Night and Horses and the Desert

by Robert Irwin

  Ibn al-Nadim was a courtier in Baghdad. What was and was not regarded as literature was largely determined by the court in Baghdad, and to a lesser extent by the Arab literary elite in the Iraqi towns of Basra, Kufa and Mosul. Soon after the overthrow of the last Umayyad caliph in 750, the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur had moved the capital of the Arab Islamic empire out of Syria, thereby distancing the centre of government from Arab tribal leaders who had been power-brokers under the Umayyads. Al-Mansur chose a new site in lower Iraq and in 762 work began on the foundations of the new ‘Abbasid capital of Baghdad. The shift of the centre of the Islamic government eastwards to Baghdad brought the caliphs and the court elite in closer proximity to Persian culture. A growing number of Persian converts to Islam entered the bureaucracy and some, such as the Barmecide dynasty of viziers, occupied the very highest ranks in government and court life. Persians who had become fluent in Arabic began to play a crucial role in the development of Arabic literature, as did Persian patrons of that literature (including, among others, the Barmecides).

  By the ninth century, if not earlier, there were many non-Arab converts to Islam who were fluent in Arabic. Some of these converts, though perhaps only a minority, resented the cultural arrogance of the Arabs and they wrote attacks on their privileged position; various Arab writers counter-attacked, giving rise to the Shuubiyyab controversy (shu'ub means ‘peoples’). The defenders of the Arabs (and they were by no means all Arabs themselves) boasted of their lineage, their conquests and their poetry. In the course of boasting of the eloquent possibilities of the Arabic language, they demonstrated that eloquence. More than anything else, they gloried in the fact that the Qur’an had been revealed in Arabic. Finally they accused their opponents of being open or covert supporters of heresy.

  Their opponents, Persians, Greeks, Copts, Berbers and others, not only pointed to the past achievements of their own cultures but were often able to demonstrate that they wrote and spoke better Arabic than the Arabs themselves. Shu'ubi partisans uncovered discreditable episodes in Arab history and in doing so they were able to draw on materials generated by the inter-tribal feuding of the Arabs. The Shu'ubis mocked the crudeness of Arab rhetoric and metre, and they referred to the Arabs as ‘lizard-eaters’. They also sought to distinguish between Islam and the Arabs, and the poet Abu Nuwas went so far as to declare that ‘the Arabs in God’s sight are nothing’. Shu'ubis also impugned the suitability of Arabic as a literary language. There were, for example, too many synonyms in the language and also too many words with opposite meanings. (For instance, khalaa means ‘to invest’ and ‘to depose’; taraba means ‘to be moved with joy’ and ‘to be moved with sadness’.)

  Most of the leading Shu’ubi partisans were Persians. However, the example of Shu'ubi polemic given here is somewhat unusual. It was allegedly written by Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn ‘Ali IBN WASHSHIYYA (though the name may be a pseudonym), and Ibn Washshiyya was a Nabataean. The Nabataeans were the remnants of the Aramaic-speaking population of Syria and Iraq and they presented themselves as heirs to the culture of ancient Babylon. According to Ibn al-Nadim, Ibn Washshiyya ‘claimed that he was a magician who made talismans and practised the Art [of alchemy]’. His longest and most famous (or should that be least obscure?) book, al-Filahah al-Nabatiya, or ‘Nabataean Agriculture’, pretended to be a translation made at the beginning of the tenth century of an agricultural treatise in Syriac. However, ‘Nabataean Agriculture’ is no ordinary agricultural handbook. It is filled with the most bizarre and sinister spells. It is also filled with boasts about the superiority of everything Nabataean, coupled with splenetic attacks on everything Arab.

