The meeting here described probably took place about A.H. 447 or 450 (A.D. 1055-58), so that we may safely reject the date (A.H. 410 = A.D. 1019-20) assigned to Bábá Ṭáhir's death by Riḍá-qulí Khán in the Riyáḍu'l-'Árifín, while the statement cited by Zhukovski in the article alluded to in a preceding footnote, that Bábá Ṭáhir conversed with Avicenna (who died in A.D. 1036) contains no inherent improbability. The anecdote cited above is quite in character both with the little we know of Bábá Ṭáhir from other sources, and with the consideration and respect still shown by the highest and noblest in Muhammadan countries to half-crazy (majdhúb) dervishes with a reputation for sanctity. Such I have myself seen wander at will into Turkish Government offices, where they always met with a kind and even deferential reception.

We now pass on to the third great quatrain-writer, Abú Sa'íd b. Abi'l-Khayr (born at Mahna, in the district of Abú Sa'íd b. Abi'l-Khayr. Kháwarán, on December 7, A.D. 967, died on January 12, A.D. 1049), whom Ethé describes as the first master of theosophic verse, the first to popularise the quatrain as a vehicle of religious, mystic, and philosophic thought, and to make it “the focus of all mystic-pantheistic irradiations,” and the first “to give the presentations and forms of the Ṣufí doctrine those fantastic and gorgeous hues which thenceforth remained typical of this kind of poetry.” Like Bábá Ṭáhir, Abú Sa'íd is said to have come into personal relations with Avicenna, and when they separated after their first interview, according to the popular story, the mystic said, “What I see he knows,” while the philosopher said, “What I know he sees.” * But Ethé has shown that (as, indeed, was to be expected) they were on important points of belief (e.g., the efficacy of faith without works) in direct antagonism (pp. 52-53 of the article mentioned in n. 1 ad calc).

The materials for Abú Sa'íd's biography are exceptionally complete, for, besides the usual hagiologies and anthologies,

Materials for his biography unusually copious. we have first of all two monographs compiled by Ethé with his usual diligence and scholarship, and subsequently the publication by Zhu-kovski in 1899 of two volumes of rare texts dealing wholly or chiefly with his life, words, and verses. These two volumes are so important that they merit a somewhat detailed notice.

The first volume contains the texts of two Persian works, the Asráru't-Tawḥíd fí Maqámáti'sh-Shaykh Abí Sa'íd (“Mysteries of the Divine Unity, treating of the Stations of Shaykh Abú Sa'íd”), and the short Risála-i-Ḥawrá'iyya (“Treatise of the Houri”). The former, a lengthy work of 485 pages, was compiled by the Saint's great-great-grandson, Muḥammad b. al-Munawwar b. Abí's-Sa'íd b. Abí Ṭáhir b. Abí Sa'íd b. Abi'l-Khayr of Mayhana, * and, as Zhukovski has shown in his learned preface, between the years A.H. 552 and 599 (A.D. 1157 and 1203), for it alludes to the death of Sanjar the Seljúq, which took place in the former year, and is dedicated to Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Muḥammad b. Sám, King of Ghúr, who died in the latter year. Zhukovski's text is based on two MSS., those of St. Petersburg and Copenhagen, and the importance of the work lies, as he points out, in the fact that it is one of the original sources used by 'Aṭṭár, Jámí, and other later compilers, and that it rests almost entirely on the statement of contemporaries transmitted either orally or in the form of notes and memoranda. Besides being one of the oldest monographs on Ṣúfí saints, and giving a very clear picture of the dervish life of that period, it is also of considerable philological interest, and the editor has wisely preserved unchanged the archaic forms in which it abounds. Both manuscripts date from the eighth century of the Flight (fourteenth of our era).

The Risála-i-Ḥawrá'iyya is a short treatise of five pages written by 'Abdu'lláh b. Maḥmúd of Shásh (or Chách) in Transoxiana to explain one of Shaykh Abú Sa'íd's quatrains.

The second volume published by Zhukovski comprises the text of an ancient and unique manuscript in the British Museum (dated A.D. 1299) whereof the greater part treats of “the spiritual teachings and supernatural powers” of Shaykh Abú Sa'íd. The author of this work, which amounts to seventy-eight pages of printed text, and was written somewhat earlier than the Asráru't-Tawḥíd, was also a great-great-grandson of the Saint, and a son, as Zhukovski conjectures, of Abú Rawḥ Luṭfu'lláh.

Besides these ample materials, to do justice to which would require in itself a volume, we have numerous notices of the Saint's life in later biographical works like the Haft Iqlím (cited by Ethé), Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída, Nafaḥátu'l-Uns (ed. Nassau Lees, pp. 339-347), &c., as well as Oriental editions of his Rubá'iyyát, which are sometimes combined in one volume with those of 'Umar Khayyám and Bábá Ṭáhir, and other kindred matter. His life, however, seems to have been uneventful, his experiences lying, to make use of the idiom of the Persian mystics, rather in the “World of Souls” than in the “World of Horizons.” In this respect he differs essentially from the writers and poets to whom the first part of this chapter was devoted.

To Dr. Ethé, I think, belongs the credit of establishing Shaykh Abú Sa'íd's pre-eminent importance in the history of Persian Mysticism—an importance hardly recognised even by his own countrymen, who, following the well-known saying of their greatest theosophical writer, Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, commonly reckon Saná'í and 'Aṭṭár, both of whom were subsequent to Abú Sa'íd, as the first and second of their three arch-mystagogues. Yet, as Dr. Ethé has amply shown in the selection of the Saint's quatrains which he published (and the same holds good of his sayings, whereof an abundance is recorded by his biographers), all the characteristics of Persian mystical thought and diction now for the first time present themselves in a combination which has ever since remained typical of Persian, Turkish, and Indian Ṣúfí poets. The following quatrains, selected from Dr. Ethé's monograph, and numbered with the numbers which he there assigns to them, will, I think, suffice to prove the truth of this assertion:—