For a long time the Arabs developed no other religious literature than this. Of the third leader of their new faith, the Caliph Omar, there is a well-known legend which may be untrue in fact but is intensely true to the fanatic spirit of the Caliph and his followers. It says that when Omar's armies conquered Egypt the scholars of Alexandria entreated him to protect the books of their great library, the largest in the world. Instead, Omar ordered the thousands of manuscripts to be used to feed the fires of the public baths; and he based the destruction upon this verdict: "If these books disagree with the Koran they are evil; if they agree they are unnecessary."
The Arabic literary spirit was thus compelled to cling to its old pre-Mohammedan form. That is, it expressed itself only in brief personal poems, in skilfully phrased epigrams, satiric couplets, or "rubaiyat," called forth by a sudden occasion. A collection of the best known of these poems, gathered from successive ages of gay and dashing singers, is given at the close of our Arabic section.
Gradually, however, a change came over the victorious Arab race. The warriors lost their intense religious inspiration. They fought among themselves for place and power. The enormous wealth which they had conquered, with its resulting temptations to luxury and ease and empty vanity, weakened them, lured them from both the high moral strength which they had really attained, and from the fanatic frenzy of faith which had been their pride. They removed the capital of their empire from the holy cities of Arabia, first to Damascus and then to Bagdad, the wonderful dream-city of splendor which they built upon the banks of the ancient Tigris river.
Under these gorgeous Caliphs of Bagdad, such as Haroun al Raschid of "Arabian Nights'" fame, a civilization developed which Mohammed would never have recognized as his own, which he would indeed have been the first to repudiate. Unrestrained power bred a callous indifference to the sufferings of its victims, and even a barbarous delight in inflicting torture. The tyranny of the ruling classes bred a corresponding falsity in their helpless but supple servitors. Truth, the chief virtue in Mohammed's teaching, became unknown in human intercourse, except as a poetic ideal. From their priest-king down, through all the ranks of society, men talked much of the virtues, while surrendering themselves almost wholly to the passions. One might of course speak cynically of mankind's having found this somewhat true in every age, but seldom has the tragic contrast between the ideal and the actual been brought into such sharp and visible form as in the medieval world of Bagdad.
From this fertile though unhealthy soil a new literature sprang up, typical of the time and place. Here were centered the wealth and leisure and most of what survived of the culture of ancient Asia and Africa. So wit and learning journeyed there as well. At first the new literature found voice mainly as history or biography, or as a rather crude form of these collections of anecdotes purporting to give the virtues and chief events in the lives of former caliphs. Among the writers of these semi-biographic tales, by far the most noted and most noteworthy is Masoudi (died A.D. 957). His huge work, the "Golden Meadows," fills many volumes, from which we give the most attractive anecdotes. While such tales must not be taken as genuine history, they teach us very clearly the spirit of their age.
After these loose histories, a more careful science developed. The real learning of the Arab scholars of the eleventh and twelfth centuries far outranked that of their European and Christian contemporaries. As yet the various fields of science were scarcely differentiated; the student took all knowledge for his province. The earliest Arab writer, who may perhaps be regarded as a genuine historian, in contrast to the previous romancers, was Al Biruni (973-1048), whose "Chronology" our volume quotes. But Al Biruni was far more than an historian; he was a leading scientist of his day and also a geographer, his work on "India" being almost as celebrated as his "Chronology." Of even greater fame in science than Al Biruni was Avicenna (980-1037), a sort of universal genius, known first as a physician. To his works on medicine he afterward added religious tracts, poems, works on philosophy, on logic, on physics, on mathematics, and on astronomy. He was also a statesman and a soldier, and he is said to have died of debauchery. He is famed as the most versatile and brilliant member of a versatile and brilliant race.
With the increasing freedom of scientific thought and speech which Avicenna typifies, there sprang up among the Eastern Mohammedans a new religious impulse. They began to examine more carefully the faith which they had before accepted blindly. To this age therefore we owe the writings of Al Ghazali (1049-1111), whom some of his own countrymen have regarded as second only to Mohammed as a teacher of their religion. Indeed, it was a common saying of his day that "If there were still prophets in the world Al Ghazali would be one."
Western scholars have, some of them, gone still further in their admiration of Al Ghazali, declaring him to have been one of the world's greatest thinkers, whom his Mohammedan contemporaries never sufficiently appreciated, and to whose high moral stature the Mohammedan world has not even yet grown up. Among his writings the most interesting and useful to modern readers is his "Rescuer from Error," a sort of spiritual autobiography, his account of his own growth in religious faith. This striking book our volume gives in full.
From Al Ghazali, or even from before his time, dates the great flow of commentaries on the Koran. These half-philosophical, half-fanatical discussions would have seemed irreligious to the earliest Mohammedan age. The Koran had been originally accepted as perfect, and therefore as completely clear. But now the analytic spirit of the Semite reasserted itself; and even as the Hebrews in their Biblical commentaries weighed every "and" and "but" and every carelessly made letter in their Holy Book, so now the Mohammedan "mullahs," or priests, began to draw deductions from their law, to interpret and so develop it. Among these commentators two are chiefly celebrated. Zamakhshari (1074-1143) was perhaps the most learned and the shrewdest, but his ideas have seemed to his coreligionists a little too radical, too independent of Mohammed, daring almost to question the divine inspiration of the prophet. Therefore the work of Zamakhshari's more submissive successor of a century later, Al Baidawi, has gradually superseded the older book as the favorite exposition of the Koran. The Western reader, however, will distinctly prefer the independence of Zamakhshari.
Into the lighter literature of the medieval Arabs we need not look too far. They had their wholly unreligious and fantastic romances such as the "Arabian Nights." This famous work, however, draws largely upon Persian sources. Indeed, as our later Persian volume will emphasize, most of the pure romance of later Arab literature is of Persian origin, and may best be studied in the Persian books. There is, however, an intermediate class of tale peculiarly Arabian. This is the mingling of romance with poetry and moral teachings, just as the earlier historians had mingled it with history. Most celebrated in this peculiar class of semi-religious, semi-poetic romances is the work presented in this volume, the "Assemblies" of Al Hariri (1054-1122). Just as Masoudi stands to his race for history, Al Biruni for geography, Avicenna for science, Al Ghazali for philosophy, and Zamakhshari and Al Baidawi for religious study, so does Al Hariri stand for literary skill, for brilliancy and humor. His "Assemblies" is the Arabs' chief purely literary achievement.