Oriental writers on the art of rhetoric classify prose writings, according to their form, into three varieties, plain Varieties of Prose. ('árí), rhymed (muqaffá), and cadenced (musajja'). We may divide them more simply into natural and artificial. To us, though not always to our ancestors, as witness the Euphuists of Elizabethan days, artificial prose is, as a rule, distasteful; and if we can pardon it in a work like the Arabic Maqámát of al-Ḥarírí or the Persian Anwár-i-Suhaylí, written merely to please the ear and display the writer's command of the language, we resent it in a serious work containing information of which we have need. It is a question how far style can be described abso­lutely as good or bad, for tastes differ not only in different countries but in the same country at different periods, and a writer deemed admirable by one generation is often lightly esteemed by the next, since, as the Arab proverb says, “Men resemble their age more than they do their fathers.”*

Ornate prose in historical works condemned. But when a serious historian takes a page to say what could be easily expressed in one or two lines, we have a right to resent the wilful waste of time inflicted upon us by his misdirected ingenuity. Before the Mongol Invasion in the thirteenth century Persian prose Early sim­plicity. was generally simple and direct, and nothing could be more concise and compact than such books as Bal'amí's Persian version of Ṭabarí's great history, the Siyásat-náma of the Niẓámu'l-Mulk, the Safar-náma of Náṣir-i-Khusraw, the Qábús-náma, or the Chahár Maqála. Mongol, Tartar and Turkish influences seem to have been uniformly bad, favouring as they did Corruption under Mongol and other foreign do­minion. flattery and bombast. The historian Waṣṣáf, whose chronicle was presented to Úljáytú in A.D. 1312, * was the first great offender, and unhappily served as a model to many of his successors. In recent times there has been a great improve- Recovery in recent times. ment, partly due to the tendency, already re­marked in the case of verse, to take as models the older writers who possessed a sounder and simpler taste than those of the post-Mongol period, and partly to the recent development of journalism, which, if not necessarily conducive to good style, at least requires a certain concision and directness. In point of style, arrange­ment, and, above all, documentation the quite recent but little-known “History of the Awakening of the Persians” (Ta'ríkh-i-Bídárí-yi-Írániyán) of the Náẓimu'l-Islám of Kirmán (1328/1910), unfortunately never completed, is in­comparably superior to the more ambitious general histories of Riḍá-qulí Khán and the Lisánu'l-Mulk (the Supplement to Mírkhwánd's Rawḍatu'ṣ-Ṣafá and the Násikhu't-Tawá-ríkh ) compiled some fifty years earlier.

Of prose works written simply to display the linguistic attainments and rhetorical ingenuities of the authors I do An instance of misplaced floridity. not propose to perpetuate the memory, or to say more than that, when they embody historical and other matter of sufficient value to render them worth translating, they should, in my opinion, if they are to be made tolerable to European readers, be ruthlessly pruned of these flowers of eloquence. As an instance I will take one passage from that very useful and by no means very florid history of the early Ṣafawí period the Aḥsanu't-Ta­wáríkh (985/1577-8), of which I have made such extensive use in the first part of this volume. It describes the war waged on the blind Sháhrukh Dhu'l-Qadar by Muḥammad Khán Ustájlú in the spring of 914/1508-9, and begins thus: * <text in Arabic script omitted> *

“In the spring, when the Rose-king with pomp and splendour turned his face to attack the tribes of the Basil, and, with thrusts of his thorn-spear, drove in rout from the Rose-garden the hibernal hosts—

A roar * arose from the cloud-drums, the army of the basils was
stirred;
The cloud contracted its brows, and drew Rustam-bows * for the
contest;
The flowering branches raised their standards, the basils prepared
their cavalry and their hosts;
The cloud in its skirts bore in every direction hail-stones for the
head of Afrásiyáb—

Khán Muḥammad Ustájlú encamped in summer quarters at Márdín.”

All this could much better be said in one line:

<text in Arabic script omitted>

“In the spring Khán Muḥammad Ustájlú encamped in summer quarters at Márdín.”

Graceful poetic fancies are all very well in their proper place, but in a serious history they are inappropriate and irritating. The trouble is that, as has been remarked already, nearly all literary Persians, and consequently historians, are poets or poetasters, and they unhappily find it easier and more entertaining to mix poetry with their history than history with their poetry, even their professedly historical poetry. In discussing the later prose literature of Persia I shall therefore confine myself to what has substantial value apart from mere formal elegance, and shall treat of it, ac­cording to subject, under the five following headings:

Classification of prose works.

(1) Theology.

(2) Philosophy.

(3) The Sciences—mathematical, natural and occult.

(4) History—general, special and local.

(5) Biography and autobiography, including travels.

