work on lexicography, the Kiidb al-Ain (Book of the Letter 'Am), in which the letters are not arranged in the order of the Arab alphabet, nor in

hammer

ringing on the anvil), and

THE 'ABBASIDS
that

139

passed from

historic order (because it Phcenician inventors into the Greek and Latin languages), but in an order suggested by linguistic and phonetic laws. The alphabet thus conceived began
its

which may be called the

with the letter

^ain, so characteristic of the Semitic tongues, and especially of the Arab (my readers are aware that the ''ain is the guttural cry of the camel on

whose back
letter y.

the pack is being placed), and ended with the Lepsius has adopted a rational and experimental order of this nature in his Standard Alphabet,

which

is

the delight of linguists, and obliges

It is

men

of

learning to acquire yet another alphabet.

interest-

ing to note the order adopted by a learned Arab of the eighth century. First come the gutturals (^ain, h, h, kh, gh, and
q),

next the palatals

s,

{k, j),

then the whistling

(/,

and
dh,

sibilant letters {sh,

th,
r,
I,

d, s, z),
(/",

the lingual

d,

t,

z,

11),

the labials

b,

m), and the semi-vowels

This work, begun during a visit paid author to Khurasan, and finished after his death Laith ibn Muzaffar, was in the library of the Tahirid family, and was removed, in 862, to Bagdad, where it became the subject of constant study and
{w, hamsa, andj').

by by

its

alteration.
It
is

more
all

especially

by means of the famous book

written by Khalil's pupil, Sibawaih, the Kitdb, or

Book
is

above

others, that

we

are enabled to gauge Khalil's

influence over the

Bassora School.

Sibawaih

the

Arab pronunciation of the Persian name Sibuya, the meaning of which was given as "perfume of apple," and which may possibly be the ancient historical He came to Bassora when he name of Sebukht. was thirty - two years of age, completed his studies there, and then moved on to Bagdad, where he found

I40
life

ARABIC LITERATURE
intolerable

on
of

account of

his

altercations

with
the

Al-Kisa'i,

tutor

Harun

al-Rashid's

son,

as

to

accusative or nominative of a word.

Infuriated at the

venal testimony borne against

him by desert Arabs on whose honour he had fully depended, he returned to his native country, and died young, before he was fifty, in

the neighbourhood of Shiraz (793 or 796). His Kitdb was famous all over the East, and has remained the

no other work has ever been acknowledged its equal. The text has been published by H. Derenbourg, and translated into German
great and favourite authority
;

by G. Jahn.
Besides Sibawaih, Khalil had other pupils.

Mu'arrij
desert,

ibn 'Amr al-Sadusi, accompanied Caliph

who was born

Ma'mun

in

the

into Khurasan, lived

and some

time at Merv and at Nishapur, and came back to die at Bassora in 810. Nadr ibn Shumail was born at Merv, and lived there after he had studied grammar and law at Bassora. He was appointed a judge in his native town,

and died there in 818, leaving exegetical works on the Koran and on the traditions, and also an encyclopasdia of the Bedouin tongue, which attained great celebrity
{Kitdb
al-sifdi).

To

the

same school belongs one

ibn

of Sibawaih's pupils,

Ahmad al-Musta'mir, whom his master surnamed Qutrub (Were-Wolf), qutrub being a mere

Muhammad

corruption of the Greek term lykanthropos : the surname was bestowed because, in his eagerness to learn, he always came to his lessons before any of the other pupils. He was a freedman, born at Bassora, acted as tutor to the
children
of

Abu

Dulaf, a

general in the service of

left

Ma'mijn and Mu'tasim, and

a collection of lexico-

graphical works, numbering twenty-eight, four of which

THE 'ABBASIDS

141

have survived to the present day, and have been the subjects of copious commentary, more especially his book on triliteral roots, the signification of which alters according to their vocalisation {Kitdb al-Muthallath), a subject on which he was the first to write, and on which he has found many imitators. He died in 821. Amongst Qutrub's pupils we must place Muhammad ibn Habib, to whom we owe our collection of the verses
of Ferazdaq.

He

also studied the ancient history. of the

Arab

tribes,

and wrote
at

now lost. He died name was Habib.

Abij 'Ubaida
at

book on the subject, which is Samarra in 859. His mother's

Ma'mar ibn al - Muthanna v^as born Bassora in 728, of Jewish parents, settled in Persia. He attended the lectures of Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala. He was attached to the religious and political views of the that Kharijites, and his leanings were also ShuHbite is to say, he asserted the superiority of the conquered races over the Arab victors, as we have previously ex-

plained.
in 803.

Harun al-Rashid summoned him

to

Bagdad
his

He had made

himself so

many enemies by

book

called al-Mathdlib

(Book

of the Arabs' Faults) that

died at Bassora in 825, poisoned by a banana, not a soul followed his coffin to the grave a most unusual occurrence in the East. He wore dirty garments, and had a burr in his speech. He wrote two hundred

when he

and philological treatises, composed of extracts from the poems and proverbs of the Arabian The poet Abu Nuwas took lessons from Peninsula. Abu 'Ubaida. He thought very highly of him, and despised Al-Asma 1, of whom he used to say that he was a caged nightingale in other words, that he made fine speeches without understanding a word of them. Of
grammatical

142
his

ARABIC LITERATURE
own
master he said
in a skin."
:

"

He

is

a bundle of

done up

When

he recited verses, he

knowledge would

when he repeated passages from the Koran or from the traditions, he made deliberate blunders on being asked the reason, he would say " Because grammar is an evil portent." His Book of the Arab Days was the foundation on which the Aghdnt of Abu'l-Faraj al-Isfahani and the Kdmil of Ibn al-Athir were written. Abu Zaid Sa'Id ibn 'Amr al-Ansari was another of Abu 'Amr ibn al- Ala's pupils. His family belonged to Medina, but he was born at Bagdad, just when Caliph Mahdi came to the throne, and died there in 830, aged nearly a hundred years. He was a qadarl, which means that he acknowledged man's free will, a theological opinion then considered heretical. Yet he is regarded as a trustworthy authority on the Prophet's traditions. But the most famous of all Abu 'Amr's disciples was Al-Asma'1 'Abdal-Malik ibn Quraib, a man of true Arab descent, who was born at Bassora in 739. His astonishnot mark the rhythm, and
;
:

ing erudition earned

him

the highest consideration at the

in literary

court of Hariin al-Rashid, while, both as an instructor

and

as a writer,

he wielded great influence

circles.

He

is

distinguished from his predecessors

by his.

excessive piety, the expression of

in his philological works.

which

is

evident even

He died towards 831. He wrote books on a great many subjects, amongst others the Kitdb al-Khail (Book of the Horse), in which he enumerates the names given by the Bedouins to every part of the noble creature's body, and quotes an appropriate Arabic verse to accompany each. This book gave rise to an incident which Al-Asma'i himself relates to us. He went one day, with Abu 'Ubaida, to

THE 'ABBASIDS
the Vizier Fadl ibn Rabi',

143

who

asked him the number of

on the horse was contained. "One only," replied the grammarian. To a similar question Abu 'Ubaida, who had also written a book on the horse, replied that his work was in fifty volumes. "Go up to that horse," said the vizier, pointing to one which had just been led out of his stables, "and lay your hand on every part of his body, one after the other,
volumes
in

which

his treatise

giving
replied

me

their

names."

"

am

Abu 'Ubaida; "I

got everything

not a horse-doctor," I have written

on the subject from the Bedouins." But Al-Asma'i undertook to do what the vizier desired, and taking hold of the horse by the mane, he named every part of its body, and quoted a verse of Bedouin poetry in which each was mentioned. Of course the horse was bestowed on him as the reward of his knowledge. Afterwards, whenever he desired to nettle Abu 'Ubaida's feelings, he would call on him, riding the horse which had been the cause of his confusion. So profound was AlAsma'i's respect for the Koran and the traditions of the Pirophet, that he would never apply his learning to the elucidation of their difficulties and obscurities. He " The Arabs of the desert say that always answered such an expression means such and such a thing, but I do not know what it may mean in the Koran." This
:

timidity in exegetical matters arose out of his religious

and prevented him from using the gifts which had brought him fame in profane subjects, for the study
feelings,

of the sacred texts.

Al-Akhfash (surnamed Al-Ausat, "the Middle," to him from an older grammarian of the same name) Sa'id ibn Mas'ada was born at Balkh, and was probably of Persian descent. He was a freedman,
distinguish

144

ARABIC LITERATURE

Though older than belonging to an Arab tribe. Sibawaih, he had been his favourite disciple, and was in " My master never put a single the habit of saying passage into his Kitdb without having first submitted
:

it

to me."

To

him, in

fact,

we owe

the preservation of

that

famous grammar, certain tendencies of which, however, he opposed. His surname Akhfash signifies " he
has
little

who

eyes," or can only see plainly in the dark.

Besides this peculiarity, his

mouth was always open,

and he could not bring

towards 835.

his lips over his teeth.

He

died

Al-Asma"i had several pupils. The first is Abu 'Ubaid Al-Qasim ibn Sallam (773-837), the son of a Greek

He not only studied at Bassora slave, born at Herat. with Al-Asma'i, Abu 'Ubaida, and Abu Zaid, but also at Kufa with Ibn al-A'rabi and Al-Kisa'i. He was first of all appointed tutor to the children of Harthama, Governor of Khurasan under Harun al-Rashid, and to those of Thabit ibn Nasr, Governor of Tarsus in Cilicia. This latter functionary gave him a post as qddi, which he held for eighteen years. Then he travelled to the court of 'Abdallah ibn Tahir, Governor of Khurasan, who gave him a generous welcome. There was a wonderful prudence about his literary efforts. To avoid the disagreeable consequences of the satirical lines he introduced into them, he replaced the proper names by substantives fabricated by himself to suit the rhythm. In his later years we find him back at Bagdad. He died at Mecca, or at Medina, in the course of a pilgrimage. He was said to have divided the night into three parts one for prayer, one for sleep, and one for the composition of his literary works. Of these latter, the Gharib al-Musannaf, on which he laboured for forty years, is preserved in the

THE 'ABBASIDS
Leyclen,

145
is

Khedivial Library at Cairo, the Gharib al-Hadith and \S.\& Book of Proverbs in. Paris.

at

The second of Al-Asma'i's pupils is AbCt Hatim Sahl Muhammad, who belonged to Sijist^n, and died towards 864. He lived for some time at Bagdad, and
ibn

forswore study, becoming known as the author of the Kitdb al-Mil ammarin, which is preserved in the Cambridge University Library and deals with men of remarkably long life. His book of the palm-trees

towards the close of his

a bookseller instead.

life
is

He

well

{Kitdb al-Nakhl) has been studied by Cusa and Lagu-

He was the teacher of Ibn Duraid and of AlMubarrad. He was a man of piety, who spent a gold coin in alms every day, and read the whole Koran through every week. We are told he was a better poet than grammarian. One anecdote related of him shows he was acquainted with the use of sympathetic
mina.

He used to say to his pupils.: inks to conceal writings. " If you desire to consign a secret to paper, write it in
fresh milk; the words will come out when you throw hot ashes from burnt paper upon them or else write with a
:

solution of sulphate of iron

legible
if

the writing will

you pour an

infusion of gall-nuts

can also write with the gall-nut

sulphate of iron

become upon it. You infusion, and pour

on

it."

The

third pupil

of

this

great master,

Abu 'Umar

Salih ibn ISHAQ al-Jarml, was a jurisconsult and grammarian, born at Bassora. He went to Bagdad, where he held great discussions with Al-Farra. He died
in

840.

The

fourth,

Abu'1-Fadl al-'Abbas ibn Faraj

al-RiyashI, perished at Bassora during the insurrection of

the Bassoran 'Alid, the

of the

sham

'Ali ibn

Muhammad,

Chief

Zanj,

in 874.

When

the

town was taken by

146

ARABIC LITERATURE
grammarian
fell in

these savage negroes, the

the general

massacre of the inhabitants which ensued. A fifth was AlSukkari Abu Said al-Hasan ibn al-Husain (827-888),

who made

collection

and

a critical edition

of the

poets, the Hudhailite diwdn, and that of Imru'ul-Qais. A sixth was Abu 'Uthman Bakr ibn Muhammad al-Mazini, died 863 he refused, one day, to give lessons fin gcamrnar, out of Sibawaih's book to a man who was not a Moslem, 'because Ihat book is full of quotations frOm the, Koran, which he would not and this explain to the learner for fear of profanjitioYi in spite of thie, large sym_ offered him by the student, and He was summoned to Bagdad, and of his own poverty.

ancient Arab

written

explained a grammatical difficulty occurring in a verse by the erotic poet Al- Arji, of Mecca, grandson
of Caliph

'Uthman,

to Caliph

Wathiq.

One of the chief props of the Bassora School was Al-Mubarrad Muhammad ibn Yazid al-Azdf, author of the Kdmil, or complete treatise on grammar. Born at
Bassora towards 826, and trained

by Al-Mazini and
of

Abu Hatim, he opposed

Sibawaih.

several

the
life

theories

of

Towards the

close of his

he
(the

settled at

Bagdad, and died there

the origin of his

in 898.

He

himself has related

surname Al-Mubarrad

Cooled).

One day, when the Chief of the Police wished to have him with him, and enjoy his conversation, Al-Mubarrad,
to avoid a society

to a friend's house.

which he found very wearisome, went When the messenger came there to

fetch him, he hid himself in the great osier basket used

and was not discovered. When had departed, his host called him., shouting out Al-Miibarrad{i\\& Cooled One), and the nickname stuck. A whole dynasty of philologers and teachers of
to cover drinking jars,

the messenger

THE 'ABBASIDS
grammar
is

147

formed by the Al-Yazidi family, from Abu Yahya, a freedman of the 'Adi tribe, who died at Merv in 817, and his five sons Muhammad, who was a poet too Ibrahim, who went with Ma'mun into Asia Minor, and died in 839 Ismail, 'Ubaid-Allah,

Muhammad

Abu 'Abdallah ibn al-'Abbas, tutor to the children of Caliph Muqtadir, who died in 922. He wrote a history of the family. Yazidi was present one day at a musical gathering in the palace of Ma'mun. "Tell me," said
to

and IsMq

down

his

descendant

Muhammad

the Caliph, "if there is any better thing in life than this " Yes," responded Yazidi, " there gathering of ours." are the thanksgivings due to the Most High for the
signal favour He has granted you in permitting you to have it 1" A pious answer which greatly pleased the

monarch.
Al-Mubarrad's pupils was numbered Al-ZajIbrahim ibn Sahl, originally a glassworker, who became a philologist, and died, aged over eighty, in 922, having acted as tutor to Al-Mutadid's
jaj

Among
Abu

Ishaq

vizier,

and

later entered the Caliph's

own

service.

He

'Abd alRahmin ibn Ish^q al-Zajjaj, who was born at Nahavand, taught at Damascus and at Tiberias, and died His Kitab al-Jumal (Book at the latter place in 949. of Sentences) is an instructive work on Arabic grammar, but lengthened and overloaded by a plethora of instances. He is said to have written it at Mecca, and at the end of each chapter to have circumambulated
transmitted his
as
to his pupil,

name

surname

the
rites,

Ka'ba seven times according to the pilgrimage praying God to forgive him his sins, and make
useful
to
its

his

book

readers.

Amongst

Al-Zajjaj's
al-

pupils

we must

not overlook Al-Hasan ibn Bishr

148

ARABIC LITERATURE

Amidi, born at Diyarbakr (the ancient Amida), who died in 987, and wrote a critical book on poetry, devoted to a comparison of the two poets, Abu Tammam and Buhturi. Ibn Duraid (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn al-Hasan) (837-934) was at once a poet and a man of learning. Born at Bassora, of a family belonging to'Uman, he contrived to escape the massacre that followed the capture of his native city by the negro rebels known under the name of Zanj. He returned to the land of his fathers in remained there for twelve years. Then he and 871, went on into Persia, and by his panegyrics and notably by his ode called al-Maqsura, which has been translated into Latin by Haitsma, Scheidius, and Nannestadt Boysen^he acquired the favour of the Governor of Susiana and Fars, 'Abdallah ibn Muhammad ibn Mikai,

al-Shah, " the king." In honour of and his son he wrote a great dictionary, this dignitary After the dismissal of his patrons entitled Jamhara. he went to Bagdad in 920, and the Caliph Al-Muqtadir granted him a pension which enabled him to con-

commonly

called

tinue his studies there until his death.

of Kitdb

Under the

title

Etymology), he wrote a genealogical dictionary of the Arab tribes, which He had earned has been published by Wustenfeld. large sums in the service of the Governors of Fars but, owing to his generous and even prodigal disposition, he never had any money in his pocket he
al-Ishtiqdq
of
;

(Book

had also, while in Persia, contracted a taste for wine, and was fond of getting drunk. Once, when a beggar asked alms of him, he gave him a keg of wine, having When some one exnothing else in his possession. pressed disapproval, on the score of the Koranic injunction not to drink wine,

he replied

"

It

v^'as

all

had."

THE 'ABBASIDS
He became
paralytic in his old age, but lived
after his last attack.

149

two years

Al-Mubarrad's favourite pupil, Ibn al-Sarraj (Muibn al-Sari), had a defect in his pronunciation which was a serious one for a grammarian he burred his r's, which the Arabs pronounce with a roll on the tip of the tongue. He died in Februar}' 929. Another of the master's pupils was a Persian from the town of Fasa in Fars, Ibn Durustawaih ('Abdallah ibn Jafar), born

hammad

in 871, died at

Bagdad

in

May

958.

Behzad, a Persian,

who

professed belief in the Avesta,

town of Siraf on the Persian Gulf, had a son who became a grammarian under the name of Al-Hasan ibn 'Abdallah al-sirafL He travelled much, left his native town when he was twenty, studied law in 'Uman, metaphysics at 'Askar-Mukram in Susiana, and ended his studies at Bagdad, under Ibn Duraid, who taught him philology. For forty years he acted as coadjutor to the Grand Cadi of the Hanafites in the Mosque of Rusafa, and also gave lessons in grammar.
and
lived in the
in 979. He lived a retired and very serious life. imbibed Mu'tazilite views, which he concealed, from the teachings of Abu Muhammad ibn 'Umar. He lived by the work of his hands, gaining his bread by copying manuscripts. Al-Sarraj and Ibn Duraid had a pupil named Abu'lHasan 'Ali ibn 'Isa al-Rummani, the Ikhshidite (the Bookseller) (908-994), whose family originally belonged to He was born and died at Bagdad. If we Samarra. may judge by the work he has left, and which is noAV

He died He had

in the Bibliotheque Nationale

eighteen books he wrote he chiefly applied himself to the solution of grammatical difficulties.

the

sole survivor of the

ISO

ARABIC LITERATURE

'Alt

Yet another Persian we find in the person of Abu al-Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Farisi, of Fasa (902-987). He came to Bagdad for purposes of study at the age of eighteen, went to the court of Saif al-daula at Aleppo in

952, and thence to Shiraz, to that of the Buwaihid ruler, 'Adud al-daula, to whom he dedicated his Kitdb al-lddh (Book of Grammatical Explanation) and his Takmila (Supplement). He came back to Bagdad, and died there. Very soon after the Bassora School, arose that of Kufa, of which it may be predicated that it aimed much less than did its elder at confining the Arab tongue to narrow paradigms. It consequently relied more on the customs of the living language than on the artificial constructions of the grammarians. Its foundation was attributed to a contemporary of Khalil, Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Abi Sara al-Ru'S.si. His pupil, Al-Kisa'1 ('All ibn Hamza), was of Persian descent. He, too, studied under Khalil at Bassora, and, advised by him, undertook a long journey amongst the

desert tribes, considered the depositaries of the purest

form
cular

of the language.

He was

the author of a parti-

manner

of reading the Koran,

and ranks as one

of the seven canonical readers.

him with the and Ma'mun. He was an adversary of Sibawaih. He died at Ranbuya, near Rai (Rhages, not far from the
trusted

Harun al-Rashid eneducation of his two sons, Amin

present Teheran), towards 805. The only work of his remaining to us, with the exception of the frequent quotations to be met with in
other authors,
is

a treatise

on the mistakes

in the lan-

guage
in

al-dmma), preserved the Berlin Library, and probably the most ancient
subject.

of the vulgar {Risdlafi la/m

work on the

THE 'ABBASIDS
Ziyad), like
of the

151

His chief disciple was Al-Farra (Abu Zakariya ibn

him, of Persian origin, his family being rough mountain race of Dailam. Caliph Mainun chose him to be his sons' tutor: he taught grammar at Bagdid. He died on his road to Mecca, in 822, at the age of sixty.

Al-Mufaddal AL-DABBt employed

himself in collect-

ing the lines of the ancient poets, and the Arab proverbs.

Both these works have been preserved.

;

The

first is

the

Mufaddaliyydt, which he put together for his pupil Prince Al-Mahdi the second, the Kitdb al-Amthdl. At o.ne

moment Al-Mufaddal played

nearly cost

him

dear.

He

a part in politics which very took part in the rebellion of

his

the'Alid, Ibrahim, called

Soul, against the Caliph

by

own

partisans the

Pure

Mansur. The grammarian was thrown into prison, but ultimately pardoned, and appointed tutor to the ruler's son. He died in 786, leaving as his disciple Abu 'Amr Ishaq ibn Mirar al-Shaibani, who also collected the ancient poetry, and who died in
821.

He made

a special study of the anecdotes, rare

forms of expression, and improvised poetry of the nomad His son tells us that he collected and classified tribes. when he had the poems of more than eighty tribes could find in one encampment, he pubgathered all he lished the result of his labour there, and deposited a copy in the mosque at Kufa. He also wrote more than eighty volumes with his own hand. Another of Mufaddal's pupils was IBN AL-A'rab1 (Muhammad ibn Ziyad) Mufaddal had married his mother, whose first husband, the father of Ibn al-Arabi, had been a slave from the He died at Samarra in April 846. His knowIndus. ledge of the rare forms of expression placed him in the foremost rank, and he criticised the philological works of
:

IS2

ARABIC LITERATURE
He had
a

others, pointing out tlie faults they contained.

prodigious

memory.

One

of his

pupils, Abu'l-' Abbas

Tha'lab, attended his lectures for ten years,

and never

once saw a book in his hand

yet he dictated several

camel-loads of philological texts to his pupils. Ibn AL-Sikkit (Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Ishaq) was
the son of a Susian, and probably of

Aramean

descent.

He, too, spent much time amongst the Bedouins, to The complete his knowledge of the Arab tongue. celebrity of his works induced Caliph Al-Mutawakkil to entrust him with the education of his son AlMu tazz. His avowed support of the pretensions of the 'Alids, which he never concealed even from the Caliph himself, brought him rough treatment at the hands of the ruler's Turkish body-guard, by whom he was so chastised and trampled upon that he died two days afterwards, He is said, as a grammarian, to have lacked in 857. His best work is his Isldh al-Mantiq (Correcacumen. tion of Language) he also wrote commentaries on the diwdns of Al-Khansa and Tarafa. One of his pupils was Abu Talib al -Mufaddal ibn Salama, who was the comrade of Path ibn Khaqan and of Ismail ibn Bulbul, both of them ministers in the service of Mutawakkil, wrote a collection of proverbs, under the title of Ghdyat al-Adab (The Height of Morality), and died in 920. But the man who really carried on the teaching of Ibn al-A'rabi was Abii'l- Abbas Ahmad ibn Yahya Tha'lab (815-904). Complete confidence was placed in his competence as to all matters of tradition even as a young man, his reputation as a good relater of Arabic poems was widespread. His master, Ibn al-A'rabi, did not hesitate to appeal to his pupil's knowledge in the case of doubtful He wrote the Kitdb al-Fasih, on the form questions.
;
:

THE 'ABBAsIDS
and meaning
of doubtful words,

153

and the Qawaidal-Ski'r, rules for poetical composition, and also collected and published the diwdns of Zn\\2AX and Al-A'sha. He died at Bagdad, from an accident. First, IBN al-Axbar! (Abu Bakr His pupils were
:

Muhammad
traditionist

ibn al-Qasim) (885-939), the son of a learned

knowledge
it

to his son.
life

and grammarian, who communicated his He was a pious man, who made
to follow the

his rule of

Sunna, or tradition of

the Prophet.
of

He wrote

the Kitdb gharib al-Hadtth

(Book

Rare and Curious Expressions found in the Traditions), which is quoted by Ibn al-Athir in the preface to his Nihdya; the Kitab a/- A dddd (Book of Words possessing opposite Meanings), published by Houtsma the Kitdb
;

al-iddh

(Book of the Explanation), dealing with the pauses and openings of the verses in reading the Koran. He had a pupil named Ibn al- Uzair (or Ibn al-'Uzairi) Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn 'Umar, whose family belonged to under the
Hearts),
Sijistan.
title

He

died in 941, having written,

of

of

Nuzhat al-quMb (Pleasure

the
rare

the

dictionary of

expressions in the

Koran. Secondly, Al-Mutarriz (Abij 'Umar Muhammad ibn 'Abdal-wahid al-Zahid) (874-956), whose fidelity to his master won him the surname of Ghulam Tha'lab His pupil, Ibn Khalawaih (Faithful Servant of Tha'lab). (died in 980), arranged and edited his Kitdb al- Ashardt (Book of the Tens), explaining words which ten by His astounding memory ten have the same beginning.

and

infallible erudition attracted the

hatred of his

rivals,

who

vainly strove to find

weak

spots in his truth and

correctness.

The two

rival

schools of Bassora and Kufa disappeared

154

ARABIC LITERATURE

in the fourth century of the Hegira, and were fused into what may be called the Bagdad School, which endeavoured to amalgamate, naturally, the opposing tendencies of the two provincial towns, whose glory faded day by day before the splendour and power of the city founded by AI-Mansur. To Bagdad, as the capital of the States,
all the chief intellects of the Empire. IBN QUTAIBA (Abu Muhammad Abdallah ibn Muslim) (828-889 '') 'w^s born either at Bagdad or at Kufa. His father came from Merv, and he was consequently For some time he acted as qddi at of an Iranian stock. Dinawar in 'Iraq'Ajami, and afterwards taught at Bagdad, where he died. He proved himself not only a gramhe bore his share in the marian, but an historian theological discussions which occupied men's minds at

gathered

that period,

and championed Moslem

tradition against

the scepticism arising from the perusal of Syrian, and

later,

Arabic, translations of the Greek philosophers.

He

wrote the ''UyCtn al-Akhbar (Sources of the Traditions), published by Brockelmann, a kind of "select extracts" from the works of the pre-Islamic poems, with selected specimens from the traditions and from history the Kitdb al-Mddrif (Book of Knowledge), a manual of history, published by Wiistenfeld the Adab al-Kdtib, or Secretary's Guide; and the Tabaqdt al-Shuard, on
;
;

the different classes of poets.

Abu Hanifa AL-DInawar! (Ahmad ibn Da'ud) was of Persian extraction, as his grandfather's name, Wanand, denotes. He was a man of really encyclopaedic intellect,
who,
after studying literature under Ibn al-Sikkit, learnt mathematics, geography, astronomy, and history. He died in 895. His Kitdb al-Nabdt {Jiook oi Plants) was not, properly speaking, a treatise on natural history, but

THE 'ABBASIDS
a literary work. the ancient

155^

It dealt with the plants mentioned in Arab poems. This book is known to us through the extracts from it preserved in the Khizdnat al-

Adab.

On
al-

the other hand, his historical work, Kitdb al-

AkhbAr

Tiw dl {^ook

of

Long

Stories),

now

in the St.

Petersburg Library, has been published by W. Guirgass. It is written from the Persian point of view, Alexander and the legendary history of the ancient Persians, the conquest of 'Iriq by the Arabs, and the long struggles of the Caliph Ali with his competitors, occupying an important place in its pages.

Al-Nash! AL-Akbar

(that

is

to

say,

senior) Abu'l-

'Abbas Ibn Shirshir was born at Anbar, a village on the Lower Euphrates, the name of which reveals its Persian origin; it signifies "shop" in that tongue not, as has been thought, the Greco-Latin term iixiroptov, emporium. He lived at Bagdad, and died in Egypt in 906. He was a poet, and wrote hunting scenes and didactic poems relating to sport. He has written fine verses descriptive of falcons. He also turned his attention to grammar, prosody, and scholastic theology. Great praise has been showered on his logical skill and subtle dialectics, which enabled him to controvert all the proofs brought forward by the grammarians in support of their

doctrines.

He
by

attacked the principles of versification

established

Khalil,

and invented an

entirely different

system.

The same

school

may

also claim the Shaikh al-lslam

Ibrahim ibn Ishaq al-HarbI, of Merv (814-898), who wrote on legal and theological subjects ; he was the pupil of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, founder of the orthodox rite of the Hanbalites Al-Washsha (Abu'l-Tayyib Muhammad ibn Ahmad), the follower of Al-Mubarrad and
:

156
of Tha'lab,

ARABIC LITERATURE
who
died at

Bagdad

in 936, a

humble school-

but an elegant writer, who, in his Kiidb-alMuwashshd, published by M. Briinnow, has left us a lively and most interesting picture of the civilisation of these his day, and a collection of model letters as well
master,
;

are

now
at

born

Abu'1-Fadl al-Harawi, a Persian, Herat, and disciple of the same masters he died
at

Berlin

Mafdkhir al-maqdla (Book of Glorious Discourses), the manuscript of which is preserved at Constantinople and Al-Akhfash the Little, editor of the Kdmil of Al-Mubarrad, and commentator of Sibawaih's Book, who travelled to Egypt in 900, returned in 918, and died at Bagdad in 920. IBN AL-Marzuban (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Khalaf), died 921, wrote a book to demonstrate the superiority of the dog over most men (the manuscript is now
in 940, after writing a Kitdb
:

nothing further is known about him. Ibn Khalavvaih (Abu 'Abdallah al-Husain), the pupil of Ibn Duraid and Al-Anbari, studied the traditions of the Prophet, and was even professor of that subject for a time, in the great Mosque at Medina. In later years he went to Aleppo, entered the service of the Hamdanids, and was much in the company of the poet Mutanabbi. He died at Aleppo in 980. He was the author of a book
in Berlin), but

called Laisa,

on the exceptions occurring

British

in the

Arabic

tongue, the text of which, from the unique manuscript

now

Museum, has been published by Ibn Jinni (Abul-Fath 'Uthman), of Mosul, was the son of a Greek slave. He taught in his native town, after having studied at Bagdad under the grammarian Abu "Ali al-Farisi, of the Bassora School. He ultimately returned to the capital, actually took his former master's place, and died there in 1002. His
in

the

H. Derenbourg.

THE 'ABBASIDS
many
works, of which only a few are

157

now

in existence,

which he has applied philosophy to the study of grammar. His treatise on the principles of inflection has been translated into Latin, and published by G. Hoberg. Abil Hilal al'Abdallah) was the author of a "Askari (al-Hasan ibn collection of proverbs, of works on the rules of composition in prose and verse, and on various literary subjects, and of a commentary on the diwdn of Abu Mihjan. Ibn Asad al-Bazzaz, the cloth merchant (Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad), author of a book to explain difficult lines hence his of poetry, was celebrated for his penmanship surname, al-Katib, the secretary; he was the master Al-Zujaji of the famous caligrapher Ibn al-Bawwab. (Abu'l-Qasim Yusuf ibn 'Abdallah), who died in 1024, wrote a book containing the names of the
are remarkable for the
in
'

way

different parts of the

human body,

in alphabetical order.

In Persia, about the same period, 'Abdal-Rahman ibn 'Isa al-Hamadhani, a secretary and caligrapher, who

died in 932, was writing his Kitdb al-Alfdz al-Kitdbiyya, a book on synonymy, edited by the Rev. Father Cheikho, Abu Ibrahim Ishaq ibn Ibrahim, of the at Beyrout.

town of Farab
time
Atsiz,
at

(or Otrar), in Turkestan, lived for

some

Zabid, where he wrote his

Diwdn

al-Adab, for

King of Khwarizm (Khiva). He then returned to his native town, and taught there till he died, in 961. He was the master and instructor of his nephew, the famous (Abu Nasr Ismail ibn lexicographer Al-Jauhar! Hammad), who, after having studied under his uncle at Farab, proceeded to Bagdad, where he took advantage of the lessons given by Al-Farisi and Al-Sirafi. To perfect his knowledge of the Arabic tongue, he travelled about "Iraq 'Arabi and the Syrian Desert, then returned east-

158

ARABIC LITERATURE

ward, and settled, in the first place, at Damghan, and then at Nishapur, in Khurasan, where he died, towards 1002, from the effects of a fall either from the roof of
his

own

house, or from that of the great Mosque.

On

His great dictionary, al-Sahdh fil-Liigha, is alphabetically arranged, according to the order of the last radical letter, a curious arrangement, to which his successors have adhered, and which, useful as it is to poets, is perhaps more useful still to their critics, for my readers are aware that several Arabic letters are
this point versions differ.

only differentiated by their distinguishing dots.

When

one of these dots

is

forgotten by the copyist, which fre-

quently occurs, the word becomes unintelligible. The order adopted by Al-Jauhari perhaps allows of an easier rectification of these errors than would be the case if our plan of arranging the Arabic roots according to the order

He himself drew up of the first radical were adhered to. about one half of the work the rest was completed by one of his pupils, Abu Ish&q Ibrahim ibn Salih al-Warraq (the Paper-seller or Bookseller), who allowed a few errors
;

to creep in.

Other lexicographers were working at the same time and on the same subject. Al-Azhar{ (Abu Mansur Muhammad ibn Ahmad), born at Herat in 895, was coming back from his pilgrimage to Mecca when the caravan was pillaged (26th April 924), and he fell into the hands of a Bedouin tribe which shifted its camp, according to the seasons, from one part of the peninsula This fact enabled the Persian prisoner, to another. much against the grain, to learn his Arabic at the fountain head. Once delivered out of his captivity, he returned to his native town, taught there for many years, and died there in 981. His dictionary, the Tahdhib al*

THE 'ABBASIDS
Kitdb-al- A in.

159

Lugha, adopts the arrangement followed by Khalil in his

The S&hib IBN 'AbbAd (Abiil-Qasim

Ismail)

al-

Talaqani, born at Talaqan, near Qazvin, in 938, was the son of the vizier of the Buwaihid princes Rukn al-daula

he was the first to receive the title comrade. He attended the lessons of Ibn Paris at Rai, and completed his studies at Bagdad. When he returned from this city, the Buwaihid prince Mu'ayyid al-daula, whose companion he had been in boyhood, chose him to be his minister, and he continued to hold the post under the prince's successor, Fakhr al-daula. He was a patron of art and science, and himself wrote poems and letters which have been collected under the title of Kdfi' l-Kufdt. The third volume
;

and 'Adud al-daula

of sdhib, or

of his Muhit, a dictionary in alphabetical order, in seven volumes, now preserved in the Khedivial Library at Cairo, contains a very large number of words, insufficiently supported by a very few instances. He died in

995.

He was

popular

at Rai,

and

his funeral, over

which
great

the prince presided in

person, called

forth

demonstration of sorrow. Ibn Paris Al-Raz1 (Abial-Husain Ahmad) was a teacher at Hamadhan, where one of his pupils was Badi' al-Zaman Hamadhani, author of the Lectures. He was presently summoned to Rai by Pakhr al - daula, to be He is the first instance we tutor to his son Abu Talib. Iranian descent have of a writer of who takes the Arab He also wrote side in the conflicts of the ShuHibiyya.
polished verses,
proverbial
for the
satirised the natives of
:

amongst others those in which he Hamadhan, whose ignorance was

should I not offer up a silent prayer I have had the; advantage of for-

"Why
in

town

which

i6o

ARABIC LITERATURE
I

getting everything
1005.
in the order

ever learnt ?"

is

He

died at Rai in

His Mujmal fi'l-Lugha

of

a dictionary arranged

the

first

radical letter.

Lugha (Jurisprudence
reflections.

of

the

Language)
full

His Fiqh alis an introphilosophical

duction to Arabic lexicography,

of

Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Harawi came from Herat. He was the pupil of Al-Azhari, and died in loio. He
wrote the Kitdb al-Gharibain (Book of the Two Wonders), a treatise on the obscure expressions found in the Koran
traditions. This work, which was considered exceedingly practical, was copied over and over again,

and the

and several

of these manuscripts are of this serious

now

in

Europe.

The author

book was fond of conversing subjects, did not deny himself the luxury of loose on and surrounded himself with wine in private, drinking pleasure parties he shared. companions, whose witty ibn Muhammad Nizam al-din Hasan His contemporary, of Nishapur, wrote a book of the same nature on the Koran, and simultaneously composed a commentary on
the Almagest of Ptolemy.

Egypt, too, shared in the movement, as

the labours of Ibn Wallad

is

proved by

(Ahmad

ibn

Muhammad),

a pupil of Al-Zajjaj, who died at Cairo in 943, and wrote a dictionary of the words ending with the vowel
a,

long or

short {Kitdb al-maqsilr

Ja'far),

wa l-inainditd)

of

Al-Nahhas (Abu

a pupil

of the

same master,

a teacher at Cairo,

who was thrown

into the Nile in

May 950 by

man

of the lower orders,

who

took the
for

verses he was reciting as he sat on the steps of the

Miqyds or Nilometer on the Island

of

Rauda

an

in-

cantation intended to prevent the rise of the river, and

thus to bring about famine and dearness of food.

He

THE 'ABBASIDS

i6i

was a man of sordid habits. So mean was he that if anybody gave him a piece of muslin to roll round his turban, he would cut it into three strips. Spain had enjoyed the benefit of the teaching of
ABt> 'ALi (Ismail ibn al-Qasim) AL-Qal1 (901-967), of the town of Qaliqala, in Armenia. He was a student
at

Bagdad
to

in 915,

left

that city in 939, travelled into

the distant regions of the Maghrib,

last

and wandered
as a

at

Cordova, where he

settled

teacher

of

grammar.
pupils
is

(Book an anthology, filled with traditions relating to the Prophet, an immense number of notes on the proverbs, language, and poetry of the ancient Arabs, anecdotes concerning the poets at the Caliphs' courts, prose pieces, and verses preserved by oral Another book of his, the Kitdb el-Bdi'i^, was tradition.
the
title

The work known under

;

dictated by

him

to his Spanish

of Kitdb al-Amdli

of Dictations)

it

is

devoted to the traditions of the Prophet. His chief disciple was ABt) Bakr Muhammad ibn al- Hasan AL-Zubaid!, who completed, under his guidance, the studies he had begun under Spanish teachers. His family belonged to Emesa, in Syria, but he was born
at Seville in 918.

When

his studies at

Cordova were

completed, he was appointed by the Caliph Mustansir al-Hakam to superintend the education of his son Hisham, who, when he succeeded his father, made his old tutor qddi and chief watchman over the city of Seville. Here he died in 989. His appointment brought him wealth, which his descendants enjoyed for many a year. He composed a considerable amount of poetry
the

Wddih

(Clear Treatise)
;

Escurial

Library

the Istidrdk, published

of

and a

classified

list

on grammar, now in the by Guidi the grammarians and philologists

62

ARABIC LITERATURE
flourished before his

who had
and
in his

own

time, both in Spain

in the East, of

which use has been made by SuyutJ

Mizhar.

The Nizamiyya University at Bagdad

The foundation of the Nizimiyya University at Bagdad provided a natural rallying-point for the study of classical literature. Here numerous works on poetry, rhetoric, and lexicography were elaborated, for the most part by professors of Persian origin. Yahya ibn 'Ali, surnamed Al-Khatib, and known under the name of Al-Tabrizi (1030-1109), was born at Tabriz, in Persia. He studied the traditions at Sur, the Tyre he had learnt philology under the of the ancients poet Abu'1-Ala al-Ma'arri; he taught for some time in Egypt, and then went to Bagdad, where he was a
;

professor at the Nizamiyya

till

he died.
to ask
his

We

are told that,

when he would have gone

to

Abu'l-'Ala

al-Ma'arri

direct

study

of

Abii

had no money wherewith to hire a horse, so he put the book into a sack and started to walk the long journey from Persia The sweat on his back oozed through the to Syria. material of his sack and stained the precious manuscript, which was long preserved and shown to visitors in one of the libraries of Bagdad. He wrote a treatise on prosody and metre, an abridgment of the grammar of the Koran, and commentaries on the Muallaqat, the Hamdsa, the diwdn of Abii Tammam, and that of his own master,

Mansur

al-Azhari's Kitdb al-Tahdhib, he

Abu'l- Ala al-Maarri.

His pupil was Abu Mansur Mauhub IBN ALjAWALfgt (1073-1 145), of Bagdad, who is known by

THE -ABBASIDS
his

163

book on foreign words introduced into the Arabic, which has been pubhshed by Monsieur Sachau, and by his Takmila, a supplement to Hariri's Pearl of the Diver, which has been edited by H. Derenbourg under the title of Book of Faulty Locutions. Another work of his, on the names of Arab horses and of their
riders,

may

be

seen
in

and at Munich. and manuscripts

He was famous

manuscript in the Escurial for his penmanship, his hand were eagerly sought after.
in
at

He
the

acted as
five

Imam

to the Caliph Al-Muktafi,

daily

prayers

which

the

and led monarch was

pupil asked him, one day, to poetry which contained some technical terms of astronomy, and he, perceiving he knew nothing of that science, made a vow never to teach again until he had mastered the movements of the sun and moon. Abu'l-Maali Muhammad ibn al-Hasan IBN HamdOn (1101-1167), surnamed Kdfi'l-Kufdt, or "the Most Perhabitually
present.
lines

explain

two

of

Men," was born at Bagdad, of a well-to-do family, of which had served the government as statesmen. He began his career in the army under Caliph Al-Mustanjid, he was first Inspector of the Palace and afterwards Secretary of State. While holding this latter post, he was so imprudent as to blame openly, and in an official document, the evils he saw around him. He was dismissed and cast into prison, where he shortly died. He left, under the title of al-Tadhkira, an historical and philological anthology in twelve volumes, on which Alfred von Kremer has founded his researches into preIslamic Arab history and customs. Sa'id ibn al-Mubarak Ibn al-Dahhan, who was born
fect of

members

at

Bagdad

in iioi,

made

his reputation there as a first-

64

ARABIC LITERATURE
grammarian.
his

rate

He

ultimately

left

that city to

pay a
Mosul.

visit to

the Vizier Jamal al-din al-Isbahani at

absence the Tigris overflowed its banks and Such of his books as had been saved were conveyed to him at Mosul. As they had been damaged by the river water, he tried to repair them by plunging them into the vapour of ladanuin, the resin of the Cretan gum cistus, which destroyed his
flooded his library.
died shortly afterwards, in the year 1173, in this same town of Mosul. All that remains to us of his
sight.
is his Fusul, on the art of prosody, and one qasida, both at Gotha. Another member of the Nizamij^ya University was Kamal al-din 'Abdal-Rahman Ibn AL-AnbarI (11191181), who studied and afterwards taught philology there. In the last years of his life he renounced all society, shut himself up in his chamber, and gave himself up to study and to pious exercises. His Mysteries of the Arab Tongue (Asrar al-'Arabiyya), a grammar, has been published at Leyden by Herr Seybold. His book " of the Just Decision between the grammarians of Bassora and those of Kiifa," written at the request of his pupils at the Nizamiyya, has been the subject of a grammatical treatise by Koschut. His Niizhat al-alibbd (The Delight of Men of Feeling, on the Classes of Literary Men) is a history of Arabic litera-

During

He

work

ture from
times.
It

its

earliest origin

down

to the author's

own

Other works on grammar by the same hand are at Leyden and Paris. Muhibb al-din Abu'l-Baqa'Abdallah al-UkbarI, born in 1 130, died 12 19, was regarded, towards the end of his life, as a distinguished philologist. He had also
at Cairo.

has been lithographed

made

a study of the jurisprudence of the Hanafite

rite.

THE 'ABBASIDS
His
skill

i6s

facilitated his study of the His family belonged to 'Ukbara, a village on the Tigris, above Bagdad, which has been the cradle of several remarkable men. He was completely blind. He was the author of commentaries on Mutanabbi's poetry, and on Hariri's Lectures, on the unusual syntactic expressions occurring in the ancient poets {Kitdb al-MAjiz), and on the causes of inflection, and the absence of it, in certain words {al-LubdU). The Arabic tongue was still lovingly studied in Persia. It was the language of science par excellence. There were many ideas which seemed incapable of clear and precise expression in any other. The Persian language was at this period just coming back to life, and the dawn of that brilliant constellation of poets who have ensured its eternal glory was beginning. But the vulgar

in arithmetic

had

division

of inheritances.

tongue, which the

upon
lost,

were yet forging afresh had' been and must perforce be replaced by others, borrowed
of letters

men

their anvil, lacked

many words which

Thus Arabic played the part of Latin from the Arabic. in the Middle Ages ; save in University discussions, it was no longer spoken, but everybody wrote it. Abu Mansur 'Abdal-Malik Al-Tha'alib1, born at Ntshapur in 961, who died in 1038, was a busy compiler, in whose work we note the bad habit, growing daily more general, of not quoting the source from which he borrows, a duty which had been sedulously performed during the best period of Arabic literature. His great work, Yattinat al-dahr ft mahdsin ahl al-asr (The Unique Peai'l of the Time, on the fine qualities of contemporary authors), is an anthology of the poets of his time,
arranged according to the countries of their birth to each poetical extract is prefixed a biography, which
;

66

ARABIC LITERATURE

His Lataifal-Mddrif{]esis been published by De Jong at Leyden. His Fiqh al-lugha (Jurisprudence of the Language) is a dictionary of synonyms. His Lata if al-sahaba wdl-tdbi 'in (Jests of the Companions of the Prophet and their Successors) is a collection of tons mots dropped by authorities on Moslem law. Extracts from this have been published by Cool in the Chrestomathy to Roorda's Grammar ; another collection of ana (ahdsin Kalim We owe him al-nabi, &c.) has been studied by Valeton. many other grammatical works, too numerous to mention here. To conclude, he may possibly be the author of the Kitdb al-Ghurar, part of which, dealing with an ancient history of the Persians, has been translated and published by Zotenberg. Abu'l-Hasan Tahir Ibn Babashad, although he spent his whole life in Egypt, was of Persian descent, and belonged to the southern shores of the Caspian. He was attached to the Official Correspondence Office at Cairo, his duty, for the discharge of which he received a monthly salary, being to attend to the grammatical correctness of the documents submitted to him. At a later period, having seen a cat come and beg food for one of its fellows, which had gone blind, he gave up his employment, and trusted Providence to supply his needs. He died in January 1077, having fallen, one night, from the roof of the old Mosque at Cairo into the interior of that building. He left a manual of grammar, in ten chapters, behind him. It is called al-Muqaddirna (The Preface), and has been the subject of commentaries both by himself and by other authors. Abu Bakr 'Abdal-Qahir al-Jurjini, who died in 1078, wrote a grammatical treatise on the hundred governing
is,

unfortunately, very brief.

of Science) has

THE 'ABBASIDS
particles,

167

which numerous copies have been made, found in every library. Both Erpenius (at Leyden in 1617) and Baillie and Lockett (at Calcutta) Others of his works have given it their attention. on syntax have been honoured by frequent commenof

now

to be

taries.

Yet another Persian compiler, Abu'l-Qasim al-Husain

al-Raghib AL-IsBAHANt,
collected a very

of Ispahan,

who

died in 1108,

copious literary anthology under the title of Muhddarat al-udabd (Conversations of Literary Men) he wrote a dictionary of the words of the Koran arranged in alphabetical order {Mufraddt alfdz al-Qur'dn),
;

with quotations from the traditions and from the poets he also wrote a treatise on morals, which Ghazali always
;

him {Kitdb al-dhari a), and a commentary on the Koran. The ancient Arab proverbs were put together at this period by Abu'1-Fadl Ahmad al-Maidan1, who died His great work at Nishapur, his native town, in 11 24. formed the basis of Freytag's Arabum Proverbia. His dictionary {al-sdmi fi I asdmi) and his work on syntax {al-hddi li'l-Shddi) have been somewhat overshadowed by the success of the Proverbs. Abu'l-Qasim Mahmud AL-ZAMAKHSHARf, surnamed/<2rAllah (the Neighbour of God), on account of his lengthy sojourn at Mecca, was born at Zamakhshar in Khwarizm (the present Khanate of Khiva),in 107^. His youth was spent in travelling for the sake of study. He made the holy pilgrimage to Mecca, and died in his native land, in the town of Jurjaniyya (Ourghendj, the
carried about with

ancient capital of the country), in 1143.

One

of his feet

had been frost-bitten during a winter storm, necessitating He alwaj-s its amputation, and he wore a wooden leg.

i68

ARABIC LITERATURE

carried about the written testimony of ocular witnesses

to

prove he had been maimed by an accident, and not in consequence of a sentence in punishment of some crime. He was a declared Mu'tazilite, and when he wrote his commentary on the Koran he began it with the words " Praise be to God, who created the Koran " Orthodoxy at a later date replaced the word " created " by
:
!

Although, as being more accessible to his couched in Persian in his lexicographical works, he was so convinced of the superiority of the Arabic that he opposed all the ShuAbiyya tendencies to which we have already referred.
readers, he used interpretations

" revealed."

His great commentary on the Koran is called the Kashshdf (That which Discovers the Truths of Revelation) it has been printed at Calcutta and at Cairo, and many commentaries on it have appeared. The Kitdb alMufassal (The Detailed) is a complete manual of Arabic grammar it has been published by Broch at Christiania. The Muqaddimat al-adab (Preface to Literature) is an Arabic-Persian dictionary, which has been published by Wetzstein. ^)\e. Kitdb al-Ainkina {QodV^oi Localities, of Mountains and Waters), a geographical lexicon, has appeared in print, thanks to the care of Salverda de Grave. The Nawdbigh al-Kaliin (The Gushing Words),
; ;

a collection of proverbs,
of

H. A. Schultens

in the eighteenth century,

;

him translated into a more recent study

had already attracted the notice and was by Latin Barbier de Meynard has inade
of the text.

The Atwdq al-dhahab

(The Golden Necklaces), moral allocutions, has been translated into German by Joseph von Hammer, by Fleischer and Weil, and into French by Barbier de Meynard. nThe very year in which Zamakhshari died witnessed

THE 'ABBASIDS

169

the birth, in the same country, of Abu'I-Fath Nasir ALMUTARRlzt (died in 1213), who was commonly called
his successor.

While carrying on

his literary studies,

he

taught Hanafite jurisprudence and the dogmatics of the Mu'tazilite School. He has left us a manual of syntax, the Misbdh (The Lamp) a dictionary of the rare terms
;

employed

in the style written

by

jurisconsults, al-Mugk-

al-Murib ; a lexicon of synonyms, el-Iqnd'' ; and a commentary on Hariri's Lectures. In 1204, in the
rib ft tartib

course of a pilgrimage to Mecca, he went to Bagdad, held frequent controversy on the subject of the Mu tazilite doctrines, and at the same time gave lessons in
philology.

Khwarizm was also the birthplace of Siraj al-din Yusuf al-SakkakI (i 160-1229). He was the author of the Miftdh al-UlAm (Key of the Sciences), a work on grammar and rhetoric which has had many commentators.
al-din,

Kurdistan produced three Ibn el-Athirs Majd the theologian; 'Izz al-din, the historian; and piya al-din Fakhr al-din Nasrallah (1163-1239), the
:

man

of letters.

of Jazirat Ibn

This last was born in the 'Umar, on the banks of the

little

Tigris,

town and

at the foot of the at

Kurdistan mountains. He studied Mosul, and entered the service of Saladin in 1191.

In the following year we find him acting as minister to the great warrior's son, Al-Malik al-Afdal. When his

master evacuated Damascus, Diya

al-din,

whose

life

was

threatened, was fain to flee into Egypt, where he hid

himself when Al-Malik al-'Adil conquered that country, and he then rejoined his master at Samosate. In 12 10 he entered the service of Al-Malik al-Zahir at Aleppo, and in 1221 passed into that of Nasir al-din, Prince of

I70

ARABIC LITERATURE
to

He died at Bagdad. It is understand how, in the midst of so busy a life, with such constant comings and goings, he contrived, in addition to his masterly correspondence, which is collected under the title of Al- Washy dl-MarqAm, has been printed at Beyrout, and studied by Margoliouth,
Mosul, as his secretary.
difficult

to indulge in the Jesthetic

and

critical literary studies

which resulted

in his

book Al-Matlial al-Sdir,

to

which

and

Goldziher has given his attention, his Poetics (al-Burhan), his Language of Flowet-s (al-Azhar), all preserved in
at Berlin

and in Paris. Abu'1-Baqa Ya'ish IBN Ya'ish, surnamed IBN al-Sa'igh (the Goldsmith's Son), born at Aleppo in 1158. He was on his way to Bagdad, to sit at the feet of Ibn al-Anbari, when the news of the death
manuscript
In Syria

we

find

of that master reached in that town,

him at Mosul. He made some stay and then returned to Aleppo, where he acted
till

He wrote Ibn Khallikan, the author of the Biographical Dictionary, took advantage of his teaching in 1229 he has recorded his lively admiration for his master, who had a rare gift for smoothing and explaining difficulties. He spoke in a soft voice, and his patience with such of his pupils as were beginners was exemplary. Beneath his grave and serious nature he hid a fund of humour. One day, after he had been explaining an Arabic verse, in which the poet, according to a well-known form of imagery, had compared his mistress to a gazelle, a lawyer of the company, who had listened attentively, and had apparently understood his
as a teacher of literature
his death in 1245.

commentary on Zamakhshari's Mufassal.

:

meaning, suddenly interrupted him with the inquiry: " Master, will you tell me what point of comparison exists between a beautiful woman and a gazelle ?

THE 'ABBASIDS
"The
tail

171

and the horns," replied the angry sage, to all the company. Jamal al-din Muhammad iBN Malik al-Jayyani (1203-1273) was of a family belonging to Jaen, in Spain, but he himself was born in Damascus. He finished his studies at Aleppo, became a teacher of literature at Damascus, and died there, having won the
the delight of
reputation of being the greatest philologist of his time.

He

wrote a great book,

now

lost,

called al-Fawd'id

(Useful Teachings), on the subject of syntax, an extract

from which appears in the Tashil al-fawa id ; the Alfiyya, a didactic poem on grammar, numbering about a thousand lines, which has been frequently printed, and on which many commentaries have been written it has

occupied the attention of Silvestre de Sacy, Dieterici, L. Pinto, and Goguyer and the Lainiyyat al-Af'dl, another
;

didactic

poem on

the conjugations of the Arabic verbs,

which has been autographed by Wallin, at Helsingfors, and published by Kellgren, Volck, and Goguyer. The manuscripts of other and less celebrated grammatical works, on syntax, prosody, and synonymy, are to be found in various libraries. In Southern Arabia, NashwAn ibn Sa'id al-Himyari, a poet and man of learning, turned his attention to the traditions of his native country, and composed an Himyarite ode, which has been edited by Alfred von Kremer and published by Prideaux, but on the historical accuracy of which no reliance should be placed. A dictionary. Shams al-iMun (Sun of Learning), and a treatise in rhymed prose on the true faith, as opposed to the tenets of the various sects, and the dreams of the philosophers, entitled Kitdb al-Mr al-in (Book of the Houris with Great Eyes), make up the sum of his literary output.

172

ARABIC LITERATURE

Jamal al-din 'Uthman Ibn al-Hajib, the son of a Kurdish chamberlain to the Amir 'Izz al-din Musak al-Salahi, who was born at Esneh, in Upper Egypt, in 1 175, first studied MaHkite law and the reading of the Koran at Cairo, then devoted himself to literature, went to Damascus, and taught there in the great Mosque of the Omeyyads. Later, he returned to Cairo, and
died at Alexandria, where he had just settled, in 1249. He wrote books which have been the subject of many

commentaries, and are to be found

library
:

in

almost every
;

the Kdfiya, a short manual of a work of the same kind ; the Shdfiya,
;

grammar the Maqsad al-jalil,

on prosody the Anidlt, or dictated lessons on the Koran, on Mutanabbi, and on other poets and the Muntahd alsu'dl wdl-amal (The End of Asking and of Hope), a manual of Malikite law. In Northern Africa, Abu 'Ali al- Hasan Ibn Rashiq was born in 980, or, according to some authorities, in 1000. He was the son of a Greek slave, or, as others tell
;

us, of a goldsmith.

In 1015 he journeyed to Qairawan,

and there addressed praises to Al-Muizz ibn Badis, which gained him that prince's favour. When Qairawan was destroyed by the Arab tribes of Egypt, sent for that purpose in 105 1 by the Fatimid Caliph, the poet fled to Sicily, and settled at Mazar, where he died in 1064 or
1070.

beauties and the rules of poetry, and preceded

general, earned the praise

His Kitdb al-Umda (The Stay), dealing with the by an

exceedingly detailed introduction to the poetic art in of Ibn Khaldun, author of

the

Prolegomena,
deals

who

regards
the

him
poets

as the

best of

all

the critics of

modern Arabic
with

poetry.
of

His Unm-Adhaj
the

(Specimen) Qairawan.

town

of

THE 'ABBASIDS

173

In Spain, Abu'l-Khattab 'Umar Ibn Dihya al-Kalbi, born at Valencia in 1149, was surnamed Dh-A' l-nasabain (With two Genealogies), because he was descended, on that curious indihis father's side, from Dihya al-Kalbi vidual of Mahomet's time, who was said by the Prophet to be like the Archangel Gabriel, and whom he sent as and, on his mother's, from his ambassador to Heraclius Husain, the son of 'All. He travelled all over Spain in pursuit of his studies, was twice appointed qddi of Denia, and dismissed on account of his scandalous behaviour. He took up his traveller's staff again, wandered to Morocco, and to Bijiya, where he taught the knowledge of the traditions (1198). He sojourned some time in Egypt before starting on pilgrimage to Mecca, and, on his return from the Holy City, made a long detour, lasting over several years, by Syria, Chaldea, and Persia. On his return, Al-Malik al- Aziz chose him to be tutor to his son Al-Malik al-Kamil, and when that prince succeeded to power he built his old master the Madrasa Kamiliyya, where he taught the traditions. He eventually fell into disgrace, was dismissed, and died on 30th October 1235. About the same period we find Diya al-din Muhammad He was the author of al-Khazraji, who died in 1228. a didactic poem on versification, called al-Rdmiza alSkdfiya, which was edited at Rome, by Guadagnoli, in 1642, and has been the subject of many commentaries.

CHAPTER

VII

THE 'ABBASIDS Co/;Wf^

History

Fables Anecdotes

We
wars.

have

already

Maghdsi

works

seen how history began with the devoted to the story of Mahomet's

The

constantly increasing development of the

study of the tradition {haditJi), one of the fundamental bases of Moslem law, made it necessary to collect every possible information as to the life of the lawFurther, students of ancient Arab poetry were giver. " led to inquire into the old historic deeds, and the " days
or battles to which the poets referred, and chroniclers
registered the events

which took place

after the establish-

ment
at

of Islam, adding legendary information, obtained

second-hand, as to what they believed to be the

ancient history of Persia and of the Jewish nation. The translations into Arabic of the Sasanian Books of th& Kings, produced at an early date by Persians who wrote

and spoke Arabic,

study.

certainly gave an impetus to historical

We may
capital

be sure that the 'Abbasid Caliphs,

whose

was close to the ruins of Seleucia and of Ctesiphon (not to mention the more ancient Babylonian towns, the memory of which was totally lost), were resolved, when they left the world the story of the events that took place under their rule, not to allow themselves

THE 'ABBASIDS
to be eclipsed

175 the Arabs had

by the monarchs

whom

overthrown.

Omeyyad dynasty we find a Musi ibn 'Uqba ibn Abi'l-Ayyash, whose works earned him the singularly honourable title of imAm al-maghasi, "chief, or director, of historical His work was studies as to the wars of the Prophet." put together in 1387 by Ibn Qidi Shuhba. The author
Even
at the close of the

writer of maghazt,

freedman belonging to the Zubair family, at Medina, died in 758. But the great authority of those days, constantly quoted in later works, is Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, the original of whose work is now lost but a great part of it has been preserved to us in a compilation by Ibn Hisham ('Abdalmalik al-Himyari al-Basri, died at Old Cairo in 834), known under the name of Sirat al-RaszIl (Biography of the
himself, a
;

Prophet), published by Wiistenfeld, and translated into

German by

G. Weil.

The

ill-will

Ibn Ishaq brought on

himself at Medina obliged

him

to leave that

town

for

Alexandria, and thence he went to Kufa and Rai.

At

Hira he met the Caliph Al-Mansur, to settle at Bagdad, a city he had then
there to

who
just

him founded, and

invited
in 768.

make

all

the traditions of the Prophet he had

collected into one volume.

He

died at

Bagdad

Another and most famous historian was Al-Waqid!, but he chiefly owes his renown to impostors, who very probably at the time of the Crusades, and to stir the warlike spirit of the Moslems by reminding them of the sent forth historical brilliant period of their conquests romances on the wars in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Africa, under his venerated name. Nevertheless, his

great historical
to us,

work {Kitdb al-Maghdzi) has come down and has been published at Calcutta by Alfred von

176

ARABIC LITERATURE

Kremer. Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn 'Umar alWaqidi, who was born at Medina in 747, began hfe as a corn merchant. Having ruined himself by extravagance, he was obliged to leave the city. At Bagdad, the vizier, Yahya ibn Khalid the Barmakide, furnished him with the wherewithal to arrange his affairs, and appointed him qddt over the western side of the city Caliph Ma'mun later sent him in the same capacity to Rusafa, and there he died on 28th April 823. A story reported by Mas'udt in the Golden Meadows, translated by Barbier de Meynard, casts a vivid light on the amicable relations between the historian and his

The incident is related by Waqidi himself. " I had two friends, one of whom belonged to the Hashim The family, and we were, so to speak, but one soul. festival at the end of the great Fast drew near, and I was in a state of great poverty, when my wife said to
friends.

me

'If

it

only affected ourselves,

we could
!

very well
!

bear poverty and privation.

pity them,

But the poor children

heart bleed

and

it

makes

my

They

will see

the neighbours' children dressed

festival,

and they

will still

and adorned for the have to wear their wretched

'

rags.

Couldst thou

find

enough money
friend the

my

by some ineans or other, them clothes ? I wrote to Hashimite, and begged him to help me
not,

to get

in this circumstance.

He

at

once sent

me

a sealed

contained a thousand dirhems. I had hardly time to get my breath before I received a
purse, telling
it

me

letter

from

my

other friend telling

I

me
to

of

the

same

trouble as that

Hashimite comrade. I sent him the purse just as it had come to me, and went to the Mosque, where I spent the night, for I did not dare to go back to my wife. Nevertheless,
just revealed

had

my

THE "ABBASIDS
when
I

177

I had done, one word of reproach to me. Thus the matter stood when my Hishimite friend came to me carrying the purse, still just as he had sent it to me, and he said 'Tell me honestly what you did with that which I sent you ?' I told him everything, just as it had happened, and he continued as follows At the moment when your message reached me, I had nothing in the world except the sum I sent you I therefore wrote to our mutual friend to beg him to come to my aid, and he sent me my own purse, still sealed with my own seal.' We then divided the money into three parts, and each took one, having previously set apart a hundred dirhems for my wife." His secretary, Ibn Sa'd (Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad, died 845), collected his works, of which he possessed one of the four copies existing when their author died, and himself produced a collection of biographies {tabaqaf) of the Prophet, his companions, and his successors. His life of Mahomet is occasionally reckoned as a separate volume. While these authors were writing history in general, Al-Azraqt was compiling a history of Mecca, founded on the fabulous traditions of the pre-Islamic period, and on the notes collected by his own grandfather, Abu'lWalid al-Azraq, a descendant of the Ghassanid dynasty, who died in 834. Al-Azraqi himself died soon after A successor of his, Al-Fakihi (Abu 'Abdallah), 858. also wrote a history of Mecca, in 885 the two have been published by Wiistenfeld. Ibn Zabala's history of Medina, 'Umar ibn Shabba's histories of Bassora and Kufa, Aslam ibn Sahl's history of Wasit that of Mosul, by Abu Zakariya al-Azdi, qddi of that town

did go home, she approved what

utter

and did not

'

178
of

ARABIC LITERATURE
;

Raqqa, by Al-Qushain and of Harran, by Abu Aruba al-Harrani, who had travelled in Egypt, and

taught the traditions at Bagdad, have all disappeared. Gone, too, are those of various Persian towns, such as the history of Merv, by Ahmad ibn Sayyar ; of Ispahan,

by Ibn Mandah of Bukhara, by Muhammad al-Bukhari of Astarabad and Samarqand, by 'Abdal-Rahman al-Idrisi. But we still possess, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Riydd al-Nuf{ts (Gardens of Souls), a history of the learned lawyers and pious men of Tunis, by Abu In the British Museum there is the Bakr al-Maliki. sixth volume of the great history of Bagdad, written by Abu'1-Fadl Ahmad ibn Abi Tahir Taifur, who was of Iranian blood, and belonged to a family formerly He was born at holding princely rank in Khurasan. Bagdad in 819 and died there in 893. Ibn al-Kalbi (Abii'l Mundhir Hisham) was the son of a warrior, who, after having fought at the battle of Dair al-Jamajim, in the ranks of the troops brought back from Arachosia by the rebel chief Ibn al-AsKath, turned his mind to Koranic exegesis, and collected most careful notes on the history and genealogies of
;

the ancient Arabs.

He

died in 763.

His son carried

on

his researches,

and wrote a great book on genealogy

(fragments of which, in manuscript, are

in the libraries of Paris

now

preserved

and the Escurial), and also a curious and valuable treatise on the idols of the ancient Arabs, numerous extracts from which are to be found
in

Yaqut's Geographical Dictionary.

all

This

latter

work,

the subject of which was not calculated to please the

Moslems, who hated

elicited hot criticism

memories

of the antique

pagan

period of the peninsula, as recalling an age of ignorance,

on the part

of contradictors,

who

THE 'ABBASIDS
accused
its

179
Yaqfit,

author of
deal
of

falsification.

who owed

him

a great

his

information, defended him

and modern critics have confirmed this view. Ibn al-Kalbt, who was born at Kufa, He lived for some time at Bagdad, and died in 819. also wrote a book on the genealogies of Arab horses His memory in pagan times, and in those of Islam. He himself relates that on one was very unequal. occasion, having been reproached by his uncle, he learnt the whole Koran by heart in three days while,
against this accusation,
;

on the other hand, looking

at himself in the glass

one day,

he took hold of his beard, meaning to clip all the hairs below his hand, but, instantly forgetting this intention, he cut his beard off above his hand, and consequently

made

it

much

too short.

whose work, unfortunately, has disappeared, after having been utilised by Baladhuri and Tabari, was Al-Mada'in1 (Abu'l-Hasan "Ali), who was born in 753, and died at some unascertained date
historian of great merit,

between 830 and 845. The Fihrist enumerates one hundred and eleven titles of books written by him on the history of the Prophet, of the tribe of Quraish and of the Caliphs. His Kitdb al-MaghAsi and his Tdrikh alKhulafa are frequently quoted. He wrote several works on famous women, and made collections of anecdotes. His name indicates that his origin was connected with
Ctesiphon (Mada'in). Beside this ancestor of the Arab historians we must place Al-Zubair Ibn Bakkar (Abu Abdallah), of the Medina. youth his knowledge of the traditions, of history, and genealogy, had made him a name. Having quarrelled with the descendants of 'Ali, he went to
lived at

family of 'Abdallah ibn Zubair,

who

Even

in his

i8o

ARABIC LITERATURE

Bagdad, but not meeting with the encouragement he had looked for at the court of the 'Abbasids, where, indeed, he was suspected of serving the 'Alid party, he returned to his own country, and was appointed qddi of Mecca, a position which gave him several opportunities of revisiting Bagdad. He was at Mecca, when, at the age of eighty-four, he fell off the roof of his own house, breaking Of this accident he his collar bone and one of his ribs. died, within two days, on 20th October 870. He was of the tribe genealogy of Quraish, the the author of a which is now in the Bodleian Library, and manuscript of of a collection of historical tales to which he gave the name of Muwaffaqiyydt, because they were intended for the instruction and entertainment of Al-Muwaifaq, son The three last of the eighteen of Caliph Mutawakkil.
parts into

which

this

work was divided

are preserved at
of Persian

Gottingen.

Al-Baladhur1 (Ahmad ibn Yahya) was

birth
:
:

he frequented the courts of the Caliphs Mutawakkil and Musta'in Al-Mu tazz entrusted him with the education of his son "Abdallah, the poet who was Caliph for one day. He died in 892, after having lost his reason in consequence of taking too strong a dose of cashew nut or marsh nut {balddhur), that curious Indian fruit which is supposed to develop the memory hence his surname. It became necessary to shut him up in a madhouse, and there he ended his days. His Kitdb FutAk al-Bulddn (History of the Moslem Conquest), published by De Goeje, is an exceedingly remarkable

contribution to the history of the victorious expeditions

of the

Moslems

in the first years of the Hegira.

The

he indicates the sources whence he his verbal information makes it a most has procured
care with which

THE 'ABBASIDS
valuable historical document.
a
It is,

i8i

summary

of a

much

larger

unfortunately, only work, which he never

completed. Under the title of Ansdb al-Ashrdf (Genealogy of the Noble), he wrote another historical work, two volumes of which have been preserved. The first forms part of the Schefer Collection, which has
lately

become

the property of the Bibliotheque Nationale

the

been autographed by Ahlwardt at Greifswald. Finally, he translated other books from the Persian into Arabic, the only one of which now known to us is the translation into Arabic verse of the ^Ahd A rdaskir (E,poch of Artaxerxes), probably devoted to the legends which surround the foundation of the empire of the Sasanians by Ardashir Babakan but even this has
second
has

entirely disappeared

all

we know

of

it

is

that

it is

men-

tioned in the Fihrist.

The

great historian of this epoch,

TABARt (Muhammad

ibn Jarir) (838-923), the publication of whose masterpiece has just been completed at Leyden, was also of

He was born at Amul in Tabaristan (Mizandaran), to the south of the Caspian Sea. He travelled in Egypt, Syria, and 'Iraq, and then established himself as a teacher of the traditions and of jurisIn this latter department he prudence at Bagdad. originally followed the rules of the Shafi'ite rite, which he had learnt during his stay in Egypt. He afterwards endeavoured to create a school of his own, but he failed indeed, he attracted the enmity of the fierce Hanbalites
Persian blood.
:

Bagdad. To his inquiries into these two subjects we his Tahdhtb al-Athdr, now at Constantinople (in the library belonging to Kyiiprulu Muhammad-Pacha), and his great Tafsir, or Commentary on the Koran, which was later translated into Persian and Turkish. But his most
of

owe

82

ARABIC LITERATURE
we
are

interesting work, as far as

is

concerned because

it

the most ancient written record of Arab history

possess

we

is

his universal history

mulilk, History

of the Prophets

{Akhbdr al-rusul wdland Kings), the first

complete history in the Arabic tongue. Great difficulties are connected with the verification of the full text of this work, which is scattered about, a volume here and another there, amongst many libraries, both European and Oriental. Tabari died at Bagdad, on i6th February He possessed remarkable powers of work, and for 923. forty years he wrote forty sheets a day. AL-St^Li (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Yahya) was descended from a Turkish prince of Jurjan, named SulTakin, who was a convert from Zoroastrianism to Islam. He was much valued at the courts of the Caliphs Muktafi and Muqtadir, on account of his skill in playing chess, which passed into a proverb a man was said to play chess like Al-Suli. But his views as to the posterity of 'Ali rendered his position so critical that he was obliged to flee from Bagdad and hide himself at Bassora, where he died, in 946. He had studied the Arab poets, and wrote a history of them, and special treatises on several of their number, such as Abu Tammam, Abu Nuwas, and Al-Buhturi. He also wrote an historical work on the 'Abbasids, and on those members of the dynasty who cultivated the poetic art. This is now preserved at
:
'

Cairo.

In the person of the witty and attractive story-teller

MAS'tJDt (Abu'l-Hasan

'Ali)

we

hail

the opening of a
of

new branch
anecdote.

of

Arab

literature, that

the historical

This writer, the scion of an Arab family tracing its descent from Masud, one of the comrades of the Prophet, was born at Bagdad, took journeys

THE -ABBASIDS
which brought him
to Persia,

183
visited Istakhr

where he

He traversed Mul(Persepolis) in 915, and to India. tan and Mansura, and then travelled by the Deccan
peninsula to Ceylon here he took ship, sailed over the China Sea and the Red Sea, touched at Madagascar, and
:

returned to Arabia by 'Uman. The Caspian Sea, Syria, and Palestine in turn attracted his curious attention. In

926 he was

at Tiberias, in

943 we find him

at

Antioch

and in Cilicia, and two years later he was at Damascus. During the latter years of his life he lived partly in Egypt and partly in Syria. In 947 and in 955 he was at Fustat (Old Cairo), where he probably died, in 956 or 957. A man of curious and inquiring mind, Mas'udi neglected no accessible source of information. He extended his researches beyond purely Moslem studies, examined the history of the Persians, Hindus, and Romans, and the traditions of Jews, Christians, and pagans. Touching the period of the
numberless anecdotes in his Golden (Muruj Meadows al-Dhahab) furnish us with the fullest and most entertaining fund of information as to His great histhe Eastern civilisation of that period. torical work, the Akhbdr al-zaindn, of which the Golden Meadows is but an extract, was in thirty volumes. Of these the first only now exists, at Vienna. The Kitdb al-Ausat (Middle-sized Book) was an abridgment of the greater work. The Tanbih wa l-iskrdf ('i>ioiice. and Review) is a sort of philosophical epitome of Mas'udi's whole work. The text of this has been published by
Caliphs,

the

De

Goeje, and translated into French by Baron Carra

de Vaux.

Hamza
and

ibn Hasan al-Isfahan1 was of Persian blood,

in his historical

works he has dealt with the legen-

i84

ARABIC LITERATURE

dary history of his country according to verbal information given him by the fire priests, and that obtained from Iranian sources. He belonged to the sect of the Shuubiyya, of which he was a fervent partisan, and endeavoured, in his writings, to re-establish the correct spelling of the Iranian names which had been corrupted

probably lived at Bagdad in the early part of the tenth century of our era. His Annals, with a Latin translation, have been published by Gottwaldt at St. Petersburg. The Munich Library contains a Book of Proverbs written by him, and in that of Cairo there is a Parallel between the Arab and the Persian.
in the Arabic.

He

The Book of Songs

AbCt'l-Faraj al-Isfahan1 ('Ali ibn al-Husain) (897967) was also born at Ispahan, but this was a mere chance, for by blood he was of pure Arab race and descended

from the Omeyyads.

the
life

of

many

literary

Hz studied at men of that

Bagdad, and led

period, travelling

from Aleppo, where Saif al-daula was then in power, to Persia, to wait on the ministers in the service of the Buwaihid princes, Ismail Ibn 'Abbad and Al-Muhallabi. He gradually lost his mental faculties, and died on 21st November 967. His connection with the Omeyyads by
a

common

ancestry led to his being in constant relations

with their descendants settled in Spain, from

whom

he

received gifts in acknowledgment of the books he dedicated to them. His Kitdb al-Aghdni (Book of Songs) has been published at Bulaq, and supplemented by a twentyfirst volume published at Leyden by Briinnow. These songs are simply the history of all the Arab poetry that has been set to music. And as this has been done to an

THE 'ABBASIDS

185

enormous number of lines written both by pre-Islamic poets and during the first four centuries after the Hegira, the author has had the opportunity of collecting a mass of biographical details as to their writers. Under the pretext of giving us the songs, this admirable book supplies us with anecdotes and information touching desert and city life, and that led in private by sovereigns and Caliphs, such as are nowhere else to be discovered. It offers a rich mine to the student of Arab society at its most
brilliant period. The Berlin Library possesses another work by the same author, the Kitdb al-diydrdt (Book of

the Monasteries), giving the history of

many convents
and

and places

of pilgrimage

on the banks

of the Tigris

Euphrates, or in Egypt. It really is an anthology of the poetry in which these convents have been celebrated. We must not forget that, when Moslems went to Christian cloisters, it was not to seek devotional impulses, but
the

simply for the sake of an opportunity of drinking wine, use of which was forbidden in the Mahometan towns. The poets, out of gratitude, sang the praises of the blessed spots where they had enjoyed the delights of
intoxication.

also graced by the presence of two brothers, who had been surnamed the two Khahdis, Abii 'Uthman Sa'id and Abu Bakr

The court

of Saif al-daula

was

Muhammad, both of them good poets. The ruler of Aleppo rewarded them generously for their praises. They wrote a history of Mosul, biographies of Abou Tammam and Ibn al-Rumi, and an anthology of modern
poets, entitled

Hamdsa

this

last

work

is

now

in

the

Cairo Library.

13-

i86

ARABIC LITERATURE
The Fihrist

work

of this period, which, in its

way,

is

unique,

is

the bibliographical treatise

Little,

unfortunately,

is

known as known of

the Fihrist (Index).

its

author, Abu'l-

Faraj

Muhammad

ibn Ishaq ibn Abi

Yaqub al-Nadim,

is

surnamed the Bookseller (al-Warraq) of Bagdad. It a catalogue of books, most of which have now
which overtook the Bagdad Libraries

disappeared, either because they did not survive the

great catastrophes

(destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth and by Tamerlane in the fifteenth century) disasters which

compare, as regards the Arab Middle Ages, with the various destructions of the Alexandrian Library in ancient times or because, owing to their being epitomised in more recent and fashionable works, they were no longer copied, and so died out by a process of decay. The Fihrist was written in 988, and its author probably died eight years later, in 996. The opinion expressed by

may

Sprenger, that this book was the catalogue of some

library,

has been quite put aside, for the historical refleccontains are evideiitly a part of the fundamental

tions

it

plan of the work.

Provincial Histories

The History of the Conquest of Egypt, Northern and Spain was written by Ibn 'Abdal-Hakam
Qasim'AbdaJ-Rahman), the son Egypt, who died at Old Cairo in
is

Af-ica, (Abu'l-

of the Malikite qddi in

This book, which has been partially utilised by MacGuckin de Slane in the appendix to his
871.
in

the

Bibliotheque Nationale,
of

translation

Ibn

Khaldun's History of

tJie

Berbers:

THE 'ABBASIDS

187

fragments of it have been published by J. Karle and John Harris Jones. Sa'Id ibn al-BatrIq was the Arabic name of Eutychius (876-939), a Christian physician, born at Old Cairo, who was a remarkable historical student, appointed Melkite patriarch at Alexandria in 933. At a time when men were inquiring which was the oldest language, the Syrian or the Hebrew, he declared that the Greek must be the most ancient of all, because of its richness and volume. His universal history, called Nazin al-Jauhar (Pearls Ranged in Order), has been translated into Latin by E. Pococke. While Ahmad ibn Yusuf Ibn al-Daya (died 945) was writing the anecdotic history of the founder of the Tulunid dynasty, Ahmad ibn Tulun, and of his son Khumarawaih, Ibn Yusuf (Abu 'Umar Muhammad) was composing, for Prince Kifur, and under the title of Fadd'il Misr (The Excellent Qualities of Egypt), an epitome of the history and geography of that country down to his own period, which has been translated into Danish by J. Oestrup, a history of the Egyptian qddis, and another of the governors of the same country these are now at the British Museum. At the same time Abu'l-Hasan Muhammad of Alexandria was writing a
:

journal of the government of

Muizz

Lidinillah,

which

seen in the Escurial Library, and Ibn Ziilaq al-Laithl (al-Hasan ibn Ibrahim), who was born in 919 and died on 30th November 998, was drawing up various works on Egyptian history and geography, which are now in the libraries of Paris and Gotha. A beginning of written Spanish history was made by Abdal-Malik ibn Habib al-Sulamt al-Mirdasi, who was born at Hisn Wat, near Grenada, in 796, and died at

may be

88

ARABIC LITERATURE

Cordova on 17th February 853. In the course of his became imbued with the judicial theories of Mahk ibn Anas, and spread them in his own country. But none of his many works remain us, to with the exception of the beginning of a book on the division of inheritances, which is at Berlin. As to the history now in the Bodleian Library, it has been
pilgrimage to the Hijaz, he
ascribed to him, as

due warrant.
al-Razi of

Dozy has acknowledged, without him came Ahmad ibn Muhammad Cordova, whose family came from Rai, in
After

Persia. He died in 937. On his history of Spain and description of that country was based the Spanish work

known under
most
that of

the

name

of Cronica del
this

Mora

Rasis.

The
is

interesting

figure of

epoch and country

the

historian

and
ibn

philologist

(Abu Bakr
that
is

Muhammad
say,

'Umar

Ibn al-Qutiyya ibn 'Abdal-Aziz),

Son of the Goth woman; his ancestor, 'Isa, had married a Spanish princess, Sara, the daughter of King Oppas the Goth, when she went to Damascus to lay her complaint concerning his uncle Ardabast before Caliph Hisham ibn 'Abdal- Malik. 'Isa, with his wife, was sent to Spain, and his posterity continued to inhabit Seville. Abu Bakr, who was born at Cordova, was recommended to the Caliph Al-Hakam II. by Al-Qali, as being the most learned man in the country. He died at Cordova in 977, leaving behind him a Tdrikh al-Andalus a history of Spain from the time of the Moslemconquest till the year 893 the manuscript of which is now in Paris. Cherbonneau and Houdas have translated and published extracts from it, and Cardonne has made use of it for his history of Africa and Spain. Abu Bakr also left a book on the conjugations of Arabic verbs, which has been published by J. Guidi.
to

the

THE 'ABBASIDS
Persia
in
is

189

rhymed

remarkable for the production of biographies prose, of a laudatory character, intended

to cast lustre

on the princes of the various dynasties which successively flourished on Iranian soil, as the power of the "AbbS.sid Caliphs faded. Abu Nasr Muhammad AL-Utbi, who was born in Persia, came of a family of Arab extraction. He held important posts under the government of the empire founded by the Turkish chief Sabuk-Tekin and his son Mahmud the Ghaznevid. He ended by being director of the horse post
at

Ganj-Rustaq.

He

died in 1036.

His masterpiece, the

Kitdbal- Yamtni, so called after the surname of the Sultan Mahmud, Yamln al-daula (Right Arm of the Empire),
is

a history of that ruler's glorious reign

1018.
this

down to the year The author took advantage of his presentation of work to point out that he was being intrigued against

by Abu'l-Hasan al-Baghawi, who had succeeded in ousting him from his post. The book, which is famous for its brilliancy of style, has been the subject of commentaries by various authors, and has been translated both into Persian and into English.

The Biographers of Saladin

'Imad al-d1n (1125-1201), surnamed Al-Katib al-Isfahani (the Secretary of Ispahan), devoted his pen to the He was called Aluh, history of his master, Saladin. Born at Ispahan, he a Persian word signifying eagle. went to Bagdad to study at the Nizamiyya University.
His protector, the minister 'Aun al-din Ibn Hubaira, procured him the lucrative post of Inspector of the Administrative Departments, first at Bassora and then at Wasit. But when his patron died, in 1165, he was dis-

igo

ARABIC LITERATURE

missed and cast into prison, and for two years led a wretched life, till he made up his mind to go to Damascus, where he became known to Najm al-din Ayyub and his son Saladin. Sultan Nur al-din, son of the atdbek Zangi, gave him a post as copyist, and sent him on an embassy to Caliph Mustanjid. This mission earned him, when he returned to Bagdad, the professorship of the newly built school, which was called by his name,
Al-'Imadiyya, and, in the following year, his appointto the presidency of the council. Nur al-din's death brought about his downfall. The Caliph's son, who succeeded him in 1173, was a child, and'Imad al-din's enemies circumvented him, and forced him to relinquish his office

ment

and leave the court.

but,
falling
ill

He was on

his

way

to

heard that Saladin had seized Egypt and was marching on Syria. He succeeded in joining him at Aleppo the great Moslem leader received him into his service, and took him with him on his campaigns. When his patron died,
at
;

Bagdad,

Mosul, there

perceiving that his influence had departed, he retired

and devoted himself to literary work on 20th June 1201. He thus wrote, under the title of Fath al-Qussi, his history of Saladin's conquest of Syria and Palestine, which has been published by C. von Landberg and, under that of al-Barq
into private
until his
life

own

death,

own times, including his autobiography, in seven volumes. The fifth of these volumes is now in the Bodleian Library. His Nusrat
al-shdmi, the history of his
al-fatra contains the history of

the Seljuqid

monarchs

an abridged translation, very pompous and exaggerated in style, of a Persian work by Sharaf al-din Anosharwan. His Kharidat al-Qasr is an anthology of the poets of the sixth century
their ministers
;

and

it

really

is

THE 'ABBASIDS
of the

191

Hegira, with

comments
;

written in a very pre-

tentious style,

and unfortunately containing scarcely any

it is

historical information

a continuation of Tha'alibi's

Yatimat al-dahr. One of 'Imad al-din's friends, known to us by his correspondence either with him or with other persons, was 'Abdal-Rahim ibn 'Ali of Ascalon, surnamed AlQadI al-Fadil (the excellent judge) (1135-1200). He was the son of the qddt of that small town in Palestine. He held posts in Egypt, was attached to the Secretarial Office in Cairo, then secretary to the Judge of Alexandria, and afterwards Secretary of State under the He conFatimid Caliph Al-Zafir and his successors. tinued in this office under Saladin, who appointed him Governor of Egypt during his own campaign in Syria. During a visit to Damascus he made the acquaintance He of 'Imad al-din, and they always remained friends. Saladin's son and died on the 26th of January 1200. grandson, 'Aziz and Mansur, continued the favour extended to him by their predecessor.
Let us

now

continue the series of Saladin's biographers.

Yusuf ibn Rafi" Baha al-din of Aleppo was born at Mosul on the 6th of March 1145. Attracted by the renown of the Nizamiyya University, he went to Bagdad, and was there employed as an assistant professor. Later he returned to Mosul, made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and then proceeded to Damascus, where he was honourably treated by Saladin, who appointed him military judge and qddt of Jerusalem in 11 88. After his patron's death he retired to Aleppo, of which city he was qddt under Saladin's successors, and where he founded two madrasas, out of his own private fortune. His influence

waned when

'Aziz resigned the sovereignty in

192
1231,

ARABIC LITERATURE
and he
lived

another three years as a private which he is the author bears the title of Al-Nawddir al-Sultdniyya. It has been published by Albert Schultens. Baha al-din also wrote
citizen.

The

Hfe of Saladin of

a history of Aleppo,
Asiatic

now

preserved in manuscript in the

Museum

at St.

Petersburg, and

some works on

jurisprudence, which are at Paris, in the Bodleian, and

at Cairo.

Shihab al-din "Abdal-Rahman ibn Ismail, surnamed because he had a blackish mole on his eyebrow, was born at Damascus on loth January 1203. He studied in his native town, and also at Alexandria, and then returned to Damascus, where he taught in His house was attacked by a mob, several madrasas. which suspected him of having committed a crime, and he was so roughly handled that he was left for dead. Some time afterwards his enemies renewed their assaults, and he was assassinated on 13th June 1268. He wrote a history of the two Sultans Nur al-din and Saladin, entitled Kitdb al- Raudatain ; it has been published and partially translated by Goergens and Rohricht, and has also appeared in the Historiens des Croisades, published by the Institut de France. He also left poems and commentaries on the panegyrics of the Prophet written by his master, Sakhawi, and by Busiri. Abu'l-Mahasin Muhammad IBN 'Unain was born in the same city of Damascus on 20th October 1154. He was a precocious poet, and, having stirred Saladin's enmity by his biting attacks on all highly placed personages, he was banished. He wandered through Persia, Bukhara, India, and Yemen, where he remained for some time, then passed on into the Hijaz and to Egypt, and returned to Damascus after Saladin's death.

AbO Shama,

THE 'ABBASIDS
Saladin's successor gave

193

trusted

him the title of vizier, and him with diplomatic missions he died on the 7th January 1233. He was a cheery, good-humoured man, with a facile talent for improvisation, and would answer rhymed riddles with others, yet more ingenious,
;

containing the solution of the first question. He never took the precaution, during his lifetime, of collecting his

poems into a volume, and they are now scattered and lost. The Berlin Library does possess an elegy written The by him on the death of Al-Malik al-Mu'azzam.
Turkish biographer Haji Khalfa saw and mentions his biography of Al-Malik al-'Aziz, the son of Saladin. In Egypt, while Muhyi al-din Abu'1-Fadl al-Sa'di (died 1293) was writing biographies of the Sultans Baibars and Ashraf, a Persian author was preparing a life in Arabic of Jalal al-din Mankobirti, Sultan of Khwarizm, the ill-fated adversary of Jengiz Khan. Muhammad ibn Ahmad AL-Nasaw1 was born at Khorendiz, near Nasi he became secretary to the Sultan when he returned from his expedition to India in 1221, and remained with him till his death in 1231. Ten years later he wrote the history of his patron, which has been translated into French and published by O. Houdas. As a historian he is cool and impartial, as a writer he
:

heavy. The reader generally feels that most of his Arabic phrases have been thought out in the Persian tongue.
is

The Autobiography of Ibn Munqidh

Abij'l-Muzaffar

Usama Ibn Munqidh

;

did something

better than relate other folk's histories

own, and was the

first

to introduce the novelty of

he wrote his an

194
autobiography.

ARABIC LITERATURE
He was born on
25th June 1095, at

Shaizar in Syria, a small fortress in the valley of the

Orontes, the principal town of the hereditary principality of his family. He was exiled in 1138 by his uncle 'Izz
al-din, who feared his courage and ambition, and went to Damascus. His patron there, Shihab al-din Mahmud, became prejudiced against him, and he departed to Egypt, where he gave his whole time to sport. In 1150 and 1 153 he was fighting the Crusaders at Ascalon in the following year he returned to Damascus, made the Mecca pilgrimage, went with Nur al-din on his campaign against the Franks in 1162, and afterwards took refuge at Hisn Kaifi in Mesopotamia, where he devoted himself to literary pursuits. He was recalled to Damascus by Saladin, but he did not remain long in favour, nor follow the Conqueror of the Crusaders into Egypt. He died at the Syrian capital on 6lh November leaving behind him his autobiography, which 1 188, has been translated into French and published by H. Derenbourg, the Kitdb al-badi' on the beauties and defects of poetic rhetoric, and the Book of the Stick, a monograph on celebrated sticks. Extracts from this work, and the few fragments of the author's poetry he has been able to bring together, have been published by Monsieur Derenbourg. Usama was a man of original and observing mind, whose love of the chase led him to study the habits of wild animals. His natural bravery is reflected in the strong and simple style in which he tells his adventures his poetical compositions are marked by
;
,

literary skill.

Jamal al-din
his

'Ali

ibn

Zafir,

born

in 1171,

succeeded

teacher in the Kamiliyya Madrasa at Cairo, and subsequently acted as minister to Prince
father

as

THE ABBASIDS
Malik al-Ashraf.

195

We

owe him a history

of past dynasties
a collection of

{al-duwal al-munqati'' a),

bons mots and witty

down

to 1225,

and

replies entitled Badd'i'' al-biddya.

In

1226 Abu'1-Fath al-Bundart of Ispahan made an abridg-

ment
the

'Imad al-din's history of the Selj{iqids, under of Zubdat al-nusra, and translated the Persian poet Firdausi's Book of Kings into Arabic. In the West the history of the Almohads engaged the
of
title

attention of

was born

at

finished his

Abdal- Wahid ibn 'Ali al-Marrakushi, who Having Morocco on loth July 1185. studies at Fez, he settled in Spain, and re-

mained there till 12 16. He then proceeded to Egypt, and continued in that country till his death, except when
he made a short pilgrimage to Mecca. His Kitdb alMu'Jib, written in 1224, has been translated by E. Fagnan and published by R. Dozy. Jamal al-din Muhammad ibn Salim ibn Wasil, who was born in 1207, lived at H^mat in Syria, where he taught Shafi'ite law, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. In 1261 the Egyptian Sultan Baibars summoned him to Cairo, and despatched him on a mission to Manfred, King of Sicily, son of Frederick II., for whom he wrote a short treatise on logic. On his return he was appointed qddt of his native town and Under the title of Mufarprofessor at the madrasa. rij al-KurUb, he wrote a history of the Ayyubites, which was continued up to 1296 by 'Ali ibn 'Abdal-

Rahman, the secretary of Malik al-Muzaffar, Prince of Hamat, and predecessor of the royal geographer Abu'lFida.

Abu'l-Hasan

surnamed
Coptos, in

after

Yusuf Ibn AL-QiFrt was thus town of Qift, the ancient Upper Egypt, where he was born in 1172.
'Ali ibn

the

little

196

ARABIC LITERATURE
spent his whole
life

He

in Palestine

and

Syria.

After 3

few years at Jerusalem, he settled, in 1202, at Aleppo. Malik al-Zahir, much against the historian's will, appointed him to govern that town in 1214, and as soon as that prince died he speedily rid himself of the responsibility. Yet he seems to have made himself indispensable, for twice over we see him again accept its duties, and he was discharging them at the time of his death, on
24th

December

1248.
his

He was
all

a great lover of books,

and had turned

back on

other earthly delights,

so as to indulge his favourite passion.

His principal

work, Ikhbdr al- Ulamd (Information given to the Learned on the Subject of the History of the Wise), is known to us

through an extract made from it in 1249, by Muhammad ibn "All al-Zauzani, under the title of Tdrikh al-hukamd (History of the Wise). These works have both been
studied
history

by A.
of

Miiller

and

J.

Lippert.

He

also left a

grammarians, an extract from which, by Al-Dhahabt, is preserved at Leyden, and a postthe

of

humous work treating of the poets bearing the name Muhammad, which is now in the Paris Library.
Muwaffaq
al-din Abu'l-' Abbas

IBN AbI UsaiBi'a, the

medical historian, was the son of an oculist settled at Damascus, and was born there in 1203. To complete his medical studies, which he had begun in Syria, he
travelled

to

Cairo,

v/here

he met the botanist and

'Abdallatif,

physician Ibn Baitar,

who encouraged

up a correspondence with
Account of Egypt.
ing
this,

him. He kept author of the

to

Saladin appointed

him

manage the

hospital he founded at Cairo in 1236, but notwithstand-

summons

he responded in the following year to the of the Amir 'Izz al-din Aidamir, and departed to Sarkhad in the Hauran, near Damascus, where he

THE 'ABBASIDS
died in January 1270.
called
''

197
is

His history of the physicians

it

UyAn al-anbd;

was published

at

Konigsberg,

by A.

Miiller, in 1884.

Shams al-din Abil'l-' Abbas Ahmad Ibn KhallikAn, whose family belonged to Irbil (Arbela) and was connected with the Barmakides, was born on 23rd September 1211. He was the son of a teacher in the Muzaffariyya Madrasa at Irbil, and received his first lessons from his father. He then departed to Syria, was at Aleppo in 1229, at Damascus in 1234, and four years later at Alexandria and Cairo for a time he filled the place of the Grand Qadi Yflsuf ibn al-Hasan of Sinjar, and was appointed in 1264 to the important post of Grand Qadi of Syria, to reside at Damascus. This position was all the more influential because, though he himself was an adherent of the Shafi'ite rite, the three other orthodox rites were all under his jurisdiction. In 1266, Sultan Baibars appointed separate qddis for each of these, the Hanafite, Hanbalite, and Malikite, which considerably reduced Ibn Khallikan's importance, and five years later, he lost his post altogether. He then went to Cairo, to fill the post of professor in the Fakhriyya Madrasa, and took this opportunity of finishing,
;

in

the space of seven

years,

his

great

Biographical

Dictionary.

In 1280 he was reappointed qadi, but two

years later he was so unlucky as to spend some weeks in prison, on suspicion of having abetted the governor of
the town,

who had
till

revolted.

Still

he must have conleft in

trived to exculpate himself, for he of his office

May

1281,

was when he was

possession

finally dismissed.

rasa

supported himself by teaching at the Aminiyya Madtill he died, on 30th October 1282. His Wafaydt al-A 'ydn (The Deaths of Great Personages) is a diction-

He

198

ARABIC LITERATURE
men
of Islam, with the exception of
first

ary of the famous

the companions of the Prophet, the four

and, broadly speaking, the personages of the

of

first

Cahphs, century

finished in the

It was begun at Cairo in 1256, and same city in 1274, after an interruption The caused by the author's mission to Damascus. autograph manuscript is in the British Museum. The

the Hegira.

text has

was

also

Its pubhcation been published by Wiistenfeld. begun by MacGuckin de Slane, but was inter-

rupted about half way. On the other hand, this Oriental scholar has given us a complete English translation Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi, in his Fawdt alof the work. Wafaydt (Omissions from the Book of Deaths), has written the biographies of illustrious persons not included in Ibn Khallikan's great work.
Abil Bakr Ahmad AL - Khatib al - Baghdad! (the Preacher of Bagdad) (1002-1071) was born in a large village on the Tigris, below that city, called Darzijan. He was one of those learned men who wandered up and down the world, collecting traditions concerning the Prophet. His long journeys found their reward in the renown he gained as one of the chief masters of this branch of knowledge. He returned to Bagdad, was appointed a
.

preacher, and died there, leaving a history of the learned

men

of

Bagdad,

in fourteen

volumes, a

treatise

on the

art

of seeking out the authenticity of the traditions, entitled

al-Kifdya (The Adequate Book), another ( Z'ag^'zV a/-'z7w) to prove that traditions may be written down, and a third

manner of writing proper names. Far away at Merv, in Khurasan, Abu Sa'd 'AbdalKarim AL-Sam'an1, surnamed Taj al-Isldm (the Mitre of Islamism), who was born on nth February 11 13, had
(al-Mu'tanif) on the correct

THE 'ABBASIDS
left

199

his own country to search out traditions, but he returned, and died there in January 1167. He wrote a supplement to Al-Khattb's history of Bagdad, in fifteen

volumes, and the Kitdb al-ans&b (Book of Patronymics), in eight volumes, which is in the library of Muhammad Kyiiprulu at Constantinople, and which, according to a remark made by Sachau, is important as regards the history and proper names of Central Asia, on account of the biographical information it supplies. This great work has been abridged into three volumes by Tzzal-din Ibn al-Athir, in his Lubdb, and this again has been abridged by the polygraph Suyuti, in his Lubb al-Lubdb, published by Veth. Damascus, the great Syrian city, also had her own historian, in the person of Ibn 'Asakir and already possessed an historical topography, written in 1043, by Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali al-Raba'i, and entitled riant ft fadd'il al-Shdm. Abu'l-Qasim 'All Ibn 'Asakir was born in September 1105. In 1126 he went to Bagdad, and thence to Persia, to study the traditions of the Prophet. On his return he performed professional duties at the Nuriyya School, and died in his native town on 26th Saladin himself attended his funeral. January 1176.
;

His Ta'rikk, or history of the

city of

on the same plan

say,
it is

as the history of

Damascus, is written Bagdad, that is to

a collection of biographies of celebrated

men

of

learning,

who were

either

born

at

Damascus or spent

some time there. The work is a large one, in eighty volumes, abridged in later days by various authors. Kamal AL-d1n Abu'l-Qasim 'Umar Ibn al-'Adim wrote the history of Aleppo, where he was born in 1191 or 1193. He belonged to a family of qddis. Having travelled, for
the sake of his studies, in Syria, the Hijaz and Mesopo-

200

ARABIC LITERATURE
town and discharged the and even of by whom he was also em-

tamia, he returned to his native

duties of Departmental Secretary, of qddi,

minister to several princes,

ployed on diplomatic missions.

Nasir to

He

attended Malik

al-

Egypt when that sovereign was obliged to abandon Aleppo to the devastations of the Mongols, who had taken possession of the town on 26th January 1260. Nevertheless, Hulagu, grandson of Jengiz Khan, Thus he chose him to be Grand Qadi of Syria. returned to Aleppo, to find his birthplace in ruins, and mourned it in an elegy, of which a fragment has been preserved. But he died, not long after (21st April 1262), His great history is called Bughyat al-Tdlib : at Cairo.
it

is

a history of the learned

men

of the city, in ten

volumes. The author himself abridged it, and arranged it in chronological order, under the title of Zubdat alhalab (The Cream of the Milk). Extracts from it have been published by Freytag, and it has been translated

French by Blochet. Kamal al-din was a skilful and the St. Petersburg Library possesses some models of penmanship written by his hand. Abli Muhammad 'Umara ibn 'Ali, who was born in Yemen in 1121, studied at Zabid, went on pilgrimage to Mecca in 11 54, and was sent by the Amir of the sacred city, on a mission to Egypt, then ruled by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Fa'iz. So successful was this embassy that, two years later, he was entrusted with another, and never returned to Yemen. He settled in Egypt in 11 57, and hailed Saladin's conquest with a panegyric. At a later date he was mixed up in a plot to replace the son of the last of the Fatimid Caliphs on the throne, with the help of the Frank King of Jerusalem the plot was betrayed, and "Umara was executed on 6th April
into

caligrapher,

THE 'ABBASIDS
1 175. riyya

20I

H. Derenbourg has published his Nukat al-As(Contemporary Subtleties), an autobiography, and accounts of the Egyptian viziers, together with a selection of poetry. Mr. H. Cassels Kay has translated and published his history of Yemen. His ode to Saladin appears in Maqrizi's Khitat and in Wiistenfeld's translation of Qalqashandi's geography of Egypt. Three stanzas written by him in praise of the pyramids have been translated into German by J. von Hammer in the Mines of the East.

Amir Al-Mukhtar al-Musabbih1 ('Izz al-Mulk Muhammad), who came of a family belonging to Harran, and was born at Old Cairo in 976. He entered the Government service, and in 1007 was acting as secretary to the Fatimid Caliph Hakim. He was appointed to administer certain districts in Upper Egypt, and was afterwards made head of the financial
In Egypt, likewise, flourished the

department of the Paymaster's

Office.

He

died in April,

One volume we now possess out

1029.
is

of his great history of

Egypt
wrote.

is all

of the

many books he

This

in the Escurial Library.

Saladin's conquest of

sion to Islam of Abu'l-Makarim As'ad Ibn

who, with
ment.

his family,

Egypt brought about the converal-Mammat1, was employed under the Govern-

His change of religion earned him the post of Minister of War. The enmity of the Vizier Safi al-din 'Abdallah ibn Shukr obliged him to flee to Aleppo, where he took refuge with the prince who then ruled and there he died, aged sixtythat town, Malik-Zahir
:

two, on 30th

November

1200.

In his Qawdnin al-da-

account of Egyptian government and in his Kiidb al-FdsMsh, which Saladin, under has been studied by J. Casanova, he satirises the

wdwtn he

gives an

14

202

ARABIC LITERATURE
On
this
it
is,

faulty administration of the Vizier Qaraqush.

account

perhaps, that Qaraqush has

in

become the

the East {hukm qardqushi is no ground exists, in which the specified "whereas " leads up to a perfectly illogical conclusion), and that legend has developed him into the type of the Oriental Punch, Qaragyuz. Ibn al-MammatJ was a poet of some merit his panegyric on the Conqueror of the Crusaders and his poem called Kalila and
of magistrates

CaHno

a sentence for which

Dimna
AB(r

are both lost.

Zakariya Yahya ibn Abi Bakr was born at Wargla in Algeria he studied in Wad Rir under the 'Ibadite Sheikh, Sulaiman ibn Ihlaf al-Mazati, and died in 1078, having written a history of the Tbadite imams of Mzab, which has been published by Masqueray. Aba'l-Hasan 'Ali IBN Sa'Id al-Maghrib1, who was born in 1208 or 12 14, at the castle of Yahsub (Alcala Real), near Grenada, studied at Seville, and went with his father to Mecca in 1240. His father died at Alexandria in 1243, and Ibn Sa'id, after some stay at Cairo, proceeded to Bagdad, where he saw thirty-six libraries, and copied extracts from books contained in them, and thence to Aleppo and Damascus. On his return, he paid another visit to Mecca, came back to the West, and entered the service of the Amir Abu 'Abdallah al-Mustansir, ruler of Tunis (1254). He was an inveterate traveller, and
; ,

started again for the East in 1267.

Desiring to

know

whose victories had spread his fame far and wide, he went to that prince's court in Armenia, remained there some time, and returned to die, either at Tunis in 1286, as SuyiJti and Maqqari have it, or at Damascus in 1274, as Ibn Taghribirdi avers. Fragments of his ]\Iughrib have been published by Vollers. In his Bast al-ard,
HulagCl,

THE 'ABBASIDS
habitually used

203

by Abfi'l-Fidi, he completed Ptolemy's Geography. The Bibliotheque Nationale now possesses the copy used by the Prince of Hamat. His ^Unwdn alMurqisdt wa'l-Miitribdt has been printed at Cairo. It contains samples of ancient and modern literature, arranged according to the author's own peculiar theory of taste. An extract from his Qidh al-Mu alia, which treats of the Spanish poets of the early part of the seventh century of
the Hegira,
is

now

in Paris.

Towards the end of this same century, Ibn al-Idhariof Morocco wrote, under the title of al-Baydn al-Mughrib, a history of Africa and Spain, published at Leyden by R.
Dozy.
In Spain, Abu'l-Walid 'Abdallah Ibn al-Faradi wrote
a history of the learned

Moslems

of that country,

which

Cordova in 962. On his way back from the Mecca pilgrimage, he passed through Egypt and Qairawan, where he finished his studies, and on his return to his own country, was appointed qddt at Valencia (1009). He was at Cordova when that city was taken and sacked by the Berbers in 1012, and lost his life in the carnage. Aba Nasr al-Fath Ibn Khaqan came from Sakhrat al-Walad, a village near Alcala Real, not far from Grenada as a youth he was a vagabond and a hard drinker having succeeded in attracting the attention of Tashifin ibn, 'Ali, Prince of Grenada, he obtained a post as secretary. He went to Morocco, and was strangled (1134 or 1140) in one of the caravanserais of the capital, possibly by order of "Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Tashifin, whose ire he had provoked by addressing verses to his brother Ibrahim, to whom he had also dedicated his Necklaces of Native Gold and Beauties
at
: :

has been published by F. Codera.

He was

born

204

ARABIC LITERATURE

of the Great (Qala'id al-'Iqyan wa-mahasin al-A'yan), a work in rhymed prose, much admired for the splendour
of
its

style

it

ministers of state, judges, and

contains anecdotes concerning princes, poets, with a selection

The text of this book their poetical productions. has been published in Paris by Sulaiman al-Hara'iri, The and it has been translated by E. Bourgade. Matmah al-anfus, by the same author, published at Constantinople, seems to be no more than an earlier and less extended form of the same book. Abu Marwan 'Abdal-Malik Ibn Badrun, of Silves in Southern Portugal, who came of an old Himyarite
from
family which had emigrated, lived at Seville in the second half of the twelfth century, and wrote an historical

commentary on Ibn 'Abdun's poem, which

has been published by R. Dozy. Ibn al-Faradi's history of learned Spaniards was carried on by Abu'l-Qasim Khalaf Ibn Bashkuwal

work has been published by Codera. The author, who was born on 30th September iioi, was for some time an assistant judge at Seville. He died in his native town on 5th January
al-Sila
:

(Aben Pascualis), (The Gift)

of Cordova,
this

under the

title

of Kitdb

183.

sexes
of

is

Another biography of famous Spaniards of both the Bughyat al-Mutalammis (Desire of the

by Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Yahya AL-DabbI, Cordova. This work also contains a history of the conquest of Spain and of the Omeyyad Caliphs down to the year 1196. Ibn Bashkuwal's Sila was continued by Aba 'Abdallah Ibn al-'Abbar, who was born at Valencia, and acted as secretary to the governor of that town, Muhammad ibn Abi Hafs. When the governor's son, AbCi Zaid, became a convert to ChrisSeeker),

THE 'ABBASIDS

205

tianity, and betook himself to the court of the King of Aragon, Ibn al- Abbar was despatched on a mission to Africa to beg for help against the Christians, who were then laying siege to Valencia, and captured it, in 1235, in spite of the fleet brought back by the ambassador. He thereupon resolved to leave Europe, went to Tunis, and obtained a post as secretary in the Divan. He even rose to be vizier under Al-Mustansir. He was suspected of being involved in a conspiracy, and was murdered in his own house, by the prince's orders, 2nd January 1260. Besides the continuation already mentioned, he wrote the Hullat al-siyard, biographies of such princes and great men in Spain and Northern Africa as had been

poets.

His

treatise

on disgraced

secretaries

who

re-

cover favour, which earned him the renewed patronage of the Prince of Tunis, is now in the Escurial Library.

To return to the East. hammad Ibn Maskawaih,

Abu

'All

Ahmad

ibn

Mu-

treasurer

and confidential

adviser of the Buwaihid Prince 'Adud al-daula, died in

of Tajdrib

1030, after writing a universal history under the title al-Umam, the sixth book of which has been
;

published at Leyden by De Goeje a book of practical wisdom, called A dab al- Arab wa'l-Furs (Customs of the Arabs and Persians), which also deals with the Hindoos and Greeks and a treatise on morality (Tahdhib al-Akkldg), which has been printed at Cairo. An Egyptian magistrate, Abil "Abdallah Muhammad ibn Salama AL-QupA'l, who had studied the traditions, and Shafi'ite law, at Bagdad, and had been appointed qddt, was sent on an embassy to the Roman Emperor
;

jara't,

Abu'l - Qasim 'Ali al - Jarhad been cut off by order of the Caliph Al-Hakim, was appointed vizier by the
at

Constantinople.

When

whose two

forearrris

2o6 on

ARABIC LITERATURE

Fatimid Caliph Al-Zahir, in 1027, AI-Qudai was called to perform the delicate and confidential duty of appending the seal which rendered the minister's decrees valid, to each document. He died at Old Cairo in 1062. He compiled, under the title of Kitdb al-inbd, a uni-

from the creation of the world down to the eleventh century; under that of ^Uy{m al-Mddrif (Sources of Knowledge), he wrote a history of the
versal history,
patriarchs, prophets,

and Fatimid

and Caliphs Omeyyad, 'Abbasid, and under the name of Shihdb (The Flame), a treatise on such traditions of the Prophet as
;

might serve as a basis of morality. Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali 'Izz al-din IBN AL-AXHIR, who was born at Jazirat ibn 'Umar on the Tigris, at the base of the mountains of Kurdistan, on 13th Alay 1160, went to Mosul, when he was twenty years of age, with his father, who had just been dismissed from his post as governor. At Mosul he finished his education, and took advantage of his subsequent journeys to extend his knowledge of the traditions of the Prophet and of history, both at Bagdad, whither he went seyeral times, when on pilgrimage to Mecca or on missions from the Prince of Mosul, in Syria, and at Jerusalem. When he returned to Mosul, he lived as a private citizen, and devoted his leisure to work and study. His house
rallying-point for learned men and foreigners. Ibn Khallikan met him at Aleppo in 1229 (he praises his excessive modesty) thence he went on, the next year, to Damascus. He returned to Aleppo, and then went back to Mosul, where he died in May 1234. His universal history, al-Kdmil fi'l-tartkh (Complete Chronology), is

became a

carried

down

to the year 1231

till

the portion covering the

period from the Creation

the year of the Hegira 310

THE 'ABBASIDS
is

207

an abridgment of Tabarf s work, to which, as lately demonstrated by Herr Brockelmann in a special dissertation, he has added certain information drawn from other sources. The text of this book has been published by Tornberg. The Usd al-ghdba (Lions of the Forest) is an historical treatise dealing with seven thousand five hundred companions of the Prophet it has been printed at Cairo. This work is important because of its bearing on the history of the hadith. In his Lubdb he has abridged Sam'ani's great work on patronymics. Abd Ishaq Ibrahim IBN AbI'l-DAM, who was born at Ham^t in 1187, acted as Shifi'ite qddt in that town. He was sent on an embassy to the Caliph Musta'sim, with the object of inducing him to invest Malik-Mansur, Prince of Hamat, with the government of the district of Mayyafariqin, which had fallen vacant owing to the The envoy death of Malik al-Muzafar Ghazi (1244). fell sick on his way, was forced to turn back from Ma'arra to his native town, and there died shortly afterwards. To this same Malik al-Muzaffar he had
:

dedicated his
of the

Ta'rikk al-Muzaffari, a general

history

Moslem

peoples, in six volumes, which forms

one

of

formation.
Sicily

whence Abu'1-Fida drew his inThat portion of the work which treats of has long been studied in Europe. As early as
the sources

1650 Inoegeo translated it into Italian, later (1723) Carusius translated it into Latin, and Gregorio (1790) gave it a place amongst his collection of Arabic works
bearing on the history of the great Italian island. Shams al-din Abu'l-Muzaffar Yusuf Sibt Ibn jAUZl, the son of a Turkish slave belonging to
minister Ibn Hubaira, set free

al-

the

born

at

Bagdad

in

11 86,

and educated by him, was and owed his surname to the

208

ARABIC LITERATURE

fact that his father

famous

had married the daughter of the preacher and polygraphist Ibn al-Jauzi, who brought up his grandson Yusuf, for the boy's father died very soon after his birth. After prosecuting his studies at Bagdad and travelling about, he settled at Damascus as a preacher and teacher of Hanafite law, and died in that city on loth January 1257. His Mir' at
al-Zamdn
;

is

a universal history, carried

down

to

the

year 1256 his iadhkirat Khawdss al-umma is Caliph 'All and his family, and of the twelve
a manuscript copy of this

a history of

imams

work

is

now

at

Leyden.

Under the
tion

title

of al-Jalis al-sdlik

(The Honest Comthe the

rade) he wrote a treatise on policy and on the educaof princes, in

is

honour

of

Musa ibn Abi Bakr

the

Ayyubite, which

now

in

Gotha Library

Paris Library possesses a collection of anecdotes called

Kanz al-MulAk (The

But
if

Kings' Treasury).

one Arab historian whose name has long been known to the reader, he must be George al-MakIn Ibn al-'Amid (1205-1273), son of an unfrocked monk, a Christian employe at the Ministry of War, who was born at Cairo. He, like his father, entered the Government service, and was given a similar post at a very early age. When 'Ala al-din Tibars, Governor of Syria, fell into disgrace, all the persons employed in his office were conveyed to Egypt and imprisoned there. Amongst them went Al-MakJn and his father. The latter died in 1238 the son was soon set at liberty, and given back his post. He presently fell under suspicion once more, and spent some time in prison. These mishaps disgusted him with the public service he retired to Damascus and died there. His universal history bears the title of al-Majmit al-Mubdrak (The
there
is
; ;

ITHE 'ABBASIDS
;

209

Blessed Collection) the second part, which covers the period between Mahomet's time and the year 1260, has

been published and translated into Latin by Erpenius, into English by Purchas, and into French by Vattier. Another Christian, a deacon of the Monophysite creed at the Church of the Virgin in Old Cairo, called Muallaqa (The Suspended), Abu Shukr Butrus (Petrus) Ibn alRahib, who was still alive in 1282, wrote a universal history carried down to 1259, which was translated into Latin by the learned Maronites, Abraham Ecchelensis, in 1651, and J. S. Assemani, in 1729. Yuhanna ABt)'L-FARAJ, also known under his LatinSyrian name of Bar-Hebr^eus (the son of the Hebrew), was the son of a baptized Jewish physician of Malatia, named Ahron. He was born in 1226, accompanied his father to Antioch in his flight before the
ised

Mongol invasion
the
life

(1243), there became a monk, and lived of an anchorite in a cave ; later he went as far

as Tripoli, in Syria, to

study dialectics and medicine.

in that quality

On

12th September 1246 he was appointed Bishop of

of Gregory.

Gubos, near Malatia, and

name
him,

The Bishopric

of

assumed the Aleppo rewarded

in 1252, for

the zeal displayed in securing the elec-

In 1264 tion of the new Jacobite Patriarch, Dionysius. he was appointed maphrian (Archbishop of the Eastern Mosul was the nominal seat of his see, but Jacobites). he usually lived in the Persian towns of Tabriz and Maragha, the habitual residence of the Mongol emIn the last-named town he died, on perors of Persia.

30th July 1289. He displayed considerable activity in Syriac literature, but in this place we can only refer to
his Arabic works.

The Mukhtasar al-duwal (Epitome

which

of Dynasties)

is,

in fact, an epitomised history, to

2IO
its

ARABIC LITERATURE

author has added information as to the medical and It is an amplified translation of his Syrian chronicle, made, a short time before his death, at the request of a Moslem it has been published at Oxford, by E. Pococke, and at Beyrout, by
m.athematical literature of the Arabs.
;

the Rev. Father Salhani,

and has been translated

of the

into

German by Bauer. The legendary history

Hebrew

prophets, as

it

reached the Arabs through the oral traditions preserved by the Jews of the Arabian Peninsula, has been treated by Abu Ishaq Ahmad al-Tha'labi of Nishapur, a ShaHis''Ara2s al-mafi'ite jurisconsult, who died in 1036. idlis (The Brides of the Lectures) has been printed at Cairo. A more serious production is his Al-Kashf waHbaydn (Inquiry and Exposition), a commentary on the Koran a curious little work on the victims of the Koran, entitled Kitdb mubdrak (Blessed Book), is devoted to the story of those who died of listening to the reading of the sacred book. The Masdri^ al-ushshdq is a collection of tales, anecdotes, and poetry, touching love and lovers, written by Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ja'far Ibn al-Sarraj of Bagdad, who was born about 1027 and died in 1106. The success of this work accounts for its having been given an abridged form in the Aswdq al-ashwdq (Markets of Love) by Ibrahim ibn 'Umar al-Biqai (died 1106), and for this latter book having furnished matter for a process of selection of which we have the fruit in the Tazyin al-aswdq (Ornament of the Markets), arranged by
:

Da'ud al-Antaki (died 1599).

Muhammad Ibn Zafar, who was born and brought up at Mecca, lived in his native country, and died at Hamat in 1169, leaving behind
Hujjat al-din
in Sicily

THE 'ABBASIDS
him
traits

211

the Sulzvdn al-MutSt (Consolation of the Prince), a

;

political treatise

the Inbd nuj'abd al-abnd, characteristic

and anecdotes of famous children the manuscript of this work is' in the Bibliotheque Nationale and the Khair al-bushar, a collection of prophecies concerning the

prophets.

The

celebrated
al-din

caligrapher

Yaqut

al

Musta'simt

Abu'1-Durr), who died at Bagdad in (Jamil 1298, compiled an anthology of anecdotes and poetry under the title of Akhbar wa-ash'dr (Tales and Poems), and a collection of sentences and apophthegms, called Asrdr al-hukamd (Secrets of the Wise).

The Fables of KalIla and Dimna

Some
a
class
literary

men had begun

to translate

works

of

not existing in Arabic literature, out of the Pehlevi tongue. It need scarcely be said that this labour was undertaken by Persians, who were equally skilful in the use of both languages. 'Abdallah Ibn al-Muqaffa'

was a Persian, who, before he became

Islam, bore the

convert to

name

of Ruzbih.

He

lived at Bassora,

where he became the close friend of Khalil, the gramHe was put to death in 757 by order of marian. Caliph al-Mansur, whose anger he had stirred by the fashion in which he had drawn up the deed of amnesty touching his uncle 'Abdallah ibn 'AIL The Governor of
Bassora eagerly seized this opportunity for avenging the sarcasms of which he had been made a victim by the Persians he had his enemy's limbs cut off and thrown Ibn al-Muqaffa' translated the fables of into an oven. Kalila and Dimna out of the Pehlevi into Arabic. These fables are simply an adaptation of the Indian tales of
;

2 12

ARABIC LITERATURE

the Panchatantra, originally brought back from India in

the time of Chosroes

I. Nushirwan, by the physician wrote the Durra al- Yattma, on the obedience due to kings, which has been printed at Cairo, and the Siyar Muluk al-Ajam biographies of the Persian kings, translated from a Pehlevi book, Khuddi-

Barzuya.

He

also

ndma, which was produced during the reign of the last of the Sasanians, Yezdegird III. This book was one of the sources whence the Persian poet Firdausi later drew the elements of his Book of the Kings. The Arabic translation is lost, but numerous fragments of it occur in Ibn Qutaiba's C/r^ al-akhbdr. Ibn al-Muqafa"s father's name was Dadawaih. He had been charged, under the rule of the famous and cruel Hajjaj, with the duty of collecting the taxes in the Provinces of 'Iraq and Fars, and was guilty of extortion. Hajjaj had him put to the torture, and as a result one of his hands always remained shrunk and curled up hence the surname of Muqaffa'. Abdallah was in the service of 'ls. ibn 'Ali, the paternal uncle of the Caliphs Abu'l-Abbas Saffah and Mansur. It was to him that he addressed his abjuration of Zoroastrianism. He has been accused, with other enemies of Islam, of having endeavoured to imitate the style of the Koran, and would in this case have been a predecessor of the contemporary renewer of Islamism in Persia, "Ali Muhammad the Bab, who also wrote in Khalil said of him that he had more the Koranic style. learning than judgment it is true that Ibn al-Muqaffa' had said the grammarian had more judgment than
'

learning.

He was

learnt the rules of politeness.

asked, one day, to say from whom he " I have been my

"

had

own

teacher," he replied.

Whenever

have seen another

THE 'ABBASIDS
man do
a

213

good
I

action,

whenever

have seen any one do an ill-bred thing, avoided doing it."

have followed his example, and I have

Anthologies
'Anir ibn

Bahr, surnamed Al-Jahiz (With a wideeye),

open and goggle

jects,

varied intelligence,
to

was a man of extraordinarily who turned his mind to many suband produced many works, more with a view
instruction.

amusement than

He

lived at Bassora.

Theologically

he was a Mu'tazilite, but he nevertheless created a sect which was called after his own name, Jahiziyya. He was the friend of Ibn al-Zayyat, minister to the Caliph Al-Wathiq, and very nearly shared his fate when he was put to death by Mutawakkil. However, the Caliph, to whom he had been recommended, sent for him to Bagdad, to superintend his own son's education. But on seeing how ugly he was he immediately dismissed him, with a gift of ten thousand dirhems. He owed his surname, indeed, to
speaking,
his projecting eyeballs.

He

died in 869.

Towards the end

of his

life

he was

attacked by a kind of paralysis, which inflamed one side of his body, while the other remained so cold and devoid
if it was dragged he often said: "Sicknesses of opposite kinds have conspired against my body. If I eat anything cold, it strikes my feet, and if He was anything hot, it goes to my head." I touch the burden that ninety-six years old, "and that is weighs least upon me," he would say. Amongst his works, reference must be made to the Kitdb al-Baydn wa l-tabayyun (not tabyin, as it has been

of sensation that he felt nothing, even

with pincers.

During

his illness

2 14
printed), a

ARABIC LITERATURE
book on
Its

rhetoric, but with

is

no

didactic char-

acter at

all.

teaching

conveyed through the medium

description.
at Cairo.

of anecdotes of the
this

most varied work has been published

The

text of

His Book of

Animals {Kitdb al-hayawdfi) is not precisely a treatise on natural history, but rather an anthology of passages in which animals are mentioned, with what has been said about them. He also wrote a book on the conduct of kings, which is full of interesting details on the rules of scenes drawn from the etiquette a book on misers private life and customs of the natives of Bassora, which has lately been published at Leyden by G. van Vloten another on the virtues of the Turks, a copy of which was at one time in the Schefer collection, and is now in the Bibliotheque Nationale a parallel between spring and autumn, which has been printed at Constantinople under this author's name, although the proof of its being his work is by no means trustworthy and a collection of one hundred apophthegms, which were attributed, without any real cause, to 'All, the Prophet's son-in-law, and which attained great popularity. Besides all this, he has been taken to be the author of the Kitdb al-Mahdsin (Book of Beauties and Antitheses), the Arabic text of which has appeared at Leyden, thanks to the
;

care of

Van Vloten

this

is,

at all

events, the direct

outcome of his school. Under the title of Al-Faraj bad al-Shidda (Pleasure after Pain), IBN Abi'l-Dunya (Abij Bakr ibn'Abdallah) wrote a compilation of anecdotes and short moral tales, on the model, and with the same name, as one of Al-Mada'ini's works, now lost. He was born in and, though a client of the Omeyyads, was ap823,
pointed
tutor
to

the

Caliph

Al-Muktafi,

when

that

THE 'ABBAsIDS

21 s

monarch was a child. He died in 894. His Makdrim al-Akhldq (Noble Qualities) is a moral treatise on the human ideal, according to the traditions "of the Prophet. His Dhanim al-maldhi {fildiiae of Musical Instruments) is
a treatise of the
in general,

same nature, directed against

dissipation

which, he avers, begins with music and ends in drunkenness and debauchery. He wrote many others which either only exist in manuscript or are merely known to us through quotations. Ibn 'Abd - Rabbihi (Abu 'Umar Ahmad ibn Muhammad), born at Cordova in 860, was descended from
a freedman of the

Omeyyads who

ruled in Spain.

He

was

once a classical and a popular poet, and died in 940, after having suffered, for several years, from paralysis. He was the author of another well-known anthology, Al-'Iqd al-Fartd (The Unique Necklace), divided into twenty-five chapters, the pearls forming
at

the necklace, the thirteenth chapter being the central

and

largest pearl.

Al-Tanukh! (AbiJ 'Ali Muhsin) (939-994), son of the qddt and poet 'All ibn al-Husain, who was born at Bassora, wrote a Faraj bad al-Shidda (Collection of Stories to Drive away Boredom), modelled on works by Mada'ini and Ibn Abi'l-Dunyi. This author acted
as qddt
in

various towns near the Euphrates and in

also wrote a

Susiana.
of to

He

Kitdb al-Mustajdd, a collec-

tion of anecdotes

and characteristic traits, in the time the'Abbasids, and the Nashwdn al-muliddara (Stimulus Conversation), which is a book of the same kind, now

in the Bibliotheque Nationale. When he wrote his Faraj (957) he was at the head of the Weighing Office at the Mint of al-Ahwaz, in Susiana.

CHAPTER
THE

VIII

'ABBASIDSContmueJ

The Traditions of the Prophet Jurisprudence

The Koran

alone did not suffice to provide laws for so

;

became necessary, at a very early on its precepts by means of the explanations furnished by Mahomet himself, transmitted, more or less faithfully, through the medium of human memory, at Medina and elsewhere. By the time an attempt was made to commit these sayings of the Prophet to writing, the mischief was already done the greater part had been deformed by untrustworthy memories others, again, had been fabricated from beginning to
great an empire
it

period, to cast light

end, to justify the tendencies of certain groups of dissidents.

Then was
all

created the science of the hadith,

of

that

is

to say, of criticism as applied to the sources of

of

tradition,

them

the

same nature, since

all

study of the testimony of the succession of oral witnesses who transmitted the Prophet's sayings by word of mouth, as they had received them from his companions, who had heard them spoken, and learnt them by heart. This science of the hadith, as it was understood by the Arabs, really follows the course prescribed for a Moslem judge, who, before
necessarily
to the

went back

he permits any witness to give evidence, must inquire

THE 'ABBASIDS
into his

217

moral character, his manner of life, and his By this system of criticism a sustained chain of evidence has been established as to a certain number of these apophthegms it can only
reputation for uprightness.
;

guarantee the authenticity of the transmission, not that of the original tradition. All we have to vouch for the
truth of that
is

the veracity
it,

man who
Prophet's

received
lips.

in the

and good memory of the first instance, from the

works devoted to the hadith, then, are works on jurisprudence. After those of Malik ibn Anas and Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, we must notice the Musnad, in which the traditions are arranged in the order of the most recent witnesses, without any regard to the
first

The

After these come the books Musannaf, in which the traditions are arranged by their contents, and divided into chapters according to the various subjects, ritual, legal, or moral, whereof they treat. The object of adopting this arrangement
subject matter contained.
as

known

was

to render inquiry relatively easy to

those jurists

who

favoured adherence to the letter of the haditJi, in opposition to their opponents, who recognised interpretations founded on the sense accepted by individual judges {ashdb al-ra'y).
description,

The

earliest

work

of this

looked on as a pattern and a masterpiece, is the Sahih (Sincere Book), by BOkhaki. Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn Isma'il was born at Bukhara on 21st July 810, of an Iranian family. His grandfather was called Berdizbeh, or Yezdizbeh.
is still

and one which

he was sixteen, he went on pilgrimage to Mecca, and took this opportunity of attending the lessons given by teachers of the tradition at Mecca and Medina. He then went on to Egypt, and travelled with the same
15

When

2i8
object
all

ARABIC LITERATURE
over

Moslem

Asia, spending five

at Bassora.

After an absence of sixteen years in

whole years all, he

returned to Bukhara, and there wrote his Sahih. He died on 30th August 870. The Governor of Khurasan had banished him to Kharteng, a village in the neigh-

bourhood
tionists.

of

Samarqand.

he returned to Bukhara, he thousand traditions with him, seven thousand two hundred and seventy-five, which alone are included in the Saluk and which, according to his view, are the only ones universally admitted to be authentic. He also wrote a commentary on the Koran. Another Sahih was written at the same period by a contemporary of Bukhari, MUSLIM (Abu'1-Husain ibn al-Hajjaj), who was born at Nishapur in Khurasan in 817, paid several visits to Bagdad, and died in the city of his birth on 6th May 875. The matter of Muslim's book, like that contained in Bukhari's (with which it is
identical, save for the addition of

wrote his great historical The manuscript Sophia Library. When brought back six hundred and out of these he chose

While he was at Medina he work on the trustworthy tradiof this

work

is

now

in the St.

more

authorities),

is

arranged in the order adopted for legal subjects, but without any chapter headings. It is also remarkable for its introduction, wherein the author treats of the science of the traditions in a general and complete manner. He, too, went to the Hijaz, toTraq, Syria, and Egypt, to search out traditions. He is said to have collected more than three hundred thousand, on which his selection is based. The friendship between Muslim and Bukhari survived even the persecutions which drove the latter author from his native city. Muslim defended his friend's cause against certain theologians who affirmed the

THE 'ABBASIDS
doctrine that not only was the Koran

219
itself eternal,

as

being the word of God, but that the same rule applied to the pronunciation of the words of which it is composed.

These two SahtJis, Bukhari's and Muslim's, have become two canonical books of Islam. They may be considered to sum up the science of tradition in the third century of the Hegira. Four other works complete the six canonical books to which Moslems pin their
they were all produced during the same period. These are the Sunan (Customs), by Abu Da'ud (Sulaimin ibn al-Ash'ath), who belonged to Sijistan, and was born in 817. After long wanderings in foreign countries, like those undertaken by his fellow-authors, he His settled at Bassora, and died there in February 889. work only contains those traditions which are interesting
faith
:

as regards jurisprudence or the rules affecting ritual. This work, at the outset, gained immense popularity, equalling that attained by the SahtJis, but it ultimately fell into complete obscurity, whereas the authority of the works of Muslim and Bukhari has increased steadily

Abij Da'ud had collected some hundred thousand traditions, four thousand eight hundred of which he selected for his book. He was not very critical, for he himself acknowledged he had inserted not only the authentic traditions, but others which seemed authentic, and yet others which were nearly but he added that out of this number, only authentic four were indispensable for the religious guidance of man. Here is his summary of Islamic law "Actions
until the present day.
five
:

will

be judged according to intentions the proof of a Moslem's sincerity is that he pays no heed to that which no man is a true believer unless he is not his business
: :

20

ARABIC LITERATURE
which
is

which he desires for himself and that which is unlawful likewise, but there are certain doubtful things between the two, from which it is well to abstain." Under the title of JdmV (Complete Collection), Abu 'Isa Muhammad AL-TlRMlDHt has written a kind of encyclopcedia of the traditions which throw light upon the law, pointing out those which have served as arguments in such and such legal questions, and indicating the differences between the various schools of jurisprudence. This renders his book, which has been printed at Bulaq, one of the first importance to the student desirous of keeping the schools distinct from their original beginnings. He was a pupil of Bukhari, was born at Bush near Tirmidh, a small town on the banks of the Oxus in Central Asia, and died at the same place in 892, having,
desires for his brother that
that

lawful

is

clear,

like his fellows, travelled all

traditions.

Besides his book on the hadWi,

over the world to seek out we have his

Kitdb al-shamd' il, on the physiognomy and external qualities of the Prophet Mahomet, a book on which more than ten commentaries have been written, and the text of which has been printed at Calcutta, at Cairo, and
at Fez,

and

also a collection of forty selected traditions,

intended to
is

the

first

sum up the principles of Moslem law. This known specimen of a work of this nature
is

they were eventually to swarm.

Another Sunan

that of Abii'Abdal- Rahman

Ahmad

AL-Nasa'1, remarkable for his useful inquiries into the smallest details of ritual. (My readers are aware that the
cases of conscience set forth and decided by
casuists,

Moslem

on such points

as degrees of bodily impurity,

the

nature of the water used for ablutions, &c., are

exceedingly subtle and far-fetched.)

He

quotes texts for

THE 'ABBASIDS
feeling.

221

every case, even for popular manifestations of religious

In the part dealing with jurisprudence, he provides formulas for every possible case in law. The book is therefore an ample formulary of ritual and legal
casuistry
;

it

furnishes very

little

information as to the

at Nasa in Old Cairo, where he lived till he then departed to Damascus, and there 914 stirred up popular opinion by a book of traditions favourable to the family of 'All. The mob, which still clung to the memory of the Omeyyads, drove him out of the Mosque, and trampled him under foot. He was taken to Ramla in Palestine, and there died of the effects of the treatment he had received. One author, however, asserts that he was conveyed to Mecca, and was buried there. He has left us another book, on the weak traditionists that is to say, those in whom only a limited confidence can be placed. This work is now to be found, in manuscript, in the British Museum, and also in the Bodleian Library. Nasa'i was a man of strong passions, and, to keep them under, was in the habit of fasting every second day. The fourth of these works is the Sunan of IBN MAjA (Abu "Abdallah Muhammad ibn Yazid) (824-887), of Qazvin in Persia, who travelled over the whole East, from Khurasan to Egypt. The success of this book was but mediocre, on account of the number of doubtful traditions it contains it was not included among the canonical books till at a later date. It has been lithographed at Delhi. Ibn Maja also wrote a history, now

history of

dogma.

The author was born

to

Khurisin
:

in 830.

He went

lost, of his

native town.

Besides these six corpuses of

tions,

we have

the

Musnad

of

Moslem law and tradiAl-Dakim1 ('Abdallah ibn

222

ARABIC LITERATURE

'Abdal-Rahman) of Samarqand, who died

in 869. This does not contain more than a third of the matter the first six embrace, and is drawn up for practical use. Ibn Hibban It has been lithographed at Cawnpore.

(Muhammad

ibn

Ahmad)

(885-965),

who was born

at

Bust in Sijistan, between Herat and Ghazna, and may have been of Iranian origin, travelled far and wide, from
Central Asia to Alexandria, and, on his return, was appointed qddi of Samarqand, Nasa, and Nishapur. He
finally

went back

to

his native town, as a teacher of

the traditions, and died there.

He had

built himself

a house, in which he arranged his large library. studied astronomy, medicine, and other sciences.
.

He
His

book bears the title of Taqdsim wd I-anwa Abu Bakr al-Ajurr! (Muhammad ibn al-Husain), who was born at Ajurr (The Bricks), a village near Bagdad, is the author of a book of forty traditions, which brought him fame, and is now to be found, with other works by the same author such as a treatise on the question of whether the true believer ought to seek learning, and what qualities those who carry the Koran

should possess
Abu'l

in the

Berlin Library.

Hasan 'All ibn 'Umar al-Daraqutn!, who owes his surname to a large quarter in the town of Bagdad, called Dar al-Qutn (House of Cotton), was born in that city in April 919. He was a celebrated
jurisconsult of the Shafi'ite
tions at
rite.

He

learnt the tradi-

an Mujahid, and was his true successor. Towards the end of his life he began to teach the reading of the Koran. He knew the diwdns of several of the desert poets by heart, amongst them that of Sayyid Himyari. This made many believe he was a follower of this poet's Shfite

early age, at the feet of Abii Bakr, son of

THE "ABBASIDS
tenets.

223

He was a man of scrupulous conscience. Once, having been called to bear witness against Ibn Ma'rilf, he repented, after it was done, because his evidence as to the traditions had been accepted by the judge without any demur, and merely on his own authority, whereas as a rule two witnesses are considered necessary. Having heard that Ja'far ibn Hinzaba, the vizier of the Ikhshidite Prince Kafur, in Egypt, had made up his mind to prepare a Corpus of traditions after the manner of the Musnad, he resolved to take the journey into Egypt, to assist him in the work. He remained in that country, where he was liberally rewarded, till it was concluded. He
St.

died on his return to his native city (December

His Kitdb al-Sunan (Book of Customs) is in the Sophia Library. In another work (al-istidrdkdt wa'ltatabbu") he proves the uncertainty of two hundred of the traditions accepted in the two Sahths of Bukhari and Muslim. The book is thus a critical work, dealing with
995).

the traditions.

Al-Khattabi (Hamd ibn Muhammad), whose name was popularly pronounced Ahmad, instead of Hamd, was born at Bust in Sijistan, in 931, and died in the same town in March 998. His works are commentaries on the great canonical books. Towards the close of his life he inclined to mysticism, and took refuge in a ribdt or Sufi convent, on the banks of the river Hilmend. He had studied in Traq. He was a poet, and it was he who
" It is not the pain of absence, but the lack of a sympathetic friend, which is the greatest affliction a man can endure. I am a stranger to Bust and its people, yet here I was born, and here my kinsfolk dwell." Al-Bayyi' (Muhammad ibn 'Abdallah), born atNish^said
:

pur

in 933,

was appointed qddt

of his native

town

in 966,

224

ARABIC LITERATURE

but he made a long journey through Khurasan and Later, although the Hijaz during the following years. appointed qddi of Jurjan, he declined the post, and was frequently employed by the Samanids on embassies

Buwaihids, who, through their conquest of Bagdad, had become masters of the Caliphate. He died on 3rd August 1014. He made a second journey through the East in 971, and held successful disputations with the learned men of the different cities in which he
to the

halted.

that time, towards the doctrines wrote his Kitdb al-Mustadrak as a criticism of the two Sahihs, to prove that several traditions overlooked in these two works were perfectly authentic, and had been wrongly passed over. Ibn FCirak, of Ispahan (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn al-Hasan), was educated at Bagdad, and afterwards proceeded to Rai, where his stay was rendered uncomfortleant, at
of the Shi'ites.

He

He

able by certain innovators in religious matters, and thence to Nishapur, where he was exceedingly successful both as a teacher and a writer. He was later summoned to Ghazna in Afghanistan, where he carried on numerous
controversies.

He was on

his

way back from

this

town

when he

died of poison.

He was known

as Ustdd, the

Master par excellence. A college and a dwelling-house His body was conwere built on purpose for him. veyed to Nishapur, and the funeral chapel erected
there

became

a place of pilgrimage.

When

rain

was

wanted for the country, prayers were offered on his tomb, and were always answered. One of his sayings " The burden of a family is the result was as follows of a lawful passion what then can be the result of an unlawful one ? " His book defining the foundations of Hanafite law is in the British Museum the Leyden
:
; :

THE 'ABBASIDS

225
:

Library possesses his treatise on certain traditions other worlis of his are in the Ubrary of Raghib-Pacha at
Constantinople.

Criticism of the Authorities of the HadIth

Alongside of the science of the haditk, which
century, that called
science
criticism
of
"^ihn
is

one of

codification and criticism, there rises up, in the tenth

al-rijal
is

strictly

speaking, the
to

men, which
the

specially

applied

the

of

witnesses

and

authorities

on

whom
we

the whole edifice of tradition rests.

Among

the most

important authors

who have

written on this subject

may mention
Rai in

Ibn Abi Hatim ('Abdal-Rahmin), born at 894, died at Tiis in Khurasan in 939, author of the

Kitab al-jarh wa'l-tddil (Criticism and Correction), in six volumes, the manuscript of which is both at Cairo and Al-Tabarani (Abu'l-Qasim Sulaiman) at Constantinople Tiberias, who spent thirty years in born at (870-971), travel, then settled at Ispahan, and died there his best
:

known work

is

the

Mujam

(Alphabetical Dictionary of

the Traditionists), of which he furnished three editions,

one complete; one of middle size, and one abridged the isolated volumes now in Paris, at the British Museum, and the Escurial belong to this last edition Al-Kalabadhi (Abil Nasr Ahmad), born in 918, in one of the quarters of Bukhara, from which his surname was
:

derived, died in 398 (1008), leaving a

of the huffdz

work on the names

:

quoted

in

Bukhari's Sahih

also 'Abdal-

Ghani ibn Said, the Egyptian, born at Cairo in 944, who, with the two philologists Abu Usama Junada and

Abu

'Alt

al-Hasan, of Antloch, frequented the library

;

founded by the Caliph Al-Hakim

this friendship

was

26
in

ARABIC LITERATURE
sad fashion by the execution of the two on the Caliph's order, and 'Abdal-Ghani,
his

broken

philologists,

alarmed for

own

life,

remained

in hiding

till

he

felt

he

was

safe.

He

died in the night of 25th-26th June 1018,

of traditionists resembling
differ.
It is

leaving a
library of

book on the names

each other, and those which

now

in the

Kyuprulu Mehemet-Pacha

at

Constantinople.

Subsequent Development of the HadIth

The science of the traditions, which reached its highest point in the composition of the six great books,

now

approaches the period

abridge, commentate,

famous authors.
the

Moslem

faith

when it became necessary to and explain the codes left by the Before long the fundamental rules of were summed up, for the benefit of
became the
subject of endless

the general public, into a selection of forty .traditions,

and

these, in their turn,

commentaries. My readers will understand that only those works, out of this very large body, which have earned some lasting success and produced some durable impression, can be mentioned here. In Egypt, Abu 1-Qasim al-Husain ibn 'Ali AL-Waz!r AL-Maghribi was born in 981, of an important family His great-great-grandfather's name of Persian descent. was Bahram. When, on loth July loio, the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim caused the chief members of his family to be put to death, he fled to Ramla, and induced the prince who governed that town to rise against his suzerain, but in spite of the support afforded by the Sharif of Mecca, who was defeated, the undertaking failed, the prince of Ramla made terms with the savage Hakim, and Abu'l-Qasim departed into Eastern regions,

THE -ABBASIDS
where he
filled

227

high

official

posts in the service of the

At the time of his death, at Mayyafariqin (in 1027 or 1037), he was acting as minister Of his hterary work nothing to Prince Ibn Marwan. now remains. The British Museum possesses the Kitdb
princes of those countries.

names Arab tribes, with quotations from the poets, and historical and biographical notices. Abu Bakr ibn al-Husain AL-BAiHAQt (994-1066) was born in the village of Khusraugird, a dependency of Baihaq, near Nishapur in Khurasan, travelled for a long time, seeking traditions of the Prophet, and taught Shafi'ite law at Nishapiir, where he died. He was the first writer to collect the sentences or legal
al-inds, a dictionary, in alphabetical order, of the

of the

opinions

of

Al-Shafi'l

into

ten volumes.
title

One

large

collection of traditions bears the

of Kitdb al-sunan

wa' l-dthdr. Of this an autograph manuscript, and also an abridgment, are now preserved at Cairo. The Amir Abu Nasr 'Ah Ibn MakOla was also of Persian origin. He was born at 'Ukbara, not far from Bagdad, on 9th August 1030. His father, Hibat-Allah, became minister to the Caliph Al-Qa'im he went with him to Bagdad, where his uncle was qddt, and then During one of these, on undertook long journeys. Persian territory, he was murdered and stripped by his Turkish slaves. The exact date of this event is not known (towards 1094). He had devoted himself to the study of proper names. We still have his Ikmdl (Completion), intended to complete the Mutanif, by Al-Khatib alIt is, according to Baghdadi, on the same subject. Ibn Khallikan, an exceedingly useful and practical work, determining the orthography of proper names, more
;

especially in the study of the traditions.

228
Abu'1-Fadl

ARABIC LITERATURE
Muhammad
ibn Tahir IBN AL-QAiSARANt
at Jerusalem, of a family

was born

belonging to Cesarea
;

on i8th December 1058 but he finished his education at Bagdad, and did not return to his native town till after a prolonged course of travel. He stayed for some time at Hamadhan, where he taught the science of the traditions. He died in 11 13, at Bagdad, on his His Kitdb al-ansdb return from the Mecca pilgrimage. al-muttafiqa has been published by De Jong under the
in Palestine,
title

of

Homonyma
is

inter 7toinina relatlva.

Berlin possesses
;

his

manuscript

treatise

on

falsified traditions

his

Atrdf

al-ghard'ib

at Cairo.

Abu Muhammad al-Husain AL-Farra AL-BAGHAwf,

born
at

Baghshur, between Herat and Merv, died in

the last-named town in 1116 or 1122, after having

piled a

com-

{Masdbih al-Sunna), according to the seven fundamental works, which has been frequently commentated and abridged, as, for example, in the Mishkdt al-Masdbih of Muhammad ibn 'Abdallah al-Khatib al-Tabrizi, which is widely known in the East, and has been reprinted in India and in Russia. Another collection of traditions {Shark al-Sunnd), an epitome of jurisprudence, and a commentary on the Koran have
of traditions

book

survived to the present day.

al-FarisJ, born at through the Khanate of Khiva, and proceeded to India by Afghanistan. He When only five years had been an infant prodigy. old he could read the Koran, and recite the Articles of the Faith in Persian. When he came back from his travels, he was appointed preacher in his native town, and died there in 1134. To him we owe one of those Kitdb al-Arbdtn in which the doctrines of
ibn
Isma'il

'Abd al-Ghafir
in

Nishapijr

1059,

travelled

THE 'ABBASIDS
Islam are

229

summed up
work
is

in forty selected traditions.

more

useful

his

Majmd

al-Ghardib (Collection

of Curiosities), a dictionary for the great collections of

the hadtth, and his Mufhim, a Sahih.

commentary on Muslim's

Another learned traveller born m Persia was Abu Tahir AL-SlLAFt (1082-1180), who went from Ispahan, where he was born, to Bagdad and Alexandria. In
the last-mentioned town, Ibn al-Sallar, minister to the

Caliph

Zafir,

the

Fatimid, built

him a madrasa,
till

in

the year 1151, and in it he taught addition to a collection of forty

his death.

In

traditions

called

al-Bulddniyya, because every tradition was found in a

different town, he compiled a dictionary of the Sheikhs

of

Bagdad, the manuscript of which

is

now

at

the

Escurial.

Majd

al-din Abu'l-Sa'adat al-Mubarak, the brother of

historian,

was born at Jazirat ibn entered the service of the Amir Qaimaz, Prince of Mosul, as secretary, and improved
Ibn al-Athir, the

Umar

in

1149.

He

under his successors. At an advanced age he was attacked by paralysis in his feet and hands, and died in June 1210. The illness which obliged him to quit the public service gave him leisure to dictate and publish the books he has left behind him. His satisfaction in this work, and his delight at being no longer obliged to pay court to great personages, led him to discontinue a course of treatment which might have cured him, and which had been prescribed for him by He wrote the Jdmi^ a bone-setter from the Maghrib. al-UsM (Encyclopedia of Principles), which gives the traditions of the prophets arranged in chapters by
his position

alphabetical order,

and

also

biographies of

Mahomet

230
and
with
his

ARABIC LITERATURE
contemporaries
a

rare and curious

Brilliants),

the Nihdya, a dictionary of traditions ; the Murassd (Adorned

;

lexicon

of

the

surnames

in

Ibn

and Ab-A; and the Mukhtdr, biographies of celebrated Moslems. Muhibb al-din Muhammad Ibn al-Najjar (11831245), a Shafi'ite lawyer, and pupil of Ibn al-Jauzi, born at Bagdad, devoted twenty -seven years of his life to making long journeys. The learning he thus acquired enabled him to settle in his native town as a teacher and man of letters. While at Medina he wrote the Nuzha, on the history of that town at a later period he wrote the Kamdl, a collection of biographies of the witnesses who handed down the traditions. This has served as the" basis for other treatises of the same nature. He also composed a supplement {dhait) to AlKhatib's history of Bagdad, an abridgment of which, by Ibn Aibek al-Dimyati, is now at Cairo. AbCt Nu'aiM Ahmad AL-ISFAHANt, a Shafi'ite lawyer (948-1038), produced the Hilyat al-anbiyd (Ornament of the Prophets), a history of holy and pious individuals and of their miracles and the Tibb al-nabi (Medicine of
; ;

the Prophet), a collection of hadiths touching medicine;

men of Ispahan, which Leyden, and other works on the traditions. Taqi al-din Abu 'Amr 'Uthman IBN AL-Salah (11811245), born at Sharakhin, between Irbil (Arbela) and Hamadhan, was of Kurdish descent. He began his studies at Mosul, and travelled through the chief towns in Khurasan. He was a teacher at Jerusalem, and then went to Damascus, where he finally settled. He taught Shafi'ite law in several madrasas, notably in that just founded by Saladin's sister, and died there. His Aqsd
and
also a history of the learned
at
is

now

THE 'ABBASIDS
'l-amal

231
Desire),

wdl-Shauq (The

Liveliest

Hope and

which

treats of the science of the ti-aditions, has

been

the subject of

authors with

many commentaries, and has furnished many extracts. He devoted one of his
and Ascalon over other cities; fatwds and his treatise on the rules of

works

to the examination of traditions relating to the

superiority of Alexandria
his collection of

the holy pilgrimage are

now

at Cairo.

Sharaf al-din ABtJ'L-HASAN Ibn al-Mufarrij AL-MAQDist (1149-1214) was born on Syro-Arabian territory, near the Egyptian border. He was vice-judge at Alexandria,

His and afterwards taught at Cairo, where he died. book of the forty traditions is remarkable for its exact specification of the date of each witness, and for its

complete isndd.
1258),

Abu Muhammad 'Abdal- Azim al-Mundhir1 (1185who was born in Egypt, travelled for the purall

pose of study

through Mecca, Damascus, Edessa,

Alexandria, and the surrounding countries.

He

taught

the hadith of the Shafi'ite rite for twenty years, in the

Kamiliyya Madrasa at Cairo, and died in that city. His Kitdb al-targhib wa l-tarhtb is a collection of traditions arranged in such a fashion that those which guide to what is right appear on one side, and those which lead to the avoidance of evil, on the other. His book of the biographies of remarkable traditionists is in the
British

In

Spain,

Museum. Abu 'Umar Yusuf IBN 'Abdal-Barr, who

was born at Cordova in 978, studied in that city, and had the reputation of being the greatest authority on the hadith in the Maghrib. He travelled for some time in the west of Spain, and then settled at Denia, paying occasional visits to Valencia and Jativa. Under

23 2

ARABIC LITERATURE

the rule of Prince Muzaffar ibn al-Aftas, King of Bada-

he was appointed qddt of Lisbon and Santarem. He died at Jativa on 3rd February 1071. His Kitdb alls ti db deals with the biographies of the companions of the Prophet his Durar (The Pearls) is an abridged history of the wars of Mahomet's times his Intiqd is devoted to the three great founders of the rites, Malik, Abu Hanifa, and Shafi't his Bahjat al-Majdlis is a coljoz,
: :
:

lection of proverbs, sayings, tales

to Prince Muzaffar.

and poetry, dedicated

Abi'l-Khisal
al-

Abu
Ghafiqi,

'Abdallah

Muhammad

Ibn

born

in 1072 at Burgalet, a village in the district

of Segura, near Jaen, a poet

and learned man,

lived at

Cordova and
perished

at

Grenada.

He was

appointed to perform

the duties of Minister of the Interior and of War, and

when Cordova was captured by the Moravids, on 27th May 1146. His ZiU al-sahdb (Shadow of the Clouds) is devoted to the wives and relations of the Prophet Mahomet. His Minhdj al-mandqib is a poem in honour of the Prophet and his companions. Documents belonging to his correspondence and literary lectures of his composing are still preserved at the
Escurial.

Abu'1-Fadl 'Iyad ibn

Musa,

who was born

in

De-

cember

1083, studied at Cordova, and was made qddt Ceuta, at his native town. He went on to Grenada in the same capacity, then back to Morocco, and there died
in

He wrote a book which is celebrated in the 1149. East, called al-Shifd ft tdi-tf huquq al-Mustafd, a life
Mahomet, printed
at Cairo,
:

of

on which many com,

mentaries have been written

traditions,

al-Ihnd'

a theory of the

their sources
:

of his pupils

and principles, edited by one the Mashdriq al-Anwdr, on the authentic

THE 'ABBASIDS
traditions
:

233

and the meaning of the obscure expressions occurring in them al-I'ldm, a work on penal law and the Tartib al-mudhdkara, on the proper names of the
:

Malikite

rite.

Abu'l-' Abbas

born

at

Ahmad ibn Ma'add AL-lQLfSHl, who was Denia, studied both in that town and at

He took advantage of his pilgrimage into Arabia (ii47)to spend several years at Mecca, remaining there until 1152. While on his journey back, he died at Qus, in Upper Egypt, in 1155. His Kaukab al-Durri
Valencia.
(Brilliant Star)
is

a collection of hadiths,

great canonical works.

drawn from the His Najm (Star), a book on

proverbs, Arabic and foreign, has been printed at Cairo.

was born

Ishaq Ibrahim Ibn QuRQtJL (1111-1173), who at Almeria and died at Fez, considered the traditions in his Matdli" al-anwdr (Dawn of Light).

