A Boswell of Baghdad | Page 9

no excuse for eyes which have not shed their tears. I wish, by Allah! that this elegy had been composed by you on me."
"Nay!" said the poet, "may I and my family die to save the Emir, and may I leave the world before you!"
To this Abu Dolad replied: "He whose death is deplored in verses like those is immortal."
Surely the palmy days of poetry have passed away. How one would like to think of Mr. Kipling, say, being summoned to Buckingham Palace to speak a piece and retiring with a cheque for ��1025, which is what fifty thousand dirhems come to.
Gratitude, even when it is excessive, is always a good theme. In the following case the proportions were respected with more fitness. Al-Wazir Al-Muhallabi was both vizier and poet. He was also a very poor vegetarian, and once, on a journey, being unable to obtain flesh-food, he recited extempore these verses: Where is death sold, that I may buy it? for this life is devoid of good. Oh! let death, whose taste to me is sweet, come and free me from a detested life! When I see a tomb from afar, I wish to be its inhabitant. May the Being who granteth tranquillity have compassion on the soul of the generous man who will bestow death, as a charity, upon one of his brethren! These verses being heard by a person who was travelling in the same caravan with him, and whose name was Abd Allah As-Sufi (or, by another account, Abu 'l-Hasan Al-Askalani), he bought for Al-Muhallabi a dirhem's worth of meat, cooked it, and gave it to him to eat.
"They then," says Ibn, "separated, and Al-Muhallabi having experienced a change of fortune, became vizier to Moizz Ad-Dawlat at Baghdad, while the person who had travelled with him and purchased the meat for him was reduced to poverty. Having then learned that Al-Muhallabi was a vizier, he set out to find him and wrote to him these lines: Repeat to the vizier, for whose life I would sacrifice my own--repeat to him the words of one who reminds him of what he has forgotten. Do you remember when, in a life of misery, you said: 'Where is death sold, that I may buy it?' The vizier on reading the note recollected the circumstance, and, moved with the joy of doing a generous action, he ordered seven hundred dirhems to be given to the writer, and inscribed these words on the paper: The similitude of those who lay out their substance in the service of God is as a grain of corn which has produced seven ears and in every ear a hundred grains; for God giveth many-fold to whom He pleaseth. He then prayed God's blessing on him, and clothed him in a robe of honour, and appointed him to a place under government, so that"--the corollary seems hardly worth adding--"he might live in easy circumstances."
Poetry was, you see, worth practising in Baghdad in those days; nor had the poets any shame in accepting presents. What princes liked to give it was not for poets to analyse or refuse. Al-Moizz Ibn Badis, sovereign of Ifrikya and the son of Badis, was a patron indeed. "Poets," says Ibn Khallikan, "were loud in his praise, literary men courted his patronage, and all who hoped for gain made his court their halting-place."
To the modern mind he was too easily pleased, if the following story is typical. He was sitting, one day, in his saloon with a number of literary men about him, when, noticing a lemon shaped like a hand and fingers, he asked them to extemporize some verses on that subject. Abd Abu Ali Al-Hasan Ibn Rashik Al-Kairawani at once recited the following lines: A lemon, with its extremities spread out, appears before all eyes without being injured. It seems to hold out a hand towards the Creator, invoking long life to the son of Badis.
Al-Moizz declared the verses excellent and showed more favour to the author than to any other literary man in the assembly.
Ready wit not less than poetical ingenuity could always win the respect of these gentlemen, whose cynical cold-bloodedness and implacability were ever ready to be diverted, provided that the diversion was intellectual. For instance, it is related that Al-Hajjaj said to the brother of Katari: "I shall surely put thee to death."
"Why so?" replied the other.
"On account of thy brother's revolt," answered Al-Hajjaj.
"But I have a letter from the Commander of the Faithful, ordering thee not to punish me for the fault of my brother."
"Produce it."
"I have something stronger than that."
"What is it?"
"The book of Almighty God, wherein He says: 'And no burdened soul shall bear the burden of another.'"
Al-Hajjaj was struck with his answer, and gave him his liberty.
Among the lavish patrons of poets