I have to thank Professor Huart for the kindness with which he has adapted his extraordinary stores of information to the scope of the volumes of the present series. As the system of literation used for the Arabic language in France is quite different from that employed by English scholars, it was necessary to transpose Professor Huart's spelling of proper names, and this task has been performed for me by Mr. Reynold A. Nicholson, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and now Lecturer in Persian to that University. EDMUND GOSSE. January 1903. A HISTORY OF ARABIC LITERATURE CHAPTER I THE CLIMATE AND THE RACE-ORIGINS OF ARABIC POETRY-ITS PRIMITIVE FORMS RANGE after range of grey serrated mountain peaks; southward, again, huge plains, stretching to endless horizons, and strewn with blackish pebbles; and, last of all, the sandy Desert, tinged with red, its rolling drifts blown hither and thither by the winds, to the unceasing terror of the traveller: such are the regions which part Arabia from the rest of the earth, and which made it for so long a time a land of mystery. On every other side, the sea. The Red Sea, with its depths peopled with myriad madrepores, its dangerous reefs just hidden beneath the surface of the waters. The Indian Ocean, with its periodical monsoons, and its wild hurricanes raging over the open. The Persian Gulf, whose wavelets die on the alluvia of two great historic rivers-Euphrates and Tigris. In the centre of the Peninsula, tall, bare mountains rise once more. About their feet, where water springs are found, stand towns, with palm groves clus tering round them. On the sea coast are many ports, where ships embark the produce of the country-dates, coffee, gums, and balsams, while some small quantities · of European exports are landed in exchange. From time immemorial, the nomad Arabs, owners of great flocks and herds, have wandered to and fro upon this territory, moving their camps of black camel's haircloth tents whithersoever the grass grows or a tiny rill of water tinkles; journeying from one point to another on single-humped camels-the only steed the nature of the country will permit-in endless caravans, which sometimes become warlike expeditions. What is this nation, which at one moment of its history leapt up before the world in sudden and amazing fortune, overthrowing the great Persian Empire of the Sâsânians, and defeating the Roman Legions of the Lower Empire? One burst of enthusiasm-it was but a flash-sent forth these men (who had done naught, hitherto, but quarrel over a good camping-ground, or fight to avenge some wrong) to conquer the whole world. But the Bedouin fell back ere long into his primitive way of life. Lovingly has he clung to the native ignorance, which he never would cast off. As for the town-bred Arab, intercourse with Syrian and Chaldean merchants, before the days of Islam, and with the pilgrims who have gathered to venerate the Sacred Temple of Mecca, the Ka'ba and its Black Stone, ever since the times of Mahomet the Prophet, has done something, it may be-but little enough-towards his civilisation, and those vices which are the virtues of the primitive man-cunning, greed, suspicion, crueltyreign unchecked, even to this day, in the hearts of the dwellers in these inaccessible towns. |