The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature

by Robert Irwin

  Abu Sulaiman commented to us: ‘Though Ibycus turned to the cranes, he meant by that the Master and Creator of the cranes.’

  Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam, pp. 258–9

  The story of the cranes of Ibycus is found in Greek legend, but Tawhidi’s source, Abu Sulayman, has given it a pious Muslim’s gloss (though in truth the fable seems designed to illustrate the nature of self-fulfilling prophecy rather than divine Providence). Subsequently the tale was recycled in late compilations of The Thousand and One Nights as ‘The Fifteenth Constable’s History’, and a recent variant of essentially the same story-motif featured in the film LA Confidential. Time and again the conversation in Ibn Sa’dan’s house came round to the life and opinions of Tawhidi’s philosophical guru, a certain Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani (the narrator of the previous story), who wrote little or nothing himself, but who certainly influenced almost everything that Tawhidi wrote. This was a century in which Islam’s leading intellects interested themselves more intensely than ever before or since in Greek thought and literature. Abu Sulayman was a leading figure in the dissemination of Greek ideas and, more generally, in teaching tolerance for the ideas of other cultures and creeds. Tawhidi reported that Abu Sulayman was once asked how he could reconcile being a Muslim with his belief that all religions were equally capable of defending themselves. In reply, Abu Sulayman produced a parable in which he compared himself to a man who has been allotted a leaky apartment in a caravansary, or hostel. Having noted that all the other rooms were leaky too, he concluded that he might as well stay in the one he had been allotted. Islam was the religion in which Abu Sulayman had been raised and he was going to stick with it because, though other religions were no worse, they were no better either.

  Tawhidi and his teachers and friends were interested in Greek philosophy and Sufism, and in reconciling Sufism with Neoplatonism. Abu Sulayman and his ideas also feature prominently in Tawhidi’s Muqabasat, or ‘Borrowings’. In what follows, Abu Sulayman austerely counsels his disciples against immersion in transitory pleasures – wise words perhaps, but they must have put a damper on the picnic.

  One spring day in Baghdad, Abu Sulayman went out to the steppe, seeking amusement and conviviality with a number of his companions. Among them there was a young lad – sullen, repulsive, and abusive. Despite these defects, he would chant melodiously, with a delicate body, plaintive voice, mellow intonation, and charming rendition.

  A group accompanied him of the elegant people (ziraf) of the quarter and young men (fityan) of the neighbourhood, each one suitably and thoroughly educated. When they paused for a breather, the lad launched into his specialty, reaching his peak. His companions were carried into ecstasy and swung rhythmically, enraptured.

  Abu Zakariyya’ al-Saymari said: ‘I commented to a bright companion of mine, “Do you see what is being accomplished by the pathos of this voice, the dew of this throat, the redolence of this melody, and the expiration of these musical notes?” ‘

  He said to me: ‘If this fellow had someone to train and tend him, and guide him in harmonious modes and various melodies, he would become a wonder and a temptation; for his nature is extraordinary, his artistry is marvellous, and he is thoroughly fragile and delicate.’

  Abu Sulayman suddenly interrupted: ‘Discuss with me what you were saying about nature. Why does it need art? For we know that art imitates nature, and wishes to adhere and draw nigh to it because it falls beneath it. This is a sound opinion and well-expounded proposition. [Art] only imitates [nature] and follows in its track because its level is beneath [that of nature]. Yet you claimed that nature did not suffice for this youth, and that it needed art so perfection might be derived from it and so that the ultimate may be attained with its assistance.’

  We answered: ‘We don’t know. It is really a question.’

  He replied: ‘So give it some thought.’

  So we returned to him and said: ‘It’s beyond us. If you would favour us with an explanation and embark upon expounding a useful lesson, this would be accounted a boon and supreme merit of yours.’

  Abu Sulayman said: ‘Nature only needs art in this place [i.e. the world] because here art receives dictation from soul and intellect, and it dictates to nature. And it has been ascertained that nature’s level is beneath the level of soul and intellect, and that it loves soul, receives its impressions, follows its command, takes upon itself its perfection, operates by its direction, and writes by its dictation. Music advenes to the soul and is present therein in a subtle and noble manner. And if the musician happens to have a receptive nature, responsive manner, suitable disposition, and a pliant instrument, he pours out over it, with the aid of intellect and soul, an elegant cast and wonderful harmony, giving it a beloved form and remarkable embellishment. His faculty herein is by means of communication with the rational soul. Nature consequently needs art because it attains its perfection through the rational soul by means of skilful art, which takes by dictation what it lacks, dictating what advenes to it, seeking perfection through what it receives, bestowing perfection to what it bestows.’

