Project Gutenberg's A Literary History of the Arabs, by Reynold Nicholson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: A Literary History of the Arabs Author: Reynold Nicholson Release Date: November 11, 2011 [EBook #37985] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE ARABS *** Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Turgut Dincer, Sania Ali Mirza and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's note: Spelling of the Arabic names is different in the body of the text, in the References and in the Index, these have been left as shown in the original text. Page references in the Index are sometimes related to the footnotes in these pages which can be found using the footnote links in these pages, not necessarily in the page itself. Page titles are displayed when the mouse hovers over page numbers. Litigants before a Judge (British Museum Or. 1200) Litigants before a Judge From an Arabic manuscript in the British Museum (Or. 1200; No. 1007 in Rieu's Arabic Supplement), dated A.H. 654 = A.D. 1256, which contains the Maqámȧt of Ḥarìrì illustrated by 81 miniatures in colours. This one represents a scene in the 8th Maqáma: Abú Zayd and his son appearing before the Cadi of Ma‘arratu ’l-Nu’mán. The figure on the left is Ḥárith b. Hammám, whom Ḥarìrì puts forward as the relater of Abú Zayd's adventures. A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE ARABS BY REYNOLD A. NICHOLSON Seal CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1966 PUBLISHED BY THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Bentley House, 200 Euston Road, London, N.W. 1 American Branch: 32 East 57th Street, New York N.Y. 10022, West African Office: P.O. Box 33, Ibadan, Nigeria First edition (T. Fisher Unwin) 1907, reprinted 1914, 1923 Reprinted (Cambridge University Press) 1930, 1941, 1953, 1962, 1966 First printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge Reprinted by offset-litho by Latimer Trend & Co. Ltd, Whitstable To Professor A. A. BEVAN In grateful recollection of many kindnesses PREFACE A Literary History of the Arabs, published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1907 and twice re-issued without alteration, now appears under new auspices, and I wish to thank the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press for the opportunity they have given me of making it in some respects more accurate and useful than it has hitherto been. Since the present edition is printed from the original plates, there could be no question of revising the book throughout and recasting it where necessary; but while only a few pages have been rewritten, the Bibliography has been brought up to date and I have removed several mistakes from the text and corrected others in an appendix which includes a certain amount of supplementary matter. As stated in the preface to the first edition, I hoped "to compile a work which should serve as a general introduction to the subject, and which should be neither too popular for students nor too scientific for ordinary readers. It has been my chief aim to sketch in broad outlines what the Arabs thought, and to indicate as far as possible the influences which moulded their thought.... Experience has convinced me that young students of Arabic, to whom this volume is principally addressed, often find difficulty in understanding what they read, since they are not in touch with the political, intellectual, and religious notions which are presented to them. The pages of almost every Arabic book abound in allusions to names, events, movements, and ideas of which Moslems require no explanation, but which puzzle the Western reader unless he have some general knowledge of Arabian history in the widest meaning of the word. Such a survey is not to be found, I believe, in any single European book; and if mine supply the want, however partially and inadequately, I shall feel that my labour has been amply rewarded.... As regards the choice of topics, I agree with the author of a famous anthology who declares that it is harder to select than compose (ikhtiyáru ’l-kalám aṣ‘abu min ta’lífihi). Perhaps an epitomist may be excused for not doing equal justice all round. To me the literary side of the subject appeals more than the historical, and I have followed my bent without hesitation; for in order to interest others a writer must first be interested himself.... Considering the importance of Arabic poetry as, in the main, a true mirror of Arabian life, I do not think the space devoted to it is excessive. Other branches of literature could not receive the same attention. Many an eminent writer has been dismissed in a few lines, many well-known names have been passed over. But, as before said, this work is a sketch of ideas in their historical environment rather than a record of authors, books, ix x The Semites. and dates. The exact transliteration of Arabic words, though superfluous for scholars and for persons entirely ignorant of the language, is an almost indispensable aid to the class of readers whom I have especially in view. My system is that recommended by the Royal Asiatic Society and adopted by Professor Browne in his Literary History of Persia; but I use ẓ for the letter which he denotes by dh. The definite article al, which is frequently omitted at the beginning of proper names, has been restored in the Index. It may save trouble if I mention here the abbreviations 'b.' for 'ibn' (son of); J.R.A.S. for Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society; Z.D.M.G. for Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft; and S.B.W.A. for Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie. Finally, it behoves me to make full acknowledgment of my debt to the learned Orientalists whose works I have studied and freely 'conveyed' into these pages. References could not be given in every case, but the reader will see for himself how much is derived from Von Kremer, Goldziher, Nöldeke, and Wellhausen, to mention only a few of the leading authorities. At the same time I have constantly gone back to the native sources of information." There remains an acknowledgment of a more personal kind. Twenty-two years ago I wrote—"my