Abu

Jurisprudence

The

science of the traditions, through the criticism

Prophet which cast light on the Koran had left obscure, established one of the bases of law. Jurisprudence, on the other hand, was building up a very considerable mass of literaof those sayings of the

points which the

the numberless difficulties in the application of the simple rules provided in the sacred
ture, arising out of

These two branches of study, indeed, moved on it was the necessity for seeking out clear and precise rules, founded on the legislator's authenticated deeds or words, which had led the learned to search
book.
abreast, for
out, not,
collect,

and

select

traditions

which, as often as

were contradictory
16

in their bearing,

and

to explain

and interpret them by

criticising the witnesses

who had

34

ARABIC LITERATURE

handed them down. When the judge was sure of his authorities, he felt more sure of the legality of the sentence he pronounced, and his conscience, therefore, was more easy. Yet for a long time before the body of opinion divided the Ashdb al-rdy accepting individual

interpretation, while the partisans of the letter of the

insisted

law

on adherence

to the traditional text of the hadith

the judge's right to decide according to

his

own

lights

had been recognised by the law. Probably the intercourse of the Arabs with Syrian Christians, who, as we have seen, played a prominent part at the Omeyyad Court at Damascus, introduced them to the theories of
the

Roman

law of Justinian's period, which,

in the Syrian

community, had survived the Moslem conquest. As the ancient works on Moslem law are lost, we must begin our study of this branch of literature with the heads of the four great orthodox rites the Hanafite, the Malikite, the Shafi'ite, and the Hanbalite.

The Hanafites
The founder of this rite, AbC Hanifa Numan ibn Thabit (699-767), was the grandson of a Persian slave. He was born at Kufa, and plied the trade of a cloth merchant. Being a freedman, he proclaimed his sympathy with the movement which, supported by the latent forces concealed in Persia, placed the 'Abbasids on the throne, but his real feelings were in favour of the so-called legitimate claim of the 'Alids, and the trick by which the Abbasids filched their rights from them must have been abhorrent to this man of Persian blood. He took
his share in the 'Alid rising at

Medina

in 762,

and was

cast into prison,

where he

died.

In later days,

when

THE 'ABBASIDS
men began
teacher,
side, a

23s
that the 'Abbasid
attract so great a

to wonder how it was Government had made no effort to

known to this day as the Great Imam, to its own legend was built up, and it was said that Caliph

Mansur tried to force him to accept a post as qddt, and it was the rough treatment he received when he refused this office which brought about his death. He had
that
sat at the feet of

Hammad

about 737.

From him he had

ibn Abi Sulaiman, who died learnt the system of the

qiyds, the application of

analogy in matters of jurispru-

dence, which has continued to be the rule of this school. The following books are attributed to Abu Hanifa the
:

Kitdb al-Fiqh al-Akbar (Great Book on Dogmatics) it was at a later date 'CnzS.fiqh began to signify jurisprudence which was printed at Lucknow in 1844, with a Hin;

dustani translation a Musnad, collected by his pupils ; a Wasiyya, or Last Testament, dealing with the dogmas of Islamism, and addressed to his friends and a Mak;

hdrij fil-hiyal, devoted to the study of legal quibbles.

greater number of Abu Ha-nif^'s works were probably edited by his grandson, Ismail ibn Hammad, qddi of Bassora and Raqqa, who died in 827. Abu Hanifa left a pupil named AbIJ Yusuf (Yaqub ibn Ibrahim) (731-795), surnamed the Second Imam, who was born at Kiifa, of an old Arab family. He was appointed qddt of Bagdad by Caliph Mahdi, and Although he had put held that post till he died. his master's doctrines into practice, he began to rebel against the use of personal reasoning, and to allow greater weight, in the decision of doubtful cases, to the traditions of the Prophet than to analogy, on which Abu Hanifa very largely relied. His Kitdb al- hardj (^ook on the Land-Tax) has been printed at Bulaq.

The

236

ARABIC LITERATURE
Yusuf, in his turn, had a pupil,

Abu

Muhammad

ibn

al-Shaibani, who was born at Wasit in 749. After having travelled to Medina, to draw knowledge of the traditions on which the study of the law is based at the fountain-head from the teachings of Malik He was ibn Anas he was appointed qddi of Raqqa. dismissed in 802, and afterwards lived at Bagdad, till he went with Hirun al-Rashid in 804 to Rai, where he

al-Hasan

died.

At

later

date

who

lost his library

we find Al-Khassaf (Abu Bakr), when his house was sacked by the

Turkish soldiery after the assassination of the Caliph an Egyptian, Al-Tahawi (Abu Jafar), of al-Muhtadi Taha (843-933) a Bukharian, Al-Marwazi, minister to the Sasinian Prince Hamid, who fell into the hands of Turkomans, and was drawn and quartered by them, in 945 Al-Quduri of Bagdad (Abu'l-Husain) (972who wrote an abridged manual which bears his 1036), name, and is frequently consulted, even in our own days
;
;

all

of

them

lights of the Hanafite sect.

The Malikites
The Malikites take their name from their founder, Abu 'Abdallah Malik ibn Anas, who was born at
Medina
in

715.

He was

taught by the

traditionist

Al-Zuhri, was a strong

partisan of the 'Alids, helped,

by

a fatwd,

Muhammad

ibn 'Abdallah's revolt against

the 'Abbasids in 762, submitted, at a later date, to the Bagdad Government, and beheld Caliph HS.run

attending his lessons

of
his

as

student,

on the occasion

pilgrimage in 795. His Kitdb al-Muwatta is founded on the ijmd'' of Medina in other words, the

THE 'ABBASIDS
unanimous agreement
the
to

237

of the dwellers in that town as accepted traditions and customs. He settles many doubtful cases, in the absence of any traditional basis, by the decisions of the judges who came before him and the proved custom of Medina. Malik took no

text,

pains to leave his pupils a revised and co-ordinated and this must explain the considerable variations
in the different recensions of his

book

those,

for in-

al-Masmudi, and of Muhammad al-Shaibani, whom we have lately mentioned as attending Malik's lessons at Medina. His disciple, 'Abdal-Rahman ibn al-Qasim (719-806), spread and popularised Malik's teaching in the Maghrib, where, as my readers know, it has continued dominant
stance,
of

the

Spaniard YahyA

till

the present day.

He

died in Cairo.

wana he left a up by Asad ibn

corrected,

The whole of Algeria is Malikite. Under the title of Kitdb al-Mudawmanual of Malikite law, originally drawn

al-Furat, and consisting of Ibn alQasim's answers to his questions, afterwards revised,

and

amended by Sahnun Abu

Sa'id

al-

Tanukhi, qddi of Qairawan. Among the most important Malikite doctors of these periods, Ibn Abi Zaid of Qairawan, who was born at Nafza in Spain in 928, lived in Tunis, and died at Fez in Morocco about 980, must be mentioned.

The
820),

Shafi'ites
ibn Idris) (767-

The Imam Al-Shafi'i (Muhammad

founder of the
at in the
Shafi'ite rite,

(some say

Ascalon, or even in

was born at Gaza Yemen), lived till

Bedouin tribe of the Beni-Hudhail, aad thus acquired the pure classic Arabic. To him the

manhood

238

ARABIC LITERATURE

grammarian AI-Asma'i applied, at Mecca, to obtain In the poems of tiie Hudhailites and of Shanfara. listen to the and Medina 786 we see him proceed to teachings of Malik. Having accompanied his uncle, Abu Musab, who had been appointed qddi in Yemen, he became compromised by the intrigues of the 'Alid party, and was brought before the Caliph Harun at Raqqa. He was saved by the intervention of the

He took advantage of this Fadl ibn Rabi'. enforced presence at court to attend the teachings of Muhammad al-Shaibani. In 804 he went on into Egypt, was well received by the governor of the province,
minister

returned
differed cessors.

at

later

date to
in

Bagdad, and seems to

that
of his
to

have been successful

in

teaching his doctrine, which

predein

many particulars from He started on his way

there, after

back

Egypt

813,

and died
is

to Mecca, at

having made a pilgrimage Fustat or Old Cairo, on 20th January 820.

a

His tomb

favourite

place

of

pilgrimage at the

resumed Abu Hanifa's analogical system, and reduced it to practical rules. Of the hundred and nine works he produced, none now remain, save a few as yet unpublished manuscripts, scattered about the libraries of Cairo and Constantinople, and some poems in those of Leyden and Berlin. The Shafi'ite School in Egypt claims Al-Muzani (Abu Ibrahim), who died in 877, the author of an
present day.
Shafi'i

abridged version of the doctrines of the master AlMundhiri of Nishdpur, who lived at Mecca, and died
there in 930 Al-Zubairi (Abu 'Abdallah), who carried the teachings of the Shafi'ite rite to Bassora and
;

Bagdad

Ibn al-Qass, or the Son of the Story-teller

(Abu'I- Abbas),

who

taught at

Amul

in Tabarist^n,

and

THE 'ABBASIDS
died at Tarsus in
(946)
or,
Cilicia,

239

whither he had journeyed

where he performed the Al-Qattan (Abu'l-Hasan), a professor of law at Bagdad, who died in 970 AI-Mahamili, who
as

others assert,

duties of qddi

Bagdad under pupils of there himself, and died there in 1024

studied at

Al-Shifi'i,
;

taught
studied

also Al-Lalaka'i,

the sandal-maker (Abu'l-Qasim Hibat Allah),

who

and taught in the same town, removing at a later date to Dinawar in Iraq 'Ajami, where he died in
1027.

The Hanbalites
Ibn Hanbal (Ahmad ibn Muhammad) (780-855) was born at Bagdad his parents belonged to Merv, which
;

place they quitted a short time before his birth.

all

Like

the traditionists of his period, he travelled in Syria,

in the

Arabian Peninsula, where he returned to Bagdad, where he sat at the feet of Al-Shafi't until that master departed to Egypt. He founded the fourth orthodox sect, which

Mesopotamia, and
stay.

made some

He

differs

from the others more especially in that

its

founder

totally refused to accept the personal elucidation of

any

lawyer,

and would admit no

basis for the law save the

traditions of the Prophet, to the exclusion of all others. This was a reaction which had little effect either in time or space, for it made but few proselytes beyond the province of its birth, and has now almost completely died
out. A few of its adherents still exist at Damascus, where they may be distinguished from their brotherMoslems by the fact that they will not eat the produce of kitchen gardens fertilised by the water which has passed through sewers. The Hanbalites were remarkable for their fanaticism, and caused a great deal of disturbance

240
in

ARABIC LITERATURE
of the

Bagdad when the power

Caliphs began to

wane.

When

the

Caliph

Al-Mutasim

adopted

the

Mutazilite doctrine of the creation of the Koran, Ibn

Hanbal was one of the victims of the persecution which ensued. He was cast into prison, and remained there till Mu tasim's death in 842 but Wathiq would not allow him to leave his own house, in which he was shut up he regained his liberty when, from purely
; ;

Al-Mutawakkil returned to orthodoxy. Ibn Hanbal died on 31st August 855, leaving a Musnad or collection of traditions arranged by his son 'Abdallah, and various works, all of them in manuscript. Most of the books written by Ibn Hanbal's pupils have disappeared. The only ones we can mention are an epitome of jurisprudence by Al-Khiraqi, who died at Damascus in 945, on his way from Bagdad, which city he had left on account of popular disturbances there his works were lost in a fire after his departure and the Tahdhib al-ajwiba, a book written by Abu 'Abdallah alHasan ibn Humaid al-Baghdadi, containing answers to questions on legal subjects, which is now preserved at
political motives,

Berlin.

The Zahirites
Other and
less

of jurisprudence in

were absorbed. of which we owe to the fine studies of it by Herr I. Goldziher, was founded by Abu Sulaiman Da'ud ibn 'All (815-883), whose family belonged to Ispahan, but who was born at Kufa. He studied under the most famous traditionists of Bagdad, and knew Ishiq ibn Rahawaih when he was at Nishapur. He himself taught

important sects sprang from the study which so many enlightened intellects The Zahirite School, our knowledge

THE 'ABBASIDS

241

with brilliant success at Bagdad, where he died. The school he founded utterly repudiated any analogy, or quotation on the authority of any imam, and insisted

on the external meaning (hence the name borne by this Koran and the traditions. This doctrine spread over Persia, India, and 'Uman, more especially amongst the mystics. Yet it had no lengthy vogue in the East, though at a later date it flourished in the Maghrib and in Spain, and many works on its tenets were produced. Besides these great leaders of schools, we must also mention Yahyi ibn Sulaiman, born in 818, who gave his
doctrine, Zdhir) of the
attention to legal subjects, without attaching himself to

any particular school, and wrote

the text of which has been
;

book on the

land-tax,

published at Leyden by

and the famous historian Tabari, who comJuynboll bined the study of jurisprudence with that of Koranic exegesis, and whose pupil, Abu'l-Faraj al-Muafa ibn
Jalts

Zakariya of Nahrawan (915-1000), wrote the Kitdb al(Book of the Habitual Guest), a summary of explanations as to various sayings of the Prophet and his

companions,

in the

form

of a

hundred

lectures.

The
Outside the
circle

Shi'ites

formed by the four great orthodox sects, and the other schools of the same nature, the Shi'ites were in process of evolving a jurisprudence we must now consider, though but few ancient vestiges of it
remain.
In the province of

Yemen, the

Zaidite sect,

which had taken possession of that country in the second century of the Hegira, and is still dominant there, Al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim reckoned among its teachers
:

242
al-Hasani,

ARABIC LITERATURE
;

AI-Hadi Ila'lTruth) Abu'1-Husain Yahya (859-910) another descendant of his, Al-Mahdi Lidinillah (He who is guided towards the Religion of
his grandson,

who died in 860 Haqq (He who guides to

;

the

the in 1013 al-Husain Imam AI-Mu'ayyad-Billah Ahmad ibn (944The works of these writers, formerly unknown 1020).
;

God) al-Husain ibn al-Qisim, who died

European students, have been brought back from Yemen by Herr Glaser, and are now in the Berlin
to

Library.

In Persia, where the Shi'ite School of thought was always mixed up with the feeling for national revenge, we may mention: Abu Jafar al-Qummi (died in 903),. author of a collection of Shi'ite traditions Al-Kulini
;

Ya'qub), died in 939, who wrote a theological treatise under the title oi al-Kdft ft^ Urn al-din

(Muhammad
(That

ibn
is

Adequate in the Knowledge of ReIbn Babuya of Qum, who came to Bagdad out of Khurasan in 966, and died there in 991 several of his many works (over three hundred in number) are in Europe Al-Nu man Ibn Hayyan, who forsook the Malikite sect to become an Imamite, went to Egypt with the Fatimid conqueror Al-Muizz, was appointed qddi, and died there in 974 and Abu
which
ligion)
;

Abu

Ja'far

"Abdallah al-Mufid of Bagdad (949-1022).

Further Development of Jurisprudence

ciples laid

Amongst the host of authors who expounded the prindown in the preceding centuries, we can only

mention the chief. 'All ibn Abi Bakr al-MarghInanI, who died in 1197, wrote a manual for scholars beginning the study of

THE 'ABBASIDS
self

243

Hanafite law, called Biddyat ai-Mubtadt, on which he himproduced a commentary under the name of Hiddya
;

the Persian translation of this latter (The Guidance) work was rendered into English by Charles Hamilton The Hiddya has been commentated by Persian, (1791). Turkish, and Arabic writers, and has had the greatest success that could be desired for any manual of Moslem
law.
Sirij

al-din

Abu Tahir Muhammad AL-SAJAWANDt,

end
of the sixth

who

flourished toward the

century of

the Hegira, wrote a Kitdb al-Fard'id, or Treatise on the

Division of Inheritances, which was surnamed Sirdjiyya This was translated after its author's own surname.
into

English in 1885, by Prasauma Kumar Sen, at Serampore, and in 1890, by A. Rumsey, in London.

The Hasan
at

Shifi'ite rite
'Alt

glories in the possession of Abu'l-

ibn

Muhammad al-Maward!

(974-1058),

town and Bagdad, acted for some time as Grand Qadi at Ustuwa near Nishapur, and finally settled down at Bagdad, where His works were not he was appointed Chief Justice. published during his own lifetime they were ultimately given to the world by some pupil of his. His chief work is the Kitdb al-ahkdm al-sultdniyya, published at Bonn, in This is a. treatise on politics, which 1853, by Enger. defines the ideal of Moslem government as conceived by the lawyers of that day one which has been but little attained, a kind of model society, such as has never really existed, much like Plato's Republic and Xenophon's
at Bassora, studied in his native
;

who was born

Cyropaedeia.

The

abstract definition of the Caliphate,

the qualities indispensable for the exercise of the supreme

power, the study of the various methods of election, the limits of the executive power of viziers and governors of

244

ARABIC LITERATURE

provinces these are the most interesting of the points dealt with by the Moslem thinker. A French translation of the book, one volume of which has already appeared,
has been made by Count Louis Ostrorog. Besides this famous treatise, Al-Mawardi wrote a book of advice to sovereigns, another on the rules to be observed by their ministers, a treatise on politics and government called Tasini al-Nazar wa-ta'jil al-Zafa?' (The Means of Facilitating Reflection and Gaining Swift Victory), another on the signs of prophecy {aldm al-nubuwwd), a collection of proverbs and sayings, and a treatise on morals {addb al-dunya wal-din), printed at Constantinople and Cairo, and still used in the schools of the first-named
city.

Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Ali al-ShirazI (1003born at Firuz-Abad, near Shiraz. was He went 1083) to Bassora and thence to Bagdad. He was placed at the head of the Nizamiyya University when that establishment was founded by the illustrious Nizam al-Mulk, the great minister of the Seljuqids, in 1066. He began by refusing the office, but finally, pressed by his pupils,
Ab1>

who

threatened to leave

him

unless he transported the

scene of his teaching to the

accept
it.

He

new school, he agreed to Nishapur journeyed to as the envoy of the

his

Caliph Al-Muqtadi, and, thanks to

renown

as

teacher and writer, his journey was a triumphal march.

He

died very soon after his return, on 6th

Y\\%

November

1083.

Muhadhdhab
is

{<Zovx&QXt6.

Shafiite law, as

also his

Kitdb al-Tanbih
in

Advice), published at

Leyden

on (Book of 1853 by H. Keijzer.

is

Book)

a treatise

Other works by him, on jurisprudence,

dialectics, the

Moslem catechism, and

of the Shift
ite

the history of the learned well

men

sect, are less

known.

THE 'ABBASIDS
When Abu
Nizamiyya
Ishiq
first

245

refused to act as head of the

in 1067, his place

was taken, though

for a

very short time, seeing that Abu Ishiq reconsidered his refusal within three weeks, by Abu Nasr 'Abdal-Sayyid

IBN al-Sabbagh. He was born at Bagdad in 1009. He had a second opportunity of filling the professorial chair which had once slipped through his fingers, but his sight failed, and he was forced to give up all teaching work. He waited on the minister Nizam al-Mulk at Ispahan, and obtained his promise that a school should be built
expressly for him, but died three days after his return, in 1084.

The Shdmil fV I furit (Complete Treatise on Jurisprudence), the only one of his works we now
possess,
is

at

Cairo

it

is,

according to native

critics,

not only one of the best of the treatises on ShAfi'ite law, but one containing the most authentic traditions and the most conclusive arguments.

Abu'l-Maali'Abdal-Malik al-JuwainI Imam al-HaraMAIN was born at Bushtaniqan, near Nishapur, on On the death of his father, Abu 12th February 1028. Muhammed 'Abdallah ibn Yusuf, who was a teacher in the latter town, he took his place, though barely twenty years of age. Nevertheless, to complete his own studies, and make the sacred pilgrimage, he went to Bagdad, and thence to the two holy cities, Mecca and Medina, where he taught for four years, hence his surname. When he returned to Nishapijr, Nizam al-Mulk founded a school for him, in which he gave courses of lessons till his death, which overtook him on 20th

August 1085, while on a visit to his native village, whither he had gone in the hope of recovering from an Along with his professorial duties, he had disillness. charged those of a preacher. At Nishapur, he held

246

ARABIC LITERATURE

gatherings every Friday, at which he preached sermons, and presided over discussions on various doctrinal
points
:

to these occupations

he added that

of

managing

the waqfs, or landed property devoted to the support of

pious undertakings.

For more than

thirty years he con-

tinued in undisputed possession of these various posts.

When

pulpit of the

the great he died, the mourning was general Mosque from which he had delivered his
;

sermons was broken up, and his pupils, to the number hundred and one, destroyed their pens and inkhorns, and gave up all their studies for a year. His masterpiece is his Nihdyat al-Mailab (Satisfactory Results of Inquiry), a treatise on Shafi'ite doctrine, of which it the was said that Islam had never produced its equal manuscript is preserved at Cairo. His al- Waraqdt (The Leaves), on the principles of law, has been the subject of many commentators his Mughtth al-Khalq is intended to demonstrate the superiority of the Shafi'ite doctrine
of four
: :

over

all

others.

Abd al-Wahid al-Ruyani, a Shafi'ite who was born in Tabaristan in February 1025, was one of the victims of the Assassins, who were then
Abu'l-Mahasin
doctor,
terrifying

the

propaganda.

Moslem world by their The great minister of

active

form of
Seljuqids

the

honoured him with

his special favour, on account of his After having lived for some time at eminent merits. Bukhara, the doctor travelled to Ghazna and Nishapur, then returned to his native country, and founded a school in the capital, Amul. At a later date he taught both at Rai and at Ispahan. His Bahr al-Madhhab (Sea of Doctrine) is the most voluminous treatise on ShS.fi'ite

jurisprudence in existence

it

is

now
:

at
If

Cairo.
all

The

author was in the habit of saying

"

the

Imam

THE 'ABBASIDS

247

Shafi'i's works were to be burnt, I could dictate them from memory." In 1108, just as he had concluded one of his lessons, he was murdered at Amul by the fanatics, who were then holding the castle of Alamut, in the

neighbouring mountains. Abu'l-Hasan 'AlI al-Kiya al-Harras1 (1058-1110) was also born in Tabaristan. He studied at Nishapur under the Imam al-Haramain, who made him his assistant, taught himself at Baihaq, and then at Bagdid, where he entered the Nizamiyya School, with which he maintained his connection all the rest of his life. The Seljuqid Sultan, Barkyiruq, son of Malik-Shah, who highly esteemed him, appointed him chief qddi. He was
a fine-looking man, with a clear voice, and expressed

himself in polished language.

His surname Kiyd

is

Persian

word
Ahkdni

signifying " personage of high rank

and

great influence."

His

UsM al-diniVxincv^X^i,

of Religion)

and

his

al-

Quran (Judgments

of the Koran) are

al-Shash1, surnamed Fakhr and generally known under the name of Mustazhiri (1037-1114), was born at Mayyafariqin, of a family belonging to Shash, a town in Turkestan, north
al-Islam,
of the Yaxartes or Sir-Darya.

now at Cairo. AbO Bakr Muhammad

After having studied in

to

Bagdad and NishApur, and then returned to the 'Abbasid capital, where, in 1 1 10, he was appointed professor at the Nizamiyya, a post he held till his death. His Hilyat al-Ulamd (Ornament of the Wise) is a treatise on Shafi'ite law, dedicated
his native town,

he went on

to the Caliph Mustazhir.

Abu Shuja IBN al-Dahhan was born at Bagdad, where he acquired a huge mass of information, not only on legal subjects, but in various fields of literature,

248

ARABIC LITERATURE
service to
division of

and even of mathematics, which last was of him for the calculations connected with the
inheritances.

He

first

of all attached himself, at Mosul,

Jamal al-din al-Isfahani, and afterwards passed over to Saladin, who gave him a Government post at Mayyafariqin. Not being able to work with his superior, the governor of the town, he
to the service of the minister

proceeded to Damascus and to Egypt, seeking a more suitable employment. He made the pilgrimage in 1193.

On

his

way

back, close to Hilla,

on

the site of ancient

Babylon, his camel fell, and he was killed by the blow he received from its wooden saddle (February 1194). It was said of him that his pen was more eloquent than His close acquaintance with the use of his tongue. astronomical tables led him to draw up legal tables, which he collected into a volume called Taqwim alNasar (The Calendar at a Glance) these tables are divided into ten columns, indicating the different points of view from w^hich the orthodox rites may be considered, and the solutions of them therein provided. Towards the close of the sixth century of the Hegira, another Abu Shuja' Ahmad al-Isfahan! wrote an epitome of Shafi'ite law, entitled Taqrib ; it was published at Leyden, by Keijzer, in 1859. The Fath al-Qarid by Muhammad ibn al-Oasim al-Ghazzi, published and translated by Van den Berg, under the title of Revelation of the Omnip7-esent, is a commentary on the above work. In the town of Amid, now known as Diyarbakr, was born Saif al-din 'All AL-Amid1 (i 156-1233), who at first belonged to the Hanbalite rite, but joined the Shafi'ites at Bagdad. He studied philosophy in Syria, and taught at Cairo. He was accused of heresy, atheism, and immorality, on account of his philosophical learning,
;

"THE 'ABBASIDS
and was obliged
were written
time.
:

249

to

flee

to

notwithstanding

Hamat, where his books this, he was recalled to

a

Damascus as a

professor, but again dismissed after

He

a treatise

wrote the Abkdr al-Afkdr (Virgin Thoughts), on dogmatic philosophy, and the Ihkdm al-

Hukkdm, dealing with the bases of judicial decisions. ABtJ Zakariya Yahya ibn Sharaf al-NawawI (12331278), who was born at Hauran, studied theology

Nawa

near Damascus, in the

in the Syrian capital,

where he

settled as a private individual

the pilgrimage in 1253.

when he returned from He filled Abu Shama's place

died, and was his successor at the Ashrafiyya School of the hadtth. He died in his native town, whither he had gone to recruit after his heavy labours, on 22nd December 1278. His Minhdj al-tdlibtn was translated and published in 1884, by Van den Berg, at Batavia, by order of the Netherlands Government, under the title of Guide to Fervent Believers, a manual of Moslem jurisprudence according to the Shafi'ite rite. Many commentaries have been written on this work, an honour also bestowed on the same author's Collection of His study of jurisprudence led him to Foi'ly Traditiotzs. draw up, with the object of establishing the orthography of the names of the authors quoted in the texts, the Tahdhlb al-asmd (Correction of Proper Names), published at Gottingen in 1842-1847, by F. Wiistenfeld, under the His title of Biographical Dictionary of Illustrious Men. Taqrib wa-Taisir (Study Facilitated), an introduction to

when he

the study of the traditions, printed at Cairo in 1890, with Suyuti's commentary (entitled Tadrib'), has been translated into French by Marcais. A score of other

works by Al-Nawawi are to be European and Eastern libraries.

17

found

in

various

50

ARABIC LITERATURE
balance
all

To

these names, the Hanbalites can only

MuWAFFAQ AL-DiN 'Abdallah Ibn Qudama AL-Maqdis! (1146-1223), born at Jamma'il in Palestine, who studied at Bagdad, and wrote a treatise
bring forward that of

on Hanbalite law called al-Muqni (That which Satisfies), and other works, of which twelve manuscripts at least still exist. His nephew Abu'l - Faraj 'Abdal - Rahman (i 200-1 283), who was born at Damascus, was his pupil, became a preacher and teacher in the school of the traditions, and was chosen qddi of the Hanbalite rite, when special judges for each of the orthodox rites were appointed, in 1265. He founded a school which bore his name. Piya al-din Muhammad ibn 'Abdal-Wahid al-Dimashqi, who was born at Dar al-Mubarak in 1173, He studied in Egypt, at Bagdad, and at Hamadhan. returned to Damascus in 1203, started again on a long jouimey which took him as far as Merv, and ended by
accomplishing the pilgrimage. He died in 1245, leaving a treatise on the medical science of the Prophet, which is now in Paris, and a Fadd'il al-A'mdl (Merits of the Works), which specially treats of the merit to be acquired

by use

of the peculiar litanies of the Dervishes.

He
was

built a school to

which he

left his library,

but

this

sacked and dispersed at a later date.

In Spain, the Zahirite doctrine
a

had found

its

great

protagonist in the person of

Abu Muhammad

'Al! Ibn

of Persian extraction, son of an important Cordova, where he was born on 7th November 994, in the Oriental quarter of the city, called at that time Munyat al-Mughira. He followed the same Government career as had his father before him, and in spite of his avowed and complete indifference to worldly success, rose to the rank of vizier. He gradually withdrew himself
official at

Hazm,

man

THE 'ABBASIDS
from the
Sh^fi'ite

251

School of the traditions, and attended whom he first gathered the " principles according to dogmatism" that is to say, the adoption, pure and simple, of the exoteric meaning of the text, without any explanation by analogy, nor the authority of a juris peritus. He wrote many books, which enlightened but a few pupils. The acrimony of his attacks earned him many enemies, who avenged themselves by accusing him of heresy, thus obtaining his dismissal, and his banishment from several
the lessons of Da'ud the Zahirite, from

provinces in Spain. He spent the rest of his life on his property near Niebla, where he died on i6th August 1064.

The Gotha Library

possesses his Ibtdl al-qiyds wdl-rdy

(Destruction of Analogy and Speculative Examination), a polemical disquisition, from the Zahirite point of view,
against the principles of orthodox law.

He

also wrote

a Kitdb al-milal zifd /-ntka/ (History of the Philosophical

and Religious Sects), which has been studied by Steinschneider and Goldziher. Together with several other treatises on jurisprudence, we come upon a purely literary work of his, now in the Leyden Library, called Tauq al-hamdma (The Dove's Necklace), an anthology of
love poems.

Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad Ibn TOmart (the Berber form of the name 'Umar) was born in the Atlas Mountains, overlooking the province of Sus in Morocco, While still very young he on 2ist February 1092.
earned a great reputation for piety. He travelled his longing to make the Mecca pilgrimage brought him in the first place to Cordova, then to the Hijaz, and thence to Bagdad, where he attended the Nizamiyya His teachers were professors of the Ash'ai"ite lectures. doctrine, and he carried it back with him to Tripoli in
;

2 52

ARABIC LITERATURE

Barbary, mingling with its allegorical interpretations Shfite theory of the impeccability of the imam descended from 'Ali. The disturbances caused by his teaching drove him out of Tripoli and Bijaya, and he took refuge with the Berber tribe of Masmijda, from which he was descended, and which espoused his cause he was prosecuted by the Government, proclaimed himthe
;

self

Mahdi

in 1121,

and began the struggle against the

Moravids.

He

died in the course of an attempt on

the city of Morocco, four

months

after his troops

had

been defeated before that

;

His successors disseminated his teaching over Northern Africa and his pupil, 'Abd al-Mu'min, founded and Spain the Almohad dynasty. The Paris Library possesses a complete set of his works, a collection of small treatises on theology and jurisprudence. Another of his books, the Kanz al- UMm (Treasury of Knowledge), a work on religious philosophy, is at Cairo.
fortress, in

1130.

The Almohads

lead

us

on

to

the

Shi'ites.

The

Zaidites of Southern Arabia produced

works

to explain

and defend their doctrines. Abu Talib Yahya al-Buthani, surnamed "the Imam who speaks according to the Truth
{Ndtiq bil-hagq)," who died in 1033, wrote, besides a treatise on jurisprudence (al-Tahrtr'), a history of the
Zaidite

imams down

to 971 {al-Ifddd)

a collection of

traditions
ahdditli,

was compiled, under the title of Durar alby Taqi al-din 'Abdallah Ibn Abi Najm, who

died towards 1165; 'Abdallah ibn Zaid al-AnsJ wrote the Fatdwi al-nabawiyya, against the Mutarrifites, and the

Mandhij

al-baydn, with a similar

;

tendency

he was

alive

about 1233

the

Imam
left

al-Mansiir Billah 'Abdallah ibn

a collection of poetr}', a treatise

Hamza

(i

166-1237)

on the mutual duties

of parents

and

their children [al-

THE 'ABBASIDS
baydn

253

wd l-thabdt),

a defence of the Zaidite party {risdlat

al-Kdfiya),

and other treatises of the same nature. Most the remainder are in the of these works are at Berlin
;

Museum. Amongst the Imamites, the Sharif Al-Murtada, whose name was Abul-Qasim 'Ali ibn Taliir, the deBritish

scendant of 'All ibn Abi Talib (966-1044), held the post of inspector of the 'Alid family at Bagdad, and died there. Under the title of Al-durar wa' l-ghurar (Pearls and Stars), he collected the eighty-two discourses he had occasion to deliver before gatherings over which he himself presided. These embrace a great variety of literary subjects, and contain grammatical observations on passages in the Koran or the hadtth, explained by His Shihdb fil-Shaib wdlmeans of ancient poetry. shabdb, on white hair and youth, has been printed at Constantinople. He is also the author (unless it be his brother Radi) of the Nahj al-baldgha, a collection of
sayings which he himself ascribed to
Ali
;

the

com-

mentator Mustaqim-Zade has even asserted him to be the real author of the dtwdn attributed to 'Ali, and this is by no means an impossibility.

Khurasan Bagdad, and He wrote the Fihrist Kutub al-Shia (List of Shi'ite Books), which was published at Calcutta by A. Sprenger and Maulawy Besides divers works on jurisprudence, 'Abdul-Haqq. notably the Tahdhtb al-Ahkdm (Correction of Judgments), in which he endeavours to reconcile the various Jmdiths, he has composed a book of prayers {al-hall
Jafar
at

Abu

Muhammad, born

Tus

in

in 995, spent the greater part of his life at died at Najaf (Meshhed 'Ali) in 1067.

wdl-iqd), and a treatise on

Moslem worship,

entitled

Misbdh al-Mutajahhid.

54

ARABIC LITERATURE

Radi al-din Abu 'Ali al-Tabarsi, who died in 1153, wrote a great commentary on the Koran, under the name of Majmd al-bajdfz, and another yet larger, entitled Jdnii al-jawdmi ; he defended the Imamite doctrine in his Kitdb al-ihtijdj (Book of the Argument).

Najm-al-din
(the Examiner),

Jafar

al-Hilli,

surnamed al-MuJiaqqiq

the great Shi'ite

al-Isldin
at Calcutta,

who was born at Hilla in 1205, wrote code known under the title of Shardi"

(Laws of Islamism), which has been printed and the publication of which, with a Russian translation, was begun by Kasem-Beg; it has been translated into French in its entirety, by Monsieur A. Querry. The astronomer Nasir-al-din Tusi, who travelled with the Mongol Emperor Hulagu, is said to have been proud to attend this author's lessons. He died in 1277, of a fall from the terrace of his own house.

The Study of the Koran

study
researches necessitated by the Koran, on which the whole of Moslem jurisprudence and society was founded, was
a
result

As

of

the

of

law,

the

studied more and more deeply. It was important to be able to read the text well, so as to avoid any wrong reading which might vitiate its meaning it was yet more important thoroughly to grasp that meaning. These were the two branches of science which sprang up in the East the science of reading, and the science
;

of exegesis.

When
text

Caliph 'Uthman laid

to

which was

sion as to

down a single and only be absolute, and whereby all discusthe real reading of the sacred book was to

THE 'ABBASIDS

255

be silenced, he had believed himself to be providing an unshakable foundation for the new religion. This was an illusion. In spite of the disappearance of the texts which did not agree with the accepted Vulgate, schools arose in the great cities of the empire at Mecca and Medina, jealous of their reputation as holy cities at Bassora and Kufa, the homes of grammatical knowledge. In these the art of reading the Koran was transmitted by oral tradition, and each of the fashions taught could appeal -to the authority of some great name from which its teaching had come down. Yet the multifarious differences growing out of oral tradition soon necessitated the substitution of written tradition. As early as the middle of the second century of the Hegira, Ya'qub al-Hadrami compiled a work on the various ways of reading. Of all the books the titles of which are mentioned to us, none, however, now remain neither the compilation by the famous historian Tabari, nor the summary of the seven schools of readers given by Abu Bakr Ibn Mujahid we must come down to the fourth century before we find short works by Ibn Khaqan (died 927) and Ibn Mihrin (died

991),

which are now preserved

at Berlin, Algiers,

and

Leyden. Far more interesting, from our point of view, is the interpretation of the actual text of the Koran. At a verjr early date, the companions of the Prophet were endlessly questioned as to the meaning of obscure and difficult passages, which are very numerous sometimes on account of the style, which is intentionally concise and admitting of several explanations, and sometimes owing to the use of words belonging to the Quraishite dialect, which the other Arabs either misunderstood or did

56

ARABIC LITERATURE
at all.

not understand
of

'Abdallah Ibn 'Abbas, the uncle

is

Mahomet,

to

whom

ascribed

the
first

origin

of

many Jiadtths, of which he was the was often obliged to pronounce regular exegetical judgments on the difficulties laid before him, and his authority is frequently quoted by commentators of a
ear-witness,
later

date.

From

this

period

commences

the

de-

velopment of a considerable body of literature which We have still crowds the shelves of Eastern libraries. already had occasion to mention, amongst the productions of the third century, the works of Ibn Qutaiba, Then the mystics Al-Zajjaj, Tabari, and Nishapuri. begin to add their phantasmagoric explanations and men their dreams to their predecessors' investigations
;

like

Sahl

ibn 'Abdallah al-Tustari (a disciple of the

saint Dhu'1-Nun, the Egyptian, who died Bassora towards 886 in the odour of sanctity, and who performed miracles) introduced a mass of esoteric interpretations into their commentaries on the text, to wrest its sense to the advantage of their own ideas, moral and mystic, drawing complete explanations, intended to serve their own ends, from the simple words they turned aside from their natural signification. With these mystics, of Aryan origin, we do find certain lawyers who practised a healthy form of exegesis, simply

Moslem

at

taking what the text really contains.

Among them we
learned

may mention
of the

Al-]assas

al-Razi,

Hanafite

Bagdad School, who long lived as Nishapiar, and whose works are to be found
;

a teacher at
at Constanti-

nople and at Cairo 'Abdallah ibn 'Atiyya, of Damascus, who applied his profound knowledge of the Arabic of the pre-Islamic poets to the explanation of the Koran Ibn Zamanain, a learned Spaniard, belonging to the
;

THE 'ABBASIDS

257

Malikite rite, who died in 1008, leaving a commentary, an abridgment of which is preserved in the British Museum; Al-Hasan al-Nishapuri, originally a disciple of the dogmatic school of the Karramiyya, who became a Shifi'ite, and added to his reputation as a learned exegetist that of a philologist and historian (died 1015) Ibn Salama, Bagdad, in which of city he taught at the Mosque of Al-Mansflr, and wrote the earliest work in our possession on those peculiar passages in the Koran which do away with each other, and which are called ndsikh znd7ftansiikA{tha.t which abrogates, and that which is abrogated). My readers are aware that although the Koran is reputed to be the Divine word, merely transmitted by the Prophet's mouth, certain of its precepts have been abrogated and annulled by subsequent injunctions thus will a monarch correct himself under pretext of having been better informed on the second occasion. This is no shock to the Moslem mind, accustomed as it is, through the system of passive obedience which is the very foundation of its faith, to look on the Deity as an autocrat far more mighty than anything known
; ;

on

earth.

The

Shfites themselves, as early as the fourth

century, had interpreters of the Koran, such as Abu'l-

Hasan 'Ali al-Qummi, the author of an abridged commentary which represents the family of 'Ali as the source of all knowledge, and which gives us an insight, so to speak, into the evident and entire fabrication which is
the characteristic peculiarity of Shi'ite literature.

The art of reading the Koran has been treated by Abu Muhammad MakI ibn Hammush al-QaisI. He
was born
to his
at

Qairawan

in 966,

of thirteen, to study philosophy

went and

to

Egypt

at

the age

arithmetic, returned

own

country,

left it

again in 987, to go to Mecca,

2S8

ARABIC LITERATURE

and continued his studies in Egypt when he came back. He was an incorrigible traveller, started for the valley of
the Nile a third time, with the intention of studying the

methods of reading the Koran, numbering seven, and remained there a year. In 997 he returned to Mecca, where he spent four years, and thence proceeded to Spain, taught in various mosques at Cordova, was appointed imam and preacher at the Great Mosque, and retained that position till his death in 1045, though he was hardly fitted to fill it efficiently, for he was more proficient in the art of psalmody than in the composition of sermons.
different

The Bodleian
(Observation of
his

possesses

his

Ri dya
;

li-tajwtd

al-qiraa

Good Reading)

the Berlin Library, and

those of Gotha and Cairo, have his Tabsira, his Kashf,

Prdb niushkildt al-Qurdn (Grammatical Explanation Words in the Koran), and his Shark Kalld wa - bald (Commentary on those two Arabic
of Certain Difficult

expressions).

Abu 'Amr 'Uthman

ibn

Sa'id

al-Dani

(981-1053),

who was born

in 1006,

Denia in Spain, made the pilgrimage and remained four months at Qairawan, and a
at

year at Cairo. On his return he settled in his native town, and died there. Under the title of Taisir, he left a treatise on the seven different readings, another of the

same nature

called

y<2?;2z''

al-Baydn, a

book on the com-

position of the Koran and its orthography (al-Muqnf), and some other treatises of a similar kind nine in all, of the hundred and twenty works he

the definition of

Khalaf al-Saraqost1 was born at Saragossa, and died there on 4th January 1063. He was deeply versed in literature, and never ceased tsudying and communicating the information thus ac-

produced. Abu Tahir Ismail IBN

THE 'ABBASIDS

259

quired to the public till the day of his death. His Kitdb al- Univdn exists in manuscript at Berlin. Abu 1-Muzaffar Yahya IBN HuBAiRA was the son of a soldier belonging to the military colony established on the Dujail in 'Ir^q. He was of pure Arab blood. He studied Hanbalite law and the Koranic sciences at Bagdad, and subsequently entered the Government service, and rose to be vizier, being thus rewarded for a well-turned letter whereby he brought about the repudiation
of

the

Abyssinian

eunuch

Mas'ud

al-Bilali,

Prefect of the Police at Bagdad, under the Seljuqids. He died in 1165. His Ifsdh deals with those words in

book as to the reading of which the most famous readers disagree it is now in existence, at Paris. His Ishrdf treats of the difference between the four orthodox rites.
the sacred
:

Al-Qasim ibn Firroh al-Shatibi (1144-1194), who was born at Jativa in Spain, went to Cairo in 1176, and was a reader of the Koran there. His father's
is the ancient Spanish fierro (for hierro), iron. His masterpiece, which is entitled Hirs al-Amdnt waWajh al-Tahdnt (Wishes Accomplished and Open Felicitations), but which is better known under the name of Chdtibiyya, is a didactic poem in one hundred and

name

seventy-three lines, a versification of the Tatsir, intended

in rough and not very intelligible language all the rules for reading the Koran. Ibn Khallikan was of opinion that no work of the same nature had been previously produced. Let us admire the conquest of a difficulty, and pass on our way. Al-Dani's Muqm was also put into verse by the same author, and he likewise left a commentary on the Koran. He had a pupil, 'Alam al-din Abu'l-Hasan 'All AL-

for learning

by

heart,

which gives

2 6o

ARABIC LITERATURE

SakhawI, who was born at Sakha, in Egypt, in 1163, and exercised the calling of Koran reader at Damascus, where he died in 1245. He wrote a number of works on the religious sciences, amongst them the Hiddyat alMurtdi (Dnection in Doubtful Cases), a poem in four hundred and twenty-seven lines, on the homonymous expressions to be found in the Koran, commentaries on the
works of his master, al-Chatibi, seven religious poems, and a correspondence in verse with his contemporary

Kamal

al-din al-Sharishi, the

commentator

of Hariri's

Lectures.

So successful was

his oral teaching, that

crowds

eager to learn to read the Koran under his guidance might be seen round him in the Great Mosque of the

Omeyyads.

Each person was allowed near him

;

in turn,

but only after a long wait sometimes two or three read difficult passages to him at one and the same time, and

he would give his criticisms of each, one after the other. The grammarians devoted their leisure moments not only to reading the text of the Koran, but to interpreting AbiT'l-Hasan 'Ali ibn Ibrahim Al-HaufI its meaning. came from a village near Bilbis, in Egypt he died in 1038, after having written the Burkdn (The Proof), a commentary on the Koran in twenty-eight volumes. Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali Ibn Mattuya AL-WahidI, of Nishapur, was descended, as the name of his ancestor {Mattat, Matthew) indicates, from an Aramean and Christian family he was a disciple of Tha'labi, and died, after a long illness, in 1075. His Asbdb al-NuzM is an historical
: :

on which the suras and book were revealed he also wrote two commentaries, the Wajtz and the Wasit, and turned
narrative
of

the occasions

verses of the sacred

his attention to explaining

Mutanabbi's verses

in a fashion

superior to that of his predecessors.

THE 'ABBASIDS
Abu Bakr Muhammad IBN al-Arab1 was born
Seville in

261
at

accompanied his father on a journey through the East in 1092, and visited Damascus, Bagdad, and the Hijaz. After he had accomplished the ceremonies of the pilgrimage, he returned to Bagdad, to attend the teachings of Ghazali, and then went back He reached his to Seville by Alexandria and Cairo. native city in iioo, and acted for some time as qddi, teaching there afterwards, till his death in 1151. His commentary on the traditions of Tirmidhi, called ^Aridat al-Ahwadht, is lost, but at Cairo his other commentary on the Koran {QdnAn al-ta'wil), his judicial studies of the sacred text, and his treatise on marriage (/ard id al-nikdh), may yet be seen. 'Abdal-Rahman al-SuhailI al-Khath'ami, who was born near Malaga, in the village of Suhail, in 1 1 14, studied at Grenada, lived for some time at Seville, and finally returned to Malaga. The Sultan of Morocco, Ya'qub ibn Mansur, summoned him to his court, and he died in Northern Africa some three years His Tdrifwdl-tldjn exlater, on 23rd November 1185. plains those passages of the Koran which contain proper names his Raud al-Unuf \s a commentary on the biography of the Prophet by Ibn Hisham, which has been closely examined by P. Bronnle. All the extensive labours of the commentators we have hitherto noticed, most of them grammarians, are summed
1076,
'

up

in Baidawi's celebrated

work,

Anwdr al-tanzil wa-asrdr

Mysteries

al-tdwil (The

Light of Revelation and the

by Fleischer. 'Abdallah ibn 'Umar al-BaidAwI, who belonged to Baida, a little town in Fars, was the son of the Grand Qadi of that province,' under the atdbek Abii Bakr ibn Sa'd, the Maecenas of Persian poetry. He himself acted as qddt
of Interpretation), edited

262

ARABIC LITERATURE

and afterwards Hved where he died about 1286. His commentary is based on Zamakhshari's Kashshdf, to which he has added much matter, drawn from other sources. It is the favourite commentary of the Sunnites but it is insuffiat Shiraz, the capital of the province,
at Tabriz,
:

treatment of the subject matter is too brief, and indeed it has been a good deal criticised, even in the East. His Minhdj al- Wusul is a treatise on
cient,
its

because

Shafi'ite law, like his GJidyat al-Quszvd

his

Misbdh

alis

arwdh

is

a theological

manual

his Tawdli''

al-anwdr

metaphysical treatise. He also wrote a history of Persia from the days of Adam till the year 1275, in the Persian language. It is called Nizdm al-Tawdrikh.
1081),

Abu'l-Walid Sulaiman ibn Khalaf AL-Baj1 (1012born at Badajoz, went to the East in 1029, and

remained there for thirteen years, three of which were spent at Mecca and three at Medina. On his return he held a post as Malikite qddt, and died at Almeria. He left the world a Sunan al-Sdlihin (Habits of Pious
Folk), a collection of traditions touching moral conduct,

FusM al-Ahkdm on jurisprudence, and a Reply, now preserved at the Escurial, to an Apology for Christianity contained in a letter from a French monk to Muqtadir,
a

Prince of Saragossa.

Dogmatic Theology
The Koran had
indeed,
society,
it

certain inveterate enemies, to

had assigned an

inferior position in the

whom, new
their

without insisting

religion
last,

these were
to

on

their

forswearing
Christians.

the Jews

and the
In

The
all,

especially, did not fail to argue against a religion

which claimed

rule

them.

Syria,

above

THE 'ABBASIDS

263

country but recently snatched from the hands of the Roman Emperors of the East, the struggle was sharp

and the disputations hot. The necessity for replying to these redoubtable adversaries called Moslem dogmatic
theology into existence. Soon the sects which sprang up in the very bosom of Islam constrained the orthodox
teachers to wrestle against the innovators, with arguments
texts. The Murjites held the doctrine of absolute predestination too extreme, and

drawn from the ancient

softened
great
it

down

they had the glory of counting the

Abii

jurisconsult
real attack

Hanifa among their

is

disciples.

But the
ists,

on orthodoxy came from the

It

rational-

called in Arabic Mutazila, that

to say, "those

who

separate themselves."

was

at

Ata founded the

its

Mu tazilite

sect.

Bassora that Wasil ibn This school directed

inquiries specially to the existence

and

attributes of

the

Deity.
their

The ancient
ideas

Mutazilites are said to have

dialectics

drawn
This
is

from the
are

of the

Greeks.
third

may

be, but, in the

absence of their writings, proof

all

impossible,

and these

lost.

In

the

century much argument was expended on the famous question whether the Koran had been created, or had The orthodox party inexisted through all eternity. opinion the Mu tazilites authoriclined to the second
;

tatively put

forward the

one, and steeped the

the Caliph

The struggle was Moslem Empire in blood.

first.

a long

In 827,
to

al-Ma'mun

officially

declared the

Koran

be created, and commanded that all who controverted This brilliant this doctrine should be prosecuted. triumph of the Mu tazilite teaching did not last long. In 851, Al - Mutawakkil, who, for political reasons, desired the support of the orthodox party, upset the fragile edifice, and placed the secular arm at the

264

ARABIC LITERATURE
At the same period,

disposal of the Mutazilites' foes.

ibn Ishfiq of Nishapur wrote a book against them, affirming the unity of, and noting the proofs of
the attributes
of the
of,

Muhammad

the Deity.

But the

final

disappearance

movement, and the establishment of a rigid orthodoxy, cast in a definite mould, and never again to be altered, must be ascribed to a great Moslem doctor, Abu'l-Hasan 'Alt ibn Isma'il AL-AsharL He came of an ancient and noble Arab familj^, and was born at Bassora in 873. Although he was brought up in a family of orthodox opinions, he became a Mutazilite, convinced by the teachings of the great doctor of that sect, Al-Jubba'i, and continued in this belief till he had reached his fortieth year. He then awoke to the truth His Mutazilite and returned to the orthodox fold. studies made him a dangerous enemy, for he was able
to fight the rationalists with their

Mu tazilite

abjuration took place in public, and

for

own weapons. His made a great stir,

the pulpit of the Great Mosque at it was from Bassora that he announced his repudiation of Mutazilite opinions and his submission to the faith of his fathers At a later date he went to Bagdad, and there (912). wrote ninety-nine works, many of which are quite small
treatises.

During
ibn
quarter
in

Al-Ash'ari's period,

Abu Mansur Muhammad

surnamed after the which he was born, was preaching a reform of the orthodox dogma which met with brilliant success in India, Transoxania, and TurThere was but very slight divergence, indeed, key. between his views and those of Al-Ash'ari. He died in his native city in 944. Soon after, a most prolific polyAbu'l-Laith algraph was born in the same town
al-Maturidi,
in

Mahmud

thus

Samarqand

THE 'ABBASIDS

265

Samarqandt, a Hanafite doctor, whose studies embraced the various fields of theology, jurisprudence, exegesis,

and moral

science.

He

died about 993.

(1049-1111), thus surnamed, according to Sam'ani, after the village

of Ghazala, near Tus, in

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-GhazalI

Khurasan, where he was born

studied

(not al-Ghazzali, as

it is

commonly pronounced),

Nishapur, where he received instruction from imam the Al-Haramain. After the death of his master, he attached himself to the famous Vizier Nizam al-Mulk, who gathered all the most illustrious men of his time about him he was victor in the public disputations which took place, and the caravans soon carried his fame far and wide. In 1054 he was appointed to teach at the Nizamiyya at Bagdad, where an audience of three hundred persons crowded to hear him but at the end of four years he resigned his post, and had it conferred on his brother Ahmad, so that he himself might be more free to prosecute his philosophical researches. For the space of eleven years, as he tells us, he withdrew from the world, and gave himself up to ascetic practices. He travelled, and Damascus, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Alexandria each welcomed him in turn. Then it was that he endeavoured to reconcile science with faith, and plunged into the pantheistic mysticism of the Sufis. While at Alexandria, he heard of the Moravid rising, the leader of which believed himself to have brought forth a reforming movement in Islam, and conceived the idea of entering the service of Yusuf ibn Tashifin. But Yusuf died in 1106, before Ghazali had started on his journey, and the philosopher renounced his plan, and returned to his native town of Tus, where he lived

theology

at

in peace, except for the period

18

during which, in response

266
to the

ARABIC LITERATURE
Muhammad, son of Mahk-Shah, he He died in the Tabaran quarter, on December, 11 11. He had founded a Sufi monastery
request of
:

taught at Nishapur.
19th
there,

and also a madrasa for theological study. Suyuti was able to say of him " If there was to have been any prophet after Mahomet, Al-Ghazali would surely have been that prophet." The admiration of the Moslem world decorated him with the title of Hujjat al-Isldin (The Decisive Argument of Islamism), He belonged to the Shafi'ite rite, which was the most general in Persia This was long before the triumph of at that time. Shafi'ism, which was not to become the State religion
till

the time of the Safavids, in the sixteenth century.

to Ghazali's pen are very numerous. us of sixty-nine which are still in In this place we can only hastily review
tells

The works we owe

Brockelmann
existence.

them. The Jawdhir al-Qurdn (Jewels of the Koran) is a system of theology; "Cn&^Aqida is a statement of the articles of the Moslem faith, which has been published by Pococke in his Specimen; the Precious Pearl {Aldurra al-fdkhird) is a treatise on the Last J udgment and the end of the world what theologians call an eschatology it has been translated and published by L. The morality and theology of the mystics are Gautier. codified in the Ihyd ^ulAin al-din (Revivification of the Religious Sciences). The Mizdn al-amal (Balance of the Works) has been translated into Hebrew by Ibrahim ben Hasdai of Barcelona, and published by Goldenthal. The Kimiyd al-sddda (Alchemy of Happiness) is a popular lecture founded on mysticism this work, which was originally written in Persian, has been translated into English by H. A. Homes, under the above English title. Ayyuhd!l-walad (O Child !) is a celebrated moral

THE 'ABBASIDS
treatise,

267

which has been translated into German and published by Hammer-Purgstall. In the judicial department, his treatises on Shafi'ite law have earned great success in the Moslem world his Basit, Wasit,
;

and Wajtz

abridgments of them. In that of philosophy, the Tahdfut al-Faldsifa (Collapse of the Philosophers) is an attack on the adherents of the Greek philosophy it has been studied by De Boer. The Maqdsid al-faldsifa (Aims of the Philosophers) is a sort, of introduction to the above. Its text has been pubare
all
;

by G. Beer, and a Latin translation by Gondisalvi which was printed at Venice in 1506. The Munqidh min al-daldl (Preservative from Error),
lished
is

in existence,

written after the author

recommenced

his

life

as

teacher at Nishapur for the second time, describes the development of his line of philosophic thought. It was

and published by Schmolders, in his Essay on among the Arabs ; a second and greatly improved translation was published in ih& Jouimal Asiatique for 1877, by that learned savant, Barbier de Meynard. Together with this great Shafi'ite doctor we must not forget to mention his brother, Abu'l-Futuh Majd al-din
translated
the Schools of Philosophy

Ahmad, who succeeded

to his professorial chair at the

Nizamiyya. Like him, he had mystic leanings, and he disseminated his views by exhortation, as well as by his pen, for he was a fine-looking man, and had the gift of miracles. He had a passion for preaching in public,

which led him somewhat

to neglect his judicial studies.

He

died at Qazvin in 1126.

He

abridged his brother's

and wrote treatises on Siifism, such as the Minhdj al-Albdb (Road for Hearts), a treatise on the advantages of poverty and the assumption of monkish garb among
Ihyd,

268
the mystics
;

ARABIC LITERATURE
a

book {Eawdriq

al-ilmd') in defence of

music, which was considered futile and frivolous by strict Moslems, but which the mystics held to be one

means

of reaching the state of ecstasy.

is

His Kitdb

al-

dhakhtra

summary of his brother's system. Najm al-din Abu Hafs 'Umar al-Nasaf1 (1068-1142),
a
in the

who was born

was

town

of Nasaf, in Transoxania,

one of the greatest Hanafite teachers of his time. His most famous work is his Aqd'id (Articles of Faith), a Moslem catechism, pubhshed by W. Cureton, and translated into French in the Tableau de f empire othoman, by Mouradjea d'Ohsson, and into German by Ziegler. He also wrote a long didactic poem of two seven hundred lines, on the differences which thousand leaders of the orthodox rites, and at least two divide the commentaries on the Koran.
^

Abu'1-Fath Muhammad al-Shahrastan! (1086-1153) was born at Shahrastan, a large village in Khurasan, and studied at Jurjaniyya (Ourghendj), and at Nishapur, where he specially devoted his attention to the theological

system of Al-Ash'ari.

He He

took advantage of his

pilgrimage to

Mecca

(in 11 16), to

Bagdad, on

his

way

back.

spend three years at then returned to his

own
nihal

country, and died there.

is

His Kitdb al-milal wa'l-

and detailed statement of the various philosophical opinions and religious sects, Moslem and other. It has been published by Cureton, and translated into German by Haarbriicker. He also wrote a history of the philosophers, which was in the possession of Bland a Persian translation brought to London by Eraser was purchased by a Prince of Oudh, and taken back to India by him. The Nihdyat al-iqddm (Limit of Progress) is a complete treatise on scholastic theology.
a complete

THE 'ABBASIDS
The Musdrdat
tions of metaphysics.

269

al-faldsifa is a discussion of seven ques-

Siraj al-din 'Ali al-Ush1, who was born at tjsh in Farghina, wrote, towards the year 1173, a didactic poem

rhyming in /, and known by the title of Amdlt (Dictations), which deals with the principles of the Moslem faith, and which has been published by P. von Bohlen, and frequently commentated. An extract, consisting of a hundred short traditions, from his Gliurar al-akhbdr is preserved in manuscript both at Cairo and at Berlin. On the occasion of the receipt of a letter from the Roman Emperor of Constantinople by the Egyptian Sultan Malik - Kamil, Abu'l - Baqa Sahh al-Ja'fari indited, in the year 1221, a refutation of Christianity and
Judaism, under the title oi Al-baydn al-wadth al-maskMd, which has been utilised by F. Triebs in his dissertation,

published at

Bonn

in 1897.

'Abdal-Aziz ibn 'Abdal-Salam al-Sulam1 (1181-1262), surnamed Sultdn al- Ulamd, who was born at Damascus, was a preacher there till he was summoned to Egypt,

about 1240, by Malik-Shah. He remained in that country till he died, and wrote a large number of

works on Shafi'ite jurisprudence, eighty-four of which, have come down to us, among them the great and the little QawdHd al-Shart'a (Rules of the Law), the Mulhat al-ttiqdd, which is a criticism of Al-Ash'ari's system, and a polemical attack on certain innovators, such as the
hashwiyya.

The Mystics
The same impulse which drew men's minds towards, religious orthodoxy carried a great many of them beyond
the

bounds of reason, and, aided by influences

of Persian

2-jo
origin,

ARABIC LITERATURE

developed the theories of mysticism in the Moslem The men who have been called the Saints of Islam were all mystics, or, to give them the name under which they were known in the East, they were Sufis men clad in wool, or, as we should say, in
world.

fustian.

Originally they were ascetics, after the fashion

of the Christian

monks

men who

and

its

perishable good, to

renounced the world devote themselves to the

;

at a later date we contemplative life in desert places orders, with certain apfind brotherhoods, religious pointed spots where they met for united prayer

prayers which rapidly became spiritual exercises of a very material description, such as the dance of the whirling dervishes, the juggling tricks of the 'Isavis, and the

But at the distant screams or roarings of the Rifa iyya. period of which we now speak, all these things were in the future. The question arises whether Moslem mysticism had its origin in India, or among the Greek and Syrian monks. In either case, it is the very antithesis of the Semitic spirit, and must have been the outcome of the most powerful of Aryan influences. The oldest mystics whose works have come down to us
are the following

al-Muhasibi,

Abu 'Abdallah al-Harith ibn Asad who belonged to Bassora. He preached the
:

renunciation of worldly things, and set a practical example by refusing his patrimonial inheritance on pretext

founded on the fact that his father had been a supporter of the doctrine of human free will, which is contrary to the orthodox theory of predestination, and that, in Moslem law, persons of different faiths cannot inherit from each other. He lived in indigence, and died in 857. His contemporary, Dhu'1-Nun the Egyptian, born at Ikhmhxi, seems to have held religious
of a legal scruple,

THE 'ABBASIDS
views which were closely

271
fantastic

bound up with most

of

notions on the subject of alchemy.

In the person of Ala

Junaid (died 910),

to

who came
father

family belonging

Nahawand

(his

was a glassworker), Sufism

appears to have taken a decided trend in the direction of pantheism. This master gathered a certain number of disciples about him. One, Al-Husain ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, became famous. He was of Persian birth,

performed miracles, and attracted a certain number of proselytes so many that the sovereign power took umbrage, and on pretext that he had declared the Deity to be incarnate in his own person, he was haled before the judge at Bagdad, condemned to death, and executed

(921).

In Ghazali
leanings.

We

imparted to by Persian thinkers.

we have seen the theologian with mystical are now about to study the impulse literature by this new branch, inspired
Abu'l-Qasim 'Abdal-Karim ALof a family settled in

QushairI (986-1072),

Khurasan

after the conquest, lost his father at a very early age,

and inherited a landed property near Ustuwa.

cient

He went

to study at Nishapur, with the object of acquiring suffi-

knowledge

to enable

him

to protect himself against

Abu 'All al-Hasan al-Daqqaq, the great master of Sufism, whose teachings he attended, incited him to study science and mysticism, and ended by inducing him to devote himself to them entirely. He even, at a later date, gave him his own daughter in marriage. In 1056 he proceeded to Bagdad, and there taught the traditions according to the Shifi'ite view he died at Nishapur. To a profound knowledge of the Sufi tenets, he united great skill in caligraphy, and a remarkable amount of erudition in
the exactions of the public treasury.
;

272

ARABIC LITERATURE
The
Risdla,

literary matters.

which bears

his

name, was

written with the object of imparting fresh glory to the

doctrines of the mystics, which

had
of

fallen rather out of

fashion in his day.

His Tarttb al-Suliik ft tartq Allah

(Method
the
Sufi

of Progress in the

Way

God)

is

a guide for

His Tahbir is a hundred names of God, and their use

beginner.

treatise

on the

in prayer.

Abu Ismail 'Abdallah al-Harawi, who was born at Quhan-diz in 1005, and died at Herat in 1088, left a Mandzil al-Sdirin, which treats of the various stages through which the Siifi must pass before he reaches a knowledge of the truth a Dhamm al-Kaldm, which is an attack on dogmatic and scholastic theology, and a Tabaqdt al-Siifiyya (History of the Mystics), which is the basis of
;

the Persian poet Jami's NafaJidt al-Uns.

Taj al-Islam al-Husain Ibn Khamis al-Mausili, who was born at Juhaina, a village near Mosul, travelled down the banks of the Tigris, to study Shafi'ite law under Ghazali at Bagdad, and became qddt of a big village on the Euphrates, between Raqqa and Bagdad. He ultimately retired to Mosul, and died there in May 1157. His Mandqib al-abrdr (Biographies of Pious Men) is an
imitation of Qushairi's Risdla,

combined with

a history of

the Sufis.

Sheikh 'Adi ibn Musafir al-Hakkari was born

village of Bait-Qar, near Baalbek.

in the

When

still

young

long journeys to visit the chief Sufis of At his time. a later date he retired to the ruins of a Christian convent, in the mountains to the west of Mosul, where he set up his zdwiya; and there he died in 1 163, after having founded the religious order of the 'Adawiyya. The Yazidis, who at that period probably inhabited the mountains of Sinjar, adopted him as their

man he made

THE 'ABBASIDS
patron, rendering

273

him a kind of worship which has Moslem about it down to the present day he continues to be their favourite saint, and his tomb is stil] a place of pilgrimage. The Berlin Library poshardly anything
;

sesses his catechism, i'tiqdd ahl al-sunna (Beliefs of the

Sunnites), his counsels to the Caliphs and to his own followers ( Wasdyd), and two odes, both of them mystic in their conception.

Muhyi
one
to 'All.

al-din

Abd AL-Qadir AL-GilanI

(1078-1168)/

of the great Islamic saints, traced his origin

back

He was born

in Gilan, to the south

of the

Caspian Sea, aiid when still young went to Bagdad, where he commenced the study of Hanbalite law in In 1 127 he began to hold edifying gatherings, 1095. swiftly acquired a reputation for sanctity, and performed miracles. He used to say " I would all the goods in the world were in my hands, so that I might
:

feed
trines

all

who
its

are hungry."

The

religious order of the

Qadiriyya, which he founded,

still

maintains

its

doc-

and

fame

all

over the East.

The

great ad-

versary of the power of France in Algeria, the Amir 'Abdal-Qidir (Muhyi al-din 'Abdal-Qadir al-Hasani),

Damascus, the writer had the honour of a personal acquaintance, was proud to claim descent from the illustrious He wrote the Ghunya litdlibi tariq saint of Bagdad. al-haqq (The Work which Suffices those who Seek the True Path), a complete treatise on Sufism the Futuh al-ghaib (Opening of the Mysteries), rules for the conwith
after his retirement to

whom,

of these lines

the Jala al-khdtir, a collection of sermons delivered either in the madrasa, or in the

duct of his disciples

Sufi Convent at Bagdad, in 1150 and 1151, which is preserved in the Library of the India Office ; another

274

ARABIC LITERATURE
same
kind, Al-fath al-rabbdni (Revela;

collection of the

which has been printed at Cairo numerous forms of prayer, and some mystic poetry. piya al-din 'Abdal-Qahir ibn "Abdallah al-SuhraWARDt, a descendant of the Caliph Abu Bakr, who was born at Suhraward, a little town near Zenjan in
tions of the Lord),

Adharbaijan, in the year 1097, studied Hanafite law at the Nizamiyya, became imbued with mysticism, lived a solitary life, and built himself a zdwiya to the west of Between 1131 and 1152 he taught at the Bagdad. Nizamiyya; in 1160 he held dervish meetings at Mosul; he afterwards moved towards Jerusalem, but could not get into the city, which was then in the hands of the Crusaders, and so remained at Damascus, where Nural-din Mahmud ibn Zangi received him with great He afterwards returned to Bagdad, and died honour. His treatise on mystics bears the title there in 1168.
oi

Addb al-murtdin (Morality for Disciples) the Vienna Library also possesses a commentary of his on the
;

hundred names of God. He must not be confused with another celebrated ascetic, Shihab al-din Yahyi ibn Habash ibn Amirak ALSUHRAWARdI (1153-1191), who studied law at Maragha, became a convert to Sufism, and wandered to Ispahan, Bagdad, and Aleppo. His eclectic doctrine was a mixture of Neo-Platonic ideas and Iranian tradition, modified by Islamism, and by the Shf ite conception of a hidden and impeccable Imam. He called it Hikmat al-Iskrdq {PhWosophy of the Illumination, Illuminism), and his disciples
have taken the name of ishrdqis (illuminists). In the early part of his residence at Aleppo he seems to have found the prince who ruled that city, Malik-Zahir, the son of Saladin, favourably disposed towards him but
;

THE 'ABBASIDS

275

he was suspected of heresy by the orthodox party, and, in spite of his careful disguising of his teaching under a cloak of obscure terminology, his enemies succeeded in turning the royal mind against him, and he was put to death. His tomb is a place of pilgrimage, and the people call him Shaikh maqtM (the murdered sheikh). Besides the Hikmet, to which we have already referred, he wrote the Talwthdt, on logic, physic, and metaphysics the Haydkil al-Nllr, on mysticism the Alwdh al- Imddiyya, on the infinite, the absolute, and the Divine attributes, dedicated to the Urtuqid prince, 'Imad al-din QaraArslan, and other works of less importance. At the same period there dwelt in the Maghrib AbO Madyan Shu aib ibn al-Hasan, known in Algeria under the surname of Bu-Medin. He died in 1193, leaving
; ;

a reputation for

sanctity as great as

that of 'Abdal-

Qadir al-Gllani's at Bagdad. We have several of his collections of sentences, one of which, an abridgment of the Tuhfat al-Arib, has been published and translated He also wrote mystic into Latin by Fr. de Bombay.
poetry.

Damascus and practised "Abdal-Munim ibn 'Umar AL-JuLYANt (i 136-1205), wrote a manual of mysticism under the title of Adab al-SulUk, and an apology for Saladin in rhymed prose and verse, to celebrate the taking of Jerusalem, called the Manddih al-mamddih. In praise of the same prince he was also led to compose poems to which he gave the external form of trees, columns, circles, and chessboards. These quaint compositions may be seen in the Paris and Upsala Libraries they are called the Diwdn al-tadbij. Rukn al-din Abu Hamid al-AmidI, of Samarqand, a
Spaniard,
as a
settled at

who

there

physician, Abu'1-Fadl

276

ARABIC LITERATURE

learned lawyer, who died at Bukhara in 1218, treats the subject of the independence of the microcosm, the human body, in relation to the macrocosm, according
to a Persian translation of an Indian book, in a
entitled

work

Mir at al-Mddm

(Mirror of Various Thoughts).

all

De

Guignes, Gildemeister, and Pertsch have

devoted

attention to this book.

dialectics

He

also

left

and controversy {al-tai-tqa al-Irskdd), and a treatise on talismans {Haud al-kaydi). Najm AL-dIn Abu'l-Jamal al-Khiwaqi, surnamed KUBRA, who died in 1221, wrote works on mysticism if al-hd'im, on the ten the Fawdtih al-Jaindl ; the attain man may purity of the body a means whereby draw nearer the Divinity and so to and and the soul, subjects. analogous two tracts on Shihab al-din Abu Hafs 'Umar AL-SuHRAWARot, who must not be confused with the sheikh who was murdered at Bagdad, and whose surnames were similar, He studied Shafi'ite was born at Suhraward in 1145. At a law, and felt himself drawn towards mysticism. later period we find him settled as a teacher at Bagdad, where he died in 1234. He was nephew to Diya al-din (see above); he studied under him, and also under 'AbdHis Awdrif al-mddrif (The Divine al-Qadir al-Gilani. Gifts of Knowledge), in which he deals with the mysticism of the Slfis, has been printed at Bulaq his Kashf al-faddih al- YUndniyya is directed against the study of Greek philosophy, and to the support of the Moslem

two manuals of al-Ainidiyya and

KM

Others of his treatises are devoted to the praise and renunciation of this world, to descriptions of the various stages through which the soul must pass before it can attain to the knowledge of God, and to remarks on the assumption of the dress which
religion.

of poverty

THE 'ABBASIDS
marks the dervishes' consecration
Hfe.

277

to the contemplative

MUHYf AL-DfN Abii 'Abdallah Ibn al-ArabI (11651240), who was born at Murcia, went to Seville in 1172,
and devoted
his

time to the study of the hadtth and of

In 1201 he began a series of journeys

jurisprudence.

which brought him to the Hijaz, to Bagdad, to Mosul, and into Asia Minor. He died at Damascus, without having been able to get back to his native land. While following the strict doctrine of the Zahirites in matters of jurisprudence, he indulged in the most disordered fancies as to the mystic training. He wrote an untold number of books, and his inventive facility, together with the great number of his works which have

come down to us, has earned him the reputation of being the greatest mystic of the Moslem East. His
masterpiece,

Mecca),

is

his Fusils

Makkiyya (Revelations of on mysticism, in twelve volumes al-Hikani (Mosaic of Precepts), on the existthe Fut-Ahat ala treatise

ence and importance of the twenty-seven chief prophets, was written at Damascus in 1230, after the Prophet Mahomet had appeared to him; his Mashdhid al-asrdr al-Qudsiyya (Apparition of the Sacred Mysteries) and his Anwar (Lights) were written at Konia in 1209 his Inshd al-dawd'ir is devoted to the explanation of man's place in creationand its cosmogony his' Uqlatal-mustaufiz describes the denizens of the upper world, and of this lower one, the spirits, the throne of God, the stars, the earth his Tuhfat al-safara (Gift Bestowed on Travellers) details the stages of the mystic's journey towards the knowledge of God his Hilyat al-Abddl (Ornament of the Ascetics), a guide to happiness, was written at Ta'if, T^ie, Ktmiyd al-Sa^dda (Alchemy near Mecca, in 1202.
; ; ;
;

278

ARABIC LITERATURE
and
virtues of the

of Happiness) treats of the properties

formula of the
ledge

tion) spealcs of the three

one God fundamental branches of knowGod, the rational world, and the world of sense.
belief in
;

the Ifdda (Informa-

certain

number
;

of his treatises deal with the occult

sciences, as his studies

ascribed to 'Alt
of divination

of the Jafr, or cabalistic work Fdida (Utility) turns on the subject by means of the letters of the alphabet. His
his
is
;

Tarjumdn al-ashwdq (Interpreter of Love)

of Sufi poetry published at

a collection

Mecca in 1201 he wrote a commentary on his own work to defend himself against the accusation of having sung the praises of carnal and not Divine love. Many other poems of the same nature
Of his two have been collected under various titles. hundred and eighty-nine works, one hundred and fifty have been catalogued by Brockelmann as existing, at the present day, in different European and Eastern
libraries.

The founder of the religious order of the Shadhiliyya, - Hasan 'Ali AL - SHADHiLt, who was born in a small town to the west of Tunis, died in 1258, after having written al-Muqaddima al-Ghasziyya (The Preface the famous of Gaza), on the duties of divine worship
Abii'l
;

Hizb al-bahr (Litany of the Sea), a prayer, the formula of which he believed he had received from Mahomet himself, and which the traveller Ibn Batiita thought sufficiently interesting to be inserted in extenso in the story of
his

own

adventures
still

and other

litanies of the

same kind,
Konia, in

which are

extant.

Sadr-Al-d1n

Abu'l-Ma'ali

al-QonawI,

of

Asia Minor, the ancient Iconium, a pupil of Ibn 'Arabi,

wrote a commentary on the Fatiha, or

first

chapter of

the Koran, entitled PJdz al-baydn (Miraculous Explana-

THE 'ABBASIDS
tion),

279

on the
;

forty hadiths,

of

God

the Hddiya (The Directress)

of the

and on the hundred names is a tract on the

;

principles
treatise

Moslem theodicy
;

the

Nus{is

is

on Sufi mysticism

the Miftdh al-Ghaib (Key of

World of Mystery) is a scientific introduction to the knowledge of the Divine personality and mysteries. He died in 1273.
the
'Izz al-d1n 'Abdal-salam Ibn Ghanim al-Maqdisi (or alMuqaddasi, that is to say, he who belongs to Jerusalem),

who

mouth
lated

died in 1279, put the praise of the Creator into the of birds and flowers, in his Kashf al-Asrdr (The Mysteries Unveiled), which has been published and trans-

title of Les Oiseaux et His Ila/l a/-rum/iz (Solution of the Problems) is a treatise on mysticism his Taflis Iblis (The Devil Ruined), an imitation of Ibn Jauzi's Talbis, is intended to combat the opinion that God has nothing to do with evil, whereas, on the contrary. He purposely tolerates it. 'Izz al-din "Abd al-Aziz al-DirInI (1215-1295), born at Dirin in Egypt, was the author of a famous poem on the Last Judgment, Qilddat al-durr al-manshur (The Pearl Necklace Displayed), which is generally placed with Ibn al-Wardi's Khartdat al-Ajd'ib, or Cosmography. He also produced other works, such as the Tahdrat al-QulM (Purity of Hearts), a collection of

by Garcin de Tassy under the

;

les Fleurs.

edifying anecdotes, counsels,

and prayers
;

the Taisir,

over three thousand two hundred lines, on Koranic exegesis and a refutation
a didactic
of

poem numbering

Christianity {Irshdd al-haydrd, the

Guide for Wan-

derers),

now

preserved at the Paris Library.

CHAPTER
THE

IX

'ABBASIDSCon/ina^a'. SCIENCE

Translations from the Greek

After Alexander's

conquests, the Hellenic spirit swept

to intellectual cultivation,

over the whole of Asia, and in the midst of a population

which never gave a thought

the Alexandrian School long remained a centre of erudition and scientific research. In spite of the catastrophes that overtook the libraries, which had been the storehouses of ancient thought, enough written books

remained

in circulation to

make men

feel the

mind

of

the ancients was not altogether dead.

Syria and Meso-

potamia were both influenced by Greek civilisation. For centuries, in the numberless cloisters inhabited by Syrian monks, the Greek works on philosophy and science were translated into the Syriac tongue, and to these Syrian reproductions the Arab translators went for their material. The school founded at Gundeshapur, in Susiana, by Chosroes I., in the year 350, had also spread the knowledge of Greek learning, and the taste for philosophical and medical study, in the East. In the very heart of Mesopotamia, the town of Harran, the ancient Carrhae, where Crassus was defeated, had retained its pagan faith, and there, by a syncretism which recalls the days of the later Roman Empire, the Greek and Roman

THE ^ABBASIDS

281

gods were allied with the antique divinities of the Semites. This was another centre of Hellenic civilisation, even in the midst of the Middle Ages. The dwellers in Harran were particularly addicted to mathematical and astronomical studies. It was the Caliph Al-Ma'miin who, by his foundation of a university {bait al-hikma) at Bagdad, to which he attached a library and observatory, first gave impetus, in the Moslem world, to a considerable scientific movement, of which the echo was taken up and repeated in distant lands, and ultimately, through the medium of

Moslem
Europe.

