[In the following excerpt from a work originally published in 1907, Nicholson examines al-Mutanabbi's critical reputation, particularly objections made to his work by his near-contemporary, Tha'álibí.]

Sayfu 'l-Dawla's cousin, Abú Firás al-Hamdání, was a gallant soldier and a poet of some mark, who if space permitted would receive fuller notice here.¹ He, however, though superior to the common herd of court poets, is overshadowed by one who with all his faults—and they are not inconsiderable—made an extraordinary impression upon his contemporaries, and by the commanding influence of his reputation decided what should henceforth be the standard of poetical taste in the Muḥammadan world.

Abu 'l-Tayyib Aḥmad b. Husayn, known to fame as al-Mutanabbí, was born and bred at Kúfa, where his father is said to have been a water-carrier. Following the admirable custom by which young men of promise were sent abroad to complete their education, he studied at Damascus and visited other towns in Syria, but also passed much of his time among the Bedouins, to whom he owed the singular knowledge and mastery of Arabic displayed in his poems. Here he came forward as a prophet (from which circumstance he was afterwards entitled al-Mutanabbí, i.e., ‘the pretender to prophecy’), and induced a great multitude to believe in him; but ere long he was captured by Lu'lu', the governor of Himṣ (Emessa), and thrown into prison. After his release he wandered to and fro chanting the praises of all and sundry, until fortune guided him to the court of Sayfu 'l-Dawla at Aleppo. For nine years (948-957 a.d.) he stood high in the favour of that cultured prince, whose virtues he celebrated in a series of splendid eulogies, and with whom he lived as an intimate friend and comrade in arms. The liberality of Sayfu 'l-Dawla and the ingenious impudence of the poet are well brought out by the following anecdote:—

Mutanabbí on one occasion handed to his patron the copy of an ode which he had recently composed in his honour, and retired, leaving Sayfu 'l-Dawla to peruse it at leisure. The prince began to read, and came to these lines—

Aqil anil aqṭi‘iḥmil ‘alli salli a‘id
zid hashshi bashshi tafaḍḍal adni surra ṣili.(2)
e
Pardon, bestow, endow, mount, raise, console, restore
Add, laugh, rejoice, bring nigh, show favour, gladden, give!

Far from being displeased by the poet's arrogance, Sayfu 'l-Dawla was so charmed with his artful collocation of fourteen imperatives in a single verse that he granted every request. Under pardon he wrote ‘we pardon thee’; under bestow, ‘let him receive such and such a sum of money’; under endow, ‘we endow thee with an estate,’ which he named (it was beside the gate of Aleppo); under mount, ‘let such and such a horse be led to him’; under raise, ‘we do so’; under console, ‘we do so, be at ease’; under restore, ‘we restore thee to thy former place in our esteem’; under add, ‘let him have such and such in addition’; under bring nigh, ‘we admit thee to our intimacy ’; under show favour, ‘we have done so’; under gladden, ‘we have made thee glad’³; under give, ‘this we have already done.’ Mutanabbí's rivals envied his good fortune, and one of them said to Sayfu 'l-Dawla—“Sire, you have done all that he asked, but when he uttered the words laugh, rejoice, why did not you answer, ‘Ha, ha, ha’?” Sayfu 'l-Dawla laughed, and said, “You too, shall have your wish,” and ordered him a donation.

Mutanabbí was sincerely attached to his generous master, and this feeling inspired a purer and loftier strain than we find in the fulsome panegyrics which he afterwards addressed to the negro Káfúr. He seems to have been occasionally in disgrace, but Sayfu 'l-Dawla could deny nothing to a poet who paid him such magnificent compliments. Nor was he deterred by any false modesty from praising himself: he was fully conscious of his power and, like Arabian bards in general, he bragged about it. Although the verbal legerdemain which is so conspicuous in his poetry cannot be reproduced in another language, the lines translated below may be taken as a favourable and sufficiently characteristic specimen of his style.

