BEGINNING OF THE GHAZNAWÍ PERIOD
IT seems desirable that at this point, standing, as it were, on the threshold of modern Persian literature, we should consider in somewhat greater detail the state of development attained by the Science and Literature of the Muslims, which were the common heritage of all those nations who had embraced Islám. Persian is often spoken of as a very easy language, and this is true, so far as the language itself is concerned; but to be a good Persian scholar is very difficult, since it involves a thorough familiarity, not only with the Qu'rán, the Traditions of the Prophet, and the ancient Persian legends, but with the whole scientific and literary point of view which prevailed in the Muhammadan East. This applies more particularly to those writers who lived before the terrible devastation wrought by the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century, for never after this did the literature and science of the Muslims reach their old level, owing to the wholesale massacres and acts of incendiarism perpetrated by these hateful savages. The scientific outlook of the later writers is much more circumscribed; the Arabic language ceased to be generally used throughout the realms of Islám; and, owing to the destruction of Baghdad and the Caliphate, there was no longer a metropolis of Culture and Learning to co-ordinate, concentrate, and combine the intellectual efforts of the Muslim world.
We possess fortunately three admirable sources of information on the range and scope of the literature and science of Islám at the period (i.e., the end of the tenth century of our era) of which we are speaking, viz.:—
(1) The Treatises of the Ikhwánu'ṣ-Ṣafá, or “Brethren of Purity,” that society of encyclopædists and philosophers of which we have already spoken in the last chapter.
(2) The Mafátíḥu'l-'Ulúm, or “Keys of the Sciences,” composed in A.D. 976 by Abú 'Abdi'lláh Muḥammad b. Yúsuf al-Kátib (“the Scribe”) of Khwárazm, and recently edited (Leyden, 1895) by Van Vloten.
(3) The Fihrist, or “Index,” of Abu'l-Faraj Muḥammad b. Isḥáq al-Warráq (“the Bookseller” or “Copyist”) of Baghdad, better known as Ibn Abí Ya'qúb an-Nadím, composed in A.D. 988, and edited by Flügel in 1871-2.
All these works are written in Arabic, and are of an essentially encyclopædic character. The two first deal more particularly with Philosophy and Science, and the third with Literature and “Culturgeschichte.” I propose to discuss them in the order given above, and to give some account of their scope and contents.
This society of encyclopædists flourished at Baṣra in the latter half of the tenth century of our era, and included, amongst the five or six of its members whose names have come down to us, men from Bust in the far east of Persia, Zanján in the north-west of the same country, and Jerusalem; while, of the remaining three, one was certainly Persian, and the other two were probably of Arab extraction.378a This society summed up the philosophical and scientific learning of the time in a series of fifty-one anonymous tracts, written in a popular style, of which a complete edition was printed at Bombay in four volumes, comprising some 1,134 pages, in A.H. 1305-6 (A.D. 1887-9). Complete or partial translations of these tracts (Rasá'il) exist in several other Eastern languages, viz., Persian (lith. Bombay, A.D. 1884), Hindustání, and Turkish. For a knowledge of their contents and an exposition of their teachings we are indebted chiefly to the learned and indefatigable Dr. Friedrich Dieterici of Berlin, who published between 1858 and 1895 seventeen valuable monographs (including six texts) on Arabian Philosophy in the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, with especial reference to the Ikhwánu'ṣ-Ṣafá. The fifty-one tracts published by this fraternity covered the whole ground of Philosophy, as understood by its members, pretty exhaustively. But of course the aspirant after philosophical knowledge was supposed to be already well grounded in the ordinary subjects of study, which are thus enumerated by Dieterici:379a —
1. Reading and Writing.
2. Lexicography and Grammar.
3. Calculation and Computation.
4. Prosody and the Poetic Art.
5. The Science of Omens and Portents.
6. The Science of Magic, Amulets, Alchemy, and Legerdemain.
7. Trades and Crafts.
8. Buying and Selling, Commerce, Agriculture, and Cattle-farming.
9. Biography and Narrative.
1. Knowledge of the Scripture (i.e., the Qur'án).
2. Exegesis of the Scripture.
3. The Science of Tradition.
4. Jurisprudence.
5. The Commemoration of God, Admonition, the Ascetic Life, Mysticism (Ṣúfíism), and the Ecstatic or Beatific Vision.
The philosophic studies properly so called include—
(i) Mathematics, Logic, &c. (ar-Riyáḍiyyát wa'l-Mantiqiyyát =
(ii) Natural Science and Anthropology (aṭ-Ṭabí'iyyát wa'l-Insániyyát
=
(iii) Pyschology (an-Nafsániyyát =
(iv) Theology (al-Iláhiyyát =
The Ikhwánu'ṣ-Ṣafá were essentially synthetical and en-cyclopædic, seeking, as Dieterici says (Makrokosmos, p. iv), “to correlate all the materials of knowledge, so far as these had reached them; and to construct a synthetic view of the material and spiritual worlds which would guarantee an answer to all questions, conformable to the standpoint of the Culture of that time.” In general the topics discussed by them may be divided, according to Dieterici's plan, into—
(i) The Macrocosm, or the Development of the Universe as the Evolution of Plurality out of Unity, an Evolution by Emanation from God through Intelligence, Soul, Primal Matter, Secondary Matter, the World, Nature, and the Elements to the final Products, or “Threefold Progeny,” i.e., the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Kingdoms.
(ii) The Microcosm (Man), or the Return (“Remanatio”) from Plurality to Unity.
The general character of their system was a “combination of Semitic Monotheism with Neo-Platonism,” so that in a sense Philo-Judæus may, I suppose, be regarded as their prototype. To this synthesis they were impelled, as Dieterici implies (Makrokosmos, pp. 86-88), by a conviction of the unity of all truth, religious, philosophical, and scientific. Co-ordinating all the sciences known to them with this view and for this object, they studied each not only for its own sake, but in its relation to Truth as a whole, and endeavoured to embody their conceptions in an intelligible, attractive, and even popular form, to which end they made extensive use (as in their celebrated apologue of the Beasts and Man) of simile, allegory, and parable. In their prehistoric and scientific conceptions they were most influenced by Aristotle as regards Logic and Natural Science, by the Neo-Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists in their theories of Numbers and Emanations, by Ptolemy in their ideas of Natural Hïstory, and by Galen in Anthropology and Medicine, the whole synthesis being informed by a strong Pantheistic Idealism.381a They believed that perfection was to be reached by a combination of the Greek Philosophy with the Arabian Religious Law.381b They were the successors of al-Kindí and al-Fárábí, and the predecessors of the Great Avicenna, with whom, as Dieterici observes,381c “the development of Philosophy in the East came to an end.” From the East this system, the so-called “Arabian Philosophy,” passed to the Moors in Spain; whence, after undergoing further development at the hands of Averroes (Ibn Rushd, † A.D. 1135), it became diffused in Europe, and gave rise to the Christian Scholastic Philosophy, to which, according to Dieterici,381d it rendered the greatest service in restoring the Aristotelian element, which, in the earlier systems of Christian philosophy, had been almost ousted by the Neo-Platonist element.
Turning now to the Mafátíhu'l-'Ulúm, we find the sciences primarily divided into two great groups, the indigenous or Arabian, and the exotic, which are for the most part Greek or Persian.
1. Jurisprudence (fiqh), discussed in 11 sections, including First Principles (uṣúl), and Applications (furú'), such as Legal Purity; Prayer; Fasting; Alms; Pilgrimage; Buying and Selling; Marriage; Homicide, Wounding, Retaliation, Compensation, and Blood-wit, &c.
2. Scholastic Philosophy (kalám), discussed in 7 sections, including its subject-matter; the various schools and sects of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Gentiles (Persians, Indians, Chaldæans, Manichæans, Marcionites, Bardesanians, Mazdakites, Sophists, &c.); Arabian heathenism, and the First Principles of Religion discussed and established by this science.
3. Grammar (naḥw), discussed in 12 sections.
4. The Secretarial Art (kitábat), discussed in 8 sections; including explanations of all the technical terms employed in the various Government offices.
5. Prosody ('arúḍ) and the Poetic Art (shi'r), discussed in 5 sections.
6. History (akhbár), discussed in 9 sections; especially the history of Ancient Persia, Muhammadan history, pre-Muhammadan history of Arabia, especially Yaman, and the history of Greece and Rome.
7. Philosophy (falsafa), discussed in 3 sections, including its subdivisions and terminology; the derivation of the word (correctly explained from the Greek); and the proper position in relation to it of Logic (manṭiq), the Natural Sciences (Medicine, Meteorology, Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology, and Alchemy), and the Mathematical Sciences, Geometry, Astronomy, Music, &c.).
8. Logic (manṭiq), discussed in 9 sections.
9. Medicine (ṭibb), discussed in 8 sections, including Anatomy, Pathology, Materia Medica and Therapeutics, Diet, Weights and Measures, &c.
10. Arithmetic (arithmátíqí, 'ilmu'l-'adad, ḥisáb), discussed in 5 sections, including the elements of Algebra.
11. Geometry (handasa, júmetriya), discussed in 4 sections.
12. Astronomy ('ilmu'n-nujúm), discussed in 4 sections, treating of the names of the Planets and Fixed Stars; the composition of the Universe according to the Ptolemaic system; Judicial Astrology; and the instruments and apparatus used by astronomers.
13. Music (músíqí), discussed in 3 sections; including an account of the various musical instruments and their names, and musical notation and terminology.
14. Mechanics ('ilmu'l-ḥiyal; “the Science of Devices”), in 2 sections, including Hydrostatics.
15. Alchemy (kímiyá), in 3 sections, including an account of the apparatus, the substances, and the processes used by those who practice it.
The Fihrist, or “Index,” of Muḥammad b. Isḥáq an-Nadím is one of the most remarkable and valuable works in the Arabic language which has survived to our days. Manuscripts of it are rare, and more or less defective. Flügel's edition is based on two Paris MSS. (of which the more ancient codex contains the first four of the ten Maqálát or “Discourses” into which the book is divided, and the more modern, transcribed for de Slane in Constantinople, presumably from the MSS. numbered 1134 and 1135 in the Küprülü-zádé Library, the latter portion of the work, from the fifth section of the fifth discourse onwards); two Vienna MSS., both incorrect and incomplete; the Leyden MS., which contains only Maqálas vii-x; and two Leyden fragments.383a Sprenger hazarded a conjecture that the work was in reality a Catalogue raisonné of some large library, but this view is rejected by Brockelmann.
383bBe this as it may, I know of no Arabic book which inspires me at once with so much admiration for the author's enormous erudition, and so much sadness that sources of knowledge at once so numerous and so precious as were available when he wrote should, for the most part, have entirely perished. Of authors who are known to us only by a few small fragments, he enumerates dozens or scores of works, but even these are the fortunate few, for the majority are known to us only or chiefly by his notices. His preface is such a model of conciseness, such a pleasing contrast to the empty rhetoric which disfigures, as a rule, at any rate the opening pages of most later Arabic and Persian works, that I cannot forbear translating it here.
“Lord, help man by Thy Mercy to reach upwards beyond preliminaries to conclusions, and to win to the aim in view without Translation of Preface to the Fihrist. prolixity of words! And therefore have we limited ourselves to these words at the beginning of this our Book, seeing that they sufficiently indicate our object in compiling it, if it please God. Therefore we say (and in God do we seek help, and of Him do we pray a blessing on all His Prophets and His servants who are single-hearted in their allegiance to Him: and there is no strength and no power save in God, the Supreme, the Mighty):—This is the Index of the books of all peoples of the Arabs and non-Arabs whereof somewhat exists in the language and script of the Arabs, on all branches of knowledge; together with accounts of their compilers and the classes of their authors, and the genealogies of these, the dates of their births, the extent of their lives, the times of their deaths, the location of their countries, and their virtues and vices, from the time when each science was first discovered until this our age, to wit the year three hundred and seventy-seven of the Flight (= A.D. 987-8).”
The author then immediately proceeds to summarise the contents of his book in the following epitome:—
First Discourse, in three Sections.
Section i. Describing the languages of the different peoples, Contents of the Fihrist.
Arab and non-Arab, the characteristics of their writings, the varieties of their scripts, and the forms of their written character.
Section ii. On the names of the Books of the Law (i.e., the Scriptures) revealed to the different sects of Muslims (i.e., Jews, Christians, and Sabeans)384a and the different sects of those who follow them.Section iii. Describing the Book “which falsehood approacheth not from before nor from behind, a Revelation from One Wise and Laudable”;385a and the names of the books composed on the sciences connected therewith, with notices of the Readers, and the names of those who handed down their traditions, and the anomalies of their readings.
Second Discourse, in three Sections, on the Grammarians and Philologists.
Section i. On the Origin of Grammar, with accounts of the grammarians of the School of Baṣra, and the Stylists of the Arabs, and the names of their books.
Section ii. Account of the Grammarians and Philologists of the School of Kúfa, and the names of their books.
Section iii. Account of a school of Grammarians who strove to combine the views of the two schools (above mentioned), and the names of their books.
Third Discourse, in three sections, on History, Belles Lettres, Biography, and Genealogies.
Section i. Account of the Historians, Narrators, Genealogists, Biographers, and Chroniclers, and the names of their books.
Section ii. Account of the Kings, Secretaries, Preachers, Ambassadors, Chancellors, and Government Officials (who composed books), and the names of their books.
Section iii. Account of the Courtiers, Favourites, Minstrels, Jesters, and Buffoons (who composed books), and the names of their books.
Fourth Discourse, in two sections, on Poetry and Poets.
Section i. On the groups of the Heathen Poets, and such of the Muslim poets as reached back to the Pagan Period (of the Arabs), and of those who collected their díwáns, and the names of those who handed down their poems (till they were collected and edited).
Section ii. On the groups of the Muslim Poets, including the modern poets down to this our time.
Fifth Discourse, in five sections, on the Scholastic Philosophy and the School-men.
Section i. On the origin of the Scholastic Philosophy, and of the School-men of the Mu'tazilites and Murjites, and the names of their books.
Section ii. Account of the School-men of the Shí'ites, whether Imámís, Zaydís, or other of the Extremists (Ghulát) and Isma'ílís, and the names of their books.
Section iii. On the School-men of the Predestinarians and the Ḥashwiyya, and the names of their books.
Section iv. Account of the School-men of the Khárijites, their classes, and the names of their books.
Section v. Account of the wandering mendicants, recluses, devotees, and Ṣúfís, who taught a scholastic philosophy based on their fancies and reveries, and the names of their books.
Sixth Discourse, in eight sections, on Jurisprudence, and the Jurisconsults and Traditionists.
Section i. Account of Málik and his disciples, and the names of their books.
Section ii. Account of Abú Ḥanífa an-Nu'mán and his disciples, and the names of their books.
Section iii. Account of the Imám ash-Sháfi'í and his disciples, and the names of their books.
Section iv. Account of Dá'úd b. 'Alí . . b. Khalaf al-Iṣfahání and his disciples, and the names of their books.
Section v. Account of the Shí'ite Jurisconsults, and the names of their books.
Section vi. Account of the Jurisconsults who were at the same time Traditionists and transmitters of Tradition, and the names of their books.
Section vii. Account of Abú Ja'far aṭ-Ṭabarí, and his disciples, and the names of their books.
Section viii. Account of the Khárijite Jurisconsults, and the names of their books.
Seventh Discourse, in three sections, on Philosophy and the Ancient Sciences.
