and other representative literati, as our sole authorities for pure
Arabic, the precedence in following order. First of all ranks the Jáhili
(Ignoramus) of The Ignorance, the Ἀραβίας ἄρειον ἔθνος: these pagans
left hemistichs, couplets, pieces and elegies which once composed a
large corpus and which is now mostly forgotten. Hammád al-Ráwiyah, the
Reciter, a man of Persian descent (ob. A.H. 160 = 777) who first
collected the Mu’allakát, once recited by rote in a séance before Caliph
Al-Walid two thousand poems of præ-Mohammedan bards.[445] After the
Jáhili stands the Mukhadram or Muhadrim, the “Spurious,” because half
Pagan half Moslem, who flourished either immediately before or soon
after the preaching of Mohammed. The Islámi or full-blooded Moslem at
the end of the first century A.H. (= 720) began the process of
corruption in language; and, lastly, he was followed by the Muwallad of
the second century who fused Arabic with non-Arabic and in whom purity
of diction disappeared.
I have noticed (1 § A.) that the versical portion of The Nights may be
distributed into three categories. First are the olden poems which are
held classical by all modern Arabs; then comes the mediæval poetry, the
effusions of that brilliant throng which adorned the splendid Court of
Harun al-Rashid and which ended with Al-Haríri (ob. A.H. 516); and,
lastly, are the various _pièces de circonstance_ suggested to editors or
scribes by the occasion. It is not my object to enter upon the
historical part of the subject: a mere sketch would have neither value
nor interest whilst a finished picture would lead too far: I must be
contented to notice a few of the most famous names.
Of the præ-islamites we have Ádi bin Zayd al-Ibadi the “celebrated poet”
of Ibn Kkallikán (i. 188); Nábighat (the full-grown) al-Zubyáni who
flourished at the Court of Al-Nu’man in A.D. 580–602, and whose poem is
compared with the “Suspendeds,”[446] and Al-Mutalammis the
“pertinacious” satirist, friend and intimate with Tarafah of the “Prize
Poem.” About Mohammed’s day we find Imr al-Kays “with whom poetry
began,” to end with Zú al-Rummah; Amrú bin Mádi Karab al-Zubaydi, Labíd;
Ka’b ibn Zuhayr, the father one of the Mu’allakah-poets, and the son
author of the Burdah or Mantle-poem (see vol. iv. 115), and Abbás bin
Mirdás who lampooned the Prophet and had “his tongue cut out” _i.e._
received a double share of booty from Ali. In the days of Caliph Omar we
have Alkamah bin Olátha followed by Jamíl bin Ma’mar of the Banu Ozrah
(ob. A.H. 82), who loved Azzá. Then came Al-Kuthayyir (the dwarf,
_ironicè_), the lover of Buthaynah, “who was so lean that birds might be
cut to bits with her bones:” the latter was also a poetess (Ibn Khall.
i. 87), like Hind bint al-Nu’man who made herself so disagreeable to
Al-Hajjáj (ob. A.H. 95). Jarír al-Khatafah, the noblest of the Islami
poets in the first century, is noticed at full length by Ibn Khallikan
(i. 294) together with his rival in poetry and debauchery, Abú Firás
Hammám or Homaym bin Ghalib al-Farazdak, the Tamími, the Ommiade poet
“without whose verse half Arabic would be lost[447]:” he exchanged
satires with Jarír and died forty days before him (A.H. 110). Another
contemporary, forming the poetical triumvirate of the period, was the
debauched Christian poet Al-Akhtal al-Taghlibi. They were followed by
Al-Ahwas al-Ansári whose witty lampoons banished him to Dahlak Island in
the Red Sea (ob. A.H. 179 = 795); by Bashshár ibn Burd and by Yúnus ibn
Habib (ob. A.H. 182).