  Ibn Washshiyya also wrote various other occult treatises and the extract given below comes from one of these. The Kitab al-Sumum, or ‘Book of Poisons’, is allegedly based on medical work done by Christian scientists in the old Persian city of Gondeshapur. But large parts seem to be based on the author’s own exuberant fantasy. Ibn Washshiyya’s eclectic and imaginative notion of what a poison was found space for a stone like marcasite, found in China, which causes the man who sees it to laugh himself to death. The man could only be saved from the fatal consequences of this vision if, at the same time, he saw a certain local feathered bird. Then there was a bird which, if a man attempted to stone it, bit the stones, thereby magically causing the death of the thrower. The ‘Book of Poisons’ also includes directions for making killer castanets, as well as (rather revolting) instructions for producing a human-headed cow, the mere sight of which will infallibly kill its beholder. The preface to the ‘Book of Poisons’ contains one of Ibn Washshiyya’s wholly characteristic denunciations of the Arabs and defensive praise of the conquered peoples. ‘It splits your belly because of the envious ones, the ignorant who blame the Nabataeans and who are ashamed of their nationality, language and all the rest of it.’ Certainly the Arabs did not know how to poison people half as effectively as the Nabataeans. In the extract which follows, Ibn Washshiyya pretends to be translating a book on poisons. However, he was almost certainly its actual author.

  Know, my son, that I felt it essential to translate this book and others also into Arabic from the [Syriac] language of this Nabatean people. I listened to the people calumniate them and perpetuate evil on them; these people were praising themselves, increasing their slanders, and saying, ‘We did not receive any science or philosophy from them [the Nabateans] nor moral virtue, nor any praiseworthy scientific work.’

  They ridiculed other things and scoffed at them; they made much of [any] faults in their words and blamed them for their language, and made the Nabateans shameful as Nabateans. When they wished to calumniate and throw suspicion on a man, and to scoff at him, they would say to him, ‘O Nabatean!’ They set up sayings like, ‘He is stingier than a Nabatean,’ ‘He is viler and more ignoble than a Nabatean,’ ‘Such a one claims he is an Arab and in reality he is a Nabatean and so there is no good in him,’ and ‘This one claims that he is a Persian but he originally was a Nabatean, there is no good in him because of his origin.’

  I have no patience, by Allah, my dear son, when I hear the words of the likes of those. I am not to be blamed for the zeal of my nation especially. I am sure that they discovered that knowledge of the applied sciences which is distributed among peoples or most of them. Who denies this cannot deny my words that nine-tenths of the sciences is theirs, and one tenth of it is that of other people. This is popularly accepted.

  This calumniation of the Nabateans puts a burden on me to translate some of the sciences of the Nabateans, in order to make them known to other people, and to show men how wise the Nabateans are and how excellent their thought.

  I found that most of those who calumniate the Nabateans and scoff at them are correct in applying their statements to themselves, since these have no science, no praiseworthy work, no experience, and no moral virtue. They may be pardoned since they are ignorant.

  I intend to demonstrate the science of the Nabateans for them especially and for others so that they may know that their ancestors possessed much knowledge. Furthermore, some of the people make much of themselves and are haughty to all others, and consider themselves superior. The cause of this is simple ignorance, abominable weak-mindedness in succumbing to passion, and a desire to be victorious. They calumniate the Nabateans since they are in pure ignorance as to themselves, and are in a state of forget-fulness. If they would but know that they are their descendants, that they came from the Nabateans who are their ancestors, and have taken the place of the Nabateans, then they would not calumniate them, nor call them ‘Negroes’ and ‘villagers’.

  I swear by my religion that when the prosperity of a people disappears, and its reverberations are felt, then one result is that they forget the sciences, neglect invention, and they become like beasts. When decadence settles on them, one step after another, and when distress, hard times, poverty, and straitened circumstances, one after another, and so on, occur, then they become brutes and miserable creatures.

 
; I mention these words to my readers at the beginning of my book so that they may pardon me. This is since the treatise is on the subject of poisons, a topic in which concealment of its secret, and the less said and done about it, may be the better way of treating it. However, there are reasons for my pardon. This is that I am desirous of describing the science of this people in the field of poisons because their science and wisdom must be made known. To permit the people to profit by it, the poisons are described along with their remedies so that the ill-effects of the poisons will be countered. Who desires to keep away from this, let him do so. However, there are some criminals who, if they would know the properties of the poisons, would cause harm to the people. On the other hand, the drugs, remedies, and narcotics can be useful in many ways. There is more good than harm in the discussion of this subject.

  The third reason for pardon of the one who speaks of poisons is that Allah the Creator created them to test men when they may be affected by them.

