No matter what the profession or calling of these Persians--whether they
were lawyers or lawgivers, grammarians or warriors--they all, or almost
all, adored verbal felicity and tried their hands at verse. Poetry may
be called the gold dust on their lives.
Ibn Nubata the poet knew how to say thank you. Saif Ad-Dawlat Ibn Hamdan
having given him a horse, this is how he acknowledged it: _O prince!
thou whose generous qualities are the offspring of thy natural
disposition, and whose pleasing aspect is the emblem of thy mind, I have
received the present which thou sentest me, a noble steed whose portly
neck seems to unite the heavens to the earth on which he treads. Hast
thou then conferred a government upon me, since thou sendest me a spear
to which a flowing mane serves as a banner? We take possession of what
thou hast conferred and find it to be a horse whose forehead and legs
are marked with white, and whose body is so black that a single hair
extracted from that colour would suffice to form night's darkest shades.
It would seem that the morning had struck him on the forehead and thus
made it white, for which reason he took his revenge by wading into the
entrails of the morning, and thus whitening his legs. He paces slowly,
yet one of his names is Lightning; he wears a veil, having his face
covered with white, as if to conceal it, and yet beauty itself would be
his only rival. Had the sun and the moon a portion only of his ardour,
it would be impossible to withstand their heat. The eye cannot follow
his movements, unless you rein him in and restrain his impetuosity. The
glances of the eye cannot seize all his perfections, unless the eye be
led away captive by his beauty and be thus enabled to follow him._--I
like the extravagance of that. So should the friend of man be extolled.
Emirs did not disdain to be poets. Majd Ad-Din Al-Mubarak Ibn Munkid,
although at once "The Sword of the Empire" and "The Glory of Religion,"
wrote poetry, and not always on the most exalted themes. Among his
poems, for example, is one on fleas, in which those insects, of which
Emirs should know nothing, are thus described: _A race whom man is
permitted to slay, and who profane the blood of the pilgrim, even in the
sanctuary. When my hand sheds their blood, it is not their own, but
mine, which is shed._ "It is thus," says Ibn Khallikan gravely, "that
these two verses were recited and given as his, by Izz Ad-Din Abu
'l-Kasim Abd Allah Ibn Abi Ali Al-Husain Ibn Abi Muhammad Abd Allah Ibn
Al-Husain Ibn Rawaha Ibn Ibrahim Ibn Abd Allah Ibn Rawaha Ibn Obaid Ibn
Muhammad Ibn Abd Allah Ibn Rawaha Al-Ansari, a native of Hamat."
Ibn Khallikan's greed for poetry led him, as I have said, not only to
quote most things that he could remember of each poet, but to cite also
the poems of which those reminded him. Sometimes he quoted before he
was sure of the author; but it made no difference. Thus, of Al-Farra the
grammarian he says: "No verses have been handed down as his excepting
the following, which were given by Abu-Hanifa Ad-Dinauri on the
authority of Abu Bakr At-Tuwal: _Lord of a single acre of ground, you
have nine chamberlains! You sit in an old ruin and have door-keepers who
exclude visitors! Never did I hear of a door-keeper in a ruined
dwelling! Never shall the eyes of men see me at a door of yours; a man
like me is not made to support repulses from door-keepers._" Having got
his quotation safely into print, Ibn Khallikan adds: "I since discovered
that these verses are attributed to Ibn Musa 'l-Makfuf. God knows best!"
It is a charming way of writing biography. The grass does not grow upon
the weir more easily. With such a rectifying or excusatory phrase as
"God knows best" one can hazard all. And how difficult it is to be the
first to say anything!
Here is a poem by an Emir's vizier, Al-Wazi Al-Maghribi: _I shall relate
to you my adventure, and adventures are of various kinds. I one night
changed my bed and was abandoned by repose; tell me then how I shall be
on the first night which I pass in the grave?_
Another vizier, Ibn Al-Amid, the katib, who lived in the eleventh
century, wrote as follows: _Choose your friends among strangers, and
take not your near relations into favour. Relations are like scorpions
or even more noxious._ Asked which was the worse of his two recurring
maladies, gout or colic, he replied: "When the gout attacks me I feel as
if I were between the jaws of a lion devouring me, mouthful by mouthful;
when the colic visits me, I would willingly exchange it for the gout."
