Other difficulties are raised as to the identification of the poet and the traveller, but most of them arise from the inaccuracies of late writers, and are at once resolved by an attentive perusal of the Safar-náma and the Díwán side by side. Thus the traveller seems to have been entitled Ḥakím; for the voice which reproaches him in his dream (Safar-náma, p. 3) says to him, when he defends his indulgence in wine, “Insensibility and intoxication are not refreshment; one cannot call him Ḥakím (wise) who leads men to lose their senses.” The notoriously inaccurate Dawlatsháh is responsible for the statement that the poet was a native of Iṣfáhan, a statement conclusively disproved by the following verse from his Díwán (p. 241):—

Garchi mará aṣl Khurásániyast,
Az pas-i-píriyy u mihiyy u sarí
Dústiy-i-'itrat u khána[-i-] Rasúl
Kard mará Yumgí u Mázandarí.

“Although I am originally of Khurásán, after [enjoying] spiritual
leadership, authority and supremacy,
Love for the Family and House of the Prophet have made me
a dweller in Yumgán and Mázandarán.”

And lastly, as regards the date of the poet's birth, we again have his own explicit statement (Díwán, p. 110) that he was born in A.H. 394 (=A.D. 1003-4), and in the same poem, on the same page, four lines lower down, he says that he was forty-two years of age when his “reasonable soul began to seek after wisdom,” while elsewhere (e.g., p. 217), using round numbers, he says, as in the Safar-náma, that he was forty years of age at this turning-point in his life. Nothing, in short, can be more complete than the agreement between the data derived from the Safar-náma and those derived from the Díwán, and the identity of authorship becomes clearer and clearer the more closely we study them. Forty, as we have said, is a round number, elsewhere appearing as forty-two, and in fact the poet must have been nearly forty-three (437-394=43) when he set out on his travels. He was just fifty when he returned from Egypt to Khurásán, and nearly all the poems which compose his Díwán must have been written after that date. Besides the two allusions to his age at the time of his conversion, to which we have already referred, I have notes of some seventeen passages in which he mentions his age at the time of writing. These are: age 50 (pp. 20, 219, 230, 263); age 50 and odd years (p. 78); age 60 (pp. 24, 79, 102, 164, 173, 179, 199, 207, 244); age 60 and odd years (p. 70); and age 62 (pp. 166, 171). In other passages he speaks of his increasing feebleness (p. 5), and of feeling the approach of death (pp. 6, 7), but we have no data wherewith to determine the date of his decease.

Some two years ago I carefully read through the whole Díwán in the Tabríz edition (which comprises 277 pages and, so far as I can reckon, about 7,425 verses), with a view to writing a monograph on the author, taking notes on peculiarities of grammar, vocabulary, and diction; allusions to places, persons, and events; and passages throwing light Study of the Díwán. on the author's religious and metaphysical views, especially as regards his relations to the Isma'ílí sect and the Fáṭimid Caliphs. Some of these results, since I have not yet found time to elaborate them elsewhere, may perhaps with advantage be briefly recorded here.*

As regards the diction, it is too technical a matter to be discussed at length in a work not exclusively addressed to Diction. Persian scholars, but the language and gram­matical peculiarities are thoroughly archaic, and bear an extraordinary resemblance to those of the Old Persian Commentary which I described at great length in the J.R.A.S. for July, 1894 (pp. 417-524), and which, as I there endeavoured to show, was written in Khurásán during the Sámánid period. Some forty rare words, or words used in peculiar senses, and numerous remarkable grammatical forms and constructions, are common to both works.

The places mentioned include Baghdád, Balkh, Egypt, Gurgán, Ghazna, India, the mythical cities of Jábulqá and Places mentioned. Jábulsá, Kháwarán, Khatlán, Khurásán, Mázan-darán, the Oxus, the Plain of Qipcháq, Ray, Sind, Sístán, Sipáhán (i.e., Iṣfahán), Shushtar, Sodom, Ṭiráz, Tún, Yumgán, and Zábulistán. Of these, Khurásán, the poet's native place (pp. 33, 241), to which he was sent in later life as the “Proof” (Ḥujjat, pp. 169, 178, 181, 221, 232, 247, 256), and wherein he was as “the Ark of Noah” (p. 169) amidst the “beasts” (p. 266) who consti­tuted its ill-ruled (p. 243) and evil (pp. 225, 233, 241) popula­tion, is most often addressed, generally with censure (pp. 48, 49), as a spiritual salt-desert (203), wherein the writer was compelled to remain in hiding (p. 185). The name of Yumgán, the place of his final retirement, comes next in frequency; he speaks of a sojourn of fifteen years therein (p. 167), and of his loneliness and exile (pp. 161, 170, 227), but while at one time he speaks of himself as a prisoner there (p. 243), at another he calls himself a king (Shahriyár, pp. 159, 161). Most of the other places are mentioned only once, save Balkh, which is mentioned seven times, and Baghdád, which is mentioned four times. Allusion is also made to the Turks and the Ghuzz (p. 7).

