Читать книгу Selections from the Kur-an - Various - Страница 5

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‘Oh, our manhood’s prime vigour! No spirit feels waste,

Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.

Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,

The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock

Of the plunge in the pool’s living water, the hunt of the bear,

And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.

And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold-dust divine,

And the locust flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine,

And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell

That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.

How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ

All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy!’

—Browning, Saul.

Between Egypt and Assyria, jostled by both, yielding to neither, lay a strange country, unknown save at its marches even to its neighbours, dwelt-in by a people that held itself aloof from all the earth—a people whom the great empires of the ancient world in vain essayed to conquer, against whom the power of Persia, Egypt, Rome, Byzantium was proven impotence, and at whose hands even the superb Alexander, had he lived to test his dream, might for once have learnt the lesson of defeat. Witnessing the struggle and fall of one and another of the great tyrannies of antiquity, yet never entering the arena of the fight;—swept on its northern frontier by the conflicting armies of Khusru and Cæsar, but lifting never a hand in either cause;—Arabia was at length to issue forth from its silent mystery, and after baffling for a thousand years the curious gaze of strangers, was at last to draw to itself the fearful eyes of all men. The people of whom almost nothing before could certainly be asserted but its existence was finally of its own free will to throw aside the veil, to come forth from its fastnesses, and imperiously to bring to its feet the kingdoms of the world.

It is not all Arabia of which I speak. The story to tell has nothing as yet to say to the ‘happy’ tilled lands of the south, nor to the outlying princedoms of El-Ḥeereh and Ghassán bordering the territories and admitting the suzerainty of Persia and Rome. These lands were not wrapped in mystery: the Himyerite’s kingdom in the Yemen, the rule of Zenobia at Palmyra, were familiar to the nations around. But the cradle of Islám was not here.

Along the eastern coast of the Red Sea, sometimes thrusting its spurs of red sandstone and porphyry into the waves, sometimes drawing away and leaving a wide stretch of lowland, runs a rugged range of mountain. One above another, the hills rise from the coast, leaving here and there between them a green valley, where you may see an Arab settlement or a group of Bedawees watering their flocks. Rivers there are none; and the streams that gather from the rainfall are scarcely formed but they sink into the parched earth. Yet beneath the dried-up torrent-beds a rivulet trickles at times, and straightway there spreads a rich oasis dearly prized by the wanderers of the desert. All else is bare and desolate. Climb hill after hill, and the same sight meets the eye—barren mountain-side, dry gravelly plain, and the rare green valleys. At length you have reached the topmost ridge; and you see, not a steep descent, no expected return to the plain, but a vast desert plateau, blank, inhospitable, to all but Arabs unindwellable. You have climbed the Ḥijáz—the ‘barrier’—and are come to the steppes of the Nejd—the ‘highland.’ In the valleys of this barrier-land are the Holy Cities, Mekka and Medina. Here is the birthplace of Islám: the Arab tribes of the Ḥijáz and the Nejd were the first disciples of Moḥammad.

One may tell much of a people’s character from its home. Truism as it seems, there is yet a meaning in the saying that the Arabs are peculiarly the people of Arabia. Those who have travelled in this wonderful land tell us of the quickening influence of the air and scene of the desert. The fresh breath of the plain, the glorious sky, the still of the wide expanse, trod by no step but your own, looked upon only by yourself and perhaps yonder solitary eagle or the wild goat leaping the cliffs you have left behind, the absolute stillness and aloneness, bring about a strange sense of delight and exultation, a bounding-up of spirits held in long restraint, an unknown nimbleness of wit and limb. The Arabs felt all this and more in their bright imaginative souls. A few would settle in villages, and engage in the trade which came through from India to the West; but such were held in poor repute by the true Bedawees, who preferred above all things else the free life of the desert. It is a relief to turn from the hurry and unrest of modern civilisation, from the never-ending strife for wealth, for ‘position,’ for pleasure, even for knowledge, and look for a moment on the careless life of the Bedawee. He lived the aimless, satisfied life of some child; he sought no change; he was supremely content with the exquisite sense of simple existence; he was happy because he lived. He wished no more. He dreaded the dark After-death; he thrust it from his thoughts as often as it would force itself unwelcome upon him. Utterly fearless of man and fortune, he took no thought for the morrow: whatever it brought forth, he felt confidently his strength to enjoy or endure; only let him seize the happiness of to-day while it shall last, and drain to the dregs the overbrimming cup of his life. He was ambitious of glory and victory, but it was not an ambition that clouded his joy. Throughout a life that was full of energy, of passion, of strong endeavour after his ideal of desert perfectness, there was yet a restful sense of satisfied enjoyment, a feeling that life was of a surety well worth living.

For the Arab had his ideal of life. The true son of the desert must in the old times do more than stretch his limbs contentedly under the shade of the overhanging rock. He must be brave and chivalrous, generous, hospitable; ready to sacrifice himself and his substance for his clan; prompt to help the needy and the traveller; true to his word, and, not least, eloquent in his speech.

Devotion to the clan was the strongest tie the Arab possessed. Though tracing their descent from a common traditional ancestor, the great northern family of Bedawees was split up into numerous clans, owning no central authority, but led, scarcely governed, each by its own chief, who was the most valiant and best-born man in it. The whole clan acted as one being; an injury done to one member was revenged by all, and even a crime committed by a clansman was upheld by the whole brotherhood. Though a small spark would easily light-up war between even friendly clans, it was rarely that those of kin met as enemies. It is told how a clan suffered long and oft-repeated injuries from a kindred clan without one deed of revenge. ‘They are our brothers,’ they said; ‘perhaps they will return to better feelings; perhaps we shall see them again as they once were.’ To be brought to poverty or even to die for the clan, the Arab deemed his duty—his privilege. To add by his prowess or his hospitality or his eloquence to the glory of the clan was his ambition.

A mountain2 we have where dwells he whom we shelter there,

lofty, before whose height the eye falls back blunted:

Deep-based is its root below ground, and overhead there soars

its peak to the stars of heaven whereto no man reaches.

A folk are we who deem it no shame to be slain in fight,

though that be the deeming thereof of Salool and ´Ámir;

Our love of death brings near to us our days of doom,

but their dooms shrink from death and stand far distant.

There dies among us no lord a quiet death in his bed,

and never is blood of us poured forth without vengeance.

Our souls stream forth in a flood from the edge of the whetted swords:

no otherwise than so does our spirit leave its mansion.

Pure is our stock, unsullied: fair is it kept and bright

by mothers whose bed bears well, and fathers mighty.

To the best of the uplands we wend, and when the season comes

we travel adown to the best of fruitful valleys.

Like rain of the heaven are we: there is not in all our line

one blunt of heart, nor among us is counted a niggard.

We say nay when so we will to the words of other men,

but no man to us says nay when we give sentence.

When passes a lord of our line, in his stead there rises straight

a lord to say the say and do the deeds of the noble.

Our beacon is never quenched to the wanderer of the night,

nor has ever a guest blamed us where men meet together.

Our Days3 are famous among our foemen, of fair report,

branded and blazed with glory like noble horses.

Our swords have swept throughout all lands both west and east,

and gathered many a notch from the steel of hauberk-wearers;

Not used are they when drawn to be laid back in the sheaths

before that the folk they meet are spoiled and scattered.

If thou knowest not, ask men what they think of us and them

—not alike are he that knows and he that knows not.

The children of Ed-Dayyán are the shaft of their people’s mill,

—around them it turns and whirls, while they stand midmost.4

The renown of the clan was closely wrapped up with the Arab chieftain’s personal renown. He was keenly sensitive on the point of honour, and to that notion he attached a breadth of meaning which can scarcely be understood in these days. Honour included all the different virtues that went to make up the ideal Bedawee. To be proved wanting in any of these was to be dishonoured. Above all things, the man who would ‘keep his honour and defile it not’ must be brave and hospitable—

A rushing rain-flood when he gave guerdons:

when he sprang to the onset, a mighty lion.

The Arab warrior was a mighty man of valour. He would spend whole days in the saddle, burdened with heavy armour, in the pursuit of a foe, seeking the life of the slayer of his kin, or sweeping down upon the caravan of rich merchandise which his more peaceful countrymen of the towns were carrying through the deserts. The Arab lived mainly by plunder. His land did not yield him food—unless it were dates, the Bedawee’s bread—and he relied on the success of his foraging expeditions for his support. These he conducted with perfect good-breeding; he used no violence when it could be avoided; he merely relieved the caravan from the trouble of carrying any further the goods that he was himself willing to take charge of, urging, if necessary, the unfair treatment of his forefather Ishmael as an excellent reason for pillaging the sons of Isaac. ‘When a woman is the victim, no Bedouin brigand, however rude, will be ill-mannered enough to lay hands upon her. He begs her to take off the garment on which he has set his heart, and he then retires to a distance and stands with eyes averted, lest he should do violence to her modesty.’