Spain, stirred

This movement

up the sleeping it was which

iiitelligence of

called forth a

mass

Arab translations of the Syriac manuscripts already translated from the Greek, thus further enriching, with a fresh branch, an already very rich and varied
of
literature.

Thus Al-Hajjaj al-Hasib translated Ptolemy's Astronomy under the title by which it is still known,
of the Almagest, and also Euclid's Elements "Yuhanna ibn Batriq (died 815) translated Aristotle's Politics ; and Abdal-Masih Naima of Hims, Aristotle's the request of Caliph Theology', after Porphyry, at AI-Mutasim. Qusta ibn Luq4 of Baalbek, well known by his original works on medicine, astronomy, and mathematics, turned numbers of Greek works into Arabic Abu Zaid Hunain ibn Ishiq, the son of a Christian apothecary at Hira, studied medicine under Yahyi ibn Masawaih, who flourished under Harun al-RashJd, travelled through Asia Minor, where he had an opportunity of learning Greek, returned to Bagdad, where he was chosen to be the personal medical attendant of the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, and wrote books on

that

19

282

ARABIC LITERATURE
at the

medicine and philosopliy,

same time

translating

the Old Testament out of the Septuagint into Arabic,

crates' Aphorisms, the

not to mention Plato's Timaeus and his Republic, Hippoworks of Galen and Uioscorides,

and others. His end was unfortunate. He was mixed up in the quarrel about images which divided the Christian Church, was excommunicated by Bishop Theodosius, and, in his grief, poisoned himself, in November His son and chief disciple, Ishaq ibn Hunain, a 873. close friend of the Vizier Qasim ibn 'Ubaidallah, was more of a philosopher than of a physician. He translated Aristotle's Categories, and died, paralysed, in 910. After these we hear of Hubaish ibn al-Hasan, the nephew of Ishaq, whom he assisted in his labours, who translated Dioscorides and Galen Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus, who died at Bagdad in 940, and turned his attention to Aristotle's Art of Poetry ; and Abu Zakariyya Yahya ibn 'Adi, surnamed the Logician, a
;

Jacobite Christian,

of
is

whom

nothing remains

to

us

beyond

his

name, as

also the case with regard to the

physician Ibn Zer'a, of the same Christian confession,

who

translated

works on medicine and philosophy.

Philosophy

The
to a

perusal of the translations of Aristotle gave birth

study of philosophy, which remained restricted, in the Moslem world, within the comparatively narrow circle of learned men and thinkers. It never took

hold of the common people, but was received with enthusiasm amongst the labourers in the intellectual field. So early as in the days of Caliph Al-Mu tasim, towards 840, Shibab al-din Ibn Abi'1-Rabi' composed, at

THE 'ABBASIDS
his sovereign's request, a treatise

283

some

reflections

on politics, preceded by on psychology, which may perhaps be

looked on as the oldest work of the kind in the Arabic It is now preserved in the Paris Library, and has been printed at Cairo {Suliik al-Mdlikfi tadbir al-Mamdlik). After him comes Ya'qub ibn Ishaq alKindi, the son of the Governor of Kufa, who belonged
tongue.
to

studied

an old Arab family. He was born at Kufa, and first at Bassora and then at Bagdad, where he

He was included in the prosecutions which were the outcome of the orthodox reaction in the time of Mutawakkil, saw his library confiscated, and was
finally settled.

not able to obtain

its

restoration

till

a short time before

the Caliph's death and his own.

He

wrote some two

hundred works on the most varied

subjects.

Ahmad ibn al-Tayyib al-Sarakhsi, who was born at Sarakhs in Khurasan, is better known under his surname of TiLMiDH AL-KlNDi, the pupil of Al-Kindi none
;

works are now extant. He was a member of the in attendance on the Caliph Al-Mutadid, whose suite and, as a punishment for having tutor he had been betrayed a secret entrusted to him, he was thrown into prison and put to death in the year 899. Abu Nasr Muhammad AL-FARABt, who was born at Farab, the modern Otrar, belonged to a Turkish family He studied medicine and philosophy of Transoxania. Attracted to Aleppo by the glamour of the at Bagdad. court of Saif al-daula, a patron of arts and learning, he lived there retired from the world, giving his lessons in the delightful gardens which surround the town, and
of his
;

master wrote on logic, morals, politics, mathematics, alchemy, and music. Ibn Khallikan calls
died at

Damascus

in 950, while attending his

on

a journey.

He

284

ARABIC LITERATURE

him the greatest philosopher Islam ever produced. It to him that Avicenna owed his learning, and so illustrious a pupil must needs have had a great master. When he reached Bagdad he knew no Arabic, and to acquire it was the first object of his study. When he had mastered the language, he was able to profit by the teachings of Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus, who was
is

teaching logic.

Al-Farabi

filled

seventy volumes with

read the Greek philo-

the notes he took at these lectures, which explained

Aristotle's treatise

on

logic.

He

sopher's treatise on the soul two hundred times over. " If I had lived in his days," he was fond of saying, " I

should have been his chief disciple." His Utopian ideas of a model city
Plato's Republic

are

an

adaptation of
those of a

of

the most curious description.

They

are the ideas of a philosopher, not

Men, according to him, must have a monarchical government and a religious faith. The most perfect State would be one which should include the whole of the inhabited globe. In such a universal monarchy the governed classes would need to be saints and their rulers sages. Yet the author admits that if one man did not possess all the qualities he would require of the monarch, a second, a third, and even more might be associated with him this fine system would soon end in an aristocratic republic. In 966 an Arab from Jerusalem, Mutahhar ibn Tahir al-Maqdisi, being at Bust in Sijistan, drew up, at the request of the minister of one of the Samanid princes, a summary of the learning of his times, under the title of Kitdb al-bad' wa'l-tdrikh (Book of the Creation and of History), in which he imparts to the public, besides the
politician or a lawyer.
;

common

stock of

Moslem

erudition, the fruits of his

THE 'ABBASIDS

285

own personal investigations, of his conversations with Zoroastrian priests and Jewish Rabbis. This work was
later ascribed,

nobody can
ibn

AbCi Zaid

Ahmad
name.

tell why, to the philosopher Sahl al-Balkhi, and catalogued

under

his

copy

of the

in a library at Constantinople,

unique manuscript, now was brought from the

East by the writer of these

his translation of
it,

lines,

and

is,

together with

in actual course of publication

by

the Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes, in Paris. The Buwaihid capture of Bagdad in 945, and the contutelage to which the 'Abbasid Caliph was reduced, leaving him in the position of an thereby automaton with a merely spiritual power, gave some
dition of

philosophic speculation, which had been shackled by the successful religious reaction under These princes, deMutawakkil and his successors.
life

to

free

scended from a poor fisherman

in

Tabaristan,

who

became

a condottiere in the service of the chief of that

province, were Shfites, and cared but little for the progress of orthodoxy. Under the shelter of this comparative liberty a society of philosophers,

who

called

themselves Ikhwdn al-Safd (Brothers of Purity), was formed, towards the middle of the fourth century of the Hegira, at Bassora. This body set forth, in fifty-one treatises, the whole sum of Arab philosophy. Its celebrated work has been translated into German, and a study of it has been produced in the same language by
F. Dieterici.

Abu 'Ali al-Husain lEN SIna, known as Avicenna, was the son of the governor of a small town near Bukhari he was born in 980, and studied philosophy and medicine simultaneously in the chief town When he was barely eighteen. of his native province.
;

86

ARABIC LITERATURE

wonderful cure of the Sfimanid Prince Nuh, son opened the palace gates to him. At twoand-twenty, his father having died, he went to the court of the King of Khwarizm (Khiva), 'All ibn Mansur, travelled in Khurasan and Jurjan, and rehis

of Mansur,

mained
teacher.

in

the

latter

country for

some

time,

as

There he produced his masterpiece in medical science, Qdnun fil-tibb (Canon of Medicine). He proceeded later to Rai and Qazvin, and as far as Hamadhan, where he became minister in the service of the Buwaihid Prince Shams al-daula, but was forced by the military party to resign his office. Under the son and successor of this prince, Taj al-daula, he was accused of high treason and shut up in a fortress, from which he contrived to escape, and took refuge with 'Ala al-daula Abu Ja'far Ibn Dushmanziyar, at Ispahan. Worn out by excessive labour and by debauchery, he died of an illness contracted in the course of a campaign
against

Hamadhan.

His works cover the whole field of the learning cultivated in the East of that day. In theology, he wrote risdlas, or tracts, on various suras of the Koran, on the Last Judgment, on miracles, dreams, magic, and talismans. But philosophy was his special subject. His Shifd is a treatise on logic, physics, mathematics, and astronomy. When he was accused of having displayed enmity to the doctrines of the Koran in this work, he wrote a letter to his favourite pupil, 'Ubaid Allah, of His Ishdrdt wa l-ianbihdt, a Juzajan, to clear himself. manual of logic, has been published and translated by Forget at Leyden under the title of Livre des tkeoremes His ''UyAn al-hikina (Sources of et des avertissements. Wisdom) is devoted to logic, physics, and theology.

THE 'ABBASIDS

287

His Hayy ibn Yaqsdn, a treatise on mysticism, has been translated by Mehren. Baron Carra de Vaux has published, translated, and commentated his Ode on the Soul. His Khutbat al-Gharrd (Brilliant Sermon) has been edited by Golius. The Tract of the Birds {Risdlat al-tair) is a mystic parable on captive birds. His refutation of astrology shows how the great physician had cast off the most tenacious prejudices of his time, which have by no means disappeared from the East even Avicenna's didactic poem on logic, at the present day. in two hundred and ninety-nine lines, has been published by Schmoelders. In the domain of natural and physical science, besides some half score of tracts on astronomy and physics, we find the code of medicine, the famous QdnAn, on which so many commentaries have been written, and some didactic poems, such as the Mansiima, or poem on medicine, in three thousand one hundred and thirteen lines, and another on anatomy. Abu'1-Wafa Mubashshir ibn Fatik, an Egyptian Amir, wrote, in the year 1053, a book of sayings of all the wise men of the ancient times and the Middle Ages, cdAXed Mukktdr al-Hikam (Selected Thoughts) the
;

part of this

work

relating to the legend of Alexander has

been published and translated by Meissner. Abu Bakr al-Turtushi IBN AbI Randaqa (1059He studied Malikite law II 26) was born at Tortosa. literature and at Seville, made the pilSaragossa at grimage in 1083, and travelled in the East. He went as far as Bagdad, halted in Egypt on his return, and settled at Alexandria, where he died. He was then a His Sirdj al-MuMk (Torch teacher of the traditions. of the Kings) is a guide to conduct for royal personages

288
it

ARABIC LITERATURE
finished at

was

the Vizier AI-Ma'mun.

ascetic,

Old Cairo His

in

1122,

and dedicated

to

life

was

that of a devout

who made

a practice of mortifying his body,

of a

and
very

his existence
little.

was that

poor man, content with

The philosopher Avenpace (Abu Bakr Ibn al-Sa'igh Ibn Bajja) was born at Saragossa. He lived at Seville
and Grenada, and later proceeded to the Moravid court at Fez, where he was poisoned at the ins-tance of the
physician Abu'l-'Ala. Ibn Zuhr, in 1138.
his philosophical studies,

In addition to

music.

We

he bestowed his attention on have twenty-four small works of his, on

philosophy, medicine, and the natural sciences, a farewell letter, and a poem about hunting, Tardiyya. His

enemies looked on him as a freethinker. Ibn Tufail, who was born at Cadiz, was Avenpace's pupil in philosophy and medicine. He entered the

Governor of Grenada as his secretary, and afterwards became private physician and minister to the Almohad Prince Yusuf, at whose court, at Morocco, he died in 1185. His Asrdr al-hikmat alMashriqiyya (Secrets of Illuminative Wisdom) has been
service of the

printed at Bulaq.

His philosophic novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzdn, which represents the awakening of the intelligence of a child born alone in the desert, has been
published at Oxford by E. Pococke, under the title of Philosophus Autodidactus. He strove to reconcile the
revealed law with philosophy.

Abu'l-Walid Ibn Rushd, who is known as Averroes who belonged to a family of lawyers, was born at Cordova, and received his education there. He went to Morocco in 1153, and was there presented to the Almohad King, Yusuf, by Ibn Tufail. In 1169 he was
(1126-1198),

THE 'ABBASIDS
appointed qddt
at Seville,

289

and two years later he returned whence he was summoned by Yilsuf, who would have appointed him his body physician, but the man of learning was soon back at Cordova as qddt. Towards the close of his life he was exiled, and interned at Elisana, not far from Cordova, by Yusuf's successor, Ya'qub al-Mansur, who suspected him of heresy on
to his native city,
this,

account of his studies in philosophy. Notwithstanding he was once more summoned to Morocco, and died there on loth December 1198. He left us his Fast alMaqdl (Decisive Discourse), in which he endeavours to a refutation of reconcile Moslem law with science Ghazali's Talidfut, which he entitled Tahdfut al-tahdfut (The Collapse of the Collapse), the Arabic text of which has been printed at Cairo a work on therapeutics, called Kidliyydt; and his commentary on Aristotle's Poetry and Rhetoric, which has been published and translated into A fragment of the commentary of Italian by F. Lasinio. Alexander of Aphrodisias on the metaphysics of the great Stagyrite philosopher has been translated by
; ;

Freudenthal.

Burhan

al-din al-ZarnIjjI wrote,

towards 1203, the

Tallin al-mutd allim (Instruction for

to Learn), a

Him who

Desires

manual of which many copies are in exiswhich tence, and has been published first by Reland, and then by Caspari, under the title of Enchiridion
Studiosi.

students.
in
1

Many books were written to meet the needs of Abu 'Abdallah al-Khawinj1, who was born
194, of a Persian family, became qddt at Cairo, in 1248, wrote, when at Mecca, in 1227, a

and died

summary

of

this

description,

called

al-Jumal,

or al-

Mujiz, and also a fuller treatise entitled Kashf al-asrdr

2go
(The
Secrets

ARABIC LITERATURE
Unveiled).

Athir al-din

Abhari,
physics,

who

died in 1264,

composed
and
a

Mufaddal alHiddyat al-hikma

al-tsdgkAji,

(Guide to Wisdom), which treats, in Arabic, of logic,

and metaphysics,
by Porphyry.

Kiidb

after the Elaaywyij, or introduction to the Categories of

Aristotle,

Najm

al-din

'AH al-KatibI,

of

Qazvin,

who
al-din

died in 1276, wrote, on the

command

of

Shams

Muhammad

Juwaini, and

in his

honour,

a treatise

called Al-Risdla al-shamsiyya, published

as

by

Sprenger

an appendix to the Dictionary of the Technical Terms ; the Hikinat al-Ain (Philosophy of the Essence), on physics and metaphysics, and the Jdnii^

Siraj al-din Abu'lon the same subjects. who died in Thana AL-URMAWi, 1283, wrote the Matdli" al-aiiwdr, on logic. The controversy and dialectics of this period claim the names of Burhan al-din AL-Nasaf! (1209-1288), with his FusAl, his Muqaddima, and other similar books, and of Shams al-din AL-Samarqandi, who wrote a Risdla, the Qustds, and the ''Ain al-Nazar, on logic, the Sahd'if, on dogmatics, and the Ashkdl al-tdsts, on Euclid's

al-daqaiq,

geometry.

'Abdal-Haqq Ibn Sab'In, who was born at Murcia, and is known as the founder of the mystic sect of the Sab'iniyya, was at Ceuta when the Almohad Sultan "Abdal-Wahid ordered him to reply to certain philosophical questions set the learned Arabs by the German Emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen. His correspondence on this subject has been published and commented on in the Asiatic Journal, by A. F. Mehren. Ibn Sab'in committed suicide in 1269, at Mecca, by opening the veins of his wrist. He left an introduction to metaphysics, called Budd al-diif ; another work called

THE 'ABBASIDS

291

Asrdr al-Hikmat al-mashriqijffa {Mysievits of Illuminism), and prayers in which every word begins with the
letter q.

Shams
seventh
RuiifAz

al-din

AL-SHAHRAZtJRl
of

el-Ishraqi,

in

the
his

century

the

Hegira,

wrote,

besides

wd l-amthdl
and
his

al-ldh-Atiyya

Parables)
to

Shajarat

al-ildhiyya

(Divine Mysteries and (The Divine

Tree), a history of the philosophers, from

Adam down
Garden
of

Galen,

entitled

Raudat al-afrdh (The

Joys).

Mathematics
Mathematical study, as we have seen, moved abreast with that of philosophy. There is no doubt that geometry was derived solely from Greek sources, and
Euclid's Ele^nents more particularly. But it may fairly be questioned whether arithmetic owes much to Indian science. According to Brockelmann, it was the adoption of the Indian numerals which permitted the Arabs
to

make

great

progress

in

that

science.

But

this

adoption is of recent date, and the Arabs, like the Greeks, made use of the numerical value of the letters in their own alphabet before they passed on to the decimal system of numeration which originated in India, and has since, under the name of Arabic figures, travelled round the world, but which may possibly have been borrowed by the Indians from the system of the
abacus (the empty compartment representing the zero),

Alexandria in the earliest centuries The Arab author of the tenth century, Mutahhar ibn Tahir, who wrote the Kitdb al-bad' wa'l-Tdrtkh (The Book of Creation and of History), notes,

probably invented
of the

in

Christian

era.

as a curiosity in Indian or devanagari numerals, a pretty

292

ARABIC LITERATURE

high figure ascribed by Indian populations to the length of the duration of this world. In his day, it is evident,

Arabic numerals did not as yet exist in the form the Arabs afterwards gave them, and Indian numerals, though known to the learned, were not in current use otherwise neither this writer nor his readers would have thought there was anything remarkable in the appearance

numeral he quotes. earliest of the Arab mathematicians was Abu 'Abdallah al-Khwarizmi, who lived under the Caliphate At the request of this prince, of Ma'mun, about 820. he prepared an extract from the Indian work called Siddhdnta, and undertook a revision of Ptolemy's His works on algebra and arithmetic, which Tables. were early translated into Latin, found their way all My readers are aware that the word over Europe. algorithm is derived from his ethnical surname of AlKhwarizmi (he came from Khwarizm, the ancient Khanate of Khiva). At Ma'mun's court, too, dwelt the three Muhammad, Ahmad, and sons of Musa ibn Shakir Al-Hasan who wrote a great many technical treatises. But the most prominent mathematician of that day was a Sabian belonging to Harran, Thabit ibn Qurra. He originally followed the trade of a money-changer, but went to Bagdad to study science, quarrelled over theoof the

The

logical inatters with his co-religionists, after returning

to his native

town, and was cast out of their comretired to

munity.

He

Kafartutha, there

made

the

acquaintance of Muhammad, son of Musi ibn Shakir, to whom we have just referred, was taken by him to Bagdad, and presented to the Caliph Al-Mutadid. At Bagdad he devoted himself exclusively to writing medical and mathematical works, and specially in-

THE 'ABBASIDS
terested

293

himself in the theory of numerals ; he died there on i8th February 901. Woepcke has given his views on a theory added by Thabit ibn Qurra to the speculative arithmetic of the

Greeks

the Fifth

book
;

of the Conic Sections of

Apol-

lonius of Perga has been published

and

translated into

German by L. Nix other works in manuscript are preserved in public libraries. His son Sinan was body physician to the Caliphs Muqtadir and Qahir he yielded to their threats, and ended by becoming a
;

Moslem
he took

but his concession did not disarm them, and

fright

Khurasan, but ultimately His mathematical and historical works are lost. All now remaining to us are the works on the dimensions of parabolas, written by his son Ibrihim, who died in 946. Abu Bakr alKarkhi, thus surnamed after one of the suburbs of Bagdad, is known as having dedicated an epitome of arithmetic (an extract from which has been published by Woepcke, and which has been translated into German
fied

and

to

returned, and died at

Bagdad

in 942.

by Hochheim) to Fakhr al-Mulk, minister to the Buwaihid prince, Baha al-daula. Ibn al-Haitham held a Government appointment in
his native town, Bassora, with the title of vizier,

and

had already earned a reputation

mathematical knowledge, when Caliph al-Hakim, hearing he had boasted of his ability to regularise the periodical inundations of
for

the Nile,

summoned him

to his court.

He

travelled

up

'

the river as far as Assouan, and convinced himself of the impossibility of carrying out his plan. The Caliph, to

indemnify him for

perform.

his trouble,

tive post at Cairo, the duties of

gave him an administrawhich he was not able to

This roused the sovereign's rage against him,

294

ARABIC LITERATURE

till his master's death in 1020, when he recovered his confiscated property, and turned his whole attention to literary labours. He died in 1038. Sedillot has written a notice of Ibn al-Haitham's treatise on geometrical knowledge. His treatise on optics {Ta/mr al-mundzara) was published and translated by Fr. Roesner at Basle in 1572 under the title of Opticce

and he hid himself

thesaurus Alhazeni.

Abu'1-Fath

'Umar al-Khayyam,

the

Persian poet,

celebrated for his mystic quatrains in that tongue, and universally known by the paraphrase of FitzGerald, was

and used the Arabic for his scienon algebra has been published and translated into French by Woepcke. The Leyden Library possesses a commentary on Euclid of his composition, and that of Gotha a treatise on the chemical analysis of minerals, for the purpose of determining the relative quantities of gold and silver in an amalgam of the two inetals. He was astronomer, and more espealso a mathematician,
tific

works.

His

treatise

cially

astrologer,

to

the

Seljuqid Sultan Malik-Shah.

was who proceeded to the reform of the Calendar known under the name of the Jalalian era, after the surname Jalal al-din, which was borne by Malik-Shah.
it

He

He died in 1121. Mahmud AL-Jaghmin1

1221,

al-Khwarizmi, who died in wrote an abridged astronomy {Alulakhkkas fi'l-

hai'a), which was translated into German by Rudloff and Hochheim in the Journal of the German Oriental

Society.

Abu'l-Hasan

'All

al-Marrakushi

(or,

according to the
in

Leyden MS., Abu 'Ah al-Hasan) wrote,

1230,

his

Jdmi" al-mabddi' wa'l-ghdydt (Meeting of the Beginnings and the Ends), which has been translated into French

THE 'ABBASIDS
by
J.

295

S. S^dillot,

and published by

his

son under the

title

of Traite des instruments astronomiques des Arabes.

the honorary title Muhyi' l-milla wdl-dtn (Revivifier of the People and of Religion), was of Spanish origin. He was a contemporary of the Syriac historian, Bar Hebraeus, and lived first of all in Syria, and then at the court of Besides writing many the Mongol Emperor Hulagu. astrological and astronomical works, he gave his attention to the Co7iic Sections of Apollonius of Perga, and the Spherics of Menelaus and Theodosius, and also to the computation of time amongst the Chinese and the
of

Yahya Ibn AbI Shukr, who bore

Uigurs.

Astronomy and Astrology

without the other. For centuries means of ensuring himself the necessaries of life and study was by selling astrological Who cared for the movements of the stars ? formulce. But in the casting of horoscopes, the knowledge of the
live

The one cannot

the astronomer's only

dim and slow-moving

for states

future, there

lay interest
1

alike

At a very early date, in the beginning of the third century of the Hegira, we find a popular treatise on astrology, in
al-Qarshi,

and for private individuals

twelve chapters, after the twelve Signs of the Zodiac,

by Abu Yiisuf Yaqub

Berlin Library. al-Farghani, of

which

is

now

in the

A little later, Ahmad ibn Muhammad whom we know nothing more, beyond

new Nilometer in Egypt, an astronomical treatise, which rendered him famous all over Europe, under the name of Alfraganus, and was translated into Latin, and published by Golius
the fact that in 861 he built a

wrote

at

Amsterdam

in 1669.

296
In

ARABIC LITERATURE
885
the
great

astronomer Abu Ma'shar Ja'far He belonged to Balkh, in Central Asia, and was known in the Middle Ages as Albumaser. If Europe admires his astronomical attainments, the East marvels at his powers of divination and his astrological performances, whereby he discovered treasures, and recovered objects which had gone astray. Of his compositions we still possess the Madkhal, or
ibn

Muhammad

died at Wasit.

introduction to astrology, and other astronomical works,

preserved in manuscript in various European libraries. Muhammad ibn Jabir al-Battani, famous in Europe under the narne of Albategnius, was a Sabian of Harran.

At Raqqa, on the Euphrates, where he lived, he took astronomical observations from 882 to 900, and there drew up his Tables, which arc now at the Escurial, and which Signer Nallino is translating into Latin, and publishing at Milan. He was going to Bagdad to prosecute a lawsuit, in 929, when he died in a little town on Towards the end of the eighteenth century his road. his Tables, which were translated by Plato Tiburtius under the title of De Scieniid Siellarum, and printed at Nurnberg in 1537, were still valued by Lalande. Besides these great names, we may also cite those of the following Persians KiJshyar ibn Labban, author
:

of various astrological

and astronomical works,

circa

961

Abu Nasr al-Qummi, circa 968; Abu'l-Husain 'AbdalRahman al-Siifi, of Rai, an astronomer in the service of the Buwaihid Prince 'Adud al-daula, who died in 986,
wrote a description of the fixed
translated into
stars, which has been French by Schelljerup at St. Petersburg in 1874, and a memoir on the astrolabe, of which Bernard Dorn has made use for one of his studies Abu Sahl Waijan ibn Rustam al-Kuhi, ciixa 990; Abu'1-Wafa
;

THE 'ABBASIDS
Muhammad
al-Buzjani,

297
a large village

who came from

near Nishapur in Khurasin, died in 997, wrote an imitation of Ptolemy's Almagest, and, by his deductions of certain previously unknown corollaries, earned the reputation of a great geometrician it is doubtful whether, as Sedillot believed, he discovered the third inequality on the moon's surface before Tycho Brah^. After these Persians came

'All

ibn Abi Sa'id al-Sadafi, who was astronomer to the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, Al-Hikim, to whom he dedicated his great Hdkimite Table, dealt with by Caussin de Perceval in Notices et Extraits he died in 1008 Abu'I-Hasan 'Ali ibn Abi'l-Rijal, in Africa, whose book on astrology was translated into Latin, and published at Basle under the title of Albohazen in 1551 and Abu'l-Qasim al-Ghafiqi, a Spanish physician and mathe-

matician,

whose

treatise

on the astrolabe

is

preserved in

the British

Museum.

Geography
The geography
of the

Arabs

is

of

Greek origin

Al-

Kindi had Ptolemy's work on geography translated for him, and this translation was improved at a later date by Thabit ibn Qurra it is now lost. The most ancient abridged geography in our possession is the SArat al-ard (Face of the Earth), by Muhammad ibn Mus4 al-Khwarizmi (1036), which has been studied by W. Spitta and C. Nallino. But the Arabic tongue, in response to the political and economic needs of the huge empire the Caliphs had to rule, was soon able to produce descriptive geographical works of immense interest in their bearing on our knowledge of the East of the Middle Ages, and some of the most eminent Orientalists have
;

298
been content
publication.

ARABIC LITERATURE
to limit their attention to their study

and

The postmasters

of the horse-posts

those

functionaries who, both in the capital and in the pro-

were responsible for the transmission of the Government correspondence, and at the same time were expected to keep the central authority informed of everything that occurred all over that huge empire wrote descriptions of the countries ruled by the Koran, to facilitate the performance of their own
vincial centres,
official duties.

Ibn Khurdadbeh ('Ubaidallah ibn 'Ab;

dallah)

was

of Persian descent

his grandfather,

who

was a fire-worshipper, had become a convert to Islam, and his father was for some time governor of the proHe himself vince of Tabaristan on the Caspian Sea. lived at Bagdad, and there made the acquaintance of the famous musician Ishaq, of Mosul, who instructed him in music and belles-lettres. He was ultimately sent to 'Iraq as a director of posts, and was at Samarra on the Tigris between 844 and 848, when he wrote his Book of the Roads and Provinces, which accurately gives the postal stations and the amount of taxation in each Barbier de Meynard was the first to translate province. and publish this work, of which, at a later date, De
Goeje issued a corrected
manuscripts, at Leyden.
text,

according to

less defective

Ibn Wadih al-Ya'qubi, properly called Ahmad ibn Abi Yaqiib, belonged to the family of the 'Abbasid Caliphs. His great-grandfather, Wadih, a freedman of Caliph Mansur, who became governor of Armenia, Adharbaijan, and Egypt, was a Shi'ite his devotion to the 'Alid Prince Idris, whom he helped to escape towards Morocco, brought him the penalty of death. As for our geographer, he lived at the court of the Tahirid
;

THE' "ABBASIDS
princes of Khurasan, and
title

299

made a journey into India, Egypt, and the Maghrib, where he wrote, under the
of Book of the Countries, a description of this latter country, rich in topographical detail, and accounts of the chief towns. He also wrote a history of the 'AbbS-

two volumes, which is doubled by the fact that it is the earliest work of the kind produced by a Shi'ite, and marked by Shi'ite tendencies, and that the author has drawn on ancient and valuable sources of information, which have thus
sids,

which

is

really a universal history in

carried

down

to the year 872,

and the

interest of

become available in the interests of Abu Bakr Ibn al-Faqih belonged

Persia.

science.
to

Hamadhan,
of

in

Very soon
(902),

after

the

death

the

Caliph

Mu tadid
all

he wrote a geographical work, of which

is

we now
Ja'far

possess
of

the extract

made
is

in

1022 by 'All

ibn

Shaizar,
is

and which

also

remarkable,

because no mention

made

in

it

of the capital,

Bagdad,

a fact which would lead us to suppose the book was founded on information collected in the days of the Omeyyads, before that famous city was built. Ibn Rosteh (Abu 'Ali), who was at Ispahan towards 903, there compiled an encyclopEedia entitled al-A'ldq alNafisa ; the geographical portion of this work, which forms its seventh volume, has been preserved at the British Museum, and has been published, with the preceding ones, by De Goeje, in his Bibliotheca GeoQuite recently Mr. Guy Le graphorum Arabicorum.

Strange has made us acquainted with a certain Ibn Serapion, whose curious name recalls Egypt to our minds, and who, after the taking of Bagdad by the

Buwaihids in 945, wrote an account of that capital, and But nothing is known of this topoof Mesopotamia.

300
grapher,

ARABIC LITERATURE

whom

historical order places here.

Ibn Fadlan,

ambassador sent in 921, by Caliph Al-Muqtadir, to the King of the Bulgarians, whose abode, in those days, was on the banks of the Volga, brought back an account of his mission, which was utilised by Yaqut in his great geographical dictionary the part deahng with the ancient Russians has been translated into German and published by Frahn.
an
;

Qudama
Bagdad,

(Abu'l-Faraj),
a

surnamed the Secretary

land-tax, which,

of

left

book on the

before

dealing with the questions connected with the levj'ing

and

yield of the tax, gives

an account of the organisation

and a summary of the geography But of the Arab Empire and the adjoining countries. Qudama was only a geographer on occasions by profession he was a literary man. He wrote a book called Criticism of Poetry, which treats of the poetic art amongst the Arabs, and one of his pupils composed a work on rhetoric, founded on his teachings, which is now in the
of the postal service,
;

Escurial Library.

The Samanid dynasty was then beginning

attention in Khurasan,

to attract

had attained complete independence. It protected literature and learning, and to it geographical science owes the appearance of a work written between 892 and 907 by Al-Jaihani, who acted as minister to several of the Samanid princes a work which has now completely disappeared, unless, indeed, Idrisi used it, as has been insinuated, for his description of Asia. This same Al-Jaihan!, taking advantage of the presence of the Indian prince, Kalatli, the son of Chakhbar, at the Bukharian court, caused the Arab poet, Abu Dulaf Mis'ar ibn Muhalhal, who was born at Yambo, on the Red Sea, to accompany the royal visitor on his return

where

it

THE 'ABBASIDS

301

journey through Thibet, The poet-traveller made his way back from India by Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Sijistin, and after his return wrote a book called Marvels of the Countries, which has been utilised by Yaqiat and by Qazwini, and studied by Schlozer. In the year 921, the philosopher Abu Zaid ibn Sahl al-Balkhi wrote a book entitled Suwar al-aqdliin (Figures of the Climates), the contents of which consist,for the most part, of geographical maps. A copy of this work is now at Berlin. The author had belonged, in his youth, to the Imamite sect; to attain a closer acquaintance with it, he went to 'Irak, sat at the feet of Al-Kindi, and devoted himself to philosophical studies. The Prince of Balkh, who bore the same name as himself, Ahmad ibn Sahl, loaded him with benefits, and enabled him to buy a landed property. He died in 934. For a very long time, though probably quite incorrectly, the authorship of the Book of the Creation and of History (which appears to have really been written by Mutahhar ibn Tahir alMaqdisi,

who

lived in the

town

of Bust, in Sijistan)

was

ascribed to him.
the Arabian Peninsula was the Al-Hamdani, who belonged to a favourite theme was passionately interested in the family of Yemen, and antiquities of Arabia Felix, in its historical memories, and the ancient ruined fortresses which recall the past splendours of the kingdom of Sheba. His account of the Peninsula has been published by D. H. Miiller, and studied His book entitled //;;/// (The Crown), by Sprenger. which is now at Berlin, furnished D. H. Miiller with the
of
of

The geography

subject-matter for his study of the strong castles in Southern Arabia. Abu 'Abdallah al-Maqdisi, still called Al-Muqaddast

302

ARABIC LITERATURE
habit (this form of his

by long-standing

surname

is

ad-

missible, but very unusual),

was born

at

Jerusalem.

He

spent a great part of his life in travelling all over the Moslem Empire, with the exception, perhaps, of its His eastern and western extremities, India and Spain.

book

entitled

A Asan

al-taqdstm ft

md rifat

al-aqdltm (The

is a Best of Divisions for results of the very complete work, in which, besides of his own personal observation, he gives a summary This It was written in 985. all previous information.

Knowledge

of the Climates)

account of the Moslem states has been frequently utilised Abu Raihan Muhammad by subsequent geographers. AL-BlRtJNl derived his surname from the fact that he was born in one of the suburbs of Khwarizm (Khiva), His family was of Persian origin. in September 973. He studied profoundly, history, mathematics, and mediHe kept up a correspondence with Avicenna. cine. At a later date he proceeded to India, and studied the learning of that country, of which he has left us a very
exact description in his Ta'rikh
translated into English
a/-

Hind (History of

India),

and published by E. Sachau.

After his return he attached himself to the court of Mas'ud, son of the famous Ghaznavid prince, Mahmud ibn Subuktakln, to whom he dedicated his Qdmai alMasAdi, a complete treatise on astronomy. He died at Ghazna on 13th December 1048. Like most of his compatriots, he was a Shi'ite, and ill-disposed towards the Arabs. His chronology of the Oriental ^eoY>\es{al-Athdr al-bdqiya, The Existing Monuments of Past Centuries), which is full of the most interesting information as to the populations inhabiting Central Asia, has been translated into English and published by Sachau. Abu 'Ubaid al-BakrI (1040-1094), who was born and

THE 'ABBASIDS
died at Cordova, wrote, under the
istdjani,
localities
title

303
of-

geographical

dictionary of

the

Miljam md names of

mentioned by the ancient Arab poets, with an introduction dealing with the geographical positions of

the various tribes, which has been published by Wiistenfeld, and a general geography, under the title commonly

borne by most Arabic treatises on this subject, al-Masdlik wa'l-mamdlik (The Roads and the Provinces), from which the Baron MacGuckin de Slane has extracted and translated the Description de I'Afrique Septentrionale.

Muhammad
Grenada
extract
in

ibn Abi Bakr al-Zuhr1,

left

who

lived

at

a geography from which an an account of the SAs al-aqsd has appeared

1137, has

in the Bulletin de correspondance Africaine.

'Abdallah al-Sharif AL-lDRisl, who was born Ceuta in 1099, of an 'Alid family, studied at Cordova, travelled far and wide, and reached the court of the Norman King of Sicily, Roger II., for whom he wrote, in 1154, his great geographical ^ovk, Nuzhat al-Musktdq, which has been translated into French not, indeed, in
at

Aba

a very satisfactory Aba 'Abdallah

manner

by Amed^e Jaubert.

Muhammad al-Mazin! (1080-1169), Grenada, travelled over a great part of the Moslem world Egypt, where he arrived in 1114; Bagdad, whither he went in 1161 and Khurasan, whence he returned to Syria, and settled at Damascus, where he died. He founded his geography, entitled Tuhfat al-albdb wa-nukhbat al-A'jdb (Gift Bestowed on Hearts, and Selection of Wonders), on his own journeys, and on accounts furnished by reliable witnesses.
who was born
at

He

collected for the library of Abu'l-Muzaffar

Yahyi

ibn Hubaira accounts of all his travels, in which many fabulous legends are embodied, under the title of 'AJd'ib

304
the Bodleian.

ARABIC LITERATURE
;

al-MakhlAqdt (Wonders of the Creatures)

it

is

now

at

The

title

of this

book was frequently used

by

later writers.

in 1145, wrote, towards the

IBN JUBAIR, who was born end of the sixth century of the Hegira, an account of his pilgrimage to Mecca from its starting-point in Spain. The text of this work has been published by Wright, and extracts from it have been translated into French by Amari and Crolla. The author was of Valencian extraction. He settled at Grenada, but left it in 11 82, when he started on his journey. When he came back, he went to Malaga, Ceuta, and Fez, where he taught. He died in 1217, having amassed a considerable fortune, which he renounced from motives of piety. Yaq^JT ibn 'Abdallah al-Ruml was born of Greek parents, on territory belonging to the Roman Empire He was carried off of the East, towards the year 1179. in a foray, taken to Bagdad, and sold as a slave to a merchant from Hamat, who had settled in the Caliphs' capital. His owner had him carefully educated, and sent him, when still quite young, on journeys connected with his trade. Returning in 1194 from his third voyage on the Persian Gulf, he quarrelled with his master, who was also his benefactor, and, being turned out of his house, began to copy for his livelihood, and studied under the grammarian Al-'Ukbari. Some years later he made up his difference with his patron, and once more started for the Persian Gulf but when he got back in the following year, he found the merchant was dead, set up as a bookseller, and began to publish writings. In 1213 he started on his travels again, went first of all to Tabriz, then left Mosul for Syria and Egypt, and proceeded to Khurasin in 12 15. To console himself for
Abu'l-Husain
;

Muhammad

THE 'ABBASIDS
the loss of a Turkish slave-woman, from

30s

whom he had been constrained to part on account of his poverty, he read the books in the libraries of Merv, and' conceived the plan of his great geographical dictionary. Having spent some two years at Merv, he proceeded to Khiva and Balkh, and, while in the latter town, heard that Bukhara and Samarqand had been taken by the Mongols. Alarmed by this catastrophe he turned back into Khurasan, and returned, in 1220, to Mosul, where he took up his old occupation of copying. The Vizier Jamal al-din al-Shaibani, to whom he had recourse, supplied him with the means to join him at Aleppo in 1222. He returned to Mosul and set himself to complete his dictionary, which was finished on 13th March In 1227 he once more travelled to Alexandria, 1224. returned to Aleppo in the following year, and busied
himself with correcting the manuscript of his great work.

He

died there

on 20th August

1229.

His
feld,

Mujam

al-bulddn has been published by Wiisten-

and so has his Mushtarik, a dictionary of geographical homonyms. An abridgment of the first-named work, Mardsid al-ittila published at Leyden by Juynboll, was for many years the only one of its kind within the reach of Orientalists. He also produced a dictionary of literary men, Mujain al-udaba, of which an edition is in course of preparation by Mr. Margoliouth. The Muqtadab viin jamharat al-nasab, the manuscript of which is now at Cairo, is a selection from the genealogies of the Arab
,

tribes.

Muwaffaq al-din 'Abdal-LatIf ibn Yusuf (1160was born and died at Bagdad. He wrote an account of Egypt, to which J. White, Wahl, and Silvestre de Sagy have all turned their attention.
1231), a physician,

3o6

ARABIC LITERATURE
also
left

He

collection

of

sayings

of

the Prophet

and his companions, the Tajrid, and a description of Mahomet's personal appearance, abridged from the Maqdlat al-TAj. Zakariyya AL-QAZWfNi, who was born at Qazwin in Adharbaigan towards 1203, was descended from Anas, the son of Malik. He left his native town, for what reason we know not, and settled, in 1232, at Damascus, where he made the acquaintance of Ibn al-Arabi. We next find him serving as qddt of the towns of Wasit and Hilla, under Al - Musta sim, the last 'Abbasid Caliph he died in 1283. He was the author of the of Bagdad
;
''

Ajd'ib al-Makhluqdt (Marvels of the Creatures), a cosof the

mography, published by Wiistenfeld, and

geography.

Athdr

al-Bildd (Monuments of the Countries), an historical

Abu Muhammad

AL- AbdarI,

who belonged

to

Val-

encia, wrote, in the year 1289, a Rihla (Journey),

which

contains accounts of the African towns, and details both

of their inhabitants in general,

and

of the learned

men

who dwelt

in

them.

Medicine

The Syrians had carried the knowledge of medicine even into the East the school of Gundeshapflr kept up its medical traditions until the days of the 'Abbasid Caliphs. Thence it was that the Caliph Mansur called George Bokhtyisbu' to be his body physician. Yet India exercised a certain influence over Arab medicine. We know that Harun al-Rashid had the Indian physician Manka at his court and A. Miiller has proved that Rhazes made use of the Indian Su^ruta for his Hdzvi.
;
;

The body physician

to

the Caliphs

Mutasim and

THE 'ABBASIDS
;

307

Mutawakkil was Abu'l- Hasan 'Alt ibn Sahl ibii Rabban, son of a Jewish physician from Tabaristfin the first of these two sovereigns never rested till he had
converted his medical attendant to the Moslem faith, and his change of religion established him in his position. His claim to glory lies in the fact that he was Rhazes' instructor. His two books, al-Kunndsh (System of Medicine) and Hifz al-Sihha (Preservation of Health),
are

now at Berlin, at the British Museum, and the Bodleian. From Gundeshapur, too, came Abu Zakariyya Yahyi

ibn Masawaih, the son of an apothecary in that town.

of

At Bagdad, where he was studying, he met Gabriel, son

Bokhtyishu', private physician to

who

entrusted

him with the

Hirun al-Rashid, management of an hospital.

At a later date he succeeded to Gabriel's post about Caliph Mansur and his successors, down to Wathiq. He translated many books from the Greek, and himself wrote original works, such as his Nawddir al-tibb
(Curiosities of Medicine), dedicated to

IsMq

ibn 'Imran,

who was summoned

Hunain ibn Ishaq. to Qairawin

by the Aghlabite Prince Ziyadat-Allah III., who suffered from melancholia, belonged to Bagdad. He quarrelled with the prince, and died under torture, having been denounced by one of his enemies, a Jew. He left a treatise on melancholia, which is now at Munich. The great physician of that period was Rhazes, otherwise called Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya alRazi that is to say, born at Rai, the ancient Rhages. Till his twentieth year he gave all his attention to music. He then went to Bagdad, and studied medicine under 'All ibn Sahl ibn Rabban, physician to the Caliph When he had attained the mastery of his Mu'tasim. profession, he was sent to manage the hospital at Rai,

308

ARABIC LITERATURE
later

and

returned to Bagdad, to hold a similar post

The fame of his knowledge travelled. had already spread over the East the Samanid prince Mansur ibn Ishaq welcomed him to his court, and to him the physician dedicated the work he entitled Manstiri. There was no little brutality about this sovereign of Khurasan. When Razi presented him with his work on alchemy, he insisted that the learned writer should demonstrate the reality of the facts he put forward, and
there.

Then he

as he failed in doing anything of the kind, Mansur, in a rage, lashed

blinded him.
sician's

him The

across the eyes with a whip, and

date and place
of

the great phy-

death are alike

932.

unknown
;

to us.

Some

say he

died at Rai, some at

as 923

and

preparation of
time.
pupils,

Bagdad the date is variously given He had been unable to complete the his great work, the Hdwt, during his life-

It was finished, after his death, by one of his according to his manuscript notes, on the order

Buwaihid prince Rukn al-daula. on medicine in ten books, his book on smallpox, and many others, were translated into Hebrew and Latin, or published in the original text, at an early date. A great number of them are in the
of the minister to the

His MansAri, a

treatise

Escurial Library.

IsMq ibn Sulaiman, whose surname, denotes his Jewish origin, had come into the world. He went to Qairawan in the days of the Aghlabite prince Ziyadat- Allah III., and there knew Ishaq ibn "Imran; later,after the Aghlabites had fallen, he passed into the service of the Fatimid Caliph Al-Mahdi, and died towards 932, after writing a book on fevers, a treatise on food and medicine, and inquiries into the nature of the
In Egypt, again,
Isra'ili,

elements.

THE 'ABBASIDS
'Isa

309

ibn

'Ali,

a Christian

physician, wrote,

when

at

Bagdad, a memoir on the diseases of the eye and their treatment, which was known in Europe at an early period, being much consulted by surgeons. It was printed at Venice in 1499. Another author, also well known in Europe during the Renaissance period, was All ibn 'Abbas, physician to the Buwaihid prince "Adud al-daula. He was the son of a Magian (hence his surname of Majusi), and was born at al-Ahwiz, in the heart of Susiana. His principal work, entitled Kdmil al-Sanaa al-tibbiyya (Complete Treatise on the Art of Medicine), was translated into Latin by Stephen of Antioch, and published at Leyden in 1523. Abu Sahl 'tsa ibn Yahya was a Christian from JurHe died jan, who practised medicine in Khurasan. young, at the age of forty, towards the year 1000, and He wrote a was the medical instructor of Avicenna. Medical Encyclopaedia divided into one hundred monographs, a book on general therapeutics, a demonstration

wisdom of the Deity as seen in the creation of the various members and organs of the human frame, and
of the

several other less important works.

To return to the West. We first find a native of the Maghrib, lawyer and physician at once, named Abu 'Abdullah Muhammad ibn 'All ibn Tumirt, who died in looi, and is said to have composed five hundred works, some fragments of which still exist in the
libraries

of

the

present day;

Al-Jazzar (Abu

Ja'far),

unhke

his contemporaries, preferred attending the pri-

vate residents in the town of Qairawan to doctoring

royal personages, and in his zeal

for religion served year after year withthe piratical expeditions organised in Tunis under pretext of warring against the infidels.

3IO

ARABIC LITERATURE

which did not prevent him from dying at the advanced age of over eighty years, in 1004. His abridged treatise on
medicine, entitled

Zdd

Traveller's Viaticum

and Food

al-Musdfir wa-QAt al-Hddir (The for the Sedentary Man), a

book on the confidence that should be placed in simples, and another on the education of children, are still extant. His treatise on the medicine of the poor and indigent marks him as a predecessor of Raspail. At Cordova, under Caliph 'Abdal-Rahman III., we find Abu'lQasim Khalaf ibn 'Abbas al-Zahrawi, better known under the European corruption of his name, Albucasis,
a great surgeon,
iion,

who

frequently resorted to cauterisa-

and whose works, translated into Latin, were pub-

lished in the early days of the art of printing.

IBN AL-Tayyib, a Christian taught at the hospital in Bagdad founded by the Buwaihid prince 'Adud al-daula, and also acted as He secretary to the Catholicos Elias I., died in 1043.
physician,

Abu'l-Faraj 'AbdaUah

who

paraphrased Galen's works, and wrote books on Christian theology.

His pupil, Abu'l-Hasan al-Mukhtar IBN BOTLAN,

wise a Christian and a physician, travelled to
in

like-

Egypt

1047, to make the acquaintance of his literary opponent, Ibn Ridwan. Feeling defeat close upon him, he made his way to the territory of the Greek Empire, went to Constantinople and Antioch, took refuge in a cloister, and died there after the year His Taqwim al-Sihha (Tables of Health) is a col1063. lection of forty tables of mortality, which were transHis Ddwat lated and published at Strasburg in 1532. al-atibbd is a conversation on medical subjects between the author and a physician of seventy years of age, residing at Mayyafariqin. His Amrdd al-Arida is a treatise

THE 'ABBASIDS
on
therapeutics, for the use of persons living far

311

town.

He

also wrote

two

tracts,

from a one to point out what

in

defects in a slave

may

be regarded as redhibitory

cases of sale, and the other to demonstrate that the temperature of the blood of the common fowl is higher

than that of any other bird. Abu Sa'id 'Ubaidallah Ibn BOKHTYlSHtf belonged to the famous medical family of that name. He was the friend of Ibn Botlan, lived at Mayyafariqiri, and died towards 1058. He wrote on love as a disease, and on
specifics.

Abu'l-Hasan
at Gizeh, at the

'Ali

Ibn

Ridwan was

base of the Great Pyramid.

an Egyptian, born The Caliph

Al-Hakim chose him to be his body physician, and this was his stepping-stone to fortune. Unhappily the wealth he amassed was ultimately squandered by an adopted
son

who

betrayed his confidence.

the
title

He

died in 1061 or

1068.
Suffices

Under
to

of Kifdyat al-Tabib (That

left

which

the

Physician), he

a treatise on the

classification of diseases

and on

diagnosis, in
is

which the
upon.

examination of the patient's urine

much

insisted

Of

his

UsM

ftl-tibb (Principles of Medicine) nothing

but a

Hebrew

translation

now

remains to us.

His

commentary on Galen's Ars Parva was translated into Latin, and published at Venice in 1496, and his commentary on Ptolemy's Quadripartitum at the same city in
1484.

Abu

'All

Yahya Ibn

Jazla, a

man

of Christian origin,

became

a convert to Islamism in 1074,

and was appointed

secretary to the Hanafite qddt of

Bagdad.
his

He

wrote
the

a doctrines of
letter,

which

has

now

disappeared, to

refute

Christianity.

He

devoted
his art

attention

to medical matters,

and practised

on his friends

312

ARABIC LITERATURE

and neighbours, without ever demanding a fee, nor even any payment for the drugs he supplied. He died in HOC. Under the title of Taqwim al-Abddn, he drew up tables of diseases on the system followed for astronomical tables. These were translated into Latin at Strasburg,
in

1532.

He

also

made out an

alphabetical

index of
al-

remedies,
baydn.

simple and

composite, entitled Minhdj

AbO'l-SALT Umayya ibn 'Abdal- Aziz (1068-1134) was born at Denia in Spain. In 1096 he went to Alexandria, and thence to Cairo. As a punishment for having failed in an attempt to float a stranded vessel, he was cast into He left Egypt in prison, and there remained till iiii. consequence of this inisadventure, and retired to Mahdiyya in Tunis, where he was received with honour, and ultimately died. He left a book on the simple drugs {al-Adwiya al-mufradd), a treatise on the astrolabe, astronomical problems with figures attached, and a treatise on

Taqwim al-Dhihn (Tables of the Mind). He wrote poetry, all of which, except one ode, now at Berlin, has disappeared.
logic called
also

Abu'l-Faraj 'Abdal-Rahman ibn Nasrallah of

Shiraz,

who

practised medicine at Aleppo towards 1169, wrote,

his
treatise

besides

on the mysteries
asrdi' 'ilm

of

the science

of marriage {al-Iddh ft

al-nikdli),

Raudat

al-Quliib (the

Garden

of Hearts),

explaining dreams {Khuldsat al-Kaldni),

translated into

and his on love, a book which has been

title

French by P.

Vattier,

under the
as

ol

Oneirocrite inusulnian.

Abu 'Imran Musa IBN MaimCjn, known

Maimo-

NIDES, the great Jewish philosopher of Cordova, was a He was born at Cordova, and studied Jewish physician.

theology and medicine.

For some time, under the second

THE 'ABBASIDS
Almohad

313

Sultan, 'Abdal-Mu'min, who ordered all the Jews and Christians in his dominions to choose between retractation and banishment, he passed himself off as a Moslem. Then, when he had put his affairs in order, he departed to Egypt, avowed his real faith, and even founded a Talmudic school in Old Cairo. Saladin appointed him his own physician, and he held the same post under Saladin's successor, Malik- Aziz. Maimonides died in 1204. His Guidefor the Lost, written in the Arabic

language, but in
literature.
It is

Hebrew

characters, belongs to Arabic

a philosophical treatise on certain terms of the Biblical theodicee. It has been published and translated into

French by

S.

Munk.

Among

his medical

works, one dedicated to the qddt Al-Fadil, a treatise on the venom of reptiles, and how to cure their bites,
is

particularly curious.

Alchemy
There were students
family,
for
of

alchemy
a prince

in

the

Omeyyad

belonging to that dynasty, Khalid ibn Yazid, pupil of the monk Marianus, wrote three treatises on the subject. Jabir ibn Hayyan, the great alchemist, whose teaching ruled the
find that told

we

Middle Ages, was probably his pupil, and we are also that the Imam Jafar Sadiq, the master of all
science,
?

occult

was

Jabir's

native country

No man

from Tus,

in

Khurasan.

teacher. What was his knows. Some say he came Others declare his home was

Antaradus, on the Syrian coast. Brockelmann inclines All to the opinion that he was a Sabian from Harran. that is he was living said with certainty can be that
at

Kufa towards 776.

to

known

Twenty-seven of his works are the world, several of which were" translated

314
into Latin

ARABIC LITERATURE
and German, and published
at

Nuremberg,

Frankfurt, and Strasburg, between 1473 and 1710. At the end of the third century of the Hegira, as Rosen

has established, the alchemist Muhammad ibn Umail wrote an ode on certain winged forms seen on the walls of a temple at Busir, which popular legend asserted to be the prison in which Joseph was shut up, and added a commentary on his own ode, with observations derived from the science of alchemy. Together with these reveries, in which the germ of chemistry appears as yet to possess no scientific basis, we note the appearance of a work devoted to the agriculture of the Nabateans, and full of scientific observation preserved

by

tradition

among

the toilers on the

Mesopotamian

plains.

My

readers are aware that the

Arabs gave the name of Nabateans to the aboriginal populations of Chaldea and Babylon, a Semitic race, among whom the Aramaic had supplanted the ancient
dialects,

and become the national language.

Abu Bakr

Ibn al-Wahshiyya was of Aramean blood, and was born in 'Iraq. In the year 904, he wrote a book on Nabatean agriculture, in which Chwolson thought he had discovered the remains of the ancient Babylonian literature, whereas, in reality, the Arab author, in his anxiety to demonstrate the Aramean-Syrian civilisation to be better and more highly developed than that of the Arab conquerors, had not hesitated to fabricate writings wholesale, with the object of strengthening his own theory. The Russian Orientalist never stopped to consider that Ibn al-Wahshiyya like the Egyptian Arabs in the matter of the hieroglyphs knew nothing of the Babylonian

literature,

the
till

written

characters of
time.

deciphered

our

own

which were not Another tendency to be

THE 'ABBASIDS

315

noted in this same work is the author's evident desire to oppose Moslem dogmas by the quotation of alleged texts, and this in spite of the fact that he himself always appears to be a pious disciple of Islam. Another forgery due to the same writer is the Shauq al-Mustah&m (The Desire of the Troubled Heart which would know the Secrets of the Writings), devoted to the writings of the various nations, a subject on which the author, like all Orientals, must have been very imperfectly informed. We also owe him several treatises on alchemy, and the Sidrat al-Muntahd (The Bush of the Boundary), a conversation on religious and philosophical topics.

Spaniard of Madrid, Abu'l-Qasim Maslama al-Majdied in 1007, was famous, in the days of AlHakam II., for his knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, and perhaps even more so for his practice He wrote on alchemy, and on of the occult sciences.
riti,

who

the fabrication of talismans

and amulets.

At about the same period we must place the author of the most ancient known Arabic book on mineralogy. It is called the Book of Minerals and Precious Stones,

and was written by'Utarid ibn Muhammad, surnamed Al-Hasib (the Calculator), or Al-Katib (the Secretary). Towards the year 900, the Superintendent of the Stables belonging to Caliph Mu tadid wrote a treatise on horses and horsemanship, also the oldest known Arabic work on
that particular subject.
It is

now

This student of horse-flesh was

in the British Museum. named Abu Yusuf Ya'qub

ibn Akhi Hizam. The interpretation of dreams, one of the most ancient of the pseudo - sciences of the East,
is

represented

by the Kitdb

al- Qddirt,

dedicated

to
al-

the Caliph Al-Qadir by

Abu

Sa'id

Nasr ibn Yaqub

Dinawari, in 1006.

3i6

ARABIC LITERATURE
period, too,

Towards the same

we

perceive the

first

advent of the abridged encyclopaedias, which were later to increase in considerable numbers. The oldest of these is the Mafdtih al-Ulum (Keys of the Sciences), published by G. van Vloten, after the Leyden manuscript, and written by Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad al-Khwarizmi for Abu'l-Hasan 'Ubaidallah al-Utbi, minister to the Saraanid prince, Nuh II. The Kiidb al-Muqdbasdt, by
'All

al-Tauhidi (died 1009), divided into a hundred and

three sections, and dealing with various sciences, should

be classed in the same category. 'Abdallah IBN Baitar, who was born at Malaga, travelled as a botanist in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece. At Damascus, he entered the service of the prince MalikKamil, as his chief botanist. On the death of his protector he returned to Cairo, but in spite of the honourable

upon him there by Malik-Salih he soon returned to Damascus, and died in the Syrian He left two works on simples, the capital in 1248. Mughni and the Jdim mufraddt, which last has been translated into German by J. von Sontheimer, and into French by L. Leclerc. Abii Zakariyya Yahya IBN AL- AwWAM,of Seville, wrote, during the first half of the sixth century of the Hegira, the Kitdb al-Faldha (Book of Agriculture), founded on Greek authorities and on the results of his own inquiries. This has been published and translated into Spanish by Banquera, and into French by J.-J. Clement-Mullet. Shihab al-din Abii'l- Abbas AL-Tifash1, who died in 1253, wrote a book on minerals and precious stones called the Azhdr al-afkdr (Flowers of Thought), which was studied by Ravius at Utrecht in 1784, and by Cldment-MuUet in i^
reception bestowed

THE 'ABBASIDS
The
richment of Hterature,
the diwdn called
Gold), a collection
as,

317

occult sciences, too, added their quota to the enfor

instance, in the case of

ShudhAr al-dhahab (The Parings of of poems on the philosopher's stone,

Ibn Arfa'-Ra'sahu, of Jaen in Spain, Zain al-din 'Abdal-Rahim al-JaubarI, was born in the village of Jaubar, near
al-din

by Burhan

who

died at Fez in 1197.

at

Damascus, was at Harran Konia in Asia Minor in

in

Mesopotamia

in

1216,

12 19, and, on the order of

Mas'ud, the Urtuqid prince of Amid (Diyarbakr), and Hisn Kaifa, wrote the Mukhtdr ft Kashf al-asrdr (Select Book for the Revelation of Mysteries), which contains explanations of sleight-of-hand tricks and prestidigitation.

Muhyi' al-din 'Abu'l- Abbas AL-BtiNl, who died in 1225, wrote a number of tracts on the magic art, such as the Fadd'il al-basmala, on the use of the formula " Bismillah" and its employment in magic operations; the Qabs al-iqtidd, on the mysterious properties of the name of God, and the manner in which it should be used in connection with talismans the Mawdqit al-ghdydt, on the mysteries of the contemplative life of the Sufis and the Sirr al-hikam, on the Kabbala and on divination.
; ;

Encyclopedias
composition gradually becomes more and its place is taken by compilations, abridgments of such great works as were difficult to come by, and the too concise text of which needed the skill of a commentator to shed light on its obscurities. We also notice a tendency, on the part of authors, to forsake special subjects, and plunge into a constantly
Original

more

rare,

and

3i8
widening

ARABIC LITERATURE
field of

general
to

knowledge.
of the

Some

of these

universally-minded

men we have
some others

already mentioned

we now proceed
ment.

same tempera-

it was that, in the year 1135, Jamal al-din 'Abdallah al-Qazwin! wrote his Mufid al-tdum, a popular encyclopaedia, religious, moral, geographical, and historical that Abii 'Amir Muhammad al-Balaw^I,

Thus

Abu

who
al-

died at Seville in 1164,

drew up

his

UnniMhaj
sciences,

Ulum,

devoted

to

twenty-four

different

and that Abu Bakr Muhammad AL-ISHBlLt (1108-1179), born at Seville, who, at the age of seventy, became Imam of the Great Mosque of Cordova, and died there, collected the titles of over fourteen hundred books in his Fihrist, which has been published by Codera and Tarrago at Saragossa. A polygraph gifted with an extraordinary facility for composition was Jamal al-din Abu'l-Faraj AbdalRahman IBN AL-jAUZi (1116-1200), belonging to an ancient Arab family which traced its descent from the Caliph Abu Bakr. He was born at Bagdad; his father, a wealthy man, gave him a careful and expensive education. He was a great lover of books, and when his money ran short he sold the two houses his father had left him, so His intelligence was as to be able to add to his library. precocious. At seven years old he was following the explanation of the Musnad delivered by Ibn Hanbal, and throughout his life he preserved a special taste for the study of the traditions of the Prophet. He was a fought vigorously against the rigid Hanbalite, and disciples of the other orthodox schools. For fertility of production, no writer except Suyuti can be compared with him. His works cover the whole field of

THE 'ABBASIDS
literature,

319

with the exception

of

grammar, scholastic

theology, and the exact sciences.

He

preached both

at

Mecca and Bagdad, not in the Mosques, but in private gatherings. The Sunnites and the Shfites, who were eternally at variance, chose him one day to be their He got out of the difficulty by pronouncing arbiter.
an ambiguous sentence which satisfied both parties. He boasted that he had converted more than a hundred thousand men to lead a pious life, and had induced over ten thousand young people to think seriously about themselves. To give an idea of his prodigious activity, it was asserted that if the number of quires, or folds of twenty pages, written by Ibn al-jauzl during his life were to be totted up, and the total divided by that of the days he lived, he would be found to have produced nine for each day. Ibn Khallikan rejects this result, as being inadmissible by any reasonable man.
In tlie field of linguistic study we find him writing a Taqwtin al-lugha, or vocabulary of popular mistakes in language in that of history the Muntazam, a universal history the Dhahab al-Masbuk (Molten Gold), a history
:

of the

Moslem sovereigns
;

the

of Intelligent People)

the Kitdb

Akhbdr al-adhkiyd (Annals al-Humaqd (Book of

;

Fools); the^z/i^(5/-^2^j;fij(Bookof Popular Story-Tellers);

the Wafd, on the biography of the Prophet

the Mandqib,

or panegyrics of 'Umar, Hasan al-Basri, and Ibn Hanbal. As connected with the traditions we may cite his Jdmi

drawn up by Muhibbt al-Tabari his Mantiq al-MafhUm, containing traditions as to animals and inanimate objects miraculously endowed with powers of speech, and his MauM'dt, or forged traditions, now at
al-Masdnid,
;

Cairo.

Jurisprudence owes him two works

the

Tahqtq,

on

320

ARABIC LITERATURE
is

the disputed traditions,

which

a defence of the

anthropomorphists.

and the Bds al-ashhab al-Munqadd, HanbaHte doctrine against the Koranic exegesis furnished him
;

with matter for \i\?,^Ajaib 'uluni al-Qur'dn, a general introduction to the study of the sacred text his Mukhtasar

and

his

Mujtabd, both of
;

them abridgments
;

of

the

work his Zdd al-Masir (Provisions for the March), a manual for preachers and his ^Arib, a commentary on passages which are difficult to read. His interest in practical morality and edification led him to compile many works, amongst which we may
first-named

mention the Talbis Iblts (The Devil's Wiles) al-Haddiq (The Gardens), edifying stories of the Prophet and his companions the Maurid al- Adhb, a collection of seventy sermons preached by him at Mecca and a book of lectures, accompanied by a lexicographical commentary, written in the space of thirty-four days, at Bagdad. Medical science owes him the Luqat al-mandfi'' a work on history, nosology and therapeutics, and the Tibb alRuMjtt (Medicine of the Soul). The Muthir al-Asm and the Tabsirat al-akhydr, which treats of the Nile, both belong to the geographical department. The Kitdb alMudhish is not easy to classify, for it deals at once with the Koran, with the science of language, with the traditions, with history, and with morality. Fakhr al-dIn al-RazI was the son of a preacher at Rai, the ancient Rhages, near the present city of Teheran, and was born there on 7th February 1149. He studied both in his native town and at Maragha, travelled along the banks of the Amu-Daryi and in Trahsoxania, was driven out of that country, went to Ghazna and Khurisin, and was there received with much honour. He finally settled at Herat, and died there in 1209. His
; ; ; ,

THE 'ABBASIDS
writings earned considerable success,

321

and

cast those of

many
first

of his predecessors into obUvion.

He was

the

to introduce a systematic arrangement,

which no

writer before his time

had ever attempted. His sermons, which he dehvered both in Arabic and in Persian, created a profound impression, and touched himself so much that he would sometimes shed tears. He led a great many disciples of the anthropomorphist sect of the Karramiyya back to the orthodox faith. He belonged to the Shafi'ite rite, and wrote a panegyric on the Imam Shafi'i. For a long time a history (the Fakhri, by Ibn Tiqtaqa), of which fragments have been published by Jourdain and Henzius, was ascribed He wrote a treatise on jurisprudence ento him. Koran, titled MahsM ; a great commentary on the called Mafdtih al-ghaib (Keys of tfie World of Mystery), which has been printed at Cairo and at Constantinople the Asrdr al-tansU {Mysi&Ty of Revelation), on scholastic theology the Matdlib al-dliyya (Superior Questions), on the nature of the Deity the Mabdhith al-shargiyja (Oriental Questions), on physics and metaphysics, a subject also dealt with in the Muhassal, to which Schmoelders and Schreiner have devoted their attention. The Sirr al-MaktHm (Hidden Secret) is a complete treatise on
;

astrology, as

is

also the Ikhtiydrdt al- Alaiyya, originally

written in Persian for 'Ala al-din. King of Khwarizm,

later translated into

and

Arabic by some unknown hand. Abia Jafar Nasir al-dIn al-Tus1 (1210-1273), a famous astronomer, was born at Tus in Khurasan, and was highly esteemed by the Mongol Emperor Hulagu, who valued his astrological powers, and built him an observatory at Maragha. He accompanied the sovereign on his campaigns, and had the books pillaged

322

ARABIC LITERATURE
libraries of

Bagdad, Syria, and Mesopotamia thus amassing a considerable library, amounting to over four hundred thousand volumes, and saving the books from utter destruction. His own works are compilations from others existing before his time yet he deserves credit for having dealt with trigonometry as a separate science. He died at Bagdad. In the field of jurisprudence he wrote the Jawdhir

from the

set apart for himself,

al-fard'id;
a/-

in

that

of

scholastic

theology, the

Tajrid
;

Again', which has been freqtiently

commentated

and

al-Aqd'id (Rule of the Articles of Faith), on the nature of the Deity, the character of the prophecies
the

Qawaid

Imams, and the resurrection. drew up a system of metaphysics in Persian, entitled FusM, which has been translated into Arabic by Jurjani, and also a Sufi manual called Ausdf al-ashrdf. In mathematics, he left an Arabic edition of Euclid's Elements, which was printed at Rome his treatise on the Quadrilateral has been transin 1594 lated into French by Alexandre-Pacha Carath6odory from

and

of the order of the

In philosophy, he

a manuscript at Constantinople.

In astronomy,

we have

his edition of Ptolemy's Almagest, the elements of astro-

nomy, under the title of Tadhkira, and another book of the same nature called Zubdat al-Idrdk. He drew up in Persian the famous astronomical tables known under the name of ZtJ Ilkhd?it (Imperial Tables), which were and he studied various later translated into Arabic works by Autolycus, Hypsicles, Theodosius, and Aris;

with which he made acquaintance through the Arabic translations of Thabit ibn Qurra and Qusta ibn Luqa. His Albdb al-bdhiyya is a treatise on hygiene, and his Wdfi is a comprehensive treatise on geomancy. Herr Brockelmann enumerates fifty-six works from his pen.
totle,

CHAPTER X
ARABIC LITERATURE FROM THE CAPTURE OF BAGDAD DOWN TO THE END OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Poetry

The court
Safi

poet to the Urtuqids, then reigning at Maridin,

ibn

Saraya al-Hilh, who was paid a visit to Egypt, to the court of Mahk-Nasir, in 1326, but very soon He died at Bagdad towards returned to Maridin. His contemporaries held him to be one of their 1351. His diwdn has been printed at Damascus best poets. and at Beyrout. His poems principally consist in play upon words. Under the title of Qasida of the Urtuqids he composed twenty-nine poems, each containing twentynine couplets, beginning with the same letter of the alphabet, and ending in the same order. They are Malikthe praise of Mansijr the Urtuqid, devoted to who reigned from 1294 till 1312. The ode he addressed to the Egyptian prince to whom he paid a visit has been translated both into Latin and German by Bernstein. He also wrote popular poetry, and a book entitled al-Atil al-hdli, of which the unique manuscript is
al-din 'Abdal-Aziz

born on 27th

August

1278,

at

Munich. Ibn Nubata Jamal al-din

(i

287-1 366),

who was born

324

ARABIC LITERATURE
in 1316.

was brought up in Egypt, and went to He had opportunities of frequenting the court of Abu'1-Fida, Prince of Hamat, historian and geographer, and was afterwards attached to his administration as a secretary. He was past seventy when Sultan Hasan summoned him to Cairo to act as his secretary
at Mayyafariqin,

Damascus

His patron unfortunately died in the following and the pension assigned him was very irregularly paid. He lived to be seventy-nine years old, and died in hospital. He left a diwdn, an anthology {Saj^ al-Mutawwaq), a treatise on the conduct of kings {Sulilk duwal al-muluk), and some other works. Ibn Hijja (Abu'l-Mahasin Taqi al-din) (1366-1434) was born at Hamat. He first practised the manual craft of a button-maker, hence his surname of al-Azrari at
there.

year,

a later period he devoted himself to study, visited Mosul,

Damascus, and Cairo, and saw Damascus in flames during the siege of that city by the Sultan Barquq. He composed a letter to Ibn Makanis on the subject of this disaster. He saw Cairo once more, and held a post
as secretary to the administration there.
see

In 1419 a

we

campaign in Asia Minor. He returned to his native town His most famous work is an in 1427, and died there. imitation of the poem of "The Cloak," in honour of the Prophet, in which all the flowers of Oriental rhetoric are displayed, and which is known as the Badt 'iyya. He collected his own poems, some of them written at Cairo and others at Hamat, under the title of Thamardt al-Shdhiyya. The letters and diplomas drawn up while he was in the service of the Egyptian Mamelukes have been put together in a book called Qahwat al-inshd (The Intoxicating Liquor of Epistolary Style). An anthology

him

in attendance

on Prince Ibrahim during

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

in prose

325

and verse called Thamardt al-Aui'&q (Fruits of the Leaves) was printed at Buliq on the margin of
Raghib Isfahani's Muhddardt. Other and less important works of his of the same nature are some compilations drawn from the books of Ibn Khallikan, Ibn Hisham, and Damiri.
Nasir al-din Nusair

al-Hammami

lived at Cairo.
;

He

was a man of shrewd and crafty character he lived by hiring and farming out the public baths {hamnidni), hence his surname. When he grew old he was obliged to relinquish this occupation, and took to begging, offering poems and niuwashshahs of his own composition for
sale.

He

Siraj

al-din

died in 1312. "Umar ibn

Masud, surnamed al-Majjan

;

(the Obscene),

was

the author of muwashshahs,

was much sought after in society he and died at Damascus

critic

in 1301.

A
the

grammatical

who

discovered mistakes even in

al-Saruji,

work
in

of

the

best

poets
at

Sheikh Taqi al-din 'Abdallah

Saruj
1230,

and lexicographers was who was born at

and died

Cairo in 1294.

He

wrote

many poems which

singers

made known

to the public.

He

rarely left his

Fridays.

He

did not like his

home, never being seen except on name to be announced,

:

and was
called

in the habit of saying

"Amongst
At
first,
I

friends there

hear myself Sheikh Taqi al-din later, I hear nothing but plain Taqi al-din, and I feel they are getting tired of me but when they come to calling me al-Saruji, I
;

are three degrees of friendship.

know they have done with me." Shams al-din al-Dahhan (Muhammad

ibn 'Ali) was

an oil-maker, hence his surname. His trade in no way harmed his talent. He was a poet and musician, a

26

ARABIC LITERATURE

on the stringed instrument known as the qarnln harp laid on a sounding board, rather larger than the Austrian zither, and smaller than the Hungarian He died cymbaluni), and he also composed musical airs.
virtuoso
(a

in 1321.

Sharaf ibn As'ad al-Misri was a

class,

man

of

the lower

with a natural

gift,

who composed comic and

died in 1337.

obscene poetry, and frequented loose society and public

singers of the fair sex.

He

'Uthman Abu'1-Fath al-Balati was born at Balat, a small town near Mosul. He was tall and fat, with a long beard. Even in the height of summer he wore a huge turban, and garments piled one on top of the other. He had studied for some time at Damascus. When Saladin seized Egypt, he proceeded to that country and was appointed reader and teacher of grammar in the Great Mosque. He was addicted to drink and pleasure. Ojie day, when a musician had come to sing him an air, he
began
"

to weep,

and the singer followed

surprise, asked

his example.

Abu'1-Fath, in
air,

Because my father used to and you reminded me of him," quoth the singer. "Then you must be my brother's son!" said Abu'lFath, and from that time he never called the musician anything but " my nephew," and made him his only legatee. He wrote a muwashshah in praise of the qddi
Al-Fadil.

why the other wept. weep when he heard that

IBN Fadl-Allah al-Umar1 (Shihab al-dhi Abu'lAbbas) (1301-1348) was descended from the Caliph 'Umar, and came of a family of Shafi'ite magistrates. The facility with which he could write sudden improvisations was much extolled. He was, according to
Safadi's expression, a finished

man

of letters

that

is

to

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

say, that in his verse

327
practice,

and

in his prose, theory

and

science and action, were equally balanced.

a

He

possessed

wide knowledge of biography, history, and geography. at Damascus, studied law and prosody in his native city, and then travelled in the countries under Egyptian rule. He accompanied his father when MalikNasir appointed him Secretary of State was himself appointed qddi in Cairo, and Secretary of State as well,

He was born

when
to

his father died in that office.

He

finally

Damascus, and died there

is

of the plague.

returned His Masdlik

al-absdr

a geographical, historical, and biographical

which studies by Quatremere (1838) appeared in Notices et Extraits. Pococke made use of it for his history of the Arabs. His Tdrif bil-mustalah al-sharif is a collection of models for letters addressed by the
in

work

over twenty volumes, of

Guignes (1758) and

Mameluke Sultans

to foreign

powers.

The Shatawiyydt

(Hibernals) are letters sent to several learned

men from

Damascus during the winter of 1343-1344, when the city was deep in snow. The manuscript of this book is now at Leyden. A large work in four volumes, Fawddil
devoted to the praise of the virtues of his He composed many odes and poems in the classic metres, besides popular poetry in strophes, inuwashshahs, and dii-baits.
al-samar,
is

own

family.

Ibn al-Tharada ('All ibn Ibrahim), a preacher at Wasit, was born in June 1298. He studied at Bagdad, and paid several visits to Damascus, where he preached
Great Mosque of the Omeyyads. He then fell ill and died in Ibn Suwaid's lunatic hospital, His harmless mania consisted in at Damascus, in 1349. carrying a bag under his arm, to which he fastened all
in the

of melancholia,

the threads

and

strings

he came across, and with which

328

ARABIC LITERATURE

he would never part. His malady did not prevent him from composing excellent poetry. He fancied himself the possessor of a library of two thousand volumes, which he had left behind him at Bagdad, and of which the inerchants had taken possession, and sold it, book by book, in the Damascus bazaars. When he died, his bag was opened, and its only contents were found to be scattered sheets, on which verses and sermons were
inscribed.

He

also

composed poems

in

strophes

vmwashshahs, and mawdliyds. Ibn al-Murahhal (Sadr al-din

1316),

Muhammad)

(1267-

who

is

better

known

in

Syria by his surname

He was Ibn al-Wakil, was of Egyptian origin. It was at born at Damietta, and died at Cairo. Damascus that he studied jurisprudence the basis of all other knowledge in that country, as theology was He knew a great many books by heart, such elsewhere. as the Mufassal, which he committed to memory in a hundred and one days Hariri's Lectures, which he learned in fifty and Mutanabbi's dtwdn, which, we are He had a gift assured, he acquired in a single week. for controversy, and was the only person among the Shah'ites capable of holding, his ground in discussion with Sheikh Taqi al-din Ibn Taimiyya. For seven years he performed the duties of Sheikh of the Ashrafiyya School of the traditions. He was a discreet and a very reserved man, a friend of great folks, and a lover of He wrote verses in every style, including such society. popular forms as the inuwashshah, du-bait, mukhainnias, He collected his principal poetical zajal, and billiq. compositions into an anthology entitled Al-ashbdh wd Lof

Nazd'ir.
Yiisuf

Ibn Zailaq was

killed

by the

Mongols

at

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

the taking of
several of

329

Mosul in 1262. Some of his poems them muwashshahs, intended to be sung, and of an erotic tendency are preserved in al-Kutubi's Fawdt al-Wafaydt. Shams al-din Muhammad, the preacher of

Wasit,

died in 1344, when nearly seventy years of age, also wrote popular poetry.
a former belonging to Ridwan-Pashi, Governor of Gaza, who became a soldier in the Syrian troops, and reached high military rank. These Syrian troops were well known for the violence and injustice of their conduct,
slave

who

Al-Kaiwani was descended from Kaiwan,

Kaiwan was

killed at

Baalbek

in 1623.