Section i. Account of the Materialist Philosophers and the Logicians, and the names of their books and the versions and commentaries of these, alike such as still exist, and such as are mentioned but are no longer extant, and such as were extant but are now lost.
Section ii. Account of the Mathematicians, Geometricians, Arithmeticians, Musicians, Accountants, and Astronomers, and the makers of [scientific] instruments, and the Mechanics and Engineers.
Section iii. On the origins of Medicine, with accounts of the physicians amongst the Ancients and the Moderns, and the names of their books, with their versions and commentaries.
Eighth Discourse, in three sections, on Legends, Fables, Charms, Magic, and Conjuring.
Section i. Account of the Story-tellers, Saga-men and Artists, and the names of the books composed on Legends and Fables.
Section ii. Account of the Charm-mongers, Conjurors and Magicians, and the names of their books.
Section iii. On books composed on divers other topics, whereof the authors and compilers are unknown.
Ninth Discourse, in two sections, on Sects and Creeds.
Section i. Describing the Sects of the Ḥarránian Chaldæans, called in our time Sabæans, and the Sects of Dualists, whether Manichæans, Bardesanians, Khurramís, Mar-cionites, Mazdakites, and others, and the names of their books.
Section ii. Describing sundry strange and curious sects, such as those of India and China, and others of other like peoples.
Tenth Discourse, containing accounts of the Alchemists and seekers after the Philosopher's Stone amongst the Ancient and Modern Philosophers, and the names of their books.
Besides these three books there is another and earlier work, the Kitábu'l-Ma'árif of Ibn Qutayba († circ. A.D. 889), of which the text was published at Göttingen by the indefatigable Wüstenfeld in 1850, which gives us a good idea of the historical and biographical knowledge deemed necessary for all who had any pretensions to be fairly well read. In this book the author treats of the following subjects: the Creation (pp. 6-10); Sacred History, giving a brief account of the Patriarchs and Prophets (including not only those mentioned in the Old Testament, but others, such as Húd and Ṣáliḥ, mentioned in the Qur'án), and Christ (pp. 10-27); Profane History, including the chronology and racial divisions of mankind, the names of the true believers amongst the Arabs before the Mission of the Prophet, the Genealogies of the Arabs (pp. 28-56); the Genealogy and Kinsfolk of the Prophet, including his wives, children, clients, and horses, the history of his Mission, wars, triumph, and death (pp. 56-83); the History of the Four Orthodox Caliphs (pp. 83-106), of 'Alí's sons, of Zubayr, Ṭalḥa, 'Abdu'r-Rahmán b. 'Awf, Sa'd b. Abí Waqqáṣ and other eminent Muslims of early times, concluding with a brief list of “the Hypocrites” (pp. 106-174); History of the Umayyads, and of the 'Abbásid Caliphs down to al-Mu'tamid, in whose time the author wrote (pp. 175-200); biographies of famous statesmen, officers, and governors of the Muhammadan Empire, and of notable rebels (pp. 201-215); biographies of the Tábi'ún or successors of the “Companions” of the Prophet (pp. 216-248); biographies of the chief doctors and teachers of Islám, of the founders of its principal schools of thought, of the traditionists, “readers” of the Qur'án, genealogists and historians, grammarians and transmitters of verse, &c., of the principal mosques, of the early conquests of the Muslims and other matters concerning them, and of the chief outbreaks of plague and pestilence (pp. 248-293); account of the great “Days” (i.e., the famous battles) of the Arabs, of those amongst them whose names became a proverb, of their religions before the time of Islám, of the chief sects in Islám, and of the manner in which certain peoples (e.g., the Kurds and Jews) came by their names (pp. 293-304); and histories of the Kings of Yaman, Syria (Ghassánids), Ḥíra, and Persia, from the time of Jamshíd to the end of the Sásánian dynasty (pp. 304-330).
It will be seen from what has been said above how wide a range of knowledge is required to enable the student of Muhammadan literature fully to understand and appreciate all the allusions which he will meet with even in the poets, especially those who lived in the palmy days of the Caliphate. And apart from this general knowledge, and a thorough understanding of the language (whether Persian or Arabic) which constitutes the vehicle of utterance, he must, in order to derive the fullest pleasure from the poetry of these nations, possess a considerable amount of technical knowledge, not only of Prosody and Grammar, but of the various branches of Rhetoric ('Ilmu'l-Ma'ání wa'l-Bayán, “the Science of Ideas and their Expression”) and Euphuism ('Ilmu'l-Badáyi'), so that he may at once recognise and appreciate the various tropes, similes, metaphors, inuendos, hyperboles, antitheses, quotations, ætiologies, amphibologies, homonomies, anagrams, and the like, which he will come across at every turn, especially in the qaṣídas, or panegyrics, to which most of the older Persian poets devoted so large a portion of their energies and talents, for the reason that they were for the most part Court poets, and wrote not for the general public but for their patrons, on whose liberality they depended for their livelihood. This is why many of those poets, such as 'Unṣurí, Farrukhí, Kháqání, Anwarí, Dhahír of Fáryáb, and the like, whom the Persians reckon amongst their greatest, could never, no matter with what skill they might be translated, appeal to the European reader, whose sympathies will rather be won by the epic, lyric, didactic, mystic, satiric or pessimist poets, such as Firdawsí, Ḥáfidh, Sa'dí, Náṣir-i-Khusraw, 'Aṭṭár, Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, 'Ubayd-i-Zákání, and 'Umar Khayyám, each of whom, in a different way, appeals to some ground common to all mankind.
In spite of the excellent works on the Prosody and Rhetoric of the Persians by Gladwin, Rückert, Blochmann, and other scholars, I might perhaps have thought it desirable to speak at greater length on these subjects had it not been for the masterly Prolegomena prefixed by my lamented friend Mr. E. J. W. Gibb (whose death on December 5, 1901, after a short illness, at the early age of forty-four, has inflicted an incalculable loss on Oriental scholarship) to the first volume of his great History of Ottoman Poetry (London: Luzac & Co., 1900). Nearly twenty years ago we spent several weeks together in London, studying Persian and Turkish, and cultivating the society of various educated and intelligent Muslims, chiefly Persians, who happened at that time to be resident in the metropolis. Of these the late Mírza Muḥammad Báqir of Bawánát in Fárs, whose personality I attempted to depict in the Introductory Chapter of my Year amongst the Persians (London: A. and C. Black, 1893), was beyond question the most talented and original. From that time till his death Gibb and I were in frequent communication, and the hours which I was able from time to time to spend with him in his study in London were amongst the happiest and most profitable of my life. Within the last few months it has been my sad duty to examine his books, manuscripts, and papers, to catalogue the rare and precious volumes which he had so sedulously sought out from the East, and to set in order the unpublished portions of the great work to which his life was devoted. High as was the opinion I had already formed of the first volume of his book, which alone has yet been published, I should never have realised the labour it had cost him, or the extent of his reading, his fine scholarship and his critical judgment, had I not obtained the insight into his work which this examination gave me; and I should be happy to think that I could ever produce half so fine a work on Persian poetry as he has done on Turkish. The Prolegomena at least of this great book should be read by every student of Muhammadan Literature.
THE SEVEN.”
THE religious and political position assumed by the Shí'a, or “Faction” of 'Alí ibn Abí Ṭálib, has been already discussed at some length, together with the causes which rendered it specially attractive to the Persians. In this chapter we shall have to examine one of the developments of this school of thought, which, though at the present day of comparatively little importance, played a great part in the history of the Muhammadan world down to the Mongol Invasion in the thirteenth century, and to which, therefore, we shall have to refer repeatedly in the subsequent portion of this work.
The Shí'a agree generally in their veneration for 'Alí and their rejection of his three predecessors, Abú Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthmán, and in their recognition of the Imáms of the House of 'Alí as the chosen representatives of God, supernaturally gifted and divinely appointed leaders, whose right to the allegiance of the faithful is derived directly from Heaven, not from any election or agreement of the Church (Ijmá'-i-sunnat). Briefly they may be described as the supporters of the principle of Divine Right as opposed to the principle of Democratic Election.
Further, as we have already seen, most of the Shí'ites (especially those of Persia) attached great importance to the fact that all their Imáms subsequent to 'Alí (who was the Prophet's cousin) were descended also from Fáṭima (the Prophet's daughter), and hence were the direct and lineal descendants of the Prophet himself; and to the alleged fact (see pp. 130-134 and 229 supra) that all the Imáms subsequent to al-Ḥusayn (the third) were also the lineal descendants of the Sásánians, the old Royal Family of Persia.
There were, however, other sects of the Shí'a (Kaysániyya and Zaydiyya) who recognised as Imáms descendants not only of al-Ḥusayn's brother al-Ḥasan (Imáms, that is to say, who made no claim of descent from the House of Sásán) but of his half-brother Muḥammad Ibnu'l-Ḥanafiyya (“the son of the Ḥanafite woman”), who were not children of Fáṭima,392a and hence were not the direct descendants of the Prophet. These sects, however, seem, as a rule, to have had comparatively little hold in Persia save in Ṭabaristán (where, as we have seen, a dynasty of “Zaydite” Imáms flourished from A.D. 864 to 928), and need not further claim our attention, which must rather be concentrated on the Imámiyya, or Imámites proper, and its two great branches, the “Sect of the Twelve” (Ithná-'ashariyya ), which prevails in Persia to-day, and the “Sect of the Seven” (Sab'iyya) or Isma'ílís, with its various branches, including the notorious Assassins (Maláḥida, or “heretics” par excellence, as they were generally called by their opponents in Persia), who will form the subject of a later chapter. The fourth and subsequent Imáms of both these important branches of the Shí'a were descendants of al-Ḥusayn, and, as has been already emphasised, enjoyed in the eyes of their followers the double prestige of representing at the same time the Prophetic House of Arabia and the Royal House of Persia.
As far as the sixth Imám, Ja'far aṣ-Ṣádiq (“the Veridical”), the great-grandson of al-Ḥusayn, who died in A.H. 148 (A.D. 765), the Sects of the Seven and of the Twelve agree concerning the succession of their pontiffs, but here the agreement ceases. Ja'far originally nominated as his successor his eldest son Ismá'íl, but afterwards, being displeased with him (because, as some assert, he was detected indulging himself in wine),393a he revoked this nomination and designated another of his sons, Músa al-Kádhim (the seventh Imám of the Sect of the Twelve) as the next Imám. Ismá'íl, as is generally asserted, died during his father's lifetime; and, that no doubt might exist on this point, his body was publicly shown. But some of the Shí'a refused to withdraw their allegiance from him, alleging that the nomination could not be revoked, and that even if he did drink wine this was done deliberately and with a high purpose, to show that the “wine” forbidden by the Prophet's teaching was to be understood in an allegorical sense as spiritual pride, or the like—a view containing the germ of that extensive system of ta'wíl, or Allegorical Interpretation, which was afterwards so greatly developed by the Sect of the Seven. Nor did Ismá'íl's death put an end to the sect which took its name from him, though differences arose amongst them; some asserting that he was not really dead, or that he would return; others, that since he died during his father's lifetime he never actually became Imám, but that the nomination was made in order that the Imámate might be transmitted through him to his son Muḥammad, whom, consequently, they regarded as the Seventh, Last, and Perfect Imám; while others apparently regarded Ismá'íl and his son Mu-ḥammad as identical, the latter being a return or re-incarnation of the former. Be this as it may, de Sacy is probably right in conjecturing393b that until the appearance of 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ (of whom we shall speak presently) about A.H. 260394a (A.D. 873-4), “the sect of the Ismá'ílís had been merely an ordinary sect of the Shí'ites, distinguished from others by its recognition of Muḥammad b. Ismá'íl as the last Imám, and by its profession of that allegorical doctrine of which this Muḥammad, or perhaps his grandfather Ja'far aṣ-Ṣádiq, had been the author.
The genius which gave to this comparatively insignificant sect the first impulse towards that might and influence which it enjoyed for nearly four centuries came, as usual, from Persia, and in describing it I cannot do better than cite the words of those great Dutch scholars de Goeje and Dozy.
“It was,” says the former,394b “an inveterate hatred against the Arabs and Islám which, towards the middle of the third century of the hijra, suggested to a certain 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún, an oculist (Qaddáḥ) by profession and a Persian by race, a project as amazing for the boldness and genius with which it was conceived as for the assurance and vigour with which it was carried out.”
“To bind together394c in one association the conquered and the conquerors; to combine in one secret society, wherein there should be several grades of initiation, the free-thinkers, who saw in religion only a curb for the common people, and the bigots of all sects; to make use of the believers to bring about a reign of the unbelievers, and of the conquerors to overthrow the empire which themselves had founded; to form for himself, in short, a party, numerous, compact, and schooled to obedience, which, when the moment was come, would give the throne, if not to himself, at least to his descendants; such was the dominant idea of 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún; an idea which, grotesque and audacious though it was, he realised with astonishing tact, incomparable skill, and a profound knowledge of the human heart.”
394d“To attain this end a conjunction of means was devised which may fairly be described as Satanic; human weakness was attacked on every side; devoutness was offered to the believing; liberty, not to say licence, to the reckless; philosophy to the strong-minded; mystical hopes to the fanatical, and marvels to the common folk. So also a Messiah was presented to the Jews, a Paraclete to the Christians, a Mahdí to the Mussulmáns, and, lastly, a philosophical system of theology to the votaries of Persian and Syrian paganism. And this system was put in movement with a calm resolve which excites our astonishment, and which, if we could forget the object, would merit our liveliest admiration.”
The only criticism I would make on this luminous description of the Ismá'ílí propaganda is that it hardly does justice to those, at any rate, by whose efforts the doctrines were taught, amidst a thousand dangers and difficulties; to that host of missionaries (dá'í, plural du'át) whose sincerity and self-abnegation at least are wholly admirable. And here I cannot refrain from quoting a passage from the recently published Histoire et Religion des Nosairis (Paris, 1900) of René Dussaud, one of the very few Europeans who have, as I think, appreciated the good points of this remarkable sect.
“Certain excessess,” he says (p. 49), “rendered these doctrines hateful to orthodox Musulmáns, and led them definitely to condemn them. It must be recognised that many Ismá'ílí precepts were borrowed from the Mu'tazilites, who, amongst other things, repudiated the Attributes of God and proclaimed the doctrine of Free Will. Notwithstanding this lack of originality, it appears that the judgments pronounced by Western scholars are marked by an excessive severity. It is certainly wrong to confound, as do the Musulmán doctors, all these sects in one common reprobation. Thus, the disappearance of the Fáṭimids, who brought about the triumph of the Ismá'ílí religion in Egypt, concludes an era of prosperity, splendour, and toleration such as the East will never again enjoy.”
And in a note at the foot of the page the same scholar remarks with justice that even that branch of the Ismá'ílís from whom was derived the word “Assassin,” and to whom it was originally applied, were by no means the first community to make use of this weapon of a persecuted minority against their oppressors, and that “the Old Man of the Mountain” himself was not so black as it is the custom to paint him.
