Towards the Reappraisal of Classical Arabic Literature and History: Some Aspects of Taha Husayn's Use of Modern Western

Criteria Author(s): Mohamed Al-Nowaihi Reviewed work(s): Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Apr., 1980), pp. 189-207 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/162284 . Accessed: 29/02/2012 06:01
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Int. J. Middle East Stud. ii (1980), 189-207

Printed in the United States of America

Mohamed Al-Nowaihi TOWARDS CLASSICAL AND TAHA THE REAPPRAISAL ARABIC OF

LITERATURE OF

HISTORY: HUSAYN'S

SOME ASPECTS USE OF CRITERIA

MODERN

WESTERN

In modem Arabic scholarship, it would be difficultto find a hypothesis more implausiblethan that advancedby Taha Husayn in hisfl-'adab al-jdhili. Yet it may be wonderedwhetherany other book, writtenby a contemporaryArab, has had a comparableinfluence in changing the fundamentalattitude of the Arab intelligentsiatowardstheir classical literatureand history. The unsoundness of the book's central assertion-that the bulk of pre-Islamicpoetry was fabricatedby Muslims, and portrays Islamic, ratherthan pre-Islamic, conditions and conceits-has been exposed by several critics, both native, in varying degrees of wrathfulcondemnation,and orientalist,with differentapproachesto conclusiveness. Of the latter, one at least, the late A. J. Arberry,2had some of the fallacy, but of D. pretty strongwords to say, not of the Arab propagator S. Margoliouth,who, in the same year 1926, had, as it happened, published identical views, supportedby largely similar arguments.Said Arberry, introducing his stern refutation,"The sophistry - I hesitate to say dishonesty - of Professor Margoliouth'sargumentsis only too apparent,quite unworthyof a man who was undoubtedlyone of the greatesteruditesof his generation."3 He went on to castigate Margoliouth's disregardof certainQur'anicmeaningsand intentionsof which "he must have been very well aware," his "shocking mishis "immodesty",5 and the rest. Quite restrained applicationof scholarship,"4 criticismwhen comparedto the diatribewhich the Arabdebaterspouredon the heads of their fellow citizen and his presumed infidel mentor, but rather unusual in the serene Arcady of orientalism. Readingall that criticism of TaihaHusayn's book, one mightbe led to think that it has no value whatever, and pity those benightedArabic readers whose voracity for it has demandedits reissue in somethinglike twenty reprintsover the last half-century.However, the real significanceof the book, which all that close and, in the main, well meritedrefutationtends to obfuscate, is none other than the fact attested by the long history of the humanstrugglefor freedom of expression: that the legitimacyof the case for free speech does not depend pri?
1980 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/80/020I89-17 $oi.50/X

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marily on the soundness of the new opinion which is claiming the right to be expressed. It may be said that the book, and the courageous stand of its author in the face of all the resultant persecution - both official and popular, political, religious and professional, constituted the first determined battle in the modern Arab world for that liberty. At the end of Book I, which is a critique of the methods of literary study then current in Egypt, Taha Husayn has a chapter "Freedom and Literature,'6 explaining how freedom of expression is the sine qua non, not only for the writing of literary history, but for creative literature itself, as well as science, philosophy, art and, indeed, the whole of intellectual and emotional life. He defines the freedom he wants for literature as that which counts it an end in itself, not a means to another end. The study of language and literature, he says, is considered a mere handmaid of religion, the Arabic language, and the understanding of the Qur'an. This makes them both sacrosanct and profane. By sanctifying them, it sets them above true scientific enquiry, which enquiry demands criticism, debate, denial or at least doubt. At the same time, it cheapens them, as it robs their study of all dignity and usefulness. He likens the condition of language and literature then obtaining to that of the human body in medieval times, when it was considered too sacred to be defiled by surgery, with the damage that that did to the medical sciences and the representational arts. Literature, he repeats, is not one of the accessory sciences to be studied only for the understanding of the Qur'an and Hadith. It is a branch of knowledge to be studied for itself, whose purpose before everything else is the appreciation of artistic beauty in man's verbal legacy. This comes in the beginning pages of Book II, immediately before the author reveals the thesis which he is going to argue. It may therefore be wondered whether that thesis was not simply a topic which he deliberately chose for its thorny nature in order to provoke as wide a discussion as possible of his ultimate concern: the need for freedom of expression. If this is his real campaign, what does he consider the primary weapon which must be fashioned and sharpened for the achievement of victory? This weapon is scepticism: and here we come to the important and powerful impact of the book on its Arabic readers, which is quite independent of the flimsiness of the thesis it advances as an illustration. To fully appreciate that impact, one must recall in what degree of sanctity the Arabic and Islamic legacy was then generally held, allowing for no right of challenge, hardly for the right to question and demand proof of an established judgment. Scepticism is the pervading spirit which the book attempts to carry over to its readers. The author himself admits this in the concluding pages7 of Book IV, and tries to justify it. He says that throughout his book he has been at pains to inculcate literary scepticism; his readers may, wrongly or rightly, believe that he was out for deliberate and merciless destructiveness. They may fear the effects of such destructiveness on Arabic literature in general, but, particularly, on the Qur'an, with which that literature is closely bound. But they should be assured that there is no harm in scepticism, not only on the general grounds that doubt is the avenue which leads to certain knowledge, but also because it is time Arabic literature and its sciences were established on a solid foundation. It is better for Arabic literature to be divested,

