In these circumstances a certain amount of error was inevitable. Apart from unconscious failings of memory, there Corrupt tradition of the old poetry. can be no doubt that in many cases the Ráwísacted with intent to deceive. The temptation to father their own verses, or centos which they pieced together from sources known only to themselves, upon some poet of antiquity was all the stronger because they ran little risk of detection. In knowledge of poetry and in poetical talent they were generally far more than a match for the philologists, who seldom possessed any critical ability, but readily took whatever came to hand. The stories which are told of Ḥammád al-Ráwiya, Ḥammád al-Ráwiya. clearly show how unscrupulous he was in his methods, though we have reason to suppose that he was not a typical example of his class. His contemporary, Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbí, is reported to have said that the corruption which poetry suffered through Ḥammád could never be repaired, "for," he added, "Ḥammád is a man skilled in the language and poesy of the Arabs and in the styles and ideas of the poets, and he is always making verses in imitation of some one and introducing them into genuine compositions by the same author, so that the copy passes everywhere for part of the original, and cannot be distinguished from it except by critical scholars—and where are such to be found?"261 This art of forgery was brought to perfection by Khalaf Khalaf al-Aḥmar. al-Aḥmar (õ about 800 a.d.), who learned it in the school of Ḥammád. If he really composed the famous Lámiyyaascribed to Shanfará, his own poetical endowments must have been of the highest order. In his old age he repented and confessed that he was the author of several poems which the scholars of Baṣra and Kúfa had accepted as genuine, but they laughed him to scorn, saying, "What you said then seems to us more trustworthy than your present assertion."

Besides the corruptions due to the Ráwís, others have been accumulated by the philologists themselves. As the Koran and the Ḥadíth were, of course, spoken and Other causes of corruption. afterwards written in the dialect of Quraysh, to whom Muḥammad belonged, this dialect was regarded as the classical standard;262 consequently the variations therefrom which occurred in the ancient poems were, for the most part, 'emended' and harmonised with it. Many changes were made under the influence of Islam, e.g., 'Allah' was probably often substituted for the pagan goddess 'al-Lát.' Moreover, the structure of the qaṣída, its disconnectedness and want of logical cohesion, favoured the omission and transposition of whole passages or single verses. All these modes of depravation might be illustrated in detail, but from what has been said the reader can judge for himself how far the poems, as they now stand, are likely to have retained the form in which they were first uttered to the wild Arabs of the Pre-islamic Age.

Religion had so little influence on the lives of the Pre-islamic Arabs that we cannot expect to find much trace Religion. of it in their poetry. They believed vaguely in a supreme God, Allah, and more definitely in his three daughters—al-Lát, Manát, and al-‘Uzzá—who were venerated all over Arabia and whose intercession was graciously accepted by Allah. There were also numerous idols enjoying high favour while they continued to bring good luck to their worshippers. Of real piety the ordinary Bedouin knew nothing. He felt no call to pray to his gods, although he often found them convenient to swear by. He might invoke Allah in the hour of need, as a drowning man will clutch at a straw; but his faith in superstitious ceremonies was stronger. He did not take his religion too seriously. Its practical advantages he was quick to appreciate. Not to mention baser pleasures, it gave him rest and security during the four sacred months, in which war was forbidden, while the institution of the Meccan Pilgrimage enabled him to take part in a national fête. The Fair of ‘Ukáẓ.Commerce went hand in hand with religion. Great fairs were held, the most famous being that of ‘Ukáẓ, which lasted for twenty days. These fairs were in some sort the centre of old Arabian social, political, and literary life. It was the only occasion on which free and fearless intercourse was possible between the members of different clans.263

Plenty of excitement was provided by poetical and oratorical displays—not by athletic sports, as in ancient Greece and modern England. Here rival poets declaimed their verses and submitted them to the judgment of an acknowledged master. Nowhere else had rising talents such an opportunity of gaining wide reputation: what ‘Ukáẓ said to-day all Arabia would repeat to-morrow. At ‘Ukáẓ, we are told, the youthful Muḥammad listened, as though spellbound, to the persuasive eloquence of Quss b. Sá‘ida, Bishop of Najrán; and he may have contrasted the discourse of the Christian preacher with the brilliant odes chanted by heathen bards.

The Bedouin view of life was thoroughly hedonistic. Love, wine, gambling, hunting, the pleasures of song and romance, the brief, pointed, and elegant expression of wit and wisdom—these things he knew to be good. Beyond them he saw only the grave.