396aLet us return, however, to 'Abdu'llah b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ, to whom is generally ascribed the origin of the Isma'ílí power and organisation and the real parentage of the Fáṭimid Caliphs of Egypt and the West; and let us take the account of him given in the Fihrist in preference to the assertions of more modern and less accurate writers. He was, according to this work, a native of Ahwáz; and his father Maymún the Oculist was the founder of the Maymúniyya sect, a branch of the Khaṭṭábiyya, which belonged to the Ghulát or Extreme Shí'ites, teaching that the Imáms, and in particular the sixth Imám Ja'far aṣ-Ṣádiq, the father of Ismá'íl, were Divine incarnations.396b 'Abdu'lláh claimed to be a Prophet, and performed prodigies which his followers regarded as miracles, pretending to traverse the earth in the twinkling of an eye and thus to obtain knowledge of things happening at a distance; an achievement really effected, as the author of the Fihrist asserts, by means of carrier-pigeons despatched by his confederates.396c From his native village he transferred his residence after a time to 'Askar Mukram, whence he was compelled to flee in succession to Sábáṭ Abí Núḥ, Baṣra, and finally Salamiyya near Ḥims (Emessa) in Syria. There he bought land, and thence he sent his dá'ís into the country about Kúfa, where his doctrines were espoused by a certain Ḥamdán b. al-Ash'ath, of Quss Bahrám, nicknamed Qarmaṭ on account of his short body and legs, who became one of the chief propagandists of the sect, besides giving its members one of the names (Carmathians; Ar. Qirmaṭí or Qirmiṭí, pl. Qarámiṭa) by which they were subsequently known.397a One of Ḥamdán's chief lieutenants was his brother-in-law 'Abdán, the author of a number of (presumably controversial) books, who organised the propaganda in Chaldæa, while Ḥamdán resided at Kalwádha, maintaining a correspondence with one of the sons of 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ who abode at Ṭáliqán in Khurásán.
About this time 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún died (A.H. 261 = A.D. 874-5) and was succeeded first by his son Muḥammad, secondly by a certain Aḥmed (variously described as the son or the brother of him last named) called Abú Shala'la', and thirdly by Sa'íd b. al-Ḥusayn b. Abdu'lláh b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ, who was born in A.H. 260 at Salamiyya in Syria, a year before the death of his grandfather. To him at length was it granted to reap the fruits of the ambitious schemes devised and matured by his predecessors. In A.H. 297 (A.D. 909), learning from his dá'í Abú 'Abdi'lláh that the Berbers in North Africa were impregnated with the Ismá'ílí doctrines and were eagerly expecting the coming of the Imám, he crossed over thither, declared himself to be the great-grandson of Muḥammad b. Isma'íl and the promised Mahdí, took the name of Abú Muḥammad 'Ubaydu'llah, placed himself at the head of his enthusiastic partisans, overthrew the Aghlabid dynasty, conquered the greater portion of North Africa, and, with the newly-founded city of Mahdiyya for his capital, established the dynasty which, because of the claim which it maintained of descent from Fáṭima, the Prophet's daughter, is known as the Fáṭimid. Sixty years later (A.H. 356 = A.D. 969) Egypt was wrested by them from the House of Ikhshíd, and at the end of the tenth century of our era most of Syria was in their hands. This great Shí'ite power was represented by fourteen Anti-Caliphs, and was finally extinguished by Saladin (Ṣaláḥu'd Dín) in A.H. 567 (A.D. 1171).
The genuineness of the pedigree claimed by the Fáṭimids has been much discussed, and the balance of evidence appears to weigh strongly against it: there is little doubt that not 'Alí and Fáṭima, but 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ was their real ancestor. The matter is discussed at length by de Goeje398a with his usual learning and acumen. Amongst the many arguments that he adduces against their legitimacy it is sufficient to cite here one or two of the strongest. Their descent from Fáṭima was denied alike by the 'Abbásid Caliphs (who made no attempt to contest the pedigrees of the numerous 'Alid pretenders, some of them dangerous and formidable enough, who were continually raising the standard of rebellion against them); by the Umayyads of Cordova; and, on two separate occasions (A.H. 402 and 444 = A.D. 1011-1012 and 1052-3), by the recognised representatives of the House of 'Alí at Baghdad. Moreover, the Buwayhid 'Aḍudu'd-Dawla, in spite of his strong Shí'ite proclivities, was so far from satisfied with the results of an inquiry into their pedigree which he instituted in A.H. 370 (A.D. 980-1) that he threatened to invade their territories, and ordered all their writings to be burned. And on the other hand it is frankly admitted in the sacred books of the Druzes, a sect (still active and numerous in Syria) which regards al-Ḥákim, the sixth Fáṭimid Caliph, as the last and most perfect Manifestation or Incarnation of the Deity, that 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ was the ancestor of their hero.398b When we reflect on the inward essence of the Ismá'ílí doctrine, and its philosophical and cosmopolitan character, we might well imagine that to the fully-initiated members of the sect at any rate it would be a matter of comparative indifference whether their spiritual and temporal rulers were or were not descended from the Prophet through his daughter Fáṭima. But, as we shall see in a later chapter, one of their most talented missionaries in Persia, the poet and traveller Náṣir-i-Khusraw, who held the high title of Ḥujjat, or “Proof,” of Khurásán—a man of fiery zeal and transparent sincerity—certainly believed in the genuineness of the Fáṭimid pedigree.
As regards the rule of the Fáṭimids, it was on the whole, despite occasional acts of cruelty and violence inevitable in that time and place, liberal, beneficent, and favourable to learning.
“The (Isma'ílí) doctrines,” says Guyard,399a “were publicly taught at Cairo in universities richly endowed and provided with libraries, where crowds assembled to listen to the most distinguished professors. The principle of the sect being that men must be converted by persuasion, the greatest tolerance was shown towards other creeds. Mu'izz (the fourth Fáṭimid Caliph, reigned A.D. 952-975) permitted Christians to dispute openly with his doctors, a thing hitherto unheard of; and Severus, the celebrated bishop of Ushmúnayn, availed himself of this authorisation. Out of the funds of the Treasury Mu'izz rebuilt the ruined church of St. Mercurius at Fusṭáṭ, which the Christians had never hitherto been permitted to restore. Certain Musulmán fanatics endeavoured to prevent this, and on the day when the first stone was laid a Shaykh, leaping down amongst the foundations, swore that he would die rather than suffer the church to be rebuilt. Mu'izz, being informed of what was taking place, caused this man to be buried under the stones, and only spared his life at the instance of the Patriarch Ephrem.399b Had the Isma'ílí doctrine been able to maintain itself in Egypt in its integrity, it would have involved the civilisation of the Muslim world. Unfortunately, as an actual consequence of this doctrine, a serious change was about to take place in the sect;
399cwhile, on the other hand, the excesses of the Isma'ílís of Persia and Syria armed against Egypt, the focus of the sect, the pious and orthodox Núru'd-Dín (the Atábek of Syria, A.D. 1146-1173), who succeeded in overthrowing the Fáṭimid dynasty.”
Náṣir-i-Khusraw, who was at Cairo in the middle of the eleventh century of our era, during the reign of al-Mustansir, the eighth Fáṭimid Caliph, gives an equally favourable picture.
“Every one,” says he,400a “has perfect confidence in the Sultan, and no one stands in fear of myrmidons or spies, relying on the Sultan to oppress no one and to covet no one's possessions. There I saw wealth belonging to private individuals such that if I should speak of it or describe it the people of Persia would refuse to credit my statements. I could neither limit nor define their wealth, and nowhere have I seen such prosperity as I saw there. There I saw a Christian who was one of the richest men in Egypt, so that it was said that his ships, his wealth, and his estates surpassed computation. My object in mentioning him is that one year the water of the Nile fell short and corn became dear. The Sultan's wazír summoned this Christian and said, ‘The year is not good, and the Sultan's heart is weighed down with anxiety for his people. How much corn could you supply, either for a price or as a loan?’ The Christian answered, ‘Thanks to the fortunate auspices of the Sultan and the wazír, I have in store so much corn that I could supply all Egypt with bread for six years.’400b Now the population of Egypt at this time was certainly, at the lowest computation, five times that of Níshápúr; and any one versed in statistics will readily understand what vast wealth one must possess to hold corn to such an amount, and what security of property and good government a people must enjoy amongst whom such things are possible, and what great riches; and withal neither did the Sultan oppress or wrong any one, nor did his subjects keep anything hidden or concealed.”
It does not appear that Náṣir-i- Khusraw had embraced the Isma'ílí doctrine before he made his journey to Egypt and the West, and we may fairly assume that the admirable example presented to other governments of that period by the Fáṭimids had no inconsiderable effect in his conversion to those views of which, till the end of his long life, he was so faithful an adherent and so earnest an exponent. That he was familiar with the Gospels is proved by several passages in his poems; and no doubt he held that men cannot gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles, and that a doctrine capable of producing results which contrasted so favourably with the conditions prevalent under any other contemporary government had at any rate a strong primâ facie claim to serious and attentive consideration.
Before we proceed to speak of this doctrine, however, it is necessary to say something of a less orderly and well-conducted branch of the Ismá'ílís, whose relation to the Fáṭimid Caliphs still remains, in spite of the investigations of many eminent scholars, notably de Goeje, somewhat of a mystery. Mention has already been made of Ḥamdán Qarmaṭ, from whom the Carmathians (Qarámiṭa) derive their name. These Car-mathians, the followers of the above-named Qarmaṭ and his disciple 'Abdán (the most prolific writer of the early Ismá'ílís),401a are much less intimately connected with Persian history than the Fáṭimid Ismá'ílís, and their power was of much shorter duration; but for about a hundred years (A.D. 890-990) they spread terror through the realms of the 'Abbásid Caliphs. Already, while the Zanj insurrection was in progress, we find Qarmaṭ interviewing the insurgent leader and endeavouring to arrive at an understanding with him, which, however, proved to be impossible.401b Very shortly after this (A.D. 892) the increasing power of the Carmathians began to cause a lively anxiety at Baghdad.402a About five years later they first rose in arms, but this insurrection, as well as those of A.D. 900, 901, and 902, was suppressed. Yet already we find them active, not only in Mesopotamia and Khuzistán, but in Baḥrayn, Yaman, and Syria; on the one hand we hear of them in the prison and on the scaffold; and on the other, led by their dá'ís Zikrawayh and Abú Sa'íd Ḥasan b. Bahrám al-Jannábí (both Persians, to judge by their names), we find them widely extending their power and obtaining absolute control of vast tracts of country. In A.D. 900 the Caliph's troops were utterly routed outside Baṣra, and only the general, al-'Abbás b. 'Amr al-Ghanawí, returned to tell the tale at Baghdad;402b while a year or two later “the Master of the Camel” (Ṣáḥibu'n-náqa), and after his death his brother, “the Man with the Mole” (Ṣáḥibu'sh-Sháma, or Ṣáḥibu'l-Khál), were ravaging Syria up to the very gates of Damascus. The success of this last was, however, short-lived, for he was taken captive and put to death in December, A.D. 903, and the death of Zikrawayh in the defeat inflicted on him three or four years later saved Syria for the time being from further ravages. His last and most signal achievement was his attack on the pilgrim-caravan returning from Mecca, in which fearful catastrophe no less than twenty thousand victims are said to have perished.
The Fáṭimid dynasty had been firmly established in North Africa for some years before we hear much more of the Carmathians;402c but in A.D. 924 Abú Ṭáhir al-Jannábí (the son and successor of the Abú Sa'íd al-Jannábí mentioned above) raided Baṣra and carried off a rich booty; a few months later another pilgrim-caravan was attacked (2,200 men and 300 women were slain, and a somewhat greater number taken captive, together with a vast booty);403a and soon afterwards Kúfa was looted for six days, during which the Carmathian leader quartered his guard in the great mosque. In the early spring of A.D. 926 the pilgrim-caravan was allowed to proceed on its way after payment of a heavy ransom, but during the three following years passage was absolutely barred to the pilgrims. But it was in January, 930, that the Carmathians performed their greatest exploit, for in the early days of that month Abú Ṭáhir, with an army of some six hundred horsemen and nine hundred unmounted soldiers, entered the sacred city of Mecca itself, slew, plundered, and took captive in the usual fashion, and—the greatest horror of all in the eyes of pious Muslims—carried off the Black Stone and other sacred relics. In this culminating catastrophe 30,000 Muslims are said to have been slain, of whom 1,900 met their death in the very precincts of the Ka'ba; the booty carried off was immense; and the scenes which accompanied these sacrilegious acts baffle description.
403bIt is unnecessary to follow in detail the further achievements of the Carmathians, who continued to raid, plunder, massacre, and levy taxes on the pilgrims until the death of Abú Ṭáhir in A.D. 944. Six years later the Black Stone, having been kept by the Carmathians of al-Aḥsá for nearly twenty-two years, was voluntarily restored by them to its place in the Ka'ba of Mecca. “We took it by formal command (of our Imám), and we will only restore it by a command (from him)” had been their unvarying reply to all the attempts of the Muslims to persuade them to yield it up in return for enormous ransoms; but at length the order was issued by the Fáṭimid Caliph al-Qá'im or al-Manṣúr,403c and the stone was once more set in its place, to the infinite joy and relief of all pious Muhammadans. Very soon after the Fáṭimids had obtained possession of Egypt (A.D. 969) a quarrel arose between them and their Carmathian co-religionists,404a and a year or two later we actually find some of the latter fighting on the side of the 'Abbásids against their ancient masters.
The exact relations which existed between the apparently antinomian, democratic, and predatory Carmathians and the theocratic Fáṭimids, whose just and beneficent rule has been already described,404b are, as has been said, somewhat obscure. But de Goeje has conclusively proved, in the able and learned treatise so frequently quoted in this chapter, that these relations were of the closest; that the Carmathians recognised to the full (save in some exceptional cases) the authority, temporal and spiritual, of the Fáṭimid Caliphs, even though it often seemed expedient to the latter to deny or veil the connection;404c and that the doctrines of both were the same, due allowance being made for the ruder and grosser understandings of the Bedouin Arabs from whom were chiefly recruited404d the ranks of the Carmathians, who were, as de Goeje observes, “as was only natural, absolute strangers to the highest grade of initiation in which the return of Muḥammad b. Isma'íl was spiritually explained.”
Of what is known concerning the internal organisation of the Carmathians; of their Supreme Council, the white-robed 'Iqdániyya, to whom was given power to loose and to bind; of their disregard of the ritual and formal prescriptions of Islám, their contempt for the “asses” who offered adoration to shrines and stones, and their indulgence in meats held unlawful by the orthodox; and of their revenues, commerce, and treatment of strangers, full details will be found in de Goeje's monograph. Of the many interesting passages cited in that little volume (a model of scholarly research and clear exposition) the reader's attention is specially directed to the narrative of a woman who visited the Carmathian camp in search of her son (pp. 51-56); the poems composed by Abú Ṭáhir al-Jannábí after the sack of Mecca (p. 110) and Kúfa (pp. 113-115); the scathing satire composed in Yaman agaisnt the Carmathian chief (pp. 160-161); the narrative of a traditionist who was for a time a captive and a slave in the hands of the Carmathians (pp. 175-6); and the replies made by a Carmathian prisoner to the Caliph al-Mu'taḍid (pp. 25-6). That morally they were by no means so black as their Muslim foes have painted them is certainly true, but of the terrible bloodshed heralded by their ominous and oft-repeated formula “Purify them” (by the sword) there is unfortunately no doubt whatever.
