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Assalamu-alaikum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
Introduction
It has been a
source of faith and pride for Muslims over the centuries in
that the Holy Qur'ân is the preeminent word of the Almighty,
inimitable in style and absolute in nature. This conviction is
as strong for believers of today as it has been for believers
of the past. As the tradition of truth is distinguished from
falsehood, the authenticity of the Qur'ân has been challenged
today as it has been in the past. Though the petty points of
criticism have changed over the years, the archetype has
remained quite the same since the very beginning. Time and
again, these issue has been put to rest, only to be exhumed by
depraved charlatans.
One such issue
regards the question of pre-Islamic poetry in the Arabian
Peninsula. The pagan Arabs of the pre-Islamic period were a
proud and boastful people who were characterized by epic
tales, heart-rending poetry, and eloquent prose. Indeed, their
literary excellence had intoxicated them with glaring
arrogance and self-worship. And then, with the revelation of
Prophet Muhammad(P)
, the Arabs had
found a contest for their genius - The Holy Qur'ân. Suddenly,
their pride had been undermined by something even greater than
anything they could have ever dreamed of, a book that had
never been matched in beauty, wisdom, and structure, and which
has remained
unchallenged
right to the present day. For the Arabs, the question must
have found it's time; can a more powerful book exist other
than the one whose pen belongs to the Almighty himself?
In the
previous century, attempts were made to discredit the
established power of the Holy Qur'ân by suggesting that the
Muslims fabricated the poetry of the pagan Arabs after
the revelation of the Qur'ân. Should this be the case, those
madmen whose blood boils with hatred against Islam would find
some consolation in the dishonour of the Qur'ân, no matter how
shallow, how weak. It had to be an Arab, Tâhâ Husayn,
who sensationalized these Orientalist ideas in Egypt, 1927.
Husayn's 15 minutes saw their end when his fabulous ideas
were shattered by erudite Muslim scholarship.
Recently Husayn's
ideas have been given new life by the Internet marauder, "P.
Newton". Newton's entire
argument
concerning the pre-Islamic poetry boils down to the paragraph
which says:
So it is not
only Taha Hussein who believed that the so called
"pre-Islamic poetry" is a fabricated work, there are also
some respectable contemporary scholars who think that there
is something fishy about this so called pre-Islamic poetry.
In this paper,
we intend to examine the authenticity of the pre-Islamic
poetry of the Arabs in light of genuine, contemporary
scholarship. Such an examination will provide the grounds on
which to determine the worth of such pompous, missionary
censure, such as:
...there are
also some respectable contemporary scholars who think that
there is something fishy about this so called pre-Islamic
poetry.
Toby Lester,
writing in an article in the
Atlantic Monthly,
claims
in a rather authoritative manner that:
A determined
modernist, [Taha] Hussein in the early 1920s devoted himself
to the study of pre-Islamic Arabian poetry and ended up
concluding that much of that body of work had been
fabricated well after the establishment of Islam in order to
lend outside support to Koranic mythology.
That academic
dishonesty of both Newton[1]
and Lester[2]
already have been demonstrated in separate articles. One can
only presuppose that in the spirit of deception, such arrogant
and authoritative charges are made possible through the
suppression of facts and selective argumentation.
The
Consipiracy & Conspiracy-Mongerers
Tâhâ
Husayn published a sensational book called
Fi'l-shicr
al-Jâhilî[3]
('On Pre-Islamic Poetry') in 1925. This book dealt with his
revolutionary views on the nature of the Arabic poetry, which
had been generally accepted in the Arab world as having
flourished in the Arabian desert before the rise of Islam. The
publication of this book provoked such a violent storm of
protests that Tâhâ Husayn felt obliged to
withdraw it from the market. In
Fi'l-adab
al-Jâhilî[4]
('On Pre-Islamic Literature), which appeared two years later,
he maintained the full vigor of his original argument but
omitted certain passages that had aroused the previous Muslim
sentiment. In brief, Tâhâ Husayn's theory
maintained that pre-Islamic literature was a latter day
forgery, based on a massive conspiracy involving political,
religious, exegetical, professional, patriotic, and resistance
motives.[5]
As far as both
Newton and Lester are concerned, the buck stops here. It is
only to be expected from these two personalities that their
scholarship on such issues are completely bereft of any of the
discussions that followed Tâhâ Husayn's
publications. When we proceed further, we discover that Husayn's
material was anything but convincing for his critics. Quite
the opposite, his flimsy evidence and slapdash reasoning
evoked a flood of articles and weighty volumes that
deconstructed his arguments and reinstated the authenticity of
the pre-Islamic poetry that had been the pride of the Arabs
for so many centuries. It is our intention to examine the
debate that followed the publication of
Fi'l-adab al-Jâhilî
(1927) to the present, those decades of discussion that have
been curiously avoided by mischief-makers Newton and Lester.
Ironically, it is during this period that Husayn's
theories were rejected by both Orientalists and Muslims.
It must be
added that the theories advanced by Tâhâ Husayn
were by no means a novelty as far as Europe was concerned. In
the same year that Tâhâ Husayn published his
Fi'l-shicr
al-Jâhilî (1925), it so
happened that Professor David Margoliouth of the University of
Oxford published in the
Journal Of The
Royal Asiatic Society a
paper entitled
The Origins Of
Arabic Poetry[6],
in which he expressed identical views supported largely by
identical reasons. However, Margoliouth had recognized that he
was not the first person to cast serious doubt on the
authenticity of 'pre-Islamic' literature. W Ahlwardt and Sir C
Lyall had already done so before. For he states:
The subject of this paper was treated by Ahlwardt in a
monograph called
Bemerkungen über
die Aechtheit der alten arabischen Gedichte,
Greifwald, 1872, and by Sir C Lyall in the preface to vol.
ii of his
Mufaddaliyyât.
The former is not very confident, and calls attention to
some of the matters which have been discussed rather more
fully below; Sir C Lyall deals chiefly with the character of
the transmitters, which he rates rather more highly than the
present writer.[7]
Poetry in
Arabic falls into sixteen different al-Bihâr,
viz., at-Tawîl, al-Bassit, al-Wâfir, al-Kâmîl, ar-Rajs, al-Khafîf,
al-Hazaj, al-Muttakarib, al-Munsarih, al-Muktatab, al-Muktadarak,
al-Madîd, al-Mujtath, al-Ramel, al-Khabab and as-Saria'. In
addition, we have the speech of soothsayers, rhyming prose,
and normal speech. The Qur'ân's
structure
did not fit into any of these categories. It was this
distinction that made the Qur'ân inimitable, and left the
pagan Arabs at a loss as to how they might counter it. Ibn
Ishâq recorded the reaction of one of the most fervent
opponents of the Prophet(P),
al-Walîd bin Mugîra:
They said, "He is a kâhin." He said, "By God, he is
not that, for we have seen the kâhins, and his
(speech) is not unintelligible murmuring (zamzama)
and rhymed prose (sajc)
of a kâhin." "Then he is possessed (majnûn),"
they said. "No, he is not that," he said. "We have seen and
known the possessed state, and here is no choking, spasmodic
movements, and whispering." "Then he is a poet," they said.
"He is not that," he replied. "We have known poetry in all
its forms and meters, and this is not poetry." "Then he is a
sorcerer," they said. "No, he is not that," he said, "for we
have seen sorcerers and their sorcery, and here is no
spitting and no knots."[8]
Thus the
following consideration can be raised: the Qur'ân bore no
sharp resemblance, either in structure or content, to the
poetry composed among the pre-Islamic Arabs as we know it.
This seems to have been well recognized by the discerning
auditors of the Prophet's(P)
time as well. Thus, the pagan Arabs were armed with one of
their most potent weapons against the Prophet(P);
one which drew down an emphatic Qur'ânic denunciation and a
profound differentiation between the two sources of mantic
inspiration, the God and the jinn and demons of the poets and
kâhins. And so, as Margoliouth wrote about 75 years
ago.