The poems of the early Arabs are full of the deeds of their warriors, the excitement of the pitched battle, the delight of the pursuit, the nightly raid on the camp, the trial of skill between rival chiefs, and the other pictures of a warrior’s triumph. Here we find little of the generosity of war: mercy was rarely exercised and hatred was carried to its extremest limits; quarter was neither asked nor given; to despatch a wounded man was no disgrace; the families of the vanquished were enslaved. Notwithstanding his frank genial nature, the Arab was of a dangerously quick temper, derived, he boasted, from the flesh he lived on of the camel, the surliest and most ill-conditioned of beasts. If he conceived himself insulted, he was bound to revenge himself to the full, or he would have been deemed dishonoured for ever. And since his fiery temper easily took offence, the history of the early Arabs is full of the traditions of slight quarrels and their horrible results—secret assassination and the long-lasting blood-feud.

Many the warriors, noon-journeying, who, when

night fell, journeyed on and halted at dawning—

Keen each one of them, girt with a keen blade

that when one drew it flashed forth like the lightning—

They were tasting of sleep by sips, when, as

they nodded, thou didst fright them, and they were scattered.

Vengeance we did on them: there escaped us

of the two houses none but the fewest.

And if Hudheyl5 broke the edge of his6 sword-blade—

many the notch that Hudheyl gained from him!

Many the time that he made them kneel down on

jagged rocks where the hoof is worn with running!

Many the morning he fell on their shelter,

and after slaughter came plunder and spoiling!

Hudheyl has been burned by me, one valiant

whom Evil tires not though they be wearied—

Whose spear drinks deep the first draught, and thereon

drinks deep again of the blood of foemen.

Forbidden was wine, but now it is lawful:

hard was the toil that made it lawful!

Reach me the cup, O Sawád son of ´Amr!

my body is spent with gaining my vengeance.

To Hudheyl we gave to drink Death’s goblet,

whose dregs are disgrace and shame and dishonour.

The hyena laughs over the slain of Hudheyl, and

the wolf—see thou—grins by their corpses,

And the vultures flap their wings, full-bellied

treading their dead, too gorged to leave them.

The contempt which the Arab, with a few noble exceptions, felt for the gentler virtues is seen in these lines:—

Had I been a son of Mázin, there had not plundered my herds

the sons of the Child of the Dust, Dhuhl son of Sheybán!

There had straightway arisen to help me a heavy-handed kin,

good smiters when help is needed, though the feeble bend to the blow:

Men who, when Evil bares before them his hindmost teeth,

fly gaily to meet him, in companies or alone.

They ask not their brother, when he lays before them his wrong

in his trouble, to give them proof of the truth of what he says.

But as for my people, though their number be not small,

they are good for nought against evil, however light it be;

They requite with forgiveness the wrong of those that do them wrong,

and the evil deeds of the evil they meet with kindness and love;

As though thy Lord had created among the tribes of men

themselves alone to fear Him, and never one man more.

Would that I had in their stead a folk who, when they ride forth,

strike swiftly and hard, on horse or on camel borne!

A point on which the temper of the Bedawee was easily touched was his family pride. The Arab prized good blood as much in men as in his horses and camels. In these he saw the importance of breed, and in men he firmly believed the same principle held good. With the tenacious memory of his race, he had no difficulty in remembering the whole of a complicated pedigree, and he would often proudly dwell on the purity of his blood and the gallant deeds of his forefathers. He would challenge another chief to prove a more noble descent, and hot disputes and bitter rivalries often came of these comparisons.

