[121] Ḳur. xiv. 49.
[122] Ḳur. lxxxix. 24.
CHAPTER VI.
LITERATURE.
Perhaps there are no people in the world who are such enthusiastic admirers of literature, and so excited by romantic tales, as the Arabs. Eloquence, with them, is lawful magic: it exercises over their minds an irresistible influence. "I swear by God," said their Prophet, "verily abuse of infidels in verse is worse to them than arrows."[123]
In the purest, or Heroic Age of Arabic literature, which was anterior to the triumph of the Mohammadan religion, the conquest which the love of eloquence could achieve over the sanguinary and vindictive feelings of the Arabs was most remarkably exemplified in the annual twenty days' fair of ´Okáḍh.
The fair of ´Okáḍh "was not only a great mart opened annually to all the tribes of Arabia; but it was also a literary congress, or rather a general concourse of virtues, of glory and of poetry, whither the hero-poets resorted to celebrate their exploits in rhyming verse, and peacefully to contend for every kind of honour. This fair was held in the district of Mekkeh, between Eṭ-Ṭáïf and Nakhleh and was opened at the new moon of Dhu-l-Ḳaạdeh; that is to say, at the commencement of a period of three sacred months, during which all war was suspended and homicide interdicted.... How is it possible to conceive that men whose wounds were always bleeding, who had always acts of vengeance to execute, vengeances to dread, could at a certain epoch impose silence upon their animosities, so as tranquilly to sit beside a mortal enemy? How could the brave who required the blood of a father, a brother, or a son, according to the phraseology of the desert and of the Bible,[124] who long, perhaps, had pursued in vain the murderer,—meet him, accost him peacefully at ´Okáḍh, and only assault with cadences and rhymes him whose presence alone seemed to accuse him of impotence or cowardice,—him whom he was bound to slay, under pain of infamy, after the expiration of the truce? In fine, how could he hear a panegyric celebrating a glory acquired at his own expense, and sustain the fire of a thousand looks, and yet appear unmoved? Had the Arabs no longer any blood in their veins during the continuance of the fair?
"These embarrassing questions ... were determined [to a great degree], during the age of Arab paganism, in a manner the simplest and most refined: at the fair of ´Okáḍh, the heroes were masked [or veiled]. In the recitations and improvisations, the voice of the orator was aided by that of a rhapsodist or crier, who was stationed near him, and repeated his words. There is a similar office in the public prayers; it is that of the muballigh (transmitter), who is employed to repeat in a loud voice what is said in a lower tone by the Imám.... The use of the mask [or veil] might, however, be either adopted or dispensed with ad libitum; as is proved by the narratives of a great number of quarrels begun and ended at ´Okáḍh....