If by poetry the same be meant as in the later literature,
we are confronted with a slight puzzle: Mohammad, who was
not acquainted with the art
[of poetry],
was aware that his revelations were not in verse; whereas
the Meccans, who presumably knew the art of poetry when they
heard or saw it, thought they were. We should have expected
the converse.[9]
Margoliouth
resolved this "slight puzzle" by advancing his (in)famous
theory that the poems we know of as pre-Islamic were actual
forgeries of a later Islamic period, being largely
.... a development of the styles found in the Qur'ân.[10]
His theory is
based on the verses of the Qur'ân 26:224-227, which addresses
poets and the nature of the conflict between Muhammad(P)
and the poets.
The Refutation
Margoliouth's
theory is based upon often-specious, not to mention dishonest,
argumentation and can no longer be regarded as tenable, as has
been noted by Professor A.J. Arberry of Cambridge University
as well as others. For Arberry states:
The sophistry - I hesitate to say dishonesty - of certain
of Professor Margoliouth's arguments is only too apparent,
quite unworthy of a man who was undoubtedly one of the
greatest erudites of his generation.[11]
Irfan Shahid
echoes a similar opinion:
Perhaps the most unsuccessful attempt at interpreting
these verses
[26:224-227]
was that of D S Margoliouth in his article on
The Origins Of
Arabic Poetry,
in JRAS
(1925).[12]
His exegetic effort was not only unsuccessful, but was
also disastrous, in that it formed one of the bases upon
which he rested his case against the authenticity of
pre-Islamic poetry. His conclusions have, of late, been
subjected to a searching criticism by Professor A J Arberry
and have probably been swept away beyond recall.[13]
It must be
admitted that the arguments forwarded by Margoliouth and Tâhâ
Husayn make up an impressive case against the
authenticity of the pre-Islamic poetry. Upon examining their
arguments one by one, Margoliouth and Tâhâ Husayn's
view no longer hold water. Arberry also states:
It can be conceded readily enough that the foregoing
arguments make up an impressive case against the
authenticity of the pre-Islamic poetry; it is only when
the reasons advanced are examined one by one that their
combined weight comes to appear less than at first encounter.
To enumerate the points in rebuttal or mitigation made on
the Arab side by writers such as Muhammad Farîd Wajdî,
Muhammad Lutfî Jumca,
Muhammad Sâdiq al-Râfi'î, Muhammad Ahmad
al-Ghamrâwî and Muhammad al-Khidrî, and on the
European side by E Bräunlich, T Andrae, G von Grunebaum, F
Gabrieli and R Blachère would expand this brief epilogue
into the dimensions of a full-length dissertation.[14]
It is also
important to note that both the Orientalists as well as the
Muslims have advanced the refutations against the theories of
Margoliouth and Tâhâ Husayn. Again, these are
indisputable facts of monumental significance for which Newton
and Lester remain conspicuously mute. From the above analyses,
it has become clear that they pursued the course of academic
dishonesty.
Professor
Michael Zwettler notes:
For, though the critics from Abû
cAmr
b. al-cAlâ'
and Ibn Sallâm al-Jumahî to Ahlwardt, Margoliouth, and Tâhâ
Husayn have cast doubt both on the reliability of
many transmitters of the ancient poetry, their criticisms
have generally failed to consider certain important facts
that have since been brought out in a decisive fashion. One
may, I think, grant that these doubts, at least in their
extreme form as expressed by Margoliouth, and Tâhâ
Husayn, have been laid to rest through the efforts of
later scholars.[15]
In the
language of the idiot, no one submits to the fabulous
conspiracy theories of Margoliouth and Husayn, save
that they submit to the falsification of facts and the
depravity of reasoning.
One is also
tempted to cite the "final argument" against the theories of
Margoliouth and Tâhâ Husayn, as adduced by H A R
Gibb:
it would be as impossible to 'reconstruct' the poetry of
Jahiliya from the poetry of the Umayyad period as it would
be to 'reconstruct' Elizabethan from Caroline drama.[16]
Since we have
discarded the theories of both Margoliouth and Tâhâ
Husayn on pre-Islamic poetry, may we ask what the modern
day view is regarding the poetry and its transmission?
