THE JOURNAL OF SACRED LITERATURE. EDITED BY JOHN KITTO, D.D., F.S.A. VOLUME V. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., STATIONERS' HALL COURT. OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBURGH; AND J. ROBERTSON, GRAFTON STREET, DUBLIN. 1850. THE JOURNAL OF SACRED LITERATURE. No. IX. JANUARY, 1850. ANTAR. ILLUSTRATIONS OF SCRIPTURE FROM THE ANCIENT BEDOUIN ROMANCE OF THAT NAME. THE extent to which the usages and customs of Scripture may be illustrated from the existing habits and practices of the Arab tribes, has been of late years abundantly shown. The reason of this is, that a habit and form of life which is among other nations a state of transition only, has become among the Arabians, in accordance with the prophecy by which their peculiar destiny was indicated, a fixed condition of existence. Such as they now are, they became at an early period of their history; and the lapse of time, which has broken other nations to pieces, and shaken them from land to land, finds the Ishmaelite still in the presence of all his brethren,' in the country where history, four thousand years ago, first set him down, and with the substantive habits, tastes, customs, and manners of his remotest ancestors. Still, it is not right to say, as cursory observers are apt to do, that there have been no changes. It is morally impossible for any people-even of one blood and of one land-to pass through a long series of ages without some change. Mohammedanism itself was a great change the effect of which in modifying the habits of the people, has never yet perhaps been truly estimated by European writers. If therefore we find the present usages of the Arabian tribes supplying such large materials for the illustration of Scripture, we may expect this source to be the more productive the farther we can go back, and especially if we can VOL. V.-NO. IX. B revert revert to a period anterior in date to the greatest modifying influence to which the ideas, customs, and sentiments of this great and ancient people have ever yet been subject. Under these views, we have often felt surprise that the old Bedouin romance of Antar'-which professes to describe, and essentially does describe, the manners of the Arabian tribes of the age anterior to the appearance of Mohammed-should not have been laid under contribution by any illustrator of Scripture, unless in some of the Notes of the Pictorial Bible,' and in other works by the same writer. It must indeed be admitted that the materials lie involved with the story in such a shape, that it requires much experience and some actual knowledge of the people, to recognize their fitness for this interesting service, together with considerable patience to pick them out and apply them to use. To this it may be owing that this rich source of Biblical illustration has been thus overlooked, while books of modern travel have been drained even to the lees. It is our present object to indicate by some specimens, the nature of the illustrations which may thus be obtained. But it may first be proper to furnish the reader with some notion of the work by which they are supplied. This is drawn chiefly from two communications from the pen of M. Von Hammer, the first of which appeared in the Mines de l'Orient, in 1802, and the other in the New Monthly Magazine' for 1820; and from the Introduction which Mr. Terrick Hamilton has prefixed to his translation of the first portion of this romance. As all the Arabian bibliographical authorities observe a profound silence respecting the author of Antar,' we can only appeal to the internal evidence furnished by the work itself. As Assmai, one of the most distinguished geniuses who flourished in the courts of the khalif's Harun and Mamun, which were so propitious to poetry and all the sciences, is mentioned throughout, and almost in every leaf as the first author, there can be little doubt that this is so far correct. But, besides him, frequent mention is made of two other persons as authorities, as relators of the history of Antar, viz. Ibn Obeide and Dschohaina, the son of Ghailem, from Yemen, both contemporaries of Assmai, and well esteemed, like himself, at the court of Mamun, the great patron of learning and learned men. It can scarcely be doubted but that Assmai is the first and principal author of this celebrated and admired romance; but the epoch of the reign under which it was composed is not so ex a Formerly secretary to the English embassy at Constantinople, and brother of Mr. W. Hamilton, author of the Egyptiaca-a work of great value until partly superseded by the more complete researches of Wilkinson and others. pressly pressly stated in the work as the name of the author; and the usual dedication to the khalif, by whose leave it was composed, or to whom it was presented, is wanting. Yet Von Hammer judges that, from a distinguishing characteristic of the hero, and from what Arabian history relates of the birth of Mamun, it may be decided with some degree of certainty that Antar' was not composed either under the government of Harun, as Mr. Hamilton supposes, or that of Amin, but in the reign of Mamun, and on his account. These are circumstances which show that this work must be ascribed rather to the later than the earlier part of the author's life; and that the court of Mamun, far more than even that of Harun, was as the fairy palace of the poets and reciters of tales, who waited the whole day through before the curtain, or outside the hall of audience, to be ready, when the khalif clapped his hands to summon them in, to entertain him with poems and tales. These facts, taken together, do of themselves give some probability to the opinion expressed as to the period to which the work belongs; and it is much strengthened by the internal evidence of a singular and characteristic feature common to the histories of Antar and of Mamun, as far as certainty can be obtained without express authorities. Antar, the heroic author of one of the seven poems suspended to the Kaaba, to which the Arabians paid, as to the holy house itself, honours almost sacred, by reverence and prostration, honouring in them the work of poetic genius as the fruit of heavenly inspiration-was, as we know from historical sources, the son of a female negro slave, not born in regular marriage; and, in the same manner, Mamun was not the son of his father Harun's consort, Zobeide, who was of royal blood, but of a female negro slave. It is natural that so singular a descent should afford the wits of those days materials enough for satire and malicious jests; and that if, at a later period, when the son of the negro slave rose to supreme power, the wits and epigrammatists, for fear of losing their heads, might repress the licence of their tongues, yet this compelled silence could not wholly obliterate the memory of the true descent of the khalif. It was therefore a fine and happy idea of Assmai, to connect the memory of the descent of the son of the negro slave, invested with the robe of the khalifs, with that of the highest honours of eloquence and valour, by a reference to Antar, the father of knighthood and the first Arabian poet of the golden age before Mohammed. The descent of Mamun from the negro slave, which could neither be denied nor glossed over, would appear in a much fairer and more favourable light, when compared with Antar's descent from a negro bond woman, which was also a known historical fact. For Mamun, though the son of a slave of the harem, and B 2 inheriting |