A Wealth of Information

 Literary Arabia

(This is taken from F.F. Arbuthnot's Arabic Authors, originally published in 1890.)

The oral communications of the ancient Egyptians, Medes and Persians,

the two classic tongues of Europe, the Sanscrit of the Hindus and the

Hebrew of the Jews, have long since ceased to be living languages. For

the last twelve centuries no Western language has preserved its

grammar, its style, or its literature intact and intelligible to the

people of the present day. But two Eastern tongues have come down from

ages past to our own times, and continue to exist unchanged in books,

and, to a certain extent, also unchanged in language, and these are

Chinese and Arabic. In China, though the dialects differ in the

various provinces of the empire, still the written language has

remained the same for centuries. In Arabia the Arabic language has

retained its originality without very much dialectical alteration.

The unchangeable character of the Arabic language is chiefly to be

attributed to the Koran, which has, from its promulgation to the

present time, been regarded by all Muhammadans as the standard of

religion and of literary composition. Strictly speaking, not only the

history, but also the literature of the Arabs begins with Muhammad.

Excepting the Mua’llakat, and other pre-Islamitic poems collected in

the Hamasas of Abu Tammam and Al-Bohtori, in Ibn Kutaiba and in the

Mofaddhaliat, no literary monuments that preceded his time are in

existence. The Koran became, not only the code of religious and of

civil law, but also the model of the Arabic language, and the standard

of diction and eloquence. Muhammad himself scorned metrical rules; he

claimed as an apostle and lawgiver a title higher than that of

soothsayer and poet. Still, his poetic talent is manifest in numerous

passages of the Koran, well known to those able to read it in the

original, and in this respect the last twenty-five chapters of that

book are, perhaps, the most remarkable.

Although the power of the Arabs has long ago succumbed, their

literature has survived, and their language is still more or less

spoken in all Muhammadan countries. Europe at one time was lightened

by the torch of Arabian learning, and the Middle Ages were stamped

with the genius and character of Arab civilization. The great masters

of philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics, viz., Al-Kindi,

Al-Farabi, Ibn-Sina, Ibn-Rashid, Ibn Bajah, Razi, Al Battani, Abul

Ma’shar, Al-Farghani, Al-Jaber, have been studied both in the Spanish

universities and in those of the rest of Europe, where their names are

still familiar under the corrupted forms of Alchendius, Alfarabius,

Avicenna, Averroes, Avempace, Rhazes, Albategnius, Albumasar,

Alfraganius, and Geber.

Arabic literature commenced about half a century before Muhammad with

a legion of poets. The seven poems suspended in the temple of Mecca,

and of which more anon, were considered as the chief productions of

that time. The Mussulman era begins with the Hijrah, or emigration of

Muhammad from Mecca to Madinah, which is supposed to have taken place

on the 20th of June, A.D. 622; and the rise, growth, and decay of Arab

power, learning, and literature may be divided into three periods as

follows:

1. The time before Muhammad.

2. From Muhammad and his immediate successors, viz., Abu Bakr,

Omar, Othman, and Ali, through the Omaiyide and Abbaside dynasties, to

the end of the Khalifate of Baghdad, A.D. 1258.

3. From the fall of Baghdad to the present time.

First Period.

Although the proper history of Arabian literature begins from the time

of Muhammad, it is necessary to cast a glance upon the age that

preceded him, in order to obtain a glimpse of pre-Islamitic wisdom.

The sage Lokman, whose name the thirty-first chapter of the Koran

bears, is considered, according to that book, to have been the first

man of his nation who practised and taught wisdom in all his deeds and

words. He was believed to have been a contemporary of David and

Solomon; his sayings and his fables still exist, but there is not much

really known about him, as the following extracts will show:

‘Lokman, a philosopher mentioned in the Koran, is said to have been

born about the time of David. One tradition represents him as a

descendant of the Arab tribe of Ad, who, on account of his piety and

wisdom, was saved when the rest of his family perished by Divine

wrath. According to another story he was an Ethiopian slave, noted

alike for bodily deformity and a gift for composing fables and

apologues. This account of Lokman, resembling so closely the

traditional history of Æsop, has led to an opinion that they were the

same individual, but this is now generally supposed not to be the

case. The various reports agree in ascribing to Lokman extraordinary

longevity. His extant fables bear evident marks of modern alteration,

both in their diction and their incidents. They were first published

with a Latin translation of the Arabic by Erpenius (Leyden, 1615).

Galland produced a French translation of the fables of Lokman and

Bidpay at Paris in 1724, and there are other editions by De Sacey,

1816, Caussin de Perceval, 1818, Freytag, 1823, and Rodiger, 1830.’

Burton, in a footnote to page 118, of Volume X. of his ‘Arabian

Nights,’ however, says that ‘There are three distinct Lokmans. The

first, or eldest Lokman, entitled Al-Hakim (the Sage), and the hero of

the Koranic chapter which bears his name, was son of Ba’ura, of the

children of Azar, sister’s son to Job, or son of Job’s maternal aunt;

he witnessed David’s miracles of mail-making, and when the tribe of Ad

was destroyed he became king of the country. The second Lokman, also

called the Sage, was a slave and Abyssinian negro, sold by the

Israelites during the reign of David or Solomon, and who left a volume

of proverbs and exempla, not fables or apologues, some of which still

dwell in the public memory. The youngest Lokman, of the Vultures, was

a prince of the tribe of Ad, who lived 3,500 years, the age of seven

vultures.’

This accounts for the different ideas as regards the tradition of one

Lokman in the preceding paragraph.

Before the era of the Prophet poetry had attained some degree of

excellence. At the annual festival of Okatz the poets met and made

public recitations, and competed for prizes. Of prose literature there

was none, and the irregular, half-rhythmical, half-rhyming sentences

of the Koran were the first attempts in the direction of prose.

Passing over the host of pre-Islamitic poets, the disputed time and

order in which they appeared, as well as the ranks they respectively

occupied, it will only be necessary here to describe the Arabic idyll

or elegy (Kasida), and to notice the authors of the seven famous

Mua’llakat, or suspended, or strung-together poems of the temple of

Mecca, already alluded to above. As these poems were written in

letters of gold, they were also called Muzahhibat, or “gilded.”

According to Arab notions, the subjects of a poet are four or five. He

praises, loves, is angry, mourns, or describes either female beauty,

animals, or objects of nature. Poems comprising one of these subjects

only are short, but those treating of several are longer, and contain

eulogies of chiefs, rulers, distinguished men and women, etc. The poet

touches on the valour, liberality and eloquence of the hero, on the

beauty and virtues of the woman, and describes the nearest

surroundings, which are of the greatest interest, such as the horse,

the camel, the antelope, the ostrich, the wild cow, the cloud, the

lightning, wine, the vestiges of the tent of the beloved, and the

hospitable camp-fire.

The Kasidas of the Mua’llakat are a series of smaller poems, composed

on various occasions, and then strung together in one piece. Among

them the two Kasidas of Amra-al-Kais (Amriolkais), and of Antara, are

the most brilliant and romantic, on account of the sentiments of love

they breathe towards the three beauties—Oneiza, Fatima, and Abla. The

Kasida of Labid is famous for his description of both the camel and

the horse; that of Tarafa for the delineation of the camel; that of

Amru for the picture of a battle; while Harath chanted the praises of

arms, and of the King of Hirah, and Zoheir produced a poem full of

wise maxims. The whole seven contain a great deal about the personal

feelings, the personal courage, the heroic deeds, and the wonderful

adventures of the authors themselves—to which may be added

descriptions of various animals, of hunting scenes, and of battle, the

conventional lament for the absence or departure of a mistress, the

delight of meeting her, and other bright sketches of Arab life in camp

and on the march, with its joys, its sorrows, and its constant

changes.

Sir William Jones first brought these poems to the notice of the West,

and published a translation of them in A.D. 1782. ‘They exhibit,’ he

says, ‘an exact picture of the virtues and the vices, the wisdom and

the folly, of the early Arabs. The poems show what may constantly be

expected from men of open hearts and boiling passions, with no law to

control, and little religion to restrain them.’

The above translations, with notes and remarks, have been reprinted by

Mr. W.A. Clouston, in his ‘Arabian Poetry for English Readers,’ at

Glasgow in 1881, and is a work well worthy of a perusal by any persons

who may be interested in the subject.

The names of the three ancient Arab poets considered to have been

possessed of equal talent with the authors of the Mua’llakat, are

Nabiga, Al-Kama, and Al-Aasha, and some specimens of their

composition, as also of those of other pre-Islamite poets, are to be

found in the fifteenth volume, No. 39, pages 65-108, of the ‘Bombay

Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,’ translated by Mr. E. Rehatsek in

1881.

Second Period.

From Muhammad and his immediate successors (Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and

Ali), through the Omaiyide and Abbaside dynasties, to the end of the

Khalifate of Baghdad, A.D. 1258.

The legislator of Islam, whose era began on the 16th July, A.D. 622

(though his actual departure from Mecca has been calculated to have

taken place on the 20th June, A.D. 622), is here to be considered not

from an historical, but from a poetical point of view. Although

Muhammad despised the metres in which the bards of his nation chanted

their Kasidas, and himself gave utterance in the name of Heaven to the

inspirations of his genius only in richly-modulated and rhymed prose,

nevertheless, according to the Oriental idea, he was regarded as a

poet. Those who declare that he was not a poet overlook the

circumstance that he was vehemently assailed by contemporary poets,

who attempted to degrade his heaven-inspired Surahs into mere poetical

fables. He himself protested against this insinuation, and declared at

the end of the 26th Surah, entitled ‘The Poets,’ that those are in

error who believe poets, as follows:

‘And those who err follow the poets; dost thou not see how they roam

(as bereft of their senses) through every valley (of the imagination)

and that they say things which they do not perform? ... Except those

who believe, and do good works, and remember God frequently, and those

who defend themselves after they have been unjustly treated by poets

in their lampoons, and they who act unjustly shall know hereafter with

what treatment they shall be treated.’

These lines are important as far as the history of literature is

concerned. They are written against inimical poets, but distinguish

the friendly ones, who, taking the part of Muhammad, repaid the

lampooning poets in their own coin.

Some of the hostile poets, such as Hobeira and the woman Karitha, were

killed at the taking of Mecca, whilst Zibary and the woman Hertlemah

saved their lives only by making a profession of Islam. Muhammad had,

however, also his panegyrists, the chief of whom was Ka’b bin Zoheir,

the composer of the celebrated Kasida called ‘The Poem of the Mantle,’

as a reward for which the Prophet threw his own cloak over him, under

the following circumstances, as related by Mr. J.W. Redhouse in the

preface to his translation of the poem published in the ‘Arabian

Poetry for English Readers’[1] alluded to above.

[Footnote 1: In this same work will also be found a

translation by Mr. Redhouse of another poem, also called

‘The Poem of the Mantle,’ but written by Sharaf-uddin

Muhammad Al-Busiri, who was born A.D. 1211, and died between

A.D. 1291 and 1300.]

Ka’b was a son of Zoheir, already mentioned as the author of one of

the pre-Islamite poems known as the ‘Mua’llakat.’ He had a brother

named Bujeir, and, like their father, both brothers were good poets.

Bujeir was first converted, and embraced the faith of Islam. Ka’b was

angry at this, and composed a lampoon on his brother, on the Prophet,

and on their new religion. This he sent to his brother by the mouth of

a messenger. Bujeir repeated it to Muhammad, who commented on it as

favourable to the new faith and to himself, but at the same time

passed a sentence of death on the satirist.

Bujeir well knew that his brother’s life was in danger, and warned him

accordingly, advising him at the same time to renounce his errors, and

come repentant to the Prophet, or to seek a safe asylum far away. Ka’b

found out that his life would really soon be taken, and set out

secretly for Madinah. There he found an old friend, claimed his

protection, and went with him next morning to the simple meeting-house

where Muhammad and his chief followers performed their daily

devotions. When the service was ended, Ka’b approached Muhammad, and

the two sat down together. Ka’b placed his own right hand in that of

the Prophet, whom he addressed in these words: ‘Apostle of God, were I

to bring to you Ka’b, the son of Zoheir, penitent and professing the

faith of Islam, wouldst thou receive and accept him? The Prophet

answered, ‘I would.’ ‘Then,’ said the poet, ‘I am he!’

Hearing this, the bystanders demanded permission to put him to death.

Muhammad ordered his zealous followers to desist, and the poet then,

on the spur of the moment, recited a poem improvised at the time,

probably with more or less premeditation. It is said that when Ka’b

reached the fifty-first verse: ‘Verily the Apostle of God is a light

from which illumination is sought—a drawn Indian blade, one of the

swords of God,’ Muhammad took from his own shoulders the mantle he

wore, and threw it over the shoulders of the poet as an honour and as

a mark of protection. Hence the name given to the effusion, ‘The Poem

of the Mantle,’ A.D. 630.

Moawia, the first Khalif of the Omaiyides, endeavoured to purchase

this sacred mantle from Ka’b for ten thousand pieces of silver, but

the offer was refused. Later on it was, however, bought from Ka’b’s

heirs for twenty thousand pieces of silver, and it passed into the

hands of the Khalifs, and was preserved by them as one of the regalia

of the empire until Baghdad was sacked by the Mughals. The mantle, or

what is supposed to be the self-same mantle, is now in the treasury[2]

of the Sultan Khalif of the Ottomans at Constantinople, in an

apartment named ‘The Room of the Sacred Mantle,’ in which this robe is

religiously preserved, together with a few other relics of the great

prophet.

[Footnote 2: Apropos of this treasury, it is much to be

regretted that a complete catalogue of its contents has

never been prepared along with a brief historical account of

them. It is difficult to obtain the order, which comes

direct from the Sultan, to visit the collection; and even

then visitors are hurried through at such a pace that it is

impossible to examine with minuteness the many curiosities

collected there.]

Ka’b has thus come to be considered as one of the friendly poets, and

the names of two others are also mentioned, viz., Abd-Allah bin Rewaha

and Hassan bin Thabit. On the other hand, the most celebrated

antagonists who attacked Muhammad, not only with their verses, but

also with their swords, were Abu Sofyan, Amr bin Al-‘A’asi, and

Abd-Allah bin Zobeir. These three became great political characters,

but later on made profession of Islam, and were the staunchest supporters

of it, rendering the greatest services to the Prophet during his life,

and to the cause after his death. But Muhammad’s greatest triumph over

the poets was the conversion of Labid, who, after the perusal of the

commencement of the second Surah of the Koran, tore down his own poem,

which was hung up in the Kaabah, and ran to the Prophet to announce

his conversion, and to make his profession of Islam. Even Ali, the

cousin, son-in-law, and first convert of Muhammad, was a poet, but it

is uncertain which of the Diwans attributed to him are genuine, and

how many of his maxims of wisdom, over a hundred in number, are his

own.