warmest thanks are due to my friend and colleague, Professor A. A. Bevan, who read the proofs throughout and made a number of valuable remarks which will be found in the footnotes." Happily the present occasion permits me to renew those ties between us; and the book which he helped into the world now celebrates its majority by associating itself with his name. November 1, 1929 Frontispiece Litigants before a Judge (British Museum Or. 1200) Contents PAGE Preface ix Introduction xv CHAPTER I. Saba and Ḥimyar 1 II. The History and Legends of the Pagan Arabs 30 III. Pre-islamic Poetry, Manners, and Religion 71 IV. The Prophet and the Koran 141 V. The Orthodox Caliphate and the Umayyad Dynasty 181 VI. The Caliphs of Baghdád 254 VII. Poetry, Literature, and Science in the ‘Abbásid Period 285 VIII. Orthodoxy, Free-thought, and Mysticism 365 IX. The Arabs in Europe 405 X. From the Mongol Invasion to the Present Day 442 Appendix 471 Bibliography 477 Index 487 Introduction The Arabs belong to the great family of nations which on account of their supposed descent from Shem, the son of Noah, are commonly known as the 'Semites.' This term includes the Babylonians and Assyrians, the Hebrews, the Phœnicians, the Aramæans, the Abyssinians, the Sabæans, and the Arabs, and although based on a classification that is not ethnologically precise—the Phœnicians and Sabæans, for example, being reckoned in Genesis, chap. x, among the descendants of Ham—it was well chosen by Eichhorn († 1827) to comprehend the closely allied peoples which have been named. Whether the original home of the undivided Semitic race was some part of Asia (Arabia, Armenia, or the district of the Lower Euphrates), or whether, according to a view xi REYNOLD A. NICHOLSON xii xiii xv The Arabs as representatives of the Semitic Race. Arabs of the North and South. Ishmaelites and Yoqṭánids. which has lately found favour, the Semites crossed into Asia from Africa,1 is still uncertain. Long before the epoch when they first appear in history they had branched off from the parent stock and formed separate nationalities. The relation of the Semitic languages to each other cannot be discussed here, but we may arrange them in the chronological order of the extant literature as follows:—2 1. Babylonian or Assyrian (3000-500 b.c.). 2. Hebrew (from 1500 b.c.). 3. South Arabic, otherwise called Sabæan or Ḥimyarite (inscriptions from 800 b.c.). 4. Aramaic (inscriptions from 800 b.c.). 5. Phœnician (inscriptions from 700 b.c.). 6. Æthiopic (inscriptions from 350 a.d.). 7. Arabic (from 500 a.d.). Notwithstanding that Arabic is thus, in a sense, the youngest of the Semitic languages, it is generally allowed to be nearer akin than any of them to the original archetype, the 'Ursemitisch,' from which they all are derived, just as the Arabs, by reason of their geographical situation and the monotonous uniformity of desert life, have in some respects preserved the Semitic character more purely and exhibited it more distinctly than any people of the same family. From the period of the great Moslem conquests (700 a.d.) to the present day they have extended their language, religion, and culture over an enormous expanse of territory, far surpassing that of all the ancient Semitic empires added together. It is true that the Arabs are no longer what they were in the Middle Ages, the ruling nation of the world, but loss of temporal power has only strengthened their spiritual dominion. Islam still reigns supreme in Western Asia; in Africa it has steadily advanced; even on European soil it has found in Turkey compensation for its banishment from Spain and Sicily. While most of the Semitic peoples have vanished, leaving but a meagre and ambiguous record, so that we cannot hope to become intimately acquainted with them, we possess in the case of the Arabs ample materials for studying almost every phase of their development since the sixth century of the Christian era, and for writing the whole history of their national life and thought. This book, I need hardly say, makes no such pretensions. Even were the space at my disposal unlimited, a long time must elapse before the vast and various field of Arabic literature can be thoroughly explored and the results rendered accessible to the historian. From time immemorial Arabia was divided into North and South, not only by the trackless desert (al-Rub‘ al-Khálí, the 'Solitary Quarter') which stretches across the peninsula and forms a natural barrier to intercourse, but also by the opposition of two kindred races widely differing in their character and way of life. Whilst the inhabitants of the northern province (the Ḥijáz and the great central highland of Najd) were rude nomads sheltering in 'houses of hair,' and ever shifting to and fro in search of pasture for their camels, the people of Yemen or Arabia Felix are first mentioned in history as the inheritors of an ancient civilisation and as the owners of fabulous wealth—spices, gold and precious stones—which ministered to the luxury of King Solomon. The Bedouins of the North spoke Arabic—that is to say, the language of the Pre-islamic poems and of the Koran—whereas the southerners used a dialect called by Muḥammadans 'Ḥimyarite' and a peculiar script of which the examples known to us have been discovered and deciphered in comparatively recent times. Of these Sabæans—to adopt the designation given to them by Greek and Roman geographers—more will be said presently. The period of their bloom was drawing to a close in the early centuries of our era, and they have faded out of history before 600 a.d., when their northern neighbours first rise into prominence. It was, no doubt, the consciousness of this racial distinction that caused the view to prevail among Moslem genealogists that the Arabs followed two separate lines of descent from their common ancestor, Sám b. Núḥ (Shem, the son of Noah). As regards those of the North, their derivation from ‘Adnán, a descendant of Ismá‘íl (Ishmael) was universally recognised; those of the South were traced back to Qaḥṭán, whom most genealogists identified with Yoqṭán (Joktan), the son of ‘Ábir (Eber). Under the Yoqṭánids, who are the elder line, we