Coming now to the monorhymes, that is the qaṣída, its “fragment” (qiṭ'a), and the ghazal, we notice a far greater simplicity in this than in the next period. The qaṣídas of 'Unṣurí, Farrukhí, Asadí, Manúchihrí, and other Ghaznawí poets are often nearly as artificial, and nearly as full of farfetched conceits, as those of the Seljúq and other later periods; but the earlier fragments which we have just been examining are, as a rule, simple, natural, spontaneous and often original. The same applies to the ghazal, so far as this had yet come into existence, though here the contrast is less marked, because the ghazal never assumed so purely artificial and rhetorical a form as did the qaṣída.
Although we have not space to consider at any great length
the Arabic poetry produced in Persia at this transition period,
Arabic poetry
produced in
Persia at this
period.
something must needs be said as to its general
characteristics and peculiarities. We have already
seen that, as regards language and idiom, it closely
approached, if it did not actually reach, the level of
the poetry produced in those countries where Arabic was the
spoken language, but notwithstanding this it presents several
peculiarities, some of which will now be enumerated. These
peculiarities are naturally more conspicuous in the remoter and
more purely Persian Courts of the Sámánid and other Eastern
dynasties than in the environment of the Buwayhid Princes
and Amírs (notably the Ṣáḥib Isma'íl b. 'Abbád), who were in
closer touch with the metropolis of Baghdad, and we shall
therefore confine ourselves almost entirely to a consideration
of the form, as depicted in the fourth and last volume of ath-
In the first place, then, we often find presupposed a know- Knowledge of Persian language often assumed in the Arabic verses produced in Persia. ledge of the Persian language which a non-Persian could not be expected to possess. Thus Abú 'Alí as-Sájí praises the city of Merv in the following lines (Yatíma, iii 16):—
“Earth which in fragrance ambergris excels,
A country fair, where cool, sweet waters flow:
And when the traveller seeks its bounds to quit
Its very name commands him not to go!”
The last line alludes to the fact that the letters M. R. W. which spells the name of the town in question can also be read as ma-raw, which in Persian signifies “do not go!” To an Arab, of course, unless he knew Persian, the point of the verse would be entirely lost.* Similar verses, of which the point lies in a “popular etymology,” were composed about other towns, like Bukhárá (Yatíma iii, 8, 9), but in the epigram on Bukhárá the sense is uncomplimentary, and the etymology Arabic, not Persian.
Secondly, we meet with numerous verses composed on the occasion of one of the great Persian festivals, Nawrúz and Allusions to Persian festivals and customs. Mihragán (which correspond respectively with the Spring and Autumn equinoxes), whereof the last is also called the “Day of Rám”; the twenty-first day of every Persian month, but most particularly the 21st day of the month of Mihr (i.e., Mihragán) being so named.* Concerning this Rám-rúz we find in the Yatíma (iii, 10) two pairs of verses, each containing a Persian expression which (whether because the text is corrupt or the words obsolete) is, unfortunately, unintelligible to me. Numerous similar introductions of Persian words and sentences into the Arabic verses produced in Persia at this period might no doubt be found by a more careful examination of the still somewhat inaccessible sources of information on this subject.
Thirdly, we find occasional use made by Persian poets who wrote in Arabic of verse-forms essentially Persian, notably the Employment of Persian verseforms, such as mathnawí and ghazal. mathnawí and the ghazal. A good instance of the former (called in Arabic muzdawija) is to be found at p. 23 of vol. iii of the Yatíma, in the notice of Abu'l-Faḍl as-Sukkarí (?) al-Marwazí, who, we are told, “was very fond of translating Persian proverbs into Arabic. These proverbs are here strung together into a genuine mathnawí poem, such as I do not remember to have seen elsewhere in Arabic, and the original of many of the paraphrases can be easily recognised, e.g., “Al-laylu ḥublá; laysa yudrá má yalid” (“The night is pregnant: it is not known what it will bring forth) = “Shab ábistan-ast: fardá chi záyad?” And again:—
Idha 'l-má'u fawqa gharíqin ṭamá
Fa-qábu qanátin wa alfun siwá.
(“When the water surges over the drowning man, then a fathom [lit. the cast of a javelin] and a thousand are alike”) = “Chú áb az sar dar guzasht, chi yak níza, chi sad níza.” As instances of Arabic ghazals or pseudo-ghazals, it is sufficient to refer to two short poems occupying the upper part of p. 23 of the third volume of the Yatíma, of which the second especially is quite in the Persian style as regards sentiments; and another on p. 113 of the same volume. Of the existence of true quatrains composed in Arabic I am less certain; but two pieces of verse by Abu' l-'Alá as-Sarwí, describing the narcissus and the apple respectively (Yatíma, vol. iii, p. 281), at least closely resemble this essentially Persian form of composition, and more particularly accord with a fashion prevalent amongst the Persian poets of this period of describing in a quatrain or short “fragment” some particular fruit, flower, or other natural object.
This large and interesting question as to the characteristics of the Arabic verse produced in Persia cannot be further discussed here, but it well merits a systematic examination by some scholar who has a thoroughly competent knowledge, not only of both languages, but of both literatures. Unfortunately it is but very rarely that a scholar arises whose chief interest is in Persian literature, and who yet has a complete mastery of the Arabic language. The Arabist, as a rule, slights this branch of Arabic literature as exotic, even when he does not condemn it as post-classical; while the student of Persian seldom realises till too late that for literary and historical purposes the point of view of the comparative philologist is entirely misleading, and that he need not so much to concern himself with Sanskrit and other Aryan languages as with Arabic.
Of the Persian prose literature of this period, which must
have been of some extent, few specimens, unfortunately,
Persian prose
literature.
remain to us; while even of what has been preserved
the greater part is translated from the
Arabic. Four works of importance, one historical,
one medical, and two exegetical, all composed probably during
the reign of the Sámánid King Manṣúr I b. Núḥ (A.D. 961-