Sa’id ibn Judi—­the pattern of the Knight of those days, the poet loved of women; Yahyah ibn Hakam, “the gazelle”; Ahmad ibn ’Abd Rabbih, the author of a commonplace book; Ibn Abdun of Badjiz, Ibn Hafajah of Xucar, Ibn Sa’id of Granada.  Kings added a new jewel to their crown, and took an honored place among the bards; as ’Abd al-Rahman I., and Mu’tamid (died 1095), the last King of Seville, whose unfortunate life he himself has pictured in most beautiful elegies.  Although the short revival under the Almohades (1184-1198) produced such men as Ibn Roshd, the commentator on Aristotle, and Ibn Tofeil, who wrote the first ‘Robinson Crusoe’ story, the sun was already setting.  When Ferdinand burned the books which had been so laboriously collected, the dying flame of Arab culture in Spain went out.

During the third period—­from Ma’mun (813), under whom the Turkish body-guards began to wield their baneful influence, until the break-up of the Abbasside Empire in 1258—­there are many names, but few real poets, to be mentioned.  The Arab spirit had spent itself, and the Mogul cloud was on the horizon.  There were ’Abd-allah ibn al-Mu’tazz, died 908; Abu Firas, died 967; al-Tughrai, died 1120; al-Busiri, died 1279,—­author of the ‘Burda,’ poem in praise of Muhammad:  but al-Mutanabbi, died 965, alone deserves special mention.  The “Prophet-pretender”—­for such his name signifies—­has been called by Von Hammer “the greatest Arabian poet”; and there is no doubt that his ‘Diwan,’ with its two hundred and eighty-nine poems, was and is widely read in the East.  But it is only a depraved taste that can prefer such an epigene to the fresh desert-music of Imr-al-Kais.  Panegyrics, songs of war and of bloodshed, are mostly the themes that he dilates upon.  He was in the service of Saif al-Daulah of Syria, and sang his victories over the Byzantine Kaiser.  He is the true type of the prince’s poet.  Withal, the taste for poetic composition grew, though it produced a smaller number of great poets.  But it also usurped for itself fields which belong to entirely different literary forms.  Grammar, lexicography, philosophy, and theology were expounded in verse; but the verse was formal, stiff, and unnatural.  Poetic composition became a tour de force.

This is nowhere better seen than in that species of composition which appeared for the first time in the eleventh century, and which so pleased and charmed a degenerate age as to make of the ‘Makamat’ the most favorite reading.  Ahmad Abu Fadl al-Hamadhani, “the wonder of all time” (died 1007), composed the first of such “sessions.”  Of his four hundred only a few have come down to our time.  Abu Muhammad al-Hariri (1030-1121), of Basra, is certainly the one who made this species of literature popular; he has been closely imitated in Hebrew by Charizi (1218), and in Syriac by Ebed Yeshu (1290).  “Makamah” means the place where one stands, where assemblies are held; then, the discourses delivered, or conversations held in such an assembly.  The word is used here especially to denote a series of “discourses and conversations composed in a highly finished and ornamental style, and solely for the purpose of exhibiting various kinds of eloquence, and exemplifying the rules of grammar, rhetoric, and poetry.”  Hariri himself speaks of—­