As regards literature, there was, as elsewhere explained, an extraordinary dearth of remarkable poets in Persia during Notable men of letters contemporary with Sháh Isma'íl. the whole Ṣafawí period, * while the great theologians belong to a later time when the Shí'a faith, raised by Sháh Isma'íl to the position of the established national religion of Persia, had taken firm root. Most of the celebrated writers whose deaths are recorded in the Aḥsanu't-Tawáríkh and other chronicles of Isma'íl's reign really belong to the brilliant circle who gathered round the Tímúrid Sulṭán Abu'l-Ghází Ḥusayn and his talented Minister Mír 'Alí Shír Nawá'í. Such were the poets Hátifí, nephew of the great Jámí, who died in 927/1521; Amír Ḥusayn Mu'ammá'í (d. 904/1498-9); Ban-ná'í, who perished in the massacre wrought by Isma'íl's general Najm-i-Thání * at Qarshí in 918/1512; Hilálí, who was killed by the Uzbeks at Herát in 935/1528-9 for his alleged Shí'a proclivities; the philosopher Jalálu'd-Dín Dawání (d. 908/1502-3); the historian Mírkhwánd (d. 903/ 1497-8 at the age of 66); and the versatile Ḥusayn Wá'iẓ-i-Káshifí, commentator, ethicist and narrator, best known as the author of the Anwár-i-Suhaylí. * The poet Qásimí celebrated the achievements of Sháh Isma'íl in a Sháh-náma, hitherto unpublished and but rarely met with even in manuscript , * completed ten years after the death of that monarch, who appears to have been less susceptible than most Persian potentates to the flattery of courtiers and venal verse-makers.*