During the period under review the number of Arabic authors was

legion. Some idea of the number of writers, and of the subjects on

which they wrote, can be gathered from the Fihrist of An-Nadim, from

Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary, and from Haji Khalfa’s

Encyclopædia. With such a mass of information as is contained in the

above-mentioned works, it is difficult to deal in a small work. To put

them together in an intelligible form, the idea of classing the

authors, according to the subjects on which they principally wrote,

naturally presented itself. This plan, therefore, has been followed,

and a few details of the most celebrated writers will be given,

classified under the following heads:

Jurisconsults.

Imams and lawyers.

Traditionists.

Alchemists.

Astronomers.

Grammarians.

Geographers and travellers.

Historians.

Lexicographers, biographers and encyclopædists.

Writers on natural history.

Philologists.

Philosophers.

Physicians.

Poets.

Collectors and editors of poems.

Translators.

The Omaiyide Khalifs.

The Abbaside Khalifs.

The Spanish Khalifs.

During the latter part of the first century of the Hijrah (July,

622--July, 719), the first persons of note in the Muhammadan world

after Muhammad and his immediate successors were probably the seven

jurisconsults, viz., Obaid Allah, Orwa, Kasim, Said, Sulaiman, Abu

Bakr and Kharija, who all lived at Madinah about the same time; and it

was from them, according to Ibn Khallikan, that the science of law and

legal decisions spread over the world. They were designated by the

appellation of the Seven Jurisconsults, because the right of giving

decisions on points of law had passed to them from the companions of

Muhammad, and they became publicly known as Muftis. These seven alone

were acknowledged as competent to give Fatmas, or legal decisions.

They died respectively A.D. 720, 712, 719, 710, 725, 712 and 718.

The jurisconsults were followed by the doctors of theology and law,

or, as they were styled, Imams, or founders of the four orthodox

sects. Now, among the Sunni Muslims an Imam may be described as a

high-priest, or head, or chief in religious matters, whether he be the

head of all Muhammadans—as the Khalifah—or the priest of a mosque,

or the leader in the prayers of a congregation. This title, however,

is given by the Shias only to the immediate descendants of Ali, the

son-in-law of the Prophet, and they are twelve in number, Ali being

the first. The last of them, Imam Mahdi, is supposed to be concealed

(not dead), and the title which belongs to him cannot, they conceive,

be given to another.

But among the Sunnis it is a dogma that there must always be a visible

Imam or father of the Church. The title is given by them to the four

learned doctors who were the exponents of their faith, viz., Imams

Hanifa, Malik, Shafai and Hanbal. Of these, Imam Hanifa, the founder

of the first of the four chief sects of the Sunnis, died A.D. 767. He

was followed by Imam Malik, Imam Shafai, and Imam Hanbal, the founders

of the other three sects, who died A.D. 795, 820 and 855 respectively.

From these four persons are derived the various codes of Muhammadan

jurisprudence. They have always been considered as the fundamental

pillars of the orthodox law, and have been esteemed by Mussulmans as

highly as the fathers of the Church—Gregory, Augustine, Jerome and

Chrysostom—have been appreciated by Christians.

Of these four sects, the Hanbalite and Malikite may be considered as

the most rigid, the Shafaite as the most conformable to the spirit of

Islamism, and the Hanifite as the wildest and most philosophical of

them all.

In addition to the four Imams just mentioned, there was a fifth, of

the name of Abu Sulaiman Dawud az Zahari, who died A.D. 883. He was

the founder of the sect called Az-Zahariah (the External), and his

lectures were attended by four hundred Fakihs (doctors of the civil

and of the ecclesiastical law), who wore shawls thrown over their

shoulders. But his opinions do not seem to have secured many

followers, and in time both his ideas, and those of Sofyan at Thauri,

another chief of the orthodox sect, were totally abandoned.

The third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 816-913) is noted for the six

fathers of tradition, viz., Al-Bukhari, Muslim, At Firmidi, Abu Dawud,

An-Nasai and Ibn Majah, with whom others, such as Kasim bin Asbagh,

Abu Zaid, Al-Marwazi, Abu Awana and Al-Hazini, vied in great works on

tradition, but these last-named could never acquire the authority of

the six previously mentioned, who died A.D. 870, 875, 892, 889, 916,

887 respectively.

In the beginning of Islam the great traditionists were Ayesha, the

favourite wife of the Prophet, the four rightly directed Khalifs,

viz., Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and Ali, and some of the companions[3]

known as the Evangelists of Islam. But besides these well-qualified

persons who had lived with or near Muhammad during his lifetime, many

others who had perhaps only seen him or spoken to him claimed to be

considered as companions, who handed down traditions; and when these

were all dead they were followed by others, who, having known the

companions, were now designated as the successors of the companions.

[Footnote 3: The names of these companions, and the kings,

princes, and countries to which they were sent by Muhammad,

are given in full detail in ‘The Life of our Lord Muhammad,

the Apostle of God,’ the author of which was Ibn Ishak; and

it was afterwards edited by Ibn Hisham. In the same work a

list is given of the disciples sent out by Jesus.]

Under these circumstances it can easily be imagined that many of the

traditions were of doubtful authenticity. Al-Bukhari, whose collection

of traditions of the Muhammadan religion holds the first place, both

as regards authority and correctness, selected seven thousand two

hundred and seventy-five of the most authentic out of ten thousand,

all of which he regarded as being true, having rejected two hundred

thousand as false. His book is held in the highest estimation, and

considered both in spiritual and temporal matters as next in authority

to the Koran. He was born A.D. 810, and died A.D. 870.

The Shiahs do not accept the collection of traditions as made by the

Sunnis, but have a collection of their own, upon which their system of

law, both civil and religious, is founded.

During the first and second centuries of the Hijrah (A.D. 622-816), of

all the physical sciences alchemy was studied most. The greatest

scientific man of the first century was undoubtedly Khalid, a prince

of the Omaiyide dynasty, and the son of Yazid I. His zeal for

knowledge and science induced him to get Greek and Syriac works

translated by Stephanus into Arabic, especially those which treated on

chemistry, or rather alchemy. Khalid, having been once reproached for

wasting all his time in researches in the art of alchemy, replied: ‘I

have occupied myself with these investigations to show my

contemporaries and brothers that I have found in them a recompense and

a reward for the Khalifate which I lost. I stand in need of no man to

recognise me at court, and I need not recognise anyone who dances

attendance at the portals of dominion either from fear, ambition, or

covetousness.’ He wrote a poem on alchemy, which bears the title of

‘Paradise of Wisdom,’ and of him Ibn Khallikan says: ‘He was the most

learned man of the tribe of Koraish in all the different branches of

knowledge. He wrote a discourse on chemistry and on medicine, in which

sciences he possessed great skill and solid information.’ He died A.D.

704.

Later on Jaber bin Hayam, with his pupils, became a model for later

alchemists, and he has been called the father of Arabian chemistry. He

compiled a work of two thousand pages, in which he inserted the

problems of his master, Jaafar as Sadik, considered to be the father

of all the occult sciences in Islam. Jaber was such a prolific writer

that many of his five hundred works are said to bear his name only on

account of his celebrity, but to have been written in reality by a

variety of authors. His works on alchemy were published in Latin by

Golius, under the title of ‘Lapis Philosophorum,’ and an English

translation of them by Robert Russell appeared at Leyden in A.D. 1668.

Jaber died A.D. 766, and is not to be confounded with Al-Jaber

(Geber), the astronomer, who lived at Seville about A.D. 1190, and

constructed there an astronomical observatory.

Astronomy appears to have been always a favourite science with the

Arabs from the earliest times. In A.D. 772 there appeared at the court

of the Khalif Mansur (A.D. 754-775), Muhammad bin Ibrahim bin Habib al

Fezari, the astronomer, who brought with him the tables called Sind

Hind, in which the motions of the stars were calculated according to

degrees. They contained other observations on solar eclipses and the

rising of the signs of the zodiac, extracted by him from the tables

ascribed to the Indian king, Figar. The Khalif Mansur ordered this

book to be translated into Arabic to serve as a guide for Arab

astronomers. And these tables remained in use till the time of the

Khalif Mamun (A.D. 813-833), when other revised ones bearing his name

came into vogue. These, again, were abridged by Abul Ma’shar

(Albumasar, died A.D. 885-886), called the prince of Arabian

astrologers, who, however, deviated from them, and inclined towards

the system of the Persians and of Ptolemy. This second revision was

more favourably received by the Arab astronomers than the first, and

the Sind Hind was superseded by the Almagest of Ptolemy. Better

astronomical instruments also came into use, though previously the

Al-Fezari above mentioned had been the first in Islam who constructed

astrolabes of various kinds, and had written several astronomical

treatises.

Mention might be made of about forty mathematicians and astronomers

who wrote books on these subjects. The best of them, such as

Al-Farghani (Alfraganius) and others, lived at the court of Mamun, who

built an astronomical observatory in Baghdad and another near

Damascus, on Mount Kasiun. He caused also two degrees of the meridian

to be measured on the plain of Sinjar, so as to ascertain the

circumference of the earth with more precision. In A.D. 824 there were

held philosophical disputations in his presence. Al-Farghani was the

author of an introduction to astronomy, which was printed by Golius at

Amsterdam in 1669, with notes.

Between the years A.D. 877 and 929 there flourished the famous

calculator and astronomer, Muhammad bin Jaber al Battani, Latinized as

Albategnius. He was the author of the astronomical work entitled ‘The

Sabæan Tables,’ and adopted nearly the system and the hypothesis of

Ptolemy, but rectified them in several points, and made other

discoveries, which procured him a distinguished place among the

scholars whose labours have enriched astronomical science. Al-Battani

approached much nearer to the truth than the ancients as far as the

movements of the fixed stars are concerned. He measured the greatness

of the eccentricity of the solar orbit, and a more correct result

cannot be obtained. To the work containing all his discoveries he gave

the name of ‘As-Zij-as Sabi,’ which was translated into Latin under

the title ‘De Scientiâ Stellarum.’ The first edition of it appeared at

Nuremberg in A.D. 1537, but it is believed that the original work is

in the library of the Vatican. He was classed by Lalande among the

forty-two most celebrated astronomers of the world. He died A.D.

929-930.

Another celebrated astronomer, Ali bin Yunis, was a native of Egypt,

and appears to have lived at the court of the demented tyrant of

Egypt, Al-Hakim bramrillah, and under his patronage to have composed

the celebrated astronomical tables called, after his name, ‘The

Hakimite Tables.’ Ibn Khallikan states that he had seen these tables

in four volumes, and that more extensive ones had not come under his

notice. These tables were considered in Egypt to be of equal value to

those of the astronomer Yabya bin Ali Mansur, who had in A.D. 830, by

order of the Khalif Mamun, undertaken astronomical observations both

at Baghdad and Damascus. Ibn Yunis spent his life in the preparation

of astronomical tables and in casting horoscopes, for it must be

remembered that with the Muslims astronomy and astrology were

synonymous, and their most learned astronomers were also their most

skilful astrologers. His character for honesty was highly esteemed,

and he was also well versed in other sciences, and displayed an

eminent talent for poetry. He died A.D. 1009, and is not to be

confounded with his father, Ibn Yunis, the historian, who died A.D.

958.

Yet another name must be mentioned, viz., the Spanish-Arab astronomer

Ibn Abd-ar-Rahman Es-Zerkel, Europeanized as Arzachal. He first

resided at Toledo, at the court of its sovereign, Mamun, for whom he

made an astrolabe, which he called in his honour the Mamunian. He then

went to Seville, where he wrote for Motamid bin Abbad (A.D. 1069-1091)

a treatise on the use of certain instruments. During his residence at

Toledo he constructed two clepsydras, the waters of which decreased

and increased according to the waning and growing of the moon, and

these two basins were destroyed only in A.D. 1133 by Alphonse VI.,

when he took Toledo. Arzachal left a work on eclipses, and on the

revolution of years, as well as the tables of the sky, to which the

name of Toledan tables have been given. His writings, but especially

the last, which must have been consulted by the editors of the

Alphonsine tables, were never translated, and exist only in manuscript

in libraries where but few scholars can consult them. Arzachal made

many observations in connection with the sun, and was also the

inventor of the astronomical instrument called after his name,

Zerkalla. He died A.D. 1080.

Before leaving this subject it may be mentioned that Makkari, in his

great encyclopædia of Spain, enumerates fifteen astronomers of

Andalusia, all more or less known in their time. Also that

Bedei-ul-Astrolabi and Ibn Abdul-Rayman distinguished themselves as

makers of astronomical instruments, and inventors of new ones. While

Arzachal was the greatest representative of Arab astronomy in the West,

Umar Khayam, the astronomer, mathematician, freethinker, and poet, was

its greatest representative in the East, in Persia, where he died A.D.

1123.

A great deal in Arabic literature has been written about grammar, and,

until its principles were finally laid down and established, it was

always a source of continual controversy between different professors

and different schools. Abul Aswad ad-Duwali has been called the father

of Arabic grammar. It is said that the Khalif Ali laid down for him

this principle: the parts of speech are three, the noun, the verb, and

the particle, and told him to form a complete treatise upon it. This

was accordingly done; and other works on the subject were also

produced, but none of them are apparently now extant. Muhammad bin

Ishak has stated that he saw one of them, entitled ‘Discourse on the

Governing and the Governed Parts of Speech;’ and the author of the

‘Fihrist’ also alludes to this work. Abul-Aswad died at Busra in A.D.

688, aged eighty-five, but some years later his two successors in this

branch of literature (viz., Al-Khalil and Sibawaih) far surpassed him

in every way.

Al-Khalil bin Ahmad, born A.D. 718, was one of the great masters in

the science of grammar, and the discoverer of the rules of prosody,

which art owes to him its creation. He laid the foundation of the

language by his book ‘Al-Ain’ (so called from the letter with which it

begins), and by the aid he afforded thereby to Sibawaih, whose master

he was, in the composition of his celebrated grammatical work known by

the name of ‘The Book.’ In the work called ‘Al-Ain,’ Khalil first

arranged the stock of Arabic words, dealing with the organ of speech

and the production of sounds, and then dividing the words into

classes, the roots of which consisted of one, two, three, four, or

five letters. It is still a matter of dispute whether the book

‘Al-Ain’ was wholly composed by Khalil himself, or completed in course

of time by his pupils. A copy of this celebrated lexicon and work on

philology is in the Escurial Library. Khalil also wrote a treatise on

prosody, and other works on grammar, and a book on musical intonation.

He died A.D. 786, at Busra. ‘Poverty,’ he said, ‘consists not in the

want of money, but of soul; and riches are in the mind, not in the

purse.’

Sibawaih, the pupil of Khalil, has been called the father of Arabic

lexicography, and the lawgiver of Arabic grammar. Ibn Khallikan says

that he was a learned grammarian, and surpassed in this science every

person of former and later times. As for his ‘Kitab,’ or ‘Book,’

composed by him on that subject, it has never had its equal. The great

philologist and grammarian, Al-Jahiz, said of the book of Sibawaih,

that none like it had ever been written on grammar, and that all

writers on this subject who had succeeded him had borrowed from it.