The well-known names of the Harun-cycle are Al-Asma’i, rhetorician and
poet, whose epic with Antar for hero is not forgotten (ob. A.H. 216);
Isaac of Mosul (Ishak bin Ibrahim of Persian origin); Al-’Utbi “the
Poet” (ob. A.H. 228); Abu al-Abbás al-Rakáshi; Abu al-Atahiyah, the
lover of Otbah; Muslim bin al-Walíd al-Ansari; Abú Tammám of Tay,
compiler of the Hamásah (ob. A.H. 230), “a Muwallad of the first class”
(says Ibn Khallikan i. 392); the famous or infamous Abu Nowás; Abu
Mus’ab (Ahmad ibn Ali) who died in A.H. 242; the satirist Dibil
al-Khuzáí (ob. A.H. 246) and a host of others quos nunc perscribere
longum est. They were followed by Al-Bohtori “the Poet” (ob. A.H. 286);
the royal author Abdullah ibn al-Mu’tazz (ob. A.H. 315); Ibn Abbád the
Sahib (ob. A.H. 334); Mansúr al-Halláj the martyred Sufi; the Sahib ibn
Abbad; Abu Faras al-Hamdáni (ob. A.H. 357); Al-Námi (ob. A.H. 399) who
had many encounters with that model Chauvinist Al-Mutanabbi, nicknamed
Al-Mutanabbih (the “wide-awake”), killed A.H. 354; Al-Manázi of
Manazjird (ob. A.H. 427); Al-Tughrai author of the Lámiyat al-’Ajam (ob.
A.H. 375); Al-Haríri the model rhetorician (ob. A.H. 516); Al-Hájiri
al-Irbili, of Arbela (ob. A.H. 632); Bahá al-Din al-Sinjari, (ob. A.H.
622); Al-Kátib or the Scribe (ob. A.H. 656); Abdun al-Andalúsi the
Spaniard (our xiith century) and about the same time Al-Náwaji, author
of the Halbat al-Kumayt or “Race-course of the Bay-horse”—poetical slang
for wine.[448]
Of the third category, the pièces d’occasion, little need be said: I may
refer readers to my notes on the doggrels in vol. ii. 34, 35, 56, 179,
182, 186 and 261; in vol. v. 55 and in vol. viii. 50.
Having a mortal aversion to the details of Arabic prosody I have
persuaded my friend Dr. Steingass, to undertake in the following pages
the subject as far as concerns the poetry of The Nights. He has been
kind enough to collaborate with me from the beginning, and to his minute
lexicographical knowledge I am deeply indebted for discovering not a few
blemishes which would have been “nuts to the critic.” The learned
Arabist’s notes will be highly interesting to students: mine (§ V.) are
intended to give a superficial and popular idea of the Arab’s
verse-mechanism.
“The principle of Arabic Prosody” (called ’Arúz, pattern standard, or
’Ilm al-’Arúz, science of the ’Arúz), in so far resembles that of
classical poetry, as it chiefly rests on metrical weight, not on accent,
or in other words a verse is measured by short and long quantities,
while the accent only regulates its rhythm. In Greek and Latin, however,
the quantity of the syllables depends on their vowels, which may be
either naturally short or long, or become long by position, _i.e._ if
followed by two or more consonants. We all remember from our school-days
what a fine string of rules had to be committed to and kept in memory,
before we were able to scan a Latin or Greek verse, without breaking its
neck by tripping over false quantities. In Arabic, on the other hand,
the answer to the question, what is metrically long or short, is
exceedingly simple, and flows with stringent cogency from the nature of
the Arabic Alphabet. This, strictly speaking, knows only consonants
(Harf, pl. Hurúf). The vowels which are required, in order to articulate
the consonants, were at first not represented in writing at all. They
had to be supplied by the reader, and are not improperly called
“motions” (Harakát), because they move or lead on as it were, one letter
to another. They are three in number, a (Fathah), i (Kasrah), u
(Zammah), originally sounded as the corresponding English vowels in bat,
bit and butt respectively, but in certain cases modifying their
pronunciation under the influence of a neighbouring consonant. When the
necessity made itself felt to represent them in writing, especially for
the sake of fixing the correct reading of the Koran, they were rendered
by additional signs, placed above or beneath the consonant, after which
they are pronounced, in a similar way as it is done in some systems of
English shorthand. A consonant followed by a short vowel is called a
“moved letter” (Muharrakah); a consonant without such vowel is called
“resting” or “quiescent” (Sákinah), and can stand only at the end of a
syllable or word.
