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 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 FROM THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 Sienrs W. Sage 
 
 1891 
 
 A.l/..:7.//j^...Q'.. J..a/..^^../../..f^...a.2^. 
 
 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 
 
 T 
 
Copyright, 1903 
 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 All 7-ights reserved 
 
 PuMisJied September, 1903 
 
EDITORIAL PREFACE 
 
 This volume has been written at my invitation for this 
 series of 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 
 Orientalists, 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 
 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 
 at the French Consulate at Damascus. He was ulti- 
 mately called to Constantinople, originally as dragoman 
 to the French Embassy, then as Consul. In i8go he 
 was sent to Asia Minor to make a report on the Arabic 
 epigraphy of that province, and he has made similar 
 investigations in Syria. He was recalled to Paris to 
 fill the responsible office of 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 infor- 
 mation 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 GOSSE. 
 
 January 1903. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE CLIMATE AND THE RACE — ORIGINS OF 
 
 ARABIC POETRY— ITS PRIMITIVE FORMS . . I 
 
 II. PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY lo 
 
 III. THE KORAN 33 
 
 IV. THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY 46 
 
 V. THE 'ABBASIDS 63 
 
 VI. THE 'ABBASIDS [continued) 137 
 
 VH. THE 'ABBASIDS [continued] 174 
 
 VIII. THE 'ABBASIDS [continued] 216 
 
 IX. THE 'ABBASIDS [contimied] 2S0 
 
 X. ARABIC LITERATURE FROM THE CAPTURE OF 
 BAGDAD DOWN TO THE END OF THE EIGHT- 
 EENTH CENTURY 323 
 
 XI. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 411 
 
 XII. 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 
 so long a time a land of mystery. On every other side, 
 the sea. The Red Sea, with its depths peopled with 
 myriad madrepores, its dangerous reefs just hidden be- 
 neath 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- 
 
2 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 hair- 
 cloth 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, cruelty- 
 reign unchecked, even to this day, in the hearts of the 
 dwellers in these inaccessible towns. 
 
THE CLIMATE AND THE RACE 3 
 
 The Arab of the Desert is a man of courage, at all 
 events. His adventurous mode of life makes bravery 
 indispensable. A perpetual traveller, he wanders to and 
 fro seeking the necessary water-supply for his encamp- 
 ment, 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 
 led, barebacked, to the spot. Dressed in the coat of 
 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 horse- 
 men 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 
 French say, borrowing an Algerian expression — is, in- 
 deed, 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 
 
4 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 
 of hither Asia. The Peninsula may possibly have been 
 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 to the Yemen populations, whom we know 
 to be allied by race and dialfct with the Ethiopians ; 
 and accept as a more recent source of their own 
 nationality, a Semite emigration, led by Ishmael, son of 
 Abraham and Hagar, or the issue of his marriage with 
 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 Ish- 
 mael, and the wars of the tribes connected with them, 
 whose migrations 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 
 deserts, 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. 
 He even noted, very soon, that as he hurried the 
 pace of his recitation the long string of camels would 
 raise their heads and step out with quickened pace. 
 This creature, stupid and vindictive though it be, is 
 sensitive, to some extent, to music, or, at all events, to 
 rhythm. Its four heavy steps gave the metre, and the 
 
ORIGINS OF ARABIC POETRY 5 
 
 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 
 itself out, for which the theorists of a later date for- 
 mulated 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 gram- 
 marian 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 cele- 
 brated 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 cara- 
 vans, 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 
 races, their power of translating historic or legendar}' 
 events into mighty poems, teeming with grandiose pic- 
 tures, whose superhuman heroes are types of an ideal 
 for ever sought and never realised, has no existence in 
 the brain of the peoples speaking the Semitic tongues. 
 The breath comes shorter, but it is none the less mighty 
 for that ; and though its expression of thought may be 
 concise, its effect on the human mind has been con- 
 siderable, since from this inspiration have sprung the 
 
6 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 high- 
 way, 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 
 States had grown up — the princes of Ghassan, to the 
 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- 
 suits, and travelled about Arabia, whither they carried 
 the wines grown on the banks of the great river and 
 ripened in their own cellars. These Tbads were Chris- 
 tians, and we shall shortly see that it was these wine 
 
ITS PRIMITIVE FORMS 7 
 
 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 — to which a superstitious feeling was attached, 
 and a magic power ascribed. The poet — properly speak- 
 ing, the sage, Skd'ir, a sort of soothsayer — was called on 
 to compose these satires, which passed from lip to lip 
 amongst tribes of a common origin, and were swiftly 
 answered by other satires, sprung from the brain of the 
 poet of the tribal adversaries. 
 
 Nothing now remains of the songs improvised — ac- 
 cording 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 century, reports that in A.D. 372 
 Mania or Mavia, Queen of the Saracens, defeated the 
 Roman troops in Palestine and Phoenicia, and that the 
 memory of this victory was preserved by the Arabs in 
 their popular songs. Human remembrance, unless set 
 down on brick, or stone, or paper, is a very short- 
 lived thing, and 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 
 
8 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 wicked spirits which inhabit solitary places, that the 
 ancient poet ascribed his inspiration ; 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 
 tribal oracle, inspired by the Jinn. It was at the 
 order of the old poet Zuhair ibn Janab that the en- 
 campment 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, 
 the portion of the bravest. Satire was his weapon, 
 wounding, tormenting, like the sharpest blade, driving 
 the peoples to fall upon each other. But at the same 
 time it was an incantation, threatening the foe, seeking 
 to harm him by stirring up the malevolent deities of the 
 Desert, cursing him, dooming him to ruin and destruc- 
 tion, 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. 
 
 The Hijd had special rites connected with it, such 
 as the anointing of the hair 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 exist- 
 ence, although this, according to native feeling, is not a 
 
ITS PRIMITIVE FORMS 9 
 
 true prosodic metre. But the Arabs have at all events 
 preserved its memory as being their primitive metre, 
 from which all the rest have proceeded — all, at least, 
 used by the Desert poets. For, as time went on, town 
 life, and the influence, of music and the dance, led to the 
 invention of other rhythms. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY 
 
 The most ancient pre-Islamic poems are those forming 
 the collection of the seven muallaqdt — literally " the 
 suspended," a name given them at a much later date by 
 Hammad-al-Rawiya, and on which is founded the abso- 
 lutely untrue legend that these pieces, written with golden 
 ink, were hung up in the famous Temple at Mecca, in 
 the Ka'ba. The name was merely intended as an allu- 
 sion to the place of honour they hold on the Arabian 
 Parnassus, even as a chandelier 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 
 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 
 departed in search of other encampments and fresh 
 water-springs. Then he begins to touch on love-matters, 
 
PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY n 
 
 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 
 of the poet 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 de- 
 throned 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. To- 
 wards the year 530, the Roman Emperor Justinian, who 
 had thought of utilising his services against the Persians, 
 then threatening his frontiers, granted Imru'u'l-Qais leave, 
 at the request of the Prince of Ghass^n, who held 
 the Syrian frontier for the Romans, to wait on him. He 
 journeyed by post (horse-post and camel-post) to Con- 
 stantinople, 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Palestine, and was making his way back to the Desert, 
 when he died at Ancyra, poisoned by the Emperor's 
 order, and, as the legend runs, by a garment of honour 
 — a robe of Nessus which covered his body with ulcers, 
 as punishment for the seduction of a royal lady. Ma- 
 homet held him to be the best of all the poets, and their 
 chief; and according to tradition, he was the first to 
 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, 
 as a trophy, from the heads of another hundred ! " He 
 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, 
 to denote " I made an echo." Only a very small number 
 of his verses are extant. 
 
 Nabigha DhubyanI, who belonged to a tribe from 
 the neighbourhood of Mecca, was a town-dweller. We 
 find him at Hira — a half-Persian, half-Arab city — during 
 the reigns of the Kings Al-Mundhir III. and Al-Mundhir 
 IV. This town became a literary centre whence poetry 
 radiated all over the Peninsula. The successor of the 
 last-named King, Numan Ab{i QabCis, grew angry with 
 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 
 died, 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 composi- 
 tions 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 lower lip was split. His personal bravery won him 
 reputation as a warrior, and advanced him from his 
 state of slavery to the position of Shaddad's acknow- 
 ledged 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 
 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 
 activity had forsaken him. He is said to have fallen 
 from his horse, and to have been unable to regain his 
 feet in time. His death was the signal for peace, and 
 the end of the long-drawn hostilities. In spite of the 
 tribe's desire to avenge its hero and its bard, a com- 
 pensation 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 said, "We 
 whirled as the millstone whirls on its 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, Mutal- 
 ammis, was called Jarir, the son of 'Abdal-Masih (or, 
 according to Ibn Qutaiba, of 'Abdal-Uzza). He was 
 surnamed Mutalammis, "he who seeks earnestly," be- 
 cause 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, who had used 
 an improper expression in one of his lines. "Thy 
 tongue will be thy ruin," quoth the uncle. 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 dis- 
 covered 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 15 
 
 took 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 
 more proof of judgment than did his behaviour. He is 
 almost the only one of the ancient poets in whose work 
 we find some signs of meditation, maxims, or apoph- 
 thegms.' All his 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 
 possessing the poetic gift. His father-in-law, Aus ibn 
 Hajar, his sisters Sulmi and Al-KhansS, and his son, 
 Ka'b, the panegyrist of Mahomet, all made themselves 
 reputations. He had the moralist's temperament ; his 
 verses were marked by seriousness, by a sententious and 
 didactic tendency. He cared little, for praise, which 
 does not ensure immortality, and especially he shunned 
 untruthful praise. He would not borrow lines from 
 other poets to insert them amongst his own, or use 
 words difficult to understands Such is the opinion 
 expressed concerning him by the Caliph 'Umar, who 
 specially admired Zuhair's careful avoidance of any- 
 thing "hushi," that is to say, unintelligible, in his lan- 
 guage. 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 conse- 
 quence 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 in any gathering, to greet 
 every one save him. ' These are scruples peculiar to thq 
 Desert, manners of a certain noble harshness. In later 
 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 
 poems live on. They are robes of honour which Time 
 cannot decay." 
 
 His reputation was that of a high-born and wealthy 
 man, of gentle manners, and remarkable for his scru- 
 pulous 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 
 release of some prisoners, the poet's compatriots. The 
 story of his rivalry with Imru'n'1-Qais is a mere 
 legend. 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 leav- 
 ing its nest to search for food, feeding quietly on the 
 bitter seeds borne by the bashes growing in the sands. 
 
PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY 17 
 
 and then, as it remembers its forsaken eggs, setting off 
 running on its long, bare, black shanks. Elsewhere he 
 gives a striking picture of the whitened skeletons of 
 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 pre- 
 served to us. There are also the Diwdns (collections 
 of poems arranged according to the alphabetical order 
 of the 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 
 printed at Bulaq ; the Hanidsa, or collection of war- 
 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 
 of which is at Leyden ; the Akhbdr al-Lusils (stories of 
 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 
 
1 8 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 libraries. This huge literary compilation is our most 
 valuable source as to everything regarding the circum- 
 stances amidst which the poets of the first centuries of 
 Arab literature lived their lives and composed their 
 works. In addition to these texts we should mention 
 the poems of the Hudhailites — the tribe of Hudhail which 
 dwelt to the south-east of Mecca, and which has left 
 us poetry both of pre-Islamic and Moslem times, which 
 has been collected by Sukkari, and studied and partially 
 translated by Kosegarten, Abicht, and Wellhausen. 
 
 Side by side with the six poets thus grouped together 
 by their admiring commentators, we find many warriors, 
 singing their own exploits and their loves. Thabit ibn 
 jabir al-Fahmi was surnamed Ta'abbata-Sharran (one 
 who carries evil under his arm), because he was seen 
 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. 
 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 19 
 
 that he could overcome every one, though he was short 
 and slight and stunted. " It is my name," replied the 
 brigand. " When I meet a man, I say ' I am Ta'abbata- 
 Sharran,' 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 
 cloak, and the right to bear the surname Ahil Wahb ; 
 the bargain 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 
 Wahb my patience in adversity, my indomitable courage 
 in the face of all misfortunes ? " He was fertile in cun- 
 ning artifice, and his sense of hearing was singularly 
 delicate. One night he warned his camp companions 
 that the foe 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 
 kinsmen, his work ? " On the road "below Sal' a slain 
 man lies, whose blood shall not be shed without due 
 vengeance ! " Some Arab critics have ascribed them to 
 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 
 a horse at full gallop could not outstrip. Hence the 
 famous proverb, "A swifter runner than Shanfara." 
 
 During a war with the Beni-Saliman, he swore to 
 kill a hundred men, and kept his oath as follows. 
 Every time he came across a man of the tribe, he 
 shot an arrow and struck him in the eye. In this 
 fashion he piled up ninety-nine victims. The tribe of 
 
20 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 the Beni-Salaman set about ridding itself of this trouble- 
 some enemy. Usaid, son of Jabir, one of his rivals 
 in fleetness, lay in wait for him, and caught him one 
 night when he had gone down into a gorge to slake 
 his thirst. Thus he perished ; but, the legend tells 
 us, one of his foes, passing later where his skull lay 
 on the ground, gave it a kick. A splinter of bone 
 ran into his foot, making a wound of which he died ; 
 and so the full tale of victims was accomplished, and 
 the vow was kept. Shanfara, if we may believe his 
 lines preserved in the Hamasa, had himself requested 
 that he might lie unburied. " Bury me not ! for you 
 are forbidden to perform this duty for me. But thou, 
 O Hyena, shalt rejoice when they carry off my head 
 (and in my head the most of me resides)." Ta'abbata- 
 Sharran 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 
 existence. But if Shanfara was not the author, it is 
 certainly the work of some one who was thoroughly 
 acquainted with Arab life in ancient times, and who 
 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 
 a hero. His father, whose praises 'Antara sang, had 
 fought in the war of Dahis. He himself, like all his 
 
PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY 21 
 
 fellows, was a warrior. He was called "''Urwa of the 
 Needy," because 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 
 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, it is a glorious death. If he gain riches, he has 
 made himself worthy of them ! " He had carried off a 
 young girl 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 drunken- 
 ness. 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. 
 
 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 them leave to rejoin 
 their tribes. This prosperity died away, as a result of 
 internecine quarrels, and it was the downfall of his tribe 
 
22 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 which inspired the elegies of Dhu'1-Asba. "The props 
 of the tribe of 'Adwan were like unto serpents crawling 
 on the ground. They strove to rise one higher than the 
 other, and all they reached was emptiness." He reached 
 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 
 that I have never been held to be a burden, nor a being 
 of dulness or imbecility. Wherefore then do ye so 
 slander me ? " And in another piece of verse : " Marvel 
 not, Umama, at these happenings. Fortune and Fate 
 have overwhelmed us!" Umama was his daughter, 
 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 
 sets forth a noble ideal for the Arab warrior. " Use thy 
 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 
 poor. Rush into battle where the most intrepid of 
 heroes shuns the charge, and when thou art summoned 
 on an important matter, take all the burden of it on 
 thee." 
 
 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), and the nickname stuck to him. 
 " One would think you were a woman, with big shoulders 
 and thin flanks ! " It was when they had been out hunting 
 
PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY 23 
 
 together. Zabban drew aside, in the evening, to roast 
 the game. 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. 
 
 'ABfD IBN al-Abras, of the tribe of Asad, dwelt at 
 the court of Hira, and held habitual intercourse with 
 Nabigha Dhubyani. He is said to have been put to 
 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, 
 in a fit of rage. The king had sworn to slay the first 
 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 re- 
 turn, 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 
 sacrifices. 'Abid was a poor man, with no possessions 
 of his own. One day he was leading the flocks belong- 
 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 
 asleep under some shady trees. He rose from that 
 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 
 
 (Rajab), observed by the pagans of Mudar, began, he 
 killed ten camels a day, and fed his guests. The poets, 
 Al-Hutai'a and Bishr ibn Abi Khazim, were both par- 
 takers of his hospitality. He had lost his father in early 
 youth, and was brought up by his grandfather, Sad ibn 
 al-Hashraj, on whom he played the sorry trick of pre- 
 senting 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 for- 
 give the prank. He struck his tents and left Hatim alone, 
 with the slave girl 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, call- 
 ing upon the dead man, and praying him to provide 
 a feast. Next morning he found his camel-mare slaugh- 
 tered 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 
 
PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY 25 
 
 Hajar, of the tribe of Tamim, belonged to the far-off 
 province of Bahrain. He was a 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 con- 
 gratulations in verse on his victory over the Abyssinians. 
 The subjects of Umayya's poetry, as a rule, were re- 
 ligious, and drawn from the common source of Jewish 
 and Christian ideas. He may be looked on as a pre- 
 cursor 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 
 the text of the Koran (chap. 64). He applied strange 
 names to the Deity, such as had never fallen on Arab 
 ears before. Sometimes siltit, "the emperor"; some- 
 times, again, taghriw, " the crown-bearer " (Persian, 
 iaka-bard). He wore a hair shirt to mortify his flesh. 
 In his poems he refers to the Old Testament prophets, 
 3 
 
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 
 mountain and closed the orifice, so that he could not 
 get out, and was starved to death. 
 
 The son takes front rank among the Arab poets. Sil- 
 vestre de Sacy held him a worthy equal of the authors 
 of ' the Mu'allaqat, and 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 27 
 
 of Huraira, his beloved, a black slave. She had a 
 beautiful voice, and her master made her sing for his 
 delight. He went every year to the fair at "Ukaz, and 
 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 under- 
 took to defend him from men and jinns. Al-A'sha 
 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. 
 " How so ? " asked Asha. " If death comes to thee 
 whilst thou art under my protection," answered 'Amir, 
 " I will 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 
 desire." 
 
 Amongst the town poets we must mention Qais, son 
 of Al-Khatim, who lived at Yathrib, a town later called 
 Medina, which name it bears at the present day. He 
 made himself famous by his avenging pursuit of the 
 murderers of his father and grandfather, and by the 
 war he thus caused between the Aus and Khazraj 
 tribes. He was a handsome man, with eye-brows 
 that met, great black eyes, red lips, and dazzlingly 
 white teeth. Hassan ibn Thabit had counselled the 
 poetess Al-Khansa to direct her satires against Qais. 
 " I never attack a person I have never seen," she 
 answered. One day she went to see him, and found 
 
28 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 him lying on the floor of a room. She stirred him with 
 her foot until he rose, and then made him step back- 
 wards and forwards, till Qais exclaimed : " One would 
 think she was examining a slave before she buys him 
 in the market ! " Then he lay down and went to sleep 
 again, " Never will I attack such a man as that ! " said 
 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 obse- 
 quies, was confided to women only. Such poems open 
 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 an individuality must cause. 
 These eulogies are for the most part based on the chief 
 virtues of the pagan Arab, valour and generosity. Last 
 of all 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 signi- 
 fies "The wild cow with a crushed muzzle." She was 
 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 possibly have left Palestine during the wars 
 of Titus and Hadrian. But local tradition asserts that 
 
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- 
 religionists. These colonies formed a nucleus of re- 
 ligious propaganda, and Arab tribes associated them- 
 , selves with them. Their religion was the only thing 
 they had preserved. Their language had become 
 purely Arab. Like other nomads, they began to chant 
 verses, and the greatest of their poets was Samaual 
 (Samuel), the grandson of 'Adiya. He was a rich noble- 
 man, 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'ul- 
 Qais. The poet-king, fallen from his high estate, had 
 taken refuge with Samaual, and besought him to recom- 
 mend him to the Kings of Ghassan, who might interest 
 the 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 neighbour- 
 hood. " 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. Then Samaual sang : "I have faith- 
 fully kept the breastplates of the Kindite. ... I was 
 faithful, where so many are traitors." 
 
 Amongst Samaual's co-religionists we may cite Al- 
 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. 
 
 Christianity, like Judaism, had made proselytes in 
 Arabia. Syria, whither the Northern Arabs were con- 
 tinually leading caravans, was full of churches and 
 convents ; in Mesopotamia the whole population was 
 Christian, The Princes of Ghass^n, at Damascus, pro- 
 fessed the faith, and the Lakhmites, at Hira, adopted it 
 likewise. The verses of such a poet as Umayya ibn 
 Abi'1-Salt, who, though not himself a Christian, propa- 
 gated, under the desert tents, views drawn from Jewish- 
 Christian 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 ground- 
 work of the primitive population, side by side with the 
 Arabs of the Tanukh tribe, half Bedouin, half husband- 
 men, who had seized the country, and the Ahldf, depend- 
 ants or clients, who had taken refuge in the city from 
 every corner of Arabia. Now these 'Ibads were Chris- 
 tians. 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 
 
PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY 31 
 
 brought the "good news" with them. Among these 
 Christians, 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 
 up at Ctesiphon, at the court of the Persian Sasanians. 
 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. 
 He was favoured by the king of kings, was sent on an 
 embassy to Constantinople, and passed through Damas- 
 cus, where his first poem was written. When he re- 
 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 
 the Beni-Marina, whose candidate was ousted, vowed 
 his destruction. They accused him of having spoken dis- 
 paragingly of the monarch, who partly owed his crown 
 to him ; the king tempted him within his boundaries, 
 and then cast him into prison. The King of Persia 
 would have taken up his cause, but when his envoy 
 reached Hira, he found the poet murdered in his 
 dungeon. 'Adi ibn Zaid's Bacchic verses were later to 
 be the joy of the Omeyyad Caliph, Walid II. 
 
 Prose 
 
 None of the prose of those ancient times has come 
 down to us. It was not written, and 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 a fame which at one moment 
 counterbalanced that Mahomet owed to the Koran 
 stories, drawn from the Bible. The battle of Bedr put 
 an end to this dangerous competition. There were also 
 the legendary and not at all trustworthy recitals of the 
 Arab Days — tales of the great desert battles ; proverbs, 
 collected at a later date by philologists, and founded on 
 forgotten incidents, frequently incomprehensible, and ex- 
 plained 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 
 to undergo a great development. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE KORAN 
 
 Born of a poor and lightly esteemed family, Mahomet 
 (or Mohammed), who had begun life by travelling with 
 caravans from Mecca into Syria, had acquired a fortune 
 by his marriage with Khiadija. In his days, two re- 
 ligious sects, distinct from the believers in Judaism and 
 Christianity, the growth of which we have already 
 noticed, had taken root in Arabian soil. One of these 
 was the Rakusiyya, the other the Hanifs. The first was 
 undoubtedly descended from the Mandaites, or Chris- 
 tian disciples of St. John Baptist, known in the Middle 
 Ages under the name of Sabians, and of whom a com- 
 munity 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 in- 
 volve any perusal of the sacred writings. It was in the 
 bosom of this sect of the Hanifs that Islamism came into 
 existence. Mahomet himself used to say that he was a 
 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 
 
 33 
 
34 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 about a book called the Suhuf, or scrolls, of Abraham. 
 A few years previous to the Prophet's mission, a mis- 
 sionary 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 
 may be, the Christian followers of St. John Baptist and 
 the Hanifs had prepared the way, amid all the poly- 
 theism 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 propa- 
 ganda had found a singularly useful supporter in such 
 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 
 condition in which 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, 
 the chapters or suras were, with the exception of the 
 first, placed in order according to their length — a purely 
 artificial arrangement. 
 
 Mahomet, the Koran tells us, was inspired by the Holy 
 Ghost, whom he held to t)e 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 men- 
 
THE KORAN 35 
 
 tioned a young man of the tribe of Kalb, named Dihya 
 ibn Khalifa. The revelation was always imparted in 
 small instalments, only one verse, or a few together, at a 
 time. When the revelation ceased, Mahomet called one 
 of his secretaries, generally 'Abdallah ibn Sad ibn Abi 
 Sarh, to write the words from his dictation, 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 that it is 
 altogether written in rhymed prose. This is strongly 
 apparent in the earlier s{iras, which have very short 
 verses, and is only marked in the longer chapters in- 
 spired at Medina by the terminal fause of each verse, 
 which rhymes assonantly with the other pauses. It must 
 further be borne in mind that the present arrangement 
 of the chapters is quite artificial. The manner in which 
 the book was compiled is well 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 were accom- 
 plished, and that the great Resurrection was upon them), 
 that civil wars and frontier raids were increasing, and 
 
36 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 that death was sweeping away numbers of those who 
 knew all the Koran, or part of it, by heart, fear fell on 
 them lest the Word of God should be utterly lost, and 
 all the scattered fragments were brought together. Zaid 
 ibn Thabit, Mahomet's disciple, was charged by Abu 
 Bekr, the first Caliph, to collect all that could be dis- 
 covered of the sacred text, and form it 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,. 
 or short chapter of seven verses which opens the 
 book, and then the shorter ones. Now these short 
 ones are the oldest. They were revealed at Mecca, 
 before the emigration, while the long ones placed at 
 the beginning of the book belong for the most part to 
 the period when the Prophet, then Head of the army 
 and the State, was at Medina, in command of the 
 troops who were soon to place him in possession of the 
 religious capital of Islam. This edition of Zaid's may 
 be considered the final one, for the revision of twenty 
 years later affected details of language and grammar, 
 rat.her 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 pro- 
 phetic inspiration that gravitated round Jerusalem, and 
 so descend to the Gospels. The sentences are cut up 
 into verses, very short verses at first, then very long. 
 The rhymed prose is marked by the alliterations at the 
 close of each verse. The chapters fall into two great 
 classes, according as they were produced at Mecca or 
 
THE KORAN 37 
 
 Medina. The first belongs to the preaching period, 
 before the emigration. The second came after the 
 Hegira. 
 
 At the outset the expression is curt, because the in- 
 spiration is powerful, the adjuration is pathetic. God 
 speaks, and the man falls out of sight. Here Mahomet 
 appears as the Prophet. He has not yet become the 
 statesman, the legislator, who calls a new state of 
 society to life. His object is not to give his fellow- 
 countrymen a code of laws, but to teach them to wor- 
 ship the true God. There is no mention of ritual nor 
 any reference to social laws. Mahomet calls on his 
 hearers to believe the evidence of their own appercep- 
 tion of the universe. He bids them admire the marvels 
 of nature, the stars, the moon, the sun, " all of them 
 signs of God's power, if you will understand them " ; or 
 else he recounts the misfortunes which have befallen 
 past generations who would not hearken to the prophets 
 — legends which are a mixture of the Rabbinic fables 
 with old national traditions concerning the vanished 
 tribes of 'Ad and Thamud. 
 
 In the oldest of the Meccan sAras, the sentences have 
 a rhythmic connection, although there is no regular 
 metre ; prosodic forms occur but very seldom, and 
 only in short passages. The expression of thought is 
 very succinct, and generally exceedingly vague and in- 
 complete. But the address is bold and passionate. 
 One feels that the Prophet is straining every nerve to 
 convince the careless that his mission is genuine. His 
 vehemence of expression is apparent even athwart the 
 dull pall cast over it by translation into our analytic 
 tongues. There is as much of the poet as of the preacher 
 in him, as Stanley Lane-Poole accurately remarks. His 
 
38 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 great argument, in his exhortations to do right 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 
 stars are scattered, when the waters of the seas are 
 mingled, when the tombs are overthrown, then shall 
 each soul behold its deeds, from first to last. . . . The 
 just shall dwell in bliss, but the faithless shall be in hell." 
 His imprecations against his foes are frightful, but it 
 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 
 their cruelty. Mahomet's curse upon his uncle, Abu 
 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 ad- 
 jurations "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 
 acquaintances, is the chief proof of his mission put 
 forward by Mahomet. Small wonder that the history, 
 coming in so indirect a fashion, should be incorrect and 
 full of legends. 
 
 A third period, that of argument, is marked by the 
 more prosaic nature of the language used. 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 which the name applied 
 to the Deity is "al-Rahmin" (the Merciful), the name 
 borne by the pagan divinity of certain tribes. 
 
 The second part of the Koran comprises the four- 
 and-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. The ideas of his followers 
 are formed. They believe, and the swelling multitude 
 of his disciples forces his unbelieving foes to the con- 
 viction that they will soon have to reckon with his 
 growing power. The style loses its poetic character. 
 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 ! " 
 now begin " O ye who believe ! " or, when the preacher 
 speaks to his enemies, "O Jews!" or even "O hypo- 
 crites ! " The general style is heavy and diffuse ; the 
 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 
 tliree longest chapters — the second, fourth, and fifth — 
 
40 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 which form almost a tenth part of the whole of the 
 sacred volume. 
 
 The text of the Koran was certainly not brought 
 together during the Prophet's hfetime. Only four of 
 his disciples, Ubayy ibn Ka'b, Muadh ibn Jabal, Zaid 
 ibn Thabit, and Abu Zaid Ansari, had gathered more 
 or less complete collections of its words. The struggle 
 with Musailima, the false prophet, had cost the lives 
 of many of the chosen depositaries of the original text, 
 when Abij Bekr, impelled by'Umar, who had seen the 
 end 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 edi- 
 tion, would 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 
 character — a proof of this lies in the fact that, when'Umar 
 died, it became the property of his daughter, Hafsa. 
 
 During the wars in Armenia and Adharbaijan, the 
 soldiers 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. 
 
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. He belonged to a prominent family of 
 the Beni-Ja'far. His father, Rabi'a, had earned by his 
 generosity the sobriquet of " 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 the gravity and earnest- 
 ness of conviction, made the deepest impression upon 
 his mind. The passage which worked his final accept- 
 ance of the new faith is actually quoted : — 
 
 "These are they who have bought error with the 
 coin of truth, but their bargain has brought them no 
 profit, they have not continued in the right way. They 
 are like unto a man who has kindled a fire. When 
 the fire has cast its light on all that is about it, and 
 God has suddenly quenched it, leaving men in dark- 
 4 
 
42 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 ness, they 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 dark- 
 ness and thunder and lightning comes down from 
 heaven, are filled with the fear of death, and stop 
 their ears with their fingers to shut out the noise of 
 the thunder, while the Lord hems in the infidels on 
 every side. The thunderbolt well nigh blinds them. 
 When the lightning flashes they walk by its light. When 
 it leaves them in darkness, they stop short. If God so 
 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 before you. 
 Mayhap you will fear Him." 
 
 After his uncle's death Labid went with a deputation 
 of his tribe to Medina, and was there publicly con- 
 verted. 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 of the nomad Arabs. He 
 thought it 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 light- 
 ning 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 
 his two daughters to mourn him for one year. " Do not 
 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 
 duty, 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 
 colourless, and his style as very bald. But the subject 
 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 
 death. It was not easy to escape the execution of the 
 terrible fiat. But Kab succeeded in doing so in very 
 skilful fashion. The encomiums he showered on the 
 
44 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 victorious leader were so agreeable to 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- 
 its two opening words " Bdnat Sudd . . . ," which has 
 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 
 tragic fate of his brother Malik. Malik was chief of the 
 Yarbu, a branch of the Tamim tribe. He had em- 
 braced the Moslem faith, and had been appointed a tax 
 collector. After the Prophet's death, when the Arabs 
 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 movement was speedily put down 
 by the Caliph's generals ; Malik was defeated, surren- 
 dered 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- 
 
THE KORAN 45 
 
 Hutai'a. He was one of the masters of satire. A 
 wandering troubadour, going from tribe to tribe, dwell- 
 ing 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 de- 
 puted by that general to announce the taking of Carth- 
 age to the Caliph 'Uthman. He suffered the misfor- 
 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 some- 
 what mediocre in quality. Critics regard the origin 
 of the poems ascribed to Abu Talib, Mahomet's uncle, 
 as doubtful, and are still more convinced of this as 
 regards those bearing the name of the Caliph 'Ali. 
 The Shi'ite tendencies of these last quickly convinced 
 students that they were composed, at some uncertain 
 time, to serve the interests of the' Alids. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY 
 
 t 
 
 The successful revolt of Mu'awiya and the final dis- 
 appearance of the Medina 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 
 the dwellers in towns. In literary matters, we find the 
 poets of this second period still sacrificing, in clumsy 
 imitation, on the altar of the Qasida, the ancient Bedouin 
 ode. But we find, at the same time, an ample harvest 
 of occasional poems, inspired by all the unexpected 
 incidents of the political life 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 pro- 
 vinces 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, to- 
 gether 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 singers, made their way all over the 
 Arab world. 
 
 In his turn, Abdallah ibn Qais al-Ruqayyat dis- 
 tinguished himself by the share he took in the attempts 
 of 'Abdallah ibn Zubair to obtain the Caliphate. He 
 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 
 returned to Medina. Caliph Abdal-Malik pardoned 
 him, but did not give him back the pension he had 
 formerly enjoyed. Amongst other poets belonging to 
 Medina at this .period, we may mention Qais ibn Dharih, 
 foster-brother to Husain, 'Ali's unhappy son, martyred at 
 Kerbela, who loved a certain Lubna, and made her name 
 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 
 real name was Qais ibn Mulawwah. His passion for 
 
48 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 the lovely Laila had crazed his brain, and his adven- 
 tures served the Persian poets as subjects with which 
 to embroider the canvas of their mystic poems. Jamil 
 ibn 'Abdallah loved Buthaina, even as Kuthayyir loved 
 Azza the Bedouin. The last-named poet belonged to 
 the Shi'ite sect of the Kaisaniyya, in spite of which he was 
 well received at 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 
 Suraij ibn Muhriz and Al-Gharid. Caliph Walid, the 
 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 al- 
 Isfahani. 
 
 In the person of Al-Akhtal, the Omeyyads found the 
 special bard of their brave deeds. He was a Christian, 
 of the tribe of 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 49 
 
 jar of milk 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 occa- 
 sionally 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 to the Moslem faith. " I 
 consent," quoth the poet, " if I am allowed to drink wine 
 and exempted from fasting in Ramadan 1 " and he wrote 
 the lines : " Never will I go braying like an ass, ' Come to 
 prayers,' but I will go on drinking the kindly liquor, and 
 prostrating myself when the sun rises." The last line is 
 interesting, because it 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 
 of his epigrams, for he it was who recommended him to 
 Yazid, son of Mu awiya, when 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 the Peninsula, thus serving the political ends of the 
 Omeyyads, and withdrawing the affections of the popu- 
 lace from 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, Feraz- 
 daq, 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 
 
so 
 
 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 who must be passed over if the palm was awarded to the 
 third, would get out of the difficulty by taking refuge in 
 generalities. " Jarir draws water from a well," said one; 
 " Ferazdaq hews out of the rock ; as for Akhtal, he excels 
 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 
 of 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 
 afflatus and purity of expression. We are told nothing 
 as to the loftiness of his inspiration. But one famous 
 line, which Harun al-Rashid loved to recall, proves the 
 nobility of the moral sentiments he enunciated. It 
 occurs in his ode addressed to the Caliph 'Abdal- 
 Malik, in which, speaking of the Omeyyads, he says : 
 "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 
 a sparrow, spiteful and vindictive. Such was the shabby 
 nature of this great poet. His name was 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 
 
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 
 the worthy pharisees of Medina. 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 
 his cousin Nawar (whom he married, who sought to 
 divorce him, and who could find no one to bear witness 
 for her before the judge, so great was the dread of the 
 poet's satires, who took refuge with'Abdallah ibn Zubair, 
 the Medina pretender, and at last obtained her hus- 
 band'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 
 journey, towards the year 728. He was a determined 
 supporter of the rights of the 'Alids, and the verses 
 in which he acclaimed Zain al-'Abidin, 'All's grandson, 
 brought him to a dungeon. Ferazdaq was then a man 
 of seventy. But satire is his special field, and it must be 
 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 
 are frequently charged — that of shamelessly stealing lines 
 from his neighbours' compositions. He was a plagiarist, 
 forcing his competitors to leave him in possession of lines 
 that took his fancy, and below which he wrote his own 
 name. 
 
52 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Born in the Hijaz, Kuthayyir was famous for 
 his eccentricities. He was a partisan of the 'Alids, 
 and professed the most extreme reHgious views. His 
 absurd affectations had won him the surname of "Anti- 
 christ." 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 had been starved and numbed by the — 
 relative — chilHness of the last-named country. 
 
 But JarIr, of Yamama, in the south of Najd, was the 
 popular favourite. He, too, was of the tribe of Tamim. 
 He dwelt in 'Iraq, and had opportunities of extolling 
 Al-Hajjaj, the terrible governor of that province, at 
 whose severity all men trembled. But the favour of 
 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 
 
THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY 53 
 
 authors, of descriptions of forsaken encampments, of 
 camels, and the bird called qatd. He himself, indeed, 
 admitted that his comparisons might go on for ever. 
 Nevertheless, his poems were long held in high admira- 
 tion by the philologists, more especially, perhaps, on 
 account of the uncommon words occurring in them. 
 
 Beside these poets who carried on the classic tradi- 
 tion of the long rhythmic recitations, we find the 
 simplest of prosodic metres, the rafaz, suddenly spring- 
 ing into considerable importance, and rising as high as 
 its fellows in the popular estimation. The rajaz, de- 
 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 Abu Najm al-Fadl ibn Qudama al-Tjli, the 
 friend of the Caliph Hisham, Al-Ajjaj, and his son 
 Ru'ba. 
 
 The funeral elegies written by a woman, Laila AL- 
 Akhyaliyya, are famous, more especially those devoted 
 to the memory of Tauba ibn al-Humayyir, who loved 
 her, and suffered the anguish of seeing her married by 
 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 true to her till his death, which took place in an inter- 
 tribal quarrel in 704. The celebrity won by these 
 touching 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 
 of Khurasan. 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, con- 
 cerning 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 
 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 Al- 
 Akhtal, 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 ex- 
 pression 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 depo- 
 sition 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 
 in 702. 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 
 the imprudent attacks 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 
 desert Arabs, was a musician, who sang the lines 
 written by his friend. 
 
 Al-Hajjaj had a sister, Zainab, who was beloved 
 by Numairi of Ta'if, a writer of erotic stanzas. But the 
 governor thought the poet's praise compromised the 
 reputation of his family, and Numairi had to seek refuge 
 with the Caliph of Damascus. Zainab, who had been 
 sent to the same city at the time of Al-Ash'ath's revolt, 
 died there of an accident — a fall from her mule. Nu- 
 mairi found consolation in singing elegies over her 
 tomb. 
 
S6 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 The Moslem Conquest had given a huge ascendency 
 to the 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 
 account of his surname, Al-A'^jam, not to recognise 
 the Persian origin of ZiYAD IBN SULAIMAN, who was 
 "client" of an Arab tribe (by client must be under- 
 stood either a freed slave or a man who voluntarily 
 lived under the aegis of a patronage which raised him 
 above the singular humiliations which were the lot, at 
 that period, of a vanquished foe, even of one who had 
 embraced the Moslem faith) dwelling at Persepolis, 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 
 Hisham. There, and during that prince's time, he 
 
THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY 57 
 
 began chanting the praises of the Persians instead of 
 extolling his host. The Caliph fell into a 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 de- 
 clared 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 
 not omit to mention Abu 'Ata Aflah ibn Yasar. His 
 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 of his satire against the 'Abbasids. He 
 lived 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 him in his 
 5 
 
58 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 satires, jeering at the decree whereby the populace was 
 commanded to dress in black, the chosen colour of 
 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 drink- 
 ing songs on the works of 'Adi ibn Zaid, and his suc- 
 cessor 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 hav- 
 ing 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, besought 
 the Caliph to receive him amongst his followers, so 
 that he might profit by the teaching of a renowned 
 artist, whom 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 
 
THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY 59 
 
 become a proverb, and was all the more phenomenal 
 because the views of the two friends were diametrically 
 opposed — Kumait was a Shi'ite, and championed the 
 men of Kufa, while 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 
 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 imprison- 
 ment 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 
 to enable him to escape from durance. Maslama, the 
 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 impro- 
 vised. He died a violent death in 743 — killed during 
 a riot by the soldiery. 
 
 At this period, also, flourished a very remarkable 
 man, Hammad ibn Sabiir, surnamed Al-Rawiya, or the 
 Quoter — because his extraordinary memory held thou- 
 sands of ancient Arab stanzas and complete poems. To 
 him the preservation of great part of the pre-Islamic 
 poetry is due, and to him we owe the collection into one 
 volume of the Muallaqat. He was an Iranian. His 
 father, Sabilr (Sapor), who was taken prisoner in war, 
 belonged to that redoubtable race of the Dailamites, 
 which braved the Arabs and maintained its inde- 
 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 
 spiritual sovereignty. This early commentator and 
 
6o ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 scholar, whose linguistic blunders bewrayed his foreign 
 origin, 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 gene- 
 alogies, and their dialects. He could distinguish the 
 ancient from the modern style ; he boasted that he could 
 recite long odes, belonging to the heathen times, rhym- 
 ing 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. Al- 
 Mufaddal al-Dabbi accused him of interpolating his 
 own lines amongst those of the ancient poets, so that 
 it was impossible to detect the difference, and it is even 
 said that, when pressed by Caliph Al-Mahdi, Hammad 
 confessed his fraud. 
 
 History first makes an appearance under the sway of 
 the Omeyyads. We are told that Ziyad, brother to 
 Muawiya, and his lieutenant, wrote a book on the pre- 
 tensions 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 sup- 
 ported 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 
 
THE OMEYYAD DYNASTY 6i 
 
 used to recite the stories of the kings of Yemen, and 
 biblical legends, as also did Wahb ibn Munabbih (638- 
 728), a Jew by origin, and either a Moslem convert, or, 
 possibly, a Sabian, or Christian follower of St. John 
 Baptist. 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 con- 
 quest of 'Iraq, a subject on which he was, in the earliest 
 days, the uncontested authority. He died in 774. 
 
 Muhammad ibn Muslim al-Zuhri, who was called Ibn- 
 Shihab, after one of his ancestors, was one of the learned 
 men who devoted themselves to the study of the tradi- 
 tions of Mahomet. He belonged to Medina, but was not 
 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 
 tutor, and became a magistrate under Yazid II. His 
 connection with the Omeyyad dynasty stirs some mis- 
 trust as to the tendency, unconscious no doubt, of his 
 theological studies. Caliph 'Umar II. sent letters into 
 the various provinces of the Empire, recommending that 
 al-Zuhri should be consulted in any legal difficulties, 
 "for no man," he says, "is better acquainted with the 
 customs of the past days." When at home, he was so 
 absorbed in the study of his books that he forgot every- 
 
62 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 thing else, and his wife one day exclaimed : " These books 
 are more trying to me than the three other wives the law 
 permits him, though he has but one!" He died, aged 
 seventy-three, on his farm at Adama, in Arabia, between 
 Syria and the Hijaz. 
 
 The conquest of Syria, and the selection of Damascus 
 as the seat of the capital, had brought Moslems and 
 Christians into close contact. St. John of Damascus, 
 whose father was received at the court of 'Abdal-Malik, 
 wrote a defence of the Christian religion against the 
 doctrine of Islam. In 'Iraq, the great theologian Hasan 
 Ba.sri, who died in 728, held uncontested sway as a 
 doctrinal instructor. The elegance and purity of his 
 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 ibn 'Ata, left him, and founded the 
 Mutazilite school, who professed a kind of rationalism. 
 He had a burr in his speech, and as he never could 
 correct this defect, he obliged himself to avoid all words 
 with the letter r in them. He had 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 
 down to us. The collection of the Arab proverbs now 
 began to attract some attention. 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. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE 'ABbAsIDS 
 
 The 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 domina- 
 tion, 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 
 victors' tolerance still permitted to exist. The Persian 
 language was nothing but a spoken tongue ; all the 
 literary character had departed from it. All Persians 
 now wrote in Arabic, and so strong was the impression 
 made by the Semitic tongue that it has maintained 
 itself to this day. But Persia possessed another and an 
 intangible force, the Aryan genius, the powerful, imagi- 
 native, and creative mind of the great Indo-European 
 family, the artistic, philosophic, and intellectual brain 
 which, from this period onward, so mightily affects 
 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 
 in the destruction attending the Mongol conquest. But 
 the chief specimens have been preserved, and their 
 effect on the Europe of the Middle Ages has been far 
 greater than many have imagined. 
 
 6% 
 
ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 When the 'Abbasids founded the city of Bagdad, 
 on the right 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 
 influence was so strong in political matters that 
 Mansur did not hesitate to rid himself, by the assas- 
 sin's hand, of Abu Muslim, the leader who had over- 
 thrown the Omeyyad dynasty, just as Harun al-Rashid, 
 at a later date, rid himself of the Persian Barmakides, 
 who had supplied him with two powerful ministers. In 
 literature, this Persian influence is immense. It per- 
 vades everything — poetry, theology, jurisprudence : the 
 Arabs had ceased to write ; all posts, administrative, court, 
 and legal, were held by men who were not Arabs, and 
 the same applies to all the literature of the time. From 
 this period onward, Arabic 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 Intel- 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 65 
 
 lectual parts of this medley were finally to recover their 
 identity ; the Persian tongue, which was never to drop 
 the cloak cast upon it by the Semite domination, was 
 once more to become a literary language, and to have 
 the glory of giving birth to other literatures, such as 
 the Ottoman-Turkish and the 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 
 was doomed to servile imitation, and hence to platitude. 
 But a new kind of poetry appeared on the banks of the 
 Tigris, whither the imperial splendour was attracting 
 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 pre- 
 tender '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 jester, we must glance 
 at ABtJ DULAMA Zand ibn al-Jaun, an Abyssinian negro, 
 who had fought against the Omeyyads, and was per- 
 mitted to entertain the Caliphs Mansur and Mahdi. 
 He was the favourite of Mansur, to whom he cer- 
 tainly rendered good service by praising him, in a 
 panegyric, for having put Abu Muslim to death. For 
 the populace found it hard to understand why the 'Abba- 
 sids rewarded 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 dis- 
 appeared 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 sug- 
 gested to a physician to whom he owed money for curing 
 his son, that, to secure payment 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 
 Dulima got his doctoring for nothing. One day, when 
 he had alluded in verse to a supposed relationship between 
 himself and the Caliph, Al-Mahdi, greatly enraged, in- 
 quired to whom he traced this kinship. "To Adam and 
 Eve," replied the jester, and the Caliph laughed. It 
 was said of him that he would make the very devil laugh. 
 Al-Mahdi once ordered him, on pain of death, to satirise 
 every member of the numerous company present. Abil 
 Dulama's presence of mind saved him in this hour of 
 peril. He attacked himself, called himself " monkey-face, 
 with a turban upon it," " forerunner of the Last Judg- 
 ment," 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 
 hounds, which died. Abfi Dulima summed up the 
 incident in comical fashion. " The Caliph kills a 
 gazelle and 'Ali kills a dog ! Bravo ! Each shall feed 
 on the provisions he has provided for himself." Where- 
 upon Al-Mahdi laughed till he nearly fell out of his 
 saddle. 
 
 Bashshar ibn Burd (693-783) was of Persian, and 
 possibly even of royal race, as he himself asserted. He 
 was born in the neighbourhood of Bassora, whither his 
 father had been carried into slavery ; his grandfather 
 had been made a prisoner of war in Tukhiristan, far 
 away in Khurasan. He was a skilful worker in clay, 
 although he was born blind. Later in life he obtained 
 
68 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 his 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 Mutazi- 
 lites, 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 really a Zindiq, that is to say a secret believer 
 in the Avesta, while preserving the outward appearance 
 of Islamism. He was always a suspected man. His 
 panegyric of Caliph Mahdi saved him once. The 
 Caliph contented himself with forbidding him to make 
 any mention of women in future poems. But he im- 
 prudently 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. 
 
 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 69 
 
 Jarir, 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 ex- 
 pression 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 al- 
 Hakam, 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 
 vengeance for some political verses directed against 
 the claim of the 'Alids. The criminal's confession- — 
 he himself was never discovered — is still in existence. 
 Marwan was an imitator of the ancient desert poets. 
 According to Ibn Khallikan, he was great-grandson 
 to 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 
 
70 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Jewish physician who turned Moslem. But at Medina 
 he was believed to have been the freedman of Samaual, 
 the famous Syrian nobleman and poet. We are also 
 told that Abu Hafsa was made prisoner when Per- 
 sepolis was taken under 'Uthman. As for Marwan, 
 who was born in Yamama, he made his way to Bag- 
 dad, composed panegyrics in honour of Al-Mahdi and 
 Harun al-Rashid, and wrote satires directed against 
 the descendants of "All. His most celebrated work is 
 a qasida, rhymed in /, in praise of Ma'n, son of Za'ida, 
 Governor of Yemen, in which he lauds his inex- 
 haustible generosity. "When a favour is asked of him, 
 Man will not speak the word No, for this seems a for- 
 bidden 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 
 of him that the line was written : " Marwan has no zeal 
 for pleasure ; the only jealousy he feels concerns the 
 cooking-pots." 
 
 Beside the work, not unattended by risk, of the 
 poets who dedicated their powers to politics, we find the 
 far more kindly productions of the love poet, Abu'l- 
 Fadl al- Abbas IBN AL-Ahnaf, a descendant of Arab 
 settlers in Khurasan, allied with Iranian families. He 
 was a comrade of 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 
 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 71 
 
 panegyric. His only known enemy was the great 
 Mu'tazilite theologian, Hudhail al-AUaf, who accused 
 him of having written a stanza affirming the doctrine 
 of predestination. 
 