find, together with the Sabæans and Ḥimyarites, several large and powerful tribes—e.g., Ṭayyi’, Kinda, and Tanúkh —which had settled in North and Central Arabia long before Islam, and were in no respect distinguishable from the Bedouins of Ishmaelite origin. As to ‘Adnán, his exact genealogy is disputed, but all agree that he was of the posterity of Ismá‘íl (Ishmael), the son of Ibráhím (Abraham) by Hájar (Hagar). The story runs that on the birth of Ismá‘íl God commanded Abraham to journey to Mecca with Hagar and her son and to leave them there. They were seen by some Jurhumites, descendants of Yoqṭán, who took pity on them and resolved to settle beside them. Ismá‘íl grew up with the sons of the strangers, learned to shoot the bow, and spoke their tongue. Then he asked of them in marriage, and they married him to one of their women.3 The tables on the opposite page show the principal branches of the younger but by far the more important family of the Arabs which traced its pedigree through ‘Adnán to Ismá‘íl. A dotted line indicates the omission of one or more links in the genealogical chain.4 I.5 xvi xvii xviii xix Character of Muḥammadan genealogy. South Arabic. pedigree through ‘Adnán to Ismá‘í It is undeniable that these lineages are to some extent fictitious. There was no Pre-islamic science of genealogy, so that the first Muḥammadan investigators had only confused and scanty traditions to work on. They were biassed, moreover, by political, religious, and other considerations.6 Thus their study of the Koran and of Biblical history led to the introduction of the patriarchs who stand at the head of their lists. Nor can we accept the national genealogy beginning with ‘Adnán as entirely historical, though a great deal of it was actually stored in the memories of the Arabs at the time when Islam arose, and is corroborated by the testimony of the Pre-islamic poets.7 On the other hand, the alleged descent of every tribe from an eponymous ancestor is inconsistent with facts established by modern research.8 It is probable that many names represent merely a local or accidental union; and many more, e.g., Ma‘add, seem originally to have denoted large groups or confederations of tribes. The theory of a radical difference between the Northern Arabs and those of the South, corresponding to the fierce hostility which has always divided them since the earliest days of Islam,9 may hold good if we restrict the term 'Yemenite' (Southern) to the civilised Sabæans, Ḥimyarites, &c., who dwelt in Yemen and spoke their own dialect, but can hardly apply to the Arabic-speaking 'Yemenite' Bedouins scattered all over the peninsula. Such criticism, however, does not affect the value of the genealogical documents regarded as an index of the popular mind. From this point of view legend is often superior to fact, and it must be our aim in the following chapters to set forth what the Arabs believed rather than to examine whether or no they were justified in believing it. 'Arabic,' in its widest signification, has two principal dialects:— 1. South Arabic, spoken in Yemen and including Sabæan, Ḥimyarite, Minæan, with the kindred dialects of Mahra and Shiḥr. 2. Arabic proper, spoken in Arabia generally, exclusive of Yemen. Of the former language, leaving Mahrí, Socotrí, and other living dialects out of account, we possess nothing beyond the numerous inscriptions which have been collected by European travellers and which it will be convenient to discuss in the next chapter, where I shall give a brief sketch of the legendary history of the Sabæans and Ḥimyarites. South Arabic resembles Arabic in its grammatical forms, e.g., the broken plural, the sign of the dual, and the manner of denoting indefiniteness by an affixed m (for which Arabic substitutes n) as well as in its vocabulary; its alphabet, which consists of twenty-nine letters, Sin and Samech being distinguished as in Hebrew, is more nearly akin to the Æthiopic. The Ḥimyarite Empire was overthrown by the Abyssinians in the sixth century after Christ, and by 600 a.d. South Arabic had become a dead language. From this time forward the dialect of the North established an almost universal supremacy and won for itself the title of 'Arabic' par excellence.10 xx xxi The oldest specimens of Arabic writing. The Pre-islamic poems. The Koran. Arabic in the Muḥammadan Empire. The Nabaṭæans. The oldest monuments of written Arabic are modern in date compared with the Sabæan inscriptions, some of which take us back 2,500 years or thereabout. Apart from the inscriptions of Ḥijr in the northern Ḥijáz, and those of Ṣafá in the neighbourhood of Damascus (which, although written by northern Arabs before the Christian era, exhibit a peculiar character not unlike the Sabæan and cannot be called Arabic in the usual acceptation of the term), the most ancient examples of Arabic writing which have hitherto been discovered appear in the trilingual (Syriac, Greek, and Arabic) inscription of Zabad,11 south-east of Aleppo, dated 512 or 513 a.d., and the bilingual (Greek and Arabic) of Ḥarrán,12 dated 568 a.d. With these documents we need not concern ourselves further, especially as their interpretation presents great difficulties. Very few among the Pre-islamic Arabs were able to read or write.13 Those who could generally owed their skill to Jewish and Christian teachers, or to the influence of foreign culture radiating from Ḥíra and Ghassán. But although the Koran, which was first collected soon after the battle of Yamáma (633 a.d.), is the oldest Arabic book, the beginnings of literary composition in the Arabic language can be traced back to an earlier period. Probably all the Pre-islamic poems which have come down to us belong to the century preceding Islam (500-622 a.d.), but their elaborate form and technical perfection forbid the hypothesis that in them we have "the first sprightly runnings" of Arabian song. It may be said of these magnificent odes, as of the Iliad and Odyssey, that "they are works of highly finished art, which could not possibly have been produced until the poetical art had been practised for a long time." They were preserved during hundreds of years by oral tradition, as we shall