Studies in Islamic Poetry - Studies in Islamic Poetry (R. A. Nicholson)

“It may be thou wilt abide in Paradise hereafter; at any rate in quitting this world thou hast escaped from Hell².” Would the poet have found life so painful if he had not been blind, poor³, and disappointed in his hopes, and if the conditions of the age had been less deplorable than they were? Possibly; for we know that pessimism may spring from temperament or from philosophical reflection, and that a man’s state of mind and feeling need not depend at all on the circumstances in which he lives. To grant this, however, is far from justifying the inference that Ma‘arrí’s private misfortunes and his consciousness of public ills had nothing to do with his philosophy of life. The former, culminating in his failure at Baghdád, caused him to feel that solitude was the only tolerable alternative to non-existence, while the latter confirmed him in the belief that all mankind are fools, knaves, liars, and hypocrites, or vented itself in denunciation of particular classes and professions. His contemporaries were not so uniformly black as he painted them, but since understanding comes before criticism, let us consider for a moment what was the general situation of the Moslem empire and especially of Syria during the last quarter of the tenth and the first half of the eleventh century A.D.

The ‘Abbásid Caliphs had long ceased to govern¹, though their spiritual authority was acknowledged by most of the independent princes who supplanted them. In Baghdád the Buwayhids, a Persian dynasty, held absolute sway; and while they extended their power over western and southern Persia, another Persian house, the Sámánids, maintained themselves in Khurásán and Transoxania until they were dispossessed by the Turkish Ghaznevids. Ma‘arrí did not live to see the western advance of the Seljúqs, who had occupied Baghdád in A.D. 1055, three years before his death; Aleppo and Damascus fell into their hands about fifty years later. For him the political storm-centre was Cairo, which since its foundation in A.D. 969 had been the capital of the Fáṭimid dynasty. The Fáṭimids, according to their own story, stood in the direct line of descent from the Prophet through his daughter Fáṭima; consequently they regarded the ‘Abbásid Caliphs (who descended from the Prophet’s uncle) as usurpers and claimed the title and prerogatives of the Caliphate by right divine. Their real ancestor was ‘Abdulláh ibn Maymún al-Qaddáḥ, the son of a Persian oculist. He belonged to the Ismá‘ílí sect, a branch of the Shí‘ites which recognises seven Imáms, or pontiffs, of the Prophet’s House, the last of these being Muḥammad ibn Ismá‘íl (ob. circa A.D. 770). Exploiting the Shí‘ite belief that the Imám, although he may vanish and remain hidden for a time, will one day return to fill the earth with justice, ‘Abdulláh set a vast conspiracy in train. His methods of propaganda have been described as grotesque, audacious, and satanic; but whatever we think of their morality, we must be profoundly impressed by the genius displayed in them². In A.D. 909, thirty-four years after the death of ‘Abdulláh ibn Maymún, his grandson appeared amongst the Berbers of North Africa, announcing himself under the name of ‘Ubaydulláh as the promised Mahdí and giving out that he was a descendant of the Imám Muḥammad ibn Ismá‘íl. This ‘Ubaydulláh founded the Fáṭimid dynasty in Tunis, and his successors, advancing eastward, conquered Egypt and Syria as far as Damascus (A.D. 969-70). If the rule of the Fáṭimids “was on the whole, despite occasional acts of cruelty and violence inevitable in that time and place, liberal, beneficent, and favourable to learning¹,” the Ismá‘ílí doctrines bore other fruit which was deadly enough to excuse the worst construction that could be put upon them. I refer to the Carmathians and the so-called Assassins. During the tenth century the Carmathians (Qarámiṭa)— originally the followers of an Ismá‘ílí missionary, Ḥamdán Qarmaṭ— ravaged, plundered, and massacred in many lands of Islam; in A.D. 930 they even sacked Mecca and carried off the Black Stone from the Ka‘ba. They paid a somewhat inconstant homage to the Fáṭimid Caliphs, whose secret diplomacy used them for its own ends and directed their operations, though the alliance was disavowed officially.

At the date of Ma‘arrí’s birth northern Syria, including Aleppo and Ma‘arra, was held by a successor of the famous Ḥamdánid prince, Sayfu ’l-Dawla; but the Fáṭimids were already beginning to threaten it from the south. The struggle went on with varying fortune for about ninety years. It raged most fiercely round Aleppo, which passed to and fro from the Ḥamdánids to the Fáṭimids and from the Fáṭimids to a Bedouin dynasty, the Banú Mirdás. On one occasion the Ḥamdánid Abu ’l-Faḍá’il “endeavoured to obtain the help of the Greek emperor against the Egyptian invaders, and such help was readily given, since the maintenance of Antioch in Christian hands depended on the possibility of playing off one Moslem power against the other. Aleppo after a siege of thirteen months by ‘Azíz’s general was set free by the timely aid of the Emperor Basil².” Thus Ma‘arrí lived all his life in the shadow of war and was familiar with its horrors and miseries. Once at least he came forward as peace-maker. The historian al-Qifṭí relates that in A.D. 1027, when Ṣáliḥ ibn Mirdás, the governor of Aleppo, besieged Ma‘arra and bombarded it with a catapult (manjaníq), the terrified inhabitants implored Ma‘arrí to intercede with him. “Abu ’l-‘Alá went forth, leaning on a guide. Ṣáliḥ was told that the gate of the town had been thrown open and that a blind man was being led out. He gave orders to cease fighting. ‘It is Abu ’l-‘Alá,’ said he: ‘let us see what he wants.’ He received the poet courteously, granted his request, and asked him to recite some poetry. Abu ’l-‘Alá improvised a few verses which occur in the Luzúmiyyát¹.” Another version of the incident is not so picturesque but seems more probable. Ṣáliḥ had arrested seventy notables of Ma‘arra, and Abu ’l-‘Alá was sent to plead for their release, a task which he successfully accomplished².

The prevailing anarchy fostered social and economic disorders of the gravest kind, and these in turn provoked fresh outbreaks of lawlessness. Here are some extracts from the annals of this period: they may help the reader to imagine what it was like.

Anno 982-3: It is said that on account of the civil wars between the ‘Abbásid and the Fáṭimid Caliphs no one made the pilgrimage from ‘Iráq (to Mecca) during the years 982-90. There were no pilgrims from ‘Iráq in the years 1002, 1008, 1010, 1017-21, etc., etc. Bands of Carmathians and Bedouins infested the caravan routes, robbing travellers or levying blackmail. A certain Badr ibn Ḥasanawayh paid 5000 dínárs every year to the brigand al-Uṣayfir “as compensation for what he used to take from the pilgrims.” In 998 the caravan from ‘Iráq was intercepted by Abu ’l-Jarráḥ al-Ṭá’í, who demanded 9000 dínárs from Raḍí and Murtaḍá, the Sharífs of Baghdád, before he would allow it to proceed¹.

Anno 983-4: The price of wheat in ‘Iráq rose to an enormous figure, and “a great number of people died of hunger on the road.” In 992 at Baghdád a pound of bread cost 40 dirhems, and a walnut 1 dirhem. In 1047 Mosul, Mesopotamia, and Baghdád were devastated by famine and pestilence: the number of dead reached 300,000. In 1056 (a year or two before Ma‘arrí’s death) “plague and famine spread over Baghdád, Syria, and Egypt and the whole world, and the people were eating their dead².”

Anno 1009: Abú ‘Abdallah al-Qummí al-Miṣrí the cloth-merchant died, leaving a fortune of one million dínárs, exclusive of goods, merchandise, and jewels³.

Anno 1002-3: An earthquake destroyed multitudes in the ‘Awáṣim (the province to which Ma‘arra belonged) and the frontier lands of Syria. In 1033-4 a third part of Ramla was demolished by an earthquake: “the sea ebbed to a distance of three farsakhs (about nine miles), and the people went down to fish; then it rolled back upon them and all who could not swim were drowned.” During Ma‘arrí’s lifetime there were similar disasters at Dínawar, Tabríz, Tadmor, and Baalbec⁴.

It would be tedious to lengthen this list by giving details, for example, of the bloody religious conflicts in Baghdád and ‘Iráq, where authority was divided between a Sunnite Pope and a Shí‘ite Emperor. Of course, such records mean little unless we can regard them as typical. The present case, I think, fulfils that condition in the sense that the symptoms noted above were not isolated or sporadic but continually recurred and affected the welfare of whole provinces and populations. Concerning the deeper causes of the disease— slavery, polygamy, the decay of religion, the unequal distribution of wealth, etc.— we learn more from Ma‘arrí than from the Moslem chronicles.

Literature does not always flourish under a strong central government or languish under a weak one. The damage inflicted by the break-up of the ‘Abbásid Caliphate was to a great extent repaired by the dynasties which succeeded it. The courts of Aleppo, Bukhárá, Ghazna, and other cities became rival seats of literary culture. Every prince gathered poets and scholars around him, if not for love of learning— and this was no rarity— then in order to gratify his self-esteem and assure his prestige. Islamic literature, hitherto confined to the language of the Koran, was enriched by Persians writing in their own tongue. It is true that as science and philosophy developed, poetry and literature declined: the genius of the age was constructive rather than creative, and the materials with which its writers worked were largely foreign. From that standpoint we may call it decadent if we please; but though it lacked the brilliance of the epoch which expired with Sayfu ’l-Dawla seven years before Ma‘arrí was born, it produced many authors of distinction and some of world-wide fame. Our poet numbered among his contemporaries Firdawsí and Avicenna; Bírúní, the historian of India, ‘Utbí, the biographer of Sultan Maḥmúd, and Badí‘u ’l-Zamán al-Hamadhání, inventor of a new form of romance which was brought to perfection by Ḥarírí; the scholastic theologians Báqilání and Ibn Ḥazm, the critic Ibn Rashíq, the anthologist Tha‘álibí, and the defender of orthodox Ṣúfism Abu ’l-Qásim al-Qushayrí.

The Luzúm contains several references to political affairs in Syria and elsewhere. In the following poem Ma‘arrí laments the fatal blow dealt to the house of ‘Abbás by the Buwayhid occupation of Baghdád (A.D. 945-1055).

Another poem describes the defeat of the Fáṭimids by Ṣáliḥ ibn Mirdás and his Bedouin allies.

Although Ma‘arrí sympathised with the ‘Abbásids and disliked the Fáṭimids⁷, prudence as well as inclination detached him from the political and religious controversies of his time, so that he was able to keep on friendly terms with moderate men in either camp¹. Naturally, this does not prevent him from criticising the doctrine of the extreme Shí‘ites, especially their veneration of the Imáms and their expectation of a Mahdí. He also ridicules their claim to possess an apocalyptic book².

Von Kremer (op. cit., p. 60) misunderstands this passage and attributes to Ma‘arrí the belief in a man of blood and iron, who alone could re-establish order and security (“in einem Manne, der mit ‘Blut und Eisen’ wieder die Ordnung herstellt”). The second couplet certainly expresses such a belief, but it forms part of the prediction which Ma‘arrí means to discredit. The world-saviour, the man of the mailed fist, is the Carmathian Imám— the last person our poet expected or desired to see, though the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in A.D. 1047 raised high hopes of his advent¹. Let me quote a parallel passage:

There speaks the pessimist, taught by hard experience that “Man never is, but always to be, blest.”

While Ma‘arrí has nothing to say either for or against the Fáṭimid government as such, he denounces fanaticism wherever he finds it; and in his country and age it was rampant everywhere— “men (he observes) take the opposite direction to Right: they are extreme Shí‘ites or bigoted Sunnís³.” Alluding to the Caliph Ḥákim, who pretended to be an incarnation of God, he declares that the worst of mankind is a monarch who wishes his subjects to worship him⁴. The Carmathians are bitterly attacked for their impiety and immorality. We do not know how far Ma‘arrí’s description of their tenets is trustworthy: in the Risálatu ’l-Ghufrán, where he relates many anecdotes concerning this detested sect¹, he mentions that his information was partly derived from those who had travelled in districts under Carmathian rule.

