Literatures of the East: An Appreciation

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-— ^ *>0

^ Q

PJ 307 ,C4 adel * Er ic B. 5f t

H. Ettt

An

,

Appreciation Edited by

ERIC

B.

CEADEL

Introduction by

A.

J.

ARBERRY

RITTER LIBRARY COLLEGE

BALDWH

John Murray, Albemarle London,

W.

Street,

First Edition

Made and

1953

lin by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London and Published by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd.

Printed in Great Brit

L 6-/ '2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

.......

Editor's Preface

Introduction I

II

.

.

.

.

Arabic Literature Iranian Literature

IV

Persian Literature

i

....... ......

Ancient Indian Literature

VI

Chinese Literature

VII

Japanese Literature

Index

ix xi

.

Ancient Hebrew Literature

III

V

.

PAGE

22 50

74

97 131

.

.

.

.

.

.

.161 189

EDITORIAL NOTE The desires

object

of the Editor of

above

this series is a

all things that these

He

good-will between East and West. tribute to ajuller

very definite one.

hopes that they will con-

knowledge of the great cultural heritage

for only through real understanding will the West be able the

He

books shall be the ambassadors of

oj the East, to

appreciate

and aspirations of Asia today. He is a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty

underlying problems

confident

that

philosophy of Eastern thought will help

to

a revival

of charity which neither despises nor fears creed and colour.

spirit

J.

Albemarle Street, London, W.i.

50,

vu

L.

of

the nations

that true

of another

CRANMER-BYNG.

EDITOR'S PREFACE

THE

book

chapters of this

of public of Cambridge by the following members of the Faculty of Oriental Languages are revised versions

lectures delivered in 1952 in the University

:

D. Winton Thomas (Regius Professor of Hebrew) G. M. Wickens (Lecturer in Arabic) I.

Gershevitch (Lecturer in Iranian Studies)

Reuben Levy

W.

H.

(Professor

of Persian)

Bailey (Professor of Sanskrit)

A. R. Davis (Lecturer in Classical Chinese) Eric B. Ceadcl (Lecturer in Japanese)

The course of lectures was designed with

the object of providing of the contents and value of some of the literatures of Oriental countries, and their publication has the same pur-

a survey

pose in view. strictly

Every

effort has

been made to give, within a

limited space, a balanced and clear description of each

literature, illustrated occasionally

unnecessary technical terms.

by

quotations, and free

If the reader's interest

is

from

stimu-

hoped, the bibliographies will enable him to refer

lated, as

is

to other

books dealing more

gained his attention.

fully

Some of

and new interpretations

:

with the subjects that have

the chapters contain

new

facts

but the general aim of the writers

summary of already known facts and viewpoints rather than to advance any original theories or

has been to present a useful

make any

fresh contributions to scholarship.

In the preparation of the bibliographies, preference has been

given to works in English and to those which are likely to be readily available.

Some books of importance have been omitted ix

;

EDITOR

X from the

lists

S

because they are

PREFACE now

virtually unobtainable, or

because they are of a technical nature.

The

transliteration

of Oriental names has been carried out

according to the standard systems.

Acknowledgment

Unwin

Ltd. and to

from the

latter's

also to Taylor's

translation

made to George Allen and Dr. Arthur Waley for permission to quote is

gratefully

books Chinese Poems and The Tale of Genji Foreign Press for permission to quote from a

by Professor E. D. Edwards published

in

the

periodical Asia Major.

ERIC Cambridge, 1953.

B.

CEADEL.

INTRODUCTION Do

all

speak with tongues ? do

all interpret ? I

THE of

St.

different

to the second he

Cor.

Orientalist can indeed give a positive

first

;

Paul's questions, albeit his intention

Go

The mischief of

may

to,

let

30.

answer to the was somewhat

compelled to shake his head and of Asia arc concerned, lamentably

is

reply, so far as the languages

few.

xii.

the

Tower of Babel

is

still

with us

:

us go down, and there confound their language, that they

not understand one another's speech.

Yet even if the languages of Asia are interpreted, that is still a long way from saying that the literatures of Asia are understood and appreciated and those literatures are both numerous and extremely rich. To the great majority of Europeans the ;

books prized by if at

all,

their Asian fellows will

only through translation

;

always be accessible,

but the best translation can-

not convey more than a part of the meaning of its original, and is unaware of the difof the various literatures. To comprehend, we must know not only what the other man says, but why he says it in that particular way. There is no universal criterion of literary excellence. A simple example will show this clearly. We British have

that part will be

fering

come

traditions

still

smaller if the reader

and

ideals

punning

of entertainment, the though it was not always so in these islands. Yet it is true that we concede admiration to a Barham or a Lear, because with them the pun is so clever and so amusing. We can scarcely conceive of punning as a serious occupation, much less consider it a legitimate and admirable to regard

puerility

as a

poor

of the preparatory school

;

sort

INTRODUCTION

Xll literary

Asia the

pun

many of

the literatures of

given high rank in the hierarchy of rhetorical

is

embellishment

without

Nevertheless, in

device.

a

;

poem may

be thought

inartistic

and

frigid

it.

In the following pages seven experts,

members of

all

the

Faculty of Oriental Languages in the University of Cambridge,

have accepted the

difficult

and unenviable

with a severe economy of words the

task

of describing

salient characteristics

of

Such an attempt has never to my knowledge been made before that it has been made now and, seven literatures of Asia.

;

if

I

may

venture

my

opinion, so successfully,

is

due to the quite

exceptional spirit of co-operation and fellowship that united*

and informed

their labours.

of the chapters,

I

Not having myself

feel free to boast

written any

of their achievement, and

congratulate the reader without reserve

upon

this

to

exceptional

opportunity to improve his understanding and enlarge his experience at very moderate cost, and with a

minimum of

effort.

Whereas our appreciation of Greek and Latin literature rests upon more than four centuries of continuous scholarship, the writings of Asia are to a large extent quite recently discovered. In the case of Hebrew there is an obvious exception to be made though even there full awareness, the fruits of intensive philological, historical and archaeological research, has only begun to emerge in the last fifty years. For the rest it may be well said that the part known is to the part unknown, as the visible body of the iceberg is to the mass hidden in the depths of ocean. For all that, as the very select bibliographies given in this volume ;

its

disposal a remarkable range

studies, so great

have been the energy and

indicate, the public has already at

of

translations

and

enthusiasm of those workers, a mere handful,

who

have applied

themselves to the elucidation and interpretation of Eastern

thought and writing.

INTRODUCTION To

Xlll

study with comprehension the literatures of the East

very greatly to increase one's horizon and enjoyment.

shown

is

History

of learning and artistic of alien cultures. The toil of our early Humanists fertilized and fructified all the The impact of Oriental scholarnational literatures of Europe.

has repeatedly

that a renaissance

creation follows the discovery or rediscovery

ship has already

begun

have found their

way

but

it is

obvious that

to be felt

;

Sanskrit

and Chinese words

modern poets As the books of

into the vocabulary of our far

more

is

yet to come.

Asia reach a wider and wider audience,

it is

reasonable to look

forward to a splendid rebirth of our Western literary theories,

;

new forms of expression, new

At

await die delighted exploitation of future writers. point of time

we

treasures lying at reliable

can do no more than

hand

;

this little

guide for the adventurous

call attention

volume

New

letters.

subjects in plenty

will be

this

to the

found

spirit.

A.

J.

ARBERRY.

a

I.

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE BY D.

WINTON THOMAS

For information concerning the date and authorship of the books of the Old Testament the reader

Each book has

its

is

own

referred to the Bibliograpliy at the

special problems,

the solutions they propose.

The following

and

end of

the chapter.

scholars often differ widely in

dates are for the

most part approxi-

mate only. B.C.

1400

Ras Shamra

1100

Song of Deborah {fudges v)

760

Amos

750

Hosea

texts

The document conventionally known

as E, one

porated in the Hexateuch (Genesis

740

Isaiah of Jerusalem

626

Beginning of Jeremiah's ministry

621

Deuteronomy

600

Ezekiel

540

Second Isaiah

450

Job

400

Ruth

Malachi

Song of Solomon

300

Chronicles

200

Ecclesiastes

168

Daniel

to

of

Joshua)

the sources incor-

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE

2

THE Hebrew

which is the subject of this chapter is the Old Testament as it is known to us in the Authorized Version that series of books which begins with Genesis and ends with Malachi, if we follow the order of the Authorized Version, or which begins with Genesis and ends with II Chronicles, if the order of the books in the Hebrew Bible is followed. In the Greek Old Testament the Septuagint, the Bible of the Greek-speaking Jews of Egypt, which in its beginnings dates from the third century B.C. there is preliterature

Bible, the

—

—

—

served

much

Hebrew literature, such as the and Ecclesiasticus. The term ancient Hebrew

additional ancient

books of Judith

can also be held to apply to that vast literature which emerged from the Rabbinical schools in the early centuries of the Christian era. Both the Greek Old Testament and the literature of the Rabbis fall, however, outside the scope of this chapter, which is confined to that literature which is recognized as possessing canonical authority by Jews and Christians literature

alike.

In our approach to the literature of the

Old Testament,

it is

necessary to keep before us certain preliminary considerations. In the

first

place,

covered by the

The

we

should bear in mind the period which

literature.

document

It

is

covers well nigh a thousand years.

Old Testament

Song of Deborah (Judges v), one of the greatest of war-songs. It was composed about noo B.C., soon after the event which it celebrates, the victory of the Israelites over the Canaanites " in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo " (verse 19). Among the latest documents in the Old Testament are the book of Darnel, which belongs to the middle of the second century B.C., Zechariah ix-xiv (or some parts of these chapters) and some Psalms. The books of the Old Testament thus belong to even parts of the same book may originate different periods oldest

—

in the

is

the

A from

SMALL AND EDITED LITERATURE

different periods

;

3

they derive from different authors, and

they emanate from different

circles,

and from

different localities.

Old Testament covers Compared with the litera-

Secondly, while the literature of the a long period, tures

it is

small in extent.

of Greece and Rome,

it

is

That which has evident from the Old

very small indeed.

ancient Israel possessed a larger literature than that

been preserved in the Old Testament

is

There are references in the Old Testament, II Samuel i. for example, to the Book of Jasher (Joshua x. 13 collection of national Book of probably a poems to the 18), Testament

itself.

;

;

the wars of the chronicles xvi. 14)

;

Lord (Numbers

xxi. 14)

of the kings of Judah and of

;

to the

Book of

the

Kings xiv. 29, and to biographies of the prophets, such as those of

Samuel, Nathan and

Gad

(I

Israel

(I

Chronicles xxix. 29).

Works

—

writ-

and recent archaeological discovery was commonly used as writing material in ancient Israel could not survive in the damp climate of Palestine. These and other works have consequently perished, probably irretrievably. The smallness of the literature which has survived, and the limited use of the Hebrew language employed in it, present a sometimes formidable obstacle to the full understanding of the Old Testament, and therefore to our appreciation of it. Thirdly, the literature of the Old Testament has been carefully edited by the Judaeans of the south. The Old Testament in its present form is in fact a product of the south. It is indeed often propagandist in its attitude to the northerners, who, on religious, if not political, grounds, were held in contempt and scorn by the more orthodox south. Some of the literature preserved in the Old Testament originated in the north, for example, Hosea, the documentary source conventionally known as E which is incorporated in the Hexateuch, some narrative ten

on

has

shown

leather or papyrus that papyrus

—

L.E.

B

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE

4

portions in the books of Kings, and possibly

them the

are preserved traditions, stories,

They

north.

mark them

as

reveal,

too,

some Psalms.

In

and the point of view of

linguistic

which

peculiarities

belonging to the northern dialect of Hebrew.

Old Testament was the The Hebrew ostraca from Lachish, which were discovered in 1935, and which belong to the early sixth century B.C., have proved this beyond doubt. But, by and large, the language of the

Hebrew language

current in the south.

Again, our understanding and appreciation of the literature of the Old Testament is conditioned to some extent by the manner in which it has come down to us. 1 It seems not to be generally appreciated the

Old Testament

how

Hebrew

late extant

If we leave out

are.

manuscripts lately found at the

manuscripts of

of account the

Dead Sea

2

(scholars

Biblical

still

differ

of them by about a thousand years) there is no Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament which can be in their dating

certainly dated earlier than the tenth century a.d.

what

this

text.

