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

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First printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge Reprinted in Great Britain by John Dickens & Co. Ltd, Northampton

WRITTEN during the war, these Studies grew out of the wish to impart some things I have enjoyed in Arabic and Persian not only to fellow-students, who can correct me if I misinterpret, but also to others who without being specialists are interested in the literature, philosophy and religion of the East. Since the five essays fall into two distinct groups, it has been decided to publish them in two volumes bearing different titles, namely, Studies in Islamic Poetry and Studies in Islamic Mysticism. The latter comprise (1) an account of the famous Persian Ṣúfí, Abú Sa‘íd ibn Abi ’l-Khayr— dervish, abbot, saint, and reputed poet— drawn from documents singularly rich in detail which shed a rather disillusioning light upon his character; (2) a study of ‘Abdu ’l-Karím al-Jílí’s treatise entitled al-Insán al-Kámil or “The Perfect Man,” a very curious exposition of the Mohammedan Logos doctrine by a Muḥyawí, i.e. one whose modes of thought are derived from Muḥyi’ddín Ibnu ’l-‘Arabí; (3) an essay on the Odes of Ibnu ’l-Fáriḍ, which unite mysticism with poetry of the rarest kind, but are so veiled in allegory that a glimpse of the meaning underneath is sometimes as much as we can obtain.

The present volume is devoted to belles-lettres. Professor Browne’s edition of the Lubábu ’l-Albáb, the anthology compiled by Muḥammad ‘Awfí, gave me an opportunity of trying what could be done with Persian court-poetry. In this field all the flowers are not roses, and the roses are artificial; yet with no disparagement to their beauty, so exquisite is the art. Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí was an old friend, whose pessimism made hours of gloom seem cheerful by contrast; and I believed that many would appreciate a version of selected passages from his Luzúmiyyát. English readers have not yet had this work put before them in a recognisable form: they will see that it is not in the least like the “quatrains” which it has inspired. My essay should be read as a supplement to the monograph by Alfred von Kremer in the Proceedings of the Vienna Academy (1889). That, indeed, is worthy of its theme, and one can scarcely imagine that it will ever become obsolete. But with all its brilliancy and charm I doubt whether it does justice to Ma‘arrí’s genius. Von Kremer seems to have forgotten that poetry is not philosophy and that the Luzúm is pre-eminently the work of a literary man. His attention was fixed upon the ideas, consequently he did not examine the language and style with sufficient closeness to detect the subtle manner in which the poet at once disguises and proclaims his unbelief in the Mohammedan or any other revealed religion. I have broken new ground and endeavoured to widen the perspective. However my conclusions may be regarded, they are based on the best evidence, that of the author’s writings, though it is avowedly disingenuous. Of the examples in English, including four which Mr Fisher Unwin has given me leave to reprint from my Literary History of the Arabs (1907), comparatively few coincide with the pieces chosen by Von Kremer. The appendix containing their text will serve, I hope, as an introduction to Arabic poetry for students who may find the pre-Islamic odes too difficult at first or fail to acquire a taste for them. Concerning the principles and methods which I have followed in translating, the choice of metres, the value of rhyme, etc., a good deal might be said; but as argument about such questions is apt to end in the sort of agreement recommended by Evenus— it will be enough to say that the verse-translations are not unduly free and should be of use to readers of the original Arabic and Persian. While the mystical poems often need a commentary, in other cases the aim has been to select typical extracts which for the most part explain themselves.

I cannot send forth this book without some reference to what has helped me to write it. Thirty years have now passed since I began to read Persian with Professor E. G. Browne. Looking back over that period, I recall his constant sympathy, his ever ready encouragement and support, with feelings which are beyond my power to express. By dedicating these Studies to him I would pay tribute to a great Orientalist and more especially acknowledge, in a way that will not displease him, my personal debt of gratitude and affection.

REYNOLD A. NICHOLSON.

October, 1920.

P. 7. The name Abú Zurá‘a is doubtful. See Ethé, Neupersische Litteratur in Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie, vol. 11. p. 221.

P. 10. I have retained the usual spelling of the name Rúdagí, but Rúdakí seems to be the correct form, as it rhymes with kúdakí in a verse by Niẓámí ‘Arúḍí (Lubáb, vol. 11. p. 7, l. 17) and with andakí in a verse by Kháqání (Jámí, Baháristán, ed. by Schlechta-Wssehrd, p. 95, l. 8 foll.).

P. 13. The flower which the Persians call lála (rendered here and elsewhere by “tulip”) is really the red anemone.

P. 19. Jabal in connexion with ‘Abdu ’l-Wási‘ refers to the mountainous district of Gharjistán. See Prof. Browne’s Literary History of Persia, vol. 11. p. 341, and Mr Le Strange’s Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, pp. 415-6.

P. 56, l. 8 from foot. It ought perhaps to have been mentioned that here the Latin imitation is not quite exact. In the catalectic variety of the Ṭawíl metre the third foot of the second hemistich is regularly , and occurs only as a rare exception to the rule. For this reason the “free” (muṭlaq) rhyme should be restored in the poem by Farazdaq printed in Nöldeke’s Delectus, pp. 84-6. Perfect metrical correspondence might be obtained by writing in the second line of the Latin version

and in the fourth line

P. 67, No. 24. A comma should be substituted for the full stop at the end of the sixth line.

P. 82, No. 62, first line. Read

P. 85, No. 72, first line. Read “to his sway.”

P. 89, note 1. For ḍáḍ read ḍád.

P. 104, note 4. For al-Farq bayna ’l-firaq read “Abú Manṣúr ‘Abdu ’l-Qáhir al-Baghdádí, al-Farq bayna ’l-firaq.”

P. 115, No. 140, ll. 1-4. These lines evidently allude to an apocryphal Ḥadíth, but I do not remember to have met with it in any work on Ṣúfí asceticism.

P. 116, No. 141, last line. Cf. Ibn Ḥawqal, ed. De Goeje in Bibl. Geographorum Arabicorum, 11. 117: . According to Muqaddasí, the Moslems turned half of the church into a mosque when they conquered Ḥimṣ. Dr T. W. Arnold has called my attention to a passage in Ibn Jubayr (E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series, vol. v. p. 303, 13-20) from which it appears that after mosques had been converted into churches, Moslems might continue to use a part of them. But these are doubtful examples of a practice which, in any case, was exceptional. Probably Ma‘arrí is thinking of separate but adjacent buildings.

P. 157, penult. Ḥamdulláh Mustawfí, Ta’ríkh-i Guzída (E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series. vol. XIV. p. 10, l. 7 foll.), refers to the doctrine which he says is held by the learned men of India, China, Cathay and Europe, that the creation of Adam took place a million years ago, and that there were several Adams, each speaking a different language, who succeeded one another in turn as the posterity of each died out. Cf. Bírúní, al-Átháru ’l-báqiya tr. by Sachau under the title of The Chronology of Ancient Nations. (London, 1879), pp. 115-6.

