TRÜBNER’S
ORIENTAL SERIES.
VII.
Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
[Illustration: MECCA.]
SELECTIONS FROM THE ḲUR-ÁN
BY
EDWARD WILLIAM LANE,
HON. DOCTOR OF LITERATURE, LEYDEN;
CORRESPONDENT OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE;
HON. MEMBER OF THE GERMAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY, THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY,
THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE, ETC.;
AUTHOR OF “THE MODERN EGYPTIANS,” AND “AN ARABIC-ENGLISH LEXICON;”
TRANSLATOR OF “THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS.”
A New Edition, Revised and Enlarged,
_WITH AN INTRODUCTION_,
BY
STANLEY LANE POOLE.
LONDON:
TRÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.
1879.
[_All rights reserved._]
PREFACE.
There are several translations of the Ḳur-án in several languages; but
there are very few people who have the strength of mind to read any of
them through. The chaotic arrangement and frequent repetitions, and
the obscurity of the language, are sufficient to deter the most
persistent reader, whilst the nature of a part of its contents renders
the Ḳur-án unfit for a woman’s eye.
Yet there always has been a wish to know something about the sacred
book of the Mohammadans, and it was with the design of satisfying this
wish, whilst avoiding the weariness and the disgust which a complete
perusal of the Ḳur-án must produce, that Mr. Lane arranged the
‘Selections’ which were published in 1843. In spite of many printer’s
errors, due to the author’s absence from England, the book was so far
successful that the edition was exhausted, and it is now very
difficult to obtain a copy. But partly owing to the obstructions to
the reading offered by an interwoven native commentary, and partly by
reason of the preference shown for the doctrinal over the poetical
passages, the book went into scholars’ hands rather than into the
libraries of the general reading public. It has proved of
considerable service to students of Arabic, who have found it the most
accurate rendering in existence of a large part of the Ḳur-án; and
even native Muslims of India, ignorant of Arabic, have used Lane’s
‘Selections’ as their Bible.
In this edition I have endeavoured rather to carry out the original
intention of the translator. Experience has shown that the first plan
was over-learned to commend itself to the average reader, for whom Mr.
Lane had destined the book; in this edition I have therefore omitted
many of the notes, which will not be missed by the reader for whom the
book is intended, and for which the Arabic scholar has only to refer
to the first edition, or to Sale’s _Koran_, whence most of them were
derived. Again, the text of the first edition was obscured and
interrupted by an interwoven commentary, which destroyed the pleasure
of the language and often made the meaning less intelligible than
before. This commentary has been thinned. Where it added nothing to
the text, it has been erased; where it gave a curious or valuable
explanation, it has been thrown into a footnote; where it merely
supplied a necessary word to complete the sense, that word has been
left in the text distinguished by a different type[1]. Once more, the
early and wilder _soorahs_ were almost wholly omitted in the first
edition, whilst the later more dogmatic and less poetical _soorahs_
were perhaps too fully represented. I have endeavoured to establish
the balance between the two.
In this edition the Selections are divided into two parts. The first
is Islám; the second, other religions as regarded in Islám. In the
first are grouped, under distinctive headings, the more important
utterances of Moḥammad on what his followers must believe and do; in
the second are his versions of the history of the patriarchs and other
personages of the Jewish and Christian writings.
It is only in the First Part that I have made much alteration, either
by adding fresh extracts (distinguished by a sign), or by making a few
merely verbal alterations in the original extracts, or by the
suppression or transposition of the commentary. Any alterations that
go beyond this—new renderings, for instance—are duly recorded in the
footnotes.
The Second Part is almost unchanged from the first edition. In this
part the interwoven commentary is left entire, for the traditions of
the commentators about Abraham and Moses and Christ are as curious as
the traditions of Moḥammad, and about as credible; and the narrative
style of the Second Part allows the introduction of parentheses more
easily than the rhetorical form which many of the extracts in the
First Part present.
Mr. Lane’s Introduction was abridged from Sale’s Preliminary
Discourse, with but little addition from his own knowledge. Sale’s
Discourse abounds in information, but it is too detailed and lengthy
for the purpose of this volume. I have, then, substituted a short
sketch of the beginnings of Islám. I have tried to bring home to the
reader the little we know of the early Arabs; then to draw the picture
of the great Arab prophet and his work; to show what are the salient
points of Islám; and finally to explain something of the history of
the Ḳur-án and its contents. I am conscious of having drawn the
picture with a weak hand, but I hope the sketch may serve as a not
quite useless introduction to a volume of typical selections from a
book which, in the peculiar character of its contents and the
extraordinary power of its influence, has not its parallel in the
world.
S. L. P.
_June 1878._
CONTENTS.