We must now pass to an examination of the Isma'ílí doctrine —a doctrine typically Persian, typically Shí'ité, and possessed of an extraordinary charm for minds of a certain type, and that by no means an ignoble or ignorant one.405a And here I will cite first of all the concluding paragraphs of an article which I contributed in January, 1898, to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society on the Literature and Doctrines of the Ḥurúfí Sect (pp. 88-9):—
“The truth is, that there is a profound difference between the Persian idea of Religion and that which obtains in the West. Here it is the ideas of Faith and Righteousness (in different proportions, it is true) which are regarded as the essentials of Religion; there it is Knowledge and Mystery. Here Religion is regarded as a rule by which to live and a hope wherein to die; there as a Key to unlock the Secrets of the Spiritual and Material Universe. Here it is associated with Work and Charity; there with Rest and Wisdom. Here a creed is admired for its simplicity; there for its complexity. To Europeans these speculations about ‘Names’ and ‘Numbers’ and ‘Letters’; this talk of Essences, Quiddities, and Theophanies; these far-fetched analogies and wondrous hair-splittings, appear, as a rule, not merely barren and unattractive, but absurd and incomprehensible; and consequently, when great self-devotion and fearlessness of death and torture are witnessed amongst the adherents of such a creed, attempts are instinctively made by Europeans to attribute to that creed some ethical or political aim. Such aim may or may not exist, but, even if it does, it is, I believe, as a rule, of quite secondary and subordinate importance in the eyes of those who have evolved and those who have accepted the doctrine…
“The same difference of ideal exists as to the quality and nature of Scripture, the Revealed Word of God. Provided the ethical teaching be sublime, and there be peace for the troubled and comfort for the sorrowful, we care little, comparatively, for the outward form. But in the eyes of the Musulmáns (including, of course, the followers of all those sects, even the most heretical, which have arisen in the bosom of Islám) this outward form is a matter of the very first importance. Every letter and line of the Qur'án (which always remains the model and prototype of a Revealed Book, even amongst those sects who claim that it has been abrogated by a newer Revelation) is supposed to be fraught with unutterable mystery and filled with unfathomable truth. Generations of acute minds expend their energies in attempts to fathom these depths and penetrate these mysteries. What wonder if the same discoveries are made quite independently by different minds in different ages, working with the same bent on the same material? In studying the religious history of the East, and especially of Persia, let us therefore be on our guard against attaching too much importance to resemblances which may be the natural outcome of similar minds working on similar lines, rather than the result of any historical filiation or connection.”
The Isma'ílí doctrine was, as we have seen, mainly devised and elaborated (though largely from ideas and conceptions already ancient, and, as has been remarked, almost endemic in Persia) by 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ. Great stress is generally laid, both by Oriental and European writers, on the primarily political motive which is supposed to have inspired him, the desire, namely, to destroy the power of the Arabs, and the religion of Islám whence that power was derived, and to restore to Persia the dominant position which she had previously held, and to which, in his opinion, she was entitled.407a I myself am inclined to think that, to judge by the Persian character, in which the sentiment of what we understand by patriotism is not a conspicuous feature, and by what I have myself observed in the analogous case of the Bábís, this quasi-political motive has been unduly exaggerated; and that 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún and his ally, the wealthy astrologer Dandán (or Zaydán)407b exerted themselves as they did to propagate the system of doctrine about to be described not because it was Persian, but because, being Persian, it strongly appealed to their Persian minds.
407cThe doctrine which we are about to describe is, it must be repeated, the doctrine evolved by 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ. “The sect of the Isma'ílís,” says Guyard in his Fragments relatifs à la Doctrine des Ismaílis (Paris, 1874, p. 8), “was primarily a mere subdivision of the Shí'ites, or partisans of 'Alí; but, from the time of 'Abdu'lláh, surnamed Qaddáḥ, the son of Maymún Qaddáḥ, and chief of the sect, towards the year A.H. 250 (A.D. 864), it so greatly diverged from its point of departure that it met with the reprehension of the Shí'ites themselves, who denounced as impious such as would embrace it.” The chief thing which it derived from Ismá'íl the seventh Imám was its name Ismá'ílí; but it bore several other names, such as Sab'í (“the Sect of the Seven”); Báṭiní (“the Esoteric Sect”); Ta'límí (“doctrinaire”), because, according to its tenets, the true “teaching” or “doctrine” (ta'lím) could only be obtained from the Imám of the time; Fáṭimí (“owing allegiance to the descendants of Fáṭima,” the Prophet's daughter and 'Alí's wife); Qirmaṭí or Carmathian, after the dà'í Ḥamdan Qarmaṭ already mentioned. By their foes, especially in Persia, they were very commonly called simply Maláḥida (“impious heretics”), and later, after the New Propaganda of Ḥasan-i-Sabbáḥ (of whom we shall speak in a later chapter), Ḥashíshí (“hashish-eaters”).
Their doctrine, as already indicated, and as will shortly appear more plainly, hinges to a large extent on the number seven, and, to a less degree, on the number twelve; numbers which are written plain in the universe and in the body of man. Thus there are seven Planets and twelve Zodiacal Signs; seven days in the week and twelve months in the year; seven cervical vertebræ and twelve dorsal, and so on: while the number seven appears in the Heavens, the Earths, the Climes, and the apertures of the face and head (two ears, two eyes, two nostrils, and the mouth).
Intermediate between God and Man are the Five Principles or Emanations (the Universal Reason, the Universal Soul, Primal Matter, Pleroma or Space, and Kenoma or Time),408a making in all Seven Grades of Existence.
Man cannot attain to the Truth by his unaided endeavours, but stands in need of the teaching (ta'lím) of the Universal Reason, which from time to time becomes incarnate in the form of a Prophet or “Speaker” (Náṭiq), and teaches, more fully and completely in each successive Manifestation, according to the evolution of the Human Understanding, the spiritual truths necessary for his guidance. Six great Prophetic cycles have passed (those of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muḥammad), and the last and seventh cycle, in which for the first time the Esoteric Doctrine, the true inwardness of the Law and the Prophets, is made clear, was inaugurated by Muḥammad b. Isma'íl, the Qá'im (“He who ariseth”) or Ṣáḥibu'z-Zamán (“Lord of the Time”). Each Prophet or “Speaker” (Náṭiq) is succeeded by seven Imáms (called Ṣámit, “Silent”), of whom the first (called Asás, “Foundation,” or Sús, “Root,” “Origin”) is always the intimate companion of the Náṭiq, and the repository of his esoteric teaching. The series in detail is as follows:—
| Nátiq. | Asás, who is the first of the Seven Ṣámits or Imáms. |
| 1. Adam. | Seth. (Each Ṣámit, or Imám, has twelve Ḥujjats, “Proofs,” or Chief Dá'ís.) |
| 2. Noah. | Shem. |
| 3. Abraham. | Ishmael. |
| 4. Moses. | Aaron. John the Baptist was the last Ṣámit of this series, and the immediate precursor of Jesus, the next Náṭiq. |
| 5. Jesus. | Simon Peter. |
| 6. Muḥammad. | 'Alí, followed by al-Hasan, al-Ḥusayn, 'Alí Zaynu'l-'Ábidín, Muḥammad al-Báqir, Ja'far aṣ-Ṣádiq, and Isma'íl. |
| 7. Muḥammad b. Isma'íl. | 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ, followed by two of his sons, Aḥmad and Muḥammad, and his grandson Sa'íd, later known as 'Ubaydu'lláh-al-Mahdí (who pretended to be the grandson of Muḥammad b. Isma'íl), the founder of the Fáṭimid Dynasty. |
In the correspondence established between the Grades of Being and the Isma'ílí hierarchy there seems to be a lacuna, since God, the Primal Unknowable Essence, is represented by no class in the latter. As to the last term also I am in doubt. The other correspondences are as follows:—
1. God.
2. The Universal Reason ('Aql-i-Kullí), manifested in the Náṭiq or Prophet.
3. The Universal Soul (Nafs-i-Kullí), manifested in the Asás or first Imám.
4. Primal Matter (Hayyúla,
), manifested in the Ṣámits or Imáms. 5. Space, or Pleroma (al-Malá), manifested in the Ḥujjat or “Proof.”
6. Time, or Kenoma (al-Khalá), manifested in the Dá'í or Missionary.
7. ? The Material Universe, manifested in ? The Believer.
Corresponding still with the dominant number are the degrees of initiation through which, according to his capacity and aptitude, the proselyte is successively lead by the dá'í; though these were afterwards raised to nine (perhaps to agree with the nine celestial spheres, i.e., the seven planetary spheres, the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, and the Empyrean). These degrees are very fully described by de Sacy (Exposé, vol. i, pp. lxii-cxxxviii), who follows in the main the account of the historian an-Nuwayrí († A.D. 1332). Before speaking of them, however, a few words must be said about the dá'í or propagandist.
The type of this characteristically Persian figure seems scarcely to have varied from the time of Abú Muslim to the present day, when the dá'í of the Bábís still goes forth on his perilous missions between Persia, his native land, and Syria, where his spiritual leaders dwell in exile. These men I have described from personal knowledge in another book,410a and I have often pleased myself with the thought that, thanks to these experiences, it is almost as though I had seen with my own eyes Abú Muslim, 'Abdu'lláh b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ, Ḥamdán Qarmaṭ, and other heroes of the 'Abbásid and Ismá'ílí propaganda. But if the type of dá'í is, so far as we can judge, almost unvarying in Western Asia, it differs very greatly from that of the European missionary, whose learning, knowledge of character and adaptability to circumstances fall short by as much as his material needs and national idiosyncrasies exceed those of the dá'í.
The dá'í commonly adopted some ostensible profession, such as that of a merchant, physician, oculist, or the like, and, in this guise, arrived at the place where he proposed to begin operations.411a In the first instance his aim was to impress his neighbours with a high idea of his piety and benevolence. To this end he was constant in alms-giving and prayer, until he had established a high reputation for devout living, and had gathered round him a circle of admirers. To these, especially to such as appeared most apt to receive them, he began gradually and cautiously to propound his doctrines, striving especially to arouse the curiosity of his hearers, to awaken in them a spirit of inquiry, and to impress them with a high opinion of his wisdom, but prepared at any moment to draw back if they showed signs of restiveness or suspicion. Thus he speaks of Religion as a Hidden Science, insists on the symbolic character of its prescriptions, and hints that the outward observance of Prayer, the Fast, the Pilgrimage, and Alms-giving is of little value if their spiritual significance be not understood. If curiosity and an eagerness to learn more are manifested by his hearer, the dá'í begins an explanation, but breaks it off in the middle, hinting that such divine mysteries may only be disclosed to one who has taken the oath of allegiance to the Imám of the age, the chosen representative of God on earth, and the sole repository of this Hidden Science, which he confides only to such as prove themselves worthy to receive it. The primary aim of the dá'í is, indeed, mainly to secure from the proselyte this allegiance, ratified by a binding oath and expressed by the periodical payment of a tribute of money. Of the questions whereby he seeks to excite the neophyte's curiosity the following are specimens:—
“Why did God take seven days to create the universe, when He could just as easily have created it in a single moment?”
“What in reality are the torments of Hell? How can it be true that the skins of the damned will be changed into other skins, in order that these, which have not participated in their sins, may be submitted to the Torment of the Fire?”
“What are the Seven Gates of Hell-Fire and the Eight Gates of Paradise?”
“Why were the heavens created according to the number Seven, and the Earths likewise? And why, also, is the first chapter of the Qur'án composed of seven verses?”
“What means this axiom of the philosophers, that man is a little world (Microcosm) and the World a magnified man? Why does man, contrary to all other animals, carry himself erect? Why has he ten digits on the hands, and as many on the feet; and why are four digits of the hand divided each into three phalanges, while the thumb has only two? Why has the face alone seven apertures,412a while in all the rest of the body there are but two? Why has he twelve dorsal and seven cervical vertebræ? Why has his head the form of the letter mím, his two hands that of a ḥá, his belly that of a mím, and his two legs that of a dál, in such wise that he forms, as it were, a written book, of which the interpretation is the name of Muḥammad (M.Ḥ.M.D.)? Why does his stature, when erect, resemble the letter alif, while when he kneels it resembles the letter lám, and when he is prostrate412b the letter há, in such wise that he forms, as it were, an inscription of which the reading is Iláh (I. L. H.), God?”
“Then,” says de Sacy,412c “addressing themselves to those who listen to them, they say: ‘Will you not reflect on your own state? Will you not meditate attentively on it, and recognise that He who has created you is wise, that He does not act by chance, that He has acted in all this with wisdom, and that it is for secret and mysterious reasons that He has united what He has united, and divided what He has divided? How can you imagine that it is permissible for you to turn aside your attention from all these things, when you hear these words of God (Qur'án, li, 20-21): “There are signs on the earth to those who believe with a firm faith; and in your own selves; will ye not then consider?” And again (Qur'án, xiv, 30), “And God propounds unto mankind parables, that perchance they may reflect thereon.” And again (Qur'án, xli, 53), “We will show them our signs in the horizons and in themselves, that it may become clear unto them that this is the Truth.” … And again (Qur'án, xvii, 74), “Whosoever is blind in respect to [the things of] this life is also blind in respect to [the things of] the other life, and follows a misleading path.”’”
Finally, by some or all of these means, the dá'í prevails upon the neophyte to take the oath of allegiance, saying413a —
“Bind yourself, then, by placing thy right hand in mine, and promise me, with the most inviolable oaths and assurances, that you will never divulge our secret, that you will not lend assistance to any one, be it who it may, against us, that you will set no snare for us, that you will not speak to us aught but the truth, and that you will not league yourself with any of our enemies against us.”
The full form of the oath will be found, by such as are curious as to its details, at pp. cxxxviii-cxlvii of de Sacy's Exposé.
The further degrees of initiation are briefly as follows:—
Second Degree. The neophyte is taught to believe that God's approval cannot be won by observing the prescriptions of Islám, unless the Inner Doctrine, of which they are mere symbols, be received from the Imám to whom its guardianship has been entrusted.
Third Degree. The neophyte is instructed as to the nature and number of the Imáms, and is taught to recognise the significance in the spiritual and material worlds of the number Seven which they also represent. He is thus definitely detached from the Imámiyya of the Sect of the Twelve, and is taught to regard the last six of their Imáms as persons devoid of spiritual knowledge and unworthy of reverence.
Fourth Degree. The neophyte is now taught the doctrine of the Seven Prophetic Periods, of the nature of the Náṭiq, the Sús or Asás and the remaining six Ṣámits (“Silent” Imáms)413b who succeed the latter, and of the abrogation by each Náṭiq of the religion of his predecessor. This teaching involves the admission (which definitely places the proselyte outside the pale of Islám) that Muḥammad was not the last of the Prophets, and that the Qur'án is not God's final revelation to man. With Muḥammad b. Ismá'íl, the Seventh and Last Náṭiq, the Qá'im (“He who ariseth”), the Ṣáḥibu'l-Amr (“Master of the Matter”), an end is put to the “Sciences of the Ancients” ('Ulúmu'l-awwalín), and the Esoteric (Báṭiní) Doctrine, the Science of Allegorical Interpretation (ta'wíl), is inaugurated.
Fifth Degree. Here the proselyte is further instructed in the Science of the Numbers and in the applications of the ta'wíl, so that he discards many of the traditions, learns to speak contemptuously of the state of Religion, pays less and less heed to the letter of Scripture, and looks forward to the abolition of all the outward observances of Islám. He is also taught the significance of the number Twelve, and the recognition of the twelve Ḥujjas or “Proofs,” who primarily conduct the propaganda of each Imám. These are typified in man's body by the twelve dorsal vertebræ, while the seven cervical vertebræ represent the Seven Prophets and the Seven Imáms of each.