"Roast meat and wine: the swinging rideOn a camel sure and tried,Which her master speeds amainO'er low dale and level plain:Women marble-white and fairTrailing gold-fringed raiment rare:Opulence, luxurious ease,With the lute's soft melodies—Such delights hath our brief span;Time is Change, Time's fool is Man.Wealth or want, great store or small,All is one since Death's are all."264

It would be a mistake to suppose that these men always, or even generally, passed their lives in the aimless pursuit of pleasure. Some goal they had—earthly, no doubt—such as the accumulation of wealth or the winning of glory or the fulfilment of blood-revenge. " God forbid" says one, " that I should die while a grievous longing, as it were a mountain, weighs on my breast!"265 A deeper chord is touched by Imru’u ’l-Qays: " If I strove for a bare livelihood, scanty means would suffice me and I would seek no more. But I strive for lasting renown, and 'tis men like me that sometimes attain lasting renown. Never, while life endures, does a man reach the summit of his ambition or cease from toil."266

These are noble sentiments nobly expressed. Yet one hears the sigh of weariness, as if the speaker were struggling against the conviction that his cause is already lost, and would welcome the final stroke of destiny. It was a time of wild uproar and confusion. Tribal and family feuds filled the land, as Zuhayr says, with evil fumes. No wonder that earnest and thoughtful minds asked themselves—What worth has our life, what meaning? Whither does it lead? Such questions paganism could not answer, but Arabia in the century before Muḥammad was not wholly abandoned to paganism. Jewish colonists had long been settled in the Ḥijáz. Probably the earliest settlements date from the conquest of Palestine by Titus or Hadrian. In their new home the refugees, through contact Judaism and Christianity in Arabia. with a people nearly akin to themselves, became fully Arabicised, as the few extant specimens of their poetry bear witness. They remained Jews, however, not only in their cultivation of trade and various industries, but also in the most vital particular—their religion. This, and the fact that they lived in isolated communities among the surrounding population, marked them out as the salt of the desert. In the Ḥijáz their spiritual predominance was not seriously challenged. It was otherwise in Yemen. We may leave out of account the legend according to which Judaism was introduced into that country from the Ḥijáz by the Tubba‘ As‘ad Kámil. What is certain is that towards the beginning of the sixth century it was firmly planted there side by side with Christianity, and that in the person of the Ḥimyarite monarch Dhú Nuwás, who adopted the Jewish faith, it won a short-lived but sanguinary triumph over its rival. But in Yemen, except among the highlanders of Najrán, Christianity does not appear to have flourished as it did in the extreme north and north-east, where the Roman and Persian frontiers were guarded by the Arab levies of Ghassán and Ḥíra. We have seen that the latter city contained a large Christian population who were called distinctively The ‘Ibád of Ḥíra. ‘Ibád, i.e., Servants (of God). Through them the Aramaic culture of Babylonia was transmitted to all parts of the peninsula. They had learned the art of writing long before it was generally practised in Arabia, as is shown by the story of Ṭarafa and Mutalammis, and they produced the oldest writtenpoetry in the Arabic language—a poetry very different in character from that which forms the main subject of this chapter. Unfortunately the bulk of it has perished, since the rhapsodists, to whom we owe the preservation of so much Pre-islamic verse, were devoted to the traditional models and would not burden their memories with anything new-fashioned. The most famous of the ‘Ibádí poets is ‘Adí b. Zayd, whose adventurous career as a politician has been sketched above. He is not reckoned by Muḥammadan critics among the Fuḥúl or poets of the first rank, because he was a townsman ( qarawí). In this connection ‘Adí b. Zayd. the following anecdote is instructive. The poet al-‘Ajjáj (õ about 709 a.d.) said of his contemporaries al-Ṭirimmáḥ and al-Kumayt: "They used to ask me concerning rare expressions in the language of poetry, and I informed them, but afterwards I found the same expressions wrongly applied in their poems, the reason being that they were townsmen who described what they had not seen and misapplied it, whereas I who am a Bedouin describe what I have seen and apply it properly."267 ‘Adí is chiefly remembered for his wine-songs. Oriental Christianity has always been associated with the drinking and selling of wine. Christian ideas were carried into the heart of Arabia by ‘Ibádí wine merchants, who are said to have taught their religion to the celebrated A‘shá. ‘Adí drank and was merry like the rest, but the underlying thought, 'for to-morrow we die,' repeatedly makes itself heard. He walks beside a cemetery, and the voices of the dead call to him—268