_INTRODUCTION._
PAGE
I. THE ARABS BEFORE MOḤAMMAD xi
II. MOḤAMMAD xxxvii
III. ISLÁM lxxvii
IV. THE ḲUR-ÁN c
_PART THE FIRST._
I. THE OPENING PRAYER 3
II. PREMONITION 4
III. GOD 5
IV. MOḤAMMAD AND THE ḲUR-ÁN 13
V. THE RESURRECTION, PARADISE, AND HELL 21
VI. PREDESTINATION 32
VII. ANGELS AND JINN 33
VIII. TRUE RELIGION AND FALSE 34
IX. BELIEVERS AND UNBELIEVERS 38
_PART THE SECOND._
I. PROPHETS, APOSTLES, AND DIVINE BOOKS 47
II. ADAM AND EVE 49
III. ABEL AND CAIN 53
IV. NOAH AND THE FLOOD 55
V. ´ÁD AND THAMOOD 60
VI. DHU-L-ḲARNEYN 63
VII. ABRAHAM, ISHMAEL, ISAAC 66
VIII. JACOB, JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN 77
IX. JOB 93
X. SHO´EYB 95
XI. MOSES AND HIS PEOPLE 97
XII. SAUL, DAVID, SOLOMON 132
XIII. JONAH 146
XIV. EZRA 148
XV. THE MESSIAH 149
INDEXES 167
INTRODUCTION.
I.—_THE ARABS BEFORE MOḤAMMAD._
‘Oh, our manhood’s prime vigour! No spirit feels waste,
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.
Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock
Of the plunge in the pool’s living water, the hunt of the bear,
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold-dust divine,
And the locust flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine,
And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.
How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy!’
—BROWNING, _Saul_.
Between Egypt and Assyria, jostled by both, yielding to neither, lay a
strange country, unknown save at its marches even to its neighbours,
dwelt-in by a people that held itself aloof from all the earth—a
people whom the great empires of the ancient world in vain essayed to
conquer, against whom the power of Persia, Egypt, Rome, Byzantium was
proven impotence, and at whose hands even the superb Alexander, had he
lived to test his dream, might for once have learnt the lesson of
defeat. Witnessing the struggle and fall of one and another of the
great tyrannies of antiquity, yet never entering the arena of the
fight;—swept on its northern frontier by the conflicting armies of
Khusru and Cæsar, but lifting never a hand in either cause;—Arabia was
at length to issue forth from its silent mystery, and after baffling
for a thousand years the curious gaze of strangers, was at last to
draw to itself the fearful eyes of all men. The people of whom almost
nothing before could certainly be asserted but its existence was
finally of its own free will to throw aside the veil, to come forth
from its fastnesses, and imperiously to bring to its feet the kingdoms
of the world.
It is not all Arabia of which I speak. The story to tell has nothing
as yet to say to the ‘happy’ tilled lands of the south, nor to the
outlying princedoms of El-Ḥeereh and Ghassán bordering the territories
and admitting the suzerainty of Persia and Rome. These lands were not
wrapped in mystery: the Himyerite’s kingdom in the Yemen, the rule of
Zenobia at Palmyra, were familiar to the nations around. But the
cradle of Islám was not here.
Along the eastern coast of the Red Sea, sometimes thrusting its spurs
of red sandstone and porphyry into the waves, sometimes drawing away
and leaving a wide stretch of lowland, runs a rugged range of
mountain. One above another, the hills rise from the coast, leaving
here and there between them a green valley, where you may see an Arab
settlement or a group of Bedawees watering their flocks. Rivers there
are none; and the streams that gather from the rainfall are scarcely
formed but they sink into the parched earth. Yet beneath the dried-up
torrent-beds a rivulet trickles at times, and straightway there
spreads a rich oasis dearly prized by the wanderers of the desert. All
else is bare and desolate. Climb hill after hill, and the same sight
meets the eye—barren mountain-side, dry gravelly plain, and the rare
green valleys. At length you have reached the topmost ridge; and you
see, not a steep descent, no expected return to the plain, but a vast
desert plateau, blank, inhospitable, to all but Arabs unindwellable.
You have climbed the Ḥijáz—the ‘barrier’—and are come to the steppes
of the Nejd—the ‘highland.’ In the valleys of this barrier-land are
the Holy Cities, Mekka and Medina. Here is the birthplace of Islám:
the Arab tribes of the Ḥijáz and the Nejd were the first disciples of
Moḥammad.
One may tell much of a people’s character from its home. Truism as it
seems, there is yet a meaning in the saying that the Arabs are
peculiarly the people of Arabia. Those who have travelled in this
wonderful land tell us of the quickening influence of the air and
scene of the desert. The fresh breath of the plain, the glorious sky,
the still of the wide expanse, trod by no step but your own, looked
upon only by yourself and perhaps yonder solitary eagle or the wild
goat leaping the cliffs you have left behind, the absolute stillness
and aloneness, bring about a strange sense of delight and exultation,
a bounding-up of spirits held in long restraint, an unknown nimbleness
of wit and limb. The Arabs felt all this and more in their bright
imaginative souls. A few would settle in villages, and engage in the
trade which came through from India to the West; but such were held in
poor repute by the true Bedawees, who preferred above all things else
the free life of the desert. It is a relief to turn from the hurry and
unrest of modern civilisation, from the never-ending strife for
wealth, for ‘position,’ for pleasure, even for knowledge, and look for
a moment on the careless life of the Bedawee. He lived the aimless,
satisfied life of some child; he sought no change; he was supremely
content with the exquisite sense of simple existence; he was happy
because he lived. He wished no more. He dreaded the dark After-death;
he thrust it from his thoughts as often as it would force itself
unwelcome upon him. Utterly fearless of man and fortune, he took no
thought for the morrow: whatever it brought forth, he felt confidently
his strength to enjoy or endure; only let him seize the happiness of
to-day while it shall last, and drain to the dregs the overbrimming
cup of his life. He was ambitious of glory and victory, but it was not
an ambition that clouded his joy. Throughout a life that was full of
energy, of passion, of strong endeavour after his ideal of desert
perfectness, there was yet a restful sense of satisfied enjoyment, a
feeling that life was of a surety well worth living.