  Al-Bukhari – he was one of his pupils – said to him: ‘How grateful we are to you for these resplendent gifts, and how we praise God for these constant useful lessons He gives us through you!’

  Abu Sulayman said: ‘I have acquired this from you, and have been inspired and guided by you [literally ‘I struck flint at your stone and directed myself by the light of your fire’]. If the heart of one friend is open to another, the truth glows between them, the good enfolds them, and each becomes a mainstay to his companion, a helpmate in his endeavour, and a potent factor in his attaining his wish. There is nothing surprising in this: souls ignite one another, minds fertilize one another, tongues exchange confidences; and the mysteries of this human being, a microcosm in this macrocosm, abound and spread.’

  The one who speculates in this mode must only tend his soul, seeking his felicity, concerned with his condition in proceeding to his aim, not diverting himself for conspicuous radiance, splendour of beauty, and momentary pleasure. With these premises he will reach these aims, harvest these fruits, and find this tranquillity, raised beyond these particles of dust and squalor. The beginning and end of this matter are through God and from God.

  God, purify our hearts from all kinds of corruption; endear to our souls the ways of righteousness. Be our guide and guarantor of our salvation through Your grace and goodness, from which nothing of Your creation, supernal and infernal, is devoid, and which do not elude anything of Your work, hidden and manifest. He through whom all (or: the universe) is one and who is unified in all.

  Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, pp. 162–4

  Tawhidi wrote a treatise on penmanship, in which he took a somewhat philosophical approach to the art of calligraphy. He also wrote a treatise on friendship, al-Sadaqa, though it is doubtful whether such a cantankerous man was qualified to write on such a subject. ‘In truth, man is a problem for man’, as Tawhidi himself observed. After the disgrace and execution of Ibn Sa’dan in 984, Tawhidi was once again without a patron and consequently reduced to destitution. He thereupon wrote to protest on behalf of the poor against the rich and lamented his own misery and poverty. ‘Often I have prayed in the mosque without noticing my neighbour and, whenever I did notice, I found him a shopkeeper, a tripe-man, a dealer in cotton or a butcher who sickened me with his stench.’ Towards the end of his life, he turned to Sufic asceticism and burned his books, ‘for I have no child, no friend, no pupil, no master and would not leave my books to people who would trade with them and smirch my honour. How am I to leave my books behind to those with whom I have lived for twenty years without receiving love or regard; by whom, often and often, I have been driven to privation and hunger and galling dependence or reduced to the necessity of bartering away my faith and honour.’ The fasad al-zaman, or rottenness of the age, was a recurrent theme in the writings of Tanukhi, Tawhidi and many other writers in this period. Although
this was a golden age for thought and literature, one of its characteristics was that it perceived itself as being in a cultural decline. Ruined palaces, abandoned cities and tombstones furnished the metaphorical stockin-trade for eloquent laments.

  One of the reasons that Tawhidi had found favour, albeit only temporarily, with Ibn ‘Abbad was the former’s familiarity with the underworld and the culture of the mendicant and the destitute. Despite Ibn ‘Abbad’s exalted rank and erudition, he prided himself on his familiarity with thieves’ cant and with pornography. That was the fashion. He maintained that ‘the only enjoyable form of copulation is with men’. He was the patron of Abu Dulaf, a vagabond scholar, mineralogist and poet, who was the author of the Qasida Sasaniyya, a celebration in verse of a life of crime and mendicancy. Ibn ‘Abbad also hired a one-armed gangster to recite religious poetry in his house. As for Tawhidi, the learned secretary made a cult of the figure of the wandering stranger alone and destitute in the world. Referring to this, Yaqut, a thirteenth-century compiler of a dictionary of literary men, called him ‘the mainstay of the Banu Sasan’, but who were the Banu Sasan? For reasons which are mysterious, Banu Sasan, or ‘Children of Sasan’, was the term used to designate the loose community of low-life entertainers, spongers, beggars and thieves. Their achievements were commemorated in popular epics and lengthy poems.

  The values and devices of the Banu Sasan also figured in the new genre of maqamat literature. Maqamat (sing, maqama) is usually translated as ‘sessions’, or ‘seances’, but literally (if inelegantly) it means ‘the places of standing to speak’. Customarily a poet, scholar or storyteller who held the floor at a majlis would stand to speak. The earliest specimen of what is called maqamat literature was produced by Badi’ al-Zaman al-Hamadhani (969–1008). Badi’ al-Zaman, which means ‘Wonder of the Age’, was not what his mother called him, but was rather the title he won for himself by writing his Maqamat. Ahmad ibn alHusayn al-HAMADHANI was born in Hamadan in western Persia. However, in later life he retained no fondness for the city of his origin: ‘In ugliness its children are like its old men, and, in reason, its old men are like its children.’

  Although he was born in Persia, he may well have been an Arab. Hamadhani travelled first to the Persian city of Rayy, where he wrote under the patronage of the Wazir Sahib Ibn ‘Abbad. (He is alleged to have left after being mocked for farting in the wazir’s majlis.) Thereafter he travelled from city to city in search of patrons. At the end of his life al-Hamadhani settled in Herat in Afghanistan. There in 1008, at the age of forty, he is said to have been taken for dead and buried alive. Cries were heard coming from his tomb in the night. In the morning the tomb was reopened and he was found dead, but clutching his beard.

  There is nothing very like the maqamat genre in Western literature. The individual maqamas should not be read as short stories, as they are insufficiently and inconsistently plotted. Language and the display of language skills take precedence over storytelling in each of the episodes. In Hamadhani’s Maqamat, the episodic story, such as it is, is narrated by the fictional Isa ibn Hisham and often deals with his encounter with a certain Abu al-Fath of Alexandria, a disreputable vagabond scholar. Abu al-Fath appears in a sequence of disguises, for example as a lunatic or as a blind man, the disguises being designed to help him to get money. Ibn Hisham’s function then is to penetrate the succession of disguises and to bear testimony to the old man’s cunning and eloquence – above all the eloquence, for Abu al-Fath, despite his rags, is a master of the intricacies of Arabic rhetoric. Hamadhani’s Maqamat is divided into fifty-two ‘standings’, each one devoted to a different theme. In the thirty-fifth maqama, for instance, Iblis, the Devil, puts forward a claim to have inspired a vast amount of ancient Arab poetry. Another maqama, set notionally in the city of Rusafa, is devoted to the tricks and slang of rogues and beggars. Another features a cursing match. Viewed as a whole, the Maqamat offered its readers riddles, puns, word-hoards of remarkable obscurity and veiled allusions to other authors.

  Hamadhani was interested in many of the things that Jahiz had dealt with in the previous century (for Jahiz had written essays on rhetoric, as well as on robbers and vagrants and their tricks). However, Hamadhani disapproved of Jahiz because Jahiz disapproved of saj’, whereas Hamadhani was an innovator in employing saj’ for continuous narrative. (Previously saj’ tended be used in correspondence and sermons.) Hamadhani’s use of rhymed prose facilitated a style which made heavy play with parallelisms, echoes and antitheses. The contorted prose style enforced by rhyme, as well as Hamadhani’s delight in the lexically obscure or obsolescent (nawadir), means that he is impossible to translate satisfactorily into English. Though his work was intensely admired in the tenth century, even then Hamadhani had his critics; for example, the satirical poet Abu Bakr al-Khwarizmi thought that Hamadhani’s stuff was like the tricks of a juggler.

  Some of the stories featured in the Maqamat had appeared in earlier anthologies of anecdotes put together by Tanukhi and others, but Hamadhani’s framing structure, which made use of recurring protagonists, was novel. A wanderer himself and one who lived on his wits, Hamadhani celebrated the lives of mendicant rogues, gatecrashers, wits and storytellers. He was neither the first nor the last to do so. It was claimed that he wrote some four hundred maqamas, but only fifty-two have survived.

  Isa ibn Hisham told us the following: I was in Basra with Abu’l-Fath al-Iskandari, a master of language – when he summoned elegance, it responded; when he commanded eloquence, it obeyed. I was present with him at a reception given by some merchant, and we were served a madira, one that commended the civilization of cities. It quivered in the dish and gave promise of bliss and testified that Mu’awiya, God have mercy on him, was Imam. It was in a bowl such that looks glided off it and brilliance rippled in it. When it took its place on the table and its home in our hearts, Abu’1-Fath al-Iskandari started to curse it and him who offered it, to abuse it and him who ate it, to revile it and him who cooked it. We thought that he was jesting, but the fact was the reverse, for his jest was earnest, indeed. He withdrew from the table and left the company of brothers. We had the madira removed, and our hearts were removed with it, our eyes followed behind it, our mouths watered after it, our lips smacked, and our livers were kindled. Nevertheless, we joined with him in parting with it and inquired of him concerning it, and he said, ‘My story about the madira is longer than the pain of my being deprived of it, and if I tell you about it, I am in danger of arousing aversion and wasting time.’

  We said, ‘Come on!’ and he continued.

  ‘When I was in Baghdad a certain merchant invited me to a madira and stuck to me like a creditor and like the dog to the companions of al-Raqim. So I accepted his invitation, and we set out for his house. All the way he praised his wife, for whom, he said, he would give his life’s blood. He described her skill in preparing the madira and her refinement in cooking it, and he said, “O my master, if you could see her, with the apron round her middle, moving about the house, from the oven to the pots and from the pots to the oven, blowing on the fire with her mouth and pounding the spices with her hand; if you could see the smoke blacken that beautiful face and leave its marks on that smooth cheek, then you would see a sight which would dazzle the eyes! I love her because she loves me. It is bliss for a man to be vouchsafed the help of his wife and to be aided by his helpmate, especially if she is of his kin. She is my cousin on my father’s side, her flesh is my flesh, her town is my town, her uncles are my uncles, her root is my root. She is however better natured and better looking than I.”

  ‘So he wearied me with his wife’s qualities until we reached the quarter where he lived, and then he said, “O my master, look at this quarter! It is the noblest quarter of Baghdad. The worthy vie to settle here, and the great compete to dwell here. None but merchants live here, for a man can be judged by his neighbor. My house is the jewel in the middle of a necklace of houses, the center of their circle. How much, O my master, would you say was spent on
each house? Make a rough guess, if you don’t know exactly.”

  ‘I answered, “A lot.”

  ‘He said, “Glory be to God, how great is your error! You just say ‘a lot’.” Then he sighed deeply and said, “Glory to Him who knows all things.”

  ‘Then we came to the door of his house, and he said, “This is my house. How much, O my master, would you say I spent on this doorway? By God, I spent more than I could afford and enough to reduce me to poverty. What do you think of its workmanship and shape? By God, have you seen its like? Look at the fine points of craftsmanship in it, and observe the beauty of its lattice-work; it is as if it had been drawn with a compass. Look at the skill of the carpenter in making this door. From how many pieces did he make it? You may well say, ‘How should I know?’ It is made of a single piece of teak, free from worm or rot. If it is moved, it moans, and if it is struck, it hums. Who made it, sir? Abu Ishaq ibn Muhammad al-Basri made it, and he is, by God, of good repute, skillful in the craft of doors, dextrous with his hands in his work. God, what a capable man he is! By my life, I would never call on anyone but him for such a task.

  ‘ “And this door ring which you see, I bought it in the curio market from ‘Imran the curio dealer, for three Mu’izzi dinars. And how much yellow copper does it contain, sir? It contains six ratls! It turns on a screw in the door. Turn it, by God! Then strike it and watch. By my life, one should not buy a door ring from anyone but ‘Imran, who sells nothing but treasures.”

  ‘Then he rapped on the door, and we entered the hall, and he said, “May God preserve you, O house! May God not destroy you, O walls! How strong are your buttresses, how sound your construction, how firm your foundation! By God, observe the steps and scrutinize the inside and the outside of the house, and ask me, ‘How did you obtain it, and by what devices did you acquire and gain possession of it?’ I had a neighbour called Abu Sulayman, who lived in this quarter. He had more wealth than he could store and more valuables than he could weigh. He died, may God have mercy on him, leaving an heir who squandered his inheritance on wine and song and dissipated it between backgammon and gambling. I feared lest the guide of necessity lead him to sell the house and he sell it in a moment of desperation or leave it exposed to ruination. Then I would see my chance of buying it slip away, and my grief would continue to the day of my death.