And now we are able to formulate the _one_ simple rule, which determines
the prosodical quantity in Arabic: any moved letter, as ta, li, mu, is
counted short; any moved letter followed by a quiescent one, as taf,
lun, mus, _i.e._ any closed syllable beginning and terminating with a
consonant and having a short vowel between, forms a long quantity. This
is certainly a relief in comparison with the numerous rules of classical
Prosody, proved by not a few exceptions, which for instance in Dr.
Smith’s elementary Latin Grammar fill eight closely printed pages.
Before I proceed to show how from the prosodical unities, the moved and
the quiescent letter, first the metrical elements, then the feet and
lastly the metres are built up, it will be necessary to obviate a few
misunderstandings, to which our mode of transliterating Arabic into the
Roman character might give rise.
The line:
“Love in my heart they lit and went their ways,” (vol. i. 232)
runs in Arabic:
“Akámú al-wajda fí kalbí wa sárú.” (Mac. Ed. i. 179).
Here, according to our ideas, the word akámú would begin with a short
vowel a, and contain two long vowels á and ú; according to Arabic views
neither is the case. The word begins with “Alif,” and its second
syllable ká closes in Alif after Fathah (a), in the same way, as the
third syllable mú closes in the letter Wáw (w) after Zammah (u).
The question, therefore, arises, what is “Alif.” It is the first of the
twenty-eight Arabic letters, and has through the medium of the Greek
Alpha nominally entered into our alphabet, where it now plays rather a
misleading part. Curiously enough, however, Greek itself has preserved
for us the key to the real nature of the letter. In Ἀλφα the initial a
is preceded by the so-called spiritus lenis (᾿), a sign which must be
placed in front or at the top of any vowel beginning a Greek word, and
which represents that slight aspiration or soft breathing almost
involuntarily uttered, when we try to pronounce a vowel by itself. We
need not go far to find how deeply rooted this tendency is and to what
exaggerations it will sometimes lead. Witness the gentleman, who after
mentioning that he had been visiting his “favourite haunts” on the
scenes of his early life, was sympathetically asked, how the dear old
ladies were. This spiritus lenis is the silent h of the French “homme”
and the English “honour,” corresponding exactly to the Arabic Hamzah,
whose mere prop the Alif is, when it stands at the beginning of a word:
a native Arabic Dictionary does not begin with Báb al-Alif (Gate or
Chapter of the Alif), but with Báb al-Hamzah. What the Greeks call Alpha
and have transmitted to us as a name for the vowel a, is in fact nothing
else but the Arabic Hamzah-Alif (أ), moved by Fathah, _i.e._ bearing
the sign َ for a at the top (أَ), just as it might have the sign
Zammah (ُ) superscribed to express u (أُ), or the sign Kasrah (ِ)
subjoined to represent i (إِ). In each case the Hamzah-Alif, although
scarcely audible to our ear, is the real letter and might fitly be
rendered in transliteration by the above-mentioned silent h, wherever we
make an Arabic word begin with a vowel not preceded by any other sign.
This latter restriction refers to the sign ’, which in Sir Richard
Burton’s translation of The Nights, as frequently in books published in
this country, is used to represent the Arabic letter ع in whose very
name ’Ayn it occurs. The ’Ayn is “described as produced by a smart
compression of the upper part of the windpipe and forcible emission of
breath,” imparting a guttural tinge to a following or preceding
vowel-sound; but it is by no means a mere guttural vowel, as Professor
Palmer styles it. For Europeans, who do not belong to the Israelitic
dispensation, as well as for Turks and Persians, its exact pronunciation
is most difficult, if not impossible to acquire.
