Arabic Authors Part 5

Abu Tammam Habib, the celebrated poet, according to Ibn Khallikan, 'surpa.s.sed all his contemporaries in the purity of his style, the merit of his poetry, and his excellent manner of treating a subject.

He is the author of a Hamasa, a compilation which is a standing proof of his great talents, solid information, and good taste in making a selection.' He wrote several other works connected with poets and poetry, composed many Kasidas, and knew by heart, it is said, fourteen thousand verses of that cla.s.s of compositions called Rajaz, or free metre. The poetry of Abu Tammam was put in order for the first time by Abu Bakr as Sauli, who arranged it alphabetically, according to the rhymes, and then Abul Faraj Ali bin Husain Al-Ispahani cla.s.sed it according to the subjects. He died at Mosul A.D. 845, about forty years of age, and was buried there; but his verses have survived, and rendered him one of the immortals.

The mantle of the poet Abu Tammam appears to have fallen on Abu Abada Al-Bohtori, who was born in A.D. 821, and, like his predecessor, is also the author of a Hamasa. He appears to have received his first encouragement to persevere as a poet from Abu Tammam, and later on he says: 'I recited to Abu Tammam a poem which I had composed in honour of one of the Humaid family, and by which I gained a large sum of money. When I finished he exclaimed: "Very good! You shall be the prince of poets when I am no more." These words gave me more pleasure than all the wealth which I had collected.' On being asked whether he or Abu Tammam was the better poet, Al-Bohtori replied: 'His best pieces surpa.s.s the best of mine, and my worst are better than the worst of his,' Abul-Ala al Maarri, a great philologist and poet (born in A.D. 973, died A.D. 1057), was asked which was the best poet of the three, Abu Tammam, Al-Bohtori, or Al-Mutanabbi; he replied that two of them were moralists, and that Bohtori was the poet. He died A.D. 897.

His poems were not arranged in order till Abu Bakr as Sauli collected them and cla.s.sed them alphabetically by their rhymes, while Abul Faraj Ali bin Husain Al-Ispahani collected them also, and arranged them according to their subjects. A copy of his 'Diwan' is in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

Al Mutanabbi, or the pretended prophet, a _role_ to which he aspired, but in which he did not succeed, comes next to the two great poets--Abu Tammam and Al-Bohtori--though some critics consider him to be superior to them. He is, however, generally acknowledged to be a great lyric poet, while many of his best Kasidas refer to the exploits of Saif ad Dawlah, a prince of the Benou Hamdan dynasty in Syria. After leaving him he went to Egypt, then to Persia, Baghdad, and finally Kufa, his native place, near which he was killed in a fight in A.D.

965. It is stated that in this contest Mutanabbi, seeing himself vanquished, was taking to flight, when his slave said to him, 'Let it never be said that you fled from a fight, you who are the author of this verse: "The horse, and the night, and the desert know me (well); the sword also, and the lance, and paper and the pen."'

Upon this he turned back and fought till he was slain, along with his son and his slave. His 'Diwan,' or collection of poems, is well known, and much read in our times, even in India. It has been translated into German.

An-Nami was one of the ablest and most talented poets of his time, but inferior to Mutanabbi, with whom he had some encounters and contests in reciting extemporary verses when they were at the court of Saif ad Dawlah together. He died A.D. 1008 at Aleppo, aged ninety.

Abul-Abbas Al-Mofadhdhal, the collector of the celebrated selection of Arabic poems called the 'Mofadhdhaliat,' which served as a model for the Hamasas, was the first editor of the seven suspended poems, the Mua'llakat, and also one of the earliest of the Arab philologists. He was a native of Kufa, and adhered to the faction of Ibrahim bin Abdallah; who rebelled in A.D. 761 against Al-Mansur, the second Abbaside Khalif. Al-Mansur, however, pardoned Al-Mofadhdhal, and attached him to the household of his son, Al-Mahdi, by whose orders Mofadhdhal made a collection of the most celebrated longer poems of the Arabs, one hundred and twenty-eight in number, under the t.i.tle of the Mofadhdhaliat. This, the oldest anthology of Arabian poets, was first commented upon by his disciple, Al-Aarabi; then two hundred years later by the two great philologists and anthologists, Al-Anbari and An-Nahas; by Merzuk; and lastly by Tibrizi, who is sufficiently known in Europe as the editor and commentator of the Hamasa, published by Freytag with a Latin translation. Mofadhdhal supported himself as a copyist of the Koran, and spent the last portion of his life in mosques doing penance for the satires which he had composed against various individuals. His other works were a book of proverbs, a treatise on prosody, another on the ideas usually expressed in poetry, and a vocabulary. He was held to be of the first authority as a philologist, a genealogist, and a relator of the poems and battle-lays of the desert Arabs. He died A.D. 784.

Abul Faraj Ali bin Husain Al-Ispahani is the collector of the great anthology called 'Kitab-ul-Aghani' (the Book of Songs). This work, which surpa.s.ses all former ones of this name, he produced after a labour of forty years, and presented it to Saif ad Dawlah, who gave him a thousand pieces of gold for it, but excused himself at the same time for the smallness of this honorarium. In spite of his other works, and the long string of names given him by Ibn Khallikan, he is best known as Al-Ispahani, and as the author of the Aghani. His family inhabited Ispahan, but he pa.s.sed his early youth in Baghdad, and became the most distinguished scholar and most eminent author of that city. He was born A.D. 897, and died A.D. 967, in which year also died the great scholar Kali, and the three greatest of his patrons, namely, Saif ad Dawlah, the sovereign of the Benou Hamdan in Syria; Moiz ud Dawlah, the sovereign of the Benou Bujeh in Irak; and Kafur, who governed Egypt in the name of the Akhsid dynasty. The 'Book of Songs,'

notwithstanding its t.i.tle, is an important biographical dictionary, treating of grammar, history and science, as well as of poetry.

Mention can here be made of Abu Muhammad Ka.s.sim Al-Hariri, who was one of the ablest writers of his time, and the author of the 'Makamat Hariri,' a work consisting of fifty oratorical, poetical, moral, encomiastic and satirical discourses, supposed to have been spoken or read in public a.s.semblies. Poets, historians, grammarians and lexicographers look upon the 'Makamat' (a.s.semblies or Seances) as the highest authority, and next to the Koran, as far at least as language is concerned. It contains a large portion of the language spoken by the Arabs of the desert, such as its idioms, its proverbs, and its subtle delicacies of expression; and, according to Ibn Khallikan, any person who acquires a sufficient acquaintance with this book to understand it rightly, will be led to acknowledge the eminent merit of the author, his extensive information, and his vast abilities. A great number of persons have commented on the 'Makamat,' some in long and others in short treatises, and many consider it to be the most elegantly written, and the most amusing, work in the Arabic language.

Hariri was born A.D. 1054, and died at Busra A.D. 1122. He left some other good works in the shape of treatises, epistles, and a great number of poetical pieces, besides those contained in his 'Makamat.'

There are two translations of the 'Makamat' into English. One by the Reverend Theodore Preston, printed under the patronage of the Oriental Translation Fund, London, 1850. It contains only twenty of the fifty pieces in verse, with copious notes, while an epitome of the remaining thirty pieces is given at the end of the book. The other by the late Mr. Chennery, which ends with the twenty-sixth a.s.sembly or seance. The whole work was edited in Arabic, with a select commentary upon it in French, by Baron Silvestre de Sacy, and this was reprinted in 1847.

Ruckert also made a very free translation of it in German verse, which reached a third edition in 1844, but this differs widely from the contents of the original, though it is said to be more pleasing and attractive to a general reader.

After the Muslim legal sciences had been established upon the fourfold foundations of the Koran, tradition, general consent of communities, and the a.n.a.logies derived therefrom, then philosophy and mathematics began to flourish by translations made either directly from the Greek or through Syriac and Persian.

In former times, during the reign of Nausherwan, a Persian monarch of great renown (A.D. 530-578), there was some intercourse between Persian and Byzantine philosophers; several books on logic and medicine had been translated from Greek into Persian, and from these Abdullah Ibn Al-Mukaffa made translations into Arabic. The literary career of Ibn Al-Mukaffa, who presumed to vie with the eloquence of the Koran, and was considered to be a freethinker, and eventually slain, falls into the reign of Al-Mansur (A.D. 754-775), the second Khalif. But Ibn Al-Mukaffa rendered such services to Arabian literature, that a short sketch of his life will presently be given.

During the reign of Mansur (A.D. 754-775) Greek works were translated, not yet from the original, but from the Persian. During the Khalifate of his son, Mahdi (A.D. 775-785), Abd-Allah bin Hilal translated the celebrated animal fables of Bidpay from Persian into Arabic, under the t.i.tle of 'Kalilah wa Dimnah,' and they were afterwards versified by Selil bin Nubakht. In Persian they are known under several t.i.tles, such as 'Kalilah wa Dimnah,' the 'Anwar-i Suheli,' and the 'Ayar Danish,' and in Turkish as the 'Humayan-namah.'

Eight years before the seventh Khalif, Mamun (A.D. 812-833), ascended the throne, many Greek and Syrian ma.n.u.scripts had been collected in Baghdad. These were all preserved there in the library, which was called 'The House of Wisdom,' until Mamun began to utilize them by means of translations. The Khalif appointed the scholars Al-Hajjaj, Ibn Mattar, Ibn ul-Batrik, and Selma, to superintend the work, while the three brothers, Muhammad, Ahmed, and Hasan, sons of the astronomer Shakir, were directed to search for and to buy ma.n.u.scripts. Mamun also sent the two physicians, Yohanna and Kosta, into the Byzantine dominions to bring ma.n.u.scripts from thence to Baghdad. A new cla.s.s of scholars was then formed, in the shape of translators, who were employed in translating works from the Greek, the Syriac, and the Persian languages into Arabic. The translators from the Persian were Musa and Yusuf, the two sons of Khalid, Hasan bin Sehl, and afterwards, Al-Baladori; from the Sanscrit, Munkah the Indian; from the Nabataean, Ibn Wahs.h.i.+yah. Science became hereditary, as it were, in the families of the most celebrated scholars; medical science in the family of Bakhtyeshun; translations from Greek works in that of Honein bin Ishak, the most famous of all translators, and a prolific author besides. Maseweih and his son Yahya, Syriac Christians, were both celebrated as physicians and translators of ancient Greek works into Arabic; while Kosta bin Luka, who died in A.D. 932, was also one of the most fertile translators from Greek into Arabic, and, being born a Greek, he was able to correct the translations of Honein bin Ishak and others.

The number of translators, which amounted to about one hundred, might have been increased if Arab literature had further developed itself by incorporating works from other languages; but, as such was not the case, translators appeared very few and far between after the literature had attained to its highest perfection, at the end of the third century of the Hijrah (A.D. 913).

The celebrated Ibn Al-Mukaffa was one of the earliest and best translators. His full name is Abd-Allah Ibn Al-Mukaffa, but before he made his profession of Islam he bore that of Ruzbeh. He was a native of Har, a town in the province of Fars, and first served as secretary to Daud bin Hobeirah, and then to Isa bin Ali, the uncle of the two first Khalifs of the house of Abbas. He was an excellent poet, letter-writer, and orator, equally skilled in his mother-tongue, the Persian, as in the Arabic language, from the former of which he left the splendid translations of--

(1) 'The Khodanamah,' a legend.

(2) 'The Amirnamah,' or prince-book.

(3) 'Kalilah wa Dimnah.'

(4) 'Merdak.'

(5) 'Biography of Nausherwan.'

(6) 'The Great Book of Manners.'

(7) 'The Small Book of Manners or Good Habits.'

(8) 'The Book of Epistles.'

So far the 'Fihrist'; what follows is from Ibn Khallikan. Ibn Al-Mukaffa was the secretary and most confidential servant of Isa bin Ali, with whom he dined the day before he made his public profession of Islam. Having sat down, he began to eat and to mutter according to the custom of the Magians. 'How,' said Isa, 'you mutter like the Magians, though resolved to embrace Islamism!' to which Ibn Al-Mukaffa replied that he did not wish to pa.s.s a single night without being of some religion. In spite of his conversion, he was always suspected of freethinking, like Muti bin Iyas and Yahya bin Zaad, and one day, when Al-Jahiz, the philologist, made the remark that they were persons the sincerity of whose religious sentiments was doubted, one of the learned, on hearing this, said: 'How is it that Al-Jahiz forgets to count himself?'

When Khalil the prosodist was one day asked his opinion about Ibn Al-Mukaffa, he said, 'His learning is greater than his wit;' and the latter, being asked the same question concerning Khalil, replied, 'His wit is greater than his learning.' Being a favourite with the Khalif, he took great liberties with Sofyan, the Governor of Busra, and insulted the memory of his mother. One day Sulaiman and Isa, the uncles of the Khalif Mansur, desired to obtain a letter of amnesty from him for their brother Abd-Allah, and they instructed Ibn Al-Mukaffa to compose one in the strongest terms, which he did, and added to it the following clause, 'Should the Prince of the Believers ever act treacherously towards his uncle Abd-Allah, then may he be divorced from his wives, may his slaves be free, and may his subjects be solved from obedience!' The Khalif's dignity was shocked, and he ordered the writer of this letter of amnesty to be forthwith executed, and the Governor of Busra, whom Ibn Al-Mukaffa had many times insulted, very gladly undertook the duty. Al-Madaini narrates that when Ibn Al-Mukaffa was brought before Sofyan, the latter asked him whether he remembered the insults he had heaped upon his mother, and added, 'May my mother really deserve those insults if I do not get you executed in a manner hitherto unheard of!' He also recalled Ibn Al-Mukaffa's joke about Sofyan's big nose, because he had one day asked the governor, 'How are you and your nose?' On another occasion, when the governor remarked that he never had reason to repent keeping silence, Ibn Al-Mukaffa replied, 'Dumbness becomes you; then why should you repent of it.' Accordingly Sofyan ordered the members of Ibn Al-Mukaffa's body to be chopped off, one after the other, and thrown into a burning oven, into which, last of all, the trunk of his body was also thrown.

There are other accounts of his death, viz., that he was strangled in a bath, or shut up in a privy. One opinion, however, generally prevails, that the execution was not a public one. The date of it is uncertain--A.D. 756, 759, and 760, are all given; but the victim was only thirty-six years of age at the time.

A few remarks may be made about the support given to learning and men of letters by the Omaiyide and Abbaside Khalifs, as also by those of the Spanish or Western Khalifate.

The Omaiyide Khalifs, with their capital at Damascus, were generally patrons of science, poetry, architecture, song, and music. But all these branches of knowledge were at that time merely rudimental; and, of the fourteen sovereigns of the dynasty, only five really deserve the name of protectors of learning; and of these Abdul Malik (A.D.

684-705), and his son Walid I. (A.D. 705-715), were the most distinguished.

During the period of their Khalifate there were not only male, but also some female poets. All their poems are mostly short, and confined to amatory, laudatory, or vituperative compositions, called forth by the momentary circ.u.mstances in which the authors happened to be placed. These pieces do not represent either deep thought or profound wisdom, but they show the feelings of the people, and their state of civilization at the time in question.

During this Khalifate were also produced the earliest germs of stylistics, epistolography and mysticism, all of which were more fully developed under the Abbasides. The originator of the first two was the Katib Abd Al-Hamid, secretary to the last Omaiyide Khalif, and he is designated in an old Arabic rhyme as 'the father of all secretaries.'

Epistolary writing, it was said, began with Abd Al-Hamid, and finished with Ibn Al-Amid. As regards mysticism, the origin of its doctrines is sometimes a.s.signed to Oweis Al-Kareni, the Prophet's companion, who disappeared mysteriously in A.D. 658. But mysticism and Sufism were subsequently much developed by Muhi-uddin Muhammad, surnamed Ibn Al-Arabi, a most voluminous writer on these subjects. He was born at Murcia, in Spain, A.D. 1165, and after studying in that country, went to the East, made the pilgrimage, visited Cairo and other cities, and died at Damascus A.D. 1240. He is the author of many works, but the most remarkable of them are 'Revelations obtained at Mecca' and 'Maxims of Wisdom set as Jewels.' Both Makkari the historian, and Von Hammer Purgstall, in his history of Arabian literature from the earliest times, give a long account of him.

Of the Khalifs of the house of Abbas, the second, third, fifth and seventh, viz., Al-Mansur (A.D. 754-775), Al-Mahdi (A.D. 775-785), Harun-ar-Ras.h.i.+d (A.D. 786-809), and Al-Mamun (A.D. 812-833) were the most distinguished as patrons of art, science and literature. But after the translation of the 'Arabian Nights' into European languages, the name of Harun-ar-Ras.h.i.+d became the best known in Europe as the representative of the most brilliant period of the Eastern Khalifate, and as the great protector of Arabic literature.

Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasides, was founded by their second Khalif, Al-Mansur, in A.D. 760, finished in four years, and raised to a high degree of splendour by Harun-ar-Ras.h.i.+d. Originally it was considered only as a great strategic point, and its garrisons were to keep the surrounding country in subjection. Eventually it became the centre of learning and civilization, and an Arab author wrote of it as follows: 'Baghdad is certainly the capital of the world, and the mine of every excellence. It is the city whose inhabitants have always been the first to unfurl the banners of knowledge, and to raise the standard of science; indeed, their subtlety in all branches of learning, their gentle manners and amiable disposition, n.o.ble bearing, acuteness, wit, penetration and talent are deservedly praised.'

Baghdad, at the beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era, was the centre of all that was grand and brilliant in the Muhammadan world. Art and commerce, literature and science, were cultivated to a high degree, and the luxury and extravagance of court life exceeded almost the imagination of temperate European minds.

Everything curious, romantic and wonderful, narrated in the 'Nights'

is connected with Harun-ar-Ras.h.i.+d's name, or supposed to have happened in his reign. Thus, his vizier, Jaafar, the Barmekide, the superintendent of his harem, Mesrur, and his spouse, Zobeida, were first made known to novel-readers, and their importance as historical personages were duly appreciated afterwards, when Erpenius, Poc.o.c.ke, Herbelot, and Reiske elucidated the history of the Khalifate by translating the works of the Arab chroniclers Abul-Faraj, Al-Makin, and Abul-feda. Later on still further information was made public about the translations made from Greek and Syriac into Arabic during his reign, as also concerning his position, not only as a lover of tales, but as a promoter of jurisprudence, a patron of the medical and mathematical sciences, and a builder of magnificent and useful edifices. His court was also well attended by poets and singers.

Harun was not, indeed, the first prince who made arrangements for translations from the Greek and the Syriac. In this he had been preceded, as already mentioned, by the Omaiyide prince, Khalid, the alchemist. But during the reign of Harun the business of translation was carried on to a much greater extent than it was under his predecessors, the Khalifs Mansur and Mahdi, during whose time translations were undertaken from Greek into Syriac, from Indian (Sanscrit) into Persian, but not yet into Arabic. The translators were mostly Christians and Jews. Theophilos of Edessa, the Maronite translator of Homer and of other Greek cla.s.sics into Syriac, was an astronomer and an historian. Both he and the physician Georgios, son of Bakhtyeshun, from the university of Jondshapur, were Christians.

Nubakht, the astronomer of the Khalif Mansur, was a Magian (Zoroastrian), Yahya bin Maseweih, Harun's physician, translated medical works. Hajaj bin Yusuf bin Matta dedicated his first edition of the elements of Euclid to Harun, and the second to Mamun.

As the family of the Barmekides played an important part, not only in politics, but also in literature, until its chief members were annihilated by Harun's orders, a brief notice of them may here be given.

Khalid bin Barmek was the son of a priest at the fire temple of Nevbehar in Balkh, and became in course of time vizier of the first Abbaside Khalif, and was retained in that office by the second Khalif, Al-Mansur, and by the third, Al-Mahdi. He died A.D. 780.

Yahya, the son of Khalid, not only himself became the vizier of Harun, but also his two sons, Fadhl and Jaafar. Yahya was very liberal, and gave away sometimes considerable sums of money for very small services, or, indeed, for no service at all. After his son Jaafar had been executed, Yahya was thrown into prison, along with his other son, Fadhl, at Old Rakka, where he died in A.D. 805, at the age of seventy or seventy-four.

Fadhl, the son of Yahya, was more liberal but less eloquent than his brother Jaafar. Harun esteemed the two brothers so highly that he entrusted his son Muhammad to the care of Fadhl, and his son Mamun to the care of Jaafar. Afterwards he made Jaafar his vizier, and sent Fadhl to be Governor of Khurasan. There Fadhl built mosques, reservoirs of water and caravanserais, augmented the army, and attracted numbers of emigrants to the country, whereby he gained the approval of Harun, who ordered his poets to sing his praises. After the execution of Jaafar, Harun took Yahya, with his son Fadhl and all the Barmekides, to Rakka, giving Yahya the option to go where he liked; but he preferred to be imprisoned with his son in Rakka. There Fadhl died in A.D. 809, and when Harun was informed of his death, he said: 'My own is not far,' and died a few months afterwards in Tus, the modern Mashad. The death of Fadhl, as a generous patron, was bewailed by several poets, such as Abul Hojna, Otbi, Abu Nuwas, and others. Fadhl was also notable for his filial piety, and when the use of cold water injured the health of his father whilst they were in prison, he used to warm the water by placing a pot of it on his own stomach.

Jaafar (the brother of Fadhl and a son of Yahya), who was slain A.D.

802, is to be mentioned here, not for his tragic fate, which is well known, but rather for his literary attainments, especially his oratory and his style, in both of which he excelled. From his long biography, written by Ibn Khallikan, there will be given here only some extracts relating to science and literature. He was a great master of speech, and expressed his thoughts with much elegance. In one night he endorsed more than a thousand pet.i.tions addressed to the Khalif with his decisions, all of which were in perfect concordance with the law.

