re
been no grammarians I am sure that Ibn Khallikan would never have
written it. Poetry tickled him; but grammar was his chief delight, as it
was the chief delight of all his friends and, one gathers, of all
Baghdad. Here is an example: "Al-Mamun, having asked Al-Yazidi about
something, received from him this answer: 'No; and may God accept my
life as a ransom for yours, Commander of the Faithful!'

"'Well said!' exclaimed the khalif. 'Never was the word _and_ better
placed than in the praise which you have just uttered.'" He then made
him a present.

We get an insight both into the passion for the new science of grammar
and what might be called the physical humour of the East in this
anecdote. Abu Safwan Khalid Ibn Safwan, a member of the tribe of Tamim,
was celebrated as an eloquent speaker. He used to visit Bilal Ibn Abi
Burda and converse with him, but his language was frequently
ungrammatical. This grew at length so irksome that Bilal said to him: "O
Khalid! you make me narrations fit for khalifs to hear, but you commit
as many faults against grammar as the women who carry water in the
streets."

Stung with this reproach, Khalid went to learn grammar at the mosque,
and some time after lost his sight. From that period, whenever Bilal
rode by in state, he used to ask who it was, and on being answered that
it was the Emir, he would say: "There goes a summer-cloud, soon to be
dispelled."

When this was told to Bilal, he exclaimed: "By Allah! it shall not be
dispelled till he get a full shower from it;" and he then ordered him a
whipping of two hundred strokes.

When books were so few and most learning came through the ear, memory
had to be cultivated. The Traditionist, Ibn Rahwaih, was a Macaulay in
his way. "I know," he used to say, "by heart seventy thousand
traditions; I have read one hundred thousand, and can recollect in what
work each is to be found. I never heard anything once without learning
it by heart, nor learned anything by heart which I afterwards forgot."

The sittings of the teacher, Ibn Al-Aarabi (767-846), who knew by heart
more poetry than any man ever seen, were crowded by people anxious for
instruction. Abu 'l-Abbas Thalah said: "I attended the sittings held by
Ibn Al-Aarabi, and saw there upwards of one hundred persons, some asking
him questions and others reading to him; he answered every question
without consulting a book. I followed his lessons upwards of ten years,
and I never saw him