[In the following excerpt, originally published in 1907, Nicholson discusses al-Harīrī's heroic character Abū Zayd.]

Less original than Badí‘u 'l-Zamán, but far beyond him in variety of learning and copiousness of language, Abú Muḥammad al-Qásim al-Harírí of Baṣra produced in his Maqámát a masterpiece which for eight centuries “has been esteemed as, next to the Koran, the chief treasure of the Arabic tongue.” In the Preface to his work he says that the composition of maqámát was suggested to him by “one whose suggestion is a command and whom it is a pleasure to obey.” This was the distinguished Persian statesman, Anúshirwán b. Khálid,¹ who afterwards served as Vizier under the Caliph Mustarshid Billáh (1118-1135 a.d.) and Sultán Mas‘úd, the Seljúq (1133-1152 a.d.); but at the time when he made Harírí's acquaintance he was living in retirement at Baṣra and devoting himself to literary studies. Harírí begged to be excused on the score that his abilities were unequal to the task, “for the lame steed cannot run like the strong courser.”² Finally, however, he yielded to the request of Anúshirwán, and, to quote his own words—

“I composed, in spite of hindrances that I suffered
From dullness of capacity and dimness of intellect,
And dryness of imagination and distressing anxieties,
Fifty Maqámát, which contain serious language and lightsome,
And combine refinement with dignity of style,
And brilliancies with jewels of eloquence,
And beauties of literature with its rarities,
Beside verses of the Koran wherewith I adorned them,
And choice metaphors, and Arab proverbs that I interspersed,
And literary elegancies and grammatical riddles,
And decisions based on the (double) meaning of words,
And original discourses and highly-wrought orations,
And affecting exhortations as well as entertaining jests:
The whole of which I have indited as by the tongue of Abú Zayd of Sarúj,
The part of narrator being assigned to Harith son of Hammám of Baṣra.”(3)

Harírí then proceeds to argue that his Maqámát are not mere frivolous stories such as strict Moslems are bound to reprobate in accordance with a well-known passage of the Koran referring to Naḍr b. Hárith, who mortally offended the Prophet by amusing the Quraysh with the old Persian legends of Rustam and Isfandiyár (Koran, xxxi, 5-6): “There is one that buyeth idle tales that he may seduce men from the way of God, without knowledge, and make it a laughing-stock: these shall suffer a shameful punishment. And when Our signs are read to him, he turneth his back in disdain as though he heard them not, as though there were in his ears a deafness: give him joy of a grievous punishment!” Harírí insists that the Assemblies have a moral purpose. The ignorant and malicious, he says, will probably condemn his work, but intelligent readers will perceive, if they lay prejudice aside, that it is as useful and instructive as the fables of beasts, &c.,⁴ to which no one has ever objected. That his fears of hostile criticism were not altogether groundless is shown by the following remarks of the author of the popular history entitled al-Fakhrí († circa 1300 a.d.). This writer, after claiming that his own book is more useful than the Hamása of Abú Tammám, continues:—

“And, again, it is more profitable than the Maqámát on which men have set their hearts, and which they eagerly commit to memory; because the reader derives no benefit from Maqámát except familiarity with elegant composition and knowledge of the rules of verse and prose. Undoubtedly they contain maxims and ingenious devices and experiences; but all this has a debasing effect on the mind, for it is founded on begging and sponging and disgraceful scheming to acquire a few paltry pence. Therefore, if they do good in one direction, they do harm in another; and this point has been noticed by some critics of the Maqámát of Harírí and Badí‘u 'l-Zamán.”⁵

Before pronouncing on the justice of this censure, we must consider for a moment the character of Abú Zayd, the hero of Harírí's work, whose adventures are related by a certain Hárith b. Hammám, under which name the author is supposed to signify himself. According to the general tradition, Harírí was one day seated with a number of savants in the mosque of the Banú Harám at Baṣra, when an old man entered, footsore and travel-stained. On being asked who he was and whence he came, he answered that his name of honour was Abú Zayd and that he came from Sarúj.⁶ He described in eloquent and moving terms how his native town had been plundered by the Greeks, who made his daughter a captive and drove him forth to exile and poverty. Harírí was so struck with his wonderful powers of improvisation that on the same evening he began to compose the Maqáma of the Banú Harám,⁷ where Abú Zayd is introduced in his invariable character: “a crafty old man, full of genius and learning, unscrupulous of the artifices which he uses to effect his purpose, reckless in spending in forbidden indulgences the money he has obtained by his wit or deceit, but with veins of true feeling in him, and ever yielding to unfeigned emotion when he remembers his devastated home and his captive child.”⁸ If an immoral tendency has been attributed to the Assemblies of Harírí it is because the author does not conceal his admiration for this unprincipled and thoroughly disreputable scamp. Abú Zayd, indeed, is made so fascinating that we can easily pardon his knaveries for the sake of the pearls of wit and wisdom which he scatters in splendid profusion—excellent discourses, edifying sermons, and plaintive lamentations mingled with rollicking ditties and ribald jests. Modern readers are not likely to agree with the historian quoted above, but although they may deem his criticism illiberal, they can hardly deny that it has some justification.