When 'Uthman

reached Damascus, al-Kaiwani attached himself to his service, and followed him on the campaign in which he took part and was killed. After his patron's death he returned to ConHere it was that his stantinople, and thence to Syria. character assumed the sad and melancholy tone which marks his poetry. He addressed panegyrics to Abdallah-Pacha Cheteji, when that functionary, as Governor of Damascus, put down the riots which were filling the The quality of his rhymed prose was city with blood. remarkable. also
Khalisa, kiaya to the

Grand

Vizier,

'Abdal-Ghan!
ated to
Qadiris,

Nabulus (1641-1731), who was affilithe religious orders of the Naqshbandis and the was born at Damascus, of a family belonging
of

to Nabulus.

He

lost his father

while

still

very young,

studied jurisprudence, and began to write when he was only twenty. For seven years he stayed within the house

he occupied, close to the Mosque of the Omeyyads, and spiteful tongues asserted that he no longer performed his devotions five times a day, and that he satirised his neighbours in his poems. The mob rose, and handled him

330

ARABIC LITERATURE

roughly, for which cause he wrote satires against it ; but in later years he was looked on as a saint, and people crowded to see him. He went to Constantinople in
1664, but did not remain there long.
to the Beq'a

In 1688 he went

and

to

Lebanon

in

1689, to Jerusalem

In 1693 he travelled to Egypt, and thence In 1700 he spent some forty days at Tripoli in Syria. In April 1707 he left the house hitherto

and Hebron.
to

the Hijaz.

occupied by his masters in the centre of the town, and Salihiyya, on the slopes of Mount Qasyun, His principal a sort of suburb of the Syrian capital. prose works are an unfinished commentary on Baidawi's Tafstr, a commentary on the diwdn of 'Umar Ibn alFarid, and innumerable stanzas of poetry. It is said that Abdal-Ghani could perform miracles, but disliked any He was always ready to intercede reference to this gift. with the authorities in favour of any unfortunate person who applied to him. His poetry became known all over the Arab world. He died, aged over ninety, after a very short illness, on 24th Sha'ban 1143 (4th March 1731). The bazaars of the city were all closed on the day of his funeral, and the populace crowded to Salihiyya to be
settled at

present at the

last rites.

The Amir Manjak

ibn

Muhammad

al-Yusufi (1596-

1669) was descended from the chief of the same name, who ruled Damascus about the year 1370. On his father's death, he spent his fortune freely, completely dissipated it by his extravagance, and then retired from general society. He left Arab territory and went to Turkish countries, and even presented a poem to the

Sultan Ibrahim, receiving, however, nothing in exchange.

To

record his days of poverty and suffering

stantinople, he wrote his

at ConRAmiyydt ; other poems are

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

331

devoted to the praise of wine and of asceticism. A year before he died, he returned to his dissipated habits. Sheikh Mustafa EfendI al-Bab1 derived his surname

from a
al-Bab.

village in the

neighbourhood of Aleppo called

After beginning his legal studies at Aleppo, he

proceeded in 1641 to Damascus, for the purpose of completing them there. Later, as the result of a journey to Constantinople, in the course of which he wrote a poem on that city, in which he conjures up the memory of his own fatherland, he entered the Ottoman magistracy. He also addressed praises to the Sheikh al-Islim,

Yahya Efendi, and

Kyiiprulii.

to the

Grand

Vizier,

Ahmad-Pashi

held the post of qddt at Tripoli in Syria, at Magnesia in Asia Minor, at Bagdid, and last of all at Medina (1680). He made the pilgrimage that

He

and died at Mecca in January 1681. His diwdn, which was printed at Beyrout in 1872, contains a funeral oration on one of his molar teeth, which had been pulled out. It is a very amusing piece of verse.
year,

The daughter of Ahmad ibn Nasir al-din al-Ba'uni, 'A'iSHA AL-Ba'uniyya, wrote the Fatk al-Mubin, an ode,
rhymed
is

in

m, in praise of the Prophet.

This work

accompanied by a commentary of the author's own composition, which was completed in 1516. Witty verses from her pen are also quoted, in which she
has contrived, in the space of five stanzas, to express the opinions of the doctors of the four orthodox rites on some legal controversy. To this same family of Al-Bauni also belonged Baha al-din Muhammad ibn Yusuf (1446-1505), who was born in the suburb of Salihiyya, which spreads over the lower slopes of Mount

and was fond

Qasyun, near Damascus. of reducing

He was
its

a lover of history,

annals within the limits

332
of

ARABIC LITERATURE

mnemonic poems. Thus he wrote a rajaz, Tuhfat al-Zurafa, on general history down to the enthronement of the Mameluke Sultan Qait-Bai, and another on the rule of the two Egyptian sovereigns BarsBai and Qait-Bai. He likewise did not fail to follow ancient custom, by devoting a panegyric, for which he was doubtless well rewarded, to the glory of the latter of these two sovereigns, and also wrote a poem called
short
the

Bahja al-Klialad, a
dren.

treatise

on the education

of

chil-

of Ibn Ma'tuq (1614-1676), which was and published by his son, is full of panegyrics on various Persian governors under the reign of the It was lithographed, proSafavid prince, Shah Sa.i.

The diwdn

collected

bably

at Cairo, in 1861.
al -

Ahmad
al-Saghir,
origin,

Kurdi ibn

Ilyas,

and the was a poet and lexicographer. His father, came from Shahrizur, had settled at Damascus, been appointed preacher in the caravanserai of small town of Nebk, where he had married. He

" strolling

surnamed al - Arrajani Qamus," a man of Kurdish

who
and
the

was

born in the twelfth century of the Hegira (from 1689 onwards), went to Damascus to study at the Sumaisat
Madrasa, and became cook
nature,
in that school.

His

fickle

and his perpetual quarrelling, made his life difficult, and he departed to Constantmople, fearing legal proceedings might be taken against him On account His own thoughtless conduct of some misbehaviour. forced him, at last, to leave the capital of the Empire, although he had found a protector there, and he went to Tripoli in Syria, where he married and obtained various posts. Thence he passed on into Egypt, where the governor, Muhammad-Pasha Raghib, took him under

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

his protection.

333

He

attended

him

to

was appointed governor

April 1756.

of that city,

Aleppo when he and died there in

History

Muhammad ibn 'All Ibn Tabataba, surnamed Ibn AL-TlQTAQA, who was born towards 1262, was the guest of the Governor of Mosul, Fakhr al-din'tsa ibn Ibrahim, in the year 1302, when he dedicated his history of the Moslem Empire, from its foundation down to the Caliphate of Bagdad, to him. It was entitled al-Fakhrt, and has been published first by Ahlwardt, and afterwards by H. Derenbourg. The author of this work has applied himself to writing a clear style, which all may comprehend, having remarked that many writers have limited the utility of their productions by indulging in affected language, and employing unusual terms. His great desire is to make himself understood, for his book is a treatise on politics
for the use of sovereigns

who

desire to rule themselves,

mere toys in their ministers' hands. His precepts on government are supported by instances drawn from the history of the Oriental dynasties. Ahmad al-Ghabrin1 (1246-1314), of the Berber tribe of Ghabra, was born at Bijaya, acted as qddi of that Under the title of ^Unwdn alplace, and died there.

and not

to continue

dirdya,

he has

left

us a gallery of the

men

of letters

town during the seventh century of the Hegira, which has been introduced to European readers by Cherbonneau. Abu'l - Hasan 'Ali Ibn Afii Zar', who was born at Grenada, and settled in Morocco, relates the history of the kings of the Maghrib and of the town of Fez in
of his native

334
his

ARABIC LITERATURE
Raud
al-Qartds (The Paper Garden, the

name

of a

favourite spot outside the gates of Fez),

which has been

published by Tornberg at Upsala, translated into

at

German

by F. von Bombay, into Portuguese at Lisbon, in 1828, by Brother Joz6 de Santo Antonio Moura, and into French by Beaumier, in i860. The qddi IBN Taimiyya (Taqi al-din Abu'l- Abbas) He was descended ( 263-1328) was born at Harran. from a famous preacher who bore the same surname. His father, with his whole family, fled before the Mongols. Not being able to procure beasts of burden, he loaded his books upon a cart, which, so hot was the enemy's pursuit, he was obliged to abandon in order to save himself. They took refuge at Damascus, where young Ibn Taimiyya studied Hanbalite law, and, when his father died, taught in his place. He was then only twenty-one
Agram,
in 1794,
1

years old. He enjoyed the favour of Sultan Malik-Nasir, who had ascended the throne in 1294, but his strong polemics made him many enemies, and his reply to a question put forward at Hamat as to the attributes
of the

Deity stirred public opinion against him, and

This persecution never ceased, to his dismissal. though he was occasionally recalled to his post, as, for instance, when his preaching was needed to stir up the populace to war against the Mongols. In After 1305 he went to Cairo with the Shafi'ite qddi. a sitting of the council and leading men he was shut up, with his two brothers, in the well of the citadel, and remained there for two years. He was then brought back with post-horses to Damascus, and spent He employed the as long a time in prison there. period of his imprisonment in edifying his fellowprisoners on religious subjects. He was sent back to
led

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

Cairo,
fortress of Alexandria,

335

and Sultan Baibars had him detained in the where he only remained for eight months, Malik-Nasir's return to power having brought him his liberty. Instead of taking vengeance on his enemies, he forgave them. Ibn Taimiyya was appointed professor at the school founded by the Sultan, and

continued to be his counsellor. He took advantage of the departure of the army for Syria to accompany it, went to Jerusalem, and returned to Damascus after an absence of more than seven years. He assumed his former functions as teacher and judge, but the hatred of his enemies, which now broke out afresh, procured a decree forbidding him to hold any public employment. He refused to obey, and was imprisoned for nearly six months. On recovering his liberty he recommenced his former mode of life, until the publication

of his

work on a

visit

to

the tombs of the

prophets and saints resulted

the citadel.

in

his

He was

assigned a separate

he was able to carry on his literary several books on subjects connected with the cause But when these works became of his incarceration. matters of public knowledge, his books, paper, and ink were taken from him, and this was the most cruel blow he ever received. He very soon fell ill, and died within three weeks, in September 1328. His funeral obsequies were attended by an extraordinary concourse of people. Of Ibn Taimiyya's many works, that most utilised in European science has been the fatwd issued

imprisonment in cell, in which work, and wrote

by him

against the Nusairis or Ansaris of the Syrian mountains, which has been studied by E. Salisbury and Stanislas Guyard. Maracci made use of one of

his

works against the Christians {TakhjU ahl

al-lnjil)

336
five

ARABIC LITERATURE
Koran.
Forty-

in the preface to the refutation of the

works from the pen of

in various

this

original

writer are

now
It

European

libraries.

was from the Hanbalite teachings of Ibn Taimiyya and his disciples that 'Abdal-Wahhab drew the Sunnite fanaticism and hatred of innovation which are the distinguishing features of the
of

movement

for the

reform

Islam known under the name of Wahhabeeism. This has been demonstrated by Snouck Hurgronje, and Goldziher. The qddt was an anthropomorphist,

on the literal interpretation of the passages Koran relating to the personality of the Deity. In jurisprudence he accepted logical deductions drawn by himself from the corpus of the traditions, and pracinsisted
in the tised

and

the qijds or use of

relates

analogy.

Ibn Batuta, the

traveller,

was greatly respected at Damascus, that he discoursed on the various sciences, but that there was something unhinged in his brain.
that

he

When

brought before Malik-Nasir at Cairo, his only answer to the Grand Qadi's questions as to the accusations put forward against him was "There is no God but God." His favourite disciple was Ibn Qayyim alJauziyya (Shams al-din Muhammad), who probably helped him to revise the style of his compositions, and himself vi^rote books, some thirty of which are now preserved in various libraries. He was born in Damascus in 1292, the son of the curator of the Al-Jauziyya Madrasa. He shared his master's tribulations, and was imprisoned with him at Cairo. His persecutions did not end with Ibn Taimiyya's death, but continued
:

for

some time

afterwards.

Shams
of

al-din died

on 17th
of

September 1350.
Scarcely

anything

is

known

the

life

Hafiz

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

a!-din

337
in

Abu'l-Barakat

al-Nasafi,

who

died

1310,

and wliose works have enjoyed the signal honour of tempting a swarm of commentators. Of his Mandr al-anwdr (The Beacon of Lights), a work on law, the bibliographer Hji Khalfa mentions nearly fifty comHis Wdfi, and its commentary the Kdft, mentaries. were finished at Bukhara in 1275. An abridgment by the author himself, at a later date, is the Kanz His Umda, a Moslem catechism, has been al-daqd'iq. published in London, by W. Cureton, under the title of Pillar of the Sunnite Creed. A commentary on this work, by its own author, is called al-Piirndd ft'l-i''
tiqdd.

Rashid al-din (Fadl-Allah ibn Abi'l-Khair), the Perwas born at Hamadhan in 1247, and executed at Tabriz in 1318, having been accused of poisoning the Sultan Uljaitu. He was He was physician to a physician, of Jewish origin. Abaqa, and afterwards minister to Ghazan and to his He wrote four Arabic works, now brother Uljaitu. preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale Mafdtih altafdsir, Lata if al-haqd^iq, Taudihdt, and Sultdniyya. AbO'l - FiDA Ismail ibn "Ali belonged to that Ayyubite family which the fortunes of Saladin raised His ancestors had ruled at Hamat. to various thrones. His father, Al-Malik al-Afdal, brother of Prince Al-Malik al-Mansur, had been forced, with all his family, to before the Mongols, and had taken refuge in flee the house of Ibn al-Zanjabili, at Damascus. There Abu'l Fida was born, in the year 1273. He was brought up both as a warrior and as a man of letters. He was hardly twelve years old when he accompanied his father to the siege of the fortress of Markab, which
sian historian of the Mongols,

38

ARABIC LITERATURE

was wrested from the Knights Hospitallers in 1285. He was at the taking of TripoH, and at the siege of St. Jean d'Arc, on which occasion he commanded a squad of ten men. In 1310, as a reward for his services to the Egyptian Sultan Malik-Nasir, he was made Prince of Hamat, after that State had been confiscated because his cousin had died childless. The title of honour of Malik-Salih, and subsequently that of Malik-Mu'ayyad, rewarded the attention with which he yearly journeyed to Cairo to renew the bonds of vassalage between himself and the Sultan. In 1313 he assisted the Egyptian troops to re-establish the Sharif Abu'l-Ghaith in power at Mecca. He died of intermittent fever, in his sixtieth year, in October His Universal History, which made his reputa1331. tion, is a mere abridgment of that of Ibn al-Athir, itself abridged from Tabari's, and carried down to the year 1329, but it had the advantage of attracting the notice of Orientalists at a time when the world was not, as yet, in possession of the two older works. This text, part of which was published by Reiske at Copenhagen, under the title of Annates Muslemici, has furnished subject-matter for other inquirers.

Thus

Fleischer

has translated into Latin and published the portion devoted to pre-Islamic history, from which Albert Schultens and Silvestre de Sacy had already given extracts. The
life of Mahomet, translated into Latin by Gagnier, has been translated into French and published by Nodi des Vergers, and into English by W. Murray. His general geography, with tables, has been published by Reinaud and MacGuckin de Slane, and translated into French by Reinaud and Stanislas Guyard. The first of these

Orientalists has written, as a preface to his translation, a

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

which
born
is

339

general introduction to the geography of the Orientals,

one

of his best works.

Ahmad AL-NuWAiRt (1282-1332) was He Egypt, in the little town of Nuwaira. was famous both as a lawyer and a historian. So highly was his penmanship esteemed that he was paid a thousand dirhems for each of his eight copies of Bukhari's Sahth. His encyclopaedia, Nihdyat al-arab (The Extreme Need), is a general review of human knowledge, in five great divisions Heaven, Earth, Man, Animals, Plants, and History from this work Albert Schultens drew his history of the Yoqtanids in the Yemen. His history of Sicily has been translated into French by the elder Caussin his Conquest of Northern his Africa by the Arabs has been studied by Otter of same country history the has been translated by De Slane. Silvestre de Sacy has made an extract of the part relating to the Druses, Hammer-Purgstall one of that dealing with the Egyptian decrees as to the dress
Abu'l- Abbas
in

of Christians and Jews, and Defrdmery has quoted the anecdotes connected with the life of the Sultan Baibars. Abu'1-Fath Muhammad IBN Sayyid al-Nas (12631334), whose parents were of Sevillian origin, was born
at Cairo,

and went

to

Damascus

in 1291, to

studies.

He

is

said to have taken lessons

complete his from almost

On his return, he taught in his He loved books, and collected a fine library, in which, besides his own manuscripts, autographs of famous works were to be found. He compiled a bioone thousand professors.
native town.

graphy of Mahomet called ^UyAn al-dthdr (Sources of the Monuments), and, under the title of Bushrd al-labib (Message of the Man of Sense), collected his own It is from this collecverses in praise of the Prophet.

340

ARABIC LITERATURE
ode included
in his

fion that Kosegarten extracted the

al-DimashqI Rabwa, near Damascus, whereof Ibn Batuta has written "it is one of the prettiest views in the world, and one of the most
al-Sufi

Carminum Orientalium Triga. Shams al-din Abu 'Abdallah

(1254-1327) was

imam

of the Httle village of

beautiful pleasure spots

buildings,

there are

tall

palaces, noble

and exquisite gardens." It was a place of pilgrimage, on account of a little grotto, opposite which was the supposed oratory of Khidr, who was likened to
the prophet Elias.
fields,

large proportion of the cultivated

orchards, and houses were legacies from pious persons, and what they brought in served to support

and the pilgrims. Here Shams cosmography, Nukhbat al-dahr, which has been published by Mehren, at St. Petersburg, and translated by him at Copenhagen. This work has quite
the imam, the muezzin,
al-din wrote his

recently (1898) served as the basis of a dissertation by H. Deherain. Shams al-din, who was a mystic, retired,
at a later date, to

Safad in Palestine, and there died.

He

also cultivated poetry,

the beauty of

and some lines of his, inspired by the neighbourhood of Damascus, are often

From the critic's point of view, according to Reinaud, his cosmography leaves much to be desired, but it has been most useful to students of the geography of the Middle Ages, for it contains information as to facts which are not mentioned elsewhere. AbO Hayyan Muhammad ibn Yusuf, of the Berber
quoted.
tribe of Nafza,

surnamed

al-Jayyani, because his fore-

bears lived in the Spanish town of Jaen, was born in

in November 1256; completed his studies at Malaga, Velez, and Almeria left Spain in 1280, in consequence of a difference with his master, Ibn al-Zubair

Grenada

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

travelled through

341

Northern Africa and Egypt ; made the to Egypt by Syria. He was a polyglot knew Persian, Turkish, and Ethiopian, and wrote books in those languages. In 1298 he succeeded his master, Ibn al-Nahhas, as teacher of grammar, and then of the traditions, and gained the friendship of the Amir Saif al-din Arghiin, who became Governor of Egypt in 1312. He was very frugal, and lived on a few He never bought books, not feeling copper coins. any need of them, but borrowed those he desired to read
pilgrimage,

and returned

from

the public libraries.

He was

originally a Zahirite,

but came
after his

over completely to the

it

Shilfi'ite

view,

and never

relinquished

again.

He

died in July 1345, five years

daughter Nudhar, herself a literary character, on whom he wrote a tract, which is a kind of autobiography. His Idrdk, which describes the Turkish tongue as it was

spoken
nople.

in Cairo

by the

colonists

from Central Asia

in

the fourteenth century, has been published at Constanti-

He

also wrote the kind of popular poetry

known

as muwashshahdt.

Shams al-din Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad al-DhaHAbI (1274-1348), a man of Turkoman blood, was born at Damascus, began his studies when he was eighteen years of age, and undertook journeys which brought him the acquaintance of more than twelve hundred learned men. He was a teacher of the traditions at Damascus, but was unable to enter the Ashrafiyya in that capacity, because the founder of that school had laid down conditions, as to the religious beliefs of those employed to teach in it, which he could not fulfil. Of the many works he left behind him, the best known are his Mushtabih, published by P. de Jong at Leyden, and a Medicine of the Prophet, translated into French by Perron. His

342

ARABIC LITERATURE

Tabaqdt al-Huffdz (Classes of those who know the Traditions by Heart), abridged and continued by Suyutl, has been pubhshed by Wiistenfeld under the title
of Liber Classium.
al-isldni)
is

scattered

His great history of Islamism (Tdrtkh in odd volumes through various

European

libraries.

Zain al-din
in 1290, at

Abu Hafs'Umar IBN al-Ward! was born

Upper Syria. He and was appointed assistant to the qddt Ibn al-Naqib at Aleppo. In consequence of a dream, he resigned this post, and devoted himself entirely
Ma'arrat al-Nu'man, in
studied law at Hamat,
to literary composition.

He

died of the plague, in the

Aleppo, in March 1349. His history is an abridgment of that of Abu'1-Fida, with a continuation carried down to the year of his own death. Others of his works are devoted to grammar, jurisprudence, mysticism, and even to pure literature, as, for example, the

town

of

Lecture

on the plague, preserved by Suyflti in the book he wrote on that hideous epidemic. The authorship of the Kharidat al-AJdib, a treatise on geography and
natural history, containing
fantastic tales,
all

sorts of

wondrous and

to him.
literal

has been ascribed, probably incorrectly, This work, indeed, is no more than an almost
of

transcription

the

Jdmi'

al-funitn

(Encyclo-

composed by Najm al-din Ahmad al-Harrani, learned a Hanbalite, who was in Egypt in 1332. It is a cui-ious book, and has been printed at Cairo, and studied by De Guignes, Fraehn, Hylander, Tornberg, Freund, Wiistenfeld, and Mehren. 'ApuD AL-d1n AL-1j1 of Shiraz, a Shafi'ite lawyer, qddt, and Sufi, who died in 1355, wrote a history of the patriarchs, of Mahomet, and some of his companions. Under the title of Mawdqif {T\i& Stations) he has given
paedia)

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

us a treatise on metaphysics and

343

Moslem

theology, of

which the

fifth

and

sixth parts, together with the ap-

pendix, dealing with

the Moslem sects and Jurjani's commentary, have been published by Soerensen. Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi (the Bookseller), who was of Aleppan origin, and died in 1363, studied in his native city and at Damascus. He entered the book trade as a means of making a livelihood, and grew rich in it. Under the name of Uyun al-tawdrikh, he drew up a chronicle of the Caliphs and learned men, with special particulars as to Damascus, and he also prepared a continuation or supplement to Ibn Khallikan's great biographical dictionary, Fawdt al- Wafaydt, which has
'

who was born at Safad,' Government secretary at Damascus, Cairo, and Aleppo, and Director of the Treasury at Damascus. He died in 1363. His chief work is his Wdfi bil-Wafaydt, a complete dictionary of biography, the twenty-six volumes of which are scattered among Another of his books is various European libraries. specially devoted to the famous men and women of the
in Palestine,

been printed at Bulaq. KHALiL IBN AiBAK AL-SAFADt,

was

eighth century of the Hegira

in fact

his

own

contemporaries,
is

{A'ydn al-asr).

A
.

very curious anthology

in

that of

dedicated by
tears,

him

to

poems

which mention

is

made

Ladhdhat al-Sam His Laitat al-shdkt wa-daniat al-bdki is an immoral story, intermingled with verse. His Jindn al-jinds, on F'lowers of Rhetoric, has been
printed at Constantinople.

Other collections of verse

and compilations were produced by his fertile pen. SiDl KhalIl al-Jundi, a Malikite lawyer, studied at Cairo, where he was both professor and mufti, and where he died in November 1365. He was the author of the

344

ARABIC LITERATURE

Mukhtasar, a summary of Malikite jurisprudence used in the native courts in Algeria, which has been frequently
reprinted by the Societe Asiatique in Paris, translated
into

French by Dr. Perron

in his Exploration scientifique

de I'Algerie, and concordance tables of which have been

drawn up by E. Fagnan. This concise and practical manual has found many commentators. Sidi Khalil also
wrote a biography of Sheikh 'Abdallah al-Manufi, his own and some other works, which, like this last, are still in manuscript. Ismail ibn 'Umar IBN KathIr (1302-1372), a traditionist and historian, succeeded al-Dhahabi in his
teacher,
professorial chair at

Damascus, and taught for some

time in the Ashrafiyya, but was dismissed from these latter functions. His Biddya wal-Nihdya (The Beginning and the End) is a great universal history, begin-

ning with the Creation and ending in 1337 the most copy now in existence is at Vienna. The part relating to the government of the Ethiopians in Yemen has been published by J.-F.-L. George at Berlin. Ibn
;

perfect

Kathir also dealt with the

tionists of his school.

Imam

Shafi'i,

and the

tradi-

Shihab al-din Abu'l- Abbas

Ahmad

IBN ABt Hajala,

a philologist and poet, and a Hanbalite, belonging to

Tilimsan, where he was born in 1325, travelled, went to Mecca to accomplish the rites of the pilgrimage, re-

turned by Damascus and Syria, and settled in Cairo, where he was appointed sheikh of a dervish convent. He died at Cairo, of the plague, in 1375. His grandfather had been given the surname of Abii. Hajala, or "the Man with the Partridge," because a partridge had laid its egg one day in his cloak. He wrote the Sukkarddtt

(The Sugar-bowl), an

historical

and geographical work

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

on'

345

Egypt, which includes a biography of Sultan Malikwhom the book is dedicated. It is an anthology, on the subject of the importance of the number seven in everything concerning the land of Egypt. This idea of connecting everything with the fateful number seven deprives the work of any historical value. It has been Ibn Abi Hajala's Dtwdn al-Sabdba printed at Bulaq. deals with the history of celebrated lovers ; it has been published at Cairo, on the margins of Da'iid al-Antaki's Tazytn al-asTLciq, LiSAN AL-DiN Abii "Abdallah Muhammad Ibn alKhatIb came of a Syrian family which had emigrated
Nasir, to
to Spain.

He was born at Grenada in November 13 13. His father's property, which had been confiscated, was restored to him, and he became the friend of the seventh prince of the Beni'l-Ahmar dynasty of Grenada, Abu'lHajjaj

Yusuf,

who

confided the

management

of his

kingdom
by the

He was continued in this post monarch's successor, Muhammad V., and attended
to his hands.

him when he was forced

to

flee to

Africa from his

brother Isma'il in 1359. Muhammad V. returned from Africa three years later, retook Grenada, and reappointed
Nevertheless, within a very short time, he was accused of treason by his enemies, cast into prison, and executed (1374). His
history of the Caliphs of Spain, the East,

Ibn al-Khatib to his former post.

and Africa,

furnished Casiri with a long excerpt relating to the Aghlabite Sultans, and the Fatimid Caliphs who reigned
in Sicily

and Africa,

for his

Hispano-Arab Library. This

has been reprinted in Kosario Gregorio's collection of

historical

documents
year

relating to Sicily.

He
its

studied the

history of Grenada,

and

left

annals of

sovereigns

down

to the
23

1363.

He

wrote biographies of the

346

ARABIC LITERATURE

famous men belonging to that capital, including his own. From these Casiri drew the matter for two hundred and
account of his travels contains demen to be found in them, and the most frequented libraries. Badr al-din Abu Muhammad al-Hasan IBN Habib, a learned Shafi'ite, was born at Damascus in 1310. So well did he profit by the instruction bestowed upon him, that at the age of thirteen, having been present at prayers in the Great Mosque, he wrote a poem on the incident. He went to Aleppo with his father, who had been appointed professor of the hadith in that town, and for some time performed the duties of chief of the municipal The Mecca pilgrimage afforded him an opporpolice.
eighty notices.
scriptions of the Spanish towns, the learned
of visiting Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Hebron. In the following year he made a second pilgrimage to Mecca (1338). He was then given a post in the public service at Aleppo, and accompanied the

An

tunity

Amir Sharaf al-din on his making acquaintance with

tax-collecting rounds, thus

the

chief

Syrian

towns.

From 1344 onwards, he devoted himself to editorial work. In 1354 he made a pleasure trip to Tripoli, and there made the acquaintance of the governor, Saif
Being well received, he spent two When the governor was appointed in the same capacity at Damascus, he joined him there, remained three years, and was honourably welcomed by
al-din

Manjak.

years in that town.

the learned

men

of the Syrian capital.

life

He

spent the
tl:ere

closing years of his

at

Aleppo, and died

in

August 1377. To him we owe a history of the Mameluke Suhans of Egypt, entitled Durrat al-Asldk (The Pearl of the Threads), which covers the period between 1250 and 1375, with references to contemporary events in neigh-

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

347

bouring countries, and very valuable obituary notices of the great dignitaries and learned men of that epoch. But, as the whole of the text is in rhymed prose, it may be objected that historical accuracy has been sacrificed to rhyme. His son, Zain al-din Tahir, carried his father's annals down to the year 1398. This work proved useful
to Maqrizi,

information for his history of the Mameluke Sultans from it. He also wrote a history of the Sultan Qilawun and his sons. His Nastni al-Sabd

who drew

(Breath of the Breeze), a representation of scenes from nature and from human life, is a mixture of rhymed prose and verse. Muhammad ibn 'Abdal-Rahim IBN AL-FURAT beHe made a longed to an important Cairene family.
special

study of the traditions and

is

of jurisprudence.
is

Yet

to us, for

most interesting one of the sources of the history of the He was born in 1334, and died on 2nd April Crusades. History of Dynasties and Kings is a Moslem His 1405.
it

as regards history that he

he

is

chronology,
tion of

down

to the year 1396,

Vienna Library, and are believed to be the autograph manuscript. They run from 1107 to 1396, but with inany gaps. These volumes were conveyed to Paris after the campaign of 1809, and remained there till 1814. During this period, Jourdain, a most hard-working Orientalist, made a long extract from them, which has been utilised by Michaud in his Histoire des Croisades, and by Reinaud in the fourth volume of the Bibliothcque des Croisades. Towards the same epoch, a learned qddi of ConstanIbn al-Khatib al-Qsamtini, tine, Abu'l-'Abbas Ahmad compiled a series of very short biographical notices of
in the

which has been Nine volumes of it are

clearly set forth

only a certain porby the author.

348
five

ARABIC LITERATURE

logical order,

hundred famous personages, arranged in chronofrom Mahomet's time down to the year and also wrote, in honour of the Marinid prince 1404,

Faris 'Abdal-'Aziz, his Fdrisiyya, a history of the Hafsid dynasty, extracts from which have been published by Cherbonneau in ihe. Journal Asiatique, diier a

Abu

manuscript actually discovered by him at Constantine. Arabia had then produced a mystic writer, "Afif al-din
'Abdallah
at
al-Yafi'i, who was born in Yemen in 1298, studied at Aden, and, after the year 1318, settled partly

Mecca and

partly at Medina.

He

never again

left

these two towns, except to

make a
and
died at

journe)' to Jerusalem,
a short excursion into

Damascus, and Cairo,

the

in 1324,

Yemen

in 1337.

work on the mystical

al-Khashshab,

Mecca in 1367. His interpretation of the Koran, Miikh-

He

tasar al-durr al-nazim, extracted

an author
at Cairo,

who

died

from a work by Ibn about 1252, has

his

been printed
stories of

and so has

Raud

al-raydhin

(Flower-plots of Basil), containing five hundred edifying

saints

books contains no

and pious persons. Another of his less than two hundred little tales of

the same nature, touching a saintly individual called 'Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani, and other illustrious Sufis. With him must be mentioned Abu Madyan Shuaib al-Huraifish, who was born in Egypt, and died at Mecca in 1308. His Raud al-fd iq (The Excellent Flower-plot), a collection of moral and pious anecdotes, and of traditions relating to the Last Judgment, has also been reprinted at Cairo several times over. The Nuzhat al-Majdlis (Recreations of the Gatherings), by 'Abdal-Rahman al-Safuri, written at Mecca in 1479, is another of the successful publications of the Egyptian printing presses. Yemen was the home of Sharaf al-din Ismail Ibn

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

al-Muqri, the author of a strange work.

349

He was

born

in

1354, at Abyat-Husain, in the district of Surdad, and taught at Ta'izz and at Zabid. He acted for some time
as judge in the latter town,

and died there

in 1433.
is

His

principal work, the

into three

''

Unwdn al-Sharaf al-wdft,

divided

broad columns, separated from each other by The centre columns contain a treatise on law, and the narrow ones between, which must be read separately, are treatises on history and grammar, while the two columns on the outer edges, composed of single letters which form the beginnings and endings of the columns next them, present, when read from the top downwards, an intelligible meaning of their own. This extraordinary arrangement, which makes the work a masterpiece in the overcoming of a difficulty, has been imitated by Suyuti in his Nafhat al-Miskiyya. We now come to the great historian and philosopher Abu Zaid 'Abdal-Rahman IBN KhaldOn (1332-1406). He was descended from the tribe of Kinda in the Hadramaut his ancestor, Khalid, who came with an army into Spain, in the third century of the Hegira,
four narrow ones.
;

had
in

given
a

his

name

to

the

family
of in

of

the

BenuThis

Khaldun, altering
family
first

the termination

his

appellation

manner frequently adopted

at

Yemen.

resided at Carmona, near Seville, then at

Seville, and finally settled was born on 27th May

Tunis, where Ibn Khaldun

1332.

Having finished
of

his

education,
Sultan,

he

entered

the

service

the

Hafsid

Abu

Ishaq

Ibrahim, as

caligraphist.

He

was in attendance on this prince in 1352, when he was defeated in battle, and obliged to take refuge at Ceuta, and when his protector recovered his power, and set up his capital at Fez, the young caligraphist was

50

ARABIC LITERATURE
him
appointed his master's secretary. The his intimacy with stirred up envy
;

summoned and
favour shown
the

Amir

of

Bijaya,

who was

interned at

P'ez,

fur-

nished a pretext for accusing

him

of treason,
till

and he

was

cast into prison,

and remained there

in

the death

The regent of the 1358. kingdom, Al-Hasan ibn 'Umar, who governed in the name of the youthful Abu Salim, a boy of five, set him free, and gave him back his post. From that time When Sultun Abu 'Abdallah his position improved. reconquered the kingdom of Grenada Ibn al-Ahmar
of the Sultan

Abu Tnan,

Ibn Khaldun was charged by Don Pedro, the tyrant of him his mind to remain in Spain, and He made up Castile. finding himself surrounded by sent for his family, but jealousy, he took advantage, in 1364, of the fact that Abu Abdallah Muhammad, his fellow-prisoner at Fez, had recovered possession of Bijaya, to proceed to that town, and there became chamberlain to the prince, and

from

his brother Isma'il,

to conclude peace with

regent of the State. This prosperity was not of long duration.

following year, his protector lost his
life

In the

an expedition against Abu'l -'Abbas, Prince of Constantine, and Ibn Khaldiin, instead of holding out and defending the town of Bijaya, as its inhabitants would have had him Then, feeling do, delivered it over to the victor. that the new sovereign treated him with suspicion, he departed by stealth. In spite of Ibn Khaldun's assertion that he preferred study to public functions, he cerin

had a ruling passion for politics, to which his knowledge and acute judgment naturally predisposed him. Thus he attached himself to the service of 'Abd al-'Aziz, who had driven Abu Hammu out of Tilimtainly

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

s4n,

351

and

after his death,- to that of

'Abdal-Rahman and

Abu'l- 'Abbas, who had divided the power between them. He fell under suspicion of favouring the first of these duumvirs, and was imprisoned by the second, in 1374, but after a few days he was granted his freedom, and permission to depart to Spain. He was at first well
received at Grenada by Ibn al-Ahmar, but he soon
into disgrace,
fell

and returned

to Tilimsan just in time to

Abu Hammu restored to the throne. Abu Hammu invited him to serve him, as he had served him previously, by-undertaking a mission to the Bedouins, to bring them over to his side. On this mission
see

Ibn
in

Khaldun duly
Qal'at

started,

but he tarried four years

castle

Ibn

Salama,

the

of

petty

prince,

writing his Prolegomena and his great historical work.

As he lacked the books necessary for their completion, he proceeded to Tunis, in 1378 was received with great honour by the Sultan, Abu'l-'Abbas, and there wrote
;

his history of the Berbers.

His former fellow-disciple,

Ibn 'Arafa,

who by

this

time had become a mufti, repre-

sented him to be a dangerous character, and the Sultan would have taken him away with him, on an expedition which he was then preparing. But Ibn Khaldun

begged to be allowed to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and

with this object, departed by sea, in 1382. When he passed through Cairo, whither his fame had already
spread, students

came

to his

house

in crowds,

beseeching

and give them lessons. To this he agreed, as no caravan was going to Mecca that year. Against his will, he was appointed Malikite qddt by Sultan Barquq. His impartiality, and the severity with which he put down abuses, brought him many enemies. Meanwhile, his family had at last obtained permission to

him

to stay in Egypt,

352
join him, but
tbis

ARABIC LITERATURE
all

perished in a shipwreck.

Touched by
of
his duties

misfortune, the Sultan relieved

him

as qddi,
literary

and he sought consolation in teaching and in labours. Three years later, he performed his

interrupted pilgrimage.

On his return, he wrote the history of his own life, but Sultan Barquq had him carried off from a property in the Fayyum, which he himself had bestowed upon
him once more to accept the post which he remained till 1400, when, under Barquq's successor, Malik Nasir Faraj, he was accused and imprisoned on account of his excessive severity. Notwithstanding this, he obtained a post as professor. He attended the Sultan on his campaign against Tamerlane in Syria, but when the faithless behaviour of the Egyptian officers forced his master to beat a
him, and obliged
of
qddt, in
retreat, the historian left Damascus by and went over to the Tartar conqueror, who received him with great honour, and allowed him to return to Cairo and go back to his post as qddi, which he lost and recovered again more than once. He was still holding it when he died, on 20th March

precipitate
stealth,

1406.

Ibn Khaldun is one of the greatest historians of Arabic literature, because he formulated, in his Prolegomena, a whole philosophy of Moslem history as conceived by a statesman and magistrate of the close of the fourteenth century. He also lays down sound
principles
for the writing of history.
It is

a pity, as

Wiistenfeld has pointed out, that he did not follow

them

himself,

for

his

concise,

occasionally,

to

annals are a compilation, too be comprehensible, and the not

sources of his information are

always correctly

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

given.

353

His

style

is

not
the

classic, yet

it

is

model because
dealt with

of

clear fashion in
of history.

quoted as a which he has

His work
;

the

philosophy

is

called the Book of Examples (Kitab al- Ibar)

into

three
in

parts

the

it is

divided
into

Prolegomena,

translated

by MacGuckin de Slane, after Etienne Quatreraere had published the the main history of the text in the same periodical Arabs and neighbouring peoples and the history of dynasties the Berbers and of the Moslem of Northern Africa, published and translated into French, at Algiers, by De Slane. The history of the Aghlabites and of the Sicilian Arabs, which is included in this work, had already been published and translated by Noel des Vergers. He begins his Prolegomena by laying down rules for the composition of critical history, which ensure
French
the Notices et Extraits,
; ;

thorough accuracy as to

facts.

He

opens his subject

;

by dividing the populations into two great classes the nomad tribes and the sedentary tribes he describes
the formation of the towns, the influence exerted by them, the birth of all power springing from the family
feeling, the

their

foundation of the empires and causes of decadence the nature of the various forms of
;

royalty, of the Caliphate

and the Imamate in other spiritual power of the All this is set forth in uneven fashion by Caliphs. a man who is carried away by his own ideas, who repeats himself in his desire to press them, and who
words, of the temporal and
is

perpetually breaking off to put forward historical

proofs of his theories.

telligence

His steady and sagacious

in-

and

his

great

everywhere noticeable, of study by any one desirous

power of generalisation are and I know no book so worthy

of

understanding the

3S4
history of the

ARABIC LITERATURE
Moslem empires.
the author's
utter

From

the

general

ignorance of the liistory of the free Republics of Greece, and of the formation of the Roman Empire, largely detracts from the value of his observations, but this in no way diminishes their weight as regards the history of the
point
of

view

Moslem peoples. The little town

to

of

Beyrout, which owes

it

its
it

name
stands

the wells by which

river, and on a rocky cape at carried it drinking water into till about never had any received the honour of being comthirty years ago), history of its own, written by memorated in a special a member of the Buhtur family, who ruled the mountainous country called al-Gharb in the Lebanon, with His name was Salih ibn Yahya, the title of Emir. and he is known to have died after the year 1436. His book, which deals with the history of his own family and of the town of Beyrout under Egyptian and Prankish rule, and which exists in manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale, has been published by L. Chdikho in the Mashriq, a Beyrout journal. A qddi of the little town of 'Aintab, north of Aleppo, was the father of the historian AI-Aini (Badr al-din Mahmud), abbreviated to 'Ain-TabJ. He was born in July 1360, and began to study law under his father, with so much success that he was able to take his parent's place on the bench, even before he had completed his education. To perfect this he went to Aleppo, to which locality his family originally

was supplied (for distance from any some

belonged, and, after his father's death, visited several Syrian towns, made the pilgrimage, returned from it,
in

1386,

by Damascus and Jerusalem, and there made

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

the

355
al-

acquaintance of

the

Sufi 'Ala al-din

Ahmad

Sirafi,

who
in

took him to

Cairo,

position

the newly-founded

and obtained him a Barquqiyya convent.

The influence of one of his protectors, the Emir Hakam, procured him, in 1399, the post of Commissary
of the municipal police in Cairo,

The just been dismissed. such municipal employments led to his losing and recovering this one several times over. He fell into disgrace and was put to the torture, under Sultan Malik Mu'ayyad Shaikh, in 1412. He was recalled to favour, and appointed professor of a school founded by the same sovereign, and even sent as his ambassador to the Roman Emperor of the East at Constantinople. He rose to the highest favour under the Sultan's suecessors, Malik Zahir Tatar and Malik Ashraf Barsbai the latter especially delighted in his company, because he could talk over religious questions with him in the The accession of Malik 'Aziz Yusuf Turkish tongue. restored him to his professorial chair (1438), and he then took advantage of a wave of favour to unite in his own person the posts of Grand Qadi of the Hanahad
all
fites,

from which Maqrizi uncertainty attending

head

of

the police, and curator of

the

pious
held
these

foundations, which

had

never previously been

by the same
his

individual.

He

lost

the last

of

three positions through

some

intrigue,

and then turned

back on public life. He died on 29th December His Iqd al-jumdn (Necklace of Pearls) is a 1451. universal history from the Creation down to the year His Jauhara is a versified biography of Sultan 1446. His many commentaries on works Malik Mu'ayyad. of theology and jurisprudence have earned him a celebrity which has no special interest for us.
"^

56
Abu'l-Tayyib

ARABIC LITERATURE
Ahmad
al-Hijazi (1388-1470) studied the

under the direction of Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. His over-indulgence in the use of the marsh-nut or anacardium ruined his health, and obliged him to give up his legal studies and confine himself to literature. In addition to his own poems, which may be seen in manuscript at the Escurial, he made a collection of poetry in which appear such popular forms as muivashshah and zajal, and which is entitled Raud al-dddb (Flower-beds of Literature) this work has been printed The Bibliotheque Nationale and the at Bombay. British Museum both possess his Nail al-rdid, a tract giving the height of the annual rise of the Nile from the Hegira onwards. Abu'l-Khair Ibn AL-jAZARt (1350-1429) was born at Damascus. On his way back from the Mecca pilgrimReturning to his native town, he age, he went to Cairo. became qddi of Damascus saw his Egyptian properties and then moved into Asia Minor, confiscated in 1395 the court of Ottoman the Sultan, Bayezid I. After the to battle of Ancyra, Tamerlane sent him as a. prisoner to Samarqand. When the Tartar conqueror died, he returned to Persia and settled at Shiraz, where he was appointed qddi, and where he died, having spent the closing years of his life in travels which took him from Bassora to Mecca and Medina. His works, notably a didactic poem which has been lithographed at Cairo, and on which many commentaries have been written, deal with the art of reading the Koran. His Dhdt alshifd is a poem which includes a short survey of the history of the Prophet and the four orthodox Caliphs, followed by a very succinct summary of Moslem history, down to the time of Bayezid I. It was written at Shiraz
traditions
;
; ;

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

in 1396, at the request of Sultan

357
then

Muhammad, who

ruled that

city.

A SufJ named Jamil al - din 'Abdal - Razzaq of Qashan, who died in 1330, left a dictionary of technical terms {istlldhdf), used by the mystics, which has been pubHshed by Sprenger at Calcutta (1845). His LatSHf al-ildni, which deals with a similar subject, has been
study of the speculative dochis treatise modern East on Predestination and Free-will has been translated by
utilised

by Tholuck

in his

trine of the Trinity in

the

Stanislas Guyard.

descendant of the famous ascetic 'Abdal-Qadir alGilanf, Qutb al-dhi 'Abd al-Karim, who was born in 1365, and was still alive in 1423, wrote a book called Insdn a!-Kdmil (The Perfect Man), on human destiny, which has been printed at Cairo, and nineteen other works on various points in mysticism. Even the Persian poet Jami (1414-1492) wrote thirteen Arabic works on theological questions. Sarim al-din Ibrahim IBN DuQMAQ, a zealous disciple of Abu Hanifa, who was born in Egypt towards 1350, was haled before the qddt Jalal al-din al-Bulqhii in 1401, for having written that Abii Hanifa was superior to Shafi'i. Though he excused himself by saying he had drawn this judgment from the works of other men, he was condemned to be whipped and cast into prison. He died His Nuzhat al-dndm (Pleasure of Humanity) in 1406. is a history of Islam, in twelve volumes, arranged in chronological order, and dealing principally with Egypt. A portion of the autograph manuscript is at Gotha. He also wrote, at the request of Barquq, his Jauhar alcontinued, at thanitn, a history of Egypt, down to 1402 a later date, and by an anonymous author, to the year

3S8
1500.

ARABIC LITERATURE

Other works of his have sung the wonders of Cairo and Alexandria, and the praises of Sultan Barquq, and recalled the lives of the great Imam Abii Hanifa and his famous disciples. His description of Egypt {al-Durra al-Mudid) has been published at Cairo by C. Vollers (1893), after the autograph manuscript in the
Khedive's library.

A Hanafite qddt at Aleppo, who was received by Tamerlane when he conquered that town, and has left an account of his interview, which has been utilised by Ibn 'Arabshah in his life of Timur, Abu'l-Walid IBN Shihna, drew up an abridgment of Abu'l-Fida's work, and carried it down to the year 1403, under the name of Raudat al-Mandzir (\o\^&x-hit<l of the Sights). Gottwaldt wrote a notice of this in \he. Journal Asiatique, and the text has been printed at Biilaq, on the margins of Ibn al-Athir's works. This writer was born in 1348, and died in 141 2. He left a mass of short didactic poems on theology, logic, and law. His son, MUHIBB AL-DIN Abu'l - Fadl Ibn Shihna, was likewise a magistrate. He lived at Cairo was Grand Qadi of the Hanafites, with a few intervals, from 1461 to 147 1 and afterwards
;

Shaikh al-Islam.

He

died in 1485.

He

rehabilitated the

book, which had been corrupted by copyists, and wrote the a commentary on it. He himself left a history of Aleppo, extracts from which have been
text of his father's

published by Alfred von Kremer. Abu'l- Abbas ShihAb al-din al-Qalqashandi drew his surname from a small town near Cairo, in the district of

Qalyub, where his family had settled. He died in 1418. He wrote on the more or less legendary history and genealogy of the pre-Islamic Arab tribes, and a manual on the art of graceful composition, intended for the use of

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

tains interesting details

359

candidates for administrative posts in Egypt, which con-

on the history, geography, and and of the Syrian provinces. utiHsed by Wiistenfeld, and extracts These have been from the work have been pubhshed by H. Sauvaire. Abu'I-Tayyib TaqI al-dIn al-FAsi, who was born at Fez, on 31st August 1373, went to Medina with his mother in 1377, and returned with her to Mecca in He afterwards travelled, going to Cairo, Damas1386. He returned cus, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Yemen. to Mecca in 1405, and was appointed qddt and prociviHsation of that country,
fessor of

Malikite law.

He

lost these

posts in 1414,

and was reappointed to them within a month. In 1425 he became blind, was obliged to resign his judicial position, and went to Cairo, to consult the Malikite mufti as to whether, in spite of his infirmity, it would be possible for him to continue to judge causes. The matter was decided in his favour, and he returned to his post at Mecca, but was dismissed from it in 1427, and died two years afterwards. He wrote a topographical and historical description of Mecca, under the title of al- Iqd al-Thamin (The Precious Necklace), which he himself epitomised in two other works, and of which he
second edition in his Shifd al-GJiardin, from which Wustenfeld has made extracts which have
also furnished a

appeared in his Chronicles of Mecca. Ibn Kathir's chronicles were carried on by Abu'lAbbas Ahmad AL-TabaranI, who was born at Tiberias, and died in 1432. His labours cover the period between 1220 and 1337. There is a French manuscript translation of his work, which we owe to CI. Berault, who succeeded D'Herbelot at the College de France, and which is now
in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

36o

ARABIC LITERATURE

TaqI AL-DfN Abu'l- Abbas Ahmad al-Maqrizi (13651442) took the surname by which he is known from a suburb of the town of Baalbek in Syria, in which his
grandfather, a Hanafite traditionist, had lived before emi-

His father, "Ala al-din, settled at where Maqrizi was born in 1365. The teachings of the Shafi'ites made a profound impression upon him, and he became an opponent of the Hanafites. In 1385, after his return from the Mecca pilgrimage, he became assistant qddi, as his father had been before him, and was employed in the administrative department. In 1399 he was head of the police, and was afterwards preacher in the Mosque, and taught the traditions. In 1408 he moved to Damascus, where he was employed in the management of the waqfs belonging to the Qalanisiyya and the Nuriyya Hospital, and taught in the madr-asas, but he refused the post of gddt. When he returned to Cairo, he devoted himself to literary composition, and became the
grating to Damascus.
Cairo,
historian of
his family

Moslem Egypt.

In 143 1 he started with

on the Mecca pilgrimage, and, with all his He recaravan, was attacked by Bedouins on the road. turned to Egypt in 1435, and died there. His Mawaiz wd l-V tibdr (Exhortations and Considerations), better known under the name of Khitat (The Survey), is a geography and history of Egypt, dealing more especially with the topography of Cairo, in which he has appropriated work done by his predecessors, without making any acknowledgment. Extracts from this book have been published by Langles, Silvestre de Sacy, and Hamaker. Wetzer has published his history of the Copts, which Wustenfeld has translated into German. The complete text has been published at Bulaq, and

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

361

Monsieur U. Bouriant has given a French translation of it, in the Memoires de I'Ecole du Caire. The Gotha Library possesses the autograph manuscript of his history of the Fatimid Caliphs. From
this

Kosegarten has taken the account of the entry of Al-Mu'izz into Egypt, which figures in his Arab Chrestomathy. He wrote a history of the Mameluke Sultans

under the title of SuMk U-mdrifat duwal al-muluk (The March towards the Knowledge of the Royal Dynasties), the substance of two volumes of which has been translated by Etienne Quatremere. He began an alphabetical biographical dictionary of all the princes and famous men of Egypt. The complete work was to have consisted of eighty volumes. Of these only sixteen reached the state of fair copies; three are at Leyden, and one
at Paris, all

autographic.

collection of his tracts, also

in Paris, furnished Silvestre

to be seen at

Leyden and

de Sacy with the substance of the Traite des inonnaies Musulnianes, the text of which had already been published by Tychsen after a manuscript in the Escurial. Tychsen has also published the text of his treatise on Paul Noskowyj has the legal weights and measures. published, at Bonn, his history of the province of the Hadramaut, written at Mecca on information furnished by pilgrims who were natives of that country. Wiistenfeld has given the public his explanations as to the Arab families which immigrated into Egypt. His history of the Moslem sovereigns of Abyssinia was printed at
the

Leyden by Rink as early as 1790 Omeyyads and the accession

encyclopedique,

that of the

fall

of

of the 'Abb^sids to

the Caliphate has been translated

Magasin
at

by S. de Sacy in the and published by G. Vos, in li

Leyden.

362

ARABIC LITERATURE

Abu Bakr TAQt AL-DfN IBN QAp! Shuhba (13771448), a doctor of Shafi'ite law at Damascus, was Grand Qadi of his native town, professor at various madrasas, and inspector of the Nuriyya Hospital. He employed himself in completing Dhahabi's chronicle

by the addition of an alphabetical list of celebrated men, arranged in decades. He wrote the biographies of the Shafi'ites down to the year 1433, and this work has been utilised by Wiistenfeld for his inquiries into
the educational institutions of the Arabs.

Shihab

al

din Abu'l

Fadl IBN Hajar AL-'AsQALiNt

(1372-1449) also belonged to the Shafi'ite rite. He was born at Ascalon, lost his father at an early age, and

was brought up by a relative. Before he was eleven years old, he went on pilgrimage to Mecca, remained there for several years and engaged in trade, studying literature at the same time, and writing very good
poetry.

He

then

travelled,

to

study the

traditions,

went to Cairo, paid one visit to Palestine, and two to Yemen, and in 1403 reached Cairo, where he taught the hadhh and jurisprudence with great success. He trained the young generation of law students, who were all able to call themselves his pupils, and thus built himself up a high reputation. He later, and several times over, became Grand Qadi, made the holy pilgrimage again in 1421, took a journey to Aleppo in 1432, and taught in public there. He died at Cairo. His
Inbd al-Ghinnr (Instruction of the Ignorant) gives us
the political

and

literary history of

his period (1371-

1446) both in Egypt and Syria, with his

own

autobio-

graphy and
of his

details as to the traditionists of that epoch,

a subject near his heart, for he devoted a great

number

works

as

many

as thirty-six, in

Herr Brockel-

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

mann's
list

363

to matters connected with

traditionists

and

jurisconsults.

His Durar al-Kdmina (The Hidden Pearls) contains the biographies of famous personages of the eighth century of the Hegira. His diwdn has gained so much appreciation among the moderns that it has been thought worthy to be reprinted. Abil'l-' Abbas Ahmad Ibn 'Arabshah (1389-1450), who was born at Damascus, was carried captive with his

mother and brothers to Samarqand when the Syrian He found city was captured by Tamerlane in 1400. means, in that distant land, of completing his education, with the addition of a thorough knowledge of Persian and Turkish. In 1408 he went to Khata (the Chinese Turkestan of the present day), to Khwarizm, and to the Dasht-Qyptchaq (the Great Tartary Steppe), and spent several years in the town of Haji Tarkhan (the present Astrachan)to prosecute his legal studies; he was still there Having travelled in the Crimea, and in the year 141 1.

men of that country, he proceeded to Adrianople, where the Ottoman Sultan Muhammad L, son of Bayezid L, had just made himself
held intercourse with the learned
sole master, in spite of

his brothers' opposition.

The,
into,

Sultan received
his

him with

great honour, took

him
to

own

service,

and refused to allow him

go to

Damascus, when the Emir Jaqmaq summoned hirn He commissioned him to translate Persian Arabic books into Turkish, made him his private and secretary, and employed him to keep up Arabic, Persian, and Turkish correspondence with foreign courts. On the death of Muhammad L in 1421, .Ibn 'Arabshah, desirous of seeing his native country once more, went to Damascus, where he was surnamed 'Ajami (the Here he gave himself up entirely to a life Stranger).
thither.

364
of

ARABIC LITERATURE
to

works. departure This peaceful time was interrupted by for Mecca in 1428. When he returned, he settled at Cairo, there to continue his existence as a philosopher, and won the consideration and friendship of
the
editing
of
his
his

contemplation, and

the

learned.

The Emir Jaqmaq, who had become

Sultan in 1438, with the title of Malik Zahir, already displeased with Ibn 'Arabshah for not having re-

sponded to his former invitation, lent a ready ear to calumny and denunciation, and had him cast into The unhappy writer fell sick, and, in spite of prison.
his

immediate
"^Aj'd'ib

liberation, died, after twelve days' illness,

on

25th August 1450.

His

the story of the

al-maqdur (Marvels of Predestination) is life and conquests of Tamerlane, written

in a pretentious, difficult style, full of affected expres-

and in rhymed prose. The text was published by Golius from the Elzevir Press in 1636 and by
sions,
;

Manger, with a Latin translation (1767-1772), at Calcutta and Cairo and Pierre Vattier has issued a French translation entitled L' Histoire du grand Tamerlan, traduite de I'arabe d' Ahmed, fils de Gueraspe (1658). His Fdkihat the (The Sweetmeat of Caliphs) is al-Khulafd a political work, disguised under the form of fables and rhymed prose, imitated from the Persian Mai'zubdn-ndnia. It was edited by Freytag in 1832, and has been printed
;

at

Mosul and

at Cairo.

Two
in

of this author's
of

the field

literature.

(1411-1495),
his father to

who

sons attained minor celebrity Taj al-din "Abdal - Wahhab was born at Astrachan, accompanied

Damascus, and returned, at a later date, where he died, wrote didactic poems on exegesis and genealogy. Al-Hasan wrote, towards the
to

Cairo,

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

365

year 1494, and under the title of Iddh al-Zulm, a history in rhymed prose of' the tyrant Ibrahim of Nabulus, who

was

in

command

at

Damascus

in

1446,

and whose exThis

actions

earned him

the hatred of the inhabitants.

manuscript is Abt^'l-Mahasin Jamal al-din IBN TAGHRt-BiRot was the son of a Turkish slave, owned by a merchant of the name of Bashbogha, who was bought by the Sultan Barquq early in his reign (1382), educated by him, and whom he later employed as Governor of Aleppo. Under this Sultan's successor, Malik-Nasir Faraj, he was atdbek (commander of the troops) and Governor of Damascus three times over. He was still holding this office when he died in 141 2. Abii'I-Mahasin was born at Cairo in Either on account of his rank, or because a post 141 1. which carried this dignity with it was conferred on him,, he bore the title of Grand Emir. He was at Mecca in the early days of 1459, when Shihab al-din Ahmad al-Tatari was appointed qddi there. He died in 1469. His Nu"Yim al-Zdhira (The Shining Stars) is a history of Egypt from the Arab conquest under 'Amr ibn al-'As down to the year 1453, and gives the names of the prominent personages who died in each successive year. Juynboll's edition of this work goes down to the year 975. The author's own abridgment is carried on down to 1460. His Maurid al-latdfat {ji'L'w^mg Fountain of Sweetness) contains, after a short history of the Prophet, a list of some of his companions, of the rulers of Egypt, and their
at Berlin.

ministers,
this

down

to the author's
J.

own

days.

An

edition of

work was published by

is

J/a^/W^Z-^^/z
of Safadi's

E. Carlyle in 1792. The a biographical dictionary, a continuation

Waft, just as the Hawddith al-duhikr carries The Bahr alMaqrizi's Suliik down to the year 1456.

366

ARABIC LITERATURE
historical work, of

Zdkhir was a great

preserved, in Paris.

only, covering the period

which one volume between 652 and 690, is now

Abu'1-Fadl Qasim IBN QuTLtrBUGHA (1399-1474) was the author of a dictionary of the Hanafite writers and jurisconsults, entitled Taj al-tardjim (Crown of Biographies), which is important as a means of ac-

quaintance with historic names. An edition of this book has been published by G. Fliigel. Very little is known about the man who wrote it. He was born and died at Cairo, studied Arabic, logic, and Hanafite law there, completed his studies at Damascus and other towns, and was a prolific writer.

SOYOtJTl (1445-1505)
SuyCttI, the Egyptian (Jalil al-din Abia'1-Fadl 'Abdal-

Rahman), was a man whose encyclopaedic works were destined to incarnate the Moslem learning of the fifteenth century. He belonged to a Persian family, which had been settled for three hundred years at Suyut or Usyut, in Upper Egypt, but he was born at Cairo. His ancestors had held public employments one had been a judge, another head of the municipal police, a third had become a rich merchant. His father had been qddi at Cairo, and afterwards retired from the

world, so as to devote his time to reading the Sacred

Book.

When

he died, in March 1451, young 'Abdal-

RahmSn was only five years and a half old. He was brought up by a man of ascetic habits, who made him
learn the

After

visits

Koran by heart before he was eight years old. to the Fayyum and Damietta, he went
to

on pilgrimage

Mecca

in

December

1464.

On

his

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

367

return he taught the science of the traditions, and his master, 'Alam al-din al-Bulqini, obtained him the senior
professorial chair of jurisprudence at the Shaikhftniyya

Madrasa, a post formerly held by his father. His arrogance, and lack even of loyalty, earned him the hatred of the other learned men of the city, and this feeling was fed by his love of controversy. His covetousness led

him

to cut

down

the pensions allotted to the

give

Sufis belonging to his school, or

them

to other

persons, and they rose against him, in February 1501.

After a judicial inquiry, he

Tuman-Bai and
,

retired to his

was dismissed by the Sultan house on the island of

to restore

Rauda.
it,

On

the death of Ibn Ballan, the successor to his

professorial chair, an offer

was made

him

to

but he refused, and died in retirement on 17th October He himself gives us the names of three hundred 1505.

of his books; Herr Brockelmann's list contains three hundred and fifteen and Flugel has drawn up another, mentioning five hundred and sixty-one. But many of these compositions, the majority of which are not original, A single volume, now at consist of only a few sheets.
;

Leyden, contains fourteen of these little treatises. He has been accused of taking the works of his predecessors, touching them up and transforming them, and then sending them forth as his own. They have, nevertheless, gained considerable popularity, like every compilation which brought works kept in the libraries of remote countries within the reach of the younger generation,
at a

period

when

there

and disseminate

copies.

was no printing press to multiply It was not till the end of the
in

eighteenth century that printing in Arabic characters

made

its first

appearance

Constantinople.

Up

to that

date the only printed works

known

to the Orientals

were

368

ARABIC LITERATURE

Leyden and Rome. Be that may, Suyuti, as far as we are concerned, deserves the credit of having preserved ancient writings, which would have been utterly lost to us, but for his labours as an epitomiser and compiler. His History of the Caliphs has been praised, because it is a summary, which, though convenient, perhaps, for
the Eastern incunabula of
as
it

the use of schools in the East,

is

quite insufficient for

It between Abu Bakr and the year 1497, when Al-Mustamsik became the It has been published at 'Abbasid Caliph at Cairo. Calcutta by Nassau Lees, and translated into English by It is followed by a didactic poem intended to Jarrett. be learnt by heart, and in which the names of all the His history of Egypt Caliphs are arranged in order. and of Cairo, Husn al-Muhddara, is a compilation from

our needs.

covers the period

He also wrote the abridgment, and the continuation, of Dhahabi's Tabaqdt al-Huffdz, which has been published by Wiistenfeld. His book on the interpreters of the Koran has been
twenty-eight historical works.

published by Meursinge.

His abridgment of'lzz al-din Ibn al-Athir's Lubdb, extracted from Sam'ani's great work, has appeared at Leyden under the auspices of Veth. His
Kitdb al-Azvd'il (Book of Primordial Knowledge) is an abridgment from Al- Askari, which has been studied by Gosche. His Itqdn, on Koranic exegesis, has been edited

and reprinted at Cairo. A commentary on which is famous in Eastern countries, is the Tafsir of the two Jalals, of which the first part, down to and including the seventeenth chapter, was written by Jalal al-din Muhammad al-Mahalli (born 1389, died 1459), a Cairene teacher of jurisprudence and a persevering commentator, and the second half by his pupil,
at Calcutta,

the Koran,

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

Jalal

369

who completed the work in forty Kosegarten and Grangeret de Lagrange have published extracts from the anthology entitled Al-Marj al-nddir (The Flowery Meadow). His Shaindrikh, on the science of history, was published by C. F. Seybold in 1896, and so was his treatise on. Kunyas or surnames. Ghars al-din Khalil ibn Shahin al-Zahirl (14101468) was given a robe of honour when he was Governor of Alexandria in 1435. In the following year he was appointed to conduct the Sacred Caravan from Cairo to Mecca, and the title of vizier was bestowed
al-din Suyuti,

days.

on

him

for

the

occasion.
fortress
of

governor of the

In 1437 we find him Karak, and in the two

following years at Safad and Damascus.

He

left,

in his

Zubdat kashf al-mamdlik, a

ininistrative, of the states

and adruled by the Mamelukes from

description, political

the thirteenth to the fifteenth century

of Egypt, Syria,

in other

words,

and the Hijaz. The text of this work has been published by Monsieur P- Ravaisse. He also composed an oneirocritical treatise entitled al-Ishdrdt (The Signs), which has been studied by N. Bland, and printed at Cairo on the margins of 'Abdal-Ghani alNabulusi's Tdtir al-andm.

A
who,

learned
al-din

man

of

founded

with

the

Suyut famous

in

Egypt, not to be conpolygraph Suyuti, was

also

Shams

Abu

'Abdallah,

surnamed

Suyuti,

longing to behold the sacred spots of Islam, went to Mecca, with his whole family, in 1444. He remained there for nine years, living on public
in his pious

then returned to Cairo (1453), and entered the ser^'ice of a high functionary, who took him with him to Syria, which gave the zealous pilgrim the opporcharity.

He

tunity of going to Jerusalem, in 1469, and there writing

370

ARABIC LITERATURE

his Itlidf al-akhissd, a history and description of the Temple, which was studied by P. Lemming at Copenhagen in 1817, translated into English by J. Reynolds in 1836, and extracts from which have been lately retranslated by Guy Le Strange. In Egypt, too, dwelt the veterinary surgeon to Sultan Malik-Nasir, son of Qala'un, Abii Bakr ibn al-Munthe name dhir, who died in 1340, and wrote the Ndsiri usually given to the Kdinil al-Sind'' atain (The Perfeca complete treatise on Hippotion of the Two Arts) pathology and veterinary science, which has been A Cairene physician, born at translated by Perron. Sinjar, who died of the plague in 1348, Ibn al-Akfani, wrote an encyclopaedia of sixty different sciences, called Irshdd al-qdsid (The Direction of Him who Searches out the Highest Questions), published by Sprenger in the Bibliotheca Indica, and added to it treatises on ophthalmology [Kashf al-rain), domestic medicine {Ghunyat al-labiU), and the practice of bleeding [Nikdyat al-qasd), and works on precious stones [Nukhab al-Dhakhd'ir), and on the purchase of slaves {al-Nazar waH-tahqtq), which have never been printed. At the

same

period,

Kamal

al-din

Muhammad

ibn

Musa AL-

DamirI, who was born in 1344, and died in Cairo in 1405, wrote his Haydt al-haiwdn (The Life of Animals), a dictionary of zoology which also touches on questions of grammar and etymology as connected with the names
of

animals, with quotations from the traditions, frag-

ments of poetry, and proverbs, bearing on the subject. He revised this work three times, and the largest edition, finished in 1371, has been printed at Cairo six times. Izz" al-din AlDAMiR ibn 'All ibn Aidamir AL-JlLDAKi, who died at Cairo in 1342, was an alchemist, who wrote

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

many books upon
scales
('?/;

371
of

his favourite science, the

calls the

mother

modern chemistry, which he

al-mtzdii),

science of the
(^ilm al-miftdli).

and of the key

of

Several

of his works,

course,

are

devoted to

the

search for the philosopher's stone {talab al-iksir), the elixir of life par excellence. Haji Khalfa enumerates
eighty-four books of his, dealing with the arcana of the

mysterious science. The Beni-Ziyan of Tilims^n found their historian in the person of Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn 'AbdalJalil, Imam of Tanas, who flourished at Tilimsan imder Sultan Al-Mutawakkil, to whom he dedicated his book, Nazm al-durr wa!l-iqydn (Necklace of Pearls and Native Gold), of which the first part has been translated by the

Abbe

Barges.

He

died in 1494.

Abu'l-Hasan
of the

'Alt

historian of the city of

NtiR AL-DIN AL-SAMHtJDf, the Medina, was born on the banks

Upper Nile, at Samhiad, a large village in Upper Egypt. He went to Cairo for his education, left it to go on pilgrimage, and never returned, for in 1465 he made his home at Medina, and taught in one of the He undertook to clear the chief schools of that place. great Mosque, which had been destroyed in the conflagration of 1256, of rubbish and ashes, and never
ceased to keep up active correspondence with the Princes of Bagdad and Cairo, and beg their financial assistance, till, in 1474, he persuaded the Egyptian Sultan Qaitbai to provide him with means to reconstruct the This Sultan himself paid a visit to ruined building.

Medina

in

him, the

1479, and Samhudi had an interview with principal outcome of which was that the

natives of the city were forbidden to trade in spurious

relics of the

Prophet.

During

his

absence

at

Mecca

in

372
1481, the
this

ARABIC LITERATURE
Mosque
its

at

Medina once more caught

fire,

and

time

ruin included that of the historian's

own

house, and his hbrary of three hundred volumes.

the rebuilding

While

was in progress, he took the opportunity of going to Samhud to see his aged mother, after a separation of sixteen years. She died ten days after her son's return, and he took his way back to Medina,
carrying with
to

him a large quantity of books presented him by the Sultan, to re-form his library. He was

appointed Shaikh al-Islam in the city of the Prophet,

and died there in 1505. In the fire which consumed his house, he lost the unfinished manuscript of a great history of Medina which he had planned, and which was to have included everything hitherto written on
that subject.

But, at the request of a great personage,

he had made a carefully arranged extract ( Wafd al- Wafa), which he had taken with him to Mecca, intending to

make a fair copy of it. From this work Wiistenfeld drew the documents on the history of Medina which he published at Gottingen. A still more abridged edition,
entitled Khuldsat al- Wafd, has

A
and

Persian,

Ikhtiyar al-din

been printed at Bulaq. ibn Ghiyath al-din

al-

Husaini,

who had

studied at Herat,

became qddt

there,

retired, after the

town was taken by Muhammad

Khin

Shaibani, to his native village, where he devoted

himself to agriculture, dying at Turbat in 1522, wrote the Asds al-iqtibds (Basis of Plagiarism), in 1492, at the
request of the Timurid Sultan, Husain Baiqar^.

This work, which has been printed at Constantinople, is a collection of verses from the Koran, traditions, proverbs, and selected pieces in poetry and prose a regular editor's manual. A compatriot of his, Abu'l-Qasim al-Laithi al-Samar-

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

373

qandt, wrote, towards the year 1483, a treatise on meta-

phors, called Fard'id al-fawd'id, and better known under the name of Risdlat al-Samarqandiyya, which, even within
quite recent times, has been the subject of

many com-

mentaries.
Suyuti,

whom we

hav seen accused of plagiarism,

and, worse than that, of downright theft, brought the

al-QastallanI (1448-1517), a learned Shifi'ite, who was born at Cairo, was a preacher in that city, and died there. He had
against

same charge

Shihab

al-din

him summoned before

the Shaikh-al-Islam, declaring he

had copied many of his works without mentioning his name. Qastallani, desiring to make up the quarrel, afterwards went to Suyuti's house, on the island of Rauda, but was not admitted. The dispute arose over his Mawdhib al-Laduniyya (The Mysterious Gifts), a work on the biography of the Prophet. The book has attained great popularity, has been translated into Turkish, and a commentary in the same language has been written on it. It has also been frequently reprinted. A commentary on Bukhari's Sahih, Irshdd al-Sdri (Guide for
the Nocturnal
Traveller),
in

ten volumes, has

been

printed at Bulaq and at Lucknow.

The same author

produced other works on the merits of 'Abdal-Qadir alGilani, of Shaikh Abu'l-Qasim Shatibi, and of Shaikh Abii'l- Abbas Ahmad al-Harrar, prior of the al-Zahidi
cloister,

near Cairo.

But, with the exception of the

second, these books have not

come down

to us.

Abu'1-Yumn 'Abdal-Rahman MujfR AL-dIn al-Ulaimi, Grand Qadi of the Hanbalites at Jerusalem, who died in 1521, wrote a chronicle of Jerusalem and Hebron, called Anis al-JalU (The Comrade of the Glorious Man), extracts from which Von Hammer has published in the

374

ARABIC LITERATURE

Mines de [Orient, and fragments of which have been translated by Henry Sauvaire. This chronicle was composed, or rather compiled, with marvellous rapidity.
It

than four months, and during one of these circumstances prevented the author from writing
in less
at
all.

was finished

pupil of

Suyuti,

Abu'l-Barakat
birth,

Muhammad

IBN
9th

Iyas, a Hanbalite of

humble

who was born on

June 1448, and died towards 1524, turned his attention

and to the history of which he arranged according to the years and months, and entitled Badd'i' alZuhiir. We also owe him a book on cosmography, dealing more especially with Egypt, called Nashaq alAzhdr (The Perfume of Flowers), which was completed in 15 16, and has been analysed by Langles in the Notices
to the general history of the world,

Egypt down

to the year 1522,

et Extraits.

Abu

'Abdallah 'Abdal-Rahman of

Yemen, surnamed

Ibn al-Daiba' (which means, apparently, the Son of the White Man), who was born at Zabid on 7th October 146 1, was brought up by his maternal grandfather, Isma'il,
while his father was travelling on the Indian coasts.
poverty.
legal

In

the course of this journey he died, leaving his son in

The youth had

a taste for mathematics and

studies.

He

travelled for

educational purposes,

then returned to Zabid, made the pilgrimage in 1491, attended the teachings of Sakhawi at Mecca, and, when

back

in his native

history.

town, conceived the idea of writing its His Bughyat al-Mustafid, which goes down to
the
of

the year 1495, attracted

attention

of

the

Sultan

Malik-Muzaffar 'Amir

ibn

Tahir,

who commissioned
Beni-Tahir dynasty

him

to

write

his

history

the

{Al-iqd

al-bdhi)',

The Shining

Necklace), rewarded

him

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

the traditions in the great

375

generously for his labour, and appointed him to teach

Mosque

at Zabid, a position

which he worthily filled until his death in 1537. From the Bughyat Th. Johannsen has made fragmentary extracts which appear in his Historia Jeinancz. Previously,

Abu 'Abdallah
1332,

Muhammad

al-Janadi,

who

died

in

had written the political and literary history of Yemen, in a book entitled SulUk, from which Mr. H. C. Kay has drawn facts as to the Carmathians of that
country.

The Ottoman Empire was then carrying on

series of Asiatic

that great

conquests which followed on its establishment in Europe. The battle of Marj-Dabak, near Aleppo, and the death of the Mameluke Sultan Qansuh al-Ghurt had delivered Syria into Ottoman hands, and Egypt was conquered by Selim I. in 1517. IBN Zunbul,

surnamed al-Ramnidl (the Geomancer), because he earned his livelihood by drawing out horoscopes on the sand, had an opportunity of watching the m.ovements of the Turkish troops, probably in some position connected with the military arrangements. He was even shut up, with the body of troops to which he was attached, in the He drew up a history of the Ottofortress of Aboukir. Egypt, a general geography, and a conquest of man geomancy. treatise on The Turks, like the Persians in bygone days, were
beginning to write in Arabic. Mustafa, a teacher who was born at Tashkopri, in the year of Muhammad IL's conquest of Constantinople (1453), and who was chosen by Bayezid II. to be tutor to his son Selim, dreamt, the night before he left Broussa for Angora, that a handsome old man appeared to him, and forewarned him of the birth of a son, whom he would call Ahmad. The dream

376

ARABIC LITERATURE
true.

came
(the
tion.

Ahmad was

Within a month, on 2nd December 1495, born, and was surnamed Tashkopri-Zade
father's local appella-

Son of Tashkopri), after his Having studied every kind

of learning

known

to

the Orientals of the Middle Ages, he himself began to

at Dimetoka, at Constantinople, at Uskiup in Macedonia, and at Adrianople, where he was qddt in In 1554 he was attacked by an inflammation of 1551. the eyes, became almost totally blind, and was obliged to He died in 1560. His Nawddir aldictate his works. akhbdr (Curiosities of History), is a dictionary, in alpha-

teach,

betical

order,

of the

illustrious

men

of

Islam, after
of

Abu Muhammad's
Shahrastani's history
qd'iq al-Nuindniyya

life

of

the

Companions

the

Prophet, Ibn Khallikan's biographical dictionary,

of

and
Slia-

the philosophers.
is

His

work devoted to the biographies of five hundred and twenty-two illustrious men, 'Ulema and Sufis, of the Ottoman
a

(The Anemones)

Empire, divided into ten

classes,

according to the ten

reigns, beginning with that of 'Osraan, son of Ertoghrul,

and ending with that of Sulaiman. At the end of the book we find the author's own autobiography, dictated His Miftdh al-Sdddat wa-Misbdh al-siyddat in 1558. (Key of Happiness, and Lantern of Mastery) is an encyclopaedia on the objects of the various branches of learning, dictated to his pupils, and concluded in 1560. It has been utilised by Haji Khalfa for his bibliographical dictionary, and translated into German by Von

Hammer.
it.

translated the

The author's son, Kamal al-din Muhammad, work into Turkish, and made additions to
'

This version has been printed at Constantinople. Al-Husain ibn Muhammad AL-DiYARBAKRt, who was born at Diyarbakr, settled at Mecca, where he was qddi,

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

al-nafis

377

and died there in 1558. His Khamts ft Ahwdl al-nafs (Book divided into Five Parts, dealing with the
Precious Soul)
is

a biography of the Prophet, compiled

different works, and is followed by a all the Caliphs down to Sultan Sulaimin review of general copies of this work, which was finished L (1520). Certain It has down to Murad IIL (1574). in 1533, carry it

from over a hundred

been printed
the Caliph

at Cairo.

