SOURCE: von Grunebaum, G. E. “The Spirit of Islam as Shown in Its Literature.” In Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition, pp. 95-110. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1955, von Grunebaum considers how the spirit of Islam appears in Arabic literature, including the writings of al-Harīrī.]

I

The search for reflections of the spirit of Islam in literature will be meaningful only when it is interpreted as the search for such character traits as are readily derivable from or co-ordinable with essential elements of Islamic doctrines or outlook. Two methodological difficulties immediately come to mind: for one thing, safeguards have to be taken against that vicious circle which finds the scholar defining the nature of Islam from the evidence of Muslim literature which evidence he then employs to demonstrate the effect Islam has had on the literary production of its adherents; and, for the other, the problem must be considered in the same light as the kindred quest for a Christian or a Muslim philosophy. In what sense can it be said that a denominationally determined philosophy exists? In so far as problems and tools of philosophical inquiry are based on universal human concerns the concept of a particular type of philosophical investigation, to be dubbed Muslim or Christian, is hardly relevant. The concept can be defended only when it is understood as implying the rational justification and interpretation of certain data that are peculiar to, say, Islam or Christianity and which were originally received by transrational means. Is it, then, meaningful to speak of an Islamic literature, beyond using “Islamic” as a convenient comprehensive term for the several peoples which at one time or another professed Islam?

It is obvious that the concept of literature itself needs a more precise definition. Nothing would be gained if it were to be stated that theological, ethical, or political writings are in tune with the religious principles of the writers and thus, in the case of Muslims, reflect the spirit of Islam. The concept of literature will have to be restricted to belles-lettres or, better still, to any work or parts thereof which were composed with a definite view to producing or creating a work of art—in other words, to works in the origin of which an aesthetic aspiration has been active. Once literature is thus confined to poetry, ornate prose, a great deal of what the Arabs would consider adab, certain sections of historical works, and pages like the rhymed prose introduction to Muqaddasî's geography,¹ the question can be attacked; and it can be approached, it would seem, on four different levels:

a) Interest may be focused on content.

The discussion of themes introduced by Islam can be traced. Echoes or even expositions of Muslim doctrine and Muslim ethics may be encountered. Some of the imagery will be recognized as being descended from koranic phraseology or from the poignant dicta of the early ḥadîth. Although, strangely enough, there has been a certain time lag between the acceptance of Islam and the use of Islamic ideas, metaphors, and allusions by the converted, it took less than two generations to impregnate permanently Arabic literature with themes and modes of expression that were more or less directly associated with religious motifs. It is hardly necessary to call attention to the development in the later Middle Ages of a specifically religious poetry, as represented, for instance, by poems in praise of the prophet Muḥammad and by comparable endeavors to glorify certain saints. Viewed in this manner, the spirit of Islam is traceable almost everywhere in the literatures of the Muslim territories, yet it remains questionable whether this observation contributes in any way significantly to our understanding of the relation between Islam as a religious and sociopolitical system and the literary productions of the believers.

b) Attention may be transferred from content to the outward form.

The preference of the “Islamic” literatures for poetry and ornate prose leaps to the eye. The Koran, one might argue, provides the outstanding example of an extensive composition in rhymed prose. Nevertheless it would be difficult to insist that the universal predilection for the oratio vincta (bound forms) could be connected with the model set by the Holy Book. In fact, it is only too obvious that the preference for poetry and rhymed prose is rooted in the pre-Islamic Arabic tradition and was taken up and developed in scribal circles that were in no way inspired by specifically Islamic considerations. Thus the tendency toward poetry, in preference to prose, may be called Islamic only in so far as Arabism and Islam coincide to a certain extent both from the point of view of historical fact and from that habitually professed by the average believer. Better still, the tradition may be termed “Islamic” because Islam has adopted the Arabic linguistic and literary tradition as its principal means of self-representation. As the language of revelation, Arabic has some qualities of a sacred language; as the tradition of the Prophet's countrymen, the pre-Islamic literary tradition—although emphatically secular—has become authoritative, and its authority is all the more accepted as it provides an indispensable key to the lexicographical understanding of revelation itself. This early identification of Arabism and Islam did not, however, rigidify the tradition of the literary form to the extent of rendering it completely unresponsive to innovation. For with the rise of the cultural prestige of Iranian Islam, the Persian modifications and enrichments of this basically Arabic tradition are generally adopted and in a sense identified as a natural and a typical mode of Islamic self-expression. It is the aesthetic attraction of its limited novelty which led to the integration of the Persian contribution into what the Islamic world at large would consider authoritative or standard form. So at this level it again remains an open question whether it is at all legitimate to attempt a co-ordination of the literary habits of “Muslim” literature with essential structural traits of Islam.

c) If one turns to the inner form—that is to say, to the consideration of essential structural features and basic aspirations that are peculiar to the literary tradition of Islamic peoples, the situation changes somewhat.