For the Arab had his ideal of life. The true son of the desert must in
the old times do more than stretch his limbs contentedly under the
shade of the overhanging rock. He must be brave and chivalrous,
generous, hospitable; ready to sacrifice himself and his substance for
his clan; prompt to help the needy and the traveller; true to his
word, and, not least, eloquent in his speech.
Devotion to the clan was the strongest tie the Arab possessed. Though
tracing their descent from a common traditional ancestor, the great
northern family of Bedawees was split up into numerous clans, owning
no central authority, but led, scarcely governed, each by its own
chief, who was the most valiant and best-born man in it. The whole
clan acted as one being; an injury done to one member was revenged by
all, and even a crime committed by a clansman was upheld by the whole
brotherhood. Though a small spark would easily light-up war between
even friendly clans, it was rarely that those of kin met as enemies.
It is told how a clan suffered long and oft-repeated injuries from a
kindred clan without one deed of revenge. ‘They are our brothers,’
they said; ‘perhaps they will return to better feelings; perhaps we
shall see them again as they once were.’ To be brought to poverty or
even to die for the clan, the Arab deemed his duty—his privilege. To
add by his prowess or his hospitality or his eloquence to the glory of
the clan was his ambition.
A mountain[2] we have where dwells he whom we shelter there,
lofty, before whose height the eye falls back blunted:
Deep-based is its root below ground, and overhead there soars
its peak to the stars of heaven whereto no man reaches.
A folk are we who deem it no shame to be slain in fight,
though that be the deeming thereof of Salool and ´Ámir;
Our love of death brings near to us our days of doom,
but their dooms shrink from death and stand far distant.
There dies among us no lord a quiet death in his bed,
and never is blood of us poured forth without vengeance.
Our souls stream forth in a flood from the edge of the whetted swords:
no otherwise than so does our spirit leave its mansion.
Pure is our stock, unsullied: fair is it kept and bright
by mothers whose bed bears well, and fathers mighty.
To the best of the uplands we wend, and when the season comes
we travel adown to the best of fruitful valleys.
Like rain of the heaven are we: there is not in all our line
one blunt of heart, nor among us is counted a niggard.
We say nay when so we will to the words of other men,
but no man to us says nay when we give sentence.
When passes a lord of our line, in his stead there rises straight
a lord to say the say and do the deeds of the noble.
Our beacon is never quenched to the wanderer of the night,
nor has ever a guest blamed us where men meet together.
Our Days[3] are famous among our foemen, of fair report,
branded and blazed with glory like noble horses.
Our swords have swept throughout all lands both west and east,
and gathered many a notch from the steel of hauberk-wearers;
Not used are they when drawn to be laid back in the sheaths
before that the folk they meet are spoiled and scattered.
If thou knowest not, ask men what they think of us and them
—not alike are he that knows and he that knows not.
The children of Ed-Dayyán are the shaft of their people’s mill,
—around them it turns and whirls, while they stand midmost.[4]
The renown of the clan was closely wrapped up with the Arab
chieftain’s personal renown. He was keenly sensitive on the point of
honour, and to that notion he attached a breadth of meaning which can
scarcely be understood in these days. Honour included all the
different virtues that went to make up the ideal Bedawee. To be proved
wanting in any of these was to be dishonoured. Above all things, the
man who would ‘keep his honour and defile it not’ must be brave and
hospitable—
A rushing rain-flood when he gave guerdons:
when he sprang to the onset, a mighty lion.
The Arab warrior was a mighty man of valour. He would spend whole days
in the saddle, burdened with heavy armour, in the pursuit of a foe,
seeking the life of the slayer of his kin, or sweeping down upon the
caravan of rich merchandise which his more peaceful countrymen of the
towns were carrying through the deserts. The Arab lived mainly by
plunder. His land did not yield him food—unless it were dates, the
Bedawee’s bread—and he relied on the success of his foraging
expeditions for his support. These he conducted with perfect
good-breeding; he used no violence when it could be avoided; he merely
relieved the caravan from the trouble of carrying any further the
goods that he was himself willing to take charge of, urging, if
necessary, the unfair treatment of his forefather Ishmael as an
excellent reason for pillaging the sons of Isaac. ‘When a woman is the
victim, no Bedouin brigand, however rude, will be ill-mannered enough
to lay hands upon her. He begs her to take off the garment on which he
has set his heart, and he then retires to a distance and stands with
eyes averted, lest he should do violence to her modesty.’
The poems of the early Arabs are full of the deeds of their warriors,
the excitement of the pitched battle, the delight of the pursuit, the
nightly raid on the camp, the trial of skill between rival chiefs, and
the other pictures of a warrior’s triumph. Here we find little of the
generosity of war: mercy was rarely exercised and hatred was carried
to its extremest limits; quarter was neither asked nor given; to
despatch a wounded man was no disgrace; the families of the vanquished
were enslaved. Notwithstanding his frank genial nature, the Arab was
of a dangerously quick temper, derived, he boasted, from the flesh he
lived on of the camel, the surliest and most ill-conditioned of
beasts. If he conceived himself insulted, he was bound to revenge
himself to the full, or he would have been deemed dishonoured for
ever. And since his fiery temper easily took offence, the history of
the early Arabs is full of the traditions of slight quarrels and their
horrible results—secret assassination and the long-lasting blood-feud.
