qasida — or say rather he carved her a full statue, not of marble and stone, but of rhymes and meters.
Of the same kind is the famous "Yatima" qasida, which opens:
Do the ruins hold an answer for him who asks? Or have they any covenant with speech?
And the latest to compose in this genre is the fretful poet Tamer Mallat.
Another poet, al-Munakhkhal al-Yashkuri, rises to compose on an adventure in which he came in upon a girl on a rainy day, describing the conversation that passed between them. Imru' al-Qays follows him, caring little for the description of beauty; his concern is rather to describe the perils he faced whenever he sought a meeting. He touches on features and describes their forms, and on conversations, dwelling upon them at length.
And how often the Arabs imitated the Greeks in depicting Cupid the archer! The Nabigha of Banu Shayban said:
Sulayma's arrows have undone my heart, for she shot me with shafts that did not go astray.
And A'sha Hamdan said:
Her arrow did not miss my heart when she let fly — oh, wonder at her well-aimed arrow!
Among the statues carved in verse are those that treat of dress: certain poets describe the slenderness of the waist beneath the sash and the swaying of the willowy figure beneath the robe, and what shows of bracelet and anklet, earrings and sleeves, half-veil and necklace, howdah and jewels, and all the rest of women's garments and conveyances.
If the Arabs fell short of the Spaniards and the Greeks in the arts of painting and sculpture, it was because of the barrenness of the desert, its emptiness of colors and forests, and its want of marble. And for this very reason they excelled in literature, which is the most difficult of all the arts, for it combines them and surpasses them in the portrayal of movement and life; all the fine arts are powerless to render the changes that pass over a single scene — all save literature, which goes beyond even that to the description of voice and gait and the emotions.
From the foregoing it is clear that the poets of the second Jahiliyya did not pass beyond the first phase of love, for all the dialogue and story woven through it. But Islamic poetry, however abundant its material description, is shot through with the spiritual — as in Hassan's description of the Lady Aisha (may God be pleased with her): "Chaste and grave, no suspicion touches her." The loftiest of the poets are the poets of the desert, and their chief is Jamil of Buthayna.
In the science of language the Arabs set degrees for love: hawa, inclination; then 'alaqa, attachment; then kalaf, infatuation; then shaghaf, passion — and akin to it law'a and la'ij, the burning pangs; then sha'af, ardor; then jawa, consuming grief; then tatayyum, enslavement; then tabl, love-sickness; then tadlih, dotage; then huyam, distraction. Majnun Layla said:
Meeting you makes me forget, whenever I meet you of a day, to pour out what is in me.
And how many Majnun Laylas there are among the nations of the East, such as the Indians and the Persians!
And al-Husayn ibn Mudar said:
I love you, Salma, beyond all suspicion — and what good is a love whose secrets are not chaste?
As for the rest of Umayyad town poetry, most of it is material; and such too is the poetry of the Abbasid state.
The critics stipulated that the poet, in his amatory prelude, should include much mention of longing, and the recalling of the haunts of the beloved at the blowing of winds and the flashing of lightning and whatever runs their course — the mention of abodes and traces — in the footsteps of Imru' al-Qays.
They stipulated too that the prelude should contain the utmost self-surrender and the extreme of obedience to the beloved, and that it should carry the marks of infatuation and bewilderment.
There is yet another condition: that the prelude comprise intense ardor and excess of passion, utter abandon in youthful folly, and deep sorrow and regret; and that it be free of the tokens of harshness and hardihood, and of the signs of pride and self-esteem.
One man was asked: "How far has your love for So-and-so gone?" He answered: "I find the sun upon her walls fairer than upon the walls of her neighbors."
Toward the end of the Umayyad age playfulness entered the ghazal, and it multiplied in the Abbasid age until it reached the pitch of folly and libertinism.
Abu Nuwas said:
O moon I glimpsed at a mourning, lamenting her sorrow among her companions: may death remain ever the way of those she loves, and the sight of her remain ever my way.
The poet has, as the sculptor has not, the power to portray the beauties of nature in the course of his love poems. Abu Bakr ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Zuhri, the poet of all the Muslims of Andalusia, was the first among them to describe the gardens. He said:
When we alighted at a resting-place besprinkled with dew, graceful, a garden bright with blossom, the sweetness of the place and its beauty stirred new longings in us — we wished, and you were the wishes.
And it seems to me that the poet who said:
I am you, and you are I: we two are one, two voices in the world gathered up by the echo
had anticipated the invention of the radio; and Shawqi