IF Ibnu'l-Fáriḍ, of whom we spoke at the conclusion of the preceding chapter, be without doubt the greatest mystical poet The three great mystical poets of Persia. of the Arabs, that distinction amongst the Persians unquestionably belongs to Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, the author of the great mystical Mathnawí, and of the collection of lyric poems known as the Díwán of Shams-i-Tabríz. Now Jalálu'd-Dín, as we have already observed, regards Saná'í, of whose work we have spoken at pp. 317-322 supra, and Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár, of whom we shall immediately speak, as his most illustrious predecessors and masters in mysti­cal verse, and we are therefore justified in taking these three singers as the most eminent exponents of the Ṣúfí doctrine amongst the Persian poets. For in all these matters, as it seems to me, native taste must be taken as the supreme cri­terion, since it is hardly possible for a foreigner to judge with the same authority as a critic of the poet's own blood and speech; and, though I personally may derive greater pleasure from the poems of 'Iráqí than from those of Saná'í, I have no right to elevate such personal preference into a general dogma.

Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár, like so many other Eastern poets, would be much more known and read if he had written very much less. The number of his works, it is often stated (e.g., by Qáḍí Núru'lláh of Shushtar in his Majálisu'l-Mú'minín), is equal to the number of Súras in the Qur'án, viz., one hundred and fourteen; but this is probably a great exaggeration, since Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár. only about thirty are actually preserved, or men­tioned by name in his own writings. Of these the best known are the Pand-náma, or “Book of Counsels,” a dull little book, filled with maxims of conduct, which has been often published in the East; the Manṭiqu'ṭ-Ṭayr , or “Language of the Birds,” a mystical allegory in verse, which was published with a French translation by Garcin de Tassy (Paris, 1857, 1863); and the Tadhkiratu'l-Awliyá, or “Memoirs of the Saints,” of which vol. i has been already published in my “Persian Historical Texts” by Mr. R. A. Nicholson, and vol. ii is now in the press. To the first volume is prefixed a critical Persian Preface by my learned friend Mírzá Muḥammad b. 'Abdu'l-Wahháb of Qazwín, who constructed it almost entirely out of the only materials which can be regarded as trustworthy, namely, the information which can be gleaned from the poet's own works. As this preface is untranslated, and is, moreover, the best and most critical account of 'Aṭṭár which we yet possess, I shall in what here follows make almost exclusive use of it.

The poet's full name was Abú Ṭálib (or, according to others, Abú Ḥámid) Muḥammad, son of Abú Bakr Ibráhím,

Biography of Shaykh 'Aṭṭár. son of Muṣṭafá, son of Sha'bán, generally known as Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár. This last word, generally translated “the Druggist,” means exactly one who deals in 'iṭr, or otto of roses, and other perfumes; but, as Mírzá Muḥammad shows by citations from the Khusraw-náma and the Asrár-náma, it indicates in this case something more, namely, that he kept a sort of pharmacy, where he was consulted by patients for whom he prescribed, and whose pre­scriptions he himself made up. Speaking of his poems, the Muṣíbát-náma (“the Book of Affliction”) and the Iláhí-náma (“the Divine Book”), the poet says that he composed them both in his Dárú-khána, or Drug-store, which was at that time frequented by five hundred patients, whose pulses he daily felt. Riḍá-qulí Khán (without giving his authority) says in the Riyáḍu'l-'Árifín (“Gardens of the Gnostics”) that his teacher in the healing art was Shaykh Majdu'd-Dín of Baghdád, probably the same whom we mentioned in the last chapter as one of the disciples of Najmu'd-Dín Kubrá.

Concerning the particulars of Shaykh 'Aṭṭár's life, little accurate information is to be gleaned from the biographers. The oldest of these, 'Awfí, whose Lubábu'l-Albáb contains a singularly jejune article on him (vol. ii, pp. 337-9), places him amongst the poets who flourished after the time of Sanjar, i.e., after A.H. 552 (= A.D. 1157), and the fact that 'Aṭṭár in his poems frequently speaks of Sanjar as of one no longer alive points in the same direction. Moreover, the Lubáb, which was certainly composed about the year A.H. 617 (= A.D. 1220-21), speaks of 'Aṭṭár as of a poet still living. He was born, as appears from a passage in the Lisánu'l-Ghayb (“Tongue of the Unseen”), in the city of Níshápúr, spent thirteen years of his childhood by the shrine of the Imám Riḍá, travelled extensively, visiting Ray, Kúfa, Egypt, Damascus, Mecca, India, and Turkistán, and finally settled once more in his native town. For thirty-nine years he busied himself in collecting the verses and sayings of Ṣúfí saints, and never in his life, he tells us, did he prostitute his poetic talent to panegyric. He too, as he relates in the Ushtur-náma, or “Book of the Camel,” like Ibnu'l-'Arabí and Ibnu'l-Fáriḍ, saw the Prophet in a dream, and received his direct and special blessing.

