Daqíqí's chief claim to fame is that he was first entrusted
with the versification of the Persian Epic, but when he had
completed about one thousand couplets of that portion which
deals with the appearance of Zoroaster and the establishment
of his religion, he was stabbed by a Turkish boy who was his
favourite slave.*
Firdawsí, in consequence of a vision (which,
probably enough, is a mere poetic figment) incorporated
Daqíqí's work in his own, but not without passing a somewhat
severe and ungenerous criticism on its merits—a criticism
which Professor Nöldeke, who has carefully compared this
portion of the Sháhnáma with Firdawsí's work, very properly
condemns as unfounded.*
That Daqíqí stood high in the
esteem of his contemporaries is shown by the words with
which As'ad the 'Amíd presented Farrukhí to the Amír Abu'l-
Of Daqíqí's lyric verse, 'Awfí gives ten fragments comprising in all twenty-seven couplets, and Ethé gives three additional fragments (Nos. 1, 4, and 6), comprising thirteen couplets, which are not to be found in 'Awfí. The following verses form part of a qaṣída in praise of the Amír Abú Sa'íd Muḥammad [b.] Mudhaffar [b.] Muḥtáj-i-Chighání:—
“Thy sword to guard the Empire hath God as sentry set,
Bounty its chosen agent hath made that hand of thine:
The Ear of Fate from Heaven is strained for thy command,
And gold to reach thy hand-hold emergeth from the mine.”
In another qaṣída addressed to the Sámánid ruler Manṣúr I (A.D. 961-976) he says:—
“O King recalling Dárá's noble line,
Who dost in Sámán's sky like Pole-star shine!
Should Satan see him when his wrath is stirred,
Fearing his sword, he would accept God's Word.
Náhíd and Hurmuz* guide his soldier's feet,
While Mars and Saturn are his vanguard fleet.”
In another qaṣida addressed to Núḥ II (A.D. 976-997), the successor of the king last mentioned, he says:—
“The circling Heaven lends an eager ear
That what the King commands it swift may hear.
For fear of him Saturn, most sorely tried,
Scarce dares survey the Sky's expanses wide.”
The following lines are from one of his love-poems:—
“O would that in the world 'twere endless day,
That from those lips I ne'er need 'bide away!
But for those scorpion curls* my Love doth wear
No smart like scorpion-sting my heart need bear.But for the stars* which 'neath those lips do play,
I need not count night's stars till dawn of day.*
Were she not formed of all that is most fair
Some thought beyond her love my soul might share.
If I must pass my life without my Friend,
O God, I would my life were at an end!”
In another verse he says:—
“Long tarrying, I'm lightly held: away!
Even an honoured guest too long may stay:
Waters which in the well too long repose
Lose all their flavour, and their sweetness goes.”
The following verse is descriptive of wine:—
“Wrung from the Grape which shines as shines the Light,
Yet Fire consuming is its soul and sprite:
Compounded from a Star whose setting-place
Is in the Mouth, yet rises in the Face.”
This is descriptive of a bowl of iced water:—
“Water and ice in crystal bowl combine:
Behold these three, which like a bright lamp shine.
Two deliquescent, one hard-frozen see,
Yet all alike of hue and bright of blee.”
Of the remaining poets of this earliest epoch cited by 'Awfí (and, for the most part, by Ethé also) is Manjík, who was patronised by the Chighání amírs, and whose verses seem often to have contained rare, archaic, and dialectal expressions, since in the following century we find the poet Qaṭrán of Tabríz asking Náṣir-i-Khusraw to explain and elucidate them.
*Then comes Abu'l-Ḥasan 'Alí b. Muḥammad al-Ghazzálí al-
“O Colocynth and Aloes to thy foes,
But to thy friends like sugar, honey-sweet!
The use of foresight no one better knows,
Nor how to strike the first when blows are meet.”
Next follows Manṣúr b. 'Alí al-Manṭiqí of Ray, one of the panegyrists of the great Ṣáḥib Isma'íl b. 'Abbád, the wazír of the House of Daylam (see p. 453 supra), to whom he alludes in the following lines:—
“Methinks the Moon of Heav'n is stricken sore,
And nightly grieveth as it wasteth more.
What late appeared a great, round, silver shield
Now like a mall-bat* enters heaven's field.
The Ṣáḥib's horse, you'd think, had galloped by,
And cast one golden horse-shoe in the sky.”
The following verse, apart from the pretty hyperbole which it contains, has a certain adventitious interest:—
“One hair I stole from out thy raven locks
*
When thou, O sweetheart, didst thy tresses comb;
With anxious toil I bore it to my house,
As bears the ant the wheat-grain to its home.
My father when he saw me cried amain,
'Which is my son, I pray thee, of these twain?”
According to 'Awfí's narrative, when Badí'u'z-Zamán of Hamadán, Ḥaríri's great rival in the writing of Maqámát, came to visit the Ṣáḥib at the age of twelve, the Ṣáḥib, wishing to test his skill, bade him translate these lines into Arabic verse. The youthful scholar asked what rhyme and metre he should employ, and was told to make the rhyme in ṭá and to use the metre called Sarí' (“the Swift,” in the variety here used:), whereupon he at once extemporised a very close translation in Arabic, to the following effect:—
“I stole from his tresses a hair
When he combed them with care in the morn;
Then, labouring, bore it away
As the ant staggers off with the corn.
Quoth my father, ‘Since either would go
Through the eye of a needle, I trow,
Inform me, I pray thee, which one
Of the twain is my son?’”
Such translations of Arabic into Persian verse, and vice versâ, seem to have been a very favourite exercise with scholars and wits from this period onwards into Seljúq times, though unfortunately it is not always possible to compare the version and the original, one or other having been lost. Thus we find in two of al-Bundárí's works, his abridged Arabic translation of the Sháhnáma of Firdawsí, and his History of the Seljúqs, numerous verse-renderings in Arabic of Persian poems,* which in the former instance can be compared with their originals, but in the latter, as a rule, not. And it is interesting to note that the translators considered themselves under no obligation to preserve the form, metre, or rhyme of the original, but only the meaning, and this though they were practically bilingual (dhu'l-lisánayn), and though the metrical system of the Arabs and Persians is substantially identical. On this ground alone I consider, contrary to the view of many eminent Orientalists, notably my deeply lamented friend, Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, whose great History of Ottoman Poetry has been already mentioned in several places, that he who seeks to render the poetry of the East into a Western tongue may most justly claim the same indulgence as these old masters of Arabic and Persian took when translating in verse from the one language into the other; and indeed, having regard to the wide differences which separate our verse-forms and laws of prosody from those of the Muhammadan nations, we are doubly justified in demanding the right to take equal liberties with the forms, though not with the substance of our originals.