  Martin Levey, ‘Medical Arabic Toxicology’, Transactions of the

  American Philosophical Society 56, N.S. (1966), pp. 20–21

  The translation movement was given its first impetus under the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur (754–75). According to the tenth-century historian Mas’udi, ‘Mansur was … the first caliph to have foreign works of literature translated into Arabic, for example Kalila and Dimna; the Sindhind; various of Aristotle’s treatises on logic and other subjects; Ptolemy’s Almagest; the Book of Euclid; the treatise on arithmetic and all other ancient works – Greek, Byzantine, Pahlavi, Persian and Syriac. Once in possession of these books, the public read them and studied them avidly.’

  From the eighth century onwards a significant and growing quantity of literature in Arabic was written by non-Arabs, especially by Persians. Among the authors of prose and poetry who will be discussed below, Ibn Muqaffa’, Abu Nuwas, Bashshar and Ibn al-Rumi were all Persians. Non-Arabs also played a leading role in translating works from Persian, Sanskrit, Greek and other languages. Much of this was done under the patronage of the ‘Abbasid caliphs. According to Ibn al-Nadim, the Caliph al-Mamun became a great patron of translations from the Greek after being visited at night by a vision of Aristotle: ‘He dreamed that he saw a man of reddish-white complexion with a high forehead, bushy eyebrows, bald head, dark blue eyes and handsome features sitting on his chair.’ After a brief philosophical dialogue at the end of which the dead philosopher exhorted the caliph to believe in the One God, Mamun awoke and set about organizing the purchase of Greek texts from the Byzantine lands and having them translated.

  Aristotle and especially Aristotle’s Ethics had a considerable impact on Arab culture. The tenth-century essayist Jahiz was to accuse the scribes of preferring Aristotle to the Qur’an. The philosopher Farabi (870–950?) wrote a treatise on the canons of poetry which depended almost entirely on Aristotle, yet there were areas of Aristotle’s Poetics which al-Farabi had great trouble in understanding – especially the Greek notion of theatre. Drama in Farabi’s eyes was a special kind of poetry, ‘in which proverbs and well-known sayings are mentioned’. As for comedy, it ‘is a kind of poetry having a particular metre. In comedy evil things are mentioned, personal characteristics and reprehensible habits.’ Farabi’s difficulty in understanding Aristotle on drama must in part have been due to the fact that live theatre hardly existed in the medieval Arab world.

  Greek literature was revered as a ‘treasure house of truth’. Greek works were translated, sometimes directly from the Greek, but often from intermediary texts in Syriac. The Arab translation project was selective and broadly utilitarian. Works on mathematics, medicine, engineering and military science were translated – and so were works on philosophy, for the Arabs regarded philosophy as a useful subject. However, a great deal of Greek literature was not translated. The “Abbasid court was not interested in Homer, Thucydides, or Greek drama. Only a few of the Greek romances were translated. The Islamic lands did not absorb Greek and Persian literary culture indiscriminately. Indeed, as they became more familiar with alien cultures the Arabs became increasingly aware of their own cultural identity.

  The impact of Persian literature on Arabic prose, non-fiction and fiction, was if anything even more important than that of Greek. ‘Abd Allah IBN AL-MUQAFFA‘ was not only the leading translator of Persian prose, but an important author in his own right. Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘was born around the year 721, of Persian stock. (His name, Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, ‘Son of the Shrivelled’, alludes to the fact that his father’s hand had shrivelled up as the result of a savage blow dealt by the brutal governor and keen grammarian, Hajjaj.) Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘was a convert from Zoroastrianism and his enemies sometimes impugned the sincerity of his conversion. He was accused of having written a heretical imitation of the Qur’an which began, ‘In the name of the Light, the merciful, the compassionate …’ He worked as a government secretary in Basra. He translated a number of works from Persian, aiming thereby to introduce the ‘Abbasid court to traditional Sassanian culture – the cultural lore and etiquette, and the expert pursuit of diversions which the dihqan, or country gentleman, might be expected to master.

  Ibn al-Muqaffa’ is most famous, however, for a book of animal fables, Kalila wa-Dimna. An Indian collection of animal fables in the mirrors-for-princes genre provided the ultimate source for what was to become one of the earliest and greatest classics of Arabic prose literature. The ancient Sanskrit text used stories about talking animals to offer guidance to young princes about the conduct of life and government; it was divided into five sections, hence its title, the Panchatantra (‘Five-Fold Warp’). In the sixth century the Indian story-book was translated from Sanskrit into Pahlavi (old Persian). Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘took the Persian version and translated and expanded it, in such a manner that the original tidy division into five chapters became somewhat obscured and he became the real author of the work. The animal fables are framed by a story about a pre-Islamic Persian sage, Burzoe, who went to India in quest of a famous book of wisdom which had been written for the guidance of kings. With the help of an Indian sage Burzoe secretly copied the precious book, which was in an Indian king’s library.

  In the first chapter, ‘The Lion and Bull’, the Indian King Dabshalim, having asked his minister for a story about two men whose friendship is broken up by a liar, is obligingly served up with just such a story. There are two jackal viziers at the court of the Lion King, one of whom, Kalila, is virtuous while the other, Dimna, is a wickedly plausible intriguer. Dimna, jealous of the favour the Lion King was showing Shanzabah, the bull, tricks the king into killing him. However, Dimna is subsequently accused of this crime and is brought to trial. (The trial chapter was an addition by Ibn al-Muqaffa‘.) In his defence, Dimna cites virtuous proverbs and narrates improving fables. Sounding rather like Polonius, he speaks in favour of caution, clemency, loyalty and similar virtues. He talks eloquently in the hope of saving his life, but despite all the improving stories, sage advice and exhortations to virtue, the ambitious and treacherous Dimna is a thoroughly untrustworthy narrator and at the end of the chapter he is sentenced to be executed.

  Telling a story as a ransom for one’s life is a recurrent theme in Kalila wa-Dimna. In story after story, animals talk themselves out of traps and ministers argue themselves out of disgrace. Thus the book has a Chinese-box structure, in which story is nested within story. Characteristically an animal who is arguing against being killed will announce the onset of a plea-bargaining story with some such phrase as ‘If you do that, it will be with you as it was with …’. The story which follows, which may well contain yet more stories within it, serves as a vehicle for philosophizing and for proverbs and snatches of ancient wisdom. (Of course, the theme of story-telling to save one’s life is later found in The Thousand and One Nights, not just in the frame-story of Sheherezade’s telling of tales, but also in such story-cycles as ‘The Hunchback’; that work too has a Chinese-box structure.)

  The second section of Kalila wa-Dim
na, ‘The Ring Dove’, deals with the theme of steady friendship. The main story in the next section, ‘The Owls and the Crows’, is about vigilance regarding enemies. ‘The Monkey and the Tortoise’ is dedicated to the theme of the man who acquires wealth without the ability to manage it. ‘The Mouse and the Cat’ is about escaping the wiles of enemies and, finally, ‘The Jeweller and the Traveller’ is about how a ruler should choose those whom he is going to favour. The original Indian story collection may well have been designed for princes, but the Arabic version, which has some very critical things to say about kings, seems to have been especially popular among government officials and scribes (the class to which Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘himself belonged).

  Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘wrote a prologue of his own and, as a religious sceptic, added a section on the uncertainty of religions, as well as other material. He intended the book to teach eloquence and grammar and he hoped that his readers would commit it to memory. Jahiz called Kalila wa-Dimna ‘the treasure chest of wisdom’. Even Ibn al-Nadim, who did not like prose fiction much, was prepared to praise the elegance of the book’s Arabic. Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s style, which was limpid and simple, was good for foreigners and schoolchildren who were trying to master Arabic. In the Middle Ages, Kalila wa-Dimna was one of the two most famous works of medieval Arab prose (the other, Hariri’s Maqamat, will be discussed in the next chapter). It was later turned into verse and it was also translated from Arabic into other languages including Persian, Turkish, Hebrew and Latin. Authors such as Ibn Zafar and Ibn Arabshah followed Ibn al-Muqaffa ‘in using ‘boxed’ animal fables as a vehicle for teaching politics and ethics. Modern admirers have included Carlos Fuentes and Doris Lessing.