Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

After the fall of the Roman empire in the fifth century A.D., when the western world sank into barbarism, and the inhabitants, ever menaced by famine or the sword, found full occupation in struggling against civil wars, feudal tyranny, and the invasion of barbarians; when poetry was unknown, philosophy was proscribed as rebellion against religion, and barbarous dialects had usurped the place of that beautiful Latin language which had so long connected the nations of the West, and preserved to them so many treasures of thought and taste, the Arabians, who by their conquests and fanaticism had contributed more than any other nation to abolish the cultivation of science and literature, having at length established their empire, in turn devoted themselves to letters. Masters of the country of the magi and the Chaldeans, of Egypt, the first storehouse of human science, of Asia Minor, where poetry and the fine arts had their birth, and of Africa, the country of impetuous eloquence and subtle intellect—they seemed to unite in themselves the advantages of all the nations which they had thus subjugated. Innumerable treasures had been the fruit of their conquests, and this hitherto rude and uncultivated nation now began to indulge in the most unbounded luxury. Possessed of all the delights that human industry, quickened by boundless riches, could procure, with all that could flatter the senses and attach the heart to life, they now attempted to mingle with these the pleasures of the intellect, the cultivation of the arts and sciences, and all that is most excellent in human knowledge. In this new career, their conquests were not less rapid than they had been in the field; nor was the empire which they founded less extended. With a celerity equally surprising, it rose to a gigantic height, but it rested on a foundation no less insecure, and it was quite as transitory in its duration.

The Hegira, or flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, corresponds with the year 622 of our era, and the supposed burning of the Alexandrian library by Amrou, the general of the Caliph Omar, with the year 641. This is the period of the deepest barbarism among the Saracens, and this event, doubtful as it is, has left a melancholy proof of their contempt for letters. A century had scarcely elapsed from the period to which this barbarian outrage is referred, when the family of the Abassides, who mounted the throne of the Caliphs in 750, introduced a passionate love of art, of science, and of poetry. In the literature of Greece, nearly eight centuries of progressive cultivation succeeding the Trojan war had prepared the way for the age of Pericles. In that of Rome, the age of Augustus was also in the eighth century after the foundation of the city. In French literature, the age of Louis XIV. was twelve centuries subsequent to Clovis, and eight after the development of the first rudiments of the language. But, in the rapid progress of the Arabian empire, the age of Al Mamoun, the Augustus of Bagdad, was not removed more than one hundred and fifty years from the foundation of the monarchy. All the literature of the Arabians bears the marks of this rapid development.

Ali, the fourth Caliph from Mohammed, was the first who extended any protection to letters. His rival and successor, Moawyiah, the first of the Ommyiades (661-680), assembled at his court all who were most distinguished by scientific acquirements; he surrounded himself with poets; and as he had subjected to his dominion many of the Grecian islands and provinces, the sciences of Greece under him first began to obtain any influence over the Arabians.

After the extinction of the dynasty of the Ommyiades, that of the Abassides bestowed a still more powerful patronage on letters. The celebrated Haroun al Raschid (786-809) acquired a glorious reputation by the protection he afforded to letters. He never undertook a journey without carrying with him at least a hundred men of science in his train, and he never built a mosque without attaching to it a school.

But the true protector and father of Arabic literature was Al Mamoun, the son of Haroun al Raschid (813-833), who rendered Bagdad the centre of literature. He invited to his court from every part of the world all the learned men with whose existence he was acquainted, and he retained them by rewards, honors, and distinctions of every kind. He exacted, as the most precious tribute from the conquered provinces, all the important books and literary relics that could be discovered. Hundreds of camels might be seen entering Bagdad, loaded with nothing but manuscripts and papers, and those most proper for instruction were translated into Arabic. Instructors, translators, and commentators formed the court of Al Mamoun, which appeared to be rather a learned academy, than the seat of government in a warlike empire. The Caliph himself was much attached to the study of mathematics, which he pursued with brilliant success. He conceived the grand design of measuring the earth, which was accomplished by his mathematicians, at his own expense. Not less generous than enlightened, Al Mamoun, when he pardoned one of his relatives who had revolted against him, exclaimed, "If it were known what pleasure I experience in granting pardon, all who have offended against me would come and confess their crimes."