P. 164, No. 238, first line. Read

P. 204, No. 327, third verse. For “Girls are arrows” read

P. 214, No. 24, v. . Though all the texts, I think, have , the true reading must be , equivalent to .

P. 219, No. 39, v. . For read .

P. 263, No. 219, v. . For read .

P. 264, No. 224, v. . For read .

P. 272, No. 253, v. . For read .

THE BOOK entitled Lubábu ’l-Albáb has been known to students of Persian literature since 1848, when an account of the Elliot Codex was communicated to the Royal Asiatic Society by Nathaniel Bland¹. Its importance and rarity— only two, or at most three, manuscripts have survived— marked it out for publication as soon as the long-delayed task of providing critical editions of historical and biographical Persian texts was taken in hand by Professor Browne with the energy and ardour to which Oriental scholarship owes so much; and it is now accessible in two volumes, admirably edited and artistically printed (Leyden, 1903-1906). Concerning the author, Muḥammad ‘Awfí, we have little information. His family claimed descent from ‘Abdu ’l-Raḥmán ibn ‘Awf, an illustrious Companion of the Prophet. Born and bred at Bukhárá in the latter half of the twelfth century, ‘Awfí became one of those wandering scholars who, obeying the Prophet’s injunction to seek knowledge even in China, travelled from town to town and from court to court, and with nothing but their talents to recommend them played an influential part in Moslem politics and society. When Transoxania and Khurásán were threatened by the Mongols, he made his way to India, where he served in succession under Sultan Náṣiru’ddín Qubácha of Sind and his conqueror, Sultan Iltatmish. To the vizier of Iltatmish he dedicated his most famous work, the Jawámi‘u ’l-Ḥikáyát, an immense collection of historical and literary anecdotes.

The Lubáb professes to be the first Biography of Persian Poets, but although its form and arrangement justify this description, the so-called biographies chiefly consist of high-flown complimentary phrases strung together indiscriminately, with as little regard for fitness as for truth. Dates are very rare. In many cases the poet’s name is the single fact that his “Life” yields, and we have reason to be thankful that the Moslem system of nomenclature often indicates the town or district to which a man belongs either by birth or residence. The Lubáb might safely be ignored if its value depended on the biographical notices written by ‘Awfí himself. These, however, occupy an inconsiderable amount of space in relation to the whole text, which is almost entirely composed of excerpts from the work of about 300 poets. Essentially, then, the Lubáb is an anthology. It possesses unique historical importance as the oldest compilation of the kind in Persian¹, preserving the names of many ancient poets who are otherwise unknown, together with a great deal of verse that is nowhere else to be found. Of its literary merit lovers of poetry can form some notion from the specimens which I have translated, though this test is, of course, inadequate and must be corrected by reading the original passages as well as by reference to other portions of the book. Oriental standards of taste are so deeply at variance with those which prevail in Europe that we are too ready to condemn outright what displeases us instead of trying, not to reconcile the points of view, but to lay our own aside and approach the other in a spirit of sympathetic curiosity. This is the more necessary here because, with few exceptions, the poets cited in the Lubáb are distinctly minor and unable to rise above the elaborate conventions of the Persian ars poetica, which only the breath of genius can inspire with life. Moreover, in the opinion of an accomplished critic, Mírzá Muḥammad of Qazwín— whose introduction and notes to Professor Browne’s edition are a model of patient and fruitful research— ‘Awfí has not selected the materials of his anthology to the best advantage.

Formally considered, Persian poetry falls into five main types, and four of these occur in the Lubáb, namely, the qaṣída or “purpose-poem,” which is most often a panegyric but may be satirical, didactic, philosophical, or religious; the ghazal, of which the subject is usually love, human or divine; the qiṭ‘a or fragment, which is either a piece of verse detached from a qaṣída or a poem complete in itself; and the rubá‘í or quatrain. The fifth type, which is known by the name of mathnawí, includes poems longer than the qaṣída, such as epics, romances, and expositions of moral or mystical philosophy. Both in form and motive it stands apart from the rest and offers no temptation to the ordinary anthologist.

Before discussing further these various kinds of poetry and showing some of their peculiar characteristics by means of translation, I think it may be well to say a few words on certain matters of historical interest about which the reader will naturally wish to be informed. Let me begin by setting forth ‘Awfí’s description of the contents of the Lubáb. He divides it into twelve chapters, arranged as follows:

The introductory chapters need not detain us. As regards the questions propounded in chapters III and IV, ‘Awfí is inclined to accept the tradition that the first poet in the world was Adam, who composed an Arabic elegy (two verses of which are quoted) on his son Abel; and he ascribes the first Persian verse to “that great Hunter,” King Bahráṃ Gúr. Remembering that ‘Awfí was a courtier, we can excuse him for giving royalties and grandees the place of honour in his Anthology, but it tries our patience to read those noble amateurs whom he flatters so cheaply. Of the verse in this section of the book a page or two would hold all that is worth preserving for its own sake or on account of its association with great personages and events. The eighth and following chapters, which are printed in the second volume of Professor Browne’s edition, constitute the kernel of the Lubáb. Here we find real bards, men devoted to the art and business of poetry, drawn up, rank on rank, in the chronological order of the dynasties under which they lived: the Ṭáhirids (A.D. 820-872); the Ṣaffárids, descended from Ya‘qúb ibn Layth, the Coppersmith (A.D. 867-903); the Sámánids (A.D. 874-999); the Ghaznevids— called “the House of Náṣir” after Náṣiru’ddín Sabuktigín, who founded the dynasty— from the accession of Sultan Maḥmúd to the death of Mas‘úd, the third sovereign of the line (A.D. 998-1040); and finally the Seljúqs, from Ṭughril to Sanjar (A.D. 1037-1157), and from Sanjar to the author’s day (about A.D. 1220). Thus the whole period covered by the Lubáb is approximately four hundred years. Opening with the spring-time of Persian poetry which accompanied the movement towards national independence in eastern Írán, it runs a long and brilliant course ere it closes amidst the gathering darkness of the Mongol invasion.

Since my object is not so much to trace the historical development of this poetry as to illustrate its literary form and substance, the work of individuals will receive less attention than the four principal types which have been enumerated above. I will treat each type separately, taking the simpler first and leaving the qaṣída, the most artificial and complex, to the end.