If,

earliest

teen

Consider

means in terms of the transmission of the Hebrew for example,

we

place

Amos

at

about 760

extant manuscript of his prophecies will be

hundred years

later

than his

own

time.

B.C., the

some seven-

What may

not

have happened in the meantime to the transmission of his prophetic

message

?

We

cannot expect that

preserved for us the ipsissima verba of other prophet.

In

common

we

should have

Amos, or indeed of any

with other books of the Old

1 B.J. Roberts, The Old Testament Text and Versions, Cardiff, 195 1, maybe specially recommended for study further, P. Kahle, The Cairo Geniza (Schweich Lectures, 1941), London, 1947. 2 There now exists a vast literature upon these documents. A brief ;

some of the problems involved in the study of them may be found in the present writer's review-article on A. Dupont-Sommer's The Dead Sea Scrolls : A Preliminary Survey, Oxford, 1952, in Theology,

indication of

September, 1952, pp. 321

ff.

ANONYMOUS AUTHORSHIP

5

Testament, his prophecies have been edited, and glosses and

of one kind and another will have crept into the making the task of translation difficult, sometimes impossible. But when allowance is made for all this, the marvel yet remains. It is that so much of the Old Testament can be translated without great difficulty, and that, in the case of Amos especially, some of the fire of his prophetic message still burns through the text in which it is preserved. Further, the names of the editors, and of many of the authors, of the Old Testament writings are unknown. It is not known, for example, who shaped the account of Israel's history from the creation of the world to the end of the Hebrew monarchy which is preserved in the books Genesis to II Kings. Who composed the Psalms is likewise unknown. Was it not David, scribal errors text,

it

may

tion

be asked

which

in the

?

We

may

Hebrew mind

that

perhaps psalm literature, that

is

well believe that behind the tradi-

ascribes all Psalms to

David there was

a consciousness

Hebrew literature, more particularly owed a special debt to David. But

not to say that David composed the Psalms.

It

cannot

indeed be proved that a single psalm was composed by him. is possible some were. It is certain some were not. The Song of Solomon, again, was not written by Solomon. If it was, there can be no history of the Hebrew language. It bears upon it the marks of lateness, both in style and vocabulary. In like manner, the book of Proverbs, at any rate in its present form, is not Solomon's work. Nor is the book of Ecclesiastes, despite its claim to be " The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem " (i. i). Who was the Second Isaiah, the great poet whose work we read in chapters xl-lv of the book of Isaiah ? And who composed the mighty poem of the book of Job ? We do not know, and probably never shall know. Indeed, great tracts in the prophetic books derive from

It

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE authors. Our appreciation of Old Testament must thus in large measure be an appreciation of the work of men whose names are lost to us. Their fame is in their anonymity as well as in their literary creations. It should be remembered, too, that the Hebrew language (in which, except for some chapters in Ezra (iv. 8-vi. 18, vii. 12-26) and Daniel (ii. 4-viii. 28) and a verse in Jeremiah (x. 11) written in Aramaic, the Old Testament is composed) is primarily a language of the senses. Hebrew words " originally expressed concrete or material things and movements or actions which struck the senses or started the emotions. Only secondarily and in metaphor could they be used to denote abstract or metaphysical ideas." x Indeed, few abstract terms exist in Hebrew. Compound words, too, are alien to the language. Hebrew has hardly anything of that flexibility and subtlety which other languages exhibit by means of the subordination of clause to clause. In Hebrew, clauses are normally strung together by " and ", a feature of the language which

anonymous

literature

could easily result in monotony in unskilled hands.

Our

Old Testament literature in this sphere may properly be focused on the skill which the Hebrew writers display in their use of a language which had certain limitations. With it they developed distinctive prose and verse styles, and they learnt to express in it all they had to say about God, man and the universe. It should be borne in mind that, when the Hebrew writer wished to express a psychological state, he had to express it more often than not " in the terms of a very rudiappreciation of

". 2

When, for example, Jehovah is de" scribed as a "jealous or " zealous " God, the Hebrew term mentary physiology

1 G. A. Smith, in The Legacy of Israel, ed. E. R. Bevan and C. Singer, Oxford, 1928, p. 10. 2

Ibid., p.

12.

THE HEBREWS AND THEIR GOD

7

which

is translated "jealous" or "zealous" means literally " red in the face ". The commonest word for " to love " in Hebrew means basically " to breathe " the Hebrew word for ;

" to comfort "

means

literally

" to cause

someone

to take a

and when Jehovah " repents " over the calamity which he intends to bring upon man, he literally "takes a deep breath of relief", because he does not have deep breath of relief"

;

to carry out his dire threat.

of psychological

states

physiological terms. Last the

among

These are only a few examples

which

are

for themselves that they

expressed in

could be given.

these preliminary considerations,

most fundamental of them

made

Hebrew

in

Many more

all,

is

but perhaps

the claim the

had been

set apart

above, the other peoples of the ancient world.

It

Hebrews

from, and

was

their

conviction that they stood in a special and uiriquc relationship

God, whose name was Jehovah. Their national was indeed founded upon the consciousness of this relationship. How it all came about is the main theme of their literature. The Old Testament is predominantly a religious literature. It tells above all else of a unique relationship to a unique personality which Israel claimed to enjoy. " You only have I cared for of all the families of the earth " (Amos hi. 2). A literature which spans a thousand years, which is small in extent, which survives from a much larger literature, which has been carefully edited, which is preserved in late manuscripts, which is for the most part of anonymous authorship, which is written in a language in some respects unpromising for the expression of high themes, and which was dominated throughout by the personality of Jehovah, the god, the special god, of the Hebrews these then are considerations which deserve our notice in any approach to an appreciation of the Old Testament to a personal

existence

—

as literature.

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE

8

not possible here to survey, even to refer

It is

to, all the thirty-

nine books which the Authorized Version reckons as belonging to the

Old Testament, or

contained in them.

of

to the different types

How pleasant it

would be

literature

we were

if

able

upon the superb literary qualities of the book of Genesis or upon the vivid, true to life, stories in the books of Samuel or upon the moving, oratorical style cf the book of Deuteronomy or upon what may be one of the earliest " short stories " known to literature, the book of Ruth, a tale to dwell ;

;

;

of picturesque which the Old

told with the greatest simplicity, yet with a wealth detail

upon

or

;

Testament has to

the tree and animal fables offer (e.g.

Judges

ix.

7

ff.

;

Kings xiv. 9

II

;

upon the nature of historical writing in the Old Testament, which is rather a philosophy of history than an unbiased investigation into sources or upon the philosophy of life advocated by the author of the book of Ecclesiastes. It would be possible to continue to mention aspects of Old Testament literature which it would be pleasurEzekiel xvii.

3 ff., xix. 1 ff.)

;

or

;

and profitable to pursue further. Since, however, it is I have chosen to refer to a few topics which will, it is hoped, serve to reveal something at least of the literary genius of the ancient Hebrews. In the first place, the ancient Hebrews were a people that sang on all occasions. Some of their songs which have been able

necessary to be selective,

preserved are very ancient, and afford us a glimpse into the

of the people a well

is

as it

dug

was commonly

lived.

A

song

O

well

;

sing ye unto

it.

.

(Numbers is

an exhortation to the well

that dwells in

sung

life

when

:

Spring up,

The song

is

it

—to

—or

.

.

xxi. 17.)

rather, to the spirit

send up water generously.

This song

;

HEBREW SONGS into

us

takes

heart of desert

the

life.

Q belongs to time

It

Another glimpse of desert life is caught in the Song of Lamech, in which the Beduin braggart

immemorial. so-called

does his best to impress his

boastfully

victory

womenfolk by

his

:

Adah and Zillah, hear my voice Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech For I have slain a man to my wounding, And a young man to my hurt. ;

If

Cain

shall

;

be avenged sevenfold,

Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold. (Genesis

The press

harvesters

had

and those

Come down on

the

and

ground

sit ;

as the

is

f.

Second

in the dust,

there

f.)

trod out the grapes in the wine-

their songs (Isaiah xvi. 9

were taunt songs, such

Sit

who

23

iv.

O

There loose on Babylon

Jeremiah xxv.

;

Isaiah let

30).

:

virgin daughter of Babylon,

no throne,

O

daughter of the Chaldaeans

;

For thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.

Take the millstones and grind meal. (xlvii.

Then

there

were drinking songs (Amos

vi. 5

f.

Isaiah v. 11

;

There were songs, too, sung by night-watchmen about the night

? ",

replies

city.

To

the question, "

1 f.)

f.).

they went

as

Watchman, what of

the

the night-watchman gruffly, with a tinge of irony,

:

The morning cometh, and If

also the night

ye will enquire, enquire ye

:

return,

come. (Isaiah xxi. 12.)

Songs were sung

at

weddings.

Examples

probably, and the Song of Solomon.

are

Psalm xlv

Funeral songs, too, were

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE

10

sung, such as David's laments over Saul and Jonathan and over

Abner

(II

Samuel

i.

17 ff.

;

iii.

has already been mentioned.

was over, were

The war-song in Judges v when the fighting

33 £).

Victory songs,

When David returned from defeating women came out to meet him, chanting

also sung.

the Philistines, the

:

Saul hath slain his thousands, and

David

his ten thousands. (I.

The Song of

the

Red

victory, but this time

Sea in Exodus

xv

Samuel

xviii.

7.)

similarly celebrates a

the victory of Israel's god, Jehovah,

it is

over Pharaoh and his host. In the prophetic books may be found references to various kinds of hymns, such as processional hymns (Isaiah xxx. 29), and hymns of thanksgiving (Jeremiah xxxiii. 11) and penitence (Hosea

Then, of course, there

know

the Psalms

as

—

as

is

vi. 1

ff.

;

xiv.

1 if.).

the collection of religious lyrics

has already been stated, not the

we

work

of David, nor indeed of any other one man, but of numbers of devout Hebrew poets throughout the Luther

said,

"

we

centuries.

Here,

look into the innermost souls of

all

as

the

saints ".

What

kind of a mind did the Hebrew writer bring to his was a mind that was concentrated upon ideas. It was a mind which hardly differentiated at all between ideas and reality. Let an example be given. The Hebrew believed intensely in the goodness of Jehovah and his rulership of the world. A consequence of this belief was the conviction that, art ?

if a

It

man

Tins

is

lived a

life,

he would prosper in

all

that he did.

indeed the teaching that runs through the book of

Proverbs it

good

—" Righteousness

was the

brought to

exalteth a nation "

—

and (xiv. 34) which the Deuteronomic school of writers writing of their national history. The fact

attitude their

that experience gave the he to

it

worried the Hebrew writer

THE HEBREW MIND not

The Hebrew

must correspond.

Idea and reality

at all.

mind was of mind is

II

subjective to an extraordinary degree.

This quality

seen not only in poetry but in narrative and descrip-

tion as well.

makes Hebrew story-telling human. People in Old The teller of the story so obviously

quality that

It is this

so unusually appealing, so peculiarly

Testament

stories are alive.

enjoys the telling of

He

it.

delights both in describing the

events and in suggesting motives behind

mind,

when he

is

human

writing narrative or description,

His

action. is

calm and

But when he is composing poetry, his mind is at mercy of emotion. All calm and control are swept away. The inspiration of the Hebrew poet is born of emotional strain. He was never a " maker " of a poem he was not, like the Greek, a noir\nr\£. There was no thinking out of his poem. controlled.

the

—

Indeed,

it is

perhaps erroneous to use the

and when he sang, he sang of

song both sprang from his

record of

it.

" think " at

all

For him feeling, not thought, was in con-

of a Hebrew poet. trol,

word

his

The Hebrew poet

thing outside of himself".

his

own

emotion and was

1

It is

emotions.

at the

His

same time

" could not express any-

interesting here to recall that

Hebrew vocabulary does not know of a word for " poet ", as we use the word, or as the Greeks used it. The Arabs have a word for it, however, namely, shair. This Arabic word means " feeler, one who perceives by feeling ". The Hebrew the

poet likewise was a " feeler

",

and he sang what he

felt.