Harírí's rhymed prose might be freely imitated in English, but the difficulty of rendering it in rhyme with tolerable fidelity has caused me to abandon the attempt to produce a version of one of the Assemblies in the original form.⁹ I will translate instead three poems which are put into the mouth of Abú Zayd. The first is a tender elegiac strain recalling far-off days of youth and happiness in his native land:—

“Ghassán is my noble kindred, Sarúj is my land of birth,
Where I dwelt in a lofty mansion of sunlike glory and worth,
A Paradise for its sweetness and beauty and pleasant mirth!
And oh, the life that I led there abounding in all delight!
I trailed my robe on its meadows, while Time flew a careless flight,
Elate in the flower of manhood, no pleasure veiled from my sight.
Now, if woe could kill, I had died of the troubles that haunt me here,
Or could past joy ever be ransomed, my heart's blood had not been dear,
Since death is better than living a brute's life year after year,
Subdued to scorn as a lion whom base hyenas torment.
But Luck is to blame, else no one had failed of his due ascent:
If she were straight, the conditions of men would never be bent.”(10)

The scene of the eleventh Assembly is laid in Sáwa, a city lying midway between Hamadhán (Ecbatana) and Rayy (Rhages). “Hárith, in a fit of religious zeal, betakes himself to the public burial ground, for the purpose of contemplation. He finds a funeral in progress, and when it is over an old man, with his face muffled in a cloak, takes his stand on a hillock, and pours forth a discourse on the certainty of death and judgment. … He then rises into poetry and declaims a piece which is one of the noblest productions of Arabic literature. In lofty morality, in religious fervour, in beauty of language, in power and grace of metre, this magnificent hymn is unsurpassed.”¹¹

“Pretending sense in vain, how long, O light of brain, wilt thou heap sin and bane, and compass error's span?
Thy conscious guilt avow! The white hairs on thy brow admonish thee, and thou hast ears unstopt, O man!
Death's call dost thou not hear? Rings not his voice full clear? Of parting hast no fear, to make thee sad and wise?
How long sunk in a sea of sloth and vanity wilt thou play heedlessly, as though Death spared his prize?
Till when, far wandering from virtue, wilt thou cling to evil ways that bring together vice in brief?
For thy Lord's anger shame thou hast none, but let maim o'ertake thy cherished aim, then feel'st thou burning grief.
Thou hail'st with eager joy the coin of yellow die, but if a bier pass by, feigned is thy sorry face;
Perverse and callous wight! thou scornest counsel right to follow the false light of treachery and disgrace.
Thy pleasure thou dost crave, to sordid gain a slave, forgetting the dark grave and what remains of dole;
Were thy true weal descried, thy lust would not misguide nor thou be terrified by words that should console.
Not tears, blood shall thine eyes pour at the great Assize, when thou hast no allies, no kinsman thee to save;
Straiter thy tomb shall be than needle's cavity: deep, deep thy plunge I see as diver's 'neath the wave.
There shall thy limbs be laid, a feast for worms arrayed, till utterly decayed are wood and bones withal,
Nor may thy soul repel that ordeal horrible, when o'er the Bridge of Hell she must escape or fall.
Astray shall leaders go, and mighty men be low, and sages shall cry, ‘Woe like this was never yet.’
Then haste, my thoughtless friend, what thou hast marred to mend, for life draws near its end, and still thou art in the net.
Trust not in fortune, nay, though she be soft and gay; for she will spit one day her venom, if thou dote;
Abate thy haughty pride! lo, Death is at thy side, fastening, whate'er betide, his fingers on thy throat.
When prosperous, refrain from arrogant disdain, nor give thy tongue the rein: a modest tongue is best.
Comfort the child of bale and listen to his tale: repair thine actions frail, and be for ever blest.
Feather the nest once more of those whose little store has vanished: ne'er deplore the loss nor miser be;
With meanness bravely cope, and teach thine hand to ope, and spurn the misanthrope, and make thy bounty free.
Lay up provision fair and leave what brings thee care: for sea the ship prepare and dread the rising storm.
This, friend, is what I preach expressed in lucid speech. Good luck to all and each who with my creed conform!”

In the next Maqáma—that of Damascus—we find Abú Zayd, gaily attired, amidst casks and vats of wine, carousing and listening to the music of lutes and singing—

“I ride and I ride through the waste far and wide, and I fling away pride to be gay as the swallow;
Stem the torrent's fierce speed, tame the mettlesome steed, that wherever I lead Youth and Pleasure may follow.
I bid gravity pack, and I strip bare my back lest liquor I lack when the goblet is lifted:
Did I never incline to the quaffing of wine, I had ne'er been with fine wit and eloquence gifted.
Is it wonderful, pray, that an old man should stay in a well-stored seray by a cask overflowing?
Wine strengthens the knees, physics every disease, and from sorrow it frees, the oblivion-bestowing!
Oh, the purest of joys is to live sans disguise unconstrained by the ties of a grave reputation,
And the sweetest of love that the lover can prove is when fear and hope move him to utter his passion.
Thy love then proclaim, quench the smouldering flame, for 'twill spark out thy shame and betray thee to laughter:
Heal the wounds of thine heart and assuage thou the smart by the cups that impart a delight men seek after;
While to hand thee the bowl damsels wait who cajole and enravish the soul with eyes tenderly glancing,
And singers whose throats pour such high-mounting notes, when the melody floats, iron rocks would be dancing!
Obey not the fool who forbids thee to pull beauty's rose when in full bloom thou'rt free to possess it;
Pursue thine end still, tho' it seem past thy skill: let them say what they will, take thy pleasure and bless it!
Get thee gone from thy sire, if he thwart thy desire; spread thy nets nor enquire what the nets are receiving;
But be true to a friend, shun the miser and spend, ways of charity wend, be unwearied in giving.
He that knocks enters straight at the Merciful's gate, so repent or e'er Fate call thee forth from the living!”

The reader may judge from these extracts whether the Assemblies of Harírí are so deficient in matter as some critics have imagined. But, of course, the celebrity of the work is mainly due to its consummate literary form—a point on which the Arabs have always bestowed singular attention. Harírí himself was a subtle grammarian, living in Baṣra, the home of philological science;¹² and though he wrote to please rather than to instruct, he seems to have resolved that his work should illustrate every beauty and nicety of which the Arabic language is capable. We Europeans can see as little merit or taste in the verbal conceits—equivoques, paronomasias, assonances, alliterations, &c.—with which his pages are thickly studded, as in tours de force of composition which may be read either forwards or backwards, or which consist entirely of pointed or of unpointed letters; but our impatience of such things should not blind us to the fact that they are intimately connected with the genius and traditions of the Arabic tongue,¹³ and therefore stand on a very different footing from those euphuistic extravagances which appear, for example, in English literature of the Elizabethan age. By Harírí's countrymen the Maqámát are prized as an almost unique monument of their language, antiquities, and culture. One of the author's contemporaries, the famous Zamakhsharí, has expressed the general verdict in pithy verse—

“I swear by God and His marvels,
By the pilgrims' rite and their shrine:
Harírí's Assemblies are worthy
To be written in gold each line.”

Notes

1. A full account of his career will be found in the Preface to [Martijn Th.] Houtsma's Recueil de textes relatifs à l'histoire des Seldjoucides, [Leiden, 1889], vol. ii, p. 11 sqq. Cf. E. G. Browne's Lit. Hist. of Persia, [London, 1906] vol. ii, p. 360.

2. This is a graceful, but probably insincere, tribute to the superior genius of Hamadnání.

3. The above passage is taken, with some modification, from the version of Harírí published in 1850 by Theodore Preston, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who was afterwards Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic (1855-1871).

4. Moslems had long been familiar with the fables of Bidpai, which were translated from the Pehleví into Arabic by Ibnu 'l-Muqaffa‘(† circa 760 a.d.).

5. Al-Fakhrí, ed. by [H.] Derenbourg, [Paris, 1895], p. 18, l. 4 sqq.

6. A town in Mesopotamia, not far from Edessa. It was taken by the Crusaders in 1101 a.d. (Abu 'l-Fidá, ed. by [J. J.] Reiske, [Hafniae, 1789-94], vol. iii, p. 332).

7. The 48th Maqáma of the series as finally arranged.

8. [The Assemblies of Al-Harírí, translated from the Arabic, with an introduction and notes by T. Chenery (1867), vol. i, p. 23.]

9. This has been done with extraordinary skill by the German poet, Friedrich Rückert (Die Verwandlungen des Abu Seid von Serug, 2nd ed. 1837), whose work, however, is not in any sense a translation.

10. A literal translation of these verses, which occur in the sixth Assembly, is given by Chenery, op. cit., p. 138.

11. Ibid., p. 163.

12. Two grammatical treatises by Harírí have come down to us. In one of these, entitled Durratu 'l-Ghawwáṣ (‘The Pearl of the Diver’) and edited by Thorbecke (Leipzig, 1871), he discusses the solecisms which people of education are wont to commit.

13. See Chenery, op. cit., pp. 83-97.