The oldest Persian verse-form is probably the rubá‘í. It contains four lines, of which the first, second, and fourth must rhyme with one another, while the third may or may not rhyme with the rest. Such an arrangement of rhymes, however, does not exhaust the definition: there must also be a certain metrical scheme. ‘Awfí quotes two couplets by the Ṭáhirid poet, Ḥanẓala of Bádghís, which only fail to be a rubá‘í because they are not written in one of the metres peculiar to this form:

The rubá‘í resembles a short epigram, in the Greek sense of the word, and the best specimens have something of the quality which belongs to the Greek as contrasted with the Latin epigram: simplicity and directness of style, weight rather than wit, terseness without “epigrammatic” point. It was FitzGerald, not Omar Khayyam, who wrote,

one of many instances in which the English version gives a new turn to the original. The rubá‘í, again, is always a complete unit, unrelated to any larger whole. Persian literature furnishes no example of a poem like FitzGerald’s, made up of a number of quatrains. In Persian Díwáns we often meet with collections of rubá‘ís, but each one is absolutely independent, and its place in the series is determined by an external and fortuitous feature, namely, the alphabetical position of the letter that concludes the rhyme. There are no restrictions as to subject-matter. ‘Awfí shows a marked preference for amatory rubá‘ís, and we may presume that he knew what his readers liked. Among the chosen quatrains many are concerned with criticism of life in general or with topics suggested by a particular incident; others are descriptive, encomiastic, elegiac, satirical, moral, or religious. Noteworthy, as revealing the limitations of the Lubáb and its author, is the fact that the mystical rubá‘í— and, I may add, mystical poetry of any kind— is scarcely represented at all. One must go elsewhere to learn how beautiful is the literature in which the deepest aspirations of Persian thought have expressed themselves.

I will now give some examples. The first two are by Abu ’l-Ḥasan Ṭalḥa, of whose poetry the greater part belonged to this genre. Skill in composing quatrains might make a poet celebrated, even if his more ambitious performances fell flat¹.

The following rubá‘í is evidently mystical.

Here are two quatrains which have a topical character. The first was composed by Rashídí of Samarcand, a panegyrist of Sultan Maliksháh.

‘Awfí relates that once he was in the company of a certain noble named Táju’ddín. A melon was brought in. Whilst Táju’ddín was helping himself to a slice, the knife slipped and cut his finger. The poet Sa‘du’ddín Mas‘úd Dawlatyár improvised this rubá‘í:

The qiṭ‘a (fragment) is properly a subdivision of the qaṣída, i.e. it consists of a number of verses removed from their context in the qaṣída of which they formed a part. Such excerpts have no claim to be treated as an independent poetical type. But the name is also given to any poem, complete in itself, that follows the qaṣída pattern in respect of the monorhyme (which characterises all types of Persian verse except the mathnawí), and cannot be classified either as a rubá‘í or a ghazal, or included among the verse-forms of less importance. To the qiṭ‘a, thus defined, all that has been said above concerning the varied subject-matter of the rubá‘í is applicable, but the former, not being so narrowly restricted in length, affords larger opportunities both in the choice of a theme and in the way of handling it. More unconventional and spontaneous than the qaṣída and ghazal, this type comes nearer to our ideal of poetry. The difference appears most conspicuously in the oldest Persian verse produced under the Ṭáhirids and their immediate successors. Of this only fragments survive², but they are enough to show that the first poets had not learned to use the style overloaded with ingenious rhetorical artifices, which makes the Lubáb such a tiresome book to read. Their language is generally plain and unaffected; in some pieces its simplicity is almost artless—

The conceits in which the earliest poetry abounds are often so delicate and charming that it would be ungracious to accuse them of triviality. Besides, the criticism would not be just. Is anything really trivial that possesses artistic beauty? Ought we to despise Herrick’s

because it is only a pretty fancy? Those who are superior to such things will take no more interest in ‘Awfí’s anthology than in the Lyra Elegantiarum. In order that my readers may obtain a fair view of the first sprightly runnings of Persian lyric verse, I will depart for the moment from the plan adopted in this essay and try to render into English some representative examples which were composed during the ninth and tenth centuries (A.D. 826-999).

First, a few fragments on the subject of wine.

The next piece is by the blind minstrel Rúdagí, the most famous poet of the Sámánid epoch.

The following lines are less ancient, but were composed before A.D. 1050.

My last specimen of the wine-song is longer and more elaborate than any of these, and also differs from them all in having originally been the prelude of a qaṣída, as is shown by the double rhyme of the opening verse. The author, Kisá’í of Merv, was a well-known and singularly graceful poet who flourished in the latter half of the tenth century. I have attempted to imitate the muḍári‘ metre in which the fragment is written.

The same freshness and easy grace of style appears in the poems descriptive of love and beauty which have come down to us from that early time. Some of those translated below are properly ghazals, not qiṭ‘as.

Abú Shu‘ayb of Herát wrote the following verses on a Christian boy.

Here are three couplets from a ghazal composed by Júybárí, a poet of Bukhárá, who was a goldsmith and expert in his craft. The original metre is imitated.

The objective and pictorial character which the reader will doubtless have remarked in the poems inspired by love and wine is still more conspicuous in the pieces describing Nature. Seldom in either case do we find any intimacy of passion, any depth of moral or spiritual emotion. These lyrics express the keen sensuous feeling of the poet, his joy in visible and material things and his grief at their loss, but they express it objectively so far as the feeling itself becomes subordinate to the fanciful imagery in which it is clothed. Many of the poems on spring and the beauty of spring flowers are little idylls, exquisite of their kind. I will first quote two descriptions of stormy weather about the time of the Persian New Year.

Of all the innumerable tributes which Persian poets have offered to the rose, I know of none so charming as these lines by Kisá’í:

Here are two fragments:

Even in their laudatory verses the diction of these poets is plain and direct. Being Persians and courtiers, they do not measure their compliments by the merit of their patrons, but if they are not sincere, they at least seem so— an illusion which is no longer possible when the art of exaggeration has hardened into an obviously rhetorical exercise. The following lines by Faḍl ibn ‘Abbás al-Rabinjaní lament the death of the Sámánid prince, Naṣr ibn Aḥmad, and celebrate the accession of Núḥ ibn Manṣúr.

The next examples take a more personal tone and are marked by greater finish of style.

Firdawsí extols the munificence and bravery of Sultan Maḥmúd in four lines which are worth many bombastic qaṣídas:

The following qiṭ‘as belong to different periods and illustrate the wide range of subject permitted to poems of this type.

Besides the few lines which I have just quoted, the only specimen preserved by ‘Awfí of Firdawsí’s lyrical verse is a fragment in which the aged poet looks back upon long years of ill-rewarded toil when he was engaged in gathering materials for his Sháhnáma.

Many qiṭ‘as are what the French call vers d’occasion in the sense that their subject or motive is supplied by some circumstance of passing interest. The poet Farrukhí, a contemporary of Firdawsí at the court of Ghazna, having amassed a large fortune, set out on a pleasure-trip to Samarcand. He had nearly reached his journey’s end when he was attacked by brigands, who carried off the whole of his wealth. Being penniless and without resources, he did not venture to show himself in Samarcand, and after a few days returned home, leaving as a memorial of his visit the following lines:

Although in his earlier poems Farrukhí cultivated a subtle and artificial style, he finally sought and attained the ease that “comes by art, not chance”; and this manner of writing (sahl-i mumtani‘) distinguishes the pieces by which he is represented in the Lubáb. Here is the prelude of a qaṣída addressed to Sultan Maḥmúd:

The author of the next two pieces is Anwarí, the most renowned of the Seljúq court-poets, who died circa A.D. 1190.