explain elsewhere, and were committed to writing, for the most part, by the Moslem scholars of the early ‘Abbásid age, i.e., between 750 and 900 a.d. It is a noteworthy fact that the language of these poems, the authors of which represent many different tribes and districts of the peninsula, is one and the same. The dialectical variations are too trivial to be taken into account. We might conclude that the poets used an artificial dialect, not such as was commonly spoken but resembling the epic dialect of Ionia which was borrowed by Dorian and Æolian bards. When we find, however, that the language in question is employed not only by the wandering troubadours, who were often men of some culture, and the Christian Arabs of Ḥíra on the Euphrates, but also by goat-herds, brigands, and illiterate Bedouins of every description, there can be no room for doubt that in the poetry of the sixth century we hear the Arabic language as it was then spoken throughout the length and breadth of Arabia. The success of Muḥammad and the conquests made by Islam under the Orthodox Caliphs gave an entirely new importance to this classical idiom. Arabic became the sacred language of the whole Moslem world. This was certainly due to the Koran; but, on the other hand, to regard the dialect of Mecca, in which the Koran is written, as the source and prototype of the Arabic language, and to call Arabic 'the dialect of Quraysh,' is utterly to reverse the true facts of the case. Muḥammad, as Nöldeke has observed, took the ancient poetry for a model; and in the early age of Islam it was the authority of the heathen poets (of whom Quraysh had singularly few) that determined the classical usage and set the standard of correct speech. Moslems, who held the Koran to be the Word of God and inimitable in point of style, naturally exalted the dialect of the Prophet's tribe above all others, even laying down the rule that every tribe spoke less purely in proportion to its distance from Mecca, but this view will not commend itself to the unprejudiced student. The Koran, however, exercised a unique influence on the history of the Arabic language and literature. We shall see in a subsequent chapter that the necessity of preserving the text of the Holy Book uncorrupted, and of elucidating its obscurities, caused the Moslems to invent a science of grammar and lexicography, and to collect the old Pre-Muḥammadan poetry and traditions which must otherwise have perished. When the Arabs settled as conquerors in Syria and Persia and mixed with foreign peoples, the purity of the classical language could no longer be maintained. While in Arabia itself, especially among the nomads of the desert, little difference was felt, in the provincial garrison towns and great centres of industry like Baṣra and Kúfa, where the population largely consisted of aliens who had embraced Islam and were rapidly being Arabicised, the door stood open for all sorts of depravation to creep in. Against this vulgar Arabic the philologists waged unrelenting war, and it was mainly through their exertions that the classical idiom triumphed over the dangers to which it was exposed. Although the language of the pagan Bedouins did not survive intact—or survived, at any rate, only in the mouths of pedants and poets—it became, in a modified form, the universal medium of expression among the upper classes of Muḥammadan society. During the early Middle Ages it was spoken and written by all cultivated Moslems, of whatever nationality they might be, from the Indus to the Atlantic; it was the language of the Court and the Church, of Law and Commerce, of Diplomacy and Literature and Science. When the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century swept away the ‘Abbásid Caliphate, and therewith the last vestige of political unity in Islam, classical Arabic ceased to be the κοινή or 'common dialect' of the Moslem world, and was supplanted in Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and other Arabic-speaking countries by a vulgar colloquial idiom. In these countries, however, it is still the language of business, literature, and education, and we are told on high authority that even now it "is undergoing a renaissance, and there is every likelihood of its again becoming a great literary vehicle."14 And if, for those Moslems who are not Arabs, it occupies relatively much the same position as Latin and Greek in modern European culture, we must not forget that the Koran, its most renowned masterpiece, is learned by every Moslem when he first goes to school, is repeated in his daily prayers, and influences the whole course of his life to an extent which the ordinary Christian can hardly realise. I hope that I may be excused for ignoring in a work such as this the information regarding Ancient Arabian history which it is possible to glean from the Babylonian and Assyrian monuments. Any sketch that might be drawn of the Arabs, say from 2500 b.c. to the beginning of our era, would resemble a map of Cathay delineated by Sir John Mandeville. But amongst the shadowy peoples of the peninsula one, besides Saba and Ḥimyar, makes something more than a transient impression. The Nabaṭæans (Nabaṭ, pl. Anbáṭ) dwelt in towns, drove a flourishing trade long before the birth of Christ, and founded the kingdom of Petra, which attained a high degree of prosperity and culture until it xxii xxiii xxiv xxv The Sabæans and Ḥimyarites. The pagan Arabs. The Moslem Arabs. Life of Muḥammad. The Orthodox Caliphs. The Umayyad dynasty. Three periods of Arabian history. was annexed by Trajan in 105 a.d. These Nabaṭæans were Arabs and spoke Arabic, although in default of a script of their own they used Aramaic for writing.15 Muḥammadan authors identify them with the Aramæans, but careful study of their inscriptions has shown that this view, which was accepted by Quatremère,16 is erroneous. 