e: "Surely it is better to
drink among the sand-heaps foul water mixed with pure than to
venture on the sea." From Baghdad also he would carry home the
Zoroastrian view (_quatrain_ 14) that night was primordial and
the light created. As a contrast with these foreign importations,
we have reference (_quatrain_ 15) to the lute, which was the
finest of Arabian instruments. They said themselves that it was
invented by a man who flourished in the year 500 B.C. and added
an eighth string to the lyre. Certainly the Arab lute was popular
among the Greeks: [Greek: arabion ar ego kekineka aulon], says
Menander. It was carried to the rest of Europe by crusaders at
the beginning of the twelfth century, about which time it first
appears in paintings, and its form persisted till about a hundred
years ago.[5] But with regard to travels (_quatrain_ 18), in the
twenty-seventh letter of Abu'l-Ala, "I observe," says he, "that
you find fault with travelling. Why so? Ought not a man to be
satisfied with following the precedent set by Moses, who, when he
turned towards Midyan, said, Maybe the Lord will guide me?"
(Koran 28, 21). Should a man be satisfied with what he hears from
the philosopher al-Kindi? "In any single existing thing, if it is
thoroughly known, we possess," he said, "a mirror in which we may
behold the entire scheme of things" (_quatrain_ 20). The same
philosopher has laid it down that, "Verily there is nothing
constant in this world of coming and going (_quatrain_ 24), in
which we may be deprived at any moment of what we love. Only in
the world of reason is stability to be found. If then we desire
to see our wishes fulfilled and would not be robbed of what is
dear to us, we must turn to the eternal blessings of reason, to
the fear of God, to science and to good works. But if we follow
merely after material possessions in the belief that we can
retain them, we are pursuing an object which does not really
exist." . . . And this idea of transitoriness prevails so
generally among the Arabs that the salad-seller recommends his
transitory wares to pious folk by calling, "God is that which
does not pass away!" So, too, the Arab pictures as a bird, a
thing of transience, the human soul. In Syria the dove is often
carved upon their ancient tombstones. And the Longobards among
their graves erected poles in memory of kinsfolk who had died
abroad or had been slain in battle; on the summit of the pole was
a wooden image of a dove, whos