Anwarí does not disguise his contempt for the art of poetry as practised by the professional qaṣída-writers amongst whom he had reluctantly enrolled himself. It was a choice of evils, and he resolved to be a rich poet rather than a poor scholar. Towards the end of his life, however, as the following lines testify, he shook off the galling and debasing fetters to which long years of court-patronage had not inured him, and found happiness where his own tastes pointed it out— in solitude, and quiet study,

When Anwarí condemns “boasting” as ungentlemanly, he means, of course, loud and vain words promising deeds that are never performed. Amongst Moslems, boasting of another sort is a traditional prerogative of the poet, handed down from pre-Islamic days when the Bedouin bards in glorifying themselves did honour to the tribe of which they were the foremost champions and spokesmen. Persian fakhr has no such narrow but intense background of patriotism to relieve its extravagance: it is frankly personal, as in the shorter of the two specimens translated below, which was composed by a minstrel of the Sámánid age, while in the minor poets of the succeeding periods it is often distinguished from vulgar self-advertisement only by its literary flavour and the fantastic heights of hyperbole to which it soars.

The following version retains the monorhyme:

This qiṭ‘a by Rúḥí shows that a reputation for satirical pleasantry might be embarrassing to its owner.

Abú Ṭáhir al-Khusrawání, one of whose verses had the luck to be quoted in a poem of Firdawsí, said in the course of a qaṣída composed when he was suffering from a mortal disease:

During the middle Seljúq period the people of Tirmidh groaned under the oppression inflicted on them by a tyrannous governor, named Akhṭí; and as ‘Awfí puts it, “so many pregnant sighs ascended to Heaven that at last the angels charged themselves with the task of fulfilling the prayers of his victims.” One day, while carousing, he swallowed a deep draught of wine, some of which “stuck in his throat” and choked him to death. The poet Adíb-i Ṣábir wrote this qiṭ‘a by way of epitaph:

Most of the elegiac pieces in ‘Awfí’s collection seem to us superficial in feeling and undignified in expression. We find it hard to imagine that true affection and tender sorrow can indulge in pretty (and even witty) conceits, but there have been epochs in English literature when this combination did not appear so incongruous as it does now. If we remember that contemporary taste allowed Donne to conclude his “Elegy on the Lord C.” with the couplet:

we shall be less disposed to ridicule Kisá’í for writing on the death of a certain notable of Merv:

Adíb-i Ṣábir, who has been mentioned above, wrote the following elegy on his mistress. The English rendering imitates the Persian monorhyme.

Beside this piece may be set the lines attributed to Sultan Maḥmúd of Ghazna on the death of a slave-girl to whom he was fondly attached.

Rúdagí’s lament for the poet Abu ’l-Ḥasan Murádí of Bukhárá, which is among the first elegies written in Persian, has an austere dignity of its own.

Unlike the qiṭ‘a, which lends itself to every conceivable topic and occasion, the ghazal is pre-eminently, though not exclusively, consecrated to Love. Shorter than the qaṣída, but otherwise resembling it in form, it differs from it— and from the qiṭ‘a also— in having less continuity and a looser connexion of ideas. The treatment of the subject is extremely conventional, and there are other features which not only make the ghazal unpleasing to modern taste but force the translator either to select with caution or run the risk of shocking his readers. We meet with the same difficulty in Greek literature: it will be enough to recall the names of Plato and Strato. As regards Persian poetry, this aspect of love is prominent in the lyrics, while in epic and romantic verse the normal relations of men and women are depicted. Many ghazals contain nothing to indicate the sex of the person addressed, an ambiguity which is favoured by the fact that Persian has no grammatical gender; and even when it is certain that the charms of a youth are celebrated, as in the first of the following specimens, one can scarcely feel the subject to be offensive, so fanciful and remote from actuality is the style.

Since Mu‘izzí, who died about 1150, was an original writer and seems entitled to the distinction of having first developed the characteristic Persici apparatus of court-poetry, I will translate another ghazal by him, reproducing the metre as far as is possible in English.

These poems, with their naive parallelisms and decorative metaphors, have an elegance and ease of expression that deserve to be admired. But though Persian amatory verse is seldom deficient in beauty of form, those who are most familiar with it will confess that, as a whole, it suggests “the little emptiness of love” rather than la grande passion. There are important exceptions, e.g., the semi-mystical odes in which Love has become a religion and the worship of human beauty is subtly mingled with raptures of divine enthusiasm. In the Lubáb, however, this high note is only heard at long intervals, and then imperfectly. The fashionable love-lyric runs in a narrow mould which very few Moslem poets have dared to break. Like medieval Minnesong, it is artificial and monotonous in phrase, and its sentiment (which may be quite genuine) leaves us unmoved. I do not think it is chance that the following lines— an almost unique outburst of passionate feeling— were written by a woman, Rábi‘a, the daughter of Ka‘b.

Rábi‘a was nicknamed “the Brazen Fly”— a phrase which occurs in one of her poems. An accomplished hetaera, docta sermones utriusque linguae, she wrote verse in Arabic as well as in Persian.

I will now translate a few short ghazals by different hands. They have been chosen for their simplicity and comparative lack of rhetorical ornaments.

The following ghazal is purely mystical. Its author, Fakhru’ddín Mas‘údí of Merv, was not a professional poet, but a famous scholar and theologian. His biography, therefore, belongs to the first volume of the Lubáb, but ‘Awfí having inadvertently omitted it in its proper place has inserted it in the second part of his work.

The qaṣída is the consummate type of Persian court-poetry, and in accordance with that definition its primary motive is praise, which might more accurately be termed flattery, of the great. Since no bard who knew his business could afford to economise in compliments, the qaṣída is generally a long poem, ranging from twenty or thirty to well over a hundred couplets.

Whatever metre be chosen, the rhyme-system is invariable. The opening couplet always has two rhymes, one in each hemistich, and the same rhyme is repeated at the end of every succeeding couplet until the poem is finished. To write a full-length qaṣída under such conditions, without injuring the artistic effect, demands great skill; in English, where rhymes are much scarcer, it could not be done except as a tour de force. For the sake of those who do not read Persian I translate a few couplets in order to show how the exordium of a qaṣída is rhymed.

O heart, bring the good news! She I love best         is coming.
O eye, prepare the lodging, for thy guest         is coming.
O body, though love hath brought thee to thy latest breath,
Yet forward send thy soul! She of thy quest         is coming.
Now once again make merry with new glee: the end
Of absence long that burns the achíng breast         is coming.
The days of grief and woe and anguish— all are past;
The hour of peace and joy and balmful rest         is coming¹.

Here each couplet (there are fifteen in the original) ends with the words hamí rasad, “is coming,” which constitute what is called the radíf, while the rhyme proper is formed by the syllable immediately preceding it.

