may help to a revival of that true spirit of
Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another
creed and colour. Finally, in thanking press and public for the
very cordial reception given to the "Wisdom of the East" Series,
they wish to state that no pains have been spared to secure the
best specialists for the treatment of the various subjects at
hand.

L. CRANMER-BYNG.
S. A. KAPADIA.

NORTHBROOK SOCIETY,
158, PICCADILLY, W.

INTRODUCTION TO THE DIWAN

God help him who has no nails wherewith to scratch himself.
_Arabian proverb_.

An effort has been made to render in this book some of the poems
of Abu'l-Ala the Syrian, who was born 973 years after Jesus
Christ and some forty-four before Omar Khayyam. But the life of
such a man--his triumph over circumstance, the wisdom he
achieved, his unconventionality, his opposition to revealed
religion, the sincerity of his religion, his interesting friends
at Baghdad and Ma'arri, the multitude of his disciples, his
kindliness and cynic pessimism and the reverence which he
enjoyed, the glory of his meditations, the renown of his
prodigious memory, the fair renown of bending to the toil of
public life, not to the laureateship they pressed upon him, but
the post of being spokesman at Aleppo for the troubles of his
native villagers,--the life of such a one could not be told
within the space at our command; it will, with other of his
poems, form the subject of a separate volume. What appears
advisable is that we should devote this introduction to a
commentary on the poems here translated; which we call a "diwan,"
by the way, because they are selected out of all his works. A
commentary on the writings of a modern poet is supposed to be
superfluous, but in the days of Abu'l-Ala of Ma'arri you were
held to pay the highest compliment if, and you were yourself a
poet, you composed a commentary on some other poet's work.
Likewise you were held to be a thoughtful person if you gave the
world a commentary on your own productions; and Abu'l-Ala did not
neglect to write upon his _Sikt al-Zand_ ("The Falling Spark of
Tinder") and his _Lozum ma la Yalzam_ ("The Necessity of what is
Unnecessary"), out of which our diwan has been chiefly made. But
his elucidations have been lost. And we--this nobody will
contradict--have lost the old facility. For instance, Hasan ibn
Malik ibn Abi Obaidah was one day attending on Mansur the
Cham