following the precedent set by Moses, who, when he
turned towards Midyan, said, Maybe the Lord will guide
me?” (Koran 28, 21). Should a man be satisfied
with what he hears from the philosopher al-Kindi?
“In any single existing thing, if it is thoroughly
known, we possess,” he said, “a mirror
in which we may behold the entire scheme of things”
(quatrain 20). The same philosopher has
laid it down that, “Verily there is nothing
constant in this world of coming and going (quatrain
24), in which we may be deprived at any moment of
what we love. Only in the world of reason is
stability to be found. If then we desire to see
our wishes fulfilled and would not be robbed of what
is dear to us, we must turn to the eternal blessings
of reason, to the fear of God, to science and to good
works. But if we follow merely after material
possessions in the belief that we can retain them,
we are pursuing an object which does not really exist.”
. . . And this idea of transitoriness prevails
so generally among the Arabs that the salad-seller
recommends his transitory wares to pious folk by calling,
“God is that which does not pass away!”
So, too, the Arab pictures as a bird, a thing of transience,
the human soul. In Syria the dove is often carved
upon their ancient tombstones. And the Longobards
among their graves erected poles in memory of kinsfolk
who had died abroad or had been slain in battle; on
the summit of the pole was a wooden image of a dove,
whose head was pointed in the direction where the
loved one lay buried. With us, as with Abu’l-Ala
(quatrain 26), the soul may metaphorically be
imagined as a bird, but for the European’s ancestor
it was a thing of sober earnest, as it is to-day to
many peoples. Thus the soul of Aristeas was seen
to issue from his mouth in the shape of a raven.[6]
In Southern Celebes they think that a bridegroom’s
soul is apt to fly away at marriage, wherefore coloured
rice is scattered over him to induce it to remain.
And, as a rule, at festivals in South Celebes rice
is strewed on the head of the person in whose honour
the festival is held, with the object of detaining
his soul, which at such times is in especial danger
of being lured away by envious demons.[7] . . .
This metaphor was used by Abu’l-Ala in the letter
which he wrote on the death of his mother: “I
say to my soul, ’This is not your nest, fly
away.’” And elsewhere (quatrain
34) Death is represented as a reaper. Says Francis
Thompson:
The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper
The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.
It is interesting to find Death also called a sower, who disseminates weeds among men: “Do der Tot sinen Samen under si gesoete.”