The Diwan of Abul-Ala | Page 7

this quatrain we may quote
Blunt's rendering of Zohair:
I have learned that he who giveth nothing, deaf to his friends' begging,
loosed shall be to the world's tooth-strokes: fools' feet shall tread on
him.
As for the power of the weak, we have some instances from Abbaside
history. One of the caliphs wanted to do deeds of violence in Baghdad.
Scornfully he asked of his opponents if they could prevent him. "Yes,"

they answered, "we will fight you with the arrows of the night." And he
desisted from his plans. Prayers, complaints, and execrations which the
guiltless, fighting his oppressor, sends up to heaven are called the
arrows of the night and are, the Arabs tell us, invariably successful.
This belief may solace you for the foundation of suffering (quatrain
71), which, by the way, is also in the philosophic system of Zeno the
Stoic. Taking the four elements of Empedocles, he says that three of
them are passive, or suffering, elements while only fire is active, and
that not wholly. It was Zeno's opinion that everything must be active or
must suffer. . . . An explanation for our suffering is given by Soame
Jenyns, who flourished in the days when, as his editor could write,
referring to his father Sir Roger Jenyns, "the order of knighthood was
received by gentlemen with the profoundest gratitude." Soame's thesis
is his "Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil," that human
sufferings are compensated by the enjoyment possibly experienced by
some higher order of beings which inflict them, is ridiculed by Samuel
Johnson. We have Jenyns's assurance that
To all inferior animals 'tis given To enjoy the state allotted them by
Heav'n.
And (quatrain 75) we may profitably turn to Coleridge:
Oh, what a wonder seems the fear of death! Seeing how gladly we all
sink to sleep; Babes, children, youths and men, Night following night,
for threescore years and ten.
We should be reconciled, says Abu'l-Ala (quatrain 76), even to the
Christian kings of Ghassan, in the Hauran. These were the hereditary
enemies of the kings of Hirah. On behalf of the Greek emperors of
Constantinople they controlled the Syrian Arabs. But they disappeared
before the triumphant Moslems, the last of their kings being Jabalah II.,
who was dethroned in the year 637. His capital was Bosra, on the road
between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. Nowadays the district
is chiefly occupied by nomads; to the Hebrews it was known as Bashan,
famous for its flocks and oak plantations. We can still discern the traces
of troglodyte dwellings of this epoch. The afore-mentioned Jabalah was
a convert to Islam, but, being insulted by a Mahometan, he returned to
Christianity and betook himself to Constantinople, where he died. But
in the time of Abu'l-Ala, the Ghassanites were again in the exercise of
authority. "These were the kings of Ghassan," says Abu'l-Ala, "who

followed the course of the dead; each of them is now but a tale that is
told, and God knows who is good." A poet is a liar, say the Arabs, and
the greatest poet is the greatest liar. But in this case Abu'l-Ala in prose
was not so truthful as in poetry; for if Jabalah's house had vanished, the
Ghassanites were still a power. The poet, for our consolation, has a
simile (quatrain 77) that may be put against a passage of Homer:
As with autumnal harvests cover'd o'er, And thick bestrown, lies Ceres'
sacred floor, When round and round, with never-weary'd pain The
trampling steers beat out th' unnumber'd grain: So the fierce coursers,
as the chariot rolls, Tread down whole ranks, and crush out heroes'
souls.[16]
For everything there is decay, and (quatrain 78) for the striped garment
of a long cut which now we are unable to identify.
We read in the Wisdom of Solomon: "As when an arrow is shot at a
mark, it parteth the air which immediately cometh together again, so
that a man cannot know where it went through." In this place (quatrain
84), if the weapon's road of air is not in vain it will discover justice in
the sky. How much the Arabs were averse from frigid justice is to be
observed in the matter of recompense for slaying. There existed a
regular tariff--so many camels or dates--but they looked askance upon
the person who was willing to accept this and forgo his vengeance. If a
man was anxious to accept a gift as satisfaction and at the same time to
escape reproach, he shot an arrow into the air. Should it come down
unspotted, he was able to accept the gift; if it was bloody, then he was
obliged to seek for blood. The Arabs, by the way, had been addicted to
an ancient game, but Islam