When Al-Kisai was tutor to the prince Al-Amin, son of Harun-ar-Rashid,

Sibawaih came to Baghdad, and the two great grammarians (Sibawaih, the

chief of the school of Busra, and Al-Kisai, chief of the school of

Kufa) had a long dispute about a certain expression of Arabic speech,

and an Arab of the desert was called in to arbitrate between them. The

man first decided in favour of Sibawaih, but when the question was put

in another form, the Bedouin asserted that Kisai was right. As

Sibawaih considered that he had been unjustly treated in the matter,

he left Baghdad for good. The year of his death has been given

differently by various authors, the earliest date being A.D. 787, and

the latest A.D. 809.

The most celebrated grammarians of the third century of the Hijrah

(A.D. 816-913) were Al-Mubarrad, who died A.D. 898, and Thalab, who

died A.D. 903. They were also great antagonists to each other.

Al-Mubarrad, the author of thirty works, was the chief of the school of

Busra, and Thalab of that of Kufa, both founded during the preceding

century by Sibawaih and Kisai. Thalab was the first collector of books

in Islam, and those left by him were very valuable.

Mention must also be made of Al-Farra, the grammarian, and

distinguished by his knowledge of grammar, philology, and various

branches of literature. He died A.D. 822, at the age of sixty-three,

and preceded both Mubarrad and Thalab, the latter of whom used to say:

‘Were it not for Al-Farra, pure Arabic would no longer exist; it was

he who disengaged it from the ordinary language and fixed it by

writing.’ At the request of the Khalif Al-Mamun he drew up in two

years a most elaborate work, which contained the principles of

grammar, and all the pure Arabic expressions which he had heard. It

was entitled ‘Al-Hudûd’ (the Limits or Chapters), and directly it was

finished he commenced another in connection with the Koran, which is

spoken of as a most wonderful production. He wrote besides several

other works on grammar, and acted as tutor to the two sons of the

Khalif Mamun.

Though many other grammarians could be named, such as Al-Akhfash al

Ausat, Abu Amr as Shaibani, Abu Bakr al Anbari, etc., none can be

considered so celebrated as the persons above mentioned, who are

regarded as the founders of the principles on which Arabic grammar has

been established.

In the middle of the third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 816-913), the

Arabs first began to distinguish themselves as travellers and

geographers. When Muslim Homeir was, in A.D. 845, ransomed from his

captivity among the Byzantines and returned to his country, he wrote a

book with the title of ‘Admonitions on the Countries, Kings and

Offices of the Greeks.’ Forty years afterwards Jaafar bin Ahmed al

Mervezi produced the first geographical work under the title of

‘Highways and Countries,’ which was followed by those of Ibn Foslan,

Ibn Khordabeh, Jeihani, Al-Istakhri, Ibn Haukul, Al-Beruni, Al-Bekri

and Idrisi. The great historian, Masudi, was also a writer of travels

and an ambassador. Ibn Foslan was sent by the Khalif Muktadir (A.D.

908-932) to the King of the Bulgarians. Abu Dolaf, who accompanied an

ambassador from China to the frontiers of that country, made, on his

return, a report which Yakut afterwards embodied in his voluminous

geographical Dictionary.

A few details will be given about the six chief geographers and

travellers of this period, viz., Ibn Khordabeh, Al-Istakhri, Ibn

Haukul, Al-Beruni, Al-Bekri and Idrisi.

As regards the first-named, it would appear that he has been the

object of considerable controversies among the Orientalists of Europe.

After employment in the post and intelligence departments in the

provinces, he subsequently came to the court of the Khalif Motamid

(A.D. 870-892), and became one of his privy councillors. He is the

author of several works on various subjects, but his ‘Geography,’ says

Sir H.M. Elliot, is the only work we possess of this author, and of

this there is only one copy in Europe, in the Bodleian Library at

Oxford. He died about A.D. 912.

Al-Istakhri, who flourished about the year A.D. 951, obtained his name

from Istakhar (_i.e._, Persepolis), where he was born. He was a

traveller whose geographical work has been translated into German by

Mordtmann. When Istakhari was in the Indus Valley he met another

celebrated traveller, Ibn Haukul, whose book Sir William Ouseley

translated in A.D. 1800 into English, under the title of ‘The Oriental

Geography of Ibn Haukul.’ Haukul, who died A.D. 976, had travelled for

nearly twenty-eight years in the countries of Islam with the works of

Ibn Khordabeh and Jeihani in his hands, and his work, which bears the

generally approved title of ‘Highways and Countries,’ is based on the

book of Istakhri.

But the greatest geographer and naturalist of this period is Abu

Raihan Al-Beruni (born about A.D. 971), who accompanied Mahmud the

Ghaznavide on his invasions to India. He was to Mahmud of Ghazni what

Aristotle was to Alexander, with the difference, however, that he

actually accompanied the conqueror on his Indian campaigns. He

travelled into different countries and to and from India for the space

of forty years, and during that time was much occupied with astronomy

and astronomical observations, as well as geography. His works are

said to have exceeded a camel-load, but the most valuable of all of

them is his description of India. It gives an account of the religion

of India, its philosophy, literature, geography, chronology,

astronomy, customs, law and astrology about a.d. 1030, and has been

edited by Edward Sachau, Professor in the Royal University of Berlin.

An English edition, containing a preface, the translation of the

Arabic text, notes and indices, has also been published. Al-Beruni

died at Ghurna A.D. 1038. He used to correspond with Avicenna, who was

his contemporary, and who gives in his works the answers to the

questions addressed to him by this famous geographer, astronomer,

geometrician, historian, scholar, and logician.

Some years later Abu O’beid Abd-Allah Al-Bekri distinguished himself

as one of the greatest geographers, with whose labours Quatremere and

Dozy and Gayangos have made us better acquainted. He was, by birth,

from Andalusia, whence also many others travelled to the East, either

for instruction or for trade or as pilgrims, and of whom about a

couple of dozen are mentioned by Makkari. Some of these gave

descriptions and topographies, to which class of literature also the

poetical laudations of celebrated towns belong. Not only Baghdad,

Damascus, Cairo, Fez, Morocco and Khairwan were praised or satirized,

but also Cordova, Seville, Granada, Malaga, Toledo, Valencia and Zohra

were described in Arabic poems. Al-Bekri died in A.D. 1094-1095, and

was followed by Idrisi, the author of a work on Arabian geography of

some celebrity, and which has been translated into Latin. He died A.D.

1164.

Of historians in Arab literature there are many, but only the most

celebrated will be noted. Muhammad bin Ishak, who died about A.D. 767,

produced the best and most trustworthy biography of the prophet

Muhammad. His work was published under the patronage of the Abbaside

princes, and was, in fact, composed for the Khalif Al-Mansur (A.D.

754-775). It was used as the chief source of information by Ibn

Hisham, the next historian of note, in his life of the Prophet, which

work has been edited by Dr. Wustenfeld, and translated into German by

Dr. Weil, and into English by Mr. E. Rehatsek, whose manuscript,

however, has not yet been printed. Ibn Hisham, who died in A.D. 828,

was the father of Arabic genealogy, and Abu-el-Siyadi, who died in

A.D. 857, is next to him.

But the real father of Arabian history was Al-Wackidi, a good and

trustworthy historian, thirty-two of whose works are known, all

relating to the conquests of the Arabs, and other such subjects. He

died A.D. 822. With him generally has been associated his secretary,

Muhammad bin Saad, a man of unimpeachable integrity, and of the

highest talents, merit, and eminence. He has left us some most

interesting works, full of valuable information relating to those

times. He died at Baghdad A.D. 844.

Al-Madaini, who died A.D. 839, was the author of two hundred and fifty

historical works, of which, however, nothing has yet been discovered,

except their titles as given in the ‘Fihrist.’

Passing over many other historians, two more only will be mentioned,

viz., Abu Jafir at-Tabari and Al-Masúdi.

Tabari (whose annals are now being edited by a company of European

Orientalists) was born A.D. 838, at Amol, in the province of

Tabaristan. He travelled a great deal, and composed many works on

history, poetry, grammar and lexicography. His work on jurisprudence

extends to several volumes, and his historical works stamp him as one

of the most reliable of Arab historians, while his numerous other

works also bear witness to the variety and accuracy of his

acquirements. He died at Baghdad A.D. 923, and has been called by

Gibbon the Livy of the Arabians.

Al-Masúdi, a contemporary of the great historian Tabari, died

thirty-four years after him, in A.D. 957. His great work, ‘Meadows of

Gold and Mines of Gems,’ with the Arabic text above and a French

translation below, has been published in nine volumes (1861-1877) by

Barbier de Meynard, in connection with Pavet de Courteille, at the

expense of the French Government. Dr. A. Sprenger (who translated one

volume of the work into English for the Oriental Translation Fund,

London, 1841) calls the author of it the Herodotus of Arabian history,

because he had, like his Greek prototype, undertaken extensive

travels, and had like him made the description of countries and

nations his chief occupation. The titles of ten of his works are known

to us, but the principal one is that named above, in the composition

of which he used eighty-five historical, geographical, and

philological works, as he himself informs us in the first chapter of

his history. The work itself contains one hundred and thirty-two

chapters.

Ibn al Athir al Jazari, born A.D. 1160 and died A.D. 1233, was also an

historian of note, and a personal friend of Ibn Khallikan, who writes

of him as follows: ‘His knowledge of the Traditions, and his

acquaintance with that science in its various branches, placed him in

the first rank; and his learning as an historian of the ancients and

moderns was not less extensive; he was perfectly familiar with the

genealogy of the Arabs, their adventures, combats and history; whilst

his great work, “The Kâmil or Complete,” embracing the history of the

world from the earliest period to the year 628 of the Hijrah (A.D.

1230-1231), merits its reputation as one of the best productions of

the kind.’ Another of Ibn Al Athir’s works is the history of the most

eminent among the companions of Muhammad, in the shape of a

biographical dictionary.

As the development of Arab letters proceeded, in the course of time

various authors began to tabulate the different branches of knowledge

and science, and these, with the biographies of many of the writers,

and the lists of their works, formed a distinct branch in the

literature of that day.

The most noteworthy of them all was Abul Faraj Muhammad bin Ishak, who

is generally known by the name of Ibn Ali Yakub al Warrak the copyist,

surnamed An-Nadim al Baghdadi, the social companion from Baghdad, and

the author of the ‘Fihrist.’ It may be truly said that this writer,

along with Ibn Khallikan, laid the foundations of the records of the

edifice of encyclopædical and biographical works, which was afterwards

completed by Haji Khalfa and Abul Khair. Without the work of Ibn

Khallikan it would be as impossible to give a history of Arab

scholars, as without the work of An-Nadim to give an account of Arab

literature.

The ‘Kitab al-Fihrist’ was written by An-Nadim in A.D. 987, and is

divided into ten sections, dealing with every branch of letters and

learning. It gives the names of many authors and their works long

since extant, and shows the enormous amount of writings produced by

the Arabs during the periods under review, up to A.D. 987, the date of

the author’s work. A short account of this ancient and curious book

has been given in the Journal Asiatique for December, 1839, and

from the work itself Von Hammer Purgstall has been able to gather that

the ‘Thousand and One Nights’ (‘Arabian Nights’) had a Persian origin.

In the eighth section of the ‘Fihrist’ the author says that the first

who composed tales and apologues were the kings of the early Persian

dynasties, and that these tales were augmented and amplified by the

Sasanians (A.D. 228-641). The Arabs then translated them into their

own language, and composed other stories like them.

Ibn Khallikan, the most worthy of biographers, must also be mentioned

here, though he died in A.D. 1282, twenty-four years after the fall of

Baghdad, having been born in A.D. 1211. This very eminent scholar and

follower of Shafa’i doctrines, was born at Arbela, but resided at

Damascus, where he had filled the place of Chief Kadi till the year

A.D. 1281, when he was dismissed, and from that time to the day of his

death he never went out of doors. He was a man with the greatest

reputation for learning, versed in various sciences, and highly

accomplished. He was a scholar, a poet, a compiler, a biographer and

an historian. By his talents and writings he merited the honourable

title of the most learned man and the ablest historian. His celebrated

biographical work, called the ‘Wafiat-ul-Aiyan,’ or Deaths of Eminent

Men, is the acme of perfection. This work was translated from the

Arabic by Baron MacGuckin de Slane, a member of the council of the

Asiatic Society of Paris, and printed by the Oriental Translation Fund

of Great Britain and Ireland in A.D. 1842, 1843, 1868 and 1871. For

all those who wish to gain a knowledge of the legal literature of the

Muhammadans it is a most valuable work, as the Baron has added to the

text numerous learned notes, replete with curious and interesting

information relating to the Muhammadan law and lawyers. Ibn Khallikan

died, aged seventy-three lunar years, in the Najibia College at

Damascus, and was buried in the cemetery of As-Salihiya, a well-known

village situated on the declivity of Mount Kasiun, a short distance to

the north of Damascus, and from which a splendid view of the town and

its surrounding gardens is obtained. When lately there I made

inquiries about the tomb of this great Arab littérateur, but

without success. His tomb has quite disappeared, and his name seemed

to be forgotten; but his work still lives, an everlasting monument of

his industry and his intelligence.

It will be remembered that the early Arab poets described men, women,

animals, and their surroundings in their effusive Kasidas before

prose-writing was established. Later on grammarians and philologists

began to write books on the different objects of nature and on the

physiology of man; also treatises on the horse, the camel, bees,

mountains, seas, rivers, and all natural phenomena. There were thus

laid down, though not a scientific, at least a philological basis, for

the future development of the natural sciences and geography. Such

monographs were only in later times collected in encyclopaedic works,

in which they were inserted in such a manner as to constitute various

chapters only, and no longer separate treatises.

Khalef-al-Ahmer (whom Suyuti declared to be a great forger, because he

pretended that some poems written by himself had been composed by

ancient Arab poets) wrote the first book on Arab mountains, and about

the poems recited concerning them. Ahmed bin-ud Dinveri wrote, in

addition to several grammatical and mathematical works, a book on

plants, and after him the grammarian Al-Jahiz wrote the first treatise

on animals, but more from a philological point of view than from that

of natural history. He wrote, moreover, on theology, geography,

natural history, and philology; but his most celebrated work is his

‘Book of Animals,’ in which he displayed all his knowledge of the

Arabic tongue. He was frightfully ugly, and obtained the surname of

Jahiz on account of his protuberant eyes. He himself informs us that

the Khalif Mutwakkil intended to appoint him as tutor to his sons, but

was deterred by his ugliness, and dismissed him with a present of ten

thousand dirhems. Al-Jahiz died A.D. 869, over ninety years of age.

Philology is a term now generally used as applicable to that science

which embraces human language in its widest extent, and may be shortly

called ‘the science of language.’ But in earlier times philology

included, with few exceptions, everything that could be learned—many

and various subjects, without particular reference to the meaning now

generally adopted concerning it.

There will be found among the Arab authors of this period many

philologists who also wrote upon other matters, but have been recorded

here as having particularly excelled in this particular branch of

learning.