I have said that the qaṣída is properly a panegyric; and this statement, though by no means of universal application, holds good in regard to most of the qaṣídas quoted in the Lubáb. If they had contained nothing else than flattery of kings and nobles, they would have been insufferably tedious to us, and perhaps even to those eminent persons whose munificence they were designed to stimulate. Sa‘dí, in the Galistán², tells a story about some dervishes with whom he consorted. They enjoyed a regular allowance from a certain grandee, but in consequence of an act committed by one of them he withdrew his patronage, Sa‘dí resolved to intercede on his friends’ behalf. He paid a visit to the great man, who received him with marks of honour and esteem. “I sat down,” he says, “and conversed on every topic until the subject of my friends’ offence came up”; and he goes on to relate how he gained his end. The structure of the qaṣída exemplifies this rule of courtly etiquette. Instead of coming straight to the point (which is, in plain terms, to give praise in hope of getting a reward), the poet begins his ode with an elaborate description of a handsome youth or a beautiful garden or some equally irrelevant topic; and having thus won the ear of his prospective patron, he glides as dexterously as he can from the exordium (nasíb) into the encomium (madíḥ). Although the two have no real connexion with each other, so that the qaṣída lacks organic unity, the whole poem is endowed with unity of purpose, inasmuch as the prelude contributes to the success of the panegyric and aims indirectly at bringing about the same result.

“Some excellent authorities have said that the nasíb is a ghazal with which the poet, according to convention, introduces his principal theme, in order that, by reason of the fondness that most men have for hearing the various emotions of the lover and the beloved and their mutual dalliance described, the person to whom the poem is addressed may listen attentively and divert his thoughts from other cares; and in order that he may be led by this means to apprehend the main purpose of the qaṣída with a collected mind and a calm soul, and bestow on it a greater measure of approbation. Anwarí says:

Whereas in the encomium the poet is a slave to his profession, the nasíb gives him an opportunity of displaying his powers on a subject that does not constrain him to use fine rhetoric or fulsome adulation. In this part of the qaṣída we sometimes chance on passages of fresh and opulent beauty or tinged with a maturer charm of melancholy, which bid us pause when we are tempted to cry out that these Oriental Pindars are unreadable. The few versions given here show that love, though it is a favourite subject of the nasíb, is not the only one, as the words quoted from Shams-i Qays suggest.

The poet, of course, remains deaf to her appeal and pursues his journey to the vizier whose patronage he was seeking.

In the following exordium ‘Unṣurí describes the battle-field of Sultan Maḥmúd.

Anwarí, as we have seen, was far from happy in his profession. These opening lines of one of his most celebrated qaṣídas were, no doubt, inspired by the conflict of the better which he saw and approved with the worse which he followed.

Very often the nasíb is a description of the coming of Spring, a season which the poets associate with wine-drinking amidst flowers and with all sorts of festivity.

Such passages— and there are many of equal or superior merit— redeem the courtly qaṣída from utter barrenness. Artificial as they are, they are not consciously insincere, and one can admire the workmanship without feeling that all beneath is tainted. This saving clause does not extend to the panegyric. Here the moral character and motive of the poet inevitably come into view; nor is there any pretence of disguising them. The Amír of Khurásán asked the minstrel Abú Zurá‘a, “Can you make poetry like Rúdagí?” “My poetry is better than his,” he replied, “but it needs thy bounty, for a poet becomes popular only when his patron regards him with favour”; then he said in verse:

One of the shortest articles in the Lubáb is that on Bihrúz-i Ṭabarí, which runs as follows:

“He says, complaining of the injustice of Fortune and the obscurity of the noble and the advancement of the base:

A slight alteration in the well-known lines which Catullus addressed to Cicero makes them exactly fit the theory of poetry as expounded by Persian bards:

Lest any one should suspect me of exaggerating, I will translate literally a passage which occurs in a qaṣída by Azraqí of Herát. He is addressing Sultan Ṭughánsháh ibn Muḥammad, the Seljúq.

The patron, then, is the Muse of Persian court-poetry, and his inspiration is paid for in advance by the encomium which invokes it. Did he fail to respond, he was liable to be satirised as grossly as he was flattered before, so that he had every encouragement to behave with liberality. It may be urged that moral considerations should not enter into literary criticism, but this argument loses its force when the artistic form is influenced by a moral or immoral purpose. We take pleasure in well-turned compliments, without inquiring whether they are sincere or no, and the Persian panegyrists supply admirable examples of the kind. But in the encomium the claims of art are secondary: the poet cannot write to please himself; he must sing to his patron’s tune. The more extravagant his laudation, the more turgid his rhetoric, and the more ingenious his flattery, the better chance he has of competing successfully with his rivals and securing a rich reward. Therefore extravagance, turgidity, and ingenuity are qualities belonging to the typical qaṣída since the Ghaznevid period, when it first became fully developed. Their combination with the stock-in-trade of conventional figures, phrases, epithets, assonances, and allusions— the raw material of all this poetry— produces a result which only Persian scholars can appreciate: to dress the qaṣída in another language is to leave it a shadow of its gorgeous self. With this advertisement, which is at once a warning to my readers and an apology to the poets in question, I will now render into prose or verse some of the less difficult panegyrics that ‘Awfí has selected.

The following encomium by Mu‘izzí is addressed to Niẓámu ’l-Mulk, the celebrated vizier of Sultan Maliksháh.

Although the faults of this style are evident, while its compensating beauties disappear in translation, I should like to add one or two shorter specimens of the hyperbolical flattery on which the court-poets squander all the fancy and wit they command.

That same desire was “the only begetter” of almost every qaṣída in the Lubáb. Their general features do not vary to any great extent and have been sufficiently illustrated by the extracts given above. Intellectual wit has free play in the panegyric, but a sense of humour is seldom allowed to interfere with the solemn pose and ceremonious address which the patron’s dignity demands. One of these rare exceptions is an ode by Jawharí of Herát, beginning:

The ode ends with a few lines equivalent to the English formula, “and thy petitioner will ever pray.”

On the whole, we must allow that the difficulties and fatigues encountered in this field of Persian poetry are considerably greater than any pleasure that can be gained from it. Its lack of truth and sincerity, the poverty of its ideas, and the shallowness of its sentiment leave at times an impression of disgust which the beautiful diction and brilliant imagery only serve to emphasise. Moreover, the style, pleasingly exotic at the best, in many passages becomes grotesque and ludicrous. Since I have tried to show that the work of the court-poets is not altogether unattractive, I may be pardoned for having selected such pieces as seemed to answer the purpose. Let me now justify my discretion by revealing the obstacles that would lie in the way of a more valorous translator. The chief of these is the fact that Persian poetry is largely composed of elements which are the very antithesis of what we in the West usually mean by the term “poetical”— elements which have long been regarded by us as destructive to poetry, though suitable enough for parody and other forms of light or humorous verse. This view, indeed, has not always prevailed. It was an English poet of the seventeenth century who wrote,

and the definition is applicable to the lyrical poetry of Persia. As for madness, in the sense of divine enthusiasm, the odes written by Ṣúfís have plenty of it. The court-poets are not in the least mad, but they are immoderately witty. While we may agree that wit sometimes enters into alliance with poetical beauty and is even capable of adding an unexpected touch that contributes to its perfection, none of us would presuppose a natural and intimate connexion between the two. Persian criticism, however, does connect them; and in Persian poetry mere intellectual or verbal ingenuity, far from being a vice, is an admired ornament of style, albeit at some periods and by some poets it is used more sparingly than by the encomiasts who fill the pages of the Lubáb with clever fancies and quaint comparisons. The following specimens, which I have rendered literally, are easily understood and give but a slight notion of the feats accomplished by these Oriental euphuists.

