THE present volume is a continuation or that which I published in the same series four years ago, and carries the Literary History of Persia on from the beginning of the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth century of our era. This period, comparatively short as it is, includes most of the greatest poets and writers of the Persians, and I hardly anticipate that I shall be accused by any competent critic of discussing it with undue detail. Should I succeed in carrying out my original plan, by continuing the history down to our own times, I believe that the remaining six centuries and a half can be adequately treated in one volume equal in size to this.

Of the defects of this book, now that it is all in type, I am fully sensible. They arise largely from the fact that it was chiefly written during vacations, and that two months or more often elapsed between the completion of one chapter and the beginning of the next. Under present conditions the Uni­versity of Cambridge is far from being the best place in the world for quiet, steady, regular work; and though the books of reference indispensable for a compilation of this kind were there, leisure was only to be found elsewhere, even as the poet Ṣá'ib says:—

Shigúfa bá thamar hargiz na-gardad jam' dar yak já:
Muḥál-ast ánki bá-ham ni'mat u dindán shavad paydá!

“Never in one place are found the luscious fruit and blossom fine;
Vain it is for one to hope both teeth and dainties to combine!”

In consequence of this, the book, as I am well aware, is marred not only by occasional repetitions, but by a certain disconnectedness and lack of uniformity for which I crave the reader's indulgence. On the other hand I have through­out endeavoured to use original sources and to form independent views, and in this I have been aided by several rare works, inaccessible or hardly accessible to my predecessors, of which I may specially mention the Chahár Maqála (“Four Discourses”) of Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí of Samarqand, the Lubábu'l-Albáb of Muḥammad 'Awfí, the Mu'ajjam of Shams-i-Qays, and my notes on the Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr of ar-Ráwandí, the Jahán-gushá of 'Aṭá Malik-i-Juwayní, the Jámi'u't-Tawáríkh of Rashídu'd-Dín Faḍlu'lláh, and other similar books.

The work itself has had my whole heart, and I would that it could also have had my undivided attention. For Islám and the Perso-Arabian civilisation of Islám I have the deepest admiration; an admiration which it is especially incumbent on me to confess at a time when these are so much mis­understood and misrepresented by Europeans; who appear to imagine that they themselves have a monopoly of civilisation, and a kind of divine mandate to impose on the whole world not only their own political institutions but their own modes of thought. Year by year, almost, the number of independent Muslim States grows less and less, while such as still remain— Persia, Turkey, Arabia, Morocco, and a few others—are ever more and more overshadowed by the menace of European interference. Of course it is in part their own fault, and Asiatic indifference and apathy combine with European “earth-hunger” and lust of conquest to hasten their dis­integration. To the unreflecting Western mind the ex­tinction of these States causes no regret, but only exhilarating thoughts of more “openings” for their children and their capital; but those few who know and love the East and its peoples, and realise how deeply we are indebted to it for most of the great spiritual ideas which give meaning and value to life, will feel, with Chesterton's “Man in Green,” that with the subsidence of every such State something is lost to the world which can never be replaced. Yet this is not, perhaps, a question which can be settled by argument, any more than it can be settled by argument which is better, a garden planted with one useful vegetable or with a variety of beautiful flowers, each possessing its own distinctive colour and fragrance. But this at least must be admitted by any one who has a real sympathy with and understanding of the Spirit of the East, that it suffers atrophy and finally death under even a good and well-meaning European administration; and that for this reason Constantinople, Damascus, Shíráz and Fez, for all their shortcomings, do possess something of artistic and in­tellectual, even, perhaps, of moral value, which Cairo, Delhi, Algiers, and Tunis are losing or have lost. Whether Islám is still bleeding to death from the wounds first inflicted on it by the Mongols six hundred and fifty years ago, or whether the proof given by Japan that the Asiatic is not, even on the physical plane, necessarily inferior to the European may lead to some unexpected revival, is a question of supreme interest which cannot here be discussed.

