A Literary History of the Arabs

by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

APPENDIX

[a]P. xxii,] l. 2. Arabic begins to appear in North Arabian inscriptions in the third century a.d. Perhaps the oldest yet discovered is one, of which the probable date is 268 a.d., published by Jaussen and Savignac (Mission archéologique en l'Arabie, vol. i, p. 172). Though it is written in Aramaic characters, nearly all the words are Arabic, as may be seen from the transcription given by Professor Horovitz in Islamic Culture (Hyderabad, Deccan), April 1929, vol. iii, No. 2, p. 169, note 2.

[P. 4] foll. Concerning the Sabaeans and the South Arabic inscriptions a great deal of valuable information will be found in the article Saba’ by J. Tkatsch in the Encyclopædia of Islam. The writer points out the special importance of the epigraphic discoveries of E. Glaser, who, in the course of four journeys (1882-94), collected over 2000 inscriptions. See also D. Nielsen, Handbuch der altarabischen Altertumskunde, vol. i (Copenhagen and Paris, 1927).

[P. 13], note 2. Excerpts from the Shamsu ’l-‘Ulúm relating to South Arabia have been edited by Dr ‘Azímu’ddín Aḥmad (E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series, vol. xxiv).

[P. 26] foll. For contemporary and later Christian accounts of the martyrdom of the Christians of Najrán, see the fragmentary Book of the Himyarites (Syriac text and English translation), ed. by A. Moberg in 1924, and cf. Tor Andrae, Der Ursprung des Islams und das Christentum (Uppsala, 1926), pp. 10-13.

P. 31. The collection of Arabic proverbs, entitled Kitábu ’l-Fákhir, by Mufaḍḍal b. Salama of Kúfa, is now available in the excellent edition of Mr C. A. Storey (Leyden, 1915).

[P. 32], note 1. An edition of the Aghání with critical notes is in course of publication at Cairo.

[P. 52], l. 9 foll. The battle mentioned here cannot be the battle of ‘Ayn Ubágh, which took place between Ḥárith, the son of Ḥárith b. Jabala, and Mundhir IV of Ḥíra about 583 a.d. (Guidi, L'Arabie antéislamique, p. 27).

[P. 127], l. 16. The ode Bánat Su‘ád is rendered into English in my Translations of Eastern Poetry and Prose, pp. 19-23.

[P. 133]. As regards the authenticity of the Pre-islamic poems which have come down to us, the observations of one of the greatest authorities on the subject, the late Sir Charles J. Lyall, seem to me to be eminently judicious (Introduction to the Mufaḍḍalīyāt, vol. ii, pp. xvi-xxvi). He concludes that "upon the whole, the impression which a close study of these ancient relics gives is that we must take them, generally speaking, as the production of the men whose names they bear." All that can be urged against this view has been said with his usual learning by Professor Margoliouth (The Origins of Arabic Poetry, J.R.A.S., 1925, p. 417 foll.).

[P. 145], l. 2. The oldest extant commentary on the Koran is that of Bukhárí in ch. 65 of the Ṣaḥíḥ, ed. Krehl, vol. iii, pp. 193-390.

[P. 146], note 2. Recent investigators (Caetani and Lammens) are far more sceptical. Cf. Snouck Hurgronje, Mohammedanism, p. 22 foll.

[P. 152], note 5. As suggested by Mr Richard Bell (The Origin of Islam in its Christian environment, p. 88), the word rujz is in all likelihood identical with the Syriac rugza, wrath, so that this verse of the Koran means, "Flee from the wrath to come."

[P. 170], l. 2 foll. This is one of the passages I should have liked to omit. Even in its present form, it maintains a standpoint which I have long regarded as mistaken.

