THIS translation of the Rubaiyat of Kamal ad-Din of Isfahan, the first in any Occidental language, is based on an undated edition of his collected works published in lithograph at Bombay. It contains one hundred and seventy-two quatrains, from which we have selected those which lend themselves most readily to translation, supplementing them with four, the twenty-seventh, the thirtieth, the forty-fourth, and the fifty-second, to complete the thread of the narrative in which we have arranged the verses. In the original, as in all Persian rubaiyats, the quatrains have no mutual relation, and there is no effort made to preserve a logical sequence. Fifteen verses are contained in Salemann and Shukovski’s ‘Persische Grammatik’ (Berlin, 1889), pp. *36-*39, eight of which are not in the Bombay edition. These are taken from a manuscript (No. 92) of the Library of the University of St. Petersburg. Manuscripts of the poet, whose works contain some eight thousand distichs, are not uncommon. The Bodleian Library has six, the lodest being written in 1573 A.D. and the largest and best in 1614 (see Sachau and Ethé, ‘Catalogue of the Persian, Turkish, Hindustani, and Pushtu Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library,’ Part I., ‘The Persian Manuscripts’; Oxford, 1889, Numbers 638-643, columns 506-509). The British Museum has five (Or. 473, 287, Add. 18,414, 7092, 7748), of which the oldest was written in 1598 (see Rieu, ‘Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum,’ London, 1881, pp. 580-581), and the Berlin Library one (see Pertsch, ‘Verzeichniss der persischen Handschriften der königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin,’ Berlin, 1888, No. 762, p. 783). There are four in Stamboul (see Horn, ‘Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. 54, p. 481), at least one in Paris (Bibliothèque national, 1312 du supplément persan; see Blochet, ‘Catalogue de la collection des manuscripts orientaux formée par M. Charles Schefer,’ Paris, 1900, p. 65), and one in Oudh (see Sprenger, ‘Catalogue of the Arabic, Persian, and Hindu Manuscripts in the Libraries of the King of Oudh,’ vol. I., Calcutta, 1854, p. 454). Poems of Kamal are frequently included in anthologies, as at Cambridge University (L 16.15; see Browne, ‘Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the University of Cambridge,’ Cambridge, 1896, p. 389), in one at Copenhagen (see Mehren, ‘Codices Persici, Turcici, Hindustanici … Bibliothecae Regiae Hafniensis,’ Copenhagen, 1857, p. 34), and in the British Museum (Or. 4110, see Rieu, ‘Supplement to the Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum,’ London, 1895, p. 233). This list is by no means exhaustive, nor is there any one codex which may be called canonical.
The longest notice of the life of Kamal is that translated, except for some irrelevant matter, in our introduction from Daulatshah’s ‘Tadhkirat ash-Shu‘ara’ (edited by Browne, London, 1901, pp. 148-153). There are, however, numerous briefer mentions, not only in Daulatshah (pp. 17, 82-83, 104, 136, 141-142, 381, 426, 483) and in the ‘Tarikh-i Guzidah’ (quoted from Browne’s translation in the ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society’ for 1901, pp. 13-14), but in numerous sources, inaccessible to us, as in the ‘Safinah-i Khvashgu,’ Cod. Nr. 663, fol. 285b, in the ‘Maikhanah’ of Hasan ibn Lutf Allah Tihrani Razi, fol. 230a, and an anonymous Memoir of ancient poets in the British Museum, Or. 3386, fol. 309a, in the ‘Mirat al-‘Alani,’ fol. 691, the ‘Khulasat al-Afkar,’ fol. 229, the ‘Baharistan,’ fol. 67, Habib as-Siyar, vol. ii., Juz 4, p. 190, the ‘Haft Aklim,’ fol. 356, the ‘Riyaz ash-Shu‘ara,’ fol. 356, the ‘Atashkadah,’ fol. 80 (see Rieu, ‘Supplement,’ pp. 76, 81, ‘Catalogue,’ p 581), and in Halimi’s ‘Bakhr Aghrayab’ (see Lagarde, ‘Persische Studien,’ Göttingen, 1884, p. 22). There is also a quotation from Kamal in Hafiz (No. 380, baits 7-8, ed. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1863). The additional information thus gained is very slight. We learn, as the most important fact, that Kamal, when he withdrew from the world, devoted himself to mystic contemplation under the guidance of the Sufi teacher Shihab ad-Din Omar ibn Mohammed as-Suhravardi, and doubt is cast on the exact date of the poet’s murder, which took place, according to the ‘Khulasat al-Afkar,’ in the year 628 of the Hejira, but in 639 if we follow the ‘Mirat al-‘Alani,’ instead of 635, the year adopted by the best Persian authorities. Probably the passage translated from Daulatshah is the most trustworthy in all respects. The life of Kamal is sketched in outline by Pizzi in his ‘Storia della Poesia Persiana’ (Turin, 1894, vol. i., pp. 101-102), and by Ethé in his ‘Neupersische Litteratur’ in Geiger and Kuhn’s ‘Grundriss der iranischen Philologie’ (Strassburg, 1895-1903, vol. ii., p. 269).
There is a translation of three quatrains ascribed to Kamal, but which are not found in the Bombay edition, in Rückert’s ‘Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser’ (second edition, Gotha, 1874, pp. 300-301), and one quatrain, which corresponds to the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of our translation, was rendered into English verse by Mrs. Theodosia Garrison in ‘Lippincott’s Magazine’ for 1900, p. 783. Mention should also be made of twelve distichs from Kamal contained in the Persian ‘Farhang-i Shu‘ara,’ or ‘Dictionary of the Poets,’ translated by Hammer-Purgstall in his ‘Duftkörner aus persischen Dichtern,’ second edition, revised by Bodenstedt, Stuttgart, 1860, pp. 39, 43, 49, 50, 69, 83, 85, 96, 152, 178, 191), although these verses, even were they contained in the Rubaiyat, are too fragmentary to constitute a real translation.
In the division of our work the quatrains have been selected and translated into verse by Mrs. Mumford on the basis of a complete prose rendering by Dr. Gray, who also prepared the Introduction.
| E. W. M. |
| L. H. G. |
NEW YORK CITY, August, 1903.