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rudely and mercilessly, of all that is incapable of life and unfit for survival, rather than be weighed down by those harmful and paralysing burdens. As to the Qur'an, it has nothing to fear in this respect, since its established linguistic authenticity is not in need of the so-called pre-Islamic poetry to bolster it; rather it is the other way round. One does not need to question Taha Husayn's sincerity in holding this latter opinion - which in itself is perfectly correct - to still see it for what it is: the usual ploy of reformers and challengers of traditional opinion when confronted by the literal understanding of the sacred texts. It is the same ploy which was used by Copernicus when introducing his concept of the solar system, and the Arabic author fared no better in stemming the severest onslaught of religious denunciation. For one thing, his antagonists could not forget his open questioning, in the first edition which had appeared the year before under the title alshi'r al-jdhili, of the Qur'anic story on Abraham and the building of the Ka'ba, although the author deleted it from his second, enlarged edition. For another, it was not simply a question of the linguistic authenticity of the Qur'an, as he is trying to make out in this passage; it was the whole attitude to the entire Arabic and Islamic legacy, as he himself frankly states in the rest of his book. And there is little doubt that the book is remarkably successful in instilling its advocated spirit of scepticism. This will be verified by any university teacher who has observed how year after year the fresh intakes of students come under its influence. They experience an unfamiliar state of acute suspiciousness of everything they read and hear, which is in violent contrast to their hitherto general credulity and acceptance of, or at least resignation to, authority. This state lasts for quite some time before they find their feet again and learn which kind of authority to accept and which to question, and in what fields and topics. Whence did Taha Husayn learn this scepticism? Undoubtedly the germs of it were always there in his individual makeup. Naturally possessed of a keen intelligence, he had occasions - of which a few are recorded - to doubt much of the conventional lore that was taught him as a young student in al-'Azhar, and his loss of sight in early childhood, with its physical and psychological stresses, would seem to have enhanced that propensity. However, he himself leaves us in no doubt regarding the greatest force which ripened his tendency to question and challenge. In Chapter Two of Book II, entitled "Method of Study,"8 he says that he will now candidly inform his readers of the purpose he is seeking so as to save them the trouble of guessing. He wishes to apply to literature the philosophical method invented by Descartes at the beginning of the modern age for the search for truths. The basis of this method, he says, is for the researcher to divest himself of all that he knew before, and to approach his topic with a mind completely freed from what has been said about it. He claims that despite the anger with which the traditionalists in religion and philosophy met that method when it first appeared, it proved to be one of the most fruitful and powerful methods, which totally renovated science and philosophy, and changed the methods of literature and art. It is, he states, the hallmark of this modern age. Let us therefore adopt it when we attempt to study our ancient Arabic literature and its history. Let us emancipate ourselves from all these nu-

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merous and heavy shackles which paralyse our physical and mental energy. We must forget our national and religious emotions and everything connected with them. We must not be bound by anything, we must submit only to the methods of sound scientific research, otherwise we shall be forced into partisanship and minister to the emotions. This is what spoiled the learning of the ancients, whether they were fanatically pro-Arab and pro-Islamic or fanatically antiArab and anti-Islamic. The Cartesian method, he continues, is not fruitful in science, philosophy and literature alone: it is also fruitful in ethics and the social life, as it frees them from prejudices which poison the life of people with hatred and enmity. Therefore, it is obligatory not only for the scholars and researchers, but also for the readers, since they will not benefit from what they read unless they are truly liberated. Taha Husayn knew how this propagation of the necessity for scepticism was bound to be received. The spirit of free enquiry, meticulous scrutiny and admission of limitation of knowledge which characterized much of the classical learning and which was embodied in the famous saying man qala la 'adrFfa qad 'afti (he who says 'I do not know' has thereby fulfilled his duty of giving an opinion) was long dead. Neither the common readers nor the leading dignitaries were equipped to distinguish between doubt and denial, scepticism and atheism, dissent and treason. YaqFn,sure knowledge, is one of the cardinal blessings which faith brings to a believer. Hence the uproar which met the book, and the variety and virulence of the religious, moral and patriotic accusations it stirred, some of which are preserved in Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi 'I's tahta rdyati'l Qur'dn. However, one does not need to refer to such inflamed reaction in order to see how much the new teaching was at variance with the established habits of thought. Muhammad Ahmad al-Ghamrawi, who wrote one of the more sober criticisms in Arabic,9 makes a valiant attempt to refute that propagated need for scepticism.10 Doubt, he says, is not to be sought for its own sake, but only when the researcher is forced into it by a compelling reason. Scientific doubt does not rest where it is, and is not satisfied with a negative stand, but is the first step in the research which leads to positive ascertainment. There is no need to change what the ancients have said unless we have proof that it is wrong or deficient. Science does not seek revolution deliberately, and does not seek the new for the mere purpose of renovation; on the contrary, it is cautious towards the new and only accepts it after strenuous investigation. One of the most important rules of scientific investigation is that the new must not contradict an established truth, whether it has been known for centuries or only discovered a few years ago. The scientific is not the revolutionary; in fact, revolutions in the familiar sense are the farthest things from science, strongly incongruous with its nature. The method of science is, in fact, conservation; it may be said that science is the head of the sane conservatives. Then al-Ghamrawi examines Taha Husayn's representation of the Cartesian method, to declare that he has misunderstood the element of doubt in it, has, indeed, misunderstood the entire method, and was erroneous in his application of it. Descartes cannot possibly ask that the mind be emptied of all that has been said before on the given subject. This would stop the advance of science. Indeed,

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the first thing to be required of a new researcher is that he learn what has been established by those who have gone before him in his selected field of research; otherwise, the expanse of individual lives would not suffice to achieve anything worthwhile in science. Admittedly, Descartes doubted and was excessive in his doubt. However, his scientific eminence is not due to this, for doubt has existed on earth since there was consciousness. Rather is it due to his search for an exit from doubt, and his discovery of a method of study which led him out of doubt unto the open field of certainty. He applied that method in various fields, in some of which it was fruitful and in others not. It was fruitful in mathematics, which is the true foundation of his greatness, as he invented analytical geometry, which they call Cartesian geometry; but it bore little fruit in philosophy or physics. Descartes explained his method in the treatise which he published in I637. Taha Husayn did not comprehend this method; he only took cognizance of its first stipulation, so he confused doubt with the exit from doubt - which is the important thing, the thing that can be called the method of Descartes. Here al-Ghamrawi gives the Arabic readers a summary of the Cartesian method with its four steps of acquiring knowledge which he obtained from an elementary book on inductive logic by a western writer and from the Encyclopaedia Britanica. In his argument, al-Ghamrawi has certainly made some valid points, but it may be wondered whether they are not, after all, secondary. It may be said that Taha Husayn was justified in laying stress on the first prerequisite, without which the following three steps cannot be accomplished, least of all by Arab and Muslim scholars and readers. Taha Husayn, too, said that doubt was the avenue which leads to assured knowledge. If there is a fundamental difference between al-Ghamrawi's attitude which accepts a statement unless there is proof of its error, and Taha Husayn's which demands proof before it accepts it, it is clear which of the two is nearer, not only to the scientific spirit, but even to the classical jurisprudential edict al-bayyinah 'aid man idda'd (the onus of proof lies on the claimant). It is hardly necessary to say that the only outcome of al-Ghamrawi's proposed attitude is to leave the Arab and Muslim readers with practically no doubt whatsoever about the rightness of all their mental and emotional prejudices. This is borne by the instance where al-Ghamrawi's temperateness deserts him and he, too, says some harsh things against Taha Husayn's real motives. This happens when he discusses the latter's call to free the study of language and literature from the influence of religion and nationalism.1 Here, too, he makes some good points in correcting Taha Husayn's extreme expressions, but it is hardly necessary to state who is substantively justified. He objects to the other's assertion that studying language and literature as a means towards the study of the Qur'an and religion both sanctifies and profanes the former. This, he says, is first of all logically absurd, and secondly, factually untrue. The means is cheapened only when the end for which it is used is cheap. If the religious specialists have studied language and literature as a means, the linguistic and literary specialists have studied them as an end in themselves. Sanctifying the language does not form a barrier to sound scientific research, since Islam does not hamper true research but, on the contrary,

