The Qájár rule was strong though severe, and, in spite of its harshness, was, perhaps, welcome on the whole to a Revival of poetry under the Qájárs. country which had suffered seventy years of anarchy and civil war. The brief and bloody reign of the eunuch Áqá Muḥammad Khán, * who once more carried the Persian standards into Georgia and captured Tiflis, was followed by the milder adminis­tration of his nephew Fatḥ-'Alí Sháh (A.D. 1797-1834), to whose influence Riḍá-qulí Khán, in the Introduction to his Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá, ascribes the revival of poetry and the restoration of a better literary taste. He himself wrote verses under the pen-name of Kháqán, and gathered round him a host of poets to whose lives and work several mono­graphs are devoted, such as the Zínatu'l-Madá'iḥ, the Anjuman-i-Kháqán, the Gulshan-i-Maḥmúd and Safí-natu'l-Maḥmúd , the Nigáristán-i-Dárá, and the Tadhkira-i-Muḥammad-Sháhí , all of which are described by Rieu in his Supplementary Catalogue of the Persian MSS. in the British Museum (pp. 84-91), and most of which were utilized by the above-mentioned Riḍá-qulí Khán. One of them, the Gulshan-i-Maḥmúd, contains notices of forty-eight of Fatḥ-'Alí Sháh's sons who wrote poetry, and at a later date the Royal Family supplied Persia with another verse­making autocrat in Náṣiru'd-Dín Sháh (A.D. 1848-1896), but these kingly outpourings need detain only those who accept the dictum Kalámu'l-Mulúk Mulúku'l-Kalám (“the Words of Kings are the Kings of Words”).

These poets of the earlier Qájár period might very well have been included in the preceding chapter, but for the in- Reversion to earlier models. ordinate length which it has already attained. The only respect in which they differed from their immediate predecessors was in their rever­sion to earlier models and their repudiation of the school typified by 'Urfí, Ṣá'ib, Shawkat, and their congeners. This fact is established from two opposite quarters. On the one hand Shiblí, as we have seen, * takes the view that Persian poetry, which began with Rúdakí, ended with Ṣá'ib, and that Qá'ání and the moderns did but imitate the older classical poets, especially Farrukhí and Minúchihrí. Riḍá-qulí Khán Divergent taste of Persian and Indian critics. takes the same view of the facts, but puts on them a quite different interpretation. According to him, * Persian poetry had long been on the decline and at the end of the pre-Qájár period had become thoroughly decadent, so that the early Qájár poets did well to break away from the ideals of their immediate pre­decessors and revert to earlier models, amongst which he especially mentions the poems of Kháqání, 'Abdu'l-Wási'-i-Jabalí, Farrukhí, Minúchihrí, Rúdakí, Qaṭrán, 'Unṣurí, Mas'úd-i-Sa'd-i-Salmán, Saná'í, Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, Abu'l-Faraj-i-Rúní, Anwarí, Asadí, Firdawsí, Niẓámí, Sa'dí, Azraqí, Mukhtárí, Mu'izzí, Lámi'í, Náṣir-i-Khusraw and Adíb Ṣábir, all of whom flourished before the Fall of the Caliphate and the Mongol Invasion in the middle of the thirteenth century. Of the later poets Ḥáfiẓ was perhaps the only one who retained an undiminished prestige in the eyes of his countrymen, and it is doubtful how far even he served as a model, though this was perhaps rather because he was inimitable than because he was out of fashion, like Jámí, 'Urfí and Ṣá'ib, who lost and never regained the position they had once held in their own country. Hence­forth, therefore, the divergence between Turkish and Indian taste on the one hand and Persian taste on the other increases, while the action of the British rulers of India * in substituting Urdú for Persian as the polite language of that country in 1835-6 tended still further to cut off India from the intellectual and literary currents of modern Persia.

It would be easy with the help of the Biographies of Poets mentioned above and others of a later period to compile a list of a hundred or two more or less eminent poets of the Qájár period, but it will be sufficient for our purpose to mention ten or a dozen of those who followed the classical tradition. Nor is it necessary to group them according to the reigns in which they flourished, though it Wiṣál and his family. will be convenient to arrange them in chrono­logical order. Of one great family of poets, the sons and grandsons of Wiṣál (Mírzá Shafí', commonly called Mírzá Kúchuk) who died in 1262/1846, it was my privilege to meet several, including the brothers Farhang and Yazdání, at Shíráz in the spring of 1888. * The latter was accompanied by his own son and the son of his deceased brother who wrote under the pen-name of Himmat. Of the three elder brothers, sons of Wiṣál, the eldest, Wiqár, was about forty-two years of age when Riḍá-qulí Khán * met him in Ṭihrán in 1274/1857-8, while the second, Mírzá Maḥmúd the physician, who adopted the takhalluṣ of Ḥakím, died in 1268/1851. Of the third, Dáwarí, a specimen of whose work is quoted in translation in vol. ii of my Literary History, pp. 41-42, I do not know the date of decease. As his poems have not, I think, been published, I here give the Persian text on which the trans-

<graphic>

Autograph of the poet Wiṣál
Or. 4936 (Brit. Mus.), 20
To face p. 30

lation above mentioned is based. It is taken from a small manuscript selection of his poems * given to me in Ṭihrán in the winter of 1887-8 by my late friend the Nawwáb Mírzá Ḥasan 'Alí Khán, one of his admirers and patrons.

Two stanzas of a musammaṭ by Dáwarí. <text in Arabic script omitted>

This mention of my kind friend the Nawwáb reminds me of a quaint incident which occurred while I was his The modest reward of a modern panegyrist. guest at Ṭihrán in the early part of the year 1888, and which shows how relatively unpro­fitable is the profession of a Persian poet now compared to what it was in the “good old days” when a poet's mouth was sometimes filled with gold or pearls as the reward of a successful poem which hit the taste of his patron. A minor poet, whose name I forget, if ever I knew it, came one day to the Nawwáb's house and asked and obtained permission to recite a poem which he had composed in his praise. On its conclusion he received the sum of one túmán (at that time worth about six shillings), with which he departed, apparently very well contented. But so far from the gift being deemed insignificant, the Nawwáb was subsequently reproached by some of his friends for turning the poet's head and making him imagine that he could earn an honest livelihood by writing poetry!

This is no doubt one of the causes which are tending to put an end to the old style of poetry, especially the Another cause of the decline of panegyric. panegyric qaṣída. Another still more potent one is the position attained by the Press since the Revolution of 1905-6, for the poet now tends more and more to write for the people as a whole rather than for some special patron. The transition can be very well seen in the case of poets like the unfortunate Mírzá Jahángír Khán of Shíráz, the proprietor and editor of that remarkable product of the Revolution the weekly Ṣúr-i-Isráfíl, whose life, death, and literary activities in connection with that great national upheaval are fully discussed in my previous works, the Persian Revolution and the Press and Poetry of Modern Persia. As a poet and writer of the Revolution only did I know him until lately, when I received from my accomplished friend and former pupil Mr W. A. Smart, one of the most sympathetic Consular officers ever sent to Persia from this country, a large fragment (292 pages) of an untitled, anonymous, acephalous and incomplete Persian manuscript work * con­taining accounts of thirty-eight poets, mostly of Fárs, who were either still living in A.D. 1910 or who had died in the course of the preceding forty years. Amongst these mention is made of Mírzá Jahángír Khán (pp. 74-77), and specimens are given of his earlier pre-revolutionary poems, including one addressed to his friends at Shíráz from Ṭihrán, which are quite in the classical style, and bear no traces of the modern peculiarities. Two other not less eminent “transition poets” mentioned in this extraordinarily interesting volume are Abu'l-Ḥasan Mírzá, a grandson of Fatḥ-'Alí Sháh, born in 1264/1848, and commonly entitled Ḥájji Shaykhu'r-Ra'ís, chiefly known as a philosophical and political writer and a strong advocate of Pan-Islamism, who also wrote poetry, mostly topical, but in the classical forms, under the pen-name of Ḥayrat (pp. 102-121 of my MS.); and the eminent journalist Adíbu'l-Mamálik * (born in 1277/ 1860-1), a descendant in the third degree of Mírzá 'Ísá the The transition poets of the Revolution. Qá'im-Maqám, who composed verse under the pen-name of Amírí of Faráhán (pp. 39-50 of my MS.). The new poets of the Revolution were therefore, except in the case of the younger ones who have appeared since that epoch-making event, to a large extent the poets of the old school who had sufficient enthusiasm and flexibility to adapt themselves to the new conditions. But the transition itself is marked by as hard and fast a line as can mark any such historical transition, that line lying in the years 1906-7. Of course an abun­dance of poetry of the old type is still being produced, and I myself was gratified and honoured on the occasion of my sixtieth birthday (February 7, 1922) by receiving an album of verses contributed by sixteen of the most notable con­temporary poets, besides a separate qaṣída from 'Imádu'l-Kuttáb, that Benvenuto Cellini of contemporary Persia.

The older forms of poetry in no danger of extinction. Nor is there any reason to apprehend the early disappearance of the old verse-forms. The panegyric (as opposed to the philosophical and didactic) qaṣída will probably become rarer for the reasons given above, but the mathnawí, ghazal and rubá'í will survive as long as mysticism, love and epigram continue to interest the Persians.