(6) Abú 'Abdi'lláh Muhammad b. Musá al-Faráláwí* was a contemporary of the above-mentioned Shahíd, with whom he is “bracketed” by the later and greater Rúdagí, of whom we shall speak directly, in a verse cited by 'Awfí. The following fragment alone survives of his poems:—

“What greater claim on me than him to greet,
To whom I ne'er can render service meet?
For service poorly rendered none I need
Save his great charity to intercede.”

(7) Abú 'Abdi'lláh Ja'far b. Muḥammad ar-Rawdhakí,* commonly called Rúdakí or Rúdagí, is generally reckoned the first really great poet of Muhammadan Persia; and Bal'amí, the Prime Minister of Isma'íl b. Aḥmad the Sámánid (A.D. 892-907), and father of the translator into Persian of Ṭabarí's Great Chronicle,* even went so far as to declare that he was “peerless amongst the Arabs and the Persians.”* Amongst contemporary poets also he appears to have enjoyed a high reputation. Shahíd of Balkh says in a verse cited by 'Awfí that “‘Bravo!’ and ‘Well done!’ are praise to other poets, but it would be satire to say ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Well done!’ to Rúdagí.” By Ma'rúfí of Balkh he is called “the King of poets” (Sulṭán-i-shá'irán), and from the words ascribed to him, “Incline to no one in the world but to the Fáṭimid,” it would appear as though he was in sympathy with the Isma'ílís, which agrees very well with the Isma'ílí proclivities ascribed to his master and patron, the Sámánid Prince Naṣr II b. Aḥmad (A.D. 913-942), by the Nidhámu'l-Mulk in his Siyásat-náma (ed. Schefer, pp. 188-193). Daqíqí also, the predecessor of Firdawsí, says that for him to praise one who had been the object of Rúdagí's panegyrics would be “to bring dates to Hajar” (or, as we say in English, “to bring coals to Newcastle”). Even 'Unṣurí, the Poet Laureate of Sulṭán Maḥmúd of Ghazna, admits that in the ghazal, or ode, he cannot rival Rúdagí.

Rúdagí was born in a village near Samarqand, and is stated by 'Awfí (though Dr. Ethé doubts the truth of this statement) to have been blind from his birth. He was not only a graceful poet but a sweet singer, and withal skilful in the use of the harp and lute; and he stood in high favour with his royal patron Naṣr II. Indeed the most celebrated of his achieve­ments (mentioned in almost every biography of Persian poets) is connected with an improvisation of which the circumstances have been already mentioned in the first chapter of this book (pp. 14-16 supra), and which was, apparently, sung by him before the King to the accompaniment of the harp.* Towards the end of his life* (possibly for reasons connected with his religious beliefs, to which allusion has already been made) he fell from favour and was overtaken by poverty, but in the heyday of his popularity he is said by 'Awfí to have possessed two hundred slaves, while a hundred camels* were required to carry his baggage. His verses, according to the same authority, filled a hundred volumes; while Jámí in his Baháristán states, on the alleged authority of the Kitáb-i-Yamíní (i.e. Utbí's history of Sulṭán Maḥmúd of Ghazna), that they amounted to one million and three hundred couplets.* Of these only a very small proportion have come down to our time, though many more than was formerly supposed. Thus Dr. Horn has pointed out in his excellent edition of Asadí's Lughatu'l-Furs (pp. 18-21) that Rúdagí is cited in that work more often than any other old poet, and he gives some sixteen couplets from his lost mathnawí of Kalíla and Dimna alone, and there are a good many inedited anthologies and similar works in the British Museum and other large libraries of Europe which would yield a very considerable quantity of his work. Dr. Ethé in his admirable monograph on Rúdagí* has collected together from such sources fifty-two fragments of greater or less length, amounting in all to 242 couplets, and from the additional sources of information rendered available within the last thirty years, there is no doubt that this number could now be largely increased. As Dr. Ethé has appended German verse-translations to all the fragments of Rúdagí which he has collected in the above-mentioned monograph, it appears unnecessary to give here any further specimens of his poetry for the European reader, save the two following fragments translated by my dear old teacher, Professor Cowell (= Ethé, Nos. 20 and 41):—

“Bring me yon wine which thou might'st call a melted ruby in its cup,
Or like a scimetar unsheathed, in the sun's noon-tide light held up.
'Tis the rose-water, thou might'st say, yea thence distilled for purity;
Its sweetness falls as sleep's own balm steals o'er the vigil-wearied eye.

Thou mightest call the cup the cloud, the wine the raindrop
from it cast,
Or say the joy that fills the heart whose prayer long looked-for
comes at last.
Were there no wine all hearts would be a desert waste, forlorn
and black,
But were our last life-breath extinct, the sight of wine would
bring it back.
O if an eagle would but swoop, and bear the wine up to the sky,
Far out of reach of all the base, who would not shout ‘Well
done!’ as I?”

“When I am dead, my last breath sighed away,
And spent my latest wish with no return,
Come by my bed and whisper o'er my clay,
‘I killed thee, and 'tis I who now must mourn.’”

(8) Shaykh Abu'l-'Abbás, Faḍl b. 'Abbás, a contemporary of Rúdagí, mourned the patron of the latter, Naṣr II, and at the same time hailed his successor in the following lines:—

“From us is snatched a King of noble race,
Another, brave and high-born, takes his place.
For him who's gone Time sorrows with one voice,
For him now crowned the World's heart doth rejoice.
Look with the eye of Wisdom, now, and say,
‘God giveth, even when He takes away!’
The Lamp which shines He may extinguish, yet
Again another in its place doth set.
Unlucky Saturn heavy blows may deal,
Yet Jupiter transmutes the woe to weal.”

(9) Shaykh Abú Zurá'a al-Mu'ammarí (or Mi'márí, or Mi'márí) of Gurgán, on being bidden by a noble of Khurásán to compose verse like Rúdagí's, replied thus:—

“Though I have not Rúdagí's fortune, let that not amaze
Nor cause you to think me behind him in sonnets and lays.
He amassed, at the price of his eyesight, great treasure, we're told,
But ne'er would I barter my eyesight for silver or gold!
Of what princes gave him as gifts give one thousandth to me,
And a thousand times sweeter than his shall my melody be.”

From the following fragment it would appear that he considered his military talents to be equal to his literary skill:—

“Where there is giving afoot, for silver gold do I fling,
And where there is speaking, hard steel to the softness of wax
I bring:
Where there are winds a-whirling, there like the wind I pass,
Now with the lute and the goblet, now with the mailed cuirass!”

Passing over Abú Isḥáq Ibráhím b. Muḥammad al-Bukhárí al-Júybárí, of whose life and date 'Awfí says nothing save that he was by profession a goldsmith, but of whose verse he cites five couplets, we come to another really important poet, Firdawsí's predecessor—

(10) Abú Manṣúr Muḥammad b. Aḥmad ad-Daqíqí of Ṭús. In spite of the essentially and almost aggressively Muhammadan name of this poet, it has been contended by Ethé,* Nöldeke,* and, less decidedly, by Horn,* that he was a Zoroastrian, this opinion being based on the following verses with which one of his poems concludes:* —

“Of all that's good or evil in the world
Four things suffice to meet Daqíqí's need:
The ruby-coloured lip, the harp's lament,
The blood-red wine, and Zoroaster's creed.”

Though these verses, notwithstanding what is said by Ethé (who only had at his disposal the Berlin manuscript of 'Awfí, which has a lacuna at this point), are not given by 'Awfí, I am not disposed to doubt their genuineness, but I think too much has been based upon them, and that Daqíqí's admiration for “Zoroaster's creed” was probably confined to one single point —its sanction of wine-drinking; which, as I have elsewhere remarked,* is still a very prominent feature in the daily life of the Persian Zoroastrian.