- Middle Period: the rise of Persian and Turkish poetry
Development of literary prose
- Key People:
- Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī
- Owen Jones
- Related Topics:
- the arts
- Islamic architecture
- Islamic literature
During the Abbasid period, literary prose also began to develop. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (died c. 756), of Persian origin, translated the fables of Bidpai into Arabic under the title Kalīlah wa Dimnah. These fables provided Islamic culture with a seemingly inexhaustible treasure of tales and parables, which are to be found in different guises throughout the whole of Muslim literature. He also introduced into Arabic the fictitious chronicles of the Persian Khvatāy-nāmak (“Book of Kings”). This was the source of a kind of pre-Islamic mythology that the literati preferred above the somewhat meagre historical accounts of the Arab pagan past otherwise available to them. These activities demanded a smooth prose style, and Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ has therefore rightly been regarded as the inaugurator of what is called “secretarial literature” (that produced by secretaries in the official chancelleries). He also translated writings on ethics and the conduct of government, which helped to determine the rules of etiquette (adab). His works are the prototype of the “Mirror for Princes” literature, which flourished during the late Middle Ages both in Iran and in the West. In this literature a legendary Persian counselor, Bozorgmehr, was presented as a paragon of wise conduct. Later, stories were invented that combined Qurʾānic heroes with historical characters from the Iranian past.
A growing interest in things outside the limits of Bedouin life was reflected in a quantity of didactic yet entertaining prose by such masters as the broad-minded and immensely learned al-Jāḥiẓ (died 869). In response to the wide-ranging curiosity of urban society, the list of his subjects includes treatises on theology, on misers, on donkeys, and on thieves. His masterpiece is Kitāb al-ḥayawān (“The Book of Animals”), which has little to do with zoology but is a mine of information about Arab proverbs, traditions, superstitions, and the like. Al-Jāḥiẓ’s style is vigorous, loquacious, and uninhibited. His work, however, is not well constructed, and it lacks the clear sobriety of the “secretarial style.” Yet the glimpses it affords into the life of various strata of society during the 9th century have rightly attracted the special interest of Western scholars. Less impressive, but almost as multifaceted, are the treatises of Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (died 894).
The concept of adab was soon enlarged to include not only educational prose dealing with etiquette for all classes of people but belles lettres in general. The classic example of Arabic style for prose writers in this field, accepted as such for almost a millennium, is the writing of the Persian Ibn Qutaybah (died 889). His Kitab ʿuyūn al-akhbār (“Book of Choice Narratives”), in 10 books, each dealing with a given subject, provided a model to which numberless essayists in the Muslim world conformed. In his book on poetry and poets, Ibn Qutaybah dared, for the first time, to doubt openly that pre-Islamic poetry was incomparable. The most vigorous prose style was achieved by Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (died 1023), who portrayed the weaknesses of the two leading viziers, both notorious for their literary ambitions, “…with such bitterness,” as Gibb remarks, “that the book was reputed to bring misfortune upon all who possessed a copy.” This work, like others by Tawḥīdī that have quite recently been discovered, reveals the author’s sagacity and striking eloquence. His correspondence on problems of philosophy with Ibn Miskawayh (died 1030), the author of a widely circulated book on ethics and of a general history, helps to complete the picture of this extraordinary writer.
Sometime about 800 the Arabs had learned the art of papermaking from the Chinese. Thenceforth, cheap writing material was available, and literary output was prodigious. The Fihrist (“Index”), compiled by the bookseller Ibn al-Nadīm in 988, gave a full account of the Arabic literature extant in the 10th century. It covered all kinds of literature, from philology to alchemy, but most of these works unfortunately have been lost. In those years manuals of composition (inshāʾ) were written elaborating the technique of secretarial correspondence, and they grew into an accepted genre in Arabic as well as in Persian and Turkish literature. The devices thought indispensable for elegance in modern poetry were applied to prose. The products were mannered, full of puns, verbal tricks, riddles, and the like. The new style, which was also to affect the historian’s art in later times, makes a good deal of this post-Classical Arabic prose look very different from the terse and direct expression characteristic of the early specimens. Rhymed prose, which at one time had been reserved for such religious occasions as the Friday sermons, was now regarded as an essential part of elegant style.
This rhetorical artistry found its most superb expression in the maqāmah, a form invented by al-Hamadhānī (died 1008). Its master, however, was al-Ḥarīrī (died 1122), postmaster (head of the intelligence service) at Basra and an accomplished writer on grammatical subjects. His 50 maqāmahs, which tell the adventures of Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī, with a wealth of language and learning, come closer to the Western concept of short story than anything else in Classical Arabic literature. They abound in verbal conceits, ambivalence, assonance, alliteration, palindromes; they change abruptly from earnest to jest, from the crude to the most sublime, as the mid-20th-century scholar G.E. von Grunebaum pointed out in his evaluation of this form, which he regarded as the most typical literary reflection of the Islamic spirit. The work of al-Ḥarīrī has certainly been widely admired in the East; it has been imitated in Syriac and in Hebrew and has formed part of the syllabus in Muslim high schools of India. The pleasure to be derived from the brilliant artifice and ingenuity behind such compositions has led to their being imitated in other literary fields: quite often, in later Persian literature, one finds poems—sometimes whole books—composed of letters without diacritical marks (which distinguish otherwise similar-looking letters) or even made up entirely of unconnected letters. In India, even a commentary on the Qurʾān, in undotted letters, was written (by Fayzī; died 1595).