Sixth Degree.—Here the proselyte is taught the allegorical meaning of the rites and obligations of Islám, such as prayer, alms, pilgrimage, fasting, and the like, and is then persuaded that their outward observance is a matter of no importance, and may be abandoned, since they were only instituted by wise and philosophical lawgivers as a check to restrain the vulgar and unenlightened herd.
Seventh Degree. To this and the following degrees only the leading dá'ís, who fully comprehend the real nature and aim of their doctrine, can initiate. At this point is introduced the dualistic doctrine of the Pre-existent (al-Mufíd, as-Sábiq) and the Subsequent (al-Mustafíd, at-Tálí, al-Láḥiq), which is destined ultimately to undermine the proselyte's belief in the Doctrine of the Divine Unity.
Eighth Degree. Here the doctrine last mentioned is developed and applied, and the proselyte is taught that above the Pre-existent and the Subsequent is a Being who has neither name, nor attribute, of whom nothing can be predicated, and to whom no worship can be rendered. This Nameless Being seems to represent the Zerwán Akarana (“Boundless Time”) of the Zoroastrian system, but, as may be seen by referring to de Sacy's Exposé (pp. cxxi-cxxx) some confusion exists here, and different teachings were current amongst the Ismá'ílís, which, however, agreed in this, that, to quote Nuwayrí's expression, “those who adopted them could no longer be reckoned otherwise than amongst the Dualists and Materialists.” The proselyte is also taught that a Prophet is known as such not by miracles, but by his ability to construct and impose on mankind a system at once political, social, religious, and philosophical—a doctrine which I myself have heard enunciated amongst the Bábís in Persia, one of whom said to me that just as the architect proved himself to be such by building a house, or the physician by healing sickness, so the prophet proved his mission by founding a durable religion.415a He is further taught to understand allegorically the end of the world, the Resurrection, Future Rewards and Punishments, and other eschatological doctrines.
Ninth Degree. In this, the last degree of initiation, every vestige of dogmatic religion has been practically cast aside, and the initiate is become a philosopher pure and simple, free to adopt such system or admixture of systems as may be most to his taste. “Often,” says Nuwayrí, “he embraces the views of Manes or Bardesanes; sometimes he adopts the Magian system, sometimes that of Plato or Aristotle: most frequently he borrows from each of these systems certain notions which he combines together, as commonly happens to these men, who, abandoning the Truth, fall into a sort of bewilderment.”
Space does not permit us to cite the pledge or covenant whereby the proselyte bound himself to obey the dá'í, nor to enlarge on the methods whereby the latter sought to approach the adherents of different sects and creeds in order to gain their allegiance. For these and other most interesting matters we must refer the reader to de Sacy's Exposé, vol. i, pp. cxxxviii-clxiii et passim, Guyard's Fragments relatifs à la Doctrine des Ismaélîs and Un Grand maître des Assassins, and other monographs alluded to in the notes to this chapter. The further developments of this sect will be discussed in another portion of this work.
ALTHOUGH the full development of that system of pantheistic, idealistic, and theosophic mysticism known amongst Muham-madans as taṣawwuf, and in Europe as Ṣúfíism belongs to a rather later period than that which we are now considering, it was already when the Fihrist was composed (A.D. 987) a recognised school of thought, and may therefore conveniently be considered in this place, more particularly as some knowledge of its nature and teachings is essential for the understanding of a certain proportion of even the older Persian poets who lived before the time of Saná'í (circ. A.D. 1131), 'Aṭṭár († A.D. 1230) and Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí († A.D. 1273). Shaykh Abú Sa'íd b. Abi'l-Khayr († A.D. 1049), whose mystical quatrains form the subject of one of Dr. Ethé's excellent monographs,416a and for whose biography we possess, thanks to Professor Zhukovski, unusually copious materials,416b was perhaps the first purely mystical Persian poet whose works have survived to our time, but Ṣúfí influences may be traced in the writings of some of his contemporaries if not of his predecessors.
A number of derivations have been proposed at different
times for the term Ṣúfí, but it is now quite certain that it is
Meaning and
derivation of the
term Ṣúfí.
derived from the word ṣúf, “wool,” which view is
confirmed by the equivalent pashmína-púsh, “wool-wearer,”
applied to these mystics in Persian.
From the earliest times woollen raiment was regarded as
typical of that simplicity of life and avoidance of ostentation
and luxury enjoined by the Prophet and his immediate
successors, as clearly appears from Mas'údí's account of the
“Orthodox Caliphs” in the Murúju'dh-Dhahab.417a
The
term Ṣúfí was therefore in later times applied to those
ascetic and pious devotees who, like the early Quakers in
England, made the simplicity of their apparel a silent protest
against the growing luxury of the worldly. It does not
appear to have come into use till about the middle of the
second century of the Flight (end of the eighth century of our
era), for Jámí expressly states in his Nafaḥátu'l-Uns (ed.
Nassau-Lees, p. 34) that it was first applied to Abú Háshim
the Syrian, a contemporary of Sufyán ath-Thawrí, who died in
A.D. 777. This derivation may be regarded as quite certain,
and it is sufficient merely to mention the attempts made to
connect the word with the Greek
The views which have been advanced as to the nature, Theories as to the origin of Ṣúfíism. origin, and source of the Ṣúfí doctrine are as divergent as the etymologies by which it is proposed to explain its name. Briefly they may be described as follows:—
(1) The theory that it really represents the Esoteric Doctrine of the Prophet. This is the prevalent view of the Ṣúfís themselves, 1. The “Esoteric Islám” theory. and of those Muhammadans who are more or less in sympathy with them; and though it can hardly commend itself to European scholars, it is by no means so absurd or untenable a hypothesis as is often assumed in Europe. Without insisting too much on the (probably spurious) traditions constantly cited by the Ṣúfís as the basis of their doctrine, such as God's alleged declaration, “I was a Hidden Treasure and I desired to be known, therefore I created Creation that I might be known;” or, “God was, and there was naught beside Him;” or, “Whosoever knoweth himself knoweth his Lord;” there are in the Qur'án itself a few texts which lend themselves to a mystical interpretation, as, for instance, the words addressed to the Prophet concerning his victory over the heathen at the battle of Badr (Qur'án, viii, 17): “Thou didst not shoot when thou didst shoot, but God shot.” This on the face of it means no more than that God strengthened the arms of the Muslims against their foes; but it involves no great straining of the words to deduce therefrom that God is the Absolute Agent (Fa“ál-i-Muṭlaq ) and man but “as the pen between the fingers of the scribe, who turns it as he will.” However little a critical examination of the oldest and most authentic records of the Prophet's life and teachings would warrant us in regarding him as a mystic or ascribing to him an esoteric doctrine, it must be avowed without reserve that such is the view taken by the more moderate Ṣúfís, and even of such philosophically minded theologians as al-Ghazzálí († A.D. 1111-2).
(2) The theory that it must be regarded as the reaction of the Aryan mind against a Semitic religion imposed upon it by force. 2. The “Aryan Reaction” theory. This theory has two forms, which may be briefly described as the Indian and the Persian. The former, taking note of certain obvious resemblances which exist between the Ṣúfí doctrines in their more advanced forms and some of the Indian systems, notably the Vedanta Sara, assumes that this similarity (which has, in my opinion, been exaggerated, and is rather superficial than fundamental) shows that these systems have a common origin, which must be sought in India. The strongest objection to this view is the historical fact that though in Sásánian times, notably in the sixth century of our era, during the reign of Núshírwán, a certain exchange of ideas took place between Persia and India, no influence can be shown to have been exerted by the latter country on the former (still less on other of the lands of Islám) during Muhammadan times till after the full development of the Ṣúfí system, which was practically completed when al-Bírúní, one of the first Musulmáns who studied the Sanskrit language and the geography, history, literature, and thoughts of India, wrote his famous Memoir on these subjects. In much later times it is likely enough, as shown by von Kremer,419a that considerable influence was exerted by Indian ideas on the development of Ṣúfíism. The other, or Persian, form of the “Aryan Reaction theory” would regard Ṣúfíism as an essentially Persian product. Our comparative ignorance of the undercurrents of thought in Sásánian times makes it very difficult to test this theory by the only safe method, the historical; but, as we have already seen, by no means all the early Ṣúfís were of Persian nationality, and some of the most notable and influential mystics of later times, such as Shaykh Muḥyiyyu'd-Dín ibnu'l 'Arabí († A.D. 1240-1), and Ibnu'l Fáriḍ († A.D. 1234-5), were men of Arabic speech in whose veins there was not a drop of Persian blood. Yet the first of these exerted an enormous influence over many of the most typical Persian Ṣúfís, such as 'Iráqí († A.D. 1287), whose Lama'át was wholly inspired by his writings, Awḥadu'd-Dín Kirmání († A.D. 1297-8), and indirectly on the much later Jámí († A.D. 1492-3), while even at the present day his works (especially the Fuṣúṣu'l-ḥikam) are widely read and diligently studied by Persian mystics.
(3) The theory of Neo-Platonist influence. So far as Ṣúfíism was not an independent manifestation of that mysticism which, because 3. Theory of Neo-Platonist origin. it meets the requirements and satisfies the cravings of a certain class of minds existing in all ages and in most civilised communities, must be regarded as a spontaneous phenomenon, recurring in many similar but unconnected forms wherever the human mind continues to concern itself with the problems of the Wherefore, the Whence, and the Whither of the Spirit, it is probable that it has been more indebted to Neo-Platonism than to any other system. This view, which I have long held, has been very admirably worked out by my friend and pupil Mr. R. A. Nicholson in his Selected Poems from the Díván-i-Shams-i-Tabríz (Cambridge, 1898), pp. xxx-xxxvi; but he is mistaken in stating (p. xxx) that “the name of Plotinus was unknown in the East,” for this philosopher is explicitly mentioned by name in the Fihrist (p. 255), though he is more generally referred to (e.g., by Shahristání, in his Kitábu'l-Milal) as “the Greek Teacher” (ash-Shaykhu'l-Yúnání).420a Porphyry, however, was much better known to the Muslims, and seven or eight of his writings are enumerated in the Fihrist (p. 253). But even admitting the connection between Neo-Platonism and Ṣúfíism, there remain several subsidiary questions to which it is not possible, in the present state of our knowledge, to give a definite answer: such as—(1) “What elements of their philosophy did the Neo-Platonists originally borrow from the East, and especially from Persia,420b which country Plotinus visited, as we learn from his biographer Porphyry, expressly to study the systems of philosophy there taught?”420c (2) “To what extent did the seven Neo-Platonist philosophers who, driven from their homes by the intolerance of Justinian, took refuge at the Persian court in the reign of Núshírwán (about A.D. 532) found a school or propagate their ideas in that country?”421a In the ninth century of our era, in the Golden Age of Islám, the Neo-Platonist philosophy was certainly pretty well known to thinking Muslims, but till the two questions posed above have received a definite answer we cannot exclude the possibility that its main doctrines were familiar to, if not derived from, the East at a very much earlier date.
(4) The theory of independent origin. As has been already hinted, there remains the possibility that the Ṣúfí mysticism may be an entirely independent and spontaneous growth. “The identity of two beliefs,” as Mr. Nicholson well remarks (op. cit., p. xxx), “does not prove that one is generated by the other: they may be results of a like cause.” Any one who has read that charming work, Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics, will easily recall to mind some of the many striking resemblances, both in substance and form, in the utterances of mystics of the most various creeds, countries, and epochs, between whom it is practically certain that no external relation whatever can have existed; and I would venture to assert that many of the utterances of Eckart, Tauler, or Santa Teresa would, if translated into Persian, easily pass current as the words of Ṣúfí Shaykhs.
Now we must not fall into the error of regarding Ṣúfíism as a doctrine equally definite and systematised with that, for example, of the Isma'ílís, which was considered in the last chapter. The Ṣúfí is essentially an eclectic, and generally a latitudinarian: “the ways of God,” says one of his favourite aphorisms, “are as the number of the souls of men;” while the tradition, “Seek knowledge, were it even in China,” is constantly on his tongue. No one, perhaps, did more to gain for Ṣúfíism a good repute and to give it a philosophical form than the great theologian al-Ghazzálí, “The Proof of Islám” († A.D. 1111-1112), and this is how he describes his eagerness to understand every point of view in his treatise entitled al-Munqidh mina'ḍ-Ḍalál (“The Deliverer from Error”):—
“In the prime of my youth, since I was come to full understanding and ere I reached my twentieth year, until this present time, when my age exceedeth two score and ten, I have never ceased to explore the depths of this deep sea, or to plunge into its expanse as plunges the bold, not the timorous and cautious diver, penetrating into every dark recess, attacking every difficulty, braving every whirlpool, investigating the creed of every sect and unravelling the mysteries of every school, in order that I might learn to distinguish between the true and the false, the observer of authorised practices and the heretical innovator. Wherefore I never meet a Báṭiní (“Esoteric,” i.e., Isma'ílí) without desiring to inform myself of his Esotericism (Báṭiniyyat), nor a Dháhirí (“Externalist,” “Litteralist”) without wishing to know the outcome of his Externalism (Dháhiriyyat), nor a philosopher without endeavouring to understand the essence of his philosophy, nor a schoolman (Mutakallim) without striving to comprehend the result of his scholasticism (Kalám) and his controversial method, nor a Ṣúfí without longing to divine the secret of his mysticism, nor a devout believer without wishing to ascertain what he hath gained by his devotion, nor a heretic (Zindíq) nor an atheist without endeavouring to discover behind him an admonition as to the causes which have emboldened him to profess his atheistical or heretical doctrine. A thirst to comprehend the essential natures of all things was, indeed, my idiosyncrasy and distinctive characteristic from the beginning of my career and prime of my life: a natural gift and temperament bestowed on me by God, and implanted by Him in my nature by no choice or device of mine own, till at length the bond of blind conformity was loosed from me, and the beliefs which I had inherited were broken away when I was yet little more than a boy.”
Ṣúfíism, then, by reason of that quietism, eclecticism and latitudinarianism which are amongst its most characteristic features, is the very antithesis, in many ways, to such definite doctrines as the Manichæan, the Isma'ílí, and others, and would be more justly described as an indefinite immobility than as a definite movement. This point is often overlooked, and even scholars—especially such as have never visited the East— often speak of such sects as the Isma'ílís or the Bábís of to-day as though they were akin to the Ṣúfís, whereas a great hostility usually exists between them, the natural antagonism between dogmatism and eclecticism. The Bábís in particular equal their Shí'ite foes in their hatred of the Ṣúfís, whose point of view is quite incompatible with the exclusive claims of a positive and dogmatic creed, and this same abhorrence of the Ṣúfí latitudinarianism is very noticeable in the writings of the Christian missionary Henry Martyn. As for the Shí'ite mullás, their general attitude towards the Ṣúfís is admirably depicted by Morier in the twentieth chapter of his incomparable Hajji Baba. Yet Ṣúfíism has at various times, more especially, perhaps, in Sunní countries, stood the orthodox in good stead, and any one who is familiar with the Mathnawí of that greatest of all the Ṣúfí poets, Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, will recall passages directed against the Mu'tazilites, philosophers, and other free-thinkers. And many of those who suffered death for their religious opinions, though subsequently canonised by the Ṣúfís, were in reality the exponents of various heretical doctrines; as was the case, for instance, with Ḥusayn b. Manṣúr al-Ḥalláj (of whom something will be said later in this chapter), who appears to have been a dangerous and able intriguer, in close touch with the Carmathians; with Shaykh Shihábu'd-Dín Yaḥyá Suhrawardí “the Martyr” (al-Maqtúl, put to death in A.D. 1191), the author of the Ḥikmatu'l-Ishráq (“Philosophy of Illumination,”)423a who, as Jámí tells us (Nafaḥát, pp. 683-4) was charged with atheism, heresy, and believing in the ancient philosophers; with Faḍlu'lláh the inventor of the Ḥurúfí doctrine,423b who was put to death by Tímúr in A.D. 1401-2, and his follower Nasímí, the Turkish poet, who was flayed alive at Aleppo in A.D. 1417-8. The garb of a Ṣúfí dervish or religious mendicant was one of the most obvious disguises for a heretical propagandist to assume, and in fact it was on numerous occasions adopted by the fidá'ís of the Assassins.
