“When 'Amíd As'ad heard this qaṣída,” continues the author of the Chahár Maqála, “he was overwhelmed with amazement, for never had the like of it reached his ears. He put aside all his business, mounted Farrukhí on a horse, and set out for the Amír, whose presence he entered about sundown, saying, ‘O Sire, I bring thee a poet the like of whom the eye of Time hath not seen since Daqíqí's face was veiled in death.’ Then he related what had passed.
“So the Amír accorded Farrukhí an audience, and he, when he was come in, did reverence, and the Amír gave him his hand, and assigned to him an honourable place, inquiring after his health, treating him with kindness, and inspiring him with hopes of favours to come. When the wine had gone round several times, Farrukhí arose, and, in a sweet and plaintive voice, recited his elegy, beginning:—
‘In a caravan for Ḥilla bound from Sístán did I start,
With fabrics spun within my brain and woven in my heart.’
When he had finished, the Amír, himself something of a poet, expressed his astonishment at this qaṣída. ‘Wait,’ said Amír As'ad, ‘till you see!’ Farrukhí was silent until the wine had produced its full effect on the Amír; then he arose and recited this qaṣída on the branding-ground. The Amír was amazed, and in his admiration turned to Farrukhí, saying, ‘They have brought in a thousand colts, all with white foreheads, fetlocks, and feet. Thou art a cunning rascal, a Sagzí; catch as many as thou art able, and they shall be thine.’ Farrukhí, on whom the wine had produced its full effect, came out, took his turban from his head, hurled himself into the midst of the herd, and chased a drove of them before him across the plain; but, though he caused them to gallop hither and thither, he could not catch a single one. At length a ruined rest-house situated on the edge of the camping-ground came into view, and thither the colts fled. Farrukhí, being tired out, placed his turban under his head in the porch of the rest-house, and at once went to sleep by reason of his extreme weariness, and the effects of the wine. When the colts were counted, they were forty-two in number. The Amír, being informed of this, laughed and said: ‘He is a lucky fellow, and will come to great things. Look after him, and look after the colts as well. When he awakes, waken me also.’ So they obeyed the Prince's orders.
“Next day, after sunrise, Farrukhí arose. The Amír had already risen, and, when he had performed his prayers, he gave Farrukhí an audience, treated him with great consideration, and handed over the colts to his attendants. He also ordered Farrukhí to be given a horse and equipments suitable to a man of rank, as well as a tent, three camels, five slaves, wearing apparel, and carpets. So Farrukhí prospered in his service, and enjoyed the greatest circumstance, and waited upon Sulṭán Maḥmúd, who, seeing him thus magnificently equipped, regarded him with a like regard, and his affairs reached that pitch of prosperity which they reached, so that twenty servants girt with silver girdles rode behind him.”
To the three poets just mentioned, 'Unṣurí, 'Asjadí, and Farrukhí, as they sat conversing together one day in Ghazna,
Firdawsí. came, according to the popular legend, * a stranger from Níshápúr, who made as though to join them. 'Unṣurí, not desiring the intrusion of this provincial, said to him, “O brother, we are the King's poets, and none but poets may enter our company. Each one of us will, therefore, compose a verse in the same rhyme, and if thou canst in thy turn supply the fourth verse of the quartette, then will we admit thee into our society.” So Firdawsí (for he it was who was the intruder) consented to the test, and 'Unṣurí, purposely choosing a rhyme wherein three verses might easily, but four, as he imagined, by no means be made, began * :—“Thine eyes are clear and blue as sunlit ocean”—
'Asjadí continued:—
“Their glance bewitches like a magic potion”—
Farrukhí proceeded:—
“The wounds they cause no balm can heal, nor lotion”—
And Firdawsí, alluding to a little-known episode in the Legend of the Ancient Kings, concluded:—
“Deadly as those Gív's spear dealt out to Pôshan.”
Being called upon to furnish an explanation of the allusion in this verse, Firdawsí displayed so great a knowledge of the ancient legends of Persia that 'Unṣurí told Sulṭán Maḥmúd that here at length was one competent to complete the work of versifying the national Epic which had been begun by Daqíqí for one of the Sámánid kings some twenty or thirty years before, but interrupted, when only some thousand * verses, dealing with King Gushtásp and the advent of Zoroaster, had been written, by the murder of that talented but ill-starred poet at the hands of one of his Turkish favourites.
Such is the account given by Dawlatsháh and most of the later biographists of Firdawsí's first appearance at the Court of Ghazna; but, as already remarked in a note, no trace of it is to be found in the oldest accounts (dating from the middle of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries respectively) which we possess of the poet's life, and Professor Nöldeke is undoubtedly right in rejecting it as purely fictitious. Here, indeed, we suffer not from the usual dearth of biographical details, but from an embarrassing wealth of circumstantial narratives, of which neither the oldest accounts preserved to us of the poet's life, nor the incidental fragments of autobiography which the Sháhnáma itself yields, furnish any corroboration, even when they do not stand in actual contradiction. These later accounts, then, belonging chiefly to the latter part of the fifteenth century of our era, we must here ignore, referring such as are curious as to their contents to Ouseley's Biographies of the Persian Poets, Jules Mohl's Introduction to his great edition (accompanied by a French translation) of the Sháhnáma, and other books of the kind accessible to non-Orientalists.
By common consent of Easterns and Westerns, Firdawsí is
so great a poet that, whatever our personal estimate of his
Sháhnáma may be, he and his work must necessarily be discussed
at some length; but, on the other hand, since my aim
in this volume is, so far as possible, to furnish the European
reader with such particulars about the literary history of Persia
as he cannot easily find in European books, I shall endeavour
to be as brief as seems permissible. The chief primary sources
of trustworthy information at our disposal are, first, the poet's
own works—to wit, the Sháhnáma, the later Yúsuf and Zulaykhá,
and a certain number of short lyric poems, carefully collected,
translated, and studied by Dr. Ethé in his excellent monographs
;
*
secondly, the account given by Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí-i-
Let us first dispose of the very meagre account of Firdawsí
given by 'Awfí (Lubáb, Part ii, pp. 32-33 of my edition), and
Accounts of
Lubáb and
Guzída.
of another short account given by the historian
Ḥamdu'lláh Mustawfí of Qazwín in his “Select
History” (Táríkh-i-Guzída) composed in A.D.
1330, before the growth of the legends to which we
have referred above. According to the latter authority,
Firdawsí's real name (for Firdawsí, of course, was only his
nom de guerre), which is very variously given, was Abu'l-