No

one can read Hebrew poetry and not be struck by the lack of form which often characterizes it. In the Psalms, for example, the verses do not follow upon each other in any obvious and compelling way. 1 I

D. B. Macdonald, The Hebrew

gladly acknowledge

main points

my

In

many of

the Psalms the

Literary Genius, Princeton, 1933, p. 13.

indebtedness to this interesting

in this paragraph

and the next.

book

for the

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE

12

verses could, be arranged in a different order without great

violence being done to the poet's thoughts.

The

reason

is

not

The Hebrew poet composed under the impulse of the moment, and the control of the form of his poem could as easily escape him as could the control of the emotion he felt. There was for him no working at a poem, no subsequent polishing up of his poetic outburst. It is no contradiction of this far to seek.

statement to point to the existence of acrostic poems, such as

Psalm cxix and the poems in the book of Lamentations. In these poems we have self-conscious writing of verses, something that

very

is

far

removed from

pourings of the authentic

came

the impulsive, uncontrolled, out-

Hebrew

poetic genius.

to be written to pattern, the free voice

Hebrew

in the

Now

When

verses

of singing tightened

throat.

to turn to another topic

which enables

us to see

some-

Hebrew literary artist. between two powerful neigh-

thing of the peculiar quality of the Israel

was a buffer

state situated

bours, Babylon and Egypt.

Because of her close geographical

connection with these two great powers, she could not be ignorant of their literatures nor remain unaffected by them.

borrow from their literatures. 1 It is not, however, the fact that she borrowed from them that is significant. What is important is the use she made of the She did not indeed

hesitate to

And

material she borrowed.

here the impress of her religious

genius was so pronounced that the

regarded

of the ship to 1

Hebrew

versions of the

them to be The Hebrew accounts Creation and the Flood have obviously some relationBabylonian originals. But the Hebrew idea of a unique,

borrowed material have as

a quality that entitles

unique in their

The most important

own

right.

extra-Biblical texts have recently been

available in English translations in J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Texts relating to the Old Testament, Princeton, 1950.

made

Near Eastern

3

DEBT TO BABYLON AND EGYPT spiritual

God who

of

stands at the beginning

all

1

things, yet

which world of polytheism. Again, it is possible that the book of Job was anticipated outside Israel. But the so-called Babylonian Job, which has survived on tablets of the seventh century B.C., is concerned with quite a different problem from that which exercised the mind of the author of the book of Job if, indeed, there is a problem at all in the Babylonian work. For here the sufferer confesses his sin, and exalted above them, has completely transformed stories originally

found

their setting in a

—

he

is

concerned, not

between he

sin

and

may have Further,

it

as is

the

suffering, but

book of Job, with

the connection

only with the question

as to

how

displeased his god. is

generally recognized that the

Hebrews owed

something to both Babylon and Egypt in the matter of psalm composition. The extent of the debt is disputed. There is, however, general agreement that Psalm civ, for example, is

upon an Egyptian prototype. On this point I cannot judgment of the eminent Egyptologist, the late Professor T. E. Peet. Speaking of the Hebrew Psalms, he says, " In no department of literature do the Hebrews more based

do

better than quote the

completely outdistance their masters and competitors than in

The world has produced no more spontaneous outburst. Think of its immense quantity and what we have is doubtless but a selection of what existed and of the bewildering variety of thoughts and images with which it is filled how this.

— —

.

brightly they shine,

especially

as

against

.

.

by

the Egyptian,

reason of their higher ethical tone, that consciousness of moral responsibility,

of

sin

and forgiveness, whose

such a remarkable feature of the Egyptian

of the 1

clearest

total absence

hymns

" !

1

is

One

examples of direct borrowing from the Egyptians

A Comparative Study of the Literatures of Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia

(Schweich Lectures, 1929), London, 193 1, pp. 83

f.

/

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE

14

by the Hebrews is to be found in Proverbs xxii. 17-xxiv. 22. Most of these verses are in fact literal translations of an Egyptian writing of about 1000 B.C. known as " The Teaching of

Amen-em-ope

".

It

not often that Egyptian provides a

is

satisfactory solution to textual

But when we find mentators in the

is

problems in the Old Testament.

that a difficulty

which has long

baffled

com-

solved by a comparison with the relevant passage

Egyptian writing,

literary

dependence on the Egyptian

work seems certain. This difficulty occurs in Proverbs xxii. 20, where the Hebrew word translated in the Authorized Version " excellent things "

as

means

in fact " thirty ", the reference

being to the thirty chapters of " The Teaching of

Amen-

em-ope ". Another people whose literature influenced Hebrew literature were the Canaanites. When the invading Hebrews entered Canaan, whenever that was, in the fifteenth century B.C. or later, they at once came under the influence of Canaanite culture and last twenty years or so that native which Ernst Renan hoped to discover in the

only within the

religion.

It is

Canaanite

literature,

course of an expedition over ninety years ago (in i860), has

come

of the epoch-making excavations at Ras Shamra (the ancient Ugarit). Here, in north Syria, have been found a large number of tablets, on some of which authentic Canaanite literature has been preserved. 1 The importance of this new material for the elucidation of problems of Old Testament literature is already seen to be immense, especially in the realm of Hebrew poetry. It shows us again how the Hebrews adapted what they borrowed to the service of their god, Jehovah. The phraseology of Psalm xxix, for example, is so to light, as a result

1

The

literature

translation

Rome,

of the

1949.

on the Ras Shamra texts is enormous. An English been made by C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Literature,

texts has

DEBT TO CANAAN

15

of the Canaanite texts that it is difficult to escape it was taken over by the Hebrews and adapted, and that with comparatively little alteration, to the needs of the religion of Jehovah. Instead of the " Baal " of the similar to that

the conclusion that

there

tablets

is

"Jehovah", who

is

hymned

the lord of

as

In the prophets, too, parallels with the literature

nature.

a reference to the scribed as " piercing " is

of

book of Isaiah. An Isaiah xxvii. 1, where there primeval serpent, leviathan, which is de-

Ras Shamra are plentiful, especially interesting example is to be found in

in the

and " crooked

". In one of the Canaanite from Ras Shamra there is likewise a reference to this serpent, which is called there ltn and the same two epithets are applied to it as are applied to it in Isaiah. The Semitic words are identical in both cases, and they occur in the same order in both texts. Again, Isaiah xiv. 12 ff. contains a dirge on the fall of Lucifer, son of the morning. From the Baal Epic found at Ras Shamra it is evident that the Hebrew prophet has, as has the composer of Psalm xxix, adapted a pagan dirge and pro-

texts

f

duced in turn

his

own

composition.

From

these examples

it

Hebrews throughout their literary history, when they borrowed material from other peoples, applied to

is

clear

that the

the borrowed, often crude, material, a

moral and

religious out-

look that was immeasurably higher than that of the surrounding peoples.

which

They produced

in consequence spiritual

works of

of the peoples in whose

are far superior to those

art

literary

debt they stood. Earlier in this chapter is

it

was

predominantly a religious

stated that the

literature,

that

Old Testament it

is

dominated

throughout by the personality of Jehovah, the god to

whom

Hebrews believed they stood in a unique relationship. In such circumstances it might well be wondered whether there is any place at all in Hebrew literature for what we call secular the

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE

l6

What

literature.

Testament

is

is

and what

is

not secular literature in the Old

usually very difficult to determine.

apt to regard as secular things

which the Hebrews,

with the ancient Semitic peoples, regarded sphere of religion.

we are common

For in

as falling

within the

In ancient Semitic thought the religious

and the secular life interpenetrated to an extent that differentiabetween the two was only with difficulty comprehended.

tion

camiot therefore be expected that a sharp line can be drawn

It

between what literature.

It

secular

is

would be

Old Testament

all

and what as

is

religious in

Old Testament

mistaken, however, to suggest that

literature

is

religious in character as

be to suggest that the Old Testament contains no

which can be regarded

as secular in

Danish writer has put

a recent

In considering this question

Hebrew

"

We

poetry.

shall

we

have

To

these

little difficulty

may be added

case.

The digging of

a well

importance for desert dwellers, and

had

religious aspect.

it

Of this

in designating

as the

song of the

David's laments over

a matter

is

would not be song

if

it

is

an exhortation to the well, or to the

its

*

The Song of the Well

Saul and Jonathan and over Abner.

doubtful

As

describes

be concerned only with

shall

drinking songs, and such songs

night-watchman.

would

our sense of the word.

The Old Testament

both on week-days and on holy days."

Israel's life

as secular

it,

it

literature

I

spirit

is

a

of great surprising

said earlier that

dwelling in

it,

it

to

was more than an exhortaAgain, were the tion a conjuration, an incantation even. songs of the harvesters and of those who trod out the grapes only aimed at marking the rhythm of the work, or only songs of joy ? Or must we again think in terms of a kind of incantaoverflow with water.

Perhaps

it

—

1

A. Bentzen, Introduction to the Old Testament, Copenhagen, 1952, I, " The section of the book entitled " Profane and Religious Poetry (pp. 122 ff.) will be found very helpful.

p. 123.

SECULAR LITERATURE

17

That the

rejoicings at the grape harvest and at the treadpartook of a religious character is plain of the grapes ing out from Judges ix. 27. The taunt song, such as that against Babylon in Isaiah xlvii, may too have been basically a sort of incan-

tion

?

Again, the great war-song in Judges v, which might

tation.

at first sight

appear to be secular in character,

is

seen,

on

closer

examination, to be rather a psalm of thanksgiving for victory.

On

Lamech to his womenwomen's song in greeting of

the other hand, in the boasting of

folk after his victory, and in the

David, the conqueror of the

Philistines,

it is

not easy to find any

These contrast strikingly with the song of

religious element.

victory over Pharaoh's troops at the

Red

Sea

:

Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously

The horse and

his rider

hath he thrown into the

;

sea.

(Exodus xv. 21.)

The

collection

of poems

presents a peculiarly difficult religious

and secular

this collection

known

as the

problem

literature in the

Song of Solomon

in our determination

Old Testament.

of

While

has been variously interpreted in the past, for

some way connected with the rites fertility cult of the ancient Near East, the prevailing view to-day is that it consists of popular love poems, which find their closest parallel in the wedding songs of the modern Syrian Arabs. On this view the Song of Solomon would appear to be purely example,

as a

drama, or

as in

of the

secular in character.

It is

well

known

that the inclusion

of it in

Old Testament Canon was long debated by the Rabbis, and that it gained admission into the Canon by reason of the allegorical interpretation which the Rabbis placed upon it. The Song expressed, so they argued, the love of Jehovah for Israel. The Church Fathers in their turn held that it expressed the love of Christ for His Church. In such a way were Semitic wedding the

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE

18

songs clothed in religious dress and given canonical authority.

Already in the Old Testament, in Hosea i fF.),

(i.

and

ff.)

of love and marriage, of bride and bridegroom was,

Lord"

flame of the

(viii.

Bentzen has written, "

Song

as in the

,

too

was a flame Set

can

far, it

me

poems

in the

Song of Songs

strong

is

lit

as

\1

If this

at the altar

of

God

heart, as a seal

death

:

upon

thine

man would

give

all

Yes, Love indeed

A

utterly

With

angels shared,

from

lift

The voice we hear

of Solomon,

in the

Op.

and

drown

it

;

contemned

?

cit.,

light

from heaven

f.)

;

fire

by Allah given low desire.

Song of Solomon and

in Byron's

In such poetry the frontiers that

think, reflects, as does

The Song Old Testament

whole, the personality of Jehovah, I,

6

secular are but faintly perceived.

we may

literature as a 1

:

earth our

the same voice.

separate sacred

is

spark of that immortal

To

is

arm

the substance of his house for love,

(viii.

2

a

waters cannot quench love,

would he be

lines

go

to

;

neither can the floods If a

as religious as

may seem

be said that to the Hebrew mind love

upon thy

as a seal

For love

Many

at least

was

that

ritual

Professor

accustom ourselves to under-

can belong to wedding-ceremonies which were

any Protestant wedding

" a very

itself,

Revised Version).

6,

we must

stand that even the most sensuous

little

Isaiah (v.

God and Israel are spoken of in terms and for the Israelite natural human love

the relations between

p. 129.

