The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 10 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (essential reading TXT) 📖

ends all the others, e g., aa + ba + ca, etc.; nor may the same assonance be repeated, unless at least seven couplets intervene. In the best poets, as in the old classic verse of France, the sense must be completed in one couplet and not run on to a second; and, as the parts cohere very loosely, separate quotation can generally be made without injuring their proper effect. A favourite form is the Rub�‘i or quatrain, made familiar to English ears by Mr.

Fitzgerald’s masterly adaptation of Omar-i-Khayy�m: the movement is generally aa + ba, but it also appears as ab + cb, in which case it is a Kit’ah or fragment. The Murabb�, tetrastichs or four fold-song, occurs once only in The Nights (vol.i. 98); it is a succession of double Bayts or of four lined stanzas rhyming aa +

bc + dc + ec: in strict form the first three hemistichs rhyme with one another only, independently of the rest of the poem, and the fourth with that of every other stanza, e.g., aa + ab + cb +

db. The Mukhammas, cinquains or pentastichs (Night cmlxiv.), represents a stanza of two distichs and a hemistich in monorhyme, the fifth line being the “bob” or burden: each succeeding stanza affects a new rhyme, except in the fifth line, e.g., aaaab +

ccccb + ddddb and so forth. The Muww�l is a simple popular song in four to six lines; specimens of it are given in the Egyptian grammar of my friend the late Dr. Wilhelm Spitta.[FN#444] The Muwashshah, or ornamented verse, has two main divisions: one applies to our acrostics in which the initials form a word or words; the other is a kind of Musaddas, or sextines, which occurs once only in The Nights (cmlxxxvii.). It consists of three couplets or six-line strophes: all the hemistichs of the first are in monorhyme; in the second and following stanzas the three first hemistichs take a new rhyme, but the fourth resumes the assonance of the first set and is followed by the third couplet of No. 1, serving as bob or refrain, e.g., aaaaaa + bbbaaa +

cccaaa and so forth. It is the most complicated of all the measures and is held to be of Morisco or Hispano-Moorish origin.

 

Mr. Lane (Lex.) lays down, on the lines of Ibn Khallikan (i. 476, etc.) and other representative literati, as our sole authortties for pure Arabic, the precedence in following order. First of all ranks the J�hili (Ignoramus) of The Ignorance, the : these pagans left hemistichs, couplets, pieces and elegies which once composed a large corpus and which is now mostly forgotten. Hamm�d al-R�wiyah, the Reciter, a man of Persian descent (ob. A.H. 160=777) who first collected the Mu’allak�t, once recited by rote in a s�ance before Caliph Al-Walid two thousand poems of pr�-Mohammedan bards.[FN#445] After the J�hili stands the Mukhadram or Muhadrim, the “Spurious,” because half Pagan half Moslem, who flourished either immediately before or soon after the preaching of Mohammed. The Isl�mi or full-blooded Moslem at the end of the first century A.H ( = 720) began the process of corruption in language; and, lastly he was followed by the Muwallad of the second century who fused Arabic with non-Arabic and in whom purity of diction disappeared.

 

I have noticed (I � A.) that the versical portion of The Nights may be distributed into three categories. First are the olden poems which are held classical by all modern Arabs; then comes the medi�val poetry, the effusions of that brilliant throng which adorned the splendid Court of Harun al-Rashid and which ended with Al-Har�ri (ob. A.H. 516); and, lastly, are the various pi�ces de circonstance suggested to editors or scribes by the occasion. It is not my object to enter upon the historical part of the subject: a mere sketch would have neither value not interest whilst a finished picture would lead too far: I must be contented to notice a few of the most famous names.

 

Of the pr�-Islamites we have �di bin Zayd al-Ib�di the “celebrated poet” of Ibn Khallik�n (i. 188); N�bighat (the full-grown) al-Zuby�ni who flourished at the Court of Al-Nu’man in AD.

580-602, and whose poem is compared with the “Suspendeds,”[FN#446] and Al-Mutalammis the “pertinacious”

satirist, friend and intimate with Tarafah of the “Prize Poem.”

About Mohammed’s day we find Imr al-Kays “with whom poetry began,” to end with Z� al-Rummah; Amr� bin M�di Karab al-Zubaydi, Lab�d; Ka’b ibn Zuhayr, the father one of the Mu’al-lakah-poets, and the son author of the Burdah or Mantle-poem (see vol. iv.

115), and Abb�s bin Mird�s who lampooned the Prophet and had “his tongue cut out” i.e. received a double share of booty from Ali.

In the days of Caliph Omar we have Alkamah bin Ol�tha followed by Jam�l bin Ma’mar of the Banu Ozrah (ob. A.H. 82), who loved Azz�.

Then came Al-Kuthayyir (the dwarf, ironic�), the lover of Buthaynah, “who was so lean that birds might be cut to bits with her bones :” the latter was also a poetess (Ibn Khall. i. 87), like Hind bint al-Nu’man who made herself so disagreeable to Al-Hajj�j (ob. A.H. 95) Jar�r al-Khatafah, the noblest of the Islami poets in the first century, is noticed at full length by Ibn Khallikan (i. 294) together with his rival in poetry and debauchery, Ab� Fir�s Hamm�m or Homaym bin Ghalib al-Farazdak, the Tam�mi, the Ommiade poet “without whose verse half Arabic would be lost:”[FN#447] he exchanged satires with Jar�r and died forty days before him (A.H. 110). Another contemporary, forming the poetical triumvirate of the period, was the debauched Christian poet Al-Akhtal al-Taghlibi. They were followed by Al-Ahwas al-Ans�ri whose witty lampoons banished him to Dahlak Island in the Red Sea (ob. A.H. 179 = 795); by Bashsh�r ibn Burd and by Y�nus ibn Habib (ob. A.H. 182).

 

The well known names of the Harun-cycle are Al-Asma’i, rhetorician and poet, whose epic with Antar for hero is not forgotten (ob. A.H. 2I6); Isaac of Mosul (Ishak bin Ibrahim of Persian origin); Al-‘Utbi “the Poet” (ob. A.H. 228); Abu al-Abb�s al-Rak�shi; Abu al-Atahiyah, the lover of Otbah; Muslim bin alWal�d al-Ansari; Ab� Tamm�m of Tay, compiler of the Ham�sah (ob.

A.H. 230), “a Muwallad of the first class” (says Ibn Khallikan i.

392); the famous or infamous Abu Now�s, Abu Mus’ab (Ahmad ibn Ali) who died in A.H. 242; the satirist Dibil al-Khuz�� (ob. A.H.

246) and a host of others quos nunc perscribere longum est. They were followed by Al-Bohtori “the Poet” (ob. A.H. 286); the royal author Abdullah ibn al-Mu’tazz (ob. A.H. 315); Ibn Abb�d the Sahib (ob. A.H. 334); Mans�r al-Hall�j the martyred Sufi; the Sahib ibn Abbad, Abu Faras al-Hamd�ni (ob. A.H. 357); Al-N�mi (ob. A.H. 399) who had many encounters with that model Chauvinist Al-Mutanabbi, nicknamed Al-Mutanabbih (the “wide awake”), killed A.H. 354; Al-Man�zi of Manazjird (ob. 427); Al-Tughrai author of the L�miyat al-‘Ajam (ob. A.H. 375); Al-Har�ri the model rhetorician (ob. A.H. 516); Al-H�jiri al-Irbili, of Arbela (ob.

A.H. 632); Bah� al-Din al-Sinjari (ob. A.H. 622); Al-K�tib or the Scribe (ob. A.H. 656); Abdun alAndal�si the Spaniard (our xiith century) and about the same time Al-N�waji, author of the Halbat al-Kumayt or”Race course of the Bay horse”—poetical slang for wine.[FN#448]

 

Of the third category, the pi�ces d’occasion, little need be said: I may refer readers to my notes on the doggrels in vol. ii.

34, 35, 56, 179, 182, 186 and 261; in vol. v. 55 and in vol.

viii. 50.

 

Having a mortal aversion to the details of Arabic prosody, I have persuaded my friend Dr. Steingass to undertake in the following pages the subject as far as concerns the poetry of The Nights. He has been kind enough to collaborate with me from the beginning, and to his minute lexicographical knowledge I am deeply indebted for discovering not a few blemishes which would have been “nuts to the critic.” The learned Arabist’s notes will be highly interesting to students: mine ( �V.) are intended to give a superficial and popular idea of the Arab’s verse mechanism.

 

“The principle of Arabic Prosody (called ‘Ar�z, pattern standard, or ‘Ilm al-‘Ar�z, science of the ‘Ar�z), in so far resembles that of classical poetry, as it chiefly rests on metrical weight, not on accent, or in other words a verse is measured by short and long quantities, while the accent only regulates its rhythm. In Greek and Latin, however, the quantity of the syllables depends on their vowels, which may be either naturally short or long, or become long by position, i.e. if followed by two or more consonants. We all remember from our school-days what a fine string of rules had to be committed to and kept in memory, before we were able to scan a Latin or Greek verse without breaking its neck by tripping over false quantities. In Arabic, on the other hand, the answer to the question, what is metrically long or short, is exceedingly simple, and flows with stringent cogency from the nature of the Arabic Alphabet. This, strictly speaking, knows only consonants (Harf, pl. Hur�f). The vowels which are required, in order to articulate the consonants, were at first not represented in writing at all. They had to be supplied by the reader, and are not improperly called “motions” (Harak�t), because they move or lead on, as it were, one letter to another.

They are three in number, a (Fathah), i (Kasrah), u (Zammah), originally sounded as the corresponding English vowels in bat, bit and butt respectively, but in certain cases modifying their pronunciation under the influence of a neighbouring consonant.

When the necessity made itself felt to represent them in writing, especially for the sake of fixing the correct reading of the Koran, they were rendered by additional signs, placed above or beneath the consonant, after which they are pronounced, in a similar way as it is done in some systems of English shorthand. A consonant followed by a short vowel is called a “moved letter”

(Muharrakah); a consonant without such vowel is called “resting”

or “quiescent” (S�kinah), and can stand only at the end of a syllable or word.

 

And now we are able to formulate the one simple rule, which determines the prosodical quantity in Arabic: any moved letter, as ta, li, mu, is counted short; any moved letter followed by a quiescent one, as taf, fun, mus, i.e. any closed syllable beginning and terminating with a consonant and having a short vowel between, forms a long quantity. This is certainly a relief in comparison with the numerous rules of classical Prosody, proved by not a few exceptions, which for instance in Dr. Smith’s elementary Latin Grammar fill eight closely printed pages.

 

Before I proceed to show how from the prosodical unities, the moved and the quiescent letter, first the metrical elements, then the feet and lastly the metres are built up, it will be necessary to obviate a few misunderstandings, to which our mode of transliterating Arabic into the Roman

character might give rise.

 

The line::

 

“Love in my heart they lit and went their ways,” (vol. i. 232) runs in Arabic:

 

“Ak�m� al-wajda f� kalb� wa s�r�” (Mac. Ed. i. 179).

 

Here, according to our ideas, the word akam� would begin with a short vowel a, and contain two long vowels � and �; according to Arabic views neither is the case. The word begins with “Alif,”

and its second syllable k� closes in Alif after Fathah (a), in the same way, as the third syllable m� closes in the letter W�w (w) after Zammah (u).

 

The question, therefore, arises, what is “Alif.” It is the first of the twenty-eight Arabic letters, and has through the medium of the Greek Alpha nominally entered into our alphabet, where it now plays rather a misleading part. Curiously