A Boswell of Baghdad

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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 aeons
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 Khayyam'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 Khayyam 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."

The grammarian Moad Ibn Muslim Al-Harra left some good poetry, which he
gave as having been uttered by genii, demons and female demons. The
caliph Ar-Raschid once said to him: "If thou sawest what thou hast
described, thou hast seen wonders; if not, thou hast composed a nice
piece of literature."

An-Nahhas the grammarian who, on being given a turban-cloth, would cut
it into three from avarice, met his death, in 950, in an unfortunate
manner--being, although living in so remote a period, mistaken for a
"profiteer." I quote Ibn Khallikan's words: "He had seated himself on
the staircase of the Nilometer, by the side of the river, which was then
on the increase, and began to scan some verses according to the rules of
prosody, when a common fellow who heard him said: 'This man is
pronouncing a charm to prevent the overflow of the Nile, so as to raise
the price of provisions.' He then thrust him with his foot into the
river and nothing more was heard of him."

Not all these learned men were philosophical, even though they were
philosophers. Abu Nizar Ibn Safi Malik An-Nuhat assumed the title
"Prince of Grammarians," but if any other name was given to him by those
addressing him he would fly into a passion.

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