(1) It has often been observed by Westerners that Arabic literary works are characterized, not to say disfigured, by a certain incoherence or discreteness in composition. More fairly put, an exclusive attention seems to be given to the individual verse, phrase, or paragraph, at the expense of the consistent layout of the whole. The Arab critics themselves have time and again demonstrated that the value of a poem to them would depend on the perfection of its individual lines. The critic encourages improved formulation of a traditional motif as a worthy goal of the poet, and frequently improved rendition is tantamount to a more concise one. Authors of prose works frequently profess their anxiousness to forestall a flagging of the reader's attention by quick shifts from one subject to another, or by a somewhat brusque transition from seriousness to jest; and they do not, by and large, concern themselves with maintaining the unity of their original or principal theme throughout a book.² On the contrary, they seem to have taken a distinct delight in allowing themselves to be led away and astray by their associations, and the public appears to have been well satisfied with this procedure. It may be said perhaps that Arabic literature operates on a span of attention which is much shorter than that presupposed by Western literature.

It may be tentatively and somewhat hesitatingly suggested that there exists a certain psychological affinity between this leaping from topic to topic, these momentary shifts of attention and mood, and the occasionalistic world view which dominates Muslim theology and scholastic philosophy. It is well known that, for example, Ash‘arism, especially as developed by Bâqillânî (d. 1013), sees time as a discontinuous sequence of time atoms. God recreates the world in each time atom but only for its duration. Certain thinkers have been careful to stress the nonreality in terms of time of the intervals between the individual time atoms. Nonetheless, it is incontrovertible that Bâqillânî's world is discrete, depending on continuous re-creation, and consequently not structured in terms of a self-directing regularity—this world will possess duration but neither continuity nor predictable “developmental” direction (although its end has been disclosed by revelation). At the end of the Middle Ages, Jâmî (d. 1492) summarizes the doctrine of the “moment”:

The universe consists of accidents pertaining to a single substance, which is the Reality underlying all existences. This universe is changed and renewed unceasingly at every moment and every breath. Every instant one universe is annihilated and another resembling it takes its place. … In consequence of this rapid succession, the spectator is deceived into the belief that the universe is a permanent existence. … Thus it never happens that the Very Being is revealed for two successive moments under the guise of the same phenomenon.³

This outlook expresses itself in many ways. We find definitions of faith as the sum of good deeds; of man, as consisting of atoms and accidents; of a body, as an assembly of accidents.⁴ This occasionalism was developed with a view to safeguarding God's autocratic majesty in terms of His full independence from law and obligation, even self-imposed. Thus it may be said that the trend toward viewing the world as discontinuous and, again, of concentrating on detail and incident rather than coherence and rounded composition is connected with the very core of the Islamic experience. In this fashion one may co-ordinate, not genetically but in terms of affinity, the literature and the philosophical and theological doctrines of Islam, and one would perhaps be justified in seeing in this outlook on literature a specifically Islamic phenomenon.

(2) In deference to the Arabic tradition, the literary theory of the Islamic peoples does not provide for fiction. The Arab critics, however rich their conceptual tools, did not develop the concepts of plot and action. “It is a rather strange fact that Arabic literature, so rich in anecdotal material, so eager to seize upon the unusual word or deed, never did seriously turn toward the large-scale narrative or the drama. Except for parables and short stories, many of which are borrowings from foreign literatures or more or less accurate retracings of true incidents, the Arab Muslim disdained literary invention.”⁵ In fact, wherever possible the story is presented as a report, the invention as an actual happening. In this aversion to letting oneself be caught by the urges of imagination, in this anxiety to remain within the bounds of the factual and the real, a correspondence to certain attitudes concerning man which Islam inculcated from its very beginnings may be divined. In its jealousy of the omnipotence of the Lord, which is most impressively demonstrated by His being the one and only Creator, the new faith was very careful to deny man any powers that might even by a purely verbal quid pro quo, induce a misconception of man's innate gifts and hence of his position in relation to Allâh.