Many the warriors, noon-journeying, who, when
night fell, journeyed on and halted at dawning—
Keen each one of them, girt with a keen blade
that when one drew it flashed forth like the lightning—
They were tasting of sleep by sips, when, as
they nodded, thou didst fright them, and they were scattered.
Vengeance we did on them: there escaped us
of the two houses none but the fewest.
And if Hudheyl[5] broke the edge of his[6] sword-blade—
many the notch that Hudheyl gained from him!
Many the time that he made them kneel down on
jagged rocks where the hoof is worn with running!
Many the morning he fell on their shelter,
and after slaughter came plunder and spoiling!
Hudheyl has been burned by me, one valiant
whom Evil tires not though they be wearied—
Whose spear drinks deep the first draught, and thereon
drinks deep again of the blood of foemen.
Forbidden was wine, but now it is lawful:
hard was the toil that made it lawful!
Reach me the cup, O Sawád son of ´Amr!
my body is spent with gaining my vengeance.
To Hudheyl we gave to drink Death’s goblet,
whose dregs are disgrace and shame and dishonour.
The hyena laughs over the slain of Hudheyl, and
the wolf—see thou—grins by their corpses,
And the vultures flap their wings, full-bellied
treading their dead, too gorged to leave them.
The contempt which the Arab, with a few noble exceptions, felt for the
gentler virtues is seen in these lines:—
Had I been a son of Mázin, there had not plundered my herds
the sons of the Child of the Dust, Dhuhl son of Sheybán!
There had straightway arisen to help me a heavy-handed kin,
good smiters when help is needed, though the feeble bend to the blow:
Men who, when Evil bares before them his hindmost teeth,
fly gaily to meet him, in companies or alone.
They ask not their brother, when he lays before them his wrong
in his trouble, to give them proof of the truth of what he says.
But as for my people, though their number be not small,
they are good for nought against evil, however light it be;
They requite with forgiveness the wrong of those that do them wrong,
and the evil deeds of the evil they meet with kindness and love;
As though thy Lord had created among the tribes of men
themselves alone to fear Him, and never one man more.
Would that I had in their stead a folk who, when they ride forth,
strike swiftly and hard, on horse or on camel borne!
A point on which the temper of the Bedawee was easily touched was his
family pride. The Arab prized good blood as much in men as in his
horses and camels. In these he saw the importance of breed, and in men
he firmly believed the same principle held good. With the tenacious
memory of his race, he had no difficulty in remembering the whole of a
complicated pedigree, and he would often proudly dwell on the purity
of his blood and the gallant deeds of his forefathers. He would
challenge another chief to prove a more noble descent, and hot
disputes and bitter rivalries often came of these comparisons.
But if noble birth brought rivalry and hatred, it brought withal
excellent virtues. The Arab nobleman was not a man who was richer and
more idle and luxurious than his inferiors: his position, founded upon
descent, depended for its maintenance on personal qualities. Rank
brought with it onerous obligations. The chief, if he would retain and
carry on the repute of his line, must not only be fearless and ready
to fight all the world; he must be given to hospitality, generous to
kith and kin, and to all who cry unto him. His tent must be so pitched
in the camp that it shall not only be the first that the enemy
attacks, but also the first the wayworn stranger approaches; and at
night fires must be kindled hard by to guide wanderers in the desert
to his hospitable entertainment. If a man came to an Arab noble’s
tent and said, ‘I throw myself on your honour,’ he was safe from his
enemies until they had trampled on the dead body of his host. Nothing
was baser than to give up a guest; the treachery was rare, and brought
endless dishonour upon the clan in which the shame had taken place.
The poet extols the tents—
Where dwells a kin great of heart, whose word is enough to shield
whom they shelter when peril comes in a night of fierce strife
and storm;
Yea, noble are they: the seeker of vengeance gains not from them
the blood of his foe, nor is he that wrongs them left without
help.
The feeling lasted even under the debased rule of Muslim despots; for
it is related that a governor was once ordering-out some prisoners to
execution, when one of them asked for a drink of water, which was
immediately given him. He then turned to the governor and said, ‘Wilt
thou slay thy guest?’ and was forthwith set free. A pledge of
protection was inferred in the giving of hospitality, and to break his
word was a thing not to be thought upon by an Arab. He did not care to
give an oath; his simple word was enough, for it was known to be
inviolable. Hence the priceless worth of the Arab chief’s word of
welcome: it meant protection, unswerving fidelity, help, and succour.
There was no bound to this hospitality. It was the pride of the Arab
to place everything he possessed at the service of the guest. The last
milch-camel must be killed sooner than the duties of hospitality be
neglected. The story is told of Ḥátim, a gallant poet-warrior of the
tribe of Ṭayyi, which well illustrates the Arab ideal of hostship.
