The process of transformation was aided by other causes besides the influx of Persian and Hellenistic culture: for example, by the growing importance of Islam in public life and the diffusion of a strong religious spirit among the community at large—a spirit which attained its most perfect expression in the reflective and didactic poetry of Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya. Every change of many-coloured life is depicted in the brilliant pages of these modern poets, where the reader may find, according to his mood, the maddest gaiety and the shamefullest frivolity; strains of lofty meditation mingled with a world-weary pessimism; delicate sentiment, unforced pathos, and glowing rhetoric; but seldom the manly self-reliance, the wild, invigorating freedom and inimitable freshness of Bedouin song.

It is of course impossible to do justice even to the principal ‘Abbásid poets within the limits of this chapter, but the following Five typical poets of the ‘Abbásid period. five may be taken as fairly representative: Muṭí‘ b. Iyás, Abú Nuwás, Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya, Mutanabbí, and Abu ’l-‘Alá al-Ma‘arrí. The first three were in close touch with the court of Baghdád, while Mutanabbí and Abu ’l-‘Alá flourished under the Ḥamdánid dynasty which ruled in Aleppo.

Muṭí‘ b. Iyás only deserves notice here as the earliest poet of the New School. His father was a native of Palestine, but Muṭí‘ b. Iyás. he himself was born and educated at Kúfa. He began his career under the Umayyads, and was devoted to the Caliph Walíd b. Yazíd, who found in him a fellow after his own heart, "accomplished, dissolute, an agreeable companion and excellent wit, reckless in his effrontery and suspected in his religion."525 When the ‘Abbásids came into power Muṭí‘ attached himself to the Caliph Manṣúr. Many stories are told of the debauched life which he led in the company of zindíqs, or freethinkers, a class of men whose opinions we shall sketch in another chapter. His songs of love and wine are distinguished by their lightness and elegance. The best known is that in which he laments his separation from the daughter of a Dihqán(Persian landed proprietor), and invokes the two palm-trees of Ḥulwán, a town situated on the borders of the Jibál province between Hamadhán and Baghdád. From this poem arose the proverb, "Faster friends than the two palm-trees of Ḥulwán."526

THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER. "O ye two palms, palms of Ḥulwán,Help me weep Time's bitter dole!Know that Time for ever partethLife from every living soul. Had ye tasted parting's anguish,Ye would weep as I, forlorn.Help me! Soon must ye asunderBy the same hard fate be torn. Many are the friends and loved onesWhom I lost in days of yore.Fare thee well, O yeoman's daughter!—Never grief like this I bore.Her, alas, mine eyes behold not,And on me she looks no more!"

By Europeans who know him only through the Thousand and One NightsAbú Nuwás is remembered as the boon-companion Abú Nuwás (õ  circa810 a.d.). and court jester of "the good Haroun Alraschid," and as the hero of countless droll adventures and facetious anecdotes—an Oriental Howleglass or Joe Miller. It is often forgotten that he was a great poet who, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, takes rank above all his contemporaries and successors, including even Mutanabbí, and is not surpassed in poetical genius by any ancient bard.

Ḥasan b. Háni’ gained the familiar title of Abú Nuwás (Father of the lock of hair) from two locks which hung down on his shoulders. He was born of humble parents, about the middle of the eighth century, in Aḥwáz, the capital of Khúzistán. That he was not a pure Arab the name of his mother, Jallabán, clearly indicates, while the following verse affords sufficient proof that he was not ashamed of his Persian blood:—

"Who are Tamím and Qays and all their kin?The Arabs in God's sight are nobody."527

He received his education at Baṣra, of which city he calls himself a native,528 and at Kúfa, where he studied poetry and philology under the learned Khalaf al-Aḥmar. After passing a 'Wanderjahr' among the Arabs of the desert, as was the custom of scholars at that time, he made his way to Baghdád and soon eclipsed every competitor at the court of Hárún the Orthodox. A man of the most abandoned character, which he took no pains to conceal, Abú Nuwás, by his flagrant immorality, drunkenness, and blasphemy, excited the Caliph's anger to such a pitch that he often threatened the culprit with death, and actually imprisoned him on several occasions; but these fits of severity were brief. The poet survived both Hárún and his son, Amín, who succeeded him in the Caliphate. Age brought repentance—"the Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be." He addressed the following lines from prison to Faḍl b. al-Rabí‘, whom Hárún appointed Grand Vizier after the fall of the Barmecides:—

"Faḍl, who hast taught and trained me up to goodness(And goodness is but habit), thee I praise.Now hath vice fled and virtue me revisits,And I have turned to chaste and pious ways. To see me, thou would'st think the saintly Baṣrite,Ḥasan, or else Qatáda, met thy gaze,529So do I deck humility with leanness,While yellow, locust-like, my cheek o'erlays.Beads on my arm; and on my breast the Scripture,Where hung a chain of gold in other days."530

The Díwán of Abú Nuwás contains poems in many different styles— e.g., panegyric ( madíḥ), satire ( hijá), songs of the chase ( ṭardiyyát), elegies ( maráthí), and religious poems ( zuhdiyyát); but love and wine were the two motives by which his genius was most brilliantly inspired. His wine-songs ( khamriyyát) are generally acknowledged to be incomparable. Here is one of the shortest:—

"Thou scolder of the grape and me,I ne'er shall win thy smile!Because against thee I rebel,'Tis churlish to revile. Ah, breathe no more the name of wineUntil thou cease to blame,For fear that thy foul tongue should smirchIts fair and lovely name! Come, pour it out, ye gentle boys,A vintage ten years old,That seems as though 'twere in the cupA lake of liquid gold. And when the water mingles there,To fancy's eye are setPearls over shining pearls close strungAs in a carcanet."531

Another poem begins—

"Ho! a cup, and fill it up, and tell me it is wine,For I will never drink in shade if I can drink in shine!Curst and poor is every hour that sober I must go,But rich am I whene'er well drunk I stagger to and fro.Speak, for shame, the loved one's name, let vain disguise alone:No good there is in pleasures o'er which a veil is thrown."532

Abú Nuwás practised what he preached, and hypocrisy at any rate cannot be laid to his charge. The moral and religious sentiments which appear in some of his poems are not mere cant, but should rather be regarded as the utterance of sincere though transient emotion. Usually he felt and avowed that pleasure was the supreme business of his life, and that religious scruples could not be permitted to stand in the way. He even urges others not to shrink from any excess, inasmuch as the Divine mercy is greater than all the sins of which a man is capable:—

"Accumulate as many sins thou canst:The Lord is ready to relax His ire.When the day comes, forgiveness thou wilt findBefore a mighty King and gracious Sire,And gnaw thy fingers, all that joy regrettingWhich thou didst leave thro' terror of Hell-fire!"533

We must now bid farewell to Abú Nuwás and the licentious poets ( al-shu‘ará al-mujján) who reflect so admirably the ideas and manners prevailing in court circles and in the upper classes of society which were chiefly influenced by the court. The scenes of luxurious dissipation and refined debauchery which they describe show us, indeed, that Persian culture was not an unalloyed blessing to the Arabs any more than were the arts of Greece to the Romans; but this is only the darker side of the picture. The works of a contemporary poet furnish evidence of the indignation which the libertinism fashionable in high places called forth among the mass of Moslems who had not lost faith in morality and religion.