Chapter 1

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A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD

OTHER WORKS BY E. V. LUCAS

The Vermilion Box Landmarks Listener's Lure Mr. Ingleside Over Bemerton's London Lavender Cloud and Silver Loiterer's Harvest One Day and Another Fireside and Sunshine Character and Comedy Old Lamps for New The Hambledon Men The Open Road The Friendly Town Her Infinite Variety Good Company The Gentlest Art The Second Post A Little of Everything Harvest Home Variety Lane The Best of Lamb The Life of Charles Lamb A Swan and Her Friends London Revisited A Wanderer in Venice A Wanderer in Paris A Wanderer in London A Wanderer in Holland A Wanderer in Florence The British School Highways and Byways in Sussex Anne's Terrible Good Nature The Slowcoach Remember Louvain! Swollen-Headed William

and

The Pocket Edition of the Works of Charles Lamb: I. Miscellaneous Prose; II. Elia; III. Children's Books; IV. Poems and Plays; V. and VI. Letters.

A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD

WITH DIVERSIONS

BY

E. V. LUCAS

THIRD EDITION

METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON

_This Book was First Published September 20th 1917_

_Second Edition December 1917_

_Third Edition 1918_

CONTENTS

PAGE

A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD 1

DIVERSIONS--

NURSES 93

NO. 344260 99

THE TWO PERKINSES 106

ARTS OF INVASION 118

THE MARBLE ARCH AND PETER MAGNUS 128

THE OLDEST JOKE 133

THE PUTTENHAMS 140

POETRY MADE EASY 148

A PIONEER 153

FULL CIRCLE 158

A FRIEND OF MAN 164

THE LISTENER 171

THE DARK SECRET 176

THE SCHOLAR AND THE PIRATE 180

A SET OF THREE 191

A LESSON 196

ON BELLONA'S HEM (SECOND SERIES)--

A REVEL IN GAMBOGIA 201

THE MISFIRE 207

A LETTER 212

A MANOR IN THE AIR 219

RIVALRY 223

A FIRST COMMUNION IN THE WAR ZONE 229

THE ACE OF DIAMONDS 234

THE REWARD OF OUR BROTHER THE POILU 239

NOTE 245

=A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD=

A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD

I.--INTRODUCTORY

A curious and very entertaining work lies before me, or, to be more accurate, ramparts me, for it is in four ponderous volumes, capable, each, even in less powerful hands than those of the Great Lexicographer, of felling a bookseller. At these volumes I have been sipping, beelike, at odd times for some years, and I now propose to yield some of the honey--the season having become timely, since the great majority of the heroes of its thousands of pages hail from Baghdad; and Baghdad, after all its wonderful and intact Oriental past, is to-day under Britain's thumb.

The title of the book is _Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary_, translated from the Arabic by Bn Mac Guckin de Slane, and printed in Paris for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1842-71, some centuries after it was written, for its author was dead before Edward II ascended the English throne. Who would expect Sir Sidney Lee to have had so remote an exemplar?

Remote not only in time but in distance. For although we may go to the East for religions and systems of philosophy that were old and proved worthy centuries before Hellenism or Christianity, yet we do not usually find there models for our works of reference. Hardly does Rome give us those. But there is an orderliness and thoroughness about Ibn Khallikan's methods which the _Dictionary of National Biography_ does not exceed. The Persian may be more lenient to floridity ("No flowers, by request," was, it will be remembered, the first English editor's motto), but in his desire to leave out no one who ought to be in and to do justice to his inclusions he is beyond praise.

The modernity of the ancients is continually surprising us. It is one of the phenomena to which we are never quite inured (and could we be so we should perhaps merely substitute the antiquity of the moderns as a new source of wonder), but towards such inuring Ibn Khallikan should certainly help, since he was eminently a gossip, and in order to get human nature's fidelity to the type--no matter where found, whether æons ago or to-day, whether in savage lands or, as we say, civilized--brought home to us, it is to the gossips that we must resort: to the Pepyses and Boswells rather than to the Goethes and Platos; to the little recorders rather than the great thinkers. The small traits tell.

Ibn Khallikan's Dictionary is as interesting as it is, not because its author had any remarkable instinct as a biographer, or any gift of selection, but because if a man sets out to take account of everything, much human nature and a little excellence are bound to creep in.

I do not pretend to have dug in these volumes with any great seriousness. My object has been to extract what was odd and simple and most characteristic, in short, what was most human, and there is enough residuum for a horde of other miners. But I warn them that the dross is considerable. Ibn Khallikan's leniency to trivialities is incorrigible, and his pages are filled with pointless anecdotes, dull sayings, and poetry whose only recommendation is its richness in the laboured conceits that he loved. So much did he esteem them that were, say, all English intellectual effort in every direction at his disposal to descant upon, his favourite genius would probably be John Lyly.

But although most of the poetry admired and quoted by Ibn Khallikan is marked by affectation, now and then--but very rarely--it is beautifully simple. Thus, in one of the poems of Ibn Zuhr, a learned Moslim teacher and physician of Spain (1113-99), is expressed, with a tenderness and charm that no modern or no Greek of the Anthology could exceed, the ardent desire which he felt for the sight of his child, from whom he happened to be separated: _I have a little one, a tender nestling, with whom I have left my heart. I dwell far from him; how desolate I feel in the absence of that little person and that little face. He longs for me, and I long for him; for me he weeps, and I weep for him. Our affectionate wishes are weary with passing from him to me, from me to him._

II.--IBN KHALLIKAN

Let me say something as to who Ibn Khallikan was. His father, Muhammad Ibn Ibrahim, was professor in the college at Arbela founded by Kukuburi, or the Blue Wolf, the governor of that city and the region of which it was the capital, the brother-in-law of Salah Ad-Din, the sultan, whom we in England know as Saladin, the enemy of the Cross, and the son of Ali Ibn Bektikin, known as "Little Ali, the Ornament of Religion." Kukuburi, who, although standing for the Crescent and all that was most abhorrent to our Crusaders, was famous as a founder of asylums, schools, hospitals for the blind, homes for widows, orphanages, and so forth, made special favourites of the family of which Ibn Khallikan was a scion. Ibn himself was born on September 22, 1211, and before he was two had begun instruction by his father and was the recipient of a certificate from Zainab, a very learned lady, stating that he was an industrious pupil.

In 1229, after having already read and studied much, particularly theology and law, Ibn Khallikan left Arbela with his brother and entered the college at Aleppo, then an educational centre, remaining until 1234. After this he moved from one place to another, always seeking more knowledge, until 1247-8, when he is found at Cairo occupying a seat in the imperial tribunal and acting as deputy for the kadi Sinjar, chief judge and magistrate of all Egypt. Later he himself became the kadi of Al-Mahalla, and by 1256, when he was forty-five, he had married, become a father, and had completed the first copy of his _Biographical Dictionary_, which was, of course, as we must always remember in connexion with the books mentioned in these Lives, a manuscript.

In 1261 he was appointed chief kadi over all the provinces of Syria, with his tribunal at Damascus, in which post he remained for ten years. He was not, however, sole kadi for long, as three others were appointed to assist him: a development that was meat and drink to the local satirists, one of whom wrote: _The men of Damascus are bewildered with the multitude of legal decisions. Their kadis are all suns, and yet they are in the dark._ Another said: _The people of Damascus have witnessed a perfect miracle: the greater the number of suns the more the world is in the dark._ Being found wanting, and replaced, Ibn Khallikan took a professorship in Cairo, learned by heart further enormous quantities of poetry, and engaged in literary discussions which, judging by a specimen given in one of his Lives, were even more futile than discussions usually are.

The vicissitudes of fortune, always noticeably extreme in the East, brought him again to be kadi at Damascus in 1278, when his reappointment was signalized by public ceremonies, including the composition by numberless poets of congratulatory and adulatory verses, which must have been very dear to his simple old heart, and not the less so because he may have discovered from his astonishing repertory that not all were strictly original: such discoveries and the tracing back of the loans to their fount being the greatest of his pleasures.

Thereafter, until the year 1281, the Kadi lived with much honour, famed as the most learned and widely-read personage in Damascus, filling his house with scholars and discursive amateurs of verse, and engaging in conversations that are described by a friend as "most instructive, being entirely devoted to learned investigations and the elucidation of obscure points."

But Ibn Khallikan, who was now nearing three-score years and ten, was destined still to misfortune, for suddenly, in 1281, he was deposed from his kadi-ship and, more than that, thrown into prison on the charge of having made a remark detrimental to the sultan, Kalavun. A pardon soon after arriving, he was liberated and again reinstated; but after ten more months as a kadi he was, in 1282, dismissed finally, and this time he refused ever more to leave his house, and died there in the same year.

Not a word (you will say) so far as to Baghdad. But although Ibn Khallikan spent most of his life in Egypt or Syria, the greater number of his heroes were, as I have said, citizens all of the city of the romance which recently has fallen to Sir Stanley Maude's gallant forces. Yet of the romance which we shall always associate with Baghdad he knew nothing. To him it was delectable (and perhaps even romantic too--each of us having his own conception of what romance is) because grave bearded men there taught religion, explained the _Koran_, disputed as to points of grammar, exchanged sarcasms and swapped verses. Not, however, as I hope to show, unamusingly.

What indeed I particularly like about the book is the picture that it gives of sardonic pleasantry and intellectual and sophisticated virtuosity going quietly on side by side with all the splendours and barbarities of absolute autocracy and summary jurisdiction. It throws a new or unaccustomed light on those days. Not even yet--not even in Bloomsbury, where the poets meet--have we in England anything quite like it; whereas when Baghdad and Damascus were the theatres of these poetical and hair-splitting competitions our ancestors had but just got the woad off.

III.--MEN OF LETTERS

Those of us who know Baghdad only through the _Arabian Nights_ and the ingenious productions of Mr. Oscar Asche, were not prepared for such a complete foreshadowing of the literary life and the literary temperament as Ibn Khallikan gives us.

Here, for example, is a poem by a book-lover--or manuscript-lover, to be more exact--written by Ibn Faris Ar-Razi, the philologer, who died before the Norman Conquest, which a later Occidental can cheerfully accept and could not much improve upon: _They asked me how I was. I answered: "Well, some things succeed and some fail; when my heart is filled with cares I say: 'One day perhaps they may be dispelled.' A cat is my companion; books, the friends of my heart; and a lamp, my beloved consort."_ That is modern enough! Something of this kind, which is an earlier version of Omar Khayyám's famous recipe for earthly bliss, has often been attempted since by our own poets; but nothing better. Favourite books, a lighted lamp, a faithful cat, and the library were paradise enow. It is odd, by the way, that Omar Khayyám himself, although his dates qualify him, is not found in this work. But to make tents, even with leanings towards astronomy, was no high road to Ibn Khallikan's sympathies. Had Omar explained the _Koran_ or had views on the suffixes of words, all would have been well.

While on the subject of sufficient paradises let me quote some verses by Ibn Sukkara Al-Hashimi, a famous Baghdad poet of the tenth century: _The winter set in, and I provided myself with seven things necessary when the rain prevents us from pursuing our usual occupations. These things are: A shelter, a purse, a stove, a cup of wine preceded by a bit of meat, a tender maid, and a cloak._

Ibn Khallikan does not let it stop there, but fishes up from his memory a derivative, by Ibn Al-Taawizi, running thus: _When seven things are collected together in the drinking-room, it is not reasonable to stay away. These are: Roast meat, a melon, honey, a young girl, wax-lights, a singer to delight us, and wine._

So much for the modernity and sense of comfort of the Persian author, as he flourished in Baghdad all those years ago. But there was then still more in publishing than yet meets the eye. The books of the juriconsult, Al-Mawardi, for example, reached posterity almost by chance. While he lived he did not publish any of his works but put them all up together in safety. On the approach of death, however, he said to a person who possessed his confidence: "The books in such a place were composed by me, but I abstained from publishing them, because I suspected, although my intention in writing them was to work in God's service, that that feeling, instead of being pure, was sullied by baser motives. Therefore, when you perceive me on the point of death and falling into agony, take my hand in yours, and if I press it, you will know thereby that none of these works has been accepted [by God] from me. In this case, you must take them all and throw them by night into the Tigris. But if I open my hand and close it not, that is the sign of their having been accepted, and that my hope in the admission of my intention as sincere and pure, has been fulfilled."