 But the most famous of this group, beyond all con- 
 tradiction, is AbC Nuwas, the lyric and Bacchic poet 
 par excellence, whose works have been studied by 
 Noldeke and Alfred von Kremer. He was born at Al- 
 Ahwiz 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 
 him known to the Barmakides, and had cause, later, to 
 regret his kindness, 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 
 gave himself up to religious observances. His jests 
 about a member of the Beni-Naubakht clan earned him 
 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 
 of 'Adi ibn 2aid and Walid ibn Yazid. Like his fore- 
 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 
 devout poems which mark the last stage of his career. 
 His memory was extraordinary, and, what is no less re- 
 markable, he possessed no library. Nothing was found 
 after his death save a book cover, within which lay 
 a manuscript containing notes on grammar. The 
 
72 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Caliph cast him into prison, and the poet wrote : " If 
 you kill Abu Nuwas, where will you find another ? " 
 The only woman he ever really loved was a slave, 
 Janan. She was well taught and witty, learned both 
 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 be- 
 loved one's person. Amongst others, he has this line : 
 "She taps the rose with jujubes" — that is, "her cheek 
 with her finger-tips." Scenes in which deep drinkers, 
 ever athirst, 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 mer- 
 chant, and grown mellow in its cobwebbed jar, the heat 
 of which cheers and warms the darkness of the night — 
 such are the themes of Abu Nuwas' most famous poems. 
 Here and there we catch a note of sadness, a sudden 
 memory of past days and comrades now no more, dark 
 thoughts, swiftly washed away by a fresh draught of 
 the divine juice. 
 
 Muslim ibn el-Walid, known by the surname of 
 Sart al-Ghawdni, "the victim of the fair," which had 
 been bestowed on him by Hirun al-Rashid, was client 
 of a family of Ansars or auxiliaries — otherwise those 
 dwellers in Medina who had attained noble rank by their 
 support of the Prophet against his enemies. He was 
 born at Kiifa, somewhere between 747 and 757. His 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 7% 
 
 father 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 — 
 thyself ! For many a day he wove his cloaks as ill as 
 thou now weavest thy verse 1 " 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 
 ibn 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 
 of director of the horse-post in the same place. But he 
 appointed a steward to receive the income from the farms 
 he had given the poet near Ispahan, to put aside the sum 
 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 
 Tizanabad, and has sung the praise of wine. "The 
 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 his intoxication was elegant, and his style was 
 
 6 
 
74 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 classic, like that of the ancient authors whom he closely 
 followed, even 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 
 was for less exalted ladies. 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 estab- 
 lished, remained with his adversary. He died in 803, 
 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 peni- 
 tence on account of his Bacchanalian compositions. 
 
 Abu'l- Atahiya Ismail ibn Qasim (748-828) belonged 
 to the tribe of 'Anaza. He was born in the Hijaz, 
 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 pro- 
 minent 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 under- 
 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 75 
 
 Abu'l- Atahiya boasted that he could put everything he 
 said into verse, and when he was asked if he understood 
 prosody, he would reply: " I am above all prosody." As 
 a matter of fact he did use certain metres of his own 
 invention, 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, fifty lines are devoted to the 
 celebration of his mistress' charms, and not till all his 
 praise of her is exhausted does he enter on the real 
 subject of his poem. Now Abu'l- Atahiya, on the 
 contrary, devotes only a few lines to his beloved, and at 
 once begins his panegyric. Why are you envious of 
 him ? " When he was at the point of death, 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 
 on his tomb : " A life which ends in death is a life filled 
 with bitterness." Abu Nuwas found fault with his ex- 
 treme facility, which permitted Abu'l-Atahiya to pro- 
 duce 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 suffer- 
 ing death. " I would rather write poetry," quoth the bard. 
 
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 in a trap, and gave him a hundred lashes, but very 
 light ones, seeing he dreaded the poet's vengeance. 
 Nevertheless Abu'l-Atahiya took advantage of this for- 
 bearance 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 com- 
 pose their speech correctly. The . grammarian Al- 
 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 him to compose erotic poems. 
 
 'All ibn Jabala, who was surnamed Al- Akawwak (the 
 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 jj 
 
 Ma'mfln was very wroth with him because of a set of 
 verses 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 
 one woman say to another : " That is Abu Dulaf, of 
 whom the poet said: 'Abll Dulaf is the whole world, 
 nomad or of the cities. If he turns out of his road, all 
 the world follows him.' " And the great man wept, re- 
 penting that he had not rewarded Al- Akawwak accord- 
 ing to his deserts. 
 
 Two men of Persian origin, IBRAHIM AL-MAUSiLt and 
 his son ISHAQ, won celebrity as poets, and were incom- 
 parably 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 
 that place, to study music. He first saw the light at 
 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. 
 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 desired to 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. Ibrahim was succeeded by his son Ishaq, 
 who was born in 767. Of him the Caliph Mu tasim used 
 to say : " When Ishaq sings, the borders of my Empire 
 seem to me enlarged." He was as proficient in the tradi- 
 tions of the Prophet, in jurisprudence and scholastic 
 theology, as in music. Al-Ma'mun said of him: "If 
 Ishaq were not such a famous singer I should have made 
 him a judge. He deserves it better than our present 
 qddis, and his conduct, his piety, and his uprightness sur- 
 pass theirs. But 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 dis- 
 obeyed, 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. 
 
 Amongst the 'Bagdad poets of Arab, or at all events 
 of Semitic extraction, 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 
 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 own name into the sufferer's 
 ear to effect a cure. He had yet other sins upon his 
 conscience. One night he fell upon a money-changer 
 just 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 
 of verses. AI-Buhturt preferred Di'bil to Muslim, be- 
 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 I " It is true he denied having written 
 this, in later days. 
 
8o ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 The habitual guest and companion of Caliph Al-Muta- 
 wakkil, '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 
 Al-Ma'mun summoned him to Bagdad. He opposed 
 the Shi'ites ; 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 accu- 
 sations 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. 
 By this execution they satisfied their vengeance. But, 
 thanks be to God ! their victim was a man of honour, 
 and worthy of respect ! " 
 
 He proceeded into Syria, and while travelling towards 
 'Iraq from Aleppo, fell in a fight with a Bedouin Gliazzv 
 (in 863). When help reached him, he was found to be 
 dying, but still whispering verses. " Has the darkness 
 of night 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 first 
 manifested itself when his father had him detained in the 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 8i 
 
 school he was attending. He wrote to his mother, 
 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 many people asserted the stanzas were 
 written when he was sixty, and could not, 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 intro- 
 duce 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 
 Fadl, a woman of Central Arabian blood, who led a some- 
 what loose life a;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 
 style. She went to see him when she chose. One day, 
 as she entered, Sa'id rose eagerly, greeted her, and 
 begged her to remain with him. She replied ; " A mes- 
 senger from the Palace; has just been at my house, so I 
 cannot stay. But I came up, because I could not bear to 
 pass thy door without coming in to see thee " ; and Sa id 
 replied : " Thou art like the sun that lights the world ; its 
 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 
 
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 tells us (and other testimony proves her 
 truth), "receive a 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 
 strength to write to him. " My patience is worn out, and 
 my sufferings increase. My house is near thee, it is true, 
 but thou art still a long way off ! " This happened under 
 the Caliphate of Mu tamid, in 873. In Mutawakkil's own 
 harem, a singing-woman named MAHBtrBA, born at Bas- 
 sora, but of foreign blood, was greatly admired. She com- 
 posed stanzas which she sang, accompanying herself on the 
 lute. But her verses were thought better than her singing, 
 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 into whose hands she passed when the 
 Caliph's harem was dispersed : but an officer of Turkish 
 birth asked for her as a gift, set her free, and bade her 
 quit Samarra and settle wherever she chose. She died at 
 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 ? " 
 said the minister. " Whither you have sent me." " Very 
 good," replied the vizier. " Present my duty to my father." 
 " I am not on my road to hell ! " answered the poet, who 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 83 
 
 forthwith retired to his 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 of expression 
 and originality of conception. The novelty of his ideas 
 was especially praised. He derided the Eastern mania 
 for dyeing the beard. " 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 con- 
 sidered young ? " 
 
 A 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. He died in 897, 
 either at his native town or at Aleppo. Like Abti 
 Tammim, whose chief claim to glory lies in his collection 
 of the Hamdsa, Al-Buhturt made a book of the same 
 description. And his poetry, too, is written in imitation 
 of the ancient style. He often mentions Aleppo and 
 the surrounding plain, for that country had grown dear 
 to him. It was Abu Tammam who, hearing him recite 
 a poem of his own composition, at Hims, divined his 
 poetic gift, and, as he knew him to be poor, wrote a letter 
 recommending him to the inhabitants of Ma'arrat al- 
 Nu man. As a result of this letter, he was given a pension 
 of four thousand dirhems, the first money he ever earned. 
 Abii'l-'Ala. al-Ma'arri considered Abu Tammim and 
 Mutanabbi moralists, while he took Al-Buhturi to be a 
 genuine poet. Al-Buhturt was very avaricious, wore 
 dirty garments, and starved the brother and the servant 
 
84 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 who lived with him. He left very few satires behind 
 him. 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 (86i- 
 908), 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 
 eunuch. His poetry, which resembled that of Abu 
 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 
 of style. 
 
 He formulated the rule for healthy rhetoric in the 
 following dictum : " Eloquence is the accurate expression 
 of ideas, in few words." Some poets wept his tragic 
 end, among them the refined and subtle 'Ali ibn Muham- 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 8s 
 
 mad Ibn Bassim, and his friend Ibn aI-A114f Hasan 
 ibn'Ali, the blind poet of Naliraw^n, who, to avoid per- 
 secution, wrote a celebrated elegy on a cat, his pet, 
 which was in the habit of climbing into his neigh- 
 bours' pigeon roosts and devouring their denizens, whose 
 owners ruthlessly destroyed it. "Thou hast left us, puss 
 {hirr), and thou wilt return no more ! Thou wast as 
 my own child to me. How could we cease to love 
 thee, thou who wast so sure a protection to us ! " Ibn 
 al-Mu'tazz was fond of drinking wine of a morning in 
 the meadows of Matira, near Samarra, not far from the 
 Christian Convent of 'Abdun. " How often have I been 
 wakened at dawn by the voices of the monks at their 
 prayers ! Robed in 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 con- 
 siderable fame and applause. Its ease and gaiety were 
 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 
 
86 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Pilgrim Caravan. He began to write verses very early in 
 life, and went on producing them in considerable num- 
 bers till he died. He also took an interest in Koranic 
 exegesis, and wrote works dealing with the rhetoric of the 
 Sacred Book. He died at Bagdad in 1015. 
 
 One of his pupils, MlHYAR IBN MarzDya, was con- 
 verted to Islam by his means. 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 
 Sharif Al-Rida. His Shi'ite opinions were abhorred by 
 the Sunnites, one of whom said to him, at last : " Mihyar, 
 when you were converted, all you did was to shift from 
 one corner of hell into another!" The delicacy of 
 thought and remarkable sweetness of expression charac- 
 terising his verses were greatly admired. 
 
 The Provinces 
 
 All the poetic genius of the country was not attracted 
 to the capital. From one end of the Empire to the other, 
 we find poetical works produced. Their authors, for 
 political or religious, or other more personal reasons, 
 remained far from the central point, 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 Abu'l- Abbas Saffah when 
 that city fell, 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 
 its simplicity of diction. 
 
THE "ABBASIDS 87 
 
 This poet, who came of Kharijite parents, belonging 
 to the 'Ibadite sect, spent forty years in celebrating the 
 gloi'ies of 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 to the tenets of the Kaisanites, the 
 partisans of Muhammad, son of the Hanafite woman. 
 His bronzed complexion bore witness to the many cross- 
 ings 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 them- 
 selves highly esteemed his style. His drunken habits 
 led to his being arrested one night, in a state of intoxica- 
 tion, 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 com- 
 pare 'A'isha to " the serpent which seeks to devour its 
 young." 
 
 Abu'1-Shis Muhammad ibn 'Abdallah attached himself 
 as 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 eye- 
 sight, 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, 
 Ashja', 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 
 rapidity. 
 
 No more poets are to be discovered in the Arabian 
 Peninsula. It is scarcely worth while to mention Ibn 
 Harma Ibrahim ibn 'Ali (685-767), who dwelt at 
 
88 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Medina, was a hot partisan of the 'Alids, and a great 
 lover of wine. Syria, however, continues to shine with 
 "brilliant splendour. Abu Tammam Habib ibn Aus, 
 who was born near the Lake of Tiberias in 807, the 
 son of a Christian named Tadus (Thaddeus) the 
 druggist, was a great traveller. In his youth he was 
 at Hims, where, when the poet Al-Buhturi met him, 
 he already enjoyed considerable reputation as a poet. 
 But some authorities aver that, as a child, he carried 
 water in the mosques of Cairo. Certain it is that Egypt 
 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, 
 but could not obtain an audience. Having reached 
 Mosul, he travelled into Armenia, where rich gifts from 
 the governor, Khalid ibn Yazid, awaited him. The death 
 of Caliph Al-Ma'mun recalled 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 dedi- 
 cated. The increasing renown of 'Abdallah ibn Tahir, 
 then well nigh independent in his government of Khu- 
 rasan, attracted the poet thither. On his return, being 
 delayed at 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 
 of his library, inspired him with a taste for searching 
 out and collecting the old Arab poets, and thus enabled 
 him 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 
 forgotten ; but his celebrity as the compiler of the 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 89 
 
 HamAsa has endured, and his commentator, Tabrizi, 
 has been able to declare that " Abii Tammam, when he 
 collected this anthology, proved himself a better poet 
 than in his own verse." Yet he is also said to have sur- 
 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 
 of all that was happening in the provinces. He died in 
 this town, about the year 846. 
 
 In DIk AL-Jinn ("the Cock of the Genii," thus sur- 
 named 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 supe- 
 riority and nobility of race. These rhetoricians were 
 known 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 
 of their vanquished state. The Cock of the Genii was 
 a famous Shuubi. He was born at Hims in Syria, a 
 country he never left, and he asserted the superiority 
 of the Syrian race. He was also a Shi'ite, and wrote 
 elegies on the sad death of Husain, son of 'Ali, at 
 the battle of Kerbela. He died in 849, when over 
 seventy years of age. He had squandered his whole 
 7 
 
go ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 patrimony in pleasure and dissipation. He had a slave 
 of the name of 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 
 he vents his lamentation. " O cluster of dates, destruc- 
 tion has fallen upon thee ! I have watered the earth 
 with thy blood. . . ." Her form used to appear to him 
 at night. " After she was buried she came to my couch, 
 and I said to her : 'Joy of my eyes, art thou restored 
 to me ? But how ? Can it be possible ? ' and she 
 replied : ' My corpse lies yonder, but this, my soul, 
 is come to visit thee.' " My readers will note the ex- 
 pression of regret. There is no expression of remorse. 
 The 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 Byzan- 
 tium. 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 
 amongst the desert Arabs. As a young man, he fancied 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 91 
 
 himself a prophet, founded a new religion in the plains 
 round the little town of Samawa on the Euphrates, 
 received revelations after the manner of 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 
 cast into prison. Thence his surname of MutanabbJ, 
 "he who counts himself a prophet." His prison, which 
 did not open its doors till he had acknowledged the 
 true 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, 
 of Susiana, who so far lost his self-control as to strike 
 his adversary in the face with a key, the poet quitted 
 Aleppo and offered his services to foes of the Hamda- 
 nid 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). 
 
 Mutanabbi's poems have been inordinately praised and 
 criticised, 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 author of the Yatimat al-Dahr, justly held 
 this division of opinion to be an evident proof of the 
 poet's merit and superiority. He also praised his skill. 
 " Rhythm is subject to his will, and thoughts are his 
 slaves." A close examination of Oriental criticism shows 
 us that the qualities it most values in Mutanabbi's work 
 are his refinement of expression, his neglect of the 
 antique simplicity in favour of affected mannerisms, and 
 his accumulation of fantastic imagery. Thus he was the 
 first to 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 
 eyes 1 These regrettable inventions of the pseudo- 
 prophet 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 com- 
 mentaries 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 
 of the life at Saif al-daula's court. One stern Moslem 
 actually remarked that though he did not fast, nor 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 
 
 93 
 
 recite the canonical prayers five times a day, nor read 
 the Koran, he never told a lie. 
 
 AbO FirAs al-Hamdani, who was of the princely 
 family, and cousin to Saif al-daula, who appointed him 
 governor of the town of Manbij, and had him with 
 him all through his wars with the Domesticus, general- 
 in-chief of the Roman troops in Asia, was a man of a 
 different temper. He was made prisoner in 959, when 
 the fortress he commanded fell, was conveyed to 
 Constantinople, and there remained till he was set at 
 liberty in 965. During this captivity he wrote many 
 elegies addressed to 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 
 against him by Saif al-daula's son. He was a valiant 
 soldier, and his poems, quite devoid of any pedantic 
 affectation, breathe brave and straightforward feeling, 
 expressed in noble and elevated language. They form 
 a diary of his eventful life. 
 
 With these two masters of the Arabic tongue, we 
 may mention a member of Saif al-daula's circle known 
 as Al-Sari Al-Raffa, because in his youth he had been a 
 patcher or darner of stuffs at Mosul. After Saif al-daula's 
 death, he went to Bagdad, to the Vizier Al-Muhallabi ; 
 Tha'alibt accuses him of many plagiarisms. He had 
 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 own composition. Al - Nam! 
 (Abfi'l- Abbas Ahmad), who succeeded Mutanabbi as 
 court poet, died at Aleppo between 980 and 1008. He 
 
'94 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 was called Al-Missisi, because his family came from 
 Mopsuesta in Cilicia. We possess witty lines from his 
 pen, addressed to the solitary black hair remaining on his 
 bald pate. " I say to my white hairs, which are terrified 
 by this stranger's presence : ' Respect her, I entreat 
 you. A 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 
 a defect in his speech, belonged to Nasibin. After 
 his patron's death he betook himself to Mosul, and 
 thence to Bagdad, where he died in 1007. Al-Zahi 
 'All ibn Ishaq was only a temporary visitor 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 Al- 
 Muhallabi ; 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 
 of influence of the Bagdad Caliphate. The Tulunids 
 and the Ikhshidites had established their independence, 
 and the African Fatimids was soon to establish a Shi'ite 
 Caliphate on the Nile. With a glance at the k&tib 
 (secretary), Rishid ibn Ishftq, who flourished about 
 850, 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 
 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 dissipa- 
 tion into which he had plunged had earned him the 
 reputation of being tainted with the opinions of the Greek 
 philosophers. This roused popular hatred against him, 
 and forced his patron, 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 
 973. He was still a young man, not over forty-two. 
 
 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. 
 
 TamIm, the second son of the Fatimid Caliph, Al- 
 
96 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Muizz (948-985), composed dithyrambs in praise of 
 his brother, CaHph Al-Aziz, and died in Egypt. Al- 
 'Aziz, who succeeded Al-Muizz, having been desig- 
 nated heir-presumptive in his lifetime, was also a 
 poet. Tamim wrote amorous poetry, and imitated 
 the desert poets in his descriptions of thirst-stricken 
 gazelles. With him we may refer to Ibn Wakf, 
 ■who was born at Tinnis, near Damietta, and died in 
 the same town, in 1003. His originality of thought 
 was much admired. He was a remarkable compiler, 
 and devoted a whole volume to the plagiarisms ascribed 
 to Mutanabbi. A defect in his pronunciation had pro- 
 cured 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. 
 Thy cruelty has reconciled me to thine absence. A 
 parent may cease to mourn the death of a froward 
 child." His ambition was a modest one. "An obscure 
 position fulfils my desires, which shrink from exalted 
 rank. Not that they do not know how sweet greatness 
 is, 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 
 great men of that country, and died there in 1008. Al- 
 TlHAMt (Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali ibn Muhammad) only pro- 
 duced a small volume of poems, but the greater part are 
 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 97 
 
 and it was asserted that in reward for having written 
 such fine verses his sins had been forgiven him. His 
 political action proved his ruin. He came secretly to 
 Egypt, bearing letters from Hassan ibn Mufarrij, chief 
 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 signi- 
 fies "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. The caligrapher who traces this sign is in 
 reality the State Chancellor. Tughra'i composed, at 
 Bagdad, the Ldmiyyat al-Ajam (Ode in / of the Non- 
 Arabs), in opposition to Shanfara's celebrated Ldmiyyat 
 al-Arab. It is an elegy on the misfortunes of the times. 
 At a later date, the 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 
 of the great minister, Nizam al-Mulk. The Oriental 
 scholars Pococke and Golius have exercised their skill in 
 a Latin translation of Tijghra'i's Ldmiyya. 
 
 A copyist and bookseller of Bagdad, Abu'l-Ma'ali 
 Sa'd al-HazIrI (died 1172), surnamed Dallal al-Kutub 
 (the book-broker), collected his poems, in alphabetical 
 
98 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 order, into a book called Luinah al-mulah, and also 
 made a collection of enigmas, now 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. Grace- 
 ful thoughts, very elegantly expressed, abound in his 
 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 of the great vizier of the Seljuqid dynasty, 
 Nizam al-MuIk. 
 
 At this period Syria saw the birth of a philosopher 
 who was the last of the great poets of the Arabic tongue, 
 and whose pessimism, finely expressed in verse, stirred 
 the admiration of many generations. Abu'l-'Ala AL- 
 Ma'arrI, who was born at Ma'arrat al-Nu"man, in 
 Northern Syria, in 973, came of a family descended from 
 the Yemenite tribe of Tanukh. When four years old, he 
 had an attack of smallpox, and lost one of his eyes. At 
 a later date his healthy eye, too, was destroyed, and he 
 became stone blind. In spite of this he received a 
 careful education, under the superintendence of his own 
 father, 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 
 
 Mu tazilites ; others were downright materialists. Their 
 society exercised a 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 indis- 
 pensable in prosody. He left a collection of letters, and 
 a treatise on asceticism and preaching, in rhymed prose 
 and verse He was said to have written a Koran, an 
 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 collec- 
 tion of poems arranged in alphabetical order. He was 
 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, 
 was a dainty and euphuistic poet, who over-indulged 
 in description and metaphor. He wrote the famous 
 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 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 
 first invented, but in later days, repeated ad nauseam 
 by thousands of poetasters, in Persian, Hindustani, and 
 Turkish, they constitute the most wearisome repetition 
 of empty formulas that can well be imagmed. Al- 
 Wa'wa' died at the end of the tenth century. 
 
 Abu 'Abdallah al-Ablah was born, and lived, and 
 died, at Bagdad. This last event took place towards 
 1183. His poems, some of which are preserved at the 
 British Museum, unite tenderness of feeling with 
 artificiality of style. There were not many of them, but 
 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 
 name was Nflshtakin. He was grandson, on the mater- 
 nal side, of the celebrated ascetic Ibn 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 
 not support their father, who addressed so touching a 
 poem to Caliph Nasir-Lidinillah, pleading for a pen- 
 sion for himself, that the Caliph granted his request. 
 " If that poem had been recited to a rock it would 
 have touched it," says Ibn Khallikan. His easy and 
 graceful style 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 sur- 
 name of Abu'l-GhanA'im Muhammad al-Hurthi, who 
 came from Hurth, near Wisit, was born in 1108, and 
 died in 1196. Pathetic sentiment is the dominant 
 quality of his verse, and with it we note a natural 
 delicacy of thought. His poetry is of the amorous and 
 panegyric orders, easy in sty'e, and apt in fancy. It 
 met with considerable success, spread far and wide, and 
 earned its author the public esteem, an easy fortune, 
 and an influential position. It was much learnt by 
 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. The 
 songs of carnal love led them up to the divine. There 
 was a mutual jealousy between Ibn al-Muallim and Ibn 
 al-Ta'AwidhI, who addressed satires to each other. One 
 day, when the first-named poet was passing a spot 
 
I02 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 where Shaikh Abil'l-Faraj Ibn al-Jauzi was wont to 
 deliver pious exhortations, he saw a crowd blocking the 
 street, inquired the reason, and was told that Ibn al- 
 Jauzt was about to preach a sermon. He contrived 
 to push through the press, and come near enough to 
 the preacher to hear him say : " Ibn al-Mu allim has 
 expressed a very fine thought in this stanza : ' The re- 
 putation of thy name renews, in my ear, the pleasure 
 of hearing it, and he who repeats it 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 AL-HAjlRt served, like his father, 
 as a soldier in the Turkish army. He was born at 
 Irbil. He was the close friend of a brother of Ibn 
 Khallikan, named Diya al-din Isa ; when the Arab 
 biographer left Irbil in 1229, the poet was detained in 
 the citadel of the town, "for reasons too lengthy to 
 relate " ; he lightened the dulness of his captivity by 
 writing poems on it. At a later period he obtained 
 his liberty, 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, 
 in spite of his terrible wound, a poetic appeal to 
 Batikin's vengeance. He was barely fifty years of age. 
 The surname Al-Hajiri refers to Al-Hijir, a village 
 in the Hijaz. It was not his birthplace ; he was born 
 
THE "ABBASIDS 103 
 
 at Irbil ; the name was bestowed on account of his 
 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 
 of learning, would refer to places they had never seen, 
 in which they had never set foot, and their only know- 
 ledge 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 
 ghazals, or love-poems ; the verses written in prison ; 
 the mukhammasdt, or five-lined stanzas ; the isolated 
 verses ; 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. 
 He flourished during the first half of the thirteenth 
 century. He is 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 
 died in 1258. He was one of the dandies of the city, 
 a pleasant and good-natured companion, but very 
 frivolous-minded. His odes celebrate the Caliphs and 
 Kings of that epoch, such as Malik-Nasir Da'ud, the 
 lord of Karak. When the Prince of Mosul went to 
 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, 
 
I04 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 and died near SalmSs, aged nearly sixty. At the outset, 
 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 
 subject of his nag, which the prince had found ill in a 
 garden, he adopted him as one of his daily circle at 
 meals, and gave him a pension. 
 
 If we cite, in addition, the names of 'Izz al-din 'Abd 
 al-Hamid Ibn Abi'l-Hadid, the Shi'ite 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 
 copy of which exists at 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 al- 
 Witri, a preacher at Witr (died 1264), the author of lines 
 in praise of Mahomet and on the merits of pilgrimage ; 
 of Shams al-din al-Waiz al-Kufi (a preacher at Kufa), 
 who died, aged eighty, in 1276, and whose manu- 
 script poems are at Gotha ; and of Majd al-din Ibn 
 Abi Shakir of Irbil, who was alive in 1277, and one 
 of whose poems, Tadhkirat al-arib, is now in the Biblio- 
 theque Nationale in Paris, we shall have reviewed the 
 whole of the poetic movement of which Bagdad was 
 the scene. 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS ios 
 
 Persia 
 
 The town of Bust in Sijistin, which enjoyed a period 
 of brilhant prosperity 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 
 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 sur- 
 name 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 
 satirical verses. But he had the bad taste to add: 
 "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. We know 
 scarcely anything about his life. He was born before 
 1009. He was at Wasit when Fakhr al-daula Muham- 
 mad ibn Jahir was made vizier, and congratulated 
 him on his appointment. He was killed by an accident 
 in 1072. A pit to catch lions had been dug close to 
 a village on the road to Khurasan, and he fell into it. 
 
io6 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 The study of Shaffite law did not hinder the develop- 
 ment of the poetic powers of Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali al- 
 BakharzI. 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 of the Hegira, of Tha'alibi's Yatimat 
 al-Dahr, under the title of Duniyat al-qasr (Statue of the 
 Palace). This, like the work it carried on, was a poetical 
 anthology. He was murdered in the midst of a pleasure 
 party in his native town during the summer of 1075, and 
 the crime remained unpunished. 
 
 A member of the sacred family of Hashim, a de- 
 scendant 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 his satire. He was one of the circle 
 of poets which surrounded Nizam al-Mulk, the great 
 Seljuqid vizier. His favourite forms of composition were 
 satires and humorous and obscene poems. "When 
 he condescends to respect decency, his poems are of 
 a high order of beauty," writes KatibTmad al-din in his 
 Kharida. Nizam al-Mulk treated him with the most 
 excessive indulgence. A spirit of hatred and jealousy 
 had grown up between the vizier and Taj al-Mulk 
 Ibn Darest, secretary to Turkan-Khatun, Malik-Shah's 
 wife, 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 107 
 
 all the weight of his favour and support. " How can 
 I attack a man to whose kindness I 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 j 
 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 in- 
 flicting 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 
 is, on account of its rarity, greatly admired by the 
 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 fol- 
 lowing lines are quoted : " When Abu Sa'id perceived 
 that I had abstained from wine for a whole year, he 
 said to me : ' Who is the Shaikh who has converted you 
 to a more honourable way of life ? ' and I replied : ' That 
 Shaikh is Poverty ! ' " 
 
 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 Low and Whispers) ; it is 
 in verse, in the rajas metre, two thousand lines in all, 
 and the author spent ten years in writing it. He dedi- 
 cated 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-Hab- 
 bariyya, 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. He won great celebrity 
 as a poet, but he was also a student, learned in 
 tradition and genealogy. His poetical works are classed 
 under three headings : ''Irdqtydt (poems touching 
 'Iraq), youthful effusions, and panegyrics of Caliphs 
 and their ministers ; Najdiydt (poems in praise of 
 Najd, or Central Arabia, the Arcady of the Oriental 
 poet) ; and Wajdiydt (erotic poems). His History of 
 the Cities of Abiward and Nasd is unfortunately lost. 
 His illustrious origin had inspired him with excessive 
 vanity, pride, and arrogance. He habitually prayed 
 in these words : " Almighty God ! make me king 
 of the East and the West of the earth ! " Now and 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 109 
 
 again the scion of the Omeyyads betrays himself in his 
 poetry. "We 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, 
 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 
 earned the honorary title of Shihab al-din (Luminary of 
 Religion), 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 
 of a first-rate master did not portend the speedy demise 
 of the oldest of his peers. Al-Khayyit's diwdn, which 
 was collected within a year of his death, and was ex- 
 ceedingly widely read in the Middle Ages, is preserved at 
 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 
 generously. Here it was that his work first found 
 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 Merv and Balkh, 
 and was buried in the latter town. When he felt the 
 approach of death he exclaimed : " I hope God will for- 
 give me, for three reasons. I am the compatriot of 
 al-Shafi'i, I am an old man, and I am far from my 
 own kin." 
 
 Nasih al-din AL-ARRAJANt (1068-1149) belonged, to a 
 family which traced 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 sub- 
 sequent 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 
 to him. He mentions it in his lines : "That I should 
 act as assistant in such a profession is one of fortune's 
 tricks. It is a miracle that I have enough patience to 
 endure such changes;" and again : "I am without con- 
 tradiction the most poetic jurist of my time, and at least 
 I am the most learned Doctor of Laws amongst its 
 poets ! " His diwdn, which is principally composed of 
 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 Muz- 
 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 r 
 
 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 com- 
 posed an ode which was preserved by his son Taj 
 al-din Muhammad, and is still famous throughout 
 Persia. It is remarkable for its involved and diffuse 
 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 
 the moats of Tripoli in Syria ; he was ransomed by 
 an Aleppan, who gave him his daughter in marriage. 
 He himself mentions his visits to Kashgar in Turkestan, 
 to Abyssinia, and Asia Minor. He travelled about India, 
 
112 ARABIC LITERATUKE 
 
 passing through Afghanistan on his way there. He 
 closed his wandering career by settling down 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 
 days, the cradle of poetry, yet the sacred torch is not 
 wholly extinguished. In Yemen we discover, in 1058, a 
 native poet, 'Abd al-Rahim AL-BUR't, whose verses are 
 full of mystic and religious feeling. A hundred years 
 later, and in the same region, another Sufi poet, Abu'l- 
 Hasan 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 
 Shaizar on the Orontes, dedicated his poetical anthology, 
 entitled Jamharat al-isldm, to the last of the Ayyubite 
 princes of Yemen, Malik Mas dd Salah al-din. 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 113 
 
 Egypt 
 
 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 ibn al-Hajar — a proof that 
 under William II., the third Norman king of that island, 
 the 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 Alex- 
 andria, 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. He returned to 
 his patron almost naked, nth August 1168. 
 
 He died at 'Aidhab, a small port near Jedda, on 
 29th May 1172. He said of himself, referring to his 
 many journeys: "There are many men in this world, 
 but I am fated to have no companions save sailors and 
 camel-drivers." 
 
114 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Yet another Egyptian magistrate whose serious avo- 
 cations did not prevent his successful cultivation of 
 polite literature was Hibat-Allah Ibn Sana al-Mulk, sur- 
 named Al-Qadi al-sd-id (the lucky Judge). He was born 
 in 1 150, and in March 1176 he proceeded to Syria, 
 whither his patron, Al-Qadi al-Fadil Mujir al-din of 
 Ascalon, minister to Saladin, had accompanied his 
 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 mar- 
 vellous. His merits and talents alone carried him to the 
 high position he held, and earned him fortune's favours. 
 He died at Cairo in 1211. 
 
 The one diwdn of his which has come down to us, 
 the Ddr al-tirdz (Storehouse of Embroideries), consists 
 in large measure of popular poems, known as muwash- 
 shahdt ; the Fusus al-fusiil is an anthology of scattered 
 verse and prose extracted from his literary correspond- 
 ence. At Cairo he was one of a circle of poets who had 
 meetings in the course of which they held pleasant con- 
 verse — gratuitous academies, which, if properly organised, 
 would possibly have become quite as famous as many 
 another. 
 
 Kamal al-din Ibn al-Nabih was the panegyrist of the 
 Ayyubite princes. 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, ap- 
 pears 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 al- 
 Farid, was born at Cairo in 1181, and died in that city 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 115 
 
 ill 1235, after a prolonged sojourn at Mecca. His diwdn 
 was 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 
 philosophers, as 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 
 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. 
 
 A secretary in the Egyptian Government, and court 
 poet to the Ayyubites, Baha al-Din Zuhair al-Mu- 
 hallabi, died ih 1258, leaving a diwdn whicli was pub- 
 lished and 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 
 work. Monsieur R. Basset has translated it into 
 French, and there are also German translations, and 
 one into English. Moreover, poets have entertained 
 themselves by writing paraphrases of it, called takhmis 
 — three couplets of padding, which, with two more 
 of the original Arabic, make up five. Other pane- 
 gyrics of the Prophet are also due to Biisiri's inspired 
 pen ; an ode called Unini al-Qurd (the Mother of Cities, 
 
ii6 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 a surname applied to Mecca), and four others of a' 
 similar nature. 
 
 Jamil al-din Yahyi IBN MatrOh was born at Siout 
 in 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 al- 
 Salih Najm al-din, son of Malik-Kamil, and his lieu- 
 tenant 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 
 fallen into the hands of Malik-Nasir. While the siege 
 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 
 the nth of June 1249. AI-Malik al-Salih encamped at 
 Mansura, and died there on 23rd November of the same 
 year. Then Ibn Matruh went back to Old Cairo, and 
 dwelt there in his own house till he died on 19th 
 October 1251. He was the friend of Ibn Khallikan, 
 who describes him as a man of great powers and 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 117 
 
 amiable temper, who, with these merits, possessed the 
 most estimable qualities of the heart. They kept up a 
 correspondence when they were apart, and when they 
 met they spent their time in literary discussions and 
 amusing talk. Ibn Matrlah recited his verses to his 
 friend, who inserted some of them in his Biographical 
 Dictionary. When, after his patron's death, he retired 
 from public life, his want of occupation weighed heavily 
 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 
 in life, they kept up a correspondence in verse. Ibn 
 Matruh's diwdn was published at Constantinople in 
 1881. It contains a poem on the Battle of Mansura, 
 which was won by Malik-Muazzam, and in which St. 
 Louis was taken prisoner. 
 
 Syria 
 
 The filiation of IBN al-Sa'at1 leads us to assign him 
 an Iranian origin, for his father's name was Rustam and 
 his grandfather's Hardiiz. He was born at Damascus 
 in 1161. Owing to some unknown circumstances, he 
 spent his life in Egypt, sang the praises of that country 
 in his 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 descrip- 
 tions, he gives us one, in elegant and much admired 
 language, of the delights of a day and night spent at 
 Siout, in Upper Egypt. His verses are full of ideas 
 
ii8 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 which Orientals think exquisite, but which strike us as 
 finical and affected. 
 
 The dtwdn, in four volumes, of Shihab al-din Yusuf 
 ibn Ismail, of Aleppo, surnamed Al-ShawwA (the 
 Cookshop-keeper), has disappeared. He was born in 
 Aleppo in 1166, and acquired great technical skill in 
 the art of versification. He was fond of introducing 
 grammatical expressions into his verses ; 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. 
 They were inseparable from 1236, till Al-Shawwa died, 
 in the following year. He belonged to the most extreme 
 section of the Shi'ite sect, and believed 'Ali and the imams, 
 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 
 manner of Abu Nuwas. 
 
 Nur al-din Muhammad al-Is'irdi (i 222-1 254), born at 
 Seert, 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, 
 he dedicated his Ndsiriyydt, panegyrics, now at the 
 Escurial. He was bold and shameless. One of his 
 odes is devoted to the defence of wine against hashish. 
 
 Ibn al-Saffar (the Son of the Coppersmith) (1179- 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 1.19 
 
 1260), of Maridin, otherwise called Jal^l al-din 'Ali 
 ibn Yusuf, was secretary in the service of the Ur- 
 tuqid Prince al-Malik al-Mansur, and perished at the 
 taking of the fortress by the Mongols. His poems, 
 loose and erotic, are among the manuscripts preserved 
 at Gotha. 
 
 Najm al-din Abu'l-Ma'ali Ibn Isra'il (Muhammad 
 ibn Sawwar) (1206-1278) was born at Damascus, and 
 died in the same city. He was a dervish, who retired 
 from the world and travelled about. His dtwdn is in 
 the Escurial. 
 
 Ibn Munir al-TarAbulusI (Abu'l-Husain Ahmad) 
 (1080-1153) was the son of a wandering singer, who 
 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 
 to write poetry on his own account. He went to 
 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 in- 
 fluential 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 
 Ibn Khallikan saw his tomb. The atdbek 'Imad al-din 
 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- 
 venture. 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 Al- 
 Musawi, and who was by him detained, is preserved 
 in the Berlin Library. He gives it to be understood 
 in this poem that he would be ready to renounce his 
 profession of Shi'ite opinions if only he might regain 
 possession of his servant. 
 
 The son of the chief of a tribe of desert Arabs, and 
 therefore surnamed Al-Amir, IBN HayyOs was born 
 at Damascus on 27th December 1003. His real name 
 was Abil'l - Fityan Miihammad ibn Sultan. Hayyus 
 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 Beni- 
 Mirdis, then the reigning family of Aleppo, to which 
 town he went in 1072. Mahmud ibn Nasr, one of 
 the princes of this dynasty, had presented him with a 
 thousand gold pieces. When Mahmud died in 1075, 
 the poet sought the presence of his son and successor, 
 Jalal al-daula Nasr, to offer him compliments and 
 condolence in verse. In the course of his poem he 
 said : " Mahmud gave me one thousand pieces of gold 
 out of his treasury ; I know for a certainty that his 
 son Nasr will do the same." This elegy so de- 
 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 1 " The benefits conferred on him by the Mirdas 
 
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 
 coexist. Most of his works are compilations, in which 
 we can only praise the good taste with which he has 
 selected the poems they contain. He has, indeed, left 
 some poetical compositions of his own. Hajl Khalfa 
 mentions his diwdn. The lines in which he says : 
 " 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 
 ibn Quzal ibn Jildak el-Yariiqi. He was called to 
 Damascus as inspector {mushidd) of the Office of Public 
 Administration by Al-Malik al-Nasir Ydsuf, and died 
 there. He was an agreeable social companion, and a 
 witty conversationalist. His diwdn may be seen both 
 at the Escurial and in the British Museum. 
 
 The only other names of this period worthy of recol- 
 lection are those of Ibn al-Zaqqaq al-Bulqini, who died 
 before he was forty, in 1134, and is well known for his 
 muwashshah&t ; Zafir al-Haddad of Alexandria, who 
 died at Cairo in 1135, and whose diwdn, largely com- 
 posed of elegies and panegyrics, is preserved at Berlin ; 
 9 
 
122 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 *A1J al-Hamadhani al-Sakhawi, author of seven odes in 
 praise of the Prophet, a commentary on which, written 
 at a later date by 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Ismail ibn al- 
 Maqdisi, is now in Paris ; Zain al-din Katakit, who be- 
 longed 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 con- 
 sulted 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. 
 
 Shihab al-din al-Talla'fari (Muhammad ibn Yusuf) 
 (1197-1277) was born at Mosul, His panegyrics on the 
 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 be- 
 stowed 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 
 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 
 Berlin ; 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 uttered these words : " He who knows God cannot 
 dread Him. I, on the contrary, rejoice to go to be 
 with Him." At Damascus he acted as bailiff to the 
 Collector of the Public Revenues. His son, Muhammad 
 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 
 Witty Young Man). Born in Cairo in 1263, he died 
 at Damascus in 1289. 
 
 If to these names we add those of 'Abdallah al- 
 Khafaji (died 1074), who sang the praises of the 
 great Amir Sa'd al - daula 'Alt ibn Munqidh ; of 
 Madan ibn Kathir al-Balisi, none of whose work is 
 known to us, save some panegyrics and elegies pre- 
 served at Gotha ; of Prince Bahram-Shah ibn Far- 
 rukh-Shih, Saladin's great-nephew, who ruled Baalbek 
 in 1 182, and was murdered in 1230, leaving a dtwdn 
 consisting of love poems and poems of chivalry, now 
 in the Bibliotheque Nationale ; of Sadr al-din al-Basri, 
 who dedicated his Hamdsat al-Basriyya to Malik- 
 Nasir Abii'l-Muzaffar Ytisuf, Prince of Aleppo; of Taj 
 
124 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 al-din of Sarkhad, born in 1201, who taught Hanafite 
 law at Damascus, where he died in 1275 ; and of Shams 
 al-din al-Khaffaf, a panegyrist of the Prophet, we shall 
 have reviewed all the lesser Syrian poets belonging to 
 this period. 
 
 Sicily 
 
 Abu Ishaq Ibrahim al-Husri, a poet belonging to 
 Qairawin in Tunis, was born in that town, and died 
 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 
 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 Fati- 
 mids, and publicly recognised the Caliph of Bagdad 
 as his purely nominal suzerain. He was born in 1007, 
 and died in 1061, after having reigned for many years. 
 To celebrate his declaration of independence as regards 
 the 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 
 eye. He carried on a literary duel with Ibn Rashiq, 
 who wrote several satires against him. He died in 1068. 
 In the Escurial there is a literary Lecture of his, dealing 
 
The 'abbAsids 125 
 
 with the most famous poets. He wrote a graceful 
 line 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 Muhammad al-Shuqratisi, who died 
 in Jarid (Tunis) in 1072, was the author of an ode 
 in praise of the Prophet, frequently noticed by com- 
 mentators ; Abu'1-Fadl al-Tuzari (1041-1113) wrote 
 another, called al - Munfarija, 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 
 eleventh to the thirteenth century. 
 
 'Abd al-jabbar Ibn Hamdis (1048-1132) was born in 
 Sicily ; 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 re- 
 ceived 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 
 died, blind and over eighty years old. Some authorities 
 assert he died in the Island of Majorca. His diwdn has 
 been published at Palermo, by Moncada, and his songs 
 at Rome, by Schiaparelli. 
 
126 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Spain 
 
 Even in the first century following on the Arab 
 conquest of 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 
 Harun al-Ramadi, a Cordovan poet, who died there 
 in 1013, after gaining great glory. He was noted for 
 his fecundity of production and the swiftness with 
 which he expressed his thoughts ; yet all we now 
 possess of his works is a few scattered lines in various 
 anthologies, 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 
 and New Year congratulations ; Abu'l Fath Ibn al- 
 Hasina {circa 1048) ; 'Ali al-Mayurqi, who came from 
 the Balearic Isles, and died at Bagdad in 1048 ; the 
 '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 
 Abu'l -'Abbas al-Tutili al-A'ma, the blind poet of 
 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 pro- 
 minent family in Cordova, where he was born in 
 1 103. The prominent position he occupied when still 
 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 to the city. When the 
 tyrant died, his son, Abii'l-Walid, ascended the throne, 
 recalled Ibn Zaidiln, and made him his vizier. When 
 AbO 'Amir ibn 'Abdus 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 sus- 
 picions of his patron, Abfl'l-Walid, who sent him into 
 exile. He went to Seville, 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 post till he died, in 1070. His letter to Ibn 'Abdus 
 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 
 governor of that town. When 'Umar succeeded his 
 brother Yahya, he sent for the poet to Badajoz, and 
 made him his secretary. When the prince lost his 
 territory 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 
 ibn Tashifin also employed him as his secretary. He 
 died in his native town, whither he had returned to 
 
128 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 visit his kinsfolk, in 1134. His ode on the disappear- 
 ance of the Aftas family has become celebrated. Com- 
 mentaries 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 sur- 
 rounded 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 
 on being patrons of letters. In spite of this, as we 
 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, trans- 
 ported 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, ulti- 
 mately 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. A 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 
 
 as muwashshah. A native of Malaga, Abu'l Hakam 
 Malik Ibn al-Murahhal, wrote a panegyric of the Pro- 
 phet in popular form. 
 
 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 
 the form of sermons (Khutba), epistolary art, and poetic 
 compositions, which have grown famous under the name 
 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 dur- 
 ing a dream in which the preacher believed he had seen 
 the Prophet in person. This has been translated and pub- 
 lished 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 131 
 
 in 1015. A curious incident, related by Ibn Khallik^n, 
 befel him. He was taking a siesta one day in the vesti- 
 bule of his house, when 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 
 simultaneously reached the eastern and western extremi- 
 ties of the Moslem world. 
 
