(54) Arabic Literature - Theological Writings

We may imagine (for it would be a waste of time to catalogue) the theological writings, glossaries, commentaries, discourses, and so forth, which, from the first century of Mahometanism to the extinction of Arab empire, have illustrated or obscured the great book on which that empire was founded -- the Koran. Beydawee in the 10th, Jelal-eddeen and Bokharee in the 11th, and El Ghazalee in the 12th century of our era, each was in his day considered a master in Islam and their treatises are still reverentially studied in its schools. Legal dissertations by Malek, Ebn Hanbal, Shafeyee, Hanefee, and their disciples, load the shelves of every Arab bookcase; but the authors themselves were mostly extra-Arab origin, and often reflect the Persian, the Turkoman, and even the Byzantine, rather than the genuine Arab mind.





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Arabia - Table of Contents