Arabic Authors | Page 9

15. Muhammad III. 1024-1025 (3) Yabya bin Ali bin Hammud 1025-1027 16. Hisham III. 1027-1031
A complete list of all the Muhammadan rulers in Spain will be found in Makkari's history of these dynasties, translated by Gayangos.
CHAPTER II.
LITERARY.
The oral communications of the ancient Egyptians, Medes and Persians, the two classic tongues of Europe, the Sanscrit of the Hindus and the Hebrew of the Jews, have long since ceased to be living languages. For the last twelve centuries no Western language has preserved its grammar, its style, or its literature intact and intelligible to the people of the present day. But two Eastern tongues have come down from ages past to our own times, and continue to exist unchanged in books, and, to a certain extent, also unchanged in language, and these are Chinese and Arabic. In China, though the dialects differ in the various provinces of the empire, still the written language has remained the same for centuries. In Arabia the Arabic language has retained its originality without very much dialectical alteration.
The unchangeable character of the Arabic language is chiefly to be attributed to the Koran, which has, from its promulgation to the present time, been regarded by all Muhammadans as the standard of religion and of literary composition. Strictly speaking, not only the history, but also the literature of the Arabs begins with Muhammad. Excepting the Mua'llakat, and other pre-Islamitic poems collected in the Hamasas of Abu Tammam and Al-Bohtori, in Ibn Kutaiba and in the Mofaddhaliat, no literary monuments that preceded his time are in existence. The Koran became, not only the code of religious and of civil law, but also the model of the Arabic language, and the standard of diction and eloquence. Muhammad himself scorned metrical rules; he claimed as an apostle and lawgiver a title higher than that of soothsayer and poet. Still, his poetic talent is manifest in numerous passages of the Koran, well known to those able to read it in the original, and in this respect the last twenty-five chapters of that book are, perhaps, the most remarkable.
Although the power of the Arabs has long ago succumbed, their literature has survived, and their language is still more or less spoken in all Muhammadan countries. Europe at one time was lightened by the torch of Arabian learning, and the Middle Ages were stamped with the genius and character of Arab civilization. The great masters of philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics, viz., Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn-Sina, Ibn-Rashid, Ibn Bajah, Razi, Al Battani, Abul Ma'shar, Al-Farghani, Al-Jaber, have been studied both in the Spanish universities and in those of the rest of Europe, where their names are still familiar under the corrupted forms of Alchendius, Alfarabius, Avicenna, Averroes, Avempace, Rhazes, Albategnius, Albumasar, Alfraganius, and Geber.
Arabic literature commenced about half a century before Muhammad with a legion of poets. The seven poems suspended in the temple of Mecca, and of which more anon, were considered as the chief productions of that time. The Mussulman era begins with the Hijrah, or emigration of Muhammad from Mecca to Madinah, which is supposed to have taken place on the 20th of June, A.D. 622; and the rise, growth, and decay of Arab power, learning, and literature may be divided into three periods as follows:
1. The time before Muhammad.
2. From Muhammad and his immediate successors, viz., Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman, and Ali, through the Omaiyide and Abbaside dynasties, to the end of the Khalifate of Baghdad, A.D. 1258.
3. From the fall of Baghdad to the present time.
First Period.
Although the proper history of Arabian literature begins from the time of Muhammad, it is necessary to cast a glance upon the age that preceded him, in order to obtain a glimpse of pre-Islamitic wisdom. The sage Lokman, whose name the thirty-first chapter of the Koran bears, is considered, according to that book, to have been the first man of his nation who practised and taught wisdom in all his deeds and words. He was believed to have been a contemporary of David and Solomon; his sayings and his fables still exist, but there is not much really known about him, as the following extracts will show:
'Lokman, a philosopher mentioned in the Koran, is said to have been born about the time of David. One tradition represents him as a descendant of the Arab tribe of Ad, who, on account of his piety and wisdom, was saved when the rest of his family perished by Divine wrath. According to another story he was an Ethiopian slave, noted alike for bodily deformity and a gift for composing fables and apologues. This account of Lokman, resembling so closely the traditional history of ?sop, has led to an opinion that they were the same individual, but this is now generally supposed not to be the case. The various