There is no evidence that Ma‘arrí was acquainted with the higher teaching of the Ismá‘ílís; and although it has been called “une espèce de culte de la raison²,” we can feel sure that, so far as it preserved any positive character, it would have been entirely repugnant to him. Most of the poems in which they are mentioned lay stress on their violations of law and religion, but he also charges them with revolutionary aims— “the desire, namely, to destroy the power of the Arabs and the religion of Islam whence that power was derived³.”

With one exception, which will be noticed presently, our author’s general views on government are quite orthodox.

It is not remarkable that an Oriental writer should plead for just and rational government⁴ or point out that kings have duties as well as rights; but unless I am mistaken, Ma‘arrí is alone in anticipating the modern democratic theory that the heads of the state are its paid servants.

In two of these passages (Nos. 118 and 119) the maxim rex seruus populi is used as an argument for asceticism. The poor hermit enjoys greater happiness and freedom than the most powerful monarch.

Ma‘arrí spares none of the ruling classes, and we cannot but wonder how such a contemptuous and outspoken critic escaped punishment. His lash falls cuttingly on princes and military governors, but with particular severity on the ‘ulamá, that is to say, on those who represent the legal and religious authority in the Moslem state.

Ma‘arrí’s opinion of the ‘ulamá (Moslem divines) is briefly expressed in the verse—

and is best illustrated by the poems which give us his views on that subject. Meanwhile a few specimens may find a place here.

The lay professions are not forgotten. At the head of those who prey on human folly and superstition come the astrologers; and of them Ma‘arrí speaks with an indignation corresponding to the almost universal faith in their predictions and to the very important part which they played in Moslem life, both public and private⁶.

Astrology, of course, ranked as a science and was often practised by celebrated Moslem astronomers, but the “astrologers” to whom Ma‘arrí refers are evidently vulgar fortune-tellers and impostors of evil reputation⁶, who seem to have found their clientèle chiefly in the more credulous sex. The type is familiar and not without variety.

The poets are stigmatised as frivolous and immoral¹; and Ma‘arrí austerely dissociates himself from them.

The Luzúm throws many a side-light on the state of contemporary Moslem society. Granted that the author is an ascetic as well as a pessimist, the corruption which he describes was real and deeply rooted, though less extensive than his poems suggest. Wine-drinking³ and female luxury⁴ are favourite topics. He condemns polygamy as being an injustice to the wives⁵ and is fully aware of the evils which flow from it. Family life was embittered. Harems filled with foreign slaves produced a hybrid race, adding new vices to the old⁶. The Arabs no longer ruled, the Arabic language had become debased¹; the influence of Jews and Christians was such that often a Moslem would place himself under their protection. As for religion, even its outward forms had fallen into contempt. References to some of these points are given below, while others are illustrated by the following poems or the parts of them printed in italics.

Leaving particular instances, let us see what is the poet’s judgment on society as a whole.

We gather from these passages that Ma‘arrí not only regarded human nature as evil but mankind in the mass as incorrigible and incapable of practising the virtues on which the utility of social intercourse depends. “You must choose,” he says, “either a solitude like death or the company of hypocrites¹.” He himself fell far short of the complete seclusion advertised in his letter to the people of Ma‘arra², and it is interesting to come across poems which tell us what his neighbours thought of him and he of them, how he disliked mutual compliments, how he talked to his visitors from Persia and Arabia, and so forth. He confesses that the truth cannot be spoken in society without giving offence and that he felt obliged to behave as every one else did³.

In his later years Ma‘arrí suffered from the reputation of being rich⁷. No doubt he deserved it, for he must have received considerable fees from the students who came in crowds to hear him, and his letters show him “in the character of a liberal man, helping persons of his own rank with gifts¹.” When he speaks of himself as poor and lets us know that in spite of his poverty he had often declined the presents which his friends offered to him², that is only the pessimist’s self-indulgence and the ascetic’s self-denial. We can believe that the demands made upon his charity justified him in protesting that he was not what rumour declared him to be³.

Ma‘arrí’s “confinement to his house⁴” was his revenge upon a world which rejected him. It was not a spontaneous act of virtue: Fortune held up to his lips no enticing cup that he might thrust it away. When he said, “I’ll play no more,” he knew that he had already lost the game.

He is honest enough to disclaim the merit of renunciation.

Men of acute mind call me an ascetic, but they are wrong in their diagnosis. Although I disciplined my desires, I only abandoned worldly pleasures because the best of these withdrew themselves from me⁶.

This, however, is not the whole truth. Other motives springing from his character and his experience of life contributed to the decision. The blind scholar and pensioner had little cause to love society⁷ and much time to meditate on its rottenness: long before visiting Baghdád he must have formed an opinion of his fellow-men which (we may presume) accorded pretty well with what he afterwards wrote. In the hour of disillusion this moral current was undammed and gave irresistible force to the feeling that he would now close accounts with them for good and all.

His asceticism, though leavened by a religious element, is really the negative and individualistic side of his ethics. By abandoning an evil world he sought virtue and inward peace —solitudinem fecit, pacem appellauit². That is the note struck in the opening verse of the Luzúm:

Society demoralises. No one can live by the law of reason amongst those whom he loves or hates; no one can fear God while pursuing objects of earthly ambition⁴. So far as the poet’s ideal of asceticism includes active virtue, it will be examined in the final section. We are here concerned with his world-flight, i.e., such topics as the vanity of pleasure, the need for seclusion and the happiness procured by it, the excellence of poverty, contentment, humility, and patience. Some peculiar theories and practices are inculcated. Of these the most remarkable is his belief— a thoroughly rational one from the standpoint of pessimism— that procreation is a sin against the child.

In some of these poems we find references not only to “fear of God” but also to a future life. I will now cite a few more passages in which Ma‘arrí uses here and there the language of Moslem religious asceticism. What significance we should attach to them must, of course, depend on our view of his real attitude towards Islam and dogmatic religion— a question too complex to be settled offhand.

Certain precepts in the following poem— e.g. the injunction against holding office under the Government— are characteristic of the strict pietism which developed in the Umayyad epoch and prevailed amongst the early Ṣúfís. It will be observed, however, that while the reader is exhorted to worship God and seek refuge with Him, nothing is said to indicate that what he has sown here he may hope to reap hereafter. The translation retains the monorhyme, but not the metre, of the original.

More important, as throwing light on the character of his asceticism, is a poem that has been partially translated by Von Kremer² and published by I. Krachkovsky with two Russian translations, one in prose and the other in verse, from the hand of Baron V. Rosen³. The challenge conveyed in the opening verse was taken up by Hibatu’llah Ibn Abí ‘Imrán, the chief missionary (dá‘i ’l-du‘át) of the Ismá‘ílís in Cairo, who begged for information as to the grounds on which the poet adopted vegetarianism. The letters that passed between them have been published and translated by Professor Margoliouth in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society⁴.

Here, as in many passages of the Luzúm, Ma‘arrí preaches abstinence from meat, fish, milk, eggs, and honey on the plain ground that to partake of such food is an act of injustice to the animals concerned, since it inflicts unnecessary pain upon them³. In his reply to Ibn Abí ‘Imrán he adds that on reaching the age of thirty⁴ he restricted himself to a vegetarian diet for the benefit of his health; besides, he could not afford to buy meat. The latter motives are clearly subordinate to the first, and are not inconsistent with it. Professor Margoliouth thinks that Ma‘arrí cuts a poor figure in this correspondence. No doubt Ibn Abí ‘Imrán found his letters unsatisfying. Whether he was deceived by what I have called the poet’s oracular style or whether, being an Ismá‘ílí, he supposed that every religious precept must have an esoteric doctrine behind it, he had hoped that “the tidings of sound truth” would yield something piquant: in fact, he wished to draw from Ma‘arrí a confession as to the nature of his theological beliefs. “Why,” he asks, “should you abstain from animal food? If God empowers one animal to eat another, though He knows best what is wise and is most merciful to His creatures, you need not be more just and merciful to them than their Lord and Creator.” This line of argument was hardly one that a reputed heretic would care to pursue, while an earnest moralist might be excused for ignoring it. Must we solve the problem of evil before we can justify abstention from what reason and conscience forbid? Ma‘arrí thought not. Having no solution, or none that he was willing to communicate, he took his stand with the Buddhists and Jainas on a principle which inspires all his ethics and constitutes his practical religion— the principle of non-injury. That was the “truth” which he promised to his readers, and they could not fairly reproach him if he declined to state how it was to be reconciled with divine providence, whatever his views on that subject may have been.

On the same ground he prohibits the use of animal skins for clothing, recommends wooden shoes¹, and blames fine ladies who wear furs². Probably he derived these doctrines from Indian asceticism, which he had opportunities of studying in Baghdád. Von Kremer identified them with Jainism, remarking that the prohibition of honey is peculiar to the Jainas³; which proves nothing, since any one who desired to live in accordance with the above-mentioned principle might naturally make this rule for himself. The Jainas, again, are forbidden to dye their clothes⁴, and Ma‘arrí tells us that his dress was “of cotton, neither green nor yellow nor dark-grey⁵.” When we come to his ethical discipline, we shall find that in the main it tallies with the ethics of Jainism as described in the following sentences:

The first stage of a Jaina layman’s life is that of intelligent and well-reasoned faith in Jainism; and the second is when he takes a vow not to destroy any kind of life, not to lie, not to use another’s property without his consent, to be chaste, to limit his necessaries, to worship daily, and to give charity in the way of knowledge, medicine, comfort, and food. And these virtues are summed up in one word: ahiṃsā (not-hurting). “Hurt no one” is not merely a negative precept. It embraces active service also; for, if you can help another and do not— your neighbour and brother— surely you hurt him¹.

Little is said in the Luzúm about Indian ascetics. Ma‘arrí refers to their habit of letting their nails grow long, and observes that he, like Moslems in general, considers it a mark of asceticism to pare the nails². He speaks with admiration of their religious suicide³. The Indian practice of cremation meets with his approval: fire saves the corpse from disinterment (and hyenas) and is a more effective deodoriser than camphor⁴. In another poem he says ironically that the cremated Indian is happy in being exempt from the torture which buried Mohammedans undergo.

He praises cremation without urging his readers to practise it. Let the dead be laid in mother earth, uncoffined: coffins are second graves⁷. How foreign to the spirit of Islam his asceticism is, and how fully it harmonises with Indian and Manichaean ideas, I can best show by quoting some passages of a different kind.

The rich man desires a son to inherit his wealth, but were the fathers intelligent no children would be born⁴. Procreation is a sin, though it is not called one⁵: a father wronged by his sons pays the just penalty for the crime which he committed against them⁶. To beget is to increase the sum of evil⁷, and the lizard’s ancestors are the cause of its being hunted⁸. It is better for a people, instead of multiplying, to perish off the face of the earth⁹. The first condition of happiness is that no woman should have been created¹⁰.

“Refrain from procreation, for its consequence is death⁴.” Ma‘arrí followed his own advice. He was the last of his line and takes credit for having escaped the universal plague: that is what he means when he says—

Before he died, he is said to have expressed a wish that his epitaph should be the verse:

What a contrast with the Greek poet’s calm declaration!— . Here we face pessimism as a practical creed remorselessly pointing to the extinction of mankind. If Ma‘arrí believed in a future existence, it would seem that he held the same opinion as Hafiz of its value in relation to the present:

Recognising that his panacea is too heroic to be popular, he sometimes offers it in a diluted form. “If you must wed,” says he, “take care to have no children¹”; and he censures the foolish Jew who divorced his wife because she was barren². He is more humane than logical in counselling men to seek husbands for their daughters but deter their sons from matrimony³.

