aa bbba ccca ddda.
Many of these songs and ballads were composed in the vulgar dialect and without regard to the rules of classical prosody. The troubadour Ibn Quzmán († 1160 a.d.) first raised the zajal to literary rank. Here is an example of the muwashshaḥ:—
"Come, hand the precious cup to me, And brim it high with a golden sea! Let the old wine circle from guest to guest, While the bubbles gleam like pearls on its breast, So that night is of darkness dispossessed. How it foams and twinkles in fiery glee! 'Tis drawn from the Pleiads' cluster, perdie.
Pass it, to music's melting sound, Here on this flowery carpet round, Where gentle dews refresh the ground And bathe my limbs deliciously In their cool and balmy fragrancy.
Alone with me in the garden green A singing-girl enchants the scene: Her smile diffuses a radiant sheen. I cast off shame, for no spy can see, And 'Hola,' I cry, 'let us merry be!'"[769]
True to the traditions of their family, the Spanish Umayyads loved poetry, music, and polite literature a great deal better than the Koran. Even the Falcon of Verses by ‘Abdu ’l-Raḥmán I. Quraysh, ‘Abdu ’l-Raḥmán I, if the famous verses on the Palm-tree are really by him, concealed something of the softer graces under his grim exterior. It is said that in his gardens at Cordova there was a solitary date-palm, which had been transplanted from Syria, and that one day ‘Abdu ’l-Raḥmán, as he gazed upon it, remembered his native land and felt the bitterness of exile and exclaimed:—
"O Palm, thou art a stranger in the West, Far from thy Orient home, like me unblest. Weep! But thou canst not. Dumb, dejected tree, Thou art not made to sympathise with me. Ah, thou wouldst weep, if thou hadst tears to pour, For thy companions on Euphrates' shore; But yonder tall groves thou rememberest not, As I, in hating foes, have my old friends forgot."[770]
At the court of ‘Abdu ’l-Raḥmán II (822-852 a.d.) a Persian musician was prime favourite. This was Ziryáb, a Ziryáb the musician. client of the Caliph Mahdí and a pupil of the celebrated singer, Isḥáq al-Mawṣilí.[771] Isḥáq, seeing in the young man a dangerous rival to himself, persuaded him to quit Baghdád and seek his fortune in Spain. ‘Abdu ’l-Raḥmán received him with open arms, gave him a magnificent house and princely salary, and bestowed upon him every mark of honour imaginable. The versatile and accomplished artist wielded a vast influence. He set the fashion in all things appertaining to taste and manners; he fixed the toilette, sanctioned the cuisine, and prescribed what dress should be worn in the different seasons of the year. The kings of Spain took him as a model, and his authority was constantly invoked and universally recognised in that country down to the last days of Moslem rule.[772] Ziryáb was only one of many talented and learned men who came to Spain from the East, while the list of Spanish savants who journeyed "in quest of knowledge" (fí ṭalabi ’l-‘ilm) to Africa and Egypt, to the Holy Cities of Arabia, to the great capitals of Syria and ‘Iráq, to Khurásán, Transoxania, and in some cases even to China, includes, as may be seen from the perusal of Maqqarí's fifth chapter, nearly all the eminent scholars and men of letters whom Moslem Spain has produced. Thus a lively exchange of ideas was continually in movement, and so little provincialism existed that famous Andalusian poets, like Ibn Hání and Ibn Zaydún, are described by admiring Eastern critics as the Buḥturís and Mutanabbís of the West.
The tenth century of the Christian era is a fortunate and illustrious period in Spanish history. Under ‘Abdu ’l-Raḥmán III and his successor, Ḥakam II, the nation, hitherto torn asunder by civil war, bent its united energies to the advancement of material and intellectual culture. Ḥakam was an enthusiastic bibliophile. He sent his agents in every direction to purchase manuscripts, and collected 400,000 volumes in his palace, which was The Library of Ḥakam II. thronged with librarians, copyists, and bookbinders. All these books, we are told, he had himself read, and he annotated most of them with his own hand. His munificence to scholars knew no bounds. He made a present of 1,000 dínárs to Abu ’l-Faraj of Iṣfahán, in order to secure the first copy that was published of the great 'Book of Songs' (Kitábu ’l-Aghání), on which the author was then engaged. Besides honouring and encouraging the learned, Ḥakam took measures to spread the benefits of education amongst the poorest of his subjects. With this view he founded twenty-seven free schools in the capital and paid the teachers out of his private purse. Whilst in Christian Europe the rudiments of learning were confined to the clergy, in Spain almost every one could read and write.