8/10/2019 750 Abdlhamd El-ktb Ie

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ABD - AMD . Ya y . Sa d, the founder of Arabic epistolary style, mawl of the ura clan of mir b. Lu ayy. He was probably anative of al- Anbr, and is said to have been a travelling pedagogue before he was employed in theUmayyad secretariat under Hi m's chief secretary, the mawl Slim; he was then attached to Marwn b.Mu ammad, whom he continued to serve as chief secretary after Marwn's accession to the Caliphate. Herefused to desert his master in misfortune and is generally said to have shared his fate at B r on ! u'l- i ! !a "# $% August &% . According to another account he too( refuge in the house of his disciple )bnal-Mu"a##a, but was traced and sei*ed. His descendants continued to live in +gypt under the name of anu'l-Mu$ !ir and furnished secretaries to A mad b. %ln.

he surviving compositions of Abd al- amd , comprising si formal ras il and a few chancery piecesand private letters, e hibit a remar(able divergence of styles. His most elaborate risla, a long epistleaddressed to Marwn's son and heir Abd All$, with advice on personal conduct, ceremonial, and theconduct of war, is composed in a language and style based on the idioms, rhythms, and vivid metaphors of Arabic poetry and rhetoric, but elaborated by the addition of often lengthy se/uences of /ualifying clauses.0ince the same style appears in most of his other official ras il , it can only be con1ectured 2in the absence of

earlier secretarial documents3 that this feature unusual in both earlier and later Arabic style is to betraced to 4ree( influences in the Umayyad secretariat. 5) !!a6His most famous risla, on the other hand, that addressed to the 0ecretaries 2 kuttb 3, setting forth the

dignity of their office and their responsabilities, is fluent, simple and straightforward. A comparison of itscontents with the writings of )bn al- Mu"a##a and later /uotations from 7ersian wor(s shows clearly that it isinspired by the tradition of the S&nid secretariat, and largely reproduces with an )slamic gloss the ma imsof the )ranian dibhrs 2see A. Christensen, L'Iran sous les Sassanides 2 , Copenhagen, "899, "# ff.3. Also of 7ersian inspiration, and /uite distinct from the traditional Arabic presentation of the sub1ect, is his risladescribing the incidents of a hunt, evidently written for the entertainment of the court. A large proportionof the ma ims addressed to the prince in the first risla mentioned above are also derived from S&nidcourt ceremonial and usages, although the military instructions are more probably influenced by 4ree( tactics, either through literary channels or from actual e perience in the y*antine wars.

)t would appear, therefore, that both views e pressed by later Arabic critics in regard to Abd al- amdare 1ustified, in spite of their apparent incompatibility. :n the one hand is the statement 2e.g. al- A&'ar , Dwn al- Ma n , ii, 83 that < Abd al- amd e tracted from the 7ersian tongue the modes of secretarialcomposition which he illustrated, and transposed them into the Arabic tongue