Arabic Authors Part 2

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 pa.s.sions, 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 circ.u.mstance that he was vehemently a.s.sailed 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, ent.i.tled '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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d is a light from which illumination is sought--a drawn Indian blade, one of the swords of G.o.d,' 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ha.s.san 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 Encyclopaedia. With such a ma.s.s 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 cla.s.sing the authors, according to the subjects on which they princ.i.p.ally wrote, naturally presented itself. This plan, therefore, has been followed, and a few details of the most celebrated writers will be given, cla.s.sified under the following heads:

Jurisconsults.

Imams and lawyers.

Traditionists.

Alchemists.

Astronomers.

Grammarians.

Geographers and travellers.

Historians.

Lexicographers, biographers and encyclopaedists.

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 pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle, 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle 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 G.o.d,' 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Stepha.n.u.s 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle 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 (Alb.u.masar, 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 circ.u.mference 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 ent.i.tled 'The Sabaean 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 t.i.tle 'De Scientia 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 cla.s.sed 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 ma.n.u.script 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.