I have endeavoured to show that under the Qájár Dynasty, especially since the middle of the nineteenth Modernizing influences. century, the old forms of literature, both prose and verse, took on a fresh lease of life, and, so far from deteriorating, rose to a higher level than they had hitherto reached during the four centuries (roughly speaking A.D. 1500-1900) with which we are dealing in this volume. We must now consider three or four quite recent developments due in the first instance to what Mírzá Muḥammad 'Alí Khán “Tarbiyat,” the real author of my Press and Poetry in Modern Persia (pp. 154-66), calls “Modernizing Influences in the Persian Press other than Magazines and Journals.” Amongst these he assigns an important place to the various scientific text-books compiled by, or under the supervision of, the numerous The Dáru'l­Funún. Europeans appointed as teachers in the Dáru'l-Funún and the Military and Political Colleges in Ṭihrán from A.D. 1851 onwards, and the Persian translations of European (especially French) books of a more general character, such as some of Molière's plays and Jules Verne's novels, which resulted from an increased interest in Europe and knowledge of European languages. Of such books, and of others originally written in Persian in this atmosphere, he gives a list containing one hundred and sixty-two entries, which should be con­sulted by those who are interested in this matter. The Revolution of A.D. 1906, with the remarkable development of journalism which it brought about, and the increase of facilities for printing resulting from this, gave a fresh impulse to this movement, which, checked by the difficulties and miseries imposed on Persia by the Great War, seems now again to be gathering fresh impetus. What we have to say falls under three heads, the Drama, Fiction and the Press, of which the first two need not detain us long.

The only indigenous form of drama is that connected with the Muḥarram mournings, the so-called “Passion The Drama. Plays” discussed in a previous chapter, * and even in their case it is not certain that they owe nothing to European influence. Three at least of Molière's plays (Le Médecin malgré lui, Le Misanthrope, and Translations of Molière. another entitled The Ass, which I think must be intended for L'Étourdi) have appeared in Persian translations, but are seldom met with, and seem never to have attained any great popularity. I possess only Le Misanthrope, printed at Constantinople in the Taṣwíru'l-Afkár Press in 1286/1869-70. The title is rendered as Guzárísh-i-Mardum-guríz (“the Adventure of him who fled from mankind”), the characters are Persian-ized, and the text is in verse and follows the original very closely, though occasionally Persian idioms or proverbs are substituted for French. Here, for instance, is the rendering —in this case a paraphrase—of the “Vieille chanson” in Act I, Scene 2:

“Si le roi m'avait donné
Paris, sa grand' ville,
Et qu'il me fallût quitter
L'amour de ma mie,
Je dirais au roi Henri
‘Reprenez votre Paris,
J'aime mieux ma mie, o gai!
J'aime mieux ma mie!’”

<text in Arabic script omitted>

The following Persian version of Act II, Scene 7, if compared with the original, will give a fair idea of the translator's method. The characters are Mú'nis (Alceste), Fatína (Célimène), Laylá (Éliante), Náṣiḥ (Acaste), Na'ím Beg (Philinte) and Farrásh (un garde de la Maréchaussée):

<text in Arabic script omitted> <text in Arabic script omitted>

No indication of the translator's identity appears on the title-page of my edition, nor is there any prefatory matter. Curiously enough, in the very same year in which this Persian version of Le Misanthrope was published (1286/ 1869-70) Aḥmed Vefíq (Aḥmad Wafíq) Pasha printed his Turkish translations of George Dandin, Le Médecin malgré lui, and Le Mariage Forcé, * while Tartufe appeared in Turkish somewhat later.*

In 1291/1874 there was lithographed in Ṭihrán a volume containing seven Persian plays with an Introduction on the Mírzá Ja'far Qarája-dághí's plays. educational value of the stage by Mírzá Ja'far Qarája-dághí. These plays were originally written in Ádharbáyjání Turkish by Mírzá Fatḥ-'Alí Darbandí, and were published in Tiflis about A.D. 1861. Five of them have been republished in Europe, with glossaries, notes and in some cases translations. These are (1) the Wazír of Lankurán, text, translation, vocabu­lary and notes, by W. H. D. Haggard and G. le Strange (London, 1882); (2) Trois Comédies traduites du dialecte Turc Azeri en Persan et publiées…avec un glossaire et des notes par C. Barbier de Meynard et S. Guyard (Paris, 1886); (3) Monsieur Jourdan, with translation, notes, etc. edited by A. Wahrmund (Vienna and Leipzig, 1889). The three comedies contained in No. 2 are the “Thief-catching Bear” (Khirs-i-qúldúr-básán), “the Advocates” (Wukalá-yi-Mu-ráfa'a ), and “the Alchemist” (Mullá Ibráhím Khalíl-i-Kímiyá-gar ). The two remaining plays, hitherto unpub­lished in Europe, are “the Miser” (Mard-i-Khasís) and “Yúsuf Sháh the Saddler.”*

Three more plays, written at a date unknown to me, by the late Prince Malkom Khán, formerly Persian Minister Three plays by Prince Malkom Khán. in London, were partly published as a feuilleton (pá-waraq) in the Tabríz newspaper Ittiḥád (“Union”) in 1326/1908. A complete edition, from a copy in the library of Dr F. Rosen, the well-known scholarly German diplomatist, was published in 1340/1921-2 by the “Kaviani” Press in Berlin. These plays are (1) the “Adventures of Ashraf Khán, Governor of 'Arabistán, during his sojourn in Ṭihrán in 1232/1817”; (2) the “Methods of Government of Zamán Khán of Burújird,” placed in the year 1236/1820-1; and (3) “Sháh-qulí Mírzá goes to Karbalá and spends some days at Kirmánsháh with the Governor Sháh Murád Mírzá.”

Finally in 1326/1908 there appeared at Ṭihrán a bi­weekly newspaper called “the Theatre” (Tiyátr) which The newspaper Tiyátr. published plays satirizing the autocratic régime. I possess only a few numbers, containing part of a play entitled “Shaykh 'Alí Mírzá, Gover­nor of Maláyir and Túysirkán, and his marriage with the daughter of the King of the Fairies.”

These are all the Persian plays I have met with. * All are comedies, and all are satires on the administrative or social conditions of Persia. In the “Wazír of Lankurán” a rather weak and common-place love-story is combined with the satire, but generally speaking this element is lacking, and the object of the writer is simply to arouse dislike and contempt for the old-fashioned methods of government. In other words, these productions, like the “Travels of Ibráhím Beg,” of which we shall shortly have to speak, are primarily political pamphlets rather than plays. Hardly one of them has ever been acted on the stage, and none has produced an effect comparable to Kemál Bey's Turkish play Waṭan, yakhod Silistra. * In short the drama has not succeeded in establishing itself in Persia even to the extent which it has done in Turkey.

Of stories after the style of the “Arabian Nights” or the more popular and indigenous “Ḥusayn the Kurd” there is The Novel. in Persia no end, but of the novel properly so called there is even less to be said than of the drama. Two rather ambitious attempts in this direction have recently come under my notice, and it is characteristic of recent tendencies to glorify Zoroastrian Persia that both of them deal with pre-Islamic times, the one with Cyrus, the other with Qubád and his son and successor Anúsharwán (Núshírwán) and the heresiarch Mazdak.