1. The Chain of Gold.

Of the Silsilatu'dh-Dhahab, or “Chain of Gold,” I possess Silsilatu'dhDhahab (the “Chain of Gold”) a good manuscript transcribed in 997/1588-9. This poem discusses various philosophical, ethical and religious subjects with illustrative anecdotes and comprises some 7200 couplets. A certain incoherence and scrappiness, combined with a not very pleasing metre, seem to have rendered it less popular than the remaining poems of the “Septet,” and hence probably its comparative rarity. It is dedicated to Sulṭán Ḥusayn, “whose justice bound the hands of the Sphere from aggression”:

and there follows a most elaborate and artificial acrostic on this Prince's name, full of the most far-fetched conceits.

As a specimen of the poem we may take the following anecdote concerning the distress of a poet who composed a brilliant panegyric on a king, which no one applauded save an ignorant fellow who had no acquaintance with the forms of poetry.

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“A bard whose verse with magic charm was filled,
Who in all arts of eulogy was skilled,
Did for some king a flag of honour raise,
And wrought a poem filled with arts of praise.
Reason and Law the praise of kings approve;
Kings are the shadow of the Lord above.
The shadow's praise doth to the wise accord
With praises rendered to the shadow's Lord.
A skilful rhapsodist the bard one day
Brought in his verse before the King to lay.
Melodious verse melodious voice doth need
That so its beauty may increase indeed.
From end to end these praises of the King
Unto his ears the rhapsodist did bring.
A fine delivery is speech's need:
The Book God bids melodiously to read. *
When to the end he had declaimed the piece
And from reciting it at length did cease,
The poet strained his ears to hear the pause
Swiftly curtailed by thunders of applause.
The man of talent travaileth with pain
Hoping the critic's well-earned praise to gain,
Yet no one breathed a word or showed a sign
Of recognition of those verses fine,
Till one renowned for ignorance and pride,
Standing beyond the cultured circle, cried,
‘God bless thee! Well thou singest, well dost string
‘Fair pearls of speech to please our Lord the King!’
The poet gazed on him with saddened eye,
Covered his face, and sore began to cry.
‘By this,’ he wailed, ‘my back is snapped in twain:
‘The praise of this lewd fellow me hath slain!
‘That King and beggar grudged my praises due
‘My fortune's face with black did not imbrue,
‘But this fool-fellow's baseless ill-judged praise
‘Hath changed to woe the pleasure of my days!’
In folly's garden every flower and fruit,
Though fair of branch and bud, is foul of root.
‘Verse which accordeth with the vulgar mood
‘Is known to men of taste as weak and crude.
‘Like seeks for like; this is the common law;
‘How can the ripe foregather with the raw?

‘The crow repeats the crow's unlovely wail,
‘And scorns the warbling of the nightingale.
‘The owl to some forsaken nook doth cling,
‘Nor home desires in palace of the King.
‘He hath no eye to judge the worth of verse,
‘So from his praise I suffer shame and worse!’
E'en so the Ráfiḍí * fulfilled with fraud,
When occupied with 'Alí's praise and laud,
Shame comes to 'Alí from his shameless praise,
Which praise on him a grievous burden lays.
If thou shouldst say, ‘A heart's devotion ne'er
‘Can be devoid of some relation fair;
‘'Alí so high, the Ráfiḍí so mean,
‘Doth no relationship subsist between?’
Another anecdote I pray thee hear,
Ponder it well, and rend an answer clear.”*