The

story of the assassination of

lished, with a

'Umar has been extracted from it, and pubGerman translation, by O. von Platen. A

shorter extract appears in Petermann's Arabic grammar. In India, Shaikh Zain al-din al-Ma'bari was writing an

Arabic history of the development of Islam in Malabar, of the Portuguese establishment there, and of the persecution inflicted by that nation on the Moslems, between 1498 and 1577. His Tuhfat al-Mujdhidin has been translated into English by Rowlandson, and a fragment of it
has been inserted into
history of India.
J.

Briggs' translation of Ferishta's

Muhammad QUTB
came
of a family

which

AL-DiN al-Nahrawali (1511-1582) at one time dwelt at Nahra-

wala, the capital of Gujerat, in India.

grandfather, Qadi

Here
Delhi,

his great-

Khan Mahmud

of

had

lived.

His father emigrated to Mecca, where he held a proHaving fessorial chair, and there Muhammad was born. concluded his studies in his native, city, the young man proceeded to Egypt, and attended the lectures of the professors there, who were Suyuti's pupils. Thence he went to Constantinople. He was presented to Sultan Sulaiman by Ayas Pacha, the vizier, a robe of honour was bestowed upon him, and he was appointed professor at the Ashrafiyya, a school at Mecca, the library He has left an account of a of which he set in order.
25

378

ARABIC LITERATURE

second journey from Medina to Constantinople, in the course of which he passed through Asia Minor (1558).

The

Pacha was telling him the story of his campaigns, when Qutb al-din observed that, when
Vizier 'All
is

ocular witnesses die out, history

apt to fade away,

unless the facts are committed to paper, and cited, as a

Abu Shama's history of NurPacha then desired a secretary, 'All Chelebi, to write an account of the Ottoman campaigns, a duty he seems to have left unperformed. Qutb al-din went back to Mecca, and was appointed
model
for this purpose,
'Ali

al-din

and Saladin.

professor of the Hanbalite rite when the Sulaimaniyya University was established there in 1567. He was mufti
of the Holy City when he Balad al-Hardm (Instruction
arities of the

died.

His ridm bi-dldm

is

as to the Notable Peculi-

Sacred Dwelling-place)

a history of the

Mecca and of the Ka'ba, which has been pubHis Barq al- Yamdnt (Lightning lished by Wiistenfeld. Flash of Yemen) contains the history of Arabia Felix from the year 1495, that of the first Ottoman concity of

under the Vizier Sulaiman Pacha, of the return and of the second conquest, under the Grand Vizier Sinan Pacha, to whom the whole work
quest,
of the Zaidites,
is

dedicated.

Mustafa Efendi AL-JannAbI belonged to the. little of Jannaba, on the Persian Gulf. He was at one time qddi of Aleppo, but was dismissed, and died in He wrote in Arabic, and afterwards translated 1591.

town

into Turkish, a history of eighty-two in eighty-two chapters,

J.

Moslem

dynasties,

down

to the year 1589.

From

it

B. Podesta took the history of Tamerlane, which he

translated into Latin

and published

at

The same author

also left a treatise

Vienna in 1680. on the building

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

of the

379
walls
of

Mosque

of

St.

Sophia, and on the

Constantinople.

'Amir al-Ru'amI, secretary to the princes Shams al-din and 'Izz al-din, who held the fortress of Kaukaban, near San 4, in the days of the Turkish conquest, was in both personal and epistolary intercourse with the commanders of the Ottoman troops, and especially with Hasan Pacha, who was appointed in 1580. He enshrined his recollections in two volumes, one of which, now in the Leyden Library, has been published by Rutgers, under the title of Historia Jeinance sub Hasano Pascha, while the other deals exclusively with the history of the Emir 'Izz al-din. Abu'l-'Abbas Ahmad AL-QARAMANt (1552-1610) was born at Damascus. His father, who was inspector of the Mosque of the Omeyyads, sold the prayer-carpets
for
his

own

benefit,

pulled down, and was punished

1559.

caused a Malikite school to be by being strangled in

;

acted

Government service and then as president, of the board of management of the two women's hospitals at Damascus, which depended on Egypt, and was a promi-

Ahmad,

the son, entered the

first

as secretary,

nent personage, who specially frequented legal circles. He wrote a summary of the history of Jannabi, with the addition of some supplementary information and

which he entitled Akhbdr al-duwal zva-AiMr a/- Uwa/ (History oi the Dynasties and Monuments of the Ancients). The text of this work has been printed at Bijlaq on the margins of Ibn al-Athir. Abu'l - Mawahib Abdal-Wahhab al-Sha'ranI was a mystic, belonging to Old Cairo, who gained celebrity, at an early age, by his writings, which his opponents declared to be opposed to the orthodox dogma. An attempt was made to convict him of impiety by falsifycertain inaccuracies,

38o
succeeded
cence.

ARABIC LITERATURE
in
till he had convincing the chief doctors of his inno-

ing one of his books, but he never rested

He

died in 1565, leaving his

name

to a sect

which he had founded. He believed himself to have received the most wonderful gifts from God, amongst them the power of working miracles. His Scales of the Moslem Laiv, in which he endeavours to elucidate the spirit of Islamic law, and reduce the divergent doctrines of the four orthodox rites to an agreement, has been Sha'rani explains and weighs translated by Dr. Perron. the reasons for the disagreement between the various lawyers, and accounts for them by the uncertainty as to the meaning of certain hadiths, thus clearly showing
that, in the eyes of

Moslem

doctors, the great edihce of

Moslem law

is

a purely

human work,
it

the religious authority on which

rests.

notwithstanding His Lawdqih

al-Anwdr (The Fecundating Lights), containing the lives of the most famous mystics, from the earliest days of Sufism, has been printed at Cairo, and so has his Lata if
al-minan.

Al-Maqqar1 of Tilimsan
At the other end
of the

Moslem world,

in the

town

of

Tilimsan, in the heart of the Maghrib, Shihab

of

al-din

Abu'l-'Abbas AL-Maqqari, thus called after the village

Maqqara, to which his family originally belonged, was born about the year 1591. He was educated in the town of his birth, where his uncle Sa'id was mufti for sixty years, and later went to complete his studies at Fez and Morocco. Here he remained till 1618, when he decided to make the pilgrimage, so as to escape the political disturbances which had just broken out. Returning the following year, he halted at Cairo, and

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

there took

381

him

a wife.

Notwithstanding the honour

him as too inhospitmore with his love of travel, he went to Jerusalem in 1620, made five more journeys to Mecca, and remained some time at Medina,
life in

shown him,

that city struck

able to be pleasant, and, bitten once

where he gave a course of lectures on the kadith. He returned to Cairo in 1627, but did not stay there; paid another visit to Jerusalem, and then went on to Damaswhere his compatriots from the Maghrib had prepared him a residence which did not take his fancy. Ahmad ibn Shahin, the head of the Jaqmaqiyya School, sent him the keys of that establishment with an invitation in verse, to which Maqqari replied in like fashion. He was delighted with the manner in which the school was housed, and desired no other habitation. During his stay there, he gave lessons in the great Mosque. The success of this course left a most pleasing impression upon him, to which reference is made in bis poems, and he returned to Damascus in 1631. He had gone back to Cairo, and was preparing to leave that city for good, when he was attacked by a fever, and carried
cus,

The Nafh al-Tib (Breath of the in January 1632. Perfumes), his principal work, is divided into two parts, the first devoted to the political history of Moslem and _Spain, and that of the learned men born there the second, to the life of the Vizier Lisan al-din Ibn
off,
;

al-Khatib. This bulky work, printed at Bulaq in four volumes, was written in the space of one year, during his stay at Cairo, after his first journey to Damascus. The book was compiled at the request of Ahmad Ibn Shahin, out of materials broijght together long before.

The rapidity with which a certain lack of order

it

was produced

is

evidenced by

in the construction.

The

first

382
part of the
title

ARABIC LITERATURE
Nafh
al-Tib has been published, under the
of Analectes

sur I' Histoire et la Liiterature des Arabes d'Espagne, by R. Dozy, G. Dugat, L. Krehl, and W. Wright. The political part of the book has beenextracted, and arranged in a different order, by Pascual de Gayangos, and translated by him into English, under the title of The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in
Spain.

HAjt Khalfa
Mustafa HajI Khalfa, surnamed Kdtib Chelebi, was a Constantinopolitan Turk, whose father was employed
in

the

War

Office.

He

himself

entered the military

bureaux, and accompanied the army on the Bagdad campaign. The following year he was present at the
siege of

Erzeroum.

When

he returned to Constanti-

was dead, and had left him a request that he would never give up his studies. The young man was not, however, at once able to carry out his parent's last behest, for he was obliged to go with the army to Bagdad and Hamadhan, in 1629, and to Aleppo, in 1633. But he took advantage of the winter season of the latter campaign to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, whence After the Erivan his honorary title of Hdji (Pilgrim). campaign, he left the public service, and devoted himThe recommendation of the self altogether to learning. friend of his youth, the mufti "Abdal-Rahim Efendi, procured him the post of Khalifa (pronounced by the Turks " Khalfa ") or lieutenant at the War Office, which left him leisure to choose his own occupations. In this quality he was present at the great council held in the presence of Sultan Muhammad IV., on i8th February 1653, to remedy the disordered condition of the finances.
nople, in 1628, his father

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

He
his

383

died before he was sixty, in September 1658. Besides Turkish works, such as his Jihdn-Numa, and his history of the naval wars, with which we have nothing
to

do

in this place,

he

left

bibliographic treatise, the basis of

a great encyclopaedic and all inquiry into Arabic,

Persian, and Turkish literature, called the Kashf alZuniin (Doubts Cleared up), the text of which, and a Latin translation, have been given to the world by Gustav Fliigel, under the title of Lexicon Bibliographicuin. His Fadhlaka is a summary of jannabi's general history, in which the number of dynasties dealt with is

from eighty-two to one hundred and fifty. Shaikh Muhammad ibn "Abdal-Muti AL-ISHAQt was born at Manuf, in Egypt, and received his education there. At a later date he went to Cairo, where he made his name as a poet. He died in his native town, soon after the year 1650. He had dedicated his Akhbdr alUwal, an anecdotic history of Egypt from the days of the Arab conquest, to the Ottoman Sultan, Mustafa \. Ahmad al-Khafaj1 was descended from! an old Arab family, settled in a village near Cairo. Having studied philosophy under his own uncle, Abu Bakr al-Shanawani, surnamed the Sibawaih of his century, he made the Mecca pilgrimage with his father, and pushed on to Constantinople, where he studied mathematics. He was appointed qddi in Roumelia, at Uskiup, and at Salonika, where he made his fortune, and was sent to, Egypt as Qadi'Asker. On his return to Constantinople he was so slandered, and such accusations were brought against him, that he was banished, and sent back to Cairo to occupy a post as qddt, the emoluments of which were expected to suffice for his support. He then turned his attention to literary work, had a pupil, Fadlallah, who
carried

384

ARABIC LITERATURE

was father of the famous biographer Muhibbi, and died on 4th June, 1659. His Khabdyd al-Zawdyd (Secrets Hidden in Corners) is a history of the literary men of
his

time, divided

into five

sections

Syria,

the Hijaz,

Egypt, the Maghrib, and Rum (in other words, Turkey), with the addition of an appendix devoted to the author's

and prose. His pupil Fadlallah work at Damascus, and on it KhaHis Raihdna is a second edition of faji's renown rests. the same work, in which the most prominent place is given to the poets, and it contains several lectures, one of them against Yahya ibn ZakarJya, Shaikh al-Islam at Constantinople. Both these works were useful to Muin verse
this

own sermons

took a copy of

hibbi, to

whom we

shall later refer.

is

His Tirdz al-Majdlis

exegesis,

(Fringe of the Lectures)

rhetoric.

a collection of fifty-one small

pieces, dealing with points in

grammar,

and

ibn Muhibb-Allah (1621-1671), who was Damascus, learnt Persian and Turkish, and attracted notice by his precocity. When he was sixteen, having lost his father, he entered the service of the mufti 'Abdal-Rahman al-'Imadi as his secretary. In 1638 he journeyed to Aleppo, whither the Shaikh al-Islam, Yahya, had come from Constantinople, and by him was invested with the prebend of the Derwishiyya Mosque, which had been held by his father. He then went to Constantinople and Cairo, assisted the qddt Muhammad al-Bursawi in the latter city, made acquaintance with Khafaji, and attended his teachings. Sickness drove him back to Damascus, and induced him to peruse n:iedical books and study medical science, but his health was not restored. He was appointed qddt at Diyarbakr, felt better there, was able to travel to Constantinople, and remained

Fadlallah
at

born

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

there four years.
of such posts
to

385

In 1666 he was appointed qddi at Beyrout, and lived there about a year, the usual duration

under the Ottoman rule. He went back Damascus, where he died. His supplement to the biographies written by Hasan al-Burint formed the
basis of his son Muhibbi's great work.

Ibrahim ibn 'Abdal-Rahman AL-KHlYARt (1628-1671), of an old family settled in Egypt, was born at Medina, where his father, who had come from Cairo on pilgrimage, had remained to preach and teach the hadith. Ibrahim followed in his footsteps. He became preacher in the Mosque of the Prophet, saw himself ousted from this position by a stranger, and resolved to journey to Constantinople, where his petition was granted by the Shaikh-al-Islam and the Grand Vizier. On his way back, he travelled across Syria and Palestine, and so rea'ched Cairo, where he sojourned some days before joining the Medina caravan (1670). He did not remain long in possession of his post, for the Shaikh of the Mosque insisted that the Sha.fi'ite preachers should pronounce the Bismillah according to the Hanafite rite that is to say, in an undertone. Al-Khiyari refused to obey this order, and died suddenly, of poison, on 4th November 1671. He wrote an account of his journey, the manuscript of which is at Gotha, and which has been studied by Fr. Tuch. During the same period, Ibn Abi Dinar al-Ruaini of Qairawan wrote (1689) a history of Northern Africa and Tunis, while in Egypt, in the same year, Muhammad DiyAb al-Itl1d1 concluded his romance of the Barmekides, composed almost entirely of fables, which has been

who came

printed several times at Cairo and Bijlaq.

Muhammad
at

AL-MUHiBBt, the son

of Fadlallah,

was born

Damascus

86

ARABIC LITERATURE

During his father's absence, and when he himwas only twelve years old, he kept up a correspondence with him both in verse and in rhymed prose. He
in 165 1.
self

older, to complete his studies at ConstantiHis patron there was Ibn Bairam, who had been qddi at Damascus for some time, and who took him with him when he was appointed Qadi'Asker at Adrianople. He followed Ibn Bairam's fortunes when he was replaced in 1676, and returned to Damascus after his death. There he gave himself up to literary labours, went on pilgrimage to Mecca, acted for some time as assistant qddi in that city, and then took up the post of professor He died there on in the Aminiyya School at Damascus. nth November 1699. His principal work, which has been printed in four volumes at Cairo, contains one thousand two hundred and eighty-nine biographies of famous men who died in the course of the eleventh

went,

when

nople.

century of the Hegira.

Philology
At the beginning of the eighth century of the Hegira, ibn 'AH ibn Mas'ud wrote a grammatical treatise for the use of schools, entitled Mardh al-arwdh, which has been frequently lithographed and printed in the East. In 13 1 1 Jamal al-din Muhammad Ibn Mtjkarram died He was a compiler, gifted with the most at Cairo. astonishing facility of production, for he is said to have left five hundred volumes behind him, and to his zeal we owe a work of very great value as regards our knowledge the Lisdn al-Arab, a huge dicof the Arabic tongue

Ahmad

tionary, containing the substance of Jauhari's Sahdh, of

Ibn Duraid's Jamhara, and of the Muhkam, written by

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

ram was born

387

Ibn Sida, the Spanish philologist of Murcia. Ibn Mukarin 1232 in Northern Africa; Compared with his great work, Ibn 'Asakir's summary of the history of Damascus, and Sam'ani's abridgment of that of Bagdad, have very little value. A surname known all over the Moslem world is that of Ibn Ajurrum, borne by Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn Da'ud al-Sanhaji, of whose history nothing is known, beyond the fact that he died in 1324, and that he wrote, for
the benefit of his

own

son,

Abu Muhammad,

a very ele-

mentary grammar, which has become famous under the name of Ajurrilmiyya, and which is said to have been composed at Mecca. So general has been the popularity of this little book that it has become the basis of all grammatical study in the East.

The

chief

reason for the

favour
is it,

it

enjoys
it

is its

brevity, but so exceedingly concise

There have been many from the Roman edition of 1592, and the Latin translation given to the world by Thomas Erpenius at Leyden in 1617, down to Bresnier's translation (1846-1866), Perowne's (1852), and Trumpp's (1876). 'Abdallah ibn Yusuf IBN HiSHAM, who was born in 1308, was a disciple of the Spanish grammarian Abu Hayyan. He was a Shafi'ite doctor, and as such became
that

needs a commentary.

reprints of the work,

a teacher of Koranic exegesis at Cairo.

Five years before

his death, with the object of obtaining a post in a

mad-

rasa belonging to that order, he went over to the

balite rite.

Han-

He died in 1360, having written, under the Qatr al-Nadd (The Rain of Dew), a grammar which has been translated into French by Monsieur Goguyer. His Mughnt al-labtb, a treatise on syntax in
title

of

general, written at

Mecca between 1348 and

at

been printed both

Teheran and

at Cairo.

1353, has His Prdi,

388

ARABIC LITERATURE

on the rules of inflection, published and translated into French by Silvestre de Sacy in his Anthologie Grammaticale Arabe, has been printed at Cairo with a commentary, and so have his grammar known as Shudhur al-dhahab (Shreds of Gold), and his "Enigmas" {Algkdz) on grammatical difficulties. Fifteen of his works, all dealing with grammar, are preserved in European
libraries.

Abii'l-Tahir

came

Majd al-din AL-FiRtJz-ABADf (1329-1414) family belonging to Firuz-Abad in Farsistan. of a

in

He was born He studied the

Karizin, a small

traditions

dad, and Damascus. Taqi al-din 'All al-Subki, to Jerusalem, remained there ten years, occupied with literary undertakings, and then

town near Shiraz. and philology at Wasit, BagIn 1349 he accompanied his master,

departed for Cairo, and paid

India.

visits to Asia Minor and Bagdad by the Sultan Ahmad In 1393 he met Tamerlane at Shiraz, and ibn Uwais. was well received and richly rewarded by the conHe then departed once more to India. As queror. he was making his way back to Mecca, the Sultan of Yemen, Ismail ibn 'Abbas, gave him his daughter in marriage, and, in 1393, appointed him Grand Qadi of Yemen, with a residence at Zabid. There he died, having expressed a desire, which the Sultan would not permit him to gratify, to end his days at Mecca. He had built houses at Mecca and Medina, in which

He was

invited to

professors selected by himself taught during his

own

Firuz-Abadi is well known to all Arabic students, even to beginners, by his great lexicographical work, the Qdmus al-muhit (The Ocean that Surrounds the Earth), on which all the European dictionaries of the classic tongue are based, either directly or through
absences.

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

the

389

various commentaries written upon it, amongst which we may mention Sayyid Murtada al-Zabidi's Tdjal-arHs (The Bride's Tiara), which has been printed He also wrote in Persian, in ten volumes at Bulaq. as is proved by the existence of his Sifr al-sadda, a history of the life of the Prophet, now at Gotha, which was translated into Arabic by Abu'l-Jtld al-Makhzumi
in 1401.

Jabril ibn Farhat, a Christian,

belonged to the family

of Matar.

He was born

1660, and studied first He also acquired under Shaikh Sulaiman al-Nahwi. before he was the world retired from Italian. He

Aleppo on 20th November Syriac, and afterwards Arabic,

at

twenty, took religious vows at the age of twenty-three,

and, with several other young men, left his native town The to retire into the monasteries of the Lebanon.

community was

constituted

by the authority

of

the

Maronite patriarch of Ehden, Istifan al-Duwaihi, in 1694. This primate, who bore the title of Patriarch of Antioch, and wrote a well-known history of the Maronites, gave the convent of St. Maura at Ehden, in the In 171 region of the cedars, to be its dwelling-place. our monk betook himself to Rome, was kindly received by the Pope, returned to the Lebanon, and proceeded in 1721 to Aleppo, at the request of the Melchite bishop there, to correct the Arabic translation of the works of In 1725 he was appointed Bishop St. John Chrysostom. of Aleppo, and received the name of Germanos. He died on 9th July 1732, and Niqulaus al-Sa'igh, a priest and
poet, Superior
of

the Basilian

Monks

of

St.

John

at

Shuair, whose poems were printed at Beyrout in 1859, and who had been the friend of his youth, wrote His dtwdn, which includes an elegy on his departure.

go

ARABIC LITERATURE

edifying subjects, was abridged by hand, under the title Tadhkira, in 1720. It was printed for the first time at Beyrout in 1866 and a second edition, annotated by Sa'id al-Khuri, appeared

poems on sacred and

his

own

at the

al-niatdlib,

same place in 1894. His Arabic grammar, Bahth has run through three editions the first appeared at Malta in 1836, the last at Beyrout in 1891. His dictionary {^Ahkdm bdb al-i'rdb'), abridged from the Qdmus, was published, with additions, by Rushaid Dahdah, at Marseilles, in 1849.
;

Morocco
ibn Muhammad, surnamed Ibn under the rule of Muley Abu'l-'Abbas Ahmad al-Mansur (1578-1603), wrote a number of historical and biographical works. His Jadhwat al-Iqtibds, which deals with the men of mark born in Fez, or domiciled there, was lithographed in that town, in His biography of his sovereign and patron, al1892. Muntaqd al-Maqsur, has been quoted by the author of the Nuzhat al-Hddi ; and his Durrat al-hijdl, a biographical dictionary, is preserved in manuscript in the library of
Abu'I- Abbas
al-Qadi,

Ahmad

who

lived

the University at Algiers.

Towards the
in

close

of

the

sixteenth

century, there

died in the battle of Wadi'l-Makhazin (Alcazar el-Kebir),

which the Moors defeated the Portuguese (4th August 1578), and at the side of King Don Sebastian, and of Muley Muhammad, a man who had collected the biographies of the most prominent men of the Maghrib during the tenth century of the Hegira into a dictionary, entitled Dauhat al-Ndshir, which was lithographed at Fez in 1891. His name was Muhammad ibn 'Ali ibn

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

391

Misbah, better known under the surname of IBN Askar, and he was born at Hibth, in the district of Alcazar el-Saghir. His work was carried on by Abu 'Abdallah

Muhammad

ibn al-Tayyib,

who

collected the materials

for a biographical dictionary for

Morocco during the

the

eleventh and twelfth

the

centuries

of

Hegira, called

Nashr
1661,

al- Mathdnt.

This, too, was lithographed at

Fez, in 1892,

In

Abu Salim

'Abdallah

ibn

Muhammad

al-

'Ayyashi

was accomplishing a journey in Southern Algeria and the Barbary States, his account of which {Rihld) was translated into French by Adrien Berbrugger in 1846. Early in the eighteenth century, Muhammad al-Saghir ibn al-Hajj al-WafranJ (of the Chelha tribe of the Wafran), who lived in the city of Morocco, and held an official position at the court of Sultan Muley Isma'il

(1672-1727),

fell

into disgrace

at the

and

died, in all probability, before

end of his life, Oran was taken by

Hddt he wrote
1670),

Under the title of Niishat althe Spaniards in 1732. a history of the Sa'dian dynasty (1511which
has
(1824),

Antonio Moura

been utilised by Josd de by Graberg af Hemso

Santo
(1834),

by MacGuckin de
its

Slane,

Muhammad

ibn Rahhal, and

General Dastugue, and which has been published in entirety, and translated into French, by O. Houdas.

The Soudan
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, influenced by the Arab learning propagated by the Berber tribes
of

the

Sahara,

the

northern

portions

of

the

negro
to

countries

round Timbuctoo opened

their

portals

392
civilisation,

ARABIC LITERATURE

and ebony -skinned doctors dilated on the deep subjects a knowledge of which they had attained by journeying to Cairo. The dwellers in the Melli country had been Moslems from the days of the
Moravids.

Ibn

Batiita, the

traveller,

has

left

us very

curious details as to this part of the world, which he

visited in the

course of his tour in Africa.

ibn

Ahmad

ibn 'Abdal-Rahman,

went to Egypt for his education. and made an abridgment of the commentary written by his master, Ibn Marzuq, the younger, on the Jumal. He is known to have been alive after the year 1427. 'Abdal- Aziz, the Takhurian, whose learning was very remarkable, was able to quote, in the presence of the learned men of Cairo, and without a single fault, the sources whence Sidi-Khalil had drawn the matter of Another the questions dealt with in his Summary. lawyer, "who knew tales of travel by heart," was Makhluf ibn 'Ali al-Bilbali, who began his education So successful were his first at a very advanced age. efforts in this line that he went to Fez to sit at the feet of 'All ibn Ghazi, and from that time his powers won him a great reputation, which followed him when he went back to the Soudan, and began to teach there hiinself. He pined for the land in which he had acquired his learning, and returned to Morocco, but was poisoned there, and made his way back to Timbuctoo, where he died towards the year 1534. Al-Hajj Ahmad ibn 'Umar ibn Muhammad Aqit, who belonged to the Berber tribe of the Sanhaja, and was born at Timbuctoo, left the reputation of a saint behind him in his own country. It was even asserted that, when he went on pilgrimage in 1485, he saw the

Ahmad who was born in 1357, He even taught there,

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

393

doors of the Prophet's tomb at Medina open wide before him, after he had failed to obtain access to that building. In the course of his journey to Mecca, he made the
acquaintance of Suyuti. On his return, which coincided with the revolt of the negro tyrant Sonni-'Ali, he settled at Kano, and afterwards at other Soudanese towns, and taught there. The Sultan of the country would have made him an Imam, but he refused that

and all public functions, so as to devote his whole time to teaching. He had copied a considerable number of books with his own hand, and when he died, in 1536, seven hundred volumes were found in his house. His brother. Shaikh Mahmud ibn'Umar (1463-1548), who was born at Timbuctoo, was the most venerated Marabout in the Soudan. He was gifted with a calm nature and a surprising memory, and was universally esteemed. The king of the country was in the habit of going to see him, and requesting his blessing, but the gifts showered from every quarter upon the saintly man made no impression upon him. In 1498, when he was qddi, he reformed the administration of justice by curbpost,

ing the corruption rampant

teach,

judicial duties did not prevent

on the judges' bench. His him from continuing to and expound Sidi-Khalil's Summary, which he
into the

had introduced

Soudan, together with Sahnun's

the sacred pilgrimage in 1510.

Mudawwana.

He made

Muhammad ibn 'Abdal-Karim al-Mughili belonged to Tilimsan. He was a man of bold and enterprising character, and,

by

his

up where he was a preacher, in blood. He celebrated this event by composing a poem to the glory of the Prophet, and then left that country, and passed far into the Soudan,
massacres of the
26

uncompromising fanaticism, stirred Jews which drenched the Touat,

394

ARABIC LITERATURE

where he taught Koranic learning and jurisprudence at Takeda, Kachena, and Kano. Hearing his son had been murdered, probably in revenge, by the Jews of the Touat, he started on his way back to the Sahara, but died just as he reached the end of his journey. He wrote some twenty books on law and theology, and also left a correspondence on logic, in verse and prose,

al-Ansammani was born at Takeda, a Berber village on the Soudanese frontier. He was the pupil of Al-Marili, and also attended the teachings of Suyuti at Cairo. His facility in expressing himself was especially admired. He died after the year 1543, leaving some legal treatises behind him. Ahmad ibn Ahmad ibn 'Umar (1522-1583), son of
the

with Jalal al-din Suyuti. Al- Aqib ibn 'Abdallah

Marabout Ahmad ibn 'Umar

lately

referred

to,

studied theology, logic, and diction, and his erudition

gained him a high place among the learned men of his His virtue and his popularity enabled him to period. address sharp remonstrances to persons of all classes, and even to the princes of the country. He was seized with serious illness one day, while on his road The Sultan, Ashkar Da'iid, went every to Kaghou. evening to spend several hours with him, and never
slackened in his attentions
till

the sick

man had com-

pletely recovered his health.

He

collected a consider-

able library, which he never hesitated to place at the

In 1549 he performed the journey Mecca, and passed through Cairo, where he entered into relations with all the learned men of the day, but
disposal of students.
to

more

especially with

Muhammad

al-Bakri, the Sufi,

who

caused him to write down, from his dictation, the litanies and orisons used by the religious confraternities of the

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

mystics.
logical

395

He

points,

began works on various legal and theobut most of his books were left unof
this

finished.

The most

singular figure

period

is

that of

Muhammad

ibn

Mahmud

ibn

Abu Bakr

(1524-1593),

surnamed Baghyo'o, a lawyer of Timbuctoo, coming of a family belonging to Wankoro, whose whole life was
devoted to teaching.

He

loved

all

lovers of knowledge,

and showed them every sort of kindness. He would willingly lend his most precious manuscripts, and never asked for them back, however rare they might be. He never refused a book to a student, even when the individual was quite a stranger to him. The most astonishing thing about this man, who handed about the books in his library so freely, was that he loved them passionately, and spent a great deal of trouble and money in buying
them, or having copies made. His patience as a teacher was unfailing, even when the most difficult subjects had He to be communicated to the slowest intelligence. His would spend whole days in this occupation. modesty was remarkable, and he won the affection of He died very shortly after the all who knew him. capture of Timbuctoo by the Moroccan army, under His works are for the most part the Pacha Jaudar. marginal comments on legal books.
Abu'l-' Abbas Ahmad-Baba (1556-1627) of Timbuctoo was descended from Ahmad ibn 'Umar. He was born in the village of Arawan, refused to submit to the Moorish occupation of the Soudan, and was carried to Morocco, where he lay four years in prison. His liberation, at the command of the new Sultan, Muley Zidan, enabled him to go back to his own country, and to his career as a teacher of jurisprudence. He was fifty

396
years old

ARABIC LITERATURE
when he wrote

pletion of

his Takmilat al-dtbdj (a comIbn Farhun's Brocade), a biographical dictionary of the Malikite savants, which Cherbonneau has

made known

to the

European world, and from which

he has published extracts. His other works deal with law and grammar. " He was rigorously just," writes the Soudanese historian translated by Monsieur O. Houdas, " even towards the humblest of men. Even in his dealings with sultans and emirs, he never dissembled as to The name of Mahomet was to be seen written justice.
in natural white characters

on the

skin of his right fore-

arm."

'Abdal-Rahman ibn 'Abdallah al-Sa'di (1596-1655 ?), at Timbuctoo, was a notary at Jenna, and, from 1627, acted as Imam of the mosque at Sankora. He was dismissed some ten years later, and returned to his native town, where he occupied a similar

who was born

post.

He

ultimately received the

title

of secretary to

Government, and was entrusted with missions to several Soudanese chiefs. He had attained his sixtyfirst lunar year when he completed his Tdrikh al-SAddn (History of the Soudan), which has been translated by O. Houdas. The Tadhkirat al-Nisydn, also translated by Houdas, is a biographical dictionary of the Pachas of Timbuctoo, from 1590 down to 1750. It was written by the grandson of Muhammad ibn al-Amin ibn Muhammad Slid, in 1751. The author, whose proper name is not known, was born in the Soudanese capital in 1700. The care with which he quotes exact dates from the year 17 16 onwards, leads us to suppose that when he was sixteen he began to keep a journal of some kind. The biothe

graphies are of varying lengths.

Some

give nothing

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

but a few dates, others are very
of detail

397

much worked out, full Those of contemporary personages are particularly lively and animated.
and of information.

Anthologies and Popular Works

Jamal al-din
al-

al-Watwat (Muhammad

ibn Ibrahim)

(1235-1318), surnamed al-Kutubi (the Bookseller), and

Warrdq

(the Paper-seller),

wrote the Ghurar al-khasd'is

on eight and eight vices, which has been printed at Cairo, and the Mabdhij al-fikar, an encyclopaedia of natural science and geography. From the printing presses of
al-wddiha, an anthology in sixteen chapters,
virtues

the Egyptian capital has also issued the

Husn

al-tawassul

(The Good Means), a treatise on the art of letter-writing, by Ibn Fahd (Shihab al-din MahmiJd), of Aleppo, a secretary in the Mameluke Chancery (i 246-1325), in the days of Baibars he wrote a book on chaste love, called the Mandsil al-ahbdb, some manuscript copies of which Muhammad al-Bilbaisi was the author exist in Europe. intermingled with verse, in which he starts on of a work, the supposition that thirty guests, belonging to different crafts, are sitting round a table and exchanging jokes. This little book, which is called al-Mulah wd l-Turaf (Pleasantries and Curiosities), and in the language of which the current corruptions of the Egyptian dialect of the present day are already evident, was written in
;

Towards the same period, 'Ala al-din "Ali al1345. Baha'i, a man of Berber blood, but of Damascene birth,

who
ibn

died in 1412, was compiling his Matdli

al-budUr

(Rise of the Full Moon), while Shihab al-din

Muhammad

Ahmad

al-AbshIhI,

in a village in the

who was born towards 1388, Fayyum, and died about 1446, was

398

ARABIC LITERATURE
fann

collecting the materials for his Mustatraf ft kull

Mustazraf, a book of stories, poems, and maxims, which has been frequently reprinted at Cairo, and which has just been translated into French by G. Rat.

Shams
teacher
Cairo,

al-din
of

Muhammad
traditions

the

in

al-Nawaji (1383 ?-i455), a the Shafi'ite schools of

and himself a
reprinted.

poet, left a collection of Baccha-

nalian poetry, entitled Halbat al-kuniait, which has been

through the various manuscript works of his are European libraries other to be found, such as his Kitdb al-Sabilh (The Book of the Morning Beverage), anecdotes and verses of the period of the 'Abbasid Caliphs, his Ta'hil al-Gharib, collection of Arabic poetry belonging to the Moslem a. epoch, and arranged according to the alphabetical order of the rhymes, his MardbV al-ghisldn (The Gazelles' Pasturage), which deals with erotic poetry, as does his
frequently

Scattered

Khar

al-idhdr,

and

others, besides a study of the plagia-

risms committed by the author's friend, Ibn Hijja of

Hamat. Da'ud ibn 'Umar al-Antaki was a physician. He lived at Cairo, although, by origin, he belonged to Antioch. His father lived in the village which contains the tomb of the famous Habib the Carpenter. He himself was cured of congenital rheumatism by a Greek physician, who taught him his own tongue. When questioned on any scientific subject, he would immediately dictate sufficient matter to cover ten or twenty Besides works devoted to medical subjects, he pages.

wrote the Tazyin al-aswdq, an anthology, in prose and verse, on the subject of love. He died blind, at Mecca,
in 1599.

'Abdal-Qadir al-Baghdadi,

who

died in 1682,

left,

under

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

the
title

399

Khizdnat al-adab (Treasure of Literature), a the quotations to be met with in RadJ al-din al-Astarabadi's {obiit 1287) explanation of Ibn Hajib's grammar, the Kdfiya, which contains a mass of precious information as to the early days of literature, drawn from sources no longer attainable by us. Al-'Abbas ibn 'Ali ibn Nur al-din, a Meccan, wrote, when at Mecca, and on his return, in 1735, from a long journey which had covered twelve years, his Nuzhat alof

commentary on

Jalts

wa-Munyat al-adib al-anis (Delight of the Comrade and Pleasure of the Man of Letters who Cares for Society), a book of travels, with details, literary and biographical, which carries the reader from Mecca through Egypt, This Palestine, Persia, India, and Southern Arabia. work is a remarkably erudite compilation a real anthology. It is dedicated to Ahmad ibn Yahyi Khazindar, a jurisconsult, who had advised the author to travel, so as to rid himself of the worry caused him by his relations and friends in his native town.

The Arabian Nights

If

there be one book, the

all
it

others, the delight both of childhood

is

title

which overshadows and of ripe age, the anonymous work universally known under the of Kitab Alf laila wa-laila (The Thousand and One
of

fame

Nights).

My

readers are acquainted with the

somewhat

flimsy construction

whereby a mass

of tales of varying

nature are gathered into the limits of one story. A monarch in Central Asia, determined to protect against the craft and infidelity of women, resolves himself
fictitious

that the wife he chooses

death before the next.

him every day shall be put to The two daughters of his Prime

400

ARABIC LITERATURE

Minister devote their lives to save their country, and the eldest, a clever woman, versed in the literature of fairies

and genii, amuses the king each day with a story, the end of which she prudently holds over till the following night, thus keeping his curiosity in suspense till he finally relinquishes his dark design. The names of the personages mentioned in the prologue are all Persian, and this sufficiently indicates the source from which the work is drawn. The Hazdr Afsdna (The Thousand Tales)
was, in
fact,

a Persian book, translated, as the historian

Mas'udi relates, from the Pehlevi into Arabic as early as the third century of the Hegira. "This book," he says, " is known to the public under the name of the Thousand

and One Nights daughter and his

:

it is

the story of a king, his vizier, his

slave,

Shirazad and Dinazad."

this

The

remarkable point about

chronicler
of the
is

passage from the worthy the very ancient and purely Persian form

names of the two female characters, who were ultimately to become Sheherazade and Dinarzade. For .Shirazad (the Arabicised form of Chihr-azad) signifies, in the Persian, " noble by race," and Dinazad signifies " noble by law." As the names became corrupted, their meaning disappeared. The plan of the work was possibly taken by the Persians from India, with which country they had been in contact ever since the great Sasanian conquests had renewed the exploits of the empire of the Achasmenians, founded by Cyrus and Darius, and overthrown by Alexander. Into this evidently artificial framework have been introduced a variety of tales, inserted at diverse periods, which critics have found it possible to determine. To begin with, there is an ancient ground-work, probably of Indian origin, marked by much indulgence in phantas-

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

Genius.

401

magoric description, as the tale of the Fisherman and the Then, at Bagdad, we have love stories, and adventures in the bazaars, which end in the appearance

on the scene

of

Caliph

Harun

al-Rashid,

his vizier

Ja'far the Barmakide, and his eunuch Masrur, keeping order in the streets of his capital by night. Into this

cycle of popular tales

'Abdal-'Aziz

some

literary excerpts

have slipped,

such as the story of the Omeyyad Caliph 'Umar ibn and the poets. A third and more recent group is formed by the adventures in Cairo, grouped about the characters called Ahmad al-Danaf and Dalila. These are fantastic and supernatural stories, some of which would appear to be a survival from ancient Egyptian days. Others, such as the story of Buluqiya, inserted into that of Hasib Karim al-din, on which Horovitz has recently written, are decidedly Jewish in their origin. The presence of these latter tales has even inspired Chauvin with the idea that one of the editors of the Egyptian arrangement of the work must have been a converted Jew. A further and, as might almost be said, a forcible introduction into this collection of popular tales (necessitated by an adherence to the number of one thousand and one, to which the prologue bound the compilers) is that of certain romances of chivalry, such as the story of 'Umar al-Nu'man, and even of a romance of adventure by sea, the story of Sindbad the Sailor, the origin of which goes back to the palmy days of trade in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and which was probably composed at Bassora
during the tenth century.
it,

The book,

as

we now

possess

must have been drawn up

it

in comparatively recent

times, for

contains the stories of

Qamar al-Zaman
his wife Fatima,

and the

jeweller's wife, of Ma'ruf

and

402

ARABIC LITERATURE
Abu Qir the Dyer and Abu modern of all.
is

both of them belonging to the sixteenth century, and

also the tale of
Sir the

Barber, the most

The merit

of having introduced

European readers

to

the Arabian Nights

the chief claim to glory of Antoine

Galland, the French Orientalist,

who accompanied

the

Marquis de Nointel on his embassy to Constantinople, and made two subsequent journeys in the East. His translation, which appeared between 1704 and 1708, was an event in literature. His translating labours were carried on by Petis de la Croix (1710), by Caussin de Perceval (1806), by Edouard Gaultier (1824), Destains Nearer our own (1825), and Trebutien de Caen (1828). times, after Lane (1841), John Payne (1882-1884) and Richard Burton (1885-1888) have given two complete English versions, the first in thirteen, and the second in sixteen volumes. A complete French translation, which will not curtail any of the longwindedness of the
original text,
is

now
The

in course of publication in Paris,

by

Dr. Mardrus.
the

editions published in the

East, at

Bulaq and Calcutta, have only furnished the matter of first nine volumes of Payne's edition, and the first ten of Burton's. The text of these works was completed from other manuscripts, such as that at Tunis, edited by Habicht at Breslau in 1835-1839, and continued after his death by Fleischer (1842-1843), and that brought back to England by Wortley-Montague, which was In 1886, H. Zotenberg, the curator utilised by Burton. of the manuscripts at the Bibliotheque Nationale, discovered the Arabic text of the tales of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and of Zain al-Asnam, which do not appear in the Oriental editions of the Arabian Nights. A doubt had even been expressed as to whether Galland

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

403

had not wholly invented them. Zotenberg's discovery, and the critical and historical researches he consequently made, with the object of proving that the text he had brought to light was not an Arabic translation of Galland's French version, have demonstrated that this latter Orientalist had consulted a version in the Syriac dialect, and that from it his two delightful stories had been drawn. The sixth supplementary volume of
Burton's translation contains the tales published by Dom Denis Chavis, a Syrian priest, and Jacques Cazotte, in
1788-1789, which were translated into German in 1790 and 1810, and into English in 1792. The style of the Arabian Nights is absolutely popular and local. It contains a mass of expressions which have no place in the classic Arabic, and which vary according The whole text of the story of Aladdin to the provinces.
is

in the Syrian dialect.

The source

of the stories of

They came from the Arab origin is easily detected. madddh, the popular story-teller, who wanders, on feastdays, from one caf6 to another, and is the anonymous author of the greater part of the tales of which the collection is composed.

The Romance of 'Antar

To Al-Asma'i, the grammarian of the close of the second century of the Hegira (739-831), is ascribed the
authorship of the great romance of chivalry, a partial translation of which was issued in Enghsh by Terrick
to Paris

Hamilton in 1820, while the full text was brought back from Constantinople by Cardin de Cardonne.

Caussin de Perceval, the younger, wrote a dissertation upon it in {he Journal Asiatique, and gave extracts from

404
it

ARABIC LITERATURE
the Chrestomathies Orientales (1841).

Both these and Cherbonneau, Dugat, and Devic, after them, translated fragments of the work, and it was
in

Orientalists,

published in
times, and, in

full at

Cairo, in 1893.

It is

quite evident

do not date from such remote many centuries have elapsed since those days, that the name of Al-Asma'i can be no more than a label placed by the professional rdwt on the stories, to give them some appearance of authenticity. In its present form, the romance goes back to
that the popular tales

any

case, so

the days of the Crusades. The Orientals place little value on so unpretentious a literary style, but Westerns recognise in it, with pleasure, the spirit of the people,

freed from such ready-made trammels of formulas learnt

school as appear much more frequently, indeed, than may be imagined, in certain passages of the Romance of Antar (those in rhymed prose and poetical quotations).
at

"

may

In the Romance of Antar, Caussin de Perceval declares, be found a faithful picture of the life of those desert
''

Arabs on whose manners and customs the lapse of time appears to have had scarcely any effect. Their hospitality,
their vengeances, their loves, their generosity, their thirst

for pillage, their inherent taste for poetry, are

all

closely

described. There are accounts,

Homeric

in their

way, of

the ancient Arab wars, the chief events in Arab history

before the advent of Mahomet, and the deeds of the antique heroes. The style, varied and elegant, occasionally rising
to the sublime,

and the characters, powerfully drawn and

worked out with art, combine to render the work exceedIt is, so to speak, the Arab Iliad." ingly remarkable. If we allow for his natural enthusiasm about the disAntar as
covery he had made in Syria, and accept the Romance of a popular work, in which we must not expect any

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD

historical qualities,

405

we may take Caussin de Perceval's flaming description to be fairly accurate. The book is interesting to read, and considerable pleasure may be
found
fashion
in

following the knightly adventures therein de-

scribed.

Take

it

all in

all,

it

is

much
the

after the

same
the

that Alexandre

Dumas
and

elder

wrote

history of France.

Now

again, the story-teller gives

us treasures of beauty, as in the famous episode of the

death of 'Antar, so greatly admired by Lamartine. The desert hero, stricken to death by a poisoned shaft sped by the hand of a treacherous and implacable foe, remounts his horse, to ensure the safe retreat of his tribe, and dies, leaning on his lance. His enemies, smitten
with terror by the memory of his prowess, dare not advance, till one cunning warrior devises a stratagem which startles the horse out of its marble stillness. The
creature gives a bound, and 'Antar's corpse,
ported, falls
left

unsup-

upon the ground.

The Romance of the Beni-Hilal

In that charming and now classic work, known as the Modern Egyptians, the great Arabic scholar, Edward

William Lane, has given a very

lifelike

picture of the

public story-teller, sitting on a bench outside the cafe,

with all the neighbouring townsmen gathered around him, smoking their long chibouks, after the general He also gives an analysis of several habit in the East. of the romances related by these men, among them Since then others have been the Romance of ^Antar.
published, amongst

them

the

The
Abtj.

subject

is

identical

Romance of the Beni-Hildl. with that of the Romance of

In spite of his being

Zaid, so popular in Egypt.

4o6

ARABIC LITERATURE
Emir Rizq had only two born without arms, when the

the possessor of ten wives, the

daughters, and one son,

Princess AI-Khadra, daughter of the Sharif of Mecca,

his eleventh wife, and presented him with a negro son, because, having noticed, while on a journey, a jet black bird defending itself victoriously against a crowd of others, she had wished her son might resemble the brave bird, even if he were to be as black as its plumage. Her prayer was granted, but the father, prevented by pressure on his comrades' part from acknowledging his paternity, repudiated Khadra, and sent her home to her father, the Sharif. On her journey back to that city, she met the Emir Fadl, chief of the tribe of Zahlan, who took her under his protection, and adopted her son, the youthful Barakat, later sur-

became

named Abu

Zaid,

who grew up

a hero, the glory of his

adopted tribe. Meanwhile his father, who still loved Khadra, had withdrawn himself from his people, and was living in a tent, attended by a single slave. At a later date, the tribe of which he had been chief, defeated by Barakat, and reduced to a state of misery, appealed to his powers, and besought him to undertake the leaderThus father and son were brought ship once more. face to face, neither knowing the other. The Emir Rizq was thrown from his horse, and would have been slain by his own son, if the mother had not interfered, and revealed the real tie between Rizq and Abu Zaid. Father and son recognised each other, and the Emir

Abu Zaid

forgave the injury done him by his tribe. In the great Persian epic, the Shdh-ndma, Firdausi intro-

duces Rustam and his son Suhrab. Here the father kills the son in single combat, and does not recognise him till he is dead. This striking episode is more dramatic than the

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

author of

407

corresponding one in the Arabic work. The anonymous AbA Zaid has recoiled from the conception of a parricide, which indeed would have obliged him to bring his story to a sudden termination, instead of continuing to dilate on the feats of his hero, as
case.
is

now

the

Martin Hartmann has shown that the stories of the Beni-Hilal, and their invasion of Northern Africa itaghrtbat), form one complete cycle of legends, connected with the modulated chants still to be heard among the Bedouins of the Libyan Desert. This cycle comprises eight and thirty romances, that of Abu First of all Zaid being merely the last of the series. comes the story of Jabir and Jubair, the ancestors of the Beni-Hilal, dating from the days of the Prophet. Four hundred years later, we come to that of Al-Khadra, mother of Abu Zaid, as we have just related it, and then

Shamma and of Zahr al-Ban, in which we see the Emir Sirhan made prisoner by Christian corsairs, on his way back to his own country by sea, and becoming chief swineherd in the land of his captors. His wife, Shamma, goes to join him in the country of
to the adventures of

the Franks.

His son, Sultan Hasan, betakes himself to

have a

here we the Sasanian Persians had garrisons in Southern Arabia and

Yemen,
to

make war on
of the

the fire-worshippers

memory

historic

times

when

is

aided there by the never-failing Abu Zaid. He proceeds to vanquish the monarch of India, Jarad, conquers his country, and leads the Beni-Hilal back to
Africa.

Sultan

The continuation of the story Hasan and Abu Zaid remove into
because there
is

relates

how

the province

of Najd,

nothing

left

to eat in their

own

country.

For the same reason the Beni-Hilal are

4o8
what

ARABIC LITERATURE
move westwards
;

constrained to quit Najd, and

is

this is

West).

properly called the taghrtba (Emigration to the They proceed to Tunis, where the power is

held by Al-Zanati Khalifa a name in which we easily recognise the Berber tribe of the Zanata. Accounts of fantastic fights with the Persians and with Tamerlane,
full of

names

recalling distant

memories

of the Crusades

(such as Bardewil and Baldwin), of the taking of Tangiers

and

of

Morocco, complete

this cycle of adventures, all

more

or less connected with the invasion of Northern

Africa by the Beni-Hilal, during the eleventh century of

the Christian era.

Romance of Saif Dhi>'l-Yazan

His mother, a is the son of a King of Yemen. causes him to be exposed in the desert. Here he gazelle which has lost her is miraculously fed by a young, is found by a hunter, and is carried away to
Saif
slave,

he grows up, he fights with the slays him. As a reward, the king would give him his daughter Shama to wife, but the Prime Minister opposes the plan, and insists that the young man shall first bring him the head of Sa'dun alAbyssinia.
giant Mukhtatif,

When

and

Zanji, the terror of Abyssinia,

history of the Nile,

his mother,

which

lies in

protected by talismans.

and find the book of the an inaccessible country, He is presently recognised by

she
his

who
and

desires to kill him, so that

Saif returns to

may
own-

reign alone.
full

After every kind of wonderful adventure,

sorceresses,

of genii

country, abdicates in favour of his son, and lives like a patriarch ; but undeserved misfortunes soon bring his
life

to a close.

AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd

409

A French translation from the Arabic of this story, adorned with five hthographs by Ali-Bey, has appeared at Constantinople, under the title of Sultan Saif-Zuliazan Wick, 1847, 368 pp. 8vo). (J.-J. The Saif al-Ttjdn (Sword of the Crowns) is the story,
divided into parts, of the adventures of a fabulous prince,

who

world, fighting
are
all

goes from one country to another, conquering the fairies and magicians with mighty swordthrusts, and warring against multitudinous armies, which

converted to the Moslem faith, by the intervenIt has been tion of the prophets Abraham and Isma'il. translated into French by Dr. Perron.

The Fables of Luqman

The matter of the ancient fables known to us as ^sop's, with their axioms of practical morality put into the mouths of animals, has passed into the Arabic tongue, and is ascribed by Arabs to the sage LUQMAN. Who was this sage? In the chapter of the Koran " We have given wisdom to entitled Luqvidn, we read him, Be grateful to God,' " and Luqman, saying to " one day to his son, by way of said Luqman again
:

'

no other divinities tremendous sin " The Sacred Book of the Moslems contained two allusions to this legendary personage, whose name occurs twice over in the ancient Arab traditions. The first
admonition,
'

O my

child, associate
is

with God, for idolatry

'

occasion

is

that of the destruction of the

first

popula-

tion of 'Ad, in the south of the Peninsula.

He had been

sent as ambassador to Mecca, to crave help against the

drought,

when the people's refusal to accept the prophet Hiid was avenged by the appearance of a black cloud
27

410

ARABIC LITERATURE

which ruined the whole country. His piety was rewarded by the gift of a long life, equal to those of seven generations of vultures. The second time, we hear of him in connection with the game called Maisir, which consisted in

drawing

lots

camel

killed at the general expense.

with arrows for the parts of a His passion for this

pastime had become a proverb.

We

also hear of his

cunning and cleverness. Nothing more appears in the pre-lslamic traditions concerning him. Yet in the days of Mahomet, as we have just seen, he was accepted as the incarnation of wisdom. The prophet must have taken this idea from the belief of the populations round him, for the scoffers about him would have had a fine opportunity if he had ventured to be the first to attribute the wisdom of the learned to an individual whose celebrity Luqman was rested principally on his perspicacity. said, indeed, to be the author of some proverbs, but this honour he shared with many others of both sexes. These fables, like other works which passed from the Greek into the Arabic, were translated not directly, but through the medium of a Syriac version, from the pen of a Christian, Barsuma, who died in 1316, and whose work is dated 1299. There is another collection of the same kind, which bears the Syriac title oi Matle de Soufos From these is drawn the Arabic (^sop's Fables).
version ascribed to the ancient sage Luqman, of whose wisdom we find proof in the very pages of the Koran.

CHAPTER

XI

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In Egypt, Syria, Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, among Arabic-speaking countries, there is a more or less active

by the publication of a number of newspapers, and evidenced also by the production of various works in book form. This is not confined to the countries in which Arabic is the current
stir in literary

matters, denoted

language, but

is

also noticeable in certain large cities,

where

it

is

familiar only to the learned, as in Constantiit

nople, and in others, such as Paris, where

is

utterly

few scholars, but where, thanks to the incessant circulation due to our present facilities for communication, certain Oriental writers, whose works have been published in the city, occasionally meet. MIkha'il ibn Niqiila ibn Ibrahim Sabbagh, who was born at St. Jean d'Acre about 1784, spent his youth at Damascus, served the French during the expedition into
to a

unknown, except

Egypt, and accompanied the army when it retired from When the Turks re-entered Cairo, his house was sacked, his goods confiscated, and his fortune engulfed. He was appointed copyist, or rather repairer of manuscripts, at the Imperial Library in Paris. He had formed the acquaintance of Silvestre de Sacy, who
that country.

made

a French translation of his treatise

post, entitled

on the pigeonMusdbaqat al~barq wa'l-gkaindm, and be-

412
stowed on
rapide que
period, this
it

ARABIC LITERATURE
the poetic
title

of

La

colonibe messagere, plus

I'eclair,
little

plus prompte que la nue. At a later treatise was still further popularised by

German
to

translation

due

to

Arnold, and an

Italian

rendering, the work of Cataneo.

A hymn,

addressed

by him

the King of

Napoleon I. on the occasion of the birth of Rome, was also translated by Silvestre de

Sacy in 1811. When, at a later date, the aspect of politics underwent a change, Sabbagh wrote a congratulatory hymn to Louis XVIII. {Nashid tahdni), which was done into French by Grangeret de Lagrange in 1814. He drew up some notes on the modern forms of Arabic poetry {inawaliya, zajal), which were in the possession of Grangeret de Lagrange, and utilised by G. W. Freytag in the composition of his work on Arabic metres. He
died in June 1816, leaving the manuscripts of a history of the Arab tribes and of a history of Syria and Egypt, and a grammar of the Arabic vulgarly spoken in Egypt

and Syria {Risdla al-tdmma), which was published Strasburg by Thorbecke in 1886. The manuscript
this

at

of

work, at one time in the collection of Etienne Quatremere, has passed, with all other papers belonging

to the

famous French
Library.

Orientalist, into the possession of

the

Munich

Sabbagh's friend, ElyOs

Boqtor

(Bocthor),

born, of Copt parents, at Suyut, in

of the

who was Upper Egypt, on

fifteen

12th April 1784, was attached to the headquarters staff

French army as

interpreter,

when only

years of age.

In 1812 he was employed to translate

Arabic works in the archives of the Ministry of War, and was afterwards attached to the general depot of the army as interpreter. This post was done away with in
1814.

In 1817 he was given leave to deliver a course of

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

lectures

413

on

colloquial Arabic at the :^cole des

Langues

Orientales vivantes (1816), was appointed professor in

that establishment (1821),

and
left

thirty,

and died, when barely seven on 26th September of the same year. He

an Arabic-French dictionary, published in 18281829 under the auspices of Caussin de Perceval the younger, who succeeded to his professorial chair. Nakoula (Niqul^) al-Turk, the son of Yusuf al-Turk, was a member of the Greek-Catholic (Melchite) Church. He was born in 1763 at Dair al-Qamar, where dwelt the
the

Emir Bashir, chief of the E>ruses, and now the seat of Lebanon Government. His family was of Constan-

tinopolitan origin.
prince, with the

He

entered the service of the Druse

title

of

muallim or professor, and was

little

highly esteemed as a poet, at the

sent

court.

His patron
as
to

him

into

Egypt

to obtain information

the

plans of the French, and he remained there during the whole period of the French ascendency. At the close of

he became blind, and his daughter, Warda, wrote the poems he composed at his dictation. He died at Dair al-Qamar in 1828. His Suminary of the French Occupation was translated by Alexandre Cardin, and
his
life

added

to his

full text

the Journal cT Abdurrahman Gaba7^ti {iZ was published and translated by the elder Des-},?>) ;

granges in 1839. The ode expressing his feelings as to the conquest of Egypt has been translated into French by J. -J. Marcel. Shaikh Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, son of the Shafi'ite Rafi', and descendant of the famous Santon of Tahta, Ahmad al-Badawi, who fought at the Battle of Mansura, began
his career as a pupil in the al-Azhar

Mosque
Paris

at Cairo,
title of

acted as chaplain in the Egyptian army, with the

preacher, and was afterwards sent to

with the

414
pupils of the

ARABIC LITERATURE

Egyptian School just established there, under the direction of 'Abdi-Efendi Muhurdar. He ultimately returned to Cairo, and spent the closing years of his life as head of the Translating Office. He translated a number of works from the French, among them La Lyre brise'e, by Agoub, which he put into Arabic verse, under the title of Nazm al-"uqM (1827). His original works consist of his account of his journey to France, and his residence there, which he entitled Takhlis al-Ibriz (Purification of Gold), and some patriotic Egyptian odes {mansuma misriyyd). He had planned a history of Egypt from the most remote period, after Arab authors and others of his Anwar taufiq alj'alil, only the first volume, carrying the story down to Mahomet, ever appeared. Shaikh NAsiF ibn 'Abdallah AL-YAzut (1800-1871), of the Lebanon, who was born at Kafr-Shima, was attached in a professorial capacity to the American mission at Beyrout, and wrote an imitation of the famous Lectures of Hariri, under the title of Majmd al-balirain (Confluence of the Two Seas), which was printed at Beyrout in 1856. This work had been preceded by an anthology, Majmii al-adab. A treatise on logic, called Qutb al-Sinaa (The Pole of Art); an Arabic grammar, called Fad al-Khitdb ; a commentary on the works of Mutanabbi, entitled al- Arf al-Tayyib ; a treatise on Arabic prosody, 'Iqd al-jumdn ; a commentary on the Jdima, dealing with the art of versification, called al-Ldmia (1869) the Ndr al-qird, a commentary on verses quoted in the Mukhtasar ; the ^UqM al-durar, a commentary on the Khizdna, and al-Jumdna, are his
; ;

principal productions.
Silvestre

He

wrote a

letter of criticisms to

de Sacy, relative to his edition of Hariri's

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Lectures,

415

which has been translated into Latin by A. F. Mehren. A selection from his poems, drawn from his unpublished diwdn, was printed at Beyrout in 1853, under the title of Nubdha, and within two years a selection of chronograms, from the same source (tawdrtkh), likewise appeared in the same place. Yet another collection of his poetry, entitled Thdlith al-qamarain (The Third Crescent), was published at Beyrout in 1883. Ilyas Faraj Basil, a Maronite from Kasrawan, in the Lebanon, collected his own verses into a volume at Aleppo, and called it Majmit al-azhdr (Collection of Flowers, an anthology). This was printed at Jerusalem
in 1879.

Ahmad Faris

ibn Yusuf

ibn

a Maronite converted to Islam,

who

Mansur AL-ShidyAq, died about 1890, was

the type of a many-sided and prolific writer, with the

inner lining of the journalist. His family name signifies " chorister-boy," although, etymologically speaking, it is
closely allied to the

was

attracted, in

French " archidiacre." His fancy the first instance, by lexicographical

quite devoid of

questions,

and

his inquiries into this subject, proving the

critical power, His Lafif ft kull mdnd tarif is a dictionary of Arabic synonyms, preceded by an abridged grammar, which appeared at Malta in Subsequently came his Sirr al-laydl (Mystery of 1839.

ingenuity of a

mind
till

any

were carried on

the end of his

life.

the Nights), on the qalb

metathesis,

and the

ibddl, that is to say,

on

and the
bf

alteration of consonants in the Arabic

'l-QdmAs (The Spy on the Qdmils), - Abadi's dictionary, and his alWdsita ft mdrifat Ahwdl Mdlta, a means for gaining acquaintance with the conditiori of Malta, and the disroots
;

his Jds-As

''aid

criticism

Firuz

covery of the secret of European science (Tunis, 1866

4i6

ARABIC LITERATURE

Constantinople, 1881).

A poem

in

honour

of the

Bey

of

Tunis was translated into French by Monsieur G. Dugat.

But his caustic wit had free play in the work entitled al-Sdq 'aldl-sdq (Leg over Leg), or the life and adventures of Fariac, an account of his travels, with critical
remarks on the Arab nations, and on others. This was published in Paris in 1855. His Shark tabaV al-haiwdn (Commentary on the Nature of Animals), which deals with the habits of birds and quadrupeds (Malta, 1841), is more or less borrowed from Buffon. His son, Salim
Faris,

has collected into a book, called the

Kanz

al-

raghd'ib, his
scientific

own and

his father's various literary

and

contributions to

Jazvd'ib,

founded by the

latter

an Arabic newspaper, the at Constantinople, and

subsequently transferred to Cairo.

Another inhabitant of the Lebanon, Butrus BiSTANt who went over to the Protestant Communion, and was dragoman to the United States
(1819-1883), a Maronite

Consulate at Beyrout, left, in his MuMt al-muhit (That which Surrounds the Ocean), a supplement to the Qdmiis, which was found very us,el,ul by R. Dozy, in the composition of his Supplement fiuse Dictionnaires

and meanings His Misbdh alTdlib (The Student's Lamp) jdegls with Arabic grammar; his Kashf al-hijdb (The Lifted Veil) is on arithmetic; and another great work is an Arabic Encyclopcedia, still unfinished, which is entitled Dd'irat al-ma^drif. He also published a life pf As'ad al-Shidyaq, and in a speech delivered at Beyrout in 1859, he dealt with the condition of Arabic literature at that date. The Maronite Shaikh RuSHAlD Dahdah, son of Ghalib, subsequently decorated with thp title of Count, has made
Arabes.
is

The work

full

of ,expressipns

peculiar to the various Syrian dialects.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

his

417

name by
1

the publication of certain Arabic texts, such

as that of the Fiqh al-lugha,

(Paris,

by Abu Mansur

al-Tha'alibi

the dtwdn of Ibn al-Farid, with commentaries by Hasan al-Burini and 'Abdal-Ghani al-Nabu861)
;

lust

(Marseilles,

1853

Paris,

1855

Bulaq,

1872)

poems, which ma}' be used as proverbs, collected by him under the title of Tarab Paris, 1861) and a al-masdini'' (Delight of the Ears
selection of remarkable
; ;

miscellany {Janiharat tawdndr), published at Paris in

1880.

To convey some

idea

of the

literary

movement

at

Beyrout during the course of the nineteenth century,

we

must also quote the names of Khalil-Efendi al-KhOrI, whose collection of poems occasional verses, written on

appeared at Salim Bisteris, who published a journal of his travels in Europe, al-Nuzhat al-Shahiyya (BeyIskandar-Aghi AbkAriyOs, an Armenian, rout, 1859) whose Raudat al-adab (Flower-bed of Literature Beyrout, 1858) contains biographical notices of the pre-Islamic
various political occasions (^Zahr al-rubd)

Beyrout

in 1857;

Arab

poets,

alphabetical order,
Marseilles,
in

contemporary with Mahomet, arranged and who had already published,

1852,

in

at

the

Nihdyat-al-arab, a

series

of

notices of the poets

Islamic times

Jirjis-Efendi

and prominent personages of preTannus 'Aun, who pubdictionary at Constantinople in

of

lished a technological

1884,

under the
Sa'id

Pearl);

Durr al-Khur1 al title

al-Makniin (The Hidden

Shartuni, author of

the

Aqrab al-niawdrid, an Arabic dictionary with a supplement (Beyrout, 1894), and of the Shihdb al-Thdqib, a manual of epistolary style (1884) Yusaf Ilyas DiBS, who taught Arabic grammar without a master, by means of his Mughni' l-mutd allim {i^ib^)) and ARSANiYt>s al-Fakha iri,
; ;

41
a priest,

ARABIC LITERATURE
who
?).

wrote a study of rhetoric, entitled

Raud al~

jindn (1868

In 1865 a Syrian priest, named Joseph David, printed an elementary French grammar in the Arabic tongue, under the auspices of the Dominicans at Mosul, and also a collection of moral subjects treated in prose and verse, called Tanzth al-Albdb (Recreation for the Mind). After he became Monsignor Clement Joseph David, he published, in the same town, his Tamrina, an Arabic grammar (1886), which had been preceded, in 1877, by grammatical exercises entitled Tamrin. His Tarwid altulldb (1867) was intended to imbue the minds of the youthful neo-Assyrian dwellers on the banks of the Tigris with the elements of the science of arithmetic.

He

died in 1891.

Father Louis Cheikho, of the University of St. Joseph, at Beyrout, has helped to spread the knowledge of the Arabic classics by various publications. His Mukhtasar
al-sarf, as its title indicates, is a

short

grammar

(Beyrout,

1886); his Tarqiyat al-Qdri' , a collection of readings; his

MajdnV I- Adah is a huge literary anthology in six volumes, with a commentary or notes, in four more, to which is
added a preparatory study
stone to the Majdni.
entitled Mirqdt, the stepping-

The

^Ilm al-Adab, in
is

which he

collaborated with G. Eddd,

belles-lettres,

a course of lectures on

and on literary and oratorical composition. The Shilard al-Nasrdniyya is an anthology of ancient
Arabic poets, most of them pre-Islamic, and the editor endeavours to demonstrate that they were also Christians.

The mysteries

of the faith of the Nusairis or Ansaris

have been unveiled by Sulaiman-Efendi of Adana, in his al-Bdkhura al-Sulaimdniyya, a little volume translated into
English, almost in
its

entirety,

by E. Salisbury.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

419

History, and notably the history specially connected with that mountainous province, has been much cultivated in the Lebanon. Monsignor Istifan al-Duwaihi of Ehden, in the region of the Cedars, above Tripoli, wrote in the course of the seventeenth century, as we have already remarked, a history of the Maronites, which was published at Beyrout, in 1890, by Rashid al-Khuri al-Shartuni, to whom the public was already indebted for a manual of epistolary style, the Nahj at - murdsala (1877). Yet another Maronite, Shaikh TANNtis ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq, collected the annals of the Christian families of the mountains, in his Akhbdr al-A'ydn (1859). Khalil Sarkis wrote a history of Jerusalem (1874). At Mosul, a Syrian priest, Louis Rahmani, wrote, in 1876, an epitome of ancient history, another of the history of the Middle Ages, in 1877, and one of Sacred History, in 1883. Monsignor Cyril Behnam Benni, Archbishop of Mosul, wrote a book there, on the truths of the Catholic Church, called the

Durra

al-nafisa (1867).

the poets, mention must be made of Butrus Karama, a Christian, who died about 1850, and wrote muwashshahdt : of Rizq-AUah Hassun, a free-thinker,

Amongst

died about 1880, having lived for many years in England, where, for some time, he published an Arabic newspaper his Nafathdt, which largely consist of translations from Kryloff's Fables, and were dedicated to the Emir 'Abdal-Qadir, were printed in London in 1867: of Yusuf al-Asir, born at Saida about 1815, and died at Beyrout in 1890, who studied in the Al-Azhar Mosque, and who, in spite of his deep knowledge of the Arabic tongue, was neglected, all his life, by learned men bent on amassing wealth and honours he was the author of
; ;

who

420

ARABIC LITERATURE
li'l-sahni,

muwashshahdt, and of a controversy on grammar, entitled

Radd al-Shahni

which was printed

at Constanti-

nople in 1874: of Yusuf Dibs, appointed Maronite Archbishop at Beyrout in 1870, who was still alive in 1897, and has written popular poetry, as also did Nicolas Naqqash, who was born at Saida in 18 17, and died at Tarsus in 1855, having written a play called Arzat Lubndn (The

Cedar
at

of

Lebanon)

poet belonging to

and finally, of Amin al-Jundi, a the town of Hims, who was educated
:

Damascus, and died

in his native

town, in the year

1840, leaving a collection of poems, printed at Beyrout, in

volume also containing verses by other authors. At Damascus we note Salim-Efendi 'Anhuri, whose Badat Mdriit, pieces of verse which form the third part of his complete poems, appeared at Beyrout in 1886. Under the title of Kanz al-Ndzim (The Poet's Treasure and the Lost Man's Torch), he has sent forth a collection of classic expressions arranged in subjects. At Aleppo we must not overlook Faransis Marrash al-Halabi,
1883, in a

whose poems Another poet

bear
of

the

name

of

Al-Mirdt

al-husjid.

Constantinople.

Aleppo, Philip Basil Benna, lived at Three odes with which various inci-

dents inspired him

one

written in

gratitude for the

Prince de Joinville's assistance in putting out the conflagration at Perain 1839, another in honour of Frederick William, King of Prussia, and a third rendering homage
to

Abdal-Majid

have

been translated into German by

Otto Rohrig.

Sulaiman ibn Ibrahim Sula, of Aleppo, sang, in lyric numbers, the generous deeds of the Emir 'AbdalQadir,

whose bold resolution saved numbers

at

of

Chris-

tians during the Syrian massacres, in i860.

His diwdn

was printed

Constantinople in 1895.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Christian literature
is

421

represented by the Mawd'is, or Sermons, of Monsignor Yiisuf Ilyas Dibs, Archbishop of Beyrout (1874), and controversy by alDitrr al-manzAm, refutations of questions, and answers, bearing the signature of Monsignor Maximus Mazlum, and printed in a convent on the Lebanon, in 1863. The department of legal study claims the Shark raid alfaraid, dealing with the division of inheritances, by Yusuf
Collected
al-Asir (1873).

Damascus,

like

of literary activity. lished a series of

Beyrout, has had a flourishing period Mahmud Efendi Hamza has publegal subjects

works on

auqdf, rules in force as to property in

the Qawaidalmortmain (1871),

:

al-Fard'id al-bahiyya, on jurisprudence (1881), al-Tariqat al-wddiha, on the establishment of the preferable proof
(1883),

and Tahbtr al-maqdla,

(1884).

caution
treatise

'Ala al

din

a study on delay and Efendi 'Abidin wrote a

on jurisprudence,

entitled

Hadiyya

al-ald'iyya, in

1882.

In the department of philosophy,

Ahmad

al-Barbir

produced an imaginary dialogue between Air and Water, which he entitled Maqdma, or Lecture, in 1883. Muhammad-Efendi al-Qalbaqji wrote a book on the knowledge

Kashf and 'Umar-Efendi al- Attar, who had published his Risdla, on the object of logic, in 1870, followed it, in 1884, by his Fard'id fawd'id, on the meaning of the Unity his Risdla bahiyya, on the origin of the world; and his Tahqtqdt bahiyya, on the signification of
al-Akhldq, in 1883;
;

of man's inner nature as mirrored in his eyes, called

existence.

Muhammad
1883,

ibn Ahmad-Efendi al-Iskandarani pubtitle

lished his study of Natural Science in the

under the

of

Asrdr

al-rabbdniyya,

Efendi

Abu

Sha'r wrote a treatise

same city in and Da'udon hygiene, which

42 2

ARABIC LITERATURE

he called Tuhfat al-ikhwdn. The funeral oration of the Emir 'Abdal-Qadir was pronounced there by Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Mubarak al-Jaza'iri {Laiiat alDamair, 1883) and Muhammad-Efendi 'Abidin pub;

lished a bio-bibliographical
(1885).
_

work

e.n'ixWtdL^Uqud al-lddli

Spiridion Sarruf, a

member

of the

Orthodox Church,

and

Damascene by

origin, besides issuing a

number

of

books published from the Greek texts, compiled a Sacred History from the Creation down to the first century after the birth of our Lord (Jerusalem, 1855), and wrote an abridgment of the Catechism (i860). Ya'qijb Jirjis 'Awwad, a Maronite priest, wrote an epitome of dogmatic theology {Khtddsat al-bardhin aland Sim'an Ishaq al-Qudsi, a book IdhMiyya, 1873) on the pontificate of St. Peter and his successors, called Riydsat Butrus (1870). Under the impulse of the reforms initiated by the
liturgical
;

successors of
of
literary

Muhammad

'All,

Egypt,

like

Syria, has

been the scene of most remarkable activity in the matter

production. The knowledge of European imparted in the schools of the country has science induced a considerable amount of industry among translators, which we will not follow here, limiting our The activity noticeable in attention to original work. this country, far from being purely scientific, has perhaps been more literary than anything else. For during this period the official printing presses at Bulaq, and private enterprise in the city of Cairo, have been placing
the classics of

Moslem

learning within the reach of

all

men. Beside the great names of former days, we come on those of poets of our own, who have communicated
the fruits of their inspiration to the public.
'Ali-Efendi

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

who

423

Darvish (1867), with his IsKdr; Ibrahim-bey Marzuq, wrote al-durr al-bahi al-mansilq (1880), and died at Khartum in the Soudan iij 1866 Mahmud ibn Muhammad al-Qusi (1892), Shaikh of the Sa'diyya at Dongola, who wrote the praises of the Prophet in the vulgar tongue Muhammad ibn Ism^'il ibn 'Umar Shihab
; ;

al-din

al-Hijazi,

who was

of

Meccan

origin,

and was

corrector at the
to 1849

he was
and
1857
;

Government

printing works from 1836

the author of a diwdn which appeared

in 1861,

of the Saftnat-al-Mulk (1865).

He

himself
al-

died in

Amin

ibn

Ibrahim Shamil, whose

Mubtakar comprises five lectures and twenty-six odes composed at Liverpool in 1868, and devoted to the description of man; and 'Ali Abu'1-Nasr (died 1880),
neo-Egyptian poets. The art by the literary has the men of bygone days, excited fancy of Muhammad 'Uthman Jalal (died i6th January 1898), who also translated La Fontaine's Fables into Arabic verse and that of Hasan Husnt, whose diwdn bears the title of Thamardt al-Haydt (Fruits of Life) and of Ibn alcomplete
this pleiad of

of writing popular songs, so despised

Fahham.

The history of Egypt has been written by Rahman al-Jabarti al-'Aqili (1756-1825), whose
al-dthdr

'Abdal
''Ajd'ib

was printed

at

Bulaq

in 1880,

and translated

out of the Arabic into French by four Egyptian savants His journal, kept during the French in collaboration.

Mazhar al- taqdis (an autograph copy is Cambridge), was translated into French in 1835, by Alexandre Cardin, Dragoman and Chancellor of the Consulate-General of France at Alexandria. This learned man was born at Cairo, of a family belonging to Zaila^ on the Somali coast. He was the son of a learned and
occupation,
at

now

424

ARABIC LITERATURE

highly venerated man, Shaikh Hasan, and was sent to

study at the Al-Azhar Mosque. When he was eleven years old he knew the Koran by heart, and before he

He was a man of and serious character. General Bonaparte summoned him from his property at Abyar, to which he had withdrawn he was appointed a member of the Divan, and earned much respect from the
was twenty he had lost handsome physique, and
his father.

of noble

Military Chiefs.

After the evacuation he devoted him-

One of his sons was murdered on the road to Shubra, near Cairo, and 'Abd al-Rahman wept him so inconsolably that he lost his sight, and survived him only a very short time. Al-Jabarti's history was put into mnemotechnic verse by Abu'1-Suud Efendi (1877), under the title of Minhat aU al-asr ; the same author had undertaken a universal history, the prolegomena and first part of which appeared at Cairo in 1872. Besides this, and preparatory
self entirely to learning.

in 1823,

to his historical labours,

he translated the history of the Kings of France out of the French {Nasm al-lddli\ and

also translated the history of

'All.

Egypt under

Muhammad
'All,

The foundation

of the reigning Khedivial family,

and the events

of the reign of

Muhammad

inspired
al-

Muhammad-bey

Farid with the idea of his Bahjat

;

the eleTaufiqiyya, dedicated to Tewfik-Pacha (1891) mentary history of Eastern countries has been given an

Arabic form by Sayyid-Efendi 'Azrai {al-masdlik

daiyya, 1894).
Jurji

al-ibti-

Zaidan (1834 -1890), a Syrian Christian, has

by his historical novels {Riwdydt, Fatdt Ghassdn), and has written a history of Egypt during the period of the Mahdi's power in the Soudan. 'Abdallah Fikri-pacha, who was Minister of Education,
attracted attention

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

425

and whose posthumous works in prose and verse were published by his son in 1898, was born at Mecca, where his father was in command of the Egyptian troops occupying that city. In 1882 he was accused of treason, but proved his innocence, and retired into private life.

