ABSTRACT
In literature, of course, they were pre-eminent. The great physician and philosopher Abu' Ali ibn Sina, better known as Avicenna, the man who sowed the seeds of the European Renaissance, was summoned to Bukhara towards the end of the tenth century. He describes the library of King N uh II in these words :-
I I I found there many rooms filled with books which were arranged in cases row upon row. One room was allotted to works on Arabic philology and poetry; another to jurisprudence, and so forth, the books on each particular science having a room to themselves. I inspected the catalogue of ancient Greek authors and looked for the books which I required; I saw in this collection books of which few people have heard even the names, and which I myself have never seen before
. " or SInce. • One wonders what has happened to the library of
King Nuh II and if he was a patron of literary lights. One of the greatest of these poets was al-Mutan-
abbi, so called because he once pretended to have a gift of prophecy, but whose real name was Abu'Tayyib Ahmad ibn H usayn ; he was the son of a water-carrier who was sent to Damascus to be educated. He lived among the Bedawin tribes for a long time and completely mastered their customs and learned Arabic, which was not his native tongue. He found a royal patron, and once handed him a couplet in which were fourteen imperatives, each asking for some benefit. The Prince was so much amused that he granted them all.