 The mother of Abu Bakr al-KhwarizmI was own 
 sister to the historian Tabari. He was born in 935, and 
 was the first author who left a collection of letters behind 
 him. He was a letter-writer who had seen many adven- 
 tures. He was of Persian origin. Flis father belonged 
 to Khwarizm, now the Khanate of Khiva, and his mother 
 to Tabaristin or Mazandaran, in Northern Persia. In 
 his 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 Nisha- 
 pur in Khurasan, and in Sijistan, where he lay a long 
 time in prison, because be had written a satire against 
 the governor, Tahir ibn Muhammad. Returning from 
 Nishapflr, he settled, after a certain amount of travelling, 
 at Ispahan and at Shiraz. His mania for satire earned 
 him confiscation and imprisonment at the hands of 
 Al-Utbl, minister of Mahmud the Ghaznevid. Then 
 he departed into Jurjan, whence he was recalled, 
 after 'Utbi's assassination, by his successor, Abu'l- 
 Husain al-Muzani. Towards the end of his life his 
 reputation was somewhat overshadowed by that of 
 
132 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Hamadhani. He died either in 993 or in 1002. 
 Tha'alibI has preserved extracts from his poems, in his 
 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 heart twenty thousand lines written by desert 
 Arabs. " Twenty thousand lines written by men or by 
 women ? " inquired the poet. He was recognised at 
 once. " It can be no one but him," said the vizier. 
 " Let him come in ! " The welcome this personage 
 bestowed on Al-Khwarizmi did not save him from the 
 poet's jeers at a later date. " Praise not Ibn 'Abbad, 
 even if he showers so many benefits that the very rain- 
 cloud 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 
 unflattering sketch of the poet's character : "Abu 
 Bakr has learning and talent, but he is not faithful to 
 his 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 
 o£ Hamadhan in 990. He travelled through the same 
 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 133 
 
 lethargy. 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 poem without hesitation after having once 
 heard it declaimed. He composed with the same ease, 
 either in prose or verse, and improvised at will upon any 
 subject he was given. Any poem put into his hand he 
 could at 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 
 what should have been its last line. He translated 
 Persian verse into Arabic poetry in the same rapid 
 fashion. 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 difficult style, the words of which are, for the inost 
 part, the rarest in the Arabic dictionary. The fictitious 
 hero is a chevalier dindustrie, who passes himself off 
 now as a Nabatean, now as an Arab, then as a Christian, 
 and again as a Moslem : " I am the chameleon," says 
 he, "and am perpetually changing my hue. Be not 
 deceived by reason ! Madness is the only real reason ! " 
 The word inaqdma (lecture or stance) 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 
 mentions them in his "^Uylln al - Akhbdr. But to 
 
134 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Hamadhani belongs the credit of having been the first 
 to create a new form of literature, by making a volume 
 of short stories of the comic adventures of beggars and 
 rogues, painted in the most brilliant colours by a learned 
 author, thoroughly acquainted with the homonymy of 
 the 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 pre- 
 served a lecture in the same style, and written at the 
 same period, by 'Abdal-Aziz ibn 'Umar al-Sa'di (939- 
 1015), 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 Hel- 
 lenising pagan belonging to Harran, a member of the sect 
 which preserved the ancient Syrian religions, with their 
 strong tincture of Greco-Roman syncretism, long after 
 Islam viras in full 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- 
 named al-Sabi, who was head of the Official Corre- 
 spondence 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 
 977. He was fortunate enough to be imprisoned instead, 
 and was pardoned, on condition of his writing a history 
 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 
 
 135 
 
 Lectures. He was born at Bassora. His family be- 
 longed 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 pre- 
 decessor, 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 
 situations. The name is not altogether imaginary. 
 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 
 addressed to him he replied : " I am Abu Zaid of 
 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 nine- 
 teenth century, has published the Arabic text of al- 
 Hariri'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 con- 
 siderable 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 
 Recreations (Mulhat al-Trab), a didactic poem, which has 
 been translated into French by M. L. Pinto. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ' ABB ASIBS— Continued 
 
 Grammar — The Schools of KOfa and Bassora 
 
 Meanwhile, the study of the Arabic language and 
 grammar, arising out of the exegesis of the Koran, and 
 destined to supply the needs of the constantly increasing 
 number of nations and individuals to whom a knowledge 
 of the conqueror's tongue was an absolute necessity, 
 was steadily proceeding. It is to the Aristotelian logic 
 taught in the Syro-Persian school of Gundishapur that, 
 as Ernest Renan has demonstrated, we must trace back 
 Arab research into the construction of the national 
 language. The interpretation of the Koran, and the 
 necessity for explaining the difficulties of its text, gave 
 rise to inquiries ultimately continued for the sake of 
 their intrinsic interest, and which resulted in the final 
 organisation of the lexicography of the language, and the 
 restoration of its ancient literary monuments. Thus the 
 criticism of the ancient texts sprang from these texts 
 themselves, within the limits permitted by Oriental 
 erudition, always incomplete, because Easterns can very 
 seldom go beyond the range of their native tongue. 
 Two 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 
 
 10 »37 
 
138 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 the centre of a mixed Arab and Persian population, 
 speaking two different languages — not only on account 
 of the striking difference between the two idioms, but 
 of the real though less striking variation of the Arabic 
 literature, derived from the Quraishite dialect of the 
 Koran, and from the others spoken in the Arabian 
 Peninsula — a school, the origin of which is wrapped in 
 obscurity, had arisen. Some go back to Abu'l-Aswad 
 as its founder, but to be more certain we must come 
 down to 'IsA IBN 'Umar al-Thaqafi, died 766, the master 
 of the famous grammarians Khalil and Sibawaih ; he had 
 a reputation as a reader of the Koran. Near him his 
 friend Abu 'Amr ibn al- Ala, born at Mecca in 689, died 
 at Kufa in 766, just as he had come back from a journey 
 to Damascus, collected the ancient Arab poets. It is 
 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 ascribed the invention of the rules of prosody (he 
 is said to have discovered them by hearing a smith's 
 hammer ringing on the anvil), and 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 139 
 
 that which may be called the historic order (because it 
 passed from its Phcenician inventors into the Greek and 
 Latin languages), but in an order suggested by linguistic 
 and phonetic laws. The alphabet thus conceived began 
 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 the pack is being placed), and ended with the 
 letter y. Lepsius has adopted a rational and experi- 
 mental order of this nature in his Standard Alphabet, 
 which is the delight of linguists, and obliges men of 
 learning to acquire yet another alphabet. It is 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 {k, j), then the whistling 
 and sibilant letters {sh, s, d, s, z), the lingual (/, d, t, z, 
 dh, th, r, I, 11), the labials (/", b, m), and the semi-vowels 
 {w, hamsa, andj'). This work, begun during a visit paid 
 by its author to Khurasan, and finished after his death 
 by 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 
 alteration. 
 
 It is more especially by means of the famous book 
 written by Khalil's pupil, Sibawaih, the Kitdb, or Book 
 above all others, that we are enabled to gauge Khalil's 
 influence over the Bassora School. Sibawaih is 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 
 name of Sebukht. He came to Bassora when he 
 was thirty - two years of age, completed his studies 
 there, and then moved on to Bagdad, where he found 
 
I40 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 life intolerable on account of his altercations with 
 Al-Kisa'i, tutor of Harun al-Rashid's son, as to the 
 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 
 great and favourite authority ; no other work has ever 
 been acknowledged its equal. The text has been pub- 
 lished by H. Derenbourg, and translated into German 
 by G. Jahn. 
 
 Besides Sibawaih, Khalil had other pupils. Mu'arrij 
 ibn 'Amr al-Sadusi, who was born in the desert, and 
 accompanied Caliph Ma'mun into Khurasan, lived 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 of Sibawaih's pupils, 
 Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Musta'mir, whom his master 
 surnamed Qutrub (Were-Wolf), qutrub being a mere 
 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 
 Ma'mijn and Mu'tasim, and left 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 a book on the subject, which is 
 now lost. He died at Samarra in 859. His mother's 
 name was Habib. 
 
 Abij 'Ubaida Ma'mar ibn al - Muthanna v^as born 
 at 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 
 Kharijites, and his leanings were also ShuHbite — that 
 is to say, he asserted the superiority of the conquered 
 races over the Arab victors, as we have previously ex- 
 plained. Harun al-Rashid summoned him to Bagdad 
 in 803. He had made himself so many enemies by his 
 book called al-Mathdlib (Book of the Arabs' Faults) that 
 when he 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 
 grammatical and philological treatises, composed of 
 extracts from the poems and proverbs of the Arabian 
 Peninsula. The poet Abu Nuwas took lessons from 
 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 
 
142 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 his own master he said : " He is a bundle of knowledge 
 done up in a skin." When he recited verses, he would 
 not mark the rhythm, and when he repeated passages 
 from the Koran or from the traditions, he made delibe- 
 rate 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 astonish- 
 ing erudition earned him the highest consideration at the 
 court of Hariin al-Rashid, while, both as an instructor 
 and as a writer, he wielded great influence in literary 
 circles. He is distinguished from his predecessors by his. 
 excessive piety, the expression of which is evident even 
 in his philological works. 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 143 
 
 the Vizier Fadl ibn Rabi', who asked him the number of 
 volumes in which his treatise 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, 
 giving me their names." " I am not a horse-doctor," 
 replied Abu 'Ubaida; "I got everything 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. After- 
 wards, 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 Al- 
 Asma'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 
 always answered : " The Arabs of the desert say that 
 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 
 feelings, and prevented him from using the gifts which 
 had brought him fame in profane subjects, for the study 
 of the sacred texts. 
 
 Al-Akhfash (surnamed Al-Ausat, "the Middle," to 
 distinguish 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, 
 
144 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 belonging to an Arab tribe. Though older than 
 Sibawaih, he had been his favourite disciple, and was in 
 the habit of saying : " My master never put a single 
 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, how- 
 ever, he opposed. His surname Akhfash signifies " he 
 who has little eyes," or can only see plainly in the dark. 
 Besides this peculiarity, his mouth was always open, 
 and he could not bring his lips over his teeth. He died 
 towards 835. 
 
 Al-Asma"i had several pupils. The first is Abu 'Ubaid 
 Al-Qasim ibn Sallam (773-837), the son of a Greek 
 slave, born at Herat. He not only studied at Bassora 
 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, Gover- 
 nor 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 pru- 
 dence about his literary efforts. To avoid the disagree- 
 able 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 145 
 
 Khedivial Library at Cairo, the Gharib al-Hadith is at 
 Leyclen, and \S.\& Book of Proverbs in. Paris. 
 
 The second of Al-Asma'i's pupils is AbCt Hatim Sahl 
 ibn Muhammad, who belonged to Sijist^n, and died 
 towards 864. He lived for some time at Bagdad, and 
 towards the close of his life forswore study, becoming 
 a bookseller instead. He is well 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 
 {Kitdb al-Nakhl) has been studied by Cusa and Lagu- 
 mina. He was the teacher of Ibn Duraid and of Al- 
 Mubarrad. 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 
 inks to conceal writings. He used to say to his pupils.: 
 " 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 ; the writing will become 
 legible if you pour an infusion of gall-nuts upon it. You 
 can also write with the gall-nut infusion, and pour 
 sulphate of iron 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 sham 'Ali ibn Muhammad, Chief 
 of the Zanj, in 874. When the town was taken by 
 
146 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 these savage negroes, the grammarian fell in the general 
 massacre of the inhabitants which ensued. A fifth was Al- 
 Sukkari Abu Said al-Hasan ibn al-Husain (827-888), 
 who made a collection and a critical edition of the 
 ancient Arab 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 
 explain to the learner for fear of profanjitioYi — and this 
 in spite of thie, large sym_ offered him by the student, and 
 of his own poverty. He was summoned to Bagdad, and 
 explained a grammatical difficulty occurring in a verse 
 written 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 
 Abu Hatim, he opposed several of the theories of 
 Sibawaih. Towards the close of his life he settled at 
 Bagdad, and died there in 898. He himself has related 
 the origin of his surname Al-Mubarrad (the 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 which he found very wearisome, went 
 to a friend's house. When the messenger came there to 
 fetch him, he hid himself in the great osier basket used 
 to cover drinking jars, and was not discovered. When 
 the messenger had departed, his host called him., shout- 
 ing out Al-Miibarrad{i\\& Cooled One), and the nickname 
 stuck. A whole dynasty of philologers and teachers of 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 147 
 
 grammar is formed by the Al-Yazidi family, from Abu 
 Muhammad 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, 
 and IsMq — down to his descendant Abu 'Abdallah 
 Muhammad 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 
 the Caliph, "if there is any better thing in life than this 
 gathering of ours." " Yes," responded Yazidi, " there 
 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. 
 
 Among Al-Mubarrad's pupils was numbered Al-Zaj- 
 jaj Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Sahl, originally a glass- 
 worker, who became a philologist, and died, aged over 
 eighty, in 922, having acted as tutor to Al-Mutadid's 
 vizier, and later entered the Caliph's own service. He 
 transmitted his name as surname to his pupil, 'Abd al- 
 Rahmin ibn Ish^q al-Zajjaj, who was born at Naha- 
 vand, taught at Damascus and at Tiberias, and died 
 at the latter place in 949. His Kitab al-Jumal (Book 
 of Sentences) is an instructive work on Arabic grammar, 
 but lengthened and overloaded by a plethora of in- 
 stances. He is said to have written it at Mecca, and 
 at the end of each chapter to have circumambulated 
 the Ka'ba seven times according to the pilgrimage 
 rites, praying God to forgive him his sins, and make 
 his book useful to its readers. Amongst Al-Zajjaj's 
 pupils we must not overlook Al-Hasan ibn Bishr al- 
 
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 
 871, and remained there for twelve years. Then he 
 went on into Persia, and by his panegyrics — and notably 
 by his ode called al-Maqsura, which has been trans- 
 lated into Latin by Haitsma, Scheidius, and Nannestadt 
 Boysen^he acquired the favour of the Governor of 
 Susiana and Fars, 'Abdallah ibn Muhammad ibn Mikai, 
 commonly called al-Shah, " the king." In honour of 
 this dignitary and his son he wrote a great dictionary, 
 entitled Jamhara. After the dismissal of his patrons 
 he went to Bagdad in 920, and the Caliph Al-Muqtadir 
 granted him a pension which enabled him to con- 
 tinue his studies there until his death. Under the title 
 of Kitdb al-Ishtiqdq (Book of Etymology), he wrote 
 a genealogical dictionary of the Arab tribes, which 
 has been published by Wustenfeld. He had earned 
 large sums in the service of the Governors of Fars ; 
 but, owing to his generous and even prodigal dis- 
 position, he never had any money in his pocket ; he 
 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 
 nothing else in his possession. When some one ex- 
 pressed disapproval, on the score of the Koranic injunc- 
 tion not to drink wine, he replied : " It v^'as all I had." 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 149 
 
 He became paralytic in his old age, but lived two years 
 after his last attack. 
 
 Al-Mubarrad's favourite pupil, Ibn al-Sarraj (Mu- 
 hammad ibn 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 
 in 871, died at Bagdad in May 958. 
 
 Behzad, a Persian, who professed belief in the Avesta, 
 and lived in the 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. 
 He died in 979. He lived a retired and very serious life. 
 He had 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'l- 
 Hasan 'Ali ibn 'Isa al-Rummani, the Ikhshidite (the Book- 
 seller) (908-994), whose family originally belonged to 
 Samarra. He was born and died at Bagdad. If we 
 may judge by the work he has left, and which is noAV 
 in the Bibliotheque Nationale — the sole survivor of the 
 eighteen books he wrote — he chiefly applied himself to 
 the solution of grammatical difficulties. 
 
ISO ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Yet another Persian we find in the person of Abu 
 'Alt 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 de- 
 scent. 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 of the language. He was the author of a parti- 
 cular manner of reading the Koran, and ranks as one 
 of the seven canonical readers. Harun al-Rashid en- 
 trusted him with the education of his two sons, Amin 
 and Ma'mun. He was an adversary of Sibawaih. He 
 died at Ranbuya, near Rai (Rhages, not far from the 
 present Teheran), towards 805. 
 
 The only work of his remaining to us, with the ex- 
 ception of the frequent quotations to be met with in 
 other authors, is a treatise on the mistakes in the lan- 
 guage of the vulgar {Risdlafi la/m al-dmma), preserved 
 in the Berlin Library, and probably the most ancient 
 work on the subject. 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 151 
 
 His chief disciple was Al-Farra (Abu Zakariya ibn 
 Ziyad), like him, of Persian origin, his family being 
 of the 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 a part in politics which very 
 nearly cost him dear. He took part in the rebellion of 
 the'Alid, Ibrahim, called by his own partisans the Pure 
 Soul, against the Caliph Mansur. The grammarian was 
 thrown into prison, but ultimately pardoned, and ap- 
 pointed 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 
 tribes. His son tells us that he collected and classified 
 the poems of more than eighty tribes : when he had 
 gathered all he could find in one encampment, he pub- 
 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 Mufad- 
 dal'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 
 Indus. He died at Samarra in April 846. His know- 
 ledge of the rare forms of expression placed him in the 
 foremost rank, and he criticised the philological works of 
 
IS2 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 others, pointing out tlie faults they contained. He had a 
 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 
 complete his knowledge of the Arab tongue. The 
 celebrity of his works induced Caliph Al-Mutawakkil 
 to entrust him with the education of his son Al- 
 Mu 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 chas- 
 tised and trampled upon that he died two days afterwards, 
 in 857. He is said, as a grammarian, to have lacked 
 acumen. His best work is his Isldh al-Mantiq (Correc- 
 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 com- 
 rade 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 com- 
 petence 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 
 questions. He wrote the Kitdb al-Fasih, on the form 
 
THE 'ABBAsIDS 153 
 
 and meaning of doubtful words, 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. 
 
 His pupils were : First, IBN al-Axbar! (Abu Bakr 
 Muhammad ibn al-Qasim) (885-939), the son of a learned 
 traditionist and grammarian, who communicated his 
 knowledge to his son. He was a pious man, who made 
 it his rule of life to follow the Sunna, or tradition of 
 the Prophet. He wrote the Kitdb gharib al-Hadtth (Book 
 of 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 be- 
 longed to Sijistan. He died in 941, having written, 
 under the title of Nuzhat al-quMb (Pleasure of the 
 Hearts), a dictionary of the rare 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 
 (Faithful Servant of Tha'lab). His pupil, Ibn Khalawaih 
 (died in 980), arranged and edited his Kitdb al- Ashardt 
 (Book of the Tens), explaining words which ten by 
 ten have the same beginning. His astounding memory 
 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 endea- 
 voured 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, 
 gathered all the chief intellects of the Empire. 
 
 IBN QUTAIBA (Abu Muhammad Abdallah ibn Mus- 
 lim) (828-889 '') 'w^s born either at Bagdad or at Kufa. 
 His father came from Merv, and he was consequently 
 of an Iranian stock. For some time he acted as qddi at 
 Dinawar in 'Iraq'Ajami, and afterwards taught at Bagdad, 
 where he died. He proved himself not only a gram- 
 marian, but an historian : he bore his share in the 
 theological discussions which occupied men's minds at 
 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 155^ 
 
 a literary work. It dealt with the plants mentioned in 
 the ancient Arab poems. This book is known to us 
 through the extracts from it preserved in the Khizdnat al- 
 Adab. On the other hand, his historical work, Kitdb al- 
 AkhbAr al- 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 attacked the principles of versification 
 established by 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 Mu- 
 hammad ibn Ahmad), the follower of Al-Mubarrad and 
 
156 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 of Tha'lab, who died at Bagdad in 936, a humble school- 
 master, but an elegant writer, who, in his Kiidb-al- 
 Muwashshd, published by M. Briinnow, has left us a 
 lively and most interesting picture of the civilisation of 
 his day, and a collection of model letters as well ; these 
 are now at Berlin : Abu'1-Fadl al-Harawi, a Persian, 
 born at Herat, and disciple of the same masters ; he died 
 in 940, after writing a Kitdb 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 superio- 
 rity of the dog over most men (the manuscript is now 
 in Berlin), but 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 
 called Laisa, on the exceptions occurring in the Arabic 
 tongue, the text of which, from the unique manuscript 
 now in the British Museum, has been published by 
 H. Derenbourg. 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 157 
 
 many works, of which only a few are now in existence, 
 are remarkable for the way in 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- 
 "Askari (al-Hasan ibn 'Abdallah) was the author of a 
 collection of proverbs, of works on the rules of compo- 
 sition 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 
 of poetry, was celebrated for his penmanship — hence his 
 surname, al-Katib, the secretary; he was the master 
 of the famous caligrapher Ibn al-Bawwab. Al-Zujaji 
 (Abu'l-Qasim Yusuf ibn 'Abdallah), who died in 
 1024, wrote a book containing the names of the 
 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, 
 at Beyrout. Abu Ibrahim Ishaq ibn Ibrahim, of the 
 town of Farab (or Otrar), in Turkestan, lived for some 
 time at Zabid, where he wrote his Diwdn al-Adab, for 
 Atsiz, 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 
 lexicographer Al-Jauhar! (Abu Nasr Ismail ibn 
 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 
 this point versions differ. 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 
 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 
 of the first radical were adhered to. He himself drew up 
 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 
 to another. This fact enabled the Persian prisoner, 
 much against the grain, to learn his Arabic at the foun- 
 tain 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 159 
 
 Lugha, adopts the arrangement followed by Khalil in his 
 Kitdb-al- A in. 
 
 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 
 and 'Adud al-daula ; he was the first to receive the title 
 of sdhib, or 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 con- 
 tinued 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 col- 
 lected under the title of Kdfi' l-Kufdt. The third volume 
 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, insuffi- 
 ciently supported by a very few instances. He died in 
 995. He was popular at Rai, and his funeral, over which 
 the prince presided in person, called forth a great 
 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 
 tutor to his son Abu Talib. He is the first instance we 
 have of a writer of Iranian descent who takes the Arab 
 side in the conflicts of the ShuHibiyya. He also wrote 
 polished verses, amongst others those in which he 
 satirised the natives of Hamadhan, whose ignorance was 
 proverbial : "Why should I not offer up a silent prayer 
 for the town in which I have had the; advantage of for- 
 
i6o ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 getting everything I ever learnt ?" He died at Rai in 
 1005. His Mujmal fi'l-Lugha is a dictionary arranged 
 in the order of the first radical letter. His Fiqh al- 
 Lugha (Jurisprudence of the Language) is an intro- 
 duction to Arabic lexicography, full of philosophical 
 reflections. 
 
 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 
 and the traditions. This work, which was considered 
 exceedingly practical, was copied over and over again, 
 and several of these manuscripts are now in Europe. 
 The author of this serious book was fond of conversing 
 on loose subjects, did not deny himself the luxury of 
 drinking wine in private, and surrounded himself with 
 witty companions, whose pleasure parties he shared. 
 His contemporary, Nizam al-din Hasan ibn Muhammad 
 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 is proved by 
 the labours of Ibn Wallad (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 wa l-inainditd) ; of 
 Al-Nahhas (Abu Ja'far), a pupil of the same master, 
 a teacher at Cairo, who was thrown into the Nile in 
 May 950 by a man of the lower orders, who took the 
 verses he was reciting as he sat on the steps of the 
 Miqyds or Nilometer on the Island of Rauda for 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 in 915, left that city in 939, travelled into 
 the distant regions of the Maghrib, and wandered at 
 last to Cordova, where he settled as a teacher of 
 grammar. The work dictated by him to his Spanish 
 pupils is known under the title of Kitdb al-Amdli (Book 
 of Dictations) ; it is 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 
 tradition. Another book of his, the Kitdb el-Bdi'i^, was 
 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) on grammar, now in the 
 Escurial Library ; the Istidrdk, published by Guidi ; 
 and a classified list of the grammarians and philologists 
 
1 62 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 who had flourished before his own time, both in Spain 
 and in the East, of which use has been made by SuyutJ 
 in his 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 
 of the ancients ; he had learnt philology under the 
 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. 
 
 We are told that, when he would have gone to ask 
 Abu'l-'Ala al-Ma'arri to direct his study of Abii 
 Mansur al-Azhari's Kitdb al-Tahdhib, he 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 
 to Syria. The sweat on his back oozed through the 
 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, 
 Abu'l- Ala al-Maarri. 
 
 His pupil was Abu Mansur Mauhub IBN AL- 
 jAWALfgt (1073-1 145), of Bagdad, who is known by 
 
THE -ABBASIDS 163 
 
 his 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 manuscript in the Escurial 
 and at Munich. He was famous for his penmanship, 
 and manuscripts in his hand were eagerly sought after. 
 He acted as Imam to the Caliph Al-Muktafi, and led 
 the five daily prayers at which the monarch was 
 habitually present. A pupil asked him, one day, to 
 explain two lines of 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 Per- 
 fect of Men," was born at Bagdad, of a well-to-do family, 
 members of which had served the government as states- 
 men. 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 pre- 
 Islamic Arab history and customs. 
 
 Sa'id ibn al-Mubarak Ibn al-Dahhan, who was born 
 at Bagdad in iioi, made his reputation there as a first- 
 
1 64 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 rate grammarian. He ultimately left that city to pay a 
 visit to the Vizier Jamal al-din al-Isbahani at Mosul. 
 During his absence the Tigris overflowed its banks and 
 flooded his library. 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 
 sight. He died shortly afterwards, in the year 1173, in 
 this same town of Mosul. All that remains to us of his 
 work 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 (1119- 
 1181), 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- 
 ture from its earliest origin down to the author's own 
 times. It has been lithographed at Cairo. 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 
 made a study of the jurisprudence of the Hanafite rite. 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS i6s 
 
 His skill in arithmetic had facilitated his study of the 
 division of inheritances. His family belonged to 'Uk- 
 bara, 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 
 tongue, which the men of letters were yet forging afresh 
 upon their anvil, lacked many words which had' been 
 lost, and must perforce be replaced by others, borrowed 
 from the Arabic. Thus Arabic played the part of Latin 
 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 Ntsha- 
 pur 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 
 
1 66 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 is, unfortunately, very brief. His Lataifal-Mddrif{]esis 
 of Science) has 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 
 al-nabi, &c.) has been studied by Valeton. We owe him 
 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 167 
 
 particles, of which numerous copies have been made, 
 now to be found in every library. Both Erpenius (at 
 Leyden in 1617) and Baillie and Lockett (at Calcutta) 
 have given it their attention. Others of his works 
 on syntax have been honoured by frequent commen- 
 taries. 
 
 Yet another Persian compiler, Abu'l-Qasim al-Husain 
 al-Raghib AL-IsBAHANt, of Ispahan, who died in 1108, 
 collected a very 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 
 carried about with him {Kitdb al-dhari a), and a com- 
 mentary on the Koran. 
 
 The ancient Arab proverbs were put together at this 
 period by Abu'1-Fadl Ahmad al-Maidan1, who died 
 at Nishapur, his native town, in 11 24. His great work 
 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/<2r- 
 Allah (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 
 ancient capital of the country), in 1143. One of his feet 
 had been frost-bitten during a winter storm, necessitating 
 its amputation, and he wore a wooden leg. He alwaj-s 
 
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 ! " Ortho- 
 doxy at a later date replaced the word " created " by 
 " revealed." Although, as being more accessible to his 
 readers, he used interpretations couched in Persian in 
 his lexicographical works, he was so convinced of the 
 superiority of the Arabic that he opposed all the ShuA- 
 biyya tendencies to which we have already referred. 
 His great commentary on the Koran is called the Kash- 
 shdf (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 al- 
 Mufassal (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, had already attracted the notice 
 of H. A. Schultens in the eighteenth century, and was by 
 him translated into Latin ; Barbier de Meynard has inade 
 a more recent study 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 AL- 
 MUTARRlzt (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- 
 rib ft tartib al-Murib ; a lexicon of synonyms, el-Iqnd'' ; 
 and a commentary on Hariri's Lectures. In 1204, in the 
 course of a pilgrimage to Mecca, he went to Bagdad, 
 held frequent controversy on the subject of the Mu ta- 
 zilite 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 com- 
 mentators. 
 
 Kurdistan produced three Ibn el-Athirs : Majd 
 al-din, the theologian; 'Izz al-din, the historian; and 
 piya al-din Fakhr al-din Nasrallah (1163-1239), the 
 man of letters. This last was born in the little town 
 of Jazirat Ibn 'Umar, on the banks of the Tigris, and 
 at the foot of the Kurdistan mountains. He studied 
 at 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 
 
 Mosul, as his secretary. He died at Bagdad. It is 
 difficult to understand how, in the midst of so busy a 
 life, with such constant comings and goings, he con- 
 trived, 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, 
 to indulge in the Jesthetic and critical literary studies 
 which resulted in his book Al-Matlial al-Sdir, to which 
 Goldziher has given his attention, his Poetics (al-Burhan), 
 and his Language of Flowet-s (al-Azhar), all preserved in 
 manuscript at Berlin and in Paris. 
 
 In Syria we find Abu'1-Baqa Ya'ish IBN Ya'ish, sur- 
 named 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 
 of that master reached him at Mosul. He made some stay 
 in that town, and then returned to Aleppo, where he acted 
 as a teacher of literature till his death in 1245. He wrote 
 a commentary on Zamakhshari's Mufassal. Ibn Khalli- 
 kan, the author of the Biographical Dictionary, took advan- 
 tage of his teaching in 1229 : he has recorded his lively 
 admiration for his master, who had a rare gift for smooth- 
 ing 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 
 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 171 
 
 "The tail and the horns," replied the angry sage, to 
 the delight of 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 
 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 thou- 
 sand 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 philo- 
 sophers, 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 in almost every 
 library : the Kdfiya, a short manual of grammar ; the 
 Shdfiya, a work of the same kind ; the Maqsad al-jalil, 
 on prosody ; the Anidlt, or dictated lessons on the Koran, 
 on Mutanabbi, and on other poets ; and the Muntahd al- 
 su'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. His Kitdb al-Umda (The Stay), dealing with the 
 beauties and the rules of poetry, and preceded by an 
 exceedingly detailed introduction to the poetic art in 
 general, earned the praise of Ibn Khaldun, author of 
 the Prolegomena, who regards him as the best of all 
 the critics of modern Arabic poetry. His Unm-Adhaj 
 (Specimen) deals with the poets of the town of 
 Qairawan. 
 
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 
 his father's side, from Dihya al-Kalbi — that curious indi- 
 vidual of Mahomet's time, who was said by the Prophet 
 to be like the Archangel Gabriel, and whom he sent as 
 his ambassador to Heraclius — and, on his mother's, from 
 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 
 al-Khazraji, who died in 1228. He was the author of 
 a didactic poem on versification, called al-Rdmiza al- 
 Skdfiya, 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 have already seen how history began with the 
 Maghdsi — works devoted to the story of Mahomet's 
 wars. 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 law- 
 giver. Further, students of ancient Arab poetry were 
 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 of Islam, adding legendary information, obtained 
 at 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, certainly gave an impetus to historical 
 study. We may be sure that the 'Abbasid Caliphs, 
 whose capital 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 re- 
 solved, when they left the world the story of the events 
 that took place under their rule, not to allow themselves 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 175 
 
 to be eclipsed by the monarchs whom the Arabs had 
 overthrown. 
 
 Even at the close of the Omeyyad dynasty we find a 
 writer of maghazt, Musi ibn 'Uqba ibn Abi'l-Ayyash, 
 whose works earned him the singularly honourable title 
 of imAm al-maghasi, "chief, or director, of historical 
 studies as to the wars of the Prophet." His work was 
 put together in 1387 by Ibn Qidi Shuhba. The author 
 himself, a 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 
 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, who invited him 
 to settle at Bagdad, a city he had then just founded, and 
 there to make all the traditions of the Prophet he had 
 collected into one volume. He died at Bagdad in 768. 
 
 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 
 brilliant period of their conquests — sent forth historical 
 romances on the wars in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, 
 and Africa, under his venerated name. Nevertheless, his 
 great historical work {Kitdb al-Maghdzi) has come down 
 to us, and has been published at Calcutta by Alfred von 
 
176 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Kremer. Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn 'Umar al- 
 Waqidi, who was born at Medina in 747, began hfe 
 as a corn merchant. Having ruined himself by extra- 
 vagance, 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 
 friends. The incident is related by Waqidi himself. " I 
 had two friends, one of whom belonged to the Hashim 
 family, and we were, so to speak, but one soul. The 
 festival at the end of the great Fast drew near, and I 
 was in a state of great poverty, when my wife said to 
 me : 'If it only affected ourselves, we could very well 
 bear poverty and privation. But the poor children ! I 
 pity them, and it makes my heart bleed ! They will see 
 the neighbours' children dressed and adorned for the 
 festival, and they will still have to wear their wretched 
 rags. Couldst thou not, by some ineans or other, 
 find enough money to get them clothes ? ' I wrote to 
 my friend the Hashimite, and begged him to help me 
 in this circumstance. He at once sent me a sealed 
 purse, telling me it contained a thousand dirhems. I 
 had hardly time to get my breath before I received a 
 letter from my other friend telling me of the same 
 trouble as that I had just revealed to my 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, 
 
THE "ABBASIDS 177 
 
 when I did go home, she approved what I had done, 
 and did not utter 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'l- 
 Walid al-Azraq, a descendant of the Ghassanid dynasty, 
 who died in 834. Al-Azraqi himself died soon after 
 858. A successor of his, Al-Fakihi (Abu 'Abdallah), 
 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 ; 
 
178 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 of 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 
 Bakr al-Maliki. In the British Museum there is the 
 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 
 holding princely rank in Khurasan. He was born at 
 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 now preserved 
 in the libraries of Paris 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. This latter work, 
 the subject of which was not calculated to please the 
 Moslems, who hated all memories of the antique pagan 
 period of the peninsula, as recalling an age of ignorance, 
 elicited hot criticism on the part of contradictors, who 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 179 
 
 accused its author of falsification. Yaqfit, who owed 
 him a great deal of his information, defended him 
 against this accusation, and modern critics have con- 
 firmed this view. Ibn al-Kalbt, who was born at Kufa, 
 lived for some time at Bagdad, and died in 819. He 
 also wrote a book on the genealogies of Arab horses 
 in pagan times, and in those of Islam. His memory 
 was very unequal. He himself relates that on one 
 occasion, having been reproached by his uncle, he 
 learnt the whole Koran by heart in three days ; while, 
 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. 
 
 A historian of great merit, 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 
 between 830 and 845. The Fihrist enumerates one hun- 
 dred 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 al- 
 Khulafa 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 
 family of 'Abdallah ibn Zubair, who lived at Medina. 
 Even in his 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 
 
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 revisit- 
 ing Bagdad. He was at Mecca, when, at the age of 
 eighty-four, he fell off the roof of his own house, breaking 
 his collar bone and one of his ribs. Of this accident he 
 died, within two days, on 20th October 870. He was 
 the author of a genealogy of the tribe of Quraish, the 
 manuscript of which is now in the Bodleian Library, and 
 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 
 of Caliph Mutawakkil. The three last of the eighteen 
 parts into which this work was divided are preserved at 
 Gottingen. 
 
 Al-Baladhur1 (Ahmad ibn Yahya) was of Persian 
 birth : he frequented the courts of the Caliphs Muta- 
 wakkil 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 
 care with which he indicates the sources whence he 
 has procured his verbal information makes it a most 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS i8i 
 
 valuable historical document. It is, unfortunately, only 
 a summary of a much larger 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 second has 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 
 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 master- 
 piece has just been completed at Leyden, was also of 
 Persian blood. 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 juris- 
 prudence at Bagdad. In this latter department he 
 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 
 of Bagdad. To his inquiries into these two subjects we 
 owe 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 
 
1 82 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 interesting work, as far as we are concerned— because it 
 is the most ancient written record of Arab history we 
 possess — is his universal history {Akhbdr al-rusul wdl- 
 mulilk, History of the Prophets and 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 
 923. He possessed remarkable powers of work, and for 
 forty years he wrote forty sheets a day. 
 
 AL-St^Li (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Yahya) was de- 
 scended from a Turkish prince of Jurjan, named Sul- 
 Takin, 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 
 new branch of Arab literature, that of the historical 
 anecdote. 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 183 
 
 which brought him to Persia, where he visited Istakhr 
 (Persepolis) in 915, and to India. He traversed Mul- 
 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 in- 
 formation. 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 
 Caliphs, the numberless anecdotes in his Golden 
 Meadows (Muruj al-Dhahab) furnish us with the 
 fullest and most entertaining fund of information as to 
 the Eastern civilisation of that period. His great his- 
 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 Re- 
 view) is a sort of philosophical epitome of Mas'udi's 
 whole work. The text of this has been published by 
 De Goeje, and translated into French by Baron Carra 
 de Vaux. 
 
 Hamza ibn Hasan al-Isfahan1 was of Persian blood, 
 and in his historical works he has dealt with the legen- 
 
i84 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 dary history of his country according to verbal infor- 
 mation 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 
 in the Arabic. He 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. 
 
 The Book of Songs 
 
 AbCt'l-Faraj al-Isfahan1 ('Ali ibn al-Husain) (897- 
 967) 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. Hz studied at Bagdad, and led 
 the life of many literary men of that 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 dedi- 
 cated to them. His Kitdb al-Aghdni (Book of Songs) has 
 been published at Bulaq, and supplemented by a twenty- 
 first 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 sup- 
 plies 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 places of pilgrimage on the banks of the Tigris and 
 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 Chris- 
 tian cloisters, it was not to seek devotional impulses, but 
 simply for the sake of an opportunity of drinking wine, 
 the 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. 
 
 The court of Saif al-daula was also graced by the 
 presence of two brothers, who had been surnamed 
 the two Khahdis, Abii 'Uthman Sa'id and Abu Bakr 
 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 
 
 A work of this period, which, in its way, is unique, is 
 the bibliographical treatise known as the Fihrist (Index). 
 Little, unfortunately, is known of its author, Abu'l- 
 Faraj Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Abi Yaqub al-Nadim, 
 surnamed the Bookseller (al-Warraq) of Bagdad. It 
 is a catalogue of books, most of which have now 
 disappeared, either because they did not survive the 
 great catastrophes which overtook the Bagdad Libraries 
 (destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth and by 
 Tamerlane in the fifteenth century) — disasters which 
 may 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 
 Sprenger, that this book was the catalogue of some 
 library, has been quite put aside, for the historical reflec- 
 tions it contains are evideiitly a part of the fundamental 
 plan of the work. 
 
 Provincial Histories 
 
 The History of the Conquest of Egypt, Northern Af-ica, 
 and Spain was written by Ibn 'Abdal-Hakam (Abu'l- 
 Qasim'AbdaJ-Rahman), the son of the Malikite qddi in 
 Egypt, who died at Old Cairo in 871. This book, which 
 is in the Bibliotheque Nationale, has been partially 
 utilised by MacGuckin de Slane in the appendix to his 
 translation of 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 Euty- 
 chius (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 
 may be 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 
 
1 88 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Cordova on 17th February 853. In the course of his 
 pilgrimage to the Hijaz, he became imbued with the 
 judicial theories of Mahk ibn Anas, and spread them in 
 his own country. But none of his many works remain 
 to us, 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 
 ascribed to him, as Dozy has acknowledged, without 
 due warrant. After him came Ahmad ibn Muhammad 
 al-Razi of Cordova, whose family came from Rai, in 
 Persia. He died in 937. On his history of Spain and 
 description of that country was based the Spanish work 
 known under the name of Cronica del Mora Rasis. The 
 most interesting figure of this epoch and country is 
 that of the historian and philologist Ibn al-Qutiyya 
 (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn 'Umar ibn 'Abdal-Aziz), 
 that is to say, the 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. 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 189 
 
 Persia is remarkable for the production of biographies 
 in rhymed 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 down to the year 
 1018. The author took advantage of his presentation of 
 this 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 com- 
 mentaries 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-Isfa- 
 hani (the Secretary of Ispahan), devoted his pen to the 
 history of his master, Saladin. He was called Aluh, 
 a Persian word signifying eagle. Born at Ispahan, he 
 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 appoint- 
 ment to 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 and leave the court. He was on his way to 
 Bagdad, but, falling ill at Mosul, there 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, 
 perceiving that his influence had departed, he retired 
 into private life and devoted himself to literary work 
 until his own death, 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 pub- 
 lished by C. von Landberg ; and, under that of al-Barq 
 al-shdmi, the history of his own times, including his 
 autobiography, in seven volumes. The fifth of these 
 volumes is now in the Bodleian Library. His Nusrat 
 al-fatra contains the history of the Seljuqid monarchs 
 and their ministers ; it really is 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 191 
 
 of the Hegira, with comments written in a very pre- 
 tentious style, and unfortunately containing scarcely any 
 historical information ; it is 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 Al- 
 QadI al-Fadil (the excellent judge) (1135-1200). He 
 was the son of the qddt of that small town in Pales- 
 tine. 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 
 Fatimid Caliph Al-Zafir and his successors. He con- 
 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 
 of 'Imad al-din, and they always remained friends. He 
 died on the 26th of January 1200. Saladin's son and 
 grandson, 'Aziz and Mansur, continued the favour ex- 
 tended 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 Bag- 
 dad, 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 in- 
 fluence waned when 'Aziz resigned the sovereignty in 
 
192 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 1231, and he lived another three years as a private 
 citizen. The Hfe of Saladin of 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 
 a history of Aleppo, now preserved in manuscript in the 
 Asiatic 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 
 AbO Shama, 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 
 several madrasas. His house was attacked by a mob, 
 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, en- 
 titled 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 com- 
 mentaries 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. 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 193 
 
 Saladin's successor gave him the title of vizier, and 
 trusted 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 
 by him on the death of Al-Malik al-Mu'azzam. The 
 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 
 is heavy. The reader generally feels that most of his 
 Arabic phrases have been thought out in the Persian 
 tongue. 
 
 The Autobiography of Ibn Munqidh 
 
 Abij'l-Muzaffar Usama Ibn Munqidh did something 
 better than relate other folk's histories ; he wrote his 
 own, and was the first to introduce the novelty of an 
 
194 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 autobiography. 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 cam- 
 paign against the Franks in 1162, and afterwards took 
 refuge at Hisn Kaifi in Mesopotamia, where he de- 
 voted 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 
 1 188, leaving behind him his autobiography, which 
 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 'Ali ibn Zafir, born in 1171, succeeded 
 his father as a teacher in the Kamiliyya Madrasa at 
 Cairo, and subsequently acted as minister to Prince 
 
THE ABBASIDS 195 
 
 Malik al-Ashraf. We owe him a history of past dynasties 
 {al-duwal al-munqati'' a), down to 1225, and a collection of 
 bons mots and witty replies entitled Badd'i'' al-biddya. In 
 1226 Abu'1-Fath al-Bundart of Ispahan made an abridg- 
 ment of 'Imad al-din's history of the Selj{iqids, under 
 the title 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 
 attention of Abdal- Wahid ibn 'Ali al-Marrakushi, who 
 was born at Morocco on loth July 1185. Having 
 finished his 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 al- 
 Mu'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 
 professor at the madrasa. Under the title of Mufar- 
 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'l- 
 Fida. 
 
 Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali ibn Yusuf Ibn AL-QiFrt was thus 
 surnamed after the little town of Qift, the ancient 
 Coptos, in Upper Egypt, where he was born in 1172. 
 
196 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 He spent his whole life 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. He was a great lover of books, 
 and had turned his back on all 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 by A. Miiller and J. Lippert. He also left a 
 history of the grammarians, an extract from which, 
 by Al-Dhahabt, is preserved at Leyden, and a post- 
 • humous work treating of the poets bearing the name of 
 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 
 physician Ibn Baitar, who encouraged him. He kept 
 up a correspondence with 'Abdallatif, author of the 
 Account of Egypt. Saladin appointed him to manage the 
 hospital he founded at Cairo in 1236, but notwithstand- 
 ing this, he responded in the following year to the 
 summons of the Amir 'Izz al-din Aidamir, and departed 
 to Sarkhad in the Hauran, near Damascus, where he 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 197 
 
 died in January 1270. His history of the physicians is 
 called '' UyAn al-anbd; it 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 con- 
 nected 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 Sin- 
 jar, 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 Fakh- 
 riyya 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 revolted. Still he must have con- 
 trived to exculpate himself, for he was left in possession 
 of his office till May 1281, when he was finally dismissed. 
 He supported himself by teaching at the Aminiyya Mad- 
 rasa till he died, on 30th October 1282. His Wafaydt 
 al-A 'ydn (The Deaths of Great Personages) is a diction- 
 
198 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 ary of the famous men of Islam, with the exception of 
 the companions of the Prophet, the four first Cahphs, 
 and, broadly speaking, the personages of the first century 
 of the Hegira. It was begun at Cairo in 1256, and 
 finished in the same city in 1274, after an interruption 
 caused by the author's mission to Damascus. The 
 autograph manuscript is in the British Museum. The 
 text has been published by Wiistenfeld. Its pubhcation 
 was also 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 
 of the work. Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi, in his Fawdt al- 
 Wafaydt (Omissions from the Book of Deaths), has 
 written the biographies of illustrious persons not in- 
 cluded 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 re- 
 nown 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 
 (al-Mu'tanif) on the correct manner of writing proper 
 names. 
 
 Far away at Merv, in Khurasan, Abu Sa'd 'Abdal- 
 Karim AL-Sam'an1, surnamed Taj al-Isldm (the Mitre of 
 Islamism), who was born on nth February 11 13, had 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 199 
 
 left 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 pos- 
 sessed 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 
 January 1176. Saladin himself attended his funeral. 
 His Ta'rikk, or history of the city of Damascus, is written 
 on the same plan as the history of Bagdad, that is to 
 say, it is 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 
 
 tamia, he returned to his native town and discharged the 
 duties of Departmental Secretary, of qddi, and even of 
 minister to several princes, by whom he was also em- 
 ployed on diplomatic missions. He attended Malik al- 
 Nasir to 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, 
 chose him to be Grand Qadi of Syria. Thus he 
 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), 
 at Cairo. His great history is called Bughyat al-Tdlib : 
 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 al- 
 halab (The Cream of the Milk). Extracts from it have 
 been published by Freytag, and it has been translated 
 into French by Blochet. Kamal al-din was a skilful 
 caligrapher, 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 20I 
 
 1 175. H. Derenbourg has published his Nukat al-As- 
 riyya (Contemporary Subtleties), an autobiography, and 
 accounts of the Egyptian viziers, together with a selec- 
 tion 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 trans- 
 lation 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. 
 
 In Egypt, likewise, flourished the 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 
 department of the Paymaster's Office. He died in April, 
 1029. One volume of his great history of Egypt is all 
 we now possess out of the many books he wrote. This 
 is in the Escurial Library. 
 
 Saladin's conquest of Egypt brought about the conver- 
 sion to Islam of Abu'l-Makarim As'ad Ibn al-Mammat1, 
 who, with his family, was employed under the Govern- 
 ment. 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 
 that town, Malik-Zahir : and there he died, aged sixty- 
 two, on 30th November 1200. In his Qawdnin al-da- 
 wdwtn he gives an account of Egyptian government 
 under Saladin, and in his Kiidb al-FdsMsh, which 
 has been studied by J. Casanova, he satirises the 
 14 
 
202 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 faulty administration of the Vizier Qaraqush. On this 
 account it is, perhaps, that Qaraqush has become the 
 CaHno of magistrates in the East {hukm qardqushi is 
 a sentence for which no ground exists, in which the 
 specified "whereas " leads up to a perfectly illogical con- 
 clusion), 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 Con- 
 queror of the Crusaders and his poem called Kalila and 
 Dimna are both lost. 
 
 AB(r 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 Alexan- 
 dria in 1243, and Ibn Sa'id, after some stay at Cairo, pro- 
 ceeded 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 
 HulagCl, 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 ]\Iugh- 
 rib have been published by Vollers. In his Bast al-ard, 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 203 
 
 habitually used by Abfi'l-Fidi, he completed Ptolemy's 
 Geography. The Bibliotheque Nationale now possesses 
 the copy used by the Prince of Hamat. His ^Unwdn al- 
 Murqisdt wa'l-Miitribdt has been printed at Cairo. It con- 
 tains 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 
 has been published by F. Codera. He was born at Cor- 
 dova 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 ap- 
 pointed 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 address- 
 ing verses to his brother Ibrahim, to whom he had 
 also dedicated his Necklaces of Native Gold and Beauties 
 
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 contains anecdotes concerning princes, 
 ministers of state, judges, and poets, with a selection 
 from their poetical productions. The text of this book 
 has been published in Paris by Sulaiman al-Hara'iri, 
 and it has been translated by E. Bourgade. The 
 Matmah al-anfus, by the same author, published at Con- 
 stantinople, 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 
 family which had emigrated, lived at Seville in the 
 second half of the twelfth century, and wrote an his- 
 torical 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 
 (Aben Pascualis), of Cordova, under the title of Kitdb 
 al-Sila (The Gift) : this work has been published by 
 Codera. The author, who was born on 30th Sep- 
 tember iioi, was for some time an assistant judge at 
 Seville. He died in his native town on 5th January 
 1 183. Another biography of famous Spaniards of both 
 sexes is the Bughyat al-Mutalammis (Desire of the 
 Seeker), by Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Yahya AL-DabbI, 
 of 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 con- 
 tinued 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 Chris- 
 
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. Abu 'All Ahmad ibn Mu- 
 hammad Ibn Maskawaih, treasurer and confidential 
 adviser of the Buwaihid Prince 'Adud al-daula, died in 
 1030, after writing a universal history under the title 
 of Tajdrib 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 
 at Constantinople. When Abu'l - Qasim 'Ali al - Jar- 
 jara't, whose two forearrris had been cut off by order 
 of the Caliph Al-Hakim, was appointed vizier by the 
 
2o6 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Fatimid Caliph Al-Zahir, in 1027, AI-Qudai was called 
 on to perform the delicate and confidential duty of ap- 
 pending 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- 
 versal history, 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 
 patriarchs, prophets, and Caliphs — Omeyyad, 'Abbasid, 
 and Fatimid ; 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 pil- 
 grimage to Mecca or on missions from the Prince 
 of Mosul, in Syria, and at Jerusalem. When he re- 
 turned to Mosul, he lived as a private citizen, and 
 devoted his leisure to work and study. His house 
 became a 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 
 carried down to the year 1231 : the portion covering the 
 period from the Creation till the year of the Hegira 310 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 207 
 
 is an abridgment of Tabarf s work, to which, as lately 
 demonstrated by Herr Brockelmann in a special dis- 
 sertation, he has added certain information drawn from 
 other sources. The text of this book has been pub- 
 lished by Tornberg. The Usd al-ghdba (Lions of the 
 Forest) is an historical treatise dealing with seven thou- 
 sand 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 
 death of Malik al-Muza£far Ghazi (1244). The envoy 
 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 Ta'rikk al-Muzaffari, a general history 
 of the Moslem peoples, in six volumes, which forms 
 one of the sources whence Abu'1-Fida drew his in- 
 formation. That portion of the work which treats of 
 Sicily has long been studied in Europe. As early as 
 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 al- 
 jAUZl, the son of a Turkish slave belonging to the 
 minister Ibn Hubaira, set free and educated by him, was 
 born at Bagdad in 11 86, and owed his surname to the 
 
208 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 fact that his father had married the daughter of the 
 famous 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 a history of 
 Caliph 'All and his family, and of the twelve imams ; 
 a manuscript copy of this work is now at Leyden. 
 Under the title of al-Jalis al-sdlik (The Honest Com- 
 rade) he wrote a treatise on policy and on the educa- 
 tion of princes, in honour of Musa ibn Abi Bakr the 
 Ayyubite, which is now in the Gotha Library : the 
 Paris Library possesses a collection of anecdotes called 
 Kanz al-MulAk (The Kings' Treasury). 
 
