Friday, January 28, 2011

Periods of Islamic Literature

Three successive caliphates ruled the Islamic empire:
  • The Patriarchal (632-661),
  • the Umayyad (661-750), and
  • the `Abbasid (750-1258).
In 1258 the Ottoman Turks invaded and sacked Baghdad, the capital, and murdered the caliph, thus ending Islamic rule in the eastern section of the empire. A weak ` Abbasid caliphate survived in Egypt until 1517, while in Spain and the western part of North Africa separate dynasties continued to rule until the 15th century. 

        The religious zeal of the early Muslims did inspire the beginning of two significant works, collections that were not completed until later centuries. The most important was the hadith, the record of the sayings and deeds of Muhammad. The sudden death of the spiritual and political leader took the Islamic community by surprise, and within a few decades it was deemed necessary to preserve all of Muhammad's words and actions since they were believed to have been inspired. By the 9th century, the hadith had been solidified into a body of material to which no new traditions were added. Today the hadith is revered as a major source of religious law and moral guidance, second only to the Koran.

            Another collection that was begun at the same time consists of the sayings of `Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law and the fourth caliph, whose followers later established a major division in Islam, Shi`ah. Finally compiled in the 10th century, the collection is called `The Road of Eloquence'. It is a masterpiece of Arabic prose that has inspired numerous commentaries and imitations in other languages.


The Umayyad Caliphate

         The Islamic civil wars and the rise of sectarian rivalries contributed to the emergence of a poetry that became a favorite vehicle for expression of the divergent points of view. The three greatest poets of the Umayyad period were all polemicists who used their verses to support political factions.

           Al-Akhtal, though a Christian, was a strenuous supporter of the policies of the first Umayyad, Mu'awiyah I. Jarir and Tammam ibn Ghalib Abu Firas (al-Farazdaq) were active at the courts of the Umayyad caliphs and their governors and were ardent supporters of the regime. The two were enemies, however, and they delighted rival tribesmen with their stinging satires against each other. The work of these two poets has furnished historians with a rich vein of material on the social and political climate of Islam during the early 8th century. They used the traditional qasida form with great effect, incorporating a wealth of vocabulary and imagination.

           A remarkable poet from Mecca, `Umar ibn Abi Rabi`ah, contributed to the development of the ghazel as a love poem. His poems sing of amorous adventures with the ladies who came to Mecca on pilgrimage. Using the same literary form, one of the last Umayyads, al-Walid ibn Yazid, gained a greater reputation as a poet than as a warrior. His poetry excelled in frivolous love verses and in odes praising the virtues of wine.

            In Medina the vogue was highly idealized love poetry akin to the chivalric romances of medieval Europe. Supposedly invented by Jamil, this genre sings of lovers who become martyrs, dying in their total surrender to the force of true love.


The `Abbasid Caliphate

         In contrast to the brief 90-year period of the Umayyads, the `Abbasid caliphate endured for more than five centuries. It was during the `Abbasid rule, with its capital at Baghdad, that the golden age of Islamic literature began. In Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia) all the cultural currents of the ancient Near East came together, and members of the Muslim community --centered at the court of the caliphs--began to adapt and rework elements from all the earlier cultures.

              The major poets of the ` Abbasid period were Abu Nuwas, Ibn al-Mu`tazz, Ibn Da'ud, al-Mutanabbi, and al-Ma`arri. The greatest of these was Abu Nuwas, who had an incomparable command of language and imagery. His witty, cynical verses and delightful drinking songs scandalized the orthodox Muslims, however. One of his lines, said to have been his motto, was: "Accumulate as many sins as you can."

            Al-Mu`tazz, in his `Book of the Novel and the Strange', laid down literary rules governing the use of metaphors, similes, and verbal puns. His concept of poetry involved the richest embellishment of verses by all kinds of figures of speech and rhetorical devices. In time, his advice produced poetry in which the content was overpowered by style and verbiage.

          The theme of the lover who would rather die than achieve union with his beloved became central to ghazel poetry in the 10th century. An early exponent was Ibn Da'ud, a theologian, in his anthology `Book of the Flower'. Although used in a completely secular way at first, the theme was later taken over as a major concept in religious mystic poetry. It soon became commonplace in Persian, Turkish, and Urdu poetry as well. Its influence was even felt in Spain, where another theologian, Ibn Hazm, drew upon personal experiences to compose his `The Ring of the Dove', a prose work on pure love that is interspersed with poetry.

        Al-Mutanabbi, one of the greatest Arab poets, was in the mainstream of classical qasida poets, but his work surpassed that of his predecessors in imagination. His compositions were noted for their exaggeration, sound effects, and formal perfection.

           The verses of al-Ma`arri, the blind Syrian poet, continue to appeal to young Arab readers today. Yet their vocabulary is so difficult, and meanings so compressed in his double rhymes, that even his contemporaries had to ask him to interpret them. His outlook is deeply pessimistic and skeptical, running counter to the heroic idealism of his time. He taunted the privileged classes of his day and expressed a strong contempt for hypocrisy, injustice, and superstition. Pious Muslims supposedly were offended by his `Paragraphs and Periods' because they felt it to be a parody of the holy Koran. His `Epistle of Pardon', which describes a visit to the world of the afterlife, also contains sarcastic criticism of Arabic literature.

            During the reign of the `Abbasid empire, literary prose also began to develop. Writers were consumed by an insatiable curiosity for all kinds of knowledge, a curiosity that led them to compile and translate scholarly and philosophical works from other cultures.

        Ibn al-Muqaffa` translated the fables of Bidpai, an Indian sage, into Arabic. These stories provided Islamic culture with a seemingly inexhaustible fund of tales and parables from the animal world, comparable in some respects to the fables of Aesop and La Fontaine. He also introduced into Arabic the Persian `Book of Kings', a type of pre-Islamic mythology that sophisticated Muslims preferred to the rather meager accounts of the Arab pagan past. His translations of writings on ethics and the conduct of government are the prototype of the "Mirror for Princes" literature that flourished during the late Middle Ages in both Iran and the West.

          In response to the growing interest in life outside the Islamic world, al-Jahiz of Basra wrote treatises on many subjects. The `Elegance of Expression and Clarity of Exposition' dealt with literary style and the effective use of language. His `Book of Misers' is a collection of stories about the avaricious. Although an intellectual free spirit, al-Jahiz supported government policy by writing "Exploits of the Turks," an essay on the military qualities of Turkish soldiers, upon whose strength the government depended. His `Book of Animals' has little to do with zoology, but it is a mine of information on Arab proverbs, superstitions, and traditions.

           One of the most vigorous prose stylists was Abu Hayyan at-Tawhidi. His book denouncing the weaknesses of two of the caliph' s viziers (governors) for their literary ambitions highlights his brilliance and eloquence.

       The rhetorical style of rhymed prose found its best expression in the maqamah, which was invented by al-Hamadhani. The master of this form was al-Hariri of Basra, whose 50 maqamahs are closer to the Western notion of the short story than anything else in classical Islamic literature.

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