Here are the opening lines of a qaṣída by ‘Am‘aq of Bukhárá. “All the poets,” says ‘Awfí, “are unanimously of opinion that no one before him ever composed verses like these and that no one after him has been able to equal them.”

A little of this goes a long way. My last quotation is a lover’s complaint, which occurs in the exordium of an ode by Abu ’l-Ma‘álí.

The name of Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí¹ is not one of those which any body of educated Moslems would be likely to receive with placid approbation or polite indifference; and readers of this essay will feel, though less acutely, that the words of the old blind poet, who died in Syria eight hundred and sixty years ago, ring out to-day as a challenge to deep and irreconcilable antagonisms in the nature of mankind. Is life to be desired or death? Is the world good or evil? Shall we enjoy it if we can or spurn it utterly? What is the truth about religion? Does it come to us from God, as the orthodox pretend? Are we to follow authority and tradition or reason and conscience? Such are some of the questions with which Ma‘arrí concerns himself. While his reflections— not pursued methodically, but set down piecemeal and at intervals— might be described as extensive and peculiar, we must not exaggerate their intrinsic value. Von Kremer’s essay, for which in general I have nothing but praise, seems to me to suffer from want of proportion. It hails Ma‘arrí as an original thinker, centuries in advance of his age, and discusses his theory and practice as though he were a philosopher writing in verse. Without denying that Ma‘arrí was a pioneer of Aufklärung, or that his open-minded and independent way of looking at things led him to conclusions which often agree with those of modern thought, I submit that Von Kremer has put the cart before the horse. Ma‘arrí is, first of all and essentially, a poet. His philosophy and ethics are only a background for his poetry. His work is artistic in treatment and execution and should be weighed by the standard which we apply to the Divina Commedia or the Paradise Lost. He sits below Dante and Milton, but he belongs to their school; and if he contemplates life with the profound feeling of Lucretius, he handles his subject with a literary skill as fine as that of Horace. Probably very few Europeans have read these poems, the Luzúmiyyát, from beginning to end. I am sure that any one who has accomplished the feat, or may do so in the future, will acknowledge the author’s mastery of the Arabic language— a mastery which too frequently displays itself in juggling with words— the aptness of his diction, the force and opulence of his imagery, the surprising turns of his fancy, and the charm of a style unmistakably his own, whose melancholy dirge-like cadences blend with sharper notes of wit, satire, and epigram. The matter is almost as remarkable as the style. Ma‘arrí aims at telling the truth, although according to Moslem theory poets not only are but ought to be liars. Taking Reason for his guide, he judges men and things with a freedom which must have seemed scandalous to the rulers and privileged classes of the day. Amidst his meditations on the human tragedy a fierce hatred of injustice, hypocrisy, and superstition blazes out. Vice and folly are laid bare in order that virtue and wisdom may be sought. In his poetry we see the age depicted without fear or favour, and— what is more appealing— the artist himself, struggling with doubts, yet confident in the power of mind to solve difficulties and give light, if any can be looked for. But (lest I slip after Von Kremer) much of the Luzúm is monotonous; a great deal is trivial and pedantic and to our taste intolerably clever: it moves us to admiration and contempt, it thrills, fatigues, fascinates, and repels; and when all has been said, it remains unique and immortal because it expresses the personality of an extraordinary man.

Abu ’l-‘Alá Aḥmad ibn ‘Abdallah al-Ma‘arrí¹ was born in A.D. 973 at Ma‘arra (Ma‘arratu ’l-Nu‘mán), a country-town in the district south of Aleppo². His family might boast of its cadis and poets, but its talents appear to have been more respectable than brilliant. The fact that neither his father nor his cousin nor his maternal uncle ever made the pilgrimage to Mecca is worth recording in view of the importance which he ascribes to example and custom in the formation of religious belief. Ere he was four years old, he suffered the first calamity of his life: an attack of small-pox left him partially, and soon completely, blind. After his father’s death— he was then about fourteen— he devoted himself to study, visiting Aleppo, Antioch, and other Syrian towns, learning by heart the manuscripts preserved in their libraries, and attending the lectures of many celebrated scholars. As Professor Margoliouth remarks, his memory was prodigious. We can hardly conceive how one who so early lost his sight should have been able to compose letters and treatises thickly sown with quotations which, although they are sometimes inaccurate, show a knowledge of Arabic poetry and philology such as the most industrious grammarians seldom possessed. Having finished his studies, he returned in A.D. 993 to Ma‘arra, perhaps with the intention of becoming a professional poet, that is to say, a writer of panegyrics for which he might reckon upon being paid handsomely. This was no career for a man of spirit and honour to embark on. If it tempted him, he soon put it aside: in the preface to his first collection of poems he says that he never wrote encomia for money, but only because he wished to gain practice in the art. During the next fifteen years (A.D. 993-1008) his whole income was a pension of about 30 dínárs which his blindness compelled him to share with a servant; possibly he may have earned a little more by teaching. Meanwhile he was making a reputation beyond the borders of his native town, and his thoughts turned to Baghdád, “the great field of genius and exertion, where talents of every kind had the fullest scope and the highest encouragement¹.” In 1008 he set out from Aleppo, travelling down the Euphrates in a boat provided by his uncle. It seems clear that he hoped to establish himself permanently in the capital; and he ought to have counted the cost of his refusal to live by belauding the great. “I found Baghdád,” he says, “like a pie’s wing— fair, but carrying nothing².” While his reception by the savants and academicians whom he met there was flattering enough to console him for occasional slights, and perhaps friendly enough to procure him the means of livelihood, he felt that his prospects were uncertain. According to Professor Margoliouth, an indignity put upon him by the brother of the Sharíf al-Raḍí was the last straw. Anyhow, eighteen months after entering Baghdád he started on his way home³. He took this step reluctantly and always writes of it with unfeigned regret, as in the following lines:

The sense of disillusion and failure with which he quitted Baghdád appears in a letter addressed to the people of Ma‘arra shortly before his arrival amongst them. He declares that he has now ended his youth and bidden farewell to his spring-time, and that he finds the best course for him to pursue is to go into retreat.

