CHAPTER VI.
POETS OF THE CLASSICAL TRADITION.
PRE-QÁJÁR PERIOD (A.D. 1500-1800).

Almost any educated Persian can compose tolerable verses, and the great majority do so, while the number of Widespread poetical talent in Persia. those who habitually indulge in this pastime on a considerable scale and have produced díwáns of poetry has been at all times fairly large. Moreover this poetry is as a rule so conventional, and the language in which it is written so unchanged during the period under discussion, that if a hundred ghazals, or odes, by a hundred different poets who flourished during the last four centuries were selected, avoiding those which contained any reference to current events, and omitting the concluding verse of each, wherein the poet generally inserts his ta-khalluṣ , or nom de guerre, it is extremely doubtful whether any critic could, from their style, arrange them even ap­proximately in chronological order, or distinguish the work of a poet contemporary with Sháh Isma'íl the Ṣafawí from Difficulty of discrimination between note­worthy and mediocre poets. one who flourished in the reign of Násiru'd-Dín Sháh Qájár. Nor do the tadhkiras, or Memoirs of Poets, give us much help in making a selec­tion, for when discussing contemporaries the author is very apt to make mention of his personal friends, and to ignore those whom he dislikes or of whom he disapproves. Thus influential or amiable rhymsters of mediocre ability are often included, while heretics, satirists and persons distasteful or indifferent to the author, though of greater talent, are often omitted. When Riḍá-qulí Khán “Hidáyat,” author of that great modern anthology entitled Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá (“the Concourse of the Eloquent”), * comes to speak of his contemporaries, we constantly come across such expressions as

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“He had a special connection with me, and I a sincere regard for him”; * “I saw him in Shíráz”; * “I repeatedly called on him and he used to open the gates of conversation before my face”; * “I sometimes get a talk with him”; * “for a while he established himself in Fárs, where at that time the writer also was living; I used constantly to have the honour of conversing with him, for he used to open the gates of gladness before the faces of his friends”; * and so forth. How many of the 359 “contemporary poets” mentioned in this work * were included on such personal grounds rather than on account of any conspicuous merit? I once went through the list with my excellent old friend Ḥájji Mírzá Yaḥyá Dawlatábádí, a man of wide culture and possessing a most extensive knowledge of Persian poetry, of which he must know by heart many thousands of verses, and asked him which of them he considered really notable. Out of the whole 359 he indicated five (Ṣabá of Káshán, Furúghí of Bisṭám, Qá'ání of Shíráz, Mijmar of Iṣfahán, and Nasháṭ of Iṣfahán) as of the first class; two (Wiṣál of Shíráz, and the author himself, Hidáyat) as of the second; and two (Surúsh of Iṣfahán and Wiqár of Shíráz) as of the third; that is, he regarded about one out of every forty mentioned as having a claim to real distinction.

In any case, therefore, a very rigorous selection must be made, the more so when it is a question of poets whose Criterion of selection. beauty does not depend solely on form, and can, therefore, be preserved in some degree in trans­lation. In making this selection I have included such poets as enjoy any considerable fame in their own country, and any others whom I happen to have come across in the course of my reading (a mere fraction of the total number) who make any special appeal to myself. It is doubt­ful how far a foreigner is competent to criticize; he may say that he personally admires or dislikes a particular poet, but I doubt if he should go so far as to class him definitely on Divergence of foreign from native taste. this ground as good or bad. The taste of even the Turks and Indians, who are more familiar with Persian poetry than we can easily become, differs very considerably from that of the Persians them­selves, who must be reckoned the most competent judges of their own literature. In this connection I should like to direct the reader's attention to a very apposite passage in P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life. * Speaking of a French­man who had learned English entirely from books, without being able either to speak it, or to understand it when spoken, and “had attained what would certainly in the case of a dead language be considered a very high degree of scholarship indeed,” he says: “His appreciation of our authors, especially of our poets, differed so widely from English criticism and English feeling that it was evident he did not understand them as we understand them. Two things especially proved this: he frequently mistook de­clamatory versification of the most mediocre quality for poetry of an elevated order; whilst, on the other hand, his ear failed to perceive the music of the musical poets, as Byron and Tennyson. How could he hear their music, he to whom our English sounds were all unknown?” Transform this Frenchman into an Indian or a Turk, and substitute “Persian” for “English” and “Qá'ání” for “Byron and Tennyson,” and the above remarks admirably apply to most Turkish and Indian appreciations of Persian poetry.

