A Literary History of the Arabs Part 9

CHAPTER III

PRE-ISLAMIC POETRY, MANNERS, AND RELIGION

"When there appeared a poet in a family of the Arabs, the other tribes round about would gather together to that family and wish them joy of their good luck. Feasts would be got ready, the women of the tribe would join together in bands, playing upon lutes, as they were wont to do at bridals, and the men and boys would congratulate one another; for a poet was a defence to the honour of them all, a weapon to ward off insult from their good name, and a means of perpetuating their glorious deeds and of establishing their fame for ever. And they used not to wish one another joy but for three things--the birth of a boy, the coming to light of a poet, and the foaling of a n.o.ble mare."[139]

As far as extant literature is concerned--and at this time there was only a spoken literature, which was preserved by oral tradition, and first committed to writing long afterwards--the _Jahiliyya_ or Pre-islamic Age covers scarcely more than a century, from about 500 A.D., when the oldest poems of which we have any record were composed, to the year of Mu?ammad's Flight to Medina (622 A.D.), which is the starting-point of a new era in Arabian history. The influence of these hundred and twenty years was great and lasting. They saw the rise and incipient decline of a poetry which most Arabic-speaking Moslems have always regarded as a model of unapproachable excellence; a poetry rooted in the life of the people, that insensibly moulded their minds and fixed their character and made them morally and spiritually a nation long before Mu?ammad welded the various conflicting groups into a single organism, animated, for some time at least, by a common purpose. In those days poetry was no luxury for the cultured few, but the sole medium of literary expression. Every tribe had its poets, who freely uttered what they felt and thought. Their unwritten words "flew across the desert faster than arrows," and came home to the hearts and bosoms of all who heard them. Thus in the midst of outward strife and disintegration a unifying principle was at work. Poetry gave life and currency to an ideal of Arabian virtue (_muruwwa_), which, though based on tribal community of blood and insisting that only ties of blood were sacred, nevertheless became an invisible bond between diverse clans, and formed, whether consciously or not, the basis of a national community of sentiment.

[Sidenote: Origins of Arabian poetry]

In the following pages I propose to trace the origins of Arabian poetry, to describe its form, contents, and general features, to give some account of the most celebrated Pre-islamic poets and collections of Pre-islamic verse, and finally to show in what manner it was preserved and handed down.

By the ancient Arabs the poet (_sha'ir_, plural _shu'ara_), as his name implies, was held to be a person endowed with supernatural knowledge, a wizard in league with spirits (_jinn_) or satans (_shaya?in_) and dependent on them for the magical powers which he displayed. This view of his personality, as well as the influential position which he occupied, are curiously indicated by the story of a certain youth who was refused the hand of his beloved on the ground that he was neither a poet nor a soothsayer nor a water-diviner.[140] The idea of poetry as an art was developed afterwards; the pagan _sha'ir_ is the oracle of his tribe, their guide in peace and their champion in war. It was to him they turned for counsel when they sought new pastures, only at his word would they pitch or strike their 'houses of hair,' and when the tired and thirsty wanderers found a well and drank of its water and washed themselves, led by him they may have raised their voices together and sung, like Israel--

"Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it."[141]

[Sidenote: Satire.]

Besides fountain-songs, war-songs, and hymns to idols, other kinds of poetry must have existed in the earliest times--_e.g._, the love-song and the dirge. The powers of the _sha'ir_, however, were chiefly exhibited in Satire (_hija_), which in the oldest known form "introduces and accompanies the tribal feud, and is an element of war just as important as the actual fighting."[142] The menaces which he hurled against the foe were believed to be inevitably fatal. His rhymes, often compared to arrows, had all the effect of a solemn curse spoken by a divinely inspired prophet or priest,[143] and their p.r.o.nunciation was attended with peculiar ceremonies of a symbolic character, such as anointing the hair on one side of the head, letting the mantle hang down loosely, and wearing only one sandal.[144] Satire retained something of these ominous a.s.sociations at a much later period when the magic utterance of the _sha'ir_ had long given place to the lampoon by which the poet reviles his enemies and holds them up to shame.