'The Book of Nabaṭæan Agriculture' (Kitábu ’l-Faláḥat al-Nahaṭiyya), composed in 904 a.d. by the Moslem Ibnu ’l-Waḥshiyya, who professed to have translated it from the Chaldæan, is now known to be a forgery. I only mention it here as an instance of the way in which Moslems apply the term 'Nabaṭæan'; for the title in question does not, of course, refer to Petra but to Babylon. From what has been said the reader will perceive that the history of the Arabs, so far as our knowledge of it is derived from Arabic sources, may be divided into the following periods:— I. The Sabæan and Ḥimyarite period, from 800 b.c., the date of the oldest South Arabic inscriptions, to 500 a.d. II. The Pre-islamic period (500-622 a.d.). III. The Muḥammadan period, beginning with the Migration (Hijra, or Hegira, as the word is generally written) of the Prophet from Mecca to Medína in 622 a.d. and extending to the present day. For the first period, which is confined to the history of Yemen or South Arabia, we have no contemporary Arabic sources except the inscriptions. The valuable but imperfect information which these supply is appreciably increased by the traditions preserved in the Pre-islamic poems, in the Koran, and particularly in the later Muḥammadan literature. It is true that most of this material is legendary and would justly be ignored by any one engaged in historical research, but I shall nevertheless devote a good deal of space to it, since my principal object is to make known the beliefs and opinions of the Arabs themselves. The second period is called by Muḥammadan writers the Jáhiliyya, i.e., the Age of Ignorance or Barbarism.17 Its characteristics are faithfully and vividly reflected in the songs and odes of the heathen poets which have come down to us. There was no prose literature at that time: it was the poet's privilege to sing the history of his own people, to record their genealogies, to celebrate their feats of arms, and to extol their virtues. Although an immense quantity of Pre-islamic verse has been lost for ever, we still possess a considerable remnant, which, together with the prose narratives compiled by Moslem philologists and antiquaries, enables us to picture the life of those wild days, in its larger aspects, accurately enough. The last and by far the most important of the three periods comprises the history of the Arabs under Islam. It falls naturally into the following sections, which are enumerated in this place in order that the reader may see at a glance the broad political outlines of the complex and difficult epoch which lies before him. A. The Life of Muḥammad. About the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era a man named Muḥammad, son of ‘Abdulláh, of the tribe Quraysh, appeared in Mecca with a Divine revelation (Koran). He called on his fellow- townsmen to renounce idolatry and worship the One God. In spite of ridicule and persecution he continued for several years to preach the religion of Islam in Mecca, but, making little progress there, he fled in 622 a.d. to the neighbouring city of Medína. From this date his cause prospered exceedingly. During the next decade the whole of Arabia submitted to his rule and did lip-service at least to the new Faith. B. The Orthodox Caliphate (632-661 a.d.). On the death of the Prophet the Moslems were governed in turn by four of the most eminent among his Companions— Abú Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthmán, and ‘Alí—who bore the title of Khalífa (Caliph), i.e., Vicegerent, and are commonly described as the Orthodox Caliphs (al-Khulafá al-Ráshidún). Under their guidance Islam was firmly established in the peninsula and was spread far beyond its borders. Hosts of Bedouins settled as military colonists in the fertile plains of Syria and Persia. Soon, however, the recently founded empire was plunged into civil war. The murder of ‘Uthmán gave the signal for a bloody strife between rival claimants of the Caliphate. ‘Alí, the son-in-law of the Prophet, assumed the title, but his election was contested by the powerful governor of Syria, Mu‘áwiya b. Abí Sufyán. C. The Umayyad Dynasty (661-750 a.d.). ‘Alí fell by an assassin's dagger, and Mu‘áwiya succeeded to the Caliphate, which remained in his family for ninety years. The Umayyads, with a single exception, were Arabs first and Moslems afterwards. Religion sat very lightly on them, but they produced some able and energetic princes, worthy leaders of an imperial race. By 732 a.d. the Moslem conquests had reached the utmost limit which they ever attained. The Caliph in Damascus had his lieutenants beyond the Oxus and the Pyrenees, on the shores of the Caspian and in the valley of the Nile. Meantime the strength of the dynasty was being sapped by political and religious dissensions nearer home. The Shí‘ites, who held that the Caliphate belonged by Divine right to ‘Alí and his descendants, rose in revolt again and again. They were joined by the Persian Moslems, who loathed the Arabs and the oppressive Umayyad xxvi xxvii xxviii The ‘Abbásid dynasty. The Post-Mongolian period. Arabian literary history. Writers who are wholly or partly of foreign extraction. Primitive races. government. The ‘Abbásids, a family closely related to the Prophet, put themselves at the head of the agitation. It ended in the complete overthrow of the reigning house, which was almost exterminated. D. The ‘Abbásid Dynasty (750-1258 a.d.). Hitherto the Arabs had played a dominant rôle in the Moslem community, and had treated the non-Arab Moslems with exasperating contempt. Now the tables were turned. We pass from the period of Arabian nationalism to one of Persian ascendancy and cosmopolitan culture. The flower of the ‘Abbásid troops were Persians from Khurásán; Baghdád, the wonderful ‘Abbásid capital, was built on Persian soil; and Persian nobles filled the highest offices of state at the ‘Abbásid court. The new dynasty, if not religious, was at least favourable to religion, and took care to live in the odour of sanctity. For a time Arabs and Persians forgot their differences and worked together as good Moslems ought. Piety was no longer its own reward. Learning enjoyed munificent patronage. This was the Golden Age of Islam, which culminated in the glorious reign of Hárún al-Rashíd (786-809 a.d.). On his death peace was broken once more, and the mighty empire began slowly to collapse. As province after province cut itself loose from the Caliphate, numerous independent dynasties sprang up, while the Caliphs became helpless puppets in the hands of Turkish mercenaries. Their authority was still formally recognised in most Muḥammadan countries, but since the middle of the ninth century they had little or no real power. E. From the Mongol invasion to the present day (1258 a.d.