He was

a delegate to the Congress of Orientalists at

Stockholm in 1889. He left a collection of sentences and proverbs, arranged in alphabetical order {Nazm his various works have been collected and al-lddlt) published by his son. The French Orientalist, Jean-Joseph Marcel, who was with General Bonaparte in Egypt, where he rendered valuable service to the expedition, and acted, on his re;

turn to Paris, as director of the imperial printing works,

unhesitatingly
attributes

to

Shaikh

Muhammad

al-

Mahdl al-Hafnawi (1737-1815)

tion of tales, the
at all
title

the authorship of a collec-

of which that of the first volume, Tuhfat al-mustaiqiz al-dnis ft nuzhat alinustantni al-nd' is (The Present to the Awakened Bachelor

events

is

for the Delight of the

Somnolent
title

Sleeper),

which Marcel

translated under the

of Contes du Cheykh el-Mohdy.

This Shaikh was born at Cairo. His original appellation was Hibatallah. His father, Epiphanios Fadlallah, was

steward to the kdshif (provincial governor) Sulaiman, at whose entreaty he became a Moslem, studied at the Al-Azhar Mosque, became secretary to the Divan, and held that post during the French occupation. He was fond of coming to taste the strong waters offered him by the young member of the Institute of France, and confided the manuscript of the tales to him, without consenting to admit he had viTitten them. At a later date he accompanied Tossoun-Pacha, the son of Muhammad 'Ali, on his campaign against the Wahhabis,
2S

426

ARABIC LITERATURE

but after the defeat in the Defiles of Safra, promptly betook himself back to Cairo. He was appointed Shaikh alIslam in 1812. These tales are imitations of the Arabian Nights. The hero of the stories, 'Abdal-Rahman, finds Having no himself a rich man at his father's death. taste for pleasure, he gives himself up to study, and desires, when three years have elapsed, to enjoy the fruits He calls of his learning, and let others enjoy them also. his slaves, friends, and relations together, each in their But he has the turn, and relates short stories to them. fatal gift of sending his hearers to sleep, and bringing After a misadventure on himself, on every occasion. series of unlucky incidents, he is even taken for a mad-

man, and shut up

Cairo.

in the Maristan, the lunatic

asylum

at

But,

still

ruled by his mania, he continues to

to delight

gather a circle of good-natured listeners about him, and them by his stories. Of these latter tales the

volumes, presumably finished in 1783, consist. as to whether J. -J. Marcel did not add something of his own composition to the canvas originally furnished him by Shaikh al-Mahdi, but as the

two

last

Doubt has been expressed

same insinuation was made

against Galland, who has been completely cleared of it, there is no reason why any further attention should be paid to this imputation. The historical topography of Cairo, on which the French school kept up in the Egyptian capital by the Republic zealously labours, owes the Khitat Taufiqiyya, a renewed form of Maqrizi's classic work, to 'Ali-pacha Mubarak, Minister of Public Instruction, who died in He also brought the metric system within the 1893. reach of the populace {al-Mtzdn, 1892). 'Ali-pacha Mubarak was an interesting type of the savant of his day. He was born at Birinbal in 1823, and began life

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

in the army.

427

He studied in Paris, and took part in the Crimean War, with the Egyptian contingent attached to the Turkish army. In 1870 he founded the Viceregal Library at Cairo, and thus rendered a mass of most
interesting

old manuscripts

accessible

to

the public.

Accounts of European travel have been published by Hasan-Efendi Taufiq, who made a tour in Germany and Switzerland {Rasd'il al-bushrd, 1891) by Ahmad Zaki, secretary to the Khedive, who was delegated to the Congress of Orientalists held at Geneva {al-Safar ilalMutamar, 1894) and by Muhammad Amin Fikri-bey {Irshdd al-alibbd, 1892). Geography claims the names of Mahmud Rashad {al-durHs el-jagrdfiyya, 1889); Mus; ;

tafi 'Alawi-bey

{al-thamardt al-wdfiya,

1873)

Sayyid-

Efendi Taufiq {al-nafahdt al- Abbdsiyya, 1894); and Shaikh Muhammad ibn 'Umar al-Tunisi, who was born in 1789, studied at the Mosque of Al-Azhar, took a journey to Wadai and Darfur, and wrote an account of it, which has been translated into French by Dr. Perron. He died at Cairo, where he held a post in the School of Medicine, in 1857.
In addition to numerous translations from

European

languages, which do not

arithmetic,

fall

within the province of this

work, the exact sciences have been cultivated, as regards by 'All 'Izzat-Efendi (1869), Shafiq-bey Mansur (1887), Muhammad - Efendi Hamid (1894), and Mahmud-Efendi Mujir (1870); Mustafa-Efendi Shauql Isma il-Efendi (1871) has written on the metric system Mar'i(i887),and the above-mentioned Muhammad-Efendi Hamid, on algebra Ibrahim al-Dasuqt 'Abdal-Ghaffar,
;
;

who
has

died in 1883, directed the publication of a treatise

on trigonometry
published

in 1853 and Hasan-Efendi HusnJ a work on cosmography {al-usM al'

;

428
wdfiya, 1890).
{d.
is

ARABIC LITERATURE
Mahmud-pacha
al-Falaki,

the

Minister

the impulse given to these studies specially due, wrote a memorandum on the Arabic
1885), to

whom

calendar in pre-Islamic times, which was translated by Ahmad Zaki (Bulaq, 1888). The Turkish marshal,

Ghazi

Muhammad

Mukhtar-pacha,

Commissioner-Ex-

traordinary in Egypt, has sought repose after his struggle

with the Russians in Armenia, in the publication of his Tauftqdt al-ilhdmiyya, a concordance of the Moslem, Greto the year 1500 of historical ephemerides, down to the with the Hegira, of his Riydd al-Mukhtdr the same era, and year 1309 of the assessof the Elect), a treatise on (Flower-garden

gorian,

and Coptic calendars, down

ment of time. As regards

the

subject

of

grammar,

Muhammad

'Ayyad al-Tantawi, whose fate led him to St. Petersburg, where he taught Arabic, and where he died in 1871, left a treatise on the vulgar tongue, which was published at Leipsic in 1848.

To
ibn

Physics,

Chemistry, and

Natural Science, Dr.

Muhammad-Efendi Kamil

al-Kafrawi,

and

Muhammad

Sulaiman al - Tunis!, have devoted their powers. The former wrote al-jawdhir al-badfa (1888), and Qalaid al-hisdn (1892), and the latter was the author of Mahmud Anis wrote on the culture the Tahiti (1843).
of cotton (1892),

and we note
treated

a succession of physician

authors, attended by a train of chemists.

Dr. Hasan-

pacha

Mahmud

the subject of internal patho;

logy in his Khiddsat al-Tibbiyya (1892) Dr. Muhammad 'Alawi-bey deals with ophthalmology in his Nukhbat al'

Abbdsiyya (1893) ; Dr. Ahmad Hamdi-bey imparts teaching as to the nature of simulated diseases in his Tuhfat
Abbdsiyya (1895)
;

al-

while the

Durar

al-badriyya,

by

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Muhammad
Badr-bey al-Baqli
(1893),

429
the

describes

modern remedies, and serves to complete the ''Iqd aljumdn, Mustafa Hasan Kassab's Pharmacopoeia, printed
and as a continuation of the Nafahdt ala treatise on pharmaceutical compositions, followed by a Franco-Arabic dictionary of medical and pharmaceutical terms, by "Ali-Efendi Riyad (1872). The Qudwat al-far bi-aslihi, a treatise on love of the fatherland, by 'Ali Fahmi (1873), may be classed as a philosophical vi^ork and H^mza Fathallah's Al- Uqiid al-durriyya (1891), on the Unity of the Godhead, as also his BdMrat al-Kaldm, on the rights and duties of Moslem women, which was written for the Congress of Orientalists at Stockholm (1889), under the head of biographies of the Prophet and works on the Moslem faith. To these may be added Sayyid-Efendi Muhammad's Durra al- Abbdsiyya, on the articles of the faith and pious practices of the Moslem religion (1894); and the Tcirikh al-Khulafd al-rdshidtn, a genealogy of the Prophet, and of his descendant Sultan 'Abdal-Majid, by Ahmad Hijazt Ismail (1862). The works bearing the name of Muhammad Qadri-pacha, who died on 2ist November 1888 {Murskid al-hatrdn, a treatise on obligations and contracts, according to the Hanafite rite, 1891), and of Muhammad Rif'at {al- Durra alyaitma, Lessons on the Egyptian Penal Code, 1894), must be ranged under the category of Moslem law. Christian literature, as cultivated by the Copts, justly claims the "^Iqdal-Anfas, a sacred story, by Wahbi-Efendi Tadurus (1881). A monk of the Convent of St. Barmus
in

1834,

riyddiyya,

al-Naftsa, the

has written an ecclesiastical history of Egypt, al-Kharida first volume of which appeared in 1883. In the Moslem West, Tunis and Algiers can boast a

430

ARABIC LITERATURE

few Arabic publications. In the first-named city, Sliaikh Abu'l-thana Mahmiid Qabadu has composed a poem in honour of the Prophet and his family, the Kharidat 'iqd al-la'dlt (1871), and written other poetry, which has been collected by his pupil, Shaikh Abu 'Abdallah Mu-

hammad
al-din

al-Sanusi (1876-1878).

In 1868, General Khair the

Bey of Tunis, and subsequently Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, pubal-Tunisi,

Minister to

lished his
political,

Aqwavt

al-masdlik, a description

and administrative

of

historical,

the

European

States,

with geographical notices of various parts of the earth. Muhammad al-Sanusi, to whom we have referred above, published, in 1892, his IstitWdt al-bdrisiyya, scenes in Paris during the year 1889, and has written, under the
title

of

Matld

al-dardri (Rising of the

inquiries into the conformity of

Planets), some Moslem jurisprudence

with the law of real estate (1888).

At Algiers, Abraham Daninos published, in 1848, an Arabic drama, Nuzhat al-Mushtdq wa-ghussat al- Ushshdq; in the same year. Shaikh Muhammad ibn Ahmad alTijani wrote his Tuhfat al-ariis, three chapters dealing Muhammad with the subject of women and marriage
;

Qabih produced a comic poem, the Risdlat al-abrdr, which relates the adventures of two Arab students in the negro village of Oran this has been translated and published by Delphin (1887); Si Ahmad walad Qadi, Bach-aga of Frenda, has imparted his impressions of a journey to Paris in a volume entitled al-Rihlat el-qddiyya praises of France, and warnings addressed to the desert nomads (1878). In 1852, Sayyid Sulaiman ibn Siyam had told the story of his journey to France in his Rilda. To conclude, it would be impossible to speak

of the

Arabic literature of Algiers without noticing the

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

431

name of our great and doughty adversary, the Emir Muhyt al-din 'Abdal-Qadir al-Hasani, whose Dhikrd
(Reminder to the InteUigent) has been translated French by G. Dugat, and whose Mihtary Regulations, Wishdh al-Katd'ib, were published and translated by F. Patorni in 1890. The Iktirdth, which deals with
'l-Aqil
into

the respect of the

Moslem

faith for the rights of

women,

and is the work of Muhammad ibn Mustafa ibn alKhoja Kamal, an Algerian, was translated by Arnaud
in 1895.

Shaikh Muhammad Abu Ra's al-Nasiri (1751-1823), of Mascara, was a learned man who produced several historical works, among them a description of the Island of Jarba, which was translated and published at Tunis He lost his parents at an in 1884, by Exiga (Kayzer). a most unhappy childhood. Notwithearly age, and had standing this, he learnt the alphabet without any instructor, and amassed sufficient knowledge to enable him He to give reading and writing lessons to law students. taught at Mascara, and gathered many pupils about In him, to whom he always dictated from memory. 1790 he went on the pilgrimage, and paid visits to Cairo and Tunis. On his return he acted as qddi and preacher until 1796. In 1800 he was at Algiers, went, on to Fez, and departed again, in 1811, to Mecca, where he met

some learned men of the sect of the Wahhabis. He recognised their principles as being similar to those of the Hanbalites, with rules of practice differing from His Voyages those adopted by the four orthodox rites.
Extraordinaires ('Aja'ib al-Asfar), translated by Arnaud,
are a

commentary on his own poem on the capture Oran by Muhammad ibn'Uthman (1792).
In Morocco, Abu'l-Qasim ibn

of

Ahmad

al-Ziyani has

432

ARABIC LITERATURE

given the history of that country from 1631 to 1812, in his Tarjumdn al-Murib, published and translated by

Monsieur O. Houdas. The work was written at Tilimwhere the author, then Governor of Oudjda, had been constrained to take refuge, after having been defeated by the Bedouins. This history was carried down to a later date by Ahmad al-Nasiri al-Salawi, born 1834, died 1897, who was Custom House employe in various ports along the coast, and made use, in composing his work, of various official documents {Al-Istiqsd). Muhammad ibn al - Tayyib al - Qadiri wrote and printed his Nashr al-Mathdni, a biographical dictionary of the eleventh and twelfth centuries of the Hegira, at Fez. At Mecca, Ahmad ibn Zaini Dahlan, who performed the functions of Shaikh al-Ulamd in the Holy City, and
san,

died there in 1886, printed, in 1885, a political history of Islamism, entitled al-futAhdt al-isldmiyya. In the

Moslem

East, far
-

hammad
with the

Siddiq Hasan

Bukhari) (1833-1889),

away in Hindustan, MuKhan Bahadur (al - Qanuji alNabob of Bhopal by his marriage

Begum

of that State, a vassal of England,

who
to

had inherited the throne, caused the following works

:

be printed at Constantinople al-Bulgha, an Arabic lexicography, followed by a bibliography of Arabic, Turkish,

Persian, and Hindu dictionaries (1879); al- Alain alKhaffdq, on the formation and derivation of Arabic words ; the Luqtat al-Ajldn, an historical miscellany ;

followed by the Khabi'at al-Akwdn,

various religions
;

a history of the

al-Iqlid li-adillat al-ijtihdd

;

wd l-taqlid,

a treatise on jurisprudence al-Tariqa al-Muthld, advice for finding out the principles of law without assistance

and the Nuzl al-Abrdr, on religious morality (1884); and, at Bulaq, the Nashwat al-Sakrdn (The Drunkard's

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Awakening, 1879)
the
;

433

the Ghusn al-bdn, on rhetoric (1879) al-mdinM (Obtaining of what one Desires), on the principles of law the Fath al-baydn, a commentary on the Koran, in ten volumes (1884) the Husn al-Uswa (The Fair Support), devoted to the authentic words of God and His Prophet touching woman (1884) al-Raudat al-nadiyya, a commentary on a legal work, entitled al-Durar al-bahiyya, by Muhammad al-Yamani al-Shauqanl (Bulaq, 1879) and Fath al- alldm, a commentary on Ibn Hajar's Bulilgh al - mardm (Buliq, At Bombay, Muhammad Karama al-Ali al1885).

HusM

DihlawJ,

who

died in 1832, printed a

at
'All

life

of the Prophet

Mahomet.
Far northwards, Mirza Muhammad
Kazan, a learned man,
ibn

named Muriammad Kazhem-beg,

published, in 1833, an essay on Arabic literature, entitled al-Tuhfat al-haqira ; and Shihab al-din ibn Baha al-din al-Ghazzani al-Marjani wrote the history of the Khans
of Transoxania,

which appeared

in 1864.
al-Harai'ri,

In Paris,

Abu Kabi' Sulaiman

who was

master at the Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes, published Shaikh Ahmad ibn al-Mu'azzam al-Razi's twelve Lectures (1865) wrote a treatise on meteorology, physics, and electro-plating {Risdla ft and delivered a Fatwd, or hawddith al-jaww, 1862) judicial decision as to whether Moslems may eat the this with the object flesh of animals killed by Christians of making it easier for his co-religionists to travel in European countries. He wrote a treatise on coffee in i860,
assistant Arabic
;

and described the Universal Exhibition of 1867 to his fellow-countrymen in hSs'' ard al-badd i al-dmni. In Paris, too, the Lebanon Shaikh, Yusuf Butrus Karam, published

434
tians of the

ARABIC LITERATURE
and other ChrisLebanon, and another response to further
In Constantinople, the capital of the

his reply to attacks levelled at himself

objections (1863).

Turkish Empire, where Arabic is a classic tongue, of which the influence on the Turkish language constantly increases because of the scientific terms borrowed from it, concurrently with those of French origin, which are formed from the Greek, Arabic works appear, but they are necessarily fewer and less important than those published in countries where the language is popularly spoken. Muhammad ibn Muhammad Hasan Zafir, whose birthplace is Tripoli in Barbary, has printed his Anwar alQudsiyya (Sacred Lights), on the rules and precepts of the religious order of the Shadhiliyya, in the city of the Sultan (1885). Shaikh Muhammad Abd'l-Huda Efendi
al-Siyadi, a

man

of

Aleppan

origin,
is

affiliated

to

the

religious order of the Rifa iyya,

a mystic poet.

He

published, in 1881, Al-faid al-Muhammadi (The Grace of Mahomet and the Succour of the Prophet), a collection
of his

own

literary

compositions, and has devoted his

Qilddat al-jauhar (Necklace of Jewels, 1885) to the life and praises of his master. Shaikh Ahmad al-Rifa"i. Texts
are sent from the most distant corners of the

Moslem
works

East to be printed
of the

at

Constantinople.

Most

of the

Nabob

of

Bhopal,
;

Muhammad

Siddiq Hasan

Khan, appeared there and there, too. Shaikh 'Abd alRahman 'Ali-Khan, of Bendelkend in Hindustan, has laid his Abniyat al-Isldm (Edifice of Islamism), based on the traditions of the Prophet (1882), before the public. Sayyid 'Abd al-Ghafar ibn 'Abd al-Wahid al-Akhras, who was born at Mosul after the year 1805, and died at Bassora in 1874, left a diwdn entitled
Shakfjr

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

al-Tirdz al-anfas (The

435

Most precious Embroidery), which He was dumb. Da'ud-pacha, the last of the independent governors of Bagdad, sent him to India to undergo an operation but when the doctors " I told him he would have to risk his life, he replied will not sell my all for the sake of a part of myself," and
was printed
in 1888.
;
:

Da'ud-pacha found a took his way back to Bagdad. own in the person of Arain ibn Hasan al-Hulwani, a professor at the Mausoleum of the Prophet at Medina, whose Matdli^ al-suild, lithographed at Bombay in 1887, carries us through the last victorious struggles of the Porte with the Mameluke masters of the ancient capital of the 'Abbasid Caliphs. The Imam of the Shafi'ites at Medina, Al-Hajj Ahmad-Efendi, published his Al-Khutab al-wdziyya (Sermons and Driblets of
historian of his

Gold from the Pulpit), a collection of sermons for Fridays and Moslem feast-days, and his Hiddyat almurtdb (Guide for Doubtful Passages), a treatise on Koranic exegesis, dealing with obscure passages in the
sacred book, in the year 1889. From Tripoli, in Syria, Shaikh Husain-Efendi Jisri-Zade sends his Risdla

Hamidiyya,

on the truths of the Moslem faith, a controversial work directed against the disciples of
philosophers,
the
for

modern

publication

(1890).

From

Yaman comes
under which

title

Maqdina adabiyya (Literary Lecture), the'Ulema Muhammad Hilal-Efendi,

President of the Court of Appeal in that country, has collected the judicial correspondence between himself

and the judges of the inferior courts within his jurisdiction, and his correspondence with the various Attorneys-General (1889), followed by a Turkish translation and his Iqd al-jumdn (Necklace of Pearls), a panegyric
''

436
of the

ARABIC LITERATURE
family of

Osman, with the predictions

it.

of the

ancient sages of Islam concerning

Moor, Shaikh

'Abdal-Qadir ibn 'Abdal-Karim al-Wardifi, has written and published, also at Constantinople, an elegy on the death of Sharif Muley Ahmad, uncle of Muley Hasan, Emperor of Morocco, who found a refuge at Constantinople,

and died there

in i^

CHAPTER

XII

THE PERIODICAL PRESS

contemporary literature is that consisting of the newspapers and reviews pubUshed in the Arabic tongue, which appear not only in the countries in which that tongue is spoken, but even in lands where Arabic is studied and known only as a learned language, and in some where it is utterly unknown, save to the masters and students in a few schools specially devoted to the study of Oriental languages, but which do harbour a certain number of Arabic -speaking emigrants, and possess printing works, the compositors of which are able to use the naskht character. In Egypt, where the brief French occupation had given birth to two newspapers in the French language, the Courrier d' Agypte and the Decade Egyptienne, Muhammad 'Alt founded the official organ of his Government, the Waqdi'' al-misriyya (Egyptian Events), on 20th November 1828. It appeared at Cairo two or three times After seventy-three a week in Arabic and Turkish. years of a most chequered existence, this sheet, the first newspaper printed in the East, after General Bonaparte's original attempts, and concerning which Reinaud wrote in 1831, that it was "an undertaking of which no other specimen exists, so far, in any Moslem country,"
flourishing branch of
is still

A VERY

published three times a week in Arabic.

Thirty

438
years

ARABIC LITERATURE
later, Khalil al-Khuri,

a Syrian litterateur, founded

the Hadlqat al-Akhbdr (Garden of News), a bi-weekly journal, the first issue of which appeared on ist January
1858, at Beyrout.

Towards the year i860, the official organ of the Regency of Tunis was founded, under the title of al-Rd'id al-Timist. In Paris, about the same time, Sulaimfin al-Hara'iri was publishing a paper called alBarjis, in which the romance of 'Antar began to appear as a feuilleton. In July of that same year, Ahmad
Faris al-Shidyaq began to publish ihe Jawd'ib, a weekly

paper, at

Constantinople.

After a long and brilliant

career there, this journal was removed, about ten years

ago, to Cairo.
of ihe Jawd'ib

Any

spare time at the printing offices

was utilised for the publication of various Arabic classics, drawn from Constantinopolitan libraries. At Damascus, the chief city of the province of Syria, for which country the Ottoman authorities have revived the ancient name of SArijd, an official journal, written in Turkish and Arabic, has been appearing since 1865 ; and since 1866 the Governor-General of the province of Aleppo, in the southern districts of which Arabic is spoken, has caused an official organ to be published there, under the name of al-Furdt (The Euphrates). In 1869, the Jesuit Fathers, who had then just added a branch at Beyrout, soon to become the Catholic University of St. Joseph, to their college at Ghazir on the Lebanon, began to publish a weekly review called alBashir.
tific

To this they added, in 1898, a bi-monthly scienreview, al-Mashriq (The Orient). To compete with

publication, Butrus al - Bistani founded, in the middle of 1870, a bi-monthly review called the Janna (The Garden) this disappeared in 1886; ihe Junaina
this

THE PERIODICAL PRESS

(Little

439
and Moslems
;

Garden), which only lasted for three years

a bi-monthly review called al- Jinan; while the

of Beyrout, desirous of

possessing an organ of their own, founded the Thamardt al-fun-tln (Fruits of Science), a weekly journal, in 1874. About the same time the publication of the Taqaddum (Progress) was commenced. To this paper the most active young writers in Syria contribi:ted, among them Iskandar al-Azar and Adib Ishaq, who died very young, and carried to his tomb the brilliant hopes his first literary efforts had raised. The Thamardt al-funun represented the reactionary, or
stationary

the

attitudes

are

identical

spirit

of

the
title,

Moslem population.

opened its October 1877 Khalil Sarkis, founded the Lisdn al-hdl which began by being a been published daily since

The Taqaddum, true to its columns to all the modern ideas. On

(Tongue
1894.
of

i8th

son-in-law of Butrus Bistani,

the
Situation),

bi-weekly journal, but

has

As

this paper,

which

to guide its political utterances so as to be agreeable to the Ottoman Government, also maintained a due reserve as to the numberless religious confessions which flourish on Syrian soil, the independent Maronites felt the need of a newspaper of their own, and founded one, the Misbdh, in 1880. The Protestants published the Kaukab al-subh al-munir (Brilliant Star of the Morning), which has ceased to appear, and the

was obliged

(Weekly Publication), which is still For a short time the Orthodox Greek community possessed an organ, called the Hadiyya (The Gift), which has now disappeared. To counterbalance the reactionary influence of the Thamardt al-funAn, the Government published, on and after 22nd
al-usbu'iyya
in

Nashra

existence.

March

1886, a bi-weekly sheet bearing the

name

of the

440
city in
official

ARABIC LITERATURE

which it appeared, Beyrout. This became the organ of the new province established in 1888, of which Beyrout is the capital. The development of industrial and commercial wealth which coincided with the reign of Isma il-pacha gave a fresh impetus to journalism, and during that period the following journals appeared
:

Al-Addla (Justice), a daily paper, founded in 1897, and edited by Muhammad al-Khayyami, noted for its unwavering fanaticism, and its attacks on all foreign elements. It was printed in three columns and on only one side of the sheet. The same editor published, from 1896 onwards, and assisted by Muhammad Sharbatli,

a weekly review, entitled al-Nahj al-qawim

(The
of

Straight

Path).

Al-Isldm (Islamism)
party,

is

the organ of

the old

Moslem
It is

which centres

in the

Mosque

Al-Azhar.

a journal devoted to science, history, and

literature, founded in 1893 by Ahmad "All al-Shadhill, and which used only to appear on the first day of each lunar month. It now appears once a week. The paper published by Sahm Paris was called al-

Qdhira.

It has ceased publication. Al-Saltana (The Sultanate), a weekly journal, founded

in 1857, represents

Ottoman

interests,

and

is

edited

by

Iskandar Efendi Shalhub. Al-Mahrusa (The Capital) has been in existence since 1877, and was edited by Aziz-bey Zind, who has now been succeeded by
chief writers on this paper and Khalil-Efendi Naqqash. Al-Hildl (The Crescent), a literary and scientific journal, appearing once a month, edited by Jurji- Efendi Zaidan, and founded in 1892, is devoted to the dissemination of European ideas.

Rafa'il-Efendi Zind.

The

are Yusuf-Efendi Asaf

THE PERIODICAL PRESS

A
note
certain

441

number

of papers
ladies
;

and reviews are more

especially intended for

:

among them we may

Al-Fatdt (The Young Girl), a monthly publication which has been appearing since 1892, and is edited by

Mme. Hind
(Paradise),

bint Naufal

the

Beauty), edited by

Maryam

Mir at al-hasnd (Mirror of Mizhir since 1896; al-Firdaus

Faithful Companion),

by Louise HabbMin; and Ants al-Jalts (The by Alexandra Avierino and Labiba
is

Hashim.

The

Copts, too, possess an Arabic press, which

which divide the Coptic nation, and the struggles between the clergy and the people. The Watan (The Fatherland), founded in 1878 by Mikha'il 'Abdal-Sayyid, a bi-weekly paper,
entirely devoted to the intestinal quarrels

supports the Patriarch's party, while the Taufzq (Success), a scientific and progressive weekly publication, represents the opposition.
In 1876, a journalist of the Lebanon,

who found he had

not sufficient freedom of action in Syria, Salim Taqla by name, founded at Alexandria, with the help of his brother Bishara, the Ahrdm (The Pyramids), the first
fends,

Arabic daily paper, which then defended, and still deFrench interests in Egypt. Shortly afterwards,

another Syrian founded a weekly review, al-Mahrusa, at Cairo. A bi-monthly review, the Muqtatif, founded in
1877 by the pupils of the American College, at Beyrout, was removed to Cairo, where the editors, Faris Nimr, Yaqub Sarruf, and Shahin Makarios, established, in 1889, a newspaper called al-Muqattam (after the mountain overlooking the city), which is devoted to the development of British influence. The Moslems had no organ until Shaikh Ahmad Madht (died 1893) published a
29

442
political paper,

ARABIC LITERATURE

al-Mu'ayyad (1890), which has a large Moslem world, from Morocco to the Dutch Indies, and which has been managed, since the founder's death, by 'Ali ibn Yfisuf, who calls himself Shaikh 'Ali Yusuf. To these publications, and many others, such as the Misr, which favours the English occupation, the Basir, the Saldin, and the Akhbdr, all of them Turko-Egyptian in their leanings, two weekly journals and one daily paper have recently been added. These are the Mursad and the Musnad, and the Liwd (The Flag), which last (a daily paper) is edited by Mustafa Kamil. In the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, a certain number of official journals appear in the Turkish language, and, in places where Arabic is spoken, a portion Thus, in the of the sheet is printed in that tongue. province of Bassora, we have al-Basra, al-Zaurd in that of Bagdad, Sand in the Yemen, and Tardbulus al-gharb in Tripoli of Barbary, where we may also notice the Taraqqt (Progress). Turning westward, we find at Tunis, besides the Official Gazette, to which we have already referred, al-Hddira, which has been in existence since 1890, al-Zahra, al-Bastra, and two Arabic journals
circulation all over the

printed in the

Hebrew

character, the

literary style of

which lies midway between the Arabic of the classics and the popular form of speech the Bustdn and the

Mukhayyir. In Algeria the Arabic press is represented by the Mubashshir and the Tilimsdn (Tlemcen). A political sheet known as al-Maghrib has appeared at Morocco. At Constantinople, besides the Jawd'ib, which was ultimately transferred to Cairo, various Arabic journals, most of them shortlived, have appeared. Among them we may mention the Ptiddl, the Hawddith, the Saldin, the

ITS

FUTURE
all

443
political

Haqd'iq, and the Munabbih,

of

them

organs

and the Insdn and Kaukab,

scientific

journals.

The

appear in Turkish English and Arabic. in Arabic, the Dik al-Sharq rule, a political journal (Cock of the East), is published and in India there is the Nukhbat al-Akhbdr (Selection of News), which would appear to be the only Arabic newspaper published in the huge area of Hindustan. In Italy, the Mustaqill (The Independent) in France,
In the Island of Cyprus,

le^al paper, al-Huqiiq, continues to

now under

the Anbd, the Abiil-Haul, the Ittihdd, the Basir, the

Sadd, the HuqAq, the Shuhra, the Urwa al- Wuthqd, and the Rajd (all of which, like the Barjis, to which refer"

ence has already been made, have discontinued publication)

;

in

London, the Ittihdd al-Arabt, the Khildfa, and

the

Mir

dt al-Ahwdl, edited by Rizq-Allah Hasun, repre-

which have died out on foreign soil. green and flourishing are the AbA Nazzdra (The Old Man in Spectacles), a satirical illustrated paper edited by Shaikh Sanu a, and the Tawaddud and Munsif, in Paris the KashkM, which contains Persian and
sent the journals
Still
;

Tartar sheets, at

Tiflis

the Diyd al-Khdfiqain, partly

;

printed in English,

and al-Ayydm,

in

London the Kaukab Amirikd New York the Marsad, in Marseilles

in
;
;

the Hddi, in Philadelphia

and the

Bardztl, Raqib,

and

Asmd'i, in Brazil.

The Future of Arabic Literature

The foregoing pages have given a picture of the blossoming, the maturity, and the decline of a literature which has lasted for thirteen centuries, from the earliest period of the Middle Ages down to our own days and
;

444

ARABIC LITERATURE
the second growth, induced by the

we have watched

fecundating influence of modern thought, of the original stock, several branches of which not to mention that

offshoot of circumstance engrafted

press

What future lies brought forth flowers. before this second growth ? Will it be an imitation of
the classic centuries
?

have

on

it,

the periodical

Or

will the language, forced into

modification by the necessity for interpreting fresh ideas,

enrich
revivify at

itself

with

new and

youthful forms which shall

?

the
first

ancient

groundwork

It

would seem,

the

glance, as though such centres of literary

activity as Cairo

men who,

following the

and Beyrout were destined to produce movement initiated by their prewill,

decessors of the nineteenth century,

serve as the link between
globe,

so to speak,
in

Europe
all

and

Europe

include the colonies scattered

this continent

over the face of the

and everywhere continuing the work begun on by the sons of Japhet and the East, still

dying twilight. They should be aided in this enterprise by the powerful support of the periodical press, which reaches the

wrapt

in the semi-darkness of a

Moslem world, reckoned at two hundred million souls, and which should be able to do an enormous amount of good in this direction) But how does all this affect the language ? Will it be
greater part of the

transformed, developed
accessible to the

Will

it

grow

clearer,

more

mass
?

of half-taught people educated in

the primary schools

question must answer.

Any man who has No Nowhere do we

!

studied the
see a

move-

which, in the course of the last thirty years, has altered the old Osmanli-Turkish tongue, by Arabic clearing all its ancient rhetorical forms away.
like that
is still

ment

swathed about with

classic formations,

and conse-

ITS

FUTURE
;

445

quently employs a quantity of expressions which can only be understood by Hterary men thus closing the way of comprehension to the majority, in matters which would be of the deepest interest to it. No self-respecting writer would publish a political article in anything but

rhymed

prose,

alliterations after the

displayed,

and the empty and futile rhetoric, the manner of Hariri's Lectures, therein entertain the educated reader. There it ends.
which make no attempt at shining by empty words, and appeal direct without permitting their argument to

Yet, along with these clap-trap harangues, serious articles

on

special subjects,

the use of a display of

to the intelligence,

be disturbed by extraneous trifling, are also published. tell the truth, one obstacle lies always between the editor and his readers the uncertainty which attends the reading of a language in which the vowels are very seldom marked. This drawback it will be very hard to remedy. But it would be less difficult to read Arabic, and there would be less uncertainty about it, if the editor

To

or the printer

would consent

case of words which

stantives of

may

to mark the harakdt in the bear a double meaning, in that

and in that of the subwhich the sense changes according to the spelling. This would render a huge service to that part of the Eastern public which has not worn out its youth on the flags of the universities for I do not, of course, speak here of the very small circle of Europeans who may, either as a study or a pastime, cast their eyes over an Arabic journal, though they have far better and
of the passive tenses of verbs,

more

practical literature at their

command,

in their

own

tongue.

Should Arabic

writers, instead of

producing their work

in literal Arabic, write in the dialect of the various coun-

446
tries in

ARABIC LITERATURE

which Arabic is spoken, and in which a native press exists ? That is not to be desired, for a newspaper estabhshed on such principles would find no readers beyond the inhabitants of the country in which it appears. A newspaper in Algerian Arabic is not likely to appeal to a man from Damascus, or Bagdad, or Muscat. The poor fellow's QdmAs would be wasted on it The use of the literal Arabic ensures each newspaper a circle of readers ranging far beyond Arabic-speaking countries, and comprising all those in which it is the language of the learned, as Latin was amongst ourselves This means every country inhabited in the Middle Ages. by Moslems, from the Caucasus to China, from the
Steppes of Tartary to the mouths of the Niger. Already, indeed, many neologisms have found their way into the language, and it has become possible to

render the modern expressions which the needs of modern times have created in Europe. The Arabic tongue, with its skilfully composed grammar, is sufficiently malleable to enable it to express modern thought, and at the same time to supply the whole of the Moslem

East with the

cine,

new

technical terms in chemistry, medi-

and most
and

sciences.

The path one would

is

fain see

the writer of the future tread

limpidity
attained, a brilliant career

that of the search for simplicity of expression. Once these are

may

Literature, which, like Islam

itself,

be predicted for Arabic will endure for many

an age

to

come.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL STUDIES
German
Hammer-Purgstall, LitteraturgescMchte der Araber. y vols. Vienna, 1850-1855. Alfred von Kremer, Kulturgeschichle des Orients tinter den Khalifen. Vol. ii. (Vienna, 1877), chaps, viii. (Poesie) and jx. (Wissenschaft und Litteratur). Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur. Vol. i., Weimar, 1898 (in two parts) vol. ii., Berlin, 1899- 1902 (also in two parts). Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, second

part of vol.

vi.

of the Litteraturen des Ostens in Einzeldarstel-

lungen.
public).

Leipzig,

1901 (drawn up with a view to the general

Latin
Haji-Khalfa, Lexicon bibliographicum et encyclopcEdicum, edited in Arabic, with a Latin translation, by G. Fluegel. 7 vols., quarto.
Leipzig and London, 1835-1858.

PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD
Arabic
Septeni

Mu' allakdt

Lipsiae, 1850.

Arabum. Ed. F. A. Arnold, Abu'l-Far.aj al-Isfahani, Kit&b al-Aghdni (Book

cartnina antiquissinia

of Songs). 20 vols. Bulaq, 1868. Briinnow, The twenty-first volume of the Kitab al-Aghdnt, being a collection of biographies not contained in the Buldq edition. Leyden, 1888. Rev. Father Salhani, S.J., published a collection of narratives drawn from the same work at Beyrout in 1888. Kosegarten began to publish the text of this work, with a Latin translation and notes, at Greifenwald, but only the first volume appeared (1840).

447

448

BIBLIOGRAPHY
English
Lyall,

Sir C.

Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry, with an introduction and notes. London, 1885. W. F. Prideaux, The Lay of the Himyarites. Sehore, 1879. W. A. Clouston, Arabian Poetry for English Reade7-s. Glasgow, 1881. J. L. Burckhardt,
J.

Arabic Proverbs.
Lexicoji.
8 vols.,

London, 1830.' E. W. l^a.n&'s Arabic-English 1863-1893 (full of extracts and explanations of

early Arabic poetry).

French
Silvestre de Sagy, Chrestomathie Arabe.

F. Fresnel, Lettres sur P Histoire des Arabes avant Paris, 1836. R. Basset, La pocsie Arabe anteislamique (Legon d'ouverture). Paris, i88o. Guyard, Theorie
1826, 3 vols. I'lslamisme.
St.

2me.

edit.

3 vols.

Paris,

nouvelle de la metrique Arabe {fournal Asiatique, 1876, and also published separately).

German
Ahlwardt,

Ueber

Poesie

und Foetik der Araber.

GoXA'vi'ae.r,

Bemerkungen
Philologie.

iiber die

Greifswald, 1872.

Gotha, 1856. Echtheit der alien Arabischen Gedichte.

Dichtern.
1894.

Leyden, 1876. Heft II., Noten

III.,

Heft

Jacob, Studien in Arabischen zum Verstdndniss der Muallaqdt, Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 1897. Martin

G.

Abhandlungen zur Arabischen

Hartmann, MetrumundRhythmiis: der Ursprung der Arabischen Metra. Giessen, 1896. Th. Noeldeke, Beitrdge zur Keiitniss der Poesie der alien Araber. Hanover, 1S64.

THE KORAN
English
Translations by George Sale, London, 1734, 1764, 1821, 1824, 1857. Rodwell, 1861, 1876, arranged according to the presumed historical order of the chapters. E. H. Palmer, 2 vols., Oxford, 1880.

E.

Lane, Selections from the Kur'dn. Stanley Lane-Poole, Speeches of Mohammad.

W.

London, 1879. London, 1882.

French
Translations by

The Hague, 1683, 1685 Antwerp, 1719"; Amsterdam, 1756, 1770, 1775; Geneva, 1751. Savary, Paris, 1783 (An vii., 1798), 1822; Amsterdam, 1786.
Ryer, Paris, 1649, 1672
; ;

Du

Kasimirski, Paris, 1840, 1852.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
German
Translations

449

by Solomon Schweiggem, Nuremberg,

Megerlin, 1772. Friedrich Eberhardt Boysen, Halle, 1773, 1775Wahl, Halle, 1828. Ullmann, Crefeld, 1840, 1877. F. Ruckert,

1616, 1623.

in extracts, published

by A.

Miiller at Frankfort, 1888.

Latin
Translations by Louis

mann, Hamburg,

1694.

Maracci, Padua, 1698. Abraham HinckelChr. Reinecke, Leipzig, 1721.

Italian

Andrea Arrlvabene's anonymous

translation, Venice, 1547.

;

There are Dutch translations by Swigger, Hamburg, 1641 Glasemaker, Amsterdam, 1698 Keyzer, Tollens, Batavia, 1859 Haarlem, i860 and a Russian translation by Sabloukov, Kazan, also Swedish translations by Crusenstolpe, Stockholm, 1877 1843, ^nd Tornberg, Lund, 1874.
;
;

History of the Koran Th. Noeldeke, Geschichte des Korans. Gottingen, 1863. E. M. Wherry, A Comprehensive Commentary on the Qurdn. 4 vols., London, 1882-6. La Beaume, Analysis of the Koran according to Kasimirski's translation. Paris, 1878. H. Hirschfeld, New Researches into the Composition and Exegesis of tlie Qoran. London, 1902.

Life of Mahomet.
Stuttgart,

Ibn Hisham, Das Leben Muhammed's, Weil. A. Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed. Berlin, 1861, 1869. W. Muir, The Life of Mahomet and History of Islam. London, 858-1 861 3rd 1895. L. Krehl, Das Leben des Muhammed. Leipzig, 1884. Syed The Life and Teachings of Muhammad. London, Ameer The Faith of Islam. London, 1S80. 1891. E.
tr.

1864,

ed.,

Ali,

Sell,

PERIOD OF THE CALIPHS

Al-Nadim, Kitab1872.

Ibn-Khaldun, Prol^gomines,
Boucher, 2

al-Fihrist, ed. G. Fluegel, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1871, traduites et commentes par

MacGuckin de
von
trad. par. E.

Slane, 3 vols., Paris, 1858.

Fr. Riickert, 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1846.

Hamdsa, uebersetzt Divan de Ferazdaq,

Mutanabbii Car-

vols., Paris, 1870, 1875.

mina, ed. F.

Dieterici, Beriin, 1861.

T. Chenery and F. Steingass,

450

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Assemblies of Al-Harir'i, trans., 2 vols., London, 1867, 1898. D. S. Margoliouth, The Letters of Aiu'/-'A Id ofMa'arra, text and trans., Oxford, 1898. E. H. Palmer, The Poetical Works of Behded-din Zoheir, text and trans., 2 vols., Cambridge, 1876, 1877. F. Dieterici, Die Philosophie der Araber, 16 parts, Berlin, 1858T. W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, London, 1896. 1894. E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, London, 1901 (half of this volume is occupied with Arabic literature under the Caliphate). R. Dozy, Recherches sur Phistoire et la literature de VEspagne, 1 vols., Leyden, 1881. S. Lane-Poole, Cairo, London, Sir W. Muir, 1902 (with account of Arabic literature of Egypt). The Apology of Al-Kindy, London, 2nd ed., 1887. Renan, Averroes et P Averroisme, Paris, 1852. Ibn-Khallikan, Wafaydt al-Aydn, in Arabic autographed by F. Wiistenfeld, Gottingen, 2 vols., 1835-1840; printed at Biilaq, 1882; translated into English by MacGuckin de Slane, Biographical Dictionary, 4 vols., Paris-London, 1843-1871. The Supplement to this work, Ibn Shikir Al-Kutubi's Fawdt al-Wafayat, printed at Buliq in 1866, has never been translated out of the Arabic. The Kitdb al-

Aghdni
first

(see ajite) also covers a part of this period (the three

centuries of the Hegira).

F.

Wiistenfeld, Die Geschicht-

schreiber der Araber und Hire Werke. Gottingen, 1882. Geschichte

der Arabischen Aerzte U7id Naturforscher. Gottingen, 1840. Die Academien der Araber und ihre Lehrer, after the Shafi'ite school book, written by Ibn Qadi Shuhba. Gottingen, 1837.

MODERN PERIOD
Arabic

Muhammad

al-Muhibbi, Khuldsat al-dthdr, a biographical dictionary

of the prominent persons of the eleventh century of the Hegira. 4 vols. Cairo, 1868. Abil'I-Fadl Muhammad Khalil Efendi al-

Muradi, Silk al-durar, biographies of the prominent men of the twelfth century of the Hegira. 4 books in 2 vols. Bijlaq, 1874.

German and English

Martin Hartmann, Die Zeitungen und Zeitschriften in ^Arabischen Sprachen, an article which appeared in the Specimen dune encyclopMie Musulmane, published by Monsieur Th. Houtsma at Leyden, 1899, pp. 11 and onward. The Arabic Press of Egypt. London, 1899.

INDEX
In arranging
the

proper names no account has been taken of the Arabic article, al.

Abaqa, Mongolian Sultan, 337 al-Abarzl, Abb^s (sons of ). (Sec'Abbasids. 'Abbas ibn al-Ahnaf, 73, 78 al- Abbas ibn 'AH ibn Ntr al-dln,

no

'Abd al-Malik (the Caliph), 46 sqq., 62 'Abd al-Malik ibn Quraib al-Asma'l,
142

'Abd al-Maslh Nairn a, 281 'Abd al-Miihsin ibn Hamtid

Tanftkhf,
252, 313
1

al-

50, 57, 63 sqq., 182 "Abdallah, son of Ibn Hanbal, 240 'Abdallah Fikrl-pacha, 424 'Abdallah ibn'Abd al-Uzza, 28 'Abdallah ibn'Abd al-Salam, 126 'Abdallah ibn 'AH, 21 'Abdallah ibn Atiyya, 256 'Abdallah al-KhafajJ, 123 'Abdallah al-Mantili, 344 'Abdallah ibn al-Mukhariq, 54 'Abdallah ibn Ma'n, 76 'Abdallah Ibn al-Mu'tazz, 84, 180 "Abdallah ibn Qais al-Kuqayyat, 47 'Abdallah ibn Sad, 45 'Abdallah ibn Sad ibn Abi Sarh, 35 "Abdallah ibn Tahir, 88, 144 'Abdallah ibn Zaid al-'Ansl, 252 "Abdallah ibn Zubair, 47, 51, 65
'

399 Abbasids,

18
Sultan,

'Abd al-Mu'min, Almohad

'Abd al-Qadir
sqq.,

(the Emir), 273,

420

431

'Abd

al-Qadir ibn Abd al-Kartrn alWardifi, 436 'Abd al-Qadir al-Baghdadl, 398 'Abd al-Qadir al-Gilan!, 273, 275,
348, 357, 373

'Abd al-Rahim al-Bur'i, 112 'Abd al-Raliim Efendi, 382 'Abd al-Rahman III., Caliph

of Cordova, 310 'Abd al-KahmS,n, Prince of Tilimsan,

"Abdallah-pacha ChetejS, 329 al-'Abdart, 306

'Abd al-'AzIz (AbA Faris), 348, 350 'Abd al- Aziz ibn 'Umar al-Sa'dl, 134 'Abd al-'Aziz al-SuIamI, 269 'Abd al-'Aztz, the Takrdrian, 392 'Abd al-GhafJa,r al-Akhras, 434 "Abd al-Ghafir al-Farist 228 "Abd al-Ghant al-Nabulusi, 329, 417 'Abd al-Ghan! ibn Said, 225 "Abd al-JabbSr ibn Hamdis, 125 "Abd al-LatIf, 196, 305 'Abd al-Majid ibn'AbdUn, 127

Abd al-Kahman ibn al-Ashath, 55 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabartt, 423 'Abd al Rahman al-Idrlsl, 178 'Abd al-Rahman al-'ImSdl, 384 'Abd al - Rahman ibn 'Isa alHamadhant, 157 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Ism^'U ibn alMaqdisI, 122

'Abd 'Abd 'Abd 'Abd 'Abd 'Abd

al-RahmSn ibn al-Qasim, 237 al-Rahmin al-Sa'di, 396

al-Razzaq, 357 al-Salam of Bassora, 98 al-Salam ibn Raghban, name of

the poet, Dik al-Jinn, 89 aI-Shak<ir Rahman 'AH Khan,

434

452
[

INDEX
al-Wahid,

Abd
290

Almohad

Sultan,

'Abd al-Waiiid al-Marrakusht, 195 'Abd al-Wahbab, 336

'Abdi Efendi Muhurdar, 414
'Abdfln, Christian convent of, 85

Aben-Pascuab's, 204 al-Abharl (Athir al-dln Mufaddal),

290
Abicht, 18 'Abld ibn al-Abras, 23 'AbSd ibn Sharya, 60 al-Abiwardi, 108 Abkariytts (Iskandar Agha), 41 'Abla, celebrated by'Autara, 14 al-Ablah (AbA Abdallah), 100
'

of, 26, 33 ; 34 Abraham ibn Hasdai, 266 Abraham Daninos, 430 Abraham, Ecchelensis, 209 'Abs, tribe of; 'Absitee, 13, 20, 45 al-Abshihl, 397 Abft'l-'Abbas, Prince of the Maghrib, 350. 351 AbA'l- Abb^s Ahmad al-Harrar, 373 AbA'l- Abbas Saffah (the Caliph), 86, 212 AbA'l- Abbas Tha'lab, 152, 153 Abft'l- Abbas al-Tutili, 126 AbA 'Abdallah al-Ablah, 100 AbA 'Abdallah al-Hasan ibn Humaid al-Baghdadi, 240 Abfi 'Abdallah ibn al-Ahmar, Sultan of Granada, 350 Abft 'Abdallah Muhammad, Prince of Bijaya, 350 Abft 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-JalJl, 371 Abd "Abdallah Muhammad ibn 'All ibn Tdmart, 309 Muhammad alAbti 'Abdallah
;

Ablaq (castle of), II, 29 Abnawl, surname of Munabbih, 61 Abraham, 4 religion

scrolls of,

Wahb

ibn

Abfl 'Abdallah al-Mustansir, Emir of Tunis, 202 AbA'l-'Aia ibn Zuhr, 288 Abll'I-'AU al-Ma'arrS, 83, 95, 98, 162 Abft All al-Bal'aml, 131 AbA'Ali al-Farisl, 156 Aba'AU al-Hasan, 225 Abd 'Amir ibn' AbdAs, 127 Abti'Amr ibn al-'AlS,, 138, 141, 142 AbA 'Amr 'Uthman ibn Said alDani, 258 Abft'ArAba al-Harranl, 178 Abl'Ata Aflah ibn YasS,r, 57 Abli'l-'Atahiya, 74 sqq. Abii'l-Aswad, 138 Abd'l-Aswad al-Du'al!, 45 Abil'l-Baqa, Salili al-Ja'fari, 269 Abti Bakr (the Caliph), 36, 40, 41, 44, 318, 368 Aba Bakr ibn al-Mundhir, 370 AbA Bakr ibn Sad, atabek of Ears, III, 261 Ab<\ Bakr al-Shanawanl, 383 Ab1\ Bakr al-Jurjani, 166 Abfl Bakr ibn Mujahid, 222, 255 Abft Bakr ibn al-Qfltiyya, 188 AbA Bakr al-Karkhl, 293 Abll Bakr al-Khwarizmi, 131 Abft Bakr al-Malikl, 178
'

Bakr Muhammad ibn Quzman, 128 Abfl Bishr Matta ibn Yftnus, 282,
A.b<i

284
Abtt Da'ild, 219 AbA Dhu'aib, 45 Abft Dulaf, 77 Abft Dulaf Mis'ar ibn Muhalhal, 300

AbA Dulama,

66 AbA'1-Fadl al-'AbbSs ibn al-Ahnaf, 70 AbA'1-Eadl al-'Abb^a ibn Earaj alRiyashi, 145 Abft'l-Fadl al-Harawi, 156 Abft'l-Fadl al-TAzari, 125 Abft'l-Earaj 'Abd al-Rahmdn, 250

Shuqratial, 125

Abdallah Muhammad Khwarizml, 316 Abft 'Abdallah Muhammad SanAsI, 430 AbA 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn Tayyib, 391
Abft

al-

al-

'Abd al-Rahman ibn Nasr Allah, 312 Abfl'l-Faraj al-BabbaghS, 94 Abft'l-Earaj Bar-Hebraeus, 209 Ab<l'l-Faraj ibn Abi Ya'qAb alAbA'l-Earaj

al-

Nadim, 186 Abd'l-Faraj ibn al-Jauzi, 102

INDEX
Abll'l-Faraj
al-Isfahanl,
17, 48, 74,

453
Abd al-Rahman
al-

Abii'l-Husain
S<lfl,'296

84, 142, 184

AbA'l-Faraj al-Mu'afS ibn Zakariyy4, 241

Ab<l'l-Faraj

Muljammad

al-Wa'wa',

99
Abft'l-Faraj TSsir, 113 Abti')-Fath'Alial-Bu8ti, 105 Abft'l-Fath ibn al-Hasina, 126 Abft'1-Fath Iskandarl, 133

Abti'l-Husain al-Ahwazl, 134 Abii'l-Husain 'AH al-Shushtart, 129 Abft'l-Husain al-Mnzanl, 131 Abti'I-Husain Q^simibn'Ubaid Allah,

82
Abil'l-Husain
liaqq),

TahyS

(al-Hadl

ila'l-

Abd'l-Fath

Muhammad

bn

al-

Ta'awJdhl, 100
Abft'l-Fida, 195, 203, 207, 325, 337 ??. 342, 358 Abft Firas al-Hamdani, 90, 93 Abii'l-Fityan ibn Hayyils, 109, 120 Abii'l-Futllh Nasr Allah ibn Qalaqis,

242 Abtl Ibrahim lalj^q ibn IbrShlm, 1 57 Abft'Indn, 350 Abd Ishaq Ahmad al-Tha'labl, 210 Abft Isliaq al-Shlrazi, 244 AhA Ishaq Ibrahim, Hafsid Sultan,

349

'

Abd
Abu

Ishaq

Ibrahim ibn

Hilal al-

Sabi','i34

"3
Abd'l
-

Ghana'im

Muhammad

al-

Hurtlit (Ibn al-Mu'allim), loi Abii'l-Ghaith, Sharif of Mecca, 338 Abft'l - Hajjaj Yus^lf, Prince of

Granada, 345 Abft Hafsa, freedman of Marwan, 69 AbA'l-Hakam Malik ibn al-Murahhal, 130 Abti Hantfa, 232, 234, 235, 238, 263. 357 Ab4 Hammll, Prince of Tilimsan, 350/351 Abft'I- Hasan (the qadl), 92 Abii'l-Hasan al-Ash'ari, 264 Abft'l-Haaan 'All ibn Abl'I-Rijal, 297 Abft'l-Hasan 'AH al-BakharzS, 106 Abfi'l-Hasan'Ali al-Qumml, 257 Abft'l-Hasan All al-Raba'!, 199 AbA'l-liasan al-Baghawl, 189 AbA'l- Hasan al-Haufl, 260 Abii'l-Hasan H3,zim al-Qartjljinl, 125 Abti'l-Hasan ibn Khumdrtash, the Himyarite, 112 AbA'l-Hasan al-Maqdisi, 231 AbA'I-Hasan Muhammad of Alexandria, 187 Abli'l-Hasan Sadaqa al-Mazyadi, 107 Abti Hatim Sahl ibn Muhammad,
" '

Ishaq Ibrahim al-Husrl, 124 Abft Isljiq Ibrahim ibn Sahl, 129 Abd Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Silih alWarraq, 158 Abft Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Yahya alGhazzl, 109 Abli Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Ydsuf ibn Tashifiri, 128 Abii Ja'far al-Dabbl, 204 Abft Ja'tar Mas'lld al-Bayadl, 105

AbA

Ja'far

Muhammad, 253

Abfl Ja'far al-Qumml, 242 Abd'l al-Makhzdml, 389 Abti'l-Khaibari, 24 Abfi. Lahab, uncle of Mahomet, 38 AbA'l-Laith al-Samarqandl, 264 Abll'l-Ma'ali Sa'd al-Haziri, 97

JM

AbA Madyan,

275

Abil Madyan Shu'aib al-Huraifish, 348 Abfl'l-MaMsin ibn Taghribirdl, 365 AbA MansAr'All ibn al-Hasan Surr Durr, 105 Abil Mansiir al-Azharl, 158 AhA MansAr al-Maturldl, 264 AbA Ma'shar, 296

AbA Mihjan, 44, 157 Ab4 Mikhnaf LAt ibn YahyS, 61 Abft Muhammad, 376 AbA Muhammad 'Abdallah

ibn

145, '146

Hayy3,n, 340, 387 Abll'1-Hazm ibn Jahwar, 126, 127 Abft'l-Huda Etendi, 434

AbA

AbA Muhammad AbA Muhammad

YAsuf, 24S

ibn 'Umar, 149

al-Qasim al-Harlrl, 134 AbA Mus'ab, uncle of Shafi'l, 238

454

INDEX
Aba'l-Wafa al-Bazajanl, 297 Aba'1-Wafa ibn Salama, SB

AhtL Muslim, 57, 64, 66 Abd'l-Mu^affar Muhammad alAbiwardt, 108 Abft'l-Muzaffar Yahya ibn Hubaira,
259, 303

AbaWahb,

l8l

AbA Najm

al-Fadl ibn

QudSma

al-

'm,

53

Abft Nasr al-Qiimm!, 296 Abli Nu'aim al-Isfahani, 230 Aba Nuwas, 58,71, 75, 84, 87, 118, 141, 182 Abti'l-Qasim ibn Ahmad al-Ziyanl, 431 chief Abu'I-Qfcim ibn al-Hajar, Moslem in Sicily, 113 Abvl'l-Qasim ibn Tabataba, 94 AbCi'l-Qasim al-Ghafiq!, 297 al-Zahrawt, Xhalaf Abii'l-Qasira

Aba'l-Walid, 127 Aba'l-Walid al-Azraq, 177 Aba'l-Walld al-Bajl, 262 Aba Ya'la Muhammad Habbariyya, 106 Aba Yasuf, 235

Ibn

al-

Aba Yusuf Ya'qab al-Karkhl, 152 Aba Yasuf Ya'qab ibn Akhl Hizam,
'

3^5
.

Aba Zakariyy^ al-Azd], 177 Aba Zakariyya YahyS, ibn Abl

202

Bakr,
'AdI,

Aba
282

ZukariyyS ^YahyS.

ibn

310 AbA'i-Qasim al-LaithI, 372

AbU'l-Qasini

Aba Zaid, 406 A bH Zaid, romance of, 405 Aba Zaid, son of Muhammad
Aba Aba
Abl Hafs, 204 Zaid 'Abd
al-Rahmftn

ibn

Muhammad

ibn HSni',

95
Abti'l-Qasim Shfltibi, 373 Aba Qir and Abli Sir, 402 Abu'l-Raqa'maq, 96 Aba'l-Ra's al-Nasiii, 431 Aba Said, 107 Aba Said Nasr al-DInawari, 315 Aba Salim, 350 Aba'1-Salt Umayya ibn 'Abd al"Azlz, 312 Abft Shama, 378 Aba'1-Shis Muhammad ibn'Abdallah,

Ibn

Yaklilaftan, 129 Zaid Ahmad ibn Sahl al-Balkbl, 2S5, 301 Aba Zaid Ans4rl, 40 Aba Zaid Said ibn'Amr, 142, 144

Zaid of Sarftj, 135 Achsemenians, 400 'Ad, tribe of, 37, 409

Aba

Adam,

67, 68, 262, 291

87

'Adawiyya, religious order of, 272 'Adl (the Shaikh), 272 'Adl ibn Zaid, Christian poet, 31, 58,
71 Adib Ishaq, 439 'Adiya, grandtather of Samaual, 29 'Adnan, 4

Aba Shuja al-Isfahaul, 248 Aba Sufyan, 60 Aba Sulaiman D^'ud ibn 'All, 240
Aba'l-Su'ad Efpndi, 424 Aba Talib, uncle of Mahomet, 45

'Adud
91,

al-daula,
134, 150,

Buwaihid

prince,

Aba

Taiib, son 159'

of

Fakhr

al-daala,

159, 205, 296, 309,

310
al-dSn al-'tjl, 342 tribe of, 21, 22 'Afif al-din Sulaim3,n al-TilmisHni,

Abfl Talib, al-Mufaddal ibn Salama, 152

Adud

'Adwan,

Aba Tammam,
1S2, 185

17, 83, 89, 14S,

162,

Aba 'Ubaid

al-Q^aim

ibn Sallam,

144 ibn al-Muthanna, 141, 142, 144 Aba'Umar Saiih ibn Ishaq al-Jarmi,

Aba 'Ubaida Ma mar

'

123 Aftf al-dln al-Yafil, 348 Afiah ibn Yasar, 57 Aftas, family of, 128 al-Aghlab ibn 'Umar ibn

TJbaida,

53

145

'

Agoub, 414
225
Alildf, at Hira,

Aba Usitma Junada,

30

INDEX
Ahlwardt,
17, 93, 181,

455

333

Akhhdr cd-LufAg, 17
265
al-Akhfash, the little, 156 al-Akhfash, the middle, 143 al-Akhras ('Abd al-Ghaffar), 434 al-Akhtal, 48, 49, 52, 54 "Ala al-daula Abii Ja'far ibn DushmanziySr, 286 Aladdin and tke wonderful lamp, 402 'Ala al-din, King of Khwarizm, 321 'Ala al-din Ahmad al-Sirafl, 355 'Ala al-din al-Baha'j, 397 'Ala al-dln Efendi 'Abidin, 421
'

Ahmad, brother

of al-Ghazill,

Ahmad 'All al-Shadhill, Ahmad BSba, 395 Ahmad al-Badawi, 413 Ahmad al-Barblr, 421 Ahmad al-Danaf, 401 Ahmad al-Ghabrlnl, 333 Ahmad Hamdl Bey, 428 Ahmad Hijazl lamd'H, 429 Ahmad ibn Ahmad ibn 'Abd
man, 392

al-Rah-

Ahmad ibn Ahmad ibn XJmar, 394 Ahmad ibn 'All ibn Mas' Ad, 386 Ahmad ibn Hanba], 155, 216 Ahmad ibn al-Mu'azzam al-RSzi, 433 Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-HarawS,
103, 160

Ala al-din Tibare, 208 'Alara al-din al-Bulqin!, 367 Alam al-din al-SakhawS, 260
Albategnius, 296 Albohazen, 297 Albucasis, 3 10

Ahmad

ibn

Muhammad

al-K^zl of
Ballch, 301

Albumaser, 296
Alexander, 155, 2S0, 400

Cordova, 188

Ahmad ibn SabI, prince of Ahmad ibn Sayyar, 178 Ahmad ibn Shahln, 381 Ahmad ibn Ttilun, 187 Ahmad ibn Uwais, Sultan
388

Alexander of Aphrodisias, 2S9 Alexandre Dumas, p^re, 405

Alexandre-pa<:ha Caratbeodory, 322 Alfiyya of Ibn Malik, 171 Alfraganus, 295 Ali, the Caliph, 40, 45, 50, 79, 87, 89, 94, 118, 155, 20S, 214, 278 'AH, Diwan of, 253 'Ali, grandson of 'Umar ibn al-Farid, 115 All Abft'1-Nasr. 423 'AH al-Bakhar'zl, 106
'All-bey, 409 "All al-Bustt, 105 'All Chelebi, 378 'Alids, 45, 51, 69,80, 88, 151, 152, 232 'All Efendi Darvish, 422 "Alt Efendi Riyad, 429
"

of

Bagdad,

Ahmad ibn YahyS Khazindar, 399 Ahmad ibn Zainl Dahlan, 432 Ahmad al-KurdS, 332 Ahmad Madht, 441 Ahmad al-NasibI, musician, 55

Ahmad Ahmad

al-Nasirl al-Salawl,

432

al-Numairl, 126
Kyiiprillu,

Ah mad-pacha
Vizier, 331

Grand

Ahmad al Bifa'S (Shaikh), 434 Ahmad Zakt, 427

Ahron, father of Bar-Hebrasus, 209 Ahura Mazda, 63 al-Ahwas, 47 Aidamir al-Jildakl, 370 Aidamir al-MuhyawI, 103 'Ain, pronunciation of the letter, 56 al-'Ainl, 354 'A'isha, wife of Mahomet, 87
'A'isha al-Baftniyya, 331
al-A' jam,

All Fahml, 429

'AH al-Hamadhanl al-Sakhawl, 122

"All "All "All "All 'All "All *A11 'All "All

surname of ZiySd ibn mSn, 56

Sulai-

al-'Ajjaj, 53

al-Ajurrt, 222 AjurrilTniyya^ 387

al-

Akawwak, 76

ibn 'Abbaa, 309 ibn'Abd al-E.ahman, 195 ibn Ghazl, 392 ibn al-Husain, 214 ibn Ishiq al-Zahl, 94 ibn Jabala al- Akawwak, 76 ibn Ja'far of Shaizar, 299 ibn al-Jahm, 80 ibn MansAr, King of Khwarizm, 286 'All ibn Muhammad, chief of the Zanj, 145
'

456

INDEX
'Anhurt (Saltm Efendi), 420
AnsElrs, 49, 72, Ans^rls. See Nusairls.
al-'Anst,

'AH ibn Muhammad ibn Bassam, 84 'Ali ibn Muqarrab ibn Mansftr alIbrdhimi, 112 'Ail iba Sahl ibn Rabban, 307 'Alt ibn Sulaiman, 67 'All ibn Umar ibn Quzal ibn Jildak al-Y3,r\iqi, 121 'Alt ibn Zafir (Jamal al-din), 194 'Alt'Izzat Efendi, 427 'Alt al-Mayurqt, 126 'Alt Muhammad, the Bib, 212
'

no

252

'Antar^ romance of^ 13, 403, 438 "Antara, 10, 13, 18, 30
Antichrist, surname of Kuthayyir, 52 AntljUr, minister of the Ikhshldites,

Apollonius of Perga, 293, 295 al-Aqib ibn 'Abdallah al-Ansammant,

of Labld, 42 Ardabast, brother of the Gothic King, Oppas, 1 88 Ardashlr Bibakan, l8l Aristotle, 137, 281, 282, 2S4, 289, 290, 322 al-'Arjt, 146 Arnaud, 431 Arnold, 412

'Alt-paclia, vizier,

378

"Alt-pacha Mubarak, 426 'All al-Tauhldt, 316 'All YHsuf (Shaikh), 442

394 Arbad, brother

Almagest of Ptolemy, 297 Almohads, 129, 252 Almoravids. See Moravids.

'Alqama ibn'Abada al-Fahl, 16

'Alqama, sou of AllStha, 27

Aluh ('ImM
Amari, 304

al-din), 1S9

al-Arrajanl,

no, 332

'Amid al-din As ad ibn Nasr al-Abarzt,

no
al-Amidl (Saif al-dtn 'Alt), 248 ^1-Amidl (al-Hasan ibn Bishr), 147 al-Amidl (P^ukn al-dln AbH Hamid), 275 Amtn, son of HSriin al-Rashid, 71, 150 Abti'l-Ghana'im al-daula Amtn Muslim, 112 Amln ibn Hasan al-Hulwanl, 435 Amtn al-Jundl, 420 Amin Shamil, 423 Amlniyya, school at Damascus, 197, 386 al-Amlr, surname of Ibn HayyAs, 120 'Amir, uncle of Labid, 41 'Amir, son of Zarib, supreme arbitra^

Arsacids, 6 Ars^niyAs, the priest, 417 Asad, tribe of, 23 Asad ibn al-FurSt, 237 As' ad ibn Nasr al-Abarzt, As'ad al-Shidydq, 416

no

al-A'sha, 10, 26, 27, 30, 153 Asha, Harndan, 5^ al Ash'art, 264, 268, 269 al-Ash'ath (IbnV See Abd Rahman ibn al-Ash'ath. Ashja', 87 Ashkar !D4'fid (Sultan), 394 Ashraf (Sultan), 193

al-

Ashrafiyya (school), 249, 32S, 341 Ashrafiyya at Mecca, 377

al-'Askarl, 157,

368

tor, 2

'Amir al-Ru'Sml, 379

Sahl, 177 al-Asma'l, 17, 76, 141, 142, 144, 238 Assassins, 246

Aslam ibn

'Amr ibn al-'Abd. See 'Tarafa, 14 'Amr ibn al-'As, 365 'Amr ibn Bahr al-Jihiz, 213 'Amr ibn Harith, Prince of Ghassin,
Hind, King of Hlra, 14 'Amr ibn Kulthftm, 10 Anas, son of Malik, 306 al-Anbart, 156

Assemani (J.-S.), 209 al-'Atls, surname of Ibn Wakl', 96 Atsiz, King of Khwarizm, 157 'Aun al-dtn ibn Hubaira, 189
Aus, tribe of, 27 Aus ibn Hajar, 15, 24 Autolycus, 322 Avenpace, 28S Averrhoep, 2S8 Avesta, 63, 68, 149

'Amr, son

of

'Anaza, tribe

of,

74

INDEX
Avicenna, 284, 285, 287, 303, 309 Avieriuo (Alexandra), 441 Ayas-pacha, 377 nl-'Ayyashl, 391 Ayyilbites, 112, 114, 195, 337 Azd, tribe of, 54 al-Azhari, 158, 160, 1C2
al-AzIz, Fatimid Caliph, 96 Aziz, son of Saladin, 191, "Aziz ibn Zind, 440 al-Azraqi, 177

457

Barzfiya (the physician), 212

Bashir (Amir), 413 Bashshar ibn Burd, Basset (R.), 115

Bassora, school 150, 153, 155 Batikin, 102 al-BattanI, 296 B4tyiir, 105
of,

67, 69,

86
139,

137,

146,

Bauer, 210
al-Baya,dl, 105

Azza, the Bedouin woman, 48

B4yezld Bayezld

I.,

II.,

Bab,

212 al-Babbagha (Abii'l-Faraj), 94

'All
the,

Muhammad

Ottoman Sultan, 356, 363 Ottoman Sultan, 375

al-Bayyi', 223

al-Bazz^z, 157
1

Badi' al-ZamS,n al-Hamaclh4iiI,

sqq.

32

Badr, battle

of,

32

Badr

al-din Lu'lu', at4bek of Mosul,

Beaumier, 334 Beer (G.), 267 Behnain Benni (Mgr. Behz^d, 149
Beni-'Abs.
See 'Abs.

Cyrille),

419

103, 104, 112

Bagdad, school of, 154, 256 Baghyo'o (Muhammad), 395 Baha al-daula, Buuaihid Prince, 293

Baha Baha Bah4

al-dln of Aleppo, 191 al-dtn al-MnhallabI, 115 al-din Muhammad ibn Yllsuf
'

al-BaHni, 331 Shall ibn Farrukh Shah, 123 Baibars (Sultan), 193, 195, 197, 335,

Bahrdm

339- 397 al-Baidavvi, 261 al-Baihaqi, 227

Baillie and Locketfc, 167 al-B4jf, 262 al-Balcharzi, 106

Beni- Amir, 27, 47 Beni-A=ad, n, 12 Bcni-Iiildl, romance of the, 405, 407 Beni-Hudhail, 237 Beni-Jafar, 41 Beni-Marina, 31 Beni-Mirdas, family of the, 120 Beni-Nahshal, 51 Beni-Naubakht, clan of the, 7 Beni-Qurra, 97 Beni-Salaman, 19 Beni-Shaiban, 54 Beni-Ziyan of Tilimsftn, 371

Benna (Philippe Basile), 420 B&ault (01.), 359

Eerbrugger (Adrien), 391 Berg (Van den), 248, 249
Bernstein, 323 Besthorn, 127 Bible, the, 3, 32, 34
al-Bilbaisl,
al-Eirflnl,

al-Bakrl, 302 al-Baiadhuri, 179, 180

al-Balatt,

326

al-Balawi, 319 Bdnat Sitdd, Zuhair, 44 Baliquera, 316

poem

of

Ka'b

ibn

397

al-Biqal, 210

Barbier de Meynard, 73, 168, 176, 267, 298 Barges (the Abb^), 371 Bar-Hebreus, 209, 295 Barmakides, 64, 71, 197

302

Bishr ibn Abi KhSziro, 24 Bistanl (Eutrus), 416, 438

Bisteris (Sal'jm), 417

BarqAq, 324, 35
Barqllqiyj'a (convent), 355 Barq-YarAq, SeljAqid Sultan, 247 Barshai (Sultan), 332 Earsflma, 410

Bland, 268, 369 Bloohet (E.), 200 Bocthor (ElyAs), 412 Boer, de, 267 Bohlen, (P. de), 269 Bokhtyishtf, 80, 306

30

4S8
Bonaparte,
3,

INDEX
424, 437
17, 48, 78,

184 Boohs of the Sdsdnian Kings, 174 Bourgade (E.), 204 Bouriant (UOi 361 Bresnier, 387 Briggs, (J.), 377 Broch, 168 Brockelinann (0.), 154, 207, 266, 27S,
291. 313. 322, 362, 367 Bronnle (P.), 261 Briinnow (R.), 17, 156, 184 Bu'ath, battle of, 30 Buffou, 3, 416
al-Buhturl. 17, 79, 83, 84, 88, 148, 182 Bujair, brother of Ka,'b ibn Zuhair, 43 Bukharl, 178, 217, 218, 219, 220, 339,

Biiok of Songs,

Cazotte (Jacques), 403 Chauvin, 401 Chavis (Dom Denis), 403

Cheilcho (R. P.), 157,354,418 Chcrbonneau, 188, 333, 348, 396, 404 Chosroes I. (AnAshirvan), 24, 61, 212, 2S0 Christian Arabic poets, 28 sqq. Christians of St. Jolin tiie Baptist, 33 Christians of Syria and Mesopotamia,

34 Chwolson, 314 Cle'ment-Mullet (J. -J.), 316 Cock of the Genii. See DIk al-Jinn,
(F.), 203, 204, 318 Cool (P.), 166 Crassus, 280 CroUa, 304 Crusaders, 116, 194 Cureton (W.), 268, 337 Cusa and Lagumina, 145 Cyrus, 400

Codera

373 Bulaqiya, 401

Bft Medin. See AbA Bunan, the singer, 81

Madyan.

al-Bundarl (Abtl'1-Fath), 195 alBuni, 317 iJurcfa, Mahomet's mantle, 44; Qasida of the, 115 Burt, Prince of Damascus, 1 19 al-Bur! ('Abd al-Ealilm), 112 al-Burinl, 385, 417

Burton (Richard), 402

al-BAsirl, 115, 192 al-BustI, 105

Buthaina, 48 al ButhanJ (Natiq bi'1-haqq), 252

Butrus Bistani, 416, 438 Butrus Karama, 419 Buwaihids, 59, 91, 134, 150, 159, 224, 299, 309 Bfizajani, 297

184,

413, 423 Cardin de Cardonne, 403 Cardonne, 188 Carlyle (J. E.), 114, 365 Carmathians, 112, 375 Garra de Vaux, Baron, 183, 287 Carusins, 207 Casanova (J.), 201 Casiri, 345, 346 Caspari, 289 Cataneo, 412 Causf'in de Perceval, the elder, 297, 339, 402 ; the younger, 403, 413

Cakdin (Alexander),

Ibn al-Muqaffa 212 al-Dahhan, 325 Dahis, war of, 13, 16, 20 Dalil^n (Ahmad ibn Zaini), 432 Dailamites, 59 Dallla, 401 Dallal al-Kutub, 97 al-DamIr!, 325, 370 al-Da.ni, 25S, 259 al-DaqqSq, 271 al-Daraqutnl, 222 al-Da,riml, 221 Darius, 400 Darwishiyya, mosque at Damascus, 384 Dastugue, General, 391 Da'ud the ZMiirite, 251 Da'tjd al-Antakl, 210, 345, 398 Da'ud Efendi AbH Sha'r, 421 Da'lid ibn 'AH, 240 Di'fid-pacha, governor of Bagdad,
435 David, 6 David (Mgr. Joseph), 418 Days of the Arabs, 32 Defremery, 339 De Guignes. 276, 327, 342 Dehoiain (H. ), 340

DID A WAIH, father of

INDEX
Delphin (G.), 430 Derenbourg (H.). 140,
201, 333 Desgranges aSnd, 413 Destains, 402 Devie, 404
156, 163, 194,

459

Ellas I. (the Catholicos), 310 Elias (the prophet), 340 Elyfts Bocthor, 412

al-Dhahabi, 196, 341, 344, 362, 368 d'Herbelot, 359 DhU'l-Asba" al-'Adw^nl, 21, 22
Dha'l-Kiialasa,
idol,

Enger, 243 Epiphanios Fadlallah, 425 Erpenius (Thomas), 167, 209, 387 Esop, 409
Essenians, 33 Euclid, 281, 290, 291, 294, 322 Eutychius, 187 Eve, 67 Exiga, called Kayzer, 431

12

DhU'i-Nasabain, 173 DhA'l-NUn, the Egyptian, 256, 270 Dh<i'l-Rumma, 52 Di'bil al-Kliuza'I, 78, 79, 87 Dibs (Mgr. Ytisuf Ilyas), 417, 420, 421 Dieterici (F.), 171, 285

al-Fadil (the qadi), 313, 326 Fadl (the poetess), 81 Fadl ibn Rabl', the minister, 143, 238 Fail ibn Sahl, 73
Fadlallah ibn

Dihya ibn Khalifa, 35 Dihya al-Kalbi, 173 Dlk al-Jinn, 89

Dinarzade, 400 al-Dinawarl, 154 Dionysius, Jacobite patriarch, 209
Dioscorides, 282
al-DIrint,

Muhibb
344

Allah, 383,

384

Fagnan
al-Fa'iz,

(E.), I95.

