One of the most curious and, at first sight, inexplicable Remarkable lack of great poets under the Ṣafawís. phenomena of the Ṣafawí period is the extra­ordinary dearth of notable poets in Persia during the two centuries of its duration. Architecture, miniature-painting and other arts flourished exceedingly; the public buildings with which Sháh 'Abbás adorned his realms, and especially his capital Iṣfahán, have not ceased to command the admiration of all who beheld them from his time until the present day; and Bihzád and the other artists who flourished at the Tímúrid court of Herát found worthy successors in Riḍá-yi-'Abbásí and his colleagues. Yet, though poets innumerable are mentioned in the Tuḥfa-i-Sámí * and other contemporary biographies and histories, there is hardly one (if we exclude Jámí, Hátifí, Hilálí and other poets of Khurásán, who were really the survivors of the school of Herát) worthy to be placed in the first class. During the seventy stormy years of Tímúr's life there were at least eight or ten poets besides the great Ḥáfiẓ, who outshone them all, whose names no writer on Persian literature could ignore; while during the two hundred and twenty years of Ṣafawí rule there was in Persia, so far as I have been able to ascertain, hardly one of conspicuous merit or originality. I say “in Persia” ad­visedly, for a brilliant group of poets from Persia, of whom 'Urfí of Shíráz (d. A.D. 1590) and Ṣá'ib of Iṣfahán (d. A.D. 1670) are perhaps the most notable, adorned the court of the “Great Moghuls” in India, and these were in many cases not settlers or the sons of emigrants, but men who went from Persia to India to make their fortunes and returned home when their fortunes were made. This shows that it was not so much lack of talent as lack of patronage which makes the list of distinctively Ṣafawí poets so meagre. The phenomenon is noticed by Riḍá-qulí Khán in the preface to his great anthology of Persian poets entitled Majma'u-l-Fuṣaḥá , * composed in the middle of the last century, as well as by European scholars like the late Dr Ethé, who have written on Persian poetry; with this difference, that the European writers commonly speak of Jámí as the last great Persian poet, and consider that during the four centuries which have elapsed since his death Persia has produced no poet of eminence, while Riḍá-qulí Khán, rightly as I think, places certain modern poets of the Qájár period, notably such men as Qá'ání, Furúghí and Yaghmá, in the first rank.

That no great poet should have arisen in Persia in days otherwise so spacious and so splendid as those of the Ṣafawís Reasons for this dearth of poets. seemed to me so remarkable that I wrote to my learned and scholarly friend Mírzá Muḥammad Khán of Qazwín, to whose industry and acumen students of Persian owe so much, to ask him, first, whether he accepted this statement as a fact, and secondly, if he did, how he explained it. In reply, in a letter dated May 24, 1911, he wrote as follows:

“There is at any rate no doubt that during the Ṣafawí period literature and poetry in Persia had sunk to a very Mírzá Mu­ḥammad Khán's views on this subject. low ebb, and that not one single poet of the first rank can be reckoned as representing this epoch. The chief reason for this, as you yourself have observed, seems to have been that these kings, by reason of their political aims and strong antagonism to the Ottoman Empire, devoted the greater part of their energies to the propagation of the Shí'a doctrine and the encouragement of divines learned in its principles and laws. Now although these divines strove greatly to effect the religious unification of Persia (which resulted in its political unification), and laid the foundations of this present-day Persia, whose inhabitants are, speaking generally, of one faith, one tongue, and one race, yet, on the other hand, from the point of view of literature, poetry, Ṣúfíism and mysticism, and, to use their own expression, everything connected with the ‘Accomplishments’ (as opposed to the ‘Legalities’), * they not merely fell far short in the promotion thereof, but sought by every means to injure and annoy the representatives of these ‘Accomplishments,’ who were generally not too firmly established in the Religious Law and its derivatives. In regard to the Ṣúfís particularly they employed every kind of severity and vexation, whether by exile, expulsion, slaughter or reprimand, slaying or burning many of them with their own hands or by their sentence. Now the close connection between poetry and Belles Lettres on the one hand, and Ṣúfíism and Mysticism on the other, at any rate in Persia, is obvious, so that the extinction of one necessarily involves the extinction and destruction of the other. Hence it was that under this dynasty learning, culture, poetry and mysticism completely deserted Persia, and the cloisters, monasteries, retreats and rest-houses [of the darwíshes] were so utterly destroyed that there is now throughout the whole of Persia no name or sign of such charitable foundations, though formerly, as, for instance, in the time of Ibn Baṭúṭa, such institutions were to be found in every town, hamlet and village, as abundantly appears from the perusal of his Travels, wherein he describes how in every place, small or great, where he halted, he alighted in such buildings, of which at the present day no name or sign exists. Anyone ignorant of the circumstances of the Ṣafawí period might well wonder whether this Persia and that are the same country, and the creed of its inhabitants the same Islám; and, if so, why practically, with rare ex­ceptions, there exists now not a single monastery throughout the whole of Persia, while in those parts of Turkey, such as Mesopotamia, Kurdistán and Sulaymániyya, which did not remain under the Ṣafawí dominion, there are many such buildings just as there were in Ibn Baṭúṭa's days.

“At all events during the Ṣafawí period in place of great poets and philosophers there arose theologians, great indeed, but harsh, dry, fanatical and formal, like the Majlisís, the Muḥaqqiq-i-thání, Shaykh Ḥurr-i-Ámulí and Shaykh-i-Bahá'í, etc.”

Most professional poets in the East are primarily pane­gyrists, and if Riḍá-qulí Khán is correct in his assertion Panegyrics on themselves little esteemed by the Ṣafawí kings. that the Ṣafawí kings, especially Ṭahmásp and 'Abbás the Great, expressed a wish that lauda­tory poems should be addressed to the Imáms rather than to themselves, another and a more creditable cause for the diminution of poets in their realms is indicated. More material benefits were to be looked for from the Great Moghuls * than from the Imáms, and hence the eyes and feet of the more mercenary poets turned rather to Dihlí than to Karbalá. But to religious poetry com­memorating the virtues and sufferings of the Imáms a great impetus was given in Persia, and of these poets Muḥtasham of Káshán (d. A.D. 1588) was the most eminent. But, besides these more formal and classical elegies, it is probable that much of the simpler and often very touching verse, wherein the religious feelings of the Persians find expression during the Muḥarram mourning, dates from this period, when every means was employed to stimulate and develop these sentiments of devotion to the House of 'Alí and detestation of its oppressors. On the other hand the dramati-sation of these moving scenes, which now form so remarkable a feature of the Muḥarram mourning (Ta'ziya), and are often described by European writers as “Miracle Plays,” seems to have taken place at a much later period. That careful writer Olearius spent the month of Muḥarram, A.H. 1047 (May-June, 1637) at Ardabíl, the sanctuary of the Ṣafawí family, and gives a very full description of all that he saw, the mournings, wailings, lamentations and cuttings culminating on the 'Áshúrá, the tenth day of the month or Rúz-i-Qatl, but he makes no mention of any dramatic representations, so that it is pretty certain that none existed at that time. To elucidate this point I addressed enquiries to two well-informed and intelligent Persian friends, Sayyid Taqí-záda and Mírzá Ḥusayn Dánish. The former expressed the opinion that while the solemn recitations known as Rawḍa-khwání (i.e. the reading from the pulpit of the Rawḍatu'sh-Shuhadá , or “Garden of the Martyrs,” and other similar books) dates from Ṣafawí times, the Ta'ziya-gardání, shabíh, or “Passion Play” was of much later date, and perhaps owes something to European influences. The latter also placed the origin of these “Passion Plays” (of which Sir Lewis Pelly's translations give a good idea to the English reader) about the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nine­teenth century, i.e. at the beginning of the Qájár period, and incidentally cited the following interesting verses by Shaykh Riḍá-yi-Kurd in illustration of the view that the Persian dislike of 'Umar is due not less to the fact that he conquered Persia and overthrew the Sásánian dynasty than to his usurpation of the rights of 'Alí and Fáṭima:

<text in Arabic script omitted> “'Umar broke the back of the lions of the thicket:
He cast to the winds the thews and sinews of Jamshíd.
This quarrel is not about the usurpation of the Caliphate from 'Alí:
Persia has an ancient grudge against the House of 'Umar.”

In conclusion we must not omit to notice another step taken by the Ṣafawí kings which added greatly to the consolidation of Persia and the prevention of a continued outflow of men and money from the country, namely the exaltation and popularisation of Mashhad, Qum and other holy cities of Persia, whereby the tide of pilgrims was to a considerable extent confined within the limits of their Empire, in which, as we have seen, the most sacred shrines of Karbalá, Najaf and Mashhad 'Alí were long included before they finally fell under Turkish dominion.*