—). The Mongol hordes under Húlágú captured Baghdád in 1258 a.d. and made an end of the Caliphate. Sweeping onward, they were checked by the Egyptian Mamelukes and retired into Persia, where, some fifty years afterwards, they embraced Islam. The successors of Húlágú, the Íl-kháns, reigned in Persia until a second wave of barbarians under Tímúr spread devastation and anarchy through Western Asia (1380-1405 a.d.). The unity of Islam, in a political sense, was now destroyed. Out of the chaos three Muḥammadan empires gradually took shape. In 1358 the Ottoman Turks crossed the Hellespont, in 1453 they entered Constantinople, and in 1517 Syria, Egypt, and Arabia were added to their dominions. Persia became an independent kingdom under the Ṣafawids (1502-1736); while in India the empire of the Great Moguls was founded by Bábur, a descendant of Tímúr, and gloriously maintained by his successors, Akbar and Awrangzíb (1525-1707). Some of the political events which have been summarised above will be treated more fully in the body of this work; others will receive no more than a passing notice. The ideas which reveal themselves in Arabic literature are so intimately connected with the history of the people, and so incomprehensible apart from the external circumstances in which they arose, that I have found myself obliged to dwell at considerable length on various matters of historical interest, in order to bring out what is really characteristic and important from our special point of view. The space devoted to the early periods (500-750 a.d.) will not appear excessive if they are seen in their true light as the centre and heart of Arabian history. During the next hundred years Moslem civilisation reaches its zenith, but the Arabs recede more and more into the background. The Mongol invasion virtually obliterated their national life, though in Syria and Egypt they maintained their traditions of culture under Turkish rule, and in Spain we meet them struggling desperately against Christendom. Many centuries earlier, in the palmy days of the ‘Abbásid Empire, the Arabs pur sang contributed only a comparatively small share to the literature which bears their name. I have not, however, enforced the test of nationality so strictly as to exclude all foreigners or men of mixed origin who wrote in Arabic. It may be said that the work of Persians (who even nowadays are accustomed to use Arabic when writing on theological and philosophical subjects) cannot illustrate the history of Arabian thought, but only the influence exerted upon Arabian thought by Persian ideas, and that consequently it must stand aside unless admitted for this definite purpose. But what shall we do in the case of those numerous and celebrated authors who are neither wholly Arab nor wholly Persian, but unite the blood of both races? Must we scrutinise their genealogies and try to discover which strain preponderates? That would be a tedious and unprofitable task. The truth is that after the Umayyad period no hard-and-fast line can be drawn between the native and foreign elements in Arabic literature. Each reacted on the other, and often both are combined indissolubly. Although they must be distinguished as far as possible, we should be taking a narrow and pedantic view of literary history if we insisted on regarding them as mutually exclusive. CHAPTER I SABA AND ḤIMYAR With the Sabæans Arabian history in the proper sense may be said to begin, but as a preliminary step we must take account of certain races which figure more or less prominently in legend, and are considered by Moslem chroniclers to have been the original inhabitants of the country. Among these are the peoples of ‘Ád and Thamúd, which are constantly held up in the Koran as terrible examples of the pride that goeth before destruction. The home of the ‘Ádites was in Ḥaḍramawt, the province adjoining Yemen, on the borders of the desert named Aḥqáfu ’l'Raml. It is doubtful whether they were Semites, possibly of Aramaic descent, who were subdued and exterminated by invaders from the north, or, as Hommel maintains,18 the representatives of an imposing xxix xxx xxxi 1 Legend of ‘Ad. Legend of Thamúd. ‘Amálíq. Ṭasm and Jadís. History of the Yoqṭánids. The Sabæans. non-Semitic culture which survives in the tradition of 'Many-columned Iram,'19 the Earthly Paradise built by Shaddád, one of their kings. The story of their destruction is related as follows:20 They were a people of gigantic strength and stature, worshipping idols and committing all manner of wrong; and when God sent to them a prophet, Húd by name, who should warn them to repent, they answered: "O Húd, thou hast brought us no evidence, and we will not abandon our gods for thy saying, nor will we believe in thee. We say one of our gods hath afflicted thee with madness."21 Then a fearful drought fell upon the land of ‘Ád, so that they sent a number of their chief men to Mecca to pray for rain. On arriving at Mecca the envoys were hospitably received by the Amalekite prince, Mu‘áwiya b. Bakr, who entertained them with wine and music—for he had two famous singing-girls known as al-Jarádatán; which induced them to neglect their mission for the space of a whole month. At last, however, they got to business, and their spokesman had scarce finished his prayer when three clouds appeared, of different colours—white, red, and black —and a voice cried from heaven, "Choose for thyself and for thy people!" He chose the black cloud, deeming that it had the greatest store of rain, whereupon the voice chanted— "Thou hast chosen embers dun | that will spare of ‘Ád not one | that will leave nor father nor son | ere him to death they shall have done." Then God drove the cloud until it stood over the land of ‘Ád, and there issued from it a roaring wind that consumed the whole people except a few who had taken the prophet's warning to heart and had renounced idolatry. From these, in course