Achievements in the western Muslim world
The Arabic literature of Andalusian Spain and of the whole Maghrib developed parallel with that of the eastern countries but came to full flower somewhat later. Córdoba, the seat of the Umayyad rulers, was the centre of cultural life. Its wonderful mosque inspired Muslim poets right up to the 20th century (such as Sir Muḥammad Iqbāl, whose Urdu ode, “The Mosque of Córdoba,” was written in 1935). Andalusian Spain was a favourite topic for reformist novelists of 19th-century Muslim India, who contrasted their own country’s troubled state with the glory of classical Islamic civilization. Andalusian Spain reached its cultural, political, and literary heyday under ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (ruled 912–961). Literary stylistic changes, as noted in Iraq and Syria, spread to the west: there the old Bedouin style had always been rare and soon gave way to descriptive poetry and love poetry. Ibn Hāniʾ (died 973) of Sevilla (Seville) has been praised as the western counterpart of al-Mutanabbī, largely because of his eulogies of the Fatimid caliph al-Muʿizz, who at that time still resided in North Africa. The entertaining prose style of Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (died 940) in his Al-ʿIqd al-farīd (“The Unique Necklace”) is similar to that of his elder contemporary Ibn Qutaybah, and his book in fact became more famous than that of his predecessor. Writers on music and philology also flourished in Spain; literary criticism was practiced by Ibn Rashīq (died 1064) and later by al-Qarṭājannī (died 1285) in Tunis. Ibn Ḥazm (died 1064), theologian and accomplished writer on pure love, has already been mentioned.
Philosophy: Averroës and Avicenna
Philosophy, medicine, and theology, all of which flourished in the Abbasid East, were also of importance in the Maghrib, and from there strong influences reached medieval Europe. The influences often came through the mediation of the Jews, who, along with numerous Christians, were largely Arabized in their cultural and literary outlook. The eastern Muslim countries could boast of the first systematic writers in the field of philosophy, including al-Kindī (died c. 870), al-Fārābī (died 950), and especially Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā; died 1037). Avicenna’s work in philosophy, science, and medicine was outstanding and was appreciated as such in Europe. He also composed religious treatises and tales with a mystical slant. One of his romances was reworked by the Maghribi philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl (died 1185/86) in his book Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (“Alive Son of Awake”; Eng. trans. Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale). It is the story of a self-taught man who lived on a lonely island and who, in his maturity, attained the full knowledge taught by philosophers and prophets. This theme was elaborated often in later European literature.
The dominating figure in the kingdom of the Almohads, however, was the philosopher Averroës (Ibn Rushd; died 1198), court physician of the Amazigh (Berber) kings in Marrākush (Marrakech) and famous as the great Arab commentator on Aristotle. The importance of his frequently misinterpreted philosophy in the formation of medieval Christian thought is well known. Among his many other writings, especially notable is his merciless reply to an attack on philosophy made by al-Ghazālī (died 1111). Al-Ghazālī had called his attack Tahāfut al-falāsifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), while Averroës’s equally famous reply was entitled Tahāfut tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence).
The Persian-born al-Ghazālī had, after giving up a splendid scholarly career, become the most influential representative of moderate Sufism. His chief work, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (“The Revival of the Religious Sciences”), was based on personal religious experiences and is a perfect introduction to the pious Muslim’s way to God. It inspired much later religious poetry and prose.
The numerous writings by mystics, who often expressed their wisdom in rather cryptic language (thereby contributing to the profundity of Arabic vocabulary), and the handbooks of religious teaching produced in eastern Arab and Persian areas (Sarrāj, Kalābādhī, Qushayrī, and, in Muslim India, al-Hujwīrī) are generally superior to those produced in western Muslim countries. Yet the greatest Islamic theosophist of all, Ibn al-ʿArabī (died 1240), was Spanish in origin and was educated in the Spanish tradition. His writings, in both poetry and prose, shaped large parts of Islamic thought during the following centuries. Much of the later literature of eastern Islam, particularly Persian and Indo-Persian mystical writings, indeed, can be understood only in the light of his teachings. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s lyrics are typical ghazals, sweet and flowing. From the late 9th century, Arabic-speaking mystics had been composing verses often meant to be sung in their meetings. At first a purely religious vocabulary was employed, but soon the expressions began to oscillate between worldly and heavenly love. The ambiguity thus achieved eventually became a characteristic feature of Persian and Turkish lyrics.
