“When Ya'qúb had read the Caliph's letter,” says the narrator, “his heart was in no way softened, neither did he experience any remorse for his action; but he bade them put some cress and fish and a few onions on a wooden platter, and set them before him. Then he bade them introduce the Caliph's ambassador, and caused him to be seated. Then he turned his face to the ambassador and said, ‘Go, tell the Caliph that I am the son of a coppersmith, and learned from my father the coppersmith's craft. My food has been barley bread, fish, cress and onions. This dominion and gear and treasure and goods I won by cunning and courage; I neither inherited them from my father nor received them from thee. I will not rest until I send thy head to Mahdiyya* and destroy thy House: I will either do this which I say, or I will return to my barley bread and fish and cress. Behold, I have opened the doors of my treasure-houses, and have again called out my troops, and I come on the heels of this message.’”

*

This anecdote well illustrates the character of the doughty coppersmith.

The second anecdote, which is even more celebrated, concerns the final defeat of 'Amr b. Layth, Ya'qúb's brother Anecdote con­cerning 'Amr b. Layth's defeat by Isma'íl the Sámánid. and successor, who, having been declared a rebel by the Caliph al-Mu'tamid in A.D. 884, was restored to favour for a brief period in A.D. 890, then again disavowed, until in May, A.D. 895, he was utterly routed near Balkh by Isma'íl b. Aḥmad the Sámánid, whom the Caliph had incited to attack him. Of the seventy thousand horsemen whom he had reviewed before the battle, all were scattered, though, it is said, not one was even wounded; and evening saw the fallen prince a captive in the enemy's camp, and in want of a supper. A farrásh, who had formerly been in his employment, happened to pass by, and took pity on him. He bought some meat, borrowed a frying-pan from one of the soldiers, made a fire of camel-dung, and set the pan over it, supported on a few clods of earth. Then he went off to get some salt, and while he was gone a hungry dog, attracted by the savoury smell, came up and thrust its nose into the frying-pan to pick out a bone. The hot frying-pan burned its nose, and as it drew back its head the ring-like handle of the pan fell on its neck, and when it took to its heels in terror it carried the frying-pan and the supper with it. When 'Amr saw this, he turned to the soldiers and sentinels who stood by and said, “Be warned by me! I am he whose kitchen it needed four hundred camels to carry this morning, and to-night it has been carried off by a dog!” Abú Manṣúr ath-Tha'álibí remarks in his Laṭá'ifu'l-Ma'árif (ed. de Jong, p. 88) that two of the most extraordinary battles were this one, which put an end to the Ṣaffárid power, when an army of fifty thousand escaped, though utterly routed, only the leader being taken captive; and the battle between al-'Abbás b. 'Amr and the Carmathians at Hajar, wherein the ten thousand soldiers of the former perished to a man, and only their leader escaped.

About the year A.D. 880 there rose to brief but considerable power a certain Aḥmad of Khujistán (near Herát) who deserves a passing mention because of the manner in which, according to Aḥmad al­Khujistání. the author of the Chahár Maqála (who wrote about the middle of the twelfth century),* his ambition was first stirred by two Persian verses of the poet Ḥandhala of Bádghís. He was asked, “How did'st thou, who wert originally an ass-herd, become Amír of Khurásán?” “One day,” he answered, “I was reading the Díwán of Ḥandhala of Bádghís in Bádghís of Khujistán when I chanced on these two couplets:—

‘If lordship lies within the lion's jaws,
Go, risk it, and from those dread portals seize
Such straight-confronting death as men desire,
Or riches, greatness, rank and lasting ease.’”

At this time the Ṣaffárids were at the zenith of their power, and al-Khujistání, moved by a new ambition, sold his asses, bought a horse, and entered the service of 'Amr b. Layth. Later he renounced his allegiance to them, and took Khwáf, Bayhaq, and Níshápúr. “My affairs prospered and improved,” says he, “until all Khurásán lay open to me, and I took possession of it for myself. Of all this, these two verses of poetry were the cause.” This story, told by an old and generally accurate authority, is to my mind the best proof of the existence of a considerable amount of Persian poetry even before the time of the Sámánids; though of poets who flourished under the Ṭáhirids and Ṣaffárids the names of only some half-dozen at most—the above Ḥandhala, Maḥmúd the bookseller (Warráq), Fírúz-i-Mashriqí, Abú Salík of Gurgán and one or two more—are preserved to us.