of time, a new people arose, who are called 'the second ‘Ád.' They had their settlements in Yemen, in the region of Saba. The building of the great Dyke of Ma’rib is commonly attributed to their king, Luqmán b. ‘Ád, about whom many fables are told. He was surnamed 'The Man of the Vultures' (Dhu ’l-Nusúr), because it had been granted to him that he should live as long as seven vultures, one after the other. In North Arabia, between the Ḥijáz and Syria, dwelt the kindred race of Thamúd, described in the Koran (vii, 72) as inhabiting houses which they cut for themselves in the rocks. Evidently Muḥammad did not know the true nature of the hewn chambers which are still to be seen at Ḥijr (Madá’in Ṣáliḥ), a week's journey northward from Medína, and which are proved by the Nabaṭæan inscriptions engraved on them to have been sepulchral monuments.22 Thamúd sinned in the same way as ‘Ád, and suffered a like fate. They scouted the prophet Ṣáliḥ, refusing to believe in him unless he should work a miracle. Ṣáliḥ then caused a she-camel big with young to come forth from a rock, and bade them do her no hurt, but one of the miscreants, Qudár the Red (al-Aḥmar), hamstrung and killed her. "Whereupon a great earthquake overtook them with a noise of thunder, and in the morning they lay dead in their houses, flat upon their breasts."23 The author of this catastrophe became a byword: Arabs say, "More unlucky than the hamstringer of the she-camel," or "than Aḥmar of Thamúd." It should be pointed out that, unlike the ‘Ádites, of whom we find no trace in historical times, the Thamúdites are mentioned as still existing by Diodorus Siculus and Ptolemy; and they survived down to the fifth century a.d. in the corps of equites Thamudeni attached to the army of the Byzantine emperors. Besides ‘Ád and Thamúd, the list of primitive races includes the ‘Amálíq (Amalekites)—a purely fictitious term under which the Moslem antiquaries lumped together several peoples of an age long past, e.g., the Canaanites and the Philistines. We hear of Amalekite settlements in the Tiháma (Netherland) of Mecca and in other parts of the peninsula. Finally, mention should be made of Ṭasm and Jadís, sister tribes of which nothing is recorded except the fact of their destruction and the events that brought it about. The legendary narrative in which these are embodied has some archæological interest as showing the existence in early Arabian society of a barbarous feudal custom, 'le droit du seigneur,' but it is time to pass on to the main subject of this chapter. The Pre-islamic history of the Yoqṭánids, or Southern Arabs, on which we now enter, is virtually the history of two peoples, the Sabæans and the Ḥimyarites, who formed the successive heads of a South Arabian empire extending from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf. Saba24 (Sheba of the Old Testament) is often incorrectly used to denote the whole of Arabia Felix, whereas it was only one, though doubtless the first in power and importance, of several kingdoms, the names and capitals of which are set down in the works of Greek and Roman geographers. However exaggerated may be the glowing accounts that we find there of Sabæan wealth and magnificence, it is certain that Saba was a flourishing commercial state many centuries before the birth of Christ.25 "Sea-traffic between the ports of East Arabia and India was very early established, and Indian products, especially spices and rare animals (apes and peacocks) were conveyed to the coast of ‘Umán. Thence, apparently even in the tenth century b.c., they went overland to the Arabian Gulf, where they were shipped to Egypt for the use of the Pharaohs and grandees.... The difficulty of navigating the Red Sea caused the land route to be preferred for the traffic between Yemen and Syria. From Shabwat (Sabota) in Ḥaḍramawt the caravan road went to Ma’rib (Mariaba), the Sabæan capital, then northward to Macoraba (the later Mecca), and by way of Petra to Gaza on the Mediterranean."26 The prosperity of the Sabæans lasted until the Indian trade, instead of going overland, began to go by sea along the coast of Ḥaḍramawt and through the straits of Báb al-Mandab. In consequence of this change, which seems to have taken place in the first century a.d., their power gradually declined, a great part of the population was forced to seek new homes in the north, their cities became desolate, and their massive aqueducts crumbled to pieces. We shall see presently that Arabian legend has crystallised the results of a long period of decay into a single fact—the bursting of the Dyke of Ma’rib. 2 3 4 5 The Ḥimyarites. Sources of information. The South Arabic or Sabæan inscriptions. Objections to the term 'Ḥimyarite.' Discovery and decipherment of the South Arabic inscriptions. The disappearance of the Sabæans left the way open for a younger branch of the same stock, namely, the Ḥimyarites, or, as they are called by classical authors, Homeritæ, whose country lay between Saba and the sea. Under their kings, known as Tubba‘s, they soon became the dominant power in South Arabia and exercised sway, at least ostensibly, over the northern tribes down to the end of the fifth century a.d., when the latter revolted and, led by Kulayb b. Rabí‘a, shook off the suzerainty of Yemen in a great battle at Khazázá.27 The Ḥimyarites never flourished like the Sabæans. Their maritime situation exposed them more to attack, while the depopulation of the country had seriously weakened their military strength. The Abyssinians—originally colonists from Yemen—made repeated attempts to gain a foothold, and frequently managed to instal governors who were in turn expelled by native princes. Of these Abyssinian viceroys the most famous is Abraha, whose unfortunate expedition against Mecca will be related in due course. Ultimately the Ḥimyarite Empire was reduced to a Persian dependency. It had ceased to exist as a political power about a hundred years before the rise of Islam. The chief Arabian sources of information concerning Saba and Ḥimyar are (1) the so-called 'Ḥimyarite' inscriptions, and (2) the traditions, almost entirely of a legendary kind, which are preserved in Muḥammadan