"'Twas my despair of Man that gave me hope God's grace would find me soon, I know not how."[550] LIFE AND DEATH. "Man's life is his fair name, and not his length of years; Man's death is his ill-fame, and not the day that nears. Then life to thy fair name by deeds of goodness give: So in this world two lives, O mortal, thou shalt live."[551] MAXIMS AND RULES OF LIFE. "Mere falsehood by its face is recognised, But Truth by parables and admonitions."[552] "I keep the bond of love inviolate Towards all humankind, for I betray Myself, if I am false to any man."[553] "Far from the safe path, hop'st thou to be saved? Ships make no speedy voyage on dry land."[554] "Strip off the world from thee and naked live, For naked thou didst fall into the world."[555] "Man guards his own and grasps his neighbours' pelf, And he is angered when they him prevent; But he that makes the earth his couch will sleep No worse, if lacking silk he have content."[556] "Men vaunt their noble blood, but I behold No lineage that can vie with righteous deeds."[557] "If knowledge lies in long experience, Less than what I have borne suffices me."[558] "Faith is the medicine of every grief, Doubt only raises up a host of cares."[559] "Blame me or no, 'tis my predestined state: If I have erred, infallible is Fate."[560] Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya found little favour with his contemporaries, who seem to have regarded him as a miserly hypocrite. He died, an aged man, in the Caliphate of Ma’mún.[561] Von Kremer thinks that he had a truer genius for poetry than Abú Nuwás, an opinion in which I am unable to concur. Both, however, as he points out, are distinctive types of their time. If Abú Nuwás presents an appalling picture of a corrupt and frivolous society devoted to pleasure, we learn from Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya something of the religious feelings and beliefs which pervaded the middle and lower classes, and which led them to take a more earnest and elevated view of life. With the rapid decline and disintegration of the ‘Abbásid Empire which set in towards the middle of the ninth century, numerous petty dynasties arose, and the hitherto unrivalled splendour of Baghdád was challenged by more than one provincial court. These independent or semi-independent princes were sometimes zealous patrons of learning--it is well known, for example, that a national Persian literature first came into being under the auspices of the Sámánids in Khurásán and the Buwayhids in ‘Iráq--but as a rule the anxious task of maintaining, or the ambition of extending, their power left them small leisure to cultivate letters, even if they wished to do so. None combined the arts of war and peace more brilliantly than the Ḥamdánid Sayfu ’l-Dawla, who in 944 A.D. made himself master of Aleppo, and founded an independent kingdom in Northern Syria. [Sidenote: Tha‘álibí's eulogy of Sayfu ’l-Dawla.]