Ḥátim was at one time brought to the brink of starvation by the dearth
of a rainless season. For a whole day he and his family had eaten
nothing, and at night, after soothing the children to sleep by telling
them some of those stories in which the Arabs have few rivals, he was
trying by his cheerful conversation to make his wife forget her
hunger. Just then they heard steps without, and a corner of the tent
was raised. ‘Who is there?’ said Ḥátim. A woman’s voice replied, ‘I am
such a one, thy neighbour. My children have nothing to eat, and are
howling like young wolves, and I have come to beg help of thee.’
‘Bring them here,’ said Ḥátim. His wife asked him what he would do,
for if he could not feed his own children, how should he find food for
this woman’s? ‘Do not disturb thyself,’ he answered. Now Ḥátim had a
horse renowned far and wide for the purity of his stock and the
fleetness and beauty of his paces. He would not kill his favourite for
himself nor even for his own children; but now he went out and slew
him, and prepared him with fire for the strangers’ need. And when he
saw them eating with his wife and children, he exclaimed, ‘It were a
shame that you alone should eat whilst all the camp is perishing of
hunger;’ and he went and called the neighbours to the meal, and in the
morning there remained of the horse nothing but his bones. But as for
himself, wrapped in his mantle, he sat apart in a corner of the tent.
This Ḥátim is a type of the Arab nature at its noblest. Though
renowned for his courage and skill in war, he never suffered his
enmity to overcome his generosity. He had sworn an oath never to take
a man’s life, and he strictly observed it, and always withheld the
fatal last blow. In spite of his clemency, he was ever successful in
the wars of his clan, and brought back from his raids many a rich
spoil, only to spend it at once in his princely fashion. His
generosity and faithful observance of his word at times placed him in
positions of great danger; but the alternative of denying his
principles seems never to have occurred to his mind. For instance, he
had imposed upon himself as a law never to refuse a gift to him that
asked it of him. Once, engaged in single combat, he had disarmed and
routed his opponent, who then turned and said, ‘Ḥátim, give me thy
spear.’ At once he threw it to him, leaving himself defenceless; and
had he not met an adversary worthy of himself, this had been the last
of his deeds. Happily Ḥátim was not the only generous warrior of the
Arabs, and his foe did not avail himself of his advantage. When
Ḥátim’s friends remonstrated with him on the rashness of an act which,
in the spirit of shopkeepers, they regarded as quixotic, Ḥátim said,
‘What would you have me to do? He asked of me a gift!’
It was Ḥátim’s practice to buy the liberty of all captives who sought
his aid: it was but another application of the Arab virtue of
hospitality. Once a captive called to him when he was on a journey and
had not with him the means of paying the ransom. But he was not wont
to allow any difficulties to baulk him of the exercise of his duty,
and he had the prisoner released, stepping meanwhile into his chains
until his own clan should send the ransom.
Brave, chivalrous, faithful, and generous beyond the needful of Arab
ideal—so that his niggard wife, using the privilege of high dames,
repudiated him because he was ever ruining himself and her by his open
hand—Ḥátim filled up the measure of Arab virtue by his eloquence, and
such of his poems as have come down to us reflect the nobility of his
life. As a youth he had shown a strong passion for poetry, and would
spare no means of doing honour to poets. His grandfather, in despair
at the boy’s extravagance, sent him away from the camp to guard the
camels, which were pastured at a distance. Sitting there in a state of
solitude little congenial to his nature, Ḥátim lifted his eyes and saw
a caravan approaching. It was the caravan of three great poets who
were travelling to the court of the King of El-Ḥeereh. Ḥátim begged
them to alight and to accept of refreshment after the hot and dreary
journey. He killed them a camel each, though one would have more than
sufficed for the three; and in return they wrote him verses in praise
of himself and his kindred. Overjoyed at the honour, Ḥátim insisted on
the poets each accepting a hundred camels; and they departed with
their gifts. When the grandfather came to the pasturing and asked
where the camels were gone, Ḥátim answered, ‘I have exchanged them for
a crown of honour, which will shine for all time on the brow of thy
race. The lines in which great poets have celebrated our house will
pass from mouth to mouth, and will carry our glory over all Arabia.’
[7]
This story well illustrates the Arab’s passionate love of poetry. He
conceived his language to be the finest in the world, and he prized
eloquence and poetry as the goodliest gifts of the gods. There were
three great events in Arab life, when the clan was called together and
great feastings and rejoicings ensued. One was the birth of a son to a
chief; another the foaling of a generous mare; the third was the
discovery that a great poet had risen up among them. The advent of the
poet meant the immortality of the deeds of the clansmen and the
everlasting contumely of their foes; it meant the raising up of the
glory of the tribe over all the clans of Arabia, and the winning of
triumphs by bitterer weapons than sword and spear—the weapons of
stinging satire and scurrilous squib. No man might dare withstand the
power of the poets among a people who were keenly alive to the point
of an epigram, and who never forgot an ill-natured jibe if it were
borne upon musical verse. Most of the great heroes of the desert were
poets as well as warriors, and their poesy was deemed the chiefest gem
in their crown, and, like their courage, was counted a proof of
generous birth. The Khalif ´Omar said well, ‘The kings of the Arabs
are their orators and poets, those who practise and who celebrate all
the virtues of the Bedawee.’
