Part 14 (1/2)

Avoid such a man as you would an ill-natured camel.

'When you meet a hypocrite, who is different from what he appears to be, compare him to the Yarbu, _i.e._ the mouse of the desert, which has two apertures to its lair, the one for an entrance, and the other for an exit, so that it always cheats the hunter who digs for it.'

Yet another story-book may be quoted, viz., the 'Ilam en Nas,' or Warnings for Men, containing historical tales and anecdotes of the time of the early Khalifates. Some of these were translated by Mrs.

G.o.dfrey Clerk in 1873 (King and Co.), and her little volume also contains a very good genealogical table of the families of the Prophet, and of the Ras.h.i.+din (or 'rightly directed,' _i.e._ Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman, and Ali), the Omaiyide, and the Abbaside Khalifs.

Among the many works of Arabic literature one of the most interesting and the most amusing is Ibn Khallikan's celebrated Biographical Dictionary. The author must have been a very intelligent and a very industrious man, for his volumes contain an enormous amount of information about many hundred Arabs. This work is rendered all the more readable and all the more amusing by the many anecdotes related in connection with their lives, and a few of these stories are now given below.

I.

Ibn Abbas, son of Abbas, uncle of Muhammad, was one of the ablest interpreters of the Koran. It was owing to his efforts that the study of the poems, composed before the introduction of Islamism, became of such importance to the Muslims, for he frequently quoted verses of the ancient poets in proof of the explanation he gave of different pa.s.sages of the Koran, and he used to say: 'When you meet with a difficulty in the Koran look for its solution in the poems of the Arabs, for these are the registers of the Arabic nation.' On being asked how he had acquired his extensive knowledge, he replied: 'By means of an inquiring tongue and an intelligent heart.'

It may here perhaps be stated that the Koran, composed avowedly in the purest Arabic, offered many difficulties to those who were not acquainted with the idiom of the desert Arabs, a race who alone spoke the language in its perfection. The study of the ancient poets was therefore considered as necessary for the intelligence of the Koran, and their poems, often obscure from the intricacy of their construction and their obsolete terms, required the a.s.sistance of grammatical a.n.a.lysis and philology to render them comprehensible.

II.

Ibn Faris Ar-Razi, the Philologist, is the author of these verses:

'Well, some things succeed and some fail: when my heart is filled with cares I say: ”One day perhaps they may be dispelled.” A cat is my companion; books the friends of my heart; and a lamp my beloved consort.'

III.

Badi Az-Zaman al-Hamadani, the author of some beautiful epistles and excellent essays, which last Hariri took as a model in the composition of his, wrote as follows about death: 'Death is awful till it comes, and then it is found light; its touch seems grating till felt, and then it is smooth; the world is so hostile and its injustice so great that death is the lightest of its inflictions, the least of its wrongs. Look, then, to the right; do you see aught but affliction?

Look to the left; do you see aught but woe?'

IV.

Abu Wathila Iyas Al-Kadi was renowned for his excessive acuteness of mind, observation, and penetration. Many stories are told about him in connection with these qualities, which are really astonis.h.i.+ng. It is related of him that he said: 'I was never worsted in penetration but by one man: I had taken my seat in the court of judgment at Busra, when a person came before me and gave testimony that a certain garden, of which he mentioned the boundaries, belonged to a man whom he named.

As I had some doubts of his veracity, I asked him how many trees were in that garden, and he said to me, after a short silence: ”How long is it since our lord the Kadi has been giving judgment in this hall?” I told him the time. ”How many beams,” said he, ”are there in the roof?”

On which I acknowledged that he was in the right, and I received his testimony.'

V.

It is a curious circ.u.mstance that Homer the Greek poet, Radaki the Persian poet, and Bashshar bin Burd the Arabian poet, were all blind.

Here is a specimen of one of the verses of the last-named: