A literary history of Persia

272 THE GOLDEN AGE OF ISLAMall creatures pray for him, even the fish in the*water."Makhul (t A.D. 730), originally a slave in Egypt, would noton receivinghis freedom leave that country "till he hadgathered together all the learning which was to be found"there ; and, having accomplished this, he journeyed throughHijdz, 'Iraq, and Syria seeking for an authentic tradition as tothe division of spoils taken in battle, which he at last obtainedfrom an old man named Ziyad b. Jdriya at-Tamimi, who hadit on the authority of Habib b. Maslama al-Fihri. 2 Here wehave an actual application of the principle enunciated in thefollowing words ascribed to Abu'd-Darda ": If the explanationof a passage in the Book of God presented difficulties to me,and if Imost inaccessibleheard of a man in Birku'l-Jumad " (aspot in South Arabia, proverbially spoken of as equivalent tothe ends of the earth) " who would explain it to me, I wouldnot grudge the journey thither." 3The two oldest Arabic prose works of importance (exceptthe Qur'an)which have come down to us are Ibn Ishaq's(t A.D. 767) Biography of the Prophet in the recension of IbnHisham (t A.D. 834)^ and a work on genealogy by Ibnu'l-Kalbf (t A.D. 763-4), of which manuscripts exist in thelibraries of the British Museum and the Escorial.S Manuscriptnotes, however, were constantly made at an earlier date,such men as Abuduring the first century of the Flight, byHurayra, 'Abdu'llah b. 'Amr b. al-'Asi, az-Zuhn 6 (t A.D. 742)and Hasan of Basra,7 who in some cases ordered that thesenotes should be burned at their death, because they were mereaids to memory, "and what they1knew these scholars hadGoldziher, op cit., vol. ii, p. 177 ;and on these journeys // talabil-ilmgenerally, pp. 32-33 and 175 et seqq.'Idem, p. 33.3 Idem, pp. 176-177.4 Edited by Wiistenfeld (1858-60), and translated into German byWeil (1864).s These and the following particulars are chiefly drawn from deGoeje's excellent article in the Encyclopedia Britannica to which Ihave already referred.6 'Goldziher, op. cit., pp. 195-196.De Goeje, loc. cit.