68 LITERATURE OF THE ARABS. 



studies embraced a course sufficiently ample to ex- 

 ercise every faculty of the human mind. Grammar 

 and rhetoric were cultivated with sin^lar assiduity 

 by all who aspired to literary honours and dis- 

 tinctions. As always happens, the precepts of 

 elegant composition have succeeded the models; — 

 the inimitable Koran, and the pure dialect of the 

 Koreish, had refined the Arabian tongue long before 

 its rules were fixed and its beauties analyzed in the 

 rival schools of Cufa and Bussora. The literati of 

 Spain were not inferior to those of the East in the 

 prosecution of their philological investigations. We 

 learn from Casiri that Abdallah ibn Hescham, in his 

 '■ Introduction to a Chastised INIode of Speaking," 

 reviews and corrects the errors of hmidreds of 

 former grammarians. 



Eloquence, one of the three national distinctions 

 of the ancient Arabs, had ceased to be cultivated 

 after the time of IVIohammed and his immediate 

 successors, w^hen oriental despotism had banished 

 the freedom of the desert. But this art was revived 

 by the Saracens, who exercised themselves alter- 

 nately in the compositions of the academy and the 

 pulpit. Among these distinguished orators Malek 

 was considered the most pathetic ; while Sharaif 

 possessed beyond all others the art of blending the 

 brilliancy of poetry with the vigour of prose. Ho- 

 rairi was placed in the same rank with Cicero and 

 Demosthenes ; and his academical orations, w^e are 

 assured, deserved to be \\Titten, not on paper or 

 vellum, but on silk and golcl. In the sixth century, 

 Granada could boast of Bedreddin, surnamed the 

 Torch of Eloquence ; while Sekaki, the most cele- 

 brated writer on the belles-lettres, produced a work 

 on rhetoric called the Key of the Sciences, which 

 obtained him the title of the Arabian Quinctilian. 



Poetry, anciently a favourite occupation of the 

 Arabs, continued, after the restoration of learning, 

 to be cultivated with enthusiasm ; and such was the 