[Sidenote: Saj'.]

The obscure beginnings of Arabian poetry, presided over by the magician and his familiar spirits, have left not a rack behind in the shape of literature, but the task of reconstruction is comparatively easy where we are dealing with a people so conservative and tenacious of antiquity as the Arabs. Thus it may be taken for certain that the oldest form of poetical speech in Arabia was rhyme without metre (_Saj'_), or, as we should say, 'rhymed prose,' although the fact of Mu?ammad's adversaries calling him a poet because he used it in the Koran shows the light in which it was regarded even after the invention and elaboration of metre. Later on, as we shall see, _Saj'_ became a merely rhetorical ornament, the distinguishing mark of all eloquence whether spoken or written, but originally it had a deeper, almost religious, significance as the special form adopted by poets, soothsayers, and the like in their supernatural revelations and for conveying to the vulgar every kind of mysterious and esoteric lore.

[Sidenote: Rajaz.]

Out of _Saj'_ was evolved the most ancient of the Arabian metres, which is known by the name of _Rajaz_.[145] This is an irregular iambic metre usually consisting of four or six--an Arab would write 'two or three'--feet to the line; and it is a peculiarity of _Rajaz_, marking its affinity to _Saj'_, that all the lines rhyme with each other, whereas in the more artificial metres only the opening verse[146] is doubly rhymed. A further characteristic of _Rajaz_ is that it should be uttered extempore, a few verses at a time--commonly verses expressing some personal feeling, emotion, or experience, like those of the aged warrior Durayd b. Zayd b. Nahd when he lay dying:--

"The house of death[147] is builded for Durayd to-day.

Could Time be worn out, sure had I worn Time away.

No single foe but I had faced and brought to bay.

The spoils I gathered in, how excellent were they!

The women that I loved, how fine was their array!"[148]

[Sidenote: Other metres.]

Here would have been the proper place to give an account of the princ.i.p.al Arabian metres--the 'Perfect' (_Kamil_), the 'Ample' (_Wafir_) the 'Long' (_?awil_), the 'Wide' (_Basi?_), the 'Light'

(_Khafif_), and several more--but in order to save valuable s.p.a.ce I must content myself with referring the reader to the extremely lucid treatment of this subject by Sir Charles Lyall in the Introduction to his _Ancient Arabian Poetry_, pp. xlv-lii. All the metres are quant.i.tative, as in Greek and Latin. Their names and laws were unknown to the Pre-islamic bards: the rules of prosody were first deduced from the ancient poems and systematised by the grammarian, Khalil b. Ahmad ( 791 A.D.), to whom the idea is said to have occurred as he watched a coppersmith beating time on the anvil with his hammer.

[Sidenote: The oldest extant poems.]

We have now to consider the form and matter of the oldest extant poems in the Arabic language. Between these highly developed productions and the rude doggerel of _Saj'_ or _Rajaz_ there lies an interval, the length of which it is impossible even to conjecture. The first poets are already consummate masters of the craft. "The number and complexity of the measures which they use, their established laws of quant.i.ty and rhyme, and the uniform manner in which they introduce the subject of their poems,[149] notwithstanding the distance which often separated one composer from another, all point to a long previous study and cultivation of the art of expression and the capacities of their language, a study of which no record now remains."[150]

[Sidenote: Their date.]

It is not improbable that the dawn of the Golden Age of Arabian Poetry coincided with the first decade of the sixth century after Christ. About that time the War of Basus, the chronicle of which has preserved a considerable amount of contemporary verse, was in full blaze; and the first Arabian ode was composed, according to tradition, by Muhalhil b.

Rabi'a the Taghlibite on the death of his brother, the chieftain Kulayb, which caused war to break out between Bakr and Taghlib. At any rate, during the next hundred years in almost every part of the peninsula we meet with a brilliant succession of singers, all using the same poetical dialect and strictly adhering to the same rules of composition. The fashion which they set maintained itself virtually unaltered down to the end of the Umayyad period (750 A.D.), and though challenged by some daring spirits under the 'Abbasid Caliphate, speedily rea.s.serted its supremacy, which at the present day is almost as absolute as ever.