But even the genuine Ṣúfís differed considerably one from another, for their system was essentially individualistic and little disposed towards propagandism. The fully developed 'Árif, “Gnostic” or Adept, had passed through many grades and a long course of discipline under various pírs, murshids, or spiritual directors, ere he had attained to the Gnosis ('Irfán) which viewed all existing religions as more or less faint utterances of that great underlying Truth with which he had finally entered into communion; and he neither conceived it as possible nor desirable to impart his conceptions of this Truth to any save those few who, by a similar training, were prepared to receive it. The three great classes into which Vaughan divides all mystics, the theosophic, the theopathetic, and the theurgic, are all represented amongst the Ṣúfís; but it is the second which most prevails in the earlier time which we are chiefly considering in this chapter. If we read what is recorded in the hagiologies of al-Qushayrí, al-Yáfi'í, Farídu 'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár, Jámí, and others, concerning the earlier Ṣúfís, such as Ibráhím Adham († A.D. 777-8), and his contemporaries Sufyán ath-Thawrí, Dá'úd of Ṭayy, Abú Hashim and the woman Rábi'a al-'Adawiyya, or of Fuḍayl 'Iyáḍ († A.D. 803), Ma'rúf of Karkh († A.D. 815-6), Bishr b. al-Ḥárith († A.D. 841-2), Aḥmad b. Khidrawayh († A.D. 854-5), al-Muḥásibí († A.D. 857-8), Dhu'n-Nún of Egypt († A.D. 859-860), Sirrí as-Saqatí († A.D. 867) and the like, we find their utterances reflecting little more than a devout quietism, an earnest desire for something deeper and more satisfying to ardent souls than the formalism generally prevalent in Islám, and a passionate love of God for His own sake, not for the sake of the rewards or punishments which He may bestow. The following sayings, taken almost at random from the biographies of some of the abovementioned devotees given by 'Aṭṭár in his Tadhkiratu'l-Awliyá and by Jámí in his Nafaḥát and Baháristán will sufficiently serve to illustrate this point.
Sayings of Ibráhím Adham. “O God, Thou knowest that in mine eyes the Eight Paradises weigh no more than the wing of a gnat compared with that honour which Thou hast shown me in giving me Thy love, or that familiarity which Thou hast given to me by the commemoration of Thy Name, or that freedom from all else which Thou hast vouchsafed to me when I meditate on the Greatness of Thy Glory.” ('Aṭṭár.)
Being once asked why he had abandoned his kingdom of Balkh, he replied—
“One day I was seated on the throne when a mirror was presented to me. I looked therein, and perceived that my destination was the tomb, wherein I should have no friend to cheer me, and that I had before me a long journey for which I had made no provision. I saw a Just Judge, and myself equipped with no proof, and my kingdom grew distasteful to my heart.” ('Aṭṭár.)
A man offered him ten thousand dirhams, but he refused them, saying—
“Wouldst thou for such a sum of money erase my name from the register of Dervishes?” ('Aṭṭár.)
“Three veils must be removed from before the Pilgrim's heart ere the Door of Happiness is opened to him. First, that should the dominion of both worlds be offered to him as an Eternal Gift, he should not rejoice, since whosoever rejoiceth on account of any created thing is still covetous, and ‘the covetous man is debarred’ (from the knowledge of God). The second veil is this, that should he possess the dominion of both worlds, and should it be taken from him, he should not sorrow for his empoverishment, for this is the sign of wrath, and ‘he who is in wrath is tormented.’ The third is that he should not be beguiled by any praise or favour, for whoever is so beguiled is of mean spirit, and such an one is veiled (from the Truth): the Pilgrim must be high-minded.” ('Aṭtár.)
Sayings of Sufyán ath-Thawrí. “When the dervish frequents the rich, know that he is a hypocrite; but when he frequents kings, know that he is a thief.” (Aṭṭár.)
“Glory be to that God who slays our children, and takes away our wealth, and whom withal we love.” ('Aṭṭár.)
“If thou art better pleased when one saith unto thee, ‘Thou art a fine fellow,’ than when one saith unto thee, ‘Thou art a rascal,’ then know that thou art still a bad man.” ('Aṭṭár.)
Sayings of Rábi'a al-'Adawiyya. “The fruit of Wisdom is to turn one's face towards God.” ('Aṭṭár.)
“O God! Give to Thine enemies whatever Thou hast assigned to me of this world's goods, and to Thy friends whatever Thou hast assigned to me in the Life of the Hereafter, for Thou Thyself art sufficient for me.” (Aṭṭár.)
“I ask God's forgiveness for my lack of faithfulness in asking His forgiveness.” (Jámí.)
“O God! If I worship Thee for fear of Hell, send me to Hell; and if I worship Thee in hopes of Paradise, withhold Paradise from me; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, then withhold not from me the Eternal Beauty.” (Aṭṭár.)
Sayings of Fuḍayl b. 'Iyáḍ. “I worship God in love, because I cannot refrain from worshipping Him.” (Jámí.)
“I would that I were ill, so that I need not attend congregational prayers, for ‘there is safety in solitude.’” ('Aṭṭár.)
“Whoever fears to be alone and craves for men's society is far from salvation.” ('Aṭṭár.)
“All things fear him who fears God, while he who fears aught else but God is in fear of all things.” ('Aṭṭár.)
It would be easy to multiply these aphorisms of the early Ṣúfís a hundredfold, but they are sufficient to illustrate the main characteristics of Muhammadan mysticism in its earliest stage: to wit, asceticism, quietism, intimate and personal love of God, and disparagement of mere lip-service or formal worship. This ascetic Ṣúfíism is regarded by von Kremer as the early Arabian type, which, if influenced at all from without, was influenced rather by Christian monasticism than by Persian, Greek or Indian ideas.
It is with Ṣúfís like Abú Yazíd (Báyazíd) of Bisṭám, a Persian, and the great-grandson of a Magian (his grandfather Ádam being the first of the family to embrace Islám), and Junayd of Baghdad (also, according to Jámí, a Persian), called Sayyidu'ṭ-Ṭá'ifa, “the Chief of the Community” that, in the latter part of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth centuries of our era, the pantheistic element first makes its definite appearance. The former is said427a to have declared that he was “an unfathomable ocean, without beginning and without end;” that he was the Throne ('arsh) of God, the “Preserved Tablet” (lawḥ-i-maḥfúdh), the “Pen” or Creative Word of God, the prophets Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and the Archangels Gabriel, Michael, and Isráfíl; “for,” added he, “whatever attains to True Being is absorbed into God and becomes God.” “Praise be to Me,” he is reported to have said on another occasion; “I am the Truth; I am the True God; I must be celebrated by Divine Praises.” 'Aṭṭár also reports him as saying, “Verily I am God: there is no God but me, therefore worship me;” and adds that “when his words waxed great, so that the formalists could not stomach them, seven times in succession they thrust him forth from Bisṭám.” Yet he remarked on one occasion, “Should I speak of my greater experiences, you could not bear to hear them; therefore I tell you only somewhat of the lesser ones.”
Junayd spoke much in the same fashion. “For thirty years,” said he, “God spoke with mankind by the tongue of Junayd, though Junayd was no longer there, and men knew it not.” “The supreme degree of the Doctrine of the Divine Unity is the denial of the Divine Unity.” In short, with these men, whom the Ṣúfís reckon amongst their greatest teachers, a very thorough-going pantheism is superadded to the quietism of the older mystics. The transition is in reality a natural one: from regarding God as the only proper object of love and subject of meditation; man as a mere instrument under His controlling Power, “like the pen in the hands of the scribe;” and the Spiritual Life alone as important, to regarding God as the One Reality and the Phenomenal World as a mere Mirage or Shadow of Being, is but a short step. It is noteworthy that both Báyazíd and Junayd were Persians, and may very likely have imported into the mysticism which they so ardently embraced ideas long endemic in their country, for it was certainly the Persian Ṣúfís who went to the greatest lengths in developing the Pantheistic aspect of Ṣúfíism; yet we must bear in mind that, as appears from a study of other forms of Mysticism, the step from Quietism to Pantheism is neither long nor difficult.
Here it behoves us to say something of the celebrated Ḥusayn b. Manṣúr al-Ḥalláj, who, as has been already hinted, was probably, to judge by the oldest and most credible records, a much less innocuous teacher than even the more advanced Ṣúfís, though by the later mystics, such as Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár, Ḥáfidh, and the like, he is regarded as a hero, whose only fault, if fault he had, was “that he divulged the secret.” Of this man, who flourished at the beginning of the tenth century, and was put to death for heterodoxy during the Caliphate of al-Muqtadir in A.D. 922, chiefly, as commonly asserted, because in one of his ecstasies he had cried out, “I am the Truth!” (i.e., God), the most circumstantial of the older accounts are given in the Fihrist (pp. 190-192), and in 'Aríb's Supplement to Ṭabarí's History (ed. de Goeje, pp. 86-108), to which Ibn Miskawayh's narrative is appended by the learned editor. According to the Fihrist he was a Persian, but whether of Níshápúr, Merv, Ṭáliqán, Ray, or Kúhistán is uncertain. He is there described as “a wily fellow, expert in conjuring, affecting the doctrines of the Ṣúfís, adorning his discourse with their expressions, and claiming acquaintance with every science, though in fact devoid of all. He knew something of Alchemy, and was an ignorant, pushing, headstrong fellow, over-bold against authorities, meddling in high matters, eager to subvert governments, claiming divinity amongst his disciples, preaching the Doctrine of Incarnation, pretending to kings that he was of the Shí'a, and to the common folk that he held the opinions of the Ṣúfís … claiming that the Deity had become incarnate in him, and that he was God (Mighty and Holy is He, and far above what such as these assert!).” Being arrested in the course of his wanderings (in A.D. 913, according to Ṭabarí, iii, p. 2289), he was examined by Abu'l-Ḥasan 'Alí b. 'Ísá, the wazír of the Caliph al-Muqtadir, who found him “totally ignorant of the Qur'án and its ancillary sciences of Jurisprudence, Tradition, &c., and of Poetry and Arabic philology,” and told him that “it would be better for him to study how to purify himself and observe the obligations of Religion than to compose treatises in which he knew not what he said, uttering such wild rhapsodies as, ‘There descendeth the effulgent Lord of Light, who flasheth after His shining,’429a and the like.” After being affixed for a while (apparently with cords, not nails) to a cross or gibbet first on one and then on the other side of the Tigris in the presence of the soldiers of the guard, he was committed to prison, where he strove to win favour by conforming in some measure to the Sunnite ritual. He was originally one of the missionaries or propagandists of 'Alí ar-Riḍá, the Eighth Imám of the Shí'a of the “Sect of the Twelve,” in which capacity he was arrested and punished by scourging in Kúhistán, in Persia. He attempted to win over Abú Sahl Naw-Bakhtí, who offered to believe in him, together with many others, if he would produce from the air not an ordinary dirham, but one inscribed with his name and that of his father; but this al-Ḥalláj declined to attempt. He pretended to perform miracles, such as stretching forth his hand into the air and withdrawing it filled with musk or coins, which he scattered amongst the spectators. The titles of forty-six of his books and treatises are enumerated in the Fihrist (p. 192), and in one of them, it is said, occurred the words, “I am He who drowned the people of Noah and destroyed 'Ád and Thamúd.”
430aThe first appearance of al-Ḥalláj, according to the same authority, was in A.D. 911-2, ten years before his cruel execution in A.D. 922. He was betrayed at Sús by a woman who had observed from her house the assemblies which frequented his domicile, and, though he strove to deny his identity, he was recognised by one of his former disciples by a certain scar resulting from a wound on his head. After he had been scourged with a thousand stripes, and his hands and feet cut off, he was put to death, and his body burnt with fire.
According to 'Aríb, al-Ḥalláj pretended to be all things to all men—a Sunní to the Sunnís, a Shí'í to the Shí'a, and a Mu'tazi- 'Aríb's account of al-Ḥalláj. lite to the Mu'tazilites. Medicine, as well as Alchemy and Conjuring, is numbered amongst his accomplishments. He claimed to be an Incarnation of God, “and grievous were his calumnies against God and His apostles.” To his disciples he would say, to one, “Thou art Noah;” to another, “Thou art Moses;” to another, “Thou art Muḥammad;” adding, “I have caused their spirits to return to your bodies.” The historian aṣ-Ṣúlí, who had himself repeatedly met al-Ḥalláj, described him as “an ignorant fellow who pretended to be clever, an unready speaker who would pass as eloquent, and a rogue who clothed himself in woollen raiment (ṣúf) and made a parade of piety.”
430bTo what has been said about him, Ibn Miskawayh and the Kitábu'l-'Uyún (cited by de Goeje at the foot of 'Aríb's less detailed notice) add the following particulars. The attention of Ḥámid the wazír was directed to al-Ḥalláj by rumours of the influence which he was obtaining over the lower grades of officials and the common folk, who believed that he raised the dead to life, compelled the jinn to serve him and to bring Accounts of Ibn Miskawayh and the Kitábu'l-'Uyún. him whatever he pleased, and performed such miracles of the former prophets as he pleased. Three persons, one as-Simarí, a scribe and a Há-shimite, were indicated as his “prophets” (nabí), he himself claiming to be God; and these, being arrested and interrogated by Ḥámid, admitted that they were his missionaries and regarded him as God, able to raise the dead to life. All this was strenuously denied by al-Ḥalláj, who was at this time confined in prison, but allowed to receive whom he would, and who, besides his proper name, was known by the alias of Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Fárisí. A daughter of his “prophet” as-Simarí gave a detailed and most damaging statement of his sayings and practices, and in the houses of as-Simarí, Ḥaydara, and al-Qunná'í the Háshimite were found many of his writings, some inscribed with gold on Chinese paper,431a brocade and silk, and richly bound in morocco. Then two of his missionaries in Khurásán, named Ibn Bishr and Shákir, were arrested, and the instructions which al-Ḥalláj had issued to them and his other agents were found, whereby the case was made heavier against him. Other of his pretended miracles are related, as, for instance, how he could expand his body so as to fill the whole room where he was, and how he restored a dead parrot to life for the Caliph al-Muqtadir, who was so far impressed by his achievements that he was very unwilling to consent to his death. Al-Ḥalláj was a great traveller, and visited India in order to see the celebrated Rope Trick, in which a rope is thrown up into the air and the performer (in this case a woman) climbs up it and disappears. Another of the heresies discovered by Hámid in his books consisted in elaborate instructions whereby the ceremony of the Pilgrimage could be performed anywhere, in a room specially prepared for the purpose; which heresy, along with others, he pretended to have derived from the writings of Ḥasan of Baṣra. On this he was condemned to the cruel death above mentioned (scourging, amputation, decapitation and cremation), and the execution thereof was entrusted to the Captain of the Guard (Ṣáḥibu' sh-Shurṭa) Muḥammad b. 'Abdu'ṣ-Ṣamad, who was specially cautioned not to give ear or pay heed to anything that he might say. After his head had been exposed for a while on the bridge over the Tigris, it was sent to Khurásán; but his disciples there maintained (as did the Gnostics, and after them the Muhammadans, concerning Christ)432a that not he, but one of his foes transformed into his likeness, suffered death and mutilation; and some of them even pretended to have seen and conversed with him since his reported death. The booksellers were made to take an oath that they would neither buy nor sell any of his writings. The period of his captivity from his first arrest till his execution was eight years seven months and eight days.