Ma‘arrí stands for the largest humanistic culture of his time. While he may properly be called a philosopher in so far as he sought after a reasoned view of life and the world, he was only an amateur of scientific philosophy. He reflects on its problems, takes up this or that theory in turns, and concludes that nothing is certain except death. His speculations are capricious and incoherent. “He is almost entirely wanting in the gift of combination. He can analyse, but he does not hit upon any synthesis, and his learning bears no fruit⁴.” There is, however, something to be said on the other side. Philosophy is defined by Jáḥiẓ as “Knowledge of the essences of things and the doing of that which is best⁵.” Ma‘arrí is not primarily concerned with abstract truth. He seeks the True for the sake of the Good, and seldom loses sight of the practical end. We should also recollect that neither the form of his verse nor the circumstances in which it was composed allow us to see his philosophical and theological ideas in orderly relation to each other. He presents them as jumbled fragments of truth— and to this fact he may have partly owed his immunity from persecution— but it is at least arguable that for him they were a more or less consistent whole. Recently an attempt has been made by a Mohammedan savant to harmonise them¹, and we may assume that Ma‘arrí himself endeavoured to do the same. If so, the reticence which he practised in his correspondence with Ibn Abí ‘Imrán and extols in many of his poems² is all the more tantalising; but while he disbelieved or doubted what is accepted as a matter of course by Moslems, his own beliefs seem to be deeply involved in contradiction and cannot, I think, have given him any firm ground for a solution of the problems with which he wrestled.

Upon those who pretend that his learning is barren one might retort that if he achieved no system of ethics, his moral creed was in some respects worthy of Socrates or Kant. But the result, let us admit, counts for little in comparison with the method. What gives Ma‘arrí importance in the history of Moslem thought is his critical attitude, his assertion of the rights of reason against the claims of custom, tradition and authority, and his appeal from the code of religion to the unwritten law of justice and conscience: in a word, his rationalism. He is a free-thinker at heart. Without openly denying Revelation or defying the authority of the Koran, he uses his own judgment in matters which Mohammedan orthodoxy regards as indisputable. For him, reason is “the most precious of gifts³”; it is the source of right knowledge and right action. Infallible it is not— many questions it must leave in suspense; yet wise men trust and obey it, convinced that nowhere will they meet with a surer guide “to point the morning and the evening ways¹.” In the moral domain he reaches a positive goal: virtue is not in doubt, whatever else may be².

When he applies this principle to metaphysical investigation, it does not take him very far, though his thoughts are sometimes suggestive. He appears to have had but a slight acquaintance with Greek and Moslem philosophy, but he could boast of an acute mind well stored with “curious information about every age³.” I may notice here a coincidence which illustrates his erudition. Mr Baerlein happens to remark that “he (Ma‘arrí) would have been as much bewildered as Herodotus if he had known that Lycians took their mother’s, not their father’s, name⁴.” Now, the poet knew the fact of which Mr Baerlein imagines him to have been ignorant, and these verses prove that he was not at all bewildered by it:

It would be a long business to collect all the passages in which Reason is honoured and commended. I will translate a few of them.

The poet complains that men are too stupid to think for themselves.

The service which Ma‘arrí performed by his criticism of conventional beliefs would have been more effectual if he had shown himself able to think constructively. He is not a sceptic in the strict sense of the term, he concedes that truth can be attained by means of reflection³, but as a rule his reasoning leads him to a negative conclusion.

History shows that many freethinkers, not daring to express their thoughts freely, have sheltered themselves behind a religion in which they disbelieved. Such was Euripides, and such was Ma‘arrí¹. In the works of both we find three elements:

In Ma‘arrí’s case the contrast is sharper, because he does not write as a dramatist but as a moralist directly exhibiting or disguising his own character throughout. Like Euripides, he wrote for the minority who saw at once that if the pious asseverations were sincere, the parallel questionings were absurd, and who judged that the poet was more likely to want faith than wit. He, on his side, expected them to take hints in lieu of plain speech²; and no one can study the Luzúm without recognising that it is a masterpiece of innuendo. Apart from subtle ironies— of which the words italicised in the following passage may serve as a specimen:

the whole spirit of the book is anti-clerical and anti-orthodox, pleading for inquiry, suggesting incredulity, and shaking the foundations of revealed religious truth. Of course, Ma‘arrí knew perfectly well what he was about. He must have known what inference as to moral responsibility and the reality of a future state would be drawn by some persons from these lines, for instance:

As regards the essential articles of Islam, his position is easily determined. When a dogma which it would have been suicidal to reject outright is professed on one page and doubted on the next, his credo is a refusal of martyrdom, and we take it for what it is worth. “Be veracious,” he says, “until thou deemest veracity a danger to thy life; then lie through thick and thin⁴”; and again, “Do not acquaint rascals with the essence of thy religion, else thou wilt expose thyself to ruin⁵.” Similarly, where the question is not one of faith or infidelity, but of orthodoxy or heterodoxy, and we find him wavering between two doctrines, it will appear probable that in his heart he agrees with the heretics. The positive beliefs or opinions to which he unconditionally commits himself are few. He loves interrogations and hypotheses. It is characteristic of him to turn a problem over in his mind, look at it from different aspects, and incline now to one solution, now to another. His curiosity exhausts itself in climbing hills of thought¹, only to discover that their summits are capped with mist.

Before examining his treatment of religion, including Islam, let us see the principles from which he starts.

He favours the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of matter. Against one verse in which it is expressly denied,

there are many suggesting belief in it. That he should use guarded language will not surprise any one who knows what horror this theory inspires in Moslems of every sect.

That is to say, bodies consist of eternal and indestructible substances (elements) which, in so far as they are subject to combination and decomposition, thereby assume the form of accidents. According to the orthodox (Ash‘arite) view, both substance and accident are created by the will of God and have only a momentary duration⁹.

On the other hand, Ma‘arrí asks whether the stars are acquainted with the Unseen and adds that in his opinion they are not eternal¹⁰, though elsewhere he describes them as eternal and everlasting¹¹.

It appears to me difficult to explain these and similar contradictions, which occur regularly when his orthodoxy is at stake, except by supposing that he means to contradict himself, and that his real or predominant view is the one which a writer accused of infidelity would be anxious to disown. He makes a practice of affirming or denying more or less explicitly what in other passages he affirms or denies with precaution in the contrary sense: the former class of statements is to be suspected².

Religious dissimulation (taqiyyat) is well understood by Moslems; almost every zindíq (freethinker) employed it in self-defence, and it was cultivated as a fine art. Appreciation of our poet’s skill in taking cover beneath this species of irony is the key to much that has puzzled European readers of the Luzúm. As to the influence of the stars, he shares the belief which prevailed amongst his contemporaries; but here too we find him vacillating. Have the planets a soul and intelligence, in virtue of which they operate on matter, or are they celestial bodies deriving their power from the motions of the spheres? Apparently Ma‘arrí embraced the second opinion, though he rather suggests than expresses it.

Mars and Saturn, however, are “two slaves forced to serve (God)⁴: I care not though they overtop me⁵.”

In some of his poems he plays fancifully with the theory that the planets and constellations belong to an upper world of intelligences and souls, which is the archetype of the terrestrial world.

Ma‘arrí might have said with Kant, “Two things there are which the oftener and the more steadfastly we consider them, fill the mind with an ever new and an ever increasing admiration and reverence— the starry heaven above and the moral law within.” It is not unlikely that in his blindness he retained, as Milton seems to have done, a peculiarly vivid recollection of “all luminous effects, all contrasts of light and darkness.” Be this as it may, some of his finest poems are those in which his imagination contemplates

Time and Space are eternal and infinite: they encompass every sensible object and have no perceptible colour (quality) or magnitude³.

His view of the nature of Time differs from that commonly accepted by Moslem philosophers. In the Risálatu ’l-Ghufrán he writes as follows: “Abuse of Time increased to such an extent that it was prohibited in the Apostolic Tradition, ‘Do not abuse Time, for God is Time.’ What this means is well-known⁴, and also that its inner sense is not that which appears on the surface, since none of the prophets ever held that Time is the Creator or the Object of worship; and we read in the Koran (45, 23), ‘Nothing but Time destroys us⁵.’ The statement of certain people, that Time is the motion of the heavenly sphere, is a phrase devoid of reality....I have given a definition that well deserves to have been anticipated, though I never heard it before, namely, that Time is a thing whereof the least part is capable of enclosing all objects of perception. In this respect it is the contrary of Space, because the least part of the latter cannot enclose a thing in the same way as a vessel encloses its contents¹.”

We have already seen how he turns these ideas to account in the Luzúm, and I will now select a few passages where he develops them more clearly.

First, as to the eternity and infinity of Time:

Time, being independent of the revolutions of the celestial spheres, does not affect the course of events, which (indirectly, at any rate) is determined by the ever-changing position of the planets relatively to one another. Time brings nothing to pass; it is, so to speak, the neutral, unconscious atmosphere of all action and suffering. Man sins, by freewill or by fate: Time cannot sin and therefore ought not to be reviled⁵.

The following poem has a harmony of rhythm and power of expression equal to the high thoughts which inspired it.

The conclusion stated in the penultimate verse rests on the premiss that the world is eternal; whence it follows that the number of human souls is infinite.

In all this we can trace many resemblances to the Pythagorean natural philosophy, of which the physician Abú Bakr al-Rází (Rhazes) is the most illustrious exponent. Al-Rází died forty or fifty years before Ma‘arrí was born. His metaphysic “starts from old doctrines, which his contemporaries ascribed to Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Mani and others. At the apex of his system stand five co-eternal principles— the Creator, the Universal Soul, the First or Primeval Matter, Absolute Space, and Absolute Time or Eternal Duration. In these the necessary conditions of the actually existing world are given. The individual sense-perceptions, generally, presuppose an existing Matter, just as the grouping of different perceived objects postulates Space. Perceptions of change further constrain us to assume the condition of Time. The existence of living beings leads us to recognise a Soul; and the fact that some of these living beings are endowed with Reason, i.e. have the faculty of bringing the Arts to the highest perfection, necessitates our belief in a wise Creator, whose Reason has ordered everything for the best².”

Ma‘arrí, too, believes in a Creator³, whom he identifies with Allah. He emphatically repudiates atheism. God is a reality (ḥaqq)⁴, One, eternal, omnipotent, and wise (ḥakím): His wisdom is demonstrated by His works. While it is necessary to have an intelligent belief in the Supreme Being¹, speculation concerning His essence and attributes is futile, since the mind cannot comprehend them².

In the verse (11. 219, 14):

Ma‘arrí probably means that God transcends all change, that He is eternal and infinite in His nature— not “motionless” (ghayr muntaqil) in the sense that, being actus purus, He never passes from potentiality to actuality³.

It appears, then, that Ma‘arrí was a monotheist. But was he a monotheist in the same sense as Mohammed was, or as the Moslem scholastic theologians were? For him, Time and Space are infinite: therefore the Creator cannot be outside of them.

The problem of reconciling the Greek idea of “a Divinity which invests the whole of Nature⁴” with the Semitic “conception of God as will, as the sovereign over all⁵,” is not touched by Ma‘arrí. If reason convinced him that the world is eternal and has a Creator, a divine intelligence which eternally moves and maintains it⁶, the facts of life as he saw them stood hopelessly against this theory¹ and threw him back upon the notion of an all-powerful and inscrutable will working throughout the universe of evil which it created for some mysterious end. Beyond this he seems to have been unable to go, and here his rationalism breaks down. He finds the world so radically unreasonable that in order to account for it he must call in a deus ex machinâ— the Allah of the Koran. The decree of Allah, i.e. Fate, makes things what they are.

While Ma‘arrí acknowledges that Fate, like Time, is subject to Allah², his language occasionally suggests that he felt the pressure of an impersonal necessity emanating from the planets and controlling all human action; but since he writes with the freedom of a poet, we cannot safely give his words an interpretation which they do not demand. He holds God, or Fate, responsible for the evil nature implanted in mankind and for its consequences, and declares that God is just, without attempting to prove it.

While in these passages he approaches an absolute determinism, in others (which are exceptional, however) he keeps clear of it, and his moral rationalism assures him that God, who creates injustice, is Himself just.

Here reason triumphs over experience, but for the most part it struggles in vain against the fatalistic pessimism which has been amply illustrated in these pages³. Ma‘arrí cannot “justify the ways of God to man.” Only once, I think, does he make the least advance in that direction:

He concludes by dismissing the whole question of predestination as a sterile theological controversy which interferes with the practice of virtue, and by telling his readers that the truth lies somewhere between the rival schools.

It would be rash to infer that he accepted the orthodox (Ash‘arite) via media, the view that while God creates all human actions He also creates the power of men to appropriate them. This really explains nothing, as he must have been aware. He had the practical free-thinking moralist’s contempt for scholasticism, whether liberal or the reverse. He treats the Mu‘tazilites no better than their obscurantist opponents. The former might assert divine justice and interpret the Koran by the light of reason, but they were theologians, they did not make reason independent of Revelation or authorise it to decide all things, beginning with the credibility of Revelation itself. Therefore he says, thrusting both parties aside,

Partly on rational grounds and partly, perhaps, by instinct Ma‘arrí believed in the existence of a divine Creator. But, according to the second article of the Mohammedan creed, that Creator is revealed through prophecy: belief in Allah involves belief in the Koran, Mohammed, and Islam.

I have already remarked on the poet’s ambiguous attitude towards the religion which he professed. In the Luzúm he speaks with two voices, one pious and conventional in tone, the other critical, ironic, irritating to men of firm faith, and anything but reassuring to the weaker brethren. His doubts are not concerned with minor points of doctrine; they are fundamental. We cannot dispose of them by setting his affirmations against them, as though it were simply a question of striking a balance. The anti-Islamic tendency is too deep and deliberate to be explained away. If the author was a Moslem, why should he have written so equivocally and yet significantly? If he was not a Moslem but wished to pass for one, it is easy to understand both the orthodox expressions and his peculiar method of insinuating disbelief. This hypothesis does not oblige us to maintain that during his forty years’ seclusion he consistently held the same views and never doubted his own doubts. In some moods he may have reverted to the more positive state of mind which he finally abandoned for a bare deism¹. “I confess,” he says, “belief in One God and the avoidance of evil actions. For a long time I deceived myself and judged that one who is a liar spoke the truth about certain things².” Such fluctuations are, in any case, unimportant. On the whole, his Mohammedan sentiments (where they are not mere forms of speech) must be regarded as fictitious and insincere. Nevertheless, he could not do without them— in his books: their omission would have condemned him. While he used them to mystify and baffle the enemies of free-thought, he also knew how to make them serve the cause of its friends.

Further evidence comes from his prose writings. In a work entitled al-Fusúl wa ’l-gháyát³, he imitated or parodied the Koran— an act of irreverence in which he followed the example set by several Moslem free-thinkers¹; yet he violently censures one of these, Ibnu ’l-Ráwandí, who had been guilty of the same impiety, and pays an eloquent tribute to the Koran, describing it as a book that “overcame and disabled and caused the Prophet’s foes to shiver when confronted with it².” The Risálatu ’l-Ghufrán, an epistle which Ma‘arrí addressed to the scholar and poet Ibnu ’l-Qáriḥ (‘Alí ibn Manṣúr al-Ḥalabí), contains, in addition to many anecdotes of the zindíqs and blasphemous quotations from their poetry, a burlesque description of Paradise, where in the manner of Lucian he depicts the pre-Islamic heathen bards revelling and quarrelling and taking part in a literary causerie. Although some persons upheld his orthodoxy, the mask was thin and might not have availed him, if the state of Syria during his lifetime had left the authorities at leisure to deal with offences of this kind. As it was, he ran no great risk. The Fáṭimids were indulgent, and the Mirdásids indifferent, to religious scepticism, which indeed found plenty of support both amongst the learned classes and men of the world.

Ma‘arrí nowhere asserts that the dogma of Revelation is false. His way of handling this question has not hitherto been studied with sufficient care. If we wish to understand the Luzúmiyyát, we must realise that the author intended not only to disguise his opinions but also to make the disguise a means of indicating them. Dissimulation was, in all the circumstances, inevitable: under its safeguard might not the truth venture out— duly chaperoned and veiled? Such a delicate experiment in the art of “implying things” called for correspondingly fine apprehension on the part of the reader, and Ma‘arrí knew his contemporaries well enough to feel sure that not many of them would master his secret. He gave them a chance of convincing themselves, none of convicting him. At the worst, his faith would be impeached on the ground of inferences which are apparently disproved by orthodox confessions.

To begin with, he divides men into two classes, according as they are religious or intelligent: they cannot be both.

These verses are addressed or refer to the followers of Mohammed, Jesus, Moses, and Zoroaster, i.e. to all whose religion is derived from a scripture brought by a prophet².

The second couplet is highly characteristic. Taken out of the context, it might be read as a good Moslem’s appeal to the authority of the Koran, which forbids wine-drinking, against the corrupt doctrine of the Pentateuch. That interpretation, however, pays no regard to logic. Ma‘arrí’s objection to wine-drinking, as we learn from many poems in the Luzúm, is non-religious.

Manifestly, therefore, his meaning is: “If the Torah sanctions wine-drinking, the Torah misguides us: we must obey Reason, not Revelation.” The fact that in this instance he happens to agree with Mohammed leaves the general principle untouched. All religions are mixed with falsehood and, so far, stand on the same level. When he says

his readers must be dull if they fail to see why in preaching rationalism to Moslems he attacks the supernaturalism of Jews. One guesses, too, that the following lines have a wider application than appears on the surface:

Another of his devices consists in putting forward an orthodox statement which is immediately discredited by the sequel.

Since good and evil alike are “fashioned and brought to us by Fate divine,” the compliment to Islam seems a little unhappy; but letting that pass, we discover in the next verse that the religion “which nobody can deny” is not identical with Truth². Some Mohammedan critics have attributed the poet’s eccentric opinions to the necessities of the difficult rhyme³. To speak plainly, this is nonsense. Ma‘arrí does not write at random: within a certain orbit his eccentricities are calculated and logical. His doubts, perplexities, and real inconsistencies only begin, as I have said, when his rationalism breaks down. Reason led him to conclusions which were not the less firm because they were chiefly of a negative kind; it showed him, for example, that Revelation is a false earthly light kindled and spread by men who had their own interests in view. Reason showed him this— and left him, believing in God, to wrap himself in his virtue as best he could.

We have examined a few specimens of the irony which Ma‘arrí cultivated in order to publish his opinions with impunity, and which has been ignored by most students of the Luzúmiyyát, if it has not eluded them entirely. He had no need to employ it in his criticism of the Jewish and Christian sacred books; for, according to Mohammed, the Pentateuch and Gospel are corrupt in their present form, though originally they contained the same Word which Allah revealed in the Koran. The poet, therefore, attacks Judaism and Christianity without any disguise. I will only cite two passages concerning the Crucifixion.

It was as easy for Ma‘arrí to deny the divinity of Christ as it was difficult to express any doubts about the prophetic inspiration which, according to the Koran, he shared with Moses and Mohammed. The prophets stood or fell together. Frank scepticism being thus excluded, the poet resorts to his favourite weapon, but does not forget that the words “Mohammed is the Apostle of God” form half of the Moslem profession of faith.

At first sight these lines arouse no suspicion: the author means that disbelievers in prophecy are blasphemous scoundrels and ought to be punished with death³. This, of course, is the Moslem view. Ma‘arrí durst not impugn it openly, and he may be professing it here, but readers familiar with his style will remark that the tag, “some people say,” is often used by him to introduce rationalistic judgments for which he declines to be held accountable. Further, “they” in the second verse is equivocal: we can refer it, as we please, either to the disbelievers in prophecy or to the prophets themselves; and the latter reference is suggested by the rhyme-word námús, which in this context would naturally be taken as the Arabicised form of so that the translation would run:

The verse has not passed unscathed through the hands of Mohammedan scribes. We find the oldest and probably genuine tradition in the Oxford Codex, where it stands thus:

*

Who, then, are the miscreants of the last verse? The heretics or the pseudo-prophets? If that question had been put to Ma‘arrí, he might have answered by quoting his own advice:

When the poet writes a brief eulogy of Mohammed², he restricts himself to terms which might be used of any religious and moral reformer³. Only with the final blessing— — comes a suggestion of the Moslem’s attitude. “Do not begin a quarrel with me,” he says, appealing to the Christians, “for in my opinion your Messiah is the peer of Mohammed,” i.e. the prophets are just as much in the dark as all the rest of us¹.

Ma‘arrí, in fact, regards Islam, and positive religion generally, as a human institution. As such, it is false and rotten to the core. Its founders sought to procure wealth and power for themselves, its dignitaries pursue worldly ends, its defenders rely on spurious documents which they ascribe to divinely inspired apostles, and its adherents accept mechanically whatever they are told to believe.

The following passages illustrate his point of view.

Life and death— these, for Ma‘arrí, are the everlasting certainties. There may be a life after death, for aught we know, but it is only something to speculate about.

As regards the soul and its relation to the body, while he sometimes follows Plato, he not seldom inclines to a materialistic view. Hence his meditations on immortality are vague and inconclusive.

Ma‘arrí rejects the doctrine of metempsychosis and even derides it. In the Risálatu ’l-Ghufrán he quotes these verses by one of the Nuṣayrís, a sect which had many adherents in the districts lying south and west of the river Orontes:

So in the Luzúm:

The fact that the Koran reveals the existence of angels and other good and evil spirits (Jinn) does not hinder Ma‘arrí from using his long experience of life as an argument for incredulity². If there are no human beings in Heaven, then there are no angels on earth or below it³. God is omnipotent: therefore angels are possible; and at this point our knowledge ends.

He also finds unconvincing the tradition that women who wear anklets are loved and followed by evil spirits⁶.

Resurrection and Retribution are the twin corner-stones of Islam. We have seen what Ma‘arrí thought of the authority on which these doctrines depend, and we know that he could not take them ready-made from that source. If he had any genuine belief in them, it was based on grounds which he considered reasonable. To judge from his writings, he neither believed nor wholly disbelieved in a conscious existence after death, but remained a sceptic because no empirical evidence was forthcoming. Besides, what proof would have satisfied a mind like his? Not, I think, our books of psychical research, much as they might have interested him. Clearly, if he was unable to affirm the immortality of the soul, he would be even less inclined to admit the resurrection of the body, a doctrine which he sometimes professes in agreement with the Koran, while in other poems his real attitude towards it is hardly disguised.

Most of the passages written from the orthodox standpoint are formal in tone¹. Here is one in a different vein, but we cannot suppose that it was meant to be taken seriously:

The possibility of such a resurrection is acknowledged:

This is designedly “economical” and its meaning could not be missed by any intelligent reader of the Luzúm. I will quote a few more examples.

In his references to the Mohammedan doctrine of future rewards and punishments the poet is similarly versatile. He often writes as one who believes in Paradise and Hell and even in the Koranic representation of them². He says more than once that he hopes, not to enter the Garden, but to be saved from the Fire³; and he accepts the dogma of everlasting damnation qualified sometimes by faith in the infinite mercy of God.

God will not let the labours of the pious be lost: on that point Abú Nuwás, the libertine, concurs with Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya, the ascetic⁵. Manifestly, virtue is not rewarded in this world⁶. Do good for its own sake: the Almighty can, if He please, bestow the thawáb upon us; otherwise, Death is our recompense⁷. The following passages are more or less tinged with scepticism.

As Ma‘arrí appeals to Reason against Revelation, so does he contrast the observance of religion with the practice of morality. Not that pietism is inconsistent with virtue, but it is distinctly subordinate: prayers, fasts, and almsgivings are all very well; righteousness is essential. The emphasis placed upon the latter implies a certain indifference to the former and almost conveys the impression that le mieux est l’ennemi du bon.

When the poet says, “Fear and obey God,” he means, of course, “shun evil and do good.” This, in his eyes, is the kernel of the Koran.

Ma‘arrí’s criticism of Islam goes to the root of the matter. If he is right, there is an end of the divine authority on which the whole system rests: its laws and institutions can be judged on their merits and approved or rejected as the principles of a rational ethic require. From this standpoint its ascetic features (including the prohibition of wine) commended themselves to him. Although, by his own confession, he was somewhat lax in regard to public worship¹, he assails only one— and that the most vulnerable— of the five “pillars” of Mohammedanism. The Ḥajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) was taken over by the Prophet from the pagan Arabs and incorporated in Islam as a concession to national sentiment: all Moslem men and women are bound, “if they can find a way,” to perform it at least once in their lives. Ma‘arrí had a good excuse for neglecting this injunction, which in any case he would have disobeyed. Others might be impressed by the religious enthusiasm of the pilgrims; he saw in the Ḥajj a relic of heathendom², a carnival of superstition and immorality.

We have noted how the poet censures whatever seems to him superstitious and irrational. Thus, to mention some slighter instances, he condemns augury² and belief in omens, e.g. the custom of exclaiming “God be praised!” (al-ḥamd) when any one sneezes³. He declares that the descendants of Ham owe their colour to nature, not to the sins of their progenitor⁴. Concerning the legends which attribute extraordinary length of life to certain patriarchs, heroes, and wizards⁵, he remarks that those who reckoned the age of such persons appear to have counted months as years⁶. In his opinion, holy men never flew in air or walked on water¹. The words, “if thou wilt devote thy heart entirely to God, the beasts of prey will do thee no hurt²,” immediately follow an exhortation to act according to reason and cannot be taken as evidence of his belief in miracles; the context rather suggests that “the beasts of prey” are women of bad character. He had nothing of the mystical spirit, and his allusions to Ṣúfism— a name which in his time covered much vagabondage and licence— are contemptuous. He gives the correct derivation from ṣúf (wool):

He doubts whether their rapture is so religious as they pretend⁴, calls them “one of Satan’s armies⁵,” and accuses them of travelling from land to land to fill their bellies and gratify their lusts⁶. This description, however, applies only to the evil-doers amongst them: “the God-fearing (Ṣúfí), when thou wouldst rival him, surpasses thee; he is like the sun, whose radiance no defilement comes near, and the full moon, which is too glorious to be affected by vituperation⁷.” That a free-thinker should speak of mystics with admiration and respect will not surprise those who remember how often extremes meet. Free-thought and mysticism converge from opposite sides in order to strike at orthodoxy. Ṣúfís, who regard forms of creed and ritual as relatively true and therefore as obstacles to the attainment of essential truth, have something in common with zindíqs like Ma‘arrí, who “acknowledge neither prophet nor sacred book⁸” nor any law that is not sanctioned by the inner light of reason. Both these ways of thought are hostile to sectarianism and lead in practice to a large toleration which places Jews and Christians on the same level with Moslems. Many poems in the Luzúm express the view that “man’s inhumanity to man” is fostered and made fiercer by religion, while in others the poet protests against bigotry¹, pleads for religious equality, and declares that if men act rightly it does not matter what they believe.

After what we have seen of Ma‘arrí’s views on the subject of religion it is evident that he would not be described accurately by any designation which connotes belief in a divine Word revealed through prophecy or in a religious code deriving its authority from tradition. His whole creed might be expressed in some such formula as “God, the Creator, is One: fear and obey Him⁴.” The nearest Arabic equivalent to “deist” is zindíq; but this term is opprobrious and commonly associated with immorality, being applied by Moslems not only to deists, atheists, pantheists, and persons suspected of holding Zoroastrian or Manichaean doctrines, but also to all sorts of antinomian heretics. The poet brands with the name zindíq religious impostors whose tenets he considers false and irrational¹. Some of this class— possibly Carmathians— are addressed in the following lines.

His own religion is founded on the authority of reason and fulfilled by the practice of virtue. Not a sanctified law, but an enlightened mind, distinguishes good from evil. “Serve God alone, without reference to His servants (creatures); for the law (of religion) makes us slaves, while (the use of) logical judgment makes us free³.” True religion consists in righteousness together with justice and charity to all men⁴.

Like Socrates and the Greeks generally, he takes morality to be “rather a concern of the head than of the heart.” The wickedness of human nature is repeatedly described as “ignorance” and “folly.” There are two kinds of ignorance, he says, which bring men to perdition: one of these is constitutional, the other they learn from their preceptors². Virtue is the fruit of knowledge; the understanding, not the will, controls and corrects the impulses of the flesh³. In accordance with the view that evil needs only to be known in order to be shunned, the poet teaches moral truth by exposing the universal falsehood of mankind for the sake of the few who will listen to reason and let themselves be guided by it⁴. As we have seen, his ideal of virtue demands world-flight⁵, but on the other hand his ethical doctrine inculcates “as the highest and holiest duty a conscientious fulfilment of one’s obligations ... towards all living beings⁶.”

If in some passages Ma‘arrí allows that good works may earn the thawáb (recompense from God)⁵, his rational and philosophical judgment rejects a quid pro quo morality and declares that, as virtue is commonly its own reward in this world, it ought to be practised “because ’tis best and fairest⁶,” without expectation of favours to come.

Ma‘arrí especially enjoins forbearance, compassion, and kindness. A man should be lenient to others, but severe to himself¹. “Charity is the best of thy beliefs: be not heedless thereof, and thou mayst pray facing the Ka‘ba (as Moslems do) or after the fashion of Zoroastrians².” “How is it that the rich do not share their abundance with the poor?³” The ways of true generosity are unknown to those who grudge their fellow-creatures what they bestow on their near relatives⁴. Injustice to the weak and helpless excites his indignation: he pities old men neglected by their sons⁵, and pleads for humane treatment of slaves⁶; but he is most deeply touched— this is an Indian trait— by wrong done to animals, birds, and insects⁷.

Not only does he abhor cruelty to animals in the modern sense of the phrase⁹, but he would protect them, if he could, from all injuries which human selfishness causes them to suffer.

The poet speculates concerning the likelihood of a future existence in which innocent animals will enjoy the happiness denied them in this world⁵. Two of the Luzúmiyyát are addressed to birds— the ring-dove and the cock⁶— and another to the wolf, who “if he were conscious of his bloodguiltiness, would rather have remained unborn⁷.”

As I have shown above, Ma‘arrí put no trust in blood and iron as a cure for the woes of humanity⁸. War to his mind is immoral, irrational and futile⁹— for are not the living even as the dead?— and he wishes that it were physically impossible¹.

His views on education are conservative and almost patriarchal.

“Beat thy son and lead him into a right way of action, and do not say, ‘He is a child not yet grown up.’ A crack on the head is often beneficial: consider how good it is for the reed-pen to have its head split⁵.”

Such maxims, though widely current, must have been deemed reactionary by many who read the Luzúm before the death of its author or soon afterwards⁴. They are based, no doubt, on the general Moslem view that the female sex is “deficient in intelligence and religion.” Ma‘arrí’s ideal of womanhood is the modest, hard-working, home-keeping wife, who honours and obeys her husband¹: she is “thy first Paradise².”

The practical moral excellence at which he aims is the result of right knowledge; and right knowledge cannot be gained by means of a liberal education. On the contrary, “people everywhere are called to embrace false doctrines by a party of udabá⁴,” i.e. men of letters and culture. Reason is the guide to virtue, and asceticism is the road. He scorns the argument from antiquity.

Ma‘arrí has been dubbed “a precursor of Omar Khayyám⁶,” an unfortunate and misleading phrase which can only be defended by the plea that FitzGerald does not give a true picture of the Persian astronomer⁷. Omar, certainly, was a pessimist and sceptic, but (according to FitzGerald) he had also a marked vein of hedonism and mysticism, of which no vestige is to be found in the Luzúmiyyát. M. Salmon speaks of “les éloges qu’Al-Ma‘arrí, habitué à des fréquentations de buveurs, prodigue à la liqueur vermeille⁸”; these, however, are quite imaginary, for he always refers to wine-drinking with reprobation⁹. Granted that Omar may have been more like Ma‘arrí than we should suppose from the English representation of him, trustworthy evidence concerning his character is too slight to allow the two poets to be compared. All we can say is that their philosophies of life have some features in common, and that several passages in the Luzúm at once call to mind well-known “Omarian” stanzas, for example:

Ma‘arrí, too, strikes from the calendar

but not in the sense of carpe diem; for when he says,

“Lay your hands now to that in which we are engaged, and leave alone To-morrow, for it is not yet come, and Yesterday, for it is past²,”

he warns us that to live righteously is a present and urgent duty. His pessimism is no mood of melancholy retrospect, it is the cry of a man in pain who feels himself driven along ruthlessly, “like victims with halters on their necks³.”

Although, as an ascetic, he must confess and preach the vanity of fame¹, he alludes to his literary reputation and anticipates that it will outlast him.

In another passage he tells how he was dreamed of— and in the dreamer’s vision he was a great king, his head crowned with a tiara of gold. “I said, interpreting it, ‘Gold (dhahab) is a sign of my decease (dhahábí), and the tiara signifies my renown when I shall be dust.’⁵”

The following text is that of C, collated throughout with BSZ and also, for the greater part, with LO. I have recorded nearly all the variants: it will be seen that these are few and as a rule unimportant. References showing where each extract occurs in C will be found under the English translations.

The definite article al-, which precedes many Arabic names, has usually been omitted both in the text and in the following Index; those names in which it has been retained will be found under their initial letter. Titles of books are printed in italics.

‘Abbásids, the, 67, 96, 98, 100, 101, 105, 108

‘Abdullah ibn Maymún al-Qaddáḥ, 96

‘Abdullah ibn Sa‘íd al-Kallábí, 164

‘Abdu ’l-Jabbár, cadi of Rayy, 164

‘Abdu ’l-Raḥmán ibn ‘Awf, 1

‘Abdu ’l-Wási‘ of Jabal, 19

Abel, 4

Abú ‘Abdallah al-Qummí al-Miṣrí, 99

Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí, 43 foll. See Ma‘arrí in Index of Subjects

Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya, 52, 187

Abú Ḍábiṭ, a name of Death, 113

Abu ’l-Faḍá’il, 97

Abu ’l-Ḥasan ‘Alí, 38

Abu ’l-Ḥasan Murádí, 21, 22

Abu ’l-Ḥasan Ṭalḥa, 6

Abu ’l-Hudhayl, 164

Abu ’l-Jarráḥ al-Ṭá’í, 99

Abu ’l-Ma‘álí of Rayy, 38, 42

Abu ’l-Maḥásin ibn Taghríbirdí, 99

Abú Muslim, 101

Abú Naṣr, Sámánid, 38

Abú Nuwás, 49, 187

Abu ’l-Qásim, uncle of Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí, 54

Abú Shu‘ayb of Herát, 11

Abú Shukúr, 7, 9, 10

Abú Ṭáhir al-Khátúní, 2

Abú Ṭáhir Khusrawání, 15, 20

Abú Zakariyyá ibn Abí Ḥafṣ, 208

Abú Zurá‘a, 7, 19, 32

‘Ád, 62, 149

Adam, 4, 21, 34, 61, 74, 118, 120, 121, 140, 157, 158, 175

Adíb-i Ṣábir, 20, 21

Ahlwardt, W., 150

Akhṭí, 20

Aleppo, 45, 46, 96, 97, 100-2

‘Alí, the Caliph, 104

‘Alí ibn Manṣúr al-Ḥalabí. See Ibnu ’l-Qáriḥ

‘Am‘aq of Bukhárá, 32, 41

‘Ámir ibnu ’l-Ṭufayl, 128, 132

‘Amr, 140

‘Amr ibn Ma‘díkarib, 128

Amram, 174

Anaxagoras, 158

Antioch, 45, 97

Anwarí, 17, 18, 29, 31

Árish, 17

Aristotle, 22, 149, 160

Ash‘arites, the, 150

Asia Minor, 143

Asmá, 68

al-Aṣma‘í, 51

Assassins, the, 97

Avicenna, 100

‘Awáṣim, 99

Awbar, 175

‘Awfí, Muḥammad, 1-5, 7, 8, 15, 20, 27, 34, 41

Ayla, 191

‘Azíz, Fáṭimid Caliph, 97, 102, 195

Azraqí of Herát, 33

Baalbec, 99

Bádghís, 5

Badí‘u’ddín Turkú al-Sanjarí, 7

Badí‘u ’l-Zamán al-Hamadhání, 100

Badr ibn Ḥasanawayh, 99

Baerlein, H., 143

Baghdád, 12, 46-48, 95, 96, 99-101, 125, 136, 137

Bahrám Gúr, 4

Baḥrayn, 105

Bákharzí. See Táju’ddín Ismá‘íl

Balkh, 8

Banú Mirdás, 97. See Mirdásids

Báqilání, 100

Basil, the Emperor, 97

Berbers, the, 96

Bevan, Prof. A. A., 195

Bihrúz-i Ṭabarí, 33

Bírúní, 100

Bland, N., 1

Brazen Fly, the, a nickname, 24

Brockelmann, C., 164

Browne, Prof. E. G., 1, 2, 82, 96, 97, 105, 110

Bú Ṭáhir Khusrawání. See Abú Ṭáhir

Buddhists, the, 137

Bukhárá, 1, 12, 21, 32, 41, 100

Buwayhids, the, 96, 100, 101

Caesar, 69, 128

Cairo, 96, 134

Carmathians, the, 97, 98, 103-5, 197

Carneades, 145

Cashmere, 13

Catullus, 33

Chahár Maqála, 110

China, 1, 32

Chosroes, 36, 66, 69

Christians, the, 167, 169-71, 173, 174, 189, 192, 195-7

Cicero, 33

Coleridge, 50

Cureton, W., 164

Damascus, 96, 97, 101

Dante, 44

Daqíqí, 9, 11, 15

David, 37, 41, 68, 183

Dawlatsháh, 104

Daylamites, the, 101. See Buwayhids

De Boer, T. J., 141, 158

De Goeje, M. J., 105, 110

Dhahabí, 140

Di‘bil ibn ‘Alí, 102

Dínawar, 99

Donne, 20

Egypt, 97, 99, 195

Empedocles, 158

Euphrates, the, 32, 35, 46

Euripides, 147, 171

Eve, 116, 126, 200

Faḍl ibn ‘Abbás al-Rabinjaní, 14

Fakhru’ddín Mas‘údí, 27

Farkhár, 30

Farnell, Dr L. R., 147

al-Farq bayna ’l-firaq, 104

Farrukhí, 16

Fáṭima, 96

Fáṭimids, the, 64, 96-98, 101-3, 105, 166

Fihr, 154

Firdawsí, 15, 16, 20, 100

FitzGerald, E., 5, 205

Freytag, G. W., 124

al-Fuṣúl wa ’l-gháyát, 165

Gabriel, 156

Ghassán, 106

Ghazna, 16, 21, 38, 62, 100

Ghaznevids, the, 4, 96. See Náṣir, the House of

Ghazza, 101

Goldziher, I., 166, 193, 204

Gospel, the, 68, 174

Greeks, the, 47

Gulistán, 28

Hafiz, 141

Hajar, 105

Hajarites, 105. See Carmathians

Ḥájjí Khalífa, 2

Ḥákim bi-amri’llah, Fáṭimid Caliph, 102, 103

Halíla, 10

Ham, 193

Ḥamdán Qarmaṭ, 97

Ḥamdánids, the, 97

Ḥanẓala of Bádghís, 5

Ḥarírí, 100

Ḥárith, King of Kinda, 202

Háshim, 101

Ḥassán, 101

Herát, 11, 33, 39

Herodotus, 143

Herrick, 9

Hibatu’llah Ibn Abí ‘Imrán, 134-136, 142

Ḥíra, 202

Horace, 44

Ibn Abí ‘Imrán. See Hibatu’llah

Ibnu ’l-Athír, 195

Ibnu ’l-Bayṭár, 11

Ibn Ḥazm, 100

Ibn Kalláb, 164

Ibnu ’l-Qáriḥ, 166

Ibn Rashíq, 100

Ibnu ’l-Ráwandí, 166

Iliad, the, 55

Iltatmish, Sultan, 1

‘Imádí of Ghazna, 38

Imra’u ’l-Qays, 49

India, 1, 100

Iráb, 179

‘Iráq, 98, 99, 108

Isaiah, 196

Ishmael, 191

Ismá‘íl, 191

Ismá‘ílís, the, 82, 96, 97, 105, 134, 136. See Carmathians and Fáṭimids

Jackson, Dr Henry, 160

Jacob, G., 136

Jáḥiẓ, 141

Jainas, the, 137

Jaini, J., 138

Jalálu’ddín Rúmí, 22

Jamshíd, 37

Jawámi‘u ’l-Ḥikáyát, 1

Jawharí of Herát, 39

al-Jawn of Kinda, 202

Jerusalem, 191

Jesus, 135, 167, 171, 178. See Messiah

Jews, the, 167-171, 174, 175, 181, 183, 188, 189, 192, 195, 197

Jonah, 204

Jones, E. R., 141, 158

Jurján, 7, 19

Júybárí of Bukhárá, 12

Ka‘ba, the, 97, 191, 201

Kant, 142, 153

Kawkabí of Merv, 14

Kawthar, a river in Paradise, 16

Khabbází of Níshápúr, 12

Khálid, 140

Khawarnaq, 32

al-Khiḍr, 193

Khoten, 30

Khurásán, 1, 32, 96

Khusraw Parwíz, 36

Khusrawání. See Abú Ṭáhir Khus rawání

Kinda, 202

Kisá’í of Merv, 10, 13, 15, 21

Kisrá, 69

Koran, the, 51, 62, 105, 110, 142, 152, 155, 161, 166, 167, 171, 174, 183-185, 190, 204

Krachkovsky, I., 134

Krenkow, F., 204

Kúfa, 102

Kúfán, 102

Kuthayyir, 53

Labíd, 129

Lane, E. W., 195

Layth, the House of, 3. See Ṣaffárids

Lubábu ’l-Albáb, 1-42

Lucian, 166

Lucretius, 44

Luzúmiyyát. See Luzúmu má lá yalzam

Luzúmu má lá yalzam. See Index of Subjects

Lyall, Sir C., 50, 55, 101, 129, 136, 202

Lycians, the, 143

Lyra Elegantiarum, 9

Ma‘add, Fáṭimid Caliph, 102

Ma‘arra, 45-48, 97-99, 122, 124

Ma‘arratu ’l-Nu‘mán, 45

Ma‘arrí. See Index of Subjects

Macdonald, Prof. D. B., 150, 160, 164

Magians, the, 104, 167, 176, 197. See Zoroastrians

Maḥmúd, Sultan, 4, 15, 17, 21, 30, 33, 37, 62, 100

Maliksháh, Sultan, 7, 34

Manash, 195

Manasseh, 195

Mání (Manes), 32, 158

Manichaeans, 32, 138, 196

Manjík, 14

al-Manṣúr, Caliph, 101, 152

Margoliouth, Prof. D. S., 43, 45, 48, 97, 98, 134, 136

Marv-i Shahján, 39

Mary, the Virgin, 68, 174, 196

Masrúr ibn Muḥammad of Ṭáliqán, 30

Mas‘úd, Sultan, 4

Mas‘údí, the historian, 102

Mas‘údí, Fakhru’ddín. See Fakhru ’ddín

M^cLean, N., 113

Mecca, 45, 97, 98, 153, 191, 192

Medina, 191

Merv, 7, 10, 13, 14, 21, 25, 26, 27. See Marv-i Shahján

Mesopotamia, 99

Messiah, the, 171, 173. See Jesus

Milton, 44, 52, 153

Mirdásids, the, 166. See Banú Mirdás

Mírzá Muḥammad of Qazwín, 2

Mohammed, the Prophet, 1, 51, 68, 96, 106, 154, 160, 167-9, 171-4, 178, 191, 195, 196

Mongols, the, 1

Moore, 55

Moses, 68, 89, 167, 171, 178, 193, 196

Mosul, 99

Mu‘allaqát, 50

Mughní, 164

Muḥammad, the Prophet. See Mohammed

Muḥammad ibn Ṣáliḥ al-Walwálají, 12

Mu‘izz Abú Tamím Ma‘add, 102

Mu‘izzí, 23, 34, 36, 41

Mu‘jam of Shams-i Qays, 29

Mundhir, King of Ḥíra, 202

Munkar, 138

Muntakhar (Muntakhir), 191

Murádí, 21, 22

Murtaḍá, the Sharíf, 99

Musaylima, 104

Mutanabbí, 49, 50

Mu‘tazilites, the, 164

Naḍádi, 179

Najrán, 195

Nakhr, 191

Nakír, 138

Náṣir, the House of, 3, 4. See Ghaznevids

Náṣir-i Khusraw, 124

Naṣíru’ddín, vizier, 37

Náṣiru’ddín Qubácha, Sultan, 1, 3

Náṣiru’ddín Sabuktigín, 4

Naṣr ibn Aḥmad, Sámánid, 14

Nawbakht, 151, 152

Níshápúr, 12, 26, 124

Niẓámí ‘Arúḍí, 110

Niẓámu ’l-Mulk, 34, 35

Nizár, Fáṭimid Caliph, 102

Noah, 39, 61

Nöldeke, Th., 49

Núḥ ibn Manṣúr, Sámánid, 14

Nu‘mán I, Lakhmite prince, 32

Nuṣayrís, the, 183

Omar Khayyám, 5, 205

Orontes, river, 183

Oxus, river, 35

Pentateuch, the, 167, 174, 205. See Torah

Persia, 106, 122, 128

Pharaoh, 89

Plato, 22, 178, 186

Potter, M. A., 143

Prophet, the. See Mohammed

Psalms, the, 37, 68

Qaṭrán of Tabríz, 38

Qayṣar, 69

al-Qifṭí, 97

Quraysh, 154, 191

al-Qushayrí, Abu ’l-Qásim, 100

Quss, 195

Quss ibn Sá‘ida, 195

Rábi‘a, daughter of Ka‘b, 24

Rabinjaní. See Faḍl ibn ‘Abbás

al-Raḍí, the Sharíf, 46, 99

Rafí‘ of Merv, 7, 26, 27

Rakhsh, the horse of Rustam, 36

Ramla, 99, 101, 203

Rashídí of Samarcand, 6, 7

Rayy, 38

al-Rází, Abú Bakr, 158, 160

Rhazes. See al-Rází

Rieu, C., 50, 208

Risálatu ’l-Ghufrán, 43, 104, 155, 166, 176, 182, 194

Riẓwán, 21

Rock, the Holy, 191

Rosen, Baron V., 134

Rückert, 50

Rúḥí, 19

Rúm, 143

Rustam, 36

Sabuktigín. See Náṣiru’ddín Sabuktigín

Sa‘dí, 28

Sa‘du’ddín Mas‘úd Dawlatyár, 8

Sadúm, 109

Ṣaffárids, the, 4. See Layth, the House of

Ṣaḥíḥ, the, 168

Ṣaláḥ, a name of Mecca, 191

Ṣáliḥ ibn Mirdás, 97, 98, 101

Salmon, G., 205

Samá’í of Merv, 25

Sámán, the House of, 3. See Sámánids

Sámánids, the, 4, 10, 14, 96. See Sámán, the House of

Samarcand, 6, 7, 16

Saná’í, 22

Sanjar, Sultan, 3, 4

Sanjarí. See Badí‘u’ddín Turkú

Saqṭu ’l-Zand, 49, 50

Sayfí of Níshápúr, 26

Sayfu ’l-Dawla, 97, 100

Seljúq, the House of, 3. See Seljúqs

Seljúqs, the, 4, 17, 96. See Seljúq, the House of

Shabdíz, the horse of Khusraw Parwíz, 36

Shahíd of Balkh, 8

Sháhnáma of Firdawsí, the, 15

Shahrastání, 164

Shams-i Qays, 29

Shayba, 192

Shí‘ites, the, 96, 102, 103, 177

Sinán, 101

Sind, 1

Socrates, 142, 198

Sodom, 109

Strato, 22

Ṣúfís, the, 40, 115, 133, 194

Sunnís, the, 103, 177

Suyúṭí, 51

Syria, 43, 64, 95, 97, 99, 100, 108, 166, 195

Ṭabas, 124

Tabríz, 38, 99

Tadmor, 99

Ṭá-há Ḥusayn, Dr, 43, 51, 142, 159

Ṭáhir, the House of, 3. See Ṭáhirids

Ṭáhirids, the, 4, 5, 8. See Ṭáhir, the House of

Ṭahmúrath, 39

Táju’ddín, 7

Táju’ddín Ismá‘íl al-Bákharzí, 6, 26

Ṭáliqán, 30

Ṭayyi’, tribe, 101

Tha‘álibí, 100

Thamúd, 62

Tigris, the, 35

Tirmidh, 20

Torah, the, 167, 168, 171, 181. See Pentateuch

Transoxania, 1, 96

Ṭughánsháh ibn Muḥammad, Sultan, 33

Ṭughril, Sultan, 4

Tunis, 97

Turkestan, 30

‘Ubaydullah the Mahdí, 96, 97

al-‘Umad, 164

‘Umára of Merv, 10, 13

Umayya ibn Abi ’l-Ṣalt, 89

‘Umda, 164

Umm Dafr, a name of the World, 71, 75

‘Unṣurí, 30, 33, 37, 104

Uri, 208

al-Uṣayfir, 99

‘Utbí, 100

Van Vloten, G., 141

Verrall, A. W., 171

Von Kremer, A., 43-5, 52, 58, 64, 67, 101, 103, 105, 134, 137, 198, 208

Walwálají. See Muḥammad ibn Ṣáliḥ

Wright, W., 127

Ya‘qúb ibn Layth, 4

Yemen, 83, 124, 192

Ẓahír of Fáryáb, 37

Ẓahíru’ddawla Abú Bakr, 35, 36

Zoroaster, 167

Zoroastrians, the, 104, 152, 189, 196, 201. See Magians

Zuhayr, 150

Ablutions, religious, 150

Adam, more than one, 157; the son of Time, 158

Adultery, the legal penalty for, 199

Ambition, vanity of, 72, 88

Anaesthesia, Ma‘arrí’s longing for, 109

Angels, their existence doubted, 184; recording angels, 188; the two angels who examine the dead, 138

Animals, wounds inflicted by, not subject to a legal penalty, 68; condemnation of cruelty to, 198-9, 201-2; their skins should not be used for clothing, 137; specula tions as to their future existence, 202; happiness of wild animals, 127. See Vegetarianism

Arabic language, debasement of the, 114

Arabs, the pre-Islamic, customs and beliefs of the, 67, 90, 136

Arrows, used in games of hazard, 111

Ascension of the Prophet, 172

Asceticism, Indian, 137-8

Asceticism of Ma‘arrí, 125-41; its ethical character, 126; includes active virtue, 126, 198 foll.; not without a religious element, 132-3; world-flight, 126-31; abstinence from meat, fish, milk, eggs, and honey, 134-6; celibacy, 139-41

Astrologers, 110-12

Augury, 80, 193

Barrenness, a blessing for a wife, 77

basíṭ, metre, 57

Battle-field, description of a, 30

bayt, 56

Bees, ought not to be robbed of their honey, 113, 135, 136

Beggars, 113

Birds, the injustice of taking their eggs, 134, 136; kindness to, 202; poems addressed to, 202

Blindness, allusions by Ma‘arrí to his, 47, 128, 129, 184

Blue and green, wide range of the words denoting these colours, 86

Boasting, in Persian and Arabic poetry, 18, 19

Body, the, brings anguish to the soul, 71; the spirit’s garment, 75, 179; the spirit’s cage, 180; deserves no honour after death, 92; the substance of, eternal and indestructible, 150; resurrection of the body, 169, 185

Body and soul, their marriage the source of all evil, 65, 180; at war with each other, 76; die simul taneously, 179

Books, the revealed, spurious, 110, 168

Boys, corporal punishment of, 203

buqqárá, 152

Cadis, unjust, 109

Camels, the blood of, broiled and used as food, 67

Celibacy, 139-41

Charity, 120, 193, 201-2

Charmers, 63, 113, 119

Cheeks, compared to tulips, 12; to fire, 12; to the Pleiades, 23; to the full moon, 29

Chin, the, compared to an apple, 12; to a lily, 30

Christian boy, poem on a, 11-12

Christians, their influence in Moslem society, 115

Clothes, undyed, worn by Ma‘arrí, 137

Coffins, disapproved of, 138

Conceits, in Persian poetry, 9, 20

Creator, the, one of five co-eternal principles, 158

Creed of Ma‘arrí, the, 129, 142, 165, 196

Cremation, praise of, 138

Crucifixion, the, 170-1

Curls, compared to a restless lover, 12; to a waving hand, 12; to chains, 29; black curls compared to negroes, 12; to a raven’s wing, 12

dahr, 155

dá‘í, 82

Damnation, everlasting, 187

Darkness, original, 153, 203

Dawn, compared to a poisoned sword, 89; the bow of, 132

Days, the, compared to dromedaries, 81

Days, holy, 155, 174

Death, the leveller, 66, 79; a long sleep, 85; the grandest of gifts, 86; compared to a woman throw ing fuel on a fire, 89; to a lioness, 89; the blessings of, 56, 63, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 94, 123; kunya of, 113

Democratic theory, modern, antici pated by Ma‘arrí, 107

Dervishes, 113, 115

Determinism, 147, 161-3. See Fate; Freewill; Predestination

Directions, the six, 17

Divines, the Mohammedan, 108-110. See ‘ulamá

Dowry, paid by the husband to the wife, 87

Drinking vessels, luxurious, repro bation of, 85, 133

Earth, the most trusty comrade, 72; the best healer of pain, 88; receives its daily portion of human flesh and blood, 89

Earthquakes, 99

Education, views of Ma‘arrí on, 203-4

Elegies, Persian, 20-22

Elements, the four, 7, 17, 22, 91, 157, 207

Epitaph, composed by Ma‘arrí on himself, 140

Equality, religious, 195-6

Ethics of Ma‘arrí, 126, 136-8, 190, 197-205; similar to the ethics of Jainism, 137; intellectual basis of, 198

Evil, greatly preponderates over good, 85, 87, 90; original, 90, 117, 153, 198, 203; God or Fate responsible for, 119, 161-2; should be repaid with good, 200

fakhr, 19

Fame, vanity of, 207; Ma‘arrí’s expectation of, 207

Famine, in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, 99

Fanaticism, denounced, 103

Fasting, useless without silence, 131; from sin, 182

Fate, 60, 64, 65, 66, 69, 83, 88; rules the whole course of life, 31; subject to Allah, 161; compared to a nose-ring, 178. See Deter minism

Father, the, identified with the Active Intelligence, 22

Fathers, the seven, 22

Fire, a flaming, compared to a gambolling foal, 154; to a restless bay mare, 154

Flowers, described by Persian poets, 11, 13, 14

Freethought, 142, 146 foll. See zindíq; Reason; Rationalism

Freewill, 60, 70, 129, 163, 189

furqán, 174

Games. See buqqárá and kharáj

Genies, 111. See Jinn

ghazal, Persian verse-form, 3, 8, 11, 12, 22-27

Girls, should be taught to spin, not to read and write, 204

God, Ma‘arrí’s conception of, 158 foll.; the author of evil, 147, 161-2; justice of, 161-3

Government, Ma‘arrí’s views on, 106-7; injunctions against holding office under the, 133-4

Governors, military, called “devils,” 108

Grave, the, haunted by the dead man’s wraith, 90

ḥabr, 110

Hair, compared to violets, 21; to hyacinths, 23

háma, 90

Heaven, everlasting or not, 62, 149

Hedonism, no trace of, in the Luzúm, 205-6

Hell, 68, 95, 151, 187

Hermits, 61, 108, 130, 132, 139, 180; happier than kings, 107; the tears of, 115

Hours, the, compared to snakes, 60; to mares, 61, 157

Humour, in the Persian qaṣída, 38-9

Hypocrisy, the religion of mankind, 122 foll.; practised by Ma‘arrí, 122 foll., 146-9, 151, 164-6. See Irony

iḥrám, 192

ilḥád, 172

Imám, Shí‘ite belief concerning the, 96, 101-3, 105, 106

Immortality of the soul, 178-85. See Life, a future; Resurrection

Indian practices, 85, 137-8, 201

Insects, compassion for, 202

Intelligence, a divine, 158, 160; the Active, 22

Irony, employed by Ma‘arrí, 110, 138, 147, 151, 166-72, 174, 177

Islam, the attitude of Ma‘arrí towards, 146-8, 164 foll.; his criti cism of, 191. See Religion

Ismá‘ílís, the higher teaching of the, 105; their view of religion, 136; methods of their missionaries, 82

jabr, 161

Jews, the, influence of, 115; trans formed into apes, 183; attacks on their religion, 167-8, 171, 174, 175, 181; toleration for, 195-6

Jinn, the, 184. See Genies

Judgment Day, the, 117, 129, 132

Jupiter and Saturn, conjunction of, 103, 105

kámil, metre, 57

kharáj, 144

khaṭíb, 195-6

Kings, useful to society, 106; the servants of their subjects, 107; the poorest and most miserable of men, 130, 203

