A Literary History of the Arabs

by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

"O God!" he said, "Thou knowest that the Eight Paradises are little beside the honour which Thou hast done unto me, and beside Thy love, and beside Thy giving me intimacy with the praise of Thy name, and beside the peace of mind which Thou hast given me when I meditate on Thy majesty." And again: "You will not attain to righteousness until you traverse six passes (‘aqabát): the first is that you shut the door of pleasure and open the door of hardship; the second, that you shut the door of eminence and open the door of abasement; the third, that you shut the door of ease and open the door of affliction; the fourth, that you shut the door of sleep and open the door of wakefulness; the fifth, that you shut the door of riches and open the door of poverty; and the sixth, that you shut the door of expectation and open the door of making yourself ready for death."

Shaqíq, also of Balkh, laid particular stress on the duty of leaving one's self entirely in God's hands (tawakkul), a Shaqíq of Balkh. term which is practically synonymous with passivity; e.g., the mutawakkil must make no effort to obtain even the barest livelihood, he must not ask for anything, nor engage in any trade: his business is with God alone. One of Shaqíq's sayings was, "Nine-tenths of devotion consist in flight from mankind, the remaining tenth in silence." Similarly, Fuḍayl b. ‘Iyáḍ. Fuḍayl b. ‘Iyáḍ, a converted captain of banditti, declared that "to abstain for men's sake from doing anything is hypocrisy, while to do anything for men's sake is idolatry." It may be noticed as an argument against the Indian origin of Ṣúfiism that although the three Ṣúfís who have been mentioned were natives of Khurásán or Transoxania, and therefore presumably in touch with Buddhistic ideas, no trace can be found in their sayings of the doctrine of dying to self (faná), which plays a great part in subsequent Ṣúfiism, and which Von Kremer and others have identified with Nirvána. We now come to a more interesting personality, in whom the ascetic and quietistic type of Ṣúfiism is transfigured by emotion and begins clearly to reveal the direction of its next advance. Every one knows that women have borne a distinguished part in the annals of European mysticism: St. Teresa, Madame Guyon, Catharine of Siena, and Juliana of Norwich, to mention but a few names at random. And notwithstanding the intellectual death to which the majority of Moslem women are condemned by their Prophet's ordinance, the Ṣúfís, like the Roman Catholics, can boast a goodly number of female saints. The oldest of these, and by Rábi‘a al-‘Adawiyya. far the most renowned, is Rábi‘a, who belonged to the tribe of ‘Adí, whence she is generally called Rábi‘a al-‘Adawiyya. She was a native of Baṣra and died at Jerusalem, probably towards the end of the second century of Islam: her tomb was an object of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, as we learn from Ibn Khallikán († 1282 a.d.). Although the sayings and verses attributed to her by Ṣúfí writers may be of doubtful authenticity, there is every reason to suppose that they fairly represent the actual character of her devotion, which resembled that of all feminine mystics in being inspired by tender and ardent feeling. She was asked: "Do you love God Almighty?" "Yes." "Do you hate the Devil?" "My love of God," she replied, "leaves me no leisure to hate the Devil. I saw the Prophet in a dream. He said, 'O Rábi‘a, do you love me?' I said, 'O Apostle of God, who does not love thee?—but love of God hath so absorbed me that neither love nor hate of any other thing remains in my heart.'" Rábi‘a is said to have spoken the following verses:—

"Two ways I love Thee: selfishly, And next, as worthy is of Thee. 'Tis selfish love that I do naught Save think on Thee with every thought; 'Tis purest love when Thou dost raise The veil to my adoring gaze. Not mine the praise in that or this, Thine is the praise in both, I wis."[448]

Whether genuine or not, these lines, with their mixture of devotion and speculation—the author distinguishes the illuminative from the contemplative life and manifestly regards the latter as the more excellent way—serve to mark the end of the ascetic school of Ṣúfiism and the rise of a new theosophy which, under the same name and still professing to be in full accord with the Koran and the Sunna, was founded to some extent upon ideas of extraneous origin—ideas irreconcilable with any revealed religion, and directly opposed to the severe and majestic simplicity of the Muḥammadan articles of faith.

