GOLDEN AGE OF ISLÁM.
TWO of the most important early sects of Islám, the republican Khárijites and the legitimist Shí'ites, have been already discussed at some length; while the extremists (Ghulát) of the latter body, with their wild doctrines of Incarnation (Ḥulúl), “Return” (Rij'at) and Metempsychosis (Tanásukh), will form the subject of the following chapter (pp. 308 et seqq.). These sects may be regarded, primarily at least, as to a large extent political in their character, and as representing respectively the democratic Arabian and the monarchic Persian tendencies as applied to matters of religion. To them must be added a third sect of mainly political character, the Murjiya, and a fourth of more purely theological or speculative nature, the Qadariyya or Mu'tazila. These four sects are regarded by von Kremer,279a who follows Ibn Ḥazm,279b as the four primary divisions (Hauptsekten) of the Muhammadans;279c and, according to his view,280a the two last arose at the Umayyad capital, Damascus, partly under Christian influences, during the first half of the eighth century of our era (A.D. 718-747), while the two first, as we have already seen, were already in existence in the latter part of the seventh century.
The Murjiya (so called from the root arja'a, “he postponed,” because they postpone or defer judgment against sinful Muslims The Murjiya. till the Day of Resurrection,280b and refuse to assert that any true believer, no matter what sins he may have committed, is certainly damned) were essentially that body of Muslims who, unlike the Shí'ites and Khárijites, acquiesced in the Umayyad rule. In doctrine they otherwise agreed in the main with the orthodox party, though, as von Kremer thinks, they greatly softened and mitigated its more terrible features, holding “that no believing Muslim would remain eternally in hell,”280c and, in general, setting faith above works. Their views were so evidently adapted to the environment of the Umayyad Court, with which no sincere Shí'ite or Khárijite could have established any modus vivendi, though Christians and other non-Muslims stood in high favour there, and held important offices,280d that it is hard to regard them otherwise than as time-servers of the Vicar of Bray type. With the fall of that ungodly dynasty their raison d'être ended, and they ceased to exist as an independent party, though from their ranks arose the celebrated Abú Ḥanífa, the founder of one of the four orthodox schools of the Sunnís which endure to the present day.
280e“It is much to be regretted,” says von Kremer,280f “that we have so little accurate information about this sect, but they shared the fate of that whole epoch. The Arabic historical sources of the Umayyad period perished altogether, and the oldest writings preserved to us arose in 'Abbásid times. We are therefore driven back for information as to the Murjiya to the scattered notices which we find in later Arabic writers.”
Of much greater interest and importance was the sect of the Qadariyya (“Partisans of Free Will”) or Mu'tazila The Mu'tazila. (“Seceders,”) whose leading idea, to quote Dr. Steiner,281a “is best characterised as the enduring protest of sound human understanding against the tyrannical demands which the orthodox teaching imposed upon it.” They called themselves Ahlu'l-'Adl wa't-Tawḥíd, or “Partisans of the Divine Justice and Divine Unity”; of the Divine Justice, because the orthodox doctrine of Predestination, which represented God as punishing man for sins forced upon him, as it were, by a Fate which he had no power to resist, made God in effect a pitiless Tyrant; of the Divine Unity, because, said they, the orthodox party, who make the Qur'án coeternal and coexistent with God, and who regard the Divine Attributes as separate or separable from the Divine Essence, are really Polytheists or Mushrikún (associaters of other gods with the One God). The account generally given of their origin and name is that Wáṣil b. 'Aṭá al-Ghazzál, a Persian Ḥasan of Baṣra and Wáṣil b. 'Atá. disciple of the celebrated theologian Ḥasan of Baṣra, differed from his master as to the question whether a believer, after he had committed a grievous sin, still deserved to be called by that appellation. Wáṣil held that such an one could neither be called a believer nor an unbeliever, but must be regarded as occupying a middle position between the two, and withdrew to a different part of the mosque to expound this view to those of his fellow-students who followed him; whereupon Ḥasan of Baṣra observed to those who stood round him, “I'tazala 'an-ná” (“He hath seceded from us”), in consequence of which saying Wáṣil's party were called by their opponents “al-Mu'tazila” (“the Separatists” or “Seceders.”)282a This, the generally received account of the origin of the sect, would make 'Iráq—“cette antique Babylonie, où la race sémitique et la race perse se rencontraient et se mélangeaient, et qui devint bientôt le centre de la science, puis, peu de temps après, sous les 'Abbásides, le siège du gouvernement”282b —its birthplace and cradle; but von Kremer,282c as we have seen, thinks that their doctrines were developed at Damascus under the influence of Byzantine theologians, notably of John of Damascus and his disciple Theodore Abucara. The other and more definite name—Qadariyya282d —by which they were known referred to their doctrine of man's free-will; and the spurious tradition “al-Qadariyyatu Majúsu hádhihi'l-Ummati,” “the Partisans The Qadariyya compared to Magians. of Free-will are the Magians of this Church” (because, as Steiner observes, to explain the existence of Evil they also set up a second Principle, the Will of Man, against the Will of God), was freely applied to them by their adversaries. Even in much later times, at the beginning of the thirteenth century of our era, we find the Persian Ṣúfí poet Maḥmúd Shabistarí referring to this tradition in that well-known manual for mystagogues the Gulshan-i-Ráz282e as follows:—
Har án kas-rá ki madh-hab ghayr-i-fabr-ast,
Nabí farmúd kú mánind-i- gabr-ast.“Every man whose faith is other than predestinarian
Is, according to the Prophet, even as a guebre.”
Von Kremer, as already noticed, considers that the Doctrine of Free-will was already taught in Damascus at the end of the seventh century of our era by Ma'bad al-Juḥaní (died in A.D. 699), who had imbibed the doctrine from a Persian named Sinbúya, and who was put to death by the Umayyad Caliph 'Abdu'l-Malik, or, according to other narratives, by Ḥajjáj b. Yúsuf. 'Awfí, the Persian thirteenth-century writer, in the account of the Umayyad Caliphs contained in bk. v of his immense collection of stories, the Jawámi'u'l-Ḥikáyát (which, unfortunately, exists only in rare manuscripts), says that Ghaylán the Qadarí was put to death in Damascus by Hishám b. 'Abdu'l-Malik (A.D. 724-743) for teaching the doctrine of Free-will; and even describes how he was confuted by the Caliph in the presence of the doctors of Syria. Yazíd II (A.D. 720-724), on the other hand, is said to have himself embraced the views of the Qadariyya, and, if 'Awfí may be believed, he also showed a marked partiality for the House of 'Alí. Shí'ite and Qadarí tenets, indeed, often went together, and the Shí'ite doctrine current in Persia at the present day is in many respects Mu'tazilite, while Ḥasan al-Ash'arí, the great opponent of the Mu'tazilites, is by the Shí'ites held in horror. Muḥammad Dárábí,283a the author of an Apology for the poet Ḥáfidh,283b mentions as one of the three grounds whereon objection was commonly made to his verses that some of them appeared to indicate an inclination to the doctrines of al-Ash'arí, “which,” he adds, “the doctors of the Imámiyya” (or Shí'ites of the Sect of the Twelve) “regard as false;” and he cites as an example of these Calvinistic leanings the verse:—
Dar kúy-i-ník-námí márá guzar na-dádand:
Gar tú na-mí pasandí, taghyír kun qaḍá-rá!“They suffered us not to enter the Street of Good Repute:
If thou likest it not, then change Destiny!”
It was, however, under the earlier 'Abbásid Caliphs, notably in the reign of the Caliph al-Ma'mún (A.D. 813-833) and his son al-Wáthiq (A.D. 842-847), that the Mu'tazilite school was most powerful. It had taken possession of these Caliphs and their Courts, had enriched its stores of argument and methods of dialectic by the study of Greek Philosophy, and, supported thus by its internal strength and the external favour of the governing classes, bade fair altogether to extinguish the orthodox party, towards whom, in spite of its generally liberal and tolerant attitude, it showed itself irreconcilably hostile. The orthodox doctrine that the Qur'án was uncreate they held in particular detestation. In the year A.H. 211 (A.D. 826: Ṭabarí iii, p. 1099) al-Ma'mún, having nearly provoked a civil war by his Shí'ite proclivities, and especially by his nomination of the Eighth Imám of the Shí'ites, 'Alí ar-Riḍá, as his successor to the throne (a difficulty whence, with singular inconsistency, he extricated himself by secretly poisoning the Imám and instigating the assassination of the too zealous minister, Faḍl b. Sahl, who had counselled this step), proclaimed the doctrine that the Qur'án was created, not uncreate, as an indisputable truth; and seven years later, in the last year of his Caliphate, he compelled seven eminent men of learning (amongst whom was Ibn Sa'd, the secretary of the great historian al-Wáqidí) to declare their adhesion to this doctrine, after which he wrote a long letter to Isḥáq b. Ibráhím bidding him question such theologians as he suspected of holding the prohibited belief, and punish such as refused to declare the Qur'án to be created. Some two dozen eminent and highly esteemed Muslims, the most notable of whom was Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, the founder of one of the four orthodox schools of the Sunnites, were haled before this tribunal, and, by threats and imprisonment, most of them were induced to subscribe to the Caliph's declaration that the Qur'án was created, save Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, who stood firm, and, but for the sudden death of al-Ma'mún, which happened shortly afterwards, would have been in grave peril of his life.284a Al-Wáthiq followed his father's example, and thereby provoked in the year A.H. 231 (A.D. 845-6) a dangerous conspiracy headed by Aḥmad b. Naṣr al-Khuzá'í, which was, however, revealed by the indiscretion of several of the conspirators who had been indulging to an unwise extent in nabídh, or date-wine. 285a Notwithstanding this, in the exchange of prisoners effected in the same year285b al-Wáthiq caused each released Muslim captive to be questioned as to his belief on this burning question, and such as declared their belief that the Qur'án was uncreate he refused to receive (deeming them, as it would seem, outside the pale of Islám), but sent them back to their captivity. According to another account also given by Ṭabarí,285c the released captives were likewise called upon to deny that God on the Last Day would be visible to men's eyes, this doctrine, like that of the uncreate Qur'án, being held by the orthodox, who in all things followed the very letter of God's Word, and utterly refused to exercise that process of ta'wíl, or Allegorical Interpretation, affected by their antagonists. In this point again the Shí'ites of to-day are at one with the Mu'tazilites, and Muḥammad Dárábí, in the Apology for Ḥáfidh already cited (p. 283, n. 1 supra) gives the following verse of that poet as one which has brought him under the suspicion of inclining to the revived orthodoxy associated with the name of al-Ash'arí:—
Ín ján-i-'áriyát ki bi Ḥáfidh sipurd Dúst—
Rúzí rukh-ash bi-bínam, u taslím-i-way kunam.
“This borrowed soul which the Friend [i.e., God] entrusted to
Ḥáfidh—
One day I shall see His Face and shall yield it up to him.”
It would not be just that our admiration for the Mu'tazilites, whose liberal views so greatly conduced to the splendour of this wonderful epoch, should tempt us to overlook their unusual and regrettable harshness towards those doctrines which are now generally prevalent and accounted orthodox in all Sunnite countries. Yet perhaps there was a reason for their harshness. They may have been conscious that doctrines of extreme Calvinism—or Fatalism, if the word be preferred—must in the long run (at least in Asia, which is more logical than Europe in its applications of theory to daily life) destroy effort and prevent progress; they may have foreseen that the literal interpretation of an inspired Scripture which followed naturally from a belief in its Eternity, not only in the future but in the past, would inevitably stereotype and narrow the religious outlook in such a way that all flexibility, all power of adapting itself to new conditions or carrying conviction to the minds of intelligent men, would be lost; and they may have felt that the belief that God could be seen by men must tend to an anthropomorphic and debased conception of the Deity. Whether or no they realised these results of the victory of orthodoxy, such were in reality its effects, and the retrograde movement of Islám, inaugurated by the triumph of al-Ash'arí (of which we shall speak in a later chapter), was but accelerated and accentuated by the overthrow of the Caliphate and the sack of Baghdad by the vandals of Mongolia in the middle of the thirteenth century. Changíz and Hulágú on the one hand, and al-Ash'arí on the other, probably contributed as much as any three individuals to the destruction of the material and intellectual glories of the Golden Age of the early 'Abbásid Caliphs.
The further development of the Mu'tazilite doctrine is admirably summed up by Dozy (Chauvin's French translation, pp. 205-207):—
“This doctrine was subsequently remodelled and propagated Further development of the Mu'tazilite doctrine. under the influence of the Philosophy of Aristotle. The sect, as was in the nature of things, subdivided. All the Mu'tazilites, however, agreed in certain points. They denied the existence of the Attributes in God, and contested everything which could prejudice the dogma of the Divine Unity. To remove from God all idea of injustice, they recognised man's entire freedom of action. They taught that all the truths necessary for salvation belong to the domain of reason, and that they may be acquired solely by the light of reason, no less before than after Revelation, in such wise that man, at all times and in all places, ought to possess these truths. But to these primary propositions the different sects added others peculiar to themselves. Most of them have treated theology with much profundity; others, on the contrary, became involved in hair-splittings, or even diverged widely from the spirit of Islám. Some there were, for example, who believed in Metempsychosis, and who imagined that the animals of each species form a community which has as a prophet an animal like unto themselves; strange to say they based this last doctrine on two verses of the Qur'án. And there were many other follies of the same kind. But it would be unjust to render all the Mu'tazilites responsible for the errors of some, and, when all is said and done, they deserve to be spoken of with respect. In meditating on what religion bade them believe, they became the rationalists of Islám. Thus it came about that one of their principal affirmations was that the Qur'án was really created, although the Prophet had asserted the contrary. ‘Were the Qur'án uncreate,’ they said, ‘it would be necessary to admit the existence of two Eternal Beings.’ From the moment when the Qur'án, or Word of God, was held as something created, it could no longer, having regard to the immutability of the Deity, be considered as belonging to His essence. Thereby the whole dogma of revelation was little by little seriously shaken, and many Mu'tazilites frankly declared that it was not impossible to write something as good as, or even better than, the Qur'án. They therefore protested against the dogma of the divine origin of the Qur'án and against Inspiration. The idea which they entertained of God was purer and more exalted than that of the orthodox. They would not listen to any corporeal conception of the Divinity. Mahomet had said, ‘One day ye shall see your Lord as you saw the full moon at the Battle of Badr,’ and these words, which the orthodox took literally, were for them an ever new stumbling-block. They therefore explained them away by saying that man, after his death, would know God by the eyes of the spirit, that is to say, by the reason. They equally refused to countenance the pretension that God created the unbeliever,287a and showed themselves but little pleased with the consecrated formula which says of God that ‘He hurteth and He advantageth.’ They could not admit the miracles related in the Qur'án, and so denied that the sea was dried up to yield a passage for the Israelites led by Moses, that Moses' rod was changed into a serpent, and that Jesus raised the dead to life. Mahomet himself did not escape their attacks. There was one sect which maintained that the Prophet married too many wives, and that his contemporary Abú Dharr al-Ghifárí had much more self-restraint and piety than him, which also was perfectly true.”
The best European accounts of the Mu'tazilites with which I am acquainted, besides Dozy's, are those of Steiner288a The Mu'tazilite and Greek Philosophy. and von Kremer, but I must content myself here with briefly indicating the results of their investigations as to the progress, influence, relations, and final decline of this interesting movement. As to its origin these two scholars differ, the former regarding it, at least in its primary form, as “arising in Islám independently of all external influences,” while the latter, as we have seen, considers that it was influenced even in its inception by Christian theology. Be this as it may, at a very early date it was profoundly influenced by Greek Philosophy.
“We may venture to assert,” says Steiner (p. 5), “that the Mu'tazilites were the first who not only read the translations of the Greek Naturalists and Philosophers prepared under the auspices of al-Manṣúr and al-Ma'mún (A.D. 754-775 and 813-833), and evolved therefrom all sorts of useful knowledge, but likewise exerted themselves to divert into new channels their entire thoughts, which had hitherto moved only in the narrow circle of ideas of the Qur'án, to assimilate to their own uses the Greek culture, and to combine it with their Muhammadan conscience. The Philosophers proper, al-Fárábí († A.D. 950), Ibn Síná (Avicenna, † A.D. 1037), and Ibn Rushd (Averroes, † A.D. 1198), belong first to a later age. Al-Kindí († circ. A.D. 864) was the earliest, and lived somewhat before them, but seems to have devoted his special attention to precisely those problems raised by the Mu'tazilites. His followers, however, avoided theological questions. Without directly assailing the Faith, they avoided all conflict with it, so far as possible. Theology and Natural Science, including Philosophy,289a were treated as separate territories, with the harmonising of which no further trouble was taken. Ibn Síná appears to have been a pious Muslim; yet Shah-ristání includes him amongst those who properly belonged to no definite confession, but, standing outside Positive Religion, evolved their ideas out of their own heads (Ahlu'l-ahwá). Ibn Rushd also is accounted a good Muslim. He endeavoured to show that philosophical research was not only allowed, but was a duty, and one enjoined even by the Qur'án; but, for the rest, he goes his own way, and his writings are, with few exceptions, of philosophic and scientific contents. Thus was the breach between Philosophy and Dogma already fully established with Ibn Síná. The Mu'tazilite party had exhausted its strength in the subtle controversies of the schools of Baṣra and Baghdád. Abu'l-Ḥusayn of Baṣra, a contemporary of Ibn Síná, was the last who gave independent treatment to their teaching, and in some points completed it. Zamakhsharí († A.D. 1143-4), the famous and extraordinarily learned author of the Kashsháf, reduced the moderate ideas of his predecessors to a pleasant and artistic form, and applied them consistently and adroitly to the whole region of Qur'ánic exegesis, but gave to the teaching itself no further development.”
The political power of the Mu'tazilites ceased soon after the accession of al-Mutawakkil, the tenth 'Abbásid Caliph (A.D. 847), but the school, as we have seen, was powerfully represented nearly three centuries later by Zamakhsharí, the great commentator of the Qur'án. The subsequent fate of the views which they represented will be discussed to some extent in later chapters, but, for the convenience of the reader, and for the sake of continuity, we may here briefly summarise the chief stages which preceded the final “Destruction of the Philosophers” by al-Ghazzálí and his successors, and the triumph of orthodox Islám in the form wherein it now prevails in all Sunnite countries.
(1) The Period of Orthodox Reaction began with al-Muta-wakkil (A.D. 847-861), the brother and successor of al-Wáthiq. Dozy, after describing some of the acts of barbarity and ingratitude committed by this “cruel and ungrateful tyrant,”290a continues: “Notwithstanding all this, al-Muta-wakkil was extremely orthodox, and consequently the clerical party judged him quite otherwise than we should do. A well-known Muslim historian (Abu'l-Fidá) is of opinion that he went a little too far in his hatred for 'Alí, for the orthodox also held this prince, in his capacity of cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, in high esteem; ‘but for the rest,’ says he, ‘he was of the number of the most excellent Caliphs, for he forbade man to believe that the Qur'án was created.’ He was orthodox; what matter then if he was a drunkard, a voluptuary, a perfidious scoundrel, a monster of cruelty? But he was even more than orthodox: animated by a burning zeal for the purity of doctrine, he applied himself to the persecution of all those who thought otherwise, torturing and exterminating them as far as possible. The prescriptions relative to the Christians and Jews, which during the preceding reigns had almost fallen into oblivion, were renewed and aggravated.”290b Towards 'Alí and his descendants this wicked Caliph entertained a particular hatred: it pleased him that his Court jester should pad himself with a great paunch (for 'Alí had grown corpulent in later life) and, in the assumed character of the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, should dance before him with all manner of grotesque buffooneries. A celebrated philologist who, in reply to his interrogations, ventured to prefer the sons of 'Alí to those of the tyrant Caliph, was trampled to death by the Turkish guards. The tomb of al-Ḥusayn, the Martyr of Kerbelá, was destroyed by his order, and its site ploughed and sown, and the visitation thereof forbidden. Even the most eminent and honourable theologians, such as al-Bukhárí, the great traditionist, were exposed to charges of heresy.
(2) The Teaching of al-Ash'arí.291a So far, as Dozy points out, the triumph of the orthodox was merely material; intellectually, and in methods of dialectic, they retained the same inferiority as before in respect to their opponents the Mu'tazilites. Not till twelve years had elapsed after al-Mutawakkil's death was born (in A.H. 260 = A.D. 873-4) the man who, having been trained in the Mu'tazilite school, renounced their doctrines in his fortieth year, and, armed with the logical weapons with which they themselves had supplied him, deserted to the hostile camp, and, for the remainder of his life, carried on an energetic and successful campaign against their views. This was Abu'l-Ḥasan al-Ash'arí, a descendant of that foolish Abú Músá al-Ash'arí to whose ineptitude Mu'áwiya owed so much in the arbitration of Dawmatu'l-Jandal. His literary activity was enormous, and after he had broken with his teacher, the Mu'tazilite doctor al-Jubbá'í,291b he produced polemical works on all manner of theological topics to the number of two or three hundred, of which Spitta291c enumerates the titles of one hundred. So distrustful of philosophy were the orthodox that many of them, especially the fanatical followers of Ibn Ḥanbal, unwilling to believe that an alliance with it could result in aught but evil, continued to regard al-Ash'arí with the deepest suspicion; but in the end his services to orthodoxy were fully recognised.
“In course of time,” says Dozy, after speaking of the growing influence of al-Ash'arí's teaching, “the influence of the Mu'tazilites continued to diminish more and more. The loss of temporal power was the first misfortune which befel them; the defection of al-Ash'arí was the second. ‘The Mu'tazilites,’ says a Musulmán author, ‘formerly carried their heads high, but their dominion ended when God sent al-Ash'arí.’ Nevertheless they did not disappear all at once, and perhaps they exist even at the present day, but they had no longer any power. Since the eleventh century292a they have had no doctor who has achieved renown, while the system of al-Ash'arí, on the contrary, has been more and more elaborated, so that, in its ultimate form, it includes not only religious dogma, but also embraces matters purely philosophic, such as ontology, cosmology, &c.”
292b(3) The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwánu'ṣ-Ṣafá). For our knowledge of this remarkable society or fraternity of Ency-clopædists and Philosophers we are chiefly indebted to Flügel292c and Dieterici,292d especially the latter, who has summarised and elucidated their teachings in a series of masterly monographs. Favoured by the liberal ideas of the Persian and Shí'ite House of Buwayh, who, displacing for a time the Turkish element, became practically supreme at Baghdad about the middle of the tenth century (A.D. 945), this somewhat mysterious society carried on the work of the Mu'tazilites, aiming especially at the reconciliation of Science and Religion, the harmonising of the Law of Islám with Greek Philosophy, and the synthesis of all knowledge in encyclopædic form. The results of their labours, comprising some fifty separate treatises,292e were published, according to Flügel, about A.D. 970, and supply us with an admirable mirror of the ideas which prevailed at this time in the most enlightened circles of the metropolis of the 'Abbásid Caliphs. As authors of these tracts five men of learning are named by Shahrazúrí, viz., Abú Sulaymán Muḥammad b. Naṣr al-Bustí, called also al-Muqaddasí (or al-Maqdasí), Abu'l-Ḥasan 'Alí b. Hárún az-Zinjání, Abú Aḥmad an-Nahrajúrí (or Mihrajání), al-'Awfí, and Zayd b. Rifá'a; of whom, having regard to their nisbas, the first three at any rate would seem to have been Persians. So too was Ibn Síná (Avicenna), the great physician and philosopher with whose death (A.D. 1037), according to Dieterici,293a “the development of philosophy in the East came to an end.”
(4) Al-Ghazzálí, “the Proof of Islam” and Champion of Orthodoxy. This eminent theologian, who was professor at the Nidhámiyya College of Baghdad from A.D. 1091 to 1095, and died in A.D. 1111, who had explored all realms of speculation accessible to him, and had at last found refuge in the mysticism of the more moderate Ṣúfís, “felt himself called,” as Steiner says,293b “to stand forth as the scientific apologist or Islám, and to restore the threatened faith to surer ground.” Tholuck (Bibl. Sacra, vi, 233), cited by H. A. Homes at pp. 7-8 of his translation of the Turkish version of the Alchemy of Happiness (Albany, N.Y., 1873) appraises him very highly. “Ghazzálí,” says he, “if ever any man has deserved the name, was truly a divine, and he may justly be placed on a level with Origen, so remarkable was he for learning and ingenuity, and gifted with such a rare faculty for the skilful and worthy exposition of doctrine. All that is good, worthy, and sublime which his great soul had compassed, he bestowed upon Muhammadanism; and he adorned the doctrines of the Qur'án with so much piety and learning that, in the form given them by him, they seem, in my opinion, worthy the assent of Christians. Whatsoever was most excellent in the philosophy of Aristotle or in the Ṣúfí mysticism, he discreetly adapted to the Muhammadan theology. From every school he sought the means of shedding light and honour upon religion, while his sincere piety and lofty conscientiousness imparted to all his writings a sacred majesty. He was the first of Muhammadan divines.” Dieterici, on the other hand, judges him harshly. “As a despairing sceptic,” says he,294a “he springs suicidally into the All-God [i.e., the all-pervading Deity of the Pantheists] to kill all scientific reflexion.”
The teachings of the “Brethren of Purity” were carried to the West by a Spanish Arab of Madrid, Muslim b. Muḥammad Abu'l-Qásim al-Majríṭí al-Andalusi, who died in A.D. 1004-1005. Thanks to them, and later to the great Moorish philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Spain became a centre of philosophical learning, whence, during the Middle Ages, Europe derived such light as it possessed on these great questions. “The strife between Nominalism and Realism,” says Dieterici,294b “which for centuries stirred the learned world, is a product of this development, and had already, during the ninth and tenth centuries, set in motion all the minds of the East.”
Of the Sunnites little need here be said, since, though numerous in Persia under the various Turkish or half Turkish dynasties which generally prevailed there until the rise of the Ṣafawís in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and counting amongst their numbers Persians so eminent as Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár, Sa'dí, Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, and many others, they were never really in harmony with Persian tendencies and aspirations, and are at the present day almost extinct save at Lár and in a few other districts. It should be mentioned, however, that the founders of the four orthodox schools, those of the Ḥanafites, Málikites, Sháfi'ites, and Ḥanbalites, all flourished during this period of Mu'tazilite domination. Of these the eldest, Abú Ḥanífa, was born in A.D. 700 and died in 767. He was of Persian descent.295a Málik was born at Madína in A.D. 713 or 714, and died in 795. He was cruelly flogged by al-Manṣúr for suspected disaffection towards the 'Abbásid dynasty; “from which time,” says Ibn Khallikán,295b “he rose higher and higher in public estimation, so that the punishment he underwent seemed as if it had been an honour conferred upon him.” Ash-Sháfi'í was an Arab of the tribe of Quraysh, was born in the year (some say295c on the very day) of Abú Ḥanífa's decease, and died at Cairo in A.D. 820. Lastly, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, a native of Merv, but apparently of Arab race, was born in A.D. 780, and died at Baghdad in 855. He was the favourite pupil of ash-Sháfi'í, who said, on setting out for Egypt, “I went forth from Baghdad leaving behind me no more pious man and no better jurisconsult than Ibn Ḥanbal.”295d To his steadfast courage in refusing to admit that the Qur'án was created allusion has already been made.
These are the four “Imáms” of the orthodox Sunnites, and the schools which they founded differ but in minor points, and The four orthodox schools of the Sunnís. are on good terms with one another. The Ḥana-fite school prevails in Turkey, the Málikite in Morocco, the Sháfi'ite in Egypt and Arabia, and the Ḥanbalite in some parts of Africa. All are held in equal contempt by the Shí'ites; and Náṣir-i-Khusraw, the great Isma'ílí poet and propagandist of the eleventh century of our era, goes so far as to accuse them of sanctioning the most detestable vices295e —a charge which, save in so far as concerns the alleged crudely anthropomorphic tendencies of the Ḥanbalites, merits no serious consideration.
Of the Shí'ites it will be more convenient to speak at length The Shí'ites. in a subsequent chapter, but it may be noted that the great schism which divided them into the “Sect of the Seven” (Sab'iyya) or Isma'ílís, and the “Sect of the Twelve” (Ithná 'ashariyya) which prevails in Persia at the Origin of the “Sect of the Seven” and the “Sect of the Twelve.” present day, had its origin in this period which we are considering. In the doctrine of the Imá-mate, the belief that the supreme spiritual authority must be vested in one of the descendants of 'Alí, designated in each case by his predecessor, and endowed with supernatural or even divine attributes, both sects are agreed, and they are also agreed as to the succession of Imáms as far as the sixth, Ja'far aṣ-Ṣádiq, who died A.D. 765. Here, however, the difference begins. Ja'far had in the first instance designated his eldest son Ismá'íl to succeed him, but later (owing, it is generally said, to his discovery that Isma'íl had indulged in the forbidden juice of the grape) he took the Imámate from him and conferred it on his younger brother Músá, called al-Kádhim. Soon afterwards Ismá'íl died, and his body was publicly shown ere its interment, in order that there might be no doubt as to the fact of his death. Yet, though most of the Shí'ites transferred their allegiance to Músá, some remained faithful to Ismá'íl, either refusing to believe that he was dead (for he was reported by some to have been seen subsequently to the date of his alleged death at Baṣra),296a or maintaining that the Imámate had been transmitted through him (since he had predeceased his father, and had therefore, in their view, never actually assumed the Imám's functions) to his son Muḥammad; in either case fixing the total number of Imáms at seven, and repudiating the claims of Músá and his five successors. Further discussion of the developments of these two sects may be conveniently deferred to a subsequent chapter.
Lastly, a few words must be said here of the earlier Ṣúfís,
or Mystics, whose fully developed system of Spiritualistic
The early Ṣúfís.
Pantheism will be described in another place.
Their name, as is now generally admitted, has
nothing at all to do with the Greek
“Know that after the death of the Apostle of God the most excellent of the Muslims were not at the time distinguished by any distinctive name save in regard to their companionship with the Apostle, seeing that there existed no greater distinction than this; wherefore they were called ‘the Companions.’ And when those of the second period came in contact with them, such of these as had held converse with the ‘Companions’ were named the ‘Followers,’ a title which they regarded as of the noblest. Then those who succeeded them were called ‘Followers of the Followers.’ Thereafter men differed, and diverse degrees became distinguished, and the elect of mankind, who were vehemently concerned with matters of religion, were called ‘Ascetics’ and ‘Devotees.’ Then heresies arose, and there ensued disputes between the different sects, each one claiming to possess ‘Ascetics,’ and the elect of the people of the Sunna (the Sunnites), whose souls were set on God, and who guarded their hearts from the disasters of heedlessness, became known by the name of Ṣúfís; and this name became generally applied to these great men a little before the end of the second century of the Flight” (A.H. 200 = A.D. 815-816).
A little further on (op. cit., p. 34) Jámí explicitly states that the term “Ṣúfí” was first applied to Abú Háshim, who was born at Kúfa, but passed most of his life in Syria, and died in A.D. 777-8; and (p. 36) that the Ṣúfí doctrines were first explained and expressed by Dhu'n-Nún of Egypt, a pupil of Málik (the founder of the Málikite school mentioned above), who died in A.D. 860, that they were expanded, systematised, and reduced to writing by Junayd of Baghdad (d. A.D. 910), and openly preached in the pulpit by Shiblí (d. A.D. 945). Very few of the great Ṣúfí teachers lived before the close of the second century of the Flight (A.D. 815-816): Ibráhím b. Adham († A.D. 777), Dá'úd of Ṭayy († A.D. 781), Fuḍayl b. 'Iyáḍ († A.D. 803), and Ma'rúf of Karkh († A.D. 815), were, I think, the only ones of note except the above-mentioned Abú Háshim. Ḥasan of Baṣra († A.D. 728), who has been already spoken of in connection with the Mu'tazilites, is sometimes reckoned amongst them; but, as Dozy has pointed out,298a his sombre religion, chiefly inspired by fear, contrasts sharply with the religion of love proper to the mystics. The saintly woman Rábi'a al-'Adawiyya299a († 752-753) is a far better type of the true mystic, and many of her sayings strongly recall those of Saint Theresa. It is in allusion to her that Jámí says in his Nafaḥát (ed. Nassau Lees, p. 716):—
Wa law kána 'n-nisá'u ka-má dhakarná
La faḍḍaltu 'n-nisá'a 'ala'r-rijáli;
Fa la't-ta'níthu li'smi 'sh-shamsi 'aybun,
Wa la 't-tadhkíru fakhrun li'l-hiláli.“Were women all like those whom here I name,
Woman to man I surely would prefer;
The Sun is feminine,299b nor deems it shame;
The Moon, though masculine,299c depends on her.”
The following anecdote told by Dozy299d is typical of her attitude: One day, being ill, she was visited by Ḥasan of Baṣra and Shaqíq of Balkh. The former said, “That one is not sincere in faith who does not patiently endure the chastening of the Lord.” Shaqíq, desiring to improve upon this, said, “That one is not sincere in faith who does not find pleasure in the chastening of the Lord.” But Rábi'a replied, “That one is not sincere in faith who, in the contemplation of the Lord, does not forget the chastening.”
It is related in the Memoirs of the Saints compiled by Shaykh Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár, a great Persian mystic of the thirteenth century, that she was once asked, “Dost thou hate the Devil?” “No,” she replied. They asked, “Why not?” “Because,” said she, “my love for God leaves me no time to hate him.” “I saw the Prophet of God,” she continued, “in a dream, and he asked me, ‘O Rábi'a, dost thou love me?’ ‘O Apostle of God,’ I replied, ‘who is there who loveth thee not? But the love of God hath so taken possession of every particle of my being that there is no room left me to love or hate any one else.’”
These sayings, which might be indefinitely multiplied, will indicate the character of this early mysticism of Islám. The wild pantheistic character which is later assumed, especially in Persia, was, as I think, superadded to it at a much later date. The philosophy—so far as it can be called a philosophy— which it gradually developed is, in my opinion, mainly of Neo-Platonist origin,300a and, contrary to a view which, though losing ground, is still very prevalent, was very little, if at all, influenced by Indian speculations.300b Von Kremer differentiates the earlier Arabian quietist Ṣúfíism from the later Persian pantheistic development, expressing the opinion300c “that Ṣúfíism proper, as it finds expression in the different Dervish orders (which I sharply distinguish from the simple ascetic aim which already appeared in the earliest Christianity, whence it passed over into Islám) arose essentially from Indian ideas, and in particular from that school of Indian philosophy known by the name of Vedánta.”
In another place300d he says:—
“It appears, indeed, that Ṣúfíism took into itself two different elements, an older Christian-ascetic, which came strongly to the front even in the beginning of Islám, and then later a Buddhist-contemplative, which soon, in consequence of the increasing influence of the Persians on Islám, obtained the upper hand, and called into being the Mystics proper of Islám. The former aim expressed more the Arabian character, the latter the Persian.”
Fully admitting the force and value of this distinction, I am not convinced that the existence of Indian influence has been satisfactorily proved. Persian studies have suffered much at the hands of Indianists and Comparative Mythologists and Philologists, e.g., in the attempts made to explain the Avesta solely from the Vedas without regard to the Zoroastrian tradition on the one hand, and in the favour accorded, particularly in England and Germany, to the hideous Indian pronunciation of the modern language on the other, not to mention the exaggerated admiration often expressed for the Persian compositions of Indian writers, and the concurrent neglect of all Persian literature produced in Persia during the last four centuries;301a and we have good reason to be on our guard against the tendency of Indianists to trace everything, so far as possible, to an Indian origin, or to generalise about “the Aryan genius.” Long before Neo-Platonism came to the Arabs it was, as has been already observed (p. 167 supra) brought to Persia in the days of Núshírwán (sixth century of our era), and I confess that, so far as I can judge, Ṣúfí pantheism presents far more striking analogies with Neo-Platonism than with either Vedántism or Buddhism, while historically it is much more likely that it borrowed from the first than from either of the two last. To the later developments of Ṣúfíism, to which alone those remarks apply, we shall recur in a subsequent chapter.
Before leaving the religious manifestations of this epoch, it is proper to remind the reader what religions, besides Judaism, The Mandæans or Mughtasila. Zoroastrianism, and Christianity, and what philosophies, besides those of the Greeks, were still active and potent forces in Western Asia. Apart from Manichæanism, of which we shall have a few more words to say, elements of the old Babylonian civilisation were represented by the Mandæans or true Sabæans (Ṣábiyún) of the marshes between Wásiṭ and Baṣra (the ancient Chaldæa), also named by the Arabs from their frequent ceremonial ablutions al-Mughtasila, which term, misapprehended by the Portuguese navigators of the seventeenth century, gave rise in Europe to the absurd misnomer “Christians of St. John the Baptist.”
302aFrom these true Sabæans the pseudo-Sabæans of Ḥarrán (the ancient Carrhæ) must be carefully distinguished. The learned The PseudoSabæans of Ḥarrán. Chwolson was the first to explain in his great work Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1856) the apparently hopeless confusion which till that time had surrounded the term “Sabæan.” Here we must confine ourselves to stating the curious fact which he brought to light, viz., that since about A.D. 830 two perfectly distinct peoples have been confounded together under this name, to wit, the above-mentioned Mandæans or Mughtasila of Chaldæa, and the Syrian heathens who flourished at Ḥarrán (about half-way between Aleppo and Márdín) until the eleventh century of our era,302b and that this confusion was brought about in the following ways.302c When the Caliph al-Ma'mún passed through the district of Ḥarrán on his last campaign against the Byzantines, he remarked amongst the people who came out to meet him and wish him God-speed certain persons of strange and unfamiliar appearance, wearing their hair extremely long, and clad in tightly-fitting coats (qabá). Al-Ma'mún, astonished at their appearance, inquired who and what they were, to which they replied, “Ḥarránians.” Being further questioned, they said that they were neither Christians, Jews, nor Magians; while to the Caliph's inquiry “whether they had a Holy Book or a Prophet,” they returned “a confused reply.” Convinced at last that they were heathens (“Zindíqs and worshippers of idols”), the Caliph ordered them, under pain of death, either to embrace Islám, or to adopt “one of the religions which God Almighty hath mentioned in His Book,” giving them respite for their decision till his return from the war. Terrified by these threats, the Ḥarránians cut their long hair and discarded their peculiar garments, while many became Christians or Muhammadans; but a small remnant would not forsake their own religion, and were greatly perplexed and troubled until a Muhammadan jurist offered, for a consideration, to show them a way out of their difficulty. So they brought him much fine gold from their treasuries, and he counselled them to call themselves Sabæans when al-Ma'mún returned to question them, since the Sabæans were mentioned in the Qur'án, yet, since little was known of them, the change of name would involve no change of beliefs or customs. But al-Ma'mún returned not, for death overtook him on that march; and most of the Ḥarránians who had declared themselves Christians at once openly apostatised, and returned to their old beliefs, which their brethren who had adopted Islám dared not do, since apostasy is punished with death in the Muhammadan law. And “since that time,” says the narrator, “they have kept this name (of Sabæans); for previously there were in Ḥarrán and the surrounding district no people who bore the name of Sabæans.”
Now these pseudo-Sabæans of Ḥarrán, a remnant of the
ancient Syrian pagans of Mesopotamia, included “une élite
d'hommes fort instruits, un corps d'aristocrates d'esprit, qui se
sont distingués dans les sciences, et qui ont enrichi les littératures
syrienne et arabe d'un grand nombre d'ouvrages traitant de
diverses matières.”304a
Ḥarrán, since the time of Alexander the
Great, had been deeply under the influence of Greece, so that
it was surnamed
The Syrians, both heathen and Christian, were, indeed, the great transmitters of Greek learning to the East, whence it was brought back by the Arabs to the West. The matter is so important that I subjoin a translation of Carl Brockel-mann's excellent remarks:—
305a“Syria and Mesopotamia were, from the time of Alexander the Great and his followers, exposed to the influences of Greek civilisation. The supremacy of the Romans and their successors the Byzantines in Syria furthered in every way the diffusion of Hellenic culture, which made special progress from the time when, associated with Christianity, it began to react on the religious sense of the people. The Syrians were, indeed, but feebly disposed for original production, but they were extraordinarily inclined and fitted to assimilate to themselves the results of foreign intellectual endeavour. Thus there arose in the Syrian monasteries numerous translations, not only of the spiritual literature most widely current in the Greek Church, but also of nearly all the profane authors (notably of Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen) who dominated the secular learning of that epoch.
“Already in the Persian Empire under the rule of the Sásánians the Syrians were the transmitters of Greek culture. Naturally it was only secular learning which was there promoted by the Court and Government. About the year A.D. 550 Khusraw Anúshirwán founded at Jundí-Shápúr in Khuzistán a university for the pursuit of philosophical and medical studies, and this plant of Græco-Syrian culture continued to flourish even into 'Abbásid times.
“Greek learning found a third home in the Mesopotamian city of Ḥarrán, whose inhabitants, surrounded by a wholly Christianised population, had retained their ancient Semitic heathenism. With them, as formerly in Babylon, the disposition for mathematical and astronomical studies was closely united therewith. But with them also, notwithstanding the fairly high level which they had already attained through the Assyrian-Babylonian civilisation, these studies did not remain uninfluenced by the Greek spirit.
“From all these three sources, now, was Greek learning brought to the Arabs in translations. Already at the Court of al-Manṣúr we meet with a physician from Jundí-Shápúr, who is supposed to have translated medical works into Arabic, while under Hárún flourished the translator Yuḥanná b. Másawayhi. But it was the Caliph al-Ma'mún, himself filled with understanding of, and a lively interest in, all scientific endeavours, who gave the greatest impulse to this activity. The Baytu' l-Ḥikma (‘House of Wisdom’), with its attached library and astronomical observatory, founded by him in Baghdad, was the culminating point of an active endeavour to promote learning. The translations produced under him and his immediate successors have entirely overshadowed those of the older school, and are alone preserved to us.”
Amongst the most eminent translators whose names here follow are the Christians, Qusṭá b. Lúqá of Ba'labakk (Baalbek); Ḥunayn b. Isḥáq of Ḥíra, his son Isḥáq, and his nephew Ḥubaysh.
Thus did the civilisation of 'Abbásid Baghdad become the inheritor of the ancient wisdom of Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, India, and Greece; and for this it was chiefly indebted to heathens like Thábit b. Qurra, Christians like Ḥunayn and Qusṭá, Magians, converted or unconverted, like Ibnu 'l-Muqaffa', 306a or Mu'tazilite “heretics” like 'Amr b. Baḥr al-Jáḥi dh, besides sundry Jews and Nabathæans. To this splendid synthesis the Arabs, though, as it has been said, “one of the acutest peoples that have ever existed,” lent little save their wonderful and admirable language; but the functions of assimilation, elucidation, and transmission they performed in a manner which has made mankind, and especially Europe, their debtors. That they were sensible of their own indebtedness to these non-Muslims, who bestowed upon them the wisdom of the ancients, appears, amongst other things, from the elegy composed in praise of Thábit b. Qurra, the Sabæan physician and mathematician, by the poet Sarí ar-Raffá,306b wherein he says: “Philosophy was dead, and he revived it amongst us; the traces of medicine were effaced, and he restored them to light.”
Strange and heterogeneous were the elements which made up the intellectual atmosphere of Baghdad during the first century of 'Abbásid rule. The pious Muslims of Mecca and Madína who came thither were scandalised to find unbelievers invested with the highest offices at Court, and learned men of every religion holding friendly debate as to high questions of ontology and philosophy, in which, by common consent, all appeal to revealed Scripture was forbidden. Yet was there one religious community which seemed wholly excluded from the general toleration of that latitudinarian Court: to wit, the Manichæans, or Zindíqs as they were generally called. Persecutions of the Zindíqs are mentioned by Ṭabarí as occurring in the reign of al-Mahdí (A.D. 780, 782) and al-Hádí (A.D. 786-7). In the reign of Hárúnu'r-Rashíd a special Inquisitor (Ṣáḥibu 'z-Zanádiqa) was appointed to detect and punish Manichæans,307a amongst whom not only Persians and other foreigners, but even pure Arabs, like the poets Ṣáliḥ b. 'Abdu' l-Quddús and Mutí' b. Ayás, were numbered. In the reign of al-Ma'mún, whose truly Persian passion for religious speculation earned him the title of Amíru'l-Káfirín, “Commander of the Unfaithful,”307b the lot of the Zindíqs was less hard; nay, according to von Kremer307c it was fashionable to pose as a heretic, and we find a poet remonstrating in the following lines with one of these sheep dressed in wolf's clothing:—
“O Ibn Ziyád, father of Ja'far!
Thou professest outwardly another creed than that which thou
hidest in thy heart.
Outwardly, according to thy words, thou art a Zindíq,
But inwardly thou art a respectable Muslim.
Thou art no Zindíq, but thou desirest to be regarded as in the
fashion!”
THE active life of the pre-Muslim creeds of Persia, as opposed to outwardly Muhammadan heresies embodying and reviving Bih-áfarídh. in new forms pre-Muslim and non-Muslim ideas, finds its latest expression in the Pseudo-Prophet Bih-áfarídh the son of Máhfurúdhín, of whom scanty Al-Bírúní's account of him. accounts are preserved to us in the Fihrist (p. 344) and in al-Bírúní's Chronology of Ancient Nations (Sachau's transl., pp. 193-4), whereof the latter is as follows:—
“In the days of Abú Muslim, the founder of the 'Abbásid dynasty, came forward a man called Bih-áfarídh the son of Máhfurúdhín in Khwáf, one of the districts of Níshápúr, in a place called Sírá-wand, he being a native of Zawzan. In the beginning of his career he disappeared and betook himself to China308a for seven years. Then he returned, bringing with him amongst other Chinese curiosities a green shirt, which, when folded up, could be held in the grasp of a man's hand, so thin and flexible it was. He went up to a temple during the night, and on descending thence in the morning was observed by a peasant who was ploughing part of his field. He told this man that he had been in heaven during his absence from them, that heaven and hell had been shown unto him, that God had inspired him, had clothed him in that shirt, and had sent him down to earth in that same hour. The peasant believed his words, and told people that he had beheld him descending from heaven. So he found many adherents amongst the Magians when he came forward as a prophet and preached his new doctrine.
“He differed from the Magians in most rites, but believed in Zoroaster and claimed for his followers all the institutes of Zoroaster. He maintained that he secretly received divine revelations, and established seven prayers for his followers, one in praise of the one God, one relating to the creation of heaven and earth, one relating to the creation of the animals and their nourishment, one relating to death, one relating to the Resurrection and Last Judgment, one relating to those in heaven and hell and what is prepared for them, and one in praise of the people of Paradise.