This ancient poetry of the Arabs is the reflection of the people’s
life. Far away from the trouble of the world, barred by wild wastes
from the stranger, the Bedawee lived his happy child’s life, enjoying
to the uttermost the good the gods had sent him, delighting in the
face that Nature showed him, inspired by the glorious breath of the
deserts that were his home. His poetry rings of that desert life. It
is emotional, passionate, seldom reflective. Not the end of life, the
whence and the whither, but the actual present joy of existence, was
the subject of his song. Vivid painting of nature is the
characteristic of this poetry: it is natural, unpolished, unlaboured.
The scenes of the desert—the terrors of the nightly ride through the
hill-girdled valley where the Ghools and the Jinn have their haunts;
the gloom of the barren plain, where the wolf, ‘like a ruined
gamester,’ roams ululating; the weariness of the journey under the
noonday sun; the stifling of the sand-storm, the delusions of the
mirage; or again, the solace of the palm-tree’s shade, and the
delights of the cool well;—such are the pictures of the Arab poet. The
people’s life is another frequent theme: the daily doings of the
herdsman, the quiet pastoral life, on the one hand; on the other, the
deeds of the chiefs—war, plunder, the chase, wassail, revenge,
friendship, love. There were satires on rival tribes, panegyrics on
chiefs, laments for the dead. This poetry is wholly objective,
artless, childlike; it is the outcome of a people still in the
freshness of youth, whom the mysteries and complications of life have
not yet set a-thinking. ‘Just as his language knows but the present
and the past, so the ancient Arab lived but in to-day and yesterday.
The future is nought to him; he seizes the present with too thorough
abandonment to have an emotion left for anything beyond. He troubles
himself not with what fate the morrow may bring forth, he dreams not
of a beautiful future,—only he revels in the present, and his glance
looks backward alone. Rich in ideas and impressions, he is poor in
thought. He drains hastily the foaming cup of life; he feels deeply
and passionately; but it is as if he were never conscious of the
coming of the thoughtful age which, while it surveys the past, as
often turns an anxious look to the unknown future.’
It is very difficult for a Western mind to enter into the real beauty
of the old Arab poetry. The life it depicts is so unlike any we can
now witness, that it is almost removed beyond the pale of our
sympathies. The poetry is loaded with metaphors and similes, which to
us seem far-fetched, though they are drawn from the simplest daily
sights of the Bedawee. Moreover, it is only in fragments that we can
read it; for the change in the whole character of Arab life and in the
current of Arab ideas which followed the conquests of Islám
extinguished the old songs, which were no longer suitable to the new
conditions of things; and as they were seldom recorded in writing, we
possess but a little remnant of them.[8] Yet ‘these fragments may be
broken, defaced, dimmed, and obscured by fanaticism, ignorance, and
neglect; but out of them there arises anew all the freshness, bloom,
and glory of desert-song, as out of Homer’s epics rise the glowing
spring-time of humanity and the deep blue heavens of Hellas. It is not
a transcendental poetry, rich in deep and thoughtful legend and lore,
or glittering in the many-coloured prisms of fancy, but a poetry the
chief task of which is to paint life and nature as they really are;
and within its narrow bounds it is magnificent. It is chiefly and
characteristically full of manliness, of vigour, and of a chivalrous
spirit, doubly striking when compared with the spirit of abjectness
and slavery found in some other Asiatic nations. It is wild and vast
and monotonous as the yellow seas of its desert solitudes; it is
daring and noble, tender and true.’ [9]
There was one place where, above all others, the Ḳaṣeedehs of the
ancient Arabs were recited: this was ´Okáḍh, the Olympia of Arabia,
where there was held a great annual Fair, to which not merely the
merchants of Mekka and the south, but the poet-heroes of all the land
resorted. The Fair of ´Okáḍh was held during the sacred months,—a sort
of ‘God’s Truce,’ when blood could not be shed without a violation of
the ancient customs and faiths of the Bedawees. Thither went the poets
of rival clans, who had as often locked spears as hurled rhythmical
curses. There was little fear of a bloody ending to the poetic
contest, for those heroes who might meet there with enemies or
blood-avengers are said to have worn masks or veils, and their poems
were recited by a public orator at their dictation. That these
precautions and the sacredness of the time could not always prevent
the ill-feeling evoked by the pointed personalities of rival singers
leading to a fray and bloodshed is proved by recorded instances; but
such results were uncommon, and as a rule the customs of the time and
place were respected. In spite of occasional broils on the spot, and
the lasting feuds which these poetic contests must have excited, the
Fair of ´Okáḍh was a grand institution. It served as a focus for the
literature of all Arabia: every one with any pretensions to poetic
power came, and if he could not himself gain the applause of the
assembled people, at least he could form one of the critical audience
on whose verdict rested the fame or the shame of every poet. The Fair
of ´Okáḍh was a literary congress, without formal judges, but with
unbounded influence. It was here that the polished heroes of the
desert determined points of grammar and prosody; here the seven Golden
Songs were recited, although (alas for the charming legend!) they were
_not_ afterwards ‘suspended’ on the Kaạbeh; and here ‘a magical
language, the language of the Ḥijáz,’ was built out of the dialects of
Arabia, and was made ready to the skilful hand of Moḥammad, that he
might conquer the world with his Ḳur-án.