"When Al-Mawardi's death drew near," said his friend, "I took him by the hand, and he opened it without closing it on mine, whence I knew that his labours had been accepted, and I then published his works."--But what a responsibility for a friend!

Penmanship being, of course, the only medium between author and readers in those days, it follows that calligraphy was held in high esteem, and among famous calligraphers was Kabus Ibn Wushmaghir, who, although "the greatest of princes, the star of the age, and the source of justice and beneficence," thought it worth while (as all mighty rulers have not) to write a most beautiful hand. When the Sahib Ibn Abbad saw pieces in his handwriting, he used to say: "This is either the writing of Kabus or the wing of a peacock"; and he would then recite these verses of Al-Mutanabbi's: _In every heart is a passion for his handwriting; it might be said that the ink which he employed was a cause of love. His presence is a comfort for every eye, and his absence an affliction._

The extraordinary literary activity of those times may be illustrated by the following passage dropped casually into the biographical notice of Ali Talib: "The grandson of this thief was the famous Al-Asmai, the philologer, who composed treatises on the following subjects: the human frame; the different species of animals; on the _anwa_, or influence of the stars on the weather; on the letter _hamza_; on the long and the short _elif_; on the difference between the names given to the members of the human body and those given to the same members in animals; on epithets; on the doors of tents; on games of chance played with arrows; on the frame of the horse; on horses; on camels; on sheep; on tents; on wild beasts; on the first and fourth form of certain verbs; on proverbs; on words bearing each two opposite significations; a vocabulary; on weapons; on dialects; on the springs of water frequented by the nomadic Arabs; a collection of anecdotes; on the principles of discourse; on the heart; on synonymous terms; on the Arabian peninsula; on the formation of derivative words; on the ideas which usually occur in poetry; on nouns of action; on _rajaz_ verses; on the palm-tree; on plants; on homonymous terms; on the obscure expressions met with in the Traditions; on the witticisms of the desert Arabs." Ibn closes the list with the word "etc." The late John Timbs could hardly beat this record of industry and versatility.

There is hope for authors in the following story of Ibn Al-Khashshab, who knew the _Koran_ by heart and was a scholar of considerable attainments. "When he died," says the Katib Imad Ad-Din, "I was in Syria, and I saw him one night in a dream, and said to him: 'How has God treated thee?'

"'Well,' he replied.

"'Does God show mercy to literary men?'

"'Yes.'

"'And if they have been remiss?'

"'A severe reprimand will be given, but,' Al-Khashshab was moved to add, and let us never forget it, 'then will come eternal happiness.'"

There are other scraps of consolation, scattered about the volumes, which apply not alone to men of letters. The Prophet, for example, once said: "Every lie shall be written down as a lie by the recording angels, with the exception of three: a lie told in order to reconcile two men; a lying promise made by a man to his wife; and a lie in which a man, when engaged in war, makes a promise or a threat."

But the most solacing sentiment in the whole four volumes is by the poet Abu Nuwas Ibn Hani, who carried Hedonism very far: _Multiply thy sins to the utmost, for thou art to meet an indulgent Lord. When thou comest before Him, thou shalt behold mercy and meet the great, the powerful King. Then thou shalt gnaw thy hands with regret, for the pleasures which thou avoidedst through fear of hell._--It is, says Ibn Khallikan, a "very fine and original thought." It could certainly be a very stimulating one.