“He composed for them a book in Persian. He ordered them to worship the substance of the Sun, kneeling on one knee, and in praying always to turn towards the Sun wherever it might be; to let their hair and locks grow; to give up the zamzama309a at dinner; not to sacrifice small cattle unless they were already enfeebled; not to drink wine; not to eat the flesh of animals that have died a sudden death, as not having been killed according to prescription; not to marry their mothers, daughters, sisters, or nieces,309b and not to exceed the sum of four hundred dirhams as dowry. Further, he ordered them to keep roads and bridges in good condition by means of the seventh part of their property and of the produce of their labour.
“When Abú Muslim came to Níshápúr, the múbadhs and herbadhs309c assembled before him, telling him that this man had infected Islám as well as their own religion. So he sent 'Abdu'lláh b. Shu'ba to fetch him. He caught him in the mountains of Bádghís and brought him before Abú Muslim, who put him to death, together with such of his followers as he could capture.
“His followers, called Bih-áfarídhiyya, still keep the institutes of their founder, and strongly oppose the Zamzamís amongst the Magians. They maintain that the servant of their prophet had told them that the prophet had ascended into heaven on a common dark-brown horse, and that he will again descend unto them in the same way as he ascended, and will take vengeance on his enemies.”
309dAccording to the short account in the Fihrist (p. 344), Bih-áfarídh accepted Islám at the hands of two of Abú The Fihrist. Muslim's dá'ís named Shabíb b. Dáḥ and 'Ab du'lláh b. Sa'íd, and adopted the black raiment of the 'Abbásids; but afterwards apostatised and was slain. This account, which rests on the authority of Ibráhím b. al-'Abbás aṣ-Ṣúlí († A.D. 857-8), adds that “there are to this day in Khurásán a number of people who hold his doctrine.” The sect is also mentioned, with the alternative name of Saysániyya, by Shahristání (p. 187), who describes them as “the most hostile of God's creatures to the Zamzamí Magians,” adding that “they recognise the prophetic mission of Zoroaster, and honour those kings whom Zoroaster honours.”
The meagre information which we possess concerning Bih-áfarídh does not permit us to form a clear idea as to the Bih-áfarídh's doctrine. essential nature of his doctrine, of which the two most important features, perhaps, are the prominence accorded to the number seven, and the belief in the “occultation” and “return” of the founder. Of the importance attached to certain numbers (7, 12, 19, &c.) by various sects deriving from the extreme Shí'ites (Ghulát), and of the persistent recurrence of the belief in the “Return” (rij'at) of their heroes, we shall come across numerous examples from this epoch down to our own days. Concerning these Ghulát or extreme Shí'ites Shahristání says (p. 132):—
“They are such as hold extreme views (ghalaw) in respect to their Imáms, so that they raise them above the limits of created beings, The Ghulát or extreme Shí'ites. and ascribe to them Divine virtues, so that often they liken one of the Imáms to God, and often they liken God to mankind, thus falling into the two extremes of excess (ghuluww) and defect (taqṣír). These anthropomorphic tendencies of theirs are derived from the sects of the Ḥulúliyya [who believe that the Deity can pass into a human form], the Tanásukhiyya [who hold the doctrine of Metempsychosis], the Jews, and the Christians. For the Jews liken the Creator to the creature, while the Christians liken the creature to the Creator. And these anthropomorphic tendencies have so infected the minds of these ultra-Shí'ites that they ascribe Divine virtues to some of their Imáms. This anthropomorphism belongs primarily and essentially to the Shí'a, and only subsequently was adopted by certain of the Sunnís… The heretical doctrines of the ultra-Shí'ites are four:— Anthropomorphism (tashbíh), change of [Divine] Purpose (badá), return [of the Imám; rij'at], and Metempsychosis (tanásukh). In every land they bear different names; in Isfahán they are called Khurramiyya and Kúdiyya, in Ray Mazdakiyya and Sinbádiyya, in Ádharbayján Dhaqúliyya, in some places Muḥammira (wearing red as their badge), and in Transoxiana Mubayyiḍa (wearing white as their badge).”
These ultra-Shí'ite sects, then, which we have now to consider, and which, under the leadership of Sinbádh the Magian, al-Muqanna' “the Veiled Prophet of Khurásán,” Bábak, and others, caused such commotion in Persia during this period, do but reassert, like the later Isma'ílís, Báṭinís, Carmathians, Assassins, and Ḥurúfís, the same essential doctrines of Anthropomorphism, Incarnation, Re-incarnation or “Return,” and Metempsychosis; which doctrines appear to be endemic in Persia, and always ready to become epidemic under a suitable stimulus. In our own days they appeared again in the Bábí movement, of which, especially in its earlier form (A.D. 1844-1852), they constituted the essential kernel; though in later time, under the guidance of Bahá'u'lláh († A.D. 1892) and now of his son 'Abbás Efendí “the Most Great Branch” (who appears to be regarded by his followers as a “Return” of Jesus Christ, and is so considered by the now fairly numerous adherents of this doctrine in America), they have been relegated to a subordinate, or at least a less conspicuous, position. The resemblance between these numerous sects, whose history can be clearly traced through the last eleven centuries and a half, is most remarkable, and extends even to minute details of terminology, and to the choice of particular colours (especially red and white) as badges. Thus the early Bábís, like the Mubayyiḍa of the period now under discussion, wore white apparel,312a while they imitated the Muḥammira in their fondness for red by their choice of ink of that colour in transcribing their books. An interesting question, for the final solution of which material is still wanting, is the extent to which these ideas prevailed in other forms in pre-Muhammadan Persia. The various ultra-Shí'ite risings of which we shall have to speak are commonly regarded, alike by the oldest and the most modern Muhammadan historians, as recrudescences of the doctrines of Mazdak, of whom we have already spoken in the chapter on the Sásánians (pp. 168-172 supra). This is probable enough, but unfortunately our knowledge of the principles on which the system of Mazdak reposed is too meagre to enable us to prove it. It is, however, the view of well-informed writers like the author of the Fihrist (pp. 342-345), who wrote in A.D. 987; Shahristání (pp. 193-194), who wrote in A.D. 1127; the celebrated minister of the Seljúqs, Nidhamu'l-Mulk (Siyásat-náma , ed. Schefer, pp. 182-183), who was assassinated in A.D. 1092 by an emissary of those very Isma'ílís whom he so fiercely denounced in his book as the renovators of the heresy of Mazdak, and others; while the modern Bábís have been similarly affiliated both by the historians Lisánu'l-Mulk and Riḍá-qulí Khán in Persia, and by Lady Sheil312b and Professor Nöldeke312c in Europe. In the Fihrist the section dealing with the movements of which we are about to speak is entitled (p. 342) “the Sect of the Khurramiyya and Mazdakiyya,” these being regarded as identical with one another, and with the Muḥammira (“those who made red their badge”), the followers of Bábak “al-Khurramí,” and, apparently, the Muslimiyya, or sects who believed that Abú Muslim was the Imám, or even an incarnation of the Deity, amongst whom Sinbádh the Magian and Isḥáq “the Turk” (so called, we are told, not because he was of Turkish race, but because “he entered the lands of the Turks and summoned them to believe in the Apostolic Mission of Abú Muslim”) are included. Similarly of al-Muqanna' al-Bírúní says (op. laud., p. 194) that “he made obligatory for them (i.e., his followers) all the laws and institutes which Mazhdak had established,” while Shahristání, as we have already seen, regards the terms Mazdakí, Sinbádí, Khurramí, Mubayyiḍa, and Muḥammira as synonymous. The Nidhámu'l-Mulk, in chap. xlv of his Siyásat-náma (ed. Schefer, pp. 182-183, French translation, pp. 265-268)313a is more explicit. According to him, after Mazdak's execution his wife, named Khurrama, fled from Ctesiphon to Ray with two of her husband's adherents, and continued to carry on a successful propaganda in that province. The converts to her doctrine were called either Mazdakites (after her husband) or Khurramites (Khurram-dínán or Khurramiyya) after her. The sect continued to flourish in Ázarbayján, Armenia, Daylam, Hamadán, Dínawar, Isfahán, and Ahwáz—in other words, throughout the north and west of Persia (Fihrist, p. 342)—until the days of Abú Muslim, and was amongst the disaffected elements whose support and sympathy he succeeded in enlisting in his successful attempt to overthrow the Umayyad Caliphate.
To the reverence and even adoration with which Abú Rebellion of Sinbádh the Magian (A.D. 755-756). Muslim was regarded by his followers we have already alluded (p. 243 supra), and his murder by the Caliph al-Manṣúr was almost immediately followed by the rebellion of Sinbádh the Magian,314a who had been Abú Muslim's friend and partisan—a significant fact, as showing that the great propagandist's religious views were not sufficiently intolerant to alienate from his cause even “guebres.” Starting from Níshápúr, his native place, with the avowed intention of avenging Abú Muslim, he soon collected a numerous following, occupied Qúmis and Ray (where he took possession of the treasures which Abú Muslim had deposited in that city), and declared his intention of advancing on the Arabian province of the Ḥijáz and destroying the Ka'ba. He soon attracted to him hosts of Magians from Ṭabaristán and elsewhere, Mazdakites, Ráfiḍis (Shí'ites), and “Anthropomorphists” (Mushabbiha), whom he told that Abú Muslim was not dead, but that, being threatened with death by al-Manṣúr, he had recited the “Most Great Name” of God, and turned himself into a white dove,314b which flew away. His armed followers are said to have numbered some 100,000 men, and if, as stated by al-Fakhrí, 60,000 of these were left dead on the field when he was finally, after many successes, defeated and slain by the 'Abbásid general Jahwar b. Marrár, this can be no exaggeration. This insurrection, though formidable, was short-lived, only lasting seventy days, according to the most trustworthy accounts, though the Nidhámu'l-Mulk says seven years, which is certainly an error.
Isḥáq “the Turk,” whom we have already mentioned, was another of Abú Muslim's dá'is or propagandists, who, on the Isḥáq “the Turk.” death of his master, fled into Transoxiana, and taught that Abú Muslim was not dead, but concealed in the mountains near Ray, whence he would issue forth in the fulness of time. According to the Fihrist (p. 345) he was a descendant of Zayd the 'Alid, and therefore presumably claimed himself to be the Imám, though he took advantage of Abú Muslim's popularity to recommend himself to his followers; but according to another authority cited in the same work as “well informed as to the affairs of the Muslimiyya,” he was a common and illiterate man of Transoxiana who had a familiar spirit which he used to consult, and who declared that Abú Muslim was a prophet sent by Zoroaster, and that Zoroaster was alive and had never died, but would reappear in due season to restore his religion. “Al-Balkhí,” adds our author, “and some others call the Muslimiyya (or followers of Abú Muslim) Khurram-díniyya”; “and,” adds he, “there are amongst us in Balkh a number of them at a village called …,315a but they conceal themselves.”
The next manifestation of these anthropomorphic ultra- The Ráwandiyya. Shí'ites took place a year or two later (A.D. 758-9),315b and is thus described by Dozy:315c —
“Still more foolish were those fanatics who, inspired by Indo-Persian ideas, named their prince ‘God.’ So long as the victory remained doubtful the 'Abbásids had been able to tolerate this species of cult, but since they had gained the mastery they could do so no longer, for they would have aroused against themselves not only the orthodox but the whole Arab race. On the other hand they alienated the sympathy of the Persians by refusing to be God for them; but they had to choose, and the poor Persians, who all the while meant so well, were sacrificed to the Arabs. The Ráwandís (of Ráwand near Isfahán)315d learned this to their cost when they came to present their homage to al-Manṣur; they called him their God, and believed that they saw in the governor of Mecca the Angel Gabriel, and in the captain of the bodyguards him into whom the soul of Adam had migrated.316a Not only was their homage rejected, but their chiefs were cast into prison.316b From this moment al-Manṣúr ceased in the eyes of the Ráwandís to be Caliph. The ideas of legitimate prince and of God were for them two inseparable things, and if the sovereign declared himself not to be God, he could be nothing but a usurper, and ought to be deposed. This project they immediately prepared to carry out. They proceeded to the prison, but to avoid exciting attention they took with them an empty bier, which they caused to be carried before them, as though they were about to bury some one. On arriving at the prison they broke down its doors, released their chiefs, and then attacked the Caliph's palace. There was an extremely critical moment, but at length troops hastened up in sufficient numbers, and the Ráwandís fell beneath the blows of their swords. None the less there were thousands of people in Persia who thought as they did, and for whom the 'Abbásids were no longer Caliphs since they had refused to be God. Hence the reason why such as had fewer scruples in this matter found in this country a soil wherein the seed of revolt bore fruit with vigour.”
The total number of these Ráwandís who walked round the Caliph's palace at Háshimiyya (for Baghdad was not yet built) Doctrines of the Ráwandís. crying, “This is the Palace of our Lord!” was only about six hundred,316c yet the sect, as Ṭabarí tells us (iii, 418), continued to exist till his own time—that is, until the beginning of the tenth century. Besides the doctrines of Incarnation and Metempsychosis, they seem to have held Mazdak's views as to the community of wives, and to have believed themselves to be possessed of miraculous powers. Some of them, we learn, cast themselves from high places, believing that they could fly, and were dashed to pieces. They were certainly, as Dínawarí says (p. 380), connected with Abú Muslim, whose death it was one of their objects to avenge. The peril in which for a short while the life of the Caliph al-Manṣúr was placed for lack of a good horse led to The Farasu'nnawba. the institution of the farasu'n-nawba (Persian, asp-i-nawbatí) or “sentry-horse,” a good horse, saddled, bridled, and equipped, which was henceforth always in readiness at the Caliph's palace in case of emergency. The same institution prevailed till much later times at the Courts of local rulers—e.g., with the Sámánid kings in the tenth century of our era.
317aIn the years A.D. 766-768, still in the reign of al-Manṣúr, another Persian pseudo-prophet named Ustádhsís, rose in revolt Ustádhsís (A.D. 766-8.) in the districts of Herát, Bádghís, and Sístán,317b collected a following of 300,000 men, and caused much trouble to the Government ere he was finally defeated by Kházim b. Khuzayma. Seventy thousand of his followers were slain, and fourteen thousand more, taken captive, were beheaded immediately after the battle. Ustádhsís shortly afterwards surrendered, was sent in chains to Baghdad, and was there put to death. Thirty thousand of his followers who surrendered with him were set at liberty. Al-Khayzurán, the wife of al-Mahdí and mother of al-Hádí and Hárúnu'r-Rashíd, was, according to Sir William Muir (who, however, does not give his authority), the daughter of Ustádhsís.317c She is mentioned by ath-Tha'álibí in his Laṭá'ifu'l-Ma'árif (ed. de Jong, p. 54) as one of the three women who gave birth to two Caliphs. One of the two others was likewise a Persian, namely, Sháh-Parand, the grand-daughter of Yazdigird the last Sásánian king, who was married to Walíd b. 'Abdu'l-Malik, the Umayyad Caliph, and bore him Yazíd III and Ibráhím.
About ten years later (A.D. 777-780), at the beginning of the reign of al-Mahdí, took place the much more serious rising of Al-Muqanna', “the Veiled Prophet of Khurásán,” and Yúsufu'l-Barm (A.D. 777-780). al-Muqanna', the “Veiled Prophet of Khurásán” celebrated by Moore in Lalla Rookh, by the side of which the less known and more obscure insurrection of Yúsufu'l-Barm, “whose object was naught else than to exhort men to good and turn them aside from evil,”318a sinks into insignificance. Of this celebrated heresiarch al-Bírúní gives the following account in his Chronology of Ancient Nations (Sachau's translation, p. 194; text, p. 211):—
“Thereupon came forward Háshim b. Ḥakím, known by the name of al-Muqanna', in Merv, in a village called Kâwakîmardân. He Al-Bírúní's account of al-Muqanna'. used to veil himself in green silk, because he had only one eye. He maintained that he was God, and that he had incarnated himself, since before incarnation nobody could see God. He crossed the river Oxus and went to the districts of Kash and Nasaf (Nakhshab). He entered into correspondence with the Kháqán, and solicited his help. The sect of the Mubayyiḍa318b and the Turks gathered round him, and the property and women (of his enemies), he delivered up to them, killing everybody who opposed him. He made obligatory for them all the laws and institutes which Mazhdak had established. He scattered the armies of al-Mahdí, and ruled during fourteen years, but finally he was besieged and killed in A.H. 169 (A.D. 785-786). Being surrounded on all sides he burned himself, that his body might be annihilated, and that, in consequence, his followers might see therein a confirmation of his claim to be God. He did not, however, succeed in annihilating his body; it was found in the oven, and his head was cut off and sent to the Caliph al-Mahdí, who was then in Aleppo. There is still a sect in Transoxiana who practise his religion, but only secretly, while in public they profess Islám. The history of al-Muqanna' I have translated from the Persian into Arabic, and the subject has been exhaustively treated in my history of the Mubayyiḍa and Carmathians.”
319aThe three things connected with al-Muqanna' which are best known and most widely celebrated are the mask of gold (or veil of green silk, according to some accounts) which he continually wore, to spare his followers the dazzling and insupportable effulgence of his countenance, as he asserted, or, as his opponents said, to conceal from them his deformed and hideous aspect; the false moon which he caused, night after night, to rise from a well at Nakhshab (whence he is often called by the Persians Máh-sázanda, “the moon-maker”); and the final suicide of himself and his followers, by which, as it would appear, he desired not only to avoid falling into the hands of his enemies, but to make his partisans believe that he had disappeared and would return again, with which object he Al-Qazwíni's account of al-Muqanna'. endeavoured to destroy his own body and those of his companions. Of the false moon al-Qazwíní (who wrote during the first half of the thirteenth century of our era) speaks as follows in his Átháru'l-Bilád (ed. Wüstenfeld, p. 312), under the heading Nakhshab:—
“Nakhshab. A famous city in the land of Khurásán, from which have arisen many saints and sages. With it was connected al-Ḥakím al-Muqanna',319b who made a well at Nakhshab whence there rose up a moon which men saw like the [real] moon. This thing became noised abroad through the horizons, and people flocked to Nakhshab to see it, and wondered greatly at it. The common folk supposed it to be magic, but it was only effected by [a knowledge of] mathematics and the reflection of the rays of the moon; for they [afterwards] found at the bottom of the well a great bowl filled with quicksilver. Yet withal he achieved a wonderful success, which was disseminated through the horizons and noised abroad until men mentioned him in their poems and proverbs, and his memory abode amongst mankind.”
Ibn Khallikán in his celebrated Biographies (translation of Baron MacGuckin de Slane, vol. ii, pp. 205-206) thus speaks of him:320a —
“Al-Muqanna' al-Khurásání, whose real name was 'Aṭá, but whose father's name is unknown to me (though it is said to have been Ibn Khallikán's account of al-Muqanna'. Ḥakím), began his life as a fuller at Merv. Having acquired some knowledge of Magic and Incantations, he pretended to be an Incarnation of the Deity, which had passed into him by Metempsychosis, and he said to his partisans and followers: ‘Almighty God entered into the figure of Adam; for which reason He bade the angels adore Adam, “and they adored Him, except Iblís, who proudly refused,”320b whereby he justly merited the Divine Wrath. Then from Adam He passed into the form of Noah, and from Noah into the forms of each of the prophets and sages successively, until He appeared in the form of Abú Muslim al-Khurásání (already mentioned), from whom He passed into me.’ His pretensions having obtained credence with some people, they adored him and took up arms in his defence, notwithstanding what they beheld as to the extravagance of his claims and the hideousness of his aspect; for he was ill-made, one-eyed, short in stature [and a stutterer], and never uncovered his face, but veiled it with a mask of gold, from which circumstance he received his appellation of ‘the Veiled’ (al-Muqanna'). The influence which he exercised over the minds of his followers was acquired by the delusive miracles which he wrought in their sight by means of magic and incantations. One of the deceptions which he exhibited to them was the image of a moon, which rose so as to be visible to the distance of a two months' journey, after which it set; whereby their belief in him was greatly increased. It is to this moon that Abu'l-'Alá al-Ma'arrí alludes in the following line:—
“‘Awake [from the delusions of love]! That full moon320c
whose head
is shrouded in a veil
Is only a snare and a delusion, like the Moon of al-Muqanna'!’
“This verse forms part of a long qaṣída. To it also alludes Abu'l-Qásim Hibatu'lláh b. Siná'u'l-Mulk (a poet of whom we shall speak presently) in the course of a qaṣída wherein he says:—
“‘Beware! For the Moon of al-Muqanna' does not rise
321a
More fraught with magic than my turbaned moon!’
“When the doings of al-Muqanna' became notorious, and his fame was spread abroad, the people rose up against him and attacked him in his castle wherein he had taken refuge, and besieged him there. Perceiving that death was inevitable, he assembled his women and gave them a poisoned drink, whereby they died; after which he swallowed a draught of the same liquor and expired. On entering the castle, the Muslims put all his partisans and followers to the sword. This happened in the year A.H. 163 (A.D. 779-780): may God's curse rest upon him, and with God do we take refuge from such deceptions!—I never found the name or the situation of this castle mentioned by any person, that I might record it, until at last I read it in the Kitábu'sh-Shubuhát of Yáqútu'l-Ḥamawí (who will be mentioned presently, if God please), which he wrote to differentiate those places which participate in the same name.321b He there says, in the section devoted to Sanám, that there are four places of this name, whereof the fourth is the Castle of Sanám constructed by al-Muqanna' the Khárijite [i.e., the heretic rebel] in Transoxiana. God knows best, but it would appear that this is the castle in question.—I have since found in the History of Khurásán that it is the very one, and that it is situated in the district of Kashsh;321c but God knows best!”
Ibnu'l-Athír in his great chronicle (Cairo ed., vol. vi, pp. 13-14 and 17-18, under the years A.H. 159 and 161) confirms most of the above particulars. According to him al-Muqanna' was named Ḥakím, and only made known his pretensions to Ibnu'l-Athír's narrative. be a Divine Incarnation to a select circle of his followers, declaring that from Abú Muslim the Divinity had passed into Háshim, by which name he intended himself, so that the war-cry of his followers was, “O Háshim, help us!” (“Yá Ḥáshim, a'in-ná!”). He was supported by the Mubayyiḍa, or “White-clad” heretics, in Sughd and Bukhárá, and also by many of the pagan Turks. He held Abú Muslim to be superior to the Prophet, and one of his avowed objects was to avenge the death of Yaḥyá b. Zayd, a great-grandson of al-Ḥusayn, who was killed in A.D. 742-3. The number of his followers who deserted him at the last, on a promise of quarter from Sa'íd al-Ḥarashí, the general in command of the beleaguering forces, is stated at 30,000, while those who remained with him were about 2,000.
“When he saw that death was inevitable,” says Ibnu'l-Athír (who is followed by al-Fakhrí), “he assembled his women and his family, and gave them poison to drink, and commanded that his own body should be burned with fire, that none [of his enemies] might obtain possession of it. Others say that he burned all that was in his castle, including beasts and clothing and the like, after which he said, ‘Let him who desires to ascend with me into heaven cast himself with me into this fire.’ So he cast himself into it, with his family, and his women, and his chosen companions, and they were burned, so that when the army entered the Castle, they found it empty and void. This was one of the circumstances which added to the delusion of such as remained of his followers, of whom are they who are called the Mubayyiḍa in Transoxiana, save that they conceal their belief. But some say that he, too, drank poison and died, and that al-Ḥarashí sent his head to al-Mahdí, and that it reached him when he was at Duration of the sect. Aleppo on one of his campaigns in A.H. 163 (= A.D. 779-780).” These Mubayyiḍa, or followers of al-Muqanna', seem to have continued to exist until the eleventh century.322a Abu'l-Faraj (Bar-Hebræus),322b who flourished in the thirteenth century of our era (A.D. 1226-1286), adds that al-Muqanna' Additional particulars given by Bar-Hebræus. “had promised his followers that his spirit would pass into the form of a grizzle-headed man riding on a grey horse,323a and that he would return unto them after so many years, and cause them to possess the earth.”
Our information as to the details of the doctrines held by the heresiarchs mentioned above is lamentably defective, but all Bábak the Khurramí. that we know confirms the statement of Shah-ristání (already cited)323b as to the essential identity of the sects which were called after Mazdak, Sinbádh, and al-Muqanna', and which were also denoted by the name Khurramiyya, Mubayyiḍa, and Muḥammira. Under one of these names (or the Persian equivalent of the last, Surkh 'Alam, “Red Standards”) we find risings of these schismatics chronicled in A.D. 778-9 (Ṭab. iii, 493; Dín. 382; Siyásat-náma pp. 199-200); in A.D. 796-7 (Ṭab. iii, 645); and in A.D. 808 (Ṭab. iii, 732; Dín. 387). The next great heresiarch, however, appeared in the reign of al-Ma'mún. This was Bábak, called al-Khurramí, who is first mentioned by Ṭabarí under the year A.H. 201 (A.D. 816-817), and who for more than twenty years (till A.D. 838) was the terror of Western and North-Western Persia, defeating in turn Yaḥyá b. Ma'ádh, 'Ísá b. Muḥammad, Muḥammad b. Ḥumayd of Ṭús, and other generals sent against him, and was only at last conquered and captured with much difficulty, through cunning stratagems, by the celebrated Afshín. Of these wars full accounts are given by all the principal Muhammadan historians, especially Ṭabarí;323c but of Bábak's private life, character and doctrine the most detailed information is contained in the following passage of the Fihrist (pp. 342-344), the author of which wrote about A.D. 987, a hundred and fifty years after Bábak's death. After speaking of the Khurramís and Mazdakís, this writer passes to the Bábakí Khurramís, concerning whom he says:—
“Now as for the Bábakí Khurramís, their founder was Bábak al-Khurramí, who used to say to such as he desired to lead into Account of Bábak in the Fihrist. error that he was God, and who introduced into the Khurramí sects murder, rapine, wars and cruel punishments, hitherto unknown to them.
his execution.
“Says Wáqid b. 'Amr at-Tamímí, who compiled the history of Bábak: ‘His father was an oil-seller of al-Madá'in (Ctesiphon) who emigrated to the frontiers of Ádharbayján and settled in a village called Bilál-ábádh, in the district of Maymadh.324a He used to carry his oil in a vessel on his back, and wander through the villages in the district. He conceived a passion for a one-eyed woman, who afterwards became the mother of Bábak, and with her he cohabited for a long while. And while she and he were [on one occasion] away from the village, enjoying one another's company in a glade, and devoting themselves to wine which they had with them, behold, there came women from the village to draw water from a fountain in that glade, and they heard the sound of a voice singing in the Nabathæan tongue. They made in that direction and fell upon the two of them. 'Abdu'lláh fled, but they seized Bábak's mother by the hair, brought her to the village, and exposed her to contumely there.’
“Says Wáqid: ‘Then this oil-seller petitioned her father, and he gave her to him in marriage, and she bore him Bábak. Then he went forth in one of his journeys to the Mountain of Sabalán,325a where there fell upon him one who smote him from behind and wounded him so that he died after a little while. And Bábak's mother began to act as a professional wet-nurse for wages till such time as he reached the age of ten years. It is said that she went forth one day to seek Bábak, who was pasturing the cattle of a certain tribe, and found him lying naked under a tree, taking his noontide sleep; and that she saw under each hair on his breast and head a drop of blood. Then he woke up suddenly from his sleep, and stood erect, and the blood which she had seen passed away and she found it not. “Then,” said she, “I knew that my son was destined for some glorious mission.”’
“Says Wáqid: ‘And again Bábak was with ash-Shibl ibnu'l-Mu-naqqá al-Azdí in the district of Sará,325b looking after his cattle, and from his hirelings he learned to play the drum. Then he went to Tabríz in Ádharbayján, where he was for about two years in the service of Muḥammad ibnu'r-Rawwád al-Azdí. Then he returned to his mother, being at that time about eighteen years of age, and abode with her.’
“Says Wáqid b. 'Amr: ‘Now there were in the mountain of al-Badhdh325c and the hills connected therewith two men of the barbarians 325d holding the Khurramí doctrine, possessed of wealth and riches, who disputed as to which should hold sway over the Khurramís inhabiting these hills, that the supremacy might belong exclusively to one of them. One was named Jáwídán the son of Suhrak,325e while the other was better known by his kunya of Abú 'Imrán; and there was continual war between them during the summer, while in winter-time the snow kept them apart by closing the passes. Now Jáwídán, who was Bábak's master, went forth from his city with two thousand sheep, which he intended to bring into the town of Zanján, one of the towns in the marches of Qazwín. So he entered it, sold his sheep, and turned back to the mountain of al-Badhdh, where, being overtaken by the snow and the night in the district of Mímad,325f he turned aside to the village of Bilálábádh, where he sought hospitality from the jazír326a of the place, who, holding Jáwídán in light esteem, passed him on to the mother of Bábak, bidding her entertain him. And she, by reason of poverty and straitened means, had no food [to set before him], wherefore she rose up and kindled a fire, being unable to do more than this [for his entertainment], while Bábak waited upon his servants and beasts, and tended them, and gave them water to drink. And Jáwídán sent him out to buy for him food and wine and fodder, and when he brought him these things, he conversed and talked with him, and found him, nothwithstanding his detestable character, and though his tongue was cramped by outlandish speech, of good understanding, and saw him to be a cunning rogue. So he said to Bábak's mother, “Oh woman, I am a man from the mountain of al-Badhdh, where I enjoy consideration and opulence, and I need [the services of] this thy son, wherefore give him to me, that I may take him with me, and make him my agent over my farms and estates, and I will send thee his wages, fifty dirhams every month.” She replied, “Thou seemest well-intentioned, and the signs of opulence are apparent in thee, and my heart feels confidence in thee; take him with thee, therefore, when thou departest.”
“‘Then Abú 'Imrán came down from his mountain against Jáwí-dán, and fought with him, but was routed and slain by him. And Jáwí-dán returned unto his mountain, bearing a wound which caused him anxiety, and abode in his house three days, and then died. Now his wife had conceived a passion for Bábak, who had yielded to her guilty desires, and so, when Jáwídán died, she said to him, “Verily thou art strong and cunning; Jáwídán is dead, and I have not mentioned this to any one of his followers. Prepare thyself for to-morrow, when I will assemble them before thee, and will inform them that Jáwídán said: ‘I desire to die this night, and that my spirit should go forth from my body, and enter into the body of Bábak, and associate itself with his spirit. Verily he will accomplish for himself and for you a thing which none hath heretofore accomplished and which none shall hereafter accomplish; for verily he shall take poses-sion of the earth, and shall slay the tyrants, and shall restore the Mazdakites, and by him shall the lowest of you become mighty, and the meanest of you be exalted.’” And Bábak's ambition was aroused by what she said, and he rejoiced thereat, and prepared himself to undertake it.
“‘So when it was morning, she assembled before her the army of Jáwídán, and they said, “How is it that he doth not summon us and give us his instructions?” She answered, “Naught prevented him from so doing save that ye were scattered abroad in your homes in the villages, and that, had he sent to assemble you, tidings of this would have been spread abroad; wherefore he, fearing the malice of the Arabs towards you, laid upon me that which I now convey to you, if ye will accept it and act in accordance with it.” “Tell us,” they answered, “what were the wishes he expressed to thee, for verily we never opposed his commands during his life, nor will we oppose them now that he is dead.” “He said to me,” she replied, “‘Verily I shall die this night, and my spirit will go forth from my body, and will enter into the body of this lad, my servant, and I purpose to set him in authority over my followers, wherefore, when I am dead, make known to them this thing, and that there is no true religion in him who opposeth me herein, or who chooseth for himself the contrary of what I have chosen.’” They answered, “We accept his testament to thee in respect to this lad.”
“‘Then she called for a cow, and commanded that it should be
slain and flayed, and that its skin should be spread out, and on the
skin she placed a bowl filled with wine, and into it she broke bread,
which she placed round about the bowl. Then she called them,
man by man, and bade each of them tread the skin with his foot,
and take a piece of bread, plunge it in the wine, and eat it, saying,
“I believe in thee, O Spirit of Bábak, as I believe in the spirit of
Jáwídán;” and that each should then take the hand of Bábak, and
do obeisance before it, and kiss it. And they did so, until such time
as food was made ready for her; then she brought forth food and
wine to them, and seated Bábak on her bed, and sat beside him
publicly before them. And when they had drunk three draughts
each, she took a sprig of basil and offered it to Bábak, and he took
it from her hand, and this was their marriage. Then [their followers]
came forth and did obeisance to the two of them, acknowledging
the marriage…’”
Doctrines of
Bábak.
The most important statements contained in the above narrative as to Bábak's doctrines are:—
(1) That he declared himself to be God, or at least a Divine Theophany.
(2) That he declared that the soul of his master Jáwídán had passed into him.327a He thus held two at least, and probably three, of the four doctrines (ḥulul, or the passing of God into human form; tanásukh, or the passing of the soul from one body to another; and rij'at, or the return of a departed soul in a new tabernacle of flesh) regarded by Shahristání (see p. 311 supra) as characteristic of all sects of the Ghulát or “immoderate” Shí'ites. Whether Bábak was of pure Persian extraction is doubtful, for the Fihrist represents his father as singing songs in the Nabathæan language, while Dínawarí (p. 397) expresses the opinion328a that he was one of the sons of Muṭahhar the son of Fáṭima the daughter of Abú Muslim. The Nidhámu'l-Mulk mentions in his Siyásat-náma (ed. Schefer, p. 204) that the Khurramís in their secret gatherings used first to call down blessings on Abú Muslim, the Mahdí, and Fírúz, the son of the above-mentioned Fáṭima, whom they called “the Wise Child” (Kúdak-i-Dáná), and who may perhaps be identical with Bábak's father Muṭahhar. It also appears that Bábak in the main merely perpetuated doctrines already taught by his master Jáwídán (whose followers are called by Ṭabarí, iii, 1015, al-Jáwídániyya), only adding to them, in the words of the Fihrist above cited, “murder, rapine, wars, and cruel punishments, hitherto unknown to them.” He certainly seems to have been of a bloodthirsty disposition, for according to Ṭabarí (iii, p. 1233) he slew in twenty years 255,500 persons, while Mas'údí (Kitábu't-tanbíh, p. 353) estimates the number of his victims as “500,000 at the lowest computation.” As regards his relation to the other sects which we have mentioned, he was, as the Fihrist tells us, “to restore the doctrines of the Mazdakites;” and we find (Siyásat-náma, p. 201) one of his generals bearing the name of 'Alí Mazdak. He is generally called al-Khurramí, a title which the Fihrist also applies to Jáwídán and his rival Abú 'Imrán, and which, according to the Siyásat-náma (p. 182) was simply synonymous with Mazdakite. His followers are commonly spoken of as the Khurramís, but sometimes (e.g., Ṭabarí, iii, 1235, where they are described as fighting for Theophilus against the Muslims) as al-Muḥammira, “the Wearers of Red.”
It is unnecessary for our purpose to recount the long wars of Bábak against the Muslims, or to enumerate his many and Execution of Bábak and his brother 'Abdu'lláh. brilliant successes. Suffice it to say that, after enjoying complete impunity for twenty-two years (A.H. 201-222 or 223, A.D. 816-838), he was ultimately defeated and taken captive by Afshín, sent to Surra-man-ra'a, and there put to death before the Caliph al-Mu'taṣim. His body was crucified there on a spot called al-'Aqaba (“the Hill”), still famous for this in Ṭabarí's time (iii, 1231), while his head was sent to Khurásán. His brother 'Abdu'lláh was sent in the custody of Ibn Sharwín aṭ-Ṭabarí to Baghdad, where he suffered a like fate. On the way thither the prisoner was lodged in the Castle of Baradán. “Who art thou?” he inquired of his custodian. “The son of Sharwín, Prince of Ṭabaristán,” replied the other. “Praise be to God!” exclaimed Bábak's brother, “that He hath vouchsafed to me one of the dihqáns (Persian landed gentry) to superintend my execution!” Ibn Sharwín pointed to Núdnúd, Bábak's executioner, and said, “It is he only who will superintend thy execution.” “Thou art my man,” said 'Abdu'lláh, turning towards him, “and this other is only a barbarian. Tell me now, wert thou bidden to give me anything to eat, or not?” “Tell me what you would like,” replied the executioner. “Make for me,” said 'Abdu'lláh, “some sweet wheaten porridge (fálúdhaj).” Having eaten heartily of this nocturnal meal, he said, “O So-and-so, to-morrow thou shalt know that I am a dihqán (i.e., a Persian gentleman of the old stock), if it please God.” Then he asked for some date-wine, which was also given to him, and which he drank slowly and deliberately, till it was near morning, when the journey was continued to Baghdad. When they reached the head of the Bridge, the Governor, Isḥáq b. Ibráhím, ordered 'Abdu'llah's hands and feet to be cut off, during which he uttered no sound and spoke no word. Then he was crucified on the eastern side of the river, between the two bridges. Yet was he not mocked to the same degree as Bábak, who was brought forth mounted on an elephant, clad in a robe of brocade, and crowned with a round qalansuwa, or Persian cap, of marten-skin.
About a year later (September, A.D. 840) the body of Execution of Mázyár, who is gibbeted beside Bábak. Mázyár, the rebel prince of Ṭabaristán, was gibbeted beside that of Bábak, concerning which pitiable spectacle the poet Abú Tammám († A.D. 845-6) has the following verses:330a —
“The fever of my heart was cooled when Bábak became the neigh-
bour of Mázyár;
He now makes the second with him under the vault of heaven;
but he was not like, ‘the second of two, when they were
both in the Cave.’330b
They seem to stand aside that they may conceal some news from
the curious inquirer.
Their raiment is black, and the hands of the Samúm330c
might be
supposed to have woven for them a vest of pitch.
Morning and evening they ride on slender steeds, brought out for
them from the stables of the carpenters.
They stir not from their place, and yet the spectator might suppose
them to be always on a journey.”
With them was soon associated a third, no less than Afshín himself, the conqueror of Bábak, the secret abettor of Mázyár Execution of Afshín. in his revolt against 'Abdu'lláh b. Ṭáhir, the Caliph's governor of Khurásán. He too, though formerly one of the Caliph's chief generals and favourite courtiers, was not less Persian by birth and sympathy than the two others who bore him company at that grim trysting-place.331a Of his trial a very interesting account is given by Ṭabarí (iii, pp. 1308-1313), which is significant as showing how thin a veneer of Islám sufficed for a high officer of the Commander of the Faithful (until he fell into disgrace for purely political reasons) at this period. The substance of this narrative, which is on the authority of an eye-witness, Hárún b. 'Ísá b. Manṣúr, is as follows:—
Amongst those present at the trial were Ahmad b. Abí Du'ád, Isḥáq b. Ibráhím b. Muṣ'ab, Muḥammad b. 'Abdu'l- Trial of Afshín. Malik az-Zayyát, who acted as prosecutor, Mázyár (who had turned “King's evidence,” but, as we have already seen, with no benefit to himself), the Múbadh, or high-priest of the Magians, a prince of Sughd, and two men from the same province clad in tatters. These two last were first examined. They uncovered their backs, which First charge: the scourging of Muslims for iconoclasm. were seen to be raw from scourging. “Knowest thou these men?” inquired Ibnu'z-Zayyát of Afshín. “Yes,” replied he: “this one is a mu'adhdhin, and that one an imám; they built a mosque at Ushrúsna, and I inflicted on each of them a thousand stripes, because I had covenanted with the princes of Sughd that I would leave all men unmolested in the religion which they professed, and these two fell upon a temple wherein were idols worshipped by some of the people of Ushrúsna, cast them forth, and made the place into a mosque; wherefore I punished each of them with a thousand stripes, because they had acted aggressively and hindered the people in their worship.”
Ibnu'z-Zayyát then passed to another count. “What,” inquired he, “is a book in thy possession which thou hast Second charge: the possession of heathen books. adorned with gold, jewels and brocade, and which contains blasphemies against God?” “It is a book,” replied Afshín, “which I inherited from my father, and which contains some of the wisdom of the Persians; and as for its alleged blasphemies, I profit by its literary merit and ignore the rest. And I received it thus sumptuously adorned, nor did need arise to compel me to strip it of its ornaments, so I left it as it was, just as you have the Book of Kalíla and Dimna and the Book of Mazdak332a in your house, nor did I deem this incompatible with my profession of Islám.”
Then the Magian priest came forward and said, “This man was in the habit of eating the flesh of animals killed by Third charge: the eating of the flesh of strangled animals, and the refusal of circumcision. strangulation, and used to persuade me to eat it, pretending that it was more tender than the flesh of beasts slain with the knife. Moreover, he used every Wednesday to slay a black sheep, cutting it in two with his sword, and then passing between the two pieces, and afterwards eating its flesh. And one day he said to me, ‘I have become one of these people [i.e., the Arabs] in everything which I detest, even unto the eating of oil, and the riding of camels, and the wearing of sandals, but to this day not a hair hath fallen from me,’ meaning that he had never used depilatories, nor submitted to circumcision.” “Tell me,” said Afshín, “whether this fellow, who speaketh in this fashion, is worthy of credence in his religion.” Now the Múbad was a Magian who afterwards embraced Islám in the reign of al-Mutawakkil, one of whose intimates he became; so they answered, “No.” “Then,” said Afshín, “what means your acceptance of the testimony of one in whom you have no reliance, and whom you do not regard as trustworthy?” Then he turned to the Múbad and said, “Was there a door or a window between my house and thine through which thou could'st observe me and have knowledge of my doings?” “No,” answered the Múbad. “Was I not wont,” continued Afshín, “to bring thee in unto myself, and to tell thee my secrets, and to talk with thee on Persian matters, and of my love for the things and the people of Persia?” “Yes,” replied the Múbad. “Then,” said Afshín, “thou art neither true in thy religious professions, nor generous in thy friendship, since thou hast brought up against me in public matters which I confided to thee in secret.”
The Marzubán of Sughd was next brought forward, and Afshín was asked if he knew him, to which he replied in the Fourth charge: the accepting from the people of divine honours. negative. Then they asked the Marzubán whether he knew Afshín, to which he answered that he did, and, turning to the accused, cried, “O trickster, how long wilt thou defend thyself and strive to gloss over the truth?” “What sayest thou, O long-beard?” answered Afshín. “How do thy subjects write to thee?” continued the other. “As they used to write to my father and grandfather,” replied Afshín. “Tell us how they address you,” pursued the Marzubán. “I will not,” said Afshín. “Do they not in their letters address thee as So-and-so and So-and-so in the language of Ushrúsna?” demanded the other, “and does this not signify in Arabic, ‘to the God of gods, from his servant So-and-so the son of So-and-so?’” “Yes, they do,” answered Afshín. “Do Muslims suffer themselves to be addressed thus?” cried Ibnu'z-Zayyát; “what, then, hast thou left for Pharaoh, when he said to his people, ‘I am your Lord the Supreme?’”333a “This,” said Afshín, “was the custom of the people in respect to my father, my grandfather and myself, ere I adopted Islám; and I was unwilling to lower myself in their eyes, lest their allegiance to me should be weakened.” “Out upon thee, O Ḥaydar!” exclaimed Isḥáq b. Ibráhím b. Muṣ'ab; “how dost thou swear to us by God, and we give thee credence, and accept thine oath, and treat thee as a Muslim, whilst thou makest such pretensions as Pharaoh made?” “O Abu'l-Ḥusayn!” replied Afshín, “this passage was cited by 'Ujayf against 'Alí b. Hishám, and now thou citest it against me! See who will cite it against thee to-morrow!”
Then Mázyár, the Ispahbad of Ṭabaristán, was brought forward, and Afshín was asked, “Knowest thou this man?” Fifth charge: of secretly inciting Mázyár to revolt, and encouraging him in his rebellion. “No,” he answered. Then Mázyár was asked whether he knew Afshín, to which he replied in the affirmative. “This,” said they to Afshín, “is Mázyár.” “Yes,” said Afshín, “I recognise him now.” “Hast thou corresponded with him?” they inquired. “No,” said Afshín. “Has he written to you?” they demanded of Mázyár. “Yes,” he replied, “his brother Khásh wrote to my brother Qúhyár, saying, ‘None can cause this Most Luminous Religion334a to prevail save I, and thou, and Bábak. As for Bábak, he hath caused his own death by his folly, and, though I strove to avert death from him, his own folly would not brook intervention until it cast him into the catastrophe which befell him. If thou dost revolt, the people [i.e., the Arabs] have none but me to send against thee, and with me are the knights, and the valiant and brave; so that if I be sent against thee, there remain to do battle with us only three sorts of men, the Arabs, the Moors,334b and the Turks. The Arab is like a dog; I will throw him a crust, and then smash his head with a mace. And these flies’ (meaning the Moors) ‘are but few in numbers;335a while as for these sons of devils’ (meaning the Turks), ‘it needs but a short while to exhaust their arrows, after which the cavalry will surround them in a single charge and destroy them all, and religion will return to what it ever was in the days of the Persians.’”
335bTo this Afshín replied, “This man brings against his brother and my brother charges which do not affect me. And even had I written this letter to him, that I might incline him to myself, and that he might regard my approach with equanimity, there would be nothing objectionable therein; for since I helped the Caliph with my hands, I had the better right to help him by my wits, that I might take his enemy unawares and bring him before him, that I might thereby be honoured in my master's eyes even as 'Abdu'lláh b. Ṭáhir thus won honour.”
Some further details of the trial are given, especially Afshín's attempt to defend himself for his neglect to undergo the rite of circumcision (“wherein,” said Ibn Abí Du'ád, “is the whole of Islám and of legal purity”), on the ground that he feared harm to his health from the operation. His excuses were scouted: was it possible that a soldier, constantly exposed to lance-thrust and sword-blow, should be afraid of this? Afshín saw that he was doomed, and, in the bitterness of his heart, exclaimed to Ibn Abí Du'ád, “O Abú 'Abdi'lláh, thou raisest up thy hood (ṭaylasán) with thy hand, and dost not suffer it to fall on thy shoulder until thou hast slain thereby a multitude.”335c “It hath become apparent to you,” said Ibn Abí Du'ád, addressing the audience, “what he is”; then to Bughá the Turk (called “the Elder”), “Away with him!” Thereupon Bughá seized Afshín by the girdle, and, as he cried out, “This is what I expected from you!” cast the skirt of his robe over his head, and, half throttling him, dragged him back to his prison. The Caliph al-Mu'taṣim, disregarding his piteous appeal for clemency, caused him to be slowly starved to death, after attempting, as it would appear, to poison him in some fruit which he sent to him by the hand of his son Hárún, who afterwards succeeded to the Caliphate under the title al-Wáthiq bi'lláh.336a The body, crucified for a while between Bábak and Mázyár, as already described, was afterwards burned, and its ashes cast into the Tigris. In Afshín's house were found, besides sundry idols set with jewels, many books of the religion to which he was secretly attached, including a “Magian book” called Zaráwa. His death took place in June, A.D. 841, so that he must have languished in prison for nine months after his trial and the execution of Mázyár.