[Sidenote: The Qa?ida.]

This fashion centres in the _Qa?ida_,[151] or Ode, the only form, or rather the only finished type of poetry that existed in what, for want of a better word, may be called the cla.s.sical period of Arabic literature. The verses (_abyat_, singular _bayt_) of which it is built vary in number, but are seldom less than twenty-five or more than a hundred; and the arrangement of the rhymes is such that, while the two halves of the first verse rhyme together, the same rhyme is repeated once in the second, third, and every following verse to the end of the poem. Blank-verse is alien to the Arabs, who regard rhyme not as a pleasing ornament or a "troublesome bondage," but as a vital organ of poetry. The rhymes are usually feminine, _e.g._, sa_khina_, tu_lina_, mu_hina_; mukh_lidi_, _yadi_, 'uw_wadi_; ri_jamuha_, si_lamuha_, ?a_ramuha_. To surmount the difficulties of the monorhyme demands great technical skill even in a language of which the peculiar formation renders the supply of rhymes extraordinarily abundant. The longest of the _Mu'allaqat_, the so-called 'Long Poems,' is considerably shorter than Gray's _Elegy_. An Arabian Homer or Chaucer must have condescended to prose. With respect to metre the poet may choose any except _Rajaz_, which is deemed beneath the dignity of the Ode, but his liberty does not extend either to the choice of subjects or to the method of handling them: on the contrary, the course of his ideas is determined by rigid conventions which he durst not overstep.

[Sidenote: Ibn Qutayba's account of the contents and divisions of the Ode.]

"I have heard," says Ibn Qutayba, "from a man of learning that the composer of Odes began by mentioning the deserted dwelling-places and the relics and traces of habitation. Then he wept and complained and addressed the desolate encampment, and begged his companion to make a halt, in order that he might have occasion to speak of those who had once lived there and afterwards departed; for the dwellers in tents were different from townsmen or villagers in respect of coming and going, because they moved from one water-spring to another, seeking pasture and searching out the places where rain had fallen. Then to this he linked the erotic prelude (_nasib_), and bewailed the violence of his love and the anguish of separation from his mistress and the extremity of his pa.s.sion and desire, so as to win the hearts of his hearers and divert their eyes towards him and invite their ears to listen to him, since the song of love touches men's souls and takes hold of their hearts, G.o.d having put it in the const.i.tution of His creatures to love dalliance and the society of women, in such wise that we find very few but are attached thereto by some tie or have some share therein, whether lawful or unpermitted. Now, when the poet had a.s.sured himself of an attentive hearing, he followed up his advantage and set forth his claim: thus he went on to complain of fatigue and want of sleep and travelling by night and of the noonday heat, and how his camel had been reduced to leanness. And when, after representing all the discomfort and danger of his journey, he knew that he had fully justified his hope and expectation of receiving his due meed from the person to whom the poem was addressed, he entered upon the panegyric (_madi?_), and incited him to reward, and kindled his generosity by exalting him above his peers and p.r.o.nouncing the greatest dignity, in comparison with his, to be little."[152]

Hundreds of Odes answer exactly to this description, which must not, however, be regarded as the invariable model. The erotic prelude is often omitted, especially in elegies; or if it does not lead directly to the main subject, it may be followed by a faithful and minute delineation of the poet's horse or camel which bears him through the wilderness with a speed like that of the antelope, the wild a.s.s, or the ostrich: Bedouin poetry abounds in fine studies of animal life.[153] The choice of a motive is left open. Panegyric, no doubt, paid better than any other, and was therefore the favourite; but in Pre-islamic times the poet could generally please himself. The _qa?ida_ is no organic whole: rather its unity resembles that of a series of pictures by the same hand or, to employ an Eastern trope, of pearls various in size and quality threaded on a necklace.

The ancient poetry may be defined as an ill.u.s.trative criticism of Pre-islamic life and thought. Here the Arab has drawn himself at full length without embellishment or extenuation.