“My soul did not consent to my returning till I had promised it three things— seclusion as complete as that of (the star) al-Faníq in the constellation of the Bull; separation from the world like that of the egg-shell from the chick; and to remain in the city even though the inhabitants fled through fear of the Greeks.... What I wanted was to stay in a place of learning: and I found out the most precious of spots, but fate did not allow me to stay there, and only a fool will quarrel with destiny¹.”

Here is pessimism, asceticism, fatalism— the stuff of which his later poems are made. It would be curious if their rationalism, another prime ingredient, owed nothing to the “intellectuals” of Baghdád. Considered broadly in relation to the poet’s development, these two years (1008-9) were decisive. The change of scene, the sudden plunge into metropolitan society, the literary discussions, the conversations with men of all races and creeds, the conflict of old dogmas and new ideas, then the wreck of his hopes and the burial of his ambitions in silence and solitude— need we ask whether such an experience did not stimulate his genius and alter the bent of his mind? From this standpoint the episode was entirely fortunate. Had he not gone to Baghdád, probably the Luzúmiyyát would never have been written, and (in Europe at any rate) his fame as a poet would be very different from what it is.

Ma‘arrí lived in retirement until his death in A.D. 1058, fifty years later. Proud, sensitive, and suspicious, doubly imprisoned by blindness and seclusion², a misanthropic and world-weary old man— that is the character which his poems give of him; but a true portrait shows light as well as shade. To quote Professor Margoliouth,

the result of his visit to Baghdád, where the leading writers of the time had treated him as one of themselves, became apparent as soon as he came back. Disciples began to flock to Ma‘arra from all quarters to hear his lectures on the grammar, poetry, and antiquities of the Arabs. The house or cave which he inhabited became the chief sight in Ma‘arra, and he himself the most important inhabitant....The letters, most of which were written after the return from Baghdád, exhibit the author as anything but a hermit; he appears rather as a man of many friends, who takes a kindly interest both in men and things.

Besides teaching, he occupied his mind with composing the Luzúmiyyát and dictating to his amanuenses a large number of philological and other works of which, for the most part, the titles alone have been preserved.

The poetry of Ma‘arrí recalls a long-drawn controversy, which has never wholly died out, between two schools of Islamic criticism. One party maintained that with the coming of Islam the golden age of Arabic poetry had gone for ever. A poet’s rank was decided by his date. To have lived in that age, to have spoken the pure Bedouin idiom uncontaminated by foreign conquests, to have practised the traditional virtues and to have been inspired by the chivalrous ideals of heathendom conferred a superiority outweighing every other consideration. In the eyes of early Mohammedan philologists and antiquarians— whose authority rested securely on the universal respect for learning and was but little diminished by their incompetence in matters of taste— the pagan odes fixed an unapproachable standard by which all Moslem poets should be judged; so that an imitation of them, good or bad, was more highly esteemed than any original work of genius. Pedantry, no doubt; but in justice to those old scholars we ought to reflect that they were concerned with one particular type of poetry, the Ode (qaṣída), which was the product of Arabian antiquity and corresponded in its characteristic features to conditions of life that actually existed in the pre-Islamic period¹. When these conditions vanished, the qaṣída became an anachronism but continued to be the chief medium of poetical expression, since none of the minor types was capable of filling its place. Failing the invention of a new form of equal dignity, the qaṣída held the field. What was a modern poet to do? Was he to assume the consecrated pose of bidding his two comrades halt awhile and weep with him over a certain camping-ground, desolate now, but still haunted by dear and regretful memories? And was he to describe the hardships, which he had never known, of a journey across the desert, and pretend to be as intimately acquainted with camels, horses, wild asses, antelopes, and lizards as he truly was with the rhymed loci classici in which the habits of these animals are so well delineated? If, on the other hand, like Mutanabbí and Ma‘arrí, he made fun of the obsolete fashions and re-shaped them to suit the facts of his time, academic persons might (and did) protest that his more or less novel adaptation was not poetry at all. It appears to me that those who championed the ancients were both right and wrong. They were right in preferring the model to the copy. They were wrong when they set it up as a test of all poetic values and declared it to be so perfect that nothing of a different kind could bear comparison with it. To assert that since A.D. 622 there has been no Arabic poet of the first class is ridiculous; and though more great poets lived in the century before Islam than in aný subsequent period of the same duration, I think it may reasonably be questioned whether Imra’u ’l-Qays and his fellows are superior in genius to Abú Nuwás, Mutanabbí, and others who flourished under the ‘Abbásid Caliphate². If some cannot admire the ancients without depreciating the moderns, not a few will justify the proud boast of Ma‘arrí—

For my part, when I turn from the authors of the Mu‘allaqát to the great Islamic poets, I do not miss what I do not expect to find; and I find beauties enough in both to compensate me for the deficiencies of either. Thanks mainly to Rückert and Sir Charles Lyall, the worth of old Arabian poetry is now understood everywhere. Let us hope the day is coming when it will be possible to make that statement as regards Arabic poetry in general.

What has been said of Coleridge, that “his poems lie as it were in two strata,” is also true of Ma‘arrí. Those of his first manner, the odes comprised in the Saqṭu ’l-Zand and mostly written before the age of thirty-five, show the influence of his admiration for Mutanabbí and in comparison with the Luzúmiyyát are nearly as conventional as the poems written by Coleridge before 1797. They include some fine panegyrics and elegies but have small interest for us. In the East, however, the Saqṭu ’l-Zand has always been more popular than the Luzúm, which Mohammedans usually dislike on account of the opinions put forth in it, while neither its form nor its character accords with their notion of what poetry ought to be. As we have seen, the regular type of Arabic poetry is the ode; but in the Luzúm Ma‘arrí discards this time-honoured model, substituting for it an informal composition which may contain any number of verses from two or three to eighty or ninety. How these poems strike the average Moslem we can learn from the apology which Ma‘arrí thinks it necessary to make for them. He says in effect¹:

“I have not sought to embellish my verse by means of fiction or fill my pages with love idylls, battle-scenes, descriptions of wine-parties and the like. My aim is to speak the truth. Now, the proper end of poetry is not truth, but falsehood², and in proportion as it is diverted from its proper end its perfection is impaired. Therefore I must crave the indulgence of my readers for this book of moral poetry.”

In other words, Ma‘arrí holds that truth— he means moral and philosophical truth— so far from being the standard of poetical merit, is positively injurious to it. He does not imply that the best poetry is untrue to life, but rather that it is false because it follows human life and nature, which belong to the vanities of this world and are themselves radically false. He knows that he cannot compete with his “profane” brethren who are free to employ all the resources of invention and imagination; and foreseeing that his readers will be disappointed, he hastens to assure them that the fault lies in the subject, not in the poet. A Mohammedan scholar, who in his recently published memoir of Ma‘arrí has made a valuable contribution to learning, cites this passage as evidence that the Luzúm is really “a volume of philosophy¹.” If that were so, we might ask why the author not only composed it in verse but adopted an almost incredibly difficult form of rhyme, the explanation of which gives his preface the appearance of a treatise on prosody. But I need not argue the point further. Ma‘arrí says that the Luzúm is “diction devoid of falsehood” (), i.e., poetry of an inferior kind.