But if noble birth brought rivalry and hatred, it brought withal excellent virtues. The Arab nobleman was not a man who was richer and more idle and luxurious than his inferiors: his position, founded upon descent, depended for its maintenance on personal qualities. Rank brought with it onerous obligations. The chief, if he would retain and carry on the repute of his line, must not only be fearless and ready to fight all the world; he must be given to hospitality, generous to kith and kin, and to all who cry unto him. His tent must be so pitched in the camp that it shall not only be the first that the enemy attacks, but also the first the wayworn stranger approaches; and at night fires must be kindled hard by to guide wanderers in the desert to his hospitable entertain ment. If a man came to an Arab noble’s tent and said, ‘I throw myself on your honour,’ he was safe from his enemies until they had trampled on the dead body of his host. Nothing was baser than to give up a guest; the treachery was rare, and brought endless dishonour upon the clan in which the shame had taken place. The poet extols the tents—

Where dwells a kin great of heart, whose word is enough to shield

whom they shelter when peril comes in a night of fierce strife and storm;

Yea, noble are they: the seeker of vengeance gains not from them

the blood of his foe, nor is he that wrongs them left without help.

The feeling lasted even under the debased rule of Muslim despots; for it is related that a governor was once ordering-out some prisoners to execution, when one of them asked for a drink of water, which was immediately given him. He then turned to the governor and said, ‘Wilt thou slay thy guest?’ and was forthwith set free. A pledge of protection was inferred in the giving of hospitality, and to break his word was a thing not to be thought upon by an Arab. He did not care to give an oath; his simple word was enough, for it was known to be inviolable. Hence the priceless worth of the Arab chief’s word of welcome: it meant protection, unswerving fidelity, help, and succour.

There was no bound to this hospitality. It was the pride of the Arab to place everything he possessed at the service of the guest. The last milch-camel must be killed sooner than the duties of hospitality be neglected. The story is told of Ḥátim, a gallant poet-warrior of the tribe of Ṭayyi, which well illustrates the Arab ideal of hostship. Ḥátim was at one time brought to the brink of starvation by the dearth of a rainless season. For a whole day he and his family had eaten nothing, and at night, after soothing the children to sleep by telling them some of those stories in which the Arabs have few rivals, he was trying by his cheerful conversation to make his wife forget her hunger. Just then they heard steps without, and a corner of the tent was raised. ‘Who is there?’ said Ḥátim. A woman’s voice replied, ‘I am such a one, thy neighbour. My children have nothing to eat, and are howling like young wolves, and I have come to beg help of thee.’ ‘Bring them here,’ said Ḥátim. His wife asked him what he would do, for if he could not feed his own children, how should he find food for this woman’s? ‘Do not disturb thyself,’ he answered. Now Ḥátim had a horse renowned far and wide for the purity of his stock and the fleetness and beauty of his paces. He would not kill his favourite for himself nor even for his own children; but now he went out and slew him, and prepared him with fire for the strangers’ need. And when he saw them eating with his wife and children, he exclaimed, ‘It were a shame that you alone should eat whilst all the camp is perishing of hunger;’ and he went and called the neighbours to the meal, and in the morning there remained of the horse nothing but his bones. But as for himself, wrapped in his mantle, he sat apart in a corner of the tent.

This Ḥátim is a type of the Arab nature at its noblest. Though renowned for his courage and skill in war, he never suffered his enmity to overcome his generosity. He had sworn an oath never to take a man’s life, and he strictly observed it, and always withheld the fatal last blow. In spite of his clemency, he was ever successful in the wars of his clan, and brought back from his raids many a rich spoil, only to spend it at once in his princely fashion. His generosity and faithful observance of his word at times placed him in positions of great danger; but the alternative of denying his principles seems never to have occurred to his mind. For instance, he had imposed upon himself as a law never to refuse a gift to him that asked it of him. Once, engaged in single combat, he had disarmed and routed his opponent, who then turned and said, ‘Ḥátim, give me thy spear.’ At once he threw it to him, leaving himself defenceless; and had he not met an adversary worthy of himself, this had been the last of his deeds. Happily Ḥátim was not the only generous warrior of the Arabs, and his foe did not avail himself of his advantage. When Ḥátim’s friends remonstrated with him on the rashness of an act which, in the spirit of shopkeepers, they regarded as quixotic, Ḥátim said, ‘What would you have me to do? He asked of me a gift!’

It was Ḥátim’s practice to buy the liberty of all captives who sought his aid: it was but another application of the Arab virtue of hospitality. Once a captive called to him when he was on a journey and had not with him the means of paying the ransom. But he was not wont to allow any difficulties to baulk him of the exercise of his duty, and he had the prisoner released, stepping meanwhile into his chains until his own clan should send the ransom.