Al Kasim bin Ma’an was the first who wrote on the rarities of the

language and on the peculiarities of authors, and, according to the

‘Fihrist,’ he surpassed all his contemporaries by the variety of his

information. Tradition and traditionists, poetry and poets, history

and historians, scholastic theology and theologians, genealogy and

genealogists, were the subjects on which he displayed the extent of

his acquirements. He died A.D. 791.

Abu Ali Muhammad bin-al Mustanir bin Ahmad, generally known by the

name of Kutrub, was also a grammarian and philologist, and wrote books

and treatises on these subjects, as also on natural history. He died

A.D. 821.

Philology and Arabic poetry were the special objects of the studies of

Abu Amr Ishak bin Mirar as Shaibani, and in these two branches of

knowledge his authority is of the highest order. He composed a number

of works and treatises, and wrote with his own hand upwards of eighty

volumes. He died A.D. 825.

But the two earliest, and perhaps the two most celebrated,

philologists were Al-Asmai and Abu Obaida, who outshone their

successors for all time to come, and were distinguished—the former by

his wit, and the latter by his scholarship.

Abu Said Abd-al Malik bin Kuraib al-Asmai was born A.D. 739 or 740,

and died A.D. 831. He was a complete master of the Arabic language, an

able grammarian, and the most eminent of all those who transmitted

orally historical narrations, anecdotes, stories, and rare expressions

of the language. When the poet Abu Nuwas was informed that Asmai and

Abu Obaida had been introduced at Harun’s court, he said that the

latter would narrate ancient and modern history, but that the former

would charm with his melodies. Ibn Shabba was informed by Asmai

himself ‘that he knew by heart sixteen thousand pieces of verse

composed in the measure called Rajaz, or free metre,’ and Ishak al

Mausili asserted ‘that he never heard al-Asmai profess to know a

branch of science without discovering that none knew it better than

he.’ No one ever explained better than Al-Asmai the idioms of the

desert Arabs. Most of his works, which amount to thirty-six, treat of

the language and its grammar; but he also wrote a book on the horse

and different treatises on various other animals, such as the camel,

the sheep, wild beasts, etc., and their physiology.

Al-Asmai’s contemporary, Abu Obaida, was an able grammarian and an

accomplished scholar. He was born A.D. 728, and died at Busra A.D.

824, leaving nearly two hundred treatises, of which the names of many

have been given by Ibn Khallikan, and most of them are of a purely

philological character. There are many anecdotes about him, and many

sayings of clever men regarding him. Abu Nuwas took lessons from Abu

Obaida, praised him highly, and decried Al-Asmai, whom he detested.

When asked what he thought of Al-Asmai, he replied, ‘A nightingale in

a cage,’ meaning probably that a nightingale in a cage is pleasing to

hear, but there is nothing else good about it. Abu Obaida he described

as ‘a bundle of science packed up in a skin.’

Abu Zaid al-Ansari was a philologist and grammarian, and a

contemporary of the two persons just described. He held the first rank

among the literary men of that time, and devoted his attention

principally to the study of the philology of the Arabic language, its

singular terms and rare expressions. Of him Al-Mubarrad said: ‘Abu

Zaid was an abler grammarian than Al-Asmai and Abu Obaida, but these

two came next to him, and were near to each other. Abu Obaida was the

most accomplished scholar of the day.’ Abu Zaid composed a number of

useful philological works, and titles of thirty-one of them are given

in the ‘Fihrist.’ He died A.D. 830, over ninety years of age.

Abu Othman Bakr bin Muhammad bin Habib al-Mayini, briefly called Abu

Othman, was celebrated as a philologer and grammarian, as also for his

knowledge in general literature. He learned philology from Abu Zaid,

Abu Obaida, Al-Asmai, and others, and had for pupil Al-Mubarrad, who

learned much from his master, and handed down many pieces of

traditional literature obtained from him. Abu Othman, once being asked

his opinion about various men of science, curtly summarized them as

follows: ‘The Koran-readers are deceitful administrators, the

traditionists are satisfied with superfluities, poets are too

superficial, grammarians much too heavy, narrators deal only in neat

expressions, and the only real science is jurisprudence,’ He died A.D.

863.

Abul Aina was a philologist, but also a great joker, anecdote-teller,

and poet. His memory was equal to his eloquence, and, being

quick-witted, he was never in want of a repartee when the occasion

required it; indeed, he ranked among the most brilliant wits of the

age. To a vizier, who said that everything current about the liberality

of the Barmekides was only so much exaggeration and invention of

leaf-scribblers, he replied: ‘Of you, O vizier, the leaf-scribblers

will certainly report nothing and invent nothing.’ There are many other

anecdotes and stories told about him. Being asked how long he would

continue to praise some and satirize others, he replied: ‘As long as

the virtuous do good and the wicked do evil, but God forbid that I

should be as the scorpion which stingeth equally the prophet and the

infidel.’ He had a most wonderful memory, which he applied, however,

not to the preservation of interpretations and their vouchers, but to

that of anecdotes, drolleries, and witty sayings, wherefore his name

has been perpetuated as that of a joker. He died A.D. 896.

Mention must also be made of Abdullah bin Muslim bin Kutaiba, who was

a philologist and grammarian of eminent talent, and noted for the

correctness of his information. He was the author of many works, such

as ‘The Book of Facts,’ ‘The Writer’s Guide,’ ‘Notices on the Poets,’

and ‘A Treatise on Horses,’ and others, all of which were more or less

celebrated in their time. He was born A.D. 828, and died, some say, in

A.D. 884, others in A.D. 908.

Ibn Duraid, whose many other names are given by Ibn Khallikan, is

described by that author as ‘the most accomplished scholar, the ablest

philologer, and the first poet of the age.’ Masudi and other men of

learning also speak of him in the highest terms. He composed several

works on natural history, and produced also a complete Dictionary of

this kind, after the model of the books ‘Al-A’in’ and ‘Al-Jim,’ the

two letters of the alphabet with which Khalil, the grammarian, and Abu

Amr as Shaibani respectively began their works. Ibn Duraid died at

Baghdad A.D. 933. The celebrated Motazelite divine Abu Haslim Abd-as

Salam Al-Jubbai died the same day, and this caused the people to say

that ‘To-day philology and dogmatic theology have ceased to exist.’

In the East, by philosophy not only logic and metaphysics are meant,

but also all ethical, political, mathematical, and medical sciences.

Indeed, it may be said that nearly all learned men were in those days

called philosophers, a term which included mathematicians,

astronomers, physicians, encyclopædists and others.

From the mass of Arab authors all laying claim to the title of

philosopher, it is perhaps an invidious task to select a few only, and

even those selected by one person might be rejected by another. But

public opinion will probably agree in naming three persons as having

claim to the highest rank in Arab learning. They are Al-Kindi,

Al-Farabi, and Ali-ibn Sina, commonly called Avicenna. Ali-bin Ridhwan,

Al-Ghazali, Ibn Bajah (Avempace), and Ibn Rashid (Averroes) have also

their claims to be considered, while Thalab bin Korra, Kosta bin Luka,

Al-Tavhidi, and Al-Majridi were also all eminent men. A few details

will be given about the first seven of the names just mentioned.

Yakub-bin Ishak Al-Kindi, the philosopher of the Arabs, known in

Europe by the corrupted name of Alchendius, possessed an encyclopædic

mind, and being himself a living encyclopædia, he composed one of all

the sciences. He divided philosophy into three branches, the

mathematical, the physical, and the ethical. He declared the nullity

of alchemy, which Ibn Sina had again brought to honourable notice,

till the physician Abdul Latif declaimed against it. But Al-Kindi was

not sufficiently advanced to write against astrology, which is still

in full force all over the East even in our own times. Only one of his

works has as yet been published in Europe, and that treats on the

composition of medicines, though we possess the titles of not less

than two hundred and thirty-four works composed by him on a variety of

subjects. He died A.D. 861.

Abu Nasr Al-Farabi (Alfarabius), called by the Arabs a second

Aristotle, is generally considered to be the second Arab philosopher;

Avicenna, who always quotes him in his works, the third; the first

place being assigned to Al-Kindi. Al-Farabi studied Arabic (he was a

Turk by birth) and philosophy in Baghdad, where he attended the

lectures of Abu Bishr Matta bin Yunus, who possessed, and also

imparted to his pupils, the gift of expressing the deepest meanings in

the easiest words. From Baghdad he went to Harran, where Yuhanna bin

Khailan, the Christian philosopher, was teaching logic, and after his

return he made all the works of Aristotle his special study. It is

related that the following note was found inscribed in Al-Farabi’s

handwriting on a copy of Aristotle’s treatise on the soul: ‘I have

read over this book two hundred times.’ He also said that he had read

over Aristotle’s ‘Physics’ forty times, and felt that he ought to read

it over again. Abul Kasim Said, of Cordova, says in his ‘Classes of

Philosophers’ that ‘Al-Farabi led all the professors of Islam to the

right understanding of logic by unveiling and explaining its secrets,

as well as by considering all those points which Al-Kindi had

neglected, and by teaching the application of analogy to all occurring

cases.’ In his enumeration and limitation of the sciences, Al-Farabi

embraced the whole system of knowledge as it then existed. He went to

Egypt, and afterwards to Damascus, where he died in A.D. 950. During

his residence at Damascus he was mostly to be found near the borders

of some rivulet, or in a shady garden; there he composed his works and

received the visits of his pupils. He was extremely abstemious, and

entirely indifferent to wealth and poverty. The list of his works on

philosophical and scientific subjects amount to sixty-one. Mr. Munk’s

‘Mélanges de Philosophie Juive et Arabe’ (Paris, 1859) contains good

articles on Al-Farabi and Al-Kindi.

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) was a great philosopher and physician. At the age

of ten years he had completed the study of the Koran in Bukhara, where

afterwards a certain Natili became his tutor, with whom he first

studied the ‘Eisagoge’ of Porphyry, and afterwards Euclid, and lastly

the ‘Almagest’ of Ptolemy. Natili then departed, and an ardent desire

to study medicine having taken possession of Ibn Sina, he commenced to

read medical books, which not being so difficult to understand as

mathematics and metaphysics, he made such rapid progress in them that

he soon became an excellent physician, and cured his patients by

treating them with well-approved remedies. He began also to study

jurisprudence before he was thirteen. At the age of eighteen he

entered the service of a prince of the Beni Saman dynasty, Nuh bin

Mansur, at Bukhara, a paralytic, who entertained many physicians at

his court, and Ibn Sina joined their number. There he composed his

‘Collection,’ in which he treated of all the sciences except

mathematics, and there also he wrote his book of ‘The Acquirer and the

Acquired.’ He then left Bukhara, and lived in various towns of

Khurasan, but never went further west, spending his whole life in the

countries beyond the Oxus, in Khwarizm and in Persia, although he

wrote in Arabic. It would be superfluous to follow all his changes of

fortune, but it may be mentioned that when he was the first physician

and vizier of Mezd-ud-daulah, a sultan of the Bowide dynasty, he was

twice deposed and put in irons. He also appears to have acted

treacherously towards Ala-ud-daulah, a prince of Ispahan, who was his

benefactor. He was four years in prison, but at last succeeded in

deceiving his guardians, and escaped. His dangerous travels, and the

depression of mind inseparable from reverses of fortune, however,

never interrupted his scientific pursuits. His taste for study and his

activity were such that, as he himself informs us, not a single day

passed in which he had not written fifty leaflets. The list of

manuscripts left by him, and scattered in various libraries of Europe,

is considerable, and though many of his works have been lost, some are

still in existence. The fatigues of his long journeys, and the

excesses of all kinds in which he indulged, abridged the life of this

celebrated scholar, who died in A.D. 1037, at the age of fifty-six, at

Hamadan, where the following epitaph adorns his tomb: ‘The great

philosopher, the great physician, Ibn Sina, is dead. His books on

philosophy have not taught him the art of living well, nor his books

on medicine the art of living long.’

A brief notice must be given of the celebrated physician and

philosopher, Ali bin Ridhwan, who died A.D. 1067. He was such a

prodigy of precocious learning that he began to lecture on medicine

and philosophy at Cairo from his fourteenth year. He afterwards also

taught astronomy. At the age of thirty-two he had attained a great

reputation as a physician, and was a rich man at sixty. He left more

than one hundred books which he had composed, and he himself says: ‘I

made abridgments of the chief philosophical works of the ancients, and

left in this manner five books on philology; ten on law; the medical

works of Hippocrates and Galen; the book of plants of Dioskorides; the

books of Rufus, Paulus, Hawi, and Razi; four books on agriculture and

drugs; four books for instruction in the ‘Almagest’ of Ptolemy, and an

introduction to the study of it, and to the square of Ptolemy; as also

to the works of Plato, Alexander, Themistios, and Al-Farabi. I

purchased all these books, no matter what they cost, and preserved

them in chests, although it would have been more profitable to have

sold them again rather than have kept them.’ Ibn Batlan, a clever

physician, was a contemporary of Ibn Ridhwan, and travelled from

Baghdad to Egypt only for the purpose of making his acquaintance, but

the result does not appear to have been satisfactory to either party.

He died A.D. 1063, leaving a number of works on medical and other

subjects.

Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali was born A.D. 1058. He was considered chiefly as

a lawyer and a mystic, but here he will be noticed chiefly as a

philosopher and the author of ‘The Ruin of Philosophers,’ noticed at

length by Haji Khalfa in his ‘Encyclopædical Dictionary,’ under No.

3764. But Ghazali’s most celebrated work is ‘The Resuscitation of

Religious Sciences,’ which is so permeated by the genius of Islam

that, according to the general opinion of scholars, the Muhammadan

religion, if it were to perish, might again be restored from this work

alone. Orthodox fanatics, nevertheless, attacked his works as being

schismatic, and they were even burnt in the Mugrib. He was born at Tus

(the modern Mashad), in Khurasan, and passed his life partly there,

also at Naisapur, Baghdad, Damascus, Egypt, and finally returned to

Tus, where he died A.D. 1111. His works are very numerous, and all of

them are instructive.

Ibn Bajah (known to Europeans under the name of Avempace) was a

philosoper and a poet of considerable celebrity, and a native of

Saragossa, in Spain. He was attacked by some people for his religious

opinions, and represented as an infidel and an atheist, professing the

doctrines held by the ancient sages and philosophers. Ibn Khallikan

defends Ibn Bajah, and says that these statements were much

exaggerated, but adds: ‘God, however, knows best what his principles

were,’ Abul Hassan Ali al-Imam, of Granada, was of opinion that Ibn

Bajah was the greatest Arab philosopher after Al-Farabi, and places

him higher than Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali. He left numerous logical,

grammatical and political works, and died at Fez in A.D. 1138.

Averroes, whose full and correct name is Abul Walid Muhammad bin

Rashid, was a celebrated Arab scholar, born at Cordova A.D. 1126, and

the author of many writings. He taught in his native town philosophy

and medicine, two sciences which appeared for a long time to be

inseparable, and the vulgar considered those professing them to be of

almost supernatural attainments. The period of Averroes is that of the

decadence of Arab dominion in Spain, a period when this great nation

also lost the taste for sciences which it had brought to Europe.