The following further particulars from al-Hamadhání are added by de Goeje at the foot of his edition of 'Aríb (pp. 96-101). Al-Ḥalláj's disciple as-Simarí, examined by Ḥámid, stated that his master had in mid-winter, when travelling with him near Iṣṭakhr in Fárs, produced a fresh cucumber for him out of the snow, and that he had actually eaten it; whereupon Ḥámid cursed him for a liar and commanded those who were present to smite him on the mouth. Another witness stated that the fruits apparently produced from nothing by al-Ḥalláj turned to dung as soon as men took them in their hands. There was a great flood in the Tigris shortly after his execution, and his followers declared that this was because the ashes of his burnt body had been cast into the river; while some of them pretended to have seen him on the road to Nahruwán riding on an ass, and to have heard him say that a beast transformed into his likeness had undergone the punishment destined for him. Amongst the Arabic verses of al-Ḥalláj cited are the following (p. 97):—
“Ne'er for my heart did I comfort or pleasure or peace obtain:
Wherefore, indeed, should I seek them, prepared as I was for
pain?
I mounted the steed of a perilous quest, and wonder is mine
At him who hopeth in hazardous pathways safety to gain.'Tis as though I were caught in waves which toss me about,
Now up, now down, now down, now up in the perilous main.
There burns a fire in my vitals, there dwells a grief in my
heart;
Summon my eyes to witness, for my tears bear witness plain.”
Some of the Ṣúfís, adds al-Hamadhání, claim that to al-Ḥalláj was revealed the Mystery, yea the Mystery of all Mysteries. He is reported to have said, “O God, Thou lovest even such as vex Thee: how then shalt Thou not love such as are afflicted for Thy sake?” On one occasion Ibn Naṣr al-Qushúrí was sick, and desired to eat an apple, but none were to be obtained, till al-Ḥalláj stretched forth his hand and drew it back with an apple which he claimed to have gathered from the gardens of Paradise. “But,” objected a bystander, “the fruit of Paradise is incorruptible, and in this apple there is a maggot.” “This,” answered al-Ḥalláj, “is because it hath come forth from the Mansion of Eternity to the Abode of Decay: therefore to its heart hath corruption found its way!” The author adds that those present applauded his answer more than his achievement; and, after reporting a conversation between him and ash-Shiblí, states that the name al-Ḥalláj (“the wool-carder”) was metaphorical, and was given to him because he could read man's most secret thoughts, and extract from their hearts the kernel of their imaginings as the wool-carder separates the cotton-grains from the cotton. Others, however, say that the name was given to him by a wool-carder at Wásiṭ whom he had miraculously assisted in his work. The Súfís differ as to whether he was of them or not. During his execution a woman named Fáṭima of Níshápúr was sent to him by ash-Shiblí (a recognised saint of the Ṣúfís) to ask him, amongst other things, what Ṣúfíism was; to which he replied: “That which is mine, for by God I never distinguished for a moment between pleasure and pain!”
The following additional particulars from Ibnu'l-Jawzí are also given by de Goeje at the foot of 'Aríb's text (pp. 101-8). On Wednesday and Thursday, December 1-2, A.D. 912, al-Ḥalláj was crucified alive on the east shore of the Tigris, and on the two following days on the west side.434a In the following year (having, it would appear, been released after this first severe punishment) he was arrested again at Sús with one of his followers, and brought into Baghdad on a camel as a public spectacle, while a herald proclaimed before him, “This is one of the dá'ís of the Carmathians: take note of him!” His subsequent examination before the wazír 'Alí b. 'Ísá is described as on p. 429 supra, and his second crucifixion and imprisonment. Again, under the year A.H. 309 (A.D. 921-2), in recording his death, the same author adds some further details. Al-Ḥalláj, whose grandfather is said to have been a Magian of Bayḍá (“the White Castle,” Dizh-i-Sapía) in Fárs, was brought up in Wásiṭ or Shushtar. Later he came to Baghdad, and associated with the Ṣúfís, including their great Shaykhs al-Junayd and Sufyán ath-Thawrí. Then he travelled widely in India, Khurásán, Transoxiana, and Turkistán. Men differ concerning him, some regarding him as a magician, others as a saint able to work wonders, and others as an impostor. The opinion of Abú Bakr aṣ-Ṣúlí concerning him, recorded on p. 430 supra, is cited again in nearly the same words. His professed object in visiting India was, according to a contemporary traveller who sailed in the same ship with him, to study magic; and he declared himself able to compose verses equal to those of the Qur'án—rank blasphemy worthy of death in the eyes of all good Muslims! Ibnu'l-Jawzi then mentions that he had composed a monograph on the sayings and doings of al-Ḥalláj, to which he refers the reader for further information. The same heresies (Incarnation, “Return” or Re-incarnation, and Anthropomorphism) are charged against al-Ḥalláj as by the authors already cited. His execution is stated to have taken place on Tuesday, March 26, A.D. 922. He walked fearlessly and even exultingly to the place of execution, reciting the following verses (see p. 363 supra):—
“My Friend doth unrelated stand to aught of ruth or clemency:
From His own cup He bade me sup, for such is hospitality!
But when the Wine had circled round, for sword and carpet435a
called He.
Who with the Dragon drinketh Wine in Summer, such his fate
shall be!”
Just before his head was struck off, he bade his disciples be of good cheer, for he would return to earth again in thirty days. Three years later three of his disciples, Ḥaydara, ash-Sha'rání, and Ibn Manṣúr, who refused to renounce their belief in him, were decapitated and crucified by Názúk, the Captain of the Guard.
Adh-Dhahabí also wrote a monograph (probably no longer extant) on al-Ḥalláj, and in his Annals he speaks briefly of him as consorting with al-Junayd, 'Amr b. 'Uthmán al-Makkí and other Ṣúfí Shaykhs, and feigning an ascetic life, but being led astray by his megalomania and love of power until he “quitted the circle of the Faith.” Nevertheless, says this author, many of the later Ṣúfís almost deify him, and even the great “Proof of Islám” al-Ghazzálí in his Mishkátu'l-Anwár makes excuses for him, “explaining away his sayings in a sense admirable enough, but far removed from the obvious meaning of the Arabic language. He is also mentioned by Abú Sa'íd an-Naqqásh in his History of the Ṣúfís as accused by some of magical practices and by others of heresy (zindiqa), and indeed the general view of some half-dozen other writers of authority cited by adh-Dhahabí is to the effect that al-Ḥalláj was “a detestable infidel” (Káfir khabíth).
I have dwelt thus fully on the oldest and most authentic accounts of this remarkable man because he became one of the favourite heroes and saints of most of the later Ṣúfís, the Persian mystical poets in particular constantly referring to him with approval and even enthusiasm. Moreover, he may probably be credited with introducing to a large extent the more avowedly pantheistic and thaumaturgic forms of Ṣúfíism with which henceforth we constantly meet. Farídu'd-Dín 'Aṭṭár speaks of him in his Memoirs of the Saints as “that Martyr of God in the Way of God, that Lion of the Thicket of the Search after Truth … that Diver in the Tempestuous Sea,” &c., praises his character and attainments, celebrates his miracles, and adds that “some charge him with practising magic, while some externalists denounce him as an infidel.” “I am astonished,” he remarks a little lower, alluding to Moses and the Burning Bush, “at those who consider it proper that the words, ‘Verily I am God,’ should come from a Tree which was as though non-existent, and who yet regard it as improper that the words, ‘I am the Truth,’ should come from the Tree of Ḥusayn b. Manṣur's being when Ḥusayn was no longer there.”437a Abú Sa'íd b. Abi'l-Khayr, the earliest Persian mystical poet, declared that al-Ḥalláj was unequalled in his time, either in the East or the West, in the exaltation of his ecstasies;437b and Jámí, who cites this opinion, as well as Ḥáfidh and most of the later mystics, speak in similar terms of admiration.
It was at a later period, probably during the latter part of the eleventh century, that Ṣúfíism was gradually moulded by al-Ghazzálí and others into a more or less philosophical system, and was also, to a considerable extent, brought into alliance with orthodoxy. In this connection it is a notable fact that Saná'í, 'Aṭṭár, and Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, the three greatest of the older Persian mystical poets, were all Sunnís; their poems abound with laudatory mentions of Abú Bakr and 'Umar, and they are the declared foes of the Mu'tazilites and Philosophers; while the greatest Shí'ite poets of Persia in early times, Firdawsí and Náṣir-i-Khusraw the Isma'ílí, had little of the Ṣúfí about them. Besides Firdawsí we find mentioned in that section of the Majálisu'l-Múminín, or “Assemblies of [Shí'ite] Believers,” which deals with Persian poets claimed as their own by the Shí'a, the following names: Asadí, Ghaḍá'irí of Ray, Pindár (or Bundár) of Ray, Abu'l-Mafákhir of Ray, Qiwámí of Ray, Kháqání of Shírwán, Anwarí, Salmán of Sáwa, Yamínu'd-Dín of Faryúmad, and practically no other early poets of any eminence. Even the great Sa'dí's grave at Shíráz is neglected, and has been insulted, by his later compatriots because he is known to have been a Sunní.437c The immense popularity enjoyed by Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí in Turkey, where his Mathnawí is the object of the most affectionate and careful study, especially amongst the Mevleví (or so-called “Dancing”) Dervishes, who take their name from him, their great “Master” (Mevla, the Turkish pronunciation of Mawlá), is no doubt due in great measure to the fact that, apart from his transcendental rhapsodies, he is “orthodox.” And here it may be added that all dervishes or faqírs (both words meaning “poor,” i.e., religious mendicants who have embraced a life of voluntary poverty for God's sake) are professedly more or less Ṣúfís, though many of them are, of course, ignorant fellows, who, notwithstanding their glib talk of “ecstasies,” “stations,” and “Annihilation in God,” have very little comprehension of the real scope and purport of the Ṣúfí doctrine.
Of this doctrine it is necessary in conclusion to give a brief sketch, premising that in the form in which it is here presented it is to some extent the product of a later age, and is to be found most fully elaborated in the works of poets like 'Iráqí and Jámí. In Arabic the poems of 'Umar ibnu'l-Fáriḍ and the voluminous writings of the great mystic of the West Shaykh Muḥyiyyu'd-Dín ibnu'l-'Arabí have not yet received the attention they merit from students of Ṣúfíism who choose to regard it as essentially and exclusively Persian in its origin, and who consequently confine their attention to its Persian manifestations.
The Ṣúfí system starts from the conception that not only True Being, but Beauty and Goodness, belong exclusively to The Ṣúfí system. God alone really exists. God, though they are manifested in a thousand mirrors in the Phenomenal World. “God was,” says one of their favourite aphorisms, “and there was naught beside Him;” to which are sometimes added the words, “and it is now even as it was then.” God, in short, is Pure Being, and what is “other than God” (má siwá'u'lláh) only exists in so far as His Being is infused into it, or mirrored in it. He is also Pure Good (Khayr-i-maḥḍ) and Absolute Beauty: whence He is often called by the mystics in their pseudo-erotic poems, “the Real Beloved,” “the Eternal Darling,” and the like. Thus Jámí says, in a passage of which I have published a full translation in another place:439a —
“Whatever heart
Doth yield to Love, He charms it. In His love
The heart hath life. Longing for Him, the soul
Hath victory. That heart which seems to love
The fair ones of this world loves Him alone.
Beware! Say not, ‘He is All-Beautiful,
And we His lovers!’ Thou art but the glass,
And He the Face confronting it which casts
Its image in the mirror. He alone
Is manifest, and thou in truth art hid.
Pure Love, like Beauty, coming but from Him,
Reveals itself in thee. If steadfastly
Thou canst regard, thou wilt at length perceive
He is the Mirror also; He alike
The Treasure and the Casket. ‘I’ and ‘Thou’
Have here no place, and are but phantasies
Vain and unreal.”
This, then, is how the Ṣúfís understand the Doctrine of the Divine Unity (Tawḥíd): not merely is there “no god but Being, NotBeing, and Phenomenal or Contingent Being. God,” as the Muhammadan profession of Faith declares, but there is nothing but God. The World of Phenomena and of the Senses is a mere Mirage—a reflection of Being on Not-Being, manifesting the Attributes of Being as the reflection manifests its original, but not really participating in its nature. An illustration commonly employed by the Ṣúfís is that of the Sun (which typifies Being) reflected in a pool of water (Not-Being). The reflection of the Sun (the Phenomenal World) is entirely “contingent”: it may be blotted out instantly by a passing cloud, or marred by a sudden gust of wind; it is entirely dependent on the Sun, while the Sun is absolutely independent of it; yet, while it lasts, it more or less faithfully reveals the Nature and Attributes of its Unchanging Prototype. This idea is finely expressed in one of the odes of Shams-i-Tabríz, rendered into English verse by my friend Mr. R. A. Nicholson (op. cit., p. 343):—
“Poor copies out of heaven's original,
Pale earthly pictures mouldering to decay,
What care although your beauties break and fall,
When that which gave them life endures for aye?”
It is the essential nature of Beauty to desire to reveal and manifest itself, which quality it derives from the Eternal Cause of Creation. Beauty. “I was a Hidden Treasure,” God is described by the Ṣúfís as saying to David, “and I wished to be known, so I created creation that I might be known.” Now a thing can only be known through its opposite—Light by Darkness, Good by Evil, Health by Sick- The Nature of Evil. ness, and so on; hence Being could only reveal itself through Not Being, and through the product of this admixture (to use a not very accurate expression), namely, the Phenomenal World. Thus Eternal Beauty manifests itself, as it were, by a sort of self-negation; and what we call “Evil” is a necessary consequence of this manifestation, so that the Mystery of Evil is really identical with the Mystery of Creation, and inseparable therefrom. But Evil must not be regarded as a separate and independent entity: just as Darkness is the mere negation of Light, so Evil is merely the Not-Good, or, in other words, the Non-Existent. All Phenomenal Being, on the other hand, necessarily contains some elements of Good, just as the scattered rays of the pure, dazzling white light which has passed through the prism are still light, their light more or less “coloured” and weakened. It is from this fall from the “World of Colourlessness” ('álam-i-bí-rangí) that all the strife and conflict apparent in this world result, as it is said in the Mathnawí:—
“When Colourlessness became the captive of Colour,
441a
A Moses was at war with a Moses.”
And so speaks Jámí:—
“Thou art Absolute Being; all else is naught but a Phantasm,
For in Thy universe all things are one.
Thy world-captivating Beauty, to display its perfections,
Appears in thousands of mirrors, but it is one.