In reading Arabic from transliteration for the purpose of scanning
poetry, we have therefore in the first instance to keep in mind that no
Arabic word or syllable can begin with a vowel. Where our mode of
rendering Arabic in the Roman character would make this appear to be the
case, either Hamzah (silent h), or ’Ayn (represented by the sign ’) is
the real initial, and the only element to be taken in account as a
_letter_. It follows as a self-evident corollary that wherever a single
consonant stands between two vowels, it never closes the previous
syllable, but always opens the next one. Our word “Akámú,” for instance,
can only be divided into the syllables: A (properly Ha)-ká-mú, never
into Ak-á-mú or Ak-ám-ú.
It has been stated above that the syllable ká is closed by the letter
Alif after Fathah, in the same way as the syllable mú is closed by the
letter Wáw, and I may add now, as the word fí is closed by the letter Yá
(y). To make this perfectly clear, I must repeat that the Arabic
Alphabet, as it was originally written, deals only with consonants. The
signs for the short vowel-sounds were added later for a special purpose,
and are generally not represented even in printed books, _e.g._ in the
various editions of The Nights, where only quotations from the Koran or
poetical passages are provided with the vowel-points. But among those
consonants there are three, called weak letters (Hurúf al-’illah), which
have a particular organic affinity to these vowel-sounds: the guttural
Hamzah, which is akin to a, the palatal Yá, which is related to _i_, and
the labial Wáw, which is homogeneous with u. Where any of the weak
letters follows a vowel of its own class, either at the end of a word or
being itself followed by another consonant, it draws out or lengthens
the preceding vowel and is in this sense called a letter of prolongation
(Harf al-Madd). Thus, bearing in mind that the Hamzah is in reality a
silent h, the syllable ká might be written kah, similarly to the German
word “sah,” where the h is not pronounced either, but imparts a
lengthened sound to the a. In like manner mú and fí are written in
Arabic muw and fiy respectively, and form long quantities not because
they contain a vowel long by nature, but because their initial
“Muharrakah” is followed by a “Sákinah,” exactly as in the previously
mentioned syllables taf, lun, mus.[449] In the Roman transliteration,
Akámú forms a word of five letters, two of which are consonants, and
three vowels; in Arabic it represents the combination H(a)k(a)hm(u)w,
consisting also of five letters but all consonants, the intervening
vowels being expressed in writing either merely by superadded external
signs, or more frequently not at all. Metrically it represents one short
and two long quantities (⏑ ‑ ‑), forming in Latin a trisyllabic foot,
called Bacchíus, and in Arabic a quinqueliteral “Rukn” (pillar) or “Juz”
(part, portion), the technical designation for which we shall introduce
presently.
There is one important remark more to be made with regard to the Hamzah:
at the beginning of a word it is either conjunctive, Hamzat al-Wasl, or
disjunctive, Hamzat al Kat’. The difference is best illustrated by
reference to the French so-called aspirated h, as compared with the
above mentioned silent h. If the latter, as initial of a noun, is
preceded by the article, the article loses its vowel, and, ignoring the
silent h altogether, is read with the following noun almost as one word:
le homme becomes l’homme (pronounced lomme) as le ami becomes l’ami.
This resembles very closely the Arabic Hamzah Wasl. If, on the other
hand, a French word begins with an aspirated h, as for instance héros,
the article does not drop its vowel before the noun, nor is the h
sounded as in the English word “hero,” but the effect of the aspirate is
simply to keep the two vowel sounds apart, so as to pronounce le éros
with a slight hiatus between, and this is exactly what happens in the
case of the Arabic Hamzah Kat’.