It is not mere chance that Abu Tammam's famous anthology is called the _?amasa_, _i.e._, 'Fort.i.tude,' from the t.i.tle of its first chapter, which occupies nearly a half of the book. '?amasa' denotes the virtues most highly prized by the Arabs--bravery in battle, patience in misfortune, persistence in revenge, protection of the weak and defiance of the strong; the will, as Tennyson has said,

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

[Sidenote: The Ideal Arab hero.]

[Sidenote: Shanfara.]

As types of the ideal Arab hero we may take Shanfara of Azd and his comrade in foray, Ta'abba?a Sharran. Both were brigands, outlaws, swift runners, and excellent poets. Of the former

"it is said that he was captured when a child from his tribe by the Banu Salaman, and brought up among them: he did not learn his origin until he had grown up, when he vowed vengeance against his captors, and returned to his own tribe. His oath was that he would slay a hundred men of Salaman; he slew ninety-eight, when an ambush of his enemies succeeded in taking him prisoner. In the struggle one of his hands was hewn off by a sword stroke, and, taking it in the other, he flung it in the face of a man of Salaman and killed him, thus making ninety-nine. Then he was overpowered and slain, with one still wanting to make up his number. As his skull lay bleaching on the ground, a man of his enemies pa.s.sed by that way and kicked it with his foot; a splinter of bone entered his foot, the wound mortified, and he died, thus completing the hundred."[154]

The following pa.s.sage is translated from Shanfara's splendid Ode named _Lamiyyatu 'l-'Arab_ (the poem rhymed in _l_ of the Arabs), in which he describes his own heroic character and the hardships of a predatory life:--[155]

"And somewhere the n.o.ble find a refuge afar from scathe, The outlaw a lonely spot where no kin with hatred burn.

Oh, never a prudent man, night-faring in hope or fear, Hard pressed on the face of earth, but still he hath room to turn.

To me now, in your default, are comrades a wolf untired, A sleek leopard, and a fell hyena with s.h.a.ggy mane:[156]

True comrades: they ne'er let out the secret in trust with them, Nor basely forsake their friend because that he brought them bane.

And each is a gallant heart and ready at honour's call, Yet I, when the foremost charge, am bravest of all the brave; But if they with hands outstretched are seizing the booty won, The slowest am I whenas most quick is the greedy knave.

By naught save my generous will I reach to the height of worth Above them, and sure the best is he with the will to give.

Yea, well I am rid of those who pay not a kindness back, Of whom I have no delight though neighbours to me they live.

Know are companions three at last: an intrepid soul, A glittering trenchant blade, a tough bow of ample size, Loud-tw.a.n.ging, the sides thereof smooth-polished, a handsome bow Hung down from the shoulder-belt by thongs in a comely wise, That groans, when the arrow slips away, like a woman crushed By losses, bereaved of all her children, who wails and cries."

On quitting his tribe, who cast him out when they were threatened on all sides by enemies seeking vengeance for the blood that he had spilt, Shanfara said:--

"Bury me not! Me you are forbidden to bury, But thou, O hyena, soon wilt feast and make merry, When foes bear away mine head, wherein is the best of me, And leave on the battle-field for thee all the rest of me.

Here nevermore I hope to live glad--a stranger Accurst, whose wild deeds have brought his people in danger."[157]

[Sidenote: Ta'abba?a Sharran.]

Thabit b. Jabir b. Sufyan of Fahm is said to have got his nickname, Ta'abba?a Sharran, because one day his mother, who had seen him go forth from his tent with a sword under his arm, on being asked, "Where is Thabit?" replied, "I know not: he put a mischief under his arm-pit (_ta'abba?a sharran_) and departed." According to another version of the story, the 'mischief' was a Ghoul whom he vanquished and slew and carried home in this manner. The following lines, which he addressed to his cousin, Shams b. Malik, may be applied with equal justice to the poet himself:--

"Little he complains of labour that befalls him; much he wills; Diverse ways attempting, mightily his purpose he fulfils.

Through one desert in the sun's heat, through another in starlight, Lonely as the wild a.s.s, rides he bare-backed Danger noon and night.

He the foremost wind outpaceth, while in broken gusts it blows, Speeding onward, never slackening, never staying for repose.