Amír Mu'izzí, the poet-laureate of Sanjar, had already estab­lished his reputation as a poet in the reign of Maliksháh, from Mu'izzí. whose title Mu'izzu'd-Dín (“the Glorifier of Religion”) he derived his nom-de-guerre, as he himself relates in an anecdote contained in the Chahàr Maqála and already cited in full in chapter i (pp. 35-38) of this volume. He is called by the author of that work (p. 55 of my translation) “one of the sweetest singers and most graceful wits in Persia, whose poetry reaches the highest level in freshness and sweetness, and excels in fluency and charm.” 'Awfí says (Lubáb, vol. ii, p. 69) that three Persian poets attained, under three different dynasties, to a consideration and wealth beyond compare, namely, Rúdagí under the Sámánids, 'Unṣurí under the Sulṭáns of Ghazna, and Mu'izzí under the House of Seljúq. But Mu'izzí's end was a sad one, for he was accidentally shot by Sanjar while the latter was practising archery. Such, at least, is the ordinarily accepted story; but others say that he was only wounded, and recovered from his wound, in support of which view Riḍá-qulí Khán (Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá , vol. i, p. 571) cites the following verse, which, if genuine, certainly seems to bear out this view:—

“Minnat Khudáy-rá, ki bi-tír-i Khudáyagán
Man banda bí-gunah na-shudam kushta ráyagán!”

“Thanks be to God that by the arrow of His Majesty
I the innocent servant was not slain to no purpose!”

The same authority gives A.H. 542 (= A.D. 1147-48) as the year of his death, and quotes a few verses in which Saná'í mourns his loss. He adds that in the ghazal he follows the style of Farrukhí, and in the qaṣìda that of 'Unṣurí. Here is a fairly typical fragment from one of Mu'izzí's ghazals:—

“Her face were a moon, if o'er the moon could a cloud of
musk blow free;
And her stature a cypress, if cypresses bore flowers of anemone.
For if to the crown of the cypress-tree could anemone-clusters
cling,
Perchance it might be accounted right such musk o'er the
moon to fling.
For her rounded chin and her curvéd tress, alack! her lovers
all
Lend bended backs for her polo-sticks, and a heart for the
polo-ball!
Yet if hearts should ache through the witchery of the Hárút-
spells of her eye,
Her rubies twain are ever fain to offer the remedy.”

When 'Awfí remarks (p. 69 of vol. ii of my edition of the Lubábu'l-Albáb) that with Mu'izzí “the child of Rhetoric reached maturity,” he probably means that in his verse for the first time we find in constant use all the once original and striking, but now hackneyed, similes with which every student of Persian poetry is familiar. Thus in the four couplets cited above we have the familiar comparison of a beautiful face to the moon, of a mass of black and fragrant hair to musk, of a tall and graceful figure to the cypress, of red cheeks to the anemone (làla), * of the chin and the heart respectively to a ball, of the back of one bent down by age or sorrow to a polo-stick, of the lips to rubies, and of witching eyes to Hárút, the fallen angel, who teaches magic to such as seek him in the pit where he is imprisoned at Babylon.

Here is another of his odes (Lubáb, vol. ii, p. 73):—

“Since that sugar-raining ruby made my heart its thrall,
Hath mine eye become a shell to harbour pearls withal.
Yea, as oysters filled with pearls must surely be the eyes
Of each lover who for those sweet sugar-liplets sighs.
Yet the shafts of thy narcissus-eye blood-drinking fail
To transfix my heart protected by thy tresses' mail.
Picture fair, by whose belovéd presence by me here
Seems my chamber now like Farkhár, now like far Cash-
mere,
If thy darkling tresses have not sinned against thy face
Wherefore hang they, head-dependent, downward in dis-
grace?
Yet, if sin be theirs, then why do they in heaven dwell,
Since the sinner's portion is not Paradise, but Hell?”

Again we are met by a whole string of the conventional similes of Persian erotic verse: the tearful eye is the pearl-yielding oyster-shell; sugar-raining rubies are sweet red lips; the narcissus is the eye, called “blood-drinking” or “blood­thirsty” because it wounds the hearts of lovers; plaited hair is curiously likened to chain armour; the beloved is a “picture” or “idol” more beautiful than the Manichæan pictures (Arzhang-i-Mání) of Transoxiana or the idols of India; and the sweet face of the beloved is Paradise. In short, it would not surprise me to learn that almost every simile employed by the later love-poets of Western Asia had been employed by Mu'izzí, and that most of them were first in­vented and brought into use by him. This perhaps, if true, accounts in some measure for his high reputation in his own country, for to us, who are sufficiently familiar with Ḥáfidh and other comparatively modern poets, Mu'izzí, unless we keep constantly in mind the epoch at which he flourished, does not appear as a poet of striking power or originality. Let us there­fore turn to another poet whom we have already had occasion to mention in this chapter, Rashídu'd-Dín Waṭwáṭ (“the Swallow”).