His instructor in jurisprudence had been Abu Yusuf the Hanifite, whom his father Yahya had appointed to teach him. The favour enjoyed by Jaafar with Harun-ar-Ras.h.i.+d was so great that this Khalif caused one robe to be made with two separate collars, which they both wore at the same time. Ibn Khallikan narrates the traditions relating to the fall of Jaafar and his family; the one refers to his amours with Abbasa, the sister of Harun, and to the birth of a child; the other to the escape of a member of Ali's family entrusted to Jaafar's guardians.h.i.+p by Harun. The true cause was probably the Khalifs envy of the power, wealth, and generosity of the Barmekides, along with the backbitings of their enemies. Jaafar was slain at Al-Omr in the district of Al-Anbar, his head and the trunk of his body were set up opposite to each other on the two sides of the bridge of Baghdad, and his death was lamented by various poets.

After Mamun (A.D. 812-833) the most intellectual Khalif appears to have been Radhi-billah (A.D. 934-940). His poems were collected in a Diwan. He was the last Khalif who presided not only over the Government as a sovereign, but also over the pulpit as Imam; indeed, he may be said to be the terminal point of the power, brilliancy and independence of the house of Abbas, which henceforth gradually declined till its final extinction with the conquest of Baghdad by the Mughals in A.D. 1258.

The great chess-player, Abu-bakr as Sauli, bears witness, in Masudi's 'Meadows of Gold,' to the great accomplishments of Radhi-billah, and to his love of the sciences. Of games, chess and nerd[4] flourished during his reign, and although the perfection of song and of lute-playing had already pa.s.sed away, singers and musicians are still mentioned. Of the amus.e.m.e.nts of the court, hunting appears to have flourished most, and the learned poet Koshajim, who wrote on the game of nerd, also left instructive poems on the chase. Radhi-billah appears to have been fond of books of travel and of natural history, and of the society of men of letters and of science, and liked listening to recitals on the history, politics, and glory of the old Persian kings.

[Footnote 4: Nerd.--This game is mentioned as early as the Shah-Namah, the author of which, Firdausi, was of opinion that it is of genuine Persian, and not of Indian origin, like chess, but this a.s.sertion is not necessarily correct.

Hyde has described the game in his 'Historia Nerdiludii,'

and it resembles somewhat the German puff and triktrak, and the English backgammon. It is played on a board divided into black-and-white compartments, with a black and a white house in the centre. The moves are made according to the numbers that come up on the throw of two dice.]

Of the Spanish Khalifs, mention only will be made of the ninth sovereign of the Benou Omaiyide dynasty in Andalusia, viz., Hakim II., who died A.D. 976. Among the five Arab rulers of Spain--viz., three Abd-ar-Rahmans and two Hakims--who have acquired everlasting fame in history as special friends of science and patrons of learned men, Abd-ar-Rahman III. and Hakim II. are the greatest and most prominent.

They stand in the Arab literary history of the West as high as Harun and his son Mamun do in the history of the literature of the East. As Mamun was the greatest of the Benou Abbas Khalifs of Baghdad who promoted science and art, so Hakim II. was the greatest of the Benou Omaiyides in Cordova. From his earliest youth he had received a most careful scientific education, and applied his energies to study, as he could not devote them to public affairs on account of the long duration of his father's reign, from A.D. 912 to 961. Hakim's father, Abd-ar-Rahman III., invited the learned Abu Ali Ismail Al Kali, the philologist and author, from the court of Baghdad, where he enjoyed the greatest consideration with the Khalif Mutwakkil, to Cordova, and entrusted him with the education of his son, who, later on, composed a Diwan (collection of poems), divided into twenty parts, bearing, like the Surahs, or Chapters of the Koran, the most sublime objects of nature as t.i.tles, such as 'Heaven,' 'the Stars,' 'the Dawn,' 'the Night,' etc. Hakim pursued his studies under Kali for twenty years, with as much pleasure as advantage, and after ascending the throne, science and art still remained his companions. When his father died, and he a.s.sumed the Government, he led the funeral procession, surrounded by his Andalusian, Slavonic, and Mograbin body-guard, and interred the corpse with the greatest pomp in the mausoleum of Rozafa, and after that accepted the homage of his Viziers, Amirs, Kayids, and Kadis. Astrologers and poets heralded at Cordova and in the whole of Andalusia the continuation of the father's prosperous reign by his son, and spoke the truth this time.