A third piece scoffing at the resurrection of the body is given by Schefer in his Introduction to the Safar-náma, together with the two couplets in which Naṣíru'd-Dín Ṭúsí is said to have replied to it. The sense of this third piece (which I have also heard quoted in Persia) is as follows:—

“Some luckless wretch wolves in the plain devour;
His bones are picked by vulture and by crow.
This casts his remnants on the hills above;
That voids its portion in the wells below.
Shall this man's body rise to life again?
Defile the beards of fools who fancy so!”

Naṣíru'd-Dín's reply is as follows:—

“Shall this man's body rise to life again
When thus resolved to elements? I trow
God can remake as easily as make:
Defile the beard of Náṣir-i-Khusraw!”

We must now speak briefly of Náṣir-i-Khusraw's remaining works. Those which Time has spared to us are three, two Náṣir-i-Khus­raw's remaining works. of which—the Rawshaná'í-náma and the Sa'ádat-náma —have been printed, while one—the Zádu'l-Musáfirín —exists, so far as I know, only in the MS. formerly belonging to M. Schefer, and now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. Another, the Iksír-i-A' dham, is mentioned by Ḥájji Khalífa. Less reliable authors, such as Dawlatsháh and the Átash-kada, mention a Kanzu'l-Ḥaqá'iq (“Treasury of Verities”), a Qánún-i-A'dham (“Greatest Law”), a work on the Science of the Greeks, a treatise on Magic, two works entitled Dastúr-i-A'dham and al-Mustawfí, and the Commentary on the Qur'án stated in the Pseudo-Autobiography to have been composed for the Maláḥida, or “Heretics” of the Isma'ílí sect. It is doubtful how many of the last-mentioned works ever really existed, * since no mention of them occurs in any book written within four centuries or so of Náṣir's death.

The Rawshaná'í-náma, or “Book of Light,” is a mathnawí poem containing (in Ethé's edition) 579 verses, and The Rawshaná'í­náma. written in the hexameter hazaj metre. There are two manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris (one formerly in the possession of M. Schefer), one at Leyden, one at Gotha, and one in the India Office. A line in this poem (l. 555 in Ethé's edition) giving the date of its composition forms the basis of the most serious (indeed, the only serious) argument in favour of the view already discussed that there were two separate Náṣir-i-Khusraws. The reading adopted by Ethé gives the date A.H. 440 (= A.D. 1048-49), and this most plausible con­jecture (for it does not occur in any known manuscript) he supports by many strong arguments (Z.D.M.G., xxxiii, pp. 646-649, and xxxiv, p. 638, n. 5). But the date is variously given in the different MSS. The Leyden and the two Paris MSS. give A.H. 343 (= A.D. 954-55), the Gotha MS. A.H. 420 (= A.D. 1029), and the India Office MS. A.H. 323 (= A.D. 934-35). The lines giving the first two dates do not scan, and may therefore be rejected on metrical grounds, and the latter is entirely at variance with all the facts known to us about Náṣir-i-Khusraw. For it is quite certain that the Safar-náma and the Díwán are by the same author, of whose life the main outline and principal dates are perfectly well known; and as he was born, as stated explicitly in the Díwán and by implication in the Safar-náma, in A.H. 394 (= A.D. 1003-4), he evidently cannot have written the Rawshaná'í-náma either in A.H. 323 or 343. And to suppose that there were two poets with the same name—Náṣir—the same kunya—Abú Mu'ín—the same pen-name—Ḥujjat— and the same patronymic, both of whom were connected with Yumgán in Khurásán, and both of whom wrote moral and didactic verse in exactly the same style, is a hypothesis which hardly any one will venture to maintain. I have therefore no doubt that Dr. Ethé's ingenious conjecture is correct, and that, as he supposes, the Rawshaná'í-náma was concluded in Cairo on the Feast of Bayrám, A.H. 440 (= March 9, A.D. 1049). For the fuller discussion of this matter, I must refer the reader to Dr. Ethé's exhaustive monograph.