Theology in Persia during the period with which we are dealing, that is from the establishment of the Ṣafawí dynasty Theological literature. to the present day, means Shí'a theology, and by extension the semi-heterodox doctrines of the Shaykhís and the wholly heterodox doctrines of the Bábís and Bahá'ís. A large portion of this theo­logical literature—in older times almost all, and even now a considerable amount—is in Arabic, the sacred language of Islám and of the Qur'án, and much of it in all Muslim countries is almost unreadable, save for a few professional theologians, and, it may be added, quite unprofitable. Some A worthless class of books. learned man writes a theological, philological, or logical treatise which achieves renown in the Colleges where the 'ulamá get their mediaeval training. Some one else writes a commentary on that treatise; a third produces a super-commentary on the commentary; a fourth a gloss on the super-commentary; a fifth a note on the gloss; so that at the end we are con­fronted with what the immortal Turkish wit Khoja Naṣru'd-Dín Efendí called “soup of the soup of the soup of the hare-soup,” a substance devoid of savour or nutriment, and serving rather to conceal than to reveal its original material. Shaykh Muḥammad 'Abduh, late Grand Muftí of Egypt and Chancellor of the University of al-Azhar, than whom, perhaps, no more enlightened thinker and no more en­thusiastic lover of the Arabic language and literature has been produced by Islám in modern times, used to say that all this stuff should be burned, since it merely cumbered bookshelves, bred maggots, and obscured sound knowledge. This was the view of a great and learned Muhammadan theologian, so we need not scruple to adopt it; indeed the more we admire and appreciate the abundant good literature of Islám, the more we must deplore, and even resent, the existence of this rubbish. In reading the lives of the 'Ulamá in such books as the Rawḍátu'l-Jannát and the Qiṣaṣu'l-'Ulamá we constantly find a theologian credited with forty, fifty, or sixty works of this type, which nobody reads now, and which, probably, no one but his pupils ever did read, and they only under compulsion. Even to enumerate these treatises, were it possible, would be utterly unprofitable.

The great achievement of the Shí'a doctors of the later Ṣafawí period, such as the Majlisís, was their popularization Popular theo­logical works in Persian. of the Shí'a doctrine and historical Anschauung in the vernacular. They realized that to reach the people they must employ the language of the people, and that in a simple form, and they reaped their reward in the intense and widespread enthusiasm for the Shí'a cause which they succeeded in creating. We have already seen * how few Shí'a books were available when Sháh Isma'íl first established that doctrine as the national Achievement of the Majlisí. faith of Persia, and, according to the Rawḍátu'l-Jannát , * Mullá Muḥammad Taqí Majlisí was “the first to publish the Shí'a traditions after the appearance of the Ṣafawí dynasty.” His even more Works of Mullá Muḥammad Báqir-i-Majlisí. eminent son Mullá Muḥammad Báqir compiled on this subject the immense Biḥáru'l-Anwár (“Oceans of Light”) in Arabic, and in Persian the following works: * 'Aynu'l-Ḥayát (“the Fountain of Life”), containing exhortations to renunciation of the world; Mishkátu'l-Anwár (“the Lamp of Lights”); Ḥilyatu'l-Muttaqín (“the Ornament of the Pious”), on example and conduct; Ḥayátu'l-Qulúb (“the Life of Hearts”) in three parts, the first on the Prophets before Muḥammad, the second on the Prophet Muḥammad, and the third on the Twelve Imáms, but only part of it was written and it was never completed; Tuḥfatu'z-Zá'irín (“the Pilgrims' Present”); Jalá'u'l-'Uyún (“the Clearing of the Eyes”); Miqbásu'l-Maṣábíḥ , on the daily prayers; Rabí'u'l-Asábí' (“the Spring of Weeks”); Zádu'l-Ma'ád (“Provision for the Hereafter”), and numerous smaller treatises. Oddly enough one of the most notable of his Persian theological works, the Ḥaqqu'l-Yaqín (“Certain Truth”), which was compiled in 1109/1698, and beautifully printed at Ṭihrán so early as 1241/1825, is omitted from this list. The late M. A. de Biberstein Kazi-mirski began to translate this book into French, but aban­doned his idea, sent his manuscript translation to me, and urged me to continue and complete the work he had begun; a task which, unfortunately, I have never had leisure to accomplish, though it would be well worth the doing, since we still possess no comprehensive and authoritative state­ment of Shí'a doctrine in any European language.

The basic works of the Shí'a faith, namely the Qur'án (the Word of God) and the Traditions (the sayings and Classification of Persian theo­logical works. deeds of the Prophet and the Imáms), are naturally in Arabic. The numerous Persian religious treatises may be roughly classified in three groups—the doctrinal, the historical, and the legal. In practice doctrine and history are almost inevitably inter­mixed, especially in the sections dealing with the Imámate, where attempts are made to prove that the Prophet intended 'Alí to succeed him; that Abú Bakr, 'Umar and 'Uthmán were usurpers of his rights; that the Imáms were twelve in number, no more and no less, and that they were the twelve recognized by the “Sect of the Twelve” (Ithnà-'Ashariyya) and none other. Thus while the earlier sections of these doctrinal works dealing with God and His Attributes border on Metaphysics, the later sections are largely composed of historical or quasi-historical matter, while the concluding portions, dealing with Heaven, Hell, the Last Judgment, and the like, are eschatological.

The style of these books is generally very simple and direct, and totally devoid of rhetorical adornment, but Simple style of these works. commonly affects an imitation of the Arabic idiom and order of words, not only in passages translated from that language, but throughout, as though these theologians had so steeped their minds in the Qur'án and the Traditions that even when using the Persian language the thought must follow Arabic lines. The following example, taken from the beginning of the second volume of the Ḥaqqu'l-Yaqín, * will suffice to illus­trate this peculiarity:

<text in Arabic script omitted>