1. Koranic Exegesis (‘Ilmu ’l-Tafsír).

2. Koranic Criticism (‘Ilmu ’l-Qirá’át).

3. The Science of Apostolic Tradition (‘Ilmu ’l-Ḥadíth).

4. Jurisprudence (Fiqh).

5. Scholastic Theology (‘Ilmu ’l-Kalám).

6. Grammar (Naḥw).

7. Lexicography (Lugha).

8. Rhetoric (Bayán).

9. Literature (Adab).

1. Philosophy (Falsafa).514

2. Geometry (Handasa).515

3. Astronomy (‘Ilmu ’l-Nujúm).

4. Music (Músíqí).

5. Medicine (Ṭibb).

6. Magic and Alchemy (al-Siḥr wa-’l-Kímiyá).

The religious phenomena of the Period will be discussed in a separate chapter, and here I can only allude cursorily to their The early ‘Abbásid period favourable to free-thought. general character. We have seen that during the whole Umayyad epoch, except in the brief reign of ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Azíz, the professors of religion were out of sympathy with the court, and that many of them withdrew from all participation in public affairs. It was otherwise when the ‘Abbásids established themselves in power. Theology now dwelt in the shadow of the throne and directed the policy of the Government. Honours were showered on eminent jurists and divines, who frequently held official posts of high importance and stood in the most confidential and intimate relations to the Caliph; a classical example is the friendship of the Cadi Abú Yúsuf and Hárún al-Rashíd. The century after the Revolution gave birth to the four great schools of Muhammadan Law, which are still called by the names of their founders—Málik b. Anas, Abú Ḥanífa, Sháfi‘í, and Ahmad b. Ḥanbal. At this time the scientific and intellectual movement had free play. The earlier Caliphs usually encouraged speculation so long as it threatened no danger to the existing régime. Under Ma’mún and his successors the Mu‘tazilite Rationalism became the State religion, and Islam seemed to have entered upon an era of enlightenment. Thus the first ‘Abbásid period (750-847 a.d.) with its new learning and liberal theology may well be compared to the European Renaissance; but in the words of a celebrated Persian poet—

The Caliph Mutawakkil (847-861 a.d.) signalised his accession by declaring the Mu‘tazilite doctrines to be heretical The triumph of orthodoxy. and by returning to the traditional faith. Stern measures were taken against dissenters. Henceforth there was little room in Islam for independent thought. The populace regarded philosophy and natural science as a species of infidelity. Authors of works on these subjects ran a serious risk unless they disguised their true opinions and brought the results of their investigations into apparent conformity with the text of the Koran. About the middle of the tenth century the reactionary spirit assumed a dogmatic shape in the system of Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-Ash‘arí, the father of Muḥammadan Scholasticism, which is essentially opposed to intellectual freedom and has maintained its petrifying influence almost unimpaired down to the present time.

I could wish that this chapter were more worthy of the title which I have chosen for it, but the foregoing pages will have served their purpose if they have enabled my readers to form some idea of the politics of the Period and of the broad features marking the course of its literary and religious history.

CHAPTER VII

POETRY, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE IN THE ‘ABBÁSID PERIOD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Europeans who know him only through the Thousand and One Nights Abú Nuwás is remembered as the boon-companion Abú Nuwás († circa 810 a.d.). and court jester of "the good Haroun Alraschid," and as the hero of countless droll adventures and facetious anecdotes—an Oriental Howleglass or Joe Miller. It is often forgotten that he was a great poet who, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, takes rank above all his contemporaries and successors, including even Mutanabbí, and is not surpassed in poetical genius by any ancient bard.

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

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

The Díwán of Abú Nuwás contains poems in many different styles—e.g., panegyric (madíḥ), satire (hijá), songs of the chase (ṭardiyyát), elegies (maráthí), and religious poems (zuhdiyyát); but love and wine were the two motives by which his genius was most brilliantly inspired. His wine-songs (khamriyyát) are generally acknowledged to be incomparable. Here is one of the shortest:—

Another poem begins—

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

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

Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya, unlike his great rival, came of Arab stock. He was bred in Kúfa, and gained his livelihood as a young Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya (748-828 a.d.). man by selling earthenware. His poetical talent, however, promised so well that he set out to present himself before the Caliph Mahdí, who richly rewarded him; and Hárún al-Rashíd afterwards bestowed on him a yearly pension of 50,000 dirhems (about £2,000), in addition to numerous extraordinary gifts. At Baghdád he fell in love with ‘Utba, a slave-girl belonging to Mahdí, but she did not return his passion or take any notice of the poems in which he celebrated her charms and bewailed the sufferings that she made him endure. Despair of winning her affection caused him, it is said, to assume the woollen garb of Muḥammadan ascetics,534 and henceforth, instead of writing vain and amatorious verses, he devoted his powers exclusively to those joyless meditations on mortality which have struck a deep chord in the hearts of his countrymen. Like Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí and others who neglected the positive precepts of Islam in favour of a moral philosophy based on experience and reflection, Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya was accused of being a freethinker (zindíq).535 It was alleged that in his poems he often spoke of death but never of the Resurrection and the Judgment—a calumny which is refuted by many passages in his Díwán. According to the literary historian al-Ṣúlí († 946 a.d.), Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya believed in One God who formed the universe out of two opposite elements which He created from nothing; and held, further, that everything would be reduced to these same elements before the final destruction of all phenomena. Knowledge, he thought, was acquired naturally (i.e., without Divine Revelation) by means of reflection, deduction, and research.536 He believed in the threatened retribution (al-wa‘íd) and in the command to abstain from commerce with the world (taḥrímu ’l-makásib).537 He professed the opinions of the Butrites,538 a subdivision of the Zaydites, as that sect of the Shí‘a was named which followed Zayd b. Alí b. Ḥusayn b. ‘Alí b. Abí Ṭálib. He spoke evil of none, and did not approve of revolt against the Government. He held the doctrine of predestination (jabr).539

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

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

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

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

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