IV.--THE FIRST GRAMMARIAN

Grammarians and Traditionists (both given also to poesy) being Ibn Khallikan's real heroes, let me say something of each. A Traditionist was a learned man intimate with the _Koran_, whose duty it was to separate the spurious traditions which so naturally would have collected around such a figure as Muhammad from the true. As to the importance of the _Koran_ in Moslim life and its place as the foundation of all Moslim learning, let the translator of Ibn Khallikan be heard. "The necessity," he says, "of distinguishing the genuine Traditions from the false gave rise to new branches of literature. A just appreciation of the credit to which each Traditionist was entitled could only be formed from a knowledge of his moral character, and this could be best estimated from an examination of his life. Hence the numerous biographical works arranged in chronological order and containing short accounts of the principal Traditionists and doctors of the law, with the indication of their tutors and their pupils, the place of their birth and residence, the race from which they sprung, and the year of their death. This again led Moslim critics to the study of genealogy and geography. The use of writing existed in Arabia before the promulgation of Islamism, but grammar was not known as an art till the difficulty of reciting the _Koran_ correctly induced the khalif Ali to make it an object of his attention. He imposed on Abu 'l-Aswad Ad-Duwali the task of drawing up such instructions as would enable the Moslims to read their sacred book and speak their language without making gross faults."

Another version of the beginnings of grammar eliminates the khalif Ali altogether. The story goes that as Abu 'l-Aswad Ad-Duwali (603-88) entered his house on a certain day, one of his daughters said to him: "Papa! what is most beautiful in the sky?"

To this he answered: "Its stars."

But she replied: "Papa, I do not mean what is the most beautiful object in it; I was only expressing my admiration at its beauty."

"In that case you must say," he observed, "'How beautiful is the sky!'"

Upon thinking this over, says Ibn Khallikan, Abu 'l-Aswad invented the art of grammar.

Abu 'l-Aswad Ad-Duwali thus is the father of this book, for had there been no grammarians I am sure that Ibn Khallikan would never have written it. Poetry tickled him; but grammar was his chief delight, as it was the chief delight of all his friends and, one gathers, of all Baghdad. Here is an example: "Al-Mamun, having asked Al-Yazidi about something, received from him this answer: 'No; and may God accept my life as a ransom for yours, Commander of the Faithful!'

"'Well said!' exclaimed the khalif. 'Never was the word _and_ better placed than in the praise which you have just uttered.'" He then made him a present.

We get an insight both into the passion for the new science of grammar and what might be called the physical humour of the East in this anecdote. Abu Safwan Khalid Ibn Safwan, a member of the tribe of Tamim, was celebrated as an eloquent speaker. He used to visit Bilal Ibn Abi Burda and converse with him, but his language was frequently ungrammatical. This grew at length so irksome that Bilal said to him: "O Khalid! you make me narrations fit for khalifs to hear, but you commit as many faults against grammar as the women who carry water in the streets."

Stung with this reproach, Khalid went to learn grammar at the mosque, and some time after lost his sight. From that period, whenever Bilal rode by in state, he used to ask who it was, and on being answered that it was the Emir, he would say: "There goes a summer-cloud, soon to be dispelled."

When this was told to Bilal, he exclaimed: "By Allah! it shall not be dispelled till he get a full shower from it;" and he then ordered him a whipping of two hundred strokes.

When books were so few and most learning came through the ear, memory had to be cultivated. The Traditionist, Ibn Rahwaih, was a Macaulay in his way. "I know," he used to say, "by heart seventy thousand traditions; I have read one hundred thousand, and can recollect in what work each is to be found. I never heard anything once without learning it by heart, nor learned anything by heart which I afterwards forgot."

The sittings of the teacher, Ibn Al-Aarabi (767-846), who knew by heart more poetry than any man ever seen, were crowded by people anxious for instruction. Abu 'l-Abbas Thalah said: "I attended the sittings held by Ibn Al-Aarabi, and saw there upwards of one hundred persons, some asking him questions and others reading to him; he answered every question without consulting a book. I followed his lessons upwards of ten years, and I never saw him with a book in his hand; and yet he dictated to his pupils camel-loads of philological information."