It was the policy of the early 'Abbásids, and of al-Ma'mún in particular,336b to exalt the Persians at the expense of the Arabs; and in this chapter we have examined some of the more open and undisguised manifestations of the old Persian racial and religious spirit—actual attempts to destroy the supremacy of the Arabs and of Islám, and to restore the power of the ancient rulers and teachers of Persia.336c Such aspirations after an irrevocable past may be said, in a certain sense, to have been crucified on the three gibbets at Surra man-ra'a; and yet so strongly did these Persianising ideas, which they represented in their different ways, continue to work, that, in the words of Abú Tammám already quoted (p. 330 supra), “the spectator might suppose them to be always on a journey.”
THE CALIPHATE, FROM THE ACCESSION
OF AL-MUTAWAKKIL TO THE ACCES-
SION OF SULṬÁN MAḤMÚD
OF GHAZNA
THE GENERAL PHENOMENA OF THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE DECLINE OF THE CALIPHATE (A.D. 847-1000), FROM THE ACCESSION OF AL-MUTAWAKKIL TO THE ACCESSION OF MAḤMÚD OF GHAZNA.
THE period which we have now to consider is one which, though politically far less brilliant than the last, is in many General characteristics. respects quite as interesting. The sudden reversion from the broad and tolerant spirit of al-Ma'mún and his successors to a narrow and bigoted orthodoxy seems to have encouraged rather than repressed the development of several most remarkable religious and philosophical movements, notably amongst the former the Car-mathian or Isma'ílí propaganda which culminated in the establishment of the Fáṭimide Anti-Caliphate of North Africa and Egypt, and amongst the latter the philosophical fraternity known as the Ikhwánu'ṣ Ṣafá or “Brethren of Purity.” The growing paralysis of the Court of Baghdad, primarily caused by the ever-increasing lawlessness and tyranny of the Turkish “Prætorian Guard,” wherewith, in an evil moment, the Caliphs had surrounded themselves, led directly to the formation in most parts of the Muhammadan Empire, notably in Persia, of practically independent or semi-independent dynasties, whose courts often became foci for learning and literature, more apt in many ways to discover and stimulate local talent than a distant and unsympathetic metropolis. And withal the disadvantages of the greater decentralisation which characterises later epochs were not yet apparent: Arabic still remained the language of diplomacy, science, and culture throughout the vast domains of which Baghdad was still the intellectual, and, to a large extent, the political centre; and communications, both material and spiritual, were sufficiently unimpeded to allow of the free interchange of ideas, so that men of learning passed readily from one centre of culture to another, and theories propounded in Spain and Morocco were soon discussed in Khurásán and Transoxiana.
From our special point of view, moreover, this period is of particular interest, since it gave birth to what we ordinarily Rise of Persian literature during this period. understand by Persian literature, that is the post-Muhammadan literature of Persia. We have already spoken in an earlier chapter (pp. 11-18 supra) of the slender evidences which can be adduced of the existence of neo-Persian (as opposed to Pahlawí) writings of an earlier date, and have seen that while it is likely enough that occasional memoranda, or even small manuals, may have existed before the middle of the ninth century, it is very doubtful if we possess the text of even a line of Persian which was composed before the middle of the ninth century; since the Persian poem alleged by 'Awfí to have been composed in A.D. 809 by a certain 'Abbás of Merv340a on the occasion of the visit paid by al-Ma'mún to that city is, as Kazimirski has pointed out,340b of very suspicious authenticity. Yet no sooner had Khurásán, the province of Persia most remote from Baghdad, begun to shake itself free from the direct control of the Caliphs, than Persian poetry began to flourish, at first sporadically under the Ṭáhirid (A.D. 820-872) and Ṣaffárid (A.D. 868-903) dynasties, and then copiously under the dynasty, at once more national than the former and more noble than the latter, of the Sámánids (A.D. 874-999), while in the Ghaznawí epoch, which immediately follows that which we are about to discuss, it may be said to have attained its full development, if not its zenith.
To this subject we shall return in another chapter, but it will be well first of all to treat more broadly of the general history of this period of the Caliphate, alike in its political, its religious, and its literary aspects. We shall therefore divide this Book, like the preceding ones, into three chapters, in the first of which we shall endeavour to present the reader with a conspectus of the whole period with which we are now dealing, while in the second we shall discuss more fully certain aspects of the religious and philosophical movements of the time, reserving for the last an account of the earliest period of Persian literature. And should the reader be tempted to complain of so much space being still devoted to phenomena which centre round Baghdad and appear more closely connected with Arabic than with Persian literature, he must remember that this is an essential part of the scheme on which this history is constructed, it being the author's profound conviction that the study of Persian, to prove fruitful, cannot be divorced from that of Arabic, even in its purely literary aspects, still less in the domains of religion and philosophy into which anything beyond the most superficial reading of the belles lettres of Persia must inevitably lead us. To those whose horizon of Persian literature is bounded by the Gulistán, the Bustán, the Anwár-i-Suhaylí, the Díwán of Ḥáfidh, and the Quatrains of 'Umar Khayyám, this book is not addressed.
Our period opens with the comparatively long and wholly deplorable reign of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (A.D. 847-861), which is characterised politically by the ascendancy of the Turkish party and the repression of the Arabs, and, to a less extent, of the Persians; and intellectually by the reaction against Caliphate of al-Mutawakkil. the liberal Mu'tazilite doctrines and philosophical tendencies of the previous Caliphs, and a fanatical hatred of 'Alí and his Shí'a or faction. The place of the Barmecides and other noble Persians is taken by Turkish soldiers of fortune (originally, as a rule, slaves captured in the religious wars waged on the frontiers of Khurásán against heathen Turkish tribes), whose barbarous names well accord with their savage acts. The pages of the chronicles are filled with such: Boghá (“the Bull”), an older and a younger; Bághir, Utámish (who became Prime Minister two or three years after al-Mutawakkil's murder), Báyabák, Kalbatakín, and the like. The names of these Turkish mercenaries, even when they are in Arabic, denote their origin; Waṣíf, for instance, one of the chief regicides who compassed al-Mutawakkil's death, stands revealed by his name as originally a slave.342a It was an evil day for the Caliphs when, ceasing to trust or sympathise with their own people, they surrounded themselves with these savage and self-seeking men of violence, and transferred their residence from Baghdad to Surra-man-ra'a (or Sámarra), which, being interpreted, means “gladdened is he who hath beheld it,” “from the beauty of its site,” as Muir observes,342b “or, as was wittily said, ‘Whoever saw it with the Turks settled there, rejoiced at Baghdad being well rid of them.’” And though this had happened already in the reign of al-Mu'taṣim, the bitter fruits thereof first matured in the days of al-Mutawakkil.
The latter, it is true, had thought in the latter part of his Bigotry of alMutawakkil. reign (A.D. 858) of moving his capital, but it is characteristic of his admiration for the Umayyads and his anti-Shí'ite prejudices that it was Damascus, not Baghdad, which he had in mind. His religious bigotry, which was especially directed against the Shí'a, but which also found its expression in vexatious enactments directed against the Jews and Christians, was, indeed, in complete keeping with his Turkish proclivities, and makes us liken him rather to a gloomy and fanatical Ottoman sultan than to the heir of al-Manṣúr and al-Ma'mún. As regards his attitude towards the Shí'a, it was not enough that he should on occasions shed their blood, as he did in the case of the tutor of his sons, Ibnu's-Sikkít, the celebrated grammarian343a (A.D. 857), and, for more reason, of 'Ísá b. Ja'far, who was, by his command, beaten to death in A.D. 855 for speaking ill of Abú Bakr, 'Umar, 'Á'isha, and Ḥafṣa, and his body refused burial and cast into the Tigris “as a warning to every heretic in the Faith who dissented from the body of believers”;343b his hatred extended itself to the great Imáms of the Shí'a, 'Alí and al-Ḥusayn, whom all good Muslims, be they of the Sunna or the Shí'a, revere. Thus in A.D. 851 he caused the holy shrine of Kerbelá, built to commemorate the martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn, to be destroyed, and forbade men to visit the spot,343c which was ploughed over and sown with crops; and he suffered, and apparently approved, a buffoon who, padded with pillows to give him an artificial paunch, used to hold up 'Alí to ridicule before him and his courtiers.
As regards the Jews and Christians, many of whom, as we have seen, stood high in honour with his predecessors, his first Enactments against the Jews and Christians. enactment against them was issued early in his reign (A.D. 850), and the second three or four years later. They were thereby compelled to wear “honey-coloured gowns (ṭaylasán),343d parti-coloured badges, and caps and girdles of certain ignoble patterns; to ride only on mules and asses, with wooden stirrups and saddles of strange construction; and to have placed over the doors of their houses effigies of devils. Such of their churches and temples as were of recent construction were destroyed, or converted into mosques; their tombs were to be level with the ground; and they were forbidden to gather in the streets or to exhibit the sign of the cross, while their children might not learn to write Arabic or receive instruction from a Muhammadan tutor.
344aAḥmad b. Ḥanbal († A.D. 855), the founder of the narrowest and least spiritual of the four orthodox schools of Sunní Thinkers and writers of this period. doctrine, was now the dominating religious influence, and was able to pay back with interest the harsh treatment which he had suffered at the hands of the Mu'tazilites. These, needless to say, fared but ill under the new régime, which was, indeed, generally unfavourable to men of science and philosophers. Thus the physician Bôkht-Yishú',344b the grandson of him who was Director of the Hospital and Medical School at Jundê-Shâpûr in the Caliphate of al-Manṣúr, was deprived of all his possessions and banished to Baḥrayn (A.D. 858) for some trifling cause, and it is not surprising to find how comparatively small is the number of writers and scholars of eminence who flourished in al-Mutawakkil's time. Ibn Khurdádhbih wrote the first edition of his “Book of Itineraries” (Kitábu'l-Masálik wa'l-Mamálik)344c about the beginning of this period: 'Abdu'lláh b. Sallám al-Jumahí, the author of a Memoir of the Poets (Ṭabaqátu-sh-Shu'ará); al-Wáqidí's secretary, Ibn Sa'd the historian; the Christian mathematician and man of science, Qusṭá b. Lúqá; and the Syrian Shí'ite and Shu'úbí poet, Díku'l-Jinn, who flourished about the same time or a little earlier, have been already mentioned, as have the unfortunate Ibnu's-Sikkít and Bôkht-Yishú', and the now triumphant Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal († A.D. 855). Apart from some other writers of note who flourished at this time, but whose names will be recorded according to the dates of their decease, almost the only men of letters who need be mentioned are the physician and translator from the Greek Yaḥyá b. Másawayh (d. A.D. 856), the historian of Mecca, al-Azraqí († A.D. 858), and the poet Di'bil, who was also a Shí'ite († A.D. 860). To these might be added the Egyptian mystic Dhu'n-Nún and his earlier congener al-Muḥásibí; the ill-fated poet 'Alí b. Jahm as-Sámí, one of whose panegyrics on al-Mutawakkil is still extant; the poetess Faḍl of Yamáma; the musician Isḥáq, son of the celebrated minstrel of Hárún's Court, Ibráhím al-Mawṣilí, and a few others.
At the end of the year A.D. 861 al-Mutawakkil, while overcome with drink, was murdered by his Turkish guards, Al-Mutawakkil's four successors. who were instigated thereto by his son al-Mun-taṣir; but the parricide did not survive his victim a year. He and his three successors, al-Musta'ín, al-Mu'tazz, and al-Muhtadí, reigned in all only about nine years, and the three last were all in turn done to death, generally with circumstances of great brutality, by the Turks, who were now paramount. Al Muhtadí showed the greater spirit. “Earlier,” says Muir (p. 535), “and supported by the Arabs, he might have restored life to the Caliphate. But now, both as regards number and discipline, foreigners had the upper hand.” Yet he made a brave attempt to repress the growing presumption, arrogance, and violence of these bloodthirsty mercenaries, of which attempt his successor at any rate reaped the benefit.
It was during this turbulent epoch that Persian independence may be said to have been revived by the remarkable Beginnings of Persian independence. achievements of Ya'qúb the son of Layth “the Coppersmith” (aṣ-Ṣaffár), who, notwithstanding his humble origin, succeeded in founding a dynasty which, though short-lived, made its power felt not merely in Sístán, the place of its origin, but throughout the greater part of Persia and almost to the walls of Baghdad. The Ṭáhirids are, it is true, generally reckoned an earlier Persian dynasty, and in a certain sense they were so. Their ancestor, Ṭáhir “the Ambidexter” (Dhu'l-Yamínayn), was rewarded by al-Ma'mún for his signal services in the field with the government of Khurásán (A.D. 820), and the continuance of this dignity to his heirs unto the third generation gave to the family a local authority and position which previous governors, appointed only for a term of years and removable at the Caliph's pleasure, had never enjoyed. It is a matter of common observation that settlers in a country, often after a comparatively brief residence, outdo those native to the soil in patriotic feeling, a fact of which the history of Ireland in particular affords plentiful examples; for what proportion of the foremost leaders of Irish struggles against English authority —the Fitzgeralds, Emmetts, Wolfe Tones, and Napper Tandys of the '98—could claim to be of purely Irish extraction? And so it would not be a surprising phenomenon if the Ṭáhirids, notwithstanding their Arab extraction, had become wholly Persianised. But though the earliest Persian poet, whose verses have been preserved to us—Ḥandhala of Bádghís—appears to have lived more or less under their patronage, it is doubtful whether they really sought, as did their successors, the Ṣaffárids and Sámánids, to foster the renaissance of the Persian language and literature. Dawlatsháh,346a discussing the origins of Persian poetry, relates that on one occasion a man came to the Court of 'Abdu'lláh b. Ṭáhir (A.D. 828-844) at Níshápúr and offered him an ancient Persian book. To his inquiry as to its nature the man replied, “It is the Romance of Wámiq and 'Adhrá, a pleasing tale which was compiled by wise men and dedicated to King Núshírwán.” The Amír replied, “We are men who read the Qur'án, and need not such books, but only the Scripture and Tradition. This book, moreover, was composed by Magians, and is accursed in our eyes.” He then ordered the volume to be cast into the water, and issued instructions that wherever in his territories any Persian book of Magian authorship might be discovered it should be destroyed. Without attaching too much historical importance to this story, we may yet take it as representing more or less correctly the attitude of the Ṭáhirids to things Persian; and an anecdote related by Dawlatsháh immediately after this, in which the little son of Ya'qúb the Coppersmith is represented as spontaneously producing, in an access of childish glee, the first rude Persian verse of Muhammadan times, may at least be taken as indicating a general conviction that to the Ṣaffárids Persia owed in no small measure the recovery of her national life.
It was in the very year of al-Mutawakkil's death that this Ya'qúb first appears on the scene, emerging from his native Sístán and advancing on Herát.347a Some eight years later (A.D. 869) we find him in possession of Kirmán, and sending gifts to the Caliph al-Mu'tazz. From this time onwards until his death (A.D. 876) we find him steadily enlarging his domains, to which Balkh, Ṭukháristán, Sind, Níshápúr, part of Ṭabaristán, Párs, Rám-Hurmuz, and Ahwáz were successively added. A full account of his career, based on the best authorities, has been given by Professor Nöldeke of Strassburg in his admirable Sketches from Eastern History (J. Sutherland Black's translation, pp. 176-206), to which the reader is referred for fuller particulars. The dynasty founded by Ya'qúb practically ceased with the defeat of his brother and successor 'Amr at Balkh by Ismá'íl b. Aḥmad the Sámánid in A.D. 900, but it had at least succeeded in reviving the national life of Persia, and in detaching its history definitely from that of the 'Abbásid metropolis.
About the same time (A.D. 865) another province of Persia, Ṭabaristán, the strip of fen and forest land lying The 'Alid dynasty of Ṭabaristán. between the Elburz Mountains and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, gained a precarious independence under a scion of the House of 'Alí named Ḥasan b. Zayd, called “the Stone-lifter” (Jálibu'l-ḥijára ) because of his great strength. He was succeeded by several other Sayyids of his house, whose virtues, princely generosity, charities and encouragement of learning, form a favourite theme of Ibn Isfandiyár348a (who wrote early in the thirteenth century) and other historians of this province. Needless to say that they were all ardent supporters of the Shí'ite doctrine and cause. Some of them were not only patrons of letters and founders of colleges, but poets as well, and Ibn Isfandiyár cites in his work a number of Arabic verses composed by them, including a polemic in verse against the Sunní Ibn Sukkara by Sayyid Abu'l-Ḥusayn al-Mu'ayyad bi'lláh. It is not unlikely that verses in the dialect of Ṭabaristán (from which are descended the modern Mázan-darání and Gílakí idioms) may also have been composed at this epoch, though the earliest which I have met date from the Seljúq period only, or at most (e.g., Pindár of Ray, who flourished early in the eleventh century) from a slightly earlier epoch.
Persia, then, at the epoch of which we are now speaking, was beginning to struggle into a new national life, and to give fresh expression to its marked preference for the Shí'ite doctrine. For Ya'qúb b. Layth, if we are to credit the long account of his successful revolt against the Caliphate (for such, in effect, it was) given by the Nidhámu'l-Mulk in his “Treatise on the Art of Government” (Siyásat-náma, ed. Schefer, pp. 11-17) had strong Shí'ite leanings; though of course what is there said about his relations with the Fáṭimid Caliph (who only began to establish his power some thirty-five years after Ya'qúb's death) is an absurd anachronism. And in the Biography of eminent Shí'ites lithographed at Tihrán in A.H. 1268 (A.D. 1851-2) under the title of Majálisu'l-Múminín349a (“Assemblies of True Believers”) the Ṣaffárids are included amongst the adherents of the Shí'a cause. The evidence there adduced for Ya'qúb's religious standpoint is rather quaint. Information was communicated to him that a certain Abú Yúsuf had spoken slightingly of 'Uthmán b. 'Affán; and Ya'qúb, thinking that a Sístání noble of this name was intended, ordered him to be punished. But when he was informed that it was the third Caliph, the successor of 'Umar, who had been thus reviled, he countermanded the punishment at once, saying, “I have nothing to do with the ‘Companions.’”
A third great event belonging to this period was the formidable rebellion of negro slaves (Zanj = Æthiopian) The Zanj rebellion. which for nearly fourteen years (A.D. 869-883) caused the utmost alarm and anxiety to the metropolis of Islám. The scene of this stubborn and, for a long while, successful revolt was the marshes lying between Baṣra and Wásiṭ, and the leader of these African slaves was a Persian, 'Alí b. Muḥammad of Warzanín (near Ray), who, though boasting descent from 'Alí and Fáṭima, proclaimed the doctrines not of the Shí'ites but of the Khá-rijites. The explanation of this curious fact is given by Professor Nöldeke in the excellent account of this “Servile War in the East” given in his Sketches from Eastern History (chap. v, pp. 146-175): the rebel leader knew his clientèle too well to tempt them with a bait which, though efficacious enough with his own countrymen, would have entirely failed to appeal to minds far more ready to absorb the democratic views of the Khárijites than the sentimental legitimist aspirations of the Shí'a. And so, as Nöldeke has pointed out (op. cit., p. 152)—
“It is abundantly clear why Karmat, one of the founders of the Karmatians, an extreme Shíite sect which was destined soon after this to fill the whole Mohammedan world with fear and dismay, should, on religious grounds, have decided not to connect himself with the negro leader, however useful this association might otherwise have been to him.”
The year A.H. 260 (= A.D. 873-4) was in several respects an important epoch in Muhammadan, especially in Shí'ite, Men of letters who died between A.D. 863 and 873. history; but, before speaking of it, we may briefly mention the chief men of letters who died during the decade which preceded it, which includes the first four years of al-Mu'tamid's Caliphate.
Abú Ḥáṭim of Sajistán (Sístán), who died about A.D. 864, was the pupil of al-Aṣma'í and the teacher of the celebrated Abú Hátim of Sístán. al-Mubarrad. Some thirty-two of his works are enumerated in the Fihrist, but the only one preserved to us in its entirety (and that only in the unique Cambridge manuscript, which formerly belonged to the traveller Burckhardt) is the Kitábu'l-Mu'ammarín (“Book of the Long-lived”), published with introduction and notes by the learned Goldziher (Leyden, 1899).
Much more important was 'Amr b. Baḥr, surnamed “al-Jáḥi dh” because of his prominent eyes, a man of great Al-Jáḥidh. erudition and remarkable literary activity (†A.D. 869). He was a staunch adherent of the Mu'tazi-lite doctrine, of which one school bears his name. Of his works, which chiefly belong to the class of belles lettres (adab) several have been published: the Kitábu'l-Bayán wa't-tibyán in Cairo; and the Kitábu'l-Bukhalá (“Book of Misers”) in Leyden by Van Vloten. He also wrote a tract “on the Virtues of the Turks,” which exists in several manuscripts. He stood in high favour under al-Ma'mún and his two successors, but narrowly escaped death on the fall and execution of his patron, the wazír Ibnu'z-Zayyát. His writings are equally remarkable for style and contents, and entitle him to be placed in the foremost rank of early Arabic prose writers.
A year later than al-Jáḥidh (A.D. 870) died the great traditionist al-Bukhárí, the author of the celebrated Collec- Al-Bukhárí, Muslim, atTirmidhí and an-Nasá'í. tion of Traditions called the Ṣaḥíḥ, which, amongst all Sunní Muhammadans, ranks as the highest authority on this subject. Another work on the same subject, and bearing the same title, was compiled by Muslim of Níshápúr, who died a few years later (A.D. 875); another by at-Tirmidhí († A.D. 892), and a fourth by an-Nasá'í († A.D. 914). These four great traditionists were all natives of Khurásán, and were probably of Persian extraction.
The only other writers of this period who need be mentioned are the poetess Faḍl of Yamáma († A.D. 873), who in her earlier life professed Shí'ite views, and the Christian physician and translator Ḥunayn b. Isḥáq, who poisoned himself in A.D. 873 on account of the vexation caused him by his excommunication by his bishop Theodosius.
We now come to the year A.H. 260 (= A.D. 873-4), a year memorable for the following important events: (1) the “Occultation” or Disappearance of the Twelfth Imám of the Shí'ite “Sect of the Twelve;” (2) the beginning of the Pro- The year A.H. 260. paganda of the Shí'ite “Sect of the Seven,” or Isma'ílis, which led directly to the rise of the Carmathians (Qarmaṭí, pl. Qarámiṭa) and the foundation of the Fáṭimid Anti-Caliphate of North Africa and Egypt; and (3) the establishment of the Sámánid dynasty in Khurásán. In this year also the great Ṣúfí saint Báyazíd of Bisṭám died, and the theologian Abu'l-Ḥasan al-Ash'arí was born; he who was destined to give the coup de grâce to the Mu'tazilite ascendancy in Islám, and to give currency and form to that narrower and more illiberal doctrine which has given to the Muhammadan religion its rigid and stereotyped character. The religious phenomena of this critical period will be more fully discussed in the following chapter, and here we shall continue to speak chiefly of external and political events.