Brave, chivalrous, faithful, and generous beyond the needful of Arab ideal—so that his niggard wife, using the privilege of high dames, repudiated him because he was ever ruining himself and her by his open hand—Ḥátim filled up the measure of Arab virtue by his eloquence, and such of his poems as have come down to us reflect the nobility of his life. As a youth he had shown a strong passion for poetry, and would spare no means of doing honour to poets. His grandfather, in despair at the boy’s extravagance, sent him away from the camp to guard the camels, which were pastured at a distance. Sitting there in a state of solitude little congenial to his nature, Ḥátim lifted his eyes and saw a caravan approaching. It was the caravan of three great poets who were travelling to the court of the King of El-Ḥeereh. Ḥátim begged them to alight and to accept of refreshment after the hot and dreary journey. He killed them a camel each, though one would have more than sufficed for the three; and in return they wrote him verses in praise of himself and his kindred. Overjoyed at the honour, Ḥátim insisted on the poets each accepting a hundred camels; and they departed with their gifts. When the grandfather came to the pasturing and asked where the camels were gone, Ḥátim answered, ‘I have exchanged them for a crown of honour, which will shine for all time on the brow of thy race. The lines in which great poets have celebrated our house will pass from mouth to mouth, and will carry our glory over all Arabia.’ 7

This story well illustrates the Arab’s passionate love of poetry. He conceived his language to be the finest in the world, and he prized eloquence and poetry as the goodliest gifts of the gods. There were three great events in Arab life, when the clan was called together and great feastings and rejoicings ensued. One was the birth of a son to a chief; another the foaling of a generous mare; the third was the discovery that a great poet had risen up among them. The advent of the poet meant the immortality of the deeds of the clansmen and the everlasting contumely of their foes; it meant the raising up of the glory of the tribe over all the clans of Arabia, and the winning of triumphs by bitterer weapons than sword and spear—the weapons of stinging satire and scurrilous squib. No man might dare withstand the power of the poets among a people who were keenly alive to the point of an epigram, and who never forgot an ill-natured jibe if it were borne upon musical verse. Most of the great heroes of the desert were poets as well as warriors, and their poesy was deemed the chiefest gem in their crown, and, like their courage, was counted a proof of generous birth. The Khalif ´Omar said well, ‘The kings of the Arabs are their orators and poets, those who practise and who celebrate all the virtues of the Bedawee.’

This ancient poetry of the Arabs is the reflection of the people’s life. Far away from the trouble of the world, barred by wild wastes from the stranger, the Bedawee lived his happy child’s life, enjoying to the uttermost the good the gods had sent him, delighting in the face that Nature showed him, inspired by the glorious breath of the deserts that were his home. His poetry rings of that desert life. It is emotional, passionate, seldom reflective. Not the end of life, the whence and the whither, but the actual present joy of existence, was the subject of his song. Vivid painting of nature is the characteristic of this poetry: it is natural, unpolished, unlaboured. The scenes of the desert—the terrors of the nightly ride through the hill-girdled valley where the Ghools and the Jinn have their haunts; the gloom of the barren plain, where the wolf, ‘like a ruined gamester,’ roams ululating; the weariness of the journey under the noonday sun; the stifling of the sand-storm, the delusions of the mirage; or again, the solace of the palm-tree’s shade, and the delights of the cool well;—such are the pictures of the Arab poet. The people’s life is another frequent theme: the daily doings of the herdsman, the quiet pastoral life, on the one hand; on the other, the deeds of the chiefs—war, plunder, the chase, wassail, revenge, friendship, love. There were satires on rival tribes, panegyrics on chiefs, laments for the dead. This poetry is wholly objective, artless, childlike; it is the outcome of a people still in the freshness of youth, whom the mysteries and complications of life have not yet set a-thinking. ‘Just as his language knows but the present and the past, so the ancient Arab lived but in to-day and yesterday. The future is nought to him; he seizes the present with too thorough abandonment to have an emotion left for anything beyond. He troubles himself not with what fate the morrow may bring forth, he dreams not of a beautiful future—only he revels in the present, and his glance looks backward alone. Rich in ideas and impressions, he is poor in thought. He drains hastily the foaming cup of life; he feels deeply and passionately; but it is as if he were never conscious of the coming of the thoughtful age which, while it surveys the past, as often turns an anxious look to the unknown future.’

