"Let the south-wind moisten with rain the desolate scene And Time efface what once was so fresh and green! Make the camel-rider free of a desert space Where high-bred camels trot with unwearied pace; Where only mimosas and thistles flourish, and where, For hunting, wolves and hyenas are nowise rare! Amongst the Bedouins seek not enjoyment out: What do they enjoy? They live in hunger and drought. Let them drink their bowls of milk and leave them alone, To whom life's finer pleasures are all unknown."[519]
Ibn Qutayba, who died towards the end of the ninth century a.d., was the first critic of importance to declare that ancients and moderns should be judged on their merits without regard to their age. He writes as follows in the Introduction to his 'Book of Poetry and Poets' (Kitábu ’l-Shi‘r wa-’l-Shu‘ará):—[520]
"In citing extracts from the works of the poets I have been guided by my own choice and have refused to admire anything Ibn Qutayba on ancient and modern poets. merely because others thought it admirable. I have not regarded any ancient with veneration on account of his antiquity nor any modern with contempt on account of his being modern, but I have taken an impartial view of both sides, giving every one his due and amply acknowledging his merit. Some of our scholars, as I am aware, pronounce a feeble poem to be good, because its author was an ancient, and include it among their chosen pieces, while they call a sterling poem bad though its only fault is that it was composed in their own time or that they have seen its author. God, however, did not restrict learning and poetry and rhetoric to a particular age nor appropriate them to a particular class, but has always distributed them in common amongst His servants, and has caused everything old to be new in its own day and every classic work to be an upstart on its first appearance."
The inevitable reaction in favour of the new poetry and of contemporary literature in general was hastened by various Revolt against classicism. circumstances which combined to overthrow the prevalent theory that Arabian heathendom and the characteristic pagan virtues—honour, courage, liberality, &c.—were alone capable of producing poetical genius. Among the chief currents of thought tending in this direction, which are lucidly set forth in Goldziher's essay, pp. 148 sqq., we may note (a) the pietistic and theological spirit fostered by the ‘Abbásid Government, and (b) the influence of foreign, pre-eminently Persian, culture. As to the former, it is manifest that devout Moslems would not be at all disposed to admit the exclusive pretensions made on behalf of the Jáhiliyya or to agree with those who exalted chivalry (muruwwa) above religion (dín). Were not the language and style of the Koran incomparably excellent? Surely the Holy Book was a more proper subject for study than heathen verses. But if Moslems began to call Pre-islamic ideals in question, it was especially the Persian ascendancy resulting from the triumph of the ‘Abbásid House that shook the old arrogant belief of the Arabs in the intellectual supremacy of their race. So far from glorying in the traditions of paganism, many people thought it grossly insulting to mention an ‘Abbásid Caliph in the same breath with heroes of the past like Ḥátim of Ṭayyi’ and Harim b. Sinán. The philosopher al-Kindí († about 850 a.d.) rebuked a poet for venturing on such odious comparisons. "Who are these Arabian vagabonds" (ṣa‘álíku ’l-‘Arab), he asked, "and what worth have they?"[521]
While Ibn Qutayba was content to urge that the modern poets should get a fair hearing, and should be judged not Critics in favour of the modern school. chronologically or philologically, but æsthetically, some of the greatest literary critics who came after him do not conceal their opinion that the new poetry is superior to the old. Tha‘álibí († 1038 a.d.) asserts that in tenderness and elegance the Pre-islamic bards are surpassed by their successors, and that both alike have been eclipsed by his contemporaries. Ibn Rashíq († circa 1070 a.d.), whose ‘Umda on the Art of Poetry is described by Ibn Khaldún as an epoch-making work, thought that the superiority of the moderns would be acknowledged if they discarded the obsolete conventions of the Ode. European readers cannot but sympathise with him when he bids the poets draw inspiration from nature and truth instead of relating imaginary journeys on a camel which they never owned, through deserts which they never saw, to a patron residing in the same city as themselves. This seems to us a very reasonable and necessary protest, but it must be remembered that the Bedouin qaṣída was not easily adaptable to the conditions of urban life, and needed complete remoulding rather than modification in detail.[522]
"In the fifth century," says Goldziher—i.e., from about 1000 a.d.—"the dogma of the unattainable perfection of Popularity of the modern poets. the heathen poets may be regarded as utterly demolished." Henceforth popular taste ran strongly in the other direction, as is shown by the immense preponderance of modern pieces in the anthologies—a favourite and characteristic branch of Arabic literature—which were compiled during the ‘Abbásid period and afterwards, and by frequent complaints of the neglect into which the ancient poetry had fallen. But although, for Moslems generally, Imru’u ’l-Qays and his fellows came to be more or less what Chaucer is to the average Englishman, the views first enunciated by Ibn Qutayba met with bitter opposition from the learned class, many of whom clung obstinately to the old philological principles of criticism, and even declined to recognise the writings of Mutanabbí and Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí as poetry, on the ground that those authors did not observe the classical 'types' (asálíb).[523] The result of such pedantry may be seen at the present day in thousands of qaṣídas, abounding in archaisms and allusions to forgotten far-off things of merely antiquarian interest, but possessing no more claim to consideration here than the Greek and Latin verses of British scholars in a literary history of the Victorian Age.
Passing now to the characteristics of the new poetry which followed the accession of the ‘Abbásids, we have to bear in Characteristics of the new poetry. mind that from first to last (with very few exceptions) it flourished under the patronage of the court. There was no organised book trade, no wealthy publishers, so that poets were usually dependent for their livelihood on the capricious bounty of the Caliphs and his favourites whom they belauded. Huge sums were paid for a successful panegyric, and the bards vied with each other in flattery of the most extravagant description. Even in writers of real genius this prostitution of their art gave rise to a great deal of the false glitter and empty bombast which are often erroneously attributed to Oriental poetry as a whole.[524] These qualities, however, are absolutely foreign to Arabian poetry of the best period. The old Bedouins who praised a man only for that which was in him, and drew their images directly from nature, stand at the opposite pole to Tha‘álibí's contemporaries. Under the Umayyads, as we have seen, little change took place. It is not until after the enthronement of the ‘Abbásids, when Persians filled the chief offices at court, and when a goodly number of poets and eminent men of learning had Persian blood in their veins, that an unmistakably new note makes itself heard. One might be tempted to surmise that the high-flown, bombastic, and ornate style of which Mutanabbí is the most illustrious exponent, and which is so marked a feature in later Muḥammadan poetry, was first introduced by the Persians and Perso-Arabs who gathered round the Caliph in Baghdád and celebrated the triumph of their own race in the person of a noble Barmecide; but this would scarcely be true. The style in question is not specially Persian; the earliest Arabic-writing poets of Íránian descent, like Bashshár b. Burd and Abú Nuwás, are (so far as I can see) without a trace of it. What the Persians brought into Arabian poetry was not a grandiose style, but a lively and graceful fancy, elegance of diction, depth and tenderness of feeling, and a rich store of ideas.
The process of transformation was aided by other causes besides the influx of Persian and Hellenistic culture: for example, by the growing importance of Islam in public life and the diffusion of a strong religious spirit among the community at large—a spirit which attained its most perfect expression in the reflective and didactic poetry of Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya. Every change of many-coloured life is depicted in the brilliant pages of these modern poets, where the reader may find, according to his mood, the maddest gaiety and the shamefullest frivolity; strains of lofty meditation mingled with a world-weary pessimism; delicate sentiment, unforced pathos, and glowing rhetoric; but seldom the manly self-reliance, the wild, invigorating freedom and inimitable freshness of Bedouin song.
It is of course impossible to do justice even to the principal ‘Abbásid poets within the limits of this chapter, but the following Five typical poets of the ‘Abbásid period. five may be taken as fairly representative: Muṭí‘ b. Iyás, Abú Nuwás, Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya, Mutanabbí, and Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí. The first three were in close touch with the court of Baghdád, while Mutanabbí and Abu ’l-‘Alá flourished under the Ḥamdánid dynasty which ruled in Aleppo.
Muṭí‘ b. Iyás only deserves notice here as the earliest poet of the New School. His father was a native of Palestine, but Muṭí‘ b. Iyás. he himself was born and educated at Kúfa. He began his career under the Umayyads, and was devoted to the Caliph Walíd b. Yazíd, who found in him a fellow after his own heart, "accomplished, dissolute, an agreeable companion and excellent wit, reckless in his effrontery and suspected in his religion."[525] When the ‘Abbásids came into power Muṭí‘ attached himself to the Caliph Manṣúr. Many stories are told of the debauched life which he led in the company of zindíqs, or freethinkers, a class of men whose opinions we shall sketch in another chapter. His songs of love and wine are distinguished by their lightness and elegance. The best known is that in which he laments his separation from the daughter of a Dihqán (Persian landed proprietor), and invokes the two palm-trees of Ḥulwán, a town situated on the borders of the Jibál province between Hamadhán and Baghdád. From this poem arose the proverb, "Faster friends than the two palm-trees of Ḥulwán."[526]