‘My youth as a vision of childhood in sooth
I remember: alas and alas for my youth!’”
The next poet claiming our attention is the elder Asadí,
Abú Naṣr Aḥmed b. Manṣúr of Ṭús, not to be confounded
Asadí the elder.
with his son 'Alí b. Aḥmed al-Asadí, the author
of the Garshásp-náma and of the oldest extant
Persian Lexicon, in whose handwriting is the most ancient
Persian manuscript known to exist, transcribed in A.D. 1055-56,
now preserved at Vienna, and published by Seligmann. Perhaps,
indeed, he should have been placed before Firdawsí, who
is said to have been his pupil as well as his friend and fellow-
Our knowledge of Asadí's life is meagre in the extreme. 'Awfí and the Chahár Maqála ignore him entirely, and his Dawlatsháh's fictions. name is merely mentioned (and that in connection with the Garshasp-náma, which was the younger Asadí's work) in the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída. Dawlatsháh, as usual, gives plenty of detail; but as it is, so far as I know, unsupported by any respectable authority of earlier times, it must be regarded as worthless. He pretends, for instance, that Asadí was pressed to undertake the composition of the Sháhnáma, but excused himself on the ground of his age, and passed on the task to his pupil Firdawsí; but that when the latter lay dying at Ṭús, with the last four thousand couplets of the Epic still unwritten, Asadí finished it for him in a day and a night, and was able to console the dying poet by reading to him on the following day the completion of the poem. These verses are even specified by Dawlatsháh, who says that they extend from the first invasion of Persia by the Arabs to the end of the book, and that “men of letters are of opinion that it is possible to detect by close attention where the verse of Firdawsí ends and that of Asadí begins.” One of the Cambridge MSS. of Dawlatsháh (Add. 831) has the following marginal comment on this baseless fiction: “Firdawsí, as will be subsequently mentioned in the notice of his life, himself completed the Sháhnáma, whence it is evident that no other person collaborated with him in its versification. For after he had completed it he succeeded, by a stratagem, in recovering possession of it from the King's librarian, and inserted in it the verses of the celebrated satire. What is here stated is plainly incompatible with this.” To this sensible comment another hand has added the words Níkú guftí! (“Thou sayest well!”).
Asadí's chief claim to distinction rests on the fact that he developed and perfected, if he did not invent, the species The munádhara, or “strife-poem.” of poem entitled munádhara, or “strife-poem;” and Dr. Ethé, who has gone deeply into this matter, has embodied the results of his erudition and industry in an admirable monograph published in the Acts of the Fifth International Congress of Orientalists, held at Berlin in 1882, and entitled Über persische Tenzonen. Asadí is known to have composed five such munádharát, to wit: (1) Arab and Persian, (2) Heaven and Earth, (3) Spear and Bow, (4) Night and Day, and (5) Muslim and Gabr (Zoroastrian). Of these I shall offer the reader, as a specimen of this kind of composition, a complete translation (from the text given by Dawlatsháh) of the fourth, referring such as desire further information as to the contents of the others, and the light they throw on the poet's life and adventures, to Ethé's monograph mentioned above, and to pp. 226-229 of his article Neupersische Litteratur in vol. ii of Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss.
ASADÍ'S STRIFE-POEM BETWEEN NIGHT AND DAY.
“Hear the fierce dispute and strife which passed between the
Night and Day;
'Tis a tale which from the heart will drive all brooding care
away.
Thus it chanced, that these disputed as to which stood first in
fame,
And between the two were bandied many words of praise and
blame.
‘Surely Night should take precedence over Day,’ began the
Night,
'Since at first the Lord Eternal out of Darkness called the
Light.
Do not those who pray by daylight stand in God's esteem less
high
Than do those who in the night-time unto Him lift up their
cry?
In the night it was that Moses unto prayer led forth his throng,
And at night-time Lot departed from the land of sin and wrong.
'Twas at night that by Muḥammad heaven's orb in twain was
cleft,
And at night on his ascent to God the Holy House he left.
Thirty days make up the month, and yet, as God's Qur'án doth
tell,
In degree the Night of Merit
*
doth a thousand months excel.
Night doth draw a kindly curtain, Day our every fault doth
show;
Night conferreth rest and peace, while Day increaseth toil and
woe.
In the day are certain seasons when to pray is not allowed,
While of night-long prayer the Prophet and his Church were
ever proud.
I'm a King whose throne is earth, whose palace is the vaulted
blue,
Captained by the Moon, the stars and planets form my retinue.
Thou with thy blue veil of mourning heaven's face dost hide
and mar,
Which through me, like Iram's Garden, glows with many a
flower-like star.
By this Moon of mine they count the months of the Arabian
year,
And the mark of the Archangel's wing doth on its face appear.
On the visage of the Moon the signs of health one clearly sees,
While apparent on the Sun's face are the symptoms of disease.
Less than thirty days sufficeth for the Moon her course to run,
Such a course as in the year is scarce completed by the Sun.'
“When the Day thus long had listened to the Night, its wrath
was stirred:
‘Cease!’ it cried, 'for surely never hath a vainer claim been
heard!
Heaven's Lord doth give precedence, in the oath which He
hath sworn,
Over Night to Day; and darest thou to hold the Day in scorn?
All the fastings of the people are observed and kept by day,
And at day-time to the Ka'ba do the pilgrims wend their way.
'Arafa and 'Áshúrá, the Friday prayer, the festal glee,
All are proper to the Day, as every thinking mind can see.
From the void of Non-Existence God by day created men,
And 'twill be by day, we know, that all shall rise to life again.
Art thou not a grief to lovers, to the child a terror great,
Of the Devil's power the heart, and on the sick man's heart
the weight?
Owls and bats and birds of darkness, ghosts and things of
goblin race,
Thieves and burglars, all together witness to the Night's dis-
grace.
I am born of Heaven's sunshine, thou art of the Pit's dark
hole;
I am like the cheerful firelight, thou art like the dusky coal.
These horizons I adorn by thee are rendered dull and drear;
Leaps the light in human eyes for me, for thee springs forth
the tear.
Mine Faith's luminous apparel, Unbelief's dark robe for you;
Mine the raiment of rejoicing, thine the mourner's sable hue.
How canst thou make boast of beauty with thy dusky negro
face?
Naught can make the negro fair, though gifted with a statue's
grace.
What avail thy starry hosts and regiments, which headlong fly
When my Sun sets up his standard in the verdant field of
sky?
What if in God's Holy Book my title after thine appears?
Doth not God in Scripture mention first the deaf, then him
who hears?
Read the verse ‘He Death created,’ where Life holds the second
place,
Yet is Life most surely welcomed more than Death in any
case.
By thy Moon the months and years in Arab computation run,
But the Persian months and years are still computed by the
Sun.
Though the Sun be sallow-faced, 'tis better than the Moon, I
ween;
Better is the golden dínár than the dirham's silver sheen.
From the Sun the Moon derives the light that causeth it to
glow;
In allegiance to the Sun it bends its back in homage low.
If the Moon outstrips the Sun, that surely is no wondrous
thing:
Wondrous were it if the footman should not run before the
King!
Of the five appointed prayers the Night has two, the Day has
three;
Thus thy share hath been diminished to be given unto me.
If thou art not yet content with what I urge in this debate,
Choose between us two an umpire just and wise to arbitrate;
Either choose our noble King, in equity without a peer,
Or elect, if you prefer, that Mine of Grace, the Grand Wazír,
Aḥmad's son Khalíl Abú Naṣr, noble, bounteous, filled with
zeal,
Crown of rank and state, assurer of his King's and country's
weal.'”