[P. 184], l. 4 foll. Professor Snouck Hurgronje (Mohammedanism, p. 44) asks, "Was Mohammed conscious of the universality of his mission?" and decides that he was not. I now agree that "in the beginning he conceived his work as merely the Arabian part of a universal task"—in which case dhikr^un li ’l-‘álamín in the passage quoted will mean "a warning to all the people (of Mecca or Arabia)." But similar expressions in Súras of the Medina period carry, I think, a wider significance. The conception of Islam as a world-religion is implied in Mohammed's later belief—he only came to it gradually—that the Jewish and Christian scriptures are corrupt and that the Koran alone represents the original Faith which had been preached in turn by all the prophets before him. And having arrived at that conviction, he was not the man to leave others to act upon it.

[P. 223], l. 9. In an article which appeared in the Rivista degli studi orientali, 1916, p. 429 foll., Professor C. A. Nallino has shown that this account of the origin of the name "Mu‘tazilite" is erroneous. The word, as Mas‘údí says (Murúju ’l-Dhahab, vol. vi, p. 22, and vol. vii, p. 234), is derived from i‘tizál, i.e. the doctrine that anyone who commits a capital sin has thereby withdrawn himself (i‘tazala) from the true believers and taken a position (described as fisq, impiety) midway between them and the infidels. According to the Murjites, such a person was still a true believer, while their opponents, the Wa‘ídites, and also the Khárijites, held him to be an unbeliever.

[P. 225], l. 1. The Ḥadíth, "No monkery (rahbániyya) in Islam," probably dates from the third century of the Hijra. According to the usual interpretation of Koran, LVII, 27, the rahbániyya practised by Christian ascetics is condemned as an innovation not authorised by divine ordinance; but Professor Massignon (Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane, p. 123 foll.) shows that by some of the early Moslem commentators and also by the Ṣúfís of the third century a.h. this verse of the Koran was taken as justifying and commending those Christians who devoted themselves to the ascetic life, except in so far as they had neglected to fulfil its obligations.

[P. 225], l. 6 from foot. For the life and doctrines of Ḥasan of Baṣra, see Massignon, op. cit., p. 152 foll.

[P. 228] foll. It can now be stated with certainty that the name "Ṣúfí" originated in Kúfa in the second century a.h. and was at first confined to the mystics of ‘Iráq. Hence the earliest development of Ṣúfiism, properly so called, took place in a hotbed of Shí‘ite and Hellenistic (Christian and Gnostic) ideas.

[P. 233], l. 4 from foot. In Rābi‘a the Mystic (Cambridge, 1928) Miss Margaret Smith has given a scholarly and sympathetic account of the life, legend, and teaching of this celebrated woman-saint. The statement that she died and was buried at Jerusalem is incorrect. Moslem writers have confused her with an earlier saint of the same name, Rábi‘a bint Ismá‘íl († 135).

[P. 313] foll. The text and translation of 332 extracts from the Luzúmiyyát will be found in ch. ii of my Studies in Islamic Poetry, pp. 43-289.

[P. 318], l. 12. Since there is no warrant for the antithesis of "knaves" and "fools," these verses are more faithfully rendered (op. cit., p. 167):

They all err—Moslems, Christians, Jews, and Magians; Two make Humanity's universal sect: One man intelligent without religion, And one religious without intellect.

[P. 318], l. 7 from foot. Al-Fuṣúl wa ’l-Gháyát. No copy of this work was known before 1919, when the discovery of the first part of it was announced (J.R.A.S., 1919, p. 449).

[P. 318], note 2. An edition of the Risálatu ’l-Ghufrán by Shaykh Ibráhím al-Yáziji was published at Cairo in 1907.

[P. 319], l. 6. The epistle of ‘Alí b. Manṣúr al-Ḥalabí (Ibnu ’l-Qáriḥ), to which the Risálatu ’l-Ghufrán is the reply, has been published in Rasá’ilu ’l-Bulaghá, ed. Muḥammad Kurd ‘Alí (Cairo, 1913).

[P. 332], note 2. For rhymed prose renderings of the 11th and 12th Maqámas, see Translations of Eastern Poetry and Prose, pp. 116-124.