Poetical production was judged on criteria suggested by a peculiar moral realism. In an often quoted passage from the so-called “Sûra of the Poets,” those poets are berated in a context which tends to render suspect the very source of their inspiration.

The pre-Islamic poet was thought to be under the direct influence of a demon and is on occasion represented as compelled to write by the brute force of his jinn or shaiṭân. But the necessity to maintain a precise distinction between the inspiration of the Prophet and that of the poets prevented the sublimation of the early idea of poetry as a gift or imposition emanating from a nonhuman power after the manner in which, among the Greeks, Plato came to see in the poet the autonomous interpreter of the divine afflatus.⁶

The Koran relegates the poet definitely to a questionable position. “Shall I tell you upon whom the satans come down?—They come down upon every liar guilty.—They listen, but most of them speak falsely.—And the poets—them follow the beguiled,—Seest thou not how they rove in every valley,—And that they say [in verse] what they do not do?”⁷

The theological inadmissability of human creativeness was supported by the uncertainty of the distinction in the general consciousness between creation, artistic and intellectual, and the true creatio ex nihilo. Taking its inspiration from a legend that had been received into the apocryphal Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, the Koran (3:44 and 5:110) depicts Jesus as “creating figures like birds from clay … and then breathing upon them so that they become birds,” by the permission of God. The artist as a shaper of forms is felt to be in rivalry with the Lord. On Judgment Day the makers of figures will be asked to inhale life into their works; but they will fail and be consigned to eternal punishment.⁸

Although in these two instances, the tendency to discreteness and the aversion to fiction, an affinity between literary and religious attitude will be rather readily discerned, there arises immediately a difficulty of a different kind, for it is evident that the Persians deviate to a not inconsiderable extent from the direction set by the Arab-Islamic tradition. Neo-Persian literature does have coherency and extensive composition, and it also does admit fiction or at least fictional patterns through which moral and religious truths are presented. The Persian epics are lengthy, well-planned works, for the most part re-treatments of motifs taken over from older Persian literature. There is an unmistakable joy in the narration of those semihistorical incidents.⁹ The epic tale is clearly and consistently structured and, in spite of the fact that the very length of some epics makes it rather difficult for the poet to maintain a strict and unified line of composition, the poet keeps control of his material despite the various digressions and excursuses in which he indulges. The poet does not refrain from inventing new tales or, at least, from so completely reshaping inherited ones that the question of originality becomes a very subtle one. The religious epic itself, which one might presume would be least subjected to encroachments upon the Arab-Muslim tradition, actually shows the keenest originality in providing fictionlike and actionlike frames for psychological developments, such as the ascent of the soul to union with God. In fact, anecdotes, whose pretense to historicity is of the most tenuous kind, are the preferred means to illustrate teachings of mystical and moralistic intent.

In this manner one is suddenly confronted by the larger problem of the over-all relation between “Islamic” civilization and the local cultures with which it has established contact and which, on the level of official theology and science, it appears to have more or less completely submerged. The situation that obtains in the literature of the Persians and of those Muslim nations that have followed the Persian cultural lead documents the fact that in certain important aspects of intellectual life the Islamic impulse had to express itself through the local tradition; one might almost say that it had to reconstitute, even eliminate, relevant parts of its own essence for which significant traits of the local tradition would then be substituted. In this manner Persian form developments, mystical poems of a peculiar type, and, in certain countries, even fiction, were accepted from the Persian tradition as integral parts of Islamic cultural productivity.

It is true that the authoritative character of Arabic as the sacred language as well as the authoritative character of many of the books written in Arabic helped to maintain the cultural superiority or, at least, the superior prestige of the Arabic literary tradition within the whole of Islam. Also, its priority in time over against, for instance, the influential neo-Persian literary tradition, contributed toward securing its position. On the other hand, the local language usually persisted on the belles-lettres level, all the more so perhaps as the official Islamic attitude toward those belles-lettres was one of disregard, not to say disdain. Nationalistic movements as early as the ninth century engaged in bitter and often unfair criticism of the Arabic language and its literature. This fight of the Islamic or Islamized nations for their self-respect in terms of the literary values they produced or denied naturally made the Arab attitude toward their tradition even more rigorously conservative than it had already become, for the simple reason that it provided the clue to the understanding of the Holy Book. As a result, literary discussion of theology and philosophy and, in general, any presentation of theoretical matter tend to adhere much more strictly to the Islamic pattern as evolved in Arabic-speaking territories than to that type of literary endeavor which is informed by the tendency to self-expression, however limited by the conventions of the day. It is unquestionably its emotional root which has rendered possible the infiltration of specifically Persian characteristics into the religious poetry of the Muslim mystics.¹⁰

d) The attitude toward and expectations from literature may be considered for affinities with characteristically Muslim traits.