My deepest gratitude is due to my sister, Miss E. M. Browne, and to my friend and colleague, Mr. E. H. Minns, for reading through the proofs of this book, and for making not only minor verbal corrections, but suggestions of a more general character. To Mr. Minns I am also indebted for interpreting to me the monographs of several eminent Russian Orientalists to which I have referred in these pages, and which, but for his generous help, would have been to me sealed books. Of the general criticisms which he was kind enough to make, one, I think, merits a reference in this place. He tells me that in the first chapter, when treating of Persian Prosody, I have not been sufficiently explicit for the reader who is not an Orientalist as to the nature of the bayt and the fundamental laws of quantity in scansion.

As regards the first of these points, the bayt or verse is, as I have said, always regarded by the Muslims as the unit, and for this reason I consider that it should not, as is often done in European books, be called a “couplet.” That it is the unit is clearly shown by the fact that a metre is called musaddas (hexameter) or muthamman (octameter) when the bayt comprises six or eight feet respectively. Unfortunately the bayt, which is always written or printed in one line in the East, is generally, when transcribed in Roman characters, too long to be thus treated, and has to be printed in two lines, as occurs, for instance, in the bayt printed in the Roman character about the middle of page 15, and again in the bayt occupying lines 5 and 6 on the following page. This fashion of printing, and, in the first case, the fact that the bayt, being the initial verse of a ghazal or ode, has an internal rhyme, is liable to delude the reader into supposing that he has to do with what we understand by a couplet, and not with the unit connoted by the word bayt.

As regards the second point, the rules of scansion in Persian are exceedingly simple, and no gradus is needed to determine the quantity of the vowels. All long vowels (equally un-mistakeable in the written and the spoken word) are, of course, long, and are distinguished in this book by accents. Short vowels are short, unless followed by two consonants, whether both consonants come in the same word, or one at the end of one word and the other at the beginning of the next. All this is easy enough of comprehension to the classical scholar, but what follows is peculiar to Persian. Every word ending in two consonants, or in one consonant (except n, which, being reckoned as a nasal, does not count) preceded by a long vowel, is scanned as though it ended with an additional short vowel. * This hypothetical vowel (called in the East ním-fatḥa, the “half-fatḥa,” and, most inappro­priately, by some French writers “l'izafet metrique”) is actually pronounced by the Indians, but not by the Persians, but it must always be reckoned unless the succeeding word begins with a vowel. The same rule also applies to syllables.

A few examples will best serve to illustrate the above remarks. Words like bád (wind), bíd (willow), búd (was), kár (work), shír (lion), múr (ant) scan as though they were bád^a, bíd^a, &c., i.e., not. The same applies to words like dast (hand), band (bond), gard (dust), which scan as though they were dast^a, band^a and gard^a. Similarly, words like bád-gír (“wind-catcher,” a kind of ventilation-shaft), shír-mard (brave man, lit. “lion-man”), dúr-bín (telescope), dast-kash (glove) scan as though they were bád^a-gír^a, shír^a-mard^a, dúr^a-bín, dast^a-kash. But jahán (world), nigín (signet), darún (inside) scan, because they end in n. So in the verse on page 16, which is written in the apocopated hexameter ramal:—

the scansion is as follows:—

??

There are a few other peculiarities o?? scansion in Persian verse, as, for example, that monosyllables ending in -u, like tú (thou), dú (two), chú (like), &c., may be scanned either short or long, as is the case with the i which marks the iḍáfat, while the monosyllable connoting the word for “and” may be treated either as a long vowel (ṹ), or a short vowel (ŭ), or as a consonant followed by a short vowel (wŭ); but, save in a few exceptional cases, the reader who has familiarised himself with the peculiarities above mentioned will have no difficulty in scanning any Persian verse which he may come across.

The publication of this volume, originally fixed for May 1st of the present year, was inevitably delayed by circumstances into which I need not here enter. This delay I regret, and I desire to offer my apologies for it to my friend Mr. Fisher Unwin, and also my thanks for his readiness to accept an excuse which he was kind enough to regard as valid and sufficient. My thanks are also due to the printers, Messrs. Unwin Brothers, Ltd., of Woking and London, for the singular care with which they have printed a book presenting many typographical difficulties.

EDWARD G. BROWNE.

MAY 16, 1906.