2

who

The Giaour, ad Jin.

is

not

;

THE SONG OF SOLOMON only righteous and holy but

who

also

himself could speak of a

bridegroom's love for his young bride,

The

troth of thy

youth

Thy

I

10,

Israel

:

remember,

love as a bride. 1

(Jeremiah

ii.

2.)

Thus viewed, the Song of Solomon is not well called a " strange erotic jumble " 2 and to assert, in connection with the admission of the Song into the Old Testament Canon, that " we have only the stupidity of the selectors to thank for our good fortune ", 3 is surely to misunderstand the way in which the Hebrews thought and acted. For them the sacred and the secular, the natural and the supernatural, were largely one world one real :

—

world.

so

What has been stated in this chapter amounts, perhaps, not much to an appreciation of Old Testament literature as an

approach to an appreciation of it.

What

have been attempted.

More

than this could hardly

has been stated

is,

I

believe,

fundamental for an appreciation of Old Testament

literature.

More

two main

especially

have

I

tried to direct attention to

which I have illustrated chiefly by reference to of the Old Testament. They are, first, the subjectivity of the Hebrew mind, which reveals itself not only in poetry but in narrative and description also. We have seen how the Hebrew poet was concerned chiefly with ideas how he made little distinction between the ideal and the real how his song mirrored his own emotions and how, under considerations,

the poetry

;

;

powerful emotional influence, he could

easily lose control

over

form of his poem. Our second main consideration is the way in which the Hebrews regarded themselves in a unique the

1

As translated by G. A. Smith, Jeremiah, London, 1929, p. 44. 3 D. B. Macdonald, op. cit., p. 45. Peet, op. cit., p. 9. L.E. C 2

ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE

20

relationship to a unique

God,

of Israel, Jehovah.

it is

This

and personal, the special God makes Old Testament literature

real

that

unique among the literatures of the world. We have seen who Hebrew ideas of God transformed literature borrowed from other peoples of the ancient world into magnificent works of the literary

art,

of which Jehovah was the

and often

inspirer,

We

too the ruling figure in the finished composition. seen further so

secular,

how

have

the interpenetration of the sacred and the

characteristic

of the ancient Semitic mind, often

make any clear distinction between Old Testament that even in the Song of Solomon, whose inclusion in the Canon has so often been deplored, and excused, the human flame of love may makes

it

religious

difficult for us to

and secular

literature in the

;

as kindled and fanned by Him who is divine. no excellent beauty ", wrote Francis Bacon, " that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." x The literature of the Old Testament, the literature of an ancient Oriental people, must ever appear strange to those who, like ourselves,

be thought of "

There

is

think in other categories.

If

we

have firmly planted in our

minds the two main considerations which this ancient literature will, I

revealed to our gaze both in 1

Essay

I

have

tried to present,

venture to think, stand more clearly its

xliii,

strangeness and in

Of

its

beauty.

Beauty.

BIBLIOGRAPHY General Works

W.

O. E. Oesterley and T. H. Robinson,

A

History of

Israel,

2 vols.,

Oxford, 1932.

H. H. Rowley

(ed.),

The Old Testament and Modern Study

:

a Generation of

Discovery and Research, Oxford, 195 1.

G. E. Wright and F. V. Bible, London, 1946.

Filson,

The Westminster

Historical Atlas to the

,

BIBLIOGRAPHY Works on Ancient Hebrew A. Bentzen, Introduction

to the

21

Literature

Old Testament, 2

vols.,

2nd

cd.,

Copenhagen,

1952. J.

A. Bewer, The Literature of the Old Testament 2nd ed., New York, 1933.

C. Cornill, Introduction

to the

in its Historical

Development

Canonical Books of the Old Testament, London,

1907. S.

An

R. Driver, revised,

Introduction to the Literature of the

Old Testament, 9th

ed.

Edinburgh, 1920.

O. Eissfeldt, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, Tubingen, 1934. H. Gunkel, What remains of the Old Testament, London, 1928. Hempel and O. Eissfeldt, The Literature of Israel ', in H. W. Robinson J. (ed.), Record and Revelation, Oxford, 1938. '

A. Lods, Histoire de

la Litteraturc

hebraique et juive, Paris, 1950.

D. B. Macdonald, The Hebrew Literary Genius, Princeton, 1933. Testament, 2nd cd., London, 1932. J. E. McFadyen, Introduction to the Old G. F. Moore, The Literature of the Old Testament, rev. by L. H. Brockington, Oxford, 1948. W. O. E. Oesterley and T. H. Robinson, An Introduction to the Books of the Old Testament, London, 1934. T. E. Peet,

A

Comparative Study of the Literatures of Egypt, Palestine and

Mesopotamia (Schweich Lectures, 1929), London, 193 1. to the Old Testament, New York, 1948. H. Wheeler Robinson, The Old Testament; Its Making and Meaning, London, 1937. T. H. Robinson, The Poetry of the Old Testament, London, 1947. H. H. Rowley, The Growth of the Old Testament, London, 1950.

R. H. PfeifTer, Introduction

E. Sellin, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 8th ed., edited

Heidelberg, 1950

;

Eng. translation,

Introduction to the

by

L. Rost,

Old Testament,

London, 1923. G. A. Smith,

Tlie Early Poetry of Israel in

its

Physical and Social Origins

(Schweich Lectures, 1910), London, 1912. A. Weiser, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 2nd

ed.,

Gottingen, 1949.

ARABIC LITERATURE

II.

BY G.

Pre-Islamic period

Muhammad's

.

.

active ministry

M.

WICKENS

before 622

622-632

Orthodox Caliphs

.

.

632-660^

Umaiyad Dynasty

.

.

660-730)

'Abbasid Dynasty

.

(0

little

literature

and

from poetry

fragments

730-1238 (progressivepoliticalfragmentation) 75°~ 1055y the " Golden Age " of literature (ending with the installa.

tion of the (ii)

apart

liistorical

1033-1238, the " Silver

Age " of literature

Turks

in

Baghdad)

(ending with the

Mongol

sack of Baghdad)

Period of Stagnation

.

1

2 38- 1198 (increasing Turkish ascendancy

few Modern Period

.

.

ijg8

onwards

;

a

great names in literature)

(opening

with

Napoleon

s

Egyptian campaign)

DURING the

few days of my undergraduate study of I was brash enough to ask my The book teacher what the book we were reading was about. was the Kamil of al-Mubarrad (died 998), a work still prescribed for the Tripos examination, though in these more indulgent days The answer I it has been transferred from Part I to Part II. received to my question was not only eloquent of the fine irony of a former Professor of Arabic, but also expressive of a fundamental characteristic of much of Arabic literature. My teacher's first

Arabic in Cambridge,

22

SCOPE OF THE LITERATURE

23

" Your question is falsely conthem, were you are unexpectedly fortunate, some sort of an answer may become apparent as we proceed." I hope I shall not altogether fail, in this sketch, to give some idea of what one should understand by the term " Arabic Literature ", but

words,

as I recall

:

ceived, but, if

it

cannot be denied that

well justified.

For,

a philologist, I

am

this

scrupulously cautious optimism was

though al-Mubarrad still

usually classed as

is

at a loss to define the

Kamil, with

its

stupefying and sophisticated array of history, poetry, theology,

grammar and much

much

else besides.

Nor do

I

think

I

exaggerate

some two-thirds of Arabic all-embracing, amorphous mould, with

in suggesting that perhaps

literature

is

cast in this

one feature or another only occasionally predominating to the extent that we are justified in calling a work (in the European sense)

" historical ", " critical ", " biographical ",

The remaining

and so on.

proportion clearly to be placed in a

third, that

recognized category from our point of view, consists to a great extent of poetry

fronted

by

but, so

:

much

we

said,

arc

mately to those familiar to us in our European over, in the Classical Arabic

period, extending in 1800,

still

often con-

poetical genres corresponding only very approxi-

with which

dramatic field

is

I

its

Literature — and

setting.

it is

More-

the classical

extreme limits from about a.d. 500 to

am

totally

here chiefly concerned uncultivated

—the

whole

indeed, literature, in

;

terms of imagination and entertainment,

is

until recently sadly

(Much paper and ink have been expended explanations turning explain this phenomenon

to seek in Arabic. in an effort to

:

on the fundamentally religious nature of much of Arabic literature, or on the divorce between the quasi-sacred written language and the lusty, secular colloquials, seem to me largely to beg the question. I have, however, myself drawn attention elsewhere to the fact that those peoples from whom the Arabs

ARABIC LITERATURE

24 gained their

notions of literature, chiefly the Hellenized

first

populations of Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia, were themselves

not unduly inclined, by the seventh century a.d., to subscribe to the doctrine

of

litterae gratia

1

litter arum.)

For the proper understanding (to say nothing of appreciation) of the great mass of Arabic literature, scarcely a whole lifetime ot severe discipline will

On

suffice.

well known, the script

the purely technical side,

difficult and often ambiguous (depending on the correct placing of dots or groups of dots), but, in addition, it normally entirely omits to represent the short vowels this last difficulty is enhanced by the fact that it is the vowel-patterns which normally determine the function of Arabic words. " En arabe on ne lit pas pour comprendre, il faut comprendre pour lire." Furthermore, a high proportion of the texts printed in the East itself— and it is these on which we chiefly rely still contain a depressing number of errors, and showed until recently but an indifferent regard for clear typography and layout. I do not want to

as

is

is

not only

;

—

exaggerate these technical

difficulties

problems, experience brings a certain sense

of the right approach

:

but no

as

:

skill

less a

with

all

and an

technical instinctive

scholar than the late

R. A. Nicholson once said that he counted himself suspiciously

lucky whenever a page of Arabic did not yield some crux or

must be remembered, in this connection, that only a of thousands of Arabic texts extant have been edited and commentated (far less translated) in the manner and it that a scholar of Latin and Greek takes for granted lexicoshould be borne in mind, too, that though much graphical work has been done, over the centuries, by both Arabs and Europeans, we are still far from possessing anything other.

It

tiny fraction of the tens

;

1

See, in

A.

contribution

Arberry

J.

on Religion '

(ed.), ',

The Legacy of

p. 154, n. 1

Persia,

Oxford, 1953,

my

DIFFICULTIES OF APPROACH like

25

an Arabic equivalent of the standard Greek lexicon by

and

Liddcll piling a

Indeed, the obstacles in the

Scott.

comprehensive dictionary of the

enormous, when one literature,

reflects

on the

way of com-

classical

vastness

language are

of the surviving

the fantastic richness ok the language, the diverse

matrilingual origins of the writers themselves, and the time

and the area over which the language has continued to be writ-

form for fourteen hundred years, in places China and Spain. Indeed, as one who is himself concerned with lexicography, I often find it difficult to sympathize with the lament of my fellow-Arabists over the still vaster bodies of literature that time and the hand of man have even if it be another century before the laid in oblivion libraries of Istanbul and elsewhere have yielded up all their secrets, it can still scarcely be long enough for us to put in order and understand what we already have. Quite apart from the technical difficulties of thoroughly understanding Arabic literature, there are, of course, the problems of reference and allusion in a society and a climate of thought still far from familiar. The best-esteemed Arabic style is not flowery and involved, but abrupt, terse, often bamingly elliptical few peoples can have carried sophistication further in their use and abuse of language, in reference to, and parody of, the works of others, in their concentrated display of learning in a hundred different fields, and, finally, in All of these their almost diabolical passion for literary forgery. difficulties one who would understand Arabic literature must ten in

its

present

:

as far apart as

:

;

face,

even though he

fail, as

he must

at present,

always to master

them. It is sometimes said that the non-Arabist is usually unaware of the existence of any Arabic literature at all, outside the Koran and the Arabian Niglits, and indeed I have experienced

ARABIC LITERATURE

26

judgment in places not a hundred miles must leave on one side the Arabian Nights, which, though commonly encountered in a form of Arabic, the

truth

of

this

from Cambridge.

I

are not really Arabian in origin, 1

and are certainly not normally

reckoned one of the glories of Arabic ties.

that

literature by most authoriBut there is, in a sense, much to justify the impression the Koran is the outstanding monument of Arabic litera-

usually held, as

ture.

