tradition, for “his understanding was as the understanding of the
learned;” and, like all educated Arabs of his day, “he was a connoisseur
of poetry which at times he improvised with success.”[259] He made the
pilgrimage every alternate year and sometimes on foot, while “his
military expeditions almost equalled his pilgrimages.” Day after day
during his Caliphate he prayed a hundred “bows,” never neglecting them,
save for some especial reason, till his death; and he used to give from
his privy purse alms to the extent of a hundred dirhams per diem. He
delighted in panegyry and liberally rewarded its experts, one of whom,
Abd al-Sammák the Preacher, fairly said of him, “Thy humility in thy
greatness is nobler than thy greatness.” “No Caliph,” says Al-Niftawayh,
“had been so profusely liberal to poets, lawyers and divines, although
as the years advanced he wept over his extravagance amongst other sins.”
There was vigorous manliness in his answer to the Grecian Emperor who
had sent him an insulting missive:—“In the name of Allah! From the
Commander of the Faithful Harun al-Rashid, to Nicephorus the Roman dog.
I have read thy writ, O son of a miscreant mother! Thou shalt not hear,
thou shalt see my reply.” Nor did he cease to make the Byzantine feel
the weight of his arm till he “nakh’d”[260] his camel in the imperial
Court-yard; and this was only one instance of his indomitable energy and
hatred of the Infidel. Yet, if the West is to be believed, he forgot his
fanaticism in his diplomatic dealings and courteous intercourse with
Carolus Magnus.[261] Finally, his civilised and well regulated rule
contrasted as strongly with the barbarity and turbulence of occidental
Christendom, as the splendid Court and the luxurious life of Baghdad and
its carpets and hangings devanced the quasi-savagery of London and Paris
whose palatial halls were spread with rushes.
The great Caliph ruled twenty-three years and a few months (A.H. 170–193
= A.D. 786–808); and, as his youth was chequered and his reign was
glorious, so was his end obscure.[262] After a vision foreshadowing his
death,[263] which happened, as becomes a good Moslem, during a military
expedition to Khorasan, he ordered his grave to be dug and himself to be
carried to it in a covered litter: when sighting the fosse he exclaimed,
“O son of man thou art come to this!” Then he commanded himself to be
set down and a perlection of the Koran to be made over him in the litter
on the edge of the grave. He was buried (æt. forty-five) at Sanábád, a
village near Tús.
Aaron the Orthodox appears in The Nights as a headstrong and violent
autocrat, a right royal figure according to the Moslem ideas of his day.
But his career shows that he was not more tyrannical or more sanguinary
than the normal despot of the East, or the contemporary Kings of the
West: in most points, indeed, he was far superior to the historic
misrulers who have afflicted the world from Spain to furthest China. But
a single great crime, a tragedy whose details are almost incredibly
horrible, marks his reign with the stain of infamy, with a blot of blood
never to be washed away. This tale, “full of the waters of the eye,” as
Firdausi sings, is the massacre of the Barmecides; a story which has
often been told and which cannot here be passed over in silence. The
ancient and noble Iranian house, belonging to the “Ebná” or Arabised
Persians, had long served the Ommiades till, early in our eighth
century, Khálid bin Bermek,[264] the chief, entered the service of the
first Abbaside and became Wazir and Intendant of Finance to Al-Saffah.
The most remarkable and distinguished of the family, he was in office
when Al-Mansur transferred the capital from Damascus, the head-quarters
of the hated Ommiades, to Baghdad, built ad hoc. After securing the
highest character in history by his personal gifts and public services,
he was succeeded by his son and heir Yáhyá (John), a statesman famed
from early youth for prudence and profound intelligence, liberality and
nobility of soul.[265] He was charged by the Caliph Al-Mahdi with the
education of his son Harun, hence the latter was accustomed to call him
father; and, until the assassination of the fantastic tyrant Al-Hádi,
who proposed to make his own child Caliph, he had no little difficulty
in preserving the youth from death in prison. The Orthodox, once seated
firmly on the throne, appointed Yahya his Grand Wazir. This great
administrator had four sons, Al-Fazl, Ja’afar, Mohammed, and Musa,[266]
in whose time the house of Bermek rose to that height from which decline
and fall are, in the East, well nigh certain and immediate. Al-Fazl was
a foster-brother of Harun, an exchange of suckling infants having taken
place between the two mothers for the usual object, a tightening of the
ties of intimacy: he was a man of exceptional mind, but he lacked the
charm of temper and manner which characterised Ja’afar. The poets and
rhetoricians have been profuse in their praises of the cadet who appears
in The Nights as an adviser of calm sound sense, an intercessor and a
peace-maker, and even more remarkable than the rest of his family for an
almost incredible magnanimity and generosity—une générosité effrayante.