How glows mine heart for him whose heart to me is cold,
Who liketh ill my case and me in fault doth hold!
Why should I hide a love that hath worn thin my frame?
To Sayfu 'l-Dawla all the world avows the same.
Tho' love of his high star unites us, would that we
According to our love might so divide the fee!
Him have I visited when sword in sheath was laid,
And I have seen him when in blood swam every blade:
Him, both in peace and war the best of all mankind,
Whose crown of excellence was still his noble mind.
Do foes by flight escape thine onset, thou dost gain
A chequered victory, half of pleasure, half of pain.
So puissant is the fear thou strik'st them with, it stands
Instead of thee, and works more than thy warriors' hands.
Unfought the field is thine: thou need'st not further strain
To chase them from their holes in mountain or in plain.
What! 'fore thy fierce attack whene'er an army reels,
Must thy ambitious soul press hot upon their heels?
Thy task it is to rout them on the battle-ground:
No shame to thee if they in flight have safety found.
Or thinkest thou perchance that victory is sweet
Only when scimitars and necks each other greet?
O justest of the just save in thy deeds to me!
Thou art accused and thou, O Sire, must judge the plea.
Look, I implore thee, well! Let not thine eye cajoled
See fat in empty froth, in all that glisters gold!(4)
What use and profit reaps a mortal of his sight,
If darkness unto him be indistinct from light?
My deep poetic art the blind have eyes to see,
My verses ring in ears as deaf as deaf can be.
They wander far abroad while I am unaware,
But men collect them watchfully with toil and care.
Oft hath my laughing mien prolonged the insulter's sport,
Until with claw and mouth I cut his rudeness short.
Ah, when the lion bares his teeth, suspect his guile,
Nor fancy that the lion shows to you a smile.
I have slain the man that sought my heart's blood many a time,
Riding a noble mare whose back none else may climb,
Whose hind and fore-legs seem in galloping as one;
Nor hand nor foot requireth she to urge her on.
And O the days when I have swung my fine-edged glaive
Amidst a sea of death where wave was dashed on wave!
The desert knows me well, the night, the mounted men,
The battle and the sword, the paper and the pen!(5)

Finally an estrangement arose between Mutanabbí and Sayfu 'l-Dawla, in consequence of which he fled to Egypt and attached himself to the Ikhshídite Káfúr. Disappointed in his new patron, a negro who had formerly been a slave, the poet set off for Baghdád, and afterwards visited the court of the Buwayhid ‘Aḍudu 'l-Dawla at Shíráz. While travelling through Babylonia he was attacked and slain by brigands in 965 a.d.

The popularity of Mutanabbí is shown by the numerous commentaries⁶ and critical treatises on his Díwán. By his countrymen he is generally regarded as one of the greatest of Arabian poets, while not a few would maintain that he ranks absolutely first. Abu 'l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí, himself an illustrious poet and man of letters, confessed that he had sometimes wished to alter a word here and there in Mutanabbí's verses, but had never been able to think of any improvement. “As to his poetry,” says Ibn Khallikán, “it is perfection.” European scholars, with the exception of Von Hammer,⁷ have been far from sharing this enthusiasm, as may be seen by referring to what has been said on the subject by Reiske,⁸ De Sacy,⁹ Bohlen,¹⁰ Brockelmann,¹¹ and others. No doubt, according to our canons of taste, Mutanabbí stands immeasurably below the famous Pre-islamic bards, and in a later age must yield the palm to Abú Nuwás and Abu 'l-‘Atáhiya. Lovers of poetry, as the term is understood in Europe, cannot derive much æsthetic pleasure from his writings, but, on the contrary, will be disgusted by the beauties hardly less than by the faults which Arabian critics attribute to him. Admitting, however, that only a born Oriental is able to appreciate Mutanabbí at his full worth, let us try to realise the Oriental point of view and put aside, as far as possible, our preconceptions of what constitutes good poetry and good taste. Fortunately we possess abundant materials for such an attempt in the invaluable work of Tha‘álibí, which has been already mentioned.¹² Tha‘álibí (961-1038 a.d.) was nearly contemporary with Mutanabbí. He began to write his Yatíma about thirty years after the poet's death, and while he bears witness to the unrivalled popularity of the Díwán amongst all classes of society, he observes that it was sharply criticised as well as rapturously admired. Tha‘álibí himself claims to hold the balance even. “Now,” he says, “I will mention the faults and blemishes which critics have found in the poetry of Mutanabbí; for is there any one whose qualities give entire satisfaction?—

Kafa 'l-mar'a faḍl^an an tu‘adda ma‘áyibuh.

