Persian Literature

PERSIAN LITERATURE. We possess scarcely any docu ments on the intermediary stages of the Persian language between middle Persian and modern Persian. More than this, the first specimens of modern Persian are in verse ; therefore the be ginnings of the Persian language, as known to us, practically coincide with those of Persian literature. The origin of Persian poetry is associated with the rule of the Persian dynasties, which sprang up in the east as soon as the grip of the caliphs became less felt in the outlying parts of their empire. •The earliest poets (9th and loth centuries) were mostly natives of such extreme north-eastern provinces as Merv, Bukhara and Samaruand, but we may simply be less informed of the developments in the west. According to Tabari, the amir of Maragha (in Azerbaijan) Muhhammad bin Batith (d. A.D. 85o) was the author of some poems in Persian.

Earliest Poets.—The earliest name mentioned by the Persian biographers is that of 'Abbas of Marv, who in A.H. 193 = A.D. Boo composed an ode in honour of Harfin al-Rashid's son Ma'mun, noted for his strong pro-Persian feelings. Specimens of it, as quoted in the anthologies, are now regarded as spurious, but a Persian verse by a certain Abu Taqi al-`Abbas bin Tarkhan pre served by the Arabic geographer Ibn Khurdadhbih (towards A.D. 846) has a more genuine appearance; this Abu Taqi al-`Abbas may even be the same person as 'Abbas of Marv.

We know little more than the names of the poets who lived under the Tahirids (A.D. 821-873) and the Saffarids (A.D. 878 90o), but the unification of the eastern provinces under the Samanids (A.D. 875-999) was marked by the rise of a great many Persian poets. Some of them were patronised by the princes of other contemporary Persian dynasties: the Buwaihids (932 1055), the Ziyarids (A.D. 928-1042, in Tabaristan and Gurgan) and the Farighfinids (A.D. 980-1010 in the region west of Balkh). Even the surviving fragments of these poems, some of whose au thors wrote also in Arabic, permit us to trace the principal liter ary forms developed later on,—such as the qasida, or panegyric, the ghazal, or ode (love-ditty, wine-song or religious hymn), the rubii'i or quatrain (in a special metre unknown to the Arabs), and the mathnavi, or double-rhymed poem (used for epic and didactic poetry). Many of these earliest specimens of Persian verse, first

discovered in Europe by Dr. H. Ethe, are real gems of sponta neous poetic feeling not yet fettered by the later conventional forms of rhetoric.

The Sama.nid Times.

The Samanid Nasr II. (913-943) par ticularly patronized arts and sciences. His court-poet was RUd agi, the first Persian classic. (See RUDAGI.) In 963 Baltami, vizir of Mansur I. (961-976), abridged and translated from Arabic into Persian the famous Annals of Tabari. The same Mansur employed the most learned theologists of Transoxiana for a translation of Tabari's second great work, the Tafsir, or commentary on the Koran, and accepted the dedication of the first Persian book on medicine, a pharmacopoeia by the physician Abu Mansur Muvaffaq b. 'Ali of Herat (edited by Seligmann, Vienna 1859) which forms a kind of connecting link between Greek and Indian medicine. Perso-Arabian medical science was soon after developed by the great Abu 'Ali b. Sind, or Avicenna (d. A.D. 1037), himself a Persian by birth and author of pretty wine-songs, moral maxims and a manual of philosophy, the Danish-nama-i 'Ala'i, in his native tongue.

Daqiqi and Firdousi.

Mansur's son Nfih II. (976-997), commanded from his court-poet Daqiqi a modern Persian version of the "Book of Kings" (in Middle-Persian Khveitciy-niimak). Daqiqi, who openly professed in his ghazals his Zoroastrian sym pathies, began the work but died in the prime of life. The great undertaking was carried on by Firdousi who in 1 oi o added the final touches to this work. (See The Shalt-nama almost immediately found many imitators who chiefly exploited the minor episodes of the Seistan cycle (legends concerning Rustam's family and not belonging to the original Khvcitay-namak). 'Ali b. Ahmed al-Asadi (the younger), author of the oldest Persian glos sary Lughat-i Furs (ed. by Horn, Berlin 1897), completed in o66, in upwards of 9,00o distichs, the Garshasp-ndma (ed. by Huart, Paris 1927), a story of warlike feats and love adven tures of Garshasp, one of Rustam's ancestors. Other poets fol lowed with their lengthy Scim-nama, Johangir-ndma, Fareimurz ncima, Gushasp-narna (story of Rustam's Amazon daughter) etc.