Ibn Khallikân tells us that Ḥarîri was of mean aspect, and extremely ugly. A stranger who came to visit him, and to study under him, did not sufficiently conceal his dislike of the master’s appearance. Ḥarîri addressed him in some verses, the purport of which was that,—

“I am a man to be heard of, not to be seen.”

The reader will have already gathered that the Assembly is a kind of dramatic anecdote in the telling of which the author’s object is to display his poetry, his eloquence, or his learning, and that with this view the subject is con­tinually subordinated to the treatment of it, the substance to the form. But a full understanding of these composi­tions and of the two elements of which they consist, namely the rhymed prose and the verse, cannot be ob­tained without a consideration of the earlier Arabic liter­ature. The origin of poetry among the Arabs, as among other peoples, is lost in obscurity; but there is a general consent that in primitive times there was no poetry save the verses which each man uttered as he had occasion. A singular aptitude for poetical expression, and an im­pulse towards it, distinguished both sexes from the earliest ages. The feelings of love or hate, of pride, defiance, ridicule, or pity, found utterance in verse, and this faculty of improvisation was, it would seem, cultivated assiduously even by the most barbarous tribes. The warrior defying his opponent in the field, the lover imploring his mistress, the herald in presence of a hostile band, would declaim a distich, or more; and these utterances, if they contained some striking thought or phrase, were handed down, and inseparably associated with his name. This was the origin of Arab poetry, and it is well to bear in mind its chief characteristic, for it is one which runs through the litera­ture from first to last. From the earliest recorded versicles down to the artificial pastiches produced at Cairo or Beyrout in the present day, the form of the Arab poem is that of an allocution. The dramatic and the epic elements are almost wanting. It is the poet who addresses his friend, or his patron, or the world, and makes known the feelings of his own soul, just as did the unlettered chieftain of pagan Arabia. His personality always pierces through the composition, as also does for the most part the personality of him who is addressed. The poet never effaces himself, he is always present, telling us what he thinks and feels, and bidding us notice that it is his panegyric, and his satire, and his moral observations that we are reading.

It is worth while to give some specimens of these traditionary versicles in order that the reader may view the earliest and least developed form, the palæ-ozoic life, of Arabic poetry. For the purpose of illus­tration it does not matter whether the lines were ac­tually spoken by the legendary personages to whom they are attributed: in some cases we know this to be impossible, in most it is very doubtful. But it is certain that the verses are of considerable antiquity, that they have come down from days when the regular poem, the ḳaṣîdeh, had not yet been developed, and that they do actually represent that kind of improvised poetical utterance to which each man had recourse on occasion.

Ẓarîfeh, the wife of ‘Amr ibn ‘Âmir Muzayḳîyâh, had a dream which presaged the breaking of the dyke of Mareb, the event known in Arab tradition as the Sayl al ‘Arim (see note to 17th Assembly). Horror-stricken she addressed her husband,—

“Nought have I seen, O king, like to-day:*

I have seen a cloud that banished sleep,

A cloud that lightened long,

That thundered and its bolt burst forth.

It set in flames all on which it fell,

Nor remained ought but it was o’erwhelmed.”

To the questions of her husband Ẓarîfeh returns poetical answers of the same kind, and succeeds in persuading ‘Amr to quit the country. Of a similar character is the dialogue between Jathîmet al Abrash, king of Hira, and his sister Raḳâsh, when the latter hastily married ‘Adî ibn Naṣr, after the king’s consent had been obtained during a fit of drunkenness,—

“Tell me, O Raḳâsh, and deceive me not,

Hast thou given thyself to a free man, or to a base born?

Or to one lower, for thou art fit for one lower?

Or to a slave, for thou art fit for a slave?”

Raḳâsh answered,—

“Thou gavest me in marriage, and I knew it not

Till the women came to adorn me.

This is from thy drinking the strong unmixed wine,

And thy continuing in thy folly.”

The early legends are full of such lines, which, whether or not we admit their authenticity in each case, bear testimony to the habit of the Arabs to use such poetical discourse. Now there are two forms which the poetical diction of the race has taken for itself. The first of these is the rhymed prose, such as makes up the greater part of the Assemblies of Ḥarîri, the other is metrical verse such as Abû Zayd declaims here and there. It is worth while to consider the origin of these two dissimilar forms of poetical expression, and how it comes to pass that each should have so permanent a popularity, and be united with the other in the same composition.

It is impossible to become acquainted with Arabic literature without perceiving that there is a fundamental relationship between the poetry of the Hebrew and that of the desert tribes, whose intellect was first awakened fifteen hundred years later. On the resemblance, or we might rather say the identity, of the vocabulary of the two languages it is needless to speak. It is said that six-sevenths of the Hebrew roots are to be found in the Arabic Lexicon, and whole classes of the most familiar words, such for instance as the parts of the body, are the same in both languages. Such a radical identity of speech not only proves a community of race, but justifies us in believing that the intellectual tendencies and the forms in which they would arrange themselves would be similar. Both the Hebrew and the Arabic poetical litera­ture were built up, we may assume, on the common foundation of the Semitic life, and they certainly amid all their diversity, bear traces of this primitive union. On this point it is interesting to compare the versicles which we find attributed to the early heroes and heroines of Arabia with those which are imbedded in the most ancient narratives of the Old Testament. Of these the one which comes to us as absolutely primeval, and which probably has a very high antiquity, is the address of Lamech to his two wives, which in our version runs as follows:—

“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice,

Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech:

For I have slain a man to my wounding,

And a young man to my hurt.

If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,

Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.”

The origin and meaning of this strange composition are lost to us. But to whomsoever it is to be attributed, it undoubtedly belongs to that kind of poetical utterance on occasion which existed among the early Arabs. It may be noticed here that the first four lines of Lamech’s song have a species of rhyme in the uniform desinence of the affixed pronoun. The curse and blessing of Noah on his sons, though less poetical in form, may be considered as belonging to the same class. Compare also the answer of Jehovah to Rebekah when she inquires concerning the struggling of the children in her womb, and the blessings of Isaac upon Jacob and Esau. Compare also the bless­ings pronounced upon Israel by Balaam, the curse on Moab at Numbers xxi. 27, and the song of Israel at the digging of the well, verse 17. With the age in which these compositions were produced we are not concerned. It may be that some of them express the patriotic pride of Israel after the triumphant establishment of the tribes in Canaan. But neither the popular tradition nor the histor­ical compilation would have attributed such a diction to patriarchal times unless the habit of poetical expression in important circumstances of life had been known among the people. In fact, the original type of Hebrew poetry is ever the ode, or song, inspired by some great event, and showing forth the joy or sorrow, the thankfulness or supplications, of the poet. Such are the songs of Moses in Exodus and Deuteronomy, the song of Deborah, the lamentation of David over Jonathan, and the Book of Psalms generally. Like the Arab poetry, they are the expression of individual feeling in which the personality of the bard is never lost, and it is reasonable to believe that the original type of them was a species of impro­vised utterance common to both these branches of the Semitic race.