LIFE AND DEATH. "Man's life is his fair name, and not his length of years;Man's death is his ill-fame, and not the day that nears.Then life to thy fair name by deeds of goodness give:So in this world two lives, O mortal, thou shalt live."551

MAXIMS AND RULES OF LIFE. "Mere falsehood by its face is recognised,But Truth by parables and admonitions."552 "I keep the bond of love inviolateTowards all humankind, for I betrayMyself, if I am false to any man."553

"Far from the safe path, hop'st thou to be saved?Ships make no speedy voyage on dry land."554 "Strip off the world from thee and naked live,For naked thou didst fall into the world."555 "Man guards his own and grasps his neighbours' pelf,And he is angered when they him prevent;But he that makes the earth his couch will sleepNo worse, if lacking silk he have content."556 "Men vaunt their noble blood, but I beholdNo lineage that can vie with righteous deeds."557

"If knowledge lies in long experience,Less than what I have borne suffices me."558 "Faith is the medicine of every grief,Doubt only raises up a host of cares."559

"Blame me or no, 'tis my predestined state:If I have erred, infallible is Fate."560

Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya found little favour with his contemporaries, who seem to have regarded him as a miserly hypocrite. He died, an aged man, in the Caliphate of Ma’mún.561 Von Kremer thinks that he had a truer genius for poetry than Abú Nuwás, an opinion in which I am unable to concur. Both, however, as he points out, are distinctive types of their time. If Abú Nuwás presents an appalling picture of a corrupt and frivolous society devoted to pleasure, we learn from Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya something of the religious feelings and beliefs which pervaded the middle and lower classes, and which led them to take a more earnest and elevated view of life.

With the rapid decline and disintegration of the ‘Abbásid Empire which set in towards the middle of the ninth century, numerous petty dynasties arose, and the hitherto unrivalled splendour of Baghdád was challenged by more than one provincial court. These independent or semi-independent princes were sometimes zealous patrons of learning—it is well known, for example, that a national Persian literature first came into being under the auspices of the Sámánids in Khurásán and the Buwayhids in ‘Iráq—but as a rule the anxious task of maintaining, or the ambition of extending, their power left them small leisure to cultivate letters, even if they wished to do so. None combined the arts of war and peace more brilliantly than the Ḥamdánid Sayfu ’l-Dawla, who in 944 a.d. made himself master of Aleppo, and founded an independent kingdom in Northern Syria.

"The Ḥamdánids," says Tha‘álibí, "were kings and princes, comely of countenance and eloquent of tongue, endowed with Tha‘álibí's eulogy of Sayfu ’l-Dawla. open-handedness and gravity of mind. Sayfu ’l-Dawla is famed as the chief amongst them all and the centre-pearl of their necklace. He was—may God be pleased with him and grant his desires and make Paradise his abode!—the brightest star of his age and the pillar of Islam: by him the frontiers were guarded and the State well governed. His attacks on the rebellious Arabs checked their fury and blunted their teeth and tamed their stubbornness and secured his subjects against their barbarity. His campaigns exacted vengeance from the Emperor of the Greeks, decisively broke their hostile onset, and had an excellent effect on Islam. His court was the goal of ambassadors, the dayspring of liberality, the horizon-point of hope, the end of journeys, a place where savants assembled and poets competed for the palm. It is said that after the Caliphs no prince gathered around him so many masters of poetry and men illustrious in literature as he did; and to a monarch's hall, as to a market, people bring only what is in demand. He was an accomplished scholar, a poet himself and a lover of fine poetry; keenly susceptible to words of praise."562

Sayfu ’l-Dawla's cousin, Abú Firás al-Ḥamdání, was a gallant soldier and a poet of some mark, who if space permitted would receive fuller notice here.563 He, however, though superior to the common herd of court poets, is overshadowed by one who with all his faults—and they are not inconsiderable—made an extraordinary impression upon his contemporaries, and by the commanding influence of his reputation decided what should henceforth be the standard of poetical taste in the Muḥammadan world.

Abu ’l-Ṭayyib Ahmad b. Ḥusayn, known to fame as al-Mutanabbí, was born and bred at Kúfa, where his father Mutanabbí (915-965 a.d.). is said to have been a water-carrier. Following the admirable custom by which young men of promise were sent abroad to complete their education, he studied at Damascus and visited other towns in Syria, but also passed much of his time among the Bedouins, to whom he owed the singular knowledge and mastery of Arabic displayed in his poems. Here he came forward as a prophet (from which circumstance he was afterwards entitled al-Mutanabbí, i.e., 'the pretender to prophecy'), and induced a great multitude to believe in him; but ere long he was captured by Lu’lu’, the governor of Ḥims (Emessa), and thrown into prison. After his release he wandered to and fro chanting the praises of all and sundry, until fortune guided him to the court of Sayfu ’l-Dawla at Aleppo. For nine years (948-957 a.d.) he stood high in the favour of that cultured prince, whose virtues he celebrated in a series of splendid eulogies, and with whom he lived as an intimate friend and comrade in arms. The liberality of Sayfu ’l-Dawla and the ingenious impudence of the poet are well brought out by the following anecdote:—

Mutanabbí on one occasion handed to his patron the copy of an ode which he had recently composed in his honour, and retired, leaving Sayfu ’l-Dawla to peruse it at leisure. The prince began to read, and came to these lines—

Aqil anil aqṭi‘ iḥmil ‘alli salli a‘idzid hashshi bashshi tafaḍḍal adni surra ṣili.564

" Pardon, bestow, endow, mount, raise, console, restore,Add, laugh, rejoice, bring nigh, show favour, gladden, give!"

Far from being displeased by the poet's arrogance, Sayfu ’l-Dawla was so charmed with his artful collocation of fourteen imperatives in a single verse that he granted every request. Under pardonhe wrote 'we pardon thee'; under bestow, 'let him receive such and such a sum of money'; under endow, 'we endow thee with an estate,' which he named (it was beside the gate of Aleppo); under mount, 'let such and such a horse be led to him'; under raise, 'we do so'; under console, 'we do so, be at ease'; under restore, 'we restore thee to thy former place in our esteem'; under add, 'let him have such and such in addition'; under bring nigh, 'we admit thee to our intimacy'; under show favour, 'we have done so'; under gladden, 'we have made thee glad'565; under give, 'this we have already done.' Mutanabbí's rivals envied his good fortune, and one of them said to Sayfu ’l-Dawla—"Sire, you have done all that he asked, but when he uttered the words laugh, rejoice, why did not you answer, 'Ha, ha, ha'?" Sayfu ’l-Dawla laughed, and said, "You too, shall have your wish," and ordered him a donation.

Mutanabbí was sincerely attached to his generous master, and this feeling inspired a purer and loftier strain than we find in the fulsome panegyrics which he afterwards addressed to the negro Káfúr. He seems to have been occasionally in disgrace, but Sayfu ’l-Dawla could deny nothing to a poet who paid him such magnificent compliments. Nor was he deterred by any false modesty from praising himself: he was fully conscious of his power and, like Arabian bards in general, he bragged about it. Although the verbal legerdemain which is so conspicuous in his poetry cannot be reproduced in another language, the lines translated below may be taken as a favourable and sufficiently characteristic specimen of his style.