Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/115

Islamic ancestors. The Arabs were in fact a parvenu people only just emerging out of barbarism (cf. Lammens: Le berceau de l’islam. p. 117). But the Persians, no less careful about genealogical records, to which their caste system had caused them to pay considerable attention, boasted authentic genealogies of much greater antiquity. In literature, in science, in Muslim canon law, in theology, and even in the scientific treatment of Arabic grammar, the Persians very rapidly surpassed the Arabs, so that we must be careful always to refer to Arabic philosophy, Arabic science, etc., in the history of Muslim culture, rather than to Arab philosophy, etc., remembering that, though expressed in the Arabic language, the common medium of all the Muslim world, only in a very few cases was it the work of Arabs: for the most part the Arabic philosophers and scientists, historians, grammarians, theologians, and jurists were Persians, Turks, or Berbers by birth, though using the Arabic language. The fall of the 'Umayyads and the replacing of the Arabs by the Persians commences the golden age of Arabic literature and scholarship. The older Arabic literature, that namely which was written by Arabs as yet untouched by external influences, consists entirely of poetry, the work of professional bards who sing of desert life and warfare, lament over the deserted camping grounds, boast of their tribe, and abuse their enemies. It forms a distinct class of poetic composition, which has developed its own literary standards, and attained a high standard of