‘Of the child in its cot, ere its lips yet are dry
From the milk of its mother, “Maḥmúd” is the cry!
Maḥmúd, the Great King, who such order doth keep
That in peace from one pool drink the wolf and the sheep!’”
More important in the history of Persia than the dynasties
of Ghazna and Ghúr were the Khwárazmsháhs, or Kings of
The Khwárazmsháhs.
Khiva, who began with a favourite cup-bearer of
Maliksháh named Anúshtigín in A.D. 1077,
*
and,
after completely displacing the Seljúqs, their
former masters and suzerains, ended with the gallant Jalálu'd-
With the names of Sanjar and Atsiz * are inseparably associated the names of four great Persian poets—Mu'izzí, Anwarí,
Four poets specially associated with Sanjar and Atsiz. Adíb Ṣábir, and Rashídu'd-Dín Waṭwáṭ, whose work will be considered in detail presently. The first of these was Sanjar's poet-laureate, and his father, Burhání, held the same position. * The high honour Mu'izzí, Sanjar's poet-laureate. in which he was held by his sovereign enhanced the tragedy of his death, which was caused by a stray arrow fired by Sanjar's hand in A.D. 1147-48. The death of Adíb Ṣábir was yet more tragic. According to Adíb Ṣábir. Dawlatsháh (p. 93 of my edition), he was sent by Sanjar to Khwárazm to keep a watch on Atsiz, nominally, as it would appear from Juwayní's Jahán-gushá, as an ambassador. Atsiz hired two assassins to go to Merv and murder Sanjar. Adíb Ṣábir wrote private information of this to Sanjar, enclosing portraits or descriptions of the two assassins, and his missive was carried to Merv by an old woman in her shoe. The assassins were identified and put to death, and Atsiz, on receiving news of this, caused Adíb Ṣábir to be bound hand and foot and drowned in the Oxus. The date of this event is given by Dawlatsháh as A.H. 546 (= A.D. 1151-52), but according to the Jahán-gushá, a much better authority, it took place in or before A.H. 542 (A.D. 1147), and A.H. 538 (= A.D. 1143-44), the date given by Dr. Ethé, is still more probable.Concerning Anwarí and Rashídu'd-Dín “Waṭwáṭ” (“the Swallow,” so called from his small stature and insignificant Anwarí and Rashídu'd-Dín Waṭwáṭ. appearance) I shall only mention in this place their connection with the campaigns discussed above. Waṭwáṭ, who was the secretary and Court-poet of Atsiz, had aroused the anger of Sanjar in the first instance by writing a qaṣída, which began—
Chún Malik Atsiz bi-takht-i-mulk bar ámad,
Dawlat-i-Saljúq u ál-i-ú bi-sar ámad.“When King Atsiz on the throne of power ascended,
The luck of Seljúq and his House was ended.”
Later, while Sanjar was besieging Atsiz in the fortress or Hazár-asp (a name which, being interpreted, means “a thousand horses”) in the autumn of A.D. 1147, he ordered Anwarí, who had accompanied him on the campaign, to compose a taunting verse, which, inscribed on an arrow, should be shot into the besieged town. Anwarí accordingly wrote:—
Ay Shah! hama mulk-i-zamín ḥasb turást;
Wa'z dawlat u iqbál jahán kasb turást:
Imrúz bi-yak ḥamla Hazárasp bi-gír!
Fardá Khwárazm u ṣad hazár asp turást!
There is little point, except the play on the name Hazárasp, in this verse, which means:—
“O King! all the dominion of earth is accounted thine;
By fortune and good luck the world is thine acquisition:
Take Hazárasp to-day with a single assault,
And to-morrow Khwárazm and a hundred thousand horses (ṣad hazár asp) shall be thine!”
The following reply from Waṭwáṭ's pen was shot back on another arrow:—*
Gar khiṣm-i-tu, ay Sháh, shawad Rustam-i-gurd,
Yak khar zi Hazárasp-i-tu na-t'wánad burd!
“If thine enemy, O King, were Knight Rustam himself,
He could not carry off from thy Hazárasp (or thy thousand
horses) a single ass!”
Thereafter Sanjar sought eagerly to capture Waṭwáṭ, and, having at length succeeded, ordered him to be cut into seven pieces. Muntakhabu'd-Dín Badí'u 'l-Kátib, * an ancestor of the author of the Jahàn-gushà, who relates the story, succeeded in appeasing the King by making him laugh. “O King,” he said, “I have a request to prefer. Waṭwáṭ” (“the Swallow”) “is a feeble little bird, and cannot bear to be divided into seven pieces: order him, then, to be merely cut in two!” So Waṭwáṭ was pardoned because he had enabled Sanjar to enjoy a laugh.
To complete our brief survey of the political state of Persia at this period, it remains to consider that power which, though The Isma'ílís of Alamút, or Assassins. not a kingdom, was more than Seljúq, Ghaznawí, Ghúrí, or Khwárazmsháh in the wide influence which it wielded and the terror it inspired—to wit, the Assassins, or Isma'ílís of Alamút. The circumstances which led to the establishment of that power in Persia, and the change in its character wrought by the “New Propaganda” of Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ, have been already described in a previous chapter. That redoubtable heresiarch was still flourishing in the reign of Sanjar, for he did not die until the year A.D. 1124. For many years he had never stirred from the Castle of Alamút—hardly, indeed, from his own house—though his power reached to Syria, and his name was a terror throughout Western Asia. Austere in his way of living, he put to death his two sons on the suspicion of fornication and wine-bibbing, and named as his successor his associate, Kiyá Buzurg-Ummíd, who died in A.D. 1137-38, and was followed by his son Muḥammad, who died in A.D. 1162.
It would be impossible in a work like the present to follow
in detail the history of the Assassins or Isma'ílís of Alamút
Achievements of
the Assassins.
during the period which we are now considering,
but the sect is so interesting and characteristic a
feature of the times that certain manifestations of
their activity must needs be recorded in order to present a true
picture of the age. Under almost every year in the great
chronicle of Ibnu'l-Athír mention occurs of the name of this
redoubtable organisation, which, on the death of the Fáṭimid
Caliph al-Mustanṣir, definitely severed its connection with the
parent sect of Egypt and North Africa. Their political power
began with the seizure of the mountain-stronghold of Alamút
(“the Eagle's teaching,” áluh-ámù't) in A.H. 483 (= A.D.1090-