THE "ASSEMBLIES" OF AL HARIRI
Thework of Al Hariri may well stand as our best example of typical Arab prose. With regard to religious writing, a few thoughtful Mohammedans, as we have seen, might travel, and seek new light, and meditate profoundly; but the great mass of the people were merely blindly fanatic. Mohammed was the prophet of God, and any one who failed to shout this with the rest of the world, was to be killed. Popular interest went but little further. But when you turned to the art of stringing words together, every true Arab was immediately attentive. There was an Arab proverb that God had given genius, or true creative ability, to three things, the brain of the Frank, the hand of the Chinaman, and the tongue of the Arab.
To our own more sober literary sense the clever twists of phrase and sound in which these people took such pride, seem but the outer garment of thought, more apt to confuse than to reveal its deeper meaning. Yet what the Arabs admire, they admire; and they find it to perfection in Al Hariri's "Assemblies." No mere translation can convey its intricacies of sound and sense. Only such an artistic word-juggler as Al Hariri himself could convey the impression of the original. And Al Hariri himself labored long on each brief "Assembly," polishing and repolishing, before he submitted each tale to the judgment of his keenly critical listeners.
The name "Assemblies" he gave to his work because each tale pictures an assembly of people. The form is highly artificial, for, while the author represents himself as accidentally stumbling upon each assembly, yet each proves ultimately to consist of a gathering of people listening with admiration to the brilliant words and clever rascalities of the same old beggar, Abu Zayd. The trick played by Abu Zaydis usually slight, the chief interest from the Arab view-point depending on the beggar's witty words and especially upon his supposedly extemporaneous verse.
Neither should the reader pass unnoticed the moral side of Hariri's work. He quite definitely thinks of himself as a teacher, and studies to make each "Assembly" a worthy guide to righteousness. His "Assemblies" number fifty in all, but the earlier ones are generally accepted as the best, the eleventh and twelfth being particularly noted for their excellence, after which the collection seems slightly to decline.
Of course Al Hariri was by no means alone in composing this sort of tale. Similar "Assemblies" had preceded his; many more were to follow. In short we touch here upon the "popular literature" of the Arabs, the collection of short stories which were to blossom into the "Arabian Nights"—though in the later tales of this character we find less of verse and more of story, in short less of the Arab and more of the increasing Persian influence.