It is

rise,

directly

and

literature itself,

show below,

I shall

indirectly, to a great part

while the mark

Not

it

has left

to have given

of the

on

rest

of the

that literature

is

mean, by this last statement, that it has influenced Arabic literature and language in the way that the Authorized Version influenced, say, the prose of Bunyan for the justification of much of its style strains all the ingenuity incalculable.

that

I

;

of the Arab grammarians, while the commentators are at a loss, time and again, to provide the real meaning of important elements in

its

quite peculiar,

vocabulary.

and

I

But

place in Arabic literature

its

therefore propose to discuss the

Koran

is

at

some length, even at the risk of disappointing any who had hoped to witness, per impossible, a presentation of Arabic literature in purely secular, Western terms. The Koran occupies the same key position in Islam as does the Bible in Protestant Christianity

:

that

is

to say,

it is,

in the

of the term, the word of God. It is still virtually an article of faith among the great body of Muslims that the Arabic Koran represents the actual words spoken by God to the

fullest sense

1 A substantial proportion of the tales in the Arabian Nights appear to have been of Indian origin, translated into Middle Persian (Pahlavi), and later into Arabic, undergoing considerable modification at each of these stages. In the last thousand years the tales have been widely recounted orally in Arabic, and innumerable variants are known. For a translation see E. W. Lane, The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, 4 vols., London, 1914 see also A. J. Arberry, Scheherazade, London, 1953. ;

THE KORAN Prophet

Muhammad

l

7TJ

through the intermediary of the Arch-

angel Gabriel, and that

its

prototype, wonderfully inscribed, In

exists eternally in Paradise.

very

a

real sense, then, Arabic,

of the Koran, is thus held to be God's own language. This is one of the main reasons why the Romanization of Arabic and the translation of the Koran tend still to be the Classical Arabic

looked on askance by the

stricter

Muslims.

It

is

no mere

question of preserving a formula intact and unambiguous, or

of giving utterance to

faith in

a

one universal voice, though

undoubtedly have

these considerations

their place

has but one fundamental concern in this matter

:

Muslim show all

the

— to

reverence to the holiest thing he knows, God's most perfect, abiding expression of Himself in terms of this world. sense,

and

subjectively,

may

it

In this

be compared to the Catholic

Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.

Let us consider the Koran acquaintance.

It is

portions as the

New

a

as it strikes

body of

the observer

on

first

of about the same pro-

scripture

Testament, though

it

resembles that

Book

few passages of sober narrative or quiet reflection, and the style varies between passionate, almost frenzied, exhortation, menace and prophecy on the one hand, and detailed legalistic prescription on the other. The severest critics have suggested that it is little more than a jumble of Joanna Southcctt and Justice Blackstone, and the general effect produced on the earnest inquirer, particularly when he reads it unprepared and in translation, is certain to be one of utter bewilderment. The Christian, in particular, misses the superb economy and skill of the New Testament narrative, the tone of quiet, inevitable authority, the personal and permanent significance of each of those simple, dramatic episodes in in almost

1

no other respect

:

there are very

Sec T. Andrae, Mohammed, The

W. M.

Watt, Muhammad

at

Man

and

his Faith,

Mecca, Oxford, 1953.

London, 1936, and

ARABIC LITERATURE

28

life of Christ on earth he knows not what to make of a world where Mary, mother of Jesus, can be identified

the recorded

;

of Aaron, 1 and the Archangel Gabriel with the Holy Ghost he is baffled by the striking contradictions, real or apparent, which meet the eye at every turn. Yet, as with Mary,

sister 2

;

elsewhere, if we seek in the

danger of missing the

in

non-Muslim.

to possess, even for a lims,

that

it

it

In the eyes of

most Mus-

remains a corollary of the Koran's divine origin humanly speaking, " inimitable " a number of bold

still

it is,

spirits

is not there, we shall be may undoubtedly be said

Koran what

real merits

:

have challenged

this

dogma from time

to time (usually

with a complete lack of success), and though the whole problem has a certain element of question-begging,

expect that,

among

language, the

we may

reasonably

peoples so keenly alive to the force of

Koran has not maintained some justification.

this

reputation for

its most by those unfamiliar with the original language or with the various modes of intoning it in recitation, with their rhythmical pauses and ritual gestures. The Muslim objection to translation is undoubtedly strengthened in validity by such considerations, for few books could lose more by a mere conceptual rendering into a foreign language, however sympathetic and authoritative that rendering might aspire to be. 3 And now a word about the actual composition and arrange-

1,300 years without

Certainly,

striking qualities will never be appreciated

1 Difficulties

like these,

which were early exploited by anti-Islamic some of the most ingenious casuistry in the

polemists, have called forth

whole range of Muslim 2

It is

their fields

of activity often touch,

ally expressed, Islam

3

The

translation

much

e.g. at the

would here seem

" confusion of persons

very

apologetics.

perhaps only charitable to point out that even in Christianity

Theologic-

become involved

in a

".

by Marmaduke

in point.

Annunciation.

to have

Pickthall (see Bibliography)

is

a case

THE KORAN

29

ment of the Koran. Its compilation as a book could naturally be begun only after the Prophet's death, for so long as he lived, there could be no guarantee that this, God's final revelation to man, was complete. On the instructions of his first successor, Abu Bakr (died 634), some of his closest Companions set about of his utterances we are told were found inscribed on leaves, bones, stones, leather and even parchment, and also, in the picturesque traditional phrase, " in the breasts of men ". (In parentheses, I should explain that, in view of Muhammad's peculiar position as the occasional mouthpiece of God, great care had to be exercised in distinguishing the revealed utterances from those where he was speaking in his own right the latter, which over the succeeding centuries were collected, tested and pruned of manifest forgeries, also form a highly important corpus of quasiscripture, on which has been based much of the Muslim legal system, though other criteria have inevitably had to be adopted in the numerous cases where no instance, genuine or piously fabricated, could be found. This collection of personal sayings and practices is known as Hadith, usually rendered as Tradition.) collecting the scattered fragments

:

that they

:

Various considerations seem to have governed the arrange-

ment followed by

the compilers of the

but an impression of utter chaos ally

:

is

Koran

at different times,

nevertheless created occasion-

the Suras (or Chapters) vary in length between

286 verses, the longer ones usually being placed they are generally considered to contain material.

The very

first,

much of

3 and though

the latest

division into Suras itself seems to have

been made on no clearly established principle, for few Muslims

were revealed en bloc, or even that their were necessarily revealed in their present Indeed, the substantial branch of Arabic literature

believe that the Suras

component sequence.

verses

devoted to Koranic commentary concerns

itself

very largely

ARABIC LITERATURE

30

known technically as the " reasons of revelation " of each verse in many cases, upwards of half-a-dozen instances are suggested, in connection with which the revelation may have been, as they say, " sent down ". Virtually every phrase with what

is

:

is

independent, and the division into verses

and considerably more

arbitrary

less

is

both somewhat

flexible than the division

into Suras.

The Koran,

as

we now have it, by

standardized in a.d. 646

dered 656)

as

:

may

have been omitted from

'Uthman (mur-

perhaps assume that, whatever

the Authorized Version breaks systematically destroyed

of Islam

of Authorized Version,

this version, relatively little

At the same time,

been added.

a sort

the year 646 was within fourteen years of the

Prophet's death, one

tion

is

the third Caliph,

—and here the analogy with — other versions were

down

with the

;

may

can have

all

relatively

compact organiza-

and the comparatively few manuscript

at the time,

was easier than might at first appear, and we are now never likely to discover what such versions contained, though various sects have at difcopies in existence at so early a date, this task

ferent times

now

made

their

own

suggestions. 1

The only

variations

permitted are minor ones, principally in matters of ortho-

graphy and punctuation even where they do,

;

it is

these very rarely affect the sense,

not in such

a

way

as to

give

and

rise to

serious theological controversy. 2 1

Principally the Shi'ites

(now more or

less

confined geographically

and the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent), who suggest that passages favourable to 'All and his descendants have been suppressed. 2 A common variant, depending on the omission of one dot and the transfer of another, is the substitution of the 1st person plural (We) for the 3rd person singular (He). In the earliest manuscripts both forms would have been identical, and the intended sense will always be a matter for speculation. What is not in doubt, however, is that either pronoun to Iraq, Persia

refers to

God.

THE KORAN

31

Space compels me to pass over much else touching the Koran which would be strictly relevant to my theme. I am bound to regret this, though many of my readers may not share my regret, for to me Koranic studies are the most exacting and satisfying of all the various branches of Arabic literature. As a religious work, the Book holds no claim whatsoever on my sympathy, but the problems connected with it and with the vast literature

it

has inspired, provide an intellectual field in

which any scholar may well be content to graze his head off. I commented earlier that the Koran had given rise, directly and indirectly, to much of the rest of Arabic literature. This is one of the few ideas on which the native scholars, both ancient and modern, and their European colleagues are in more or less unanimous accord in such an atmosphere it would be churlish of me to attempt to sow dissension. The development is held to have proceeded on this wise with the enormous growth of the Muslim Empire in the first one and a half centuries of Islam " most precious (i.e. from a.d. 622 to about 770), the Koran, that ", of earthly things came into the hands, and the mouths, of communities overwhelmingly lacking in a sure knowledge of Arabic, and possessing traditions and a way of life and thought utterly at variance with those of the Arabs who had first heard Muhammad's message. It thus became necessary to safeguard the Koran from the natural corruptions of ignorance on the one hand, and the deliberate attack of sophisticated opponents on :

:

the other.

In the

first

place,

then,

with grammar and lexicography. better studied than

among

the

language demanded growth of a concern

its

systematic study, with the consequent

Nowhere could

Bedouin and

in the

these be

pagan Arab

poetry, the latter virtually the only surviving relic of the written

language antedating and contemporary with the Koran (I

may

mention, in passing, that

this

itself.

recourse to the pure fount

ARABIC LITERATURE

32

of Arabic undefiled not only gave

rise

to

many

quite natural

misconceptions, but also appears to have stimulated a fantastic,

and often questionable, trade in vocabularies, with desert Arabs to market to sell their sanction of a given word or usage

coming

to the highest bidder, and adducing a genuine, " made-in-thedesert " poem in support of the views of one school or another !)

From of

this

the standpoint of this chapter, the

concern with language was that

of"

as a sort

come

", sufficiently

applied art

puritanical prejudice

So

right.

much

and

for language

:

most important poetry was kept

long to enable

alive,

to over-

it

re-establish itself in

in the second place,

result

its

it

own

became

necessary to amplify the provisions of the Koran, in order to

cover such contingencies of social and intellectual to

lie

outside the revelation

life as

seemed

There was an impulse to

itself.

Muhammad's life, habits and utterwhich gave more or less simultaneous birth to the sciences of Law, Tradition, history and biography. Once again, these were not long in taking sturdy and independent root. Thirdly, it became imperative to interpret and defend the Koran in terms study in the minutest detail ances,

acceptable to such refined critics as the theologically intoxicated

populations of Syria and Egypt.

Thus, though virtually never

without some misgivings, Muslim writers were compelled to turn their attention to problems of philosophy and theology.

A review under these three heads naturally leaves out of account a good deal of what we normally understand by the term " Classical Arabic Literature " one may mention, for example, :

works of

a mathematical or geographical character

the latter

of surpassing

the

first

sented

interest), the

instance, largely

from

by the new Empire.

brilliant,

need for which

(many of arose, in

the administrative problems pre-

There

is

also the vast corpus

of the

but short-lived, Arabic literature on medicine.

