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virtues
of loyalty, honor, friendship, bravery
and chivalry
The last great
poet of the Abbasid period was Abu
al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri (973-1057). While
al-Ma'arri's poetry reflects the
pessimism and skepticism of his
particular era, he nevertheless
transcended his age to become one of the
major figures of Arabic literature, as
well as a special favorite of western
scholars.
Towards the end of the ninth century,
history began to form a part of belles-letires.
The necessity for collections of data
on the countries of the Abbasid empire
stimulated geographical writing, mixed
with travelers' observations and tales of
marvels. Idrisi, in twelfth century
Sicily, was commissioned to compile the Book
of Roger for the Norman King of
Palermo, with accompanying maps. Yaqut
(d. 1229) wrote a large geographical
dictionary, gleaned from many sources.
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The basis
of Arab writings of history was provided
by accounts of the life of the Prophet
Muhammad. Since the compilation of such
biographies was determined by the Arab
system of isnad-that is, of
quoting all available authorities and
establishing their reliability-Arab
history-writing was generally
characterized by accuracy rather than by
creative handling or interpretation of
available materials. It, thus, provides
the modern historian with a most accurate
and comprehensive source of material.
Yet, the Arabs produced the man whom
modern scholars consider the true father
of modern historiography and of the
science of sociology. This was Ibn
Khaldun (d. 1406).
A native of Tunisia, a government
official at the Arab courts of Granada,
Morocco and Algeria, Ibn Khaldun became
the chief justice of the Mamluk sultans
of Egypt. It was in the Maghreb, before
settling in the Middle East, that he
spent several years in retreat composing
his great work: Muqaddimah. While
before Ibn Khaldun, historiography was
concerned mainly with rulers, battles and
straightforward accounts of main events,
the great Arab thinker was the first to
recognize that events did not happen in
vacuum but depended upon an endless
variety of factors previously neglected
by historians, such as climate, social
customs, food, superstitions and so on.
Thus, in his Muqaddimah, he deals
extensively with subjects such as the
nature of society and occupation, labor
conditions, climate and methods of
education.
Modern scholarship acknowledges that,
thanks to him, latter~day historiography
changed fundamentally. Of his truly
revolutionary work Arnold Toynbee wrote,
"Ibn Khaldun has conceived and
formulated a philosophy of history which
is undoubtedly the greatest work of its
kind that has ever yet been created by
any mind in any time." In a similar
vein, Professor George Sarton has said of
the Muqaddimah "I do not
hesitate to call it the most important
historical work of the Middle Ages."
Arab influences in European literature
began to appear in the poetry of the
early Spanish and Provencal troubadours,
and, in the thirteenth century, in the
French fabliaux and contes
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