Badr-i-Chách, another poet of Transoxiana, has a considerable reputation in India but is practically unknown in Badr-i-Chách Persia. The town of Chách or Shásh of which he claimed to be the “Full Moon” (Badr) is the modern Táshkand. His poetry, which I have never read, but of which Sir H. Elliot has translated specimens in his History of India, * is reputed very difficult, a common characteristic of the Persian poetry produced by men of Turkish race or writing under Turkish influence and patronage, but not in itself, from our point of view, a reason for including him in this survey.
Mention may here be made of a little-known poet called Qáni'í, who fled from his native town of Ṭús in Khurásán Qáni'í before the terrible Mongol invasion, escaped to India, and thence made his way westwards by Aden, Mecca, Medina and Baghdád to Asia Minor, where he attached himself to the court of the Seljúq rulers of Qonya (Iconium), for whom he composed an immense versified history of the dynasty on the model of the Sháh-náma, and a metrical rendering of the celebrated Book of Kalíla and Dimna, of which a manuscript (Add. 7766) belonging to the British Museum is described by Rieu, * from whom these particulars are taken. In virtue of these and other poetical productions, of which he boasted that they filled thirty volumes and amounted to 300,000 bayts, he received the title of Maliku'sh-Shu'ará (“King of Poets” or Poet Laureate), and he lived long enough to compose an elegy on the death of the great Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, who died, as already mentioned, in 672/1273.
Another early but little-known poet of this period is
Púr-i-Bahá-yi-Jámí, to whom Dawlat-sháh
*
devotes an article
Púr-i-Bahá-yiJámí'
containing but few facts about his life, to which
other biographical works, such as the Haft
Iqlím, Atash-kada, Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá, etc.
add but little. His original patron was Khwája Wajíhu'd-
<text in Arabic script omitted>
“The wizards of thy tresses, like the pens or the bakhshís,
Have practised on thy cheek the Uyghúr writing.”*
The following quatrain, addressed to a friend who had lost a tooth, is also rather neat.
<text in Arabic script omitted>
“If a pearl is missing from thy sweet casket
Thy dignity is in no wise diminished in the matter of beauty.
A hundred moons shine from the corners of thy cheek
What matter if one star be missing from thy Pleiades?”
The two following poems by Púr-i-Bahá, written in the grand style cultivated by court poets, and filled with elaborate word-plays and far-fetched metaphors, are chiefly interesting because they can be exactly dated. The first refers to the destruction of Níshápúr by an earthquake in 666/1267-8, and the second to its restoration in 669/1270-1 by order of Abáqá. Both are taken from that rare work the Mujmal of Faṣíḥí of Khwáf. * <text in Arabic script omitted> <text in Arabic script omitted>
“Through the shakes and knocks of the earthquake shocks it is upside
down and awry,
So that 'neath the Fish is Arcturus
*
sunk, while the Fish is raised to
the sky.
That fury and force have run their course, and its buildings are over-
thrown,
And riven and ruined are whole and part, and the parts asunder strown.
Not in worship, I ween, are its chapels seen with spires on the ground
low lying,
While the minarets stoop or bend in a loop, but not at the bedesmen's
crying.
The libraries all are upside down, and the colleges all forsaken,
And the Friday Mosque in ruins is laid, and the pulpits are shattered
and shaken.
Yet do not suppose that this ruin arose from the town's ill destiny,
But ask of me if thou fain wouldst see the wherefore of this and the why.
'Twas because the Lord had such high regard for this old and famous
place
That He turned His gaze on its fashions and ways with the eyes of
favour and grace,
And such was the awe which His glance inspired, and His Light's
effulgent rays
That with shaking feet to earth it fell for fear of that awful blaze.
For did not the Mountain of Sinai once fall down and crumble away
Where Moses stood, and the Face of God to behold with his eyes did
pray?”
<text in Arabic script omitted>
“The buildings of Nishápúr Time had striven to displace
And Ruin wide from every side had thither turned its face.
God willed that men should once again its buildings strive to raise
In the reign of just Abáqá, the Núshirwán of our days.
Of all the world the lord is he, of all the earth the king,
Foe-binder, world-subduer he, all kingdoms conquering.
It happened in the year six-hundred and three-score and nine
That from its ruins rose again this city famed and fine.Venus and Sol in Taurus, Ramaḍán was ending soon;
In Gemini stood Mercury, in Pisces stood the Moon.
May this new town's foundation to thee a blessing bring,
And every desert in thy reign bear towns as flourishing!
By thy good luck Nishápúr old is now grown young again,
Like to some agéd dotard who his boyhood doth regain.
Three things, I pray, may last for aye, while earth doth roll along:
The Khwája's * life, the city's luck, and Púr-i-Bahá's song!”
Not very much need be said, or indeed, is known, about
Imámí of Herát, whose full name, according to the author
Imámí of Herát
of the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída, was Abú 'Abdi'lláh
Muḥammad b. Abú Bakr b. 'Uthmán. He was
the panegyrist of the rulers and ministers of Kirmán, and
died, according to the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá
*
in 667/1268-9.
An extraordinarily complicated acrostic on his own name,
composed by him according to the terminology of the state
accountants, will be found in the Guzída.
*
The highest
compliment which he ever received was probably that paid
him by his contemporary Majdu'd-Dín Hamgar, in reply to
a versified question addressed to the latter poet by Mu'ínu'd-
<text in Arabic script omitted>
“Though I in song am like the tuneful birds,
Fly-like I sip the sweets of Sa'dí's words;
Yet all agree that in the arts of speech
Sa'dí and I can ne'er Imámí reach.”
To this Imámí replied in the following complimentary quatrain:*
<text in Arabic script omitted>
“Though throned in power in eloquence's fane,
And, Christ-like, raising song to life again,
Ne'er to the dust of Majd-i-Hamgar's door,
That Saḥbán of the Age, * can I attain.”
Sa'dí, on the other hand, vented his spleen in the following verse:
<text in Arabic script omitted>
“Whoe'er attaineth not position high
His hopes are foiled by evil destiny.
Since Hamgar flees from all who pray or preach,
No wonder he ‘can ne'er Imámí reach.’”*
The poems of Imámí, so far as I am aware, have never been published, nor are manuscripts of them common. In my necessarily limited investigations I have made use of the British Museum manuscript Or. 2847. One of the prettiest of his poems which I have met with occurs on f. 98a of that manuscript, and runs as follows:
<text in Arabic script omitted>*