PERSIAN LITERATURE. The literature of Persia is, strictly speaking, divided into three great periods, old, middle, and new. In view, however, of the wide distinctions in chronology, language, and spirit, the Old Iranian literature, including the Avesta (q.v.) and the Old Persian inscriptions (see 01.1) PEastAN), as well as the _Middle Persian or Pahlavi (q.v.), may best be treated separately. The literature which began shortly after the Mohammedan conquest of Per sia is that which is usually implied by the term Persian literature. It is for the most part in verse, although prose is by no means lacking. The genius of the poetry of Persia lies in the ability to say old things in a new way. Perfection of form and euphony of phraseology are the marks of the Persian poet rather than lofty thought and sincere inspiration, while originality of theme is supplanted by fertility of conceits. The poetry is, consequently, so essentially different from that of the Occident that it is somewhat difficult for a Western reader to become inter ested in Persian verse unless he can habitu ate himself to the somewhat artificial poetic atmosphere to which he is transported. This artificiality, which to the Occidental mind is a defect, is to the Oriental a proof of genius. Nor is this view unreasonable. The freedom of the West has never existed in Persia. Crushed by a despotism, hampered by Mohammedanism, and circumscribed by social conditions, only a small range of subjects has been left open for the Persian poet. Striving to make the best of his material, he has been driven to elaboration rather than creation. The monotony which wearies the Westerner, whose meagre vocabulary cannot match the luxuriousness of synonyms and rhymes found in Persian, does not exist in the original. There the music of the verse and the dexterity of the turns of thought conceal the poverty of idea, and give a pleasure which is real and justifiable.
The first Persian poetry of which any extensive remains have survived was epic, with the gen eral metrical scheme, read from right to left, • • —I • Here belong the fragments of a translation by Itudagi (tenth cen tury) of Bidpai (q.v.). To judge from these fragments, his style was simple and free from trivial conceits. The Persian literary historians term him the Sultan of bards. and regard him as the first classical poet. About this period flourished Kisa'i, Kliabbaz, Abu'l Abbas, Khus rawani. and l'inara. When the Samanid dynasty fell before the attack of Mahmud of Ghazni. the conqueror gathered at his court the poets and philosophers of the time.. Of them the laureate was Unsuri, the author of an epic entitled u '.4(//tra, of which a few verses are pre served in Asadi's rhyming dictionary, and the composer of a long series of eulogies on his patron. Greater than be. however, was his rival, Farrukhi. a master of description. although artificial and Arabized, who bent his energies, like Anvari. Khakani. and others, to eulogies of Malimml. To this period also belongs Daqiqi. who began the task of composing on epic on the legends of amient Iran. The work of Daqiqi, amounting. according to tradition. to about a thousand couplets, was incorporated after his death the greatest of all Persian epics and one of the masterpieces of world-literature, the Fhiikndarab. or Book of Kings of Firdausi (q.v.). Of the epic poets who immediately follow ed Firdausi but two names survived. The first of these is Ali ibn Ahmad al-Asadi of the eleventh century (generally, but perhaps erroneously, supposed to be the same as the lexicographer Asadi), the author of the Gar Siagpminuth, wherein be recounts in between nine and ten thousand couplets the deeds of Garshasp (a mutilation of the Avesta name Keresuspa), the grandfather, according to some traditions, of the legendary Iranian hero Rustiuu. The second is the Nahrydrniimah of Mulitari (died 1149 or 1159), who wrote of the adventures of Shahryar, the great-uncle of Rustam. Of this poem, the scene of which is in great part. laid in India. but a few fragments remain. The other epics of this legendary cycle are anonymous. Of these prob ably the most important is the SO ninfimah, which almost equals in length the Shahnanuth itself, and contains the adventures of Sam, according to the Avesta the grandfather of Keresaspa ; and still longer is the BarviuSinah, which, like the com paratively short Jah5.ngirnannalt, the Faramorz
uamah, and the 1;an5 also forms a part of the Rustam style. The legendary epic yielded• however, to the historical. Here it was the story of Alexander the Great, aug mented by myths, which gave the first im pulse. The poets Amir Khusru, and Jami, from the twelfth to the fifteenth cen tury, each wrote an Iskandarnitmah. This series was followed by a long line of epics, in many instances hardly more than rhymed chronicles, of comparatively little poetic worth. It will he sufficient here to name as the most important Alnuad Tabrizi's on Genghis Khan and his successors until 1338, Abdullall llatifis's (died 1521) on Tamerlane, and the long larjoRmak, or Book of George, by Alulla Firuz ibn Ka'us, celebrating the English conquest of India up to the fall of Poona in 1817. Side by side with the legendary and historical epic the romantic epopee was de veloped. Firdausi himself had set the example in his rasuf a Zalikhri, based on the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. The type of the romantic epic is conventional. The lovers become enamored of each other through a dream or a deseription, and the interest then centres about their constancy and their trials. The hero and heroine are either Iranian, as in the twenty-one epics on the loves of the Sassanian Khusru. his wife, the fair Armenian Shirin, and her lover, Ferhad, the sculptor, and the ten versions of Behram Oar's seven (or eight) love-adventures; or they are borrowed from the Arabs, as the four teen poems on .Joseph and Zalikha, the seven on Wamik and Adhra, and the eighteen on Laila and Majnun. After Firdausi the first great poet in this genre whose work survives was Fakh ed-Din of Gurgan (born about 1048). His poem, the Wig u nutnin, in about nine thousand couplets. relates the love of Wis., the young wife of the aged King Mobad of Merv, for his brother Ramin. The point of the epic, which has many old Iranian elements, lies in the repeated deception of the doting monarch, and it is marked by a humor which is piquant even if unethical. A far greater romantic epic poet than Fakh ed-Din was Nizami (died c.1203), who wrote poems on three of the favorite themes already noted, the loves of Laila and Majnun, of Khusru and Shirin, and of Behram Gor. These works, together with his historical epic, the Iskandariulmah, and his mystical poem, the Makhzan-ul-asrar, or Treas ury of Mysteries, made a khantsah, or pentacle, which was imitated by many poets. (See Nunmi.) Nizami thus became the model for the romantic epopee in Persia. Of his successors the most important was Jami (1414-92) (q.v.), whose l.asuf a Zaliklal and Laila u ilajnfin are not inferior to the corresponding poems of Firdausi and Nizami. Khwaja Kirmani (1281 135'2) returned to the legendary epic in his Hama; u Huntiiyan, which describes the love of Humai. son of the mythical Iranian hero Hushang (the Haoshanha of the Avesta), for Humnayun, Princess of China, and a similar story is told in the same poet's Gui a Nauru:, on the wooing of Gut, the Princess of Rome (i.e. Byzan tium). by Nauruz, Prince of Khorasan. On the other hand. Amir Khusru (1253-1325) wrote a romantic epic of his own time, entitled Ducal rani Khigi-khan, on the tragic loves of the Per sian Prince Khidrkhan and 'Duvalrani, Princess of Gujarat. The multitude of minor poets in this genre may be passed over. A noteworthy modifi cation of the romantic epic, however, deserves mention. This is the mystical romance. Katibi (died about 1434) in his ilajma' or Union of the Two Seas, also called u Manzar, or Seer and Seen, set forth in Sutiistic diction (see SuFllsm) the mutual love of God and man, while Jami treated the same theme in his poem on the loves of Salaman and Absal. Here too belong, together with many others, the OSI a Caugan, or Ball and Mallet (also called Ilabnamah, Or Book of Ecstasy) of Arifi (1438), and the Sall. u Gadd, or King and Dervish, of Hilali (died 1532).