NEW SERIES VOL. XXVIII THE TABLE-TALK OF A TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL ARABIC BY D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, PREFACE THE author of this work, al-Muhassin son of 'Ali son of Mohammed son of Dawud of the tribe Tanukh, figures occasionally in the Chronicles called The Eclipse of the 'Abbasid Caliphate, but not so frequently as his father, 'Ali, to whom there are several allusions in this book. There is a collection of anecdotes about him in Yāqūt's Dictionary of Learned Men1, where we are told that he was born in Basrah in 329 (began Oct. 6, 940 A.D.) and died in Baghdad in 384 (994 A.D.),2 after having occupied the position of judge (qādī) in many towns and districts of Mesopotamia. The work of which the first Part is here presented in Arabic and English was according to the author commenced in the year 361 (971 A.D.), and according to one of Yaqut's authorities it occupied twenty years. Two other works by the same author are in existence; the collection of tales called al-Faraj ba'd al-Shiddah (Deliverance after Stress), of which we have a Cairene edition; and a collection of wise sayings, called 'Unwān al-Hikmah wal-Bayān (The Title of Wisdom and Eloquence), of which there is a MS. copy in the Bodleian Library. 3 The account of his work which the author gives in his Preface is clear and accurate; and such fragments as are to be found in various works of the ten Parts of it which have not yet come to light indicate that the style throughout was uniform. It was his purpose to record interesting facts which had come to his knowledge by personal experience or by hearsay; in general he avoided matter which had already appeared in books. He admits that there are exceptions to this rule to be found in his work, and indeed several of the stories already published in the Deliverance after Stress are repeated here. The author belonged to a family which had originally come from Antioch, but in which the Judgeship had become hereditary in Mesopotamia. They followed the tenets of the Mu'tazils, or as they styled themselves" The People of Justice and Monotheism," who by admitting freedom of the will made it possible to believe in the justice of the Divine Being, and by denying the Divine Attributes arrived, as they supposed, at a truly Unitarian doctrine. To some extent they were freethinkers, I vi. 251-267. See also Ibn Khallikan, tr. de Slane, ii. 564. 2 * Yaqut gives the exact day, -5 Muharram * Below p. 6. = March 13. • Some references are given in the Post-script to the Arabic text. The name is printed correctly in the Matāli' al-Budūr. |