 But if there is 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 
 
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 al- 
 Rahib, 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 Latin- 
 ised Syrian 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, accom- 
 panied his father to Antioch in his flight before the 
 Mongol invasion (1243), there became a monk, and lived 
 the life of an anchorite in a cave ; later he went as far 
 as Tripoli, in Syria, to study dialectics and medicine. 
 On 12th September 1246 he was appointed Bishop of 
 Gubos, near Malatia, and in that quality assumed the 
 name of Gregory. The Bishopric of Aleppo rewarded 
 him, in 1252, for the zeal displayed in securing the elec- 
 tion of the new Jacobite Patriarch, Dionysius. In 1264 
 he was appointed maphrian (Archbishop of the Eastern 
 Jacobites). Mosul was the nominal seat of his see, but 
 he usually lived in the Persian towns of Tabriz and 
 Maragha, the habitual residence of the Mongol em- 
 perors of Persia. In the last-named town he died, on 
 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 
 of Dynasties) is, in fact, an epitomised history, to which 
 
2IO ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 its author has added information as to the medical and 
 m.athematical literature of the Arabs. 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 
 the Rev. Father Salhani, and has been translated into 
 German by Bauer. 
 
 The legendary history of the 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 Sha- 
 fi'ite jurisconsult, who died in 1036. His''Ara2s al-ma- 
 idlis (The Brides of the Lectures) has been printed at 
 Cairo. A more serious production is his Al-Kashf waH- 
 baydn (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, anec- 
 dotes, 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). 
 
 Hujjat al-din Muhammad Ibn Zafar, who was born 
 in Sicily and brought up at Mecca, lived in his native 
 country, and died at Hamat in 1169, leaving behind 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 211 
 
 him the Sulzvdn al-MutSt (Consolation of the Prince), a 
 political treatise ; the Inbd nuj'abd al-abnd, characteristic 
 traits 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 caligrapher Yaqut al Musta'simt 
 (Jamil al-din Abu'1-Durr), who died at Bagdad in 
 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 literary men had begun to translate works of 
 a class 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 a convert to 
 Islam, bore the name of Ruzbih. He lived at Bassora, 
 where he became the close friend of Khalil, the gram- 
 marian. He was put to death in 757 by order of 
 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 
 into an oven. Ibn al-Muqaffa' translated the fables of 
 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 
 Barzuya. He also 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- 
 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 trans- 
 lation is lost, but numerous fragments of it occur in 
 Ibn Qutaiba's ' C/r^« al-akhbdr. Ibn al-Muqa£fa"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 Zoro- 
 astrianism. 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 
 the Koranic style. Khalil said of him that he had more 
 learning than judgment ; it is true that Ibn al-Muqaffa' 
 had said the grammarian had more judgment than 
 learning. 
 
 He was asked, one day, to say from whom he had 
 learnt the rules of politeness. " I have been my own 
 teacher," he replied. " Whenever I have seen another 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS ■ 213 
 
 man do a good action, I have followed his example, and 
 whenever I have seen any one do an ill-bred thing, I have 
 avoided doing it." 
 
 Anthologies 
 
 'Anir ibn Bahr, surnamed Al-Jahiz (With a wide- 
 open and goggle eye), was a man of extraordinarily 
 varied intelligence, who turned his mind to many sub- 
 jects, and produced many works, more with a view 
 to amusement than instruction. He lived at Bassora. 
 Theologically speaking, 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 superin- 
 tend 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 
 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 
 of sensation that he felt nothing, even if it was dragged 
 with pincers. During his illness he often said: "Sick- 
 nesses of opposite kinds have conspired against my 
 body. If I eat anything cold, it strikes my feet, and if 
 I touch anything hot, it goes to my head." He was 
 ninety-six years old, "and that is the burden that 
 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 
 
2 14 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 printed), a book on rhetoric, but with no didactic char- 
 acter at all. Its teaching is conveyed through the medium 
 of anecdotes of the most varied description. The text of 
 this work has been published at Cairo. 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 
 etiquette ; a book on misers — scenes drawn from the 
 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 Con- 
 stantinople 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 
 823, and, though a client of the Omeyyads, was ap- 
 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 same nature, directed against dissipation 
 in general, 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 Mu- 
 hammad), born at Cordova in 860, was descended from 
 a freedman of the Omeyyads who ruled in Spain. He 
 was at 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 
 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 
 Susiana. He also wrote a Kitdb al-Mustajdd, a collec- 
 tion of anecdotes and characteristic traits, in the time 
 of the'Abbasids, and the Nashwdn al-muliddara (Stimulus 
 to 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 VIII 
 
 THE 'ABBASIDS—ContmueJ 
 
 The Traditions of the Prophet — Jurisprudence 
 
 The Koran alone did not suffice to provide laws for so 
 great an empire ; it became necessary, at a very early 
 period, to cast light 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 
 end, to justify the tendencies of certain groups of dis- 
 sidents. Then was created the science of the hadith, 
 that is to say, of criticism as applied to the sources of 
 tradition, all of them of the same nature, since all 
 necessarily went back to the study of the testimony 
 of the succession of oral witnesses who transmitted the 
 Prophet's sayings by word of mouth, as they had re- 
 ceived 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 
 he permits any witness to give evidence, must inquire 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 217 
 
 into his moral character, his manner of life, and his 
 reputation for uprightness. By this system of criticism 
 a sustained chain of evidence has been established as to 
 a certain number of these apophthegms ; it can only 
 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 and good memory of the 
 man who received it, in the first instance, from the 
 Prophet's lips. 
 
 The first 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 
 subject matter contained. After these come the books 
 known as 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 
 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 in- 
 dividual judges {ashdb al-ra'y). The earliest work of this 
 description, and one which is still 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. 
 When 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 
 
2i8 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 object all over Moslem Asia, spending five whole years 
 at Bassora. After an absence of sixteen years in 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 of Samarqand. While he was at Medina he 
 wrote his great historical work on the trustworthy tradi- 
 tionists. The manuscript of this work is now in the St. 
 Sophia Library. When he returned to Bukhara, he 
 brought back six hundred thousand traditions with him, 
 and out of these he chose 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 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 219 
 
 doctrine that not only was the Koran itself eternal, as 
 being the word of God, but that the same rule applied 
 to the pronunciation of the words of which it is com- 
 posed. 
 
 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 com- 
 plete the six canonical books to which Moslems pin their 
 faith : 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 
 settled at Bassora, and died there in February 889. His 
 work only contains those traditions which are interesting 
 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 
 until the present day. Abij Da'ud had collected some 
 five 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 in- 
 serted not only the authentic traditions, but others which 
 seemed authentic, and yet others which were nearly 
 authentic : but he added that out of this number, only 
 four were indispensable for the religious guidance of 
 man. Here is his summary of Islamic law : "Actions 
 will be judged according to intentions : the proof of a 
 Moslem's sincerity is that he pays no heed to that which 
 is not his business : no man is a true believer unless he 
 
2 20 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 desires for his brother that which he desires for himself : 
 that which is lawful is clear, 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 en- 
 cyclopcedia 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 begin- 
 nings. 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, 
 like his fellows, travelled all over the world to seek out 
 traditions. Besides his book on the hadWi, 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 sum up the principles of Moslem law. This 
 is the first known specimen of a work of this nature — 
 they were eventually to swarm. 
 
 Another Sunan is 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 Moslem 
 casuists, 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 221 
 
 every case, even for popular manifestations of religious 
 feeling. 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 
 history of dogma. The author was born at Nasa in 
 Khurisin in 830. He went to Old Cairo, where he lived 
 till 914 : he then departed to Damascus, and there 
 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, how- 
 ever, 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 litho- 
 graphed at Delhi. Ibn Maja also wrote a history, now 
 lost, of his native town. 
 
 Besides these six corpuses of Moslem law and tradi- 
 tions, we have the Musnad of Al-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. 
 It has been lithographed at Cawnpore. Ibn Hibban 
 (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. He 
 studied astronomy, medicine, and other sciences. 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 — in the Berlin Library. 
 
 Abu'l 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 rite. He learnt the tradi- 
 tions at an early age, at the feet of Abii Bakr, son of 
 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 
 
THE "ABBASIDS 223 
 
 tenets. 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 Ikhshi- 
 dite 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 died on his return to his native city (December 
 995). His Kitdb al-Sunan (Book of Customs) is in the 
 St. Sophia Library. In another work (al-istidrdkdt wa'l- 
 tatabbu") 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 
 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 
 said : " 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^- 
 pur in 933, was appointed qddt of his native town in 966, 
 
224 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 but he made a long journey through Khurasan and 
 the Hijaz during the following years. Later, although 
 appointed qddi of Jurjan, he declined the post, and 
 was frequently employed by the Samanids on embassies 
 to the 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 
 halted. He leant, at that time, towards the doctrines 
 of the Shi'ites. He wrote his Kitdb al-Mustadrak as a 
 criticism of the two Sahihs, to prove that several tra- 
 ditions 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 pro- 
 ceeded to Rai, where his stay was rendered uncomfort- 
 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 
 were built on purpose for him. His body was con- 
 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 
 was as follows : " The burden of a family is the result 
 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 is one of 
 codification and criticism, there rises up, in the tenth 
 century, that called "^ihn al-rijal — strictly speaking, the 
 science of men, which is specially applied to the 
 criticism of the witnesses and authorities on whom 
 the whole edifice of tradition rests. Among the most 
 important authors who have written on this subject we 
 may mention Ibn Abi Hatim ('Abdal-Rahmin), born at 
 Rai in 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 
 at Constantinople : Al-Tabarani (Abu'l-Qasim Sulaiman) 
 (870-971), born at Tiberias, who spent thirty years in 
 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 work on the names 
 of the huffdz 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 
 
2 26 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 broken in sad fashion by the execution of the two 
 philologists, on the Caliph's order, and 'Abdal-Ghani, 
 alarmed for his own life, remained in hiding till he felt he 
 was safe. He died in the night of 25th-26th June 1018, 
 leaving a book on the names of traditionists resembling 
 each other, and those which differ. It is now in the 
 library of 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 when it became necessary to 
 abridge, commentate, and explain the codes left by the 
 famous authors. Before long the fundamental rules of 
 the Moslem faith were summed up, for the benefit of 
 the general public, into a selection of forty .traditions, 
 and these, in their turn, became the subject of endless 
 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 
 of Persian descent. His great-great-grandfather's name 
 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 227 
 
 where he filled high official posts in the service of the 
 princes of those countries. At the time of his death, at 
 Mayyafariqin (in 1027 or 1037), he was acting as minister 
 to Prince Ibn Marwan. Of his hterary work nothing 
 now remains. The British Museum possesses the Kitdb 
 al-inds, a dictionary, in alphabetical order, of the names 
 of the 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 
 opinions of Al-Shafi'l into ten volumes. One large 
 collection of traditions bears the title 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 
 undertook long journeys. During one of these, on 
 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 al- 
 Baghdadi, on the same subject. It is, according to 
 Ibn Khallikan, an exceedingly useful and practical work, 
 determining the orthography of proper names, more 
 especially in the study of the traditions. 
 
228 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Abu'1-Fadl Muhammad ibn Tahir IBN AL-QAiSARANt 
 was born at Jerusalem, of a family belonging to Cesarea 
 in Palestine, 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 
 return from the Mecca pilgrimage. His Kitdb al-ansdb 
 al-muttafiqa has been published by De Jong under the 
 title of Homonyma inter 7toinina relatlva. Berlin possesses 
 his manuscript treatise on falsified traditions ; his Atrdf 
 al-ghard'ib is 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 com- 
 piled a book of traditions {Masdbih al-Sunna), according 
 to the seven fundamental works, which has been fre- 
 quently 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 
 survived to the present day. 
 
 'Abd al-Ghafir ibn Isma'il al-FarisJ, born at 
 Nishapijr in 1059, travelled through the Khanate of 
 Khiva, and proceeded to India by Afghanistan. He 
 had been an infant prodigy. When only five years 
 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 229 
 
 Islam are summed up in forty selected traditions. A 
 more useful work is his Majmd al-Ghardib (Collection 
 of Curiosities), a dictionary for the great collections of 
 the hadtth, and his Mufhim, a commentary on Muslim's 
 Sahih. 
 
 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, in 
 the year 1151, and in it he taught till his death. In 
 addition to a collection of forty 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 
 Ibn al-Athir, the historian, was born at Jazirat ibn 
 Umar in 1149. He entered the service of the Amir 
 Qaimaz, Prince of Mosul, as secretary, and improved 
 his position 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 satis- 
 faction 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 
 a bone-setter from the Maghrib. He wrote the Jdmi^ 
 al-UsM (Encyclopedia of Principles), which gives the 
 traditions of the prophets arranged in chapters by 
 alphabetical order, and also biographies of Mahomet 
 
230 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 and his contemporaries ; the Nihdya, a dictionary of 
 rare and curious traditions ; the Murassd (Adorned 
 with Brilliants), a lexicon of the surnames in Ibn 
 and Ab-A; and the Mukhtdr, biographies of celebrated 
 Moslems. 
 
 Muhibb al-din Muhammad Ibn al-Najjar (1183- 
 1245), 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 Al- 
 Khatib'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; 
 and also a history of the learned men of Ispahan, which 
 is now at Leyden, and other works on the traditions. 
 
 Taqi al-din Abu 'Amr 'Uthman IBN AL-Salah (1181- 
 1245), 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 231 
 
 'l-amal wdl-Shauq (The Liveliest Hope and Desire), 
 which treats of the science of the ti-aditions, has been 
 the subject of many commentaries, and has furnished 
 authors with many extracts. He devoted one of his 
 works to the examination of traditions relating to the 
 superiority of Alexandria and Ascalon over other cities; 
 his collection of fatwds and his treatise on the rules 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, 
 and afterwards taught at Cairo, where he died. His 
 book of the forty traditions is remarkable for its exact 
 specification of the date of each witness, and for its 
 complete isndd. 
 
 Abu Muhammad 'Abdal- Azim al-Mundhir1 (1185- 
 1258), who was born in Egypt, travelled for the pur- 
 pose of study all 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 tradi- 
 tions 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 Museum. 
 
 In Spain, 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- 
 joz, he was appointed qddt of Lisbon and Santarem. 
 He died at Jativa on 3rd February 1071. His Kitdb al- 
 ls 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 col- 
 lection of proverbs, sayings, tales and poetry, dedicated 
 to Prince Muzaffar. 
 
 Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Abi'l-Khisal al- 
 Ghafiqi, born in 1072 at Burgalet, a village in the district 
 of Segura, near Jaen, a poet and learned man, lived at 
 Cordova and at Grenada. He was appointed to perform 
 the duties of Minister of the Interior and of War, and 
 perished 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. Docu- 
 ments 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 
 at Ceuta, his native town. He went on to Grenada in 
 the same capacity, then back to Morocco, and there died 
 in 1149. He wrote a book which is celebrated in the 
 East, called al-Shifd ft tdi-tf huquq al-Mustafd, a life 
 of Mahomet, printed at Cairo, on which many com- 
 mentaries have been written : al-Ihnd' , a theory of the 
 traditions, their sources and principles, edited by one 
 of his pupils : the Mashdriq al-Anwdr, on the authentic 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 233 
 
 traditions 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 Ahmad ibn Ma'add AL-lQLfSHl, who was 
 born at Denia, studied both in that town and at 
 Valencia. 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 
 (Brilliant Star) is a collection of hadiths, drawn from the 
 great canonical works. His Najm (Star), a book on 
 proverbs, Arabic and foreign, has been printed at Cairo. 
 
 Abu Ishaq Ibrahim Ibn QuRQtJL (1111-1173), who 
 was born at Almeria and died at Fez, considered the 
 traditions in his Matdli" al-anwdr (Dawn of Light). 
 
 Jurisprudence 
 
 The science of the traditions, through the criticism 
 of those sayings of the Prophet which cast light on the 
 points which 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 litera- 
 ture, arising out of the numberless difficulties in the 
 application of the simple rules provided in the sacred 
 book. These two branches of study, indeed, moved on 
 abreast, for 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 
 out, collect, and select traditions which, as often as 
 not, were contradictory in their bearing, and to explain 
 
 and interpret them by criticising the witnesses who had 
 16 
 
2 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 law 
 insisted 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 inter- 
 course 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 mer- 
 chant. 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 legiti- 
 mate 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 23s 
 
 men began to wonder how it was that the 'Abbasid 
 Government had made no effort to attract so great a 
 teacher, known to this day as the Great Imam, to its own 
 side, a legend was built up, and it was said that Caliph 
 Mansur tried to force him to accept a post as qddt, and 
 that it was the rough treatment he received when he re- 
 fused this office which brought about his death. He had 
 sat at the feet of Hammad ibn Abi Sulaiman, who died 
 about 737. From him he had 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. 
 The greater number of Abu Ha-nif^'s works were pro- 
 bably 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 
 held that post till he died. Although he had put 
 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- K hardj (^ook on the 
 Land-Tax) has been printed at Bulaq. 
 
236 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Abu Yusuf, in his turn, had a pupil, Muhammad ibn 
 al-Hasan al-Shaibani, who was born at Wasit in 
 749. After having travelled to Medina, to draw know- 
 ledge of the traditions on which the study of the law is 
 based at the fountain-head — from the teachings of Malik 
 ibn Anas — he was appointed qddi of Raqqa. He was 
 dismissed in 802, and afterwards lived at Bagdad, till he 
 went with Hirun al-Rashid in 804 to Rai, where he 
 died. 
 
 At a later date we find Al-Khassaf (Abu Bakr), 
 who lost his library when his house was sacked by the 
 Turkish soldiery after the assassination of the Caliph 
 al-Muhtadi ; an Egyptian, Al-Tahawi (Abu Jafar), of 
 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) (972- 
 1036), who wrote an abridged manual which bears his 
 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 as a student, on the occasion 
 of his pilgrimage in 795. His Kitdb al-Muwatta is 
 founded on the ijmd'' of Medina — in other words, the 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 237 
 
 unanimous agreement of the dwellers in that town as 
 to the 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 
 pains to leave his pupils a revised and co-ordinated 
 text, and this must explain the considerable variations 
 in the different recensions of his book — those, for in- 
 stance, of the Spaniard YahyA al-Masmudi, and of 
 Muhammad al-Shaibani, whom we have lately men- 
 tioned 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 
 till the present day. The whole of Algeria is Malikite. 
 He died in Cairo. Under the title of Kitdb al-Mudaw- 
 wana he left a manual of Malikite law, originally drawn 
 up by Asad ibn al-Furat, and consisting of Ibn al- 
 Qasim's answers to his questions, afterwards revised, 
 corrected, 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 Shafi'ites 
 
 The Imam Al-Shafi'i (Muhammad ibn Idris) (767- 
 820), founder of the Shafi'ite rite, was born at Gaza 
 (some say at Ascalon, or even in Yemen), lived till 
 manhood in the Bedouin tribe of the Beni-Hudhail, 
 aad thus acquired the pure classic Arabic. To him the 
 
238 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 grammarian AI-Asma'i applied, at Mecca, to obtain 
 the poems of tiie Hudhailites and of Shanfara. In 
 786 we see him proceed to Medina and listen to the 
 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 
 minister Fadl ibn Rabi'. He took advantage of this 
 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, 
 returned at a later date to Bagdad, and seems to 
 have been successful in teaching his doctrine, which 
 differed in many particulars from that of his prede- 
 cessors. He started on his way back to Egypt in 
 813, and died there, after having made a pilgrimage 
 to Mecca, at Fustat or Old Cairo, on 20th January 820. 
 His tomb is a favourite place of pilgrimage at the 
 present day. Shafi'i resumed Abu Hanifa's analogical 
 system, and reduced it to practical rules. Of the hun- 
 dred 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 
 abridged version of the doctrines of the master Al- 
 Mundhiri 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 239 
 
 died at Tarsus in Cilicia, whither he had journeyed 
 (946) — or, as others assert, where he performed the 
 duties of qddi ; Al-Qattan (Abu'l-Hasan), a professor of 
 law at Bagdad, who died in 970 ; AI-Mahamili, who 
 studied at Bagdad under pupils of Al-Shifi'i, taught 
 there himself, and died there in 1024 ; also Al-Lalaka'i, 
 the sandal-maker (Abu'l-Qasim Hibat Allah), who studied 
 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. Like 
 all the traditionists of his period, he travelled in Syria, 
 Mesopotamia, and in the Arabian Peninsula, where he 
 made some stay. 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 
 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 pro- 
 vince 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 brother- 
 Moslems 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 in Bagdad when the power of the 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 
 political motives, 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 al- 
 Hasan ibn Humaid al-Baghdadi, containing answers to 
 questions on legal subjects, which is now preserved at 
 Berlin. 
 
 The Zahirites 
 
 Other and less important sects sprang from the study 
 of jurisprudence in which so many enlightened intellects 
 were absorbed. The Zahirite School, our knowledge 
 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 
 
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 
 doctrine, Zdhir) of the 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 
 attention to legal subjects, without attaching himself to 
 any particular school, and wrote a book on the land-tax, 
 the text of which has been published at Leyden by 
 Juynboll ; and the famous historian Tabari, who com- 
 bined the study of jurisprudence with that of Koranic 
 exegesis, and whose pupil, Abu'l-Faraj al-Muafa ibn 
 Zakariya of Nahrawan (915-1000), wrote the Kitdb al- 
 Jalts (Book of the Habitual Guest), a summary of ex- 
 planations as to various sayings of the Prophet and his 
 companions, in the form of a hundred lectures. 
 
 The Shi'ites 
 
 Outside the circle 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, 
 reckoned among its teachers : Al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim 
 
242 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 al-Hasani, who died in 860 ; his grandson, AI-Hadi Ila'l- 
 Haqq (He who guides to the Truth) Abu'1-Husain 
 Yahya (859-910) ; another descendant of his, Al-Mahdi 
 Lidinillah (He who is guided towards the Religion of 
 God) al-Husain ibn al-Qisim, who died in 1013 ; the 
 Imam AI-Mu'ayyad-Billah Ahmad ibn al-Husain (944- 
 1020). The works of these writers, formerly unknown 
 to European students, have been brought back from 
 Yemen by Herr Glaser, and are now in the Berlin 
 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 
 (Muhammad ibn Ya'qub), died in 939, who wrote a 
 theological treatise under the title oi al-Kdft ft^ Urn al-din 
 (That which is Adequate in the Knowledge of Re- 
 ligion) ; Abu Ja'far Ibn 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 
 "Abdallah al-Mufid of Bagdad (949-1022). 
 
 Further Development of Jurisprudence 
 
 Amongst the host of authors who expounded the prin- 
 ciples laid down 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 243 
 
 Hanafite law, called Biddyat ai-Mubtadt, on which he him- 
 self produced a commentary under the name of Hiddya 
 (The Guidance) ; the Persian translation of this latter 
 work was rendered into English by Charles Hamilton 
 (1791). The Hiddya has been commentated by Persian, 
 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, 
 who flourished toward the end of the sixth century of 
 the Hegira, wrote a Kitdb al-Fard'id, or Treatise on the 
 Division of Inheritances, which was surnamed Sirdjiyya 
 after its author's own surname. This was translated 
 into English in 1885, by Prasauma Kumar Sen, at 
 Serampore, and in 1890, by A. Rumsey, in London. 
 
 The Shifi'ite rite glories in the possession of Abu'l- 
 Hasan 'Alt ibn Muhammad al-Maward! (974-1058), 
 who was born at Bassora, studied in his native town and 
 at Bagdad, acted for some time as Grand Qadi at Ustuwa 
 near Nishapur, and finally settled down at Bagdad, where 
 he was appointed Chief Justice. His works were not 
 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 
 1853, by Enger. This is a. treatise on politics, which 
 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 
 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 Facili- 
 tating Reflection and Gaining Swift Victory), another 
 on the signs of prophecy {aldm al-nubuwwd), a collec- 
 tion 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. 
 
 Ab1> Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Ali al-ShirazI (1003- 
 1083) was born at Firuz-Abad, near Shiraz. He went 
 to Bassora and thence to Bagdad. He was placed at the 
 head of the Nizamiyya University when that establish- 
 ment 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, 
 who threatened to leave him unless he transported the 
 scene of his teaching to the new school, he agreed to 
 accept it. He journeyed to Nishapur as the envoy of the 
 Caliph Al-Muqtadi, and, thanks to his renown as a 
 teacher and writer, his journey was a triumphal march. 
 He died very soon after his return, on 6th November 
 1083. Y\\% Muhadhdhab {<Zovx&QXt6. Book) is a treatise on 
 Shafiite law, as is also his Kitdb al-Tanbih (Book of 
 Advice), published at Leyden in 1853 by H. Keijzer. 
 Other works by him, on jurisprudence, dialectics, the 
 Moslem catechism, and the history of the learned men 
 of the Shift ite sect, are less well known. 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 245 
 
 When Abu Ishiq first refused to act as head of the 
 Nizamiyya 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 re- 
 turn, 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-Hara- 
 MAIN was born at Bushtaniqan, near Nishapur, on 
 12th February 1028. On the death of his father, Abu 
 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 sur- 
 name. 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 
 illness. Along with his professorial duties, he had dis- 
 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 he died, the mourning was general ; the great 
 pulpit of the Mosque from which he had delivered his 
 sermons was broken up, and his pupils, to the number 
 of four hundred and one, destroyed their pens and ink- 
 horns, 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 
 was said that Islam had never produced its equal : the 
 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 
 over all others. 
 
 Abu'l-Mahasin Abd al-Wahid al-Ruyani, a Shafi'ite 
 doctor, who was born in Tabaristan in February 1025, 
 was one of the victims of the Assassins, who were then 
 terrifying the Moslem world by their active form of 
 propaganda. The great minister of the Seljuqids 
 honoured him with his special favour, on account of his 
 eminent merits. After having lived for some time at 
 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 Cairo. The 
 author was in the habit of saying : " If all 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 assis- 
 tant, 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 a 
 Persian word signifying " personage of high rank and 
 great influence." His UsM al-diniVxincv^X^i, of Religion) 
 and his Ahkdni al- Quran (Judgments of the Koran) are 
 now at Cairo. 
 
 AbO Bakr Muhammad al-Shash1, surnamed Fakhr 
 al-Islam, and generally known under the name of Mus- 
 tazhiri (1037-1114), was born at Mayyafariqin, of a 
 family belonging to Shash, a town in Turkestan, north 
 of the Yaxartes or Sir-Darya. After having studied in 
 his native town, he went on 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 (Orna- 
 ment of the Wise) is a treatise on Shafi'ite law, dedicated 
 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 
 
 and even of mathematics, which last was of service to 
 him for the calculations connected with the division of 
 inheritances. He first of all attached himself, at Mosul, 
 to the service of the minister 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 
 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 tongue. His close acquaintance with the use of 
 astronomical tables led him to draw up legal tables, 
 which he collected into a volume called Taqwim al- 
 Nasar (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 pub- 
 lished 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 249 
 
 and was obliged to flee to Hamat, where his books 
 were written : notwithstanding this, he was recalled to 
 Damascus as a professor, but again dismissed after a 
 time. He wrote the Abkdr al-Afkdr (Virgin Thoughts), 
 a treatise on dogmatic philosophy, and the Ihkdm al- 
 Hukkdm, dealing with the bases of judicial decisions. 
 
 ABtJ Zakariya Yahya ibn Sharaf al-NawawI (1233- 
 1278), who was born at Nawa near Damascus, in the 
 Hauran, studied theology in the Syrian capital, where he 
 settled as a private individual when he returned from 
 the pilgrimage in 1253. He filled Abu Shama's place 
 when he 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 
 Foi'ly Traditiotzs. His study of jurisprudence led him to 
 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 
 title of Biographical Dictionary of Illustrious Men. His 
 Taqrib wa-Taisir (Study Facilitated), an introduction to 
 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 found in various 
 European and Eastern libraries. 
 17 
 
2 50 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 To balance all these names, the Hanbalites can only 
 bring forward that of MuWAFFAQ AL-DiN 'Abdallah Ibn 
 Qudama AL-Maqdis! (1146-1223), born at Jamma'il in 
 Palestine, who studied at Bagdad, and wrote a treatise 
 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, 
 studied in Egypt, at Bagdad, and at Hamadhan. He 
 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 
 built a school to which he left his library, but this was 
 sacked and dispersed at a later date. 
 
 In Spain, the Zahirite doctrine had found its great 
 protagonist in the person of Abu Muhammad 'Al! Ibn 
 Hazm, a man of Persian extraction, son of an important 
 official at 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 251 
 
 from the Sh^fi'ite School of the traditions, and attended 
 the lessons of Da'ud the Zahirite, from 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 
 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 Stein- 
 schneider 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 Ber- 
 ber form of the name 'Umar) was born in the Atlas 
 Mountains, overlooking the province of Sus in Morocco, 
 on 2ist February 1092. While still very young he 
 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 
 lectures. His teachers were professors of the Ash'ai"ite 
 doctrine, and he carried it back with him to Tripoli in 
 
2 52 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Barbary, mingling with its allegorical interpretations 
 the 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 him- 
 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 fortress, in 1130. His suc- 
 cessors disseminated his teaching over Northern Africa 
 and Spain ; and his pupil, 'Abd al-Mu'min, founded 
 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. 
 
 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 was compiled, under the title of Durar al- 
 ahdditli, by 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 al-Mansiir Billah 'Abdallah ibn 
 Hamza (i 166-1237) left a collection of poetr}', a treatise 
 on the mutual duties of parents and their children [al- 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 253 
 
 baydn wd l-thabdt), a defence of the Zaidite party {risdlat 
 al-Kdfiya), and other treatises of the same nature. Most 
 of these works are at Berlin ; the remainder are in the 
 British Museum. 
 
 Amongst the Imamites, the Sharif Al-Murtada, 
 whose name was Abul-Qasim 'Ali ibn Taliir, the de- 
 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 
 means of ancient poetry. His Shihdb fil-Shaib wdl- 
 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. 
 
 Abu Jafar Muhammad, born at Tus in Khurasan 
 in 995, spent the greater part of his life at Bagdad, and 
 died at Najaf (Meshhed 'Ali) in 1067. He wrote the 
 Fihrist Kutub al-Shia (List of Shi'ite Books), which was 
 published at Calcutta by A. Sprenger and Maulawy 
 'Abdul-Haqq. Besides divers works on jurisprudence, 
 notably the Tahdhtb al-Ahkdm (Correction of Judg- 
 ments), in which he endeavours to reconcile the various 
 Jmdiths, he has composed a book of prayers {al-hall 
 wdl-iqd), and a treatise on Moslem worship, entitled 
 Misbdh al-Mutajahhid. 
 
2 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, en- 
 titled Jdnii al-jawdmi ; he defended the Imamite 
 doctrine in his Kitdb al-ihtijdj (Book of the Argu- 
 ment). 
 
 Najm-al-din Jafar al-Hilli, surnamed al-MuJiaqqiq 
 (the Examiner), who was born at Hilla in 1205, wrote 
 the great Shi'ite code known under the title of Shardi" 
 al-Isldin (Laws of Islamism), which has been printed 
 at Calcutta, and the publication of which, with a Russian 
 translation, was begun by Kasem-Beg; it has been trans- 
 lated 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 
 
 As a result of the researches necessitated by the 
 study of law, the Koran, on which the whole of 
 Moslem jurisprudence and society was founded, was 
 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 Caliph 'Uthman laid down a single and only 
 text which was to be absolute, and whereby all discus- 
 sion as to the 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 know- 
 ledge. 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 his- 
 torian 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 
 
2 56 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 not understand at all. 'Abdallah Ibn 'Abbas, the uncle 
 of Mahomet, to whom is ascribed the origin of 
 many Jiadtths, of which he was the first ear-witness, 
 was often obliged to pronounce regular exegetical 
 judgments on the difficulties laid before him, and his 
 authority is frequently quoted by commentators of a 
 later date. From this period commences the de- 
 velopment of a considerable body of literature which 
 still crowds the shelves of Eastern libraries. We have 
 already had occasion to mention, amongst the produc- 
 tions of the third century, the works of Ibn Qutaiba, 
 Al-Zajjaj, Tabari, and Nishapuri. Then the mystics 
 begin to add their phantasmagoric explanations and 
 their dreams to their predecessors' investigations ; men 
 like Sahl ibn 'Abdallah al-Tustari (a disciple of the 
 Moslem saint Dhu'1-Nun, the Egyptian, who died 
 at 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, in- 
 tended 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 
 taking what the text really contains. Among them we 
 may mention Al-]assas al-Razi, a learned Hanafite 
 of the Bagdad School, who long lived as a teacher at 
 Nishapiar, and whose works are to be found 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 dog- 
 matic 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, 
 of Bagdad, in which city he taught at the Mosque of 
 Al-Mansflr, and wrote the earliest work in our pos- 
 session 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 abro- 
 gated). 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 injunc- 
 tions ; 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 com- 
 mentary 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 at Qairawan in 966, went to Egypt at the age 
 of thirteen, to study philosophy and arithmetic, returned 
 to his 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 
 different 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. 
 The Bodleian possesses his Ri dya li-tajwtd al-qiraa 
 (Observation of Good Reading) ; the Berlin Library, and 
 those of Gotha and Cairo, have his Tabsira, his Kashf, 
 his Prdb niushkildt al-Qurdn (Grammatical Explanation 
 of Certain Difficult Words in the Koran), and his Shark 
 Kalld wa - bald (Commentary on those two Arabic 
 expressions). 
 
 Abu 'Amr 'Uthman ibn Sa'id al-Dani (981-1053), 
 who was born at Denia in Spain, made the pilgrimage 
 in 1006, and remained four months at Qairawan, and a 
 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 the definition of its ortho- 
 graphy (al-Muqnf), and some other treatises of a similar 
 kind — nine in all, of the hundred and twenty works he 
 produced. 
 
 Abu Tahir Ismail IBN 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- 
 
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 repu- 
 diation 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 
 the sacred 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. 
 
 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 
 name is the ancient Spanish fierro (for hierro), iron. 
 His masterpiece, which is entitled Hirs al-Amdnt wa- 
 Wajh al-Tahdnt (Wishes Accomplished and Open Felici- 
 tations), but which is better known under the name 
 of Chdtibiyya, is a didactic poem in one hundred and 
 seventy-three lines, a versification of the Tatsir, intended 
 for learning by heart, which gives 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- 
 
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 al- 
 Murtdi (Dnection in Doubtful Cases), a poem in four hun- 
 dred and twenty-seven lines, on the homonymous expres- 
 sions 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 
 its meaning. AbiT'l-Hasan 'Ali ibn Ibrahim Al-HaufI 
 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 
 narrative of the occasions on which the suras and 
 verses of the sacred book were revealed : he also wrote 
 two commentaries, the Wajtz and the Wasit, and turned 
 his attention to explaining Mutanabbi's verses in a fashion 
 superior to that of his predecessors. 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 261 
 
 Abu Bakr Muhammad IBN al-Arab1 was born at 
 Seville in 1076, accompanied his father on a journey 
 through the East in 1092, and visited Damascus, Bagdad, 
 and the Hijaz. After he had accomplished the cere- 
 monies of the pilgrimage, he returned to Bagdad, to 
 attend the teachings of Ghazali, and then went back 
 to Seville by Alexandria and Cairo. He reached his 
 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 Se- 
 ville, 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 
 later, on 23rd November 1185. His Tdrifwdl-tldjn ex- 
 plains those passages of the Koran which contain proper 
 names : his Raud al-Unuf \s a commentary on the bio- 
 graphy 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 
 up in Baidawi's celebrated work, Anwdr al-tanzil wa-asrdr 
 al-tdwil (The Light of Revelation and the Mysteries 
 of Interpretation), edited 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 
 
262 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 at Shiraz, the capital of the province, and afterwards Hved 
 at Tabriz, 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 insuffi- 
 cient, because its 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 
 Shafi'ite law, like his GJidyat al-Quszvd : his Misbdh al- 
 arwdh is a theological manual : his Tawdli'' al-anwdr is a 
 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. 
 
 Abu'l-Walid Sulaiman ibn Khalaf AL-Baj1 (1012- 
 1081), born 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, 
 a 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, 
 Prince of Saragossa. 
 
 Dogmatic Theology 
 
 The Koran had certain inveterate enemies, to whom, 
 indeed, it had assigned an inferior position in the new 
 society, without insisting on their forswearing their 
 religion — these were the Jews and the Christians. The 
 last, especially, did not fail to argue against a religion 
 which claimed to rule them. In Syria, above all, a 
 
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 
 drawn from the ancient texts. The Murjites held the 
 doctrine of absolute predestination too extreme, and 
 softened it down ; they had the glory of counting the 
 great jurisconsult Abii Hanifa among their disciples. 
 But the real attack on orthodoxy came from the rational- 
 ists, called in Arabic Mutazila, that is to say, "those who 
 separate themselves." It was at Bassora that Wasil ibn 
 Ata founded the Mu tazilite sect. This school directed 
 its inquiries specially to the existence and attributes of 
 the Deity. The ancient Mutazilites are said to have 
 drawn their ideas from the dialectics of the Greeks. 
 This may be, but, in the absence of their writings, proof 
 is impossible, and these are all lost. In the third 
 century much argument was expended on the famous 
 question whether the Koran had been created, or had 
 existed through all eternity. The orthodox party in- 
 clined to the second opinion ; the Mu tazilites authori- 
 tatively put forward the first. The struggle was a long 
 one, and steeped the Moslem Empire in blood. In 827, 
 the Caliph al-Ma'mun officially declared the Koran to 
 be created, and commanded that all who controverted 
 this doctrine should be prosecuted. This brilliant 
 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 
 
 disposal of the Mutazilites' foes. At the same period, 
 Muhammad ibn Ishfiq of Nishapur wrote a book against 
 them, affirming the unity of, and noting the proofs of 
 the attributes of, the Deity. But the final disappearance 
 of the Mu tazilite 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, con- 
 vinced 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 
 and returned to the orthodox fold. His Mutazilite 
 studies made him a dangerous enemy, for he was able 
 to fight the rationalists with their own weapons. His 
 abjuration took place in public, and made a great stir, 
 for it was from the pulpit of the Great Mosque at 
 Bassora that he announced his repudiation of Mutazilite 
 opinions and his submission to the faith of his fathers 
 (912). At a later date he went to Bagdad, and there 
 wrote ninety-nine works, many of which are quite small 
 treatises. 
 
 During Al-Ash'ari's period, Abu Mansur Muhammad 
 ibn Mahmud al-Maturidi, thus surnamed after the 
 quarter in Samarqand in which he was born, was 
 preaching a reform of the orthodox dogma which met 
 with brilliant success in India, Transoxania, and Tur- 
 key. There was but very slight divergence, indeed, 
 between his views and those of Al-Ash'ari. He died in 
 his native city in 944. Soon after, a most prolific poly- 
 graph was born in the same town — Abu'l-Laith al- 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 265 
 
 Samarqandt, a Hanafite doctor, whose studies embraced 
 the various fields of theology, jurisprudence, exegesis, 
 and moral science. He died about 993. 
 
 Abu Hamid Muhammad al-GhazalI (1049-1111), 
 thus surnamed, according to Sam'ani, after the village 
 of Ghazala, near Tus, in Khurasan, where he was born 
 (not al-Ghazzali, as it is commonly pronounced), studied 
 theology at Nishapur, where he received instruction from 
 the imam 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 Alex- 
 andria 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 
 
 in peace, except for the period during which, in response 
 18 
 
266 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 to the request of Muhammad, son of Mahk-Shah, he 
 taught at Nishapur. He died in the Tabaran quarter, on 
 19th December, 11 11. He had founded a Sufi monastery 
 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 
 at that time. This was long before the triumph of 
 Shafi'ism, which was not to become the State religion 
 till the time of the Safavids, in the sixteenth century. 
 
 The works we owe to Ghazali's pen are very numerous. 
 Brockelmann tells us of sixty-nine which are still in 
 existence. In this place we can only hastily review 
 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 {Al- 
 durra al-fdkhird) is a treatise on the Last J udgment and 
 the end of the world — what theologians call an escha- 
 tology — it has been translated and published by L. 
 Gautier. The morality and theology of the mystics are 
 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 267 
 
 treatise, which has been translated into German and 
 published by Hammer-Purgstall. In the judicial de- 
 partment, his treatises on Shafi'ite law have earned 
 great success in the Moslem world ; his Basit, Wasit, 
 and Wajtz are all abridgments of them. In that of 
 philosophy, the Tahdfut al-Faldsifa (Collapse of the Philo- 
 sophers) 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 pub- 
 lished by G. Beer, and a Latin translation by Gondisalvi 
 is in existence, which was printed at Venice in 1506. 
 The Munqidh min al-daldl (Preservative from Error), 
 written after the author recommenced his life as a 
 teacher at Nishapur for the second time, describes the 
 development of his line of philosophic thought. It was 
 translated and published by Schmolders, in his Essay on 
 the Schools of Philosophy 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 
 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 
 Ihyd, 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 
 
268 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 the mystics ; 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. His Kitdb al- 
 dhakhtra is a summary of his brother's system. 
 
 Najm al-din Abu Hafs 'Umar al-Nasaf1 (1068-1142), 
 who was born in the town of Nasaf, in Transoxania, 
 was 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 
 thousand seven hundred lines, on the differences which 
 divide the leaders of the orthodox rites, and at least two 
 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 theo- 
 logical system of Al-Ash'ari. He took advantage of his 
 pilgrimage to Mecca (in 11 16), to spend three years at 
 Bagdad, on his way back. He then returned to his 
 own country, and died there. His Kitdb al-milal wa'l- 
 nihal is a complete and detailed statement of the various 
 philosophical opinions and religious sects, Moslem and 
 other. It has been published by Cureton, and trans- 
 lated 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. 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 269 
 
 The Musdrdat al-faldsifa is a discussion of seven ques- 
 tions of metaphysics. 
 
 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 (Dicta- 
 tions), 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 in- 
 dited, 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 origin, developed the theories of mysticism in the Moslem 
 world. 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 
 fustian. Originally they were ascetics, after the fashion 
 of the Christian monks — men who renounced the world 
 and its perishable good, to devote themselves to the 
 contemplative life in desert places ; at a later date we 
 find brotherhoods, religious orders, with certain ap- 
 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 whirl- 
 ing dervishes, the juggling tricks of the 'Isavis, and the 
 screams or roarings of the Rifa iyya. But at the distant 
 period of which we now speak, all these things were in 
 the future. The question arises whether Moslem mysti- 
 cism 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 : Abu 'Abdallah al-Harith ibn Asad 
 al-Muhasibi, who belonged to Bassora. He preached the 
 renunciation of worldly things, and set a practical ex- 
 ample by refusing his patrimonial inheritance on pretext 
 of a legal scruple, 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 predestina- 
 tion, 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 271 
 
 views which were closely bound up with most fantastic 
 notions on the subject of alchemy. In the person of Al- 
 Junaid (died 910), who came of a family belonging 
 to Nahawand (his father 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 we have seen the theologian with mystical 
 leanings. We are now about to study the impulse 
 imparted to literature by this new branch, inspired 
 by Persian thinkers. Abu'l-Qasim 'Abdal-Karim AL- 
 QushairI (986-1072), of a family settled in Khurasan 
 after the conquest, lost his father at a very early age, 
 and inherited a landed property near Ustuwa. He went 
 to study at Nishapur, with the object of acquiring suffi- 
 cient knowledge to enable him to protect himself against 
 the exactions of the public treasury. 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 Bag- 
 dad, 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 
 
272 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 literary matters. The Risdla, which bears his name, was 
 written with the object of imparting fresh glory to the 
 doctrines of the mystics, which had fallen rather out of 
 fashion in his day. His Tarttb al-Suliik ft tartq Allah 
 (Method of Progress in the Way of God) is a guide for 
 the Sufi beginner. His Tahbir is a treatise on the 
 hundred names of God, and their use 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 ulti- 
 mately 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 in the 
 village of Bait-Qar, near Baalbek. When still a young 
 man he made long journeys to visit the chief Sufis of 
 his time. At 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 273 
 
 patron, rendering him a kind of worship which has 
 hardly anything 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 pos- 
 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 al-din Abd AL-Qadir AL-GilanI (1078-1168)/ 
 one of the great Islamic saints, traced his origin back 
 to 'All. 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 
 1095. In 1 127 he began to hold edifying gatherings, 
 swiftly acquired a reputation for sanctity, and per- 
 formed miracles. He used to say : " I would all the 
 goods in the world were in my hands, so that I might 
 feed all who are hungry." The religious order of the 
 Qadiriyya, which he founded, still maintains its doc- 
 trines and its 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), 
 with whom, after his retirement to Damascus, the writer 
 of these lines had the honour of a personal acquaint- 
 ance, was proud to claim descent from the illustrious 
 saint of Bagdad. He wrote the Ghunya litdlibi tariq 
 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 con- 
 duct of his disciples ; the Jala al-khdtir, a collection 
 of sermons delivered either in the madrasa, or in the 
 Sufi Convent at Bagdad, in 1150 and 1151, which is 
 preserved in the Library of the India Office ; another 
 
274 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 collection of the same kind, Al-fath al-rabbdni (Revela- 
 tions of the Lord), which has been printed at Cairo ; 
 numerous forms of prayer, and some mystic poetry. 
 
 piya al-din 'Abdal-Qahir ibn "Abdallah al-Suhra- 
 WARDt, a descendant of the Caliph Abu Bakr, who 
 was born at Suhraward, a little town near Zenjan in 
 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 
 Bagdad. Between 1131 and 1152 he taught at the 
 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 Nur- 
 al-din Mahmud ibn Zangi received him with great 
 honour. He afterwards returned to Bagdad, and died 
 there in 1168. His treatise on mystics bears the title 
 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 AL- 
 SUHRAWARdI (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 {PhWo- 
 sophy 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 Qara- 
 Arslan, 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 
 into Latin by Fr. de Bombay. He also wrote mystic 
 poetry. 
 
 A Spaniard, who settled at Damascus and practised 
 there as a physician, Abu'1-Fadl "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 
 
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 work 
 entitled Mir at al-Mddm (Mirror of Various Thoughts). 
 De Guignes, Gildemeister, and Pertsch have all devoted 
 attention to this book. He also left two manuals of 
 dialectics and controversy {al-tai-tqa al-Ainidiyya and 
 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 : 
 the Fawdtih al-Jaindl ; the KM if al-hd'im, on the ten 
 means whereby a man may attain purity of the body 
 and the soul, and so draw nearer to the Divinity ; and 
 two tracts on analogous subjects. 
 
 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, 
 was born at Suhraward in 1145. He studied Shafi'ite 
 law, and felt himself drawn towards mysticism. At a 
 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 'Abd- 
 al-Qadir al-Gilani. His ^ Awdrif al-mddrif (The Divine 
 Gifts of Knowledge), in which he deals with the mysti- 
 cism of the S£lfis, 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 
 religion. Others of his treatises are devoted to the praise 
 of poverty and renunciation of this world, to descrip- 
 tions 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 277 
 
 marks the dervishes' consecration to the contemplative 
 Hfe. 
 
 MUHYf AL-DfN Abii 'Abdallah Ibn al-ArabI (1165- 
 1240), who was born at Murcia, went to Seville in 1172, 
 and devoted his time to the study of the hadtth and of 
 jurisprudence. In 1201 he began a series of journeys 
 which brought him to the Hijaz, to Bagdad, to Mosul, 
 and into Asia Minor. He died at Damascus, with- 
 out 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 dis- 
 ordered fancies as to the mystic training. He wrote an 
 untold number of books, and his inventive facility, to- 
 gether 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, the Fut-Ahat al- Makkiyya (Revelations of 
 Mecca), is a treatise on mysticism, in twelve volumes ; 
 his Fusils al-Hikani (Mosaic of Precepts), on the exist- 
 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, 
 near Mecca, in 1202. T^ie, Ktmiyd al-Sa^dda (Alchemy 
 
278 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 of Happiness) treats of the properties and virtues of the 
 formula of the belief in one God ; the Ifdda (Informa- 
 tion) spealcs of the three fundamental branches of know- 
 ledge — God, the rational world, and the world of sense. 
 A certain number of his treatises deal with the occult 
 sciences, as his studies of the Jafr, or cabalistic work 
 ascribed to 'Alt ; his Fdida (Utility) turns on the subject 
 of divination by means of the letters of the alphabet. His 
 Tarjumdn al-ashwdq (Interpreter of Love) is a collection 
 of Sufi poetry published at 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 
 have been collected under various titles. Of his two 
 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, 
 Abii'l - 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 
 of Gaza), on the duties of divine worship ; the famous 
 Hizb al-bahr (Litany of the Sea), a prayer, the formula of 
 which he believed he had received from Mahomet him- 
 self, and which the traveller Ibn Batiita thought suffi- 
 ciently interesting to be inserted in extenso in the story of 
 his own adventures ; and other litanies of the same kind, 
 which are still extant. 
 
 Sadr-Al-d1n Abu'l-Ma'ali al-QonawI, of Konia, in 
 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 279 
 
 tion), on the forty hadiths, and on the hundred names 
 of God ; the Hddiya (The Directress) is a tract on the 
 principles of the Moslem theodicy ; the Nus{is is a 
 treatise on Sufi mysticism ; the Miftdh al-Ghaib (Key of 
 the World of Mystery) is a scientific introduction to 
 the knowledge of the Divine personality and mysteries. 
 He died in 1273. 
 
 'Izz al-d1n 'Abdal-salam Ibn Ghanim al-Maqdisi (or al- 
 Muqaddasi, that is to say, he who belongs to Jerusalem), 
 who died in 1279, put the praise of the Creator into the 
 mouth of birds and flowers, in his Kashf al-Asrdr (The 
 Mysteries Unveiled), which has been published and trans- 
 lated by Garcin de Tassy under the title of Les Oiseaux et 
 les Fleurs. 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 Cosmo- 
 graphy. He also produced other works, such as the 
 Tahdrat al-QulM (Purity of Hearts), a collection of 
 edifying anecdotes, counsels, and prayers ; the Taisir, 
 a didactic poem numbering over three thousand two 
 hundred lines, on Koranic exegesis ; and a refutation 
 of Christianity {Irshdd al-haydrd, the Guide for Wan- 
 derers), now preserved at the Paris Library. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE 'ABBASIDS—Con/ina^a'.— SCIENCE 
 
 Translations from the Greek 
 
 After Alexander's conquests, the Hellenic spirit swept 
 over the whole of Asia, and in the midst of a population 
 which never gave a thought to intellectual cultivation, 
 the Alexandrian School long remained a centre of eru- 
 dition and scientific research. In spite of the catas- 
 trophes 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 philo- 
 sophical 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 astro- 
 nomical 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 move- 
 ment, of which the echo was taken up and repeated in 
 distant lands, and ultimately, through the medium of 
 Moslem Spain, stirred up the sleeping iiitelligence of 
 Europe. This movement it was which called forth a 
 mass of Arab translations of the Syriac manuscripts 
 already translated from the Greek, thus further enrich- 
 ing, with a fresh branch, an already very rich and varied 
 literature. 
 
 Thus Al-Hajjaj al-Hasib translated Ptolemy's Astro- 
 nomy under the title by which it is still known, 
 that 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 
 Theology', after Porphyry, at the request of Caliph 
 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 atten- 
 dant of the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, and wrote books on 
 19 
 
282 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 medicine and philosopliy, at the same time translating 
 the Old Testament out of the Septuagint into Arabic, 
 not to mention Plato's Timaeus and his Republic, Hippo- 
 crates' Aphorisms, the works of Galen and Uioscorides, 
 and others. His end was unfortunate. He was mixed 
 up in the quarrel about images which divided the Chris- 
 tian Church, was excommunicated by Bishop Theo- 
 dosius, and, in his grief, poisoned himself, in November 
 873. His son and chief disciple, Ishaq ibn Hunain, a 
 close friend of the Vizier Qasim ibn 'Ubaidallah, was 
 more of a philosopher than of a physician. He trans- 
 lated 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 whom nothing remains to us 
 beyond his name, as is 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 perusal of the translations of Aristotle gave birth 
 to a 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 283 
 
 his sovereign's request, a treatise on politics, preceded by 
 some reflections on psychology, which may perhaps be 
 looked on as the oldest work of the kind in the Arabic 
 tongue. 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 al- 
 Kindi, the son of the Governor of Kufa, who belonged 
 to an old Arab family. He was born at Kufa, and 
 studied first at Bassora and then at Bagdad, where he 
 finally settled. 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 
 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 sur- 
 name of TiLMiDH AL-KlNDi, the pupil of Al-Kindi ; none 
 of his works are now extant. He was a member of the 
 suite in attendance on the Caliph Al-Mutadid, whose 
 tutor he had been ; and, as a punishment for having 
 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 
 of Transoxania. He studied medicine and philosophy 
 at Bagdad. Attracted to Aleppo by the glamour of the 
 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 
 died at Damascus in 950, while attending his master 
 on a journey. He wrote on logic, morals, politics, 
 mathematics, alchemy, and music. Ibn Khallikan calls 
 
284 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 him the greatest philosopher Islam ever produced. It 
 is 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 
 teaching logic. Al-Farabi filled seventy volumes with 
 the notes he took at these lectures, which explained 
 Aristotle's treatise on logic. He read the Greek philo- 
 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 — an adaptation of 
 Plato's Republic — are of the most curious description. 
 They are the ideas of a philosopher, not those of a 
 politician or a lawyer. Men, according to him, must 
 have a monarchical government and a religious faith. 
 The most perfect State would be one which should in- 
 clude 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 
 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 tell why, to the philosopher 
 AbCi Zaid Ahmad ibn Sahl al-Balkhi, and catalogued 
 under his name. A copy of the unique manuscript, now 
 in a library at Constantinople, was brought from the 
 East by the writer of these lines, and is, together with 
 his translation of it, in actual course of publication by 
 the Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes, in Paris. 
 
 The Buwaihid capture of Bagdad in 945, and the con- 
 dition of tutelage to which the 'Abbasid Caliph was 
 thereby reduced, leaving him in the position of an 
 automaton with a merely spiritual power, gave some 
 life to free philosophic speculation, which had been 
 shackled by the successful religious reaction under 
 Mutawakkil and his successors. These princes, de- 
 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 com- 
 parative 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 cele- 
 brated 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 philo- 
 sophy and medicine simultaneously in the chief town 
 of his native province. When he was barely eighteen. 
 
2 86 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 his wonderful cure of the Sfimanid Prince Nuh, son 
 of Mansur, opened the palace gates to him. At two- 
 and-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 re- 
 mained in the latter country for some time, as a 
 teacher. There he produced his masterpiece in medi- 
 cal 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 
 Juzajan, to clear himself. His Ishdrdt wa l-ianbihdt, a 
 manual of logic, has been published and translated by 
 Forget at Leyden under the title of Livre des tkeoremes 
 et des avertissements. His ''UyAn al-hikina (Sources of 
 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 re- 
 futation 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 
 at the present day. Avicenna's didactic poem on logic, 
 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 (1059- 
 II 26) was born at Tortosa. He studied Malikite law 
 at Saragossa and literature at Seville, made the pil- 
 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 
 teacher of the traditions. His Sirdj al-MuMk (Torch 
 of the Kings) is a guide to conduct for royal personages ; 
 
288 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 it was finished at Old Cairo in 1122, and dedicated to 
 the Vizier AI-Ma'mun. His life was that of a devout 
 ascetic, who made a practice of mortifying his body, 
 and his existence was that of a poor man, content with 
 very little. 
 
 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. In addition to 
 his philosophical studies, he bestowed his attention on 
 music. We have twenty-four small works of his, on 
 philosophy, medicine, and the natural sciences, a fare- 
 well 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 
 service of 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 al- 
 Mashriqiyya (Secrets of Illuminative Wisdom) has been 
 printed at Bulaq. His philosophic novel, Hayy ibn 
 Yaqzdn, which represents the awakening of the intelli- 
 gence 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 
 (1126-1198), 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 289 
 
 appointed qddt at Seville, and two years later he returned 
 to his native city, 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 
 account of his studies in philosophy. Notwithstanding 
 this, he was once more summoned to Morocco, and died 
 there on loth December 1198. He left us his Fast al- 
 Maqdl (Decisive Discourse), in which he endeavours to 
 reconcile Moslem law with science ; a refutation of 
 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 
 Italian by F. Lasinio. A fragment of the commentary of 
 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 Him who Desires 
 to Learn), a manual of which many copies are in exis- 
 tence, and which has been published first by Reland, 
 and then by Caspari, under the title of Enchiridion 
 Studiosi. 
 
 Many books were written to meet the needs of 
 students. Abu 'Abdallah al-Khawinj1, who was born 
 in 1 194, of a Persian family, became qddt at Cairo, 
 and died in 1248, wrote, when at Mecca, in 1227, a 
 summary of this description, called al-Jumal, or al- 
 Mujiz, and also a fuller treatise entitled Kashf al-asrdr 
 
2go ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 (The Secrets Unveiled). Athir al-din Mufaddal al- 
 Abhari, who died in 1264, composed a Hiddyat al-hikma 
 (Guide to Wisdom), which treats, in Arabic, of logic, 
 physics, and metaphysics, and a Kiidb al-tsdgkAji, 
 after the Elaaywyij, or introduction to the Categories of 
 Aristotle, by Porphyry. Najm al-din 'AH al-KatibI, of 
 Qazvin, who died in 1276, wrote, on the command of 
 Shams al-din Muhammad Juwaini, and in his honour, 
 a treatise called Al-Risdla al-shamsiyya, published by 
 Sprenger as an appendix to the Dictionary of the 
 Technical Terms ; the Hikinat al-Ain (Philosophy of the 
 Essence), on physics and metaphysics, and the Jdnii^ 
 al-daqaiq, on the same subjects. Siraj al-din Abu'l- 
 Thana AL-URMAWi, who died in 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 
 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 philo- 
 sophical questions set the learned Arabs by the German 
 Emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen. His correspon- 
 dence on this subject has been published and com- 
 mented 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-mashriqijff a {Mysievits of Illuminism), 
 and prayers in which every word begins with the 
 letter q. 
 
 Shams al-din AL-SHAHRAZtJRl el-Ishraqi, in the 
 seventh century of the Hegira, wrote, besides his 
 RuiifAz wd l-amthdl al-ldh-Atiyya (Divine Mysteries and 
 Parables) and his Shajarat al-ildhiyya (The Divine 
 Tree), a history of the philosophers, from Adam down 
 to Galen, entitled Raudat al-afrdh (The Garden of 
 
 Joys). 
 
 Mathematics 
 
 Mathematical study, as we have seen, moved abreast 
 with that of philosophy. There is no doubt that geo- 
 metry 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 adop- 
 tion 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, tra- 
 velled 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), 
 probably invented in Alexandria in the earliest centuries 
 of the Christian era. 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, 
 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 
 of the numeral he quotes. 
 
 The earliest of the Arab mathematicians was Abu 
 'Abdallah al-Khwarizmi, who lived under the Caliphate 
 of Ma'mun, about 820. At the request of this prince, 
 he prepared an extract from the Indian work called 
 Siddhdnta, and undertook a revision of Ptolemy's 
 Tables. His works on algebra and arithmetic, which 
 were early translated into Latin, found their way all 
 over Europe. My readers are aware that the word 
 algorithm is derived from his ethnical surname of Al- 
 Khwarizmi (he came from Khwarizm, the ancient Khanate 
 of Khiva). At Ma'mun's court, too, dwelt the three 
 sons of Musa ibn Shakir — Muhammad, Ahmad, and 
 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 theo- 
 logical inatters with his co-religionists, after returning 
 to his native town, and was cast out of their com- 
 munity. He retired to 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 293 
 
 terested 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 ; but his concession did not disarm them, and 
 he took fright and fied to Khurasan, but ultimately 
 returned, and died at Bagdad in 942. 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 al- 
 Karkhi, 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 
 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 for mathematical know- 
 ledge, when Caliph al-Hakim, hearing he had boasted 
 of his ability to regularise the periodical inundations of 
 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 his trouble, gave him an administra- 
 tive post at Cairo, the duties of which he was not able to 
 perform. This roused the sovereign's rage against him, 
 
294 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 and he hid himself 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 
 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 
 also a mathematician, and used the Arabic for his scien- 
 tific works. His treatise on algebra has been published 
 and translated into French by Woepcke. The Leyden 
 Library possesses a commentary on Euclid of his com- 
 position, 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 espe- 
 cially astrologer, to the Seljuqid Sultan Malik-Shah. 
 He it 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. 
 He died in 1121. 
 
 Mahmud AL-Jaghmin1 al-Khwarizmi, who died in 
 1221, 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 
 Leyden MS., Abu 'Ah al-Hasan) wrote, in 1230, his 
 Jdmi" al-mabddi' wa'l-ghdydt (Meeting of the Beginnings 
 and the Ends), which has been translated into French 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 295 
 
 by J. S. S^dillot, and published by his son under the title 
 of Traite des instruments astronomiques des Arabes. 
 
 Yahya Ibn AbI Shukr, who bore the honorary title 
 of Muhyi' l-milla wdl-dtn (Revivifier of the People and 
 of Religion), was of Spanish origin. He was a con- 
 temporary of the Syriac historian, Bar Hebraeus, and 
 lived first of all in Syria, and then at the court of 
 the Mongol Emperor Hulagu. Besides writing many 
 astrological and astronomical works, he gave his atten- 
 tion 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 
 Uigurs. 
 
 Astronomy and Astrology 
 
 The one cannot live without the other. For centuries 
 the astronomer's only means of ensuring himself the 
 necessaries of life and study was by selling astrological 
 formulce. Who cared for the movements of the stars ? 
 But in the casting of horoscopes, the knowledge of the 
 dim and slow-moving future, there lay interest alike 
 for states and for private individuals 1 At a very early 
 date, in the beginning of the third century of the 
 Hegira, we find a popular treatise on astrology, in 
 twelve chapters, after the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, 
 by Abu Yiisuf Yaqub al-Qarshi, which is now in the 
 Berlin Library. A little later, Ahmad ibn Muhammad 
 al-Farghani, of whom we know nothing more, beyond 
 the fact that in 861 he built a new Nilometer in Egypt, 
 wrote an astronomical treatise, which rendered him 
 famous all over Europe, under the name of Alfraganus, 
 and was translated into Latin, and published by Golius 
 at Amsterdam in 1669. 
 
296 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 In 885 the great astronomer Abu Ma'shar Ja'far 
 ibn Muhammad died at Wasit. He belonged to Balkh, 
 in Central Asia, and was known in the Middle Ages as 
 Albumaser. If Europe admires his astronomical attain- 
 ments, 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 
 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 pub- 
 lishing at Milan. He was going to Bagdad to prosecute 
 a lawsuit, in 929, when he died in a little town on 
 his road. Towards the end of the eighteenth century 
 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 'Abdal- 
 Rahman 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 stars, which has been 
 translated into 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 297 
 
 Muhammad al-Buzjani, who came from a large village 
 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 dedi- 
 cated 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 pub- 
 lished 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 descrip- 
 tive 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 been content to limit their attention to their study and 
 publication. The postmasters of the horse-posts — those 
 functionaries who, both in the capital and in the pro- 
 vincial centres, were responsible for the transmission 
 of the Government correspondence, and at the same 
 time were expected to keep the central authority in- 
 formed 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 
 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 pro- 
 vince of Tabaristan on the Caspian Sea. He himself 
 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 
 province. Barbier de Meynard was the first to translate 
 and publish this work, of which, at a later date, De 
 Goeje issued a corrected text, according to less defective 
 manuscripts, at Leyden. 
 
 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 to- 
 wards Morocco, brought him the penalty of death. As 
 for our geographer, he lived at the court of the Tahirid 
 
THE' "ABBASIDS 299 
 
 princes of Khurasan, and made a journey into India, 
 Egypt, and the Maghrib, where he wrote, under the 
 title 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- 
 sids, which is really a universal history in two volumes, 
 carried down to the year 872, and the interest of 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 ten- 
 dencies, and that the author has drawn on ancient 
 and valuable sources of information, which have thus 
 become available in the interests of science. 
 
 Abu Bakr Ibn al-Faqih belonged to Hamadhan, in 
 Persia. Very soon after the death of the Caliph 
 Mu tadid (902), he wrote a geographical work, of which 
 all we now possess is the extract made in 1022 by 'All 
 ibn Ja'far of Shaizar, and which is also remarkable, 
 because no mention is 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 al- 
 Nafisa ; 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 Geo- 
 graphorum Arabicorum. Quite recently Mr. Guy Le 
 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 
 of Mesopotamia. But nothing is known of this topo- 
 
300 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 grapher, whom historical order places here. Ibn Fadlan, 
 an 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. 
 
 Qudama (Abu'l-Faraj), surnamed the Secretary of 
 Bagdad, left a book on the land-tax, which, before 
 dealing with the questions connected with the levj'ing 
 and yield of the tax, gives an account of the organisation 
 of the postal service, and a summary of the geography 
 of the Arab Empire and the adjoining countries. But 
 Qudama was only a geographer on occasions ; by pro- 
 fession 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 
 Escurial Library. 
 
 The Samanid dynasty was then beginning to attract 
 attention in Khurasan, where it 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 Chakh- 
 bar, 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 301 
 
 journey through Thibet, The poet-traveller made his 
 way back from India by Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Si- 
 jistin, 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 al- 
 Maqdisi, who lived in the town of Bust, in Sijistan) was 
 ascribed to him. 
 
 The geography of the Arabian Peninsula was the 
 favourite theme of Al-Hamdani, who belonged to a 
 family of Yemen, and was passionately interested in the 
 antiquities of Arabia Felix, in its historical memories, and 
 the ancient ruined fortresses which recall the past splen- 
 dours of the kingdom of Sheba. His account of the 
 Peninsula has been published by D. H. Miiller, and studied 
 by Sprenger. His book entitled //;;/// (The Crown), 
 which is now at Berlin, furnished D. H. Miiller with the 
 subject-matter for his study of the strong castles in 
 Southern Arabia. 
 
 Abu 'Abdallah al-Maqdisi, still called Al-Muqaddast 
 
302 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 by long-standing habit (this form of his 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 
 eastern and western extremities, India and Spain. His 
 book entitled A Asan al-taqdstm ft md rifat al-aqdltm (The 
 Best of Divisions for Knowledge of the Climates) is a 
 very complete work, in which, besides the results of 
 his own personal observation, he gives a summary of 
 all previous information. It was written in 985. This 
 account of the Moslem states has been frequently utilised 
 by subsequent geographers. Abu Raihan Muhammad 
 AL-BlRtJNl derived his surname from the fact that he 
 was born in one of the suburbs of Khwarizm (Khiva), 
 in September 973. His family was of Persian origin. 
 He studied profoundly, history, mathematics, and medi- 
 cine. He kept up a correspondence with Avicenna. 
 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 a/- Hind (History of India), 
 translated into English 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 al- 
 MasAdi, a complete treatise on astronomy. He died at 
 Ghazna on 13th December 1048. Like most of his com- 
 patriots, 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 trans- 
 lated into English and published by Sachau. 
 
 Abu 'Ubaid al-BakrI (1040-1094), who was born and 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 303 
 
 died at Cordova, wrote, under the title of- Mil jam md 
 istdjani, a geographical dictionary of the names of 
 localities mentioned by the ancient Arab poets, with an 
 introduction dealing with the geographical positions of 
 the various tribes, which has been published by Wiisten- 
 feld, 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 trans- 
 lated the Description de I'Afrique Septentrionale. 
 
 Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Zuhr1, who lived at 
 Grenada in 1137, has left a geography from which an 
 extract — an account of the SAs al-aqsd — has appeared 
 in the Bulletin de correspondance Africaine. 
 
 Aba 'Abdallah al-Sharif AL-lDRisl, who was born 
 at 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 
 a very satisfactory manner — by Amed^e Jaubert. 
 
 Aba 'Abdallah Muhammad al-Mazin! (1080-1169), 
 who was born at 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 jour- 
 neys, and on accounts furnished by reliable witnesses. 
 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 al-MakhlAqdt (Wonders of the Creatures) ; it is now at 
 the Bodleian. The title of this book was frequently used 
 by later writers. 
 
 Abu'l-Husain Muhammad IBN JUBAIR, who was born 
 in 1145, wrote, towards the 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 consider- 
 able 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 
 of the East, towards the year 1179. He was carried off 
 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 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 30s 
 
 the loss of a Turkish slave-woman, from 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 Mon- 
 gols. 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 com- 
 plete his dictionary, which was finished on 13th March 
 1224. In 1227 he once more travelled to Alexandria, 
 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 Mujam al-bulddn has been published by Wiisten- 
 feld, 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 (1160- 
 1231), a physician, was 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. 
 
3o6 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 He also left a 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 
 of Bagdad ; he died in 1283. He was the author of the 
 '' Ajd'ib al-Makhluqdt (Marvels of the Creatures), a cos- 
 mography, published by Wiistenfeld, and of the Athdr 
 al-Bildd (Monuments of the Countries), an historical 
 geography. 
 
 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 phy- 
 sician 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 Rab- 
 ban, 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 posi- 
 tion. 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. At 
 Bagdad, where he was studying, he met Gabriel, son 
 of Bokhtyishu', private physician to Hirun al-Rashid, 
 who entrusted him with the 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 him- 
 self wrote original works, such as his Nawddir al-tibb 
 (Curiosities of Medicine), dedicated to Hunain ibn Ishaq. 
 
 IsMq ibn 'Imran, who was summoned 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, other- 
 wise called Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al- 
 Razi — 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 
 Mu'tasim. When he had attained the mastery of his 
 profession, he was sent to manage the hospital at Rai, 
 
308 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 and later returned to Bagdad, to hold a similar post 
 there. Then he travelled. The fame of his knowledge 
 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 Man- 
 stiri. 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 
 as he failed in doing anything of the kind, Mansur, in 
 a rage, lashed him across the eyes with a whip, and 
 blinded him. The date and place of the great phy- 
 sician's death are alike unknown to us. Some say he 
 died at Rai, some at Bagdad ; the date is variously given 
 as 923 and 932. He had been unable to complete the 
 preparation of his great work, the Hdwt, during his life- 
 time. It was finished, after his death, by one of his 
 pupils, according to his manuscript notes, on the order 
 of the minister to the Buwaihid prince Rukn al-daula. 
 His MansAri, a treatise 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 
 Escurial Library. 
 
 In Egypt, again, IsMq ibn Sulaiman, whose surname, 
 Isra'ili, denotes his Jewish origin, had come into the 
 world. He went to Qairawan in the days of the Aghla- 
 bite 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 
 elements. 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 309 
 
 'Isa 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 Jur- 
 jan, who practised medicine in Khurasan. He died 
 young, at the age of forty, towards the year 1000, and 
 was the medical instructor of Avicenna. He wrote a 
 Medical Encyclopaedia divided into one hundred mono- 
 graphs, a book on general therapeutics, a demonstration 
 of the wisdom of the Deity as seen in the creation of the 
 various members and organs of the human frame, and 
 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 al-Musdfir wa-QAt al-Hddir (The 
 Traveller's Viaticum and Food 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'l- 
 Qasim Khalaf ibn 'Abbas al-Zahrawi, better known 
 under the European corruption of his name, Albucasis, 
 a great surgeon, who frequently resorted to cauterisa- 
 iion, and whose works, translated into Latin, were pub- 
 lished in the early days of the art of printing. 
 
 Abu'l-Faraj 'AbdaUah IBN AL-Tayyib, a Christian 
 physician, who taught at the hospital in Bagdad founded 
 by the Buwaihid prince 'Adud al-daula, and also acted as 
 secretary to the Catholicos Elias I., died in 1043. He 
 paraphrased Galen's works, and wrote books on Chris- 
 tian theology. 
 
 His pupil, Abu'l-Hasan al-Mukhtar IBN BOTLAN, like- 
 wise a Christian and a physician, travelled to Egypt 
 in 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 
 1063. His Taqwim al-Sihha (Tables of Health) is a col- 
 lection of forty tables of mortality, which were trans- 
 lated and published at Strasburg in 1532. His Ddwat 
 al-atibbd is a conversation on medical subjects between 
 the author and a physician of seventy years of age, re- 
 siding at Mayyafariqin. His Amrdd al-Arida is a treatise 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 311 
 
 on therapeutics, for the use of persons living far from a 
 town. He also wrote two tracts, one to point out what 
 defects in a slave may be regarded as redhibitory in 
 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 'Ali Ibn Ridwan was an Egyptian, born 
 at Gizeh, at the base of the Great Pyramid. 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. He died in 1061 or 
 1068. Under the title of Kifdyat al-Tabib (That which 
 Suffices to the Physician), he left a treatise on the 
 classification of diseases and on diagnosis, in which the 
 examination of the patient's urine is much insisted upon. 
 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 commen- 
 tary 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. He wrote 
 a letter, which has now disappeared, to refute the 
 doctrines of Christianity. He devoted his attention 
 to medical matters, and practised his art 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 
 remedies, simple and composite, entitled Minhdj al- 
 baydn. 
 
 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 
 prison, and there remained till iiii. He left Egypt in 
 consequence of this inisadventure, and retired to Mah- 
 diyya 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, astro- 
 nomical problems with figures attached, and a treatise on 
 logic called Taqwim al-Dhihn (Tables of the Mind). He 
 also wrote poetry, all of which, except one ode, now at 
 Berlin, has disappeared. 
 
 Abu'l-Faraj 'Abdal-Rahman ibn Nasrallah of Shiraz, 
 who practised medicine at Aleppo towards 1169, wrote, 
 besides his treatise on the mysteries of the science 
 of marriage {al-Iddh ft asrdi' 'ilm al-nikdli), and his 
 Raudat al-Quliib (the Garden of Hearts), on love, a book 
 explaining dreams {Khuldsat al-Kaldni), which has been 
 translated into French by P. Vattier, under the title ol 
 Oneirocrite inusulnian. 
 
 Abu 'Imran Musa IBN MaimCjn, known as Maimo- 
 NIDES, the great Jewish philosopher of Cordova, was a 
 physician. He was born at Cordova, and studied Jewish 
 theology and medicine. For some time, under the second 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 313 
 
 Almohad 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 ap- 
 pointed him his own physician, and he held the same 
 post under Saladin's successor, Malik- Aziz. Maimonides 
 died in 1204. His Guide for the Lost, written in the Arabic 
 language, but in Hebrew characters, belongs to Arabic 
 literature. It is a philosophical treatise on certain terms 
 of the Biblical theodicee. It has been published and trans- 
 lated 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 of alchemy in the Omeyyad 
 family, for we find that a prince belonging to that 
 dynasty, Khalid ibn Yazid, pupil of the monk Marianus, 
 wrote three treatises on the subject. Jabir ibn Hay- 
 yan, the great alchemist, whose teaching ruled the 
 Middle Ages, was probably his pupil, and we are also 
 told that the Imam Jafar Sadiq, the master of all 
 occult science, was Jabir's teacher. What was his 
 native country ? No man knows. Some say he came 
 from Tus, in Khurasan. Others declare his home was 
 Antaradus, on the Syrian coast. Brockelmann inclines 
 to the opinion that he was a Sabian from Harran. All 
 that can be said with certainty is that he was living 
 at Kufa towards 776. Twenty-seven of his works are 
 known to the world, several of which were" translated 
 
314 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 into Latin 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 agri- 
 culture of the Nabateans, and full of scientific observa- 
 tion 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 dis- 
 covered 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 con- 
 querors, had not hesitated to fabricate writings whole- 
 sale, 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 written characters of which were not 
 deciphered till our own time. 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 con- 
 versation on religious and philosophical topics. 
 
 A Spaniard of Madrid, Abu'l-Qasim Maslama al-Maj- 
 riti, who died in 1007, was famous, in the days of Al- 
 Hakam II., for his knowledge of mathematics and 
 astronomy, and perhaps even more so for his practice 
 of the occult sciences. He wrote on alchemy, and on 
 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 in the British Museum. 
 This student of horse-flesh was 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 
 the Caliph Al-Qadir by Abu Sa'id Nasr ibn Yaqub al- 
 Dinawari, in 1006. 
 
3i6 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Towards the same period, too, 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 Malik- 
 Kamil, as his chief botanist. On the death of his pro- 
 tector he returned to Cairo, but in spite of the honourable 
 reception bestowed upon him there by Malik-Salih he 
 soon returned to Damascus, and died in the Syrian 
 capital in 1248. He left two works on simples, the 
 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^ 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 317 
 
 The occult sciences, too, added their quota to the en- 
 richment of Hterature, as, for instance, in the case of 
 the diwdn called ShudhAr al-dhahab (The Parings of 
 Gold), a collection of poems on the philosopher's stone, 
 by Burhan al-din Ibn Arfa'-Ra'sahu, of Jaen in Spain, 
 who died at Fez in 1197. Zain al-din 'Abdal-Rahim 
 al-JaubarI, was born in the village of Jaubar, near 
 Damascus, was at Harran in Mesopotamia in 1216, 
 at Konia in Asia Minor in 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 prestidigi- 
 tation. 
 
 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 
 
 Original composition gradually becomes more and 
 more rare, and its place is taken by compilations, ab- 
 ridgments 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 
 
3i8 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 widening field of general knowledge. Some of these 
 universally-minded men we have already mentioned ; 
 we now proceed to some others of the same tempera- 
 ment. 
 
 Thus it was that, in the year 1135, Jamal al-din 
 Abu 'Abdallah al-Qazwin! wrote his Mufid al-tdum, 
 a popular encyclopaedia, religious, moral, geographical, 
 and historical ; that Abii 'Amir Muhammad al-Balaw^I, 
 who died at Seville in 1164, drew up his UnniMhaj 
 al- Ulum, devoted to twenty-four different sciences, 
 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 Abdal- 
 Rahman 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 
 as to be able to add to his library. His intelligence was 
 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 
 rigid Hanbalite, and fought vigorously against the 
 disciples of the other orthodox schools. For fertility 
 of production, no writer except Suyuti can be com- 
 pared with him. His works cover the whole field of 
 
THE 'ABBASIDS 319 
 
 literature, 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 
 arbiter. He got out of the difficulty by pronouncing 
 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 Akhbdr al-adhkiyd (Annals 
 of Intelligent People) ; the Kitdb 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 
 al-Masdnid, drawn up by Muhibbt al-Tabari ; his Mantiq 
 al-MafhUm, containing traditions as to animals and in- 
 animate objects miraculously endowed with powers of 
 speech, and his MauM'dt, or forged traditions, now at 
 Cairo. 
 
 Jurisprudence owes him two works — the Tahqtq, on 
 
320 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 the disputed traditions, and the Bds al-ashhab al-Munqadd, 
 which is a defence of the HanbaHte doctrine against the 
 anthropomorphists. Koranic exegesis furnished him 
 with matter for \i\?,^Ajaib 'uluni al-Qur'dn, a general in- 
 troduction to the study of the sacred text ; his Mukhtasar 
 and his Mujtabd, both of them abridgments of the 
 first-named work ; his Zdd al-Masir (Provisions for the 
 March), a manual for preachers ; and his ^Arib, a com- 
 mentary on passages which are difficult to read. 
 
 His interest in practical morality and edification led 
 him to compile many works, amongst which we may 
 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 al- 
 RuMjtt (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 al- 
 Mudhish is not easy to classify, for it deals at once with 
 the Koran, with the science of language, with the tradi- 
 tions, 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 Tehe- 
 ran, 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 321 
 
 writings earned considerable success, and cast those of 
 many of his predecessors into obUvion. He was the 
 first 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 pane- 
 gyric 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 
 to him. He wrote a treatise on jurisprudence en- 
 titled MahsM ; a great commentary on the Koran, 
 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 (Ori- 
 ental 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, and 
 later translated into 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 Hu- 
 lagu, 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 
 
 from the libraries of Bagdad, Syria, and Mesopotamia 
 set apart for himself, 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 
 al-fard'id; in that of scholastic theology, the Tajrid 
 a/- Again', which has been freqtiently commentated ; and 
 the Qawaid al-Aqd'id (Rule of the Articles of Faith), on 
 the nature of the Deity, the character of the prophecies 
 and of the order of the Imams, and the resurrection. 
 In philosophy, he 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 edi- 
 tion of Euclid's Elements, which was printed at Rome 
 in 1594 ; his treatise on the Quadrilateral has been trans- 
 lated into French by Alexandre-Pacha Carath6odory from 
 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 
 later translated into Arabic ; and he studied various 
 works by Autolycus, Hypsicles, Theodosius, and Aris- 
 totle, 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. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 ARABIC LITERATURE FROM THE CAPTURE 
 OF BAGDAD DOWN TO THE END OF THE 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Poetry 
 
 The court poet to the Urtuqids, then reigning at Maridin, 
 Safi al-din 'Abdal-Aziz ibn Saraya al-Hilh, who was 
 born on 27th August 1278, paid a visit to Egypt, 
 to the court of Mahk-Nasir, in 1326, but very soon 
 returned to Maridin. He died at Bagdad towards 
 1351. His contemporaries held him to be one of their 
 best poets. His diwdn has been printed at Damascus 
 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 twenty- 
 nine couplets, beginning with the same letter of the 
 alphabet, and ending in the same order. They are 
 devoted to the praise of Malik- Mansijr the Urtuqid, 
 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 Bern- 
 stein. He also wrote popular poetry, and a book en- 
 titled al-Atil al-hdli, of which the unique manuscript is 
 at Munich. 
 
 Ibn Nubata Jamal al-din (i 287-1 366), who was born 
 
324 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 at Mayyafariqin, was brought up in Egypt, and went to 
 Damascus in 1316. He had opportunities of frequenting 
 the court of Abu'1-Fida, Prince of Hamat, historian and 
 geographer, and was afterwards attached to his adminis- 
 tration as a secretary. He was past seventy when Sultan 
 Hasan summoned him to Cairo to act as his secretary 
 there. His patron unfortunately died in the following 
 year, and the pension assigned him was very irregu- 
 larly 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 
 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. In 1419 we 
 see him in attendance on Prince Ibrahim during a cam- 
 paign in Asia Minor. He returned to his native town 
 in 1427, and died there. His most famous work is an 
 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 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 325 
 
 in prose 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, offer- 
 ing poems and niuwashshahs of his own composition for 
 sale. He died in 1312. 
 
 Siraj al-din "Umar ibn Masud, surnamed al-Majjan 
 (the Obscene), was much sought after in society ; he 
 was the author of muwashshahs, and died at Damascus 
 in 1301. 
 
 A grammatical critic who discovered mistakes even in 
 the work of the best poets and lexicographers was 
 Sheikh Taqi al-din 'Abdallah al-Saruji, who was born at 
 Saruj in 1230, and died at Cairo in 1294. He wrote 
 many poems which singers made known to the public. 
 He rarely left his home, never being seen except on 
 Fridays. He did not like his name to be announced, 
 and was in the habit of saying : "Amongst friends there 
 are three degrees of friendship. At first, I hear myself 
 called 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 
 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 
 
3 26 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 virtuoso on the stringed instrument known as the qarnln 
 (a harp laid on a sounding board, rather larger than 
 the Austrian zither, and smaller than the Hungarian 
 cymbaluni), and he also composed musical airs. He died 
 in 1321. 
 
 Sharaf ibn As'ad al-Misri was a man of the lower 
 class, with a natural gift, who composed comic and 
 obscene poetry, and frequented loose society and public 
 singers of the fair sex. He died in 1337. 
 
 '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 his example. 
 Abu'1-Fath, in surprise, asked why the other wept. 
 " Because my father used to weep when he heard that 
 air, and you reminded me of him," quoth the singer. 
 "Then you must be my brother's son!" said Abu'l- 
 Fath, 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. 
 
 IBN Fadl-Allah al-Umar1 (Shihab al-dhi Abu'l- 
 Abbas) (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 impro- 
 visations was much extolled. He was, according to 
 Safadi's expression, a finished man of letters ; that is to 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 327 
 
 say, that in his verse and in his prose, theory and practice, 
 science and action, were equally balanced. He possessed 
 a wide knowledge of biography, history, and geography. 
 He was born at Damascus, studied law and prosody in 
 his native city, and then travelled in the countries under 
 Egyptian rule. He accompanied his father when Malik- 
 Nasir appointed him Secretary of State ; was himself 
 appointed qddi in Cairo, and Secretary of State as well, 
 when his father died in that office. He finally returned 
 to Damascus, and died there of the plague. His Masdlik 
 al-absdr is a geographical, historical, and biographical 
 work in over twenty volumes, of which studies by 
 Guignes (1758) and 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 
 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 
 al-samar, is devoted to the praise of the virtues of his 
 own family. He composed many odes and poems in 
 the classic metres, besides popular poetry in strophes, 
 inuwashshahs, and dii-baits. 
 
 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 
 in the Great Mosque of the Omeyyads. He then fell ill 
 of melancholia, and died in Ibn Suwaid's lunatic hospital, 
 at Damascus, in 1349. His harmless mania consisted in 
 carrying a bag under his arm, to which he fastened all 
 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 Muhammad) (1267- 
 1316), who is better known in Syria by his surname 
 of Ibn al-Wakil, was of Egyptian origin. He was 
 born at Damietta, and died at Cairo. It was at 
 Damascus that he studied jurisprudence — the basis of 
 all other knowledge in that country, as theology was 
 elsewhere. He knew a great many books by heart, such 
 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 
 assured, he acquired in a single week. He had a gift 
 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 
 society. He wrote verses in every style, including such 
 popular forms as the inuwashshah, du-bait, mukhainnias, 
 zajal, and billiq. He collected his principal poetical 
 compositions into an anthology entitled Al-ashbdh wd L- 
 Nazd'ir. 
 
 Yiisuf Ibn Zailaq was killed by the Mongols at 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 329 
 
 the taking of Mosul in 1262. Some of his poems — 
 several of 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, who died in 1344, when nearly seventy years of 
 age, also wrote popular poetry. 
 
 Al-Kaiwani was descended from Kaiwan, a former 
 slave 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, 
 Kaiwan was killed at Baalbek in 1623. When 'Uthman 
 Khalisa, kiaya to the Grand Vizier, 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 Con- 
 stantinople, and thence to Syria. Here it was that his 
 character assumed the sad and melancholy tone which 
 marks his poetry. He addressed panegyrics to Abdal- 
 lah-Pacha Cheteji, when that functionary, as Governor 
 of Damascus, put down the riots which were filling the 
 city with blood. The quality of his rhymed prose was 
 also remarkable. 
 
 'Abdal-Ghan! of Nabulus (1641-1731), who was affili- 
 ated to the religious orders of the Naqshbandis and the 
 Qadiris, was born at Damascus, of a family belonging 
 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 neigh- 
 bours 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. In 1688 he went 
 to the Beq'a and to Lebanon ; in 1689, to Jerusalem 
 and Hebron. In 1693 he travelled to Egypt, and thence 
 to the Hijaz. In 1700 he spent some forty days at 
 Tripoli in Syria. In April 1707 he left the house hitherto 
 occupied by his masters in the centre of the town, and 
 settled at Salihiyya, on the slopes of Mount Qasyun, 
 a sort of suburb of the Syrian capital. His principal 
 prose works are an unfinished commentary on Baidawi's 
 Tafstr, a commentary on the diwdn of 'Umar Ibn al- 
 Farid, and innumerable stanzas of poetry. It is said that 
 Abdal-Ghani could perform miracles, but disliked any 
 reference to this gift. He was always ready to intercede 
 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 
 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, com- 
 pletely 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 at Con- 
 stantinople, he wrote his RAmiyydt ; 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 village in the neighbourhood of Aleppo called 
 al-Bab. 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 magis- 
 tracy. He also addressed praises to the Sheikh al-Islim, 
 Yahya Efendi, and to the Grand Vizier, Ahmad-Pashi 
 Kyiiprulii. He 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 
 year, 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. 
 
 The daughter of Ahmad ibn Nasir al-din al-Ba'uni, 
 'A'iSHA AL-Ba'uniyya, wrote the Fatk al-Mubin, an ode, 
 rhymed in m, in praise of the Prophet. This work 
 is 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 
 Qasyun, near Damascus. He was a lover of history, 
 and was fond of reducing its annals within the limits 
 
332 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 of short mnemonic poems. Thus he wrote a rajaz, 
 the 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 Bars- 
 Bai 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 
 Bahja al-Klialad, a treatise on the education of chil- 
 dren. 
 
 The diwdn of Ibn Ma'tuq (1614-1676), which was 
 collected and published by his son, is full of panegyrics 
 on various Persian governors under the reign of the 
 Safavid prince, Shah Sa.i. It was lithographed, pro- 
 bably at Cairo, in 1861. 
 
 Ahmad al - Kurdi ibn Ilyas, surnamed al - Arrajani 
 al-Saghir, and the " strolling Qamus," a man of Kurdish 
 origin, was a poet and lexicographer. His father, who 
 came from Shahrizur, had settled at Damascus, and 
 been appointed preacher in the caravanserai of the 
 small town of Nebk, where he had married. He was 
 born in the twelfth century of the Hegira (from 1689 
 onwards), went to Damascus to study at the Sumaisat 
 Madrasa, and became cook in that school. His fickle 
 nature, and his perpetual quarrelling, made his life diffi- 
 cult, and he departed to Constantmople, fearing legal 
 proceedings might be taken against him On account 
 of some misbehaviour. His own thoughtless conduct 
 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 333 
 
 his protection. He attended him to Aleppo when he 
 was appointed governor of that city, and died there in 
 April 1756. 
 
 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 Cali- 
 phate 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 writ- 
 ing 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, 
 and not to continue 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 
 place, and died there. Under the title of ^Unwdn al- 
 dirdya, he has left us a gallery of the men of letters 
 of his native 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 
 
334 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 his 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 German 
 at Agram, in 1794, 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) 
 ( 1 263-1328) was born at Harran. He was descended 
 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 him- 
 self. 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 
 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 
 led to his dismissal. This persecution never ceased, 
 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 
 1305 he went to Cairo with the Shafi'ite qddi. After 
 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 
 as long a time in prison there. He employed the 
 period of his imprisonment in edifying his fellow- 
 prisoners on religious subjects. He was sent back to 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd 335 
 
 Cairo, and Sultan Baibars had him detained in the 
 fortress of Alexandria, 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 pub- 
 lication of his work on a visit to the tombs of the 
 prophets and saints resulted in his imprisonment in 
 the citadel. He was assigned a separate cell, in which 
 he was able to carry on his literary work, and wrote 
 several books on subjects connected with the cause 
 of his incarceration. But when these works became 
 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 
 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 in the preface to the refutation of the Koran. Forty- 
 five works from the pen of this original writer are 
 now in various European libraries. 
 
 It 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 dis- 
 tinguishing features of the movement for the reform 
 of Islam known under the name of Wahhabeeism. 
 This has been demonstrated by Snouck Hurgronje, 
 and Goldziher. The qddt was an anthropomorphist, 
 and insisted on the literal interpretation of the passages 
 in the Koran relating to the personality of the Deity. 
 In jurisprudence he accepted logical deductions drawn 
 by himself from the corpus of the traditions, and prac- 
 tised the qijds or use of analogy. Ibn Batuta, the 
 traveller, relates that he was greatly respected at 
 Damascus, that he discoursed on the various sciences, 
 but that there was something unhinged in his brain. 
 When brought before Malik-Nasir at Cairo, his only 
 answer to the Grand Qadi's questions as to the accusa- 
 tions put forward against him was : "There is no God 
 but God." His favourite disciple was Ibn Qayyim al- 
 Jauziyya (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 pre- 
 served 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 al-din died on 17th 
 September 1350. 
 
 Scarcely anything is known of the life of Hafiz 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd 337 
 
 a!-din Abu'l-Barakat al-Nasafi, who died in 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 H§ji Khalfa mentions nearly fifty com- 
 mentaries. His Wdfi, and its commentary the Kdft, 
 were finished at Bukhara in 1275. An abridgment 
 by the author himself, at a later date, is the Kanz 
 al-daqd'iq. His Umda, a Moslem catechism, has been 
 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 Per- 
 sian historian of the Mongols, was born at Hamadhan 
 in 1247, and executed at Tabriz in 1318, having been 
 accused of poisoning the Sultan Uljaitu. He was 
 a physician, of Jewish origin. He was physician to 
 Abaqa, and afterwards minister to Ghazan and to his 
 brother Uljaitu. He wrote four Arabic works, now 
 preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale — Mafdtih al- 
 tafdsir, 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 
 to various thrones. His ancestors had ruled at Hamat. 
 His father, Al-Malik al-Afdal, brother of Prince Al-Malik 
 al-Mansur, had been forced, with all his family, to 
 flee before the Mongols, and had taken refuge in 
 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 
 
3 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 
 1331. His Universal History, which made his reputa- 
 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 fur- 
 nished subject-matter for other inquirers. Thus Fleischer 
 has translated into Latin and published the portion de- 
 voted 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 339 
 
 general introduction to the geography of the Orientals, 
 which is one of his best works. 
 
 Abu'l- Abbas Ahmad AL-NuWAiRt (1282-1332) was 
 born in Egypt, in the little town of Nuwaira. He 
 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 
 Africa by the Arabs has been studied by Otter ; his 
 history of the same country 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 
 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 (1263- 
 1334), whose parents were of Sevillian origin, was born 
 at Cairo, and went to Damascus in 1291, to complete his 
 studies. He is said to have taken lessons from almost 
 one thousand professors. On his return, he taught in his 
 native town. 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 bio- 
 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 
 verses in praise of the Prophet. It is from this collec- 
 
340 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 fion that Kosegarten extracted the ode included in his 
 Carminum Orientalium Triga. 
 
 Shams al-din Abu 'Abdallah al-Sufi al-DimashqI 
 (1254-1327) was imam of the Httle village of Rabwa, near 
 Damascus, whereof Ibn Batuta has written "it is one 
 of the prettiest views in the world, and one of the most 
 beautiful pleasure spots ; there are tall palaces, noble 
 buildings, 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. A large proportion of the cultivated 
 fields, orchards, and houses were legacies from pious 
 persons, and what they brought in served to support 
 the imam, the muezzin, and the pilgrims. Here Shams 
 al-din wrote his cosmography, Nukhbat al-dahr, which 
 has been published by Mehren, at St. Petersburg, and 
 translated by him at Copenhagen. This work has quite 
 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, and some lines of his, inspired by 
 the beauty of the neighbourhood of Damascus, are often 
 quoted. 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 
 tribe of Nafza, surnamed al-Jayyani, because his fore- 
 bears lived in the Spanish town of Jaen, was born in 
 Grenada in November 1256; completed his studies at 
 Malaga, Velez, and Almeria ; left Spain in 1280, in con- 
 sequence of a difference with his master, Ibn al-Zubair ; 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd 341 
 
 travelled through Northern Africa and Egypt ; made the 
 pilgrimage, and returned 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 
 copper coins. He never bought books, not feeling 
 any need of them, but borrowed those he desired to read 
 from the public libraries. He was originally a Zahirite, 
 but came over completely to the Shilfi'ite view, and never 
 relinquished it again. He died in July 1345, five years 
 after his 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 in Cairo by the colonists from Central Asia in 
 the fourteenth century, has been published at Constanti- 
 nople. He also wrote the kind of popular poetry known 
 as muwashshahdt. 
 
 Shams al-din Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad al-Dha- 
 HAbI (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 condi- 
 tions, 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 Mush- 
 tabih, 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 Suy- 
 utl, has been pubhshed by Wiistenfeld under the title 
 of Liber Classium. His great history of Islamism (Tdrtkh 
 al-isldni) is scattered in odd volumes through various 
 European libraries. 
 
 Zain al-din Abu Hafs'Umar IBN al-Ward! was born 
 in 1290, at Ma'arrat al-Nu'man, in Upper Syria. He 
 studied law at Hamat, 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 
 to literary composition. He died of the plague, in the 
 town of 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, mysti- 
 cism, and even to pure literature, as, for example, the 
 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 all sorts of wondrous and 
 fantastic tales, has been ascribed, probably incorrectly, 
 to him. This work, indeed, is no more than an almost 
 literal transcription of the Jdmi' al-funitn (Encyclo- 
 paedia) composed by Najm al-din Ahmad al-Harrani, 
 a learned 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 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 343 
 
 us a treatise on metaphysics and 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 
 been printed at Bulaq. 
 
 KHALiL IBN AiBAK AL-SAFADt, who was born at Safad,' 
 in Palestine, was a 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 
 various European libraries. Another of his books is 
 specially devoted to the famous men and women of the 
 eighth century of the Hegira — his own contemporaries, 
 in fact {A'ydn al-asr). A very curious anthology is that 
 dedicated by him to poems in which mention is made of 
 tears, 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 
 teacher, and some other works, which, like this last, are 
 still in manuscript. 
 
 Ismail ibn 'Umar IBN KathIr (1302-1372), a tradi- 
 tionist and historian, succeeded al-Dhahabi in his 
 professorial chair at Damascus, and taught for some 
 time in the Ashrafiyya, but was dismissed from these 
 latter functions. His Biddya wal-Nihdya (The Begin- 
 ning and the End) is a great universal history, begin- 
 ning with the Creation and ending in 1337 ; the most 
 perfect 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 
 Kathir also dealt with the Imam Shafi'i, and the tradi- 
 tionists of his school. 
 