The Fair of ´Okáḍh was not merely a centre of emulation for Arab
poets: it was also an annual review of Bedawee virtues. It was there
that the Arab nation once-a-year inspected itself, so to say, and
brought forth and criticised its ideals of the noble and the beautiful
in life and in poetry. For it was in poetry that the Arab—and for that
matter each man all the world over—expressed his highest thoughts, and
it was at ´Okáḍh that these thoughts were measured by the standard of
the Bedawee ideal. The Fair not only maintained the highest standard
of poetry that the Arabic language has ever reached: it also upheld
the noblest idea of life and duty that the Arab nation has yet set
forth and obeyed. ´Okáḍh was the press, the stage, the pulpit, the
Parliament, and the Académie Française of the Arab people; and when,
in his fear of the infidel poets (whom Imra-el-Ḳeys was to usher to
hell), Moḥammad abolished the Fair, he destroyed the Arab nation even
whilst he created his own new nation of Muslims;—and the Muslims
cannot sit in the places of the old pagan Arabs.
It is very difficult for the Western mind to dissociate the idea of
Oriental poetry from the notion of amatory odes, and sonnets to the
lady’s eyebrow: but even the few extracts that have been given in this
chapter show that the Arab had many other subjects besides love to
sing about, and though the divine theme has its place in almost every
poem, it seldom rivals the prominence of war and nature-painting, and
it is treated from a much less sensual point of view than that of
later Arab poets. Many writers have drawn a gloomy picture of the
condition of women in Arabia before the coming of Moḥammad, and there
is no doubt that in many cases their lot was a miserable one. There
are ancient Arabic proverbs that point to the contempt in which
woman’s judgment and character were held by the Arabs of ‘the Time of
Ignorance,’ and Moḥammad must have derived his mean opinion of women
from a too general impression among his countrymen. The marriage tie
was certainly very loose among the ancient Arabs. The ceremony itself
was of the briefest. The man said _khiṭb_ (_i.e._ I am an
asker-in-marriage), and the giver-away answered _nikḥ_ (_i.e._, I am a
giver-in-marriage), and the knot was thus tied, only to be undone with
equal facility and brevity. The frequency of divorce among the Arabs
does not speak well for their constancy, and must have had a degrading
effect upon the women. Hence it is argued that women were the objects
of contempt rather than of respect among the ancient Arabs.
Yet there is reason to believe that the evidence upon which this
conclusion is founded is partial and one-sided. There was a wide gulf
between the Bedawee and the town Arab. It is not impossible that the
view commonly entertained as to the state of women in preïslamic times
is based mainly on what Moḥammad saw around him in Mekka, and not on
the ordinary life of the desert. To such a conjecture a curiously
uniform support is lent by the ancient poetry of the desert; and
though the poets were then—as they always are—men of finer mould than
the rest, yet their example, and still more their poems passing from
mouth to mouth, must have created a widespread belief in their
principles. It is certain that the roaming Bedawee, like the mediæval
knight, entertained a chivalrous reverence for women, although he,
too, like the knight, was not always above a career of promiscuous
gallantry; but there was always a certain glamour of romance about the
intrigues of the Bedawee. He did not regard the object of his love as
a chattel to be possessed, but as a divinity to be assiduously
worshipped. The poems are full of instances of the courtly respect
displayed by the heroes of the desert toward defenceless maidens, and
the mere existence of so general an ideal of conduct in the poems is a
strong argument for Arab chivalry: for with the Arabs the abyss
between the ideal accepted of the mind and the attaining thereof in
action was narrower than it is among ‘more advanced’ nations.
Whatever was the condition of women in the trading cities and
villages, it is certain that in the desert woman was regarded as she
has never since been among Muslims. The modern ḥareem system was there
as yet undreamt of; the maid of the desert was unfettered by the
ruinous restrictions of modern life in the East. She was free to
choose her own husband, and to bind him to have no other wife than
herself. She might receive male visitors, even strangers, without
suspicion: for her virtue was too dear to her and too well assured to
need the keeper. It was the bitterest taunt of all to say to a hostile
clan that their men had not the heart to give nor their women to deny;
for the chastity of the women of the clan was reckoned only next to
the valour and generosity of the men. In those days bastardy was an
indelible stain. It was the wife who inspired the hero to deeds of
glory, and it was her praise that he most valued when he returned
triumphant. The hero of desert song thought himself happy to die in
guarding some women from their pursuers. Wounded to the death,
´Antarah halted alone in a narrow pass, and bade the women press on to
a place of safety. Planting his spear in the ground, he supported
himself on his horse, so that when the pursuers came up they knew not
he was dead, and dared not approach within reach of his dreaded arm.
At length the horse moved, and the body fell to the ground, and the
enemies saw that it was but the corpse of the hero that had held the
pass. In death, as in a life _sans peur et sans reproche_, ´Antarah
was true to the chivalry of his race.
There are many instances like this of the knightly courtesy of the
Arab chief in ‘the Time of Ignorance.’ In the old days, as an ancient
writer says, the true Arab had but one love, and her he loved till
death, and she him. Even when polygamy became commoner, especially in
the towns, it was not what is meant by polygamy in a modern Muslim
state: it was rather the patriarchal system of Abram and Sarai.
