There was also the same tendency in both nations to utter ecstatically sententious and moral sayings. Though only one poem in the Muallaqat, that by Zuhayr, really moralizes, the later Arabic poets always loved to give vent to reflections, proverbs, words of wisdom. Two of the best Arabic poems of the kind are the improvisations of the vagabond Abu Zayd in the 11th and 50th Assembly
of Hariri's Assemblies. Two finer poems which moralize without losing their poetic quality can scarcely be found in Arabic literature. Most of the reflective poetry of those two pessimistic, skeptic poets Abu l'Atahiya and Abu 'l Ala al Maarri are of this kind. The ecstatic potentiality in reflection is seen in Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
The chief phase of Pre-islamic poetry that will not appeal to us is in the great body of martial verse where love of robbery and bloodshed, cruelty, revenge and hatred are fostered. The Bedouins gave us a transcript of their life. They dwelt in their vices with frankness, but they tried to make virtues out of them. We cannot blame them for not having our ideals of peace and it is also doubtful if cruelties in their warfare were greater than those in our own day.
The poets before Islam sang about revenge and fighting in a way that even nauseates us. The martial spirit in the Romance of Antar has made it less popular with us than The Arabian Nights, for the former work is an account of the fighting Arabs of the desert, and the latter deals largely with the merchant Arabs of the city. Even the great and beautiful Song of Vengeance by the Arab Robin Hood, Ta abbata Sharran, of which we have a second hand translation by Goethe, and fine verse versions by R. A. Nicholson, Literary History of the Arabs (pp. 98-100), and by Charles J. Lyall on pages 48-49 of Arabic Poetry, is very cruel.
Pre-islamic poetry reeks too much with the ecstasy of delight to shed blood, in which tendency it of course differs little from the early poetry of other nations. However, the remarkable thing is that the hearts of these warriors possessed so many fine feelings. One of the noblest descriptions of woman is by a companion of the brigand
Sharran, from the Mufaddaliyyat, a translation of which appears on pages 81-82 of Lyall's volume.
The Arabian poetry which has been most frequently translated and written about in English is Pre-islamic poetry. In especial, the Muallaqat, or the seven so-called suspended poems, has been translated several times. Sir William Jones made the first translation in prose in the eighteenth century. In modern times we have had several translations, one by Wilfrid Blunt and his wife. There has been considerable support for the critical view that these poems represent the highest achievement of Arabic poetry, both among Arabs themselves and Aryan critics. Imru'ul Qays, who flourished in the sixth century A.D., is the most famous of the poets in the collection, and is regarded by many as the greatest Arabian poet. R. A. Nicholson and Clement Huart have given accounts of the Muallaqat in their histories of Arabic Literature. Professor Mackail has published in his Oxford Lectures an essay on these odes and D. Nöldeke has given us a full study of them in the Encyclopedia Britannica. I shall not therefore dwell on them except to say that they were collected in the eighth century by Hammad, and that most of these poems deal with warriors rather than lovers, though they contain love laments.
Nicholson and others regard the Abbasid period as the great era of Arabic poets. This period extended from the accession of Saffah in 749 to the destruction of Bagdad by the Mongols in 1258. Abu Nuwas, Abu 'l Atahiya, Mutanabbi and Abu 'l Ala al Maarri are recognized by Nicholson as the Gods of Arabian poetry, and we in our smug inordinate satisfaction with Aryan poetry, have not even translated or paid attention to them. Abu Nuwas, who flourished in the early part of the ninth century, sang of love and wine and led a riotous and
immoral life, and is familiar to the reader of the Arabian Nights as the jester of Harun al Rashid. His Divan is to be found in German but not in English. Many consider him the greatest of the Arabian poets. Abu 'l Atahiya is a pessimist and philosophical poet thinker. He was imprisoned by Harun for having ceased writing love poetry because he was hopelessly in love with a slave girl. He described common emotions and used simple language instead of far-fetched conceits. Mutanabbi in the tenth century was the most famous of all the Arabian poets, but he is criticized by many for his rhetoric and ornament. He is the master of the grand style. Then we have in the next century the great Abu 'l Ala al Maarri, who has been called the predecessor of Omar Khayyam. Bauerlein and Rihani have translated some of his verses into English, and Bauerlein has also devoted a little volume to him in The Wisdom of the East series. Abu 'l Ala is the most modern of the Arabian poets. He was a freethinker and a pessimist and his Luzumiyyat reads like a work of one of our rational poets. It attacks all religion including Islam. His letters have been translated into English by Professor Margoliouth.[218-A]
I have already several times mentioned the most famous Arabic work next to the Koran, the Maqamat or Assemblies, by Hariri (1054-1122). The tales have been called immoral, but Abu Zayd interests us as Gil Blas does. The work written in rhymed prose is most fascinating reading. There is a complete translation of this by T. Chenery and F. Steingass, 1867-1898.