With regard to the Wasl, however, Arabic goes a step further than
French. In the French example, quoted above, we have seen it is the
silent h and the _preceding_ vowel, which are eliminated; in Arabic both
the Hamzah and its own Harakah, _i.e._ the short vowel _following_ it,
are supplanted by their antecedent. Another example will make this
clear. The most common instance of the Hamzah Wasl is the article al
(for h(a)l = the Hebrew hal), where it is moved by Fathah. But it has
this sound only at the beginning of a sentence or speech, as in
“Al-hamdu” at the head of the Fatihah, or in “Alláhu” at the beginning
of the third Surah. If the two words stand in grammatical connection, as
in the sentence “Praise be to God,” we cannot say “Al-Hamdu li-Alláhi,”
but the junction (Wasl) between the dative particle li and the noun
which it governs must take place. According to the French principle,
this junction would be effected at the cost of the preceding element and
li Alláhi would become l’Alláhí; in Arabic, on the contrary, the
kasrated l of the particle takes the place of the following fathated
Hamzah and we read li ’lláhi instead. Proceeding in the Fatihah we meet
with the verse “Iyyáka na’budu wa iyyáka nasta’ínu,” Thee do we worship
and of Thee do we ask aid. Here the Hamzah of iyyáka (properly hiyyáka
with silent h) is disjunctive, and therefore its pronunciation remains
the same at the beginning and in the middle of the sentence, or to put
it differently, instead of coalescing with the preceding wa into
wa’yyáka, the two words are kept separate, by the Hamzah reading wa
iyyáka, just as it was the case with the French Le héros.
If the conjunctive Hamzah is preceded by a quiescent letter, this takes
generally Kasrah: “Tálat al-Laylah,” the night was longsome, would
become Tálati ’l-Laylah. If, however, the quiescent letter is one of
prolongation, it mostly drops out altogether, and the Harakah of the
next preceding letter becomes the connecting vowel between the two
words, which in our parlance would mean, that the end-vowel of the first
word is shortened before the elided initial of the second. Thus “fí
al-bayti,” in the house, which in Arabic is written f(i)y h(a)lb(a)yt(i)
and which we transliterate fí ’l-bayti, is in poetry read fil-bayti,
where we must remember, that the syllable fil, in spite of its short
vowel, represents a long quantity, because it consists of a moved letter
followed by a quiescent one. Fíl would be overlong and could, according
to Arabic prosody, stand only in certain cases at the end of a verse,
_i.e._ in pause, where a natural tendency prevails to prolong a sound.
The attentive reader will now be able to fix the prosodical value of the
line quoted above with unerring security. For metrical purposes it
syllabifies into: A-ká-mul-vaj-da fí kal-bí wa sá-rú, containing three
short and eight long quantities. The initial unaccented a is short, for
the same reason why the syllables da and wa are so, that is, because it
corresponds to an Arabic letter, the Hamzah or silent h, moved by
Fathah. The syllables ká, fí, bí, sá, rú, are long for the same reason,
why the syllables mul, waj, kal are so, that is, because the accent in
the transliteration corresponds to a quiescent Arabic letter, following
a moved one. The same simple criterion applies to the whole list, in
which I give in alphabetical order the first lines and the metre of all
the poetical pieces contained in the Mac. edition, and which will be
found at the end of this volume.
The prosodical unities, then, in Arabic are the moved and the quiescent
letter, and we are now going to show how they combine into metrical
elements, feet, and metres.
i. The metrical elements (Usúl) are:
1. The Sabab,[450] which consists of _two_ letters and is either khafíf
(light) or sakíl (heavy). A moved letter followed by a quiescent, _i.e._
a closed syllable, like the aforementioned taf, lun, mus, to which we
may now add fá = fah, ’í = ’iy, ’ú = ’uw, form a Sabab khafíf,
corresponding to the classical long quantity (‑). Two moved letters in
succession, like muta, ’ala, constitute a Sabab sakíl, for which the
classical name would be Pyrrhic (⏑ ⏑). As in Latin and Greek, they are
equal in weight and can frequently interchange, that is to say, the
Sabab khafíf can be evolved into a sakíl by moving its second Harf, or
the latter contracted into the former, by making its second letter
quiescent.