All through the classical period a clear theoretical distinction

GROWTH

OF DISCIPLINES

33

the so-called "

was preserved between Arab sciences " and the on the one hand, grammar, history, Tradition, Law and Koranics on the other, philosophy, theology, mathematics, geography and medicine with poetry, and creative literature generally, occupying something akin to the uneasy position of casual tenants in other people's furnished But it is a fortunate fact that the general distinction houses. was in practice often artificial one may cite the ironical case of Arabic grammar itself, the origins of which are unmistakably foreign disciplines

:

;

—

:

Aristotelian, while

its

chief exponents, Sibawaih (died about

793) and Zamakhshari (died

So long, however,

1

143),

as the division

were not Arabs but

Persians.

remained

with the

artificial,

foreign sciences enlivening the native disciplines, and the writers,

on

an evident

their side, setting

seal

on

Muslim

the foreign

learning, so long did Arabic literature remain, if not diverting, at least intellectually creative

and

spiritually nourishing.

tragedy that after some three centuries of vigorous

its

began, in about 1050, to atrophy imperceptible, but after the 1258,

it

gained a

(I

was almost

of Baghdad to the Mongols, in and an inevitability that it is impos-

fall

momentum

sible to disregard.

at first the process

:

would

add, in passing, that

I

altogether too simpliste the usual attempts to saddle the

with responsibility for

would

It is

life it

decay

this

seem

:

unlike

many

regard

as

Mongols

individuals,

and overcame the Islamic civilization manifested itself simultaneously, and even earlier, in regions never touched by the Mongols. 1 ) Whatever the reasons for the decay, its civilizations

usually

to get their just deserts,

the paralysis that

pattern

is

clear

enough

:

the foreign sciences decline

relatively quickly, and, in the case 1

E.g. in Spain

and Mauretania.

first,

of medicine and philosophy,

On the

other hand, the most splendid

period of Persian creative literature (particularly in the field of poetry) dates

from about the time of the coming of the Mongols.

ARABIC LITERATURE

34

of extinction then the native learning lapses into coma, the ultimate term of which can never be defined, though the absolute rigidity of death is apparent in the early years of the nineteenth century. to the point

;

a

After these inevitably

somewhat lengthy prolegomena

propose to turn in greater

detail to those

I

now

branches of Arabic

Western reader. which ought of its nature to be readily our imagination, though it is not always necessarily

literature likely to interest directly the

To

take

first

accessible to

intelligible to

As

poetry.

significant

that part

our reason or grateful to our I

taste

I

:

have just implied, Arabic poetry

branch of Arabic

mean Arabic is

the only

whose roots go back no doubt its barbaric

literature

beyond the coming of Islam, and it is origins which have contributed to its insecure place in Islamic civilization. The poetry of pagan Arabia, of which much undoubtedly genuine is extant, is a form of art very highly specialized indeed, though obvious similarities can be traced with the poetry of other warring

The poet

tribal societies.

in

such a society was not merely, or even primarily, a creative

but the journalist, the propagandist, the public-relations

artist,

of

officer

his tribe.

I

will not trespass

on the

territory

of the

anthropologist by discussing his semi-magical function, but he

seems to have been

as

much

blackmail and abduction,

as is the

The main burden of

day. threats

and taunts

spirit are, for

modern

:

atomic

his verse

as

much

scientist

would be

astonishing to see

in danger

of

of the present grim

boasting,

how

faithful to his

days, particularly in such remarks as that expressing

But the

knock

at the

doors of Paradise with British

striking characteristic

by which alone

of

this

poetry

is

its

number of predetermined he may approach his main theme. The

unity of form, imposing on the poet a steps,

and

example, the Egyptian orators and journalists of

their intention to " skulls ".

it is

feared,

POETRY

35

opening, as stereotyped as the "

abbey ruins by moonof the Romantics, is an invitation by the poet to imaginary companions, to draw rein awhile and survey the traces of the encampment where he knew his beloved in former days then follows, often, a description of the beloved, naively frank,

normal light "

;

but with none of the paradoxical suggestiveness usually implied the term " frankness " at the present time.

by

prelude

is

This amatory

followed by a resumption of the poet's journey, which

provides an excuse to describe his

mount and

ences of hunting and adventure.

These excursions

the poet approaches the

wider choice of

theme of his poem through

alternatives,

passages of moralizing,

encomium,

threats, his

Such a poem

is

at his

whatever.

his satire, his elegy or

are

some

be realized,

as will

to ioo lines.

fifteen basic

forms

nothing of the variations), are extremely intricate

of

six or eight feet, are

which has

a constant

an end,

somewhat

—brief descriptions of nature, — arriving eventually

known as a qaslda. It is, may sometimes run

which there

at

a

and so on

never very short, and metres, of

to recall experi-

(to

The say

the lines,

;

divided into hemistichs, the second of

rhyme throughout

the

poem

:

not such

might be thought, for the majority of words Arabic follow established patterns of consonants and vowels.

a difficult task as in

The syntax extremely

is

usually very simple, but the language itself

rich, so that

one needs to learn something

vocabulary for each poet, a vocabulary which

when one comes

is

is

like a special

largely useless

Such poetry might be assumed, particularly monotonous, apart from the rhyme scheme but there are few Europeans (and I am not of their number) who ever acquire a real taste for it, though it has been extensively studied for philological purposes. Hence, good editions of the works of individual poets are not lacking, nor of the voluminous later collections, the Kitab L.E. D

is

to read discursive prose works.

not, as

;

ARABIC LITERATURE

36 al-Aghatii

x

and the two Hamasas. 2

The most famous qasidas by as many

are the seven " golden " or " suspended " odes,

as there is some dispute as to exactly which poems ought to be included in this group, I will not mention names here. There is, however, reference in the Bibliography to translations which I think are unique in their

different poets

:

poets and

combination of

of the

accuracy and faithfulness to the flavour

spirit,

original.

This " camp-litter poetry

", as its

tinued in Arabic right up to our

opponents

own

call

the desert and the grace of their camels,

it,

Men

times.

when

has con-

wrote of

their familiar

bounded by the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada there are still a few who do so, in Cairo, between visits to Groppi's Restaurant and the Rivoli Cinema. I will say no more of this artificial life of the qasida, but pass on to world was

in fact

;

fresh developments.

By

its

very length and

its

synthetic form,

the qasida easily lent itself to fragmentation and adaptation.

poems now in our possession are no doubt the what were once full qasidas, but many more, especially from the ninth century onwards, are known to have been deliberately composed in the form of brief love-poems,

Many

shorter

battered relics of

bacchic odes, moralizing exhortations, and so on.

example, the philosophical poems of al-Ma'arri

3

Others, for

or the mystical

Compiled about 950 by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahanl, it runs in the average some twenty volumes, and contains an enormous amount of information on the poems (or " songs "), their composers and singers, and on literary and social life generally. 2 The more famous is by Abu Tammam (died about 850), the other by 1

edition to

Buhturi (died 897).

They

are both considerably smaller

and

less

valuable

than the Agham. 3

A

difficult, pessimistic poet and prose-writer, whose works are variously judged, especially by Muslim critics, as " deeply mystical " or " scandalously blasphemous ". All that can be said with certainty is

POETRY verse of Ibn al-'Arabi, indefinitely extended. that

1

represent a

Much

of

37

component of the

this later

composed between about 800 and 1300

qasida

Arabic poetry,

i.e.

A.D., has contrived at

European languages, though the deliberately archaising and " classical " verse often resulting only rarely conveys the flavour of the original if different times to get itself translated into

:

were to be done, for example, al-Ma arri's poetry would need the joint services of Swift and Pope, with the carefully controlled intervention of Ezra Pound Ibn al-'Arabi cries out for Vaughan and Donne, and Abu Nuwas 2 for Voltaire and, sometimes, Chesterton. Much of this verse simply will not bear translation, being the poetry of patronage and delighting in artificiality, verbal gymnastics and hyperbole at other times it deals in themes so abstruse that only prose could bear their burden For all these reasons I make no attempt to quote in translation. even a few lines from al-Mutanabbi (died 965), usually regarded as the greatest " all-round " Arabic poet of this period, and, indeed, of Arabic literature generally. I personally nearly

justice

;

;

always miss in Arabic poetry the strong personal note, the naive delight in and grief over

life,

the taste of death,

which

enliven even the poorest Persian verse. I

now

pass to history, taking the

word

in a broad, philo-

Those brought up on Caesar, Livy and Tacitus will not feel altogether uneasy with the Arabic historians, though in many of them they will miss a certain design, a disciI am not here concerned with plined, economical integration. sophical sense.

that they are obscure

and

bitter.

He

spent most of his

life

in blindness,

and died in 1057. 1 A mystical poet and prose-writer, of great richness and imaginative power, though often tedious and given to mystification. A Spaniard by birth, he lived most of his life in the Levant (died 1240). 2 A libertine poet (died about 810), immortalized in the Arabian Nights.

ARABIC LITERATURE

38

so-called scientific historiography, but with the creative ability

to organize material, throwing certain aspects into high

relief,

while letting others shade off into partial or total obscurity.

As

it is,

many

statements as

:

Arabic historians are "

amait

...il

jeu

le

et

all

too prone to write such

avait

il

coutume de

se

cacher

un rideau il ne connaissait ni le bien pour le faire ni le mal pour Fomettre. Ses secretaires furent... " x (This failure to integrate and economize is one that I feel to run through derriere

virtually

;

Arabic writing, having

all

thought, art and architecture elsewhere,

I

among

its

as

them

will not elaborate

considerable figures (died 923)

but

;

implications, as well, in

I

have treated such topics

here. 2 )

The two

earliest

the great Arabic historians, Tabari

and Mas'udi (died 956), present material which

the foundation of

all

were both voluminous

writers, but while Tabari,

is

They

subsequent Arabic historiography.

with occasional

exceptions, remains very matter-of-fact and prosaic, dealing

with the body

politic

almost exclusively, Mas'udi

example of the historian whose

magnum opus

is

known

"

The inconsequent

natural

history,

know no

the classic

is

bounds.

His

to us only in an abridgement, itself run-

ning to hundreds of pages said,

interests

:

style

history,

of this work one authority has of the author as he ranges over

geography,

ethnology,

religion,

medicine, and what not, his breadth of view and innumerable anecdotes, keep the reader interested and amused." I

would

say that

when

one's quest

is

3

something more

To

this

solid than

amusement, 'Mas'udi's manner can be irritating in the extreme. For some time after Tabari and Mas'udi, little original writing 1

Mas'udi describing Yazid b. 'Abd al-Malik, Le Livre de V Avertissement by B. Carra de Vaux), Paris, 1897, p. 414. 2 See the contribution mentioned in p. 24 n. 1 above, and also the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XIV (1952), pp. 239-43. 3 H. A. R. Gibb, Arabic Literature, London, 1926, p. 58. (trans,

HISTORY

39

was done in history, though there is no lack of popular works, ranging from the Creation to the author's own day the best known example of this type of writing is the Fakhri of Ibn al-Tiqtaqa (composed about 1300), available in French and English versions of average reliability. But long before the time of the composition of the Fakhri, in a period contemporary with, and enduring long after, Tabari and Mas'udi, we encounter the vogue of strictly limited biography, and the history of a land, a locality or a town in the field of biography nothing was to equal the popularity of the " classified " biography, dealing with saints, scholars, poets, sectaries, and so on and there were other categories, depending on such arbitrary criteria as physical peculiarities, longevity and eccentricity of character. But the next really great figure in the general field of history is that of Ibn al-Athir (died 1234), who, though he follows Tabari in much of his work, gives also a priceless picture of his own age, particularly of the Crusades and the coming of the Mongols, which forms one of the chief Oriental sources for the period. It is worthy of note that it was European scholars who, in the nineteenth century, rescued both Tabari and Ibn al-Athir from all

:

;

:

oblivion

:

since then,

however, none of us has seen

fit

to

emulate our forebears' industry and grandeur of conception by undertaking the translation of the whole of these great works.

mention must be made of the great Moorish statesman Ibn Khaldun (died 1406), whose Prolegomena has by now achieved general fame. Once again, he derives from Ibn al-Athir, as does the latter from Tabari, and, again, he makes important additions relative to his own time and place. But it Special

and

is

historian,

commonly

said that his real claim to

fame

lies

in his being the

Arabic historian to evolve and express a general philosophy of history. In fact, this general philosophy is even more than

first

usually conditioned

by

his

own

experience

:

history, for

him,

ARABIC LITERATURE

40 is

an account of the relations between nomadism and

of the

civilization,

observations

on

cyclic rise

politics,

against that background. enthusiastic than

latest

fall

religion

In our day

settled

of empires, and

and thought

we

all his

made

are

are perhaps less naively

were our grandfathers about philosophical con-

ceptions of history

Khaldun's

art,

and

:

it

is

thus scarcely accidental that Ibn

who would

admirers are those

Marxist view of history under another name. ends subserve means, even heresy

is

present the

No doubt, where

permissible, but, as an

to point out that the word sometimes loosely rendered as " classes " (taw a if) equally well means " factions ", petty kingdoms ", even " tribes ". have as yet

Arabist,

I

feel

bound

We

no

really reliable text

may

see here

of Ibn Khaldun, and even

if

we

had, one

an object lesson in the danger of using Arabic

works in other

disciplines

without a sure grasp of

linguistic

problems involved.

