[p. 342]
[p. 343]
[p. 344]
When the Arabians became the only learned people, and their empire extended over the greater part of the known world, they impressed their own genius on those nations with whom they were allied as friends, or reverenced as masters.—Isaac D’Israeli: Curiosities of Literature.
[p. 345]
[“Ptolemy mentions the Homerites as a nation seated in the southern parts of Arabia Felix, and bounded on the east by the Adramitæ, or province of Hadramaut. His Arabiæ Emporium he likewise places in their country, as Pliny does his Massala. Some authors make them the same people with the Sabæans, whilst others consider them in a different light. For our part, we look upon Sabæi and Homeritæ to have been different names of the same nation, and are countenanced herein by the Oriental historians. For these inform us that the Sabæans were called Hamyarites from Hamyar the son of their great ancestor Saba; and that they ruled over almost the whole country of Yaman. Though the kingdom of the Hamyarites, or Homerites, was at length [346] translated from the princes of Hamyar to the descendants of Cahlan his brother, yet they all retained the title of King of Hamyar. . . . They made a great figure amongst the ancient Arabs before the time of Mohammed.”—Ancient Universal History, vol. xviii. p, 352.
Major W. F. Prideaux has employed some of the few leisure hours afforded by his official duties at Sehore, Central India, in rendering into English the excellent didactic Poem, the “Lay of the Himyarites,” composed in the 12th century a.d., by Neshwân ibn Sa’îd. His work—printed, for private circulation, at the School Press of Sehore, in 1879, and the impression limited to 25 copies—presents the original text together with the prose translation; also Notes, giving the more important variants found in the texts previously published, and collated with the Miles and Rich MSS. in the British Museum; to which is added a series of genealogical tables, “designed to exhibit, at one comprehensive glance, the various degrees of relationship in which the chiefs and heroes who are commemorated in the Poem stood to one another.”
The “Lay of the Himyarites” is chiefly valuable, as Major Prideaux remarks, for the light it throws upon the ancient history of that nation. The opening and closing verses, which are here reproduced, with the translator’s kind permission, will perhaps enable the general reader to form a tolerably clear notion of the design and character of this fine Poem, written by a learned and pious descendant of the renowned princes of Himyar.—Ed.]
¶ FROM THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
Beyond his pedigree, we know but little of Neshwân ibn Sa’īd. He tells us himself in his great work, the Shems el-’Ulûm, that his mother, like his father, was of noble Himyaritic [347] descent, and that his residence was at Hûth, a little village in the district of Hamdân. Here we may imagine him to have lived and worked until his death, which took place in a.h. 573 [a.d. 1177]. The knowledge which is so copiously displayed in his works was probably derived, not only from the writings of more ancient authors, such as Wahb ibn Munebbih and ’Ubaid ibn Shariyah, but from the oral traditions of the peasantry. His principal work, the Shems el-’Ulûm, is in lexicographical form, and, according to Dr. D. H. Müller, is of the highest value from a historical and geographical point of view. A manuscript of this book is in the Royal Library at Berlin, and it is much to be wished that Dr. Muller, who has already turned its contents to considerable use, should complete his task by giving to the world the work in its entirety. Neshwân ibn Sa’îd was also the author of several other works, chiefly, it would appear from their titles, of an exegetical nature, and of a few scattered poetical pieces, which the searcher amongst Arabic manuscripts may here and there light upon.
The work, however, which has been chiefly associated with his name is the Lay of the Himyarites. The motif of this Poem is clearly ethical: it deals with the most commonplace and yet the newest of themes, the decay of glory, the vanity of human power. Not less vain perhaps are the efforts of poet or moralist to persuade man that he is but a sharer in the common lot, and that he, even he, like every one else, “cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness;” for that which strikes him as only natural in the case of the rest of the world, appears something strange and novel when his own turn comes to endure it. The Poet of Himyar takes as his text the fallen fortunes of his own illustrious race. “Where,” asks he, “are the kings and nobles of Himyar? They have been ground down as the kernel of the date beneath the millstone: they have become as dust in the earth!”
But reflections which are merely the echo of the voice of the Preacher may be thought too trite to merit much attention. This is true; the writer’s claims to a hearing rest on other [348] grounds. The Poem is a terse epitome of the ancient history of El-Yemen: if it does little more than record the names of kings and princes, still these names are rarely to be found else where, and, when read with the Commentary and with the Shems el-’Ulûm of the same author, the work affords valuable testimony in support of the theory that the interminable genealogies which we find scattered throughout the works of the early Arab writers are not the mere figments of their imagination, but are actually founded upon evidence which is more or less of a historical character.
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