The rise of the Sámánid dynasty coincided with, and indeed brought about, the fall of the short-lived power of the Copper- The Sámánid Dynasty. smith's sons Ya'qúb and 'Amr, and marks the really active beginning of the Persian Renaissance. Sámán, after whom the dynasty is called, claimed descent from Bahrám Chúbín (see p. 181 supra), and the genuineness of this pedigree is admitted by the learned and exact Abú Rayḥán al-Bírúní.352a He was converted from the Zoroastrian faith to Islám by Asad b. 'Abdu'lláh, the governor of Khurásán, after whom he named his son. His four grandsons all had provincial governments in Khurásán in the Caliphate of al-Ma'mún (about A.D. 819), but Aḥmad, the second of them, was most successful in extending and consolidating his dominions, and his two sons, Naṣr I and Isma'íl, succeeded in overthrowing the Ṣaffárid power, taking 'Amr b. Layth (who succeeded his brother Ya'qúb in A.D. 876) captive in A.D. 900, and establishing a dynasty which flourished for nearly 125 years ere it was in turn overthrown by the rising might of the House of Ghazna.
Two anecdotes concerning the Ṣaffárids, both to be found in the Nidhámu'l-Mulk's Siyásat-náma (ed. Schefer, pp. 13-16), Anecdote concerning the death of Ya'qúb b. Layth. are too typical and too celebrated amongst the Persians to be omitted here. The first concerns the elder brother Ya'qúb. When, after his defeat by the troops of the Caliph al-Mu'tamid on the occasion of his persistent attempt to enter Baghdad, he lay dying of colic, the Caliph, still fearing him, sent him a conciliatory letter, wherein, while reproaching him for his disobedience, he held out conditional promises of forgiveness and compensation.
“When Ya'qúb had read the Caliph's letter,” says the narrator, “his heart was in no way softened, neither did he experience any remorse for his action; but he bade them put some cress and fish and a few onions on a wooden platter, and set them before him. Then he bade them introduce the Caliph's ambassador, and caused him to be seated. Then he turned his face to the ambassador and said, ‘Go, tell the Caliph that I am the son of a coppersmith, and learned from my father the coppersmith's craft. My food has been barley bread, fish, cress and onions. This dominion and gear and treasure and goods I won by cunning and courage; I neither inherited them from my father nor received them from thee. I will not rest until I send thy head to Mahdiyya353a and destroy thy House: I will either do this which I say, or I will return to my barley bread and fish and cress. Behold, I have opened the doors of my treasure-houses, and have again called out my troops, and I come on the heels of this message.’”
353bThis anecdote well illustrates the character of the doughty coppersmith.
The second anecdote, which is even more celebrated, concerns the final defeat of 'Amr b. Layth, Ya'qúb's brother Anecdote concerning 'Amr b. Layth's defeat by Isma'íl the Sámánid. and successor, who, having been declared a rebel by the Caliph al-Mu'tamid in A.D. 884, was restored to favour for a brief period in A.D. 890, then again disavowed, until in May, A.D. 895, he was utterly routed near Balkh by Isma'íl b. Aḥmad the Sámánid, whom the Caliph had incited to attack him. Of the seventy thousand horsemen whom he had reviewed before the battle, all were scattered, though, it is said, not one was even wounded; and evening saw the fallen prince a captive in the enemy's camp, and in want of a supper. A farrásh, who had formerly been in his employment, happened to pass by, and took pity on him. He bought some meat, borrowed a frying-pan from one of the soldiers, made a fire of camel-dung, and set the pan over it, supported on a few clods of earth. Then he went off to get some salt, and while he was gone a hungry dog, attracted by the savoury smell, came up and thrust its nose into the frying-pan to pick out a bone. The hot frying-pan burned its nose, and as it drew back its head the ring-like handle of the pan fell on its neck, and when it took to its heels in terror it carried the frying-pan and the supper with it. When 'Amr saw this, he turned to the soldiers and sentinels who stood by and said, “Be warned by me! I am he whose kitchen it needed four hundred camels to carry this morning, and to-night it has been carried off by a dog!” Abú Manṣúr ath-Tha'álibí remarks in his Laṭá'ifu'l-Ma'árif (ed. de Jong, p. 88) that two of the most extraordinary battles were this one, which put an end to the Ṣaffárid power, when an army of fifty thousand escaped, though utterly routed, only the leader being taken captive; and the battle between al-'Abbás b. 'Amr and the Carmathians at Hajar, wherein the ten thousand soldiers of the former perished to a man, and only their leader escaped.
About the year A.D. 880 there rose to brief but considerable power a certain Aḥmad of Khujistán (near Herát) who deserves a passing mention because of the manner in which, according to Aḥmad alKhujistání. the author of the Chahár Maqála (who wrote about the middle of the twelfth century),355a his ambition was first stirred by two Persian verses of the poet Ḥandhala of Bádghís. He was asked, “How did'st thou, who wert originally an ass-herd, become Amír of Khurásán?” “One day,” he answered, “I was reading the Díwán of Ḥandhala of Bádghís in Bádghís of Khujistán when I chanced on these two couplets:—
‘If lordship lies within the lion's jaws,
Go, risk it, and from those dread portals seize
Such straight-confronting death as men desire,
Or riches, greatness, rank and lasting ease.’”
At this time the Ṣaffárids were at the zenith of their power, and al-Khujistání, moved by a new ambition, sold his asses, bought a horse, and entered the service of 'Amr b. Layth. Later he renounced his allegiance to them, and took Khwáf, Bayhaq, and Níshápúr. “My affairs prospered and improved,” says he, “until all Khurásán lay open to me, and I took possession of it for myself. Of all this, these two verses of poetry were the cause.” This story, told by an old and generally accurate authority, is to my mind the best proof of the existence of a considerable amount of Persian poetry even before the time of the Sámánids; though of poets who flourished under the Ṭáhirids and Ṣaffárids the names of only some half-dozen at most—the above Ḥandhala, Maḥmúd the bookseller (Warráq), Fírúz-i-Mashriqí, Abú Salík of Gurgán and one or two more—are preserved to us.
Under the Sámánids (A.D. 874-999) the case was different, Poetry under the Sámánids. and we find Persian verse, and to a lesser extent Persian prose, flourishing in full vigour, the most celebrated poet of this period being Rúdagí (or Rawdhakí), who flourished in the first half of the tenth century. Indeed his fame so far outshone that of his predecessors that he is often reckoned the first Persian poet: thus in an Arabic “Book of Origins” written early in the thirteenth century356a occurs the following passage:—
“The first to compose good poetry in Persian was Abú 'Ab-di'lláh Ja'far b. Muḥammad b. Ḥakím b. 'Abdu'r-Raḥmán b. Ádam ar-Rawdhakí,356b that poet so piquant in expression, so fluent in verse, whose Díwán is famous amongst the Persians, and who was the leader in Persian poetry in his time beyond all his contemporaries. The minister Abu'l-Faḍl al-Bal'amí used to say, ‘Rawdhakí has no equal amongst the Arabs or the Persians.’”
The minister above cited was wazír to Isma'íl b. Aḥmad, and died in 940; he is not to be confounded with his son The two Bal'amís. Abú 'Alí al-Bal'amí, who was wazír to the Amír Manṣúr b. Núḥ, translated Ṭabarí's great chronicle into Persian, and died in A.D. 996.
Turning once more to Baghdad, and to the metropolitan, as opposed to the provincial, writers of al-Mu'tamid's Caliphate Arabic writers of A.D. 874-893. (A.D. 870-893), we need notice only, amongst events of general importance, the suppression of the Zanj insurrection in A.D. 883, and the increasing activity of the Carmathians, whose history and doctrines will be more fully discussed in the next chapter. The chief writers and thinkers who died between A.D. 874 and 900 were the following: The “Philosopher of the Arabs,” Abú Yúsuf Ya'qúb b. Isḥáq al-Kindí, whose literary activity chiefly belongs to an earlier and more liberal period, is supposed to have died about A.D. 874. He is notable as one of the few pure Arabs who were really distinguished in the domain of thought and letters. Ḥunayn b. Isḥáq, the physician and translator, who died about the same time, has been already mentioned. Ibnu'l-Waḥshiyya, the author of the celebrated “Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” wherein he sought to demonstrate the superiority of the old Babylonians to the Arabs in point of civilisation, flourished about this period. Dá'úd b. 'Alí, the founder of the Dháhirí (or Ẓáhirite)357a school, who held strongly to the literal meaning of the Qur'án and Traditions, and discountenanced all allegorical interpretations,357b died in A.D. 883. Abú Ma'shar, the great astronomer, one of al-Kindí's pupils, died in A.D. 885, about which time al-Fákihí, the historian of Mecca, wrote. Ibn Mája († A.D. 885) should have been mentioned in connection with al-Bukhárí and his successors in the Science of Tradition. Sahl b. 'Abdu'lláh of Shushtar, mystic and Qur'án-reader, was a pupil of the earlier mystic Dhu'n-Nún, and died about A.D. 886. As a collector and critical editor of old Arabic poems (e.g., the Díwán of the poets of the tribe of Hudhayl) as-Sukkarí, one of al-Aṣma'í's pupils, deserves a passing mention († A.D. 888). The erotic and satirical poet Ibnu'r-Rúmí owed his death (A.D. 889 or 896) to his bitter tongue. Ibn Abi'd-Dunyá (d. A.D. 894), tutor to the Caliph al-Muktafí in his youth, was the author of several collections of stories and anecdotes. Al-Buḥturí the poet (A.D. 897) and al-Mubarrad the philologist († A.D. 899) ought also to be mentioned. Much more important, however, from our point of view are the four historians Ibn Qutayba († A.D. 889), al-Baládhurí († A.D. 892), ad-Dínawarí († A.D. 895), and Ibn Wáḍiḥ al-Ya'qúbí, who wrote about this time.357c Of these, the first three were Persians, while the last was an ardent Shí'ite, which gives his admirable history a special interest, since he speaks at greater length of the Imáms, and cites many of their sayings. Indeed Goldziher and Brockel-mann, two of the greatest living authorities on Arabic literature in its widest sense, agree in the opinion “that the historical sense was entirely lacking in the ancient Arabs,” and that “the idea of historiography was first inspired in them by Persian culture.”358a To the writers above enumerated we may add the celebrated mathematician Thábit b. Qurra the Ḥarránian, and the geographer Ibnu'l-Faqíh al-Hamadhání, both of whom died about the beginning of the tenth century of our era.
On the death of the Caliph al-Mu'taḍid and the accession of his son al-Muktafí the Sámánids were practically supreme Caliphate of al-Muktafí (A.D. 902-908). in Persia, while around Baghdad and Baṣra, in Syria and in Yaman the terrible Carmathians, under their able leader Zikrawayh, inspired the utmost terror—a terror which cannot be regarded as ill-founded when we remember that on the occasion of one of their attacks on the pilgrim-caravans returning from Mecca 20,000 persons are said to have been left dead on the field. Only two writers of note who died during this period need be mentioned: the Shí'ite divine al-Qummí († A.D. 903), and the royal poet Ibnu'l-Mu'tazz, who is notable as having produced one of the nearest approximations to an epic poem to be found in Arabic literature,358b and also one of the “Memoirs of the Poets” (Ṭabaqát), which served as a model to ath-Tha'álibí, al-Bákharzí, and other compilers of such biographical anthologies.
We next come to the comparatively long reign of al-Muqtadir (A.D. 908-932), of which the most important political event was the establishment of the Fáṭimid, or Isma'ílí, Anti-Caliphate in North Africa (A.D. 909), with Caliphate of al-Muqtadir (A.D. 908-932). Mahdiyya (“the City of the Mahdí,” i.e., of 'Ubadu'lláh, the first Caliph of this dynasty) as its capital. The activity of the Carmathians continued unabated, in spite of the deaths of their leaders Zikrawayh and al-Jannábí the Elder: in A.D. 924 they entered Baṣra; in the following year they again attacked the Pilgrim-caravan; in A.D. 929 they invaded Mecca itself, and, to the unspeakable horror of all pious Muslims, carried off the Sacred Black Stone, which they kept for twenty years; while, in the closing years of al-Muqtadir's reign, they entered Kúfa and took possession of 'Ummán. About this time, however, their activity was checked, not so much by any external force, as by the scandals connected with the appearance of the false Mahdí Ibn Abí Zakariyyá,359a whose abominable teachings are summarised by al-Bírúní in his Chronology of Ancient Nations.359b Yet some years later, in A.D. 939, we find them still levying blackmail (khifára) on the pilgrims to Mecca.
359cTo turn now to Persian affairs at this period, we may notice first the final suppression, even in Sístán, of the House of Layth Persian affairs at this period. (the Ṣaffárids) about A.D. 910, when Ṭáhir and Ya'qúb, the grandsons of 'Amr, were taken prisoners and sent captive to Baghdad. In A.D. 913 Naṣr II succeeded to the Sámánid throne, and in his long reign (he died in A.D. 942) the power and splendour of that illustrious House reached their zenith,359d and Rúdagí, the first great Persian poet, was at the height of his renown and popularity. Yet Ṭabaristán was wrested from him by the 'Alawí Sayyid Ḥasan b. 'Alí Uṭrúsh, whose family maintained their footing there till A.D. 928, when Mardáwíj b. Ziyár succeeded in seizing the province and establishing there a dynasty (known as the Ziyárids) which endured, and played an honourable part in the promotion of learning and the protection of letters, for more than a century, ere it was extinguished by the Ghaznawís. And in yet another way Mardáwíj played an important part in Persian history, for to him the great House of Buwayh, which by the middle of the tenth century was practically supreme throughout Southern Persia and in Baghdad itself, owed its first fortunes; and from him 'Alí b. Buwayh, who afterwards, with the title of 'Imádu'd-Dawla, ruled over Fárs, or Persis proper, received his first appointment as governor of Karach.
Amongst the men of learning who flourished at this epoch the first place must without doubt be assigned to the historian Writers and men of learning of this epoch.—Ṭabarí. Abú Ja'far Muḥammad b. Jarír aṭ-Ṭabarí († A.D. 923),360a whose great Chronicle ends ten years earlier (A.H. 300 = A.D. 912-913), thus depriving us of one of our best sources of information, though the Supplement of 'Aríb b. Sa'd of Cordova carries us down to the end of al-Muqtadir's Caliphate (A.H. 320 = A.D. 932), after which we have to depend chiefly for general history on Ibnu'l-Athír († A.D. 1232-3), the author of the great Kámilu't-Tawáríkh.
360b“In this year” (A.H. 310), says the latter, “died at Baghdad Mu-ḥammad b. Jarír aṭ-Ṭabarí, the historian, who was born in A.H. 224 (= A.D. 838-9). He was buried by night in his house, because the mob assembled and prevented him from being buried by day, declaring that he was a Ráfiḍí (Shí'ite) and even a heretic. And 'Alí b. 'Isá used to say, ‘By Alláh, were these people to be questioned as to what was meant by a Ráfiḍí or a heretic, they would neither know nor be capable of understanding!’ Thus Ibn Miskawayh, the author of the Tajáribu'l-umam, who defends this great leader of thought (Imám) from these charges. Now as to what he says concerning the fanaticism of the mob, the matter was not so; only some of the Ḥanbalites, inspired with a fanatical hatred of him, attacked him, and they were followed by others. And for this there was a reason, which was that Ṭabarí compiled a book, the like of which had never been composed, wherein he mentioned the differences of opinion of the theologians, but omitted all reference to Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. And when he was taken to task about this, he said, ‘He was not a theologian, but only a traditionist;’ and this annoyed the Ḥanbalites, who were innumerable in Baghdad; so they stirred up mischief against him, and said what they pleased.”
Of an utterly different character to this sober and erudite historian was another Persian of this period, whose reputation Al-Ḥusayn b. Manṣúr al-Ḥalláj. —somewhat transfigured, it is true, by pious hagiologists—is at least as enduring amongst his countrymen, and to whom admiring references are frequently made by the Persian Ṣúfí poets, such as Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár, Ḥáfidh and the like. This was al-Ḥusayn b. Manṣúr “the Wool-carder” (al-Ḥalláj), who was arrested for preaching heretical doctrines in Baghdad and the neighbourhood in A.D. 913 (Ṭabarí, iii, p. 2289), and put to death with circumstances of great cruelty in A.D. 921. The charge against him which is chiefly remembered is that in a state of ecstasy he cried, “Ana'l-Ḥaqq” (“I am the True One,” or “the Fact,” i.e. God), and the Ṣúfís regard this utterance as the outcome of a state of exaltation wherein the Seer was so lost in rapture at the contemplation of the Beatific Vision of the Deity that he lost all cognisance and consciousness of himself, and indeed of all Phenomenal Being. At most, say they, his crime was only that he revealed the secret; and generally he is regarded as a saint and a martyr. Thus Ḥáfidh says (ed. Rosenzweig-Schwannau, vol. i, p. 364):—
Chu Manṣúrán murád ánán ki bar dárand bar dár-and,
Ki bá ín dard agar dar band-i-darmán-and, dar mánand.
“Those who attain their desire are, like Manṣúrs, crucified,
For if, [being afflicted] with this grief, they hope for a remedy,
they fail [to find it].”
And again in another poem (not given in the above edition) he says:—
Kashad naqsh-i- ‘ANA'L-ḤAQQ’ bar zamín khún,
Chu Manṣúr ar kashí bar dár-am imshab!
“My blood would write ‘I am the True One’ on the ground,
If thou wert to hang me, like Manṣúr, on the cross to-night.’
The later Ṣúfí conception of this man may be found in such works as the Tadhkiratu'l-Awliyá of Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár, or the Nafaḥátu'l-Uns of Jámí, or, for European readers, in Tholuck's Ssufismus (Berlin, 1821), pp. 68, 152, &c. but the older and better authorities, Ṭabarí (iii, p. 2289), Ibn Mis-kawayh and the Kitábu'l- 'Uyún (cited on pp. 86-108 of de Goeje's ed. of 'Aríb), and the Fihrist (pp. 190-192), present him in a different light as “a wily conjuror,” “bedecking his doctrines in the phraseology of the Ṣúfís,” “an ignorant and forward pretender to all the sciences,” “a dabbler in Alchemy,” a dangerous and impudent political intriguer, claiming to be an Incarnation of the Deity and outwardly professing the Shí'ite doctrine, but actually in league with the Carmathians and Isma'ilís. Some forty-five books composed by him are enumerated by the Fihrist (p. 192), and what we learn ('Aríb, p. 90) as to the sumptuous manner in which they are written out, sometimes with gold ink, on Chinese paper, brocade, silk, and the like, and magnificently bound, reminds us strongly of the Manichæans. In short, as to the extreme unorthodoxy of this Persian, whose near ancestors had held the Magian faith, there can be little doubt, though the great al-Ghazzálí himself undertook his defence in the Mishkátu'l-Anwár ('Aríb, p. 108); he certainly held all the cardinal doctrines of the Ghulát or extreme Shí'ites; to wit, Ḥulúl (Incarnation), Rij'at (Return to the life of the world in another body), and the like. But he is a remarkable figure, and has created a deep impression on the minds of his countrymen, while some of his Arabic verses are really strong and original, as, for instance, the following ('Aríb, p. 106):—
“My Friend is unrelated to aught of ruth:
He gave me to drink of the Cup which He quaffs, as doth host
with guest.
And when the Cup had gone round, He called for the sword
and the headsman's carpet:
Thus fares it with him who drinks Wine with the Dragon in
Summer.”
His master and teacher Junayd (also, as it would appear, Junayd of Baghdad. a Persian), who died in A.D. 910, was only a little less celebrated, and not much more orthodox.
Amongst other eminent men who died during the Caliphate of al-Muqtadir were Isḥáq b. Ḥunayn, like his father a physician Other eminent men of alMuqtadir's Caliphate. and translator into Arabic of works on Greek Philosophy († A.D. 911); an-Nasá'í, the traditionist († A.D. 914); Abú Bakr Muḥammad b. Zakariyyá ar-Rází, the eminent physician known to mediæval Europe as Rhazes († A.D. 923 or 932), whose most celebrated work, the Manṣúrí, was dedicated to the Sámánid Prince Manṣúr b. Isḥáq; the historian al-A'tham of Kúfa, whose History of the Early Caliphs is remarkable for its strong Shí'ite bias, and is only known to us through its much later Persian translation (lithographed at Bombay A.H. 1305); Muḥammad b. Jábir b. Sinán al-Baṭṭání, the astronomer, known to mediæval Europe as Albategnius († A.D. 929); and the poet Ibnu'l-'Alláf († A.D. 930), a friend of Ibnu'l-Mu'tazz, whose cruel death, which could not be openly deplored, is supposed to form the real subject of the celebrated poem professedly written on the death of a favourite cat killed by a pigeon-fancier on account of its depredations.363a Lastly we may mention Ibn Muqla, the famous calligraphist, who was wazír to al-Muqtadir and his two immediate successors.
The short reigns of the next four Caliphs, al-Qáhir, ar-Ráḍí, al-Muttaqí and al-Mustakfí (A.D. 932-946), were chiefly A.D. 932-946.— Rise of the Buwayhid power. remarkable for the rise of the Buwayhid power, of which the first beginnings have been already mentioned. With the help of their Daylamí and Gílání troops, the three sons of Buwayh, 'Alí 'Imádu'd-Dawla, Ḥasan Ruknu'd-Dawla and Aḥmad Mu'izzu'd-Dawla, having successively subdued Iṣfahán, Arraján, Nawbandaján, Kázarún, Shíráz, Kirmán and Ahwáz, obtained effective control of Baghdad itself during the short reign of al-Mustakfí, who, besides the honorific titles given above in italics, conferred on the third brother the style and rank of Amíru'l-Umará, or Chief Noble.364a These Buwayhids were Persians and Shí'ites: they claimed (though, as al-Bírúní holds,364b on insufficient grounds) descent from the Sásánian King Bahrám Gúr; and they were generous patrons of literature and science. Their beneficent influence. Philosophy especially, which had been stifled by Turkish ascendancy and Ḥanbalite fanaticism, as well as by the growing strength of al-Ash'arí's doctrines, once more revived, and soon found expression in the formation of that remarkable fraternity of encyclopædists known as the Ikhwánu'ṣ-Ṣafá, or “Brethren of Purity,” who The Ikhwánu'ṣṢafá. summed up the physical and metaphysical sciences of their time in a series of fifty-one tracts, the contents of which have been largely rendered accessible to European readers by Professor F. Dieterici's numerous publications on this subject. In the Caspian The Ziyárids in Ṭabaristán. provinces the House of Ziyár maintained an authority curtailed in other directions by their own protégés, the Buwayhids; which authority was wielded for thirty-two years (A.D. 935-957) by Washmgír, the son of Ziyár and brother of Mardáwíj.
In the north-east of Persia, Khurásán and Transoxiana the Sámánid power, represented by Naṣr II and his son Núḥ, was The Sámánids. still at its height, and the literary revival of which their Court was the centre continued in full vigour. But it must not be supposed, as has sometimes been done, that the encouragement of Persian literature for which these princes are so remarkable indicated any tendency or desire on their part to repress or restrict the use of the Arabic language. Abundant evidence of their liberal patronage of Arabic letters is afforded by the entire fourth volume of the Yatímatu'd Dahr, the celebrated Arabic anthology of Abú Manṣúr 'Abdu'l-Malik ath-Tha'álibí of Níshápúr (b. A.D. 961, d. A.D. 1038). The substance of this portion of his work has been rendered accessible to the European reader by M. A. C. Barbier de Meynard in two articles published in the Journal Asiatique for Feb.-March, 1853 (pp. 169-239), and March-April, 1854 (pp. 291-361), under the title “Tableau littéraire du Khorassan et de la Transoxiane au quatrième siècle de l'Hégire”; but one passage of the original work (Damascus ed., vol. iv, pp. 33-4) so strongly emphasises this point that it is here given in translation:—
“Bukhára was, under the Sámánid rule, the Focus of Splendour, the Shrine of Empire, the Meeting-place of the most unique Literary splendour of Bukhárá under the Sámánids. intellects of the Age, the Horizon of the literary stars of the World, and the Fair of the greatest scholars of the Period. Abú Ja'far Muḥammad b. Músá al-Músawí related to me as follows. ‘My father Abu'l-Ḥasan received an invitation to Bukhárá in the days of the Amír-i-Sa'íd [Naṣr II b. Aḥmad, reigned A.D. 913-942], and there were gathered together the most remarkable of its men of letters, such as Abu'l-Ḥasan al-Laḥḥám, Abú Muḥammad b. Maṭrán, Abú Ja'far b. al-'Abbás b. al-Ḥasan, Abú Muḥammad b. Abu 'th-Thiyáb, Abu'n-Naṣr al-Harthamí, Abú Naṣr adh-Dharífí, Rijá b. al-Walíd al-Isbahání, 'Alí b. Hárún ash-Shaybání, Abú Isḥáq al-Fársí, Abu'l-Qásim ad-Dínawarí, Abú 'Alí az-Zawzaní, and others belonging to the same class.366a And when these were settled in familiar conversation one would engage with another in plucking the fringes of some discussion, each offering to the other fragrant flowers of dialectic, and pursuing the perfumes of Culture, and letting fall in succession necklaces of pearls, and blowing on magical knots.366b And my father said to me, “O my son, this is a notable and red-letter day: make it an epoch as regards the assembling of the standards of talent and the most incomparable scholars of the age, and remember it, when I am gone, amongst the great occasions of the period and the notable moments of thy life. For I scarcely think that in the lapse of the years thou wilt see the like of these met together.” And so it was, for never again was my eye brightened with the sight of such a gathering.’”
Amongst the men of learning and letters who died during these fourteen years were the following: Abu'l-Ḥasan Necrology of the years A.D. 932- 946. al-Ash'arí († A.D. 935), the chief promoter of the orthodox reaction, to whom most justly might the Mu'tazilites to whom he owed his education apply the words of the poet:—
U'allimuhu'r- rimáyata kulla yawmin,
Fa-lamma 'shtadda sá'iduhu, ramá-ní!“I taught him daily how to use the bow,
And when his arm grew strong he laid me low!”
Ibn Durayd, the philologist († A.D. 934), author of the Arabic lexicon entitled the Jamhara. Sa'íd b. al-Baṭríq, better known as Eutychius († A.D. 929), the Christian patriarch of Alexandria, author of a well-known history. Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi of Cordova († A.D. 940), poet and historian. Al-Kulíní (or Kulayní, † A.D. 939), a celebrated theologian of the Shí'a, author of the Káfí. The physicians Sinán b. Thábit b. Qurra († A.D. 942), his son Ibráhím († A.D. 947), and 'Ubaydu'lláh b. Jibríl b. Bôkht-Yishú' († A.D. 941). The theologian al-Máturídí († A.D. 944); Ibn Serapion († circ. A.D. 945), the author of the very interesting description of Baghdad published and translated in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society by Mr. Guy le Strange in 1895; the historian as-Ṣúlí († A.D. 946), a converted Magian of Gurgán; and the Ṣúfí saint ash-Shiblí (d. A.D. 946) of Khurásán, the disciple of Junayd of Baghdad, and fellow-student of Ḥusayn b. Manṣúr al-Ḥalláj. For religious manifestations this period was not remarkable: the Carmathians, as has been already noted, discouraged by the scandals connected with their false Mahdí Ibn Abí Zakariyyá, were remarkably quiet: their eminent general Abú Ṭáhir al-Jannábí died in A.D. 944: the power of the Fáṭimid Caliphs was seriously checked in North Africa;367a and a few years later (A.D. 950) we find the Black Stone restored to Mecca and Carmathian soldiers in the service of the Buwayhid prince Mu'izzu'd-Dawla.
We now come to the long reign of al-Muṭí' (A.D. 946-974), during which the general political conditions in Caliphate of al-Mutí' (A.D. 946-974). Persia underwent little change, the Sámánids still holding the north and north-east, the Ziyárids the Caspian provinces, and the House of Buwayh the south and (save in name) Baghdad, where, under the title of Amíru'l-Umará, they were practically supreme. During the last decade of this period the Fáṭimid anti-Caliph al-Mu'izz Abú Tamím Ma'add obtained possession of Egypt, and transferred his capital from Mahdiyya to Cairo, which thenceforward till the extinction of the dynasty in A.D. 1171 remained the centre of their power. About the same time a quarrel arose between them and their former allies the Carmathians, who about A.D. 971 even allied themselves with the 'Abbásids.
368aTurning once more to the world of literature and science, we may note the following events. In A.D. 950 died Abú Literary manifestations of this period. Naṣr al-Fárábí, the greatest philosopher of Islám before Avicenna, and, curiously enough, of Turkish origin.368b About the same time al-Iṣtakhrí the geographer produced his recension of al-Balkhí's work, and the Persian sea-captain Buzurg b. Shahriyár of Rámhurmuz wrote in Arabic, from his own recollections and information derived from other travellers, his curious work on the Marvels of India. The death of Rúdagí, generally regarded as the father of Persian poetry, and the birth of another Persian poet, Kisá'í, also happened at this time. About A.D. 956 died the great historian al-Mas'údí, of Arab extraction and alleged Mu'ta- Al-Mas'udi. zilite leanings, of whose voluminous writings the Kitábu't-Tanbíh wa'l-Ishráf is accessible to students in the original Arabic, and the better known Murúju 'dh-Dhahab both in the original and in the French translation of MM. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille. Narshakhí, the historian of Bukhárá (preserved to us only in the later Persian translation of al-Qúbáwí made about A.D. 1128) died in A.D. 959. Gúshyár, the astronomer of Gílán, flourished about the same time; as did also the Christian physician 'Ísá b. 'Alí, who compiled a Biography of Oculists. In A.D. 961 was born Abú Manṣúr 'Abdu'l-Malik ath-Tha'álibí, the author of the Yatímatu'd-Dahr Al-Bal'amí's Persian version of aṭ-Ṭabarí's history. cited above, as well as of many other important and interesting works, at Níshápúr. About three years later the minister of Manṣúr I the Sámá-nid, Abú 'Alí Muḥammad al-Bal'amí, at the command of his royal master, translated into Persian in an abridged form the great history of Ṭabarí, which is one of the earliest important prose works in Persian which have come down to us. This version has been published in a French translation by Dubeux and Zotenberg (Paris, 1867-1874), and the number of excellent and carefully written old MSS. of it which exist in our public libraries show in what high esteem it was held.
A few years later (A.D. 965) died al-Mutanabbí, who, though disparaged by some European scholars, is generally Al-Mutanabbí. regarded by all Arabic-speaking people as the greatest poet of their race. Von Hammer calls him, in the translation of his poems which he published at Vienna in 1823, “der grösste Arabische Dichter”; and Jules Mohl (Journal Asiatique for 1859, series v, vol. 14, pp. 36-7) has the following most sensible remarks on him:—
“Quant au rang que chaque poëte doit occuper dans sa littérature nationale, il n'appartient qu'à sa propre nation de le lui assigner, et s'il le garde pendant des siècles, comme Motanabbi l'a gardé, il ne nous reste qu'à accepter l'opinion de ses juges naturels, dont la décision, après les discussions prolongées et passionnées, parâit être que Motanabbi, malgré ses défauts et son inégalité, est le meilleur représentant du gôut et des sentiments des Arabes musulmans, comme les auteurs des Moallakat sont les représentants les plus fidèles des sentiments des Arabes du désert.”
The influence of al-Mutanabbí and one or two other Arabic poets on the early developments of Persian poetry was also, as has been pointed out by Kazimirski in his edition and translation of the Díwán of Minúchihrí (Paris, 1886, pp. 143 and 316), very great, and for this reason alone his works ought to be read by every serious student of the origins of Persian poetry. The far-fetched conceits and rhetorical figures which abound in his verses will hardly appeal to many European readers as they do to the poet's countrymen, and at times he gives expression to ideas which to our taste are grossly unpoetical;
369aothers of his verses, however, breathe the old Bedouin spirit, amongst these being the verse which, as Ibn Khallikán says,370a “caused his death.” For, as he was returning from Persia with a large sum of money which had been bestowed on him by the Buwayhid prince 'Aḍudu'd-Dawla, he was attacked near Kúfa by Arabs of the tribe of Asad. Being worsted in the combat, he was preparing to take to flight when his slave cried to him: “Let it never be said that you fled from the combat, you who are the author of this verse:—
‘I am known to the horse-troop, the night and the desert's expanse,
Not more to the paper and pen than the sword and the lance!’”
So al-Mutanabbí turned again to the combat and met his death like a true son of the desert. The Arab pride of race which animated him is shown by the following incident. One day a number of learned men370b were conversing in the presence of that illustrious prince Sayfu'd-Dawla, and the grammarian Ibn Khálawayh was expressing his views on some point of Arabic philology, when al-Mutanabbí interrupted him, saying, “Silence, fellow! What hast thou to do with Arabic, thou who art a Persian of Khuzistán?”
More admirable, according to Western taste, than al-Mutanabbí, though less celebrated, was his contemporary Abu Abú Firás alḤamdámí. Firás, the cousin of the above-mentioned prince Sayfu'd-Dawla, to whose “circle” also (along with a galaxy of less famous poets like an-Námí, an-Náshí, az-Záhí, ar-Raffá' and al-Babbaghá) he belonged. Von Kremer370c esteems him very highly, and concludes his notice of him in these words:—
“Thus is Abu Firás the picture of the stirring times in which he lived: in him once again the old, proud, warlike spirit of antiquity was re-incarnated, only the finer feelings being the outcome of the later culture. The inner history of Arabic poetry ought, indeed, to conclude with him, had not a greater and more lofty genius371a stepped forth, who independently gave a new and important development to the philosophical and speculative turn of thought first introduced by Abu'l-'Aṭáhiya.”
Abu Firás was killed in battle in A.D. 968, a year remarkable also for the birth of one of the great mystical poets of Persia, Abú Sa'íd b. Abi'l-Khayr. Abu Sa'íd b. Abi'l-Khayr, the author of a celebrated collection of quatrains. About the same time died Abu'l-Faraj of Iṣfahan, the compiler of that vast thesaurus of Arabic verse known as the Kitábu'l- Abu'l-Faraj alIṣfahání. Aghání or “Book of Songs,” a work which in the Cairo edition comprises twenty volumes. He also was of Arab, and, as it is asserted, of Umayyad descent, and belonged to the “circle” of Sayfu'd-Dawla. About Ibu Kushájim A.D. 971 died the poet Ibn Kushájim, remarkable for his Indian descent and the high position which he held in the Carmathian government;371b and in the same year Abu'l-Fath al-Bustí. was born the poet Abu'l-Fatḥ al-Bustí, one of the earliest literary protégés of the Ghaznawí dynasty. Finally, the last year of the Caliphate of al-Muṭí' is notable for the birth of two very eminent men, the poet Abu'l-'Alá al-Ma'arrí and al-Bírúní.
We come now to the Caliphate of at-Ṭá'í (A.D. 974-991), whose contemporaries were the Sámánid Nuḥ II b. Manṣúr Caliphate of al-Ṭá'í (A.D. 974- 991).—Political condition of Persia at this time. (A.D. 976-997) in Khurásán, Qábús b. Washmgír the Ziyárid (A.D. 976-1012) in Ṭabaristán, 'Aḍudu'd-Dawla in Fárs, Kirmán, Ahwáz, and Southern Persia, and in Egypt the Fáṭimid Anti-Caliph al-'Azíz Abu Manṣúr Nazár (A.D. 975-996). About the same time there rose into prominence Sabuktagín (A.D. 976-997), “the true founder of the Ghaz-nawí dynasty,” as Stanley Lane-Poole says, whose son Maḥmúd achieved so mighty a renown as a warrior and champion of Islám. This Sabuktagín was originally one of the Turkish slaves of Alptagín, himself in turn one of the Turkish slaves and favourites of 'Abdu'l-Malik the Sámánid; and he enlarged the little kingdom founded by his predecessors Alptagín and his two sons Isḥáq and Balkátagín in the fastnesses of the Sulaymán Mountains by the capture of Písháwar from the Rájpúts, and by the acquisition of the government of Khurásán in A.D. 994 under the nominal suzerainty of the Sámánids.
In the literary history of this period we have to notice first the death of the Persian poet Daqíqí (A.D. 975), who began the Literary history of this period.— Daqíqí. composition of the Sháhnáma which was afterwards so gloriously completed by Firdawsí. About a year later was composed a very important Arabic work, now rendered accessible to all scholars in the excellent edition of Van Vloten (Leyden, 1895) named “the Keys of the Sciences” (Mafátíḥu'l-'Ulúm), by Abu 'Abdi'lláh Muḥammad The Mafátíḥu'l'Ulúm. b. Aḥmad b. Yúsuf al-Khwárazmí, which, in a small compass, gives a conspectus of the sciences, both indigenous and foreign, known to the Muslims of that time, together with their terminology. About Ibn-Ḥawqal. the same time Ibn Ḥawqal372a re-edited al-Iṣtakhrí's recension of the geography composed by Abu Zayd al-Balkhí, a pupil of the philosopher al-Kindí. About Aṣ Ṣírafí. a year later (A.D. 978) died the Arabic grammarian aṣ-Ṣírafí, who was not only a Persian but the son of a Zoroastrian named Bihzád. In A.D. 980, was Avicenna. born the great philosopher and physician Abú 'Alí b. Síná (Avicenna), also a Persian. A year later died a mystic of some note, Abú 'Abdi'lláh Muḥammad b. Khafíf of Shíráz. In A.D. 982 died Ibráhím b. Hilál aṣ-Ṣábí, Ibn Khafíf the mystic.—Aṣ-Ṣábí. one of the heathen of Ḥarárn, whose great history of the Buwayhids, entitled Kitábu't-Táj (“the Book of the Crown”), has unfortunately not come down to us. This work was written in the highly artificial and rhetorical style which was now coming into fashion, and replacing the simple, unvarnished narratives of the earlier historians, and which, as Brockelmann points out, had a great influence on the formation of the prose style of the more ambitious Persian writers. Another writer of the same Ibn Nubáta. type, Ibn Nubáta the Syrian, Court preacher to Sayfu'd-Dawla, who died in A.D. 984, is still read in the East, where some of his writings have been Tamím b. alMu'izz. printed. The Fáṭimid poet Tamím b. al-Mu'izz († A.D. 984), brother of the Anti-Caliph al-'Azíz, in whose honour he composed panegyrics, deserves mention. The traveller and geographer al-Maqdisí, or Al-Muqaddasí. al-Muqaddasí, composed his important work, entitled Aḥsanu't-Taqásím fí ma'rifati'l-Aqálím373a in A.D. 985, a work which has received the highest tributes of praise from several eminent Orientalists.373b A year later was Al-Qushayrí. born al-Qushayrí, the author of an important treatise on Ṣúfíism. About A.D. 988 was composed the The Fihrist. Fihrist,373c or “Index,” one of the most important sources of knowledge for the literary and religious history of the early Muslim period, and even for the more ancient times which preceded it, whereof the author, Abu'l Faraj Mu-ḥammad b. Isḥáq an-Nadím al-Warráq al-Baghdádí, died some six years later. Of his valuable work Brockelmann speaks as follows:373d “His book, which he named simply the Fihrist, i.e., ‘Index,’was intended to include all books in the Arabic language available in his time, whether original compositions or translations. After an introduction on the different kinds of scripts, he deals with the revealed books of the different religions, then with each individual branch of Literature, from the Qur'án and the writings connected therewith down to the Occult Sciences. In each section he groups the individual writers in approximately chronological order, and communicates what is known to him of their lives and works. To this book we owe many valuable data for the history of the civilisation and literature, not only of the Arabs, but generally of the whole of the Nearer History of Qum. East.” About the same time (A.D. 988) was composed one of the earliest local histories of Persia, a monograph on the city of Qum, which is preserved in a Persian translation (made in A.D. 1128),374a though the Arabic original is lost. The work was dedicated to that great The Ṣáḥib Is-ma'íl b. 'Abbád. patron of literature the Ṣáḥib Isma'íl b. 'Abbád (b. A.D. 936, d. 995), who was minister to the two Buwayhid rulers Mu'ayyidu'd-Dawla and Fakhru'd-Dawla, and who was himself the author of a copious Arabic dictionary called the Muḥíṭ (“Comprehensive”), still partly preserved, and of a treatise on Prosody called the Iqná' (“Satisfaction”), of which a fine MS., dated A.H. 559 (= A.D. 1164), formerly in the possession of M. Schefer, is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. Of the crowd of poets and men of letters whom the Ṣáḥib's generosity drew round him we read in ath-Tha'álibí's Yatímatu'd-Dahr (vol. iii, pp. 31 et seqq.); to his unparalleled generosity all writers bear testimony, so that the contemporary poet Abú Sa'íd ar-Rustamí exclaims in a threnody which he composed on his patron's death:374b “God hath willed that the hopes of the needy and the gifts of the generous should perish by the death of Ibn 'Abbád, and that they should never meet again till the day of resurrection.” His love of books was such that, being invited by the Sámánid King Núḥ II b. Manṣúr to become his prime minister, he excused himself on this ground, amongst others, that four hundred camels would be required for the transport of his library alone.375a Poet, philologist, patron of letters, statesman and wit, the Ṣáḥib stands out as one of the brightest ornaments of that liberal and enlightened Buwayhid dynasty of which, unfortunately, our knowledge is so much less complete than we could desire.
Amongst other men of letters and science belonging to this period, we can only mention the great Shí'ite theologian Ibn Ibn Bábawayh. Bábawayh († A.D. 991),375b whose work on jurisprudence called Kitábu man la yaḥḍuruhu'l-faqíh (“the Book of him who hath no lawyer at hand”) is still of high authority in Persia; the physician 'Alí b. 'Abbás al-Majúsí Al-Majúsí. († A.D. 994),375c whose father was, as his name implies, an adherent of the Zoroastrian faith; the philologist al-Mubarrad, author of the celebrated Kámil;375d and Avicenna. last, but not least, the great Avicenna (Abú 'Alí b. Síná), philosopher, physician, and statesman († A.D. 1037), who at this time, being only about seventeen years of age, established his medical reputation by curing the Sámánid ruler Núḥ II b. Manṣúr, whose favour and protection he thus secured. Of this great man we shall have more to say in a subsequent chapter.
We have now brought our history to the end of the tenth century of our era, at which point we may pause to survey, Review of this period. before proceeding further, the scientific and literary achievements of this period, its religious and philosophical movements, and more particularly the earliest developments of that revival of the Persian national literature which now, having once been inaugurated, goes forwards with ever-increasing force. This period which we are discussing began, as we have seen, with a Turkish ascendancy fraught with peril alike to the Caliphate and to the civilisation of Islám, and ended with the sudden rise to almost unlimited power of another Turk, Sulṭán Maḥmúd of Ghazna (succeeded Maḥmúd of Ghazna. to the throne, A.D. 998; died A.D. 1030), who, beginning with the small kingdom inherited from his father Sabuktagín, overthrew the tottering House of Sámán; invaded India in twelve separate campaigns (A.D. 1001-1024), wherein he slew innumerable “idolators,” destroyed many idol-temples, and permanently annexed the Panjáb; reduced Ghúr (A.D. 1012); annexed Transoxiana (A.D. 1016), and struck a death-blow at the House of Buwayh, from whom he wrested Isfahán. But between these two extremes we see Persia, ever more detached from the direct control of the Caliph, divided between several noble and enlightened dynasties of Persian extraction, the Houses of Sámán, Buwayh, and Ziyár, free once more to develop on its own lines and to produce in its native tongue a splendid and extensive literature.
Gesch. d. Herrschenden Ideen d. Islams, pp. 15 et seqq.
↩Ibid., pp. 10 and 124. Ibn Ḥazm, a Spanish Arab of Cordova, died about A.D. 1054, and is the author of the oldest extant work on the Sects of Islám. MSS. of this work (which has never been printed) are very rare. See Flügel's Vienna Catalogue, vol. ii, pp. 197-199, and, for Ibn Ḥazm's biography, de Slane's transl. of Ibn Khallikán, vol. ii, pp. 267-272.
↩Shahristani, who also reckons four, substitutes the Ṣifátiyya for the Murjiya, while al-Íjí (A.D. 1355) enumerates seven principal heterodox sects. See Dr. H. Steiner's Mu'taziliten, pp. 2-3.
↩Culturgesch. Streifzüge, pp. 1-9.
↩See Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, Bk. i, p. 1033.
↩Gesch. d. Herrsch. Ideen, p. 25.
↩Streifzüge p. 2. The Court-poet al-Akhṭal was a Christian.
↩Ibid., p. 6, and cf. Herrsch. Ideen, p. 26.
↩Ibid., p. 3.
↩Mu'taziliten, p. 4.
↩See Steiner's Mu'taziliten, pp. 24-26, and Dozy's Hist. de l'Islamisme, p. 204.
↩Dozy, op. cit., p. 201.
↩Streifzüge, pp. 7-9.
↩On the quite opposite senses in which the word qadar is used, see Steiner, op. cit., pp. 26-28.
↩Ed. Whinfield, l. 538, pp. 32 and 54.
↩P. 5 of an excellent little pamphlet entitled Laṭífa-i-Ghaybiyya, lithographed in Tihrán in A.H. 1304 (A.D. 1887), to which my attention was directed by my friend Mr. Sidney Churchill, one of the finest Persian scholars I have ever met.
↩Díwán of Háfidh, ed. Rosenzweig-Schwannau, vol. i, p. 16.
↩See Ṭabarí, iii, pp. 1112-1131, where this transaction is very fully reported.
↩Ṭabarí, iii, pp. 1343-1350. See also Dozy's l'Islamisme, pp. 238-239.
↩Ibid., p. 1351.
↩Ibid., pp. 1533-4.
↩Meaning, of course, that every man was created a potential believer, and that the unbelievers only became so by their own frowardness, not by God's will.
↩Two pamphlets, both published in 1865. One is entitled Die Mu'tazi-liten oder die Freidenker im Islam; the other, Die Mu'taziliten als Vorlaüfer der islamischen Dogmatiker und Philosophen, nebst Anhang, enthaltend kritische Anmerkungen zu Gazzáli's Munqidh.
↩“The Arabian Aristotelians,” says Steiner, “were properly rather Natural Scientists than Philosophers; their most signal achievements belong to the region of observation of natural phenomena, above all Medicine and Astronomy.”
↩Dozy's l'Islamisme (Chauvin's translation), pp. 248 et seqq.
↩See Ṭabarí, iii, pp. 1389 et seqq., and 1419.
↩See Spitta's excellent monograph, Zur Geschichte Abu'l-Ḥasan Al-Ash'arî's (Leipzig, 1876).
↩Dozy, pp. 252-256.
↩Op. cit., pp. 62-81.