[P. 367], l. 7 from foot. New light has recently been thrown upon the character of the Mu‘tazilite movement by the publication of the Mu‘tazilite al-Khayyáṭ's Kitábu ’l-Intiṣár (ed. H. S. Nyberg, Cairo, 1926), a third (ninth) century polemical work directed against the Shí‘ite freethinker Ibnu ’l-Ráwandí (cf. p. 375 supra). It is now evident that this "heretical" sect played an active part as champions of Islam, not only in the early controversies which arose between Moslems and Christians in Syria but also against the more dangerous attacks which proceeded in the first hundred years of the ‘Abbásid period from the Manichæans and other "zanádiqa" in Persia and especially in ‘Iráq (cf. I. Guidi, La Lotta tra l'Islam e il Manicheismo (Rome, 1927)). In order to meet these adversaries on equal terms, the Mu‘tazilites made themselves acquainted with Greek philosophy and logic, and thus laid the foundations of an Islamic scholasticism. Cf. H. H. Schaeder, Der Orient und die Griechische Erbe in W. Jaeger's Die Antike, vol. iv, p. 261 foll.

[P. 370], I. 3 foll. From what has been said in the preceding note it follows that this view of the relation between the Mu‘tazilites and the Ikhwánu ’l-Ṣafá requires considerable modification. Although, in contrast to their orthodox opponents, the Mu‘tazilites may be described as "rationalists" and "liberal theologians," their principles were entirely opposed to the anti-Islamic eclecticism of the Ikhwán.

[P. 375], note 2. Professor Schaeder thinks that Middle Persian zandík has nothing to do with the Aramaic zaddíq (Z.D.M.G., vol. 82, Heft 3-4, p. lxxx).

[Pp. 383-393]. During the last twenty years our knowledge of early Ṣúfiism has increased, chiefly through the profound researches of Professor Massignon, to such an extent as to render the account given in these pages altogether inadequate. The subject being one of great difficulty and unsuitable for detailed exposition in a book of this kind, I must content myself with a few illustrative remarks and references, which will enable the student to obtain further information.

[P. 383]. Massignon's view is that Ṣúfiism (down to the fourth century a.h.) owed little to foreign influences and was fundamentally Islamic, a product of intensive study of the Koran and of inward meditation on its meaning and essential nature. There is great force in his argument, though I cannot help believing that the development of mysticism, like that of other contemporary branches of Moslem thought, must have been vitally affected by contact with the ancient Hellenistic culture of the Sásánian and Byzantine empires on its native soil. Cf. A. J. Wensinck, The Book of the Dove (Leyden, 1919) and Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Niniveh (Amsterdam, 1923).

[P. 384], l. 1. The identity of third-century Ṣúfiism with the doctrines of the Vedanta is maintained by M. Horten (Indische Strömungen in der Islamischen Mystik, Heidelberg, 1927-8). Few, however, would admit this. The conversion of Ṣúfiism into a monistic philosophy was the work of Ibnu ’l-‘Arabí (1165-1240 a.d.). See p. 402 foll.

[P. 384], l. 5. The so-called "Theology of Aristotle," translated from Syriac into Arabic about 830 a.d., is mainly an abstract of the Enneads of Plotinus. There is an edition with German translation by Dieterici.

[P. 385], l. 11. All previous accounts of the development of mystical doctrines in Islam during the first three centuries after the Hijra have been superseded by Massignon's intimate analysis (Essai, chs. iv and v, pp. 116-286), which includes biographies of the eminent Ṣúfís of that period and is based upon an amazingly wide knowledge of original and mostly unpublished sources of information. A useful summary of these two chapters is given by Father Joseph Maréchal in his Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics, tr. Thorold (1927), pp. 241-9.

[P. 386], l. 6 from foot. For Dhu ’l-Nún, see Massignon, op. cit., p. 184 foll.

[P. 389], l. 12. The Book of the Holy Hierotheos has recently been edited in Syriac for the first time, with English translation, by F. S. Marsh (Text and Translation Society, 1927).

[P. 391]. For Báyazíd of Bisṭám, see Massignon, op. cit., p. 243 foll. The oldest complete Arabic version of his "Ascension" (Mi‘ráj)—a spiritual dream-experience—has been edited and translated into English in Islamica, vol. ii, fasc. 3, p. 402 foll.