Mohammed was famed for exalted views and nobility of sentiment and Musa
for bravery and energy: of both it was justly said, “They did good and
harmed not.”[267]
For ten years (not including an interval of seven) from the time of
Al-Rashid’s accession (A.D. 786) to the date of their fall, (A.D. 803),
Yahya and his sons, Al-Fazl and Ja’afar, were virtually rulers of the
great heterogeneous empire, which extended from Mauritania to Tartary,
and they did notable service in arresting its disruption. Their downfall
came sudden and terrible like “a thunderbolt from the blue.” As the
Caliph and Ja’afar were halting in Al-’Umr (the convent) near Anbár-town
on the Euphrates, after a convivial evening spent in different
pavilions, Harun during the dead of the night called up his page Yásir
al-Rikhlah[268] and bade him bring Ja’afar’s head. The messenger found
Ja’afar still carousing with the blind poet Abú Zakkár and the Christian
physician Gabriel ibn Bakhtiashú, and was persuaded to return to the
Caliph and report his death; the Wazir adding, “An he express regret I
shall owe thee my life; and, if not, whatso Allah will be done.” Ja’afar
followed to listen and heard only the Caliph exclaim, “O sucker of thy
mother’s clitoris, if thou answer me another word, I will send thee
before him!” whereupon he at once bandaged his own eyes and received the
fatal blow. Al-Asma’í, who was summoned to the presence shortly after,
recounts that when the head was brought to Harun he gazed at it, and
summoning two witnesses commanded them to decapitate Yasir, crying, “I
cannot bear to look upon the slayer of Ja’afar!” His vengeance did not
cease with the death: he ordered the head to be gibbetted at one end and
the trunk at the other abutment of the Tigris bridge where the corpses
of the vilest malefactors used to be exposed; and, some months
afterwards, he insulted the remains by having them burned—the last and
worst indignity which can be offered to a Moslem. There are indeed pity
and terror in the difference between two such items in the
Treasury-accounts as these: “Four hundred thousand dinars (£200,000) to
a robe of honour for the Wazir Ja’afar bin Yahya;” and, “Ten kírát, (5
shill.) to naphtha and reeds for burning the body of Ja’afar the
Barmecide.”
Meanwhile Yahya and Al-Fazl, seized by the Caliph Harun’s command at
Baghdad, were significantly cast into the prison “Habs al-Zanádikah”—of
the Guebres—and their immense wealth which, some opine, hastened their
downfall, was confiscated. According to the historian, Al-Tabari, who,
however, is not supported by all the annalists, the whole Barmecide
family, men, women, and children, numbering over a thousand, were
slaughtered with only three exceptions; Yahya, his brother Mohammed, and
his son Al-Fazl. The Caliph’s foster-father, who lived to the age of
seventy-four, was allowed to die in jail (A.H. 805) after two years’
imprisonment at Rukkah. Al-Fazl, after having been tortured with two
hundred blows in order to make him produce concealed property, survived
his father three years and died in Nov. A.H. 808, some four months
before his terrible foster-brother. A pathetic tale is told of the son
warming water for the old man’s use by pressing the copper ewer to his
stomach.
The motives of this terrible massacre are variously recounted, but no
sufficient explanation has yet been, or possibly ever will be, given.
The popular idea is embodied in The Nights.[269] Harun, wishing Ja’afar
to be his companion even in the Harem, had wedded him, pro formâ, to his
eldest sister Abbásah, “the loveliest woman of her day,” and brilliant
in mind as in body; but he had expressly said, “I will marry thee to
her, that it may be lawful for thee to look upon her but thou shalt not
touch her.” Ja’afar bound himself by a solemn oath; but his mother
Attábah was mad enough to deceive him in his cups and the result was a
boy (Ibn Khallikan) or, according to others, twins. The issue was sent
under the charge of a confidential eunuch and a slave-girl to Meccah for
concealment; but the secret was divulged to Zubaydah who had her own
reasons for hating husband and wife and cherished an especial grievance
against Yahya.[270] Thence it soon found its way to head-quarters.