Among the Arabs, religious poetry mainly followed the classical qaṣīdah models, and the poets lavishly decorated their panegyrics to the Prophet Muhammad with every conceivable rhetorical embellishment. Examples of this trend include Al-Burdah (Eng. trans. The Poem of the Scarf and The Prophet’s Mantle) of al-Buṣīrī (died 1298), upon which dozens of commentaries have been written (and which has been translated into most of the languages spoken by Muslims because of the power to bless attributed to it). More sophisticated but less well known is an ode on the Prophet by the Iraqi poet Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥilli (died 1350), which contains 151 rhetorical figures. The “letters of spiritual guidance” developed by the mystics are worth mentioning as a literary genre. They have been popular everywhere; from the western Islamic world the letters of Ibn ʿAbbād (died 1390) of Ronda (in Spain) are outstanding examples of this category, being written clearly and lucidly.
Geographical literature
The Maghrib also made a substantial contribution to geographical literature, a field eagerly cultivated by Arab scholars since the 9th century. The Sicilian geographer al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī produced a famous map of the world and accompanied it with a detailed description in his Kitāb nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (1154; “The Pleasure Excursion of One Who Is Eager to Traverse the Regions of the World”), which he dedicated to his patron, Roger II. The Spanish traveler Ibn Jubayr (died 1217), while on pilgrimage to Mecca, kept notes of his experiences and adventures. The resulting book became a model for the later pilgrims’ manuals that are found everywhere in the Muslim world. The Maghribi explorer Ibn Baṭṭūṭah (died 1368/69 or 1377) described his extensive travels to East Asia, India, and Mali in a book filled with information about the cultural state of the Muslim world at that time. The value of his narrative is enhanced by the simple and pleasing style in which it was written.
Poetry
In the field of poetry, Spain, which produced a considerable number of masters in the established poetical forms, also began to popularize strophic poetry, possibly deriving from indigenous models. The muwashshaḥ (“girdled”) poem, written in the classical short metres and arranged in four- to six-line stanzas, was elaborated, enriched by internal rhymes, and, embodying some popular expressions in the poem’s final section, soon achieved a standardized form. The theme is almost always love. Among the greatest lyric poets of Spain was Ibn Zaydūn of Córdoba (died 1071), who was of noble birth. After composing some charming love songs dedicated to the Umayyad princess Wallādah, he turned his hand to poetic epistles. He is the author of a beautiful muwashshaḥ about his hometown, which many later poets imitated. When the muwashshaḥ was transplanted to the eastern Arabic countries, however, it lost its original spontaneity and became as stereotyped as every other lyric form of expression during the later Middle Ages. Another strophic form developed in Spain is the songlike zajal (melody), interesting for its embodiment of dialect phrases and the use of occasional words from Romance languages. Its master was Ibn Quzmān of Córdoba (died 1160), whose lifestyle was similar to that of Western troubadours. His approach to life as expressed in these melodious poems, together with their mixed idiom, suggests an interrelationship with the vernacular troubadour poetry of Spain and France.
Historiography: Ibn Khaldūn
Any survey of western Muslim literary achievements would be incomplete if it did not mention the most profound historiographer of the Islamic world, the Tunisian Ibn Khaldūn (died 1406). History has been called the characteristic science of the Muslims because of the Qurʾānic admonition to discover signs of the divine in the fate of past peoples. Islamic historiography has produced histories of the Muslim conquests, world histories, histories of dynasties, court annals, and biographical works classified by occupation—scholars, poets, and theologians. Yet, notwithstanding their learning, none of the earlier writers had attempted to produce a comprehensive view of history. Ibn Khaldūn, in the famous Muqaddimah (“Introduction”) to a projected general history, Kitāb al-ʿibar, sought to explain the basic factors in the historical development of the Islamic countries. His own experiences, gained on a variety of political missions in North Africa, proved useful in establishing general principles that he could apply to the manifestations of Islamic civilization. He created, in fact, the first “sociological” study of history, free from bias. Yet his book was little appreciated by his fellow historians, who still clung to the method of accumulating facts without shaping them properly into a well-structured whole. Ibn Khaldūn’s work eventually attracted the interest of Western scholars of Asia, historians, and sociologists alike, and some of his analyses are still held in great esteem.
Decline of Classical Arabic literary style
Ibn Khaldūn, who had served in his youth as ambassador to Pedro I of Castile and in his old age as emissary to Timur, died in Cairo. After the fall of Baghdad in 1258, Cairo had become the centre of Muslim learning. Historians there recorded every detail of the daily life and the policies of the Mamluk sultans; theologians and philologists worked under the patronage of Turkish and Circassian rulers who often did not speak a word of Arabic. The amusing semicolloquial style of the historian Ibn Iyās (died after 1521) is an interesting example of the turn toward more direct and less ornate use of Arabic. While Classical Arabic was still the ideal of the literate, it had become exclusively a “learned” language. Even some copyists who transcribed classical works showed a deplorable lack of grammatical knowledge. It is hardly surprising that poetry composed under such circumstances should be restricted to insipid versification and the repetition of well-worn clichés.