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opens all avenues to it. As regards the claim that forgetting one's nationalism and religion is a basic condition of scientific research, it depends what this means. If it means that the researcher must not conceal part of the truth or relax in seeking full scientific evidence out of a wish to please a nationalist or religious emotion, then it is correct. But if Tahai Husayn means that we cannot have a strong nationalist or religious emotion without falling victim to partisanship or committing falsification, then he is wrong. Indeed, true religiousness can only increase the honest researcher's anxiety to arrive at the truth, so he is driven to it by two motives: his religion and his science. What, then, can Taha Husayn's real purpose be? It can only be the same purpose which made him, in the name of renovation, and in the garb of enriching Arabic literature by translating western works, select for translation certain French novels which are devoid of morals, purity and chastity and which corrupt the readers. Like his selection of Abu Nuwas, al-Khali' and similar profligates for study in his hadith al-arba'a', this is a campaign against morals under the banner of tajdid. Taha Husayn is one of those who believe that art should be freed of moral bonds so as to allow the artist to depict sin as he wishes by his brush, chisel or pen as long as he depicts it as it is in reality. This is a school that has recently become widespread in Europe, abetted by the animal side in man's nature. It is a school which has been shunned by the great European artists and leading reformers, such as Carlyle, Ruskin and Matthew Arnold. Now, the Arabic language and its literature have been erected around the Qur'an and Hadith, which are the nucleus of virtue and the fountain of life and light. The license and obscenity to be found in al-Aghadn and other books are alien to the spirit of this language. They prevail only in an age whose people have travelled far from the Qur'an and religion. Therefore, when Taha Husayn, in the name of freedom of literature, calls for the separation between language and religion, and between religion and literature, he is only entertaining a similar design. He is trying to pave the way for himself and the followers of his creed in order to reach their desired goal of licentious literature. When this happens, people will accept such books as hadith al-arba'a' and al-shi'r al-jdhili without demur. The hadith al-arba'a' to which al-Ghamrawi is referring was the general title under which Taha Husayn published his weekly articles giving a reappraisal of classical literature; by that title he paid homage to Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du Lundi. From December 1922 to February 1924 they dealt with 'Abbasi poetry;12 from September to December 1924, with Umayyad.13 In the earlier articles he had, indeed, selected a group of recklessly dissolute poets who lived in the later decades of the Umayyad and earlier decades of the 'Abbasi rule; apart from replacing with ellipses the more smutty verses, in heed of the modern laws on pornography, he had spared no effort in depicting the extent of their dissipation, and the religious scepticism that lay behind it. Together with those poets, certain dignitaries, even Caliphs, were implicated, such as al-Rashid and alMa'mfin. This contradicted the prevalent picture of those early times as the golden ages of unshakable faith and unsullied virtue, so the articles raised a furor of denial, denunciation and abuse. Taha Husayn's answer was simply that those poets had existed and behaved as he portrayed them, and that as a liter-

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ary historian he could not afford to ignore them. The life of the ancients is wholly the property of history, and studying it in its entirety is the bounden duty of the historian and literary critic. He did not create Abu Nuwas and his companions, nor did he instill license and profligacy into them. He found them so, so he had two alternatives: either to ignore them or to know them. He preferred the latter to the former, believing that knowledge was better than ignorance, truth better than error, and courage in history - writing better than cowardice. As it was easy to prove that those poets did in fact lead such lives, the critics soon shifted their ground and questioned his choice of them for study as against the study of other men of proven piety and uprightness. He countered that although these latter did exist, the former were in the majority and it was they who truly mirrored the dominant conditions of the times, so it would be both scientifically wrong and morally dishonest to disregard them. Such an answer was not of a nature to appease the critics, so the battle raged on. To realise the extent of the opposition, one does not need to refer to the extreme bursts of anathema that were let loose; it is sufficient to read the controlled and courteous argument which was written by Rafiq al-'Azm, and which Taha Husayn included in his collection of the articles. In this argument,14 the eminent Syrian man of learning does not accuse Taha Husayn of outright fabrication of those stories, as the more violent critics had done; he admits that they are to be found in the classical books of history and literature. However, they themselves were the product of extensive fabrication and exaggeration, caused by the great and bitter feuds between the old political parties and religious sects on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by the extravagant inventions of mercenary story-tellers who wished to regale their listeners or who were paid by the then rulers to distract the masses from discussing their policies. Rafiq al'Azm is particularly condemnatory of the stories which ascribe dissolution to the Caliphs or kings. As these stories discredit the early Islamic ages, which we consider among the great prides of our glorious past, they cannot be true. Those Caliphs and kings could not have maintained a rule of supremacy and power as they did if their private behavior had been so lowly; ergo, those stories must be false. Ibn Khaldfin, known for his insight in history and soundness in the study of the characteristics of society and the morals and inclinations of nations, denied the stories ascribed to al-Rashid. It is Ibn Khaldfn who should be trusted, not those fabricators. Taha Husayn's answer to this argument is condensed in the attached appendix. Rereading that answer, one may come to the conclusion that he had yet another motive in selecting the licentious poets for his study, a motive which he could not very well have spelt out in so many words at the time. It was not simply that those poets existed and could not be ignored, nor the contention that it was they who truly mirrored the prevalent conditions of their times. Taha Husayn was out for an intentional debunking of the established picture of the Arab and Muslim past: a rosy picture of a lost golden age which had no blemishes. He resumed his campaign seven months after the conclusion of the series on the 'Abbasi poets, when, in September 1924, he started on his second series dealing with the 'Udhri lovers whose poetry flourished in the first cen-