Although Thy Beauty accompanies all the beautiful,
In truth the Unique and Incomparable Heart-enslaver is one.
All this turmoil and strife in the world is from love of Him:
It hath now become known that the Ultimate Source of the Mischief
is one.”
From another aspect, which harmonises better with the Neo-Platonist doctrine (to which, as we have already seen, Ṣúfíism was apparently so much indebted for its later more philosophical form), the Grades of Being may be conceived of as a series of Emanations, which become weaker, more unreal, more material and less luminous as they recede further from the Pure Light of Absolute Being.
So far we have spoken chiefly of the “Arc of Descent,” but there is also the “Arc of Ascent,” whereby Man, the final product of this evolutionary chain, returns to his original home, and, by “Annihilation in God” (Faná fi'lláh), is once more merged in the Divine Essence which is the only True Being: as it is said, “Everything returns to its Source.” Here it is that the Ethics, as opposed to the Metaphysics, of Ṣúfíism begin. Evil is, as we have seen, illusion; its cure is to get rid of the ignorance which causes us to take the Phantasms of the World of Sense for Realities. All sinful desire, all sorrow and pain, have their root in the idea of Self, and Self is an illusion. The first and greatest step in the Ṣúfí “Path” (Ṭaríqat) is, then, to escape from self, and even an earthly love may, to some extent, effect this deliverance. It is here especially that the emotional character of Ṣúfíism, so different from the cold and bloodless theories of the Indian philosophies, is apparent. Love here, as with so many of the Mystics in all ages and all countries, is the Sovereign Alchemy, transmuting the base metal of humanity into the Divine Gold. Once more let Jámí speak:—
442a“Though in this world a hundred tasks thou tryest,
'Tis Love alone which from thyself will save thee.
Even from earthly love thy face avert not,
Since to the Real it may serve to raise thee.
Ere A, B, C, are rightly apprehended,
How canst thou con the pages of the Qur'án?
A sage (so heard I) unto whom a scholar
Came craving counsel on the course before him,
Said, ‘If thy steps be strangers to Love's pathways,
Depart, learn love, and then return before me!
For, should'st thou fear to drink wine from Form's flagon,
Thou canst not drain the draughts of the Ideal.
But yet beware! Be not by Form belated;
Strive rather with all speed the bridge to traverse.
If to the bourn thou fain would'st bear thy baggage
Upon the bridge let not thy footsteps linger.’”
Hence the Ṣúfís say: “Al-majázu qanṭaratu'l-Ḥaqíqat” (“The Phantasmal is the Bridge to the Real”): by the typal love the Pilgrim (sálik) learns to forget self and to see only the beloved, until he at length realises that what he loves in his beloved is a mere dim reflection of the Eternal Beauty, which “appears in thousands of mirrors, yet is but One.” Of this rather than of the cold metaphysics of Buddhism might Sir Edwin Arnold have been writing where he says:442b —
“For love to clasp Eternal Beauty close,
For glory to be Lord of self, for pleasure
To live beyond the gods; for countless wealth
To lay up lasting treasureOf perfect service rendered, duties done
In charity, soft speech, and stainless days:
These riches shall not fade away in life,
Nor any death dispraise.
While his equally beautiful definition of Nirvâna443a admirably describes the Ṣúfí idea of “Annihilation in God”:—
“Seeking nothing, he gains all;
Foregoing self, the Universe grows ‘I’:
If any teach Nirvâna is to cease,
Say unto such they lie.If any teach Nirvâna is to live,
Say unto such they err, not knowing this,
Nor what light shines beyond their broken lamps,
Nor lifeless, timeless bliss.”
Ṣúfíism has been discussed by other writers so much more fully than most of the topics mentioned in these pages that I do not propose to devote more space to it in this volume. As already remarked, it essentially differs from most of the creeds hitherto described in its latitudinarian and non-proselytising character. It seeks not so much to convert those of other faiths as to understand what particular aspect of Truth each of these creeds represents. How it understands the Muhammadan doctrine of the Divine Unity we have already seen. In the Dualism of the Magians and the Manichæans it sees typified the interaction of Being and Not Being wherefrom the Phenomenal World results. The Christian Trinity typifies the Light of Being, the Mirror of the purified human soul, and the Rays of the Divine Outpouring. Even from Idolatry there are lessons to be learned.444a How far removed is this attitude of mind from that of the dogmatic and exclusive creeds which have hitherto occupied our attention!
444bAs has been already observed, Arabic continued during the whole of the period which we are now discussing to be the chief literary medium in Persia, not only for prose but for verse. Nevertheless Persian again begins, under those semi-independent dynasties, the Ṣaffárids and Sámánids, and even under the earlier Ṭáhirids, to be employed as a literary language: more, indeed, for verse than prose, but to some extent for both. In this chapter we shall have to consider chiefly the poets of Persian nationality, first those who used their mother-tongue, and secondly those who employed the Arabic language.
Our authorities for the latter are fuller, though, with one exception, not much more accessible, than for the former; and Authorities for the Arabicwriting poets. (i) The Yatíma of ath-Tha'álibí. the chief one is the Yatímatu'd-Dahr (or “Unique Pearl of the Age”) of Abú Manṣúr 'Abdu'l-Malik b. Muḥammad b. Isma'íl ath-Tha'álibí445a of Níshá-púr in Khurásán, who, according to Ibn Khallikán, was born in A.D. 961 and died in A.D. 1038. This valuable anthology of Arabic verse was published at Damascus in A.D. 1885 and following years in four volumes; of which the first deals in ten chapters (pp. 536) with the poets of Syria (including the “Circle of Sayfu'd-Dawla,” Abú Firás, the House of Ḥamdán and al-Mutanabbí), Egypt, the Maghrib and Mosul; the second, in ten chapters (pp. 316), with the poets of Baghdad and Arabian 'Iráq who flourished under the patronage of the noble House of Buwayh; the third, in ten chapters (pp. 290), with the poets of Persia (except Khurásán), who were patronised by the Buwayhids of Persia and their ministers (notably the Ṣáḥib Isma'íl b. 'Abbad), and the rulers of Ṭabar-istán, especially the Ziyárid Qábús b. Washmgír, a glowing encomium of whose virtues and talents concludes the volume; and the fourth and last, also in ten chapters (pp. 332), with the poets of Khurásán and Khwárazm, who flourished under the protection of the House of Sámán. This work is a perfect treasury of information as to the literary condition of Persia in this period (circ. A.H. 350-403 = A.D. 961-1012), and gives us an extraordinary idea of the extent to which the Arabic language was cultivated throughout Persia, even as far as Khwárazm, at this time; for here we find Persian poets addressing their Persian patrons in excellent Arabic verse, occasionally extemporised on the spur of the moment; so that it would seem that at this epoch Arabic must have been as well understood in Persia by persons of education as English is in Wales at the present time; and that there were eloquent Persians then who could wield the Arabic language as skilfully and successfully as several Welsh orators can the English language in this our day. This is certainly a far closer analogy than that afforded by the Greek and Latin verses now produced in England by classical scholars, which, however good they may be, are the outcome of much thought and labour, and lack, I imagine, the quality of spontaneity. In order to ascertain the effect produced by these Arabic verses composed by Persian poets on one whose native language was Arabic, and who knew no Persian, though deeply learned in his own tongue and its literature, I seized the occasion of a visit paid to me at Cambridge two or three summers ago by Shaykh Abu'n-Naṣr, formerly répétiteur of Arabic at the admirably organised École des Langues Orientales Vivantes of Paris, to read with him some thirty pages of the last volume of the Yatíma, dealing with the poets of Khurásán; and he assured me that the verses were excellent Arabic, and, as a rule, so far as the language went, showed no trace of foreign origin. The lack of Persian verse produced at this epoch does not, then, arise from any lack either of talent or of literary ability, but simply from the fact that it was still the fashion to use Arabic instead of the native speech for literary purposes; and I cannot help feeling astonished that those who concern themselves with Persian literature (unless they regard literature as merely expressing the speech and not at all the genius of a people) should have hitherto ignored almost entirely this rich field of study, with which those scholars whose interest lies primarily with the Arabs and other Semitic peoples are more naturally disinclined to trouble themselves. Indeed the only considerable study of the Yatíma (in so far as it concerns Persia) with which I am acquainted is M. Barbier de Meynard's interesting series of articles in the Journal Asiatique for 1853 (pp. 169-239), and 1854 (pp. 291-361), entitled Tableau Littéraire du Khorassan et de la Transoxiane au IVe siècle de l'Hégire, which contains a translation of pp. 2-114 or the fourth volume of the Yatíma. If we are entitled to look for the Celtic genius in the poems of Moore, Yeats, or Lewis Morris, surely we may expect to discover some characteristics of the Persian mind in these poets, who, though Arabic in speech (at least for literary purposes), were Íránian by race.
With the precursors of the Yatíma (such as the Ḥamásas; the “Classes,” or Ṭabaqát, of Ibn Qutayba and Abú 'Abdi'lláh Supplement to the Yatíma. Muḥammad b. Sallám al-Jumaḥí; the Kitábu'l-Aghání , &c.),447a we need not here further concern ourselves, but a few words must be said concerning its supplements, which, unfortunately, since they exist only in rare manuscripts, I have not been able at present to read or examine at leisure. Two only need be mentioned, of which The Dumyatu 'l-Qaṣr. the first and most important is the Dumyatu 'l-Qaṣr of al-Ḥusayn b. 'Alí al-Bákharzí († A.D. 1074-5). Of this work the British Museum possesses at least two manuscripts (Add. 9994 and Add. 22,374), and its contents are fully described at pp. 265-271 of the old Arabic Catalogue. It comprises seven chapters, of which the first treats of the poets of the Arabian Desert and Ḥijáz (27 notices); the second of the poets of Syria, Diyár Bakr, Mesopotamia, Ádharbayján, and other lands west of Persia proper (70 notices); the third of the poets of 'Iráq (64 notices); the fourth of the poets of Ray, al-Jibál, Isfahán, Párs, and Kirmán (72 notices); the fifth of the poets of Jurján, Astarábád, Qúmis, Dihistán, and Khwárazm (55 notices); the sixth of the poets of Khurásán, Kúhistán Bust, Sístán, and Ghazna (225 notices); and the seventh of eminent literary men who were not poets (20 notices). In this work one is struck not only by the very large number of natives of Persia who appear as the authors of Arabic verse, but by the essentially Persian names or titles of many of them. Some were recent converts from Zoroastrianism (perhaps in some cases actual Zoroastrians), such as Ibn Mahabzud (i.e., Máh-afzúd) “the Magian” (al-Majúsí), and Mahyár b. Marzúya of Daylam, who was converted to Islám in A.D. 1003-4 by the Sharíf ar-Raḍí, a much more famous poet than himself;448a others have names, such as Khusraw Fírúz, Durustúya, and Faná-Khusraw (for Panáh-Khusraw), or titles, such as Dihkhudá, Dív-dádí, so essentially Persian that no doubt as to their origin is possible. Other later works of the same class are the Zaynatu'z-Zamán of Shamsu'd-Dín Muḥammad of Andakhúd, the Kharídatu'l-Qaṣr of 'Imádu'd-Dín al-Kátib al-Iṣfahání, &c.
For the Persian-writing poets of Persia the chief primary authorities now extant are the Chahár Maqála, or “Four Primary sources for Persianwriting poets of this period. Discourses” of the Ghúrid court-poet Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí of Samarqand (written about A.D. 1155), and the Lubábu'l Albáb of Muḥammad 'Awfí (written in the first half of the thirteenth century). Of the former I published in the J. R. A. S. for 1899 The Chahár Maqála. a complete translation (obtainable also as a tirage-à-part ), based on the Tihrán lithographed edition (A.H. 1305 = A.D. 1887-8) and the two British Museum manuscripts (Or. 2,956 and Or. 3507); while 'Awfí's Lubáb. the latter, based on the Elliot Codex described by N. Bland in the J. R. A. S., vol. ix, pp. 112 et seqq., and the Berlin Codex (Sprenger 318 = No. 637 of Pertsch's Catalogue), will form the next volume of my Persian Historical Text Series.449a Another important work (unfor- Abú Ṭáhir al-Khátúní. tunately, as it would appear, no longer extant) was the Manáqibu'sh-Shu'ará (“Traits of the Poets”) of Abú Ṭáhir al-Khátúní,449b a well-known poet and writer of the Seljúq period. All these authorities were used directly and indirectly by Dawlatsháh (wrote in A.D. 1487), and by the later compilers of Tadhkiras (“Memoirs”) of the Persian poets; and 'Awfí in particular is extensively cited by Riḍa-qulí Khán, the author of one of the most modern and most complete works of this Asadí's Lughat-iFurs. nature, the Majma'u'l-Fuṣahá (2 vols., lith. Tihrán, A.H. 1295 = A.D. 1878). Another ancient though somewhat scanty source of information, which at least serves to show us how many Persian-writing poets flourished before the middle of the eleventh century of our era, is the Lughat-i-Furs, or Persian Lexicon, of Asadí of Ṭús, composed about A.D. 1060, and edited from the old Vatican MS. (Pers. XXII), transcribed in A.D. 1332, by Dr. Paul Horn (Strassburg, 1897).450a In this most valuable work verses of some seventy-eight poets, many of them otherwise unknown or scarcely known even by name, are cited.
Having now considered the sources available to us for a study of the literary phenomena presented by Persia at this period, we shall consider first the Persian- and then the Arabic-writing poets who flourished under the Ṭáhirid, Ṣaffárid, Sámánid, and other contemporary dynasties, deriving our information concerning the former chiefly from 'Awfí's Lubáb, and for the latter from Tha'álibí's Yatíma. The latter work has been already sufficiently described, but, pending the publication of my edition of the latter, some account of its contents is here given.
Of the author of this work, Muḥammad 'Awfí, nearly all that is known will be found on pp. 749-750 of Rieu's Description of 'Awfí's Lubábu'l-Albáb. Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum. He claimed descent from 'Abdu'r Raḥ-mán b. 'Awf, one of the six Companions of the Prophet who were appointed by the dying Caliph 'Umar to choose his successor from their midst. His repeated references to poets whom he had met at different dates and in different towns in Persia show that he had travelled widely in Khurásán and the neighbouring lands about the beginning of the seventh century of the hijra (circ. A.D. 1200). He subsequently resided in India, first at the Court of Náṣiru'd Dín Qúbacha, and then at that of Shamsu'd-Dín Íltatmish, after the overthrow of his former patron by the latter in A.H. 625 (= A.D. 1228). Besides the Lubáb he was the author of a vast collection of stories entitled the Jawámi'u'l-Ḥikáyát, consisting of four books, each comprising twenty-five chapters.
The Lubáb, notwithstanding its age, is in some ways a disappointing book, owing to the undue prominence which it gives to the poets of Khurásán, and the almost complete lack of biographical particulars. Indeed, it is rather to be regarded as a vast anthology than as a biography. It is divided as follows into twelve chapters, of which the first seven make up vol. i, and the last five the larger and more interesting vol. ii:—
| Chapter | I. | On the Excellence of Poetry. |
| Chapter | II. | Etymology of the word shi'r (Poetry). |
| Chapter | III. | Who first composed poetry. |
| Chapter | IV. | Who first composed poetry in Persian. |
| Chapter | V. | Kings and nobles who wrote verse. |
| Chapter | VI. | Ministers and officials who wrote verse. |
| Chapter | VII. | Theