Chi khush bí mihrabúní az du sar bí,
Ki yak-sar mihrabúní dard-i-sar bí!
Agar Majnún dil-i-shúrída'í dásht,
Dil-i-Laylá az un shúrída-tar bí!

“How sweet is love on either side confessed!
One-sided love is ache of brain at best.
Though Majnún bore a heart distraught with love,
Not less distraught the heart in Laylá's breast!”

In this quatrain the only dialect-forms are bí (= buvad, “is, will be”), and the substitution (common to most of the dialects, and prevalent to a great extent in the standard Persian speech of the present day, especially in the South) of the ú-sound for á in un, mihrabúní.

Magar shír u palangí, ay dil, ay dil!
Ba-mú dá'im bi-jangí, ay dil, ay dil!
Agar dastum futí, khúnat vi-rízhum:
Vi-vínum tá chi rangí, ay dil, ay dil!

“Lion or leopard fierce thou surely art,
Ever at war with us, O heart, O heart!
If I can catch thee, I will spill thy blood,
And see of what strange hue thou art, O heart!”

Here ba-mú = bá má, “with us”; while dastum, vi-rízhum, and vi-vínum are equivalent respectively to dastam (for bi-dastam, “into my hand”), bi-rízam “I will shed”), and bi-bínam (“I will see”).

Vi-shum, váshum, azín 'álam ba-dar shum!
Vi-shum, az Chín u Má-chín dír-tar shum!
Vi-shum, az Ḥájiyán-i-Ḥaj bi-pursum
Ki ‘í' dírí bas-é', yá dír-tar shum?’

“Out of this world I will arise, and fare
To China and beyond; and when I'm there
I'll ask the Pilgrims of the Pilgrimage,
‘Is here enough? If not, direct me where!’”

Here vi-shum = bi-shavam, “I will go”; vásham = either básham, “I will stay, abide,” or báz shavam, “I will again go,” or “I will go back”; dír-tar = dúr-tar, “further”; í' = ín, “this”; bas-é = bas-ast, “is enough.”

Besides these, however, many other well-known poets, such as Sa'dí, Ḥáfidh, Pindár or Bundár of Ray, Bus-ḥáq (Abú Isḥáq), the gastronomic poet and parodist of Shíráz, and others enumerated in my article in the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal for October, 1895 (pp. 773-825), on “the Poetry of the Persian Dialects,” composed occasional verses in various forms of patois, though these present, save in the best and most ancient manuscripts, so hopelessly corrupt a text that it is very difficult to make anything of them. One very good and ancient manuscript, dated A.H. 635, of a probably unique Persian work on the history of the Seljúqs, entitled Kitábu Ráḥati'ṣ-Ṣudúr … fí tawáríkhi Kay-Khusraw wa Ál-i-Saljúq, composed by Najmu'd-Dín Abú Bakr Muḥammad b. 'Alí b. Sulaymán b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn b. Himmat ar-Ráwandí, and now forming part of the magnificent library of the late M. Charles Schefer, contains numerous Fahlawiyyát, or verses in dialect, which appeared to me, on a cursory examination, to merit, in spite of their difficulty, a careful study on account of the age of the manuscript and the pre­sumable correctness of the text.

In the notices of poets and poetesses (eighty-nine in number) contained in ch. v, § 6 of Ḥamdu'lláh Mustawfí's excellent Táríkh-i-guzída, or “Select History,” compiled in A.D. 1330, the following are mentioned as having composed verses in dialect (where such verses are actually cited, an asterisk is prefixed to the poet's name):—^*Abu'l-Májid Ráyagání of the Qazwín district (late thirteenth century); Amír Ká', also of Qazwín; ^*Utánj Zanjání(?); Pindár or Bundár of Ray; ^*Júláha (“the Weaver”) of Abhar; ^*'Izzu'd-Dín of Hamadán; ^*Káfí-i-Karachí (thirteenth century). The celebrated poet, traveller, and Isma'ílí propagandist Náṣir-i-Khusraw mentions in his Travels (Safar-náma, edited with a French translation by Schefer, Paris, 1881, p. 6 of the text) that on his westward journey in A.D. 1046 he was questioned by the poet Qaṭrán at Tabríz as to the meaning of certain verses in dialect of the poet Manjík, so that we have definite proof that such dialect-poetry has existed in Persia from the eleventh century till the present day. Asadí's Persian Lexicon (Lughat-i-Furs), edited by Dr. Paul Horn from the unique Vatican MS. (Berlin, 1897), another eleventh century work, also cites here and there verses in dialect, called, as usual, “Pahlawí.” Of prose works in dialect the two most remarkable are both heterodox, viz., the Jáwidán-i-Kabír, one of the principal books of the Ḥurúfí sect which arose in the days of Tamerlane (fourteenth century), and is partly written in a West Persian dialect;* and a romantic history of the Bábí insurrection in Mázandarán in 1849, written in the dialect of that province, and published by Dorn, with a translation in vol. v of the Mélanges Asiatiques (St. Petersburg, 1866), pp. 377, et seqq.

The best-known dialects of Persian spoken at the present day are those of Mázandarán, Gílán, and Tálish in the north; List of the more important dialects. Samnán in the north-east; Káshán, Quhrúd, and Ná'in in the centre, with the peculiar Gabrí dialect of the Zoroastrians inhabiting Yazd, Kirmán, Rafsinján, &c.; Síwand in the south; Luristán, Behbehán (which possesses a real poet, Riḍá-quli Khán by name), and Kurdistán in the west; but many other dialects, some entirely unknown to Europeans, doubtless exist in out-of-the-way places. Of those hitherto hardly studied the Bakhtiyárí idiom in the west and the Sístání in the east most deserve careful attention.