you abase yourselves before Ishaq with such abasement, when there is not one of you whose voice is not sweeter than his,

and there is no meanness in your craft?" He said: "Do not say that. By God, if you saw us with him you would pity us; you would see us melt as lead melts in the fire."

And it becomes clear to whoever reads Ishaq's life that he was not the possessor of a peerless voice, that he should be pampered so; rather, all the singers, it appears, had finer voices than his. There was a flaw in his voice that compelled him to introduce into song what is called takhnith, to suit it and match it; there was in his throat a recoil from the string. Ibn Hamdun said: Ishaq was the first to bring takhnith into song, and it was not known before; he contrived by his skill — since his throat clashed with the string — to answer it with a measure of takhnith, which sounded better to the ear. Nor did the caliphs' care for Ishaq weaken even after his sight failed and he grew old.

Ishaq the singer

It may seem strange that we should find that Ishaq hated singing, and hated whoever asked him to sing — he, the singer of far-flung fame! He would always repeat: "I would rather my head were struck fifteen lashes — I could not bear more than that — than be told: Sing."

The great singers bore witness for him and esteemed him to the full, as we have seen. Muhammad ibn al-Muhassin ibn Mus'ab analyzed his singing and said: "His craft was sound in its principles, his melody marvelous in construction, his division even in its measures; he united in his craft two qualities: strength of natural gift and smoothness of path. The singers nicknamed him 'the Stung One,' because he begins with a cry in the finest tone with which any man ever opened his mouth; then he brings his tone back, rolling it and letting it descend, until he lowers it from that intensity to a softness that balances it; then he does the like again, passing from intensity to softness and from softness to intensity — and this is the hardest thing that occurs in song and the rarest thing known of the craft."

And Ibn Yahya said of him:

"Ishaq was the most learned man of his age in song... He set himself against Ibn Surayj and Ma'bad and held his own with them; and Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi contended with him in this craft and did not reach him; nor was there, after Ishaq, his like." Ishaq was once asked: "Which is the finer: your melody in 'Khalili 'uja,' or the melody of al-Wathiq?" — al-Wathiq being thoroughly learned in song — and he said: "My melody is finer in division and greater in workmanship; his is the more striking, because he made its refrain out of its own division, and none can perform it but one in full command of himself." There is nothing arbitrary in this answer; there is in it precision and analysis, such as shows the height of Ishaq's standing in the art of song. The critics preferred some of his melodies to the melodies of Ibn Surayj and Ma'bad, who are among the imams of the singers of old, while Ishaq said modestly: "By God, I took the reins of their two mounts and shook them and made them kneel — but I did not reach them." He would compose melodies as a miracle to the singers, so that they could not imitate them or take them from him. His songs did not number more than two hundred.

The son is the secret of his father

And Ishaq was the secret of his father, following his footsteps and walking by his principles. Like him, he prized beauty and the cup, poetry and song, and did not excel in one without the other. He had amorous escapades which, if they fell short of his father's adven-tures in number, fell nothing short of them in drollery and license. He would send messengers in quest of aged wine to the princes and the caliphs themselves. Ali ibn Hisham once sent him wine and said: "I have sent you a drink harder than rock, older than time, and clearer than raindrops." And Ishaq was tender toward the cup-bearers of wine and its sellers — especially the women who sold it.

He said — and here his lightness of spirit shows itself: "I came in to al-Rashid one day in a turban I had wound about my head, and he said: 'What is this turban? As if you were from Anbar.' The next day he summoned us to him, and I held back until all the singers had

gone in before me; then I entered last of them, having bound my waist with a sash of red silk and put on a garish costume and taken in my hands a pair of clappers; and I came forward strutting, striking the clappers and singing:

Listen to a charming song of Anbar workmanship — a light and graceful song that flies along the strings.

And he stretched out his hands toward me until he almost rose to his feet, and kept saying: 'Well done — by my life, well done! Well done!' — until I sat down... Then he drank to it the rest of his day and called for nothing else, and ordered me twenty thousand dirhams."

We have said that Ishaq was the secret of his father: he prized poetry as he did, and was a man of feeling like him — yearning for the beautiful melody, drawn to the bright, radiant face, stirred by the moaning of the waterwheels, and drinking until rapture took him, so that he was carried off drunk upon men's shoulders.

He sang to al-Ma'mun two verses on the pleasures, saying:

Sweeter than the strumming of the strings and their refrain is the repeated sound of lip striking upon lip; and the drunkenness of love slakes my bones and my joints better than drinking, from the cups, of vintage wine.

And al-Ma'mun said to him: "Shall I not tell you of something sweeter than that, and finer? Leisure, and youth, and wealth!!"

I bear witness that al-Ma'mun was the better poet!!

And finally, before I wipe my pen, it is fitting that I mention that Ishaq united in his person religion and the world. He transmitted hadith and met its masters, such as Malik ibn Anas, Ibn Uyayna, Abu Mu'awiya al-Darir, Rawh ibn Ubada, and others of the sheikhs of Iraq and the Hijaz. He read the Qur'an under al-Kisa'i, al-Farra', and Ibn Ghazala, and recited poetry with al-Asma'i and Abu Ubayda.

He was born in the year 150 A.H. — the year of the birth of the Imam al-Shafi'i and of the death of the Imam Abu Hanifa — and he lived eighty-five years, and then died in Baghdad at the beginning of the caliphate of al-Mutawakkil.