Part 6

Hamadan, the capital of the province, is situated 188 m. W.S.W. of Teheran, at an elevation of 5930 ft., near the foot of Mount Elvend (old Persian _Arvand_, Gr. _Orontes_), whose granite peak rises W. of it to an altitude of 11,900 ft. It is a busy trade centre with about 40,000 inhabitants (comprising 4000 Jews and 300 Armenians), has extensive and well-stocked bazaars and fourteen large and many small caravanserais. The principal industries are tanning leather and the manufacture of saddles, harnesses, trunks, and other leather goods, felts and copper utensils. The leather of Hamadan is much esteemed throughout the country and exported to other provinces in great quantities. The streets are narrow, and by a system called Kucheh-bandi (street-closing) established long ago for impeding the circulation of crowds and increasing general security, every quarter of the town, or block of buildings, is shut off from its neighbours by gates which are closed during local disorders and regularly at night. Hamadan has post and telegraph offices and two churches, one Armenian, the other Protestant (of the American Presbyterian Mission).

Among objects of interest are the alleged tombs of Esther and Mordecai in an insignificant domed building in the centre of the town. There are two wooden sarcophagi carved all over with Hebrew inscriptions. That ascribed to Mordecai has the verses Isaiah lix. 8; Esther ii. 5; Ps. xvi. 9, 10, 11, and the date of its erection A.M. 4318 (A.D. 557). The inscriptions on the other sarcophagus consist of the verses Esther ix. 29, 32, x. 1; and the statement that it was placed there A.M. 4602 (A.D. 841) by "the pious and righteous woman Gemal Setan." A tablet let into the wall states that the building was repaired A.M. 4474 (A.D. 713). Hamadan also has the grave of the celebrated physician and philosopher Abu Ali ibn Sina, better known as Avicenna (d. 1036). It is now generally admitted that Hamadan is the Hagmatana (of the inscriptions), Agbatana or Ecbatana (q.v., of the Greek writers), the "treasure city" of the Achaemenian kings which was taken and plundered by Alexander the Great, but very few ancient remains have been discovered. A rudely carved stone lion, which lies on the roadside close to the southern extremity of the city, and by some is supposed to have formed part of a building of the ancient city, is locally regarded as a talisman against famine, plague, cold, &c., placed there by Pliny, who is popularly known as the sorcerer Balinas (a corruption of Plinius).

Five miles S.W. from the city in a mountain gorge of Mount Elvend is the so-called Ganjnama (treasure-deed), which consists of two tablets with trilingual cuneiform inscriptions cut into the rock and relating the names and titles of Darius I. (521-485 B.C.) and his son Xerxes I. (485-465 B.C.). (A. H. S.)

HAMADHANI, in full ABU-L FADL AHMAD IBN UL-HUSAIN UL-HAMADHANI (967-1007), Arabian writer, known as Badi' uz-Zaman (the wonder of the age), was born and educated at Hamadban. In 990 be went to Jorjan, where he remained two years; then passing to Nishapur, where he rivalled and surpassed the learned Khwarizmi. After journeying through Khorasan and Sijistan, he finally settled in Herat under the protection of the vizir of Mahmud, the Ghaznevid sultan. There he died at the age of forty. He was renowned for a remarkable memory and for fluency of speech, as well as for the purity of his language. He was one of the first to renew the use of rhymed prose both in letters and _maqamas_ (see ARABIA: _Literature_, section "Belles Lettres").

His letters were published at Constantinople (1881), and with commentary at Beirut (1890); his _maqamas_ at Constantinople (1881), and with commentary at Beirut (1889). A good idea of the latter may be obtained from S. de Sacy's edition of six of the _maqamas_ with French translation and notes in his _Chrestomathie_ arabe, vol. iii. (2nd ed., Paris, 1827). A specimen of the letters is translated into German in A. von Kremer's _Culturgeschichte des Orients_, ii. 470 sqq. (Vienna, 1877). (G. W. T.)