One of the latest of his works is the Madhharu'l-'Ajá'ib, or “Manifestation of Wonders” (a title given to 'Alí ibn Abí Ṭálib, to whose praises this poem is consecrated), which, according to Mírzá Muḥammad (for I have no access to the book), is remarkable both for its strong Shí'ite tendencies and for the marked inferiority of its style to his previous works. The publication of this poem appears to have aroused the anger and stirred up the persecuting spirit of a certain orthodox theologian of Samarqand, who caused the book to be burned and denounced the author as a heretic deserving of death. Not content with this, he charged him before Buráq the Turkmán * with heresy, caused him to be driven into banishment, and incited the common people to destroy his house and plunder his property. After this 'Aṭṭár seems to have retired to Mecca, where, apparently, he com­posed his last work, the Lisánu'l-Ghayb, a poem which bears the same traces of failing power and extreme age as that last mentioned. It is worth noting that in it he compares him­self to Náṣir-i-Khusraw, who, like himself, “in order that he might not look on the accursed faces” of his persecutors, retired from the world and “hid himself like a ruby in Badakhshán.”

As to the date of Shaykh 'Aṭṭár's death, there is an extra­ordinary diversity of opinion amongst the biographers. Thus Date of 'Aṭṭár's death. the Qáḍí Núru'lláh of Shushtar places it in A.H. 589 (= A.D. 1193), and the old British Museum Catalogue of Arabic MSS. (p. 84) in A.H. 597 (= A.D. 1200-1), on the authority of Dawlatsháh (see p. 192 of my edition), who gives A.H. 602 (= A.D. 1205-6) as an alternative date, though both these dates are in direct con­flict with the story which he gives on the preceding page or 'Aṭṭár's death at the hands of the Mongols during the sack of Níshápúr in A.H. 627 (= A.D. 1229-30). Dawlatsháh also gives yet a fourth date, A.H. 619 (= A.D. 1222), which is like­wise the date given by Taqiyyu'd-Dín Káshí, while Ḥajji Khalífa and Amín Aḥmad-i-Rází mention both A.H. 619 and 627. This latter date, indeed, seems to be the favourite one, having eight authorities (mostly comparatively modern) in its favour, * while a still later date, A.H. 632 (= A.D. 1234-35), is also mentioned by Ḥájji Khalífa.

It will thus be seen that the difference between the earliest and the latest date assigned to 'Aṭṭár's death is no less than forty-three lunar years, and, in fact, that no reliance can be placed on these late biographers. For more trustworthy evidence we must consider the data yielded by the poet's own works, which will enable us to fix the date at any rate within somewhat closer limits. Though it is hardly credible that, as some of his biographers assert, 'Aṭṭár lived to the age of one hundred and fourteen, a verse in one of his own poems clearly shows that his age at least reached “seventy and odd years,” but how much beyond this period he survived we have no means of ascertaining. In one of his Mathnawís he alludes to the revolt of the Ghuzz Turks, which took place in A.H. 548 (=A.D. 1153-54), while a copy of the Manṭiqu'ṭ-Ṭayr in the British Museum (Or. 1,227, last page) and another in the India Office contain a colophon in verse giving “Tuesday, the Twentieth Day of the Month of God, A.H. 573” (= A.D. 1177-78) as the date on which the poem was completed. Moreover, 'Aṭṭár was a contemporary of Shaykh Majdu'd-Dín Baghdádí (or Khwárazmí), and, accord­ing to Jámí's Nafaḥát (p. 697), his disciple, which latter state­ment seems to be borne out by what 'Aṭṭár himself says in the Preface to the Tadhkiratu'l-Awliyá (ed. Nicholson, vol. i, p. 6, l. 21); and Shaykh Majdu'd-Dín died either in A.H. 606 (= A.D. 1209-10) or A.H. 616 (= A.D. 1219-20). The most decisive indication, however, is afforded by a passage in the Madhharu'l-'Ajá'ib, wherein Shaykh Najmu'd-Dín Kubrá, who, as we saw in the last chapter, was killed by the Mongols when they took and sacked Khwárazm in A.H. 618 (= A.D. 1221), is spoken of in a manner implying that he was no longer alive. We may, therefore, certainly conclude that 'Aṭṭár survived Legends con­cerning 'Aṭṭár. that year, and that his birth was probably ante­cedent to the year A.H. 545 or 550 (A.D. 1150-55), while there is, so far as I know, no weighty evidence in support of Jámí's statement (Nafaḥát, p. 699) that he was killed by the Mongols in A.H. 627 (= A.D. 1229-30), still less for the detailed account of the manner of his death given by Dawlatsháh (p. 191 of my edition), who seeks to give an air of verisimilitude to his improbable story by a great precision as to the date of the event, which he fixes as the 10th of Jumáda II, A.H. 627 (= April 26, A.D. 1230). Other constantly recurring features in most of the later biographies of Shaykh 'Aṭṭár are the account of his conver­sion, the account of his blessing the infant Jalálu'd-Dín, after­wards the author of the great mystical Mathnawí, and the miracle whereby his holiness was demonstrated after his death to an unbelieving father. These stories are in my opinion mere phantasies of Dawlatsháh and his congeners, unworthy of serious attention, but they may be found by such as desire them in Sir Gore Ouseley's Biographical Notices of Persian Poets (London, 1846, pp. 236-243).