 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 345 
 
 on' Egypt, which includes a biography of Sultan Malik- 
 Nasir, to whom 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 
 printed at Bulaq. Ibn Abi Hajala's Dtwdn al-Sabdba 
 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 al- 
 KhatIb came of a Syrian family which had emigrated 
 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'l- 
 Hajjaj Yusuf, who confided the management of his 
 kingdom to his hands. He was continued in this post 
 by the monarch's successor, Muhammad V., and attended 
 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 
 Ibn al-Khatib to his former post. 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, 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 relating to Sicily. He studied the 
 history of Grenada, and left annals of its sovereigns 
 
 down to the year 1363. He wrote biographies of the 
 
 23 
 
346 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 famous men belonging to that capital, including his own. 
 From these Casiri drew the matter for two hundred and 
 eighty notices. An account of his travels contains de- 
 scriptions of the Spanish towns, the learned men 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 ap- 
 pointed professor of the hadith in that town, and for 
 some time performed the duties of chief of the municipal 
 police. The Mecca pilgrimage afforded him an oppor- 
 tunity of visiting Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and 
 Hebron. In the following year he made a second pil- 
 grimage to Mecca (1338). He was then given a post 
 in the public service at Aleppo, and accompanied the 
 Amir Sharaf al-din on his tax-collecting rounds, thus 
 making acquaintance with 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 
 al-din Manjak. Being well received, he spent two 
 years in that town. When the governor was appointed 
 in the same capacity at Damascus, he joined him there, 
 remained three years, and was honourably welcomed by 
 the learned men of the Syrian capital. He spent the 
 closing years of his life at Aleppo, and died tl:ere 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, who drew 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 
 (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 be- 
 longed to an important Cairene family. He made a 
 special study of the traditions and of jurisprudence. 
 Yet it is as regards history that he is most interesting 
 to us, for he is one of the sources of the history of the 
 Crusades. He was born in 1334, and died on 2nd April 
 1405. His History of Dynasties and Kings is a Moslem 
 chronology, down to the year 1396, only a certain por- 
 tion of which has been clearly set forth by the author. 
 Nine volumes of it are in the 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 Constan- 
 tine, Abu'l-'Abbas Ahmad Ibn al-Khatib al-Qsamtini, 
 compiled a series of very short biographical notices of 
 
348 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 five hundred famous personages, arranged in chrono- 
 logical order, from Mahomet's time down to the year 
 1404, and also wrote, in honour of the Marinid prince 
 Abu Faris 'Abdal-'Aziz, his Fdrisiyya, a history of the 
 Hafsid dynasty, extracts from which have been pub- 
 lished by Cherbonneau in ihe. Journal Asiatique, ■diier a 
 manuscript actually discovered by him at Constantine. 
 
 Arabia had then produced a mystic writer, "Afif al-din 
 'Abdallah al-Yafi'i, who was born in Yemen in 1298, 
 studied at Aden, and, after the year 1318, settled partly 
 at Mecca and partly at Medina. He never again left 
 these two towns, except to make a journe)' to Jerusalem, 
 Damascus, and Cairo, in 1324, and a short excursion into 
 the Yemen in 1337. He died at Mecca in 1367. His 
 work on the mystical interpretation of the Koran, Miikh- 
 tasar al-durr al-nazim, extracted from a work by Ibn 
 al-Khashshab, an author who died about 1252, has 
 been printed at Cairo, and so has his Raud al-raydhin 
 (Flower-plots of Basil), containing five hundred edifying 
 stories of saints and pious persons. Another of his 
 books contains no 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 (Recrea- 
 tions of the Gatherings), by 'Abdal-Rahman al-Sa£furi, 
 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 349 
 
 al-Muqri, the author of a strange work. 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. His 
 principal work, the '' Unwdn al-Sharaf al-wdft, is divided 
 into three broad columns, separated from each other by 
 four narrow ones. 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, 
 had given his name to the family of the Benu- 
 Khaldun, altering the termination of his appellation 
 in a manner frequently adopted in Yemen. This 
 family first resided at Carmona, near Seville, then at 
 Seville, and finally settled at Tunis, where Ibn Khaldun 
 was born on 27th May 1332. Having finished his 
 education, he entered the service of the Hafsid 
 Sultan, Abu Ishaq Ibrahim, as a 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 
 
3 50 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 summoned and appointed his master's secretary. The 
 favour shown him stirred up envy ; his intimacy with 
 the Amir of Bijaya, who was interned at P'ez, fur- 
 nished a pretext for accusing him of treason, and he 
 was cast into prison, and remained there till the death 
 of the Sultan Abu Tnan, in 1358. The regent of the 
 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 
 his position improved. When Sultun Abu 'Abdallah 
 Ibn al-Ahmar reconquered the kingdom of Grenada 
 from his brother Isma'il, Ibn Khaldun was charged by 
 him to conclude peace with Don Pedro, the tyrant of 
 Castile. He made up his mind to remain in Spain, and 
 sent for his family, but finding himself surrounded by 
 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 
 regent of the State. 
 
 This prosperity was not of long duration. In the 
 following year, his protector lost his life in 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 
 do, delivered it over to the victor. Then, feeling 
 that the new sovereign treated him with suspicion, he 
 departed by stealth. In spite of Ibn Khaldun's asser- 
 tion that he preferred study to public functions, he cer- 
 tainly 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 Tilim- 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 351 
 
 s4n, 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 fell 
 into disgrace, and returned to Tilimsan just in time to 
 see 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 
 Ibn Khaldun duly started, but he tarried four years 
 in Qal'at Ibn Salama, the castle of a 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 
 him to stay in Egypt, 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 
 
352 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 join him, but all perished in a shipwreck. Touched by 
 tbis misfortune, the Sultan relieved him of his duties 
 as qddi, and he sought consolation in teaching and in 
 literary 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, and obliged him once more to accept the post 
 of qddt, in 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 
 precipitate retreat, the historian left Damascus by 
 stealth, 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 
 1406. 
 
 Ibn Khaldun is one of the greatest historians of 
 Arabic literature, because he formulated, in his Pro- 
 legomena, 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 annals are a compilation, too 
 concise, occasionally, to be comprehensible, and the 
 sources of his information are not always correctly 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd 353 
 
 given. His style is not classic, yet it is quoted as a 
 model because of the clear fashion in which he has 
 dealt with the philosophy of history. His work is 
 called the Book of Examples (Kitab al- Ibar) ; it is divided 
 into three parts — the Prolegomena, translated into 
 French in the Notices et Extraits, by MacGuckin de 
 Slane, after Etienne Quatreraere had published the 
 text in the same periodical ; the main history of the 
 Arabs and neighbouring peoples ; and the history of 
 the Berbers and of the Moslem dynasties 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 
 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 foundation of the empires and causes of 
 their decadence ; the nature of the various forms of 
 royalty, of the Caliphate and the Imamate — in other 
 words, of the temporal and spiritual power of the 
 Caliphs. All this is set forth in uneven fashion by 
 a man who is carried away by his own ideas, who 
 repeats himself in his desire to press them, and who 
 is perpetually breaking off to put forward historical 
 proofs of his theories. His steady and sagacious in- 
 telligence and his great power of generalisation are 
 everywhere noticeable, and I know no book so worthy 
 of study by any one desirous of understanding the 
 
3S4 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 history of the Moslem empires. From the general 
 point of view the author's utter 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 
 Moslem peoples. 
 
 The little town of Beyrout, which owes its name 
 to the wells by which it was supplied (for it stands 
 on a rocky cape at some distance from any river, and 
 never had any drinking water carried into it till about 
 thirty years ago), received the honour of being com- 
 memorated in a special history of its own, written by 
 a member of the Buhtur family, who ruled the moun- 
 tainous country called al-Gharb in the Lebanon, with 
 the title of Emir. His name was Salih ibn Yahya, 
 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 
 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 355 
 
 the acquaintance of the Sufi 'Ala al-din Ahmad al- 
 Sirafi, who took him to Cairo, and obtained him a 
 position in the newly-founded 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, from which Maqrizi 
 had just been dismissed. The uncertainty attending 
 all 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 sue- 
 cessors, 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 
 Turkish tongue. The accession of Malik 'Aziz Yusuf 
 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 Hana- 
 fites, head of the police, and curator of the pious 
 foundations, which had never previously been held 
 by the same individual. He lost the last of these 
 three positions through some intrigue, and then turned 
 his back on public life. He died on 29th December 
 1451. His "^ Iqd al-jumdn (Necklace of Pearls) is a 
 universal history from the Creation down to the year 
 1446. His Jauhara is a versified biography of Sultan 
 Malik Mu'ayyad. His many commentaries on works 
 of theology and jurisprudence have earned him a 
 celebrity which has no special interest for us. 
 
3 56 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Abu'l-Tayyib Ahmad al-Hijazi (1388-1470) studied the 
 traditions under the direction of Ibn Hajar al-Asqa- 
 lani. 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 muivash- 
 shah and zajal, and which is entitled Raud al-dddb 
 (Flower-beds of Literature) ; this work has been printed 
 at Bombay. The Bibliotheque Nationale and the 
 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 pilgrim- 
 age, he went to Cairo. Returning to his native town, he 
 became qddi of Damascus ; saw his Egyptian properties 
 confiscated in 1395 ; and then moved into Asia Minor, 
 to the court of the Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid I. After the 
 battle of Ancyra, Tamerlane sent him as a. prisoner to 
 Samarqand. When the Tartar conqueror died, he re- 
 turned 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 al- 
 shifd 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 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd 357 
 
 in 1396, at the request of Sultan Muhammad, who then 
 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 
 utilised by Tholuck in his study of the speculative doc- 
 trine of the Trinity in the modern East ; his treatise 
 on Predestination and Free-will has been translated by 
 Stanislas Guyard. 
 
 A descendant of the famous ascetic 'Abdal-Qadir al- 
 Gilanf, 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 con- 
 demned to be whipped and cast into prison. He died 
 in 1406. His Nuzhat al-dndm (Pleasure of Humanity) 
 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 al- 
 thanitn, a history of Egypt, down to 1402 — continued, at 
 a later date, and by an anonymous author, to the year 
 
3S8 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 1500. 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). Gott- 
 waldt 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 
 text of his father's book, which had been corrupted by 
 the copyists, and wrote a commentary on it. He himself 
 left a history of Aleppo, extracts from which have been 
 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 359 
 
 candidates for administrative posts in Egypt, which con- 
 tains interesting details on the history, geography, and 
 civiHsation of that country, and of the Syrian provinces. 
 These have been utiHsed by Wiistenfeld, and extracts 
 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 
 1386. He afterwards travelled, going to Cairo, Damas- 
 cus, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Yemen. He returned 
 to Mecca in 1405, and was appointed qddt and pro- 
 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 
 also furnished a second edition in his Shifd al-GJiardin, 
 from which Wustenfeld has made extracts which have 
 appeared in his Chronicles of Mecca. 
 
 Ibn Kathir's chronicles were carried on by Abu'l- 
 Abbas 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 (1365- 
 1442) 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- 
 grating to Damascus. His father, "Ala al-din, settled at 
 Cairo, 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 manage- 
 ment 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 
 historian of Moslem Egypt. In 143 1 he started with 
 his family on the Mecca pilgrimage, and, with all his 
 caravan, was attacked by Bedouins on the road. He re- 
 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 ap- 
 propriated 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 manu- 
 script 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 Chresto- 
 mathy. 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 trans- 
 lated by Etienne Quatremere. He began an alphabetical 
 biographical dictionary of all the princes and famous 
 men of Egypt. The complete work was to have con- 
 sisted of eighty volumes. Of these only sixteen reached 
 the state of fair copies; three are at Leyden, and one 
 at Paris, all autographic. A collection of his tracts, also 
 to be seen at Leyden and in Paris, furnished Silvestre 
 de Sacy with the substance of the Traite des inonnaies 
 Musulnianes, the text of which had already been pub- 
 lished by Tychsen after a manuscript in the Escurial. 
 Tychsen has also published the text of his treatise on 
 the legal weights and measures. Paul Noskowyj has 
 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. Wiisten- 
 feld 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 
 Leyden by Rink as early as 1790 ; that of the fall of 
 the Omeyyads and the accession of the 'Abb^sids to 
 the Caliphate has been translated by S. de Sacy in the 
 Magasin encyclopedique, and published by G. Vos, in li 
 at Leyden. 
 
362 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Abu Bakr TAQt AL-DfN IBN QAp! Shuhba (1377- 
 1448), 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 pilgrim- 
 age 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 details as to the traditionists of that epoch, 
 a subject near his heart, for he devoted a great number 
 of his works — as many as thirty-six, in Herr Brockel- 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd 363 
 
 mann's list — 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 
 city was captured by Tamerlane in 1400. He found 
 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 
 in the year 141 1. Having travelled in the Crimea, and 
 held intercourse with the learned men of that country, he 
 proceeded to Adrianople, where the Ottoman Sultan 
 Muhammad L, son of Bayezid L, had just made himself 
 sole master, in spite of his brothers' opposition. The, 
 Sultan received him with great honour, took him into, 
 his own service, and refused to allow him to go to 
 Damascus, when the Emir Jaqmaq summoned hirn 
 thither. He commissioned him to translate Persian 
 and Arabic books into Turkish, made him his private 
 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 
 Stranger). Here he gave himself up entirely to a life 
 
364 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 of contemplation, and to the editing of his works. 
 This peaceful time was interrupted by his departure 
 for Mecca in 1428. When he returned, he settled 
 at Cairo, there to continue his existence as a philo- 
 sopher, and won the consideration and friendship of 
 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 
 prison. The unhappy writer fell sick, and, in spite of 
 his immediate liberation, died, after twelve days' illness, 
 on 25th August 1450. 
 
 His "^Aj'd'ib al-maqdur (Marvels of Predestination) is 
 the story of the life and conquests of Tamerlane, written 
 in a pretentious, difficult style, full of affected expres- 
 sions, and in rhymed prose. The text was published 
 by Golius from the Elzevir Press in 1636 ; and by 
 Manger, with a Latin translation (1767-1772), at Calcutta 
 and Cairo ; and Pierre Vattier has issued a French trans- 
 lation entitled L' Histoire du grand Tamerlan, traduite de 
 I'arabe d' Ahmed, fils de Gueraspe (1658). His Fdkihat 
 al-Khulafd (The Sweetmeat of the Caliphs) is 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 of this author's sons attained minor celebrity 
 in the field of literature. Taj al-din "Abdal - Wahhab 
 (1411-1495), who was born at Astrachan, accompanied 
 his father to Damascus, and returned, at a later date, 
 to Cairo, where he died, wrote didactic poems on 
 exegesis and genealogy. Al-Hasan wrote, towards the 
 
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 ex- 
 actions earned him the hatred of the inhabitants. This 
 manuscript is at Berlin. 
 
 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 
 141 1. Either on account of his rank, or because a post 
 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) con- 
 tains, after a short history of the Prophet, a list of some 
 of his companions, of the rulers of Egypt, and their 
 ministers, down to the author's own days. An edition of 
 this work was published by J. E. Carlyle in 1792. The 
 J/a^/W^Z-^^/z is a biographical dictionary, a continuation 
 of Safadi's Waft, just as the Hawddith al-duhikr carries 
 Maqrizi's Suliik down to the year 1456. The Bahr al- 
 
366 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 Zdkhir was a great historical work, of which one volume 
 only, covering the period between 652 and 690, is now 
 preserved, in Paris. 
 
 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 Koran by heart before he was eight years old. 
 After visits to the Fayyum and Damietta, he went 
 on pilgrimage to 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 covetous- 
 ness led him to cut down the pensions allotted to the 
 Sufis belonging to his school, or give them to other 
 persons, and they rose against him, in February 1501. 
 After a judicial inquiry, he was dismissed by the Sultan 
 Tuman-Bai , and retired to his house on the island of 
 Rauda. On the death of Ibn Ballan, the successor to his 
 professorial chair, an offer was made to restore him to 
 it, but he refused, and died in retirement on 17th October 
 1505. He himself gives us the names of three hundred 
 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, 
 consist of only a few sheets. A single volume, now at 
 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 was no printing press to multiply 
 and disseminate copies. It was not till the end of the 
 eighteenth century that printing in Arabic characters 
 made its first appearance in Constantinople. Up to that 
 date the only printed works known to the Orientals were 
 
368 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 the Eastern incunabula of Leyden and Rome. Be that 
 as it 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 use of schools in the East, is quite insufficient for 
 our needs. It covers the period between Abu Bakr 
 and the year 1497, when Al-Mustamsik became the 
 'Abbasid Caliph at Cairo. It has been published at 
 Calcutta by Nassau Lees, and translated into English by 
 Jarrett. It is followed by a didactic poem intended to 
 be learnt by heart, and in which the names of all the 
 Caliphs are arranged in order. His history of Egypt 
 and of Cairo, Husn al-Muhddara, is a compilation from 
 twenty-eight historical works. He also wrote the ab- 
 ridgment, 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 
 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 
 at Calcutta, and reprinted at Cairo. A commentary on 
 the Koran, 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 per- 
 severing commentator, and the second half by his pupil, 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 369 
 
 Jalal al-din Suyuti, who completed the work in forty 
 days. 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 (1410- 
 1468) 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 
 on him for the occasion. In 1437 we find him 
 governor of the fortress of Karak, and in the two 
 following years at Safad and Damascus. He left, in his 
 Zubdat kashf al-mamdlik, a description, political and ad- 
 ininistrative, of the states ruled by the Mamelukes from 
 the thirteenth to the fifteenth century — in other words, 
 of Egypt, Syria, 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 al- 
 Nabulusi's Tdtir al-andm. 
 
 A learned man of Suyut in Egypt, not to be con- 
 founded with the famous polygraph Suyuti, was 
 Shams al-din Abu 'Abdallah, also surnamed Suyuti, 
 who, in his pious 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 
 charity. He 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 oppor- 
 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 Copen- 
 hagen in 1817, translated into English by J. Reynolds 
 in 1836, and extracts from which have been lately re- 
 translated by Guy Le Strange. 
 
 In Egypt, too, dwelt the veterinary surgeon to Sultan 
 Malik-Nasir, son of Qala'un, Abii Bakr ibn al-Mun- 
 dhir, who died in 1340, and wrote the Ndsiri — the name 
 usually given to the Kdinil al-Sind'' atain (The Perfec- 
 tion of the Two Arts) — a complete treatise on Hippo- 
 pathology and veterinary science, which has been 
 translated by Perron. A Cairene physician, born at 
 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 trea- 
 tises on ophthalmology [Kashf al-rain), domestic medi- 
 cine {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 371 
 
 many books upon his favourite science, the mother of 
 modern chemistry, which he calls the science of the 
 scales ('?■/;« al-mtzdii), and of the key (^ilm al-miftdli). 
 Several of his works, of 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 'Abdal- 
 Jalil, 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 'Alt NtiR AL-DIN AL-SAMHtJDf, the 
 historian of the city of Medina, was born on the banks 
 of the 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 
 chief schools of that place. He undertook to clear the 
 great Mosque, which had been destroyed in the con- 
 flagration 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 
 ruined building. This Sultan himself paid a visit to 
 Medina in 1479, and Samhudi had an interview with 
 him, the 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 1481, the Mosque at Medina once more caught fire, and 
 this time its ruin included that of the historian's own 
 house, and his hbrary of three hundred volumes. While 
 the rebuilding 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 him a large quantity of books presented 
 to 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 been printed at Bulaq. 
 
 A Persian, Ikhtiyar al-din ibn Ghiyath al-din al- 
 Husaini, who had studied at Herat, became qddt there, 
 and 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 
 same charge against Shihab al-din al-QastallanI 
 (1448-1517), a learned Shifi'ite, who was born at Cairo, 
 was a preacher in that city, and died there. He had 
 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 com- 
 mentary 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 al- 
 Gilani, 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 com- 
 posed, or rather compiled, with marvellous rapidity. It 
 was finished in less than four months, and during one of 
 these circumstances prevented the author from writing 
 at all. 
 
 A pupil of Suyuti, Abu'l-Barakat Muhammad IBN 
 Iyas, a Hanbalite of humble birth, who was born on 9th 
 June 1448, and died towards 1524, turned his attention 
 to the general history of the world, and to the history of 
 Egypt down to the year 1522, which he arranged accord- 
 ing to the years and months, and entitled Badd'i' al- 
 Zuhiir. We also owe him a book on cosmography, 
 dealing more especially with Egypt, called Nashaq al- 
 Azhdr (The Perfume of Flowers), which was completed 
 in 15 16, and has been analysed by Langles in the Notices 
 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. In 
 the course of this journey he died, leaving his son in 
 poverty. The youth had a taste for mathematics and 
 legal 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 town, conceived the idea of writing its 
 history. His Bughyat al-Mustafid, which goes down to 
 the year 1495, attracted the attention of the Sultan 
 Malik-Muzaffar 'Amir ibn Tahir, who commissioned 
 him to write his history of the Beni-Tahir dynasty 
 {Al-iqd al-bdhi)', The Shining Necklace), rewarded him 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 375 
 
 generously for his labour, and appointed him to teach 
 the traditions in the great Mosque at Zabid, a position 
 which he worthily filled until his death in 1537. From 
 the Bughyat Th. Johannsen has made fragmentary ex- 
 tracts which appear in his Historia Jeinancz. Previously, 
 Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad al-Janadi, who died in 
 1332, 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 that great 
 series of Asiatic conquests which followed on its estab- 
 lishment 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 
 fortress of Aboukir. He drew up a history of the Otto- 
 man conquest of Egypt, a general geography, and a 
 treatise on geomancy. 
 
 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 
 
 came true. Within a month, on 2nd December 1495, 
 Ahmad was born, and was surnamed Tashkopri-Zade 
 (the Son of Tashkopri), after his father's local appella- 
 tion. Having studied every kind of learning known to 
 the Orientals of the Middle Ages, he himself began to 
 teach, at Dimetoka, at Constantinople, at Uskiup in 
 Macedonia, and at Adrianople, where he was qddt in 
 1551. In 1554 he was attacked by an inflammation of 
 the eyes, became almost totally blind, and was obliged to 
 dictate his works. He died in 1560. His Nawddir al- 
 akhbdr (Curiosities of History), is a dictionary, in alpha- 
 betical order, of the illustrious men of Islam, after 
 Abu Muhammad's life of the Companions of the 
 Prophet, Ibn Khallikan's biographical dictionary, and 
 Shahrastani's history of the philosophers. His Slia- 
 qd'iq al-Nuindniyya (The Anemones) is a work devoted 
 to the biographies of five hundred and twenty-two 
 illustrious men, 'Ulema and Sufis, of the Ottoman 
 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 
 in 1558. His Miftdh al-Sdddat wa-Misbdh al-siyddat 
 (Key of Happiness, and Lantern of Mastery) is an en- 
 cyclopaedia 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 bibliogra- 
 phical dictionary, and translated into German by Von 
 Hammer. The author's son, Kamal al-din Muhammad, 
 translated the work into Turkish, and made additions to 
 it. 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 377 
 
 and died there in 1558. His Khamts ft Ahwdl al-nafs 
 al-nafis (Book divided into Five Parts, dealing with the 
 Precious Soul) is a biography of the Prophet, compiled 
 from over a hundred different works, and is followed by a 
 general review of all the Caliphs down to Sultan Sulaimin 
 L (1520). Certain copies of this work, which was finished 
 in 1533, carry it down to Murad IIL (1574). It has 
 been printed at Cairo. The story of the assassination of 
 the Caliph 'Umar has been extracted from it, and pub- 
 lished, with a German 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 perse- 
 cution inflicted by that nation on the Moslems, between 
 1498 and 1577. His Tuhfat al-Mujdhidin has been trans- 
 lated into English by Rowlandson, and a fragment of it 
 has been inserted into J. Briggs' translation of Ferishta's 
 history of India. 
 
 Muhammad QUTB AL-DiN al-Nahrawali (1511-1582) 
 came of a family which at one time dwelt at Nahra- 
 wala, the capital of Gujerat, in India. Here his great- 
 grandfather, Qadi Khan Mahmud of Delhi, had lived. 
 His father emigrated to Mecca, where he held a pro- 
 fessorial chair, and there Muhammad was born. Having 
 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 pro- 
 fessor at the Ashrafiyya, a school at Mecca, the library 
 of which he set in order. He has left an account of a 
 25 
 
378 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 second journey from Medina to Constantinople, in the 
 course of which he passed through Asia Minor (1558). 
 The Vizier 'All Pacha was telling him the story of his 
 campaigns, when Qutb al-din observed that, when 
 ocular witnesses die out, history is apt to fade away, 
 unless the facts are committed to paper, and cited, as a 
 model for this purpose, Abu Shama's history of Nur- 
 al-din and Saladin. 'Ali Pacha 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 
 professor of the Hanbalite rite when the Sulaimaniyya 
 University was established there in 1567. He was mufti 
 of the Holy City when he died. His ridm bi-dldm 
 Balad al-Hardm (Instruction as to the Notable Peculi- 
 arities of the Sacred Dwelling-place) is a history of the 
 city of Mecca and of the Ka'ba, which has been pub- 
 lished by Wiistenfeld. His Barq al- Yamdnt (Lightning 
 Flash of Yemen) contains the history of Arabia Felix 
 from the year 1495, that of the first Ottoman con- 
 quest, under the Vizier Sulaiman Pacha, of the return 
 of the Zaidites, and of the second conquest, under the 
 Grand Vizier Sinan Pacha, to whom the whole work 
 is dedicated. 
 
 Mustafa Efendi AL-JannAbI belonged to the. little 
 town of Jannaba, on the Persian Gulf. He was at one 
 time qddi of Aleppo, but was dismissed, and died in 
 1591. He wrote in Arabic, and afterwards translated 
 into Turkish, a history of eighty-two Moslem dynasties, 
 in eighty-two chapters, down to the year 1589. From it 
 J. B. Podesta took the history of Tamerlane, which he 
 translated into Latin and published at Vienna in 1680. 
 The same author also left a treatise on the building 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 379 
 
 of the Mosque of St. Sophia, and on the walls of 
 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 recollec- 
 tions 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, caused a Malikite school to be 
 pulled down, and was punished by being strangled in 
 1559. Ahmad, the son, entered the Government service ; 
 acted first as secretary, 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- 
 nent personage, who specially frequented legal circles. 
 He wrote a summary of the history of Jannabi, with 
 the addition of some supplementary information and 
 certain inaccuracies, which he entitled Akhbdr al-duwal 
 zva-AiMr a/- Uwa/ (History oi the Dynasties and Monu- 
 ments 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 falsify- 
 
38o ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 ing one of his books, but he never rested till he had 
 succeeded in convincing the chief doctors of his inno- 
 cence. 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 
 translated by Dr. Perron. Sha'rani explains and weighs 
 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, notwithstanding 
 the religious authority on which it rests. 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 al-din 
 Abu'l-'Abbas AL-Maqqari, thus called after the village 
 of 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 381 
 
 there took him a wife. Notwithstanding the honour 
 shown him, life in that city struck him as too inhospit- 
 able to be pleasant, and, bitten once more with his love 
 of travel, he went to Jerusalem in 1620, made five more 
 journeys to Mecca, and remained some time at Medina, 
 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 Damas- 
 cus, where 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 
 off, in January 1632. The Nafh al-Tib (Breath of the 
 Perfumes), his principal work, is divided into two parts, 
 the first devoted to the political history of Moslem 
 _Spain, and that of the learned men born there ; and 
 the second, to the life of the Vizier Lisan al-din Ibn 
 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 it was produced is evidenced by 
 a certain lack of order in the construction. The first 
 
382 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 part of the Nafh al-Tib has been published, under the 
 title 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 been- 
 extracted, 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- 
 nople, in 1628, his father 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 
 his honorary title of Hdji (Pilgrim). After the Erivan 
 campaign, he left the public service, and devoted him- 
 self altogether to learning. The recommendation of the 
 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. 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAd 383 
 
 He died before he was sixty, in September 1658. Besides 
 his 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 a great encyclopaedic and 
 bibliographic treatise, the basis of all inquiry into Arabic, 
 Persian, and Turkish literature, called the Kashf al- 
 Zuniin (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 Bibliographi- 
 cuin. His Fadhlaka is a summary of jannabi's general 
 history, in which the number of dynasties dealt with is 
 carried 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 al- 
 Uwal, 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-Shana- 
 wani, 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 
 
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 
 own sermons in verse and prose. His pupil Fadlallah 
 took a copy of this work at Damascus, and on it Kha- 
 faji's renown rests. His Raihdna is a second edition of 
 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 Mu- 
 hibbi, to whom we shall later refer. His Tirdz al-Majdlis 
 (Fringe of the Lectures) is a collection of fifty-one small 
 pieces, dealing with points in grammar, exegesis, and 
 rhetoric. 
 
 Fadlallah ibn Muhibb-Allah (1621-1671), who was 
 born at Damascus, learnt Persian and Turkish, and at- 
 tracted 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 re- 
 stored. He was appointed qddt at Diyarbakr, felt better 
 there, was able to travel to Constantinople, and remained 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 385 
 
 there four years. In 1666 he was appointed qddi at 
 Beyrout, and lived there about a year, the usual duration 
 of such posts under the Ottoman rule. He went back 
 to 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), 
 who came 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 Barme- 
 kides, composed almost entirely of fables, which has been 
 printed several times at Cairo and Bijlaq. Muhammad 
 AL-MUHiBBt, the son of Fadlallah, was born at Damascus 
 
3 86 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 in 165 1. During his father's absence, and when he him- 
 self was only twelve years old, he kept up a correspond- 
 ence with him both in verse and in rhymed prose. He 
 went, when older, to complete his studies at Constanti- 
 nople. His 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 
 in the Aminiyya School at Damascus. He died there on 
 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 
 century of the Hegira. 
 
 Philology 
 
 At the beginning of the eighth century of the Hegira, 
 Ahmad 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 
 at Cairo. He was a compiler, gifted with the most 
 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 
 of the Arabic tongue — the Lisdn al-Arab, a huge dic- 
 tionary, containing the substance of Jauhari's Sahdh, of 
 Ibn Duraid's Jamhara, and of the Muhkam, written by 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 387 
 
 Ibn Sida, the Spanish philologist of Murcia. Ibn Mukar- 
 ram was born in 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 Bag- 
 dad, 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 gram- 
 matical study in the East. The chief reason for the 
 favour it enjoys is its brevity, but so exceedingly concise 
 is it, that it needs a commentary. There have been many 
 reprints of the work, 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 transla- 
 tion (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 
 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 Han- 
 balite rite. He died in 1360, having written, under the 
 title of 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 
 general, written at Mecca between 1348 and 1353, has 
 been printed both at Teheran and at Cairo. His Prdi, 
 
388 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 on the rules of inflection, published and translated into 
 French by Silvestre de Sacy in his Anthologie Gramma- 
 ticale Arabe, has been printed at Cairo with a com- 
 mentary, 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 Majd al-din AL-FiRtJz-ABADf (1329-1414) 
 came of a family belonging to Firuz-Abad in Farsistan. 
 He was born in Karizin, a small town near Shiraz. 
 He studied the traditions and philology at Wasit, Bag- 
 dad, and Damascus. In 1349 he accompanied his master, 
 Taqi al-din 'All al-Subki, to Jerusalem, remained there 
 ten years, occupied with literary undertakings, and then 
 departed for Cairo, and paid visits to Asia Minor and 
 India. He was invited to Bagdad by the Sultan Ahmad 
 ibn Uwais. In 1393 he met Tamerlane at Shiraz, and 
 was well received and richly rewarded by the con- 
 queror. He then departed once more to India. As 
 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 
 professors selected by himself taught during his own 
 absences. 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 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 389 
 
 the various commentaries written upon it, amongst 
 which we may mention Sayyid Murtada al-Zabidi's Tdj- 
 al-arHs (The Bride's Tiara), which has been printed 
 in ten volumes at Bulaq. He also wrote in Persian, 
 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 at Aleppo on 20th November 
 1660, and studied first Syriac, and afterwards Arabic, 
 under Shaikh Sulaiman al-Nahwi. He also acquired 
 Italian. He retired from the world before he was 
 twenty, took religious vows at the age of twenty-three, 
 and, with several other young men, left his native town 
 to retire into the monasteries of the Lebanon. The 
 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 Maron- 
 ites, gave the convent of St. Maura at Ehden, in the 
 region of the cedars, to be its dwelling-place. In 171 1 
 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 
 St. John Chrysostom. In 1725 he was appointed Bishop 
 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 
 an elegy on his departure. His dtwdn, which includes 
 
3 go ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 poems on sacred and edifying subjects, was abridged by 
 his own 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 
 at the same place in 1894. His Arabic grammar, Bahth 
 al-niatdlib, 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 
 
 Abu'I- Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad, surnamed Ibn 
 al-Qadi, who lived under the rule of Muley Abu'l-'Abbas 
 Ahmad al-Mansur (1578-1603), wrote a number of his- 
 torical 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 
 1892. His biography of his sovereign and patron, al- 
 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 
 the University at Algiers. 
 
 Towards the close of the sixteenth century, there 
 died in the battle of Wadi'l-Makhazin (Alcazar el-Kebir), 
 in 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 
 eleventh and twelfth centuries of the Hegira, called 
 the Nashr al- Mathdnt. This, too, was lithographed at 
 Fez, in 1892, 
 
 In 1661, 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 Ber- 
 brugger 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 end of his life, 
 and died, in all probability, before Oran was taken by 
 the Spaniards in 1732. Under the title of Niishat al- 
 Hddt he wrote a history of the Sa'dian dynasty (1511- 
 1670), which has been utilised by Josd de Santo 
 Antonio Moura (1824), by Graberg af Hemso (1834), 
 by MacGuckin de Slane, Muhammad ibn Rahhal, and 
 General Dastugue, and which has been published in 
 its 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 
 countries round Timbuctoo opened their portals to 
 
392 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 civilisation, 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. Ahmad 
 ibn Ahmad ibn 'Abdal-Rahman, who was born in 1357, 
 went to Egypt for his education. He even taught there, 
 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 
 the questions dealt with in his Summary. Another 
 lawyer, "who knew tales of travel by heart," was 
 Makhluf ibn 'Ali al-Bilbali, who began his education 
 at a very advanced age. So successful were his first 
 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 ac- 
 quired 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 
 
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 coin- 
 cided 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 
 post, 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 curb- 
 ing the corruption rampant on the judges' bench. His 
 judicial duties did not prevent him from continuing to 
 teach, and expound Sidi-Khalil's Summary, which he 
 had introduced into the Soudan, together with Sahnun's 
 Mudawwana. He made the sacred pilgrimage in 1510. 
 
 Muhammad ibn 'Abdal-Karim al-Mughili belonged to 
 Tilimsan. He was a man of bold and enterprising char- 
 acter, and, by his uncompromising fanaticism, stirred 
 up massacres of the Jews which drenched the Touat, 
 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, 
 26 
 
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, 
 with Jalal al-din Suyuti. 
 
 Al- Aqib ibn 'Abdallah 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 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 
 period. His virtue and his popularity enabled him to 
 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 
 to Kaghou. The Sultan, Ashkar Da'iid, went every 
 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 
 disposal of students. In 1549 he performed the journey 
 to Mecca, and passed through Cairo, where he entered 
 into relations with all the learned men of the day, but 
 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 395 
 
 mystics. He began works on various legal and theo- 
 logical points, but most of his books were left un- 
 finished. 
 
 The most singular figure of this 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 indivi- 
 dual 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 
 to be communicated to the slowest intelligence. He 
 would spend whole days in this occupation. His 
 modesty was remarkable, and he won the affection of 
 all who knew him. He died very shortly after the 
 capture of Timbuctoo by the Moroccan army, under 
 the Pacha Jaudar. His works are for the most part 
 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 libera- 
 tion, 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 years old when he wrote his Takmilat al-dtbdj (a com- 
 pletion of Ibn Farhun's Brocade), a biographical dic- 
 tionary 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 deal- 
 ings with sultans and emirs, he never dissembled as to 
 justice. The name of Mahomet was to be seen written 
 in natural white characters on the skin of his right fore- 
 arm." 
 
 'Abdal-Rahman ibn 'Abdallah al-Sa'di (1596-1655 ?), 
 who was born at Timbuctoo, was a notary at Jenna, 
 and, from 1627, acted as Imam of the mosque at San- 
 kora. He was dismissed some ten years later, and re- 
 turned to his native town, where he occupied a similar 
 post. He ultimately received the title of secretary to 
 the Government, and was entrusted with missions to 
 several Soudanese chiefs. He had attained his sixty- 
 first 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 bio- 
 graphies are of varying lengths. Some give nothing 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 397 
 
 but a few dates, others are very much worked out, full 
 of detail and of information. Those of contemporary 
 personages are particularly lively and animated. 
 
 Anthologies and Popular Works 
 
 Jamal al-din al-Watwat (Muhammad ibn Ibrahim) 
 (1235-1318), surnamed al-Kutubi (the Bookseller), and 
 al- Warrdq (the Paper-seller), wrote the Ghurar al-khasd'is 
 al-wddiha, an anthology in sixteen chapters, on eight 
 virtues 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 
 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 
 exist in Europe. Muhammad al-Bilbaisi was the author 
 of a work, intermingled with verse, in which he starts on 
 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 
 1345. Towards the same period, 'Ala al-din "Ali al- 
 Baha'i, a man of Berber blood, but of Damascene birth, 
 who died in 1412, was compiling his Matdli al-budUr 
 (Rise of the Full Moon), while Shihab al-din Muhammad 
 ibn Ahmad al-AbshIhI, who was born towards 1388, 
 in a village in the Fayyum, and died about 1446, was 
 
398 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 collecting the materials for his Mustatraf ft kull fann 
 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 al-din Muhammad al-Nawaji (1383 ?-i455), a 
 teacher of the traditions in the Shafi'ite schools of 
 Cairo, and himself a poet, left a collection of Baccha- 
 nalian poetry, entitled Halbat al-kuniait, which has been 
 frequently reprinted. Scattered through the various 
 European libraries other manuscript works of his are 
 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, 
 a. collection of Arabic poetry belonging to the Moslem 
 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 
 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 him- 
 self was cured of congenital rheumatism by a Greek 
 physician, who taught him his own tongue. When 
 questioned on any scientific subject, he would im- 
 mediately dictate sufficient matter to cover ten or twenty 
 pages. Besides works devoted to medical subjects, he 
 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 399 
 
 the title of Khizdnat al-adab (Treasure of Literature), a 
 commentary on 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 al- 
 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, 
 Palestine, Persia, India, and Southern Arabia. This 
 work is a remarkably erudite compilation — a real antho- 
 logy. 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 fame of which overshadows 
 all others, the delight both of childhood and of ripe age, 
 it is the anonymous work universally known under the 
 title of Kitab Alf laila wa-laila (The Thousand and One 
 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 
 fictitious monarch in Central Asia, determined to protect 
 himself against the craft and infidelity of women, resolves 
 that the wife he chooses him every day shall be put to 
 death before the next. 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 re- 
 linquishes 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 : it is the story of a king, his vizier, his 
 daughter and his slave, Shirazad and Dinazad." The 
 remarkable point about this passage from the worthy 
 chronicler is the very ancient and purely Persian form 
 of the 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 over- 
 thrown by Alexander. 
 
 Into this evidently artificial framework have been in- 
 troduced 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 401 
 
 magoric description, as the tale of the Fisherman and the 
 Genius. 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 some literary excerpts have slipped, 
 such as the story of the Omeyyad Caliph 'Umar ibn 
 'Abdal-'Aziz 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 pro- 
 logue 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. The book, as we now possess 
 it, must have been drawn up in comparatively recent 
 times, for it contains the stories of Qamar al-Zaman 
 and the jeweller's wife, of Ma'ruf and his wife Fatima, 
 
402 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 both of them belonging to the sixteenth century, and 
 also the tale of Abu Qir the Dyer and Abu Sir the 
 Barber, the most modern of all. 
 
 The merit of having introduced European readers to 
 the Arabian Nights is 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 
 (1825), and Trebutien de Caen (1828). Nearer our own 
 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 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 
 the 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 
 utilised by Burton. In 1886, H. Zotenberg, the curator 
 of the manuscripts at the Bibliotheque Nationale, dis- 
 covered 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 conse- 
 quently 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 
 to the provinces. The whole text of the story of Aladdin 
 is in the Syrian dialect. The source of the stories of 
 Arab origin is easily detected. They came from the 
 madddh, the popular story-teller, who wanders, on feast- 
 days, 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 
 Hamilton in 1820, while the full text was brought back 
 to Paris 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 it in the Chrestomathies Orientales (1841). Both these 
 Orientalists, and Cherbonneau, Dugat, and Devic, after 
 them, translated fragments of the work, and it was 
 published in full at Cairo, in 1893. It is quite evident 
 that the popular tales do not date from such remote 
 times, and, in any case, so 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 authen- 
 ticity. In its present form, the romance goes back to 
 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 
 at 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). 
 In the Romance of '' Antar, Caussin de Perceval declares, 
 " may 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 exceed- 
 ingly remarkable. It is, so to speak, the Arab Iliad." 
 If we allow for his natural enthusiasm about the dis- 
 covery he had made in Syria, and accept the Romance of 
 Antar as a popular work, in which we must not expect any 
 
AFTER THE FALL OF BAGDAD 405 
 
 historical qualities, 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 in following the knightly adventures therein de- 
 scribed. Take it all in all, it is much after the same 
 fashion that Alexandre Dumas the elder wrote the 
 history of France. Now and 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, re- 
 mounts 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, left unsup- 
 ported, falls 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 
 habit in the East. He also gives an analysis of several 
 of the romances related by these men, among them 
 the Romance of ^Antar. Since then others have been 
 published, amongst them the Romance of the Beni-Hildl. 
 The subject is identical with that of the Romance of 
 Abtj. Zaid, so popular in Egypt. In spite of his being 
 
4o6 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 the possessor of ten wives, the Emir Rizq had only two 
 daughters, and one son, born without arms, when the 
 Princess AI-Khadra, daughter of the Sharif of Mecca, 
 became 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 ac- 
 knowledging 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- 
 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 leader- 
 ship once more. Thus father and son were brought 
 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 407 
 
 corresponding one in the Arabic work. The anonymous 
 author of 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 con- 
 tinuing to dilate on the feats of his hero, as is now the 
 case. 
 
 Martin Hartmann has shown that the stories of the 
 Beni-Hilal, and their invasion of Northern Africa 
 itaghrtbat), form one complete cycle of legends, con- 
 nected 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 
 Zaid being merely the last of the series. First of all 
 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 
 to the adventures of Shamma and of Zahr al-Ban, in 
 which we see the Emir Sirhan made prisoner by Chris- 
 tian 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 
 the Franks. His son, Sultan Hasan, betakes himself to 
 Yemen, to make war on the fire-worshippers — here we 
 have a memory of the historic times when the Sas- 
 anian Persians had garrisons in Southern Arabia — and is 
 aided there by the never-failing Abu Zaid. He pro- 
 ceeds to vanquish the monarch of India, Jarad, con- 
 quers his country, and leads the Beni-Hilal back to 
 Africa. The continuation of the story relates how 
 Sultan Hasan and Abu Zaid remove into the province 
 of Najd, because there is nothing left to eat in their 
 own country. For the same reason the Beni-Hilal are 
 
4o8 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 constrained to quit Najd, and move westwards ; this is 
 what is properly called the taghrtba (Emigration to the 
 West). 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 
 
 Saif is the son of a King of Yemen. His mother, a 
 slave, causes him to be exposed in the desert. Here he 
 is miraculously fed by a gazelle which has lost her 
 young, is found by a hunter, and is carried away to 
 Abyssinia. When he grows up, he fights with the 
 giant Mukhtatif, and 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 al- 
 Zanji, the terror of Abyssinia, and find the book of the 
 history of the Nile, which lies in an inaccessible country, 
 protected by talismans. He is presently recognised by 
 his mother, who desires to kill him, so that she may 
 reign alone. After every kind of wonderful adventure, 
 full of genii and sorceresses, Saif returns to his own- 
 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 
 (J.-J. Wick, 1847, 368 pp. 8vo). 
 
 The Saif al-Ttjdn (Sword of the Crowns) is the story, 
 divided into parts, of the adventures of a fabulous prince, 
 who goes from one country to another, conquering the 
 world, fighting fairies and magicians with mighty sword- 
 thrusts, and warring against multitudinous armies, which 
 are all converted to the Moslem faith, by the interven- 
 tion of the prophets Abraham and Isma'il. It has been 
 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 
 entitled Luqvidn, we read : " We have given wisdom to 
 Luqman, saying to him, ' Be grateful to God,' " and 
 again : " Luqman said one day to his son, by way of 
 admonition, ' O my child, associate no other divinities 
 with God, for idolatry is a 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 
 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 re- 
 warded 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 con- 
 sisted in drawing lots with arrows for the parts of a 
 camel killed at the general expense. 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 oppor- 
 tunity if he had ventured to be the first to attribute the 
 wisdom of the learned to an individual whose celebrity 
 rested principally on his perspicacity. Luqman was 
 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 
 (^sop's Fables). From these is drawn the Arabic 
 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 
 stir in literary matters, denoted by the publication of a 
 number of newspapers, and evidenced also by the pro- 
 duction of various works in book form. This is not con- 
 fined to the countries in which Arabic is the current 
 language, but is also noticeable in certain large cities, 
 where it is familiar only to the learned, as in Constanti- 
 nople, and in others, such as Paris, where it is utterly 
 unknown, except to a 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 
 Egypt, and accompanied the army when it retired from 
 that country. 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 
 made a French translation of his treatise on the pigeon- 
 post, entitled Musdbaqat al~barq wa'l-gkaindm, and be- 
 
412 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 stowed on it the poetic title of La colonibe messagere, plus 
 rapide que I'eclair, plus prompte que la nue. At a later 
 period, this little treatise was still further popularised by 
 a German translation due to Arnold, and an Italian 
 rendering, the work of Cataneo. A hymn, addressed 
 by him to Napoleon I. on the occasion of the birth of 
 the King 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 at 
 Strasburg by Thorbecke in 1886. The manuscript of 
 this work, at one time in the collection of Etienne 
 Quatremere, has passed, with all other papers belonging 
 to the famous French Orientalist, into the possession of 
 the Munich Library. 
 
 Sabbagh's friend, ElyOs Boqtor (Bocthor), who was 
 born, of Copt parents, at Suyut, in Upper Egypt, on 
 12th April 1784, was attached to the headquarters staff 
 of the French army as interpreter, when only fifteen 
 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 413 
 
 lectures on colloquial Arabic at the :^cole des Langues 
 Orientales vivantes (1816), was appointed professor in 
 that establishment (1821), and died, when barely seven 
 and thirty, on 26th September of the same year. He 
 left an Arabic-French dictionary, published in 1828- 
 1829 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 
 Emir Bashir, chief of the E>ruses, and now the seat of 
 the Lebanon Government. His family was of Constan- 
 tinopolitan origin. He entered the service of the Druse 
 prince, with the title of muallim or professor, and was 
 highly esteemed as a poet, at the little court. His patron 
 sent him into Egypt to obtain information as to the 
 plans of the French, and he remained there during the 
 whole period of the French ascendency. At the close of 
 his life 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 
 added to his Journal cT Abdurrahman Gaba7^ti {iZ -},?>) ; the 
 full text 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 at Cairo, 
 acted as chaplain in the Egyptian army, with the title of 
 preacher, and was afterwards sent to Paris with the 
 
414 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 pupils of the 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 trans- 
 lated 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 patri- 
 otic 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 al- 
 j'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 pre- 
 ceded 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 commen- 
 tary 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. He wrote a letter of criticisms to 
 Silvestre de Sacy, relative to his edition of Hariri's 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 415 
 
 Lectures, 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 selec- 
 tion of chronograms, from the same source (tawdrtkh), 
 likewise appeared in the same place. Yet another col- 
 lection 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 Mansur AL-ShidyAq, 
 a Maronite converted to Islam, who 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 French " archidiacre." His fancy 
 was attracted, in the first instance, by lexicographical 
 questions, and his inquiries into this subject, proving the 
 ingenuity of a mind quite devoid of any critical power, 
 were carried on till the end of his life. His Lafif ft kull 
 mdnd tarif is a dictionary of Arabic synonyms, preceded 
 by an abridged grammar, which appeared at Malta in 
 1839. Subsequently came his Sirr al-laydl (Mystery of 
 the Nights), on the qalb and the ibddl, that is to say, on 
 metathesis, and the alteration of consonants in the Arabic 
 roots ; his Jds-As ''aid 'l-QdmAs (The Spy on the Qdmils), 
 a criticism bf Firuz - Abadi's dictionary, and his al- 
 Wdsita ft mdrifat Ahwdl Mdlta, a means for gaining 
 acquaintance with the conditiori of Malta, and the dis- 
 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 adven- 
 tures 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 own and his father's various literary and 
 scientific contributions to an Arabic newspaper, the 
 Jazvd'ib, founded by the latter at Constantinople, and 
 subsequently transferred to Cairo. 
 
 Another inhabitant of the Lebanon, Butrus BiSTANt 
 (1819-1883), a Maronite who went over to the Protestant 
 Communion, and was dragoman to the United States 
 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 
 Arabes. The work is full of ,expressipns and meanings 
 peculiar to the various Syrian dialects. His Misbdh al- 
 Tdlib (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 un- 
 finished, 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 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 417 
 
 his name by the publication of certain Arabic texts, such 
 as that of the Fiqh al-lugha, by Abu Mansur al-Tha'alibi 
 (Paris, 1 861) ; the dtwdn of Ibn al-Farid, with commen- 
 taries by Hasan al-Burini and 'Abdal-Ghani al-Nabu- 
 lust (Marseilles, 1853 ; Paris, 1855 ; Bulaq, 1872) ; a 
 selection of remarkable poems, which ma}' be used as 
 proverbs, collected by him under the title of Tarab 
 al-masdini'' (Delight of the Ears ; Paris, 1861) ; and a 
 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 
 various political occasions (^Zahr al-rubd) — appeared at 
 Beyrout in 1857; Salim Bisteris, who published a journal 
 of his travels in Europe, al-Nuzhat al-Shahiyya (Bey- 
 rout, 1859) ; Iskandar-Aghi AbkAriyOs, an Armenian, 
 whose Raudat al-adab (Flower-bed of Literature ; Beyrout, 
 1858) contains biographical notices of the pre-Islamic 
 Arab poets, contemporary with Mahomet, arranged in 
 alphabetical order, and who had already published, at 
 Marseilles, in 1852, the Nihdyat-al-arab, a series of 
 notices of the poets and prominent personages of pre- 
 Islamic times ; Jirjis-Efendi Tannus 'Aun, who pub- 
 lished a technological dictionary at Constantinople in 
 1884, under the title of Durr al-Makniin (The Hidden 
 Pearl); Sa'id al-Khur1 al - Shartuni, author of the 
 Aqrab al-niawdrid, an Arabic dictionary with a supple- 
 ment (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 8 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 a priest, 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 pub- 
 lished, in the same town, his Tamrina, an Arabic gram- 
 mar (1886), which had been preceded, in 1877, by 
 grammatical exercises entitled Tamrin. His Tarwid al- 
 tulldb (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 entitled Mirqdt, the stepping- 
 stone to the Majdni. The ^Ilm al-Adab, in which he 
 collaborated with G. Eddd, is a course of lectures on 
 belles-lettres, 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 culti- 
 vated 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 Jeru- 
 salem (1874). At Mosul, a Syrian priest, Louis Rah- 
 mani, 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). 
 
