Part 15 (1/2)
2. The _Mufa??aliyyat_,[255] by which t.i.tle it is generally known after its compiler, Mufa??al al-?abbi ( circa 786 A.D.), who made it at the instance of the Caliph Man?ur for the instruction of his son and successor, Mahdi. It comprises 128 odes and is extant in two recensions, that of Anbari ( 916 A.D.), which derives from Ibnu 'l-A'rabi, the stepson of Mufa??al, and that of Marzuqi ( 1030 A.D.). About a third of the _Mufa??aliyyat_ was published in 1885 by Thorbecke, and Sir Charles Lyall has recently edited the complete text with Arabic commentary and English translation and notes.[256]
All students of Arabian poetry are familiar with--
[Sidenote: 3. The _?amasa_ of Abu Tammam.]
3. The _?amasa_ of Abu Tammam ?abib b. Aws, himself a distinguished poet, who flourished under the Caliphs Ma'mun and Mu'ta?im, and died about 850 A.D. Towards the end of his life he visited 'Abdullah b. ?ahir, the powerful governor of Khurasan, who was virtually an independent sovereign. It was on this journey, as Ibn Khallikan relates, that Abu Tammam composed the _?amasa_; for on arriving at Hamadhan (Ecbatana) the winter had set in, and as the cold was excessively severe in that country, the snow blocked up the road and obliged him to stop and await the thaw. During his stay he resided with one of the most eminent men of the place, who possessed a library in which were some collections of poems composed by the Arabs of the desert and other authors. Having then sufficient leisure, he perused those works and selected from them the pa.s.sages out of which he formed his _?amasa_.[257] The work is divided into ten sections of unequal length, the first, from which it received its name, occupying (together with the commentary) 360 pages in Freytag's edition, while the seventh and eighth require only thirteen pages between them. These sections or chapters bear the following t.i.tles:--
I. The Chapter of Fort.i.tude (_Babu 'l-?amasa_).
II. The Chapter of Dirges (_Babu 'l-Marathi_).
III. The Chapter of Good Manners (_Babu 'l-Adab_).
IV. The Chapter of Love-Songs (_Babu 'l-Nasib_).
V. The Chapter of Satire (_Babu 'l-Hija_).
VI. The Chapter of Guests (Hospitality) and Panegyric (_Babu 'l-A?yaf wa 'l-Madih_).
VII. The Chapter of Descriptions (_Babu 'l-?ifat_).
VIII. The Chapter of Travel and Repose (_Babu 'l-Sayr wa 'l-Nu'as_).
IX. The Chapter of Facetiae (_Babu 'l-Mula?_).
X. The Chapter of Vituperation of Women (_Babu Madhammati 'l-Nisa_).
The contents of the _?amasa_ include short poems complete in themselves as well as pa.s.sages extracted from longer poems; of the poets represented, some of whom belong to the Pre-islamic and others to the early Islamic period, comparatively few are celebrated, while many are anonymous or only known by the verses attached to their names. If the high level of excellence attained by these obscure singers shows, on the one hand, that a natural genius for poetry was widely diffused and that the art was successfully cultivated among all ranks of Arabian society, we must not forget how much is due to the fine taste of Abu Tammam, who, as the commentator Tibrizi has remarked, ”is a better poet in his _?amasa_ than in his poetry.”
[Sidenote: 4. The _?amasa_ of Bu?turi.]
4. The _?amasa_ of Bu?turi ( 897 A.D.), a younger contemporary of Abu Tammam, is inferior to its model.[258] However convenient from a practical standpoint, the division into a great number of sections, each ill.u.s.trating a narrowly defined topic, seriously impairs the artistic value of the work; moreover, Bu?turi seems to have had a less catholic appreciation of the beauties of poetry--he admired, it is said, only what was in harmony with his own style and ideas.
[Sidenote: 5. The _Jamhara_.]
5. The _Jamharatu Ash'ari 'l-'Arab_, a collection of forty-nine odes, was put together probably about 1000 A.D. by Abu Zayd Mu?ammad al-Quras.h.i.+, of whom we find no mention elsewhere.
[Sidenote: Prose sources.]
Apart from the _Diwans_ and anthologies, numerous Pre-islamic verses are cited in biographical, philological, and other works, _e.g._, the _Kitabu 'l-Aghani_ by Abu 'l-Faraj of I?fahan ( 967 _A.D._), the _Kitabu 'l-Amali_ by Abu 'Ali al-Qali ( 967 _A.D._), the _Kamil_ of Mubarrad ( 898 A.D.), and the _Khizanatu 'l-Adab_ of 'Abdu 'l-Qadir of Baghdad ( 1682 A.D.).
[Sidenote: The tradition of Pre-islamic poetry.]
[Sidenote: The Rawis.]
[Sidenote: The Humanists.]