We who dissent from his theory judge otherwise of his work. Although moral, religious, and philosophical ideas are not the essence of poetry, they have inspired the greatest poets, and where genius is equal they will turn the scale. Whether and to what extent they enhance the merit of a poem depends on the author’s power to give them artistic and original expression: the most striking doctrines and speculations may have less value for this purpose than thoughts and feelings with which everyone is familiar. Von Kremer’s view of Ma‘arrí led him to ignore the latter element; hence the passages which he translated stand somewhat apart, so to speak, from the main themes. These are simple and even commonplace: the pain of life, the peace of death, the wickedness and folly of mankind, the might of Fate and the march of Time, the emptiness of ambition, the duty of renunciation, the longing for solitude and then— to rest in the grave. The pessimism of the Luzúm wears the form of an intense pervading darkness, stamping itself on the mind and deeply affecting the imagination¹. It is an old philosophy and its poets have been many, but I can think of none who in sincerity, individuality, and eloquence has surpassed Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí².

The book derives its title from a “troublesome bondage” (to borrow Milton’s phrase) voluntarily imposed on himself by the author in regard to the rhyme³. Although the nature of this cannot be explained properly without using technical terms which I wish to avoid, the so-called “rich rhymes” of French versification are a close parallel and will serve to illustrate what is meant. Conceive a French poem of ten, fifteen, or twenty verses, every verse having not only the same rhyme but the same consonant preceding the rhyme-vowel, e.g., plume, allume, enclume; mirage, enrage, ouvrage, parage; further, conceive hundreds of poems rhymed throughout in this manner and arranged according to the alphabetical sequence of the final consonant, so that those with the rhyme lume are placed under m, those with the rhyme rage under g, and so on— the analogy, such as it is, may help readers ignorant of Arabic to measure the enormous labour which the composition of the Luzúmiyyát must have entailed. There is nothing like it, of course, in any European language; even in Arabic, a language that seems to have been made for virtuosity, we find only a few brief and isolated specimens to set beside it¹. Were Ma‘arrí a minor poet, the Luzúm would be a senseless tour de force. Some of it is not very remote from that description, and the tyranny of the rhyme exacts a crushing toll of repetition, monotony, banality, obscurity, and affectation. Still, take it all in all, the work is shaped by the artist, not by the mould which it fills slowly and reluctantly. I do not think so poorly of his powers as to believe, with some Mohammedan and European critics, that the difficulty of the form compelled him to say what he never would have said if he had been his own master. No doubt, he is apt to be dragged down by his chains, but often he can move in them with such dexterity and ease that they appear rather an ornament than a hindrance.

The Luzúm contains 1592 poems amounting, I suppose, to between twelve and thirteen thousand verses altogether. When the author declares that they glorify God, exhort the heedless, and warn against the vanity and wickedness of the world¹, he does not indicate either the range of their topics or the variety of their style. He was interested in many things besides asceticism: he was a keen student of passing events, he professed to know his contemporaries by heart², and we shall see how political and social phenomena reflect themselves in his meditations. Recalling his avowed intention to tell the truth, one may find there the best commentary on his way of telling it. For him Truth was a mystery—

By hard living and thinking he strove to lift that veil, and the laboured utterance, the dark hints and metaphors— in short, the oracular quality of his verse— are only in keeping with the physical and mental strain which he had undergone. Closer acquaintance with the Luzúm has persuaded me that its obscurity is more natural and less deliberate than I once imagined. Ma‘arrí had good reason to cloak some of his opinions, and being a sensible as well as a cautious man, he did not court persecution, though in fact the most heretical passages of his work are by no means the most obscure. Apart from special causes his style, as I said before, is the expression of a strange untempered personality⁴, while in the second place it is the product of a poet who seldom allows us to forget that he was also a very learned scholar. His love of grammar, prosody, rhetoric, and belles-lettres asserts itself extravagantly; some poems are mere strings of word-plays. This feature spoils many pages for us, but it is not invariable, as will be acknowledged by those who read the Arabic text of the poems translated below. These, though representative as regards the author’s ideas, are comparatively plain in style and include no example of what he could do when he ran to the opposite extreme.

Following Sir Charles Lyall, a master in the art, I have sometimes tried to imitate the original metres without the monorhyme, which in a language like ours lays too heavy a burden upon the translator. Arabic metres being quantitative, their equivalents in a modern European tongue are necessarily imperfect. It is not possible to reproduce the movement and cadence of the Luzúmiyyát except in the same way as the movement and cadence of the Iliad are reproduced, or rather suggested, by a version in English hexameters; yet, shadowy as the resemblance is, it conveys something of real value, which is more easily felt than described. Like the broken vase in Moore’s song, these Oriental rhythms have a perfume that “clings to them still.” More than that we dare not hope for: even when transplanted by skilful hands they lose the best of their beauty and never become quite acclimatised.

I have thought it well to give the names and schemes of the four principal metres for the sake of those who do not know them already, together with specimens in Arabic, Latin, and English. It will be observed that the Latin renderings are weightier than the English, because (coinciding in this respect with the originals) they are based on quantity instead of accent. Besides weight, however, Arabic has a peculiar sonority which Latin does not possess in the same degree and which is greatly increased by the recurring monorhyme.

Here the Latin and English versions exhibit the usual form of the Ṭawíl metre, while the Arabic lines are a less common variation, in which is substituted for in the last foot of the verse, i.e., the foot containing the rhyme². Another variety shortens the same foot by omitting the final syllable, thus:

Notwithstanding that a single poem may touch upon many topics, it seemed convenient to group the translations as far as possible under the following general heads:

This arrangement has the advantage of distributing the contents of the work in something like their due order and proportion, and of helping the reader to judge it as a whole more fairly than from the extracts published by Von Kremer, which are not so numerous or representative as mine; but I confess that I have with difficulty resisted the temptation to show how fine and original a poet Ma‘arrí is by gathering his best pieces into one garland. The poems in the first three sections offer a wide survey of his theory, practice, and experience of life. While their figurative language may sometimes require explanation, I do not think they call for a preliminary statement of the philosophical ideas which lie beneath. We can understand and enjoy them without knowing how Ma‘arrí conceived of God, fate, time, space, spirit, and matter. What he has to say about these and other subjects— the influence of the stars, the immortality of the soul, the doctrine of transmigration, the nature of religion, etc.— particularly excites our curiosity, and many will consider that it is the quintessence of his poetry; as a rule, however, it occurs only in brief passages which must be taken out of their context and examined side by side before we can draw any sure evidence from them. That is the task I have attempted in the fourth section, where the author’s philosophy and his attitude towards positive religion will be discussed.

I conclude this section with a few short pieces which might be called elegiac epigrams if their purpose were not rather to warn and exhort than to mourn or commemorate.

“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.