ABSTRACT
First-hand acquaintance in Britain with Arabic literature, as opposed to knowledge via translations, often at second or third-hand, really dates back to the mid-seventeenth century and to the generations of outstanding pioneer Arabic scholars filling the newly-founded chairs of Arabic at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, such as Edward Pococke and his son of the same name, Abraham Wheelock and Simon Ockley. But despite the interest in the historical, scientific, ethical and philosophical monuments of Arabic literature evinced by these scholars, the true spirit of Arabic literary achievement could not be apprehended in the West, nor could it have any significant influence on the indigenous literatures there, until the most characteristic expression of the Arabic literary genius, poetry, began to be known. There were many obstacles to an acceptance, and, even, to a comprehension of this poetry, with its peculiar conventions and its multiplicity of allusions. Régis Blachère rightly described Arabic poetry as ‘a secret garden’, entry to which requires not only profound linguistic expertise but also an empathy with the entire thought-world of Islam, its religion, history and culture. It was the Welsh judge, administrator and scholar Sir William Jones (1746–94) who achieved a proficiency, remarkable for its time in the languages of ancient India and of the Persian world, and who also brought Arabic poetry to the wider attention of British readers, even if it is now clear that he was not a profound Arabic scholar. In 1772, at the age of 28, there appeared his Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages, in 1774 a work in Latin, Poesos Asiaticae commentariorum libri, on ancient Arabian poetry, and in 1782 his English prose translation of the seven Muʿallaqāt, for which he had consulted some of the best native Arabic commentaries, including those of al-Tibrīzī and al-Zawzanī. 3 It was not until over a century later that C. (later Sir Charles) J. Lyall, an Indian Civil Servant, endeavoured very successfully to convey the metrical feel of the quantitative measures of this poetry; Lyall eschewed rhyme, but pointed out that the Arabic metre ṭawīl, for instance, already existed in English prosody as a form of anapaestic metre, and that an English poem like Robert Browning’s Abt Vogler (though quite uninfluenced, so far as we know, by Arabic models) contains many lines which (substituting of course stress for quantity) perfectly fulfil the requirements of an English ṭawīl, metre:
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told.
Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!
And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head.
