Note 18 — PREFACE.

But I am surprised to find a European scholar like Professor Margoliouth giving countenance to such views; even repeating, to support his own argument,18 such drivel. For if the system of rhyme-ending imposes upon the poet his irreligious opinions, how can we account for them in his prose writings? How, for instance, explain his book “Al-fusul wal Ghayat” (The Chapters and the Purposes), a work in which he parodied the Koran itself, and which only needed, as he said, to bring it to the standard of the Book, “the polishing of four centuries of reading in the pulpit?” And how account for his “Risalat ul-Ghufran” (Epistle of Forgiveness), a most remarkable work both in form and conception?—a Divina Comedia in its cotyledonous state, as it were, only that Abu’l-Ala does not seem to have relished the idea of visiting Juhannam. He must have felt that in his “three earthly prisons” he had had enough of it. So he visits the Jannat and there meets the pagan bards of Arabia lulling themselves in eternal bliss under the eternal shades of the sidr tree, writing and reading and discussing poetry. Now, to people the Muslem’s Paradise with heathen poets who have been forgiven,—hence the title of the Work,—and received among the blest,—is not this clear enough, bold enough, loud enough even for the deaf and the blind? “The idea,” says Professor Nicholson, speaking of The Epistle of Forgiveness,19 “is carried out with such ingenuity and in a spirit of audacious burlesque that reminds one of Lucien.”