Koran, the, imitated or parodied, 165-6; kernel of the, 190

kunya, 45, 87, 113

Lamentation for the dead, con demned by Ma‘arrí, 72, 135

Laughter, ought to be avoided, 72

Letters, of the Arabic Alphabet, 89, 123

Life, a dream, 65, 93; a disease, 74, 91; bitterness of, 60, 66, 92; com pared to a serpent with black and white stripes, 68, 91; to a bridge, 69, 175; to a she-camel, 90; to an ill-strung necklace, 93

Life, a future, uncertain, 148, 178-84; references to, 131 foll. See Resurrection

Light, posterior to darkness, 153, 203

Lips, compared to coral, 23

Literature, the state of, in the age of Ma‘arrí, 100

Love, Persian poems on the subject of, 11-13, 22-27; treatment of, in the ghazal, 22, 24; in Persian epic and romantic poetry, 22; in semi-mystical poetry, 24; a favourite topic in the exordium of a qaṣída, 29

Luxury of women, 114

Luzúmu má lá yalzam, by Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí, style and matter, 43-5, 50 foll., 53-5, 58; disliked by Mohammedans, 50; a book of moral poetry, 50; main themes, 52; meaning of the title, 52; characterised by a difficult form of rhyme, 52-3; poems on Life and Death, 59 foll.; poems referring to political affairs, 100 foll.; on the Fáṭimids and Carmathians, 101-6; on government, 106-7; on the ruling classes and the ‘ulamá, 107 foll.; on astrologers, 110 foll.; on the wickedness of mankind, 116 foll.; on world-flight, 126 foll.; on vegetarianism, 134-5; on celi bacy, 139-40; in praise of Reason, 144; the Luzúm anti-Islamic in spirit, 146 foll., 164 foll.; poems on the stars, Time and Space, etc., 149 foll.; on God and Fate, 159 foll.; poems in which the dogma of Revelation is discredited, 167 foll.; poems illustrating the author’s view of positive religion, 173 foll.; poems on the nature and destiny of the soul, 178 foll.; on angels and Jinn, 184; on Resur rection and Retribution, 185-9; on the uselessness of external rites, 190; on the Pilgrimage, 191-3; on religious equality and toleration, 195-6; on virtue, 198-200; on charity, 201-2; against war, 203; on the education of girls and women, 204-5; the Luzúm and the Rubá‘iyyát of Omar Khayyám, 205-6

Lynx, somnolence of the, 145

Ma‘arrí, essentially a poet, 44, 51; aims at telling the truth, 44, 50 foll.; his life, 45-8; his poetry unconventional, 49-50; his pessi mism, 52, 95; wide range of his interests, 54; his fondness for philology and rhetoric, 55; his poverty, 46, 95, 125; he was familiar with the horrors of war, 97; came forward as a peace-maker, 97-8; sympathised with the ‘Abbásids and attacked the Ismá‘ílís, 101 foll.; did not believe in “blood and iron,” 103; denounces fanaticism, 103; assails governors, theologians, astrolo gers, and professional poets, 106-14; describes the corruption of Moslem society, 114 foll.; was thought to be rich, 124-5; his asceticism, 125 foll.; his philosophy and religion, 141 foll.; the practical tendency of his philosophy, 141; his importance in the history of Moslem thought, 142; an instance of his erudition, 143; his rationalism and scepticism, 144 foll.; his relation to Islam, 146 foll., 164 foll.; he uses irony, 147, 166 foll.; his philosophical principles, 149 foll.; they resemble those of al-Rází, 158; he believes in one God, 158-60; holds God or Fate responsible for evil, 160 foll.; throws doubt on Revelation, 166 foll.; does not write at random, 169; criticises Judaism and Christianity, 168-71; his views on the origin of religion, 173 foll.; on the soul, 178 foll.; on metempsychosis, 182-3; on the fundamental dogmas of Islam, 184-93; he censures superstition, 193; has nothing of the mystical spirit, 194; pleads for religious toleration, 195-6; his creed, 165, 196; his ethical teaching, 197 foll.; he expects to be famous after his death, 207

madíḥ, 29

Mankind, the breaths of Earth, 60; compared to plants, 86, 182, 183; the wickedness of, 116-24; incorrigible, 119-122

Mare, the black, referring to the ‘Abbásid dynasty, 67

Marriage, 87, 112, 114, 116, 141

mathnawí, Persian verse-form, 3, 8

Matriarchy, 143

Matter, the eternity of, 79, 149-50; the First or Primeval, 158

Mercy, enjoined by Ma‘arrí, 201; the Divine, 187

Metempsychosis, 182-4

Metres, Arabic, 55; specimens of the four principal, 56-7

Miracles, 194

mi‘ráj, 172

Monorhyme, the, in Arabic and Persian verse, 8, 27, 55; examples in English, 19, 21, 28, 133

Moon, the crescent, compared to a spear, 89

Mothers, the four, 22

mu‘áhid, 115

muḍári‘, metre, 11

nafs, 144

Nails, allowed to grow long by Indian ascetics, 138; to pare the nails, a mark of asceticism, 138

Names, inappropriate, ridicule of, 87

Names of honour, 45, 71, 75, 87, 113

námús, 172

nasíb, 29. See qaṣída, exordium of the

Nature, Persian poems descriptive of, 13

Nature, human, radically evil, 116 foll.; fights against Reason, 81, 117

náẓir, 195

Olive oil, the merits of, 133

Omens, 193

Ostrich, food of the, 90

Panegyrics, by Persian poets, 14, 15, 33-9

Paradise, 13, 17, 132, 133, 151, 187, 188; burlesque description of, 166; the eight Paradises, 16

Patronage, influence of, on Persian court-poetry, 32-4

People of the Book, the, 167

Pessimism of Ma‘arrí, 47, 52, 95, 206

Philosophy, defined by Jáḥiẓ, 141; the Pythagorean, 158

Pilgrimage, the, not performed by Ma‘arrí, 45, 78, 191; interrupted by Carmathians and brigands, 98-9; immoral and superstitious, 191-3

Planets, the seven, 207; subject to Allah, 152, 159; influence of, 22, 151-2, 161, 207; conjunction of, 103, 105; endowed with souls and minds, 151, 154; capable of speech, 152, 181; Jupiter, 14, 65, 103, 105; Mars, 19, 62, 65, 152; Saturn, 8, 14, 103, 105, 152; Venus, 152

Poet, the first Arabic, 4; the first Persian, 4

Poetry, Arabic, criticism of, 48-50; the proper end of, 44, 50; con demned by many Moslems, 51; moral poetry regarded as inferior, 50-52

Poetry, Persian, five main types of, 2, 3; the oldest, 8-15; mystical, 6, 24

Poets, professional, 4, 18, 32 foll., 45, 114

Political conditions, in Ma‘arrí’s time, 96 foll.

Polygamy, 114

Prayer, the efficacy of, 182; cannot alter the course of Fate, 64, 200

Prayers, the public, 109, 128

Preachers, the popular, corruptors of true religion, 110

Predestination, the question of, a sterile controversy, 163; an excuse for sin, 175

Procreation, a sin against the child, 126, 139; the source of misery, 139; increases the sum of evil, 139; the cause of death, 140

Prophets, the, 171-3

Proverbs, Arabic, 124, 145

Punishment, corporal, 203

qaṣída, the Arabic, 48-50; the Persian, 3, 8, 27-42; exordium of the, 17, 28; primary motive of the, 27; rhyme-system of the, 27-8; structure of the, 28-9; charac teristics of the, 33-4

qass, 196

qiṭ‘a, Persian verse-form, 3, 8-22

quṣṣáṣ, 110

radíf, 28

Rain, metaphors derived from, 60, 77, 88; prayers for, 200

Rationalism of Ma‘arrí, 47, 142, 167 foll.; of the Mu‘tazilites, 164

Reason, opposed to Revelation, 142, 168, 190; the sage’s mirror, 63; the only true Imám, 102; the source of right knowledge and action, 142; an attribute of the Creator, 158; the means of self-emancipation, 197; passages in praise of, 143-4

Recompense, future, 117, 132, 187-9, 199

Religion, a human institution, 106, 173-8; causes men to hate one another, 181, 195-6; makes them slaves, 197; false and irrational, 86, 167, 177; subordinate to righteousness, 190; its outward forms have no value in them selves, 190, 201; neglected, 115, 116; definitions of true religion, 102, 133, 182, 197

Resurrection, possible, 181, 185; doubtful, 169, 175, 184-7; terri fying sermons on, 110

Retaliation, the Mohammedan law of, condemned, 80

Revelation, how Ma‘arrí deals with the dogma of, 166 foll.

Rhyme, in the rubá‘í, 5; in the qaṣída, 27-8; in the Luzúm, 52-3; irregularities of, 127. See Mono rhyme

riqán, 111

Rose, the, poems on the, 13, 14

rubá‘í, Persian verse-form, 3, 5-8

Rue-seed, burnt as a charm against the evil eye, 5

sahl-i mumtani‘, 16

Scepticism of Ma‘arrí, 145-6

Scholasticism, Ma‘arrí’s contempt for, 164

Sectarianism, condemnation of, 194-6

Self-cremation, practised by Indian ascetics, 85

shanbalíd, 11

Shoes, should be made of wood, not of hide, 137

Silence, praise of, 130, 131, 142

Sin, original, 90, 198; a ladder to religion, 163

Sky, the, described as blue or green, 86

Slaves, humane treatment of, enjoined by Ma‘arrí, 201

Solitude, 122, 126

Sons, the worst enemies of their fathers, 112, 140

Soul, the, has its centre in the highest sphere, 118; subject to cognition and nescience, 145; obstinate in evil, 136; weakened by Reason, 144; nature and destiny of, 178-85. See Body; Spirit

Soul, the Universal, 158

Souls, human, infinite in number, 158

Space, Absolute, 158; infinite, 154-5, 160

Spheres, the nine, 17

Spirit, the, feels nothing after death, 121; corrupts the body, 179; dies with the body, 179; illumines the body, 180

Spring, poems on, 13, 31

Stars, influence of the, 70, 151-2, 160; sentient, intelligent, and articulate, 151, 152, 154; married to each other, 152, 154; the flowers of heaven, 86; ought to be venerated, 93, 153-4; foretell death, but not resurrection, 186; question whether they are eternal, 150, 154; Aquila, 156; Arcturus, 74, 152; Ashráṭ, 186; ‘Ayyúq, 35; Canopus, 152; al-Faníq, 47; Lyra, 74; Sirius, 37, 66; Spica Virginis, 66; Suhá, 37; Virgo, 74

Stone, the Black, a relic of paganism, 177, 191

ṣúfí, derivation of, 194

Ṣúfís, dissolute, 115, 194; God-fearing, praised by Ma‘arrí, 194; have something in common with freethinkers, 194; pietism of the early, 133

Sun, the, will not rise unless he is beaten, 89; may be extinguished, 149; eternal, 157

taqiyyat, 151. See Irony

ṭawíl, metre, 56

Tears, when shed by hermits, put out Hell-fire, 115

thaghám, 101

thawáb, 187, 199

Time, the nature of, 59, 154-7; subject to Allah, 116, 157; defini tion of, 156; has no influence on events, 156-7; abuse of, forbidden by the Prophet, 155; brings anguish on the wise, 31; immortal, 70

Time, Absolute, 158

Toleration, religious, 195-6

Traditions, religious, weakly attested, 144; forged, 110, 168, 175

Transmigration of souls, 182-4

Truth, used by Ma‘arrí in the sense of Right, 54; cannot be spoken in society, 122; moral, the object of Ma‘arrí’s poetry, 50; religious, not the monopoly of any race, 174

Tulips, compared to blood-stained swords, 13; to flagons of wine, 32

‘ulamá, attacks on the, 107-110, 175