A literary history of Persia

CONTEMPT OF ARABS FOR LETTERS 261observing an Arab child studying the Book of Sibawayhi, 1 could'not refrain from exclaiming, Fie upon thee That is the learning!of schoolmasters and the pride of 'beggars For ! it was reckonedas a jest that any one who was a grammarian, prosodist, accountantor jurist (for the science last mentioned arithmetic is indispensable)would give instruction in these subjects to little children forsixty dirhams (for what length of time is not, unfortunately, mentioned)."The Arabs of the Jahiliyyat, or pagan time, were, as Goldziherfully shows, so little familiar with the art of writing(savein the case of those who had come under^te k r ryndendesa npureJewish, Christian, Greek, or Persian influences)frabs? tnat an ^ Poet distinguishes a wise man fromwhom he cites a sentence as "he who dictateswriting on parchment, whereon the scribe writes down "it ;and that even in the Prophet's time they were not much moreliterate isshown, as he says, not only by the strange materialson which the Qur'an was inscribed, but also by the fact thatthose taken captive at the Battle of Badr could, if they possesseda knowledge of writing, obtain their liberty withoutpaying any further ransom. Al-Waqidi,cited by al-Baladhuri(Futlthu l-Buldbn^ ed. de Goeje, pp. 471-72), expresslystates that in the early days of Islam only seventeen menof the tribe of Quraysh,the aristocracy of Mecca, couldwrite ;and he enumerates them by name, including amongstthem 'Umar, 'All, Uthman, Ibnu'l-Janah, Talha, AbuSufyan, and his son Mu'awiya. Dhu'r-Rumma, who isregarded as the last of the old Bedouin poets (died betweenA.D. 719 and 735), had to conceal the fact that he was ableto write,2 " because," said he," it is regarded as a disgraceamongst us."similar narratives from other sources given by von Kremer in vol. ii of hisCulturgcschichte, p. 159.1This celebrated Persian grammarian died about A.D. 795. His work" the oldest systematic representation of Arabian Grammar " is called" The Book " (al-Kitf.b) par excellence.9 Goldziher, Multam. Stud., vol. i, p. 112.