 Amongst 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, 
 who 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 trans- 
 lations 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 
 
420 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 muwashshahdt, and of a controversy on grammar, entitled 
 Radd al-Shahni li'l-sahni, which was printed at Constanti- 
 nople in 1874: of Yusuf Dibs, appointed Maronite Arch- 
 bishop 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 of Lebanon) : and finally, of Amin al-Jundi, a 
 poet belonging to the town of Hims, who was educated 
 at Damascus, and died in his native town, in the year 
 1840, leaving a collection of poems, printed at Beyrout, in 
 1883, in a 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, 
 whose poems bear the name of Al-Mirdt al-husjid. 
 Another poet of Aleppo, Philip Basil Benna, lived at 
 Constantinople. Three odes with which various inci- 
 dents inspired him — one written in gratitude for the 
 Prince de Joinville's assistance in putting out the con- 
 flagration 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 'Abdal- 
 Qadir, whose bold resolution saved numbers of Chris- 
 tians during the Syrian massacres, in i860. His diwdn 
 was printed at Constantinople in 1895. 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 421 
 
 Christian literature is represented by the Mawd'is, or 
 Collected Sermons, of Monsignor Yiisuf Ilyas Dibs, 
 Archbishop of Beyrout (1874), and controversy by al- 
 Ditrr 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 al- 
 faraid, dealing with the division of inheritances, by Yusuf 
 al-Asir (1873). 
 
 Damascus, like Beyrout, has had a flourishing period 
 of literary activity. Mahmud Efendi Hamza has pub- 
 lished a series of works on legal subjects : the Qawaidal- 
 auqdf, rules in force as to property in mortmain (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, a study on delay and 
 caution (1884). 'Ala al - din Efendi 'Abidin wrote a 
 treatise 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. Muham- 
 mad-Efendi al-Qalbaqji wrote a book on the knowledge 
 of man's inner nature as mirrored in his eyes, called Kashf 
 al-Akhldq, in 1883; and 'Umar-Efendi al- Attar, who had 
 published his Risdla, on the object of logic, in 1870, fol- 
 lowed 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 
 existence. 
 
 Muhammad ibn Ahmad-Efendi al-Iskandarani pub- 
 lished his study of Natural Science in the same city in 
 
 1883, under the title of Asrdr al-rabbdniyya, and Da'ud- 
 Efendi Abu Sha'r wrote a treatise on hygiene, which 
 
42 2 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 he called Tuhfat al-ikhwdn. The funeral oration of the 
 Emir 'Abdal-Qadir was pronounced there by Muham- 
 mad ibn Muhammad al-Mubarak al-Jaza'iri {Laiiat al- 
 Damair, 1883) ; and Muhammad-Efendi 'Abidin pub- 
 lished a bio-bibliographical work e.n'ixWtdL^Uqud al-lddli 
 (1885). _ 
 
 Spiridion Sarruf, a member of the Orthodox Church, 
 and a Damascene by origin, besides issuing a number of 
 liturgical books published from the Greek texts, com- 
 piled 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 al- 
 IdhMiyya, 1873) ; and Sim'an Ishaq al-Qudsi, a book 
 on the pontificate of St. Peter and his successors, called 
 Riydsat Butrus (1870). 
 
 Under the impulse of the reforms initiated by the 
 successors of Muhammad 'All, Egypt, like Syria, has 
 been the scene of most remarkable activity in the matter 
 of literary production. The knowledge of European 
 science imparted in the schools of the country has 
 induced a considerable amount of industry among 
 translators, which we will not follow here, limiting our 
 attention to original work. The activity noticeable in 
 this country, far from being purely scientific, has per- 
 haps 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 , 423 
 
 Darvish (1867), with his IsKdr; Ibrahim-bey Marzuq, 
 who wrote al-durr al-bahi al-mansilq (1880), and died 
 at Khartum in the Soudan iij 1866 ; Mahmud ibn Mu- 
 hammad al-Qusi (1892), Shaikh of the Sa'diyya at Don- 
 gola, 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 Government printing works from 1836 
 to 1849 — he was the author of a diwdn which appeared 
 in 1861, and of the Saftnat-al-Mulk (1865). He himself 
 died in 1857 ; Amin ibn Ibrahim Shamil, whose al- 
 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), 
 complete this pleiad of neo-Egyptian poets. The art 
 of writing popular songs, so despised by the literary 
 men of bygone days, has excited the fancy of Muham- 
 mad '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 al- 
 Fahham. 
 
 The history of Egypt has been written by 'Abdal 
 Rahman al-Jabarti al-'Aqili (1756-1825), whose ''Ajd'ib 
 al-dthdr was printed at Bulaq in 1880, and translated 
 out of the Arabic into French by four Egyptian savants 
 in collaboration. His journal, kept during the French 
 occupation, Mazhar al- taqdis (an autograph copy is 
 now at 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 
 
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 
 was twenty he had lost his father. He was a man of 
 handsome physique, and of noble 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 
 Military Chiefs. After the evacuation he devoted him- 
 self entirely to learning. One of his sons was murdered 
 in 1823, 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 ap- 
 peared at Cairo in 1872. Besides this, and preparatory 
 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 Egypt under Muhammad 
 'All. The foundation of the reigning Khedivial family, 
 and the events of the reign of Muhammad 'All, inspired 
 Muhammad-bey Farid with the idea of his Bahjat al- 
 Taufiqiyya, dedicated to Tewfik-Pacha (1891) ; the ele- 
 mentary history of Eastern countries has been given an 
 Arabic form by Sayyid-Efendi 'Azrai {al-masdlik al-ibti- 
 daiyya, 1894). 
 
 Jurji Zaidan (1834 -1890), a Syrian Christian, has 
 attracted attention 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, 
 
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 
 al-lddlt) ; his various works have been collected and 
 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) the authorship of a collec- 
 tion of tales, the title of which — that of the first volume, 
 at all events — is Tuhfat al-mustaiqiz al-dnis ft nuzhat al- 
 inustantni al-nd' is (The Present to the Awakened Bachelor 
 for the Delight of the Somnolent Sleeper), which Marcel 
 translated under the title 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, with- 
 out 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 be- 
 took himself back to Cairo. He was appointed Shaikh al- 
 Islam in 1812. These tales are imitations of the Arabian 
 Nights. The hero of the stories, 'Abdal-Rahman, finds 
 himself a rich man at his father's death. Having no 
 taste for pleasure, he gives himself up to study, and de- 
 sires, when three years have elapsed, to enjoy the fruits 
 of his learning, and let others enjoy them also. He calls 
 his slaves, friends, and relations together, each in their 
 turn, and relates short stories to them. But he has the 
 fatal gift of sending his hearers to sleep, and bringing 
 misadventure on himself, on every occasion. After a 
 series of unlucky incidents, he is even taken for a mad- 
 man, and shut up in the Maristan, the lunatic asylum at 
 Cairo. But, still ruled by his mania, he continues to 
 gather a circle of good-natured listeners about him, and 
 to delight them by his stories. Of these latter tales the 
 two last volumes, presumably finished in 1783, consist. 
 Doubt has been expressed 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 
 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 
 1893. He also brought the metric system within the 
 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 427 
 
 in the army. 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 ilal- 
 Mutamar, 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 fall within the province of this 
 work, the exact sciences have been cultivated, as regards 
 arithmetic, by 'All 'Izzat-Efendi (1869), Shafiq-bey Man- 
 sur (1887), Muhammad - Efendi Hamid (1894), and 
 Mahmud-Efendi Mujir (1870); Mustafa-Efendi Shauql 
 (1871) has written on the metric system ; Isma il-Efendi 
 Mar'i(i887),and the above-mentioned Muhammad-Efendi 
 Hamid, on algebra ; Ibrahim al-Dasuqt 'Abdal-Ghaffar, 
 who died in 1883, directed the publication of a treatise 
 on trigonometry in 1853 ; and Hasan-Efendi HusnJ 
 has published a work on cosmography {al-usM al' 
 
428 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 wdfiya, 1890). Mahmud-pacha al-Falaki, the Minister 
 {d. 1885), to whom the impulse given to these studies 
 is specially due, wrote a memorandum on the Arabic 
 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, Gre- 
 gorian, and Coptic calendars, down to the year 1500 of 
 the Hegira, with historical ephemerides, down to the 
 year 1309 of the same era, and of his Riydd al-Mukhtdr 
 (Flower-garden of the Elect), a treatise on the assess- 
 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 pub- 
 lished at Leipsic in 1848. 
 
 To Physics, Chemistry, and Natural Science, Dr. 
 Muhammad-Efendi Kamil al-Kafrawi, and Muhammad 
 ibn 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 
 the Tahiti (1843). Mahmud Anis wrote on the culture 
 of cotton (1892), and we note a succession of physician 
 authors, attended by a train of chemists. Dr. Hasan- 
 pacha Mahmud treated 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 teach- 
 ing as to the nature of simulated diseases in his Tuhfat 
 al- Abbdsiyya (1895) ; while the Durar al-badriyya, by 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 429 
 
 Muhammad Badr-bey al-Baqli (1893), describes the 
 modern remedies, and serves to complete the ''Iqd al- 
 
 jumdn, Mustafa Hasan Kassab's Pharmacopoeia, printed 
 in 1834, and as a continuation of the Nafahdt al- 
 riyddiyya, a 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 Mu- 
 hammad'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 al- 
 
 yaitma, 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 
 has written an ecclesiastical history of Egypt, al-Kharida 
 al-Naftsa, the 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-Sanusi (1876-1878). In 1868, General Khair 
 al-din al-Tunisi, Minister to the Bey of Tunis, and 
 subsequently Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, pub- 
 lished his Aqwavt al-masdlik, a description — historical, 
 political, and administrative — of 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 Planets), some 
 inquiries into the conformity of 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 al- 
 Tijani wrote his Tuhfat al-ariis, three chapters dealing 
 with the subject of women and marriage ; Muhammad 
 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 
 'l-Aqil (Reminder to the InteUigent) has been translated 
 into French by G. Dugat, and whose Mihtary Regula- 
 tions, Wishdh al-Katd'ib, were published and translated 
 by F. Patorni in 1890. The Iktirdth, which deals with 
 the respect of the Moslem faith for the rights of women, 
 and is the work of Muhammad ibn Mustafa ibn al- 
 Khoja 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 his- 
 torical works, among them a description of the Island 
 of Jarba, which was translated and published at Tunis 
 in 1884, by Exiga (Kayzer). He lost his parents at an 
 early age, and had a most unhappy childhood. Notwith- 
 standing this, he learnt the alphabet without any in- 
 structor, and amassed sufficient knowledge to enable him 
 to give reading and writing lessons to law students. He 
 taught at Mascara, and gathered many pupils about 
 him, to whom he always dictated from memory. In 
 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 
 those adopted by the four orthodox rites. His Voyages 
 Extraordinaires ('Aja'ib al-Asfar), translated by Arnaud, 
 are a commentary on his own poem on the capture of 
 Oran by Muhammad ibn'Uthman (1792). 
 
 In Morocco, Abu'l-Qasim ibn 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 Tilim- 
 san, where the author, then Governor of Oudjda, had 
 been constrained to take refuge, after having been de- 
 feated 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). Mu- 
 hammad 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 
 died there in 1886, printed, in 1885, a political history of 
 Islamism, entitled al-futAhdt al-isldmiyya. 
 
 In the Moslem East, far away in Hindustan, Mu- 
 hammad Siddiq Hasan - Khan Bahadur (al - Qanuji al- 
 Bukhari) (1833-1889), Nabob of Bhopal by his marriage 
 with the Begum of that State, a vassal of England, who 
 had inherited the throne, caused the following works to 
 be printed at Constantinople : al-Bulgha, an Arabic lexico- 
 graphy, followed by a bibliography of Arabic, Turkish, 
 Persian, and Hindu dictionaries (1879); al- Alain al- 
 Khaffdq, on the formation and derivation of Arabic 
 words ; the Luqtat al-Ajldn, an historical miscellany ; 
 followed by the Khabi'at al-Akwdn, a history of the 
 various religions ; 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 433 
 
 Awakening, 1879) ; the Ghusn al-bdn, on rhetoric (1879) ; 
 the HusM al-mdinM (Obtaining of what one Desires), 
 on the principles of law ; the Fath al-baydn, a com- 
 mentary 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 com- 
 mentary on Ibn Hajar's Bulilgh al - mardm (Buliq, 
 1885). At Bombay, Muhammad Karama al-Ali al- 
 DihlawJ, who died in 1832, printed a life of the Prophet 
 Mahomet. 
 
 Far northwards, at Kazan, a learned man, named 
 Mirza Muhammad 'All ibn 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. 
 
 In Paris, Abu Kabi' Sulaiman al-Harai'ri, who was 
 assistant Arabic master at the Ecole des Langues Orien- 
 tales Vivantes, published Shaikh Ahmad ibn al-Mu'az- 
 zam al-Razi's twelve Lectures (1865) ; wrote a treatise 
 on meteorology, physics, and electro-plating {Risdla ft 
 hawddith al-jaww, 1862) ; and delivered a Fatwd, or 
 judicial decision as to whether Moslems may eat the 
 flesh of animals killed by Christians — this with the object 
 of making it easier for his co-religionists to travel in Euro- 
 pean countries. He wrote a treatise on coffee in i860, 
 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 his reply to attacks levelled at himself and other Chris- 
 tians of the Lebanon, and another response to further 
 objections (1863). In Constantinople, the capital of the 
 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 pub- 
 lished in countries where the language is popularly spoken. 
 Muhammad ibn Muhammad Hasan Zafir, whose birth- 
 place is Tripoli in Barbary, has printed his Anwar al- 
 Qudsiyya (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, affiliated to the 
 religious order of the Rifa iyya, is 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 
 East to be printed at Constantinople. Most of the works 
 of the Nabob of Bhopal, Muhammad Siddiq Hasan 
 Khan, appeared there ; and there, too. Shaikh 'Abd al- 
 Shakfjr Rahman 'Ali-Khan, of Bendelkend in Hindu- 
 stan, has laid his Abniyat al-Isldm (Edifice of Islamism), 
 based on the traditions of the Prophet (1882), before 
 the public. Sayyid 'Abd al-Gha£far 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 
 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 435 
 
 al-Tirdz al-anfas (The Most precious Embroidery), which 
 was printed in 1888. 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 
 told him he would have to risk his life, he replied : " I 
 will not sell my all for the sake of a part of myself," and 
 took his way back to Bagdad. Da'ud-pacha found a 
 historian of his own in the person of Arain ibn Hasan 
 al-Hulwani, a professor at the Mausoleum of the Pro- 
 phet 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 
 Gold from the Pulpit), a collection of sermons for 
 Fridays and Moslem feast-days, and his Hiddyat al- 
 murtdb (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 
 modern philosophers, for publication (1890). From 
 Yaman comes the Maqdina adabiyya (Literary Lecture), 
 under which title 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 juris- 
 diction, and his correspondence with the various Attor- 
 neys-General (1889), followed by a Turkish translation ; 
 and his '' Iqd al-jumdn (Necklace of Pearls), a panegyric 
 
436 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 of the family of Osman, with the predictions of the 
 ancient sages of Islam concerning it. A 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 Constan- 
 tinople, and died there in i^ 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE PERIODICAL PRESS 
 
 A VERY flourishing branch of contemporary literature is 
 that consisting of the newspapers and reviews pubUshed 
 in the Arabic tongue, which appear not only in the coun- 
 tries 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 emi- 
 grants, 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 Novem- 
 ber 1828. It appeared at Cairo two or three times 
 a week in Arabic and Turkish. After seventy-three 
 years of a most chequered existence, this sheet, the 
 first newspaper printed in the East, after General Bona- 
 parte'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," 
 is still published three times a week in Arabic. Thirty 
 
438 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 years 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 al- 
 Barjis, 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. Any spare time at the printing offices 
 of ihe Jawd'ib 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 Uni- 
 versity of St. Joseph, to their college at Ghazir on the 
 Lebanon, began to publish a weekly review called al- 
 Bashir. To this they added, in 1898, a bi-monthly scien- 
 tific review, al-Mashriq (The Orient). To compete with 
 this 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 
 
THE PERIODICAL PRESS 439 
 
 (Little Garden), which only lasted for three years ; and 
 a bi-monthly review called al- Jinan; while the Moslems 
 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 pub- 
 lication 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 
 Moslem population. The Taqaddum, true to its title, 
 opened its columns to all the modern ideas. On i8th 
 October 1877 Khalil Sarkis, son-in-law of Butrus Bistani, 
 founded the Lisdn al-hdl (Tongue of the Situation), 
 which began by being a bi-weekly journal, but has 
 been published daily since 1894. As this paper, which 
 was obliged to guide its political utterances so as to 
 be agreeable to the Ottoman Government, also main- 
 tained a due reserve as to the numberless religious con- 
 fessions 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 
 Nashra al-usbu'iyya (Weekly Publication), which is still 
 in existence. For a short time the Orthodox Greek 
 community possessed an organ, called the Hadiyya 
 (The Gift), which has now disappeared. To counter- 
 balance the reactionary influence of the Thamardt 
 al-funAn, the Government published, on and after 22nd 
 March 1886, a bi-weekly sheet bearing the name of the 
 
440 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 city in which it appeared, Beyrout. This became the 
 official 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 Shar- 
 batli, a weekly review, entitled al-Nahj al-qawim (The 
 Straight Path). Al-Isldm (Islamism) is the organ of 
 the old Moslem party, which centres in the Mosque of 
 Al-Azhar. It is 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 
 Rafa'il-Efendi Zind. The chief writers on this paper 
 are Yusuf-Efendi Asaf and Khalil-Efendi Naqqash. 
 
 Al-Hildl (The Crescent), a literary and scientific jour- 
 nal, appearing once a month, edited by Jurji- Efendi 
 Zaidan, and founded in 1892, is devoted to the dissemi- 
 nation of European ideas. 
 
THE PERIODICAL PRESS 441 
 
 A certain number of papers and reviews are more 
 especially intended for ladies ; among them we may 
 note : — 
 
 Al-Fatdt (The Young Girl), a monthly publication 
 which has been appearing since 1892, and is edited by 
 Mme. Hind bint Naufal ; the Mir at al-hasnd (Mirror of 
 Beauty), edited by Maryam Mizhir since 1896; al-Firdaus 
 (Paradise), by Louise HabbMin; and Ants al-Jalts (The 
 Faithful Companion), by Alexandra Avierino and Labiba 
 Hashim. 
 
 The Copts, too, possess an Arabic press, which is 
 entirely devoted to the intestinal quarrels 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, 
 supports the Patriarch's party, while the Taufzq (Suc- 
 cess), 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 
 Arabic daily paper, which then defended, and still de- 
 fends, French 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 develop- 
 ment of British influence. The Moslems had no organ 
 until Shaikh Ahmad Madht (died 1893) published a 
 29 
 
442 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 political paper, al-Mu'ayyad (1890), which has a large 
 circulation all over the Moslem world, from Morocco to 
 the Dutch Indies, and which has been managed, since 
 the founder's death, by 'Ali ibn Yfisuf, who calls him- 
 self 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 lan- 
 guage, and, in places where Arabic is spoken, a portion 
 of the sheet is printed in that tongue. Thus, in the 
 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 
 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 politi- 
 cal 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 443 
 
 Haqd'iq, and the Munabbih, all of them political organs ; 
 and the Insdn and Kaukab, scientific journals. The 
 le^al paper, al-Huqiiq, continues to appear in Turkish 
 and Arabic. In the Island of Cyprus, now under English 
 rule, a political journal in Arabic, the Dik al-Sharq 
 (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, 
 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 publica- 
 tion) ; in London, the Ittihdd al-Arabt, the Khildfa, and 
 the Mir dt al-Ahwdl, edited by Rizq-Allah Hasun, repre- 
 sent the journals which have died out on foreign soil. 
 Still 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 
 Tartar sheets, at Tiflis ; the Diyd al-Khdfiqain, partly 
 printed in English, in London ; the Kaukab Amirikd 
 and al-Ayydm, in New York ; the Marsad, in Marseilles ; 
 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 blos- 
 soming, 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 
 
 we have watched the second growth, induced by the 
 fecundating influence of modern thought, of the original 
 stock, several branches of which — not to mention that 
 offshoot of circumstance engrafted on it, the periodical 
 press — have brought forth flowers. What future lies 
 before this second growth ? Will it be an imitation of 
 the classic centuries ? Or will the language, forced into 
 modification by the necessity for interpreting fresh ideas, 
 enrich itself with new and youthful forms which shall 
 revivify the ancient groundwork ? It would seem, 
 at the first glance, as though such centres of literary 
 activity as Cairo and Beyrout were destined to produce 
 men who, following the movement initiated by their pre- 
 decessors of the nineteenth century, will, so to speak, 
 serve as the link between Europe — and in Europe I 
 include the colonies scattered all over the face of the 
 globe, and everywhere continuing the work begun on 
 this continent by the sons of Japhet — and the East, still 
 wrapt in the semi-darkness of a dying twilight. They 
 should be aided in this enterprise by the powerful 
 support of the periodical press, which reaches the 
 greater part of the 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 
 transformed, developed ? Will it grow clearer, more 
 accessible to the mass of half-taught people educated in 
 the primary schools ? Any man who has studied the 
 question must answer. No ! Nowhere do we see a move- 
 ment like that which, in the course of the last thirty 
 years, has altered the old Osmanli-Turkish tongue, by 
 clearing all its ancient rhetorical forms away. Arabic 
 is still 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, and the empty and futile rhetoric, the 
 alliterations after the manner of Hariri's Lectures, therein 
 displayed, entertain the educated reader. There it ends. 
 Yet, along with these clap-trap harangues, serious articles 
 on special subjects, which make no attempt at shining by 
 the use of a display of empty words, and appeal direct 
 to the intelligence, without permitting their argument to 
 be disturbed by extraneous trifling, are also published. 
 To 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 
 or the printer would consent to mark the harakdt in the 
 case of words which may bear a double meaning, in that 
 of the passive tenses of verbs, and in that of the sub- 
 stantives of which 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 
 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 ARABIC LITERATURE 
 
 tries in 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 ap- 
 pears. 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 
 in the Middle Ages. This means every country inhabited 
 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 suffi- 
 ciently malleable to enable it to express modern thought, 
 and at the same time to supply the whole of the Moslem 
 East with the new technical terms in chemistry, medi- 
 cine, and most sciences. The path one would fain see 
 the writer of the future tread is that of the search for 
 limpidity and simplicity of expression. Once these are 
 attained, a brilliant career may be predicted for Arabic 
 Literature, which, like Islam itself, 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. Leipzig, 1901 (drawn up with a view to the general 
 public). 
 
 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 cartnina antiquissinia Arabum. Ed. F. A. Arnold, 
 Lipsiae, 1850. Abu'l-Far.aj al-Isfahani, Kit&b al-Aghdni (Book 
 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 Greifen- 
 wald, but only the first volume appeared (1840). 
 
 447 
 
448 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 English 
 Sir C. J. Lyall, 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, 
 Arabic Proverbs. London, 1830.' — E. W. l^a.n&'s Arabic-English 
 Lexicoji. 8 vols., 1863-1893 (full of extracts and explanations of 
 early Arabic poetry). 
 
 French 
 
 Silvestre de Sagy, Chrestomathie Arabe. 2me. edit. 3 vols. Paris, 
 1826, 3 vols. — F. Fresnel, Lettres sur P Histoire des Arabes avant 
 I'lslamisme. Paris, 1836. — R. Basset, La pocsie Arabe ante- 
 islamique (Legon d'ouverture). Paris, i88o. — St. Guyard, Theorie 
 nouvelle de la metrique Arabe {fournal Asiatique, 1876, and 
 also published separately). 
 
 German 
 Ahlwardt, Ueber Poesie und Foetik der Araber. Gotha, 1856. 
 Bemerkungen iiber die Echtheit der alien Arabischen Gedichte. 
 Greifswald, 1872. — L GoXA'vi'ae.r, Abhandlungen zur Arabischen 
 Philologie. Leyden, 1876. — G. Jacob, Studien in Arabischen 
 Dichtern. Heft II., Noten zum Verstdndniss der Muallaqdt, 
 1894. Heft III., Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 1897. — Martin 
 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. W. Lane, Selections from the Kur'dn. London, 1879. — 
 Stanley Lane-Poole, Speeches of Mohammad. London, 1882. 
 
 French 
 Translations by Du Ryer, Paris, 1649, 1672 ; The Hague, 1683, 1685 ; 
 Antwerp, 1719"; Amsterdam, 1756, 1770, 1775; Geneva, 1751. — 
 Savary, Paris, 1783 (An vii., 1798), 1822; Amsterdam, 1786.— 
 Kasimirski, Paris, 1840, 1852. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 449 
 
 German 
 
 Translations by Solomon Schweiggem, Nuremberg, 1616, 1623. — 
 Megerlin, 1772. — Friedrich Eberhardt Boysen, Halle, 1773, 1775- 
 — Wahl, Halle, 1828.— Ullmann, Crefeld, 1840, 1877.— F. Ruckert, 
 in extracts, published by A. Miiller at Frankfort, 1888. 
 
 Latin 
 
 Translations by Louis Maracci, Padua, 1698. — Abraham Hinckel- ■ 
 mann, Hamburg, 1694. — Chr. Reinecke, Leipzig, 1721. 
 
 Italian 
 
 Andrea Arrlvabene's anonymous translation, Venice, 1547. 
 
 There are Dutch translations by Swigger, Hamburg, 1641 ; Glase- 
 maker, Amsterdam, 1698 ; Tollens, Batavia, 1859 ; Keyzer, 
 Haarlem, i860 ; and a Russian translation by Sabloukov, Kazan, 
 1877 ; also Swedish translations by Crusenstolpe, Stockholm, 
 1843, ^nd Tornberg, Lund, 1874. 
 
 History of the Koran — Th. Noeldeke, Geschichte des Korans. Got- 
 tingen, 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 Exe- 
 gesis of tlie Qoran. London, 1902. 
 
 Life of Mahomet. — Ibn Hisham, Das Leben Muhammed's, tr. Weil. 
 Stuttgart, 1864, — A. Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des 
 Mohammed. Berlin, 1861, 1869. — W. Muir, The Life of Mahomet 
 and History of Islam. London, 1 858-1 861 ; 3rd ed., 1895. — • 
 L. Krehl, Das Leben des Muhammed. Leipzig, 1884. — Syed 
 Ameer Ali, The Life and Teachings of Muhammad. London, 
 1891. — E. Sell, The Faith of Islam. London, 1S80. 
 
 PERIOD OF THE CALIPHS 
 
 Al-Nadim, Kitab- al-Fihrist, ed. G. Fluegel, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1871, 
 1872. — Ibn-Khaldun, Prol^gomines, traduites et commentes par 
 MacGuckin de Slane, 3 vols., Paris, 1858. — Hamdsa, uebersetzt 
 von Fr. Riickert, 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1846. — Divan de Ferazdaq, 
 trad. par. E. Boucher, 2 vols., Paris, 1870, 1875. — Mutanabbii Car- 
 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 Behd- 
 ed-din Zoheir, text and trans., 2 vols., Cambridge, 1876, 1877. — 
 F. Dieterici, Die Philosophie der Araber, 16 parts, Berlin, 1858- 
 1894. — T. W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, London, 1896. — 
 
 E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, London, 1901 (half of 
 this volume is occupied with Arabic literature under the Cali- 
 phate). — R. Dozy, Recherches sur Phistoire et la literature de 
 VEspagne, 1 vols., Leyden, 1881. — S. Lane-Poole, Cairo, London, 
 1902 (with account of Arabic literature of Egypt). — Sir W. Muir, 
 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 (see ajite) also covers a part of this period (the three 
 first 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 en- 
 cyclopMie 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, no 
 
 Abb^s (sons of ). (Sec'Abbasids. 
 'Abbas ibn al-Ahnaf, 73, 78 
 al- Abbas ibn 'AH ibn Ntr al-dln, 
 
 . 399 
 
 Abbasids, 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 1 
 '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 
 "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-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 al- 
 
 Tanftkhf, 1 18 
 'Abd al-Mu'min, Almohad Sultan, 
 
 252, 313 
 'Abd al-Qadir (the Emir), 273, 420 
 
 sqq., 431 
 'Abd al-Qadir ibn Abd al-Kartrn al- 
 
 Wardifi, 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 Cor- 
 dova, 310 
 'Abd al-KahmS,n, Prince of Tilimsan, 
 
 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 al- 
 
 Hamadhant, 157 
 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Ism^'U ibn al- 
 
 MaqdisI, 122 
 'Abd al-RahmSn ibn al-Qasim, 237 
 'Abd al-Rahmin al-Sa'di, 396 
 'Abd al-Razzaq, 357 
 'Abd al-Salam of Bassora, 98 
 'Abd al-Salam ibn Raghban, name of 
 
 the poet, Dik al-Jinn, 89 
 'Abd aI-Shak<ir Rahman 'AH Khan, 
 
 434 
 
452 
 
 INDEX 
 
 [ Abd al-Wahid, Almohad Sultan, 
 
 290 
 '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 7 
 'Abla, celebrated by'Autara, 14 
 al-Ablah (AbA ' Abdallah), 100 
 Ablaq (castle of), II, 29 
 Abnawl, surname of Wahb ibn 
 
 Munabbih, 61 
 Abraham, 4 ; religion of, 26, 33 ; 
 
 scrolls of, 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 
 Abti 'Abdallah Muhammad al- 
 
 Shuqratial, 125 
 Abft Abdallah Muhammad al- 
 
 Khwarizml, 316 
 Abft 'Abdallah Muhammad al- 
 
 SanAsI, 430 
 AbA 'Abdallah Muhammad ibn al- 
 
 Tayyib, 391 
 
 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 al- 
 
 Dani, 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 
 A.b<i Bakr Muhammad ibn Quzman, 
 
 128 
 Abfl Bishr Matta ibn Yftnus, 282, 
 
 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 al- 
 
 Riyashi, 145 
 Abft'l-Fadl al-Harawi, 156 
 Abft'l-Fadl al-TAzari, 125 
 Abft'l-Earaj 'Abd al-Rahmdn, 250 
 AbA'l-Earaj '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 al- 
 
 Nadim, 186 
 Abd'l-Faraj ibn al-Jauzi, 102 
 
INDEX 
 
 453 
 
 Abll'l-Faraj al-Isfahanl, 17, 48, 74, 
 
 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 
 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, 
 
 "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 Alex- 
 andria, 187 
 Abli'l-Hasan Sadaqa al-Mazyadi, 107 
 Abti Hatim Sahl ibn Muhammad, 
 
 145, '146 
 AbA Hayy3,n, 340, 387 
 Abll'1-Hazm ibn Jahwar, 126, 127 
 Abft'l-Huda Etendi, 434 
 
 Abii'l-Husain Abd al-Rahman al- 
 
 S<lfl,'296 
 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 TahyS (al-Hadl ila'l- 
 
 liaqq), 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 Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Hilal al- 
 
 Sabi','i34 
 Abu Ishaq Ibrahim al-Husrl, 124 
 Abft Isljiq Ibrahim ibn Sahl, 129 
 Abd Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Silih al- 
 
 Warraq, 158 
 Abft Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Yahya al- 
 
 Ghazzl, 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 JM 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 
 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 
 
 YAsuf, 24S 
 AbA Muhammad ibn 'Umar, 149 
 AbA Muhammad al-Qasim al-Harlrl, 
 
 134 
 • AbA Mus'ab, uncle of Shafi'l, 238 
 
454 
 
 INDEX 
 
 AhtL Muslim, 57, 64, 66 
 Abd'l-Mu^affar Muhammad al- 
 
 Abiwardt, 108 
 Abft'l-Muzaffar Yahya ibn Hubaira, 
 
 259, 303 
 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 
 Abu'I-Qfcim ibn al-Hajar, chief 
 
 Moslem in Sicily, 113 
 Abvl'l-Qasim ibn Tabataba, 94 
 AbCi'l-Qasim al-Ghafiq!, 297 
 Abii'l-Qasira Xhalaf al-Zahrawt, 
 
 310 
 AbA'i-Qasim al-LaithI, 372 
 AbU'l-Qasini 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, 
 
 87 
 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 
 Aba Taiib, son of Fakhr al-daala, 
 
 159' 
 Abfl Talib, al-Mufaddal ibn Salama, 
 
 152 
 Aba Tammam, 17, 83, 89, 14S, 162, 
 
 1S2, 185 
 Aba 'Ubaid al-Q^aim ibn Sallam, 
 
 144 
 Aba 'Ubaida Ma mar ibn al-Muth- 
 
 anna, 141, 142, 144 
 Aba'Umar Saiih ibn Ishaq al-Jarmi, 
 
 145 ' ' 
 
 Aba Usitma Junada, 225 
 
 Aba'l-Wafa al-Bazajanl, 297 
 
 Aba'1-Wafa ibn Salama, SB 
 
 AbaWahb, l8l 
 
 Aba'l-Walid, 127 
 
 Aba'l-Walid al-Azraq, 177 
 
 Aba'l-Walld al-Bajl, 262 
 
 Aba Ya'la Muhammad Ibn al- 
 
 Habbariyya, 106 
 Aba Yasuf, 235 
 
 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 Bakr, 
 
 202 
 Aba ZukariyyS ^YahyS. ibn 'AdI, 
 
 282 
 Aba Zaid, 406 
 A bH Zaid, romance of, 405 
 Aba Zaid, son of Muhammad ibn 
 
 Abl Hafs, 204 
 Aba Zaid 'Abd al-Rahmftn Ibn 
 
 Yaklilaftan, 129 
 Aba Zaid Ahmad ibn Sahl al-Balkbl, 
 
 2S5, 301 
 Aba Zaid Ans4rl, 40 
 Aba Zaid Said ibn'Amr, 142, 144 
 Aba Zaid of Sarftj, 135 
 Achsemenians, 400 
 'Ad, tribe of, 37, 409 
 Adam, 67, 68, 262, 291 
 '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 
 'Adud al-daula, Buwaihid prince, 
 
 91, 134, 150, 159, 205, 296, 309, 
 
 310 
 Adud al-dSn al-'tjl, 342 
 'Adwan, tribe of, 21, 22 
 'Afif al-din Sulaim3,n al-TilmisHni, 
 
 123 
 Aftf al-dln al-Yafil, 348 
 Afiah ibn Yasar, 57 
 Aftas, family of, 128 
 al-Aghlab ibn 'Umar ibn TJbaida, 
 
 53 
 
 Agoub, 414 
 Alildf, at Hira, 30 
 
INDEX 
 
 455 
 
 Ahlwardt, 17, 93, 181, 333 
 
 Ahmad, brother of al-Ghazill, 265 
 
 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 al-Rah- 
 
 man, 392 
 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 
 Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-K^zl of 
 
 Cordova, 188 
 Ahmad ibn SabI, prince of Ballch, 301 
 Ahmad ibn Sayyar, 178 
 Ahmad ibn Shahln, 381 
 Ahmad ibn Ttilun, 187 
 Ahmad ibn Uwais, Sultan of Bagdad, 
 
 388 
 Ahmad ibn YahyS Khazindar, 399 
 Ahmad ibn Zainl Dahlan, 432 
 Ahmad al-KurdS, 332 
 Ahmad Madht, 441 
 Ahmad al-NasibI, musician, 55 
 Ahmad al-Nasirl al-Salawl, 432 
 Ahmad al-Numairl, 126 
 Ah mad-pacha Kyiiprillu, Grand 
 
 Vizier, 331 
 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, surname of ZiySd ibn Sulai- 
 
 mSn, 56 
 al-'Ajjaj, 53 
 al-Ajurrt, 222 
 AjurrilTniyya^ 387 
 al- Akawwak, 76 
 
 Akhhdr cd-LufAg, 17 
 
 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 Dush- 
 
 manziySr, 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 
 ' Ala al-din Tibare, 208 
 'Alara al-din al-Bulqin!, 367 
 Alam al-din al-SakhawS, 260 
 Albategnius, 296 
 Albohazen, 297 
 Albucasis, 3 10 
 Albumaser, 296 
 Alexander, 155, 2S0, 400 
 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 
 " All Fahml, 429 
 
 'AH al-Hamadhanl al-Sakhawl, 122 
 "All ibn 'Abbaa, 309 
 "All ibn'Abd al-E.ahman, 195 
 "All ibn Ghazl, 392 ' 
 "All ibn al-Husain, 214 
 'All ibn Ishiq al-Zahl, 94 
 "All ibn Jabala al- Akawwak, 76 
 *A11 ibn Ja'far of Shaizar, 299 
 'All ibn al-Jahm, 80 
 "All ibn MansAr, King of Khwarizm, 
 
 286 
 'All ibn Muhammad, chief of the 
 
 Zanj, 145 
 
456 
 
 INDEX 
 
 'AH ibn Muhammad ibn Bassam, 84 
 'Ali ibn Muqarrab ibn Mansftr al- 
 
 Ibrdhimi, 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 
 'Alt-paclia, vizier, 378 
 "Alt-pacha Mubarak, 426 
 'All al-Tauhldt, 316 
 'All YHsuf (Shaikh), 442 
 Almagest of Ptolemy, 297 
 Almohads, 129, 252 
 Almoravids. See Moravids. 
 'Alqama ibn'Abada al-Fahl, 16 
 'Alqama, sou of AllStha, 27 
 Aluh ('ImM al-din), 1S9 
 Amari, 304 
 '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 
 Amtn al-daula Abti'l-Ghana'im 
 
 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- 
 
 ^ tor, 2 1 
 'Amir al-Ru'Sml, 379 
 'Amr ibn al-'Abd. See 'Tarafa, 14 
 'Amr ibn al-'As, 365 
 'Amr ibn Bahr al-Jihiz, 213 
 'Amr ibn Harith, Prince of Ghassin, 
 
 'Amr, son of Hind, King of Hlra, 14 
 'Amr ibn Kulthftm, 10 
 Anas, son of Malik, 306 
 al-Anbart, 156 
 'Anaza, tribe of, 74 
 
 'Anhurt (Saltm Efendi), 420 
 
 AnsElrs, 49, 72, no 
 
 Ans^rls. See Nusairls. 
 
 al-'Anst, 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, 
 
 394 
 Arbad, brother 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 
 al-Arrajanl, no, 332 
 Arsacids, 6 
 
 Ars^niyAs, the priest, 417 
 Asad, tribe of, 23 
 Asad ibn al-FurSt, 237 
 As' ad ibn Nasr al-Abarzt, no 
 As'ad al-Shidydq, 416 
 al-A'sha, 10, 26, 27, 30, 153 
 Asha, Harndan, 5^ 
 al Ash'art, 264, 268, 269 
 al-Ash'ath (IbnV See Abd al- 
 
 Rahman ibn al-Ash'ath. 
 Ashja', 87 
 
 Ashkar !D4'fid (Sultan), 394 
 Ashraf (Sultan), 193 
 Ashrafiyya (school), 249, 32S, 341 
 Ashrafiyya at Mecca, 377 
 al-'Askarl, 157, 368 
 Aslam ibn Sahl, 177 
 al-Asma'l, 17, 76, 141, 142, 144, 238 
 Assassins, 246 
 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 
 
INDEX 
 
 457 
 
 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 
 
 Azza, the Bedouin woman, 48 
 
 Bab, 'All Muhammad the, 212 
 al-Babbagha (Abii'l-Faraj), 94 
 Badi' al-ZamS,n al-Hamaclh4iiI, 1 32 
 
 sqq. 
 Badr, battle of, 32 
 Badr al-din Lu'lu', at4bek of Mosul, 
 
 103, 104, 112 
 Bagdad, school of, 154, 256 
 Baghyo'o (Muhammad), 395 
 Baha al-daula, Buuaihid Prince, 293 
 Baha al-dln of Aleppo, 191 
 Baha al-dtn al-MnhallabI, 115 
 Bah4 al-din Muhammad ibn Yllsuf 
 
 al-BaHni, 331 ' 
 Bahrdm Shall ibn Farrukh Shah, 123 
 Baibars (Sultan), 193, 195, 197, 335, 
 
 339- 397 
 al-Baidavvi, 261 
 al-Baihaqi, 227 
 Baillie and Locketfc, 167 
 al-B4jf, 262 
 al-Balcharzi, 106 
 al-Bakrl, 302 
 al-Baiadhuri, 179, 180 
 al-Balatt, 326 
 al-Balawi, 319 
 Bdnat Sitdd, poem of Ka'b ibn 
 
 Zuhair, 44 
 Baliquera, 316 
 Barbier de Meynard, 73, 168, 176, 
 
 267, 298 
 Barges (the Abb^), 371 
 Bar-Hebr£eus, 209, 295 
 Barmakides, 64, 71, 197 
 BarqAq, 324, 35 1 
 Barqllqiyj'a (convent), 355 
 Barq-YarAq, SeljAqid Sultan, 247 
 Barshai (Sultan), 332 
 Earsflma, 410 
 
 30 
 
 Barzfiya (the physician), 212 
 
 Bashir (Amir), 413 
 
 Bashshar ibn Burd, 67, 69, 86 
 
 Basset (R.), 115 
 
 Bassora, school of, 137, 139, 146, 
 
 150, 153, 155 
 Batikin, 102 
 al-BattanI, 296 
 B4tyiir, 105 
 Bauer, 210 
 al-Baya,dl, 105 
 
 B4yezld I., Ottoman Sultan, 356, 363 
 Bayezld II., Ottoman Sultan, 375 
 al-Bayyi', 223 
 al-Bazz^z, 157 
 Beaumier, 334 
 Beer (G.), 267 
 
 Behnain Benni (Mgr. Cyrille), 419 
 Behz^d, 149 
 Beni-'Abs. See 'Abs. 
 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 1 
 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, 397 
 al-Biqal, 210 
 al-Eirflnl, 302 
 Bishr ibn Abi KhSziro, 24 
 Bistanl (Eutrus), 416, 438 
 Bisteris (Sal'jm), 417 
 Bland, 268, 369 
 Bloohet (E.), 200 
 Bocthor (ElyAs), 412 
 Boer, de, 267 
 Bohlen, (P. de), 269 
 Bokhtyishtf, 80, 306 
 
4S8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bonaparte, 3, 424, 437 
 
 Biiok of Songs, 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, 
 
 373 
 Bulaqiya, 401 
 
 Bft Medin. See AbA Madyan. 
 Bunan, the singer, 81 
 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, 184, 
 
 224, 299, 309 
 Bfizajani, 297 
 
 Cakdin (Alexander), 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 
 
 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, 
 Codera (F.), 203, 204, 318 
 Cool (P.), 166 
 Crassus, 280 
 CroUa, 304 
 Crusaders, 116, 194 
 Cureton (W.), 268, 337 
 Cusa and Lagumina, 145 
 Cyrus, 400 
 
 DID A WAIH, father of 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 
 
INDEX 
 
 459 
 
 Delphin (G.), 430 
 
 Derenbourg (H.). 140, 156, 163, 194, 
 
 201, 333 
 Desgranges aSnd, 413 
 Destains, 402 
 Devie, 404 
 
 al-Dhahabi, 196, 341, 344, 362, 368 
 d'Herbelot, 359 
 DhU'l-Asba" al-'Adw^nl, 21, 22 
 Dha'l-Kiialasa, idol, 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 
 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, 279 
 
 Dtwdns of the Six Poets, 17 
 Biyd al-dln ' tsa, brother of Ibn 
 
 Khallikan, 102 
 Diya al-dln Muhammad al-Dimashql, 
 ■ 250 
 Diya al-dln Muhammad al-Khazrajl, 
 
 ' 173 
 
 Diyab al-Itlidi, 385 
 al-Diyarbakrl, 376 
 d'Ohsson (Mouradjea), 268 
 Dombay (Fr. de), 275, 334 
 Domestious, the, General of the 
 
 K(jman troops in Asia, 93 
 Don Pedro, tyrant of Castile, 350 
 Don Sebastian, King of Portugal, 390 
 Dorn (B.), 290 
 Dozy (R.), 188, 19s, 203, 204, 382, 
 
 416 
 Du-hait, 103 
 
 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 
 
 Ellas I. (the Catholicos), 310 
 
 Elias (the prophet), 340 
 
 Elyfts Bocthor, 412 
 
 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 
 
 al-Fadil (the qadi), 313, 326 
 
 Fadl (the poetess), 81 
 
 Fadl ibn Rabl', the minister, 143, 238 
 
 Fail ibn Sahl, 73 
 
 Fadlallah ibn Muhibb Allah, 383, 
 
 384 
 Fagnan (E.), I95. 344 
 al-Fa'iz, Fatimid Caliph, 200 
 Fakhr al-daula, 159 
 Fakhr al-daula Muhammad ibn 
 
 Jahlr, 105 
 Fakhr al-dln 'tsS ibn Ibrahim, 333 
 Fakhr al-dln al-Razl, 320 
 Fakhr al-Mulk, 293 
 Fakhr al-Turk, 103 
 Fakhriyya (Madrasa), 197 
 al-Fakihi, 177 
 al-Farabl, 283 
 Faransis Marrish, 420 
 al-Farghanl (Alfraganus), 295 
 Farhat ( Jabril ibn). See Jabrll and 
 
 Germanos. 
 Faris al-Shidyaq, 415, 438 
 Faris Nimr, 441 
 al-Farisl, 150, 156, 157, 228 
 al-Farra, 145, 151 
 al-Farra al-Baghawl, 228 
 Fath ibn KhSqan, the minister, 152 
 al-Fath ibn Khaqan, the Spaniard, 
 
 203' 
 Fdtiha, 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 
 FIl (Elephant), surname of the singer 
 
 Yahya, 58 
 
460 
 
 INDEX 
 
 FirdausI, Persian poet, 195, 212, 406 
 
 Firtlz-Abadt, 388, 415 
 
 Fleischer, 168, 261, 338, 402 
 
 Fluegel (G.), 366, 367. 382 
 
 Forget (J.), 2S6 
 
 Fraelin, 300, 342 
 
 Fraser, 26S 
 
 Frederic of Hohenstaufen, 290 
 
 Fresnel, 20 
 
 Freudenthal, 2S9 
 
 Freund, 342 
 
 Freytag, 17, 167, 200, 364, 412 
 
 Fudala ibn Kilda, 25 
 
 Furqdn, name of the Koran, 35 
 
 Gabriel (the archangel), 34, 173 
 
 Gabriel, Bon of Bokhtyishu, 307 
 
 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, no 
 Ghiyath (al-Akhtal), 48 
 Ghoul, female Jinn, 18 
 Ghiilam Tha'lab, surname of al- 
 
 Mutarriz, 153 
 Gildemeister, 276 
 Glaser, 6, 242 
 Goeje (M. de), 180, 183, 205, 29S, 
 
 299 
 Goergens and Rohrioht, 192 
 Goguyer, 171, 3S7 
 Golden Meadows, the, of Mas'-ftd!, 176, 
 
 183 
 
 Gold en thai, 266 
 
 Goldziher (I.), 170, 240, 251 336 
 
 Golius, 97, 287, 295, 364 
 
 Gondisalvi, 267 
 
 Gosche, 368 
 
 Gospels, the, 36, 54 
 
 Gottwaldt, 184, 358 
 
 Graberg de Hemso, 391 
 
 Grangeret de Lagrange, 369, 412 
 
 Gregorio, 207 
 
 Guadagnoli, 173 
 
 Guidi (J.), 161, 188 
 
 Guirgass (W.), 155 
 
 GundeshapAr (School of), 1 37, 2S0, 
 
 306. 307 
 Gunzbourg (D. de), 129 
 Guyard (Stanislas), 335, 338, 357 
 
 Haarbrilcker, 268 
 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 , 
 al-Hajjaj al-Hfisib, 281 
 Hajjl Khalfa, 121, 193, 337, 371, 
 
 376, 382 
 al-HajirS, 102 
 
 JETakam, supreme arbitrator, 21 
 Hakam (Amir), 355 
 al-Hakam II., 1S8, 315 
 al-fiakim, Fatimid Caliph, 201, 205, 
 