It is very difficult for a Western mind to enter into the real beauty of the old Arab poetry. The life it depicts is so unlike any we can now witness, that it is almost removed beyond the pale of our sympathies. The poetry is loaded with metaphors and similes, which to us seem far-fetched, though they are drawn from the simplest daily sights of the Bedawee. Moreover, it is only in fragments that we can read it; for the change in the whole character of Arab life and in the current of Arab ideas which followed the conquests of Islám extinguished the old songs, which were no longer suitable to the new conditions of things; and as they were seldom recorded in writing, we possess but a little remnant of them.8 Yet ‘these fragments may be broken, defaced, dimmed, and obscured by fanaticism, ignorance, and neglect; but out of them there arises anew all the freshness, bloom, and glory of desert-song, as out of Homer’s epics rise the glowing spring-time of humanity and the deep blue heavens of Hellas. It is not a transcendental poetry, rich in deep and thoughtful legend and lore, or glittering in the many-coloured prisms of fancy, but a poetry the chief task of which is to paint life and nature as they really are; and within its narrow bounds it is magnificent. It is chiefly and characteristically full of manliness, of vigour, and of a chivalrous spirit, doubly striking when compared with the spirit of abjectness and slavery found in some other Asiatic nations. It is wild and vast and monotonous as the yellow seas of its desert solitudes; it is daring and noble, tender and true.’ 9

There was one place where, above all others, the Ḳaṣeedehs of the ancient Arabs were recited: this was ´Okáḍh, the Olympia of Arabia, where there was held a great annual Fair, to which not merely the merchants of Mekka and the south, but the poet-heroes of all the land resorted. The Fair of ´Okáḍh was held during the sacred months—a sort of ‘God’s Truce,’ when blood could not be shed without a violation of the ancient customs and faiths of the Bedawees. Thither went the poets of rival clans, who had as often locked spears as hurled rhythmical curses. There was little fear of a bloody ending to the poetic contest, for those heroes who might meet there with enemies or blood-avengers are said to have worn masks or veils, and their poems were recited by a public orator at their dictation. That these precautions and the sacredness of the time could not always prevent the ill-feeling evoked by the pointed personalities of rival singers leading to a fray and bloodshed is proved by recorded instances; but such results were uncommon, and as a rule the customs of the time and place were respected. In spite of occasional broils on the spot, and the lasting feuds which these poetic contests must have excited, the Fair of ´Okáḍh was a grand institution. It served as a focus for the literature of all Arabia: every one with any pretensions to poetic power came, and if he could not himself gain the applause of the assembled people, at least he could form one of the critical audience on whose verdict rested the fame or the shame of every poet. The Fair of ´Okáḍh was a literary congress, without formal judges, but with unbounded influence. It was here that the polished heroes of the desert determined points of grammar and prosody; here the seven Golden Songs were recited, although (alas for the charming legend!) they were not afterwards ‘suspended’ on the Kaạbeh; and here ‘a magical language, the language of the Ḥijáz,’ was built out of the dialects of Arabia, and was made ready to the skilful hand of Moḥammad, that he might conquer the world with his Ḳur-án.

The Fair of ´Okáḍh was not merely a centre of emulation for Arab poets: it was also an annual review of Bedawee virtues. It was there that the Arab nation once-a-year inspected itself, so to say, and brought forth and criticised its ideals of the noble and the beautiful in life and in poetry. For it was in poetry that the Arab—and for that matter each man all the world over—expressed his highest thoughts, and it was at ´Okáḍh that these thoughts were measured by the standard of the Bedawee ideal. The Fair not only maintained the highest standard of poetry that the Arabic language has ever reached: it also upheld the noblest idea of life and duty that the Arab nation has yet set forth and obeyed. ´Okáḍh was the press, the stage, the pulpit, the Parliament, and the Académie Française of the Arab people; and when, in his fear of the infidel poets (whom Imra-el-Ḳeys was to usher to hell), Moḥammad abolished the Fair, he destroyed the Arab nation even whilst he created his own new nation of Muslims;—and the Muslims cannot sit in the places of the old pagan Arabs.

