A Literary History of the Arabs Part 29

[Sidenote: Critics in favour of the modern school.]

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

[Sidenote: Popularity of the modern poets.]

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

[Sidenote: Characteristics of the new poetry.]

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

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

[Sidenote: Five typical poets of the 'Abbasid period.]

It is of course impossible to do justice even to the princ.i.p.al 'Abbasid poets within the limits of this chapter, but the following five may be taken as fairly representative: Mu?i' b. Iyas, Abu Nuwas, Abu 'l-'Atahiya, Mutanabbi, and Abu 'l-'Ala al-Ma'arri. The first three were in close touch with the court of Baghdad, while Mutanabbi and Abu 'l-'Ala flourished under the ?amdanid dynasty which ruled in Aleppo.

[Sidenote: Mu?i' b. Iyas.]

Mu?i' b. Iyas only deserves notice here as the earliest poet of the New School. His father was a native of Palestine, but he himself was born and educated at Kufa. He began his career under the Umayyads, and was devoted to the Caliph Walid b. Yazid, who found in him a fellow after his own heart, "accomplished, dissolute, an agreeable companion and excellent wit, reckless in his effrontery and suspected in his religion."[525] When the 'Abbasids came into power Mu?i' attached himself to the Caliph Man?ur. Many stories are told of the debauched life which he led in the company of _zindiqs_, or freethinkers, a cla.s.s of men whose opinions we shall sketch in another chapter. His songs of love and wine are distinguished by their lightness and elegance. The best known is that in which he laments his separation from the daughter of a _Dihqan_ (Persian landed proprietor), and invokes the two palm-trees of ?ulwan, a town situated on the borders of the Jibal province between Hamadhan and Baghdad. From this poem arose the proverb, "Faster friends than the two palm-trees of ?ulwan."[526]

THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER.

"O ye two palms, palms of ?ulwan, Help me weep Time's bitter dole!

Know that Time for ever parteth Life from every living soul.

Had ye tasted parting's anguish, Ye would weep as I, forlorn.

Help me! Soon must ye asunder By the same hard fate be torn.

Many are the friends and loved ones Whom I lost in days of yore.

Fare thee well, O yeoman's daughter!-- Never grief like this I bore.

Her, alas, mine eyes behold not, And on me she looks no more!"

[Sidenote: Abu Nuwas ( _circa_ 810 A.D.).]

By Europeans who know him only through the _Thousand and One Nights_ Abu Nuwas is remembered as the boon-companion and court jester of "the good Haroun Alraschid," and as the hero of countless droll adventures and facetious anecdotes--an Oriental Howlegla.s.s or Joe Miller. It is often forgotten that he was a great poet who, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, takes rank above all his contemporaries and successors, including even Mutanabbi, and is not surpa.s.sed in poetical genius by any ancient bard.

?asan b. Hani' gained the familiar t.i.tle of Abu Nuwas (Father of the lock of hair) from two locks which hung down on his shoulders. He was born of humble parents, about the middle of the eighth century, in A?waz, the capital of Khuzistan. That he was not a pure Arab the name of his mother, Jallaban, clearly indicates, while the following verse affords sufficient proof that he was not ashamed of his Persian blood:--

"Who are Tamim and Qays and all their kin?

The Arabs in G.o.d's sight are n.o.body."[527]

He received his education at Ba?ra, of which city he calls himself a native,[528] and at Kufa, where he studied poetry and philology under the learned Khalaf al-A?mar. After pa.s.sing a 'Wanderjahr' among the Arabs of the desert, as was the custom of scholars at that time, he made his way to Baghdad and soon eclipsed every compet.i.tor at the court of Harun the Orthodox. A man of the most abandoned character, which he took no pains to conceal, Abu Nuwas, by his flagrant immorality, drunkenness, and blasphemy, excited the Caliph's anger to such a pitch that he often threatened the culprit with death, and actually imprisoned him on several occasions; but these fits of severity were brief. The poet survived both Harun and his son, Amin, who succeeded him in the Caliphate. Age brought repentance--"the Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be." He addressed the following lines from prison to Fa?l b.

al-Rabi', whom Harun appointed Grand Vizier after the fall of the Barmecides:--

"Fa?l, who hast taught and trained me up to goodness (And goodness is but habit), thee I praise.

Now hath vice fled and virtue me revisits, And I have turned to chaste and pious ways.

To see me, thou would'st think the saintly Ba?rite, ?asan, or else Qatada, met thy gaze,[529]

So do I deck humility with leanness, While yellow, locust-like, my cheek o'erlays.

Beads on my arm; and on my breast the Scripture, Where hung a chain of gold in other days."[530]

The Diwan of Abu Nuwas contains poems in many different styles--_e.g._, panegyric (_madi?), satire (_hija_), songs of the chase (?ardiyyat_), elegies (_marathi_), and religious poems (_zuhdiyyat_); but love and wine were the two motives by which his genius was most brilliantly inspired. His wine-songs (_khamriyyat_) are generally acknowledged to be incomparable. Here is one of the shortest:--

"Thou scolder of the grape and me, I ne'er shall win thy smile!