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tury of Islam. Although he accepted the poetry itself, or much of it, as authentic, his research led him to have grave doubts of the historical verity of the poets to whom the poetry was ascribed. They were more in the nature of legendary heroes whom the storytellers had invented in order to ascribe to them the huge body of anonymous, communal amatory verse spoken by scores of unknown nomadic youths throughout the Arabian desert. Taha Husayn realized that his new thesis would intensify the accusations against him and give them fresh fuel. He had been seen as imputing to the ancient Arabs the most heinous sins of profligacy and religious levity; now he would be seen as adding the crimes of lying, deception and fabrication to their score. (It may be remembered that he had not yet written his thesis on the pre-Islamic poetry; this would come two years later.) There was no help for it, however; so he decided that his best policy would be a frontal attack, and in the very first page15of his new series, he announced that he was going to increase the ranks of his angry critics by denying the verity of another group of poets. He went on to say the following, which may be here translated in full, as it was his most outspoken expression of his attitude to the sanctification of ancient Arab history: I am goingto negatea certaingroupof poets, or deny the authenticityof theirpersons. I know that not a small numberof those who are interestedin literaturedo not like this sort of researchwhichends in negationor doubt. They wantall researchto be, or to lead and certainty.In their opinion, a skillfulresearcheris not one who ends to, affirmation or doubtinghis existence. Such a researcheris a destroyer of by negatingal-Majnfin To them, a trulyskillfulresearcheris one Arabgloryand an attackerof Arabicliterature. and who takes every means and uses every device to prove the existence of al-Majnfin banishall the reasonsfor doubtingit. Thus he will add new glory to the Arabglory, and artisticgenres. prove that Arabicliteratureis distinguishedby innumerable If you wish to please these people, then flattertheirlove of the Arabs, and theirgoing to extremesin this love. Ascribeto the Arabswhat they said and what they did not say, what they did andwhatthey did not do. Declaretheirnationto be the noblest of nations, their languagethe noblest of languages,their literaturethe most sublime literature.In doing this, disregardany caution and stop at no limits. Do not admit that the modern nationshave any achievement,unless it be one which they inheritedor liftedbodilyfrom the same pathfollowedby the Arabs.In orderto please these people, follow in literature as they use political some in politics. Use literarydata as a means of misrepresentation, interests. Thus you will win all the applauseand admiration you wish, all the gratitude it. So and praise, althoughyou will be doinga disserviceto knowledgeand transgressing choose between the satisfactionof knowledgeand the satisfactionof the masses. As for myself, I confess that - for my good or bad luck - I preferthe satisfactionof and applauseof the masses. knowledgeand conscience to the satisfaction,admiration Whether Taha Husayn, in this debunking campaign, was activated by hatred and enmity towards the Arabs, or by the deepest and most sincere love and concern for their genuine well-being; whether he was a mischievous and spiteful detractor and destroyer, or a true reformer who realized that the new national awakening could not be built upon a false conception of the past and a vain yearning for its return; what constitutes injurious nationalist fanaticism and what constitutes sane, beneficial patriotism; whether or not the contemporary Arabs could have avoided the tragedies of their recent history epitomized

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in the crippling defeats of I948 and 1967 had they heeded such warnings and made a more objective assessment of their inherited and acquired strengths and weaknesses: these are all questions which lie outside the topic of this paper.16 What comes within its purview is the consideration that Taha Husayn could not easily have developed his reconstruction of Arab history had he been merely dependent upon his inborn faculty and had not whetted and deepened it by his reading of western historiography, in both the classical periods of Greece and Rome and the history of modern France. We have seen one or two instances in his answer to Rafiq al-'Azm. While the modern Arabs, in their present weakness and degradation, resent the imputation of shortcomings to their ancestors, those ancients themselves, being self-assured in their time of power and glory, thought nothing of their contemporary writers recording the defects of their leading men. This is reminiscent of the Greeks, who, in their time of greatness, did not mind Herodotus' description of the acts of treachery, cowardice and venality of their heroes in the Persian wars; but when they entered their times of subjugation and humiliation, they were hurt by those descriptions. Being in need of exaggerating their past glory to compensate for their downfall, they welcomed Plutarch's attack on Herodotus and his vindication of the ancient heroes of Herodotus' defamatory lies. Yet, he adds, modern scholarship has proven that it was Herodotus who was in the right. In the same answer, trying to establish that the Umayyad and 'Abbasi caliphs could have managed the serious affairs of the state and yet enjoyed a private life of pleasure at the same time, he cites the examples of Augustus, Tiberius and Nero, as well as Louis XIV and Louis XV. He also refers to the time of the French revolution to argue that one and the same age could be a time of the most awesome gravity and the most reprobate abandon. Likewise, his searching criticism of the biographies of the 'Udhri poets could only have been made by a man who has followed the phenomenon of fabrication in other literatures. It must first be noted that this criticism is a very different matter from the flimsy arguments he will concoct about pre-Islamic poetry two years later. Is is of such conclusiveness that one does not only readily accept it, but wonders how centuries could have passed during which al-Majnun was accepted as a historical figure when a perusal of the first ten pages of his biography in al-'Aghani17 is sufficient to show that most of the ancient scholars themselves declared him to be a fictitious character. Moreover, Taha Husayn's study of the 'Udhri movement is not merely negatory. If he stamps the stories woven round the poets as legendary tales, his comparative knowledge at the same time alerts him to the supremely important fact that even legends may have their historical significance, as they portray the aspirations and frustrations of the people who invented them and among whom they became popular. So, having denied the authenticity of those tales, he still submits them to one of the most cogent pieces of research in modern Arabic criticism to discover their political, economic, social and religious mainsprings. One need not agree with all his points; some of them may appear forced, or in need of further verification. But there is little doubt that this was an epoch-making chapter in the revaluation of classical Arabic literature and the study of its connection with its his-