To geography early

I

have already made

geographical texts are

gazetteers, but

little

The a brief reference. more than governmental

from about 850 onwards we have

sailors'

records

Europe before the war. With the Islamization of a large area of the earth's surface, many wealthy Arabic writers went far beyond the statutory obligation of the pilgrimage to Mecca, visiting Central Africa, Central Asia, India, South-East Asia and China, and not a few of these have left accounts of things seen and done. They travelled, of course, more slowly than their modern they counterparts, and stayed very much longer in each place were, moreover, unhardened by press, radio and film, so that their narratives are pro founder, more objective and incomparably more " actual ". Both Tabari and Mas'udi, already mentioned, were considerable travellers, and the name of Ibn Battuta, who was always on the move, has achieved the rare and the

sort

of traveller's narrative that was so popular

in

;

GEOGRAPHY of being

distinction

known

to

some

resolutely ignore things Oriental. a Spanish Arab,

who made

about 1185, and has

all

who

scholars

myself best

I

like

otherwise

Ibn Jubair,

an extended pilgrimage to Mecca in account of

left a fascinating

and adventures on land,

41

perils at sea

recounted in a highly personal style

and with great narrative power. Those of my readers who a brush with the Egyptian Customs will appreciate

have ever had a rendering

We

of a few sentences from Ibn Jubair in the same plight

:

Muslims were ordered to disembark our baggage and what on the quayside were porters, who

remained of our provisions

;

took charge of us, and carried our things to the customs-house.

we were summoned one by

one, together with our baggage.

customs-house was choked with people, but every spected, process.

Later

The

was inboth great and small, and many became mixed up in the Hands were introduced into the middle of everything, article

what might be hidden. Finally, we were asked to nothing apart from what had been found. But, course of all this, what with the confusion and the crowd,

searching for

swear that in the

many

we had

of baggage disappeared.

pieces

Ibn Jubair

is

reluctant to

.

.

.

blame Saladin for

all this

inefficiency

and dishonesty, but he prays God to reward those responsible, concluding this section with the remark :

For

As

I

was brought about by the

this

customs-officials.

stated above, the Classical Arabic Literature

is

virtually

wholly lacking in dramatic and romantic forms, though these are the staple literature. lettres,

colloquial,

and

until recently unwritten,

not devoid, however, of certain forms of belles-

among them

" epistle ".

a sort

of essay

known

as

the risala or

Originally conceived as a real letter addressed to

it later hardened into a fixed pattern, in which the was subordinated to a display of literary virtuosity. In

a friend,

subject

of the

It is

ARABIC LITERATURE

42

it was used as a vehicle for many was comparatively short-lived, reaching its apogee in the work of al-Jahiz (died 869), a nickname usually solemnly rendered as the " Goggle-eyed One ". The grandson of a negro slave, he acquired by his own efforts a prodigious and disordered erudition, which his original genius and wit enlivened in expression beyond anything comparable in Arabic. The titles of some of his hundreds of books and essays, though they are a poor indication of the richness of their contents, give some " The Book of Misers ", slight idea of his eccentricity of mind " " The Bestiary ", Thoroughbreds and Half breeds ", " The Respective Merits of Men and Women ", " On Idols ", " The Tricks of Merchants ", The Swindles of Workmen ", The Nature of the Mob ", " The Ruses of Burglars ", " On Civil Servants ", and so on. I look forward to the day when, suitably edited (in all senses), we may have an Everyman or a Penguin It is his lack of discipline and restraint, however, which Jahiz. detracts from the claim of certain modern Arabic writers, that Jahiz was the first great scientific student of the problems of His rich, anarchic mind evolution, sociology and psychology. was revolted after only a few days of life in a government office the rigours of scientific method would have stifled his spirit in a few hours. I have made little or no reference to legal writings, mysticism, Koranics or Tradition nor have I been able even to touch on

its

purely literary aspect (for

other purposes)

it

:

:

;

the great

names

in theology

and philosophy, Avicenna (died

1037), Averroes (died 1198), IbnTufail (died 1185) and, greatest

of them

all

in

my

opinion, al-Ghazali (died nil).

of

his

The

last is

not the rarest me, in every way unique in Islam qualities was the studied gift of expressing his mighty

a figure, for

learning, his powerful thought

:

and

his religious experience in

terms significant to the ordinary man, though

this

very quality

MODERN LITERATURE would seem Tahafut

recommend him

to

43

to certain minds.

ill

His great

but anti-rationalistic in character,

al-Faliisifa, intellectual

on the intellectual follies and fashions of man though he were writing today he is particularly telling on the gullibility of minds who uncritically accept ideas represented

reads as freshly as

:

and " rational

" as " critical

To come of the

state

and the

to

of Arabic

Industrial

I

times, let

literature since the

me

give a brief survey

campaigns of Napoleon

Revolution have brought

touch with the West. frank,

".

more modern

I

will not linger

doubt whether there

is

it

once more into

long on

much worth

it,

for, to

saying about

be it

:

most of it, though not quite all, seems to me little but a servile imitation of the worst features of our own modern literature, repeated at a geometrically decreasing interval of time only twenty years ago Arabic literature was out and out fin de sieck, with Ibsen, Zola, Shaw, Wells and particularly Guy de Maupassant begetting all unconsciously their monstrous and sterile brood. (Any student disposed to trace the transmogrifications in modern Arabic literature of just one of Maupassant's stories could construct a very respectable Ph.D. thesis.) Only five years ago we were regaled on warmed-up Isherwood and Auden. At the moment Jean-Paul Sartre seems fair-set to The leave a large-sized blot on the pages of Arabic literature. :

ostensibly reasonable attempts at writing in the various col-

loquial dialects have not been conspicuously successful,

the habit

is

now

though

The two Americas form, to my in modern Arabic literature

well established in the comic-papers.

Arabic-writing communities in the

mind, the only source of elsewT here, ours,

we

:

of the

and rehashes are never so unappetizing

half-digested I

vitality

are offered a tasteless rehash

would

as

past, theirs

and

when they

are

may

be

!

rather not

end on

this note, so

perhaps

I

ARABIC LITERATURE

44

permitted to return briefly to the

classical period.

Let

me

trans-

few passages from an obscure work that recently came my way, which provides an example of the delightful surprises awaiting anyone prepared to endure the rigours of the field. The work is a sort of" University Handbook " of the thirteenth century, by a judge and rector, Ibn Jama'a. Here he gives a hint to kitchen-stewards late a

:

Let the student be sparing in his use of foods that induce lassitude

and unresponsiveness, such

as

sour apples, beans and vinegar

like-

;

wise with those, an excess of which renders the mind phlegmatic and the

body heavy, such

milk and

as

For games he holds no There

is

no harm

brief,

fish.

.

.

.

but one concession he allows

in his exercising the

body by walking,

quickens heat and dispels excessive humours.

All senior cordially

by

.

since

members of a University who have been hailed modern generation of students will sympathize :

should not address his teacher familiarly, save with permission,

and never, in any circumstances,

Here he gives advice

difficulty in

call

out to

to College Offices

Upper rooms should be have no

him from

afar.

reserved for those of studious habit,

climbing the

stairs,

should like to quote

tutor's door,

fist,

successive occasion, but

appropriateness to

my

best time for

if no I

.

.

who

but the ground-floor should .

.

.

length the rules for knocking on a

beginning with the

ing up to the whole

The

at

.

:

be kept for the infirm and for those of suspect moral character. I

it

.

the

with the following

He

.

:

tip

of the finger-nail and work-

answer should be received on each

must conclude with

present discourse

memorizing

is

a passage

of some

:

during the watches of the night,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

45

but for research the early morning, while writing should be done at

Disputations and discourses are best suited to the evening,

midday.

but should not continue too long

.

.

.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

l

General Works on Islam (N.B. Many of the books in this bibliography and especially of those under this heading are also relevant to Chapter IV, Persian Literature \) '

H. A. R. Gibb, Mohammedanism, Oxford, 1949. M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Muslim Institutions, London, 1950. T. W. Arnold and A. Guillaume (edd.), The Legacy of Islam, Oxford, 1931.

G. E. von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam, Chicago, 1946. T. W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, 2nd ed., London, 1913. A. Ali, The Spirit of Islam, rev. ed., London, 1922.

A Dictionary of Islam, London, 1885 (repr. 1935). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 4 vols, and suppl., London, 1913-38. C. Brockelmann, History of the Islamic Peoples, New York, 1947. H. W. Hazard, An Atlas of Islamic History, Princeton, 1952. A. S. Dimand, A Handbook of Muhammadan Art, New York, 1947. T. P. Hughes,

General

Works on Arabic History

P. K. Hitti,

The Arabs,

B. Lewis, The Arabs

London, 1948. London, 1950.

a Short History,

in History,

1

Apart from important general works, the references given are based Despite something like texts selected for mention in the chapter. seven or eight centuries of Arabic studies in the West, we still lack complete and reliable translations of most of the outstanding works in the for one thing, language. Not that the fault lies wholly with Arabists

on the

:

Arabic literature being what

it

is,

many of

the works

would

scarcely

European Arabists, particularly during the last two or three centuries, have been directed towards the rescue and the scholarly preservation of the very texts themselves in the face of the Arab world's own social and cultural collapse. bear translation

:

for another, the best efforts of

:

ARABIC LITERATURE

46

General Works on Arabic Literature

A

R. A. Nicholson,

Literary History of the Arabs,

London, 1907.

J.-M. Abd-el-Jalil, Breve Histoire de la Litterature Arabe, Paris, 1947. H. A. R. Gibb, Arabic Literature, London, 1926. C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischcn Litteratur, Weimar and Leiden, 1

898-1942,

vols.

5

Particular Branches of Arabic Literature Koran

The Koran (Chandos Classics). The Koran (Everyman's Library). E. H. Palmer (trans.), The Koran (World's Classics). R. Bell (trans.), T)xe Qur'an, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1937-9. M. Pickthall (trans.), The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, Hyderabad, G. Sale

(trans.),

M. Rodwell

J.

(trans.),

1938.

Y. Ali (trans.), The Holy Quran, 2 vols., Lahore, 1934. A. J. Arberry, The Holy Koran, an Introduction with Selections, London, 1953.

R.

Blachere, Le Coran, Paris, 1947.

T. Noldeke and others, Geschichte des Qorans,

3 vols.,

Leipzig, 1909-38.

Poetry

W.

S.

Blunt, Seven Golden Odes of Pagan Arabia, London, 1903.

C. Lyall, Translations of Ancient Arabic Poetry, London, 1885. R. A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge, 1921.

A. A.

J.

Arberry,

A

J.

Arberry,

Modem

Moorish Anthology, Cambridge, 1953. Arabic Poetry, London, 1950.

History

Mas'udi Les Prairies d'Or (French Paris,

teille),

Le Livre

trans,

by B. de Meynard and

de V Avertissement et de la Revision (French trans,

de Vaux),

Ibn al-Tiqtaqa

P. de

by B. Carra

Paris, 1897. :

Al-Faklui (French trans, by E. Amar), Paris, 1910.

Al Fakhri

Cour-

1861-77.

(trans,

by C. E.

J.

Whitting), London, 1949.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ibn Khaldun

47

:

Prolegomenes (French trans,

by Baron M. de

Slane), Paris, 1863-8.

Histoire des Berberes (by the same), Algiers, 1852.

An

Arab Philosophy of History

(selections trans,

by C.

Issawi),

London,

1950.

Biography

Ibn Khallikan

:

(trans, by Baron M. de Slane), Paris and London, 1843-71. A Boswell of Baghdad (adaptations from the above by E. V. Lucas), London, 1917.

Biographical Dictionary

Usama

Munqidh

b.