So much space has already been devoted to Náṣir-i-Khusraw, and so much remains to be said of other important writers of this period, that I cannot discuss either the Rawshaná'í-náma or the Sa'ádat-náma in this place as I should wish, but this is of less importance, since the European reader has at his disposal Dr. Ethé's metrical German translation of the first and M. Fagnan's French prose translation of the second. Both are didactic and ethical mathnawí poems written in the same hazaj metre; and both appear to me far inferior in poetic merit to the Díwán. The Sa'ádat-náma is divided into thirty short chapters, and comprises 287 verses, and deals almost exclusively with practical ethics, while the Rawshaná'í-náma discusses also various metaphysical and teleological matters, and includes a very characteristic section (ll. 513-523) in reprobation of secular poets “whose verses have no other object than to gain silver and gold.”

Leaving Náṣir-i-Khusraw, we must now pass to the con­sideration of four poets, all of whom achieved celebrity in one The four quatrain-writers of this period. special form of verse—a form, as we have seen, typically Persian—the rubá'í or quatrain. These four are, first, the famous Astronomer-Poet of Níshápúr, 'Umar Khayyám; secondly, the dialect-poet—the Persian Burns, as he may be termed—Bábá Ṭáhir of Hamadán; thirdly, the celebrated Ṣúfí, or mystic, Abú Sa'íd b. Abi'l-Khayr; and lastly the pious Shaykh al-Anṣárí, or Pír-i-Anṣár, who, as Ethé says (Neupers. Litt., p. 282), “through his numerous half-mystical, half-ethical writings, which are com­posed sometimes in rhymed prose, sometimes in prose mingled with actual ghazals and rubá'ís, contributed more than any one else to the gradual fusion of mystical and didactic poetry, and prepared the way for the great Saná'í.”

Let us begin first with 'Umar Khayyám (or al-Khayyámí, as he is called in Arabic), who, thanks to the genius of Fitz- 'Umar Khayyám. Gerald, enjoys a celebrity in Europe, especially in England and America, far greater than that which he has attained in his own country, where his fame rests rather on his mathematical and astronomical than on his poetical achievements. The oldest accounts which we possess of him are contained in the Chahár Maqála, or “Four Discourses,” of Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí of Samarqand, and, be it noted, not in that section of the work which treats of Poets, but that which treats of Astrologers and Astronomers. This Nidhámí (not to be confounded with the later and more celebrated Nidhámí of Ganja) wrote his “Four Discourses” in the latter half of the twelfth century of our era, and in Anec­dote xxvii (pp. 100-101 of my translation) relates as follows:—

“In the year A.H. 506 (= A.D. 1112-13) Khwája Imám 'Umar Khayyám and Khwája Imám Mudhaffar-i-Isfizárí had alighted in Account of 'Umar Khay­yám from the Chahár Maqála. the city of Balkh, in the Street of the Slave-sellers, in the house of Amír Abú Sa'd, and I had joined that assembly. In the midst of that friendly gathering I heard that Proof of the Truth (Ḥujjat-i-Ḥaqq) 'Umar say, ‘My grave will be in a spot where the trees will shed their blossoms on me twice a year.’ This thing seemed to me impossible, though I knew that one such as he would not speak idle words.

“When I arrived at Níshápúr in the year A.H. 530 (= A.D. 1135-36), it being then some years * since that great man had veiled his countenance in the dust, and this lower world had been bereaved of him, I went to visit his grave on the eve of a certain Friday * (seeing that he had the claim of a master on me), taking with me a guide to point out his tomb. So he brought me out to the Ḥíra (or Ḥírí) Cemetery; I turned to the left, and his tomb lay at the foot of a garden-wall, over which pear-trees and peach-trees thrust their heads, and on his grave had fallen so many flower-leaves that his dust was hidden beneath the flowers. Then I remembered that saying which I had heard from him in the city of Balkh, and I fell to weeping, because on the face of the earth, and in all the regions of the habitable globe, I nowhere saw one like unto him. May God (blessed and exalted is He) have mercy upon him, by His Grace and His Favour! Yet although I witnessed this prognosti­cation on the part of that Proof of the Truth 'Umar, I did not observe that he had any great belief in astrological predictions; nor have I seen or heard of any of the great [scientists] who had such belief.”