The progress of the Arabians in science was proportioned to the zeal of the sovereign. In every town of the empire schools, colleges, and academies were established. Bagdad was the capital of letters as well as of the Caliphs, but Bassora and Cufa almost equaled that city in reputation, and in the number of celebrated poems and treatises that they produced. Balkh, Ispahan, and Samarcand were equally the homes of science. Cairo contained a great number of colleges; in the towns of Fez and Morocco the most magnificent buildings were appropriated to the purposes of instruction, and in their rich libraries were preserved those precious volumes which had been lost in other places.

What Bagdad was to Asia, Cordova was to Europe, where, particularly in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Arabs were the pillars of literature. At this period, when learning found scarcely anywhere either rest or encouragement, the Arabians were employed in collecting and diffusing it in the three great divisions of the world. Students traveled from France and other European countries to the Arabian schools in Spain, particularly to learn medicine and mathematics. Besides the academy at Cordova, there were established fourteen others in different parts of Spain, exclusive of the higher schools. The Arabians made the most rapid advancement in all the departments of learning, especially in arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. In the various cities of Spain, seventy libraries were opened for public instruction at the period when all the rest of Europe, without books, without learning, without cultivation, was plunged in the most disgraceful ignorance. The number of Arabic authors which Spain produced was so prodigious, that many Arabian bibliographers wrote learned treatises on the authors born in particular towns, or on those among the Spaniards who devoted themselves to a single branch of study, as philosophy, medicine, mathematics, or poetry. Thus, throughout the vast extent of the Arabian empire, the progress of letters had followed that of arms, and for five centuries this literature preserved all its brilliancy.

5. GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC.—The perfection of the language was one of the first objects of the Arabian scholars, and from the rival schools of Cufa and Bassora a number of distinguished men proceeded, who analyzed with the greatest subtlety all its rules and aided in perfecting it. As early as in the age of Ali, the fourth Caliph, Arabian literature boasted of a number of scientific grammarians. Prosody and the metric art were reduced to systems. Dictionaries of the language were composed, some of which are highly esteemed at the present day. Among these may be mentioned the "Al Sehah," or Purity, and "El Kamus," or the Ocean, which is considered the best dictionary of the Arabian language. The study of rhetoric was united to that of grammar, and the most celebrated works of the Greeks on this art were translated and adapted to the Arabic. After the age of Mohammed and his immediate successors, popular eloquence was no longer cultivated. Eastern despotism having supplanted the liberty of the desert, the heads of the state or army regarded it beneath them to harangue the people or the soldiers; they called upon them only for obedience. But though political eloquence was of short duration among the Arabians, on the other hand they were the inventors of that species of rhetoric most cultivated at the present day, that of the academy and the pulpit. Their philosophers in these learned assemblies displayed all the measured harmony of which their language was susceptible. Mohammed had ordained that his faith should be preached in the mosques;—many of the harangues of these sacred orators are still preserved in the Escurial, and the style of them is very similar to that of the Christian orators.

6. POETRY.—Poetry still more than eloquence was the favorite occupation of the Arabians from their origin as a nation. It is said that this people alone have produced more poets than all others united. Mohammed himself, as well as some of his first companions, cultivated this art, but it was under Haroun al Raschid and his successor, Al Mamoun, and more especially under the Ommyïades of Spain that Arabic poetry attained its highest splendor. But the ancient impetuosity of expression, the passionate feeling, and the spirit of individual independence no longer characterized the productions of this period, nor is there among the numerous constellations of Arabic poets any star of distinguished magnitude. With the exception of Mohammed and a few of the Saracen conquerors and sovereigns, there is scarcely an individual of this nation whose name is familiar to the nations of Christendom.

The Arabians possess many heroic poems composed for the purpose of celebrating the praises of distinguished men, and of animating the courage of their soldiers. They do not, however, boast of any epics; their poetry is entirely lyric and didactic. They have been inexhaustible in their love poems, their elegies, their moral verses,—among which their fables may be reckoned,—their eulogistic, satirical, descriptive, and above all, their didactic poems, which have graced even the most abstruse science, as grammar, rhetoric, and arithmetic. But among all their poems, the catalogue alone of which, in the Escurial, consists of twenty-four volumes, there is not a single epic, comedy, or tragedy.