Harun’s treatment of Abbásah supports the general conviction: according
to the most credible accounts she and her child were buried alive in a
pit under the floor of her apartment.
But, possibly, Ja’afar’s perjury was only “the last straw.” Already
Al-Fazl bin Rabí’a, the deadliest enemy of the Barmecides, had been
entrusted (A.D. 786) with the Wazirate which he kept seven years.
Ja’afar had also acted generously but imprudently in abetting the escape
of Yahya bin Abdillah, Sayyid and Alide, for whom the Caliph had
commanded confinement in a close dark dungeon: when charged with
disobedience the Wazir had made full confession and Harun had (they say)
exclaimed, “Thou hast done well!” but was heard to mutter, “Allah slay
me an I slay thee not.”[271] The great house seems at times to have
abused its powers by being too peremptory with Harun and Zubaydah,
especially in money matters;[272] and its very greatness would have
created for it many and powerful enemies and detractors who plied the
Caliph with anonymous verse and prose. Nor was it forgotten that, before
the spread of Al-Islam, they had presided over the Naubehár or Pyræthrum
of Balkh; and Harun is said to have remarked anent Yahya, “The zeal for
magianism, rooted in his heart, induces him to save all the monuments
connected with his faith.”[273] Hence the charge that they were
“Zanádakah,” a term properly applied to those who study the Zend
scripture, but popularly meaning Mundanists, Positivists, Reprobates,
Atheists; and it may be noted that, immediately after Al-Rashid’s death,
violent religious troubles broke out in Baghdad. Ibn Khallikan[274]
quotes Sa’íd ibn Sálim, a well-known grammarian and traditionist who
philosophically remarked, “Of a truth the Barmecides did nothing to
deserve Al-Rashid’s severity, but the day (of their power and
prosperity) had been long and whatso endureth long waxeth longsome.”
Fakhr al-Din says (p. 27), “On attribue encore leur ruine aux manières
fières et orgueilleuses de Djafar (Ja’afar) et de Fadhl (Al-Fazl),
manières que les rois ne sauroient supporter.” According to Ibn Badrún,
the poet, when the Caliph’s sister ’Olayyah[275] asked him, “O my lord,
I have not seen thee enjoy one happy day since putting Ja’afar to death:
wherefore didst thou slay him?” he answered, “My dear life, an I thought
that my shirt knew the reason I would rend it in pieces!” I therefore
hold with Al-Mas’udi, “As regards the intimate cause (of the
catastrophe) it is unknown and Allah is Omniscient.”
Aaron the Orthodox appears sincerely to have repented his enormous
crime. From that date he never enjoyed refreshing sleep: he would have
given his whole realm to recall Ja’afar to life; and, if any spoke
slightingly of the Barmecides in his presence, he would exclaim, “God
damn your fathers! Cease to blame them or fill the void they have left.”
And he had ample reason to mourn the loss. After the extermination of
the wise and enlightened family, the affairs of the Caliphate never
prospered: Fazl bin Rabí’a, though a man of intelligence and devoted to
letters, proved a poor substitute for Yahya and Ja’afar; and the Caliph
is reported to have applied to him the couplet:—
No sire to your sire,[276] I bid you spare ✿ Your calumnies or their
place replace.
His unwise elevation of his two rival sons filled him with fear of
poison, and, lastly, the violence and recklessness of the popular
mourning for the Barmecides,[277] whose echo has not yet died away, must
have added poignancy to his tardy penitence. The crime still “sticks
fiery off” from the rest of Harun’s career: it stands out in ghastly
prominence as one of the most terrible tragedies recorded by history,
and its horrible details make men write passionately on the subject to
this our day.[278]
As of Harun so of Zubaydah it may be said that she was far superior in
most things to contemporary royalties, and she was not worse at her
worst than the normal despot-queen of the Morning-land. We must not take
seriously the tales of her jealousy in The Nights, which mostly end in
her selling off or burying alive her rivals; but, even were all true,
she acted after the recognised fashion of her exalted sisterhood. The
secret history of Cairo, during the last generation, tells of many a
viceregal dame who committed all the crimes, without any of the virtues
which characterised Harun’s cousin-spouse. And the difference between
the manners of the Caliphate and the “respectability” of the nineteenth
century may be measured by the Tale called, “Al-Maamun and
Zubaydah.”[279] The lady, having won a game of forfeits from her
husband, and being vexed with him for imposing unseemly conditions when
he had been the winner, condemned him to lie with the foulest and
filthiest kitchen-wench in the palace; and thus was begotten the Caliph
who succeeded and destroyed her son.