2. The Watad, consisting of _three_ letters, one of which is quiescent.
If the quiescent follows the two moved ones, the Watad is called majmú’
(collected or joined), as fa’ú (= fa’uw), mafá (= mafah), ’ilun, and it
corresponds to the classical Iambus (⏑ ‑). If, on the contrary, the
quiescent intervenes or separates between the two moved letters, as in
fá’i (= fah’i), látu (= lahtu), taf’i, the Watad is called mafrúk
(separated), and has its classical equivalent in the Trochee (‑ ⏑).
3. The Fásilah,[451] containing _four_ letters, _i.e._ three moved ones
followed by a quiescent, and which, in fact, is only a shorter name for
a Sabab sakíl followed by a Sabab khafíf, as muta + fá, or ’ala + tun,
both of the measure of the classical Anapaest (⏑ ‑ ⏑).
ii. These three elements, the Sabab, Watad and Fásilah, combine further
into feet Arkán, pl. of Rukn, or Ajzá, pl. of Juz, two words explained
supra p. 275. The technical terms by which the feet are named, are
derivatives of the root fa’l, to do, which as the student will remember,
serves in Arabic Grammar to form the Auzán or weights, in accordance
with which words are derived from roots. It consists of the three
letters Fá (f), ’Ayn (’), Lám (l), and, like any other Arabic root,
cannot strictly speaking be pronounced, for the introduction of any
vowel-sound would make it cease to be a root and change it into an
individual word. The above fa’l, for instance, where the initial Fá is
moved by Fathah (a), is the Infinitive or verbal noun, “to do,” “doing.”
If the ’Ayn also is moved by Fathah, we obtain fa’al, meaning in
colloquial Arabic “he did” (the classical or literary form would be
fa’ala). Pronouncing the first letter with Zammah (u), the second with
Kasrah (i), _i.e._, fu’il, we say “it was done” (classically fu’ila).
Many more forms are derived by prefixing, inserting or subjoining
certain additional letters called Hurúf al-Ziyádah (letters of increase)
to the original radicals: fá’il, for instance, with an Alif of
prolongation in the first syllable, means “doer;” maf’úl (= maf’uwl),
where the quiescent Fá is preceded by a fathated Mím (m), and the
zammated ’Ayn followed by a lengthening Waw, means “done”; Mufá’alah,
where in addition to a prefixed and inserted letter, the feminine
termination ah is subjoined after the Lám means “to do a thing
reciprocally.” Since these and similar changes are with unvarying
regularity applicable to all roots, the grammarians use the derivatives
of Fa’l as model-forms for the corresponding derivations of any other
root, whose letters are in this case called its Fá, ’Ayn and Lám. From a
root, _e.g._, which has Káf (k) for its first letter or Fá, Tá (t) for
its second letter or ’Ayn, and Bá (b) for its third letter or Lám
fa’l would be katb = to write, writing;
fa’al would be katab = he wrote;
fu’il would be kutib = it was written;
fá’il would be kátib = writer, scribe;
maf’úl would be maktúb = written, letter;
mufá’alah would be mukátabah = to write reciprocally, correspondence.
The advantage of this system is evident. It enables the student, who has
once grasped the original meaning of a root, to form scores of words
himself, and in his readings, to understand hundreds, nay thousands, of
words, without recourse to the Dictionary, as soon as he has learned to
distinguish their radical letters from the letters of increase, and
recognises in them a familiar root. We cannot wonder, therefore, that
the inventor of Arabic Prosody, readily availed himself of the same plan
for his own ends. The Taf’íl, as it is here called, that is the
representation of the metrical feet by current derivatives of fa’l, has
in this case, of course, nothing to do with the etymological meaning of
those typical forms. But it proves none the less useful in another
direction: in simply naming a particular foot it shows at the same time
its prosodical measure and character, as will now be explained in
detail.