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torical circumstances. In this study, Taha Husayn finds a similarity between Layla, the ideal beloved of the Arabs, and Helen of Troy.18 He also compares the pessimism which he claims the Arab nomads felt after Islam to the despair of the French people after the Revolution, and sees the strong points of resemblance between the 'Udhri poetry and the sombre romantic poetry of Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Musset and Vigny.19 Here again, one may wonder whether Taha Husayn could have formed his picture of the intrinsic nature of 'Udhri poetry had he not had a firsthand knowledge of the rather parallel movement in European literature. Numerous other instances could be quoted to illustrate how his remarkable ability to arrive at a fresh and deeper understanding of the classical literary ages and movements was a product of a fecund marriage between his natural perspicacity and acquired western education. His comprehension of the fight between the old and the new in the later Umayyad and early 'Abbasi times is sharpened by his familiarity with the similar fight in ancient Greece.20 His perceptive analysis of the juxtaposition and tension between the political and the cultural forces in that age found a succinct paradox: just as the Romans conquered the Greeks militarily but were conquered by them culturally, so it happened between the Arabs and Persians.21 This simple comparison is capable of illuminating and synthesizing a whole world of contradictory events and phenomena in those troubled yet fruitful days. But it is time now to move from Taha Husayn's intellectual contribution, on which this paper has so far concentrated, to his aesthetic contribution, in order to see another major field in which his gifts were ripened by his western studies. The influence of those studies was manifest in the writings he published before fi'l-adab al-jdhili: his doctoral dissertation on al-Ma'arri, translations and precis from western literature, and the Wednesday articles considered above. However, it was in Book I of that work that he fully acknowledges his debt to western methods of literary studies, and, moreover, urges all Arabic scholars to learn and apply them, otherwise their efforts will remain sterile. Before he makes this assertion, he gives a critique of the methods then current in Egypt. First, some teachers still follow the method of the ancients, which concentrated on the linguistic, grammatical and rhetorical points of the literary texts. This method is good as far as it goes: it gets the students to memorize and love some excellent texts, develops their taste and strengths their faculty for composition. Second, there is the European method, introduced by Nullino and the orientalists who succeeded him in the Egyptian University. This is a fruitful method which applies modern western criteria of scholarship in the study of the literary history, and teaches the students how to research, compare and make deductions. These are complementary: they help the student to have a well-balanced literary cum scientific makeup, develop his taste, comprehension, critical and researching faculty, and writing skill. What is totally bad is the third method, rife in the School of ShariPaLaw, Dar al-'Ulum, the secondary schools and just introduced into al-Azhar. It attempts to imitate the European method in the study of literary history, but consists of a jumble of truncated and pointless biographies containing a garbled assortment of quotations

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and data which the students are required to learn by heart for the sake of examinations, and which they afterwards promptly forget. From such a method students learn neither criticism nor research, nor acquire any taste, but only gain the illusion of having gathered all possible knowledge about Arabic literature since God created it to present day. Taha Husayn goes on to say the teachers of Arabic, in their profound ignorance, are incapable of doing justice to the classical heritage, even in the conventional study of language, grammar and rhetoric. They cannot get the students to love the literary texts, since they present them as no more than hard, dry, indigestible matter that holds no pleasure for the emotion, no corrective for the errors of speech, no satisfaction to man in his individual, domestic, national, human and moral life. A proper teacher of Arabic needs to know at least one foreign language and literature; he needs to be familiar with the methods of research into the life of language and the stages of development of literature; he must acquaint himself with the scientific results achieved by Europeans in their study of the East, its literatures and languages. It is from the Europeans that we must seek knowledge, so as to be able to stand on our feet and reclaim our sciences, literatures and history to which they have beaten us. The proper study of literature must pay a great attention to language, grammar, rhetoric and prosody as the ancients used to do. However, it must also understand the relation between literature and the people, between literature and other manifestations of intellectual and emotional life. Furthermore, it must enquire into the connection between the various literatures of nations and their mutual influence. This necessitates a good study of the Semitic languages and literatures, and the modern European languages and literatures. From all this, it will be seen that every sound, disciplined scientific study, whatever its subject may be, demands a solid general culture. From this condensation of Taha Husayn's critique, which occupies the first three chapters of Book I, two major influences will be seen to have affected his view how Arabic literature should be studied and taught: the work of the orientalists, some of whom he knew as teachers in the Egyptian University, and his own readings in western literature, literary history and criticism. However, it is when he comes to the seventh chapter that he gives specific details about the western methods of study which he learnt, and thus enables us to gauge the strength and limitation of that learning. He entitles this chapter "Criteria of Literary History." First he describes a method which he calls the political criterion, and which he says is the one prevalent in the formal teaching of literature in the Egyptian secondary and higher schools. This method divides literary history into ages connected with the political periods, the pre-Islamic, Islamic and 'Abbasi, followed by the age of decline. He stamps this method as inaccurate, superficial and misleading, giving reasons for this judgment. Then he describes what he calls the scientific criterion, which is the one developed by a group of critics and literary historians who appeared in France in the last century, and who attempted to make literary history a science like the other natural sciences, though they differed in the way each worked toward that aim. The first of them is Sainte-Beuve, who attempts to deduce the principles of this new sci-

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ence from a study of the personalities of writers and poets. Taha Husayn describes this method of study as psycho-organic, a study which classifies personalities as botanists classify the various plant species. It is founded on the fact that an author's psychology and his mental and physical makeup exert full influence on his literary production, so they must be studied to discover their points of similarity with and of distinction from those of other authors. The second is Taine, who considers these individual personalities themselves the product of general racial influences, which in turn are the outcome of two dominant factors, place and time. Last comes Brunetiere, who went farther than the first two, and submitted the literary arts to the theory of evolution; in his opinion, what should be studied is not the individual personality of the author, but the literary art itself, just as the living species are studied in their origin, evolution, adaptation to the environment and the changes they undergo. Having thus outlined these three methods, Taha Husayn finds that they share one shortcoming: in their attempt to make a science of the study of literature, they neglect the importance of literary taste, and he says he means the individual taste before the general. Literary history then becomes dry, joyless and barren, and loses connection with creative literature. So he proposes what he calls the literary criterion, which makes all the use it can of the appropriate sciences, but adds the consideration of individual taste and aesthetic pleasure, thus combining scientific soundness with discernment of artistic beauty. It may be observed that, according to this tabulation, Taha Husayn's knowledge of the western methods of literary study are limited to French schools which arose in the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. Thus his application of the psychological approach is confined to conscious, as opposed to depth, psychology, and he has not been able to accept or sympathize with the psychoanalytical revolution brought about by Freud and the various approaches to the unconscious or subconscious which branched out afterwards. Methods of exploring the phenomena of literature and plumbing the personalities of authors were not yet familiar when the young Taha Husayn was diligently acquiring his western education in the second decade of the twentieth century in France. Consequently, he remained suspicious and antagonistic to the attempts of later critics to introduce them in the revaluation of classical Arabic literature.22 Similarly, his consideration of the material and social factors which underlie the emergence and development of literature did not go beyond the theories of Taine and Brunetiere to open itself up to the influence of Marxism. Here again, the simple reason would appear to be that at the time of his formative education the intellectual climate of the West was different from what it is today when the impact of the Marxian analysis is not confined to the out-and-out materialists and when few serious scholars can remain impervious to it in one way or another. Hence he had some strong objections to make to the Marxist and pseudo-Marxist Arab intellectuals in the 1950s.23 In this opposition, he made a number of valid points in his attempt to curb the excesses of those theorists who were applying vague concepts, which they considered fixed and universal, to a field of which they had little or no specialized knowledge. At the same time, his determined opposition may seem to go beyond those pertinent corrections and invalidate the dialectical approach in toto.