HAMAH, the Hamath of the Bible, a Hittite royal city, situated in the narrow valley of the Orontes, 110 English miles N. (by E.) of Damascus. It finds a place in the northern boundaries of Israel under David, Solomon and Jeroboam II. (2 Sam. viii. 9; 1 Kings viii. 65; 2 Kings xiv. 25). The Orontes flows winding past the city and is spanned by four bridges. On the south-east the houses rise 150 ft. above the river, and there are four other hills, that of the _Kalah_ or castle being to the north 100 ft. high. Twenty-four minarets rise from the various mosques. The houses are principally of mud, and the town stands amid poplar gardens with a fertile plain to the west. The castle is ruined, the streets are narrow and dirty, but the bazaars are good, and the trade with the Bedouins considerable. The numerous water-wheels (_naurah_,) of enormous dimension, raising water from the Orontes are the most remarkable features of the view. Silk, woollen and cotton goods are manufactured. The population is about 40,000.

In the year 854 B.C. Hamath was taken by Shalmaneser II., king of Assyria, who defeated a large army of allied Hamathites, Syrians and Israelites at Karkor and slew 14,000 of them. In 738 B.C. Tiglath Pileser III. reduced the city to tribute, and another rebellion was crushed by Sargon in 720 B.C. The downfall of so ancient a state made a great impression at Jerusalem (Isa. x. 9). According to 2 Kings xvii. 24, 30, some of its people were transported to the land of N. Israel, where they made images of Ashima or Eshmun (probably Ishtar). After the Macedonian conquest of Syria Hamath was called Epiphania by the Greeks in honour of Antiochus IV., Epiphanes, and in the early Byzantine period it was known by both its Hebrew and its Greek name. In A.D. 639 the town surrendered to Abu 'Obeida, one of Omar's generals, and the church was turned into a mosque. In A.D. 1108 Tancred captured the city and massacred the Ism'aileh defenders. In 1115 it was retaken by the Moslems, and in 1178 was occupied by Saladin. Abulfeda, prince of Hamah in the early part of the 14th century, is well known as an authority on Arab geography.

HAMANN, JOHANN GEORG (1730-1788), German writer on philosophical and theological subjects, was born at Konigsberg in Prussia on the 27th of August 1730. His parents were of humble rank and small means. The education he received was comprehensive but unsystematic, and the want of definiteness in this early training doubtless tended to aggravate the peculiar instability of character which troubled Hamann's after life. In 1746 be began theological studies, but speedily deserted them and turned his attention to law. That too was taken up in a desultory fashion and quickly relinquished. Hamann seems at this time to have thought that any strenuous devotion to "bread-and-butter" studies was lowering, and accordingly gave himself entirely to reading, criticism and philological inquiries. Such studies, however, were pursued without any definite aim or systematic arrangement, and consequently were productive of nothing. In 1752, constrained to secure some position in the world, he accepted a tutorship in a family resident in Livonia, but only retained it a few months. A similar situation in Courland he also resigned after about a year. In both cases apparently the rupture might be traced to the curious and unsatisfactory character of Hamann himself. After leaving his second post he was received into the house of a merchant at Riga named Johann Christoph Behrens, who contracted a great friendship for him and selected him as his companion for a tour through Danzig, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam and London. Hamann, however, was quite unfitted for business, and when left in London, gave himself up entirely to his fancies, and was quickly reduced to a state of extreme poverty and want. It was at this period of his life, when his inner troubles of spirit harmonized with the unhappy external conditions of his lot, that he began an earnest and prolonged study of the Bible; and from this time dates the tone of extreme pietism which is characteristic of his writings, and which undoubtedly alienated many of his friends. He returned to Riga, and was well received by the Behrens family, in whose house he resided for some time. A quarrel, the precise nature of which is not very clear though the occasion is evident, led to an entire separation from these friends. In 1759 Hamann returned to Konigsberg, and lived for several years with his father, filling occasional posts in Konigsberg and Mitau. In 1767 he obtained a situation as translator in the excise office, and ten years later a post as storekeeper in a mercantile house. During this period of comparative rest Hamann was able to indulge in the long correspondence with learned friends which seems to have been his greatest pleasure. In 1784 the failure of some commercial speculations greatly reduced his means, and about the same time he was dismissed with a small pension from his situation. The kindness of friends, however, supplied provision for his children, and enabled him to carry out the long-cherished wish of visiting some of his philosophical allies. He spent some time with Jacobi at Pempelfort and with Buchholz at Walbergen. At the latter place he was seized with illness, and died on the 21st of June 1788.

Hamann's works resemble his life and character. They are entirely unsystematic so far as matter is concerned, chaotic and disjointed in style. To a reader not acquainted with the peculiar nature of the man, which led him to regard what commended itself to him as therefore objectively true, they must be, moreover, entirely unintelligible and, from their peculiar, pietistic tone and scriptural jargon, probably offensive. A place in the history of philosophy can be yielded to Hamann only because he expresses in uncouth, barbarous fashion an idea to which other writers have given more effective shape. The fundamental thought is with him the unsatisfactoriness of abstraction or one-sidedness. The _Aufklarung_, with its rational theology, was to him the type of abstraction. Even Epicureanism, which might appear concrete, was by him rightly designated abstract. Quite naturally, then, Hamann is led to object strongly to much of the Kantian philosophy. The separation of sense and understanding is for him unjustifiable, and only paralleled by the extraordinary blunder of severing matter and form. Concreteness, therefore, is the one demand which Hamann expresses, and as representing his own thought he used to refer to Giordano Bruno's conception (previously held by Nicolaus Curanus) of the identity of contraries. The demand, however, remains but a demand. Nothing that Hamann has given can be regarded as in the slightest degree a response to it. His hatred of system, incapacity for abstract thinking, and intense personality rendered it impossible for him to do more than utter the disjointed, oracular, obscure dicta which gained for him among his friends the name of "Magus of the North." Two results only appear throughout his writings--first, the accentuation of belief; and secondly, the transference of many philosophical difficulties to language. Belief is, according to Hamann, the groundwork of knowledge, and he accepts in all sincerity Hume's analysis of experience as being most helpful in constructing a theological view. In language, which he appears to regard as somehow acquired, he finds a solution for the problems of reason which Kant had discussed in the _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_. On the application of these thoughts to the Christian theology one need not enter.

None of Hamann's writings is of great bulk; most are mere pamphlets of some thirty or forty pages. A complete collection has been published by F. Roth (_Schriften_, 8vo, 1821-1842), and by C. H. Gildemeister (_Leben und Schriften_, 6 vols., 1851-1873). See also M. Petri, _Hamanns Schriften u. Briefe_, (4 vols., 1872-1873); J. Poel, _Hamann, der Magus im Norden, sein Leben u. Mitteilungen aus seinen Schriften_ (2 vols., 1874-1876); J. Claassen, _Hamanns Leben und Werke_ (1885). Also H. Weber, _Neue Hamanniana_ (1905). A very comprehensive essay on Hamann is to be found in Hegel's _Vermischte Schriften_, ii. (Werke, Bd. xvii.). On Hamann's influence on German literature, see J. Minor, _J. G. Hamann in seiner Bedeutung fur die Sturm- und Drang-Periode_ (1881).

HAMAR, or STOREHAMMER (GREAT HAMAR), a town of Norway in Hedemarken _amt_ (county), 78 m. by rail N. of Christiania. Pop. (1900), 6003. It is pleasantly situated between two bays of the great Lake Mjosen, and is the junction of the railways to Trondhjem (N.) and to Otta in Gudbrandsdal (N.W.). The existing town was laid out in 1849, and made a bishop's see in 1864. Near the same site there stood an older town, which, together with a bishop's see, was founded in 1152 by the Englishman Nicholas Breakspeare (afterwards Pope Adrian IV.); but both town and cathedral were destroyed by the Swedes in 1567. Remains of the latter include a nave-arcade with rounded arches. The town is a centre for the local agricultural and timber trade.

HAMASA (HAMASAH), the name of a famous Arabian anthology compiled by Habib ibn Aus at-Ta'i, surnamed Abu Tammam (see ABU TAMMAM). The collection is so called from the title of its first book, containing poems descriptive of constancy and valour in battle, patient endurance of calamity, steadfastness in seeking vengeance, manfulness under reproach and temptation, all which qualities make up the attribute called by the Arabs _hamasah_ (briefly paraphrased by at-Tibrizi as _ash-shiddah fi-l-amr_). It consists of ten books or parts, containing in all 884 poems or fragments of poems, and named respectively--(1) _al-Hamasa_, 261 pieces; (2) _al-Marathi_, "Dirges," 169 pieces; (3) _al-Adab_, "Manners," 54 pieces; (4) _an-Nasib_, "The Beauty and Love of Women," 139 pieces; (5) _al-Hija_, "Satires," 80 pieces; (6) _al-Adyaf wa-l-Madih_, "Hospitality and Panegyric," 143 pieces; (7) _as-Sifat_, "Miscellaneous Descriptions," 3 pieces; (8) _as-Sair wa-n-Nu'as_, "Journeying and Drowsiness," 9 pieces; (9) _al-Mulah_, "Pleasantries," 38 pieces; and (10) _Madhammat-an-nisa_, "Dispraise of Women," 18 pieces. Of these books the first is by far the longest, both in the number and extent of its poems, and the first two together make up more than half the bulk of the work. The poems are for the most part fragments selected from longer compositions, though a considerable number are probably entire. They are taken from the works of Arab poets of all periods down to that of Abu Tammam himself (the latest ascertainable date being A.D. 832), but chiefly of the poets of the Ante-Islamic time (_Jahiliyyun_), those of the early days of Al-Islam (_Mukhadrimun_), and those who flourished during the reigns of the Omayyad caliphs, A.D. 660-749 (_Islamiyyun_). Perhaps the oldest in the collection are those relating to the war of Basus, a famous legendary strife which arose out of the murder of Kulaib, chief of the combined clans of Bakr and Taghlib, and lasted for forty years, ending with the peace of Dhu-l-Majaz, about A.D. 534. Of the period of the Abbasid caliphs, under whom Abu Tammam himself lived, there are probably not more than sixteen fragments.

Most of the poems belong to the class of extempore or occasional utterances, as distinguished from _qasidas_, or elaborately finished odes. While the latter abound with comparisons and long descriptions, in which the skill of the poet is exhibited with much art and ingenuity, the poems of the _Hamasa_ are short, direct and for the most part free from comparisons; the transitions are easy, the metaphors simple, and the purpose of the poem clearly indicated. It is due probably to the fact that this style of composition was chiefly sought by Abu Tammam in compiling his collection that he has chosen hardly anything from the works of the most famous poets of antiquity. Not a single piece from Imra 'al-Qais (Amru-ul-Qais) occurs in the _Hamasa_, nor are there any from 'Alqama, Zuhair or A'sha; Nabigha is represented only by two pieces (pp. 408 and 742 of Freytag's edition) of four and three verses respectively; 'Antara by two pieces of four verses each (id. pp. 206, 209); Tarafa by one piece of five verses (id. p. 632); Labid by one piece of three verses (id. p. 468); and 'Amr ibn Kulthum by one piece of four verses (id. p. 236). The compilation is thus essentially an anthology of minor poets, and exhibits (so far at least as the more ancient poems are concerned) the general average of poetic utterance at a time when to speak in verse was the daily habit of every warrior of the desert.

To this description, however, there is an important exception in the book entitled _an-Nasib_, containing verses relating to women and love. In the classical age of Arab poetry it was the established rule that all _qasidas_, or finished odes, whatever their purpose, must begin with the mention of women and their charms (_tashbib_), in order, as the old critics said, that the hearts of the hearers might be softened and inclined to regard kindly the theme which the poet proposed to unfold. The fragments included in this part of the work are therefore generally taken from the opening verses of _qasidas_; where this is not the case, they are chiefly compositions of the early Islamic period, when the school of exclusively erotic poetry (of which the greatest representative was 'Omar ibn Abi Rabi'a) arose.

The compiler was himself a distinguished poet in the style of his day, and wandered through many provinces of the Moslem empire earning money and fame by his skill in panegyric. About 220 A.H. he betook himself to Khorasan, then ruled by 'Abdallah ibn Tahir, whom he praised and by whom he was rewarded; on his journey home to 'Irak he passed through Hamadhan, and was there detained for many months a guest of Abu-l-Wafa, son of Salama, the road onward being blocked by heavy falls of snow. During his residence at Hamadhan, Abu Tammam is said to have compiled or composed, from the materials which he found in Abu-l-Wafa's library, five poetical works, of which one was the _Hamasa_. This collection remained as a precious heirloom in the family of Abu-l-Wafa until their fortunes decayed, when it fell into the hands of a man of Dinawar named Abu-l-'Awadhil, who carried it to Isfahan and made it known to the learned of that city.

