Another and more accessible contemporary account of the poets of this period forms the last portion of the well- Luṭf 'Al Beg Ádhar (b. 1123/1711, d. 1195/1781). known Átash-kada (“Fire-temple”) of Luṭf 'Alí Beg Ádhar. The greater part of this book deals with the Persian poets who flourished before the author's time, arranged in alphabetical order under the various towns and countries which gave birth to them, including Túrán and Hindústán. This is followed by an account of sixty of the author's contemporaries, which begins with a brief historical survey of the misfortunes of Persia during the fifty years succeeding the Afghán invasion down to the re-establishment of security and order in the South by Karím Khán-i-Zand. * The author recognizes the dearth of poets and men of letters during this period and ascribes it to the prevalent chaos and misery, “which,” he says, “have reached such a point that no one has the heart to read poetry, let alone to compose it”:

To most of these poets the author devotes only a few lines. The longer notices include Mullá Muḥammad Mú'min, poetically surnamed Dá'í, who died in 1155/1742-3 at the age of ninety; Mullá Ḥusayn Rafíq of Iṣfahán; Sayyid Muḥammad Shu'la of Iṣfahán; Sayyid Muḥammad Ṣádiq of Tafrish; Mírzá Ja'far Ṣáfí of Iṣfahán; a young friend of the author's named Sulaymán, who wrote under the name Ṣabáḥí, and to whose poems he devotes no less than thirteen pages; Mírzá Muḥammad 'Alí Ṣubúḥ of Iṣfahán; Áqá Taqí Ṣahbá of Qum; Sayyid 'Abdu'l-Báqí Ṭabíb (“the physician”), whose father Mírzá Muḥammad Raḥím was court-physician to Sháh Sulṭán Ḥusayn, as he himself was to Nádir Sháh; Ṭúfán of Hazár-jaríb, whose death was commemorated by the author in a chronogram giving the date 1190/1776-7; Áqá Muḥammad 'Áshiq of Iṣfahán (d. 1181/1767-8), to whom he devotes eight pages; and his own younger brother Isḥáq Beg, who wrote under the penname of 'Udhrí and died in 1185/1771-2, according to the chronogram:

Other poets noticed are Muḥammad 'Alí Beg the son of Abdál Beg, a Frankish painter who embraced Islám; Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ghálib, who spent fourteen years of his earlier life in India and married the daughter of the Nawwáb Sar-afráz Khán; Mír Sayyid 'Alí Mushtáq of Iṣfahán; Sayyid Muḥammad Ṣádiq, nephew of the abovementioned court-physician Mírzá Muḥammad Raḥím, who, besides several mathnawí poems dealing with the somewhat threadbare romances of Laylá and Majnún, Khusraw and Shírín and Wámiq and 'Adhrá, was engaged on a history of the Zand dynasty; Mírzá Naṣír, son of the physician Mírzá 'Abdu'lláh (d. 1192/1778); and Sayyid Aḥmad Hátif, the most notable of all these poets, of whom we shall shortly have to speak.

Luṭf 'Alí Beg concludes his Átash-kada with an autobiography of himself, from which we learn that he was born on the 20th of Rabi' i, A.H. 1123 (June 7, 1711) at Iṣfahán, but spent fourteen years of his earlier life at Qum, whither his family migrated in consequence of the Afghán menace. At the beginning of Nádir Sháh's reign his father was made governor of Lár and the coasts of Fárs, and he resided in Shíráz. On the death of his father two years later he accompanied his uncle Ḥájji Muḥammad Beg on the pilgrimage to Mecca, and, after visiting that and the other holy places, returned to Persia, and was at Mashhad when Nádir's victorious army returned from India. After accompanying them to Mázandarán he returned to Iṣfahán, and, after the assassination of Nádir Sháh, was attached for a while to the service of 'Alí Sháh, Ibráhím Sháh, Sháh Isma'íl and Sháh Sulaymán. He then seems to have retired from public life and devoted himself to the cultivation of poetry under the guidance and tuition of Mír Sayyid 'Alí Mushtáq. With selections of this poetry, largely drawn from his Yúsuf u Zulaykhá, he concludes the book.*

Of Sayyid Aḥmad Hátif of Iṣfahán, though he was the contemporary and friend of Luṭf 'Alí Beg, no biographical Hátif of Iṣfahân. particulars are given in the Átash-kada, but only praises which appear somewhat exaggerated, since he is described as “in Arabic and Persian verse and prose the third after A'shá and Jarír, and second only to Anwarí and Ẓahír.” Nearly ten pages are filled with citations from his poems, but of all these we need only concern ourselves with the beautiful and celebrated tarjí'-band by which alone Hátif's name has been immortalized.