There is much in the fragments of the ancient poetry which reflects
this fine spirit. It is ofttimes ‘tender and true,’ and even Islám
could not wholly root out the real Arab sentiment, which reappears in
Muslim times in the poems of Aboo-Firás. Especially valuable is the
evidence of the old poetry with regard to the love of a father for his
daughters. Infanticide, which is commonly attributed to the whole Arab
nation of every age before Islám, was in reality exceedingly rare in
the desert, and after almost dying out only revived about the time of
Moḥammad. It was probably adopted by poor and weak clans, either from
inability to support their children, or in order to protect themselves
from the stain of having their children dishonoured by stronger
tribes, and the occasional practice of this barbarous and suicidal
custom affords no ground for assuming an unnatural hatred and contempt
for girls among the ancient Arabs. These verses of a father to his
daughter tell a different story:—
If no Umeymeh were there, no want would trouble my soul,
no labour call me to toil for bread through pitchiest night;
What moves my longing to live is but that well do I know
how low the fatherless lies, how hard the kindness of kin.
I quake before loss of wealth lest lacking fall upon her,
and leave her shieldless and bare as flesh set forth on a board.
My life she prays for, and I from mere love pray for her death—
yea death, the gentlest and kindest guest to visit a maid.
I fear an uncle’s rebuke, a brother’s harshness for her;
my chiefest end was to spare her heart the grief of a word.
Once more, the following lines do not breathe the spirit of
infanticide:—
Fortune has brought me down (her wonted way)
from station great and high to low estate;
Fortune has rent away my plenteous store:
of all my wealth, honour alone is left.
Fortune has turned my joy to tears: how oft
did Fortune make me laugh with what she gave!
But for these girls, the Ḳaṭa’s downy brood,
unkindly thrust from door to door as hard,
Far would I roam and wide to seek my bread
in earth that has no lack of breadth and length;
Nay, but our children in our midst, what else
but our hearts are they walking on the ground?
If but the wind blow harsh on one of them,
mine eye says no to slumber all night long.
Hitherto we have been looking at but one side of Arab life. The
Bedawees were indeed the bulk of the race, and furnished the swords of
the Muslim conquests; but there was also a vigorous town-life in
Arabia, and the citizens waxed rich with the gains of their
trafficking. For through Arabia ran the trade-route between East and
West: it was the Arab traders who carried the produce of the Yemen to
the markets of Syria; and how ancient was their commerce one may
divine from the words of a poet of Judæa spoken more than a thousand
years before the coming of Moḥammad.
Wedan and Javan from San´a paid for thy produce:
sword-blades, cassia, and calamus were in thy trafficking.
Dedan was thy merchant in saddle-cloths for riding;
Arabia and all the merchants of Kedar, they were the merchants
of thy hand:
in lambs and rams and goats, in these were they thy merchants.
The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants,
with the chief of all spices, and with every precious stone,
and gold,
they paid for thy produce.
Haran, Aden, and Canneh, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur and
Chilmad were thy merchants;
They were thy merchants in excellent wares,
in cloth of blue and broidered work,
in chests of cloth of divers colours, bound with cords
and made fast among thy merchandize.[10]
Mekka was the centre of this trading life, the typical Arab city of
old times—a stirring little town, with its caravans bringing the silks
and woven stuffs of Syria and the far-famed damask, and carrying away
the sweet-smelling produce of Arabia, frankincense, cinnamon,
sandal-wood, aloe, and myrrh, and the dates and leather and metals of
the south, and the goods that come to the Yemen from Africa and even
India; its assemblies of merchant-princes in the Council Hall near the
Kaạbeh; and again its young poets running over with love and
gallantry; its Greek and Persian slave-girls brightening the luxurious
banquet with their native songs, when as yet there was no Arab school
of music, and the monotonous but not unmelodious chant of the
camel-driver was the national song of Arabia; and its club, where busy
men spent their idle hours in playing chess and draughts, or in
gossiping with their acquaintance. It was a little republic of
commerce, too much infected with the luxuries and refinements of the
states it traded with, yet retaining enough of the free Arab nature to
redeem it from the charge of effeminacy.
Mekka was a great home of music and poetry, and this characteristic
lasted into Muslim times. There is a story of a certain stonemason who
had a wonderful gift of singing. When he was at work the young men
used to come and importune him, and bring him gifts of money and food
to induce him to sing. He would then make a stipulation that they
should first help him in his work; and forthwith they would strip off
their cloaks, and the stones would gather round him rapidly. Then he
would mount a rock and begin to sing, whilst the whole hill was
coloured red and yellow with the variegated garments of his audience.
Singers were then held in the highest admiration, and the greatest
chiefs used to pay their court to ladies of the musical profession.
One of them used to give receptions, open to the whole city, in which
she would appear in great state, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting,
each dressed magnificently, and wearing ‘an elegant artificial
chignon.’ It was in this town-life that the worse qualities of the
Arab came out; it was here that his raging passion for dicing and his
thirst for wine were most prominent. In the desert there was little
opportunity for indulging in either luxury; but in a town which often
welcomed a caravan bringing goods to the value of twenty thousand
pound, such excesses were to be looked for. Excited by the song of the
Greek slave-girl and the fumes of mellow wine, the Mekkan would throw
the dice till, like the Germans of Tacitus, he had staked and lost his
own liberty.