Rashíd-i-Waṭwáṭ, whose proper name was Muḥammad b. 'Abdu'l-Jalíl al-'Umarí (so-called because he claimed descent Rashídu'd­Dín Waṭwáṭ. from the Caliph 'Umar), was by profession a scribe or secretary (whence he is often called al-Kátib), and, besides his poetry, was the author of several prose works, of which the most celebrated are the Ṣad Kalima, or “Hundred Sayings,” of the Four Caliphs, * paraphrased and explained in Persian, and a well-known work on Rhetoric and Poetry entitled Ḥadá'iqu's-Siḥr, or “Gardens of Magic,” which latter, based, I believe, on the lost Tarjumánu'l-Balághat (“Interpreter of Eloquence”) of Farrukhí, has been litho­graphed in Persia, and is one of the most useful manuals on the Ars Poetica of the Persians. He was nicknamed “the Swallow” (Waṭwáṭ) on account of his small size and insigni­ficant appearance, but, according to Dawlatsháh, his tongue was as sharp as it was active, and made him many enemies. Once, according to this biographer, he was disputing in an assembly at which his sovereign and patron Atsiz Khwárazm-sháh was present. It chanced that an ink-bottle stood before him, and Atsiz, amused at the violent torrent of words which issued from so small a body, exclaimed in jest, “Take away that ink-bottle that we may see who is behind it!” Rashíd-i-Waṭwáṭ at once rose to his feet and quoted the Arabic proverb: “A man is a man by virtue of his two smallest parts, his heart and his tongue!” Dawlatsháh adds that Waṭwáṭ lived to a great age and died in Khwár-azm, or Khiva, in A.H. 578 (= A.D. 1182-83). In A.H. 551 (= A.D. 1156-57) his patron Atsiz died, and the poet, with tears in his eyes, addressed his dead patron in the following quatrain:—*

“O King, the heavens before thy power did quake,
And humbly like a slave thine orders take:
Where is a man of judgment to decide
If this be bearable for kingship's sake?”

Seventeen years later, in A.H. 568 (= A.D. 1172), Sulṭán Sháh Maḥmúd, the grandson of Atsiz, succeeded to the throne of Khwárazm, and desired to see the now infirm and aged poet, who, being brought before him in a litter, apostro­phised him in the following quatrain:—*

“From tyranny thy grandsire cleared the ground;
Thy father's justice made the broken sound:
'Tis now thy turn: what, therefore, wilt thou do
While Empire's robe still compasseth thee round?”

A good deal of incidental information about Rashíd-i-Waṭwáṭ is contained in al-Juwayní's great unpublished history of the Mongols, the Jahán-gushá, in the second volume, which deals with the history of the Khwárazmsháhs. Quite at the beginning of this volume, immediately after the account of Sanjar's defeat in his campaign against Khitá, and the sack of Merv by Atsiz, in A.H. 536 (= A.D. 1141-42), is inserted a long letter in Arabic from Waṭwáṭ to a certain Ḥakím Ḥasan Qaṭṭán (?), who, it appears, suspected the poet of having appropriated certain books of his which had been lost at Merv. In this letter the poet defends himself vigorously against a charge which he regards as particularly odious, inasmuch as he had, as he says, presented to various public libraries some thousand fine manuscripts and rare books “so that the Muslims might profit thereby,” in spite of which he is suspected without reasonable cause of stooping to lay hands on the little library of an eminent scholar, which, he dis­paragingly observes, if sold, bindings and all, in the market, would only realise an insignificant sum of money. Here follows the account of the siege of Hazár-asp, the execution of the poet Adíb-i-Ṣábir by Atsiz, and the narrow escape of Waṭwáṭ from Sanjar, whose anger he had aroused by verses already cited. A few pages further on we learn that about A.H. 547 (= A.D. 1152-53) Waṭwáṭ, together with his friend Kamálu'd-Dín b. Arslán Khán Maḥmúd, the Governor of Jand, incurred the anger of Atsiz, and was banished from the court of Khwárazm in disgrace, but succeeded in winning his pardon by sundry contrite verses, of which the following are cited by al-Juwayní:—