What about the sciences of language?
Well, the Arabic language became an object of study, and a new science of language developed, which embraced grammar, rhetoric, prosody, and so on. The closely associated science of philology, concerned with editions and interpretations of the ancient works, also emerged, as did a body of commentaries on the Qur’an, on the collected traditions, and on the ancient poems. Poetry had now become literature. A historical literature of colossal scope was produced, which comprised general world and Islamic history and the histories of individual countries and cities, with an incessant stream of biograhies forming by no means the least important element. The lands of Islam were described, partly by public functionaries and direcors of posts, who were acquanited through their official duties with the various regions and their roads, and also by private travelers, who recounted their personal observations and experiences. There was also a wide range of light literature, poems, stories, and so on.
What was the role of non-Arabs in creating Arabic literature?
Well, we can say that only a small portion of the vast body of literature that evolved in this fasion was written by Arabs, but its language was Arabic, and Islam must have the credit for it, since Islam was bound up with the Arabic language through the Holy Qur’an.
Now let’s talk about the processes of composition and transmission of Books. What was the role of the mosque in this respect?
The starting point and center of the prodigious literary activity that developed in Islamic lands was the mosque. People did not merely foregather for religious services: the government’s public announcements were made in the mosque; judicial proceedings were held there; and, most notably, every aspect of the intellectual life of Islam was cultivated in the mosque. Education took place in the mosque, where the teacher sat surrounded by a circle (halqa) of young peole, drilling them in the knowledge required of a Muslim; but it was not mere instruction alone that went on. In the mosque scholars of distinguished reputation recounted the results of their studies, their audiences consisting not only of young pupils but also of other scholars and educated lay people. The cultural basis was common to the entire Islamic world. Scholars formed a kind of fraternity, and though each might have his special field of learning, there were no no hard and fast boundaries.
You mean every scholar was knowledgeable in all brances?
In most of the cases: the philologist was also a Qur’anic exegete, a theologian, philosopher, historian, and so forth, and every man of education had his portion of this universal knowledge.
What about functionaries seated in their offices, including the wazirs and other powerful men?
They were often scholars who did not merely listen to lectures in the mosques but might themselves attract a circle around them now and then as they discoursed. Scholars might also, of course, address gatherigns of people in their own homes. Al-Ahmar (d. 810), who succeeded al-Kisā’ī as tutor to the children of al-Rashīd, delivered his lectures in his own palatial residence, where his audience was supplied with all necessary writing materials and he himself arrived with his clothes smelling of musk and incense. The audience preferred al-Farrā’, who sat at the door while they squatted in the dust in front of him. (Irshād, V, 110).
What was the root of intellectual life?
Its rooting was in religion, the basis of Muslim society, which created a respect for it such that rulers and rich men opened their doors to the representatives of the intellectual life and freque3ntly lavished large sums of money on them. It is to be noted that notables and dignitaries would often assemble at the mosque as a group to deliberate on scholarly and literary questions, and scholars themselves commonly came together in majlis, i.e. concourse, for munāzara, i.e. discussions. Sometimes these might take place in the mosque as a supplement to the discourses. One renowned grammarian, Tha’lab (d. 904), says of a colleague: “I have not missed Ibrāhīm al-Harbi at a concourse on language in fifty years.” Muslims love company and conversation, and from the very beginning communication of the products of the intellect has had a personal character.
Does it account for traveling so widely for intellectual pursuits?
Yes, they wanted to hear eminent personages discoursing about their own works. The many books written about learned men leave a strong impression of this intense life of study, which leads young and old from one end of the far-flung world of Islam to the other.
Could you cite a random example?