↩Since Zamakhsharí lived till A.D. 1144, it would seem better to substitute “twelfth” for “eleventh.”
↩Dozy, pp. 255-256.
↩Z. D. M. G., vol. xiii, pp. 1-43.
↩In some dozen publications (texts, translations, and dissertations), published between the years 1858 and 1886.
↩Published in four vols. at Bombay, A.H. 1305-6; a Persian version of the same, comprising fifty tracts (pp. 167), was lithographed at Bombay in A.H. 1301 = A.D. 1884. For the contents of these tracts see Dieterici's Die Philosophie der Araber im x Jahrhundert nach Christ., erster Theil, Einleitung u. Makrokosmos (Leipzig, 1876), pp. 131-137.
↩Die Philosophie der Araber im x Jahrhundert nach Christ., erster Theil, Einleitung u. Makrokosmos (Leipzig, 1876), p. 158.
↩Mu'taziliten, p. 12.
↩Op. cit., p. 157.
↩Op. cit., p. 161.
↩See de Slane's translation of Ibn Khallikán, vol. iii, p. 555.
↩Ibid., vol. ii, p. 547. This probably occurred in A.D. 764-5.
↩Ibid., vol. ii, p. 571.
↩Ibid., vol. i, p. 44.
↩See his Díwán, lithographed at Tabríz in A.H. 1280, pp. 115 and 209. Cf. Dozy's Islamisme, pp. 441-443.
↩Shahristání, ed. Cureton, p. 146.
↩Murúju'dh-Dhahab, ed. Barbier de Meynard, vol. iv, p. 193.
↩Ibid., p. 195.
↩Ibid., p. 196.
↩Cited at p. 31 of Jámí's Nafaḥátu'l-Uns, ed. Nassau Lees, Calcutta, 1858.
↩L'Islamisme (Chauvin's French translation), pp. 319-320. Cf. also pp. 201-202, where Ḥasan's character is well depicted.
↩See de Slane's translation of Ibn Khallikán, vol. i, pp. 515-517.
↩In Arabic grammar.
↩In Arabic grammar.
↩Op. cit., p. 319.
↩This point has been very admirably worked out by my friend and former pupil, Mr. R. A. Nicholson, in his Selected Poems from the Díván-i. Shams-i-Tabríz (Cambridge, 1898), especially pp. xxx-xxxvi. Cf. von Kremer, Gesch.-Streifzüge, p. 45.
↩This is, for example, Dozy's view (l'Islamisme, p. 317), and he cites Trumpp (Z. D. M. G., xvi, p. 244) as saying “Dass der Sufismus ein indisches Produkt ist, darüber kann kein Zweifel obwalten, und noch näher bestimmt ist der Sufismus ein speciell Buddhistisches Erzeugniss.”
↩Gesch.-Streifzüge, p. 46.
↩Herrsch. Id., p. 67.
↩See, for example, the article on Persian Literature in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Dr. Ethé does more justice to the modern poets of Persia in his article Neupersische Litteratur (pp. 311-316) in vol. ii of Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie (Strassburg, 1897).
↩See Chwolson's Ssabicr und Ssabismus, vol. i, p. 100. The most important works on the Mandæans are: Dr. A. J. H. Wilhelm Brandt, Die Mandäische Religion (1889); Idem, Mandäische Schriften (1893); Mand. Grammatik by Th. Nöldeke, 1875; H. Pognon, Consul de France à Alep, Inscr. Mand. des coupes de Khouabir (1898). Of the book of the Mandæans, the Sidrâ Rabbâ or Ginzâ, there are two editions, Norberg's, in three vols. (1815-1816), and Petermann's, in two vols., (1867). Nöldeke describes their literature as “eine Literatur, welche voll des grössten Widersinns ist, geschrieben in eine Mundart von der ein Kenner des Syrisches zunächst den Eindruck starker Entartung erhält.”
↩Chwolson, op. cit., i, pp. 669, 671.
↩Ibid., ii, pp. 14-19. The facts are recorded in the Fihrist (ed. Flügel, pp. 320-321) on the authority of an almost contemporary Christian writer, Abú Yúsuf al-Qaṭí'í.
↩Kunik's compte-rendu of Chwolson's work, Mélanges Asiatiques, vol. i, p. 663.
↩Several sects existing in Western Asia at the present day, such as the Nuṣayrís, the Yezídís (or so-called “Devil-worshippers,”) &c., are, as Chwolson and others have pointed out, almost certainly survivals of ancient pagan communities; though, to secure a doubtful tolerance from their Muhammadan governors, they have been careful to conceal their real beliefs and practices, and to vindicate their right to be regarded and treated as “People of the Book,” by a liberal, though not always skilful use of names regarded by the Muslims as holy.
↩Gesch. d. Arabische Litteratur, vol. i, pp. 201 et seqq.
↩Amongst translators from Pahlawí into Arabic are mentioned in the Fihrist (ed. Flügel, pp. 244-245), besides Ibnu'l-Muqaffa', the family of Naw-Bakht (see also op. cit., pp. 177 and 274), who were ardent Shí'ites, Bah-rám, the son of Mardán-sháh, múbad of Níshápúr, and a dozen others. Mention is also made of two learned Indians who made translations from the Sanskrit, and of the celebrated Ibnu'l-Waḥshiyya who translated the Book of Nabathæan Agriculture.
↩Ibn Khallikán, Wüstenfeld's text, vol. i, No. 127; de Slane's transl., vol. i, pp. 288-289.
↩Von Kremer's Streifzüge, pp. 210 et seqq.
↩Al-Ya'qúbí, ed. Houtsma, p. 546.
↩Op. cit., pp. 41-42.
↩Perhaps influenced by the legend of Mání (Manes).
↩That is, the mumbling of prayers and graces chararacteristic of the Zoroastrian practice.
↩These marriages (called khvêtu-das) were not only sanctioned but approved by Zoroastrianism.
↩The priests of the second and third grades of the Zoroastrian religion. The chief priests are called dastúr.
↩Compare the expectations entertained by the followers of al-Muqanna' as to his “Return” in the section devoted to him a few pages further on. Al-Balkhí, writing about A.H. 350 (A.D. 960), speaks of the Bih-áfarídhís as existing in his time from personal knowledge. See vol. i of Cl. Huart's ed. and transl. of the Kitábu'l- Bad' wa't-Ta'ríkh, p. 164 of the translation.
↩See my translation of the New History of … the Báb (Cambridge, 1893), pp. 70, 283.
↩Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (1856), p. 180.
↩In an article entitled Orientalischer Socialismus, in vol. xviii, pp. 284-291 of the Deutsche Rundschau (1879).
↩From chap. xl of this work onwards the numbers of the chapters in the translation are one ahead of those they bear in the text, two successive sections in the text (pp. 125 and 131) being called “fortieth.”
↩Some account of this is found in al-Fakhrí (p. 203); Ṭabarí iii, 119-120; Mas'udí's Murúju'dh Dhahab, vi, 188-189; al-Ya'qúbí, ii, 441-442; Idem, Kitabu'l-Buldán (de Goeje's Bibl. Geogr. Arab., vol. vii), p. 303; Dorn's Gesch. von Tabaristán, &c., p. 47; Idem, Auszüge … betreffend die Gesch… der Südl. Küstenländer des Kaspischen Meeres, pp. 442-444; Justi's Iranisches Namenbuch, pp. 314-315, article Sumbát (Sunfádh), § 19.
↩Cf. Shahristání, op. cit., p. 111, and al-Ya'qúbí, ii, p. 313.
↩Name uncertain; perhaps Khurramábád, a common name of Persian villages.
↩Ṭabarí (iii, 129 et seqq. and 418) mentions the incident first recorded under the year A.H. 141 (A.D. 758-9), but adds that some place it in A.H. 136 or 137 (A.D. 753-5), while he records a similar narrative under A.H. 158 (A.D. 774-5). The last two dates are those of the accession and decease of al-Manṣúr, and the narrative may simply have been recorded there by one of his authorities as a piece of undated general information about that Caliph. See also Dínawarí, p. 380, and al-Fakhrí, p. 188.
↩L'Islamisme (transl. of V. Chauvin), pp. 241-243.
↩There were two places called Ráwand, one near Káshán and Isfahán, the other near Níshápúr (see de Slane's translation of Ibn Khallikán's Biographical Dictionary, vol. i, p. 77). Dozy seems to be mistaken in supposing that the former is here meant, since Ṭabarí (iii, 129), al-Fakhrí (188), &c., speak of these Ráwandís as “from Khurásán.”
↩Al-Fakhrí only says “a certain other man.” Ṭabarí (iii, 129) says that they supposed 'Uthmán b. Nahík and al-Haytham b. Mu'áwiya to be incarnations of Adam and Gabriel respectively.
↩Two hundred of them were so imprisoned.
↩Ṭabarí, iii, p. 130.
↩Cf. my translation of the Chahár Máqála of Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí-i-Samar-qandí in the J. R. A. S. for 1899, p. 55 of the tirage-à-part.
↩Ṭabarí, iii, 354-8; al-Ya'qúbí, ii, 457-8. The latter writer distinctly states that he claimed to be a Prophet.
↩Op. cit., p. 459.
↩See van Vloten's Recherches sur la Domination Arabe, p. 59; Ṭabarí, iii, 470; al-Ya'qúbí, ii, pp. 478-479.
↩So called, as already explained, because of their white raiment, which won for them amongst the Persians the title, Sapíd-Jámagán.
↩These works of al-Bírúní are unfortunately lost to us.
↩Ibnu'l-Muqaffa' in the text is, of course, an error for al-Muqanna'. From al-Bírúní's account (cited above) it would appear that his own name was Háshim, and his father's name Ḥakím, but al-Qazwíní seems to have taken the latter as a common noun in the sense of “The Sage.”
↩For the text of this passage, see Wüstenfeld's ed., Biography No. 431.
↩Qur'an ii. 31.
↩For the text of this passage, see Wüstenfeld's ed., Biography No. 431.
↩I.e., the beautiful face, surmounted by a turban, of my beloved.
↩This work, properly entitled Kitábu'l-Mushtarik, or “Lexicon of geographical homonyms,” was published by Wüstenfeld at Göttingen in 1846. The passage to which allusion is here made occurs on p. 254. Shaykh Shihábu 'd Dín Abu 'Abdi'lláh Yáqút al-Ḥamawí, the last great Muslim geographer, was of Greek origin. He was born about A.D. 1178, and died about 1229.
↩This is confirmed by al-Ya'qúbí in his Kitábu'l-Buldán (Bibl. Geogr. Arab., vol. vii, p. 304). It is there stated that al-Muqanna' and his followers, when hard pressed by the besiegers, “drank poison, and all died together.” See also Ṭabarí, iii, 484 and 494.
↩They are spoken of by Shaykh Abu'l-Mudhaffar Ṭáhir al-Isfará'iní († A.D. 1078-9) as existing in his time. See Haarbrücker's translation of Shahristání's Kitábu'l-Milal, pp. 378 and 409.
↩Beyrout ed. of 1890, pp. 217-218.
↩Cf. what is said on p. 309 supra as to the expected return of Bih-áfarídh.
↩See Haarbrücker's translation, p. 200; Cureton's text, p. 132; Schefer's Chrestomathie Persane, vol i, p. 177; the Nidhámu'l-Mulk's Siyásat-náma (ed. Schefer), p. 199.
↩See particularly Ṭabarí, iii, pp. 1015, 1039, 1044, 1045, 1099, 1101, 1165, 1170-1179, 1186-1235, and, for Afshín's fall and death, 1308-1314; Dínawarí, pp. 397-401; Baládhurí, pp. 329-330 and 340; Ya'qúbí, pp. 563-565, 575, 577-579, and for Afshín, 582-584; the Fihrist, pp. 342-344; Qazwíní's Átháru'l-Bilád, 213, 344; Siyásat-náma, pp. 200-203; Ibn Khallikán (de Slane's translation), vol. iii, p. 276; Ibn Qutayba's Kitábu'l-Ma'árif, p. 198; de Goeje's Bibl. Geogr. Arab. i, 203; vi, 121; v, 52, 284-285, 307, 309; vii, 259, 272; viii, 88, 170, 352-353; Mas'údi's Murúju'dh-Dhahab (ed. B. de Meynard), vi, 187; vii, 62, 123-132, 138-139, &c.
↩In the district of Ardabíl and Arraján. See B. de Meynard's Dict. de la Perse, p. 557.
↩A high mountain, covered with perpetual snow, near Ardabíl. See Dict. de la Perse, p. 300.
↩Or Saráw, in Ádharbayján. See Bibl. Geogr. Arab., vii, 271, last line.
↩This was, till the last, Bábak's great and chiefest stronghold.
↩Probably Persians. The arrogance of the Arabs impelled them, like the Greeks, to regard all foreigners as barbarous folk.
↩Concerning this name, see Justi's Iranisches Namenbuch, p. 292.
↩See Barbier de Meynard's Dict. de la Perse, p. 557.
↩According to the Muḥíṭu'l-Muḥíṭ this word has in 'Iráq the special signification of one chosen by his fellow-villagers to entertain official guests quartered on the village.
↩This is confirmed by Ṭabarí, iii, 1015.
↩Bábak's pedigree was, however, very uncertain. Cf. Ṭabarí, iii, p. 1232.
↩Cited by Ibn Khallikán, ed. Wüstenfeld, No. 709; de Slane's trans., vol. iii, p. 276, which version is here given.
↩Allusion is made to the prophet and Abú Bakr in the Cave of Thawr. See Qur'án ix, 40.
↩The burning poisonous wind of the desert, commonly called Simoom.
↩See especially, as illustrating his hatred of the Arabs, pp. 199-207 of the Táríkh-i-Bayhaqí (Calcutta, 1862), and the translation of this remarkable passage given by Kazimirski at pp. 149-154 of his edition of the Díwán of Manuchihrí (Paris, 1886), and cf. de Slane's translation of Ibn Khallikán, vol. i, p. 63, and p. 72, n. 9, where, on the authority of Ibn Shákir, Afshín is said to have been descended from the old Persian kings, an assertion confirmed by Bayhaqí (op. cit., p. 203, ll. 1-2 = Kazimirski, op. cit., p. 151, last five lines).
↩This book, as Nöldeke has remarked (Gesch. d. Sasaniden, p. 461, n. 2 ad calc.), “which Ibnu'-l-Muqaffa' translated [into Arabic], and Abán al-Láḥiqí re-edited, no doubt in metrical form (Fihrist, pp. 118 and 163), was not religious, but was a work designed merely to amuse, classed with the Book of Kalíla and Dimna, and regarded as harmless for a Muslim.”
↩Qur'án, lxxix, 24.
↩I presume that the religion of Zoroaster is intended, or else the doctrine of Mazdak as revived by Bábak.
↩Or Maghribís (pl. Magháriba), i.e., Arabs and Berbers from N. and N.W. Africa.
↩Literally, “are eaters of a head,” meaning, “they are few; one head satisfying their stomachs.” See Lane's Arabic Lexicon, Bk. i, Part 1, p. 73.
↩It seems quite clear from all this that Afshín, though from Trans-oxiana, was not, as has been sometimes alleged, a Turk, but wholly Persian in feeling and sympathy.
↩Meaning that he was what we should call “a hanging judge.” The ṭaylasán, says Lane in his Lexicon (Bk. i, Part 5, p. 1867, s.v.), “seems to have resembled our academic hood, of which it was perhaps the original.” It was worn by men of learning, doctors of Theology, Law, Medicine, and the like.
↩See the interesting narrative of Ḥamdún b. Isma'íl given by Ṭabarí (iii, pp. 1314-1318).
↩His reasons for mistrusting the Arabs are clearly set forth in Ṭabarí, iii, p. 1142.
↩Cf. Goldziher's luminous chapter on the Shu'úbiyya, or “Gentile Faction,” in his Muhammedanische Studien, pp. 147 et seqq., especially p. 150.
↩See Ethé's tract entitled Rûdagî's Vorläufer und Zeitgenossen, ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss der ältesten Denkmäler neupersischer Poesie, pp. 36-8, and Horn's Geschichte der persischen Litteratur (Leipzig, 1901), pp. 47-8.
↩Menoutchehri, pp. 8-9 of the Introduction.
↩See Dozy's Supplément aux Dictionnaires Arabes, vol. ii, p. 810, s.v.
↩The Caliphate, 2nd ed. (1892), p. 509 ad calc.
↩Muir, op. cit., p. 525; Brockelmann, Gesch. d. Arab. Litt., i, p. 117.
↩Ṭabarí's Annals, Ser. iii, pp. 1424-1426.
↩Ibid., Ser. iii, p. 1407.
↩The dull yellow garments which the Zoroastrians of Persia (Yazd and Kirmán) are still compelled to wear are the last remnant of these old disabilities. Sa'dí, writing in the thirteenth century, still spoke of them as “'asal-i-dúkhta,” “sewed [i.e. made up] honey.” See n. 3 on p. 335 supra.
↩Muir's Caliphate, pp. 521-2; Ṭabarí's Annals, Ser. iii, pp. 1389, et seqq. and 1419.
↩The meaning of this name is “Jesus hath delivered”: the first part of it is from an old Persian verb bôkhtan, “to save,” “deliver,” and has nothing to do with bakht, “fortune.” See an interesting note in Nöldeke's Gesch. b. Artachšir-i-Pâpakân, p. 49, n. 4, ad calc.
↩Published, with French translation, in the Journal Asiatique for 1865 (Ser. vi, vol. 5, pp. 1-127 and 227-295 and 446-527), and in vol. vi of de Goeje's Bibl. Geogr. Arab.
↩See p. 30 of my edition of Dawlatsháh.
↩Ṭabarí's Annals, Ser. iii, p. 1500.
↩This valuable work exists only in manuscript. Copies of it are preserved in the British Museum, the Bodleian, the India Office, the Biblio-thèque Nationale, and St. Petersburg. A long extract from it relating to early Sásánian times was published with a French translation by the late Professor James Darmesteter in the Journal Asiatique for 1894, pp. 185-250 and 502-555. The account of the poet Firdawsí cited in it from the Chahár Maqála was also used (before the latter work was rendered generally accessible by my translation of it in the J. R. A. S. for 1899) by Dr. Ethé and Professor Nöldeke.
↩The utility of this valuable work, written about A.D. 1585, by Sayyid Núru'lláh b. Sayyid Sharíf al-Mar'ashí of Shushtar, is, unfortunately, greatly marred by the fact that in the lithographed edition the pages are not numbered, and there are no indices.
↩See p. 48 of Sachau's translation of his Chronology of Ancient Nations. Al-Bírúní died in A.D. 1048.
↩The genuineness of this speech is disproved by this anachronism. Mahdiyya, the first capital of the Fáṭimid Caliphs, was not founded for more than thirty years after Ya'qúb's death, which happened in June, A.D. 879.
↩Cf. Nöldeke's Sketches, English translation, p. 193, and also Ibnu'l-Athír , Cairo ed., vol. vii, p. 107.
↩See pp. 43-44 of the separate reprint of the translation which I published in the J. R. A. S. for 1899.
↩See my Hand-list of the Muḥammadan MSS. in the Cambridge University Library, pp. 125-6.
↩See Carra de Vaux, Avicenne, pp. 80-88.
↩See a monograph on this school by Dr. Ignaz Goldziher, Die Zâhiriten Leipzig, 1884.
↩See Brockelmann's Gesch. d. Arab. Litt., vol. i, pp. 120, 123, and 141.
↩The works of these writers, which have been published and are easily accessible, and which should be read by all students of Persian history, are: the Kitábu'l-Ma'árif of Ibn Qutayba (ed. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen, 1850); the Futúḥu'l-Buldán (ed. de Goeje, Leyden, 1855); the Akhbáru'ṭ-Ṭiwál of Dínawarí (ed. Guirgass, Leyden, 1888); and al-Ya'qúbí's History (ed. Houtsma, Leyden, 1883, 2 vols.).
↩Brockelmann, op. cit., p. 134.
↩See pp. 83-86 of Brockelmann's Gesch. d. Arab. Litt. (in vol. vi of Amelang's monographs, Leipzig, 1901; not to be confounded with the more scientific work by the same author, and with almost the same title, published at Weimar in 1897- ).
↩See de Goeje's Carmathes du Bahraïn, p. 131.
↩Sachau's translation, pp. 196-7.
↩De Goeje, op. cit., p. 140.
↩Chahár Maqála, separate reprint, p. 51.
↩The edition of this great work by Professor de Goeje and a small body of the most distinguished Arabic scholars must be regarded as the greatest achievement of Oriental scholarship in Europe in recent times. This edition comprises 13 vols. of text and 2 vols. of Indices and Apparatus Criticus; the publication was begun at Leyden in A.D. 1879, and completed in 1901. 'Aríb's Ṭabarî continuatus, edited by de Goeje, was published in 1897.
↩Tornberg's edition (Leyden, 1851-1876) in 14 vols. is the best, as it has an index, which the Cairo edition of A.H. 1303 (the text which I have used throughout) has not.
↩See de Slane's Ibn Khallikán, vol. i, pp. 400-401.
↩Lane's Muhammadan Dynasties, pp. 139-144.
↩Al-Bírúní's Chronology of Ancient Nations (Sachau's translation), pp. 45-46.
↩Literally, “and such as were strung on their string,” the simile being derived from a necklace of pearls.
↩Eloquence is called by the Muslims “siḥr-i-ḥalál,” “lawful Magic.” Concerning “blowing on knots,” see the commentaries on Súra cxiii of the Qur'án. “This” (blowing on knots as a magical practice), says Sale, “was a common practice in former days: what they call in France nouër l'aiguillette, and the knots which the wizards in the northern parts tie, when they sell mariners a wind (if the stories told of them be true), are also relics of the same superstition.”
↩See de Goeje's Mémoire sur les Carmathes, &c. (Leyden, 1886), pp. 142-3.
↩De Goeje, op. laud., pp. 176 and 183 et seqq.
↩See Moritz Steinschneider's Al-Farabi des arabischen Philosophen Leben und Schriften in vol. xiii of the Mém. de l'Acad. de St. P.; Carra de Vaux's Avicenne, pp. 91 et seqq, &c.
↩For a striking instance of this see Dieterici's edition of his Díwán (Berlin, 1861), p. 8, verse 7.
↩See de Slane's translation, vol. i, pp. 105-6.
↩Ibid., p. 109.
↩Culturgeschichte, vol. ii, pp. 381-6.
↩I.e., Abu'l-'Alá al-Ma'arri, b. A.D. 973.
↩See de Goeje's Carmathes, pp. 151-2.
↩This forms the second volume of de Goeje's Bibliothcca Geographorum Arabicorum (Leyden, 1873).
↩This forms the third volume of de Goeje's Bibl. Geogr. Arab. (Leyden, 1877).
↩See Von Kremer's Culturgeschichte, vol. ii, pp. 429-433, where a long extract from his Preface is translated.
↩Edited with copious notes by Flügel (Leipzig, 1871).
↩Gesch. d. Arab. Litt., p. 111.
↩The MS. is in the British Museum, OR. 3391.
↩See the interesting notice of the Ṣáḥib given by Ibn Khallikán (de Slane's translation, vol. i, p. 216).
↩Ibid., p. 215, and the Yatíma, vol. iii, pp. 35-6.
↩Brockelmann's Gesch. d. Arab. Litt., vol. i, p. 187.
↩Ibid., p. 236.
↩Edited by Dr. W. Wright, Leipzig, 1864.
↩