“I DON’T think there is anything wrong with music.” So said Al-Jahiz, and then asked: “Why should we treat it as something which is haram (forbidden), when we can trace in the Holy Quran and Sunnah no such injunction against it?”
Jahiz is a distinguished writer and thinker belonging to the third century of the Hijra. He lived in Baghdad during the Abbasid period. He belonged to the group of thinkers known as Muatzilas, who enjoy the reputation of being the founders of rationalism in Islam. From among his journals written on a number of subjects, Khalid Latif has chosen to translate into Urdu one titled Risala Alqayan, which has been published by Takhliqat, Lahore.
Khalid Latif belongs to the generation of journalists who had made their appearance soon after the birth of Pakistan. However, he did not stay long in this profession. After making his mark in journalism, he thought it fit to leave and try his luck in the world of business. But the change of profession did not lessen his interest in reading and writing. Instead, he embarked on a more serious journey in the world of letters.
Here, we have from him two works of translation, where he is seen probing into old Arabic manuscripts like a researcher and selecting two for his study and translation. The one is, as noted above, Jahiz’s Risala Alqayan. The other is Risala Ibn-Fazlan, an Arabic travelogue written in the third decade of the 10th century. Both the manuscripts were lost to us. It was only during the late 19th and early 20th century that they were retrieved, only partly in the latter’s case, by research scholars.
Though Khalid Latif has taken equal pains in the research and translation of both the authors, it appears to me that he is more at ease with Ibn-i-Fazlan than with Jahiz. In the latter case, trouble has arisen just because the translator has developed some ideological differences with the author. As noted above, Jahiz was very much under the influence of the Muatzila school of thought. Khalid Latif holds the Muatzila thinkers responsible for the spread of immoral practices in society. According to his analysis, the liberal thinking preached by them encouraged young men and women to mix freely, leading to a moral decline in society. According to him, it was because of this situation that the caliphs found themselves compelled to impose purdah restrictions to the extent that even casting a glance on the face of a woman was treated as sin. He regrets that Jahiz has, in contravention of Quranic injunctions, tried to prove that if a woman comes out with her face uncovered or tries to talk to a man, there is no harm in it, that this act is not haram.
Equally, or perhaps more regrettable is Khalid Latif’s attempt to ignore the worsening moral conditions prevalent in the Umayyad darbar long before the advent of the Muatzilas. I dare not quote the shockingly obscene examples cited by Jahiz.
But Jahiz is a shrewd writer and believes in saying things in subtle ways. This article has been conceived as a letter from those who believe in enjoying life to the full to those, who are “uncultured, uncouth, detestable, quarrelsome, and have dirty minds.”
Employing this form of expression, Jahiz takes a look at the social conditions of the then Muslim society, cites examples from the social behaviour of personalities known for their moral integrity and arrives at the conclusion that there is nothing morally wrong with a woman talking to a man who is a stranger to her, and of a man listening to music by a woman.
Khalid Latif has based his translation from the English translation published in 1980 under the title of The Epistle on Singing Girls of Jahiz. But at the same time, he had the Arabic text before him. One hopes he has been faithful to it. At least, while translating the title he has cared not to be faithful to the text. He has himself told us that qayan is the plural form of qeen, which means female singer or mughanniya in Urdu. But thinking in his own moralistic way, he argues that a female singer inevitably takes to prostitution and in consequence is known more as a prostitute than a singer, so it is better to translate the title as Tawaif. Indeed, Jahiz had to wait for a very long time to be corrected by Khalid Latif.
Thank God, Khalid Latif had to face no ideological problem in the case of Ibn-i-Fazlan. So he is at ease with him and translates him with perfect peace of mind.
Ibn-i-Fazlan had accompanied a delegation sent by the caliph to Bulgharistan, at the request of its newly-converted Muslim king. The period has been determined as the second decade of the 10th century. Ibn-i-Fazlan, in his travel in the company of this delegation, passed through a number of countries, each of which has been described here. So the travelogue provides precious information to us about the geographical conditions, social customs and religious beliefs of the Turks, Bulgars, Russians and the Khizris during that period.