Arabic and Persian literature as well as the official literature of the nations carrying on the Arabic or Persian tradition are clearly to be considered learned literatures. This is to say that the poet was not expected to follow his natural and untutored genius; rather he was required before starting on his career to become steeped in the inherited lore of his craft, to identify himself with its traditional aspirations, and to obtain mastery of the techniques of his art as they had been transmitted from generation to generation. In an often quoted page (written in 1156), Nizâmî ‘Arûḍî says of the poet that “he must be well versed in many divers sciences, and eclectic amidst divergent customs; for as poetry is of advantage in every science, so is every science of advantage in poetry.”¹¹ The implications of this statement will be fully understood only when it is realized that the poet's achievement was judged not only by his aesthetic accomplishment, but also on the factual correctness of his statements. This idea of correctness does not necessarily suggest that the poet's discussions needed to be accurate in terms of naturalistic standards. It is rather to be interpreted as an obligation on the part of the writer to reproduce the canonical patterns and molds in which certain topics had been conventionally cast. It is true that some horses have long, and others short, tails; but this trivial fact does not entitle the poet to praise a horse with a short tail. He is to select the appropriate objects for his discussions, be they panegyrical or satirical, and to discuss them in the appropriate manner. He is to see to it that they are properly styled before being properly praised or run down.¹²

The training which the poet was supposed to undergo was designed to prepare him for these “learned” aspects of his task.

But to this [highest] rank a poet cannot attain unless in the prime of his life and the season of his youth he commits to his memory twenty thousand couplets of the poetry of the Ancients, keeps in view [as models] ten thousand verses of the works of the Moderns, and continually reads and remembers the dîwâns of the masters of his art, observing how they have acquitted themselves in the strait passes and the delicate places of song, in order that thus the different styles and varieties of verse may become ingrained in his nature, and the defects and beauties of poetry may be inscribed on the tablet of his understanding. In this way his style will improve and his genius will develop. Then, when his genius has thus been firmly established in the power of poetical expression, and his verse has become even in quality, let him address himself seriously to the poetic art, study the science of prosody, … then let him make a critical study of poetic ideas and phraseology, plagiarisms, biographies, and all the sciences of this class, with such a Master as knows these matters, so that he in turn may merit the title of Master. …¹³

This attitude toward poetical accomplishment is perfectly in tune with the general formalization of Islamic learning and the overwhelming prestige which is accorded knowledge per se in Islamic civilization. This appreciation of knowledge, in turn, is directly related to the fundamental aspiration of Islam. To the Muslim, the purpose of man is the service of God in the hope of eternal felicity. Through revelation God has communicated to man the exact ways in which He wishes to be served. The data of revelation themselves, the tradition of and about the Prophet, various methods of deductive reasoning—they are the means that have been used by the community to elaborate that complete system of prescriptions and prohibitions, obedience to which will almost guarantee Paradise to the faithful. It is the learned of the community, the doctors of the faith, who are the repositories of this saving knowledge, and it is the duty of every Muslim man and every Muslim woman to join in the quest for that knowledge which will make it possible for the community to remain a community under God in every detail of its life, collectively as well as individually. It is in the nature of things that the kind of knowledge sought after and appreciated must be authoritative as being directly derivable from the fundamental sources of the religious experience and as having been lived by and acted upon by the believers of the early days of the faith. With learning ingrained in the religious life and with the religious life the justification of human existence, the eminent prestige of the bearers of this near-sacred knowledge becomes understandable. This prestige expresses itself in many and sometimes quite unexpected ways; thus Sûlî (d. 947) says at the end of one year of his Annals that nothing remains for him but to mention those men of learning who had died during that particular year. Then he adds, “As for the ignorant, rich or poor, we shall not bother about them.”¹⁴ It hardly needs to be pointed out that within the framework of a civilization designed to accommodate and realize the Islamic aspiration, literature and the literati could not withdraw from the general learned and traditionalistic style of expression. And since the need to regulate Muslim life was the same wherever Islam spread, regardless of the local traditions it encountered and adjusted to, the pressure on literature—at least on its official representatives—to remain true to the over-all pattern of an erudite traditionalism, never ceased.

The relation of the “spirit of Islam” to the literary productions in the areas dominated by the Muslim religion may, then, perhaps be briefly characterized in this guise: the unity of the literatures that may because of the religious affiliations of their bearers be described as Islamic is safeguarded by the identity of the basic existential experience, by the identity of the fundamental intellectual interests, by the authoritativeness of certain principles of form and presentation, not to forget the kindred political and social organization within which those peoples aspire to live. Where these elements do not directly or indirectly interfere, local developments, even local fashions, based on non-Islamic traditions have fairly free rein, as may be seen by some of the literary trends that were successful in Persia and Spain or even in some of the heart lands of Islam, such as Mesopotamia. The Islamic aspiration unifies the local traditions, trimming them somewhat in terms of topics and freedom of form, but also by shaping the human ideal which is reflected in poems and adab books. On the whole, however, the Islamic aspiration operates and becomes effective through the local tradition, even as the peculiar Muslim piety would appear time and again in local garb. These local variations of the Muslim tradition have often been noticed by the Muslims themselves who, in their concern for the genuine and by its very nature indifferentiatable tradition of the founder, could hardly do other than brand them as bida‘ (blameworthy) innovations.

It does not seem that this situation differs too much from the relation, obtaining in the Western Middle Ages, between a specifically Christian literature and the several national literatures which strove to emerge in the local languages. A number of questions suggest themselves in this connection but, fortunately, need not be answered here. There is, first of all, the intriguing problem: why did some local traditions resist and assert themselves within the Islamic tradition while others yielded? The question also might be ventilated whether it would not be expedient to reclassify the medieval literatures as primarily Islamic or Christian rather than making a national affiliation the principal basis of classification. But were one to accept such reclassification, one would be confronted with a new problem: at what period in the modern literary development does the description by nations become more significant than that by cultures—and this in spite of the fact that even the most typically national literatures in the Christian as well as in the Islamic civilizational area retain characteristically their connection with the civilization to which they owe perhaps not their origin but their early cachet?

II

In his Eleventh Assembly Harîrî (d. 1122) takes his rapporteur, al-Hârith b. Hammâm, to a graveyard where a funeral happens to be in progress. When the interment is over, an old man harangues the mourners, admonishing them to slough off heedlessness and become aware of their insincerity. Passing from rhymed prose to poetry proper, he exhorts his listeners to mend their ways while there is still time. When he is done, he asks for alms. Al-Hârith recognizes in the preacher Abû Zaid of Sarûj, the hero of the Maqâmât, and takes him to task for his hypocrisy. But Abû Zaid retorts brashly and quickly parts company with his censor.

What then, in this famous maqâma, may be appraised as peculiarly Islamic? What can be shown to follow a specifically Arabic literary tradition?

a) The Islamic character of the content is readily demonstrable. The theme has never lacked treatment since the passing of the Prophet. Early Muslim piety, motivated largely by a contemplation of the end, by the need to live with one's death, viewed human existence as a brief preliminary to dissolution, a long stay in the grave, and the terrors of judgment and eternal punishment. The Prophet is quoted as saying: “Hearts will rust even as iron will.” Then he was asked: “What is their polish?” He replied: “Reading the Koran and visiting the graves.”¹⁵

The very hardness of heart, qasâwa, to cure which al-Hârith repairs to the graveyard, is described in Tradition. A man said to ‘Â’isha: “Mother of the Faithful, I have a disease; hast thou a remedy for it?” She said: “What is thy disease?” He said: “Hardness of heart.” She said: “A bad disease is thine; but visit the sick, and attend funerals and keep in mind death.”¹⁶ The famous preacher, Ibn al-Jauzî (d. 1200), advises the faithful, “O my brother, if you wish to know the state you will be in after your death, go out to the graves and look at them in their effacement. Imagine your own grave amidst them. Then reflect on what you will need in your grave. And gather much of it as you will spend a long time in your grave—[what you need is] good works.”¹⁷

The theme of man's heedlessness, which dominates the saj‘ part of Abû Zaid's address, is well anchored in the Koran. It carries through as a principal motif from Hasan al-Baṣrî (d. 728) to Ibn al-Jauzî (and beyond). “O man—and we all of us are that man!—awake from they heedlessness and rouse thyself from thy somnolence. It is time for the physician to be called in to you with his medicaments; for [otherwise] no recovery from what has befallen you may be hoped for.”¹⁸

Harîrî moves on to another theme concisely adumbrated in the Koran. “Rivalry for increase [in wealth and children] deflects you until you visit the graves; nay, but ye shall know [what reward you will have earned]!”¹⁹ For

your [eternal] home, be it misery or felicity—you have no door to it except the grave.²⁰

“Sinless was I created from dust; full of sins have I returned to dust.”²¹ The Prophet is reported as saying: never yet has a man turned his mind often to death without experiencing an increase in his good works. Therefore, Ibn al-Jauzî continues, do bethink yourselves often of it; make death your headrest when asleep; prepare yourselves many a good deed; God will have mercy on him who has mercy on himself.²² It is in this key that Abû Zaid's poem ends.

There is thus hardly a phrase in the maqâma whose motif could not be traced in Muslim theological and paraenetic writing. If it be argued that Christian parallels could easily be found, the Islamic character of Harîrî's sermon would not thereby be impugned; it is only that the common features of the medieval Christian and of the medieval Muslim views of life would be brought into focus.

b) On the other hand, the outward form of Harîrî's presentation—the mise en scène, the saj‘-poetry sequence, and largely also the motif sequence—may clearly be considered as a phenomenon peculiar to the civilization of Islam. In fact, the relevant question with regard to this outward form is not whether it may be considered a product of the Muslim civilizational area, but to which literary tradition does it owe its characteristics.

The maqâma, Standpredigt,²³ is a comparatively late development. It does not seem to have any pre-Islamic roots. The recitations of the quṣṣâṣ, the professional tellers of anecdote and religious lore, and perhaps the harangues of certain Sûfî preachers, contribute the popular basis of what (after an abortive start by the philologist, Ibn Duraid [d. 934]) Badî‘ az-Zamân al-Hamadânî (d. 1008) is supposed to have been the first to turn into a brief sketch of especially choice and varied diction. Greek mimus and Greek diatribe are likely to have been contributory elements in the formation of this semidramatic form, which, like the earlier qaṣîda Sâsâniyya of Abû Dulaf (fl. 930-50) with its use of the argot of criminals and beggars, and the later shadow plays of Ibn Dâniyâl (d. 1310) with their portrayal of the popular milieu, has always remained the domain of the sophisticated and the erudite.

The maqâma is first met with in Arabic, but it is not an offshoot of the classical Arabic heritage, nor can its growth be anticipated during the “Arab” empire of the Umayyads. The re-animation of a Hellenistic literary form by its acceptance as a frame within which to show characters and incidents as they could typically occur only in a Muslim metropolitan environment and by lifting it into the literary sphere through the use of a difficult and subtle language full of allusions, conceits, and technical artifice—this amalgamation of heterogeneous elements by means of the imposition of a unity of style—reflects significantly in a restricted sphere that larger process to which Islamic civilization owes its origin and its fertility.

When the maqâma is thus identified as an Islamic rather than as a specifically Arabic literary kind it is not implied that none of its formal elements would be ascribable to the Arabic tradition more narrowly defined. The interchange of prose and poetry in a single piece of narrative is pre-Islamic. In the ayyâm tales, the reports of the battle days of the Bedouin Arabs, not infrequently the prose sections can be shown to have grown up around a core of topical verse. In other contexts the illustrative poem is secondary to the prose account. The use of prosimetry with both elements on an equal footing, that is to say with their employment planned beforehand by the narrator, can, with some probability, be traced back to Hellenistic influences. The maqâma replaces ordinary with rhymed prose but, apart from this added demand on the writer's skill, the customary structure of prosimetric presentation is maintained—a distinct contribution of the Arabic tradition.

c) The inner form shows the Arabic preference for quick and abrupt transition from earnestness to jest, from the crude to the sublime,²⁴ subtilized into an attitude approaching “romantic irony.” When the preacher in the cemetery has reached the conclusion of his sermon with this line:

Thus have I given my precepts, friend, and shown as one who showeth clearly, and happy the man who walketh by my doctrines and maketh them his example;

Al-Hârith unmasks him as an impudent beggar. But, unabashed, Abû Zaid rejects his criticism:

Look well, and leave thy blaming; for, tell me, hast thou ever known a time when a man would not win of the world when the game was in his hands.²⁵

The contrast between the religious ethics demanded by the sermon and the self-seeking vulgarity of the preacher is predicated on the Islamic milieu; but here, the Islamic setting merely points up possibilities inherent in the earlier literary tradition.

Unmistakably Islamic are the characters of the two personages whom Harîrî introduces. To confine the analysis to one significant element, the identity of their “life curve” with that of the typical repentant sinner needs to be noted. The reckless and gay, the frivolous and loose-tongued, the favorites of elegant and well-nigh amoral circles are apt to break with the world when they feel their decline approaching. Abû Nuwâs (d. 810 or 813) in his later years threw himself on God's mercy; Abû 'l-’Atâhiya (d. 828) broke with his literary past, at some personal risk, to atone for his erotic songs by composing zuhdiyyât, poems of renunciation, after he had been awakened to repentance.²⁶

In the fiftieth (last) maqâma, Abû Zaid redeems his life by a conversion of unquestioned sincerity. “Truly,” he says to the still doubtful al-Hârith, “I had stood before them [the faithful of Baṣra] in the stead of a doubter, a deceiver, and, lo, I have turned from them with the heart of the contrite, the devout.” Al-Hârith follows him to the mosque, where Abû Zaid spends his day in prayer and recitation of the Koran. At night, “He rose to enter his Oratory, and remained alone in converse with the Lord, until, when the morn shone forth, and the wakeful worshipper was entitled to his reward, he followed up his vigil with prayers of praise.” And upon hearing his prayers, al-Hârith “wept by reason of the weeping of his eyes, as he had wept heretofore because of him.”²⁷

Al-Hârith's understanding for Abû Zaid's conversion is all the more genuine as he, too, had experienced a similar, if less extreme, break in his own life. At the beginning of the Forty-first Assembly, al-Hârith relates:

I responded to the calls of wantonness in the bloom of my youth, wherefore I ceased not visiting dainty damsels and listening to the tunes of song, until the warner had arrived and the freshness of life had turned its back on me. Then I craved for rectitude of watchful conduct, and repented of what I had trespassed in the face of Allah. So I began to drive out evil inclinations by good deeds and to mend wicked ways before it was too late, for I turned from the morning-call on the fair, to meeting with the God-fearing, and from mixing with songstresses to drawing near to men of piety, …²⁸

d) The attitude toward and expectations from literature that have promoted the development of the maqâma and preserved its appreciation over the centuries were touched upon by implication when the learned character of its style was discussed. As a matter of fact, the maqâma has always been a preferred medium for the display of philological erudition as well as of prosodical virtuosity. While the themes of Abû Zaid's sermons are utterly conventional and Harîrî's originality is restricted to their treatment, it must be emphasized that, in general, invention of incident, repartee, or argument is more important in the maqâma than in other poetical kinds favored by Harîrî's contemporaries. True, it is invention on a small scale; yet before the maqâma, in consequence of its possibilities and its success, fell a victim to scholarly pedantry and completely forsook the realistic tradition of the early Abbasid age, it required sufficient originality in detail and perhaps also in compositional planning to constitute a genre apart, on this ground alone. In this aspect of the maqâma we may again be entitled to discern an Islamic strain as distinguished from or perhaps superimposed on the specifically Arabic tradition of literary expression.

Notes

1. Muqaddasî, Aḥsan at-taqâsîm (written in a.d. 985), ed. M. J. de Goeje, Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum (Leiden, 1906), III, p. 123.

2. Jâḥiz (d. 869), whose theory and practice are especially representative of this attitude, on one occasion made himself the champion of the opposite viewpoint. When a friend trims a book of his he berates him saying: “An author is like a painter. Now I have in my work painted—may God blind your eyes—a figure with two eyes which you have gouged, two ears which you have—may God cut off your ears—cut off, two hands, which you have amputated—may God amputate your hands.” So he enumerates all the limbs of the figure, and the man apologizes for his stupidity and promises never to repeat this procedure; cf. Yâqût, Mu‘jam al-buldân, ed. F. Wüstenfeld (Leipzig, 1866-73), I, 11-12.

3. Lawâ’iḥ (“Flashes”), ed. trans. E. H. Whinfield and M. M. Quzwini (London, 1906), No. XXVI, pp. 42-45; quoted by A. K. Coomaraswamy, Time and Eternity (Ascona, 1947), pp. 98-100.

4. A. S. Tritton, Muslim Theology (London, 1947), pp. 127, 118, 69.

5. G. E. von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam. A Study in Cultural Orientation (2d ed.; Chicago, 1953), p. 287.