'Tis the height of merit in a man that his faults can be numbered.

Then I will proceed to speak of his beauties and to set forth in due order the original and incomparable characteristics of his style.

The radiant stars with beauty strike our eyes
Because midst gloom opaque we see them rise.

It was deemed of capital importance that the opening couplet (maṭla‘) of a poem should be perfect in form and meaning, and that it should not contain anything likely to offend. Tha‘álibí brings forward many instances in which Mutanabbí has violated this rule by using words of bad omen, such as ‘sickness’ or ‘death,’ or technical terms of music and arithmetic which only perplex and irritate the hearer instead of winning his sympathy at the outset. He complains also that Mutanabbí's finest thoughts and images are too often followed by low and trivial ones: “he strings pearls and bricks together” (jama‘a bayna 'l-durrati wa-'l-ájurrati). “While he moulds the most splendid ornament, and threads the loveliest necklace, and weaves the most exquisite stuff of mingled hues, and paces superbly in a garden of roses, suddenly he will throw in a verse or two verses disfigured by far-fetched metaphors, or by obscure language and confused thought, or by extravagant affectation and excessive profundity, or by unbounded and absurd exaggeration, or by vulgar and commonplace diction, or by pedantry and grotesqueness resulting from the use of unfamiliar words.” We need not follow Tha‘álibí in his illustration of these and other weaknesses with which he justly reproaches Mutanabbí, since we shall be able to form a better idea of the prevailing taste from those points which he singles out for special praise.

In the first place he calls attention to the poet's skill in handling the customary erotic prelude (nasìb), and particularly to his brilliant descriptions of Bedouin women, which were celebrated all over the East. As an example of this kind he quotes the following piece, which “is chanted in the salons on account of the extreme beauty of its diction, the choiceness of its sentiment, and the perfection of its art”:—

Shame hitherto was wont my tears to stay,
But now by shame they will no more be stayed,
So that each bone seems through its skin to sob,
And every vein to swell the sad cascade.
She uncovered: pallor veiled her at farewell:
No veil 'twas, yet her cheeks it cast in shade.
So seemed they, while tears trickled over them,
Gold with a double row of pearls inlaid.
She loosed three sable tresses of her hair,
And thus of night four nights at once she made;
But when she lifted to the moon in heaven
Her face, two moons together I surveyed.(13)

The critic then enumerates various beautiful and original features of Mutanabbí's style, e.g.

1. His consecutive arrangement of similes in brief symmetrical clauses, thus:—

She shone forth like a moon, and swayed like a moringabough,
And shed fragrance like ambergris, and gazed like a gazelle.

2. The novelty of his comparisons and images, as when he indicates the rapidity with which he returned to his patron and the shortness of his absence in these lines:—

I was merely an arrow in the air,
Which falls back, finding no refuge there.

3. The laus duplex or ‘two-sided panegyric’ (al-madḥ al-muwajjah), which may be compared to a garment having two surfaces of different colours but of equal beauty, as in the following verse addressed to Sayfu 'l-Dawla:—

Were all the lives thou hast ta'en possessed by thee,
Immortal thou and blest the world would be!

Here Sayfu 'l-Dawla is doubly eulogised by the mention of his triumphs over his enemies as well as of the joy which all his friends felt in the continuance of his life and fortune.

4. His manner of extolling his royal patron as though he were speaking to a friend and comrade, whereby he raises himself from the position of an ordinary encomiast to the same level with kings.

5. His division of ideas into parallel sentences:—

We were in gladness, the Greeks in fear,
The land in bustle, the sea in confusion.

