Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Cultural Activities under the Umayyads 485
settled in al-Hijaz, stood for pure and innocent love of the platonic type. Jamil’s verses, all addressed to his sweet heart Buthaynah. who belonged to the same tribe, breathe a spirit of tenderness unparalleled in that age. Because of their esthetic value and simple unaffected language they have since been set to music by many Arabic singers. Like Jamil al-Udhri, the semi-mythical Majnun Layla, whose original name is said to have been Qays ibn-al-Mulawvvah, represents the lyric type of poetical composition Qays, according to legend, became in fatuated to the point of madness (whence his surname majnun) with a woman of the same tribe named Layla, who reciprocated his love but was obliged to marry another to satisfy her father. Crazed with despair, Qays passes the rest of his life wandering half-naked among the hills and valleys of his native Najd singing the beauty of his beloved and yearning for a sight of her. Only when her name was mentioned would be return to his normal self.’ Thus did Majnun Layla become the hero of numberless Arabic, Persian and Turkish romances extolling the power of undying love. Undoubtedly many of the poems attached to the names of Jamil and Majnun were not actually composed by them but were originally ballads and folk-songs.
Besides love poetry, political poetry made its appearance under Umayyad auspices. The first occasion was the request made of Miskin al-Darimi to compose and sing publicly verses commemorating the nomination of Yazid to the Caliphate. To this period also belongs the fiist attempt to compile ancient pre-Islamic poetry, which attempt was undertaken by Hammad al-Rawiyah. Hammad was born in a!-Kufah of a Daylami (Persian) prisoner of war and spoke Arabic with an accent, but he was one of those famed in Arabic annals for possessing phenomenal memories. In answer to a question by al-Walid II he offered to recite of the jahiliyah poems alone, rhyming in each of the letters of the alphabet, one hundred different odes for each letter. After listening in person and by proxy to 2900 qasidahs, as we are told, al-Walid felt satisfied and ordered

100,000 dirhams for the reciter.’ Hammad’s great merit, no doubt, was his collection of the famous Golden Odes, otherwise called Mu’allaqat.

The provincial school of poetry in the Umayyad period was headed by ai-Farazdaq and Jarir, that of the capita! by al-Akhtal. All three were born and brought up in Iraq. They were satirists as well as panegyrists. As poets the trio stand in the very front rank among

486
Political and Cultural History of Islam

those with whom Arab criticism has found nothings to compare since their time. AI-Akhtal, the Christian, was the champion of Ihe Umayyad cause against the theocratic part>; al-I’arazdaq,s ’he dissolute, was the poet laureate of Abdul Malik and his sons aiWalid, Sulayman and Yazid: Jarir, the greatest satirist of the age, was the court poet of al-Hajjaj. In their panegvrks, on which they lived rather than on their lampoons, these poets periormed the same function as the party press today. AI-Farazdaq and Jarir often attacked each other in the most virulent and abusive language, and al-Akhtal as a rule sided with the former How lightly Christianity sat on the heart of the wine-bibbing Akhtal is illustrated by the words of consolation he addressed to his pregnant wife as she rushed to touch the garment of a passing bishop and succeeded only in reaching the tail of the donkey he was riding: ” He and the tail of his ass-there is no difference!” ORATORY
Public speaking in its several forms was cultivated during the Umayyad epoch as never before and attained a height unsurpassed in later time. The khatib used it as an instrument of religion in his Friday noon sermons, the general resorted to it as a means of arousing military enthusiasm among his troops and the provincial governor depended upon it for instilling patriotic feeling in his subjects. In an age with no special facilities for propaganda, oratory provided an excellent channel for spreading ideas and. kindling emotions. The highly ethical orations of Hazrat Ali, with their rhymes and wise sayings, the sermonettes of the ascetic a!- Hasan al-Basri delivered in the presence of the Caliph Umar ibnAbdul Aziz and preserved by the latter’s biographer, the military and patriotic speeches of Ziyad ibn Abih and the fiery al-Hajjaj- all these are among the most valuable liteiary treasures handed down to us from that eaily age/ ALCHEMY
Like other fields of science, the Muslims also made scientific contributions in Alchemy, Chemistry is generally supposed to be an accidental pror^t of alcherrn However, the Muslim Scientists <*•£ much to improve and advance it. The Muslims c°n.*iibution to the world’s store of knowledge was the accumulation of scientific facts and the advancement of scientific theories. They
P249
Cultural Actnntw, under tlie Uwnyynds 487
developed the process of crystallization and precipitation, distillation and sublimation and were thereby able to obtain a number of substances(old and new) in a state of comparative purity, like mercury, ammonia, soda, lead and antimony. It was in Muslim Spain that chemistry was first established and had the Muslims not been defeated at Poitiers, it would have reached its zenith there. The Muslim contributions to chemistry has also been admitted by Humbolt who says, ”Modern chemistry was admittedly the invention of the Muslims, whose achievements in this sphere were of unique
interest.”
According to Hitti, ”Alchemy, like medicine, one of the few sciences in which the Arabs later made a distinct contribution, was one of the disciplines early developed Khalid. the son of the second Umayyad caliph and the ”’philosopher (hakim) of the Marwanids”, was according to the Fihrist’ (our oldest and best source of information) the first in Islam to ha\e translations made from Greek and Coptic books on alchemy, medicine and astrology. Through proved legendary, the ascription of this activity to Khalid is . significant, since it points out the truth that the Arabs drew their scientific knowledge from the older Greek sources and received their first impulse therefrom. With the name of this Umayyad prince legend associates the name of the famous Jabir ibn-Hayyan (Latinized Geber), but Jabir flourished later, about 776, and will be dealt with under the Abbasids. Likewise the astrological and alchemical treatises ascribed to Ja’far al-Sadiq (700-765), a descendant of Ali and one of the twelve imams of the Shi’ah, have been discredited by critical modern scholarship. The most unfortunate fact about the intellectual life under the Umayyads is that it left no extant traces in the form of documents from which we can properly evaluate it.”6