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In the chapters discussed above, Taha Husayn speaks repeatedly and at length of the need to develop the scientific spirit, to learn the sciences which have made such splendid progress in the west, to use them to impregnate Arabic culture in general and the study of Arabic literature in particular. And there can be no doubt that he was utterly sincere in this, and, moreover, that he did his utmost to benefit by all the scientific knowledge he could absorb in his formative years. However, it may not be unjust to question whether the influence went deep enough; the evidence of his later opposition to every method of study that went farther than his favorites would seem to warrant a negative answer. Even his account of the criteria of literary history may be seen to presage his later stand. In criticizing what he considers the excessive scientific tendency of Sainte-Beuve, Taine and Brunetiere, he makes the following statements which may be quite right in themselves, but which can be easily overstated. The cause of all these scientific attempts, he says, is the great scientific progress which captivated the minds. So philosophy, history and later literature each tried to become a science. But they did not succeed and they can never succeed. Literary history cannot be completely objective; it is deeply influenced by taste, and by individual taste before the general. A literary historian cannot divest himself of his personality and taste. Were he able to, literary history would become dry and distasteful, severed from creative literature, to be cared for only by specialists, to be shunned by the enlightened. Furthermore, it will never succeed in giving a completely scientific explanation of the literary phenomena. No matter how much it will say about environment, time and race, and about the evolution of the literary phenomena, it will still have before it a puzzle which has not been solved and which it will never succeed in solving: that is, the psychology of the producer of literature, and the relation between this psychology and the literary products. If literary criticism becomes all science, it is uncouth and sterile. On the other hand, if it is all art, it loses fairness of judgment and becomes overidden by personal prejudice. It must therefore take a middle place between the two. Now when Taha Husayn makes these pronouncements, few will disagree with him; the question is whether he managed to keep to this well-balanced position, or rather swayed to the side of unchecked personal taste. The later critics, stung by his adamant refusal of their innovations, have often accused him of being extravagantly emotional, hopelessly impressionistic, chaotically unsystematic and self-contradictory, lacking in the solid core of objectivity, a complete and unmitigated product of nineteenth-century neoclassicism and romanticism. Such criticism, however, can be overdone. First, it can easily overshadow his solid achievements, some of which have been outlined above; on the purely intellectual side, in his exploration of the history of Arabic literature, reconstruction of the ancient times, and revaluation of some of the most important phenomena and events. These achievements are even more to be admired for being completely new and unprecedented in the history of native Arabic scholarship. True, they benefited a great deal from the labors of the orientalists, but they gave as much as they received, and they are therefore the unmistakable signs of a power of originality and what A. J. Arberry called "no small measure of genius.'24 Secondly, that criticism can grievously underrate Taha Husayn's

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aesthetic achievement, which may be his greatest and most permanent contribution. No scholar in the long history of Arabic literature has contributed more to the deep enjoyment of its treasures; very few have contributed as much; none since the days of 'Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjini in the eleventh century. Taha Husayn may be often emotional in his exposition of artistic beauty, but he usually succeeds in infecting his reader with his thrill, and it is to be wondered whether this is not the highest mission of a literary critic. This ability should be sought not in Fi'l-adab al-Jdhili, but in his later series on the study of pre-Islamic poetry published from January to May 1935, and now, together with his essays on the Umayyad poetry, constituting the first volume of the rearranged edition. Although he never publicly recanted his earlier hypothesis, these studies, which bring to light some of the distinctive features of the pre-Islamic poetical achievement, could hardly have been written by a man who maintained that strong negation of its authenticity. The penetration of this exploration becomes more spectacular as one realizes that the dominant quality of this poetry is its minute and vivid pictorial imagery.25 Here was a man who had lost his sight in his early childhood, but who could, with his inner eye, perceive combinations of colors and shades, configurations of shapes and contours, and details of complex movements never before consciously noticed and acutely analyzed by sighted scholars. In the introduction and first two chapters of this series, Taha Husayn laments the state of affairs when the Arab youths find no joy in the study of this classical heritage, but only in pointless toil and drudgery, and turn to western literature for the pleasure and profit which literature offers its readers. He declares that his endeavour in these essays is to show these youngsters some of the exciting beauty hidden in that legacy and waiting only for proper discovery and enjoyment. And there can be few people, even among his bitterest enemies, who deny that he brilliantly succeeds in his aim: these essays have given thousands of readers all over the Arab world a kind of thrill they never before experienced. Here was a writer who until quite recently was popularly denounced as the destructive enemy of Arabic language and literature, proving to be their most convincing champion. The same ability to communicate literary pleasure is found in his studies of Umayyad and 'Abbasi poems and poets. Nor is it correct to say that his emotionalism or personal prejudices always spoilt his objectivity. He may have been eminently unfair to Bashshar Ibn Burd,26 whose aggressive behavior and boisterous profligacy were exceedingly distasteful to this gentle and abstemious scholar to a degree which overweighed the sympathy one might have expected from a fellow sufferer from the loss of eyesight and from official and public persecution. However, he manifested a great and unreserved love for Abf Nuwas, another profligate whose temperament and habits were at great odds with his; and he was the first in modern criticism to accord this poet the full appreciation due his towering genius, after centuries during which he was considered little more than a lightweight dilettante. Again, although he utterly detested the personality of al-Mutanabbi, with his loud-mouthed boastfulness, insufferable vanity and unwarranted ambition, he was remarkably able to transcend his loathing of the person and accord the poet unstinting admiration for his unique power of

