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

Arabic Literature
Arabic literature in the narrow sense of adab (belles-letters) began with al-Jahiz, the sheikh of the Basrah literatures, and reached its culmination in the fourth and fifth Muslim centuries in the works of Badi al-Zaman ai-Hamadhani (969-1008), al-Tha’alibi of Naysabur (961-1038) and al-Hariri (1054-1122). One characteristic feature of prose-writing in this period was the tendency, in response to Persian influence, to be affected and ornate. The terse, incisive
1 Nails Ahmad Muslim Contribution to Oeographs. P 60
Scientific knd Literary Progress under the Abbasids 61
and simple expression of early days had gone for ever. It w; supplanted by polished and elegant style, rich in elaborate simiU and replete with rhymes. The whole period was marked by predominance of humanistic over scientific studies Intellectually was a period of decline. It supported a literary proletariat, many < whose members, with no independent means of livelihood roarm from place to place ready to give battle over linguistic issues at grammatical technicalities or to measure poetical swords over tnv matters with a view to winning favours from wealthy patrons. Tl period also saw the rise of a new form of literary expression, t maqamah.
Badi al-Zaman (wonder of the age) al-Hamadhani is credit
with the creation of the maqamah (assembly), a kind of dramal
anecdote in the telling of which the author subordinates substance
form and does his utmost to display his poetical ability, learning ai
eloquence. In reality such a form of composition as the maqam
could not have been the creation of any one man; it was a natui
development of rhymed prose and flowery diction as represented
ibn-Durayd and earlier stylists. Al-Hamadhani’s work served as
model for al-Hariri of al-Basrah, whose Maqamat for more th
seven centuries were esteemed as the chief treasure, next to t
Quran, of the literary Arabic tongue. In these maqamat of al-Hat
and other writers there is much more than the elegant form a
rhetorical anecdote which most readers consider the only signifies
feature. The anecdote itself is often used as a subtle and indirect w
of criticizing the existing social order and drawing a whole soi
moral. Since the days of al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri the maqam
become the most perfect form of literary and dramatic presentati
in Arabic, a language which has never produced real drama Ea
Spanish and Italian tales of the realistic or picaresque type disp
clear affinities with the Arabic maqamah.
Before the maqamah was developed Arabic literature s the rise of its greatest literary historian, Abu-al-Faraj-al-lsbahani, al-Isfahani, a lineal descendant of Marwan, the last Umayyad cali Abu-al-Faraj flourished in Aleppo, where he produced his Kitab Aghani (book of songs), a veritable treasury of poetry and literal and an indispensable source for the study of Muslim civilization his Muqaddamah, Ibn-Khaldun rightly calls it ”the registei of Arabs” and ’’the final resource of the student of belles-letters”. Aleppine patron Sayf-al-Dawlah al-Hamdani bestowed on the aut

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Scientific and Literary Progress under the Abbasids
621
a thousand gold pieces as a reward for this work, and the Andalusian al-Hakam II sent him a like sum. A Buwayhid wazir, al-Sahib ibn Abbad, who is said to have been wont to take with him on his journeys thirty camel-loads of books, dispensed with them all on receiving a copy of al-Aghani, which he thereafter carried about alone.