Zubaydah was the grand-daughter of the second Abbaside Al-Mansur, by his
son Ja’afar whom The Nights persistently term Al-Kasim: her name was
Amat al-Azíz or Handmaid of the Almighty; her cognomen was Umm Ja’afar
as her husband’s was Abú Ja’afar; and her popular name “Creamkin”
derives from Zubdah,[280] cream or fresh butter, on account of her
plumpness and freshness. She was as majestic and munificent as her
husband; and the hum of prayer was never hushed in her palace.
Al-Mas’udi[281] makes a historian say to the dangerous Caliph Al-Káhir,
“The nobleness and generosity of this Princess, in serious matters as in
her diversions, place her in the highest rank”; and he proceeds to give
ample proof. Al-Siyuti relates how she once filled a poet’s mouth with
jewels which he sold for twenty thousand dinars. Ibn Khallikan (i. 523)
affirms of her, “Her charity was ample, her conduct virtuous, and the
history of her pilgrimage to Meccah and of what she undertook to execute
on the way is so well-known that it were useless to repeat it.” I have
noted (Pilgrimage iii. 2) how the Darb al-Sharki or Eastern road from
Meccah to Al-Medinah was due to the piety of Zubaydah who dug wells from
Baghdad to the Prophet’s burial place and built not only cisterns and
caravanserais, but even a wall to direct pilgrims over the shifting
sands. She also supplied Meccah, which suffered severely from want of
water, with the chief requisite for public hygiene by connecting it,
through levelled hills and hewn rocks, with the Ayn al-Mushásh in the
Arafat subrange; and the fine aqueduct, some ten miles long, was erected
at a cost of 1,700,000 to 2,000,000 of gold pieces.[282] We cannot
wonder that her name is still famous among the Badawin and the “Sons of
the Holy Cities.” She died at Baghdad, after a protracted widowhood, in
A.H. 216 and her tomb, which still exists, was long visited by the
friends and dependents who mourned the loss of a devout and most liberal
woman.
The reader will bear with me while I run through the tales and add a few
remarks to the notices given in the notes: the glance must necessarily
be brief, however extensive be the theme. The admirable introduction
follows, in all the texts and MSS. known to me, the same main lines but
differs greatly in minor details as will be seen by comparing Mr.
Payne’s translation with Lane’s and mine. In the Tale of the Sage Dúbán
appears the speaking head which is found in the Kámil, in Mirkhond and
in the Kitáb al-Uyún: M. C. Barbier de Meynard (v. 503) traces it back
to an abbreviated text of Al-Mas’udi. I would especially recommend to
students The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (i. 82), whose
mighty orgie ends so innocently in general marriage. Lane (iii. 746)
blames it “because it represents Arab _ladies_ as acting like Arab
_courtesans_”; but he must have known that during his day the indecent
frolic was quite possible in some of the highest circles of his beloved
Cairo. To judge by the style and changes of person, some of the most
“archaic” expressions suggest the hand of the Ráwi or professional
tale-teller; yet as they are in all the texts they cannot be omitted in
a loyal translation. The following story of The Three Apples perfectly
justifies my notes concerning which certain carpers complain. What
Englishman would be jealous enough to kill his cousin-wife because a
blackamoor in the streets boasted of her favours? But after reading what
is annotated in vol. i. 6, and purposely placed there to give the
key-note of the book, he will understand the reasonable nature of the
suspicion; and I may add that the same cause has commended these “skunks
of the human race” to debauched women in England.