literature. Although the South Arabic language may have maintained itself sporadically in certain remote districts down to the Prophet's time or even later, it had long ago been superseded as a medium of daily intercourse by the language of the North, the Arabic par excellence, which henceforth reigns without a rival throughout the peninsula. The dead language, however, did not wholly perish. Already in the sixth century a.d. the Bedouin rider made his camel kneel down while he stopped to gaze wonderingly at inscriptions in a strange character engraved on walls of rock or fragments of hewn stone, and compared the mysterious, half-obliterated markings to the almost unrecognisable traces of the camping-ground which for him was fraught with tender memories. These inscriptions are often mentioned by Muḥammadan authors, who included them in the term Musnad. That some Moslems—probably very few—could not only read the South Arabic alphabet, but were also acquainted with the elementary rules of orthography, appears from a passage in the eighth book of Hamdání's Iklíl; but though they might decipher proper names and make out the sense of words here and there, they had no real knowledge of the language. How the inscriptions were discovered anew by the enterprise of European travellers, gradually deciphered and interpreted until they became capable of serving as a basis for historical research, and what results the study of them has produced, this I shall now set forth as briefly as possible. Before doing so it is necessary to explain why instead of 'Ḥimyarite inscriptions' and 'Ḥimyarite language' I have adopted the less familiar designations 'South Arabic' or 'Sabæan.' 'Ḥimyarite' is equally misleading, whether applied to the language of the inscriptions or to the inscriptions themselves. As regards the language, it was spoken in one form or another not by the Ḥimyarites alone, but also by the Sabæans, the Minæans, and all the different peoples of Yemen. Muḥammadans gave the name of 'Ḥimyarite' to the ancient language of Yemen for the simple reason that the Ḥimyarites were the most powerful race in that country during the last centuries preceding Islam. Had all the inscriptions belonged to the period of Ḥimyarite supremacy, they might with some justice have been named after the ruling people; but the fact is that many date from a far earlier age, some going back to the eighth century b.c., perhaps nearly a thousand years before the Ḥimyarite Empire was established. The term 'Sabæan' is less open to objection, for it may fairly be regarded as a national rather than a political denomination. On the whole, however, I prefer 'South Arabic' to either. Among the pioneers of exploration in Yemen the first to interest himself in the discovery of inscriptions was Carsten Niebuhr, whose Beschreibung von Arabien, published in 1772, conveyed to Europe the report that inscriptions which, though he had not seen them, he conjectured to be 'Ḥimyarite,' existed in the ruins of the once famous city of Ẓafár. On one occasion a Dutchman who had turned Muḥammadan showed him the copy of an inscription in a completely unknown alphabet, but "at that time (he says) being very ill with a violent fever, I had more reason to prepare myself for death than to collect old inscriptions."28 Thus the opportunity was lost, but curiosity had been awakened, and in 1810 Ulrich Jasper Seetzen discovered and copied several inscriptions in the neighbourhood of Ẓafár. Unfortunately these copies, which had to be made hastily, were very inexact. He also purchased an inscription, which he took away with him and copied at leisure, but his ignorance of the characters led him to mistake the depressions in the stone for letters, so that the conclusions he came to were naturally of no value.29 The first serviceable copies of South Arabic inscriptions were brought to Europe by English officers employed on the survey of the southern and western coasts of Arabia. Lieutenant J. R. Wellsted published the inscriptions of Ḥiṣn Ghuráb and Naqb al-Ḥajar in his Travels in Arabia (1838). Meanwhile Emil Rödiger, Professor of Oriental Languages at Halle, with the help of two manuscripts of the Berlin Royal Library containing 'Ḥimyarite' alphabets, took the first step towards a correct decipherment by refuting the idea, for which De Sacy's authority had gained general acceptance, that the South Arabic script ran from left to right30; he showed, moreover, that the end of every word was marked by a straight perpendicular line.31 Wellsted's inscriptions, together with those which Hulton and Cruttenden brought to light at Ṣan‘á, were deciphered by Gesenius and Rödiger working independently (1841). Hitherto England and Germany had shared the credit of discovery, but a few years later France joined hands with them and was soon leading the way with characteristic brilliance. In 1843 Th. Arnaud, starting from Ṣan‘á, succeeded in discovering the ruins of Ma’rib, the ancient Sabæan metropolis, and in copying at the risk of his life between fifty and sixty inscriptions, which were afterwards published in the Journal Asiatique and found an able interpreter in Osiander.32 Still more important were the results of the expedition undertaken in 1870 by the Jewish scholar, Joseph Halévy, who penetrated into the Jawf, or country lying east of Ṣan‘á, which no European had traversed 6 7 8 9 The historical value of the inscriptions. Votive inscriptions. Literary sources. Hamdání († 945 a.d.). Nashwán b. Sa‘íd al- Ḥimyarí († 1177 a.d.). before him since 24 b.c., when Ælius Gallus led a Roman army by the same route. After enduring great fatigues and meeting with many perilous adventures, Halévy brought back copies of nearly seven hundred inscriptions.33 During the last twenty-five years much fresh material has been collected by E. Glaser and Julius Euting, while study of that already existing by Prætorius, Halévy, D. H. Müller, Mordtmann, and other scholars has substantially enlarged our knowledge of the language, history, and religion of South Arabia in the Pre-islamic age. Neither the names of the Ḥimyarite monarchs, as they appear in the lists drawn up by Muḥammadan historians, nor the...