Because against thee I rebel, 'Tis churlish to revile.

Ah, breathe no more the name of wine Until thou cease to blame, For fear that thy foul tongue should smirch Its fair and lovely name!

Come, pour it out, ye gentle boys, A vintage ten years old, That seems as though 'twere in the cup A lake of liquid gold.

And when the water mingles there, To fancy's eye are set Pearls over shining pearls close strung As in a carcanet."[531]

Another poem begins--

"Ho! a cup, and fill it up, and tell me it is wine, For I will never drink in shade if I can drink in shine!

Curst and poor is every hour that sober I must go, But rich am I whene'er well drunk I stagger to and fro.

Speak, for shame, the loved one's name, let vain disguise alone: No good there is in pleasures o'er which a veil is thrown."[532]

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

"Acc.u.mulate as many sins thou canst: The Lord is ready to relax His ire.

When the day comes, forgiveness thou wilt find Before a mighty King and gracious Sire, And gnaw thy fingers, all that joy regretting Which thou didst leave thro' terror of h.e.l.l-fire!"[533]

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

[Sidenote: Abu 'l-'Atahiya (748-828 A.D.).]

Abu 'l-'Atahiya, unlike his great rival, came of Arab stock. He was bred in Kufa, and gained his livelihood as a young man by selling earthenware. His poetical talent, however, promised so well that he set out to present himself before the Caliph Mahdi, who richly rewarded him; and Harun al-Rashid afterwards bestowed on him a yearly pension of 50,000 dirhems (about 2,000), in addition to numerous extraordinary gifts. At Baghdad he fell in love with 'Utba, a slave-girl belonging to Mahdi, but she did not return his pa.s.sion or take any notice of the poems in which he celebrated her charms and bewailed the sufferings that she made him endure. Despair of winning her affection caused him, it is said, to a.s.sume the woollen garb of Mu?ammadan ascetics,[534] and henceforth, instead of writing vain and amatorious verses, he devoted his powers exclusively to those joyless meditations on mortality which have struck a deep chord in the hearts of his countrymen. Like Abu 'l-'Ala al-Ma'arri and others who neglected the positive precepts of Islam in favour of a moral philosophy based on experience and reflection, Abu 'l-'Atahiya was accused of being a freethinker (_zindiq_).[535] It was alleged that in his poems he often spoke of death but never of the Resurrection and the Judgment--a calumny which is refuted by many pa.s.sages in his Diwan. According to the literary historian al-?uli ( 946 A.D.), Abu 'l-'Atahiya believed in One G.o.d who formed the universe out of two opposite elements which He created from nothing; and held, further, that everything would be reduced to these same elements before the final destruction of all phenomena. Knowledge, he thought, was acquired naturally (_i.e._, without Divine Revelation) by means of reflection, deduction, and research.[536] He believed in the threatened retribution (_al-wa'id_) and in the command to abstain from commerce with the world (_ta?rimu 'l-makasib_).[537] He professed the opinions of the Butrites,[538] a subdivision of the Zaydites, as that sect of the Shi'a was named which followed Zayd b. Ali b. ?usayn b. 'Ali b. Abi ?alib. He spoke evil of none, and did not approve of revolt against the Government. He held the doctrine of predestination (_jabr_).[539]

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

"If thou would'st see the n.o.blest of mankind, Behold a monarch in a beggar's garb."[541]

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

His poetry breathes a spirit of profound melancholy and hopeless pessimism. Death and what comes after death, the frailty and misery of man, the vanity of worldly pleasures and the duty of renouncing them--these are the subjects on which he dwells with monotonous reiteration, exhorting his readers to live the ascetic life and fear G.o.d and lay up a store of good works against the Day of Reckoning. The simplicity, ease, and naturalness of his style are justly admired.

Religious poetry, as he himself confesses, was not read at court or by scholars who demanded rare and obscure expressions, but only by pious folk, traditionists and divines, and especially by the vulgar, "who like best what they can understand."[542] Abu 'l-'Atahiya wrote for 'the man in the street.' Discarding conventional themes tricked out with threadbare artifices, he appealed to common feelings and matters of universal experience. He showed for the first and perhaps for the last time in the history of cla.s.sical Arabic literature that it was possible to use perfectly plain and ordinary language without ceasing to be a poet.

Although, as has been said, the bulk of Abu 'l-'Atahiya's poetry is philosophical in character, there remains much specifically Islamic doctrine, in particular as regards the Resurrection and the Future Life.

This combination may be ill.u.s.trated by the following ode, which is considered one of the best that have been written on the subject of religion, or, more accurately, of asceticism (_zuhd_):--

"Get sons for death, build houses for decay!

All, all, ye wend annihilation's way.