6. G. E. von Grunebaum, Comparative Literature, IV (1952), 333.

7. Koran 26:221-26. The translation follows that of R. Bell, The Qur’ân (Edinburgh, 1937-39), except for vs. 225 which Bell renders: “Seest thou not that in every wâdî they fall madly in love.”

8. Comparative Literature, IV, 333-34.

9. It is interesting to compare the admiration for the Shâh-Nâmah which Ibn al-Athîr (d. 1239) expresses (al-Mathal as-sâ’ir [Cairo, 1312], p. 324), with the reaction to the narrative of Daḥḥâk's atrocities and his death at the hands of Kâwa (Kâbî) which Yâqût (d. 1229) registers, Mu‘jam al-buldân, ed. F. Wüstenfeld (Leipzig, 1866-73), I, 293^17-18: “That (narrative) is a long story, qiṣṣa, full of startling and absurd incidents, dât tahâwîl wa-hurâfât.”

10. Conversely, there is evidence that the Persians took some little time before actively accepting the motivations which induced the Arab aristocracy to support the poets. Jâḥiz speaks of a crisis poetry underwent when Persians came into power in Baghdâd, because they did not show much interest in having their genealogies praised by the poets nor did they care to have the memory of their assemblies, maqâmât, perpetuated by them; Kitâb al-buhalâ’, ed. G. Van Vloten (Leiden, 1900), pp. 191^18-92¹ (ed. Aḥmad al-‘Awâmirî and ‘Alî al-Jârim [Cairo, 1939], II, 126^1-5; ed. Taha al-Hâjirî [Cairo, 1948], p. 161^13-17; trans. C. Pellat [Beyrouth and Paris, 1951], p. 256).

11. Chahâr Maqâla, trans. E. G. Browne (London, 1921), p. 31. Yâqût, op. cit., I, 4^12-5³, makes an interesting case for the importance for poets and literary men of geographical handbooks and toponymical dictionaries.

12. Even though description, waṣf, was the pride and ambition of the Muslim poet or writer, there obtained some feeling for the natural limitations of descriptive art. Thus Jâḥiz observes that scenes whose effectiveness derives from the comicality of gestures cannot be adequately reproduced by means of words. Cf. his Kitâb al-buhalâ’, ed. G. Van Vloten, p. 61^18-20 (ed. Aḥmad al-‘Awâmirî and ‘Alî al-Jârim, I, 108^5-6; ed. Taha al-Hâjirî, p. 51^6-7; trans., p. 83).

13. Chahâr Maqâla, p. 32. The problem of the learned poet is discussed with great understanding by Marzûqî (d. 1030), in the Preface to his commentary on Abû Tammâm's Hamâsa; ed. Shukrî Faiṣal, Majallat al-Majma‘ al-‘Ilmî al-‘Arabî bi-Dimashq, XXVII (1371/1952), 92-95.

14. Akhbâr ar-Râḍî billâh wa'l-Muttaqî billâh, trans. M. Canard (Algiers, 1946-50), II, 37.

15. Harîrî, Séances, ed. with an Arabic commentary by Silvestre de Sacy (2d ed. [by Reinaud and Dérenbourg]; Paris, 1847-53), I, 121.

16. The Assemblies of Al-Harîrî, trans. Th. Chenery (Vol. I) and F. Steingass (Vol. II) (London, 1867-98), I, 364.

17. Ibn al-Jauzî, Bustân al-wâ‘izîn (Cairo, 1353/1934), pp. 188-89.

18. Ibid., pp. 168-69.

19. Sûra 102:1-3.

20. Ibn al-Jauzî, op. cit., p. 180.

21. Ibid., p. 172.

22. Ibid., p. 152, abridged.

23. This is the rendering used by C. Brockelmann, Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, 1913-34), III, 162.

24. Cf., e.g., Jâḥiz (d. 869), Hayawân (Cairo, 1325/1907), III, 2-3 (2d ed.; [Cairo, 1356-64, 1938-45], III, 5-7).

25. Trans. Chenery, I, 167.

26. For a lesser figure following the same pattern, cf. Sa‘îd b. Wahb (d. during the lifetime of Abû 'l-‘Atâhiya), who ends by repenting his beginnings as a lascivious love poet; cf. Abû 'l-Faraj al-Iṣfahânî, Kitâb al-aghânî, Vol. XXI, ed. R. E. Brünnow (Leiden, 1888), pp. 104-5.

27. Trans. Chenery, II, 181, 182, 185.

28. Ibid., II, 109.