For instance, Yāqūt (d. 1229) in his seven-volume work on “Learned Literary Men,” makes mention of the wanderings of a certain Muhammad b. ‘Abdallāh, who was born in Murcia, spain in the second half of the 12th century. He journeyed to cairo in 1210, proceeding from there to Mecca and Medina and on to Baghdad, where he remained for some time at the Nizāmīyya College; then he went to Wāsiţ, another town in Iraq, then to Hamadān in western Persia and Nishābūr in eastern Persia; again he traveled further eastward to Marv and to Harāt in Afghanistan, returning from there to Baghdad; later he traveled to Allepo, Damascus, and Mosul, where Yāqūt met him; then he spent more time in Mecca, Medina, and Damascus; finally he went to Cairo, where Yāqūt encountered him again after a number of years. Thus he was traveling for seventeen years and of course he made notes everywhere he went. Yāqūt was able to enumerate a long list of books written by him. Yāqūt relates of another individual that he traveled for twenty-seven years and that the scholars wom he heard numbered three thousand. This itinerant life developed most fully in Egypt and the eastern lands, the region within which Yāqūt’s own journeying took place. When a man had heard a sufficient number of scholars and commpiled his notes, he could set himself up as an author. Authorship is colored by the above-described intercourse between cultured people, and books reflect the oral nature of communication. The author has “heasrd from” or “taken from” this or that authority, and now “he is handing it down from him” (rawā ‘anhu), i.e. he is transmitting the oral communication further, and the book is speaking to an invisible circle of listeners.
Let’s turn to books themselves. How do they begin?
To begin with, every book opens with the formula “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,” for any enterprise not beginning in this way must inevitably fail; thus has the Prophet spoken, it is said. Then follow praises to God and His Prophet and the latter’s family and associates, in which the poet displays all his stylistic capabilities. The transition to the subject is signaled by an ancient pre-Islamic formula, ammā ba’du, i.e. “as regrds the following,” but discussion of the subject proper still does not begin. As a rule, there first come certain general remarks, interwoven with citations from the Qur’ān, selected with great skill so as to approach the subject imperceptibly while drawing attention to its inherent interest. The author will probably next relate why – not infrequently under heavy pressure from friends – he has brougth out this book, and he begs God to grant him the grace and strength to carry through the enterprise. At this point the structure fo the book is often explained. It very quickly became custormary to give books grandiose titles, such as “the Vast Ocean of Qur’anic Exegesis,” “The Priceless Pearl for Defining the Doctrine of Unity,” and so forth. To us there often seems a glaring contrast between the poetic title and the cry contents.
How does the author of the Islamic book reveal himself?
I assume that he seldom reveals himself as a person. The purpose of a book is not to express personal feelings or originality; even the erotic poems move in fixed phrases determined by custom. A very large proportion of the contents of Islamic books are presented as traditions handed on from others. The author picks from his notes and sets down an item that he finds useful, stating the authority from whom he has heard it, and the informant from whom this authority received it, and so on back to the original source. This painstaking recording of the chain of informants (isnād) reflects the fact that the book represents a continuing and unbroken oral tradition. The great importance attached to it certainly stems from the fact that the oldest Muslim literary activity centered upon the commpilation of sayings of the Prophet, the genuineness of which had to be attested, and that the form of transmission thus developed had percolated into other fields.
Could you elaborate a little bit further on the chain of transmission?
The character of the particular subject determines the chain of informants, but the one who is named first has certainly been heard by the author. The chain is often considerably longer and consists of a series of scholars who, one after the other, have handed on the particular item of information one author acts as transmitter, rāwī, to the next.
What are the characteristics of this form of narrative?
Well, it gives the exposition a heavy and disjointed character, and it contributes to the further effacement of the author’s personality; he does not shape his material independently. If he wishes to put forward a personal opinion or an item of information of his own, it is often written in the third person like the others: “Abū Ja’far says” is a stock phrase in Abū Ja’far al-Ţabarī’s great historical work. Another phrase frequently used is “the author says.” This is connected with the fact that the published book was as a rule a transcript of the author’s discourse.
Now, let’s talk briefly about publication. What is the procedure?
The word used in Arabic to denote publication means “let (it) go out” (kharraja or akhraja), and “go out” (kharaja) can also mean “come out, be published.” The procedure was rather more complex than with us, resulting from the fact that, until the most recent times, the Islamic book was a handwritten production.
How were the books published?
The oral path was followed in publishing. A work was published by being recited and written down to dictation, imlā’, usually in a mosque. This was the only method by which the Muslims of former days could conceive of a work being made public and brought before a wider circle. Even poets, who in fact still had their rāwīs in the period of the Umayyads (661-750), published their works in the mosque. One of the minor poets from the beginning of the 10th century describes a sitation in which he sat and dictated one of his works in the principal mosque of Kūfa, and people wrote it down after him.