We have seen that the oldest existing poems date from the beginning of the sixth century of our era, whereas the art of writing did not come into general use among the Arabs until some two hundred years afterwards. Pre-islamic poetry, therefore, was preserved by oral tradition alone, and the question arises, How was this possible? What guarantee have we that songs living on men's lips for so long a period have retained their original form, even approximately? No doubt many verses, _e.g._, those which glorified the poet's tribe or satirised their enemies, were constantly being recited by his kin, and in this way short occasional poems or fragments of longer ones might be perpetuated.
Of whole _qa?idas_ like the _Mu'allaqat_, however, none or very few would have reached us if their survival had depended solely on their popularity. What actually saved them in the first place was an inst.i.tution resembling that of the Rhapsodists in Greece. Every professed poet had his _Rawi_ (reciter), who accompanied him everywhere, committed his poems to memory, and handed them down, as well as the circ.u.mstances connected with them, to others. The characters of poet and _rawi_ were often combined; thus Zuhayr was the _rawi_ of his stepfather, Aws b. ?ajar, while his own _rawi_ was al-?u?ay'a. If the tradition of poetry was at first a labour of love, it afterwards became a lucrative business, and the _Rawis_, instead of being attached to individual poets, began to form an independent cla.s.s, carrying in their memories a prodigious stock of ancient verse and miscellaneous learning.
It is related, for example, that ?ammad once said to the Caliph Walid b. Yazid: ”I can recite to you, for each letter of the alphabet, one hundred long poems rhyming in that letter, without taking into count the short pieces, and all that composed exclusively by poets who lived before the promulgation of Islamism.” He commenced and continued until the Caliph, having grown fatigued, withdrew, after leaving a person in his place to verify the a.s.sertion and hear him to the last. In that sitting he recited two thousand nine hundred _qa?idas_ by poets who flourished before Mu?ammad. Walid, on being informed of the fact, ordered him a present of one hundred thousand dirhems.[259] Thus, towards the end of the first century after the Hijra, _i.e._, about 700 A.D., when the custom of _writing_ poetry began, there was much of Pre-islamic origin still in circulation, although it is probable that far more had already been irretrievably lost. Numbers of _Rawis_ perished in the wars, or pa.s.sed away in the course of nature, without leaving any one to continue their tradition. New times had brought new interests and other ways of life. The great majority of Moslems had no sympathy whatever with the ancient poetry, which represented in their eyes the unregenerate spirit of heathendom. They wanted nothing beyond the Koran and the ?adith. But for reasons which will be stated in another chapter the language of the Koran and the ?adith was rapidly becoming obsolete as a spoken idiom outside of the Arabian peninsula: the 'perspicuous Arabic' on which Mu?ammad prided himself had ceased to be fully intelligible to the Moslems settled in 'Iraq and Khurasan, in Syria, and in Egypt. It was essential that the Sacred Text should be explained, and this necessity gave birth to the sciences of Grammar and Lexicography. The Philologists, or, as they have been aptly designated, the Humanists of Ba?ra and Kufa, where these studies were prosecuted with peculiar zeal, naturally found their best material in the Pre-islamic poems--a well of Arabic undefiled. At first the ancient poetry merely formed a basis for philological research, but in process of time a literary enthusiasm was awakened. The surviving _Rawis_ were eagerly sought out and induced to yield up their stores, the compositions of famous poets were collected, arranged, and committed to writing, and as the demand increased, so did the supply.[260]
[Sidenote: Corrupt tradition of the old poetry.]
[Sidenote: ?ammad al-Rawiya.]
[Sidenote: Khalaf al-A?mar.]
In these circ.u.mstances a certain amount of error was inevitable. Apart from unconscious failings of memory, there can be no doubt that in many cases the _Rawis_ acted with intent to deceive. The temptation to father their own verses, or centos which they pieced together from sources known only to themselves, upon some poet of antiquity was all the stronger because they ran little risk of detection. In knowledge of poetry and in poetical talent they were generally far more than a match for the philologists, who seldom possessed any critical ability, but readily took whatever came to hand. The stories which are told of ?ammad al-Rawiya, clearly show how unscrupulous he was in his methods, though we have reason to suppose that he was not a typical example of his cla.s.s. His contemporary, Mufa??al al-?abbi, is reported to have said that the corruption which poetry suffered through ?ammad could never be repaired, ”for,” he added, ”?ammad is a man skilled in the language and poesy of the Arabs and in the styles and ideas of the poets, and he is always making verses in imitation of some one and introducing them into genuine compositions by the same author, so that the copy pa.s.ses everywhere for part of the original, and cannot be distinguished from it except by critical scholars--and where are such to be found?”[261] This art of forgery was brought to perfection by Khalaf al-A?mar ( about 800 A.D.), who learned it in the school of ?ammad. If he really composed the famous _Lamiyya_ ascribed to Shanfara, his own poetical endowments must have been of the highest order. In his old age he repented and confessed that he was the author of several poems which the scholars of Ba?ra and Kufa had accepted as genuine, but they laughed him to scorn, saying, ”What you said then seems to us more trustworthy than your present a.s.sertion.”