From this summary of Tha‘álibí's criticism the reader will easily perceive that the chief merits of poetry were then considered to lie in elegant expression, subtle combination of words, fanciful imagery, witty conceits, and a striking use of rhetorical figures. Such, indeed, are the views which prevail to this day throughout the whole Muḥammadan world, and it is unreasonable to denounce them as false simply because they do not square with ours. Who shall decide when nations disagree? If Englishmen rightly claim to be the best judges of Shakespeare, and Italians of Dante, the almost unanimous verdict of Mutanabbí's countrymen is surely not less authoritative—a verdict which places him at the head of all the poets born or made in Islam. And although the peculiar excellences indicated by Tha‘álibí do not appeal to us, there are few poets that leave so distinct an impression of greatness. One might call Mutanabbí the Victor Hugo of the East, for he has the grand style whether he soars to sublimity or sinks to fustian. In the masculine vigour of his verse, in the sweep and splendour of his rhetoric, in the luxuriance and reckless audacity of his imagination we recognise qualities which inspired the oft-quoted lines of the elegist:—

Him did his mighty soul supply
With regal pomp and majesty.
A Prophet by his diction known;
But in the ideas, all must own,
His miracles were clearly shown.(14)

One feature of Mutanabbí's poetry that is praised by Tha‘álibí should not be left unnoticed, namely, his fondness for sententious moralising on topics connected with human life; wherefore Reiske has compared him to Euripides. He is allowed to be a master of that proverbial philosophy in which Orientals delight and which is characteristic of the modern school beginning with Abu 'l-‘Atáhiya, though some of the ancients had already cultivated it with success (cf. the verses of Zuhayr, p. 118 supra). The following examples are among those cited by Bohlen (op. cit., p. 86 sqq.):—

When an old man cries ‘Ugh!’ he is not tired
Of life, but only tired of feebleness.(15)
He that hath been familiar with the world
A long while, in his eye 'tis turned about
Until he sees how false what looked so fair.(16)
The sage's mind still makes him miserable
In his most happy fortune, but poor fools
Find happiness even in their misery.(17)

Notes

1. See Von Kremer's Culturgeschichte, vol. ii, p. 381 sqq.; Ahlwardt, Poesie und Poetik der Araber, p. 37 sqq.; R. Dvorak, Abú Firás, ein arabischer Dichter und Held (Leyden, 1895).

2. Mutanabbí, ed. by Dieterici, p. 493. Wáḥidí gives the whole story in his commentary on this verse.

3. Mutanabbí, it is said, explained to Sayfu 'l-Dawla that by surra (gladden) he meant surriyya; whereupon the good-humoured prince presented him with a slave-girl.

4. Literally, “Do not imagine fat in one whose (apparent) fat is (really) a tumour.”

5. Díwán, ed. by Dieterici, pp. 481-484.

6. The most esteemed commentary is that of Wáḥidí († 1075 a.d.), which has been published by Fr. Dieterici in his edition of Mutanabbí (Berlin, 1858-1861).

7. Motenebbi, der grösste arabische Dichter (Vienna, 1824).

8. Abulfedæ Annales Muslemici (Hafniæ, 1789, &c.), vol. ii, p. 774. Cf. his notes on Tarafa's Mu‘allaqa, of which he published an edition in 1742.

9. Chrestomathie Arabe (2nd edition), vol. iii, p. 27 sqq. Journal des Savans, January, 1825, p. 24 sqq.

10. Commentatio de Motenabbio (Bonn, 1824).

11. Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur (Weimar, 1898, &c.), vol. i, p. 86.

12. I have made free use of Dieterici's excellent work entitled Mutanabbi und Seifuddaula aus der Edelperle des Tsaâlibi (Leipzig, 1847), which contains on pp. 49-74 an abstract of Tha‘álibí's criticism in the fifth chapter of the First Part of the Yatíma.

13. Mutanabbí, ed. by Dieterici, p. 182, vv. 3-9, omitting v. 5.

14. The author of these lines, which are quoted by Ibn Khallikán in his article on Mutanabbí, is Abu 'l-Qásim b. al-Muzaffar b. ‘Alí al-Tabasí.

15. Mutanabbí, ed. by Dieterici, p. 581, v. 27.

16. Ibid., p. 472, v. 5.

17. Mutanabbí, ed. by Dieterici, p. 341, v. 8.