The Assmeblies Of Al Hariri Vol-1

Front matter

ASSEMBLIES OF AL HARIRI

THE

ASSEMBLIES OF AL HAEIRI,

Preface

have great historical or political importance. Por the full tmdei'standing of its sisters, the Hebrew and the Syriac, and its vassals, the Persian and the Turkish, the language of the Arabian Peninsula must he studied. These latter modem tongues, especially, can only be known inadequately and superficially by one who is not well grounded in Arabic. The great epic poet of the Persians does, indeed, use the pure speech of Iran ; hut succeeding ages brought in a flood of Arabic words and idioms, until the literary Persian assumed the composite diction which now confuses our Indian learners. The literary Turkish is even more largely commingled. It borrowed both directly from the Arabs and indirectly through the Persians. Without a know¬ ledge of Arabic it is difficult to read intelligently the Odes of Baki, and still more the historical and official writings of the modern Osmanlis. Por though the polyglot dictionaries of the East may give the student a vague knowlege of individual Arabic words as they appear in other languages, yet, without a grammatical knowledge, as for instance, of the structure of the verb, and the mechanism of what are called the broken plurals, even .the vocabulary must be misty to his eyes ; while of the references and allusions to Arabic litera¬ ture, and the perpetual iktibds or quotation of the Koran, he must remain wholly ignorant.

PREFACE.

Vll

The difficulty of the Arabic language has, however, confined the thorough study of it to very few, to the detriment of all Oriental learning. It is with the desire to smooth the path of the student that I have undertaken to translate and annotate the work of the most learned and eloquent of the Arabic authors. A translation may have two objects ; it may be cither intended to display the ti-anslator’s felicity of diction, as when scholars produce English versions of Anacreon or Horace for the amusement of those who arc well acquainted with the originals, a piirsuit for which I cannot say that I have any high esteem; or it may be intended to fae-ilitato th(> study of a difficult original, while it gives the translator’s countrymen generally some acquaintance witli a foreign author who deserves to bo known by them, thougli they cannot hope to learn his language. Tlu^ latter has been the object proposed in the present translation. It is a lit(n-al prose render¬ ing of tlio Makamat, intended primarily to help the student in Arabic, and with this view I have always guard(id mysdf from being seducod into paraphrase by th(^ desir(! of elegance. The text of the author has been rendered throughout as closely as is consistent with intelligibility; but the translation will, I believe, liave lost nothing thereby, for readers of true taste will prefer that the idiom of the original, strange and uncouth as

Tin

PREFACE.

it sometimes may be, should pierce through the version, rather than that Hariri’s diction should be, as it were, melted down and remoulded into the current English of the nineteenth century.

In this version there is no attempt to imitate the plays on words, or the rhyme of the original. Such a resemblance in form could only be attained by the abandonment of all accuracy, and the sacrifice of the chief object for which the translation has been under¬ taken. But the parallelistic rhythm of the original has been sufB.ciently preserved, and on the whole the reader will be able to gain from this version a fair idea of the form in which Hariri cast his thoughts. If I have adopted at times a somewhat antiquated diction it has been naturally suggested by the work itself. One of the earliest students of the Assemblies, the learned and critical Albert Schultens, perceived the essential cha¬ racter of Hariri’s style. He says, ^‘Hm faces quicquid tenebrarum stilus Haririi grandisonus ac mille floribus figurisque variegatus offundebat diseussere, laborem quern in eo, a eapite ad calcem, describendo impendebam compensante summa animi voluptate ; eo quod hoe ia scriptore reperirem id quod spe atque cogitatione prseceperam, eminentem et expressam imaginem priscrn illius grandiloquentiee Orientalis, qu4 liber Jobi exaratus est, qu^que in Psalmis, in Proverbiis, in rcliquo cor-

FREFACE.

The notes haye been primarily designed for the student, but care has been taken that the allusions in the text shall be sufficiently explained for the general reader. The legends of the heroic warriors of the Ig¬ norance, Apa^iat apeiov avdoi, their proverbial utterances, their genealogies, their feuds, their Days or battles, their usages and habits of life, are illustrated from many sources, and references are given which will further aid the student. As this pagan antiquity was one of the chief studies of the learned, and its influence largely pervades the Assemblies, some knowledge of it is necessary to a reader of Ilariri. In the grammatical notes I have throughout followed the system of the Arabs, being convinced of the futility of the efforts which have been made by European scholars to remould the Arabic grammar on the principles of the Latin; to say nothing of the necessity that the student should understand the grammatical and rhetorical terms of the native writers, without a knowledge of which their commentaries and explanations are unintelligible. In some of the notes, as those to the Twenty-fourth Assem¬ bly, rather abstruse questions are discussed, but they will have no exceeding difficulty to any one who has taken the right road in learning the languagi'.

X

PREFACE.

In writing Arabic names and words with. European letters I have desired to combine sufficient accuracy with such a representation of the word as shall not be pedantic or uncouth. The Arabic scholar will soon perceive the system that has been adopted. Fetliah is represented by a or e, and dammah by o or m, hesreh being represented by i. The long syllables are indi¬ cated by o, u. In non-Arabic names I have generally followed the popular spelling, as it is to be found in European books ; some well-known names also, as Basra, Elufa, Medina, Mecca, are written in the same manner. Following high authority I have paid no attention to the i‘rdb in composite Arabic names. Notwithstanding all the care that has been bestowed on the proofs, it will be found that the subscribed points and other signs by which the Arabic letters are indicated in English type have been occasionally omitted or misplaced. These in¬ accuracies are, however, few and trifling.

The present volume contains a long Introduction, which dispenses with the necessity of saying more in this place ; it contains also the opening Address of Hariri, and the first twenty-six Assemblies. With the second volume there will be published an Index to the entire work.

Page 12, line 12, for mezduj read muzdawij.

Page 41, line 28, and page 86, line 15, for Muzaykiah read Muzaykiyd. Page 101, line 2% for Laudian read’Loxd^ Almoner's.

Pago 472, line 22, after any other read than a.