The worth of the _Hamasa_ as a store-house of ancient legend, of faithful detail regarding the usages of the pagan time and early simplicity of the Arab race, can hardly be exaggerated. The high level of excellence which is found in its selections, both as to form and matter, is remarkable, and caused it to be said that Abu Tammam displayed higher qualities as a poet in his choice of extracts from the ancients than in his own compositions. What strikes us chiefly in the class of poetry of which the _Hamasa_ is a specimen, is its exceeding truth and reality, its freedom from artificiality and hearsay, the evident first-hand experience which the singers possessed of all of which they sang. For historical purposes the value of the collection is not small; but most of all there shines forth from it a complete portraiture of the hardy and manful nature, the strenuous life of passion and battle, the lofty contempt of cowardice, niggardliness and servility, which marked the valiant stock who bore Islam abroad in a flood of new life over the outworn civilizations of Persia, Egypt and Byzantium. It has the true stamp of the heroic time, of its cruelty and wantonness as of its strength and beauty.

No fewer than twenty commentaries are enumerated by Hajji Khalifa. Of these the earliest was by Abu Riyash (otherwise ar-Riyashi), who died in 257 A.H.; excerpts from it, chiefly in elucidation of the circumstances in which the poems were composed, are frequently given by at-Tibrizi (Tabrizi). He was followed by the famous grammarian Abu-l-Fath ibn al-Jinni (d. 392 A.H.), and later by Shihab ad-Din Ahmad al-Marzuqi of Isfahan (d. 421 A.H.). Upon al-Marzuqi's commentary is chiefly founded that of Abu Zakariya Yahya at-Tibrizi (b. 421 A.H., d. 502), which has been published by the late Professor G. W. Freytag of Bonn, together with a Latin translation and notes (1828-1851). This monumental work, the labour of a life, is a treasure of information regarding the classical age of Arab literature which has not perhaps its equal for extent, accuracy, and minuteness of detail in Europe. No other complete edition of the _Hamasa_ has been printed in the West; but in 1856 one appeared at Calcutta under the names of Maulavi Ghulam Rabbani and Kabiru-d-din Ahmad. Though no acknowledgment of the fact is contained in this edition, it is a simple reprint of Professor Freytag's text (without at-Tibrizi's commentary), and follows its original even in the misprints (corrected by Freytag at the end of the second volume, which being in Latin the Calcutta editors do not seem to have consulted). It contains in an appendix of 12 pages a collection of verses (and some entire fragments) not found in at-Tibrizi's recension, but stated to exist in some copies consulted by the editors; these are, however, very carelessly edited and printed, and in many places unintelligible. Freytag's text, with at-Tibrizi's commentary, has been reprinted at Bulaq (1870). In 1882 an edition of the text, with a marginal commentary by Munshi 'Abdul-Qadir ibn Shaikh Luqman, was published at Bombay.

The _Hamasa_ has been rendered with remarkable skill and spirit into German verse by the illustrious Friedrich Ruckert (Stuttgart, 1846), who has not only given translations of almost all the poems proper to the work, but has added numerous fragments drawn from other sources, especially those occurring in the _scholia_ of at-Tibrizi, as well as the Mu'allaqas of Zuhair and 'Antara, the _Lamiyya_ of Ash-Shanfara, and the Banat Su'ad of Ka'b, son of Zuhair. A small collection of translations, chiefly in metres imitating those of the original, was published in London by Sir Charles Lyall in 1885.

When the _Hamasa_ is spoken of, that of Abu Tammam, as the first and most famous of the name, is meant; but several collections of a similar kind, also called _Hamasa_, exist. The best-known and earliest of these is the _Hamasa_ of Buhturi (d. 284 A.H.), of which the unique MS. now in the Leiden University Library, has been reproduced by photo-lithography (1909); a critical edition has been prepared by Professor Chlikho at Beyreuth. Four other works of the same name, formed on the model of Abu Tammam's compilation, are mentioned by Hajji Khalifa. Besides these, a work entitled _Hamasat ar-Rah_ ("the Hamasa of wine") was composed of Abu-l-'Alaal-Ma'arri (d. 429 A.H.). (C. J. L.)