We must not deny, however, that those inclined to strictness had some ground for their censures. Ḥarîri is not, indeed, an irreligious or, in any way, an immoral writer. In the whole of the Assemblies, there is not a phrase which can justify a suspicion of free-thinking. His mind and temper were not those of a sceptic, still less of one who would endanger fortune and position by questioning the prevalent theology. Indeed the habit of speculation was at this time on the wane in Irak. The weakness of the Khalifate, and the troubles of the time, had made the learned shrink from anything which might bring them into disfavour, either with the local authority or with the multitude. The new ideas which, under the reign of Ar Reshîd and Al Ma’mûn, had penetrated into Islam, through Persian infidels and Syrian Christians, were now stifled, and Bagdad no longer represented the revolt of a civilized and intellectual society against the narrow formularies of the Koran. The Arab intellect was indeed busy, and some of its greatest masters of philosophy were yet to flourish. But this activity was chiefly in Spain, amid a community which had taken up the tradition of a higher culture, when it was passing away in the East. Though Andalusia had had its troubles, though Cordova had been sacked, the palace of the Khalifs over­thrown, the remains of the library of Ḥâkim destroyed, yet, in the time of Ḥarîri, philosophical studies had regained their former sway. It was not so in Irak, and least of all in Basra, which was eminently the Moslem city, and devoted to a strictly orthodox culture. So far as we can judge from the Assemblies, Ḥarîri was utterly ignorant of Greek letters. He may, for what we know, have held the prevalent opinion that they were dangerous, and their patrons, like the Khalif Al Ma’mûn, hardly good Moslems. He was versed in the niceties of doctrine and discipline. The thirty-second Assembly, of which a sketch will be found further on, shows his knowledge of the Shâfi‘î rite, to which he belonged, and at every turn the Koran and the Traditions are quoted. Furthermore, there is a real moral excellence in much that he writes. Many of his discourses and his verses, though ill placed in the mouth of Abû Zayd, are without a blemish. But undoubtedly the spirit of the whole composition might well have offended the more scrupulous. Abû Zayd, with his dishonesty and dissoluteness, is made too at­tractive, and it is plain that in the mind of the author his genius more than compensates for all his faults. Ḥarîri depicts too favourably the witty and cynical improviser with his two wives—one old and weather­beaten, like himself; the other a handsome, impudent young jade, the ready instrument in her husband’s knaveries. He has too much partiality for the beautiful and graceless son whom Abû Zayd is bringing up to his own wicked ways, for his descriptions altogether to escape censure. Then the appending of discourses, filled with the most lofty devotion, to the adventures of a profligate, the mingling of the sermon with the jest, of the psalm with the Bacchanalian song, will find objectors at all times. It may be argued in defence of the author that the style of composition had been fixed by his predecessor, Al Hamadâni, and that in so artificial a work the characters must not be judged by the laws of matter-of-fact morality. Abû Zayd and his family are but the setting of the pearls of poetry and rhetoric which the author lavishes on the world.

Some of the Assemblies, though very few of them, are not without a graver fault. Whatever be the age or country of a writer, he cannot but lose in reputation by indecency. Ḥarîri has but very little to answer for on this head: almost everything he has written may be read in any assemblage, and this comparative purity has done much to maintain his book as an in­strument of education. Only one Assembly is founded on a trick absolutely indecent. In others there are here and there questionable phrases, which may be rendered by euphemisms, without danger to the sense. When­ever the author is led from the path of decorum, it is by his desire to show his wit in the management of double-entente. This figure, if I may call it so, was looked upon by the literary of the time as a sort of philological exercise; and Ḥarîri, however grave and sober might be his own character, addressed himself to it as he would to any other branch of scholarship. To produce a series of sentences which, to the duller listeners, should be common-place, but should excite a smile of admiration from the quick-witted, was an achievement which Ḥarîri had not the moderation to forego. He also mingled sacred things with something like ribaldry, in a manner that must have given deep offence to strict professors. In his description of his dead warrior, in the twentieth Assembly, he quotes the Koran; and in the forty-fifth, the ceremonies of the Pilgrimage—the most sacred act of Moslem wor­ship—are treated with a licence still more audacious. But I must repeat that these faults are few and far between, that they hardly appear, except to the Arabic student, and detract little from the merit of Ḥarîri’s work.

The composition and correction of the Assemblies occupied the last twenty years of the author’s life. As has been mentioned, he died about the year 1122 of our era, at the age of 68. The arrangement of the work, as we now have it, is by himself, and to several of the Assemblies explanatory notes are added by his own hand. As the adventures of Abû Zayd have little connection with each other, there is hardly a trace of order in the sequence of the compositions. The scene is shifted from one city of the Moslem world to another far remote from it, and the hero appears alone or with his family, in poverty or wealth, without any attempt to form a consistent history. The Ḥarâmîyeh, which was the first composed, is placed forty-eighth in order. Only the first and the last two have any special claim to the place they occupy. In the first, Ḥârith is repre­sented as unacquainted with Abû Zayd. In the forty-ninth, Abû Zayd, being in the decline of life, urges his son to live by the noble and profitable art of beg­ging, and in the fiftieth he is shown as a penitent, redeeming, by a religious life, the errors of his past ways, and parting from Ḥârith for ever. At the end of the Assemblies is a paragraph by the author, in the spirit of his apology in the preface. He says that the composition was a task beyond his strength, and undertaken unwillingly—alluding to the instances of his patron, Anûshirwân. He admits the little merit of his work, and affects to believe that it has had but small success. He asks pardon of God for whatever it contains that is frivolous and unedifying, and throws himself on the divine mercy. This literary modesty we may assume to be hardly sincere. Ḥarîri had really a very high opinion of his own powers, and Abû Zayd’s boasts only represent the author’s estimate of the compositions which he places in the mouth of his hero. Although in the preface he speaks reverentially of Al Hamadâni, we cannot but see that he believed himself to have surpassed his model. In the forty-seventh Assembly Abû Zayd is made to say:—“If the Alexandrian (that is Al Hamadâni’s hero Abû’l Fatḥ), did go before me, know that the light rain precedes the shower, yet the excellency is with the shower.” Indeed the praises which Ḥarîri received were enough to exalt him in his own opinion, and to make him careless of unfriendly critics. Complimentary poems, and still more solid proofs of esteem reached him from his admirers. Mention has been made of the verses of Nejm ad Dowleh, celebrating Ḥarîri’s merits, and lauding him as the glory of the tribe of Temîm. In the thirty-ninth Assembly, Ḥarîri had mentioned in terms of honour the Amîr Dobays, the Asadi, son of Sayf ad Dowleh Ṣadaḳah, the Arab prince of Ḥilleh, and in the commentary of Sherîshi it is related that Dobays was so delighted with the compliment that he sent him presents of the most costly kind.

More happy than this benefactor, who was put to death by the Seljûk Sultan Mas‘ûd, or, according to another account, was driven out of the country, and joined the Christian crusaders in Syria, the author of the Assemblies ended his days in peace. He left three sons, who followed the profession of their father, and appear to have been men of ability and learning. One of them, ‘Obayd allah, became chief Kadi of Basra; another, Abû’l Ḳâsim ‘Abd allah, was an official at Bagdad; the third, Abû’l ‘Abbâs Moḥammed, succeeded his father in his post at Meshân. They had been well instructed by Ḥarîri in the Assemblies, in order that they might teach them after his death, and explain their difficulties to the numerous students. Of Abû’l ‘Abbâs it is said that he was a learned and eloquent man, especially versed in the Assemblies and ready with the best expla­nations. From these and other pupils the first com­mentators derived their materials. Among the contem­poraries of the author, who admired and studied his work, the first place is due to Zamakhshari. He will be found frequently mentioned by the commentators, under this name or that of Jâr allah “the neighbour of God,” which he received from having passed several years at Mecca. In learning he was not inferior to Ḥarîri, and he was especially one of the acutest gram­marians of the age. But it is as a commentator on the Koran that he is chiefly famous. His great work, of which an excellent edition has been published at Calcutta, is the foundation of the more commonly used commen­tary of Bayḍâwi, who has borrowed from it largely. But as Zamakhshari was tainted with the doctrines of the Mu‘tazilûn, his work has never been held as a sound guide, while Bayḍâwi represents the strictest Sunni orthodoxy. Zamakhshari read the Assemblies with admiration, and placed them on a level with the Mo‘al-laḳât. Two verses which he composed upon them have often been prefixed to the manuscript copies, and will be found on the title-page of De Saey’s edition:—

“I swear by God and his wonders, by the place of the pilgrimage and its rite,

Ḥarîri is worthy that his Assemblies should be written in letters of gold.”

Such was the judgment of contemporaries: of his posthumous fame I shall have to speak in connection with his imitators and commentators.