279
'

Dtwdns of the Six Poets, 17 Biyd al-dln tsa, brother

Khallikan, 102

Fatimid Caliph, 200 al-daula, 159 Muhammad ibn al-daula Jahlr, 105 Fakhr al-dln 'tsS ibn Ibrahim, 333 Fakhr al-dln al-Razl, 320

Fakhr Fakhr

of

Ibn

Fakhr al-Mulk, 293 Fakhr al-Turk, 103

Fakhriyya (Madrasa), 197
al-Fakihi, 177 al-Farabl, 283

Diya al-dln Muhammad al-Dimashql, 250 Diya al-dln Muhammad al-Khazrajl,

'

173
al-Itlidi,

Diyab

385 al-Diyarbakrl, 376 d'Ohsson (Mouradjea), 268

Faransis Marrish, 420 al-Farghanl (Alfraganus), 295

Farhat ( Jabril Germanos.

of

ibn).

See Jabrll

and

Dombay
Don Don

Domestious,

(Fr. de), 275, 334 the, General

the

Faris al-Shidyaq, 415, 438 Faris Nimr, 441

al-Farisl, 150, 156, 157,

K(jman troops
Sebastian,
(B.),

in Asia, 93 Pedro, tyrant of Castile, 350

228

King

of Portugal,

390

Dorn Dozy
416

290
19s, 203, 204, 382,

(R.), 188,

al-Farra, 145, 151 al-Farra al-Baghawl, 228 Fath ibn KhSqan, the minister, 152 al-Fath ibn Khaqan, the Spaniard,

203'
first chapter of the Koran, 36 Fatimids, 94, 124, 200, 345 Ferazdaq, 49, 50, 51, 52, 141 Ferishta, 377 Fihrist, 60, 179, 181, 186 Fikrl-pacha, 424

Du-hait, 103

Fdtiha,

Dugat

(G.), 382, 404, 416, 431

Dutnyat al-Qasr, 106

Dunya,

slave of

Dlk

al-Jinn, 90

Ebionites, 33 Eddi4(G.), 418 Elephant, the, surname of the singer YahyS, 58

FIl (Elephant), surname of the singer

Yahya, 58

460

INDEX
Gold en thai, 266 Goldziher (I.), 170, 240, 251 336
Golius, 97, 287, 295, 364 Gondisalvi, 267

FirdausI, Persian poet, 195, 212, 406 Firtlz-Abadt, 388, 415 Fleischer, 168, 261, 338, 402 Fluegel (G.), 366, 367. 382

Forget

(J.),

2S6

Gosche, 368
Gospels, the, 36, 54 Gottwaldt, 184, 358 Graberg de Hemso, 391

Fraelin, 300, 342 Fraser, 26S Frederic of Hohenstaufen, Fresnel, 20

290

Freudenthal, 2S9 Freund, 342 Freytag, 17, 167, 200, 364, 412 Fudala ibn Kilda, 25 Furqdn, name of the Koran, 35

Grangeret de Lagrange, 369, 412 Gregorio, 207 Guadagnoli, 173 Guidi (J.), 161, 188 Guirgass (W.), 155

GundeshapAr (School
306. 307

of),

37, 2S0,

Gabriel

(the archangel), 34, 173 Gabriel, Bon of Bokhtyishu, 307

Gunzbourg (D. de), 129 Guyard (Stanislas), 335,

Haarbrilcker, 268

338,

357

Gagnier, 338 Galen, 2S2, 291, 310, 311

Galland (Antoine), 402, 403, 426 Garcin de Tassy, 279 Gaultier (Edouard), 402 Gautier (L.), 266 Gayangos (P. de), 382 George (J.-F.-L.), 344 Germanos ibn Farhat (Jabril), 389

Ghabra (the mare), 13 al-Ghabrlnf, 333 Ghailan ibn CJqba, sumamed DhU'l'

Kumrna, 52
al-6harid (musician), 48 GhassSn, princes of, Ghassanids, 6, II, 13, 29, 177 Ghatafan, tribe of, 16

Ghakll, 167, 261, 265, 266, 271, 272, 289 Gh4zan, Mongol Sultan, 337
Ghazels, 103 Ghazui, 3, 80 al-Ghazzl, 109, Ghiyath (al-Akhtal), 48 Ghoul, female Jinn, 18 Ghiilam Tha'lab, surname

Habbalin (Louise), 441 Habib the carpenter, 398 liabib ibn Aus Abii TammSm, 88 Habieht, 402 Hadal, Jewish tribe, 29 al-HadS (the Caliph), 78 al-Hadl iia'1-Haqq, 242 al-Hadira (Qutba ibn Aus), 22 Hadith, 61, 225 Hadrian, 28 Hafsa, daughterof the Caliph'Umar, 46 Hagar, 4 Haggada, 38 Haitsma, 148 al-Hajj Ahmad Aqit, 392 al-Hajj Ahmad Efeudi, 435 al-Hajjaj, governor of 'Ir^q, 52, 54) 55. 65, 212
,

no

of

al-

337, 376, 382 al-HajirS, 102 JETakam, supreme arbitrator, 21

al-Hajjaj al-Hfisib, 281 Hajjl Khalfa, 121, 193,

371,

Mutarriz, 153 Gildemeister, 276

Glaser, 6, 242

Hakam

(Amir), 355
II., 1S8,

al-Hakam

315

Goeje (M. de), 180, 183, 205, 29S, 299 Goergens and Rohrioht, 192 Goguyer, 171, 3S7 Golden Meadows, the, of Mas'-ftd!, 176,
183

al-fiakim, Fatimid Caliph, 201, 205, 226, 293, 297, 311

Halevy

(J.),

Ha.l!ma, daughter of Fudala, 25 a'l-Haliaj, 271 Haniadhan, battle of, 97 Hamadhani, 132 sqq., 159

INDEX
Hamaker, 360

461

Hamdsa
Hamdsa

of

Abu Tammam,

17, 19, 20,

Hassftn (Rizq Allah), 419, 433 Hashim, family of, 58, 106

83, 88, 162 of al-Buhturi, 17, 83

al-HamdtLnt, 301

Hamdanids, 90, 91, 156 Hainld, Saminid prince, 236 Hamilton (Ch.), 243 Hamilton (Terrick), 403 Hammad ibn Abl Sulaiman, 235

Hammad

Hammam
Hammer
Hamza
234

al-Hawiya, 10, 59 (Ferazdaq), 50

(J.

von),

108,

168,

201,

267, 339, 373. 376 Hamza al-Isfahani, 183

Hatim of the tribe of Tai, 21, 23, 24 al-Hauft, 260 al-Hazirl (AbU'l-Ma'ail Sad), 97 Henzius, 321 Heraclius, 173 Hibatallah, minister of the Caliph alQa'im, 227 Hibatallah ibn Sana al-Mulk, 1 14 Hidd, chant of the camel-driver, 5 j/jjd, satire, 7, 8 Hind bint Naufa], 441 Hippocrates, 282 Hisham (the Caliph), 53, 54, 56, 58,
61, 188

Fathallah, 429 Hanafites, 87, 124, 149,

164,

197,

Hisham, son
161

of the

Caliph al-Hafcam,

Hanbalites, 104, 155, 181, 197, 239, 250, 431 Hanlfs, 26, 33 Han?ala, of the tribe of Tai, 23
a'l-Harawi, 156, 272

Historians of the Crusades, 192

Hoberg(G.), 157 Hochheim, 293, 294 Holy Ghost, the, 34 Homes (H. A.), 266
Horowitz, 401 Hospitallers, 338

al-Harbl, 155 Hard-az, 117 Harim, 16 Hariri, 134, 163, 165, 169, 260, 328, 414, 445 al-Harith ibn Jabala, 16 al-Harith ibn Hilliza, 10 al-Harith ibn Zaiim, 29 Harthama, governor of Khurasan, 144
'

Houdas (O.), 18S, 193, 391, Houtsma, 1 53 Hubaish ibn al-Hasan, 282 HAd, the prophet, 409 Hudhaifa, Arab general, 40

396, 432

Hartmann

(Martin), 407 Hartin al-Kashid, 50, 64, 70, 72, 76,

140, 141, 142, 144, 150, 236, 238, 281, 306, 401 Hasan (Sultan), 324 Hasan Basrl, 62, 319 Hasan al-BArSnl, 385, 41
a'l-Hasan, son of

Hudhail, tribe of, 18, 45 Hudhailites.poemsof the, 18, 146,238 Hujr, father of Imru'u'l-Qais, 1
Hulagfl, Mongol Sultan, 103, 2cx3, 202, 254, 295, 321 Hulwan, the two palm-trees of, 65

Humaid

al-T<isI,

77

Hunain ibn Ishaq, 281, 307 Hunduj. See Imru'u'l-Qais.

Huraira, 27 Hurthan ibn
See Dhtl'lal Harith. Asba' al- Adwanl. al-Hurthi (Ibn al-Mu'allim), lOI

Ibn "Arabshah, 364

Hasan Efendi Husnl, 423, 427 Hasan Efendi Tanftq, 427^ Hasan ibn Muhammad al-' Attar, 129
al-Hasan ibn'vjniar, 350 al-Hasan al-Ntsai .(iri, 257 Hasan-pacha, 379 Hasan-pacha Mahmud, 428 Hasan ibn Wahb, 89 Hasib EarSm al-dln, 401

Husain, eon of

'Ali, 47, 89, 104, 173 liusain Baiqara, Tiraftrid Sultan, 372

Husain Efendi JisrI-zade, 435 al-Husain ibn al-Qasim (al-Mahdt li'dlni'Uah), 242 al-Husain ibn Mansfir al-Hallaj, 271
the

Hassan ibn Mufarrij,

tribe of Tai, 97

chief of

HAsM,

Hassan ibn Thabit,

27, 43

15 al-Husrt, 124 al-Hutai'a, 24, 45

462
Hylander, 342 Hypsicles, 322

INDEX
Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn
Babtlya, 242 BadrCln, 128, 204

Bairam, 386
Baitar, 196, 316

IbadS, the, of Hira,

6, 26,

30

"Ibadites, sect ot the, 87

Ibn'Abbad, theminister, 132, 159, 184 Ibn al-'Abbdr, 204, 205 Ibn 'Abbas, io5, 256

Eajja (Avenpace), 288 Ibn Balian, 367 Ibn Bashkuwal, 204

Ibn'Abd al-Barr, 231 Ibn'Abd al-Hakam, 186

Ibn'AbdAn,
127,

204

Ibn'Abdus, 127

Ibn'Abd Rabbihi,

124, 215 Ibn Abl'1-Dam, 207 Ibn AbS'l-DInar, 385 Ibn Abi'l-Dunya, 214 Ibn Abl'l-Hadid, 104 Ibn Abl Hajala, 344, 345 Ibn Abt Hatim, 225 Ibn Abl'l-Khisai, 232 Ibn Abt Najm', 252 Ibn Abl'l-Rabt, 282 Ibn Abi Randaqa, 2S7 See AbU'l-Hasan Ibn Abl'l-Rijal.
'All.

Ibn Abi Shakir, 104 Ibn Ab! Shukr, 295 Ibn Abi Usaibia, ig6 Ibn Abl Zar, 333 Ibn Abl Zaid, 237 Ibn al-Ahmar, 351 Ibn al-Ahnaf, 70, 73. 78 Ibn Aibak al-Dimyatt, 230 Ibn Ajurrum, 387 Ibn al-Akfanl, 370 Ibn al-'Aliat Hasan ibn 'All, 85 Ibn al-'Amld (al-Makln), 208 Ibn al-Anbarl, 153, 164, 170 Ibn 'Arabahah, 358, 363 Ibn al-A'r4bl, 144, 151, 152 Ibn al-'Arabl, 261, 277, 306
Ibn'Arata, 351

Jbn Baasara, 85 Ibn Batllta, 278, 336, 340, 392 Ibn al-Bawwab, the caligrapher, 157 Ibn Bokhtyishtf ('Ubaidallah), 311 Ibn Butlan, 310, 311 Ibn al-i)ahhan, 163, 247 Ibn al-Daiba, 374 Ibn Darest, 106, 107 Ibn al-Daya, 187 Ibn Dihya al-Kalbl, 173 Ibn Duqmaq, 357 Ibn Duraid, 145, 148, 149, 156, 386 Ibn Dntustawaih, 149 Ibn Fadlallah al-'Umari, 326 Ibn Fadlan, 300 Ibn Falid, 397 Ibn al-Fahham, 423 Ibn al-Faqih, 299 Ibn al-Faradi, 203, 204 Ibn al-Farid fUmar), 114, 330, 417 Ibn Farhun, 396 Ibn Fai-is, 159
IbnFirroh. fe al-Qasina ibnFirroh. Ibn al-Furat, 347 Ibn Ftlrak, 224 Ibn al-Habbariyya, 106, 108 Ibn Habib, 346 Ibn al-Haitham, 293 Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalanl, 356, 362, 433 Ibn al-Hajib, 172, 399 Ibn al-Hajjaj, 85 Ibn al-Haiawi, 103

Ibn Haindis, 125 Ibn Hamdun, 163 Ibn Hanbal, 155,

319

216, 239, 240, 318,

Ibn Arfa Ra'sahn, 317

Ibn al-Ash'ath,

Ibn'Asakir, 199, 387 65, 178 Ibn'Askar, 391 Ibn al-Athlr (Diya al-dln), 169

Ibn

Hani'. Hani'.

See

Muhammad
ibn 'AH, 87

ibn

Ibn al-Athlr

Ibn al-Athlr (Majd al-dtn), Ibn al-'Awwam, 316 Ibn Babashad, l56

153, 169, 199, 206, 338, 358, 368, 379 169, 229

('Izz al-din),

142,

Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn

Harma Ibrahim
al-Haslna, 126

al-Haya (Sawar ibn Auta), 54 Hayyfls, 109, 120 Hazm, 250 Hibban, 223 Hijja, 324, 398

INDEX
Ibn Hisha,m,

463

Hm
Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn

175, 261, 325, 387 Hubaira, 189, 207, 259, 303

Hudhail al-'AUaf, 71 al-Idhari, 203

lehaq (Muhammad), 175
Isra'il, 1 19'

lyUs, 374 Jahwar, 127

al-Jauzi, 102, 208, 230, 279, 318 al-Jawaliqi, 162 al-Jazarl, 356 Jazla, 311 Jinnt, 156

Jubair, 304 al-Kalbl, 178, 179 Kathlr, 344, 359

Ibn Khafaja, 128 Ibn Khdqdn, 203, 255 Ibn Khalaf al -Saraqiistf, 25S Ibn Kh^lawaih, 153, 156 Ibn Khaldfin, 172, 186, 349, 350, 351, 352 Ibn Khallas, 129 Ibn Kliallikan, 69, 89, 92, 101, 102,
116, 118, 119, 131, 170, 197 sqq., 206, 227, 259, 2S3, 319, 325, 343,

Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn

376 Khamis, 272 al-Khashshab, 348 al-Khattb, 345 al-Khatib al-Qsamtln!, 347 al-Khayy^t, 109 Ibn Khumrtaih the Himyarite, 112 Ibn Khurdadbeh, 298 Ibn ICushSjim, 99 Ibn Maja, 221 Ibn Maimtln, 312 Ibn Makftuis, 324 Ibn M^kAla, 227 Ibn Malik al-Jayy^ni, 171 Ibn al-Mamm4ti, 201, 202 Ibn Mandah, 178 Ibn Ma'rtif (the qftdl), 223 Ibn Marwdn, Prince of MayyMSriqln, 227 Ibn al-MarzubS,n, 156 Ibn Marz<iq, 392 Ibn MSsawaih. See YahyS ibn M^sawaih. Ibn Maskawaih, 205 Ibn Matrth, 116 Ibn Mattflya al-Wahidi, 260
'

Ibn Ma'tftq, 332 Ibn Mihrfin, 255 Ibn al-Mu'allim, loi Ibn Mukarram, 386 Ibn MunSr al-Tarabulns!, 119 Ibn Munqidh (Usama), 193 Ibn al-Muqaifa', 211, 212 Ibn al-MuqrJ, 348 Ibn al-Miirahhai, 328 Ibn al-Mu'ta'zz, 84, 85 Ibn al-Nablh, 114 Ibn al-Nahhas, 341 Ibn al-Najjkr, 230 Ibn al-Naqlb, 342 Ibn Nubata, 130, 323 Ibn Nubdta, the preacher, 130 Ibn al-Qadl, 390 Ibn Qadl Shuhb;',, 1 75, 362 Ibn al-QaisarS,n}, 120, 228 Ibn Qalaqis, 113 Ibn Qanbar, 'jt,^ 74 Ibn al-Q^ss, 23S Ibn Qayyim al-Jaiiziyya, 336 Ibn al-QiftI, 195 Ibn Qurqftl, 233 Ibn Qutaiba, 10, 14, 133, 154, 212, 256 Ibn al-Qatiyya, 1S8 Ibn QiitlAbugha, 366 Ibn Qnzman, 12S Ibn al-Rahib, 209 Ibn al-Rashlq, 17, 124, 172 Ibn RidwS,n, 310, 311 Ibn al-R4mI, 82, 185 Ibn Rushd (Averroes), 2S8 Ibn Rusteh, 299 Ibn al-Sa'atl, 117 Ibn al-Sabb4gh, 245 Ibn Sab'in, 290 Ibn Sa'd, 177 Ibn al-Saffslr of M4tidtn, 118 Ibn Sahl, 129 Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribl, 202 Ibn al-Sa'igh, 170 Ibn al-Saldh, 230 Ibn Saiama, 257 Ibn al-Saliar, 229 Ibn Sana al-Mulk, 114 Ibn al-Sarraj, 149, 210 Ibn Sayyid al-Na?, 339 Ibn Serapion, 299 Ibu Shakir al-Kutubl, 198, 343

464
Ibn Sharaf

INDEX
al-Qairawfi.n! al-Judhaml,

124 Ibn Shihab, surname of al-Zuhrl, 61 Ibn Shihna, 358 Ibn SbirshSr, 155 Ibn SIda, 387 Ibn al-Sikkit, 152, 154 Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 285 Ibn Suwaid, hospital of, at Damascus, 327

Ibrahim of Nabulus, Tyrant of Damascus, 365 Ibrahim ibn 'All ibn Harma, 87 Ibrahim ibn Hasdai of Barcelona, 266 Ibrahim ibn YAsnf ibn Tashifin, 128, 203 Idris, the 'Alid, 298 Idrls 11., Prince of Malaga, 127
Idrlsl,

303
al-dtn, 91, 266 ('Adud al-din), 342

Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn

al-TaftwldhS, 100, lOI

Ihyd'ulUm
al-'j.]i

Tabataba, 94, 333

Taghribirdl, 202, 365 Taimiyya (the qadl), 328, 334

Ikhshidites, 91, 94 Ikhtiyar al-dln iijn Ghiyath al-din al-

sqq.

Ibn al-Tayyib, 310 Ibn al-Tharada, 327 Ibn al-Tiqtaqa, 333 Ibn Tuf'ail, 28i) Ibn Tuniart, 251 Ibn'Unain, 192 Ibn al-'Uzair, 153
Ibn Wadih al-Ya'qabi, 29S Ibn al-Wahshiyya, 314 Ibn Waki"; 96 Ibn al-Wakll, 328 Ibn Waliad, 160 Ibn al-WardI, 279, 342 Ibn Ya'ish, 170 Ibn Yakhlaftan, 129 Ibn Ydsuf, 187

Husaini, 372 al-Safa ,285 'Imad al-din (the Katib), 100,

Ikhwan

106,

114, 1S9, 195

'Imad

al-diii,

Qara-Arsian, Urtuqid

Prince, 275 "Imad al-dln Zangi, 119

'Imadiyya (school), 190 Imam al-Haramain, 245, 247, 265

Imru'u'1-Qais, ID, II, 15, 16, 26, 29,
85, 146 Inoegeo, 207 233 Irdqiyydt, 108

al-Iqlishl,
'

Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn Ibn

ZabEila, 177

Zafar, 210
Zaidftn, 126, 127 Zailaq, 328

'Isa ibn'All, 212 'isa ibn'All, the physician, 309 'Isa ibn'Umar al-Thaqafl, 138 'Isa ibn Sinjar al-Hajirl, 102 Isa ibn Yahya (Ab1i Sahl), 309
'Isawis,

Zanianain, 256 al-Zanjabtlt, 337

al-Zaqqdq al-Bulqlnl, 121 Zar, the physician, 282 al-Zayyat, the minister, 213
al-Zubair, 340 Zulaq, 187

Zunbul, 375 Ibrahim, Ottoman Sultan, 330 Ibrahim, Prince, 324 Ibrahim, brother of Ismail ibn Yasar,

270 Ishaq ibn Hunain, 2S2 ibn'imran, Ishaq 307, 308 Isliaq al-Mansili, 77, 78, 298 Isiiaq ibn Hahawaih, 240 Ishaq ibn Sulaimau, 308 al-Ishaql, 383 al-Ishblll, 318 Ishmael, 4 Iskandar al-'Azar, 439 Iskandar Efendi Shalhub, 440 Granada, of Isma'll, Prince
350

345,

Ibrahim, surnamed the Pure Soul,

151

Ibrahlm-bey MarzOq, 423 Ibrahim al-Dasflqi, 427 Ibrahim al-Mausili, 77, 78

86 Isma'll, the Himyarite Sayyid, " Isma'll Efendi Marl, 427 Ismail ibn 'Abbas, Sultan of Yemen, 388 Isma'il ibn Athlr, 128 Ismail ibn Bulbul, 152

INDEX
Isma'll ibn Isma'll ibn

465
al-dln Yahya al-Sarsarl, 104 al-dln Yahya ibn Ma'trfth, 1 16,
al-'Ardb, 17

Hammed, 235

Qasim Abd'l- Atahiya, 74 IsmS.'11-pacha, 440

Isma'll ibn Yasar, 56
Israel, 6

Jamai Jamai
117

Jamharat ash'dr
419

Istifan al-Duwaihl (Mgr.), 389, lyad, tribe of, 24

jami, Persian poet, 272, 357 Jamil ibn'Abdallah, 48

al-Janadl, 375 Janan, 72 al-Jannabl, 378, 379, 383 Jaqmaq (Amir of Damascus), 363, 364

'lyad (theqadl), 232

'Izz al-daula,

Buwaihid Prince, 134

uncle
of of

'Izz

al-din,

Usama

Ibn

Munqidh, 194
"Izz al-d!n. 'Izz

Jaqmaqlyya (School)
381
Jarlr,

at Damascus,

Yemen, 379 al-dln'Abd al-Hamtd ibn Abf 1Emir

49

sqq.

Hadid, 104
'Izz al-din 'Aibak, Prince of Sarkhad,

118
"Izz al-dln

Jarir, son of 'Abd al-Masih or'Abd See Mutalammis. al-'Uzza. al-Jarjara'l (the vizier), 205
al-Jarinl, 145 al-Jarrar (Abii'l-'Atahiya),

Aidamir

(the alchemist),

370
'Izz "Izz "Izz "Izz

al-din Aidamir (Amir), 196 al-dln al-Dlrlnl, 279 al-dln al-Maqdisl, 279 al-dln Mdsak al-Salahl, 172

al-Jabarti, 423, 424 Jabir ibn Hayyan, 313

Jabril (the'archangel Gabriel), 34 Jabrll ibn Farhat, 389 Ja'far the Barmakide, 77, 401 Ja'far, son of the Caliph Manstar,

74 Jarrett, 368 Jarwal ibn Aus al-Hutai'a, 44 al-Jassas al-Razl, 256 al-Jaubari, 317 Jaudar, Moroccan pacha, 395 Jauhar, Fatimid general, 95 al-Jauhari, 157, 386 al-Jazzar, 309
Jengiz Khan, 103, 193, 2CK3 Jews, 33, 38, 39 Jewish Arabic poets, 28 sqq.
Jinns,
Jirjls
7i

65
Ja'far ibn Hinzaba (tbe Vizier), 223 Ja"far Sadiq (the imam), 313 Ja'far ilDn Shams al-Khiiafa al-Afdall,

15

121 al-jaghm!ni, 294 al-Jahiz, 213 jahi?iyya, sect of the, 213 Jahn (G.)> 14
al-Jaihanl, 300

Efendi Tanntls, 417 Johannsen (Th.), 375 Jonas (Yllnus), Persian singer, 48 Jones (John Harris), 187 Jong (de), 166, 228, 341 Joseph, 314
Jourdain, 321, 347
al-Jubba'i, 264 al-Julyanl, 275 al-Jnnaid, 271 Juraij (George), grandfather of Ibn
al-RlimJ, 82 Jurjanl, 32 2, 343 Jurjl Efendi Zaidan, 424, 440 Justinian, 11, 234 al-Juwainl, 245

Jalal al-daiila Nasr, Prince of Aleppo,

120
Jaiai Jaiai Jalal Jalal
al-din 'All ibn al-Saffar, 1 18 al-din al-Bulqlni, 357 al-dln al-MahalU, 368 al-dln Mankoblrti, Sultan of
1 93

Khwarizm,

Jaiais, the two, 368 Jamai al-dln al-Isfahani, 248 Jamai al-dln Muhammad ibn Salim

Juynboll, 241, 305, 365

Ka'b ibn

Ju'ail, 48, 49
15, 43, 115

ibn Wasil, 195 Jamai al-dln al-Shaibanl (the vizier),

Ka'b ibn Zuhair,

305

Ka'ba, ii, 10, 147 KafUr, name given to negroes, 100

466

INDEX
al-Khassaf, 236 al-Khat!b al-BaghdMl, 198, 227, 230 al-Khatib al-Tibrlzl, 228 al-Khattabl, 223 al-Kh,winjI, 289 Khazraj, tribe of, 27 al-Khazrajl (Diya al-dln Muhammad), 173 Khidr, 340 al-Khiraqi, 240 Khirniq, sister of Tarafa, 14 Khitat, 201, 360
al-Khiyarl, 385

Kaffir the Ikshidite, 91, 187, 223 Kaisaniyj'a, Kaisanites, Shi'ite sect,

48,87
al-Kaiwanl, 329 al-KalabadhI, 225 Kalatii, son of Chakhbar,
prince,

Indian

300
of,

Kalb, tribe

35

KalUa and Dimna^ 107, 202, 211 Kamal al-dln ibn al-Nablh, 1 14

Kamal Kam^l
Kdmil

al-dln Muhammad, 376 Ivamai al-dln al-SharishI, 260

al-dln 'Umar ibn alhistorian of Aleppo, 199 Kdmil of Ibn al-Athir, 206

Adlm,

Khumarawaih,

87

of al-Mnbarrad, 146, 156 KtLiniliyya (madrasa) at Cairo,

73,

194, 231 Karam (Yiisuf Butrus),

433

al-Khwarizml (Abd 'Abdallah), 292 al-Khwarizml (Abft Bakr), 131, 132 al-Khwarizml (Muhammad ibnMflsa), 297 Kinda, the race of, II
al-Kindl, 297, 301
al-KisS,'l, 140, 144,

al-Karkhl, 293 Karle (J.), 1S7

150

Karramijja, sect of the, 257, 321 A'aslishdf, 168, 262 Katib (secretary), surname of the
singer Yfinus, 48 Katib, the, "Imad al-din.
al-din.

See

'Imad

Kitdb of Slbawaih, 139, 140 Kitdb al-Ai/Mni, 17, 48, 78, 1S4 Kitdh al-Badi' 84 al-Kiyfl, al-Harrasi, 247 Koran, 32, 33 sqq., 50, 53, 57, 61,
,

68, 91, 93, 119, 130, 134, 137, 13S,

al-Kd.tibl (Najm al-dln 'All), Kay (H. Cassels), 201, 375

290

Keijzer (H.), 244, 24S Kellgren, 171 Kerbela, 89 Khadlja, wife of Mahomet, 33
al-Khafajl, 383 Khair al-din al-TdnisI,

^142, 143, 212, 253 Koran, interpretation of, 254 sqq. Koran of Abil'l-'Aia al-Ma'arrl, 99

Koschut, 164 Kosegarten, iS, 340, 361, 369 Krehl(L.), 382

Kremer
430

(Alfred von), 71, 163, 171,

Khaiawaih, 91 Khalaf al-Ahmar, 19, 20 KhS,lid, general under AbA Bakr, 44, 62 Khalid ibn Yazld, Omeyyad prince, 62, 88, 313
Khalidls, the two, 185 Khalll, 5, 138, 140, 150, 15s, 159, 211, 212 Khalll ibn Aibak al-Safadl, 343

175. 35S Kryldff, 419

al-dln), Ktifa, School of, 150 al-Kflhl, 296

Kubra (Najm

276

Kilkburl, 102 al-Kulinl, 242

al-Kumait, 58 Kushajim, 93 Kftshy^r ibn Labban, 296

Khalll Efendi Naqqish, 440 Khalll al-Khflrl, 417,438 Khalll Sarkls, 419, 439 Khalll ibn Shihln al-Zahirl, 369 al-KhansS, 15, 16, 27, 28, 54, 152 ^/tartt^a of 'Imdd al-dln, 100, 106
Kharijites, 141

Kutbayyir, 48, 52 al-Kutubl, 122, 329,-343

LaeJba Hashim, 441

Labid, 10, 41 sqq. La Fontaine, li'ables of, 423 Laila, the beloved of Majnftn, 48 Laiia, mother of al-Akhtal, 48

INDEX
LailS, al-Akhyaliyya, 53 Laith ibn Muzaffar, 139 Lakhniites of Hira, 30 al-Lalaka'!, 239 Lalande, 296 LdTfiiyyat al- Ajam, 97 Ldmiyi/at at- Arab, 20, 97 Landberg (C. von), igo Lane (E. W.), 402, 405 Lane-Poole (Stanley), 37 Langlea, 360,^ 374 Laqit ibn Ya'mur, 24 Lasinio (F.), 289 Leclero (L.), 316

467
12, 13, 15, 25, 26, 32,

Mahomet,

sqq., 41, 43, 45, 104,

33 129,216, 220,

229, 232, 266, 339, 342

al-Maidanl, 167 Maimonides, 312

Maimdn,

father Mausill, 77

of

Ibrahim

al-

Maimiln ibn Qais al-A'sha, 26 Majd al-dln ibn Abl Shakir, 104 Majd al-dln al-Waiz al-Witrl, 104 Majnun, the madman of the Beni Amir, 47 Makhliif ibn 'All al-Bilball, 392
al-Qaisl, 257 al-Makln, 208 Malik, brother of Mutammim, 44 Malikibn Anas, 188,217,232,236322. Malikites, 236 al-Malik al-'Adil, 169 al-Malik al-Afdal, son of Saladin,

Makl

Lemming

(P.), 370.

Lepsius, 139 Le Strange (Guy), 299, 370

Lippert (J.), 196 Lisin al-dln ibn al-KhatIb, 345, 38 Lisdn al- Arab-, 386 Lubnd, celebrated by Qais ibn Dharlh,

169,

337

47
Lu'lu', general of the Ikhshldites, 91
of, 409 Luviah aZ-Mulah, 98 Ldt ibn Yahya, 61 LuzAm md lam yaZzam, 99

LuqmAn, Fables

Malik al-Ashraf, 195 Malik al-Ashraf, Prince of Mosul, 122 Malik al-Ashraf Barsbai, 3155 Malik al-Ashraf Mfisa, Prince of
Naslbln, 114 al-Malik al-'Azlz, son of Saladin, 173, 193. 3'3 Malik 'Aziz Yftsuf, 355 al-Malik al-Kamil, 116, 173, 269, 316 Malik Mansfir, Prince of Haniat, 207

al-MABAEi (Zain al-dln), 377 al-Mada'inJ, 179, 214, 215 Ma'dan ibn Kathlr al-Ballsl, 123
Maff/idzi, 174 al-Mahamill, 239

Malik Mans&r, Urtuqid Prince,

323, 337

119,

Mahan, father
77

of

Ibrahim al-Mausill,

Malik Mas'M Salah

bite Prince of

al-dln,

Ayytiof

Yemen, 112

Mahb<iba, singing-woman, 82 al-Mahdl, the Caliph, 17, 60, 66 sqq., 70, 74. 75. 77. 78, 142, 151. 23s al-Mahdl, Fatimid Caliph, 308" al-MahdS (Shaikh), 425, 426 Mahdt, the, 424 al-Mahdl li-dlnillah, 242 MahmM, Seljuqid Sultan, 97, 128 Malimlid Auls, 428 Malimtld ibn Nasr, Prince of Aleppo, 120 Mahmftd ibn 'Umar (Shaikh), 393 Malimdd Efendi Hamza, 421 Malimtld Efendi Mujlr, 427 Mahm<id,theGhaznavid, 105, 189,302 Malimtld al-Qftsl, 423 Rashad, 427

Malik Mu'ayyad Shaikh, Sultan

Egypt. 355

Malik Mu'azzam, the victor of Mansura, 117, 193 Malik al-Mu?affar, ]?rince of Hamat,
195

Malik Muzaffar Amir ibn Tahir, 374 Malik al-Muzaffar Ghazl, Prince of
Mayyafariqin, 207

Malik Nasir, 116, 200, 323, 327 Malik Nasir, Sultan of Egypt, 334 ??. 338'. 345. 370 Malik Nasir Abft'l-Mu?;affar Ydsnl,
Prince of Aleppo, 123

Malik Nasir, the AyyUbite, Prince

of

MahmM

Aleppo, 118 Malik Nasir Da'ftd, lord of Karak, 103

468

INDEX
Mas' Ad, SeljAqid Sultan,
,97

Malik Nasir Faraj, 352, 365 al-Malik al-Nasir Yflsuf, 121 Malik Shah, 106, 247, 269, 294 al-Malik al-Zahir, 169, 196, 201, 274 Malik ZShir. See Barq<iq and Jaqmaq.

Mas'ftd, Urtnqid Prince, 317 Prince, 112 Mas'ild, companion of the Prophet,

Mas'M, 'Uyllnid
182

Malik Zahir Tatar, Sultan

of

Egypt,

Mas'ftd al-Bayadi, 105 Mas'ftd al-Bilalt, 259

Mas'tidJ, 176, 182,

355 Ma'inar ibn al-Muthanna, I41

al-Ma'ra<in, the Caliph, 77, 78, 80, 88, 140, 147, 151, 176, 263, 281, 292

400
of,

Matlra,

meadows

near Samarra,

al-Ma'mdn, the Almohad, 129 al-Ma'mtin, the vizier, 28S Man, son of Za'ida, 70 Maudaites, 33 Manfred, King of Sicily, 195 Manger, 364 Mania or Mavia, Queen of the Saracens, 7

Malta ibn Yftnus, 282, 284 al-Maturldl, 264

Maulawy 'Abdu'1-Haqq, 253

Mavia. See Mania. Mawdlt, 103 al-Mawardi, 243
sister of'Abid, 23 al-Mazdlim, Court of Appeal, 85 al-Mazini, 146, 303 Mazliim (Mgr. Maximus), 421

Mawiyya,

Manjak, the Anilr, 330

Mansftr, the Caliph, 57, 64, 65, 151,

Mehren
415

(A. P.), 287, 290, 340, 342,

212 Fatimid Caliph, 95 Manstir, grandson of Saladin, 191 Mansflr ibn Ishilq, Siiioanid Prince, 308 al-Mansiir-billah, 252
154, 175, al-Mansftr,

Meissner, 2S7 Menelaus, 295 Meursinge, 368

Maqdma^ lecture, 1 33 al-Maqqari, 202, ^So sqq. MaqrSzl, 201, 347,335. 360 sqq., 365,
426
Maracci, 335

Michaud, 347 Mihyar ibn Marzftya, 86 Mlkha'll'Abd al-Sayyid, 441

MiUha'il Sabbagh, 411 Miqyds, Kilometer, 160 Mirdas, son of Abd'Amir, 28 Mirdas, family of. See Beni Mirdas. al-Mirdasi, 187 Mirza Kazhem {Kasem)-beg, 254, 443
al-MissisI,

Mardrus

Marcel (J.-J.), 413, 425, 426 (Dr.), 402

al-Marghinanl, 242 Margoliouth (D. S.), 170, 305 Marianus, the mnnk, 62, 313 Marida, slave of Hardn al-Eashid, 77 al-Marill, 394 al-MarrakushI, 294 Marthiya, elegy, 28 Ma'rdf and Fatima, 401 Marwan, 41, 51, 69 Marwan ibn Abi Hafsa, 69

94 Mon9a"da, 125 Mongols, III, 119, 186, 200, 305, 328, 334. 337

Montague (Wortley), 402

Month, the deaf (Rajab), 23
Moravids, 127, 232, 252, 265, 288, 392 Moses, 29 Moura (Fr. Joz^ de Santo Antonio),
334, 391

al-Marwazl (the minister), 236 Maryam Mizhir, 441 Maslama, son of Hisham, 59 Maslama al-Majrltl, 315 Masmflda, Berber tribe, 252 Masqueray, 202 Masriir, the eunuch, 401 Mas'^d, Ghaznavid Sultan, 302

Muadh

ibn Jaba], 40
10, 17, 26, 41, 59,

al-Mu'afa ibn Zakariyya, 241

Muallaqdt,

162

Mu'arrij ibn'Amr al-Sadfisl, 140 Mu'awiya, brother of al-Khansa, 28 Mu'awiya, the Caliph, 41, 46, 59, 60

al-Mu'ayyad-billah Husain, 242

Ahmad

ibn al-

INDEX
Mu'ayyid al-daula, 159
al-Mubarrad, 74, 146 sqq., 15S1 15^ Mubashshir ibn Fatik, 2S7 Mudar, pagans of, 24 ; tribes of, 58 al-Mufaddal al-Dabbi, 17, 60, 151 Mufaddaiiyydi, 17, 151 al-Mufld, 242 Muhalhil, inventor of the qafida, 12

469

Muhammad

ibn Ahmad al-Musta'mir (Qutrub), 140 Muhammad ibn 'All al-ZauzanI, 196 Muhammad ibn al- Amid, 134 Muhammad ibn Hablb, 141 Muhammad ibn Hani', 95 Muhammad ibn Ishaq of Nlshapftr,

264

Muhallab ibn Abl Sufra, 56

al-MuhallabI, the minister, 91, 93, 94. 184 Miihallek, 27 Muhammad, the Prophet. See Mahomet, Muhammad I., Ottoman Sultan, 363 Muhammad IV., Ottoman Sultan,

Muhammad ibn Muslim al-Zuhrl, 61 Muhammad ibn MustafS, ibn al-

Muhammad
248

Klioja Kamiil, 431 ibn al-Qasira al-Ghazzl, ibn Rahhal, 391 ibn Saww^r ibn

Muhammad Muhammad
119

Isra'il,

3S2

Muhammad
sanl, 123

ibn SulaimSn al-Tilimibn Sulaimin al-Tdnisl,

Muhammad
Muhammad,
woman, 87
345

V., Prince of Granada,

Muhammad
son
of

the

Hanafite

428

Muhammad
brother of Ismail ibn

ibn al-'Tayyib al-Qadirl,

ibn Umail, 314 ibn 'Umar al-Tdnisl, ibn U(hmS,n, 431
al-lskandarfi,nl,

Muhammad,
Y'asslr,

432

57

Muhamm.ad
son
of

Muhammad,
266

Malik Shah,

Muhammad
427

Muhammad,
siir,

son of the Caliph

Man-

Muhammad
Muhammad,

73

Muhammad Muhammad
la'wi,

Muhammad Muhammad Alawl-bey, 428 Muhammad 'AH, 422, 424 Muhammad Amin Fikrl-bey, 427 Muhammad 'Ayyad al-Tantaw!, 428 Muhammad Badr-bey al-Baqlt, 429 Muhammad al-Bakrt, 394
'

(Sultan) of Shlraz, 357 'Uyftnid Prince, 112 AbA Ua's al-Nasirl, 431

Muliammad Karama
433

421 al-'AU al-Dih-

Muhammad Khrin Shaibanl, 372 Muhammad al-Khayyanil, 440 Muhammad al-Mubarak al-Jaza'iri,
422

Muhammad-bey

FarSd, 42^

Muhammad al-Bilbaist, 397 Muhammad al-Bukharl, 178 Muhammad al-Bursawl.qadl of Cairo,

378

Muhammad Pacha Eaghib, 332 Muhammad Qablh, 430 Muhammad al-Rida, 85 Muhammad Rifat, 429 Muhammad al-SanAsl, 430 Muhammad al-Shaibanl, 236 sqq. Muhammad Sharbatli, 440 Muhammad Siddlq Hasan Khan,

Muhammad Muhammad Muhammad

rawi,

Efendi Abidin, 422 Efendi Haraid, 427 Efendi Kamil al-KafHilal Efendi, 435 ibn al- Abbas al-YazidI,

428

Muhammad Muhammad
147

Muhammad Sftd, 396 Muhammad al-Tijanl, 430 Muhammad 'Uthman Jalal, 423 Muhammad al-Yamanl al-Shauqanl,

432.434

Muhammad
ibn Abdallah, 236 ibn 'Abd al-Karlm
al-

433

Muhammad Muhammad

MughJlI, 393 Muhammad ibn Abl Hafs, 204

Zafir, 434 al-Muhaqqiq, 254 al-Muhasibl, 270 Muhib'b al-din Ibn Shihna, 358 al-Muhibbl, 384, 385

470
Miihibbt al-Tabarl, 319 al-Muhtadl, 236

INDEX
al-dln

Muhyt
1,93

Ab^'l-Fadl

al-Sa'dl,

Mu'In al-dln Ahmad ibu 'Abd alRazzaq al-TantaranJ, 98 al-Mu'izz, F^timid Caliph, 95, 96,
187, 242, 361

al-Muizz ibn Badis, 124, 172 Mujlr al-dln, 373 Mujlr al-dln of Ascalon. See alQadt al-Fadil. Mukliammasdt, 103 Mukhariq, the singer, 75 al-Mukhtar al-Musabbilil, 201 Mukhtar Pacha, 428 al-Muktafl, 163, 182, 214 Muley Abd'l-' Abbas al-Mansftr, 390 Muley Ahmad, uncle of Muley Hasan, 436

Muley Ismail, 391 Muley Muhammad, 390 Muley Zldan, 395

Muller(A.), 196, 197, 306 Miiller (D. H.), 301 al-Mundhir III. and IV., Hira, 12

Mflsa ibn'TJqba ibn Abl'l- Ayyash, 175 Mus'ab, brother of 'Abdallah ibn Zubair, 47 al-Musabbihl, 201 Musailima, false prophet, 40 Mushidd, inspector, 121 Muslim ibn al-Walid, 55, 72, 79, 87 Muslim (Abd'l-Ghana'im), 112 Muslim, the lawyer, 218, 219 Alusnad, 217, 221, 223, 235, 240, 318 ^ Mustafa I., Ottoman Sultan, 383 Mustafa of Tashkopri, 375 Mustafa 'Alawl-bey, 427 Mustafa Efendi al-Babl, 331 Mustafa Bfendi Shauql, 427 Mustafa Hasan Kass^b, 429 al-Musta'in, 'Ahbasid Caliph, 81, iSo al-Mustakfl, Omeyyad Caliph in Spain, 126 al-Mustamsik, 'Abbasid Caliph at Cairo, 368 al-Mustanjid (the Caliph), 163, 190 al-Mustaiisir-billah, Hafsid Sovereign of Tunis, 125, 202, 205

Kings

of

Mustansir al-Hakam (the

l6t

Caliph),

Mundhir, son
31

of

Ma'ul-sama, 23, 29,

al-Mnndhirl, 231, 238 Mu'nis, the eunuch, 84

(S.l, 313 al-Muqaddasl, 301 al-Muqtadl, 244 al-Muqtadir, 84, 147, 148, 1S2, 293,

Mimk

Mustaqlm-Zade, 253 al-Mustasim, 'Abbasid Caliph, 207, 306 Mustazhir (the Caliph), 247 Mustazhirl, 247
Mu'tadid, 82, 84, 127, 147, 283, 292,

299/315 Mutahhar ibn Tahir al-Maqdisl,

291, 301

284,

300 Muqtadir, Prince of Saragossa, 262 Murad III., 377 Murjites, 263 Murray (W.), 338 al-Murtada (the Sharif), 253 Murtada al-Zabldl (Sayyid), 389 al-Murtadl, title of Ibn al-Mu'tazz, 84
Mfi^a (the Imam), 85 Mflsa, name of the Caliph al-Hadt, 78 Mtlsa ibn Abl Bakr, the Ayydbite,

Mutalammis, uncle of Tarafa, 14 Mu'tamid (the Caliph), 82

al-Mu'tamid, Caliph of Spain,
sqq.

125

Mutammim

ibn Nuwaira, 44
156, 165,

Mutanabbl, 83, 90 sqq., 96, 172, 260, 328, 414

208
M<lsa ibn Da'fld, 66 Mft^a ibn Shakir, the three sons
of,

al-Mutarriz, 153 al-Mutarrizl, 169 Mu'tasim (the Caliph), 78, 79, 88, 140, 240, 281, 282, 306, 307 al-Mutawakkil (the Caliph), 8l sqq., 152, 180, 213, 240, 263, 281, 2S3, 285, 307 al-Mutawakkil, Sultan of Tilimsan,

292

371

INDEX
Mu'tazilites, 62, 68, 80, 99, 168, 169,

471
al-Arraja,nl,

Nasih al-dln

no

263, 264

al-Mutazz, 84, 152, 180 Mutf ibn Ayas, 65 al-Muwaffac|, son ot Mutawakkil, l8o

Muwaffaq

al-dln al-Maqdisl,
103, 129

250

Muwashskah,

al-Muwatla', 236 Muzaffar al-diii ibn al-Aftas, King of Badajoz, 232 Muzaflfar al-din Klikburi, 102 Muzaffar al-din Sad ibn Zang}, atabek of Fars, III Muzaffariyya (inadrasa), 197 JVJuzaina, tribe of, 15, 43 al-MuzanI, 23S

Nasir li-dlnillah (the Caliph), lOI, 104, 112 Nfcir al-dln, Prince of Mosul, 169 Nisir al-dln Tflsl, 254, 321 Nasr ( Jalal al-daula). Prince of Aleppo, 120 Nasr al-dln Mukram ibn al-'AU,

no
Nasr ibn Sayyar, 57 Nassau Lees, 368 Nat&\j al-Fltna, 108
al-Nawajl, 398 Navvar, cousin of JTerazdaq, 51 al-Nawawl, 249 Nehawend, battle of, 53 Nessus, legend of the robe of, 12
NlqAla'fls al-Sa'igh, NIshapflrl, 256

Nabatkans, 314
Beni Shaiban, 54 Nabigha Dhubyaul, 10, 12, 15, 23, 26, 30 Nabigha al-Ja'dt, 54 Nadir, Jewish tribe, 29 Nadr ibn Harith, 32 Nadr ibn Shnmail, 14O al-Nahlias (AbA Ja'far), 160 al-Nahrawall, 377
Nabiglia of
tlie

389

Nix (L.), 293 Nizam al-dln Hasan ibn Muhammad

of Nlshapftr,'i6o

Najdlyydt, 108 Najuj al-din Abfl 'l-Ma'alt ibn 119

98, 106, 107, no, 244, 245, 265 Nizamiyya (University), 109, in, 162 sqq., 189, 191, 244, 247, 251, 265, 267 Nizamiyya (College) at Ispahan,

Nizam al-Mnlk,

no

Isra'!!,

Najm al-din Ahmad al-HarranI, 342 Najm al-dln Ayyftb, father of Saladin,
190

Noel des Vergers, 338, 353 Nointel (Marquis de), 402 Noldeke (Th.), 71 Normans, the, 125

Noskowyj
al-dln
Ja'far
al-Hilll
al-

(Paul), 361
of

Najm

Nudhar, daughter
341

AbH Hayyan,

Muhaqqiq, 254 Najm al-dSn Kubra, 276 Najm al-dln al-Nasafl, 268 Najran, Bishop of, 26 Nakoula al-Turk, 413 Nallino, 296, 297 al-Nami, 93 Nannestad Boyeen, 148 Naqqash (Nicolas), 420 Naqshbandls, 329 al-Nasafl (Najm al-dln), 268 al-NasafJ (Biirhin al-dln), 290 al-Nasafl (AbA'l-Barakat), 337 al-Nasa'l, 220
al-Nasawl, 193 al-Nashl al-Akbar, 151; Nashwan ibn Said al-Himyarl, 171 Naslf al-Yazijl, 414

Ndh, son

of Mansflr,

Samanid Prince,

286 Nflh II., SimSnid Prince, 316 Numairl, 55, 126 Numan, son of al-Mundhir, King of
HIra, 31

Nu'man AbH QabAs, King of Hlra, 12 NUr al-dln (the atabek), 190, 192, 194
N<ir al-dln, 378

Ndr

al-dln

Muhammad
;

al-Is'irdi,

118

Ntlriyya (school), 199

(hospital), 360;

362 Nusair al-Hammaml, 325 Nusairis, 123, 335, 418 Nflshtakin, father of Ibn al-Ta'awldhl, 100
al-Nuwairl, 339

472
Oestrup (J.), 187 Old Testament, 25, 282 Omeyyads, 46 sqq., 57, 60,
66, 97, 108, 109, 184,

INDEX
Qais, son of al-Khat!m, 27 Qais, father of al-A'slia, 26
61, 64, 65,

234

Oppas, Gothic King, 188 'Osman, son of Ertoglirul, 376 Ostrorog (Count), 244 Otter, 339

Palmer

(E. H.), 115

Patomi (F.), 431 Payne (John), 402

Perowne, 3S7 Perron (Dr.), 341. 344, 370, 380,409, 427 Pertsch, 276
Petermaiin, 377 Pe'".is de la Croix, 402 Phoenicians, the, 139 Pinto (L.), 136, 171

Qais ibn Dharth, foster-brother of Husain, 47 Qais ibn Mulawwah (Majn^n), 47 Qait-bai, Mameluke Sultan, 332, 371 Qalanisiyya, 360 al-Qalbaqji (Muhammad Efendi), 42t al-Qali, 161, 188 al-Qalqashandl, 201, 358 Qamar al-Zaman, 401

QdmtU, 388
Qansflh al-Ghflrl, 375 al-Qaramini, 379 Qaraqlish, the vizier, 202 al-Qartajini, 125 al-Qasim ibn Pirroh al-Sh4tibi, 259 al-Qasim ibn IbrahJm al-HasanI, 24I al-Qisim ibn Sallam, 144 Qasim ibn 'Ubaidallah (the vizier),

Platen (O. von), 377 Plato, 243, 282, 284 Plato Tiburtius, 296 Pococke, 97, 187, 210, 266, 288, 327 Podestii (J. B.), 378 Porphyry, 281, 290 Prasauma Kumar Sen, 243 Prideaux, 171 Ptolemy, 160, 203, 28lj 292, 297, 311, 322 Purchas, 209

282
al-Qastallan!, 373

al-Qattan, 239

al-Qazwint (Jamal al-din Abft 'Abdallah), 318 al-Qazwini (Zakariyya), 301, 306
Qilawiin, Sultan, 347 al-Q6nawi, 278 Quatremfere (Etienne), 327, 353, 361, 412 al-Qudal, 205 Qudama, 300 al-QudCirtj 236

Qabado
al-Qadl

(Mahrnftd), 430
al-A'azz,
113.

See

Ibn

Querry

(A.),

254
Ja'far),

Qaliiqis.

al-Qummi (Abd

242

al-QadI al-Fadil Mujir al-dln, minister to Saladin, 1 1 4, 1 91 Qadt Khan Mahir)tld of Delhi, 377 al-Qadl al-Sa'ld,' title of Ihn Sana alMuik, 114 al-Qadir (the Caliph), 312
Qadiris,

Quraish, tribe of, Quraishites, 25, 40, 46, So, 108 Quraiza, Jewish tribe, 29
al-Qushairi, 178, 271, 272 Qusta ibn L<iqa, 281, 322 Qutaiba ibn Muslim (the general), 54

Qadiriyya (religious order),

of,

al-Qutami, 55

273. 329

Qidisiyya, battle

44 Q.ihir'jthe Caliph), 293 Qahtan, 4 Qalitanid, the, who announces the Last Judgment, 55 al-Qa'im (tlie Caliph), 227 Qaiiuiz, Prince of Mosul, 229
Qais, descent from, 21 Qais, chief of the tribe of 'Abs, 13

Qutb al-diii 'Abd al-Karim, 357 Qutba ibn Aus al-Hadira, 22

Qutrub, 140, 141
al-Kabi', son of Ab<l*l-Huqaiq, Jewish poet, 29 Kabl'a, father of Labid, 41 Kadi al-din al-AstarabadI, 399

Radi

al-din al-TabarsI, 254 Rala'il Efendi Zind, 440

INDEX
al-Raffa (al-Sar!), 93

473

al-Raghib al-Isbahanl, 167, 325 Eajhib Pachaj 225 al-Kahman, one of the names of God, 39

al-SabI, 134 Sabiaiis, ^^, 134

Itahmanl (Louis), 419 Rajab, month of, 24

Rakftsiyya, sect of, 33

Sab'iniyya, 290 Sabuktakin, father of Mahmftd the Ghaznavid, jo:, 189 Sabtlr, father of Hauimad al-Rawiya,

59

RamadSn,

49 Ilasis, Croiiica del Moro, 188 Raspail, 310 Rat (G.), 398 Ravaisse (P. ), 369 Ravins, 316
al-Razt

fast of,

Sachau (E.), 163, 199, 302 Sacy (Silvestre de), 20, 26,

98, 135,

171, 305, 338, 339. 360, 361. 3!^-. 411, 412, 414 Sad ibn al-IIashraj, 24

Sad

ibn ZangI, atAbek of Fars, ill Sa'd al-daula 'All ibn Munqidh, 123
al-Sadafi, 297

(Muhammad

ibn Zakariyya),

307
al-Razi (Fakhr al-dln), 320 Reinaud, 338, 340, 347, 437 Reiske, 127, 338

Sadaqa al-Mazyadi, 107

Persian poet, III ('Abd al-Rahman), 396 al-Sddih wal-hdghim^ 107 Sadr al-din al-Basrl, 123 Sadr al-dln al-Q6nawi, 278 Safadl, 122, 326, 343, 365 al-Saft'drl, 348 Safl al-din "Abdallah ibn Shukr, 201 Safl al-dln al-Hilll, 323 l^a/idh, the, of al-Jauharl, 158 Sahih, the, of Bukharl, 217 3175,, 223, 225 ()f Muslim, 218 sqq.j 223 Sahl ibn 'Abdallah al-Tustari, 256 Sahl ibn Muhammad, 145 Sahnfln, qadi of QairawAn, 237, 393 Said ibn'Airir, 142 Said ibn al- As, 51 Sa'id ibn al-Batriq, 187 Sa'ld ibn Humaid, 81 Sa'id ibn al-Kh1\ri, 390, 417 Sa'id ibn Mas'ada al-Akhfash, 143 Sa'id, son of Malik Shah, 97 Saif ibn Dhl Yazan, King of Yemen, 25 Saif Dliu^l-Yazan, romance of, 408
Sa'dl,

al-Sa'di

Reland, 289

Renan

(Ernest), 137

(.1.), 370 Rhazca, 306, 307 Ridvvan Pacha, 329 Rifaa, Shaikh, 413 Rifaiyya (religious order), loi, 270,

Reynolds

434
Rijik, 361

al-Riydshi, 145

Roesner (Fr.), 294 Rohrig (Otto), 420

Jiomancc of Antar, Roorda, 166
'

13, 403,

438

Rof^ario Gregorio, 345

Rosen, 314 Rowlandson, 377

al-Ru'aai, 150 RuM)a, son of al-'Ajjaj, 53

Rilckert (F.), 17 Rudloff, 2^4

Rukn al-daula, Buwaihid Prince,

159,

308 al-Rummani, 149 Rumsey (A.), 243 Rushaid Dahdah, 390, 416 Rustam, father of Ibn al-Saatl, 117 Rutgers, 379 al-Rftyanl, 246 Rtizbih, name of Ibn al-MuqafEa', 211
al-SnV
at-

Sarf al-daula. 91, 92, 93, 130, 134, 150, 184, 185, 2S3 Saif al-dln Arghtin, 341 Saif al-dln Manjak, 346 Saif al-dln Mushidd, 121 Saif aZ-Tijdn^ romance of, 409 St. John Baptist, Christian disciples
of. 33.

134
of

St.

John

Damascus, 62

Alawiyydf, 104
4,

St. Louis, 116 St. Nilus, the hermit, 7

Saba (Sheba),
31

474
Saf, rhymed prose, S al-Sajawandl, 243

INDEX
Schultsns (Albert), 192, 338, 339

Schultens(H. A.), 168

Sebokht, 139
Sedillot, 194, 195

Sakhawl, 192, 260, 374 Sakhr, brother of al-Khansa, 28 al-Sakka,kl, 169

Saladin, 113 sqq., 123, 169, 189 sqq., 230, 248, 275, 313, 326, 337, 378 Salhani, 210 Silih ibu Ishaq, 145 Sdlih ibn Yahya, 354

Selim

I., 3751 Seljilqids, the, 98, 190, 244, 246, Septuagint, the, 282

259

Sallm Bisteris, 417 Sallm !F^ris, 416, 440 Saltm Taqla, 441 Salisbury (E.), 335, 418 Salma, wife of 'Urwa, 21 Salverda de Grave, 168 Sam'4ni, 198, 207, 368, 387 Samdnids, the, 224, 300 Samar, evening tales, 32 al-Samarqandi, 264, 290 Samaual, 11, 29, 70 al-SamliMl, 371
a]-Sdml, surname of "All ibn

Jahm,

80 See Samuel, Prince of Taim^ Samaual. Sanhaja, Berber tribe, 392 Santf a, Shaikh, 443 Sara, daughter of King Oppae the
Goth, 188
al-SarakhsI, 283 al-Saraqostt, 258 al-Sari al-Raff4, 93 Sari' al-Ghavt^anl (al-Qutami),

55

(Muslim), 72
Sarkis (Ivhalll), 419, 439 al-Sarllji, 325
S,sanians, the, 2, 6, 31,

the, 79 Seybold, 164, 369 al-Shabb al-Zarlt, 123 Shaddad, father of Autara, 13 al-Shadhili, 278 Shddhiliyya {religious order), 278, 434 al-Shafi'i, no, 227, 232, 237 sqq., 247, 321, 344. 357 Shati'ites, 237 sqq. Shaflq-bey Mansflr, 427 al-Shah, 148 Sha.h SafI, Safavid Prince, 332 Shahln Makdrios, 441 al-Shahrast4ni, 268, 376 al-Shahrazllrl al-Ishraql, 291 al-Shaibant (I^hiq ibn Mirar), 151 al-Shaibani (Muhammad), 236 sqq. Shaikh 'Adi, 272 Shaikh Maqtfll, 275 Shaikh Rifaa, 413 Shaikhflniyya (madrasa), 367 Shdir, the, 7, 8 Shams al-daula, Buwaihid Prince, 286 Shams al-din, Emir of Yemen, 379 Shams al-din AbA 'Abdallah Suyiiti, 369 Shams al-din al-Dimashqi, 340 Shams al-din al-Khaffaf, 124

Seven Sleepers,

Shams Shams
290

al-din

Muhammad,

the

preacher of Wasit, 329

al-din

63

Muhammad

Juwaini,

Satan, 68 Sauvaire (H.), 359. 374 SawHr ibn Aufd ibn al-Hayd, 54 Sayyid, the Himyarite, 86, 222

Sayyid Sayyid Sayyid Sayyid

Efendi'Azml, 424 Efendi Muhammad, 429 Efendi Tanfiq, 427 Sulaimiin ibn Siy^m, 430

al-din al-Waiz al-Kflfi, 104 Shanfara, 19, 97, 23S Sharaf ibn As'ad al-Misri, 326 Sharaf al-din, Emir of Aleppo, 346 Sharaf al-din AnosharwtLn, 190 Sharaf al-din Muhammad al-BAsiri,

Shams

"5
al-Sha'rani, 379

Sohefer (collection), 148

Schelljerup, 296 Schiaparelli, 125 Sohlozer, 301

Sharif al-Milsawl, 120 Sharif al-Ridii, 85, 85

al-Sharishi, 260 al-Shashi, 247 al-Shatibi, 259, 260

Sohmoldera, 267, 287, 321 Schreiner, 321

INDEX
al-Shawwa, Ii8 Sheherazade, 400 Shihab al-dln Ahmad
al-Suhaill al-Khath'aml, 261
al-Tatilrt,

475

365

ShiliElb al-din al-Ghazzanial-Marjilnl,

433 Shihab al-dla al-Hijazl, 423 Shihab al-din ibn'al-Khayydt, 109 Shihab al-dSn Mahmdd, 194 Shihab al-din al-SuhraVvardl (Ab4 Hafs'Umar), 276
Shi'hab al-din al-Suhrawardi

(Yahya

ibn Habash), 274

al-Suhrawardi (Diya al-dln), 274, 276 al-Suhrawardi (Shihab al-diu Abft Hafs'Umar), 276 al-Suhrawardi (Shihab al-dln Yaliya), called Shaikh Maqtftl, 274 Suhuf, scrolls of Abraham, 34 Sukkari, 17, 18, 146 Saia (Sulaiman), 420 Sulaiman I. (the Sultan), 376 sqq. Sulaiman Efendi of Adaua, 418 Sulaiman al-Hara'iri, 204, 433, 438

Shihab 'al-diu al-Talla'fari, 122 Shihab al-diu Ydsuf ibn Ismail

Sulaiman ibn Ihlaf al-MazatS, 'Ibadalite

Shaikh, 202

Shawwa, IlS
Shl'ites, 40, 57, 80, 241, al-Shlrizi, 244

252

al-Shuqratisi, 125 Shu'tlbiyya, 57, 89, 141, 159, 168, 184

Sulaiman al-Nahwl, Shaikh, 389 Sulaiman Pacha, 378 Sulaimaniyya (TJaiversity) at Mecca, 378 al-Sulami, 269
Sulma,
al-S{lll,

Si

Ahmad Walad

Qadi, 430

sister of Zuhair, 15

Sibawaih, 139 sqq., 144, 146, 150, 156 Sibt ibn al-Jauzl, 207 SlbAya, 1 39 Siddhdnfa, 292 Sidi Khalil, 343, 392, 393 Siddlq Hasan Khan (Muhammad), 432, 434 Siffin, battle of, 45 al-Silafi, 229 Sim'au Ishaq al-Qudsi, 422 Sinan, son of Thabit ibn Qurra, 293 Sindn Paoha, 378 Sindbad the Sailor, 401 Siqt al-Zand, 99 Sir ibn Abi Bakr, 127 Siraj al-din 'Umar ibn Mas'ftd, 325 Siraj al-din al-Ushi, 269 Siraj al-dln al-Warraq, 122
"

182
vizier),

Sai'-Takin, ancestor of al-SAll, 182

Sumairami(the
aZ-Suraiit,

97
for

another MuaUaqdi, 10

name

the

Sunan, 219
Sunni'Ali, 393 Sunnites, 86 Suraij ibn Muhriz, musician, 48 Siiras of the Koran, 34, 35, 37 Surr Ba'r, 105 Surr Durr, loj
Suyiiti, 162, 199, 202, 240, 266, 318,

342, 349, 366 sqq., 374, 377, 393,

394

Ta'abbata Sharean,

al-Sirafi, 149,

57

SlanB(Mao-Gucl<inde), 130, 186, 198,

303. 338, 339. .353. 391

18, 19 al-TabaranI, 225, 359 Tabari, 179, 181,207,241,255,256,338 al-Tabarsi, 254

Snouck Hurgronje, 336

Soerensen, 343

al-Tabrizl, 89, 192 Tadfts, the druggist, father of

Aba

Solomon, 6 Sontheimer Sozomen, 7

(J.

von), 316

Spiridion Sarrflf, 422 Spitta (W.'), 297 Sprenger, 34, 186, 253, 301, 357, 370 Steinschneider, 251

Tammam, 88 Taghlib, tribe of, 48, 54 al-Tahav/i (Abd Ja'far), 236 Tahir, governor of Khurasan, 80 Tahir, father of Muhamma,d al-Kida,
85 Tahir ibn

Muhammad,

131

Stephen of Antioch, 309 Safls, 270

Tahirids, 139 Tai, tribe of, 83, 97 TaifUr, 178

476

INDEX
Tizan&ba,d, vines of, 73 iVrd (Pentateuch), 36

Tdj al-'Ards, 389 Taj al-daula, Buwaihid Prince, 286 Taj al-din'Abdal-Wahhab, 364
Tfij al-din

Tornberg, 207, 334, 342

MuhaHimad, III

Taj al-din of Sarkhad, 123 Taj al-Mulk ibn Ddrest, 106 Tahhmls, 115
al-Talla'fari, 122

Tnssoun Pacha, 425 Triebs (F.), 269 Triimpp, 387

T.ich (Fr.), 385 Ty,ghyd (official stamp), 97

Tamerlane, l85, 352, 356, 363, 364, 378, 388, 408

Tughra

i,

97
1

Tughtakin (atabek),
TftKlnids, 94, 1S7

19

Tamim,
50,52

race

of,

16

tribe of, 25, 44,

Tnmadir (al-Khansi), 28
Tfitnan-Bai, 367

Tamlin, son of al-Mu'izz, 95 TannAs ibn YHsuf al-Shidyaq, 419 al-Tantarani, 98 Tanftkii, tribe of, 30, 98 al-Tantlkhi, 215 Taqt al-din 'All al-Subkt, 388

Turkan KhatAn, wife

lo5
al-Turtftshi ibn
al-tutill, 126
al-Tfizari, 125

of

Malik Shah,

Abi Randaqa, 287

TaqI al-din al-Fasi, 359

Taqlfl (Salim), 441

Tycho Brahe, 297

Tychseii, 361

Tarafa, 10, 14, 152 Tarjt, (Echo Ode), 98

Tarrago, 318
Ta,3hifln ibn 'Ali, Prince of

Granada,

203
TtLshkopri-zade, 376 Tatar, slave of Ibn Miinir, 120 Tauba ibn al-PIumayyir, 53

'Ubaid, the camel-herd, 52 Ubaidallali, father of Ibn al-Ta'awIdhi 100 'Ubaidallah of .Ttizajan, 286 'Ubaidallah ibn MuzaiTar, 128
'

Ubayy
40

ibn Ka'b, disciple of Mahomet,

Tewfik Pacha, 424

Thaalibi, 92, 93, 106, 132, 165, 191,

'XJkaz, fair of, 27 al-'XJkbarl, 164, 304

Uljaitfi, Mongol Sultan, 337 "Umair ibn Shuyaim al-Qutami, 54

417 Thabit ibn Jabiral-Fahmi, sumamed Ta'abbata Sharran, 18, 19 Thabit ibn Nasr, 144 Thabit ibn Qurra, 292, 293, 297, 322 Thaddeus. See TadAs. Tha'Iab, 152, 153, 156 Tha'labI, 260

TJinama, daughter of Dhli'l-Asba'al'Adwani, 22 "Unjar (the Caliph), 15, 40, 44 sgq.,

137. 326, 377 II., 47, 52, 6r, 401 'Ulnar Efendi al-' Attar, 421 'Umar ibn Abi Rabl'a, 46 Umar ibn Aftas, governor of Evora, 127 'Umar ibn al-'AlS, governor of Tabari-

'Umar

Thamdd,

tribe of Thamftdites,

3,

37

of, 18, 44 Theodosius (the bishop), 282 Theodosius, 295, 322 Tholuok, 357 Thorbecke, 17, 412 Thousand and One Nights, the, 399 al-Tifashl, 316 al-Tih^ml, 96 al-TilimsanI, 123 Tilmldh al-KindS, 283

Thaqif, tribe

stan, 75

"Umar ibn al-Farid, 114, 330 'Umar ibn al-HusainI, 103 'Umar al-Kliayy^m, 294 'Umar al-Numin, 401 'Umar ibn Shabba, 177 'Umara of Yemen, 200
al-'Umart (Ibn Fadlallah), 326

Tirimmah,

58, 59 al-Tirmidhi, 220, 261 Titus, 28

Umayya ibn Abi'1-Salt, 25, 30, 34 'Uqail, tribe of, 69

INDEX
Uqba
ibn Ja'far al-Khuza'l, 87
al-tJrraawl, 290

477

Urwa, son of Zubair, 56 'Urwa ibn al-Ward, 20

Usaid, son of Dhft'1-Asba' al-'Adwant, 22 Usaid, son of Jabir, 20 Usfl.ma iba Munqidh, 103, 194 al-CTshS, 269 XTshkunwEln, fortress of, III 'Utarid ibn Muhammad, 315 'Utba, slave of al-Mahdl, 74 al-'Utbl, 131, 189, 316

'Uthm^n

(the Caliph), 34, 40, 41, 45,

46, 69, 70, 146, 254

al-Washsha, 155 Wasif, slave of Dik al-Jiun, 90 Wasil ibn 'Ata,, 62, 68, 263 al-Wathiq (the Caliph), 146, 213, 240, 307 al-Watwat (Jamai al-din), 397 al-Wa'wa', 99 al-Wazlr al-Maghribl, 226 Weijers, 127 Weil (G.), 168, 175 Wellhausen, 18 Wetzer, 360 Wetzstein, 168 White (J.), 305 William II., Norman King of Sicily,

"Uthmin ibn Said al-Da,nl, 258 'Uthmdn Khalisa, 329

Uyiinids, family
of,

"3
Woepcke, 293, 294 Wright (W.), 304, 382
Wiistenfeld, 148, 154, 175, 177, 198, 20 1, 249, 303, 306, 342, 359, 360, 361, 372, 378,
al-

112

Valeton, 166
Vattier (P.), 209, 312, 362 Veth, 199, 368 Victim of the fair, name given to Qutamt and Muslim, 72

Xekophon, 243
singer of Mecca, 58 Efendi, Shaikh al-IsUm, 331 ibn Adam ibn Sulaim^n, 241 Yahyfl, ibn Aftas, 127 YahyS, ibn Kh^lid, the Barmakide, 176 Yahya ibn M4sawaih, 281, 307 Yahya ibn ZakariyyS,, Shaikh alIslam, 384 YahyS, al-MasmfidI, 237

Vloten (G. van), 214, 316

Volck, 171
Vollers, 202, 358

YAHTi,

Yahya Yahya

Vos

(G.),

361

Wafaydtal-Aydn, 197 al-Wafrani, 391 Wahb ibn Munabbih, 6 Wahbl Efendi (Tadurus), 429 Wahhabts, the, 425, 431 al-Wahidl, 260
Wahl,'305 Waij4n ibn Rustam al-KAhl, 296
al-Wa'i? al-EAfl, 104
al-\va'i? al-"Witrl, 104

Wajdiyydt, 1 08 Waliba, master of Abft Nuw4s, 71 Walid ibn'Ubaid al-Buhturl, 83 VValld II. ibn Yazid, Omeyyad
Caliph, 31, 48, 54, 56, 58, 65, 71 Wallaiia, daughter of the Caliph al-

the Ghaznavid), 189 Ya'qflb al-Hadrami, 255 Ya'qfib ibn Akhi Hizam, 315 Ya'qtib ibn Da'Ad,' 68 Ya'qftb ibn Ish4q al-Kindl, 283 Ya'q-ab ibn Manstir, Sultan of
'

Yahya al-Sarsari, 104 Yamiu al-daula (Mahm<id

Morocco, 261

YaqAb
2S9

Ya'qflb Jirjis 'Awwad, 422 al-MansAr, Almohad Prince,

Mustakfl, 126 Wallin, 171 Wanand, grandfather of al-Dluawarl, 154 al-Waqidi, 175 Warda, daughter of Nakoula al-

Ya'qftb Sarrtif, 441 al-Ya'qUb!, 298 YaqAt, the geographer,

300, 301, 304 Yaqdt al-Musta'simI, 21

112,

78,

Turk, 413

Yarbtf tribe
,

of,

44

478
Yathrib,
27- 33

INDEX
ancient

name

of

Medina,

Yaiimat al-dahr, 92, 106 Yazld, son of Mu'iwiya, 49, 60 Yazld II., 62

Yazid ibn Mazyad

Zaiu al-'Abidin, 51 at- A sndim, 402 Zain al-din Katakit, 122 Zain al-dln Tahir, son of Ibn Hablb, 347

Zain

(the general), 73 al-Yazidi, family of, 147

Yazldis, the, 272 Yemenites, the, 58 Yezdegird III., 212 YAhann.l ibn Batiiq, 281 Ytinns (Jonas), Persian singer, 48 Yftnus ibn Hablb, 138 Yasuf, Almohad Prince, 288 Yljlsuf al-A'lam of Santa Maria, 17 YAsuf al-Aslr, 419, 421 Yllsuf Butrus Karam, 433 YAsuf Efendi Asaf, 440 Yftsuf ibn H4nln al-Ramadi, 126 Yljlsuf ibn al-Hasan of Sinjar, 197

Zainab, sister of al-Hajjaj, 55 Zairids, 124 Zajal, 128

256 Zamakhsharl, 167 s?^., 262 Zand ibn al-Jauu (AbA I)ul4ma), 66
al-Zajjaj, 147, 160,

Zanj, 145, 148

al-Zarntijl,

289

Ziegler, 268 Zinat al-dahr^ 98 Zindlq, 66, 68 ZiyS.d, brother of Mu'^wiya, Ziyad, governor of 'Iraq, 51

60

Yfisuf ibn Tashifin,

125,

126,

127,

265
Zab, battle of the great, 63 Zabban ibn Sayy4r, 22 al-Zafir (Fatimid Cab'ph), 191, 229
Z3.Hr (Muhammad), 434 Zafir al-Haddad, 121 al-Zahl 'All ibu Ishaq, 94 al-Za,hir (Fatimid Caliph), 206
al-Z4hirl,

Ziy4d ibn Sulaim4n, 56 Ziydddt, loi Ziyildat Allah III., Aghlabite Prince, 307. 308 Zotenberg (H.), 166, 402, 403
al-Zubaidl (AbA Bakr), i6l Zubair, family of, 175 al-Zubair ibn B.akkar, 179
al-Zubairi, 238 Zubairids, 56 Ziihair (Baha al-dln), 115, 117

369

Zahirites, 240, 250, 277 Zaid ibn Thabit, 36, 40 Zaidites, sect of the, 241, 252, 378

Zuhair ibn Abl Sulm^ 26,153 Zuhair ibn Janab, 8 al-Zuhrl, 61, 236, 303
al-Zujiiji,

10,

15,

16,

157

(1)

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exceptionally clear and exact.

Classical

Roman

Dictionary of Greek and Biography, Mythology, and

Geography.
Based on the larger dictionaries by the late Sir William Smith, D. C. L., LL. D. Revised throughout and in part rewritten by G. E. Marindin, M."A., Cambridge. With numerous maps and illustrations. 8vo. Half morocco, $6.00.

The "Classical Dictionary," of which this book is a revision, was designed by the late Sir William Smith for schools, and as a compendious reference book. The historical articles include Greek and Latin writers from the earliest times down to the fall of the Western Empire, The literary articles cover all authors whose works are A. D. 476. In this revision the extant, and all others who influenced literature. immense advances in classical philology have been utilized. This Many new plans applies particularly to mythology and typography. and maps have been inserted. This book is an indispensable companion to the student in reading the Greek and Latin authors.

D.

APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

A MAGNIFICENT WORK.
The Living Races
By H. N. Hutchinson, B
Gregory, D. Sc,
S.,

of Mankind,
A., F. R. G. S., F. G. S.; J.
;

W.

F. G. S.

and R. Lydekker,

F. R.

F. G.

S.,

F. Z. S., etc.;

Assisted by Eminent Spe-

cialists.

A Popular

Illustrated

Account of

the Customs,

Habits, Pursuits, Feasts, and Ceremonies of the Races

of

from

Mankind throughout the World. One volume, royal Life.

600 Illustrations
8vo.

$5.00 net

postage. 65 cents additional.

The

publication of this
at this

opportune

down

barriers

magnificent and unique work is peculiarly moment, when the trend of political expansion is breaking between races and creating a demand for more intimate

knowledge of the various branches of the human family than has ever
before existed.

he is well known as a and has been engaged for several years in collecting the vast amount of material (much of it having been obtained with great difficulty from remote regions) herewith presented. The pictures speak for themselves, and certainly no such perfect or complete
Mr. H. N. Hutchinson
is

the

{general editor

fertile writer

on anthropological

subjects,

races has ever before been attempted. The been prepared so as to appeal to the widest public possible. In " The Living Races of Mankind " attention is confined to a popular account of the existing peoples of the world. The various authors describe how the widely scattered members of the great fraternity live what they
series of portaits of living

letter-press has

do

their habitations, dress, ornaments,

;

and weapons

their religious feasts,

ceremonies, and superstitions

their general

characteristics,

manners, and

customs

in their daily relations

with one another.

are
a.

The superb

illustrations

new

departure,

and form a most

reproductions of
likely to

important feature.

They

are accurate

and

beautiful

photographs from life and they form a collection not again in the course of the coming century.

be secured

D.

APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.