The opening century of Islam was not favourable to literature. At first conquest, expansion, and organisation, then Umayyad literature. civil strife absorbed the nation's energies; then, under the Umayyads, the old pagan spirit asserted itself once more. Consequently the literature of this period consists almost exclusively of poetry, which bears few marks of Islamic influence. I need scarcely refer to the view which long prevailed in Europe that Muḥammad corrupted the taste of his countrymen by setting up the Koran as an incomparable model of poetic style, and by condemning the admired productions of the heathen bards and the art of poetry itself; nor remind my readers that in the first place the Koran is not poetical in form (so that it could not serve as a model of this The decline of Arabian poetry not due to Muḥammad. kind), and secondly, according to Muḥammadan belief, is the actual Word of God, therefore sui generis and beyond imitation. Again, the poets whom the Prophet condemned were his most dangerous opponents: he hated them not as poets but as propagators and defenders of false ideals, and because they ridiculed his teaching, while on the contrary he honoured and rewarded those who employed their talents in the right way. If the nomad minstrels and cavaliers who lived, as they sang, the free life of the desert were never equalled by the brilliant laureates of imperial Damascus and Baghdád, the causes of the decline cannot be traced to Muḥammad's personal attitude, but are due to various circumstances for which he is only responsible in so far as he founded a religious and political system that revolutionised Arabian society. The poets of the period with which we are now dealing follow slavishly in the footsteps of the ancients, as though Islam had never been. Instead of celebrating the splendid victories and heroic deeds of Moslem warriors, the bard living in a great city still weeps over the relics of his beloved's encampment in the wilderness, still rides away through The Umayyad poets. the sandy waste on the peerless camel, whose fine points he particularly describes; and if he should happen to be addressing the Caliph, it is ten to one that he will credit that august personage with all the virtues of a Bedouin Shaykh. "Fortunately the imitation of the antique qaṣída, at any rate with the greatest Umayyad poets, is to some extent only accessory to another form of art that excites our historical interest in a high degree: namely, the occasional poems (very numerous in almost all these writers), which are suggested by the mood of the moment and can shed a vivid light on contemporary history."[449]

The conquests made by the successors of the Prophet brought enormous wealth into Mecca and Medína, and Music and song in the Holy Cities. when the Umayyad aristocracy gained the upper hand in ‘Uthmán's Caliphate, these towns developed a voluptuous and dissolute life which broke through every restriction that Islam had imposed. The increase of luxury produced a corresponding refinement of the poetic art. Although music was not unknown to the pagan Arabs, it had hitherto been cultivated chiefly by foreigners, especially Greek and Persian singing-girls. But in the first century after the Hijra we hear of several Arab singers,[450] natives of Mecca and Medína, who set favourite passages to music: henceforth the words and the melody are inseparably united, as we learn from the Kitábu ’l-Aghání or 'Book of Songs,' where hundreds of examples are to be found. Amidst the gay throng of pleasure-seekers women naturally played a prominent part, and love, which had hitherto formed in most cases merely the conventional prelude to an ode, now began to be sung for its own sake. In this Peninsular school, as it may be named in contrast with the bold and masculine strain of the great Provincial poets whom we are about to mention, the palm unquestionably belongs to ‘Umar b. Abí Rabí‘a († 719 a.d.), ‘Umar b. Abí Rabí‘a. the son of a rich Meccan merchant. He passed the best part of his life in the pursuit of noble dames, who alone inspired him to sing. His poetry was so seductive that it was regarded by devout Moslems as "the greatest crime ever committed against God," and so charming withal that ‘Abdulláh b. ‘Abbás, the Prophet's cousin and a famous authority on the Koran and the Traditions, could not refrain from getting by heart some erotic verses which ‘Umar recited to him.[451] The Arabs said, with truth, that the tribe of Quraysh had won distinction in every field save poetry, but we must allow that ‘Umar b. Abí Rabí‘a is a clear exception to this rule. His diction, like that of Catullus, has all the unaffected ease of refined conversation. Here are a few lines:—

"Blame me no more, O comrades! but to-day Quietly with me beside the howdahs stay. Blame not my love for Zaynab, for to her And hers my heart is pledged a prisoner. Ah, can I ever think of how we met Once at al-Khayf, and feel no fond regret? My song of other women was but jest: She reigns alone, eclipsing all the rest. Hers is my love sincere, 'tis she the flame Of passion kindles—so, a truce to blame!"[452]

We have no space to dwell on the minor poets of the same school, al-‘Arjí (a kinsman of the Umayyads), al-Aḥwaṣ, and many others. It has been pointed out by Dr. C. Brockelmann that the love-poetry of this epoch is largely of popular origin; e.g., the songs attributed to Jamíl, in which Buthayna is addressed, and to Majnún—the hero of countless Love-ballads. Persian and Turkish romances which celebrate his love for Laylá—are true folk-songs such as occur in the Arabian Nights, and may be heard in the streets of Beyrout or on the banks of the Tigris at the present day. Many of them are extremely beautiful. I take the following verses from a poem which is said to have been composed by Jamíl:—

"Oh, might it flower anew, that youthful prime, And restore to us, Buthayna, the bygone time! And might we again be blest as we wont to be, When thy folk were nigh and grudged what thou gavest me! Shall I ever meet Buthayna alone again, Each of us full of love as a cloud of rain? Fast in her net was I when a lad, and till This day my love is growing and waxing still. I have spent my lifetime, waiting for her to speak, And the bloom of youth is faded from off my cheek; But I will not suffer that she my suit deny, My love remains undying, though all things die!"[453]

The names of al-Akhṭal, al-Farazdaq, and Jarír stand out pre-eminently in the list of Umayyad poets. They were men Poetry in the provinces. of a very different stamp from the languishing Minnesingers and carpet-knights who, like Jamíl, refused to battle except on the field of love. It is noteworthy that all three were born and bred in Mesopotamia. The motherland was exhausted; her ambitious and enterprising youth poured into the provinces, which now become the main centres of intellectual activity.