It is very difficult for the Western mind to dissociate the idea of Oriental poetry from the notion of amatory odes, and sonnets to the lady’s eyebrow: but even the few extracts that have been given in this chapter show that the Arab had many other subjects besides love to sing about, and though the divine theme has its place in almost every poem, it seldom rivals the prominence of war and nature-painting, and it is treated from a much less sensual point of view than that of later Arab poets. Many writers have drawn a gloomy picture of the condition of women in Arabia before the coming of Moḥammad, and there is no doubt that in many cases their lot was a miserable one. There are ancient Arabic proverbs that point to the contempt in which woman’s judgment and character were held by the Arabs of ‘the Time of Ignorance,’ and Moḥammad must have derived his mean opinion of women from a too general impression among his countrymen. The marriage tie was certainly very loose among the ancient Arabs. The ceremony itself was of the briefest. The man said khiṭb (i.e. I am an asker-in-marriage), and the giver-away answered nikḥ (i.e., I am a giver-in-marriage), and the knot was thus tied, only to be undone with equal facility and brevity. The frequency of divorce among the Arabs does not speak well for their constancy, and must have had a degrading effect upon the women. Hence it is argued that women were the objects of contempt rather than of respect among the ancient Arabs.

Yet there is reason to believe that the evidence upon which this conclusion is founded is partial and one-sided. There was a wide gulf between the Bedawee and the town Arab. It is not impossible that the view commonly entertained as to the state of women in preïslamic times is based mainly on what Moḥammad saw around him in Mekka, and not on the ordinary life of the desert. To such a conjecture a curiously uniform support is lent by the ancient poetry of the desert; and though the poets were then—as they always are—men of finer mould than the rest, yet their example, and still more their poems passing from mouth to mouth, must have created a widespread belief in their principles. It is certain that the roaming Bedawee, like the mediæval knight, entertained a chivalrous reverence for women, although he, too, like the knight, was not always above a career of promiscuous gallantry; but there was always a certain glamour of romance about the intrigues of the Bedawee. He did not regard the object of his love as a chattel to be possessed, but as a divinity to be assiduously worshipped. The poems are full of instances of the courtly respect displayed by the heroes of the desert toward defenceless maidens, and the mere existence of so general an ideal of conduct in the poems is a strong argument for Arab chivalry: for with the Arabs the abyss between the ideal accepted of the mind and the attaining thereof in action was narrower than it is among ‘more advanced’ nations.

[Pg xxviii]

Whatever was the condition of women in the trading cities and villages, it is certain that in the desert woman was regarded as she has never since been among Muslims. The modern ḥareem system was there as yet undreamt of; the maid of the desert was unfettered by the ruinous restrictions of modern life in the East. She was free to choose her own husband, and to bind him to have no other wife than herself. She might receive male visitors, even strangers, without suspicion: for her virtue was too dear to her and too well assured to need the keeper. It was the bitterest taunt of all to say to a hostile clan that their men had not the heart to give nor their women to deny; for the chastity of the women of the clan was reckoned only next to the valour and generosity of the men. In those days bastardy was an indelible stain. It was the wife who inspired the hero to deeds of glory, and it was her praise that he most valued when he returned triumphant. The hero of desert song thought himself happy to die in guarding some women from their pursuers. Wounded to the death, ´Antarah halted alone in a narrow pass, and bade the women press on to a place of safety. Planting his spear in the ground, he supported himself on his horse, so that when the pursuers came up they knew not he was dead, and dared not approach within reach of his dreaded arm. At length the horse moved, and the body fell to the ground, and the enemies saw that it was but the corpse of the hero that had held the pass. In death, as in a life sans peur et sans reproche, ´Antarah was true to the chivalry of his race.

There are many instances like this of the knightly courtesy of the Arab chief in ‘the Time of Ignorance.’ In the old days, as an ancient writer says, the true Arab had but one love, and her he loved till death, and she him. Even when polygamy became commoner, especially in the towns, it was not what is meant by polygamy in a modern Muslim state: it was rather the patriarchal system of Abram and Sarai.

There is much in the fragments of the ancient poetry which reflects this fine spirit. It is ofttimes ‘tender and true,’ and even Islám could not wholly root out the real Arab sentiment, which reappears in Muslim times in the poems of Aboo-Firás. Especially valuable is the evidence of the old poetry with regard to the love of a father for his daughters. Infanticide, which is commonly attributed to the whole Arab nation of every age before Islám, was in reality exceedingly rare in the desert, and after almost dying out only revived about the time of Moḥammad. It was probably adopted by poor and weak clans, either from inability to support their children, or in order to protect themselves from the stain of having their children dishonoured by stronger tribes, and the occasional practice of this barbarous and suicidal custom affords no ground for assuming an unnatural hatred and contempt for girls among the ancient Arabs. These verses of a father to his daughter tell a different story:—