 226, 293, 297, 311 
 Halevy (J.), 6 
 
 Ha.l!ma, daughter of Fudala, 25 
 a'l-Haliaj, 271 
 Haniadhan, battle of, 97 
 Hamadhani, 132 sqq., 159 
 
INDEX 
 
 461 
 
 Hamaker, 360 
 
 Hamdsa of Abu Tammam, 17, 19, 20, 
 
 ■ 83, 88, 162 
 
 Hamdsa 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 al-Hawiya, 10, 59 
 Hammam (Ferazdaq), 50 
 Hammer (J. von), 108, 168, 201, 
 
 267, 339, 373. 376 
 Hamza al-Isfahani, 183 
 Hamza Fathallah, 429 
 Hanafites, 87, 124, 149, 164, 197, 
 
 ■ 234 
 
 Hanbalites, 104, 155, 181, 197, 239, 
 
 ■ 250, 431 
 Hanlfs, 26, 33 
 
 Han?ala, of the tribe of Tai, 23 
 
 a'l-Harawi, 156, 272 
 
 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 
 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 7 
 a'l-Hasan, son of 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 
 Hassan ibn Mufarrij, chief of the 
 ■ tribe of Tai, 97 
 Hassan ibn Thabit, 27, 43 
 
 Hassftn (Rizq Allah), 419, 433 
 
 Hashim, family of, 58, 106 
 
 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 al- 
 
 Qa'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 
 Hisham, son of the Caliph al-Hafcam, 
 
 161 
 Historians of the Crusades, 192 
 Hoberg(G.), 157 
 Hochheim, 293, 294 
 Holy Ghost, the, 34 
 Homes (H. A.), 266 
 Horowitz, 401 
 Hospitallers, 338 
 
 Houdas (O.), 18S, 193, 391, 396, 432 
 Houtsma, 1 53 
 Hubaish ibn al-Hasan, 282 
 HAd, the prophet, 409 
 Hudhaifa, Arab general, 40 
 Hudhail, tribe of, 18, 45 
 Hudhailites.poemsof the, 18, 146,238 
 Hujr, father of Imru'u'l-Qais, 1 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 al Harith. See Dhtl'l- 
 
 Asba' al- Adwanl. 
 al-Hurthi (Ibn al-Mu'allim), lOI 
 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 
 HAsM, 15 
 al-Husrt, 124 
 al-Hutai'a, 24, 45 
 
462 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hylander, 342 
 Hypsicles, 322 
 
 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 
 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 
 Ibn Abl'l-Rijal. See AbU'l-Hasan 
 
 '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 
 Ibn Arfa Ra'sahn, 317 
 Ibn'Asakir, 199, 387 
 Ibn al-Ash'ath, 65, 178 
 Ibn'Askar, 391 
 
 Ibn al-Athlr (Diya al-dln), 169 
 Ibn al-Athlr ('Izz al-din), 142, 153, 
 
 169, 199, 206, 338, 358, 368, 379 
 Ibn al-Athlr (Majd al-dtn), 169, 229 
 Ibn al-'Awwam, 316 
 Ibn Babashad, l56 
 
 Ibn Babtlya, 242 
 
 Ibn BadrCln, 128, 204 
 
 Ibn Bairam, 386 
 
 Ibn Baitar, 196, 316 
 
 Ibn Eajja (Avenpace), 288 
 
 Ibn Balian, 367 
 
 Ibn Bashkuwal, 204 
 
 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, 216, 239, 240, 318, 
 
 319 
 Ibn Hani'. See Muhammad ibn 
 
 Hani'. 
 Ibn Harma Ibrahim ibn 'AH, 87 
 Ibn al-Haslna, 126 
 Ibn al-Haya (Sawar ibn Auta), 54 
 Ibn Hayyfls, 109, 120 
 Ibn Hazm, 250 
 Ibn Hibban, 223 
 Ibn Hijja, 324, 398 
 
INDEX 
 
 463 
 
 Ibn Hisha,m, 175, 261, 325, 387 
 
 Hm Hubaira, 189, 207, 259, 303 
 
 Ibn Hudhail al-'AUaf, 71 
 
 Ibn al-Idhari, 203 
 
 Ibn lehaq (Muhammad), 175 
 
 Ibn Isra'il, 1 19' 
 
 Ibn lyUs, 374 
 
 Ibn Jahwar, 127 
 
 Ibn al-Jauzi, 102, 208, 230, 279, 318 
 
 Ibn al-Jawaliqi, 162 
 
 Ibn al-Jazarl, 356 
 
 Ibn Jazla, 311 
 
 Ibn Jinnt, 156 
 
 Ibn Jubair, 304 
 
 Ibn al-Kalbl, 178, 179 
 
 Ibn 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, 
 
 376 
 Ibn Khamis, 272 
 Ibn al-Khashshab, 348 
 Ibn al-Khattb, 345 
 Ibn al-Khatib al-Qsamtln!, 347 
 Ibn al-Khayy^t, 109 
 Ibn Khum£rtaih 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 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ibn Sharaf 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 
 Ibn al-TaftwldhS, 100, lOI 
 Ibn Tabataba, 94, 333 
 Ibn Taghribirdl, 202, 365 
 Ibn Taimiyya (the qadl), 328, 334 
 
 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 
 Ibn ZabEila, 177 
 Ibn Zafar, 210 
 Ibn Zaidftn, 126, 127 
 Ibn Zailaq, 328 
 Ibn Zanianain, 256 
 Ibn al-Zanjabtlt, 337 
 Ibn al-Zaqqdq al-Bulqlnl, 121 
 Ibn Zar, the physician, 282 
 Ibn al-Zayyat, the minister, 213 
 Ibn al-Zubair, 340 
 Ibn Zulaq, 187 
 Ibn Zunbul, 375 
 Ibrahim, Ottoman Sultan, 330 
 Ibrahim, Prince, 324 
 Ibrahim, brother of Ismail ibn Yasar, 
 
 Ibrahim, surnamed the Pure Soul, 
 
 151 
 Ibrahlm-bey MarzOq, 423 
 Ibrahim al-Dasflqi, 427 
 Ibrahim al-Mausili, 77, 78 
 
 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 
 
 Ihyd'ulUm al-dtn, 91, 266 
 al-'j.]i ('Adud al-din), 342 
 Ikhshidites, 91, 94 
 Ikhtiyar al-dln iijn Ghiyath al-din al- 
 
 Husaini, 372 
 Ikhwan al-Safa ,285 
 'Imad al-din (the Katib), 100, 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 
 
 al-Iqlishl, 233 
 
 ' Irdqiyydt, 108 
 
 '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, 270 
 
 Ishaq ibn Hunain, 2S2 
 
 Ishaq ibn'imran, 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 
 
 Isma'll, Prince of Granada, 345, 
 
 350 
 Isma'll, the Himyarite Sayyid, 86 
 Isma'll Efendi Marl, 427 " 
 Ismail ibn 'Abbas, Sultan of Yemen, 
 
 388 
 Isma'il ibn Athlr, 128 
 Ismail ibn Bulbul, 152 
 
INDEX 
 
 465 
 
 Isma'll ibn Hammed, 235 
 
 Isma'll ibn Qasim Abd'l- Atahiya, 74 
 
 IsmS.'11-pacha, 440 
 
 Isma'll ibn Yasar, 56 
 
 Israel, 6 
 
 Istifan al-Duwaihl (Mgr.), 389, 419 
 
 lyad, tribe of, 24 
 
 'lyad (theqadl), 232 
 
 'Izz al-daula, Buwaihid Prince, 134 
 
 'Izz al-din, uncle of Usama Ibn 
 
 Munqidh, 194 
 "Izz al-d!n. Emir of Yemen, 379 
 'Izz al-dln'Abd al-Hamtd ibn Abf 1- 
 
 Hadid, 104 
 'Izz al-din 'Aibak, Prince of Sarkhad, 
 
 118 
 "Izz al-dln Aidamir (the alchemist), 
 
 370 
 'Izz al-din Aidamir (Amir), 196 
 "Izz al-dln al-Dlrlnl, 279 
 "Izz al-dln al-Maqdisl, 279 
 "Izz 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, 
 
 65 
 Ja'far ibn Hinzaba (tbe Vizier), 223 
 
 Ja"far Sadiq (the imam), 313 
 
 Ja'far ilDn Shams al-Khiiafa al-Afdall, 
 
 121 
 al-jaghm!ni, 294 
 al-Jahiz, 213 
 
 jahi?iyya, sect of the, 213 
 Jahn (G.)> 14° 
 al-Jaihanl, 300 
 Jalal al-daiila Nasr, Prince of Aleppo, 
 
 120 
 Jaiai al-din 'All ibn al-Saffar, 1 18 
 Jaiai al-din al-Bulqlni, 357 
 Jalal al-dln al-MahalU, 368 
 Jalal al-dln Mankoblrti, Sultan of 
 
 Khwarizm, 1 93 
 Jaiais, the two, 368 
 Jamai al-dln al-Isfahani, 248 
 Jamai al-dln Muhammad ibn Salim 
 
 ibn Wasil, 195 
 Jamai al-dln al-Shaibanl (the vizier), 
 
 305 
 
 Jamai al-dln Yahya al-Sarsarl, 104 
 Jamai al-dln Yahya ibn Ma'trfth, 1 16, 
 
 117 
 Jamharat ash'dr al-'Ardb, 17 
 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 
 Jaqmaqlyya (School) at Damascus, 
 
 381 
 Jarlr, 49 sqq. 
 Jarir, son of 'Abd al-Masih or'Abd 
 
 al-'Uzza. See Mutalammis. 
 al-Jarjara'l (the vizier), 205 
 al-Jarinl, 145 
 
 al-Jarrar (Abii'l-'Atahiya), 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, 7i 15 
 
 Jirjls 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 
 Juynboll, 241, 305, 365 
 
 Ka'b ibn Ju'ail, 48, 49 
 
 Ka'b ibn Zuhair, 15, 43, 115 
 
 Ka'ba, ii, 10, 147 
 
 KafUr, name given to negroes, 100 
 
466 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Kaffir the Ikshidite, 91, 187, 223 
 Kaisaniyj'a, Kaisanites, Shi'ite sect, 
 
 48,87 
 al-Kaiwanl, 329 
 al-KalabadhI, 225 
 Kalatii, son of Chakhbar, Indian 
 
 prince, 300 
 Kalb, tribe of, 35 
 KalUa and Dimna^ 107, 202, 211 
 Kamal al-dln ibn al-Nablh, 1 14 
 Kamal al-dln Muhammad, 376 
 Ivamai al-dln al-SharishI, 260 
 Kam^l al-dln 'Umar ibn al- Adlm, 
 
 historian of Aleppo, 199 
 Kdmil of Ibn al-Athir, 206 
 Kdmil of al-Mnbarrad, 146, 156 
 KtLiniliyya (madrasa) at Cairo, 1 73, 
 
 194, 231 
 Karam (Yiisuf Butrus), 433 
 al-Karkhl, 293 
 Karle (J.), 1S7 
 
 Karramijja, sect of the, 257, 321 
 A'aslishdf, 168, 262 
 Katib (secretary), surname of the 
 
 singer Yfinus, 48 
 Katib, the, "Imad al-din. See 'Imad 
 
 al-din. 
 al-Kd.tibl (Najm al-dln 'All), 290 
 Kay (H. Cassels), 201, 375 
 Keijzer (H.), 244, 24S 
 Kellgren, 171 
 Kerbela, 89 
 
 Khadlja, wife of Mahomet, 33 
 al-Khafajl, 383 
 Khair al-din al-TdnisI, 430 
 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 
 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 
 
 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 Muham- 
 mad), 173 ■ 
 
 Khidr, 340 
 
 al-Khiraqi, 240 
 
 Khirniq, sister of Tarafa, 14 
 
 Khitat, 201, 360 
 
 al-Khiyarl, 385 
 
 Khumarawaih, 1 87 
 
 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, 150 
 
 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, 
 ^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 (Alfred von), 71, 163, 171, 
 
 175. 35S 
 Kryldff, 419 
 
 Kubra (Najm al-dln), 276 
 Ktifa, School of, 150 
 al-Kflhl, 296 
 Kilkburl, 102 
 al-Kulinl, 242 
 al-Kumait, 58 
 Kushajim, 93 
 Kftshy^r ibn Labban, 296 
 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 
 
 467 
 
 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 
 
 Lemming (P.), 370. 
 
 Lepsius, 139 
 
 Le Strange (Guy), 299, 370 
 
 Lippert (J.), 196 
 
 Lisin al-dln ibn al-KhatIb, 345, 38 1 
 
 Lisdn al- Arab-, 386 
 
 Lubnd, celebrated by Qais ibn Dharlh, 
 
 47 
 Lu'lu', general of the Ikhshldites, 91 
 LuqmAn, Fables of, 409 
 Luviah aZ-Mulah, 98 
 Ldt ibn Yahya, 61 
 LuzAm md lam yaZzam, 99 
 
 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 
 
 Mahan, father of Ibrahim al-Mausill, 
 
 77 
 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 
 MahmM Rashad, 427 
 
 Mahomet, 12, 13, 15, 25, 26, 32, 33 
 sqq., 41, 43, 45, 104, 129,216, 220, 
 229, 232, 266, 339, 342 
 
 al-Maidanl, 167 
 
 Maimonides, 312 
 
 Maimdn, father of Ibrahim al- 
 Mausill, 77 
 
 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 
 
 Makl 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, 
 
 169, 337 
 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 
 Malik Mans&r, Urtuqid Prince, 119, 
 
 323, 337 
 Malik Mas'M Salah al-dln, Ayyti- 
 
 bite Prince of Yemen, 112 
 Malik Mu'ayyad Shaikh, Sultan of 
 
 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 
 
 Aleppo, 118 
 Malik Nasir Da'ftd, lord of Karak, 103 
 
468 
 
 INDEX 
 
 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 Jaq- 
 
 maq. 
 Malik Zahir Tatar, Sultan of Egypt, 
 
 355 
 
 Ma'inar ibn al-Muthanna, I41 
 
 al-Ma'ra<in, the Caliph, 77, 78, 80, 88, 
 140, 147, 151, 176, 263, 281, 292 
 
 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 Sar- 
 acens, 7 
 
 Manjak, the Anilr, 330 
 
 Mansftr, the Caliph, 57, 64, 65, 151, 
 154, 175, 212 
 
 al-Mansftr, Fatimid Caliph, 95 
 
 Manstir, grandson of Saladin, 191 
 
 Mansflr ibn Ishilq, Siiioanid Prince, 
 308 
 
 al-Mansiir-billah, 252 
 
 Maqdma^ lecture, 1 33 
 
 al-Maqqari, 202, ^So sqq. 
 
 MaqrSzl, 201, 347,335. 360 sqq., 365, 
 426 
 
 Maracci, 335 
 
 Marcel (J.-J.), 413, 425, 426 
 
 Mardrus (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 
 
 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 
 
 Mas' Ad, SeljAqid Sultan, ,97 
 Mas'ftd, Urtnqid Prince, 317 
 Mas'M, 'Uyllnid Prince, 112 
 Mas'ild, companion of the Prophet, 
 
 182 
 Mas'ftd al-Bayadi, 105 
 Mas'ftd al-Bilalt, 259 
 Mas'tidJ, 176, 182, 400 
 Matlra, meadows of, near Samarra, 
 
 Malta ibn Yftnus, 282, 284 
 
 al-Maturldl, 264 
 
 Maulawy 'Abdu'1-Haqq, 253 
 
 Mavia. See Mania. 
 
 Mawdlt, 103 
 
 al-Mawardi, 243 
 
 Mawiyya, sister of'Abid, 23 
 
 al-Mazdlim, Court of Appeal, 85 
 
 al-Mazini, 146, 303 
 
 Mazliim (Mgr. Maximus), 421 
 
 Mehren (A. P.), 287, 290, 340, 342, 
 
 415 
 Meissner, 2S7 
 Menelaus, 295 
 Meursinge, 368 
 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, 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 
 Muadh ibn Jaba], 40 
 al-Mu'afa ibn Zakariyya, 241 
 Muallaqdt, 10, 17, 26, 41, 59, 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 Ahmad ibn al- 
 
 Husain, 242 
 
INDEX 
 
 469 
 
 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 
 Muhallab ibn Abl Sufra, 56 
 al-MuhallabI, the minister, 91, 93, 
 
 94. 184 
 Miihallek, 27 
 
 Muhammad, the Prophet. See Ma- 
 homet, 
 Muhammad I., Ottoman Sultan, 363 
 Muhammad IV., Ottoman Sultan, 
 
 3S2 
 Muhammad V., Prince of Granada, 
 
 345 
 Muhammad, son of the Hanafite 
 
 woman, 87 
 Muhammad, brother of Ismail ibn 
 
 Y'asslr, 57 
 Muhammad, son of Malik Shah, 
 
 266 
 Muhammad, son of the Caliph Man- 
 
 siir, 73 
 Muhammad (Sultan) of Shlraz, 357 
 Muhammad, 'Uyftnid Prince, 112 
 Muhammad AbA Ua's al-Nasirl, 431 
 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 
 Muhammad-bey FarSd, 42^ 
 Muhammad al-Bilbaist, 397 
 Muhammad al-Bukharl, 178 
 Muhammad al-Bursawl.qadl of Cairo, 
 
 378 
 Muhammad Efendi Abidin, 422 
 Muhammad Efendi Haraid, 427 
 Muhammad Efendi Kamil al-Kaf- 
 
 rawi, 428 
 Muhammad Hilal Efendi, 435 
 Muhammad ibn al- Abbas al-YazidI, 
 
 147 
 Muhammad ibn Abdallah, 236 
 Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Karlm al- 
 
 MughJlI, 393 
 Muhammad ibn Abl Hafs, 204 
 
 Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Mus- 
 
 ta'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 
 Muhammad ibn Muslim al-Zuhrl, 61 
 Muhammad ibn MustafS, ibn al- 
 
 Klioja Kamiil, 431 
 Muhammad ibn al-Qasira al-Ghazzl, 
 
 248 
 Muhammad ibn Rahhal, 391 
 Muhammad ibn Saww^r ibn Isra'il, 
 
 119 
 Muhammad ibn SulaimSn al-Tilim- 
 
 sanl, 123 
 Muhammad ibn Sulaimin al-Tdnisl, 
 
 428 
 Muhammad ibn al-'Tayyib al-Qadirl, 
 
 432 
 Muhamm.ad ibn Umail, 314 
 Muhammad ibn 'Umar al-Tdnisl, 
 
 427 
 Muhammad ibn U(hmS,n, 431 
 Muhammad al-lskandarfi,nl, 421 
 Muliammad Karama al-'AU al-Dih- 
 
 la'wi, 433 
 Muhammad Khrin Shaibanl, 372 
 Muhammad al-Khayyanil, 440 
 Muhammad al-Mubarak al-Jaza'iri, 
 
 422 
 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, 
 
 432.434 
 Muhammad Sftd, 396 
 Muhammad al-Tijanl, 430 
 Muhammad 'Uthman Jalal, 423 
 Muhammad al-Yamanl al-Shauqanl, 
 
 433 
 Muhammad Zafir, 434 
 al-Muhaqqiq, 254 
 al-Muhasibl, 270 
 Muhib'b al-din Ibn Shihna, 358 
 al-Muhibbl, 384, 385 
 
470 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Miihibbt al-Tabarl, 319 
 
 al-Muhtadl, 236 
 
 Muhyt al-dln Ab^'l-Fadl al-Sa'dl, 
 
 1,93 
 Mu'In al-dln Ahmad ibu 'Abd al- 
 
 Razzaq 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 al- 
 
 Qadt 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., Kings of 
 
 Hira, 12 
 Mundhir, son of Ma'ul-sama, 23, 29, 
 
 31 
 al-Mnndhirl, 231, 238 
 Mu'nis, the eunuch, 84 
 Mimk (S.l, 313 
 al-Muqaddasl, 301 
 al-Muqtadl, 244 
 al-Muqtadir, 84, 147, 148, 1S2, 293, 
 
 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, 
 
 208 
 M<lsa ibn Da'fld, 66 
 Mft^a ibn Shakir, the three sons of, 
 
 292 
 
 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 
 Mustansir al-Hakam (the Caliph), 
 
 l6t ■ 
 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, 284, 
 
 291, 301 
 Mutalammis, uncle of Tarafa, 14 
 Mu'tamid (the Caliph), 82 
 al-Mu'tamid, Caliph of Spain, 125 
 
 sqq. 
 Mutammim ibn Nuwaira, 44 
 Mutanabbl, 83, 90 sqq., 96, 156, 165, 
 
 172, 260, 328, 414 
 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, 
 
 371 
 
INDEX 
 
 471 
 
 Mu'tazilites, 62, 68, 80, 99, 168, 169, 
 
 263, 264 
 al-Mutazz, 84, 152, 180 
 Mutf ibn Ayas, 65 
 al-Muwaffac|, son ot Mutawakkil, l8o 
 Muwaffaq al-dln al-Maqdisl, 250 
 Muwashskah, 103, 129 
 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 
 
 Nabatkans, 314 
 
 Nabiglia of tlie 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 
 Najdlyydt, 108 
 Najuj al-din Abfl 'l-Ma'alt ibn Isra'!!, 
 
 119 
 Najm al-din Ahmad al-HarranI, 342 
 Najm al-dln Ayyftb, father of Saladin, 
 
 190 
 Najm al-dln Ja'far al-Hilll al- 
 
 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 
 
 Nasih al-dln al-Arraja,nl, no 
 
 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, 389 
 NIshapflrl, 256 
 Nix (L.), 293 
 Nizam al-dln Hasan ibn Muhammad 
 
 of Nlshapftr,'i6o 
 Nizam al-Mnlk, 98, 106, 107, no, 
 
 244, 245, 265 _ 
 Nizamiyya (University), 109, in, 
 
 162 sqq., 189, 191, 244, 247, 251, 
 
 265, 267 
 Nizamiyya (College) at Ispahan, no 
 Noel des Vergers, 338, 353 
 Nointel (Marquis de), 402 
 Noldeke (Th.), 71 
 Normans, the, 125 
 Noskowyj (Paul), 361 
 Nudhar, daughter of AbH Hayyan, 
 
 341 
 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 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Oestrup (J.), 187 
 
 Old Testament, 25, 282 
 
 Omeyyads, 46 sqq., 57, 60, 61, 64, 65, 
 
 66, 97, 108, 109, 184, 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 
 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 
 
 Qabado (Mahrnftd), 430 
 
 al-Qadl al-A'azz, 113. See Ibn 
 
 Qaliiqis. 
 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 al- 
 
 Muik, 114 
 al-Qadir (the Caliph), 312 
 Qadiris, Qadiriyya (religious order), 
 
 273. 329 
 Qidisiyya, battle of, 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 
 
 Qais, son of al-Khat!m, 27 
 Qais, father of al-A'slia, 26 
 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), 
 
 282 
 al-Qastallan!, 373 
 al-Qattan, 239 
 al-Qazwint (Jamal al-din Abft 'Ab- 
 
 dallah), 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 
 Querry (A.), 254 
 al-Qummi (Abd Ja'far), 242 
 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 
 al-Qutami, 55 
 
 Qutb al-diii 'Abd al-Karim, 357 
 Qutba ibn Aus al-Hadira, 22 
 Qutrub, 140, 141 
 
 al-Kabi', son of Ab<l*l-Huqaiq, Jew- 
 ish 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 
 
 473 
 
 al-Raffa (al-Sar!), 93 
 
 al-Raghib al-Isbahanl, 167, 325 
 
 Eajhib Pachaj 225 
 
 al-Kahman, one of the names of God, 
 
 39 ■ 
 Itahmanl (Louis), 419 
 Rajab, month of, 24 
 Rakftsiyya, sect of, 33 
 RamadSn, fast of, 49 
 Ilasis, Croiiica del Moro, 188 
 Raspail, 310 
 Rat (G.), 398 
 Ravaisse (P. ), 369 
 Ravins, 316 
 al-Razt (Muhammad ibn Zakariyya), 
 
 307 
 al-Razi (Fakhr al-dln), 320 
 Reinaud, 338, 340, 347, 437 
 Reiske, 127, 338 
 Reland, 289 
 Renan (Ernest), 137 
 Reynolds (.1.), 370 
 Rhazca, 306, 307 
 Ridvvan Pacha, 329 
 Rifaa, Shaikh, 413 
 Rifaiyya (religious order), loi, 270, 
 
 434 
 Rijik, 361 
 al-Riydshi, 145 
 Roesner (Fr.), 294 
 Rohrig (Otto), 420 
 Jiomancc of ' Antar, 13, 403, 438 
 Roorda, 166 
 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- Alawiyydf, 104 
 Saba (Sheba), 4, 6 
 
 31 
 
 al-SabI, 134 
 
 Sabiaiis, ^^, 134 
 
 Sab'iniyya, 290 
 
 Sabuktakin, father of Mahmftd the 
 
 Ghaznavid, jo:, 189 
 Sabtlr, father of Hauimad al-Rawiya, 
 
 59 
 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 
 Sadaqa al-Mazyadi, 107 
 Sa'dl, Persian poet, III 
 al-Sa'di ('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 
 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 
 St. John of Damascus, 62 
 St. Louis, 116 
 St. Nilus, the hermit, 7 
 
474 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Saf, rhymed prose, S 
 
 al-Sajawandl, 243 
 
 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 
 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 
 Samuel, Prince of Taim^ See 
 
 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, 63 
 Satan, 68 
 
 Sauvaire (H.), 359. 374 
 SawHr ibn Aufd ibn al-Hayd, 54 
 Sayyid, the Himyarite, 86, 222 
 Sayyid Efendi'Azml, 424 
 Sayyid Efendi Muhammad, 429 
 Sayyid Efendi Tanfiq, 427 
 Sayyid Sulaimiin ibn Siy^m, 430 
 Sohefer (collection), 148 
 Schelljerup, 296 
 Schiaparelli, 125 
 Sohlozer, 301 
 Sohmoldera, 267, 287, 321 
 Schreiner, 321 
 
 Schultsns (Albert), 192, 338, 339 
 
 Schultens(H. A.), 168 
 
 Sebokht, 139 
 
 Sedillot, 194, 195 
 
 Selim I., 3751 
 
 Seljilqids, the, 98, 190, 244, 246, 259 
 
 Septuagint, the, 282 
 
 Seven Sleepers, 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 
 Shams al-din Muhammad, the 
 
 preacher of Wasit, 329 
 Shams al-din Muhammad Juwaini, 
 
 290 
 Shams 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, 
 
 "5 
 
 al-Sha'rani, 379 
 Sharif al-Milsawl, 120 
 Sharif al-Ridii, 85, 85 
 al-Sharishi, 260 
 al-Shashi, 247 
 al-Shatibi, 259, 260 
 
INDEX 
 
 475 
 
 al-Shawwa, Ii8 
 
 Sheherazade, 400 
 
 Shihab al-dln Ahmad al-Tatilrt, 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 
 Shihab 'al-diu al-Talla'fari, 122 
 Shihab al-diu Ydsuf ibn Ismail al- 
 
 Shawwa, IlS 
 Shl'ites, 40, 57, 80, 241, 252 
 al-Shlrizi, 244 
 al-Shuqratisi, 125 
 
 Shu'tlbiyya, 57, 89, 141, 159, 168, 184 
 Si Ahmad Walad Qadi, 430 
 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 
 al-Sirafi, 149, 1 57 
 SlanB(Mao-Gucl<inde), 130, 186, 198, 
 
 303. 338, 339. .353. 391 
 Snouck Hurgronje, 336 
 Soerensen, 343 
 Solomon, 6 
 
 Sontheimer (J. von), 316 
 Sozomen, 7 
 Spiridion Sarrflf, 422 
 Spitta (W.'), 297 
 
 Sprenger, 34, 186, 253, 301, 357, 370 
 Steinschneider, 251 
 Stephen of Antioch, 309 
 Safls, 270 
 
 al-Suhaill al-Khath'aml, 261 
 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 
 Sulaiman ibn Ihlaf al-MazatS, 'Ibad- 
 
 ite Shaikh, 202 
 Sulaiman al-Nahwl, Shaikh, 389 
 Sulaiman Pacha, 378 
 Sulaimaniyya (TJaiversity) at Mecca, 
 
 378 
 al-Sulami, 269 
 Sulma, sister of Zuhair, 15 
 al-S{lll, 182 
 
 Sai'-Takin, ancestor of al-SAll, 182 
 Sumairami(the vizier), 97 
 aZ-Suraiit, another name for the 
 
 MuaUaqdi, 10 
 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, 18, 19 
 
 al-TabaranI, 225, 359 
 
 Tabari, 179, 181,207,241,255,256,338 
 
 al-Tabarsi, 254 
 
 al-Tabrizl, 89, 192 
 
 Tadfts, the druggist, father of Aba 
 
 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 
 Tahirids, 139 
 Tai, tribe of, 83, 97 
 TaifUr, 178 
 
476 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Tdj al-'Ards, 389 
 
 Taj al-daula, Buwaihid Prince, 286 
 
 Taj al-din'Abdal-Wahhab, 364 
 
 Tfij al-din MuhaHimad, III 
 
 Taj al-din of Sarkhad, 123 
 
 Taj al-Mulk ibn Ddrest, 106 
 
 Tahhmls, 115 
 
 al-Talla'fari, 122 
 
 Tamerlane, l85, 352, 356, 363, 364, 
 
 378, 388, 408 
 Tamim, race of, 16 ; tribe of, 25, 44, 
 
 50,52 
 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 
 TaqI al-din al-Fasi, 359 
 Taqlfl (Salim), 441 
 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 
 Tewfik Pacha, 424 
 Thaalibi, 92, 93, 106, 132, 165, 191, 
 
 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 
 
 Thamdd, tribe of Thamftdites, 3, 37 
 Thaqif, tribe 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 
 Tirimmah, 58, 59 
 al-Tirmidhi, 220, 261 
 Titus, 28 
 
 Tizan&ba,d, vines of, 73 
 
 iVrd (Pentateuch), 36 
 
 Tornberg, 207, 334, 342 
 
 Tnssoun Pacha, 425 
 
 Triebs (F.), 269 
 
 Triimpp, 387 
 
 T.ich (Fr.), 385 
 
 Ty,ghyd (official stamp), 97 
 
 Tughra i, 97 
 
 Tughtakin (atabek), 1 19 
 
 TftKlnids, 94, 1S7 
 
 Tnmadir (al-Khansi), 28 
 
 Tfitnan-Bai, 367 
 
 Turkan KhatAn, wife of Malik Shah, 
 
 lo5 
 al-Turtftshi ibn Abi Randaqa, 287 
 al-tutill, 126 
 al-Tfizari, 125 
 Tycho Brahe, 297 
 Tychseii, 361 
 
 'Ubaid, the camel-herd, 52 
 
 ' Ubaidallali, father of Ibn al-Ta'awIdhi 
 
 100 
 'Ubaidallah of .Ttizajan, 286 
 'Ubaidallah ibn MuzaiTar, 128 
 Ubayy ibn Ka'b, disciple of Mahomet, 
 
 40 
 'XJkaz, fair of, 27 
 al-'XJkbarl, 164, 304 
 Uljaitfi, Mongol Sultan, 337 
 "Umair ibn Shuyaim al-Qutami, 54 
 TJinama, daughter of Dhli'l-Asba'al- 
 
 'Adwani, 22 
 "Unjar (the Caliph), 15, 40, 44 sgq., 
 
 137. 326, 377 
 'Umar 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- 
 
 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 
 Umayya ibn Abi'1-Salt, 25, 30, 34 
 'Uqail, tribe of, 69 
 
INDEX 
 
 477 
 
 Uqba ibn Ja'far al-Khuza'l, 87 
 al-tJrraawl, 290 
 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 
 "Uthmin ibn Said al-Da,nl, 258 
 'Uthmdn Khalisa, 329 
 Uyiinids, family of, 112 
 
 Valeton, 166 
 
 Vattier (P.), 209, 312, 362 
 
 Veth, 199, 368 
 
 Victim of the fair, name given to al- 
 
 Qutamt and Muslim, 72 
 Vloten (G. van), 214, 316 
 Volck, 171 
 Vollers, 202, 358 
 Vos (G.), 361 
 
 Wafaydtal-Aydn, 197 
 
 al-Wafrani, 391 
 
 Wahb ibn Munabbih, 6 1 
 
 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- 
 
 Mustakfl, 126 
 Wallin, 171 
 Wanand, grandfather of al-Dluawarl, 
 
 154 
 al-Waqidi, 175 
 Warda, daughter of Nakoula al- 
 
 Turk, 413 
 
 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, 
 
 "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, 
 
 Xekophon, 243 
 
 YAHTi, singer of Mecca, 58 
 Yahya Efendi, Shaikh al-IsUm, 331 
 Yahya 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 al- 
 
 Islam, 384 
 YahyS, al-MasmfidI, 237 
 Yahya al-Sarsari, 104 
 Yamiu al-daula (Mahm<id the Ghaz- 
 
 navid), 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 
 
 Morocco, 261 
 Ya'qflb Jirjis 'Awwad, 422 
 YaqAb al-MansAr, Almohad Prince, 
 
 2S9 
 Ya'qftb Sarrtif, 441 
 al-Ya'qUb!, 298 
 YaqAt, the geographer, 112, 1 78, 
 
 300, 301, 304 
 Yaqdt al-Musta'simI, 21 1 
 Yarbtf , tribe of, 44 
 
478 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Yathrib, ancient name of Medina, 
 
 27- 33 
 Yaiimat al-dahr, 92, 106 
 Yazld, son of Mu'iwiya, 49, 60 
 Yazld II., 62 
 
 Yazid ibn Mazyad (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 
 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, 369 
 
 Zahirites, 240, 250, 277 
 
 Zaid ibn Thabit, 36, 40 
 
 Zaidites, sect of the, 241, 252, 378 
 
 Zaiu al-'Abidin, 51 
 
 Zain at- A sndim, 402 
 
 Zain al-din Katakit, 122 
 
 Zain al-dln Tahir, son of Ibn Hablb, 
 
 , 347 ■ 
 
 Zainab, sister of al-Hajjaj, 55 
 
 Zairids, 124 
 
 Zajal, 128 
 
 al-Zajjaj, 147, 160, 256 
 
 Zamakhsharl, 167 s?^., 262 
 
 Zand ibn al-Jauu (AbA I)ul4ma), 66 
 
 Zanj, 145, 148 
 
 al-Zarntijl, 289 
 
 Ziegler, 268 
 
 Zinat al-dahr^ 98 
 
 Zindlq, 66, 68 
 
 ZiyS.d, brother of Mu'^wiya, 60 
 
 Ziyad, governor of 'Iraq, 51 
 
 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 
 Zuhair ibn Abl Sulm^ 10, 15, 16, 
 
 26,153 
 Zuhair ibn Janab, 8 
 al-Zuhrl, 61, 236, 303 
 al-Zujiiji, 157 
 
 (1) 
 
 THE END 
 
LITERATURES OF THE WORLD. 
 
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 don Spectator, 
 
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 which both the student of French literature and the stranger to it will, in different ways, 
 find eminently useful, and in many parts of it ihoroughly enjoyable as well." — Lon- 
 don Literary World. 
 
 " Professor Dowden is both trustworthy and brilliant; be writes from a full knowl- 
 edge and a fuUsympathy. Master of a style rathercorrect than charming for its adorn- 
 ments, he can still enliven his pages with telling epigram and pretty phrase. Above all 
 things, the book is not eccentric, not unmethodical, not of a wayward brilliance ; and 
 this is especially commendable and fortunate in the case of an English critic writing 
 upon French literature." — London Daily Chronicle. 
 
 *' A book readable, graphic, not overloaded with detail, not bristling with dates. . . . 
 It is a book that can be held in the hand and read aloud with pleasure as a literary treat 
 by an expert in style, master of charmin"? words that come and go easily, and ol other 
 literatures that serve for iUustrations. " — The Critic. 
 
 " His methods afford an admirable example of compressing an immense amount of 
 information and criticism in a sentence or paragraph, and his survey of a vast field is 
 bi>th comprehensive and interesting. As an introduction for the student of literature the 
 work is most excellent, and for the casual reader it will serve as a compendium of one 
 of the richest literatures of the world. " — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 
 
 "Thorough without being diffuse. The author is in love with his subject, has made 
 it a study for years, and therefore produced an entertaining volume. Of the .scholar- 
 ship shown it is needless to speak. ... It is more than a cyclopsedia. It is a brilliant 
 talk by one who is loaded with the lively ammunition of French prose and verse. He 
 talks of the pulpit, the stage, the Senate, and the salon^ until the preachers, dramatists, 
 orators, and philosophers seem to be speaking for themselves." — Boston Globe. 
 
 " Professor Dowden's book is more interesting than we ever suoDOsed a brief his- 
 tory of a literature could be His characterizations are most admirable in their concise- 
 ness and brilliancy. He has civen in one volume a very thorough review of French 
 
 literature." — The Interior, Chicago. 
 
 " The book will be especially valuable to the student as a safe and intelligible index 
 to a course of reading." — The Independe^it. 
 
 V). APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 LITERATURES OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Edited by EDMUND GOSSE, 
 Hon. M. A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 /I NCI EN T GREEK LITERATURE. By Gil- 
 
 '*-* BERT Murray, M. A., Professor of Greek in the University of 
 Glasgow. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " A sketch to which the much-abused word ' brilliant ' may be justly applied. Mr. 
 Murray has produced a book which fairly represents the best conclusions of modem 
 scholarship with regard to the Greeks." — London Times. 
 
 "An illuminating history of Greek literature, in which learning is enlivened and 
 supplemented by literary skill, by a true sense of the ' humanities.' The readerfeels that 
 this is no hook of perfunctory erudition, but a labor of love, performed by a scholar, to 
 whom ancient Greece and her literature are exceedingly real and vivid. His judgments 
 and suggestions are full of a personal fresh sincerity; he can discern the living men 
 beneath their works, and give us his genuine impression of them." — London Daily 
 Chronicle, 
 
 " A fresh and stimulating and delightful book, and should be put into the hands of 
 all young scholars. It will make ihem understand, or help to make them understand, 
 to a degree they have never yet understood, that the Greek writers over whom they 
 have toiled at school are living literature after all." — IVesimznster Gazette. 
 
 " Brilliant and stimulating." — London Atkenceum. 
 
 "A powerful and original study." — The Nation. 
 
 " Mr. Murray's style is lucid and spirited, and, besides the fund of information, he 
 imparts to his subject such fresh and vivid interest that students will find in these papes 
 a new impulse for more profound and exhaustive study of this greatest and most im- 
 mortal of all the world's literatures." — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 
 
 ** The admirable perspective of the whole work is what one most admires. The 
 reader unlearned in Greek history and literature sees at once the relation which a given 
 author bore to his race and his age, and the current trend of thought, as well as what 
 we value him for to-day. . . . As an introduction to the study of some considerable per- 
 tion of Greek literature in English translations it will be found of the very highest \xs&- 
 {mItiqss." ^Boston Herald. 
 
 "Professor Murray has written an admirable book, clear in its arrangement, com- 
 pact in its statements, and is one, we think, its least scholarly reader must feel an in- 
 structive and thoroughly trustworthy piece of English criticism." — Neiv York Mail 
 aiid Express. 
 
 " At once scholarly and interesting. . . . Professor Murray makes the reader ac- 
 quainted not merely with literary history and criticism, but with individual living, 
 striving Greeks. . . . He has felt the power of the best there was in Greek life and lit- 
 erature, and he rouses the reader's enthusiasm by his own.honest admiration." — Boston 
 Transcript. 
 
 "Professor Murray has contributed a volume which shows profound scholarship, 
 together with a keen literary appreciation. It is a book for scholars as well as for the 
 general reader. The author is saturated with his subject, and has a rare imaginative 
 sympathy with ancient Greece." — The Interior, Chicago. 
 
 "Written in a style that is sometimes spasmodic, often brilliant, and always fresh 
 and suggestive." — New York Sun. 
 
 " Professor Murray's careful study will be appreciated as the work of a man of 
 unusual special learning, combined with much delicacy of literary insight." — Neu 
 York Christian A dvocate. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. NEW YORK. 
 
LITERATURES OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Edited by 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE, Hon. M.A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 J2mo. Qoth, $J.50 each. 
 
 ITALIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 By RICHARD GARNETT, C. B., LL. D., 
 
 Formerly Keeper of Printed Books in the British Museum. 
 
 " Finished and graceful, at once delicate and strong, and 
 never relapses into prosiness." — The Dial. 
 
 "Dr. Garnett is lucid in arrangement, agreeable and cor- 
 rect, and often powerful and felicitous in style. He has 
 done a real service to both English and Italian literatures." 
 — Literature. 
 
 "The manual is a worthy companion of its predecessors, 
 and will be found useful by each one who desires to refresh 
 or enlarge his acquaintance with the magnificent achievements 
 of Italian genius." — Public Ledger, Philadelphia. 
 
 "A most interesting book, written xrom a full knowledge 
 of the subject, but without pedantry. The style is simple, 
 graceful, and readable ; the erudition is easily discovered by 
 those who seek for it, but it is not ostentatiously displayed. 
 Scholars will appreciate it at its worth ; the general reader 
 will be gratefial for the charity of the text, and for the labor 
 that has made his path one of pleasure only." — Saturday 
 Evening Gazette. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
UTERATURES OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Edited by 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE, Hom M. A. of Trinity Coflege, Cambridge. 
 
 )2ino. Ooth, $1.50 each. 
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 
 
 By JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY, 
 
 Member of the Spanish Academy. 
 
 " Mr. Kelly has written a book that must be read and 
 pondered, for within its limits it has no rival as • A History 
 of Spanish Literature.' " — The Mail and Express. 
 
 " The work before us is one which no student can hence- 
 forth neglect, ... if the student would keep his knowl- 
 edge of Spanish up to date. . . . We close with a re- 
 newed expression of admiration for this excellent manual ; 
 the style is marked and full of piquancy, the phrases dwell 
 in the memory." — The Spectator. 
 
 "A handbook that has long been needed for the use of 
 the general reader, and it admirably supplies the want. 
 Great skill is shown in the selection of the important facts ; 
 the criticisms, though necessarily brief, are authoritative and 
 to the point, and the history is gracefully told in sound 
 literary style." — Saturday Evening Gazette. 
 
 "For the first time a survey of Spanish literature is pre- 
 sented to English readers by a writer of ample knowledge 
 and keen discrimination. Mr. Kelly's work rises far be- 
 yond the level of the text-books. So good a critic does not 
 merely comment on literature; he makes it himself." — 
 New York Bookman. 
 
 •D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.. 
 
LITERATURES OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Edited by 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE, Hon. M. A. of Trinity Coflcge, Cambridge, 
 
 I2mo. Cloth, $1.50 each. 
 
 A HISTORY OF 
 BOHEMIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 By FRANCIS, COUNT LUTZOW, 
 
 Author of " Bohemia : An Historical Sketch." 
 
 " This book deals with an interesting subject in an abk 
 and impartial manner, and it is written in excellent English." 
 — London Morning Post. 
 
 " Count L'litzow's wide and deep knowledge and experi- 
 ence in matters Bohemian have particularly fitted him for the 
 preparation of this work, and he has succeeded in producing 
 a highly interesting as well as instructive exposition of a 
 subject altogether unknown in western Europe, and hardly 
 more familiar in America." — Boston Beacon. 
 
 " Students cf literature will value this work, because it 
 offers some insight into the character, the extent, and the 
 quality of Bohemian literature extant, and the general public 
 will find most interest in the discussion of the life and death 
 of Hus and the principal events of his career, the life and 
 work of Komensky, the sketch of Dobrovsky, and the long 
 account of the enthusiastic work of the four patriots to whom 
 the revival of Bohemian literature in the present century is 
 due — ^Jungmann, KoUar, Safarik, and Palacky." — Boston 
 Herald. 
 
 "Count L'dtzow's volume is of special value and in- 
 terest." — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
LITERATURES OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Edited by 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE, Hon. M. A. of Trinity Coflege, Cambridge. 
 
 12nio. Qoth, $1.50 each. 
 
 JAPANESE LITERATURE 
 
 By W. G. ASTON, C. M. G., M. A., 
 
 late Acting Secretary at the 
 British Legation at Tokio. 
 
 "A volume of unique erudition, wide research, clear dis- 
 crimination, and excellent design. Mr. Aston has wrought 
 a memorable service not only to those interested in Japan 
 and Japanese studies, but to the world of letters at large. ' ' 
 
 Sir Edwin Arnold, in Literature. 
 
 " Mr. Aston has written the first complete narrative from 
 early times to the present of the history, the rituals, the po- 
 etry, the drama, and the personal outpourings of thoughts and 
 feelings which constitute the body of the literature of Japan." 
 
 Baltimore Sun. 
 
 " Mr. Aston has unquestionably enabled the European 
 reader for the first time to enjoy a comprehensive survey of 
 the vast and ancient field of Japanese literature, of which we 
 have had hitherto only furtive and partial glimpses." 
 
 London Times. 
 
 "His work is a model of what a manual of this character 
 should be. While it constitutes an admirable guide-book to 
 any one who cares to go deeper into this special subject, it 
 is sufficiently comprehensive to meet the requirements of the 
 average reader or the general student of literature. " 
 
 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
LITERATURES OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Edited by EDMUND GOSSE, 
 
 Hon. M. A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 Each, 12mo, cloth, $1.50. 
 
 Chinese Literature. 
 
 By Herbert A. Giles, M. A., LL. D. (Aberd.), 
 Professor of Chinese in the University of 
 Cambridge. 
 
 "Few recent Hstories of literature are more pregnant vfith 
 new and interesting material than this. There is nothing like it 
 in any library, and one may say with assurance that there is not 
 a dull page in it." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 "Information and instruction share its pages with enlivening 
 wit and wisdom, and it can be confidently relied upon for many 
 hours of pure delight." — Chicago Evening Post. 
 
 "Any private, public, or school library that fails to place it 
 on its shelves would be guilty of almost culpable indifference 
 to the most opportune, the most instructive, the most fascinating 
 of Asiatic masterpieces that has ever been garnered into a single 
 volume." — Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 
 
 "The work is done with sympathy, with insight, and with 
 that openness of mind which is so essential in dealing with the 
 life and thought of the East. The quality of the poetry wU] 
 surprise those who have thought of the Chinese as dealing in pru- 
 dential maxims and in philosophy of the moral life rather than in 
 the stuff of the imagination." — The Outlook. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
APPLETONS' CLASSICAL DICTIONARIES. 
 
 Appletons' Latin Dictionary (Latin-Eng- 
 lish and Englisii-Latin). New and Revised 
 edition, 1902, 
 
 By J. R. V. Marchant, M. A., Oxford, and Joseph 
 F. Charles, B. A., City of London School. i22d Thou- 
 sand. 927 pages, i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 This is a lexicon of classical Latin. Hence, a large number of 
 archaic and post-Augustan words are omitted. In the edition of 1902 
 nearly all the important articles have been entirely rewritten, chiefly to 
 introduce a greater number of quotations illustrating construction and 
 usage. The historical and geographical notices have been increased in 
 number and lessened in size, and etymologies have been added. The 
 considerable changes in type and classification will make the work 
 more intelligible, and so more useful. A book of the highest practical 
 utility, exceptionally clear and exact. 
 
 A Classical Dictionary of Greek and 
 Roman Biography, Mythology, and 
 Geography. 
 
 Based on the larger dictionaries by the late Sir Wil- 
 liam 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 moroc- 
 co, $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 compen- 
 dious reference book. The historical articles include Greek and Latin 
 writers from the earliest times down to the fall of the Western Empire, 
 A. D. 476. The literary articles cover all authors whose works are 
 extant, and all others who influenced literature. In this revision the 
 immense advances in classical philology have been utilized. This 
 applies particularly to mythology and typography. Many new plans 
 and maps have been inserted. This book is an indispensable compan- 
 ion to the student in reading the Greek and Latin authors. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
A MAGNIFICENT WORK. 
 
 The Living Races of Mankind, 
 
 By H. N. Hutchinson, B A., F. R. G. S., F. G. S.; J. W. 
 Gregory, D. Sc, F. G. S. ; and R. Lydekker, F. R. 
 S., 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 Mankind throughout the World. 600 Illustrations 
 from Life. One volume, royal 8vo. $5.00 net ; 
 postage. 65 cents additional. 
 
 The publication of this magnificent and unique work is peculiarly 
 opportune at this moment, when the trend of political expansion is breaking 
 down barriers between races and creating a demand for more intimate 
 knowledge of the various branches of the human family than has ever 
 before existed. 
 
 Mr. H. N. Hutchinson is the {general editor ; he is well known as a 
 fertile writer on anthropological subjects, and has been engaged for several 
 years in collecting the vast amount of material (much of it having been 
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 The pictures speak for themselves, and certainly no such perfect or complete 
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 letter-press has 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 
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 ceremonies, and superstitions ; their general characteristics, manners, and 
 customs in their daily relations with one another. 
 
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 important feature. They are accurate and beautiful reproductions of 
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