Under the Sámánids (A.D. 874-999) the case was different, Poetry under the Sámánids. and we find Persian verse, and to a lesser extent Persian prose, flourishing in full vigour, the most celebrated poet of this period being Rúdagí (or Rawdhakí), who flourished in the first half of the tenth century. Indeed his fame so far outshone that of his pre­decessors that he is often reckoned the first Persian poet: thus in an Arabic “Book of Origins” written early in the thirteenth century* occurs the following passage:—

“The first to compose good poetry in Persian was Abú 'Ab-di'lláh Ja'far b. Muḥammad b. Ḥakím b. 'Abdu'r-Raḥmán b. Ádam ar-Rawdhakí,* that poet so piquant in expression, so fluent in verse, whose Díwán is famous amongst the Persians, and who was the leader in Persian poetry in his time beyond all his contemporaries. The minister Abu'l-Faḍl al-Bal'amí used to say, ‘Rawdhakí has no equal amongst the Arabs or the Persians.’”

The minister above cited was wazír to Isma'íl b. Aḥmad, and died in 940; he is not to be confounded with his son The two Bal'amís. Abú 'Alí al-Bal'amí, who was wazír to the Amír Manṣúr b. Núḥ, translated Ṭabarí's great chronicle into Persian, and died in A.D. 996.

Turning once more to Baghdad, and to the metropolitan, as opposed to the provincial, writers of al-Mu'tamid's Caliphate Arabic writers of A.D. 874-893. (A.D. 870-893), we need notice only, amongst events of general importance, the suppression of the Zanj insurrection in A.D. 883, and the increasing activity of the Carmathians, whose history and doctrines will be more fully discussed in the next chapter. The chief writers and thinkers who died between A.D. 874 and 900 were the following: The “Philosopher of the Arabs,” Abú Yúsuf Ya'qúb b. Isḥáq al-Kindí, whose literary activity chiefly belongs to an earlier and more liberal period, is supposed to have died about A.D. 874. He is notable as one of the few pure Arabs who were really distinguished in the domain of thought and letters. Ḥunayn b. Isḥáq, the physician and translator, who died about the same time, has been already mentioned. Ibnu'l-Waḥshiyya, the author of the celebrated “Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” wherein he sought to demonstrate the superiority of the old Babylonians to the Arabs in point of civilisation, flourished about this period. Dá'úd b. 'Alí, the founder of the Dháhirí (or Ẓáhirite)* school, who held strongly to the literal meaning of the Qur'án and Traditions, and discountenanced all allegorical interpretations,* died in A.D. 883. Abú Ma'shar, the great astronomer, one of al-Kindí's pupils, died in A.D. 885, about which time al-Fákihí, the historian of Mecca, wrote. Ibn Mája († A.D. 885) should have been mentioned in connection with al-Bukhárí and his successors in the Science of Tradition. Sahl b. 'Abdu'lláh of Shushtar, mystic and Qur'án-reader, was a pupil of the earlier mystic Dhu'n-Nún, and died about A.D. 886. As a collector and critical editor of old Arabic poems (e.g., the Díwán of the poets of the tribe of Hudhayl) as-Sukkarí, one of al-Aṣma'í's pupils, deserves a passing mention († A.D. 888). The erotic and satirical poet Ibnu'r-Rúmí owed his death (A.D. 889 or 896) to his bitter tongue. Ibn Abi'd-Dunyá (d. A.D. 894), tutor to the Caliph al-Muktafí in his youth, was the author of several collections of stories and anecdotes. Al-Buḥturí the poet (A.D. 897) and al-Mubarrad the philologist († A.D. 899) ought also to be mentioned. Much more important, however, from our point of view are the four historians Ibn Qutayba († A.D. 889), al-Baládhurí († A.D. 892), ad-Dínawarí († A.D. 895), and Ibn Wáḍiḥ al-Ya'qúbí, who wrote about this time.* Of these, the first three were Persians, while the last was an ardent Shí'ite, which gives his admirable history a special interest, since he speaks at greater length of the Imáms, and cites many of their sayings. Indeed Goldziher and Brockel-mann, two of the greatest living authorities on Arabic literature in its widest sense, agree in the opinion “that the historical sense was entirely lacking in the ancient Arabs,” and that “the idea of historiography was first inspired in them by Persian culture.”* To the writers above enumerated we may add the celebrated mathematician Thábit b. Qurra the Ḥarránian, and the geographer Ibnu'l-Faqíh al-Hamadhání, both of whom died about the beginning of the tenth century of our era.