The next tale, sometimes called “The Two Wazírs” is notable for its
regular and genuine drama-intrigue which, however, appears still more
elaborate and perfected in other pieces. The richness of this Oriental
plot-invention contrasts strongly with all European literatures except
the Spaniard’s, whose taste for the theatre determined his direction,
and the Italian, which in Boccaccio’s day had borrowed freely through
Sicily from the East. And the remarkable deficiency lasted till the
romantic movement dawned in France, when Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas
showed their marvellous powers of faultless fancy, boundless imagination
and scenic luxuriance, “raising French Poetry from the dead and _not_
mortally wounding French prose.”[283] The Two Wazirs is followed by the
gem of the volume, The Adventure of the Hunchback-jester (i. 225), also
containing an admirable surprise and a fine development of character,
while its “wild but natural simplicity” and its humour are so abounding
that it has echoed through the world to the farthest West. It gave to
Addison the Story of Alnaschar[284] and to Europe the term “Barmecide
Feast,” from the “Tale of Shacabac” (vol. i. 343). The adventures of the
corpse were known in Europe long before Galland, as shown by three
fabliaux in Barbazan. I have noticed that the Barber’s Tale of himself
(i. 317) is historical and I may add that it is told in detail by
Al-Mas’udi (chapt. cxiv).
Follows the tale of Núr al-Dín Alí, and what Galland miscalls “The Fair
Persian,” a brightly written historiette with not a few touches of true
humour. Noteworthy are the Slaver’s address (vol. ii. 15), the fine
description of the Baghdad garden (vol. ii. 21–24), the drinking-party
(vol. ii. 25), the Caliph’s frolic (vol. ii. 31–37) and the happy end of
the hero’s misfortunes (vol. ii. 44). Its brightness is tempered by the
gloomy tone of the tale which succeeds, and which has variants in the
Bágh o Bahár, a Hindustani version of the Persian “Tale of the Four
Darwayshes;” and in the Turkish Kirk Vezir or “Book of the Forty
Vezirs.” Its dismal péripéties are relieved only by the witty indecency
of Eunuch Bukhayt and the admirable humour of Eunuch Káfur, whose
“half-lie” is known throughout the East. Here also the lover’s agonies
are piled upon him for the purpose of unpiling at last: the Oriental
tale-teller knows by experience that, as a rule, doleful endings “don’t
pay.”
The next is the long romance of chivalry, “King Omar bin al-Nu’man”
etc., which occupies an eighth of the whole repertory and the best part
of two volumes. Mr. Lane omits it because “obscene and tedious,” showing
the license with which he translated; and he was set right by a learned
reviewer,[285] who truly declared that “the omission of half-a-dozen
passages out of four hundred pages would fit it for printing in any
language[286] and the charge of tediousness could hardly have been
applied more unhappily.” The tale is interesting as a picture of
mediæval Arab chivalry and has many other notable points; for instance,
the lines (iii. 86) beginning “Allah holds the kingship!” are a lesson
to the manichæanism of Christian Europe. It relates the doings of three
royal generations and has all the characteristics of Eastern art: it is
a phantasmagoria of Holy Places, palaces and Harems; convents, castles
and caverns, here restful with gentle landscapes (ii. 240) and there
bristling with furious battle-pictures (ii. 117, 221–8, 249) and tales
of princely prowess and knightly derring-do. The characters stand out
well. King Nu’man is an old lecher who deserves his death; the ancient
Dame Zát al-Dawáhí merits her title Lady of Calamities (to her foes);
Princess Abrízah appears as a charming Amazon, doomed to a miserable and
pathetic end; Zau al-Makán is a wise and pious royalty; Nuzhat al-Zamán,
though a longsome talker, is a model sister; the Wazir Dandán, a sage
and sagacious counsellor, contrasts with the Chamberlain, an ambitious
miscreant; Kánmakán is the typical Arab knight, gentle and brave:—
Now managing the mouthes of stubborne steedes
Now practising the proof of warlike deedes;
And the kind-hearted, simple-minded Stoker serves as a foil to the
villains, the kidnapping Badawi and Ghazbán the detestable negro. The
fortunes of the family are interrupted by two episodes, both equally
remarkable. Taj al-Mulúk[287] is the model lover whom no difficulties or
dangers can daunt. In Azíz and Azízah (ii. 291) we have the beau idéal
of a loving woman: the writer’s object was to represent a “softy” who
had the luck to win the love of a beautiful and clever cousin and the
mad folly to break her heart. The poetical justice which he receives at
the hands of women of quite another stamp leaves nothing to be desired.
Finally the plot of “King Omar” is well worked out; and the gathering of
all the actors upon the stage before the curtain drops may be improbable
but it is highly artistic.