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melody, of which he wrote some of the most cogent analyses in Arabic critiIn this exploration of the aesthetic appeal of Arabic literature, the keen perceptiveness of which can hardly be overestimated, Taha Husayn undoubtedly benefited a great deal from his study of western literature and literary criticism. However, this was achieved in the indirect way, which is probably the correct and legitimate way, as it is the most truly rewarding. In his best work, he did not consciously seek to apply western criteria or forcedly introduce this or that method of study, a process which, in the present writer's opinion, only results in sorry travesties. What happened was that Taha Husayn made a good study of French literature and acquired an intelligent understanding of western criteria as practiced in and applied to western literature itself. This broadened his view and sharpened his critical faculty. Then, forgetting for a while his acquired knowledge, he came back to Arabic literature, and, with his developed insight, was able to make a fresh evaluation of its distinctive aesthetic quality. The difference between the two literary natures being as wide as it is, no direct application of values could be efficacious, and there was little in the work of the orientalists to help him, since the aesthetic nuances he was dealing with were not, perhaps, of a nature that could be easily perceived by a foreign scholar, irrespective of his imaginative power. On the purely intellectual side, his debt to the orientalists' incisiveness of mind and maturity of methodology was indeed great, and he himself acknowledged this debt fully and repeatedly, even at times when it was tantamount to an admission of atheism and high treason times, unhappily, which are by no means over yet. However, in the field of sheer aesthetic appreciation, he had only that indirect influence of western literature itself, which acted as the catalyst for his native genius. An example may be found in his book on al-Mutanabbi. In the parts which study the political events of the age and the vicissitudes of the poet's life, he is heavily dependent upon the researches of Blachere, without which, indeed, he could not have written those parts, though he differs with him in some of his findings. However, the parts that study the beginning, development and full fruition of al-Mutanabbi's poetical power, and analyze its peculiar quality, are all his own. He notes Blachere's aversion to al-Mutanabbi's heroic poems, and rightly finds excuse for him in the fact that this particular kind of aesthetic appeal is alien to the orientalists' tastes and tempers. All the same, it must be reiterated that even this aesthetic appreciation could not have been possible to Taha Husayn to such a degree of keenness and depth had he not made a good, firsthand study of some other literature. That appeal was there all the time waiting to be discovered and presented, and yet not one of the traditionally educated scholars was able to perceive it, or in any case to present it in a convincing, infectious exposition. As is well known, the distinctive quality of a thing can often best be recognized when it is contrasted with something different. Moreover, it would be wrong to suppose an impassable barrier between the intellectual and the aesthetic faculty. Undoubtedly as the former gets more powerful, the latter increases in sharpness. In fact, that is one of the major arguments adduced by Taha Husayn in his urging Arab scholars to

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learn the sciences of the west and the scholarship of the orientalists. In summation: Taha Husayn, in making use of western culture to develop his natural gifts, and in the volume and quality of such use, both intellectual and aesthetic, direct and indirect, stands as a good example of the great benefits which issue from a sagacious marriage of cultures. Thus we see the full turn of the cycle. Ancient Arabic culture borrowed its fructifying seeds from classical western culture. On such borrowings it matured and was able to contribute what may be considered elements of its own, while the west went into its dark age. Then when the time came for its renaissance, it found its most available door to the rediscovery of its classical riches in what the Arabs had preserved and developed, while they in turn entered upon their centuries of decay. Now in this century Arabs have started the proper reappraisal of their legacy and the solid building of their new culture by learning from the arts and sciences of the west. A wonderful picture of the interdependence of the cultures of mankind, a story that gives the lie to the racists, fanatics and peddlers of chauvinism and xenophobia on both sides. This, as I know both from my readings and personal contact, was the major concern of the late Gustav von Grunebaum, to whose memory this Plenary Session is dedicated, and who had the most profound esteem for and the most cordial relations with our Egyptian scholar. I am therefore happy to contribute this modest effort to the cause which the two great men have served.
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO CAIRO, EGYPT

APPENDIX

Condensation of Tdhd Husayn's Article: "An Answer To a Criticism: How Should We Understand History?' 28 The esteemed scholar Rafiq Bey al-'Azm, and many illustrious scholars in the East, go on shrouding Islamic history in a garb of exaltation and religious or semi-religious sanctity which hinders the mind from looking into it with correct scientific research and criticism. They believe in the glory, august status and sacred position of the ancient Arabs. They attribute to them every good and declare them immune from all evil. They ascribe to them the greatest deeds and raise them above mean ones. They make this one of the rules of research and one of the yardsticks of criticism. If you ascribe anything to al-Rashid, this can be true only if it is worthy of al-Rashid and his position. The said position is not what his position was in itself; it is the position shed on him by antiquity, the remoteness of time, the majesty of the caliphate, the dignity of religion and the might of the Arab nation. As to historical criticism per se: as to looking at men as human beings, giving them the attributes that can befit humans, analyzing their characters and habits as those of men should be analyzed, and connecting these with the circum-

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stances which surrounded them - this is something which is seldom thought of or heeded by these scholars. The reason is this. Nations are forced by the vicissitudes of life to forego their eminence and submit to loss of power and prestige. Then they wake up and aspire to reclaim the old glory. Their first feeling is their need for that old glory and the necessity of exalting those who achieved it and holding them up as ideals to be emulated. In this attitude, our contemporary scholars take Ibn Khaldun as their leader. Ibn Khaldun was, indeed, great. In the first part of his Introduction to History, he gives a critique of the errors of historians in which he formulates some scientific rules which are not bad. He hates prejudice, warns against the many dangers that beset a historiographer, and calls for the arbitration of reason in the ascertainment of narrated events. Through all this, he discovers some valuable principles in historical criticism. However, he hardly begins to apply them when he falls into pits similar to those of the former historians. For he, too, is swayed by belief in the glory, piety and purity of the ancients, and the degeneration and corruption of morals and conditions of the contemporaries. When he wishes to refute the accusations of levity and abandon that were levelled against al-Rashid, he does not do so as historians should. Instead, he tells you that al-Rashid used to perform a hundred prostrations (in prayer) every day, and would go on pilgrimage one year and wage a holy war the following year. It did not occur to Ibn Khaldun that another historian may have the right to deny that al-Rashid performed a hundred prostrations every day, or to hold that alRashid could very well have performed the prayer and yet (at other times) behaved with abandon. This did not occur to Ibn Khaldfin, because he admired and exalted al-Rashid, and wanted to set him and similar caliphs up as paragons. I remember a little treatise by the Greek historian Plutarch in which he criticized Herodotus and accused him of lying and fabrication. Herodotus had imputed various defects to the ancient Greek heroes in the Persian war: treachery, high treason, cowardice, venality. Plutarch claimed that these heroes were too great and lofty to fall into such sins. The Greeks loved this criticism, as it exonerated their ancestors. When, in the modern age, the Greek legacy was discovered, and the modern methods of historical criticism explored, it became evident that Herodotus did not lie or claim what was impossible, and that it was Plutarch who claimed for men a sanctity and immunity which men are incapable of possessing. This was not strange. The "father of history" lived in the time of Greek glory and might, so it did not hurt him, nor did it hurt the Greeks, to ascribe to their heroes the defects from which men cannot be immune. Plutarch lived in the time of Greek humiliation and political degradation, when these defects hurt their feelings and they were in need of exaggerating their ancient glory as they had no new glory. Such is our present condition: we have no glory or illustrious deed, so we borrow the glory of our ancestors as a plumage and a boast. Hence we imagine

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that to define the said glory with its true attributes does not denigrate the ancestors alone, but denigrates both them and ourselves. Is this not the case? Why, otherwise, do we boast of the Arabs and the Pharaohs and the monuments of Arabs and Pharaohs? Merely a kind of self-conceit with which we hide our present condition of ignorance, degradation and weakness. Arab narrators and historians who lived in the days of Arab glory and might were not averse to describing the Arab caliphs and emirs with the shortcomings which belong to humans. It is sufficient to read, not a particular book, but any of the books of literature and history to see this. Ustaz al-'Azm and his friends say that these reports are fabricated. I am the first to admit that many reports are fabricated. But I cannot believe that every report which attributes to the ancients something unpleasant is fabricated, and every report which attributes to them something nice is genuine. These reports should be verified in themselves. I claim that many of them are true. I claim that very many of the Umayyad and 'Abbasi caliphs committed various acts of levity and abandon, and enjoyed certain pleasures held by religion reprehensible. Augustus, Tiberius and Nero were the religious heads in Rome, but they were also Caesars; they gave religion its due, and gave the world it due. Louis XIV and XV were the manifestation of the power of Christ in France, but at the same time were the manifestation of the authority of the French. So they prayed and they frolicked. They heard the sermons of the church fathers and preachers, and these sermons frightened them of the wrath of God, but they went back to the palace, and were soon immersed in sins. The age of the French Revolution was an age of frightening gravity, yet it was the age of the greatest amount of frolicking and abandon, an age in which ran rivers of blood and rivers of wine. In this age of ours, the Great War, with all its gravity and terrors, did not stop the Europeans from enjoying the pleasures of life; in fact, pleasure-seeking became more widespread. Likewise, war and conquest were not barriers that would prevent the Umayyads and 'Abbasis from enjoying the pleasures of life. Nor was learning a barrier: their share of learning was no higher than that of the contemporary Europeans and Americans; it was lower. All those ancients should be studied according to one rule: they were men, not angels.
NOTES 1 Taha Dar al-Ma'arif, Cairo, 1962. This book was first published in Husayn,fJT-adab al-jdhiilL, 1927. The year before, the author had printed a briefer presentation of his hypothesis under the title til-shi'r al-jdhili, which was suppressed. The present book omits the chapter which caused most offense, and which expressed the author's doubt about the historical veracity of the Qur 'anic story on Abraham and the building of the Ka'ha. 2 A. J. Arberry, The Seven Odes, London and New York, 1957, "Epilogue: True or False?", p. 228 ff. 3Ibid., p. 238. Ibid., p. 239.
5Ibid.,
6

p. 244.

Op. cit., pp. 55-59. 7Ibid., pp. 243-244.

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Ibid., pp. 67-70. 9 Muhammad Ahmad al-Ghamrawi, al-naqd al-tahlili li-kitdb "f'l-adab al-jdhili,' Cairo, 1929. 10 Ibid., pp. 100-132. 11 Ibid., pp. 44-5412 Now constituting vol. II of the rearranged ed., Ddr al-Ma'drif, Cairo, I964. 13 Now, with the later series which studies some pre-Islamic poems, constituting vol. I of the book, Ddr al-Ma'drif, Cairo, I965, beginning on p. 173. 14 Taha Husayn, hadith al-arba'd', 1964, vol. II, pp. 58-62. 15 Tiah Husayn, hadith al-arba'd', I965, vol. I, p. I73. 16 They were tackled in another paper by the present author, Ibn Khaldun and Modern Arab Historiography, Seminar on Historical Sociology, Department of Sociology, American University in Cairo, April 17, 1972. 17 Kitdb al-aghdni, Dar al-Kutub, Cairo, 1928, vol. 2, pp. 2 ff. 8 Taha Husayn, hadith al-arba'd', vol. I, p. 194. 19Ibid., p. 222. 20 Taha Husayn, hadith al-arba'd', vol. II, p. 6. 21 Taha Husayn, hadith al-arba'a', vol. I, p. 178 and vol. II, p. 27. 22 Taha Husayn, khisdm wvanaqd, Bayrit, 1960, pp. 221-260. (For the present writer's answer, see his book Nafsiyyat Abi Nuwds, 2nd ed., Cairo, 1970, pp. 176-184 and 193-204.) 23 Ibid., pp. 90-127. 24 A. J; Arberry, op. cit., p..229. 25 For an exposition of this characteristic, see the present writer's al-shi'r al-jhili: manhaj fi dirdsatih wa taqwimih, Cairo, I966, vol. I, pp. 107-120. 26 Taha Husayn, hadith al-arba'c', vol. II, pp. I88-211. 27 Taha Husayn, ma'a'l-mutanabbi, Cairo, I962. 28 Taha Husayn, hadith al-arba'd', vol. II, pp. 63-70.