Zwettler says:
The poetry of Arabs, in the ages which preceded the rise
of Islamism, was perpetuated by oral tradition; for in
ancient times, when writing was not used or scarcely used,
memory was exercised and strengthened to a degree now almost
unknown. In those countries of Arabia where Arabian
poetry may be justly considered to have had its origin or to
have attained its earliest growth, there lived reciters, or
Râwis, as the Arabs called them, who got by heart numerous
songs of their poets, and recited them, occasionally, in
public assemblies and private parties... This impression,
in essence, has been shared by a great majority of medieval
and modern scholars who have dealt to any degree with Arabic
poetry.[17]
Conclusion
It is clear in
light of the above discussion that the fabulous theories of
David Margoliouth and Tâhâ Husayn, which declare
the poetry of the pagan Arabs to be a latter day forgery by
the Muslims, have been refuted by both Orientalists and
Muslims. Certain arguments have found special grounds for
vigorous criticism.
One can see
the seductive appeal in fabulous conspiracy theories that can
seemingly explain almost any phenomenon, as has been
demonstrated by Toby Lester and his Christian counterpart, P.
Newton.
Real
conspiracies, however, are rare since they are virtually
impossible to organize on such a massive scale. Both Newton
and Lester remain, not too surprisingly, in utter silence
about the embarassing criticisms of their theories. This is to
be expected as their writings are dedicated as fodder for the
ignorant.
And Allah
knows best!
References
[1] See the
article:
Pseudo-Callisthenes,
Dhul-Qarnain & Alexander The Great
[2] See the
article:
Nevo & Negev Inscriptions: The
Use & Abuse Of The Evidence
[3] Tâhâ
Husayn,
Fi'l-shicr
al-Jâhilî, 1925, Dâr al-Macârif,
Cairo.
[4] Tâhâ
Husayn,
Fi'l-adab al-Jâhilî,
1927(?), Dâr al-Macârif,
Cairo.
[5] A J
Arberry,
The Seven Odes: The First Chapter In Arabic Literature,
1957, Allen & Unwin: London, pp. 236-237.
[6] D
Margoliouth, "The
Origins Of Arabic Poetry",
Journal Of
The Royal Asiatic Society,
1925, pp. 417-449.
[7] Ibid.,
p. 417 (See footnote).
[8] A
Guillaume (Trans.),
The Life Of Muhammad:
A Translation Of Ibn Ishâq's Sîrat Rasûl Allah,
1957, Oxford University Press, Pakistan Branch, p. 121. The
quote is the adapted version.
[9] D
Margoliouth, "The
Origins Of Arabic Poetry",
Op. Cit., p. 418.
[10] Ibid.,
p. 446.
[11] Arberry,
The Seven
Odes: The First Chapter In Arabic Literature,
Op. Cit., p. 238.
[12] See
Margoliouth's article in reference 4.
[13] I
Shahid's article, "A
Contribution To Koranic Exegesis"
in G. Makdisi (Ed.)
Arabic And
Islamic Studies In Honor Of Hamilton A R Gibb,
Cambridge (Mass.): Department of Near Eastern Languages and
Literatures, Harvard University, 1965, p. 564.
[14] Arberry,
The Seven
Odes: The First Chapter In Arabic Literature,
Op. Cit., p. 238.
[15] Michael
Zwettler,
The Oral Tradition Of Classical Arabic Poetry: Its Character &
Implications, 1978, Ohio
State University Press (Columbus), p. 12.
[16] See I
Shahid's article, "A
Contribution To Koranic Exegesis"
in G. Makdisi (Ed.)
Arabic And
Islamic Studies In Honor Of Hamilton A R Gibb,
Op. Cit., p. 564. Also in Michael Zwettler's,
The Oral
Tradition Of Classical Arabic Poetry: Its Character &
Implications, Ibid.,
p. 159.
[17] Michael
Zwettler,
The Oral Tradition Of Classical Arabic Poetry: Its Character &
Implications, Ibid.,
p. 14. |