The Silsilatu'dh-Dhahab is divided into three books or daftars, whereof the first ends with an I'tiqád-náma, or Confession of Faith, which exhibits Jámí, in spite of his mysticism, as a thoroughly orthodox Sunní. This is sufficiently shown by the sectional headings, which run as follows: Necessary Existence; Unity of God; the Attributes of God, viz. Life, Knowledge, Will, Power, Hearing, Seeing, Speech; Divine Actions; existence of the Angels; belief in all the Prophets; superiority of Muḥammad over all other prophets; finality of Muḥammad's mission; the Prophet's Law; his Night-Ascent to Heaven; his miracles; God's Scriptures; eternal pre-existence of God's Word; * superiority of the people of Muḥammad over all other peoples; unlawfulness of regarding as infidels any of the “people of the Qibla”; * the Angels of the Tomb, Munkir and Nakír; the two blasts of the trumpet; the distribution of the books kept by the recording angels; the Balance; the Bridge of Ṣiráṭ; the fifty stations of 'Araṣát; indicating that the infidels shall remain in Hell-fire for ever, while sinners shall escape therefrom by the intercession of the virtuous and the pious; Paradise and its degrees.

The second book of the “Chain of Gold” consists chiefly of dissertations on the different kinds and phases of Love, “metaphorical” and “real,” and anecdotes of saints and lovers. The third contains for the most part anecdotes of kings, and towards the end several about physicians. Amongst the latter it is interesting to find two borrowed from the fourth Discourse of the Chahár Maqála of Niẓámí-i-'Arúḍí of Samarqand, one related by Avicenna concerning a certain physician at the Sámánid Court who healed a maidservant by psychical treatment, and the other describing how Avicenna himself cured a prince of the House of Buwayh of melancholic delusions. * These are followed by a disquisition on the two opposite kinds of poetry, the one “a comfort to the soul” and the other “a diminution of the heart”; and an interesting dissertation on poets of old time who rewarded their royal patrons by immortalizing their names, which would otherwise have passed into oblivion. The poets of whom mention is here made are Rúdakí, 'Unṣurí, Saná'í, Niẓámí, Mu'izzí, Anwarí, Kháqání, Ẓahír, Sa'dí, Kamál and Salmán of Sáwa. Another anecdote from the Chahár Maqála * about one of 'Unṣurí's happy improvisations is also introduced in this place. The book ends somewhat abruptly with a short conclusion which, one cannot help feeling, would have seemed almost equally appropriate at any other point in the text. In a word, the “Chain of Gold” could bear the withdrawal of many of its component links without suffering much detriment. It contains some excellent matter, but is too long, and lacks artistic unity of conception.

2. Salámán and Absál.

The character and scope of the curious allegorical poem of Salámán and Absál may be readily apprehended by the Salámán and Absál English reader from Edward FitzGerald's rather free and somewhat abridged translation. His rendering in blank verse is generally graceful and sometimes eloquent; but the employment of the metre of Hiawatha for the illustrative anecdotes (which, as is generally the case in poems of this class, frequently interrupt the continuity of the text) is a less happy experiment. The story is of the slenderest kind, the dramatis personæ being a King of Greece, a Wise Man who is his constant mentor and adviser, his beautiful and dearly beloved son Salámán, Absál the fair nurse of the boy, and Zuhra (the planet Venus), representing the heavenly Beauty which finally expels the memory of Absál from Salámán's mind. Amongst the somewhat grotesque features of the story are the birth of Salámán without a mother to bear him (the poet's misogyny holding marriage in abhorrence, though he was himself married), and the seniority by some twenty years of the charming Absál over her nursling, whom, when he reached maturity, she entangles in an attachment highly distasteful to the king and the sage. The latter, by a kind of mesmeric power, compels Salámán in the earthly paradise whither he has fled with Absál to build and kindle a great pyre of brushwood, into which the two lovers cast themselves, with the result that, while poor Absál is burned to ashes, Salámán emerges unhurt, purified from all earthly desires, and fit to receive the crown and throne which his father hastens to confer upon him. The allegory, transparent enough without commentary, is fully explained in the Epilogue.*

As FitzGerald's work has a special interest in the eyes of all amateurs of Persian literature, I here give an extract of his translation with the corresponding passage of the original. * The passage selected describes the arrival of the lovers, in the course of their flight from the King's reproaches, in the enchanted island where they spend their joyous days of dalliance.