[P. 396], l. 8. See my essay on the Odes of Ibnu ’l-Fáriḍ (Studies in Islamic Mysticism, pp. 162-266), which comprises translations of the Khamriyya and three-fourths of the Tá’iyyatu ’l-Kubrá.

[P. 399], note 1. With Ḥalláj, thanks to the monumental work of Massignon (La Passion d'al-Ḥalláj, 2 vols., Paris, 1922), we are now better acquainted than with any other Moslem mystic. His doctrine exhibits some remarkable affinities with Christianity and bears no traces of the pantheism attributed to him by later Ṣúfís as well as by Von Kremer and subsequent European writers. Cf. the summary given by Father Joseph Maréchal, op. cit., pp. 249-281, and The Idea of Personality in Ṣúfism (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 26-37.

[P. 402], l. 9. For Ibnu ’l-‘Arabí's theory of the Perfect Man, see Tor Andrae, Die Person Muhammeds, p. 339 foll., and for the same theory as expounded by ‘Abdu ’l-Karím al-Jílí († circ. 1410 a.d.), a follower of Ibnu ’l-‘Arabí, in his famous treatise entitled al-Insán al-Kámil, cf. Studies in Islamic Mysticism, pp. 77-142.

[P. 456], l. 1 foll. Here, though he is out of place in such an academic company, mention should have been made of Ibn Baṭṭúṭa of Tangier († 1377), whose frank and entertaining story of his almost world-wide travels, entitled Tuḥfatu ’l-Nuẓẓár, is described by its latest translator, Mr H. A. R. Gibb, as "an authority for the social and cultural history of post-Mongol Islam."

[P. 465], last line. For a summary of the doctrines and history of the Wahhábís, see the article Wahhābīs by Professor D. S. Margoliouth in Hastings' Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics.

[P. 469]. La littérature arabe au xix^e siècle, by L. Cheikho (Beyrouth, 1908-10), which deals chiefly with the literature produced by the Christian Arabs of Syria, deserves mention as one of the few works on the subject written in a European language. The influence of Western ideas on Moslem theology may be studied in the Risálatu ’l-tauḥíd of the great Egyptian divine, Muḥammad ‘Abduh (1842-1905), which has been translated into French by B. Michel and Mustapha ‘Abd el Razik (Paris, 1925).

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS BY
EUROPEAN AUTHORS

The following list is intended to give students of Arabic as well as those who cannot read that language the means of obtaining further information concerning the various topics which fall within the scope of a work such as this. Since anything approaching to a complete bibliography is out of the question, I have mentioned only a few of the most important translations from Arabic into English, French, German, and Latin; and I have omitted (1) monographs on particular Arabic writers, whose names, together with the principal European works relating to them, will be found in Brockelmann's great History of Arabic Literature, and (2) a large number of books and articles which appeal to specialists rather than to students. Additional information is supplied by E. G. Browne in his Literary History of Persia, vol. i, pp. 481-496, and D. B. Macdonald in his Development of Muslim Theology, etc. (London, 1903), pp. 358-367, while the Appendix to H. A. R. Gibb's Arabic Literature (Oxford University Press, 1926) contains a well-chosen list of books of reference and translations. Those who require more detailed references may consult the Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux Arabes publ. dans l'Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885, by V. Chauvin (Liège, 1892-1903), the Orientalische Bibliographie, edited by A. Müller, E. Kuhn, and L. Scherman (Berlin, 1887—), the Handbuch der Islam-Litteratur, by D. G. Pfannmüller (Berlin and Leipzig, 1923), and the Catalogue of the Arabic Books in the British Museum, by A. G. Ellis, 2 vols. (London, 1894-1902) with the Supplementary Catalogue, by A. S. Fulton and A. G. Ellis (London, 1926).

As a rule, titles of monographs and works of a specialistic character which have been already given in the footnotes are not repeated in the Bibliography.