:

A Syro-Arab Gentleman New York, 1927.

in the.

The Autobiography of Usama Jahiz

Period of the Crusades (trans,

(trans,

by G. R.

Potter),

by

P. Hitti),

London, 1929.

:

Livre des Avares (French trans,

by C.

Pellat), Beirut-Paris, 1951.

Geography

R. Blachere, Ibn Battuta

Extraits des Principaux Ge'ographes Arabes, Beirut, 1932.

:

Les Voyages (French trans, by C. Defremery and B. Sanguinetti), 1853-9.

Paris,

Travels in Asia and Africa, 1323-54 (selection trans,

by H. A. R. Gibb),

London, 1929. Ibn Jubair

:

The Travels of Ibn Jubayr

(trans,

by R.J. C. Broadhurst), London,

1952.

Ibn Jobair, Voyages (French trans,

Part

Marvazi

by M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes),

Paris, 1949.

1, :

Marvazi, on China, the Turks and India

(trans,

by V. Minorsky),

London, 1942. Belles-Lettres

Al-Ma'arri Letters of

:

Abu

'I-

Ala

(trans,

by D.

S.

Margoliouth), Oxford, 1898.

:

ARABIC LITERATURE

48

Hazm

Ibn

:

The Ring and

Dove

the

by A.

(trans,

J.

Arbcrry), London, 1953.

Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism

Wensinck, The Muslim Creed, Cambridge, 1932. Watt, Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam, London, 1948. R. A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, London, 1914. R. A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, Cambridge, 192 1. A. J. Arberry, Sufism, London, 1950. Avicenna Livres des Directives et Remarques (French trans, by A.-M. Goichon), A.

J.

W. M.

:

Beirut-Paris, 195 1. Avicenna on Theology (selections trans, by A.

J.

Arberry), London,

1951. Scientist and Philosopher Wickens), London, 1952.

Avicenna,

Ghazali

(a

symposium

ed.

by G. M.

:

Wensinck, La

A.

J.

O

Disciple (trans,

Ghazzali, Paris, 1940.

Pense'e de

by G. H.

Scherer), Beirut, 195 1.

Rhazes Spiritual Physick of

Rhazes

(trans,

by A.

J.

Arberry), London, 1950.

Medicine

Browne, Arabian

E. G.

Medicine,

Cambridge, 1921.

Science

De

L. O'Leary,

How

Greek Science passed

to the

Arabs,

London, 1949.

Law A. A. A. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law, Oxford, 1949. Schacht, Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, Oxford, 1950.

J.

Tradition

A

Guillaume, The Traditions of Islam, Oxford, 1924.

Modern

Literature

Taufiq al-Hakim

Maze

:

of Justice (trans,

by A.

S.

Eban), London, 1947.

BIBLIOGRAPHY J.

K. Jabran

49

:

of the Valley (trans, by H. M. Nahmad), London, 1948. Spirits Rebellious (trans, by the same), London, 1949.

Nymphs

A Taha

by the same), London,

1950.

by H. Wayment), London,

1948.

Tear and a Smile (trans, LIusain

:

Stream of Days (trans,

IRANIAN LITERATURE

III.

BY I.

GERSHEVITCH

Iranian period (approximately 6th-ist centuries B.C.) 1

Old

Old

Persian

Avestan

Middle Iranian period (approximately ist-ioth centuries A.D.) Middle Persian (Pahlavi) Parthian

Sogdian

Khotanese

Modern Iranian period (approximately loth

Modem

century

A.D. onwards)

Persian 2

Pashto

Kurdish Baluchi Ossetic

•

•

THE aim ofmeans,chapter this

and 1

thirdly, the extent to

The

is

to

secondly,

literature

•

make

why

which

it

clear firstly,

it is is

what

Iranian

interesting to study

dependent on

it,

religion.

of most languages mentioned in this table falls into onlywhich each of the respective languages may be presumed to have been spoken. Moreover, within each period there occur centuries in which no literature is attested in one or several of the Iranian languages. Even the attested literature cannot always be dated within a margin of less than several centuries. To simplify matters the approximate dates in this table have been based on linguistic considerations. literature

part of the period during

2 1

Modern Persian literature is

Persian Literature

treated separately in the following chapter,

'.

50

ORIGIN OF THE IRANIANS The words word aryana,

51

from the ancient of the word arya. It is only to Iranians and to the first Indo-European invaders of India that the term Aryan is correctly applied. The original meaning of arya is thought to have been " hospitable, kind to strangers ", though Aryans have not always been so. Sometime about 500 B.C. the Achaemenian king of Persia, Darius the Great, Iran and Iranian have developed

derivative

a

described himself in an inscription as " a Persian, son of a Persian, an

Aryan, of Aryan lineage

".

what

in an introductory survey

may be allowed to very much wider term

trates

point out, namely, that Iranian

than Persian.

Oar

is

This wording

illus-

one

a

criterion for establishing that a nation was,

Most European and certain Asiatic languages have evolved from a common original source, the so-called Indo-European language, which was spoken by various Indo-European groups. These in time became separated from each other. The group from which the Iranians descend evolved from Indo-European a language which we or

is,

Iranian,

is

its

Some,

Indo-Iranian.

call

language.

referred to themselves

if

not

by the

all,

speakers of Indo-Iranian

term

ethnical

arya.

After their

from the other Indo-European groups, the Indoin their turn divided into two main branches, the

separation Iranians

The former

Indian and the Iranian. in the territory

be called Iran.

by

which

as a result

This territory

is

of

settled in India, the latter

their occupation

came

very large, bounded

as it

to is

the rivers Tigris in the west, Indus in the east, and Sir Daria

To-day

(the ancient Yaxartes) in the north-east.

this territory

comprises part of Turkey, the whole of Persia, Afghanistan

and Baluchistan,

as

well

as a vast area in

In ancient times, moreover,

numerous of Iran

for centuries outside the territory

roaming along the huge northern L.E.

the Soviet Union.

Iranian tribes remained ;

belt that

were nomads, from China crossed these

E

IRANIAN LITERATURE

52

Central Asia, skirted the northern shores of Lake Aral, the

Caspian and the Black Sea, and ended

at the

Danube.

These

nomads were known under the general name of Saka. Among them were the Scythians and the Sarmatians, in whom

Iranian

we

recognize the ancestors of the present-day Ossetes in the

Caucasus.

s

A KA

B £i_ r

a L.Aral.

r

.

$

^r

(central asia) • KHOTAN

"^^(tibii)

(INDIA)

Old

Iranian literature begins in the sixth century B.C., with

the inscriptions of the

Achaemenian kings of

hymns composed by Zoroaster cannct be sure as to Avestan.

Persia,

and the

in the Avestan language.

which was the Iranian nation

We

that spoke

Let us provisionally accept the suggestion that Avestan

was the language of the Chorasmians, 1 who once occupied a considerable area east of the Caspian Sea. Although only the 1

Cf.

W.

B. Henning, Zoroaster, Oxford, 195 1, pp. 42

f.

OLD PERIOD

53

of Iran, and the speakers of Avestan documents of this early period, ancient

Persians, in the south- west

have

left

us literary

Iran included as bearers

two other

of a

nations which, at a later period,

literary culture

:

the Parthians,

lay in central Iran, and the Sogdians,

around

their capital

who

emerge whose homeland

lived in the north-east,

Samarkand.

were incorporated Empire of the Achaemenians. Alexander's conquests put an end to Persian rule in 330 B.C. Eighty years later the Parthians, led by their Arsacid kings, began to recover and gradually rescued Iran from the prostration into which it had fallen. By the middle of the second century B.C. Parthia had become the ruling power in Iran, a position which she held until the beginning of the third century of our era, when the Arsacids were replaced by the Persian dynasty of the Sasanians. From that time the Persians held sway over Iran until they were defeated by the Arabs in 635. Under the Sasanians, the Persians produced a rich literature, of which a certain amount has survived. The language they used had considerably changed since Old Persian times. It had become what we call Middle Persian. That form of Middle Persian which we find in Zoroastrian books and in inscriptions In the sixth century B.C. both these nations

Old

in the

is

Persian

commonly

called Pahlavi.

Beside Middle Persian, Parthian continued for some time to

The chief as a second official language. however, for including Parthian in a history of Iranian literature is the fortunate discovery in Central Asia of many

be used on inscriptions reason,

hundreds of fragments of Manichean books composed by Since Mani, the founder of Manicheism, Parthian missionaries. died in the year 277 of our era, the beginnings of this literature can be approximately dated in the end of the third century,

while

its latest

products probably belong to the ninth century.

IRANIAN LITERATURE

54

texts, Manichean literature in Middle Persian and Sogdian was also found. The Sogdians were geographically in an ideal position for entering and maintaining cultural and trade relations with Central Asian states and with China. They wandered as misThey established sionaries and traders all over Central Asia. Sogdian colonies along the caravan routes leading to China and within China itself these colonies continued to exist until The Sogdian language came to be the tenth century at least. used as the lingua franca of Central Asia. It is not surprising

Together with the Parthian

;

a large, even though fragmentary, Sogdian was found in Central Asia, consisting of Manichean, Buddhist and Christian writings, as well as documents and

therefore, that literature

letters.

The

earliest

Sogdian texts can be dated in the beginning

of the fourth century of our

era.

Chronologically, therefore, the Achaemenian inscriptions in

Old

Persian,

constitute

and the Avesta, the Scripture of the Zoroastrians,

what we

call

Old

Iranian literature,

whereas the

Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian writings belong to the Middle Iranian period. In addition, Middle Iranian literature includes the large literary output of the Khotanese, who, as one of the numerous groups of the nomadic Sakas of the great northern belt, had settled in Central Asia, in the region of the town of Khotan, from which their name was derived. A flourishing Khotanese literature is preserved in records of the seventh to the tenth century of our era. If we pass on to Modern Iranian, we find works of literature in Modern Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Baluchi, and Ossetic. Modern Persian is the language which evolved from Middle Persian after the conquest of the Arabs, and remained substantially unaltered to the present

cussed in the next chapter.

Pashto

day. is

Its

literature

one of the two

is

dis-

official

LATER PERIOD

55

languages of Afghanistan, the other being Persian

it is spoken of the Afghan population, as well as by the Patan tribes of Pakistan, the names Patan and Pashto being different modifications of the original name of this nation Pashto literature begins in the sixteenth century, and is under-

by

;

a large section

;

going an interesting revival literature goes

at the present time. Kurdish back to the fifteenth century, while the Baluchi

poems collected from local hundred years. Ossetic, as mentioned earlier, is spoken in the central Caucasus. The Ossetes are descendants of one of the Sarmatian groups of The tribes within the great Saka confederacy of Nomads. mythology of the Ossetes, although collected only in the last century, contains a number of motifs that arc found already among the ancient Scythians in South Russia. The Ossetic epic material largely consists of tales and

bards in the

last

thus appears to be the heir of Scythian or Saka traditions

such

;

as

Apart from the

has a high claim to our attention.

it

ancient epics, the Ossetes have several distinguished

modern

poets, notably Khetaegkaty Kosta. It

will

be apparent that Iranian literature comprises

output in eleven languages, written

literary

within

now

a

at various times

period of twenty-five centuries, and in various regions

and outside the vast area which is called Iran. I have, of course, quoted only those Iranian languages in which a A purely literature of general interest has been preserved. linguistic survey of Iranian would have to range more widely. The formidable task of writing a history of the whole of Iranian

inside

literature has

may

still

to be faced, but the contents

be summarized

as

follows

a.

Zoroastrian (in Avestan and Middle Persian)

b.

Manichean

(in

of the

:

Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian)

literature

IRANIAN LITERATURE

56 c.

Buddhist

d.

Islamic (in

Modern

Persian, Pashto,

(Inscriptions (in

.

.

Khotanese and Sogdian)

(in

[Books

(in

u

(in

Parthian)

Persian and Pashto)

Avestan, Middle Persian,

and

Modern

Persian)

^ Scythian " (the Ossetic Nart Saga)

Local

(in Pashto, Ossetic

Manichean Buddhist o.

Old Persian, Middle Persian, and

Modern

Zoroastrian "

!"

and Kurdish)

(see b

(see c

and Baluchi)

above]

above)

Tales