Of the poets who died between A.D. 1500 and 1600 some ten or a dozen deserve at least a brief mention; of those between A.D. 1600 and 1700 about the same number; between A.D. 1700 and 1800 only one or two; between A.D. 1800 and 1885 about a score. Those who outlived the date last-mentioned may be conveniently grouped with the moderns, who will be discussed separately. The following are the poets of whom I propose to speak briefly, arranged in chronological order of their deaths (the dates of birth are seldom recorded) in the four periods indicated above.

I. Between A.D. 1500 and 1600 (A.H. 906-1009).

Several of the poets who really belong to this period have been already mentioned in my Persian Literature under Tartar Dominion, namely, Mír 'Alí Shír Nawá'í, d. 906/ 1500-1 (pp. 505-6); Ḥusayn Wá'iẓ-i-Káshifí, d. 910/1504-5 (pp. 503-4); Banná'í, killed in the massacre at Qarshí in 918/1512-3 (p. 457); and Hilálí, killed by 'Ubaydu'lláh Khán the Uzbek as a Shí'a in 936/1529-30 (p. 459). Of the last-named only need anything further be said here.

1. Hátifí (d. 927/Dec. 1520 or Jan. 1521).

Mawláná 'Abdu'lláh Hátifí of Kharjird in Khurásán derives his chief fame from the fact that he was the nephew Hatifí (d. 927/1520). of the great Jámí, who, according to the well­known story, * tested his poetical talent before allowing him to write by bidding him compose a “parallel” to the following verses in Firdawsí's celebrated satire * on Sultán Maḥmúd of Ghazna:

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“A tree whereof the nature is bitter, even if thou plantest it in the
Garden of Paradise,
And if, at the time of watering, thou pourest on its roots nectar and
fine honey from the River of Paradise, *
It will in the end give effect to its nature, and bring forth that same
bitter fruit.”

Hátifí produced the following “parallel,” which his uncle Jámí approved, except that he jocularly observed that the neophyte had “laid a great many eggs on the way”: * <text in Arabic script omitted>

“If thou should'st place an egg of the crow compounded of darkness
under the Peacock of the Garden of Paradise,
And if at the time of nourishing that egg thou should'st give it grain
from the Fig-tree of the Celestial Gardens,

And should'st water it from the Fountain of Salsabíl, and Gabriel
should breathe his breath into that egg,
In the end the crow's egg will become a crow, and vain will be the
trouble of the Peacock of Paradise.”

Hátifí was one of the innumerable poets who strove to compose a “Quintet” (Khamsa) rivalling that of Niẓámí of Ganja. Two of his five subjects were the same, the romances of Laylá and Majnún * and of Shírín and Khusraw; the Haft Manẓar formed the parallel to the Haft Paykar; while the Tímúr-náma * formed the counterpart to the Sikandar-náma, except that, as Hátifí boasts, * his poem was based on historical truth instead of on fables and legends. He also began, but did not complete, a similar historical poem on the achievements of Sháh Isma'íl the Ṣafawí, who paid him a surprise visit as he was returning from a cam­paign in Khurásán in 917/1511-12. This poem is in the style and metre of the Sháh-náma of Firdawsí, and is entitled Sháh-náma-i-Ḥaẓrat-i-Sháh Isma'íl.*

Hátifí belongs essentially, like so many other represen­tatives of Art and Letters in the early Ṣafawí period, to the circle of Herát formed under the liberal patronage of the later Tímúrids.