At the other end of the Muslim world, the star of the Umáyyids, which had set at Damascus, rose again at Cordova. The union of two civilizations--Indo-Germanic and Semitic--was as advantageous in the West as in the East. The influence of the spirit of learning which reigned at Bagdad reached over to Spain, and the two dynasties vied with each other in the patronage of all that was beautiful in literature and learned in science. Poetry was cultivated and poets cherished with a like regard: the Spanish innate love of the Muse joined hands with that of the Arabic. It was the same kind of poetry in Umáyyid Spain as in Abbasside Bagdad: poetry of the city and of the palace. But another element was added here,--the Western love for the softer beauties of nature, and for their expression in finely worked out mosaics and in graceful descriptions. It is this that brings the Spanish-Arabic poetry nearer to us than the more splendid and glittering verses of the Abbassides, or the cruder and less polished lines of the first Muhammadans. The amount of poetry thus composed in Arab Spain may be gauged by the fact that an anthology made during the first half of the tenth century, by Ibn Fáraj, contained twenty thousand verses. Cordova under 'Abd-al-Rahmán III. and Hákim II. was the counterpart of Bagdad under Harun. "The most learned prince that ever lived," Hákim was so renowned a patron of literature that learned men wandered to him from all over the Arab Empire. He collected a library of four hundred thousand volumes, which had been gathered together by his agents in Egypt, Syria, and Persia: the catalogue of which filled forty-four volumes. In Cordova he founded a university and twenty-seven free schools. What wonder that all the sciences--Tradition, Theology, Jurisprudence, and especially History and Geography--flourished during his reign. Of the poets of this period there may be mentioned: Sa'íd ibn Júdi--the pattern of the Knight of those days, the poet loved of women; Yáhyah ibn Hakam, "the gazelle"; Ahmad ibn 'Abd Rabbíh, the author of a commonplace book; Ibn Abdún of Badjiz, Ibn Hafájah of Xucar, Ibn Sa'íd of Granada. Kings added a new jewel to their crown, and took an honored place among the bards; as 'Abd al-Rahmán I., and Mu'tamid (died 1095), the last King of Seville, whose unfortunate life he himself has pictured in most beautiful elegies. Although the short revival under the Almohades (1184-1198) produced such men as Ibn Roshd, the commentator on Aristotle, and Ibn Toféil, who wrote the first 'Robinson Crusoe' story, the sun was already setting. When Ferdinand burned the books which had been so laboriously collected, the dying flame of Arab culture in Spain went out.
During the third period--from Ma'mún (813), under whom the Turkish body-guards began to wield their baneful influence, until the break-up of the Abbasside Empire in 1258--there are many names, but few real poets, to be mentioned. The Arab spirit had spent itself, and the Mogul cloud was on the horizon. There were 'Abd-allah ibn al-Mu'tazz, died 908; Abu Firás, died 967; al-Tughrai, died 1120; al-Busíri, died 1279,--author of the 'Búrda,' poem in praise of Muhammad: but al-Mutanábbi, died 965, alone deserves special mention. The "Prophet-pretender"--for such his name signifies--has been called by Von Hammer "the greatest Arabian poet"; and there is no doubt that his 'Diwán,' with its two hundred and eighty-nine poems, was and is widely read in the East. But it is only a depraved taste that can prefer such an epigene to the fresh desert-music of Imr-al-Kais. Panegyrics, songs of war and of bloodshed, are mostly the themes that he dilates upon. He was in the service of Saif al-Dáulah of Syria, and sang his victories over the Byzantine Kaiser. He is the true type of the prince's poet. Withal, the taste for poetic composition grew, though it produced a smaller number of great poets. But it also usurped for itself fields which belong to entirely different literary forms. Grammar, lexicography, philosophy, and theology were expounded in verse; but the verse was formal, stiff, and unnatural. Poetic composition became a tour de force.
This is nowhere better seen than in that species of composition which appeared for the first time in the eleventh century, and which so pleased and charmed a degenerate age as to make of the 'Makamat' the most favorite reading. Ahmad Abu Fadl al-Hamadhání, "the wonder of all time" (died 1007), composed the first of such "sessions." Of his four hundred only a few have come down to our time. Abu Muhammad al-Hariri (1030-1121), of Bâsra, is certainly the one who made this species of literature popular; he has been closely imitated in Hebrew by Charízi (1218), and in Syriac by Ebed Yéshu (1290). "Makámah" means the place where one stands, where assemblies are held; then, the discourses delivered, or conversations held in such an assembly. The word is used here especially to denote a series of "discourses and conversations composed in a highly finished and ornamental style, and solely for the purpose of exhibiting various kinds of eloquence, and exemplifying the rules of grammar, rhetoric, and poetry." Hariri himself speaks of--
"These 'Makamat,' which contain serious language and lightsome,
And combine refinement with dignity of style,
And brilliancies with jewels of eloquence,
And beauties of literature with its rarities,
Besides quotations from the 'Qur'an,' wherewith I adorned them,
And choice metaphors, and Arab proverbs that I interspersed,
And literary elegancies, and grammatical riddles,