Poetry in those days ran in families. The family which had the greatest
skill in the art was that of Hassan Ibn Abi Hafsa, for it produced six
persons, in succession, all of them poets. These were: Said, his father
Abd Ar-Rahman, his father Hassan, his father Thabit, his father
Al-Mundir, and his father Hizam. Abd Ar-Rahman began very young. It is
related that having been stung by a wasp, he went crying to his father,
who asked what was the matter. He replied: "I have been stung by a
flying thing, dressed, as it were, in a double cloak of striped cloth."
"By Allah!" exclaimed the delighted father, recognizing a chip of the
old block, "thou hast there pronounced a verse."
The family of Abi Hafsa came next to that of Hassan in poetical gifts.
The reason was, according to one statement, that they could "all touch
the point of their nose with their tongue, and this denotes a talent for
speaking with elegance and precision." "God knows," Ibn Khallikan adds,
"how far that may be true!"
It was Marwan Ibn Abi Hafsa, of this family, who made such a mistake (in
a poet depending on the beneficence of the exalted) as to commit himself
to the sweeping statement, in his elegy on the death of Maan, the Emir,
that patronage had died with him. "It is said," Ibn Khallikan relates,
"that Marwan, after composing this elegy, could never gain anything by
his verses, for, as often as he celebrated the praises of a khalif or of
any other person less elevated in rank, he to whom the poem was
addressed would say to him: 'Did you not say, in your famous elegy:
_Whither should we go, since Maan is dead? Presents have ceased and are
not to be replaced?_' So the person he meant to praise would not give
him anything nor even listen to his poem."
But once--having the persistency of the needy--Abi Hafsa scored. The
story goes that, entering into the presence of the khalif Al-Mahdi with
a number of other poets, he recited to him a panegyric.
"Who art thou?" said the khalif.
"Thy humble poet, Marwan, the son of Abi Hafsa."
"Art thou," said the khalif with great presence of mind, remembering the
poet's useful indiscretion, "not he who said: _Whither should we go,
since Maan is dead?_ and yet thou hast come to ask gifts from us!
_Presents have ceased_; we have nothing for thee. Trail him out by the
leg!"
They trailed him out by the leg, but, twelve months later, Marwan once
more contrived to gain admittance with the other poets, who, at that
time, were allowed to enter into the khalif's presence once a year. He
then stood before him and recited the kasada which begins thus: _A
female visitor came to thee by night; salute her fleeting image._
Al-Mahdi at first listened in silence, but as the poet proceeded, he
became gradually more and more agitated, till at length "he rolled on
the carpet with delight."
He then asked how many verses were in the poem and, on being answered,
"One hundred," he ordered the author a--present of one hundred thousand
pieces of silver.
The poet Ibn Ar-Rumi met his necessary end with composure. Al-Kasim Ibn
Obaid Allah Ibn Sulaiman Ibn Wahb, the vizier of Al-Motadid, dreading to
incur the satirical attacks of this writer and the outbursts of his
malignant tongue, suborned a person called Ibn Firas, who gave him a
poisoned biscuit whilst he was sitting in company with the vizier.
When Ibn Ar-Rumi had eaten it, he perceived that he was poisoned, and he
rose to withdraw; on which the vizier said to him: "Where are you
going?"
"To the place," replied Ibn Ar-Rumi, "where you sent me."
"Well," observed the vizier, "you will present my respects to my
father."
"I am not taking the road to hell," retorted the poet.
Another poet, Ibn Sara As-Shantarini, falling upon evil days, became a
bookbinder. As such he wrote the following poem: _The trade of a
bookbinder is the worst of all; its leaves and its fruits are nought but
disappointment. I may compare him that follows it to a needle, which
clothes others but is naked itself!_