HISTORY OF ARABIC LITERATURE pdf download

history of Arabic literature

HISTORY OF ARABIC LITERATURE

Range after range of grey serrated mountain peaks; southward, again, huge plains, stretching to endless horizons, and strewn with blackish pebbles;

and, last, of all, the sandy Desert, tinged with red, its rolling drifts blew hither and thither by the winds, to the unceasing terror of the traveler:

such are the regions that part Arabia from the rest of the earth, and which made it for so long a time a land of mystery. On every other side, the sea.

 The Red Sea, with its depths, peopled with myriad madrepores, its dangerous reefs just hidden be¬ neath the surface of the waters.

The Indian Ocean, with its periodical monsoons, and its wild hurricanes raging over the open.

The Persian Gulf, whose wavelets die on the alluvia of two great historic rivers—Euphrates and Tigris.

 In the center of the Peninsula, tall, bare mountains rise once more. About their feet, where water springs are found, stand towns, with palm groves clustering around them.

On the sea, the coast is many ports, where ships embark on the produce of the country—dates, coffee, gums, and balsams, while some small quantities of European exports are landed in exchange.

From time immemorial, the nomad Arabs, owners of great flocks and herds, have wandered to and fro upon this territory, moving their camps of black camel’s hair¬ cloth tents whithersoever the grass grows or a tiny rill of water tinkles;

 journeying from one point to another on single-humped camels—the only steed the nature of the country will permit—in endless caravans, which sometimes become warlike expeditions.

What is this nation, which at one moment of its history leaped up before the world in sudden and amazing fortune, overthrowing the great Persian Empire of the Sasanians, and defeating the Roman Legions of the Lower Empire?

One burst of enthusiasm—it was but a flash—sent forth these men (who had done naught, hitherto, but quarrel over a good camping-ground, or fight to avenge some wrong) to conquer the whole world. But the Bedouin fell back ere long into his primitive way of life.

Lovingly has he clung to the native ignorance, which he never would cast off.

 As for the town-bred Arab, intercourse with Syrian and Chaldean merchants, before the days of Islam, and with the pilgrims who have gathered to venerate the Sacred Temple of Mecca, the Ka’ba and its Black Stone, ever since the times of Mahomet the Prophet, has done something,

 it may be—but little enough—towards his civilization, and those vices which are the virtues of the primitive man—cunning, greed, suspicion, cruelty— reign unchecked, even to this day, in the hearts of the dwellers in these inaccessible towns.