The persons referred to are much more numerous. Of Old Testament patriarchs, prophets, &c., we find mention of Persons mentioned. Adam and Eve, Noah, Shem, Ham, Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Aaron, Joshua the son of Nun, and Daniel. Christ is mentioned (p. 178) with the utmost respect as “that fatherless son, the brother of Simon,” who by the Water of God restored the dead to life. Of the Greeks, Socrates, Plato, Euclid, and Constantine are mentioned; of the old legendary kings of Persia, Jamshíd, Ḍaḥḥák (Azhidaháka), and Ferídún; of the Sásánians, Shápúr II, the son of Ardashír, and the noble Qáren; of Arab poets and orators, an-Nábigha, Saḥbán b. Wá'il, Ḥassán b. Thábit, and al-Buḥturi; and of Persian poets, Rúdagí (p. 273), 'Unṣurí (pp. 11, 12, 172), Kisá'í (pp. 19, 28, 38, 51, 133, 247, 251), Ahwází (p. 249), and the Sháhnáma of Firdawsí (pp. 183, 190).

I do not know on what Dr. Ethé bases his assertion * that Náṣir-i-Khusraw “does not share Kisá'í's hatred for the three first Caliphs, but identifies 'Alí with his predecessors Abú Bakr, 'Umar and 'Uthmán, through whom the Divine Incar­nation was, as it were, transmitted to him.” In the Díwán I find six allusions to 'Umar, two of which couple his name with that of Abú Bakr, while 'Uthmán seems not to be mentioned at all. Some of these, indeed, imply no condem­nation, but surely this can hardly be said of the following:—

“Without doubt 'Umar will give thee a place in Hell if thou
followest the path of those who are the friends of 'Umar”
(p. 62).
“Be not sad at heart because in Yumgán thou art left alone and
art become a prisoner;
'Umar drove Salmán from his home: to-day thou art Salmán in
this land” (p. 263).

And in another place (p. 262) he says: “How dost thou contend so much with me for 'Umar?”

Similarly of 'Á'isha and Fáṭima he says (p. 241):—

“'Á'isha was step-mother to Fáṭima, therefore art thou to me of the
faction (Sḥí'at) of the step-mother;
O ill-starred one! Thou art of the faction of the step-mother;
it is natural that thou should'st be the enemy of the step-
daughter !”

'Alí, Fáṭima, the Imáms, the Fáṭimid Caliphs (especially al Mustanṣir), Salmán the Persian, Mukhtár the Avenger of Kerbelá, and the Shí'ites are, on the other hand, constantly mentioned in terms of warmest praise and commendation; while the 'Abbásid Caliph is termed dív-i-'Abbásí, “the 'Abbásid devil” (p. 261); the Sunnís or “Náṣibís” are vehemently denounced; Abú Ḥanífa, Málik and ash-Sháfi'í, the founders of three of the four orthodox schools, are repre­sented (pp. 115, 119, 209) as sanctioning dice, wine-drinking, and graver crimes; and the orthodox jurisconsults (fuqahá) are mentioned with contempt (pp. 58, 82, 181). Three of the great Ṣúfí Shaykhs—Báyazíd of Bisṭám, Dhu'n-Nún of Egypt, and Ibráhím Adham—are incidentally mentioned (pp. 237, 195, 264) in a manner which implies commenda­tion. Of Muhammadan rulers there is one reference to the Sámánids (p. 191), combined with a scornful allusion to “the servile crew” (qawmí zír-dastán)—presumably the Ghaznawí slave-kings—who succeeded them in Khurásán. The Faríghúniyán, or first dynasty of Khwárazmsháhs, are once mentioned (p. 7), as is Ṭughril the Seljúq (p. 143), and Sulṭán Maḥmúd of Ghazna, the latter four or five times; and there is one allusion to the Sámánid minister Abu'l-Faḍl al-Bal'amí, the translator into Persian of Ṭabarí's history (p. 263).