Arabic Authors / A Manual of Arabian History and Literature

by F. F. Arbuthnot

[Footnote 4: Nerd.—This game is mentioned as early as the Shah-Namah, the author of which, Firdausi, was of opinion that it is of genuine Persian, and not of Indian origin, like chess, but this assertion is not necessarily correct. Hyde has described the game in his 'Historia Nerdiludii,' and it resembles somewhat the German puff and triktrak, and the English backgammon. It is played on a board divided into black-and-white compartments, with a black and a white house in the centre. The moves are made according to the numbers that come up on the throw of two dice.]

Of the Spanish Khalifs, mention only will be made of the ninth sovereign of the Benou Omaiyide dynasty in Andalusia, viz., Hakim II., who died A.D. 976. Among the five Arab rulers of Spain—viz., three Abd-ar-Rahmans and two Hakims—who have acquired everlasting fame in history as special friends of science and patrons of learned men, Abd-ar-Rahman III. and Hakim II. are the greatest and most prominent. They stand in the Arab literary history of the West as high as Harun and his son Mamun do in the history of the literature of the East. As Mamun was the greatest of the Benou Abbas Khalifs of Baghdad who promoted science and art, so Hakim II. was the greatest of the Benou Omaiyides in Cordova. From his earliest youth he had received a most careful scientific education, and applied his energies to study, as he could not devote them to public affairs on account of the long duration of his father's reign, from A.D. 912 to 961. Hakim's father, Abd-ar-Rahman III., invited the learned Abu Ali Ismail Al Kali, the philologist and author, from the court of Baghdad, where he enjoyed the greatest consideration with the Khalif Mutwakkil, to Cordova, and entrusted him with the education of his son, who, later on, composed a Diwan (collection of poems), divided into twenty parts, bearing, like the Surahs, or Chapters of the Koran, the most sublime objects of nature as titles, such as 'Heaven,' 'the Stars,' 'the Dawn,' 'the Night,' etc. Hakim pursued his studies under Kali for twenty years, with as much pleasure as advantage, and after ascending the throne, science and art still remained his companions. When his father died, and he assumed the Government, he led the funeral procession, surrounded by his Andalusian, Slavonic, and Mograbin body-guard, and interred the corpse with the greatest pomp in the mausoleum of Rozafa, and after that accepted the homage of his Viziers, Amirs, Kayids, and Kadis. Astrologers and poets heralded at Cordova and in the whole of Andalusia the continuation of the father's prosperous reign by his son, and spoke the truth this time.

Hakim, who had already as a youth been fond of books, now, when he became sovereign, fully satisfied this predilection, which had grown to be a passion. He spared neither trouble nor expense in collecting in his Merwan palace the rarest and most costly books in every branch of science from all countries. He sent special commissioners to Egypt, Syria, Irak, and Persia to purchase books. At Baghdad, Muhammad bin Turkhan was charged with the business of purchasing books, or getting them copied, for which purpose he had an establishment of calligraphers and stenographers; because of some books beautiful, and of others rapidly made, copies were required. He procured all the genealogies, all the histories, and all the poems of the Arabs; all works on law and jurisprudence, on grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, philology, mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic and geography, composed in Arabic. Thus the library of the Merwan palace became not only the richest in Islam, but also the best arranged, by the care which he bestowed on it. The catalogue consisted of forty-four fascicles, each of fifty leaves, so that the whole constituted a volume of two thousand two hundred leaves, two-fifths of which were filled with titles of poetical works only. In this catalogue the titles of the books were inserted, with the names of their authors, their descent, birth-place, the year of their birth and of their decease, in the most accurate manner, to serve as a model for other libraries, of which Spain contained so many. This library alone is said to have consisted of six hundred thousand volumes, a number never surpassed by any earlier or later libraries in Islam.

To his two brothers, who loved the sciences as ardently as himself, Hakim entrusted the care of the libraries, and of public instruction, appointing Abdul Latif to be the chief librarian, and another man to be the director of studies. He kept up intercourse with the great scholars of the East and of the West, with sundry persons in Syria, with learned men in Egypt, and with Abul Faraj Al-Ispahani (author of the great anthology 'Kitab-ul-Aghani') in Irak, giving houses and salaries to those who chose to reside at his court.

A few words must be said about the establishment of places of learning which were celebrated at the time. The first university, in the sense in which such an institution is at present understood, was flourishing in Syria long before any seat of learning of this kind had been established in Europe; and there was another in Egypt. The first institution was called 'The Society of the Brethren of Purity,' and the second (opened at Cairo on the 24th May, A.D. 1005) was founded by Al-Hakim-bramrillah, and bore the name of Dar-ul Hikinat, or Abode of Wisdom. It was under this same name that the library of the Khalifs was formerly known at Baghdad. Later on the great vizier Nizam-ul-Mulk founded a high school at Baghdad, in A.D. 1066. It was not the first that had been established in Islam, but it eclipsed all others of the kind by the abilities of the professors who worked there, viz., the Imam Abu Ishak Shirazi, Al-Ghazali, and others. With the Society of the Brethren of Purity, mentioned above, there were two men closely connected, viz., Al-Tavhidi, who died A.D. 985, and Al-Majridi, who died A.D. 1004, the former in the East, the latter in the West, and both of them are deserving of the general name of philosopher. So much for the Eastern Khalifates. As regards the Western Khalifate, still greater attention was paid to education and learning there. The schools and lectures were attended by many Europeans, who were not, perhaps, sufficiently grateful to the Arabs for keeping up a progress in literature and science while Europe itself was struggling for emancipation from the dark ages which followed the higher cultures of Greece and of Rome.

THIRD PERIOD.

From the fall of Baghdad, in A.D. 1258, to the present time.

The conquest of Baghdad by the Mughals is a most remarkable period, not only in the literature, but also in the history, of the Arabs. It marks the final extinction of the Abbaside dynasty, from whom the ancient power and glory had vanished to such a degree that the authority of the Khalifs may almost literally be said to have been confined to the city only. Halaku Khan, the brother of the grand Khan Kubilai, and grandson of Jenghiz Khan, took and sacked Baghdad, keeping the Khalif imprisoned for some time, but slaying him at last, with his sons and several thousand Abbasides. Al-Mustaa'sim was the thirty-seventh and last Khalif of the house of Abbas, which had reigned over five hundred years, and was now extinguished.

Halaku Khan attacked Baghdad by the advice of Khojah Nasir-uddin Tusy, the great Persian astronomer and mathematician. Nasir-uddin had entered the service of the last prince of the Assassins only for the purpose of avenging himself on the Khalif, who had disparaged one of his works. When, however, he became aware of Halaku's power, he not only betrayed his new master to him, but led the Mughal conqueror also to Baghdad. After the burning of the library at Alamut (the stronghold of the Assassins, where they kept their literary treasures) and the sacking of Baghdad by Halaku Khan, the erection of the astronomical observatory at Maragha, under the direction of Nasir-uddin Tusy, was the first sign that Arab civilization and the cultivation of science had not been entirely extinguished by Tartar barbarism. The learned viziers who stood by the side of the conqueror, such as the two brothers Juvaini, were Persians, and therefore hardly belong to the history of Arab literature. But the fact that one of these two historians now wrote 'The Heart Opener,' also implies that the invasion of the barbarians had not quite put an end to literary activity.

More than ten historians flourished at the beginning of this period whose names terminated with 'din,' such as Baha-uddin, Imad-uddin, Kamal-uddin, etc., and they were contemporaries of the Arab Plutarch Ibn Khallikan, already mentioned and described in the preceding period.