Considering the prodigious number of works composed by Averroes, who

filled at the same time the offices of Imam and Kadi, his entire life

must have been one of labour and meditation. He is the author of an

Arabic version of Aristotle, but it is not the first which existed in

that language, as some of his biographers assert, because this work

had been produced already at Baghdad during the brilliant Khalifate of

Mamun. There are various manuscripts of Averroes extant treating on

physics, pure mathematics, astronomy and astrology, from which it

would appear that, in spite of their encyclopædic attainments, the

celebrated men of these times still believed in some popular errors.

Science was at that time surrounded by a kind of superstitious halo of

respect, to which Averroes, like so many others, is indebted for a

good part of his renown. He died A.D. 1198, in the city of Morocco;

his corpse was transferred to Cordova and there interred.

Medical science had already, under the second Khalif of the house of

Abbas (A.D. 754-775), enjoyed the highest honours, which it ever

afterwards retained. Great physicians were brought from the Persian

hospital of Jondshapur, and between the years A.D. 750 and 850 the

number of physicians was considerable, but only the most celebrated

will be noticed.

Georgios (Jorjis) bin Bakhtyeshun, of Jondshapur, lived at the

commencement of the Abbaside dynasty, and was the author of the book

of Pandects. When Al-Mansur was building the city of Baghdad he

suffered from pains in his stomach and from impotency, and Georgios,

the director of the medical college at Jondshapur, was recommended to

him as the most skilled physician of the time. Accordingly, the Khalif

directed Georgios and two of his pupils, Ibrahim and Serjis, to come

to Baghdad, appointing Gabriel (Jebrayl), the son of Georgios, as

director of the hospital in the place of his father. Georgios cured

Al-Mansur, and received from him three thousand ducats for his reward,

along with a beautiful slave girl; the latter was, however, returned

to the Khalif with thanks, and the remark that, ‘being a Christian, he

could not keep more than one wife.’ From that moment the physician

attained free access to the harem, and enjoyed high favour with the

Khalif, who greatly pressed him in A.D. 770 to make a profession of

Islam; but this he refused to do, and died shortly afterwards, in A.D.

771. Before his death Georgios asked to be allowed to return to

Jondshapur, to be buried there with his ancestors. Al-Mansur said,

‘Fear God, and I guarantee you paradise.’ Georgios replied, ‘I am

satisfied to be with my ancestors, be it in paradise or be it in

hell.’ The Khalif laughed, allowed him to return home, and presented

him with ten thousand pieces of gold for his travelling, expenses.

Gabriel (Jebrayl), the son of the above-named Georgios (Jorjis), was

also a celebrated physician. He enjoyed great favour with

Harun-ar-Rashid, who used to declare that he would not refuse him

anything. When, however, this Khalif fell ill at Tus, and asked Gabriel

for his opinion, the latter replied that if Harun had followed his

advice to be moderate in sexual pleasure, he would not have been

attacked by the disease. For this reply he was thrown into prison, and

his life was saved only by the chamberlain Rabi’i, who was very fond of

him. Amin, the son and successor of Rashid, followed the advice of

Gabriel more than his father did, and would not eat or drink anything

without his doctor’s sanction. In A.D. 817 Gabriel cured Sehl bin

Hasan, who recommended him to Mamun; but Michael, the son-in-law of

Gabriel, was his body physician. In A.D. 825 Mamun fell sick, and, as

all the medicines of Michael were of no use, Isa, the brother of Mamun,

advised him to get himself treated by Gabriel, who had known him from

boyhood; but Abu Ishak, the other brother of Mamun, called in Yahya

bin Maseweih, and when he could do nothing, then Mamun sent for

Gabriel, who restored him to health in three days, and was handsomely

rewarded in consequence. When Mamun marched, in A.D. 828, against the

Byzantines, Gabriel fell sick and died, whereon the Khalif took

Gabriel’s son with him on the campaign, he being also an intelligent

and skilled physician.

The works of Gabriel are:

(1) A treatise on food and drink, dedicated to Mamun.

(2) An introduction to logic.

(3) Extracts from medical Pandects.

(4) A book on fumigatories.

Isa bin Musa, who flourished about A.D. 833, was also one of the most

distinguished physicians of the period. He left the following works:

(1) Book on the forces of alimentary substances.

(2) A treatise for a person who has no access

to a physician.

(3) Questions concerning derivations and races.

(4) Book of dreams, indicating why medicines

should not be given to pregnant women.

(5) Book of the remedies mentioned by Hippocrates

in his treatise on bleeding and cupping.

(6) Dissertation on the use of baths.

Without giving any details about Maseweih, Yahya bin Maseweih, Honein

bin Ishak, and Kosta bin Luka, all of whom were distinguished for

medical knowledge, some fuller mention must be made of Abu Bakr

Ar-Razi (Rhases), who has been described as ‘the ablest physician of

that age and the most distinguished; a perfect master of the art of

medicine, skilled in its practice, and thoroughly grounded in its

principles and rules.’ He composed a number of useful works on

medicine, and some of his sayings have been handed down to us, and are

still worthy of record, such as:

(1) When you can cure by a regimen, avoid

having recourse to medicine.

(2) When you can effect a cure with a simple

medicine, avoid employing a compound one.

(3) With a learned physician and an obedient

patient sickness soon disappears.

(4) Treat an incipient malady with remedies

which will not prostrate the strength.

Till the end of his life he continued at the head of his profession,

finally lost his sight, and died in A.D. 923. A new and much improved

edition of Razi’s ‘Treatise on the Small-Pox and Measles’ was

published in London in A.D. 1848 by Dr. Greenhill, and an article on

him will also be found in Wüstenfeld’s ‘History of the Arabian

Physicians.’

Poetry flourished to a very great extent during the reigns of the

early Abbaside Khalifs, and, as all Arab littérateurs were more or

less poets and writers of verses, it is somewhat difficult to select

the most celebrated.

The first collection of Arabic poems was compiled by Al-Mofadhdhal in

the work called after him—‘Mofadhdhaliat.’ He was followed by Abu Amr

as Shaibani, by Abu Zaid bin A’us, Ibn-as Sikkit, Muhammad bin Habib,

Abu Hatim es Sejastani, and Abu Othman al Mazini. Abu Tammam and

Al-Bohtori, the collectors of the two Hamasas, are considered to be the

two greatest poets of the third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 816-913).

And it may here be observed that in the great bibliographical

dictionary of Haji Khalfa, who enumerates seven Hamasas, the names of

Ibn-ul Marzaban and of Ibn Demash, each of whom composed one, are not

mentioned.

Zukkari made himself a reputation by editing several of the

Mua’llakat, as also the poems of the great pre-Islamite bards,

Al-Aasha and Al-Kama, whilst Abu Bakr as Sauli likewise acquired great

merit by publishing ten of the master-works of Arabic poetry.

From the many poets of this period some of the most celebrated have

been selected—viz., Farazdak, Jarir, Al-Akhtal, Abul-Atahya, Bashshar

bin Burd, Abu Nuwas, Abu Tammam, Al-Otbi, Al-Bohtori, Al-Mutanabbi,

and An-Nami, and a few biographical details about them will be given,

as also some remarks about Al-Mofadhdhal, the first collector and

compiler of Arab poetry, and of Abul Faraj-Al-Ispahani, the collector

of the great anthology called ‘Kitab-ul-Aghani,’ or the Book of Songs.

Jarir and Al-Farazdak were two very celebrated poets, who lived at the

same time and died in the same year, A.D. 728-729. Ibn Khallikan has

given their lives at considerable length, and says that ‘Jarir was in

the habit of making satires on Al-Farazdak, who retorted in the same

manner, and they composed parodies on each other’s poems.’ Jarir

always used to say that the same demon inspired them both, and

consequently each knew what the other would say. On all occasions they

seem to have been excessively rude in verse to each other, and did not

at all mind about having recourse to actual insult. The lives of

Al-Akhtal, Al-Farazdak, and Jarir, translated from the ‘Kitab-ul-Aghani’

and other sources, have been given by Mr. Caussin de Perceval in the

Journal Asiatique for the year 1834. Prom this it would appear that

the verses of these three poets were much discussed during their

lifetime, and often compared with the productions of the other poets

who followed them. Some writers are in favour of one and some of the

other, but the general opinion of them is that their effusions

resembled the Arab poetry written before the period of Muhammad much

more than any poetry that was written during the reign of the

Abbasides. Al-Akhtal belonged to a Christian tribe of Arabs, and was

much patronized by the Omaiyide Khalif Abdul Malik (A.D. 684-705), in

whose glory and honour he composed many verses, and, indeed, such good

ones, that Harun-ar-Rashid used to say no poet had ever said so much

in praise of the Abbasides as he (Akhtal) had written in praise of the

Omaiyides. He died at an advanced age some years before Jarir and

Farazdak, who were much younger men, but the exact year of his death

does not appear to have been recorded.

The blind Bashshar bin Burd and Abul-Atahya were two of the principal

poets who flourished in the first ages of Islamism, and ranked in the

highest class among the versifiers of that period. The former was put

to death, or rather beaten, by the orders of the Khalif Al-Mahdi, for

certain satirical verses which the poet is said to have written, and

from the effects of these strokes of a whip he died in A.D. 783.

Abul-Atahya wrote many verses on ascetic subjects, and all his amatory

pieces were composed in honour and praise of Otba, a female slave

belonging to the Khalif Al-Mahdi, and to whom he appears to have been

devotedly attached. He was born A.D. 747, and died A.D. 826.

Abu Nuwas was a poet of great celebrity. His father, Hani, was a

soldier in the army of Marwan II., the last Omaiyide Khalif, and the

poet was born in A.D. 762, some say in Damascus, others at Busra, and

others at Al-Ahwaz. His mother apprenticed him to a grocer, and the

boy became acquainted with the poet Abu Osâma, who discovered his

talent, and induced him to accompany him to Baghdad. There Abu Nuwas

afterwards became celebrated as one of the chief bards at the court of

the Khalif, and his most famous Kasida is that which he composed in

praise of Amin, the son of Harun-ar-Rashid. According to the critics

of his time, he was the greatest poet in Islam, as Amriolkais had been

before that period. When Merzeban was asked which he considered the

greater poet, Abu Nuwas or Rakashi, he replied, ‘A curse of Abu Nuwas

in hell contains more poetry than a laudation of Rakâshi’s in

paradise.’ He was a favourite of Amin, whom his brother Mamun

reproached for associating with him, because Abu Nuwas enjoyed the

reputation of being the greatest libertine of all the poets.

Sulaiman, the son of Al-Mansur, complained to the Khalif Amin that Abu

Nuwas had insulted him with lampoons, and desired him to be punished

with death; but Amin replied: ‘Dear uncle, how can I order a man to be

killed who has praised me in such beautiful verses?’ and thereupon

recited them.

Mamun, the son of Harun, states that he asked the great critic Yakut

bin Sikkit to what poet he gave the preference. He replied: ‘Among the

pre-Islamite ones to Amriolkais and Al-Aasha, among the older Muslim

poets to Jarir and Farazdak, and among the more recent to Abu Nuwas.’

Otbi, having been asked who was the greatest poet, replied; ‘According

to the opinion of the people, Amriolkais, but according to mine, Abu

Nuwas.’

Al-Khasib, the chief of the revenue office in Egypt, once asked Abu

Nuwas from what family he came. ‘My talents,’ replied he, ‘stand me

instead of noble birth,’ and no further questions were asked him. He

was a freethinker, who joked about the precepts of Islam. Once a Sunni

and a Rafidhi desired him to be the umpire in their quarrel, as to who

occupied the most exalted position after the Prophet. He said: ‘A

certain Yazid,’ and on their asking who this Yazid might be, he

replied: ‘An excellent fellow, who presents me with a thousand dirhems

every year.’ He used to say that the wine of this world is better than

that of the next; and, being asked for the reason, replied: ‘This is a

sample of the wine of paradise, and for a sample the best is always

taken.’

Ismail bin Nubakht said: ‘I never saw a man of more extensive learning

than Abu Nuwas, nor one who, with a memory so richly furnished,

possessed so few books. After his decease we searched his house, and

could only find one book-cover containing a quire of paper, in which

was a collection of rare expressions and grammatical observations.’

He died on the same day as the mystic Al-Kerkhi, whose corpse was

accompanied to the grave by more than three hundred persons, but that

of Abu Nuwas by not one. When, however, one of the three hundred

exclaimed: ‘Was not Abu Nuwas a Muslim? And why do none of the Muslims

recite the funeral prayer over his body? all the three hundred who had

assisted at the interment of Kerkhi recited the prayer also over the

corpse of Abu Nuwas.

He is considered to have been an equally good narrator, scholar, and

poet; and, being asked by Sulaiman bin Sehl what species of poetry he

thought to be the best, replied: ‘There are no poems on wine equal to

my own, and to my amatory compositions all others must yield,’ He used

to boast that he knew by heart the poems of sixty poetesses, and among

them those of Khansa and Leila, as also seven hundred Arjuzat, or

poems in unshackled metre, by men. He said that he could compose

nothing except when he was in a good humour, and in a shady garden. He

often began a Kasida, put it away for several days, and then took it

up again to rescind much of it.

According to Abu Amr, the three greatest poets in the description of

wine are Aasha, Akhtal, and Abu Nuwas. Abu Hatim al Mekki often said

that the deep meanings of thoughts were concealed underground until

Abu Nuwas dug them out.

His end was tragic. Zonbor, the secretary, and Abu Nuwas were in the

habit of composing lampoons against each other; whereon the former

conceived the idea of propagating a satire against Ali, the son-in-law

of the Prophet, in the name of Abu Nuwas; and this became the cause of

his death. In an already half-drunken circle Zonbor recited the satire

on Ali as the work of Abu Nuwas; on which all fell upon the poet,

ripped open his belly, and pulled his entrails about till he expired.

Others assert that Ismail bin Abu Sehl administered a poisonous potion

to Abu Nuwas, because he had composed a lampoon against him; but its

operation was so slow that he died only four months after he had drunk

it. His death took place at Baghdad in A.D. 810.

Al-Otbi was a poet of great celebrity, and taught traditions to the

people of Baghdad; but was more generally noted for drinking wine and

composing love verses about his beloved Otba. Being of the tribe of

Koraish, and of the family of Omaya, he and his father held a high

rank, and were regarded as accomplished scholars and elegant speakers,

Otbi both composed and collected poems. One of his verses has now

acquired the force of a proverb: ‘When Sulaima saw me turn my eyes

away—and I turn my glances away from all who resemble her—she said:

“I once saw thee mad with love;” and I replied: “Youth is a madness of

which old age is the cure.”’ He died in A.D. 842.

Abu Tammam Habib, the celebrated poet, according to Ibn Khallikan,

‘surpassed all his contemporaries in the purity of his style, the

merit of his poetry, and his excellent manner of treating a subject.

He is the author of a Hamasa, a compilation which is a standing proof

of his great talents, solid information, and good taste in making a

selection.’ He wrote several other works connected with poets and

poetry, composed many Kasidas, and knew by heart, it is said, fourteen

thousand verses of that class of compositions called Rajaz, or free

metre. The poetry of Abu Tammam was put in order for the first time by

Abu Bakr as Sauli, who arranged it alphabetically, according to the

rhymes, and then Abul Faraj Ali bin Husain Al-Ispahani classed it

according to the subjects. He died at Mosul A.D. 845, about forty

years of age, and was buried there; but his verses have survived, and

rendered him one of the immortals.

The mantle of the poet Abu Tammam appears to have fallen on Abu Abada

Al-Bohtori, who was born in A.D. 821, and, like his predecessor, is

also the author of a Hamasa. He appears to have received his first

encouragement to persevere as a poet from Abu Tammam, and later on he

says: ‘I recited to Abu Tammam a poem which I had composed in honour

of one of the Humaid family, and by which I gained a large sum of

money. When I finished he exclaimed: “Very good! You shall be the

prince of poets when I am no more.” These words gave me more pleasure

than all the wealth which I had collected.’ On being asked whether he

or Abu Tammam was the better poet, Al-Bohtori replied: ‘His best

pieces surpass the best of mine, and my worst are better than the

worst of his,’ Abul-Ala al Maarri, a great philologist and poet (born

in A.D. 973, died A.D. 1057), was asked which was the best poet of the

three, Abu Tammam, Al-Bohtori, or Al-Mutanabbi; he replied that two of

them were moralists, and that Bohtori was the poet. He died A.D. 897.

His poems were not arranged in order till Abu Bakr as Sauli collected

them and classed them alphabetically by their rhymes, while Abul Faraj

Ali bin Husain Al-Ispahani collected them also, and arranged them

according to their subjects. A copy of his ‘Diwan’ is in the

Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

Al Mutanabbi, or the pretended prophet, a rôle to which he aspired,

but in which he did not succeed, comes next to the two great

poets—Abu Tammam and Al-Bohtori—though some critics consider him to

be superior to them. He is, however, generally acknowledged to be a

great lyric poet, while many of his best Kasidas refer to the exploits

of Saif ad Dawlah, a prince of the Benou Hamdan dynasty in Syria. After

leaving him he went to Egypt, then to Persia, Baghdad, and finally

Kufa, his native place, near which he was killed in a fight in A.D.

965. It is stated that in this contest Mutanabbi, seeing himself

vanquished, was taking to flight, when his slave said to him, ‘Let it

never be said that you fled from a fight, you who are the author of

this verse: “The horse, and the night, and the desert know me (well);

the sword also, and the lance, and paper and the pen.”’

Upon this he turned back and fought till he was slain, along with his

son and his slave. His ‘Diwan,’ or collection of poems, is well known,

and much read in our times, even in India. It has been translated into

German.

An-Nami was one of the ablest and most talented poets of his time, but

inferior to Mutanabbi, with whom he had some encounters and contests

in reciting extemporary verses when they were at the court of Saif ad

Dawlah together. He died A.D. 1008 at Aleppo, aged ninety.

Abul-Abbas Al-Mofadhdhal, the collector of the celebrated selection of

Arabic poems called the ‘Mofadhdhaliat,’ which served as a model for

the Hamasas, was the first editor of the seven suspended poems, the

Mua’llakat, and also one of the earliest of the Arab philologists. He

was a native of Kufa, and adhered to the faction of Ibrahim bin

Abdallah; who rebelled in A.D. 761 against Al-Mansur, the second

Abbaside Khalif. Al-Mansur, however, pardoned Al-Mofadhdhal, and

attached him to the household of his son, Al-Mahdi, by whose orders

Mofadhdhal made a collection of the most celebrated longer poems of

the Arabs, one hundred and twenty-eight in number, under the title of

the Mofadhdhaliat. This, the oldest anthology of Arabian poets, was

first commented upon by his disciple, Al-Aarabi; then two hundred

years later by the two great philologists and anthologists, Al-Anbari

and An-Nahas; by Merzuk; and lastly by Tibrizi, who is sufficiently

known in Europe as the editor and commentator of the Hamasa, published

by Freytag with a Latin translation. Mofadhdhal supported himself as a

copyist of the Koran, and spent the last portion of his life in

mosques doing penance for the satires which he had composed against

various individuals. His other works were a book of proverbs, a

treatise on prosody, another on the ideas usually expressed in poetry,

and a vocabulary. He was held to be of the first authority as a

philologist, a genealogist, and a relator of the poems and battle-lays

of the desert Arabs. He died A.D. 784.

Abul Faraj Ali bin Husain Al-Ispahani is the collector of the great

anthology called ‘Kitab-ul-Aghani’ (the Book of Songs). This work,

which surpasses all former ones of this name, he produced after a

labour of forty years, and presented it to Saif ad Dawlah, who gave

him a thousand pieces of gold for it, but excused himself at the same

time for the smallness of this honorarium. In spite of his other

works, and the long string of names given him by Ibn Khallikan, he is

best known as Al-Ispahani, and as the author of the Aghani. His family

inhabited Ispahan, but he passed his early youth in Baghdad, and

became the most distinguished scholar and most eminent author of that

city. He was born A.D. 897, and died A.D. 967, in which year also died

the great scholar Kali, and the three greatest of his patrons, namely,

Saif ad Dawlah, the sovereign of the Benou Hamdan in Syria; Moiz ud

Dawlah, the sovereign of the Benou Bujeh in Irak; and Kafur, who

governed Egypt in the name of the Akhsid dynasty. The ‘Book of Songs,’

notwithstanding its title, is an important biographical dictionary,

treating of grammar, history and science, as well as of poetry.

Mention can here be made of Abu Muhammad Kassim Al-Hariri, who was one

of the ablest writers of his time, and the author of the ‘Makâmat

Hariri,’ a work consisting of fifty oratorical, poetical, moral,

encomiastic and satirical discourses, supposed to have been spoken or

read in public assemblies. Poets, historians, grammarians and

lexicographers look upon the ‘Makâmat’ (Assemblies or Séances) as the

highest authority, and next to the Koran, as far at least as language

is concerned. It contains a large portion of the language spoken by

the Arabs of the desert, such as its idioms, its proverbs, and its

subtle delicacies of expression; and, according to Ibn Khallikan, any

person who acquires a sufficient acquaintance with this book to

understand it rightly, will be led to acknowledge the eminent merit of

the author, his extensive information, and his vast abilities. A great

number of persons have commented on the ‘Makâmat,’ some in long and

others in short treatises, and many consider it to be the most

elegantly written, and the most amusing, work in the Arabic language.

Hariri was born A.D. 1054, and died at Busra A.D. 1122. He left some

other good works in the shape of treatises, epistles, and a great

number of poetical pieces, besides those contained in his ‘Makâmat.’

There are two translations of the ‘Makâmat’ into English. One by the

Reverend Theodore Preston, printed under the patronage of the Oriental

Translation Fund, London, 1850. It contains only twenty of the fifty

pieces in verse, with copious notes, while an epitome of the remaining

thirty pieces is given at the end of the book. The other by the late

Mr. Chennery, which ends with the twenty-sixth assembly or séance. The

whole work was edited in Arabic, with a select commentary upon it in

French, by Baron Silvestre de Sacy, and this was reprinted in 1847.

Ruckert also made a very free translation of it in German verse, which

reached a third edition in 1844, but this differs widely from the

contents of the original, though it is said to be more pleasing and

attractive to a general reader.

After the Muslim legal sciences had been established upon the fourfold

foundations of the Koran, tradition, general consent of communities,

and the analogies derived therefrom, then philosophy and mathematics

began to flourish by translations made either directly from the Greek

or through Syriac and Persian.

In former times, during the reign of Nausherwan, a Persian monarch of

great renown (A.D. 530-578), there was some intercourse between

Persian and Byzantine philosophers; several books on logic and

medicine had been translated from Greek into Persian, and from these

Abdullah Ibn Al-Mukaffa made translations into Arabic. The literary

career of Ibn Al-Mukaffa, who presumed to vie with the eloquence of

the Koran, and was considered to be a freethinker, and eventually

slain, falls into the reign of Al-Mansur (A.D. 754-775), the second

Khalif. But Ibn Al-Mukaffa rendered such services to Arabian

literature, that a short sketch of his life will presently be given.

During the reign of Mansur (A.D. 754-775) Greek works were translated,

not yet from the original, but from the Persian. During the Khalifate

of his son, Mahdi (A.D. 775-785), Abd-Allah bin Hilal translated the

celebrated animal fables of Bidpay from Persian into Arabic, under the

title of ‘Kalilah wa Dimnah,’ and they were afterwards versified by

Selil bin Nubakht. In Persian they are known under several titles,

such as ‘Kalilah wa Dimnah,’ the ‘Anwar-i Suheli,’ and the ‘Ayar

Danish,’ and in Turkish as the ‘Humayan-namah.’

Eight years before the seventh Khalif, Mamun (A.D. 812-833), ascended

the throne, many Greek and Syrian manuscripts had been collected in

Baghdad. These were all preserved there in the library, which was

called ‘The House of Wisdom,’ until Mamun began to utilize them by

means of translations. The Khalif appointed the scholars Al-Hajjaj, Ibn

Máttar, Ibn ul-Batrik, and Selma, to superintend the work, while the

three brothers, Muhammad, Ahmed, and Hasan, sons of the astronomer

Shakir, were directed to search for and to buy manuscripts. Mamun also

sent the two physicians, Yohanna and Kosta, into the Byzantine

dominions to bring manuscripts from thence to Baghdad. A new class of

scholars was then formed, in the shape of translators, who were

employed in translating works from the Greek, the Syriac, and the

Persian languages into Arabic. The translators from the Persian were

Musa and Yusuf, the two sons of Khalid, Hasan bin Sehl, and

afterwards, Al-Baladori; from the Sanscrit, Munkah the Indian; from

the Nabataean, Ibn Wahshiyah. Science became hereditary, as it were,

in the families of the most celebrated scholars; medical science in

the family of Bakhtyeshun; translations from Greek works in that of

Honein bin Ishak, the most famous of all translators, and a prolific

author besides. Maseweih and his son Yahya, Syriac Christians, were

both celebrated as physicians and translators of ancient Greek works

into Arabic; while Kosta bin Luka, who died in A.D. 932, was also one

of the most fertile translators from Greek into Arabic, and, being

born a Greek, he was able to correct the translations of Honein bin

Ishak and others.

The number of translators, which amounted to about one hundred, might

have been increased if Arab literature had further developed itself by

incorporating works from other languages; but, as such was not the

case, translators appeared very few and far between after the

literature had attained to its highest perfection, at the end of the

third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 913).

The celebrated Ibn Al-Mukaffa was one of the earliest and best

translators. His full name is Abd-Allah Ibn Al-Mukaffa, but before he

made his profession of Islam he bore that of Ruzbeh. He was a native

of Har, a town in the province of Fars, and first served as secretary

to Daud bin Hobeirah, and then to Isa bin Ali, the uncle of the two

first Khalifs of the house of Abbas. He was an excellent poet,

letter-writer, and orator, equally skilled in his mother-tongue, the

Persian, as in the Arabic language, from the former of which he left

the splendid translations of—

(1) ‘The Khodanamah,’ a legend.

(2) ‘The Amirnamah,’ or prince-book.

(3) ‘Kalilah wa Dimnah.’

(4) ‘Merdak.’

(5) ‘Biography of Nausherwan.’

(6) ‘The Great Book of Manners.’

(7) ‘The Small Book of Manners or Good

Habits.’

(8) ‘The Book of Epistles.’

So far the ‘Fihrist’; what follows is from Ibn Khallikan. Ibn

Al-Mukaffa was the secretary and most confidential servant of Isa bin

Ali, with whom he dined the day before he made his public profession

of Islam. Having sat down, he began to eat and to mutter according to

the custom of the Magians. ‘How,’ said Isa, ‘you mutter like the

Magians, though resolved to embrace Islamism!’ to which Ibn Al-Mukaffa

replied that he did not wish to pass a single night without being of

some religion. In spite of his conversion, he was always suspected of

freethinking, like Muti bin Iyas and Yahya bin Zaad, and one day, when

Al-Jahiz, the philologist, made the remark that they were persons the

sincerity of whose religious sentiments was doubted, one of the

learned, on hearing this, said: ‘How is it that Al-Jahiz forgets to

count himself?’

When Khalil the prosodist was one day asked his opinion about Ibn

Al-Mukaffa, he said, ‘His learning is greater than his wit;’ and the

latter, being asked the same question concerning Khalil, replied, ‘His

wit is greater than his learning.’ Being a favourite with the Khalif,

he took great liberties with Sofyan, the Governor of Busra, and

insulted the memory of his mother. One day Sulaiman and Isa, the

uncles of the Khalif Mansur, desired to obtain a letter of amnesty

from him for their brother Abd-Allah, and they instructed Ibn

Al-Mukaffa to compose one in the strongest terms, which he did, and

added to it the following clause, ‘Should the Prince of the Believers

ever act treacherously towards his uncle Abd-Allah, then may he be

divorced from his wives, may his slaves be free, and may his subjects

be solved from obedience!’ The Khalif’s dignity was shocked, and he

ordered the writer of this letter of amnesty to be forthwith executed,

and the Governor of Busra, whom Ibn Al-Mukaffa had many times insulted,

very gladly undertook the duty. Al-Madaini narrates that when Ibn

Al-Mukaffa was brought before Sofyan, the latter asked him whether he

remembered the insults he had heaped upon his mother, and added, ‘May

my mother really deserve those insults if I do not get you executed in

a manner hitherto unheard of!’ He also recalled Ibn Al-Mukaffa’s joke

about Sofyan’s big nose, because he had one day asked the governor,

‘How are you and your nose?’ On another occasion, when the governor

remarked that he never had reason to repent keeping silence, Ibn

Al-Mukaffa replied, ‘Dumbness becomes you; then why should you repent

of it.’ Accordingly Sofyan ordered the members of Ibn Al-Mukaffa’s body

to be chopped off, one after the other, and thrown into a burning

oven, into which, last of all, the trunk of his body was also thrown.

There are other accounts of his death, viz., that he was strangled in

a bath, or shut up in a privy. One opinion, however, generally

prevails, that the execution was not a public one. The date of it is

uncertain—A.D. 756, 759, and 760, are all given; but the victim was

only thirty-six years of age at the time.

A few remarks may be made about the support given to learning and men

of letters by the Omaiyide and Abbaside Khalifs, as also by those of

the Spanish or Western Khalifate.

The Omaiyide Khalifs, with their capital at Damascus, were generally

patrons of science, poetry, architecture, song, and music. But all

these branches of knowledge were at that time merely rudimental; and,

of the fourteen sovereigns of the dynasty, only five really deserve

the name of protectors of learning; and of these Abdul Malik (A.D.

684-705), and his son Walid I. (A.D. 705-715), were the most

distinguished.

During the period of their Khalifate there were not only male, but

also some female poets. All their poems are mostly short, and confined

to amatory, laudatory, or vituperative compositions, called forth by

the momentary circumstances in which the authors happened to be

placed. These pieces do not represent either deep thought or profound

wisdom, but they show the feelings of the people, and their state of

civilization at the time in question.

During this Khalifate were also produced the earliest germs of

stylistics, epistolography and mysticism, all of which were more fully

developed under the Abbasides. The originator of the first two was the

Katib Abd Al-Hamid, secretary to the last Omaiyide Khalif, and he is

designated in an old Arabic rhyme as ‘the father of all secretaries.’

Epistolary writing, it was said, began with Abd Al-Hamid, and finished

with Ibn Al-Amid. As regards mysticism, the origin of its doctrines is

sometimes assigned to Oweis Al-Kareni, the Prophet’s companion, who

disappeared mysteriously in A.D. 658. But mysticism and Sufism were

subsequently much developed by Muhi-uddin Muhammad, surnamed Ibn

Al-Arabi, a most voluminous writer on these subjects. He was born at

Murcia, in Spain, A.D. 1165, and after studying in that country, went

to the East, made the pilgrimage, visited Cairo and other cities, and

died at Damascus A.D. 1240. He is the author of many works, but the

most remarkable of them are ‘Revelations obtained at Mecca’ and

‘Maxims of Wisdom set as Jewels.’ Both Makkari the historian, and Von

Hammer Purgstall, in his history of Arabian literature from the

earliest times, give a long account of him.

Of the Khalifs of the house of Abbas, the second, third, fifth and

seventh, viz., Al-Mansur (A.D. 754-775), Al-Mahdi (A.D. 775-785),

Harun-ar-Rashid (A.D. 786-809), and Al-Mamun (A.D. 812-833) were the

most distinguished as patrons of art, science and literature. But

after the translation of the ‘Arabian Nights’ into European languages,

the name of Harun-ar-Rashid became the best known in Europe as the

representative of the most brilliant period of the Eastern Khalifate,

and as the great protector of Arabic literature.

Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasides, was founded by their second

Khalif, Al-Mansur, in A.D. 760, finished in four years, and raised to

a high degree of splendour by Harun-ar-Rashid. Originally it was

considered only as a great strategic point, and its garrisons were to

keep the surrounding country in subjection. Eventually it became the

centre of learning and civilization, and an Arab author wrote of it as

follows: ‘Baghdad is certainly the capital of the world, and the mine

of every excellence. It is the city whose inhabitants have always been

the first to unfurl the banners of knowledge, and to raise the

standard of science; indeed, their subtlety in all branches of

learning, their gentle manners and amiable disposition, noble bearing,

acuteness, wit, penetration and talent are deservedly praised.’

Baghdad, at the beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era,

was the centre of all that was grand and brilliant in the Muhammadan

world. Art and commerce, literature and science, were cultivated to a

high degree, and the luxury and extravagance of court life exceeded

almost the imagination of temperate European minds.

Everything curious, romantic and wonderful, narrated in the ‘Nights’

is connected with Harun-ar-Rashid’s name, or supposed to have happened

in his reign. Thus, his vizier, Jaafar, the Barmekide, the

superintendent of his harem, Mesrur, and his spouse, Zobeida, were

first made known to novel-readers, and their importance as historical

personages were duly appreciated afterwards, when Erpenius, Pococke,

Herbelot, and Reiske elucidated the history of the Khalifate by

translating the works of the Arab chroniclers Abul-Faraj, Al-Makin,

and Abul-feda. Later on still further information was made public

about the translations made from Greek and Syriac into Arabic during

his reign, as also concerning his position, not only as a lover of

tales, but as a promoter of jurisprudence, a patron of the medical and

mathematical sciences, and a builder of magnificent and useful

edifices. His court was also well attended by poets and singers.

Harun was not, indeed, the first prince who made arrangements for

translations from the Greek and the Syriac. In this he had been

preceded, as already mentioned, by the Omaiyide prince, Khalid, the

alchemist. But during the reign of Harun the business of translation

was carried on to a much greater extent than it was under his

predecessors, the Khalifs Mansur and Mahdi, during whose time

translations were undertaken from Greek into Syriac, from Indian

(Sanscrit) into Persian, but not yet into Arabic. The translators were

mostly Christians and Jews. Theophilos of Edessa, the Maronite

translator of Homer and of other Greek classics into Syriac, was an

astronomer and an historian. Both he and the physician Georgios, son

of Bakhtyeshun, from the university of Jondshapur, were Christians.

Nubakht, the astronomer of the Khalif Mansur, was a Magian

(Zoroastrian), Yahya bin Maseweih, Harun’s physician, translated

medical works. Hajaj bin Yusuf bin Matta dedicated his first edition

of the elements of Euclid to Harun, and the second to Mamun.

As the family of the Barmekides played an important part, not only in

politics, but also in literature, until its chief members were

annihilated by Harun’s orders, a brief notice of them may here be

given.

Khalid bin Barmek was the son of a priest at the fire temple of

Nevbehar in Balkh, and became in course of time vizier of the first

Abbaside Khalif, and was retained in that office by the second Khalif,

Al-Mansur, and by the third, Al-Mahdi. He died A.D. 780.

Yahya, the son of Khalid, not only himself became the vizier of Harun,

but also his two sons, Fadhl and Jaafar. Yahya was very liberal, and

gave away sometimes considerable sums of money for very small

services, or, indeed, for no service at all. After his son Jaafar had

been executed, Yahya was thrown into prison, along with his other son,

Fadhl, at Old Rakka, where he died in A.D. 805, at the age of seventy

or seventy-four.

Fadhl, the son of Yahya, was more liberal but less eloquent than his

brother Jaafar. Harun esteemed the two brothers so highly that he

entrusted his son Muhammad to the care of Fadhl, and his son Mamun to

the care of Jaafar. Afterwards he made Jaafar his vizier, and sent

Fadhl to be Governor of Khurasan. There Fadhl built mosques,

reservoirs of water and caravanserais, augmented the army, and

attracted numbers of emigrants to the country, whereby he gained the

approval of Harun, who ordered his poets to sing his praises. After

the execution of Jaafar, Harun took Yahya, with his son Fadhl and all

the Barmekides, to Rakka, giving Yahya the option to go where he

liked; but he preferred to be imprisoned with his son in Rakka. There

Fadhl died in A.D. 809, and when Harun was informed of his death, he

said: ‘My own is not far,’ and died a few months afterwards in Tus,

the modern Mashad. The death of Fadhl, as a generous patron, was

bewailed by several poets, such as Abul Hojna, Otbi, Abu Nuwas, and

others. Fadhl was also notable for his filial piety, and when the use

of cold water injured the health of his father whilst they were in

prison, he used to warm the water by placing a pot of it on his own

stomach.

Jaafar (the brother of Fadhl and a son of Yahya), who was slain A.D.

802, is to be mentioned here, not for his tragic fate, which is well

known, but rather for his literary attainments, especially his oratory

and his style, in both of which he excelled. From his long biography,

written by Ibn Khallikan, there will be given here only some extracts

relating to science and literature. He was a great master of speech,

and expressed his thoughts with much elegance. In one night he

endorsed more than a thousand petitions addressed to the Khalif with

his decisions, all of which were in perfect concordance with the law.

His instructor in jurisprudence had been Abu Yusuf the Hanifite, whom

his father Yahya had appointed to teach him. The favour enjoyed by

Jaafar with Harun-ar-Rashid was so great that this Khalif caused one

robe to be made with two separate collars, which they both wore at the

same time. Ibn Khallikan narrates the traditions relating to the fall

of Jaafar and his family; the one refers to his amours with Abbasa,

the sister of Harun, and to the birth of a child; the other to the

escape of a member of Ali’s family entrusted to Jaafar’s guardianship

by Harun. The true cause was probably the Khalifs envy of the power,

wealth, and generosity of the Barmekides, along with the backbitings

of their enemies. Jaafar was slain at Al-Omr in the district of

Al-Anbar, his head and the trunk of his body were set up opposite to

each other on the two sides of the bridge of Baghdad, and his death

was lamented by various poets.

After Mamun (A.D. 812-833) the most intellectual Khalif appears to

have been Radhi-billah (A.D. 934-940). His poems were collected in a

Diwan. He was the last Khalif who presided not only over the

Government as a sovereign, but also over the pulpit as Imam; indeed,

he may be said to be the terminal point of the power, brilliancy and

independence of the house of Abbas, which henceforth gradually

declined till its final extinction with the conquest of Baghdad by the

Mughals in A.D. 1258.

The great chess-player, Abu-bakr as Sauli, bears witness, in Masudi’s

‘Meadows of Gold,’ to the great accomplishments of Radhi-billah, and

to his love of the sciences. Of games, chess and nerd[4] flourished

during his reign, and although the perfection of song and of

lute-playing had already passed away, singers and musicians are still

mentioned. Of the amusements of the court, hunting appears to have

flourished most, and the learned poet Koshajim, who wrote on the game

of nerd, also left instructive poems on the chase. Radhi-billah

appears to have been fond of books of travel and of natural history,

and of the society of men of letters and of science, and liked

listening to recitals on the history, politics, and glory of the old

Persian kings.

[Footnote 4: Nerd.—This game is mentioned as early as the

Shah-Namah, the author of which, Firdausi, was of opinion

that it is of genuine Persian, and not of Indian origin,

like chess, but this assertion is not necessarily correct.

Hyde has described the game in his ‘Historia Nerdiludii,’

and it resembles somewhat the German puff and triktrak, and

the English backgammon. It is played on a board divided into

black-and-white compartments, with a black and a white house

in the centre. The moves are made according to the numbers

that come up on the throw of two dice.]

Of the Spanish Khalifs, mention only will be made of the ninth

sovereign of the Benou Omaiyide dynasty in Andalusia, viz., Hakim II.,

who died A.D. 976. Among the five Arab rulers of Spain—viz., three

Abd-ar-Rahmans and two Hakims—who have acquired everlasting fame in

history as special friends of science and patrons of learned men,

Abd-ar-Rahman III. and Hakim II. are the greatest and most prominent.

They stand in the Arab literary history of the West as high as Harun

and his son Mamun do in the history of the literature of the East. As

Mamun was the greatest of the Benou Abbas Khalifs of Baghdad who

promoted science and art, so Hakim II. was the greatest of the Benou

Omaiyides in Cordova. From his earliest youth he had received a most

careful scientific education, and applied his energies to study, as he

could not devote them to public affairs on account of the long

duration of his father’s reign, from A.D. 912 to 961. Hakim’s father,

Abd-ar-Rahman III., invited the learned Abu Ali Ismail Al Kali, the

philologist and author, from the court of Baghdad, where he enjoyed

the greatest consideration with the Khalif Mutwakkil, to Cordova, and

entrusted him with the education of his son, who, later on, composed a

Diwan (collection of poems), divided into twenty parts, bearing, like

the Surahs, or Chapters of the Koran, the most sublime objects of

nature as titles, such as ‘Heaven,’ ‘the Stars,’ ‘the Dawn,’ ‘the

Night,’ etc. Hakim pursued his studies under Kali for twenty years,

with as much pleasure as advantage, and after ascending the throne,

science and art still remained his companions. When his father died,

and he assumed the Government, he led the funeral procession,

surrounded by his Andalusian, Slavonic, and Mograbin body-guard, and

interred the corpse with the greatest pomp in the mausoleum of Rozafa,

and after that accepted the homage of his Viziers, Amirs, Kayids, and

Kadis. Astrologers and poets heralded at Cordova and in the whole of

Andalusia the continuation of the father’s prosperous reign by his

son, and spoke the truth this time.

Hakim, who had already as a youth been fond of books, now, when he

became sovereign, fully satisfied this predilection, which had grown

to be a passion. He spared neither trouble nor expense in collecting

in his Merwan palace the rarest and most costly books in every branch

of science from all countries. He sent special commissioners to Egypt,

Syria, Irak, and Persia to purchase books. At Baghdad, Muhammad bin

Turkhan was charged with the business of purchasing books, or getting

them copied, for which purpose he had an establishment of

calligraphers and stenographers; because of some books beautiful, and

of others rapidly made, copies were required. He procured all the

genealogies, all the histories, and all the poems of the Arabs; all

works on law and jurisprudence, on grammar, rhetoric, philosophy,

philology, mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic and geography, composed

in Arabic. Thus the library of the Merwan palace became not only the

richest in Islam, but also the best arranged, by the care which he

bestowed on it. The catalogue consisted of forty-four fascicles, each

of fifty leaves, so that the whole constituted a volume of two

thousand two hundred leaves, two-fifths of which were filled with

titles of poetical works only. In this catalogue the titles of the

books were inserted, with the names of their authors, their descent,

birth-place, the year of their birth and of their decease, in the most

accurate manner, to serve as a model for other libraries, of which

Spain contained so many. This library alone is said to have consisted

of six hundred thousand volumes, a number never surpassed by any

earlier or later libraries in Islam.

To his two brothers, who loved the sciences as ardently as himself,

Hakim entrusted the care of the libraries, and of public instruction,

appointing Abdul Latif to be the chief librarian, and another man to

be the director of studies. He kept up intercourse with the great

scholars of the East and of the West, with sundry persons in Syria,

with learned men in Egypt, and with Abul Faraj Al-Ispahani (author of

the great anthology ‘Kitab-ul-Aghani’) in Irak, giving houses and

salaries to those who chose to reside at his court.

A few words must be said about the establishment of places of learning

which were celebrated at the time. The first university, in the sense

in which such an institution is at present understood, was flourishing

in Syria long before any seat of learning of this kind had been

established in Europe; and there was another in Egypt. The first

institution was called ‘The Society of the Brethren of Purity,’ and

the second (opened at Cairo on the 24th May, A.D. 1005) was founded by

Al-Hakim-bramrillah, and bore the name of Dar-ul Hikinat, or Abode of

Wisdom. It was under this same name that the library of the Khalifs

was formerly known at Baghdad. Later on the great vizier Nizam-ul-Mulk

founded a high school at Baghdad, in A.D. 1066. It was not the first

that had been established in Islam, but it eclipsed all others of the

kind by the abilities of the professors who worked there, viz., the

Imam Abu Ishak Shirazi, Al-Ghazali, and others. With the Society of

the Brethren of Purity, mentioned above, there were two men closely

connected, viz., Al-Tavhidi, who died A.D. 985, and Al-Majridi, who

died A.D. 1004, the former in the East, the latter in the West, and

both of them are deserving of the general name of philosopher. So much

for the Eastern Khalifates. As regards the Western Khalifate, still

greater attention was paid to education and learning there. The

schools and lectures were attended by many Europeans, who were not,

perhaps, sufficiently grateful to the Arabs for keeping up a progress

in literature and science while Europe itself was struggling for

emancipation from the dark ages which followed the higher cultures of

Greece and of Rome.

THIRD PERIOD.

From the fall of Baghdad, in A.D. 1258, to the present time.

The conquest of Baghdad by the Mughals is a most remarkable period,

not only in the literature, but also in the history, of the Arabs. It

marks the final extinction of the Abbaside dynasty, from whom the

ancient power and glory had vanished to such a degree that the

authority of the Khalifs may almost literally be said to have been

confined to the city only. Halaku Khan, the brother of the grand Khan

Kubilai, and grandson of Jenghiz Khan, took and sacked Baghdad,

keeping the Khalif imprisoned for some time, but slaying him at last,

with his sons and several thousand Abbasides. Al-Mustaa’sim was the

thirty-seventh and last Khalif of the house of Abbas, which had

reigned over five hundred years, and was now extinguished.

Halaku Khan attacked Baghdad by the advice of Khojah Nasir-uddin Tusy,

the great Persian astronomer and mathematician. Nasir-uddin had

entered the service of the last prince of the Assassins only for the

purpose of avenging himself on the Khalif, who had disparaged one of

his works. When, however, he became aware of Halaku’s power, he not

only betrayed his new master to him, but led the Mughal conqueror also

to Baghdad. After the burning of the library at Alamut (the stronghold

of the Assassins, where they kept their literary treasures) and the

sacking of Baghdad by Halaku Khan, the erection of the astronomical

observatory at Maragha, under the direction of Nasir-uddin Tusy, was

the first sign that Arab civilization and the cultivation of science

had not been entirely extinguished by Tartar barbarism. The learned

viziers who stood by the side of the conqueror, such as the two

brothers Juvaini, were Persians, and therefore hardly belong to the

history of Arab literature. But the fact that one of these two

historians now wrote ‘The Heart Opener,’ also implies that the

invasion of the barbarians had not quite put an end to literary

activity.

More than ten historians flourished at the beginning of this period

whose names terminated with ‘din,’ such as Baha-uddin, Imad-uddin,

Kamal-uddin, etc., and they were contemporaries of the Arab Plutarch

Ibn Khallikan, already mentioned and described in the preceding

period.

The ‘Alfiyya,’ or Quintessence of Arab Grammar, was written in verse

by Jamal-uddin Abu Abdallah Muhammad, known under the name of Ibn

Malik. The author died in A.D. 1273-1274; but his work has lived, and

it is looked upon as a good exponent of the system. The Arab text has

been published, with a commentary upon it in French, by Silvestre de

Sacy, A.D. 1834.

During the eighth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1301-1398), there lived

three distinguished men, one famed as a geographer and traveller, and

the other two as historians, viz., Ibn Batuta, Abul Feda, and Ibn

Khaldun. The first-named left his native town, Tangiers, in A.D. 1324,

and travelled all over the East, performing his pilgrimage to Mecca in

A.D. 1332. The travels of Ibn Batuta were translated by the Rev. S.

Lee, and published by the Oriental Translation Fund, as their first

work, in A.D. 1829. This traveller has been noticed by Kosegarten in a

Latin treatise, and his travels have been also translated into French,

with the Arabic text above, by C. Defremery and R. Sanguinetti, at the

expense of the French Government (1874-1879).

Abul Feda Ismail Hamawi is well known as an historian, and is

frequently mentioned by Gibbon as one of his authorities. He wrote an

account of the regions beyond the Oxus, and also an abridgment of

universal history down to his own time, and as he is supposed to be

very exact, and his style elegant, his works are very much esteemed.

He died A.D. 1345, having succeeded his brother Ahmad as King of Hamat

in Syria, A.D. 1342.

Ibn Khaldun, the African philosopher, was born in Tunis, A.D. 1332,

and passed his youth in Egypt. He served a short time as Chief Justice

at Damascus, and returned to Egypt, where he became Supreme Judge, and

died there A.D. 1406. His principal and most remarkable work is the

‘History of the Arabs, the Persians, and the Berbers.’

During the ninth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1398-1495) Arabian

literature can still boast of a few great names. Ibn-Hajar was not

only the continuator of Ibn Kesir’s universal history, called ‘The

Beginning and the End,’ but also the author of biographies of

celebrated men who had lived during the preceding century, and of

other works besides. He died A.D. 1449. Ibn Arabshah was the writer of

a history of Timour, or Tamerlane, which has some celebrity, and has

been translated into Latin and French. He was a native of Damascus,

and died there A.D. 1450.

Majr-uddin Muhammad Bin Yakub, surnamed Firuzabadi, a learned Persian,

was the author of the largest and most celebrated Arabic dictionary in

existence at the time, called the ‘Qânûs,’ or Ocean, a standard work

to this day, and always greatly praised, and also used by European

lexicographers.

Taki-uddin, of Fez, composed the best history of Mekka, and A’ini, who

died A.D. 1451, wrote two celebrated historical works. But the

greatest historian of this time was Al-Makrisi, whose proper name was

Taki-uddin Ahmad, and who was born at Makris, near Baalbec, in A.D.

1366. He early devoted himself to the study of history, geography,

astrology, etc., at Cairo, and his Egyptian history and topography is

still an important work, describing the state of the country and its

rulers. He died at Cairo, A.D. 1442. Some of his works have been

translated into French and Latin, and are still referred to.

In honour of Sayuti, that colossus of learning, who cultivated,

according to the spirit of his times, so many sciences, and dealt with

them practically, this might be called the poly-historical and

poly-geographical period. Julal-uddin Sayuti is said to be the author

of some four hundred works, and he died in A.D. 1505, some twelve years

before the conquest of Egypt by Selim I, the Sultan of Turkey, when

independent Arab literature under Arab sovereigns came to an end. It

is true enough that not only in Egypt and Syria, but also in Turkey

and Persia, Arabic books were written afterwards, but more under

foreign protection, although in the two first-named countries Arabic

is the language of the people, while in the last two it occupies

nearly the same position that Latin does in European universities and

in the Roman Catholic Church.

In the tenth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1495-1592) the generally

prevalent belief that the world would, at the completion of it, come

to an end, contributed much to the gradual decay of science and

literature. The case is somewhat analogous to the superstition in

Europe some six hundred years previously, when the Christian era

attained its millennium, which was considered to carry with it the

same catastrophe. This prophecy, believed to be true, contributed in

some measure to slacken authority as well as exertion, and the power

of Islamitic countries really sank; but this might have been predicted

without any prophetic foresight. In one part of Islam, the ruin of

Muhammadan countries thus prophesied was accomplished twenty-one years

before the end of the thousandth year, that is in the 979th year of

the Hijrah, A.D. 1571, by the total expulsion of the Moors from Spain.

Granada itself had succumbed already, seventy-nine years before, and

the unwieldy palace of the kings, of Spain (still unfinished) had

risen by the side of the lofty arcades of the Alhambra, still a lovely

specimen of Moorish artistic design and architecture.

The tenth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1495-1592), which was the first

of the decay of Arab literature, is to be considered as the period

when the political importance of Turkey culminated in the reign of

Sulaiman the Law-giver. There were, however, four authors of celebrity

who wrote both in Arabic and in Turkish. Ibn Kamal Pasha, the surname

of Mufti Shams-uddin Ahmad bin-Sulaiman, who died A.D. 1534, wrote on

history in Turkish, and on law in Arabic; the Mufti Abu Sa’ud acquired

great renown by his numerous Fetwas (legal decisions), approving of

the political institutions of Sulaiman; Ibrahim of Aleppo is the

author of the ‘Molteka’ (Confluence of Two Seas), which embodies the

essence of Muslim law, according to the Hanifi ritual; and lastly,

Birgeli, otherwise known as Mulla Muhammad Ibn Pir Ali ul-Birkali, was

equally great as a dogmatist and as a grammarian. He wrote in Arabic

‘The Unique Pearl; or, The Art of Reading the Koran,’ and died A.D.

1573. Special mention, too, must be made of Mulla Ahmad Bin Mustafa,

the celebrated Arabian, whom Haji-Khalfa always calls by the more

euphonious name of Abul-Khair (Father of Wisdom). This author is

worthy of notice, on account of the Arabic works he wrote on

biographical, historical, and especially encyclopædic subjects. His

‘Key of Felicity’ will remain for ever the best encyclopædia of

Arabian sciences, representing as it does their division among the

Arabs, with notices of the works of scholars in every branch of them

in a most compact and comprehensive manner. He died A.D. 1560.

The three most celebrated calligraphers of this century were

Hamdallah, who died A.D. 1518; Mir Ali, who died A.D. 1544; and

Muhammad Hussain Tabrizi, who died A.D. 1574. Their names are just as

celebrated for Thuluth and Talik writing as were formerly those of Ibn

Bawwab, of Ibn Hilal, and of Yakut are for Naskhi. In Egypt and Syria

the characters used were always more beautiful than those of

Andalusia, which survived in the Mugrib (North of Africa).

Here, perhaps, it may be stated that the art of Arabic writing came

into existence but a very short time before Muhammad. ‘It was Abu Ali

bin Mukla who first took the present system of written characters from

the style of writing employed by the people of Kufa, and brought it

out under its actual form. He had, therefore, the merit of priority,

and it may be added that his handwriting was very elegant. But to Ibn

Al Bawwab pertains the honour of rendering the character more regular

and simple, and of clothing it in grace and beauty.’ In other words,

Ibn Mukla was the first who changed the Kufic into the new Naskhi

character, which Ibn Bawwab improved after him by imparting rotundity

and clearness to the new letters, and which Ibn Yakut Al-Mausili

brought afterwards to the greatest perfection in A.D. 1200.

Ibn Mukla, who was born in A.D. 885, and died A.D. 941, was vizier to

the Khalifs Al-Kahir-billah and Al-Radhi-billah; but, falling into

disfavour through the intrigues of his enemies, he first had his hand

cut off in A.D. 937, and eventually his tongue was torn out, and he

was allowed to perish in the dungeon without any assistance being

offered to him.

Ibn-al-Bawwab, the Penman, is said to have possessed a skill in

penmanship to which no other person ever attained in ancient or modern

times. He died at Baghdad A.D. 1032, and the following verses were

composed as his elegy:

‘Thy loss was felt by the writers of former times, And each

successive day justifies their grief. The ink-bottles are

therefore black with sorrow, And the pens are rent through

affliction.’

During the eleventh century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1592-1689) there lived

Mustafa bin Abdullah Katib Jelaby, otherwise known as Haji Khalfa, and

commonly called Mustafa Haji Khalfa, a man of science as a Turkish

historian and geographer, but an Arabic encyclopædist and

bibliographer. He was the compiler of a work containing many thousands

of titles of Arab, Persian, and Turkish books, with the names of their

authors. Fluegel edited this great work under the title of ‘Lexicon

Enciclopædicum et Bibliographicum,’ with a Latin translation in seven

bulky volumes, and it is an extremely valuable work of reference, put

together with the most astonishing and persevering care, and consulted

by all who desire information on Arabic, Persian, and Turkish

literature. This was printed by the Oriental Translation Fund between

A.D. 1835 and 1850, and will always remain as one of the most valuable

works printed by that most useful society, whose extinction must ever

be regretted by all Orientalists and persons interested in Oriental

literature. Haji Khalfa wrote another interesting work, giving a

detailed account of the maritime wars of the Turks in the

Mediterranean and Black Sea and on the Danube, which has been

translated by Mr. James Mitchell. The date of Haji Khalfa’s death is

uncertain. He is known to have been alive in A.D. 1622, and still in

1652, and he is supposed to have died in A.D. 1657.

The works of Abul Khair, previously mentioned, and of Haji Khalfa,

embody a mass of information, and constitute the top of the pyramid of

encyclopædical and biographical works, after which nothing worthy of

mention has been written on these subjects. The basis of this pyramid

had been already laid by An-Nadim, the author of the ‘Fihrist,’ who

flourished A.D. 987, and by Ibn Khallikan, who died A.D. 1282.

During this century (A.D. 1592-1689) of the most sanguinary wars,

revolutions and dethronements, the condition of Arab literature in the

Ottoman Empire was neither progressive nor satisfactory. Nevertheless,

the study of the sciences, and especially the linguistic and juridical

branches of them, were fostered not only in Constantinople, but also

in Syria and Egypt, in consequence of the institution of the body of

Ulema, established by Muhammad II., the Conqueror (A.D. 1451-1481),

and improved by Sulaiman I., the Law-giver (A.D. 1520-1566), which

sheltered the cultivation of science from the storms of war within the

inviolable precincts of religion.

Mention may be made of Muhammad-Al-Amin, the learned philologist and

lawyer of Damascus, who was born in that town about the middle of the

eleventh and died the beginning of the twelfth century of the Hijrah,

and produced a dozen respectable works, the principal of which bears

the title of ‘The Biographies of the Celebrated Men of the Eleventh

Century,’ A.H. He gives an account of a couple of hundred scholars,

who represented in Egypt and in Syria the last rays of the setting sun

of Arabian literature.

Next to Muhammad-Al-Amin another author of about a dozen works is to

be noticed, namely, Ahmad-Al Makkari, whose principal work was a

history of the Muhammadan dynasties in Spain, which was translated

from the copies in the library of the British Museum, and illustrated

with critical notes on Spanish history, geography and antiquities, by

Pascual de Gayangos, and printed for the Oriental Translation Fund of

Great Britain and Ireland in A.D. 1840-43. Makkari also wrote a

history of Fez and Morocco, as well as an account of Damascus. He

died at Cairo A.D. 1631.

Besides some historians, grammarians, philologists and poets, the

eleventh century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1592-1689) produced in Syria and

Egypt even astronomers and physicians, who distinguished themselves as

scholars. Of writers of light literature Khafaji may be named as the

chief. He composed a Diwan of ardent love poems, with two anthologies,

containing specimens of verses from a couple of poets, his

contemporaries. He died A.D. 1658. A few more writers might be

mentioned; but their efforts strongly mark the decline of Arabic

literature in the East, the cultivation of which, however, was

henceforth more energetically pursued in Europe, where many works have

been printed and translated.

With the twelfth century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1689-1786) the history of

original Arab literature may be said to have terminated, and its

genius to have disappeared. A revival, however, of Arabian learning is

taking place in Egypt, Syria, and North Africa, but in accordance with

European models, and chiefly under European auspices. All original

research has long been extinct, even among those populations whose

vernacular is the Arabic language; and consequently it is the former,

and not the present state of Arab literature, which is the most

interesting to the people of to-day.

The presses of Constantinople, Cairo, Algiers, Beyruth, and some other

places, reproduce old Arabic works of value, but more translations

from European languages than original compositions are printed and

lithographed. From Bombay, where more than fifty presses are at work,

large quantities of books are exported to countries beyond the British

possessions. These books treat generally of religion, poetry, history,

or medicine; but as they deal more with ancient than with modern

knowledge, they do not tend to propagate progress.

But though Arab literature has decayed, the faith of Islam is still

active and energetic. It is estimated that one hundred and eighty

millions of human beings still follow the precepts of the Prophet, and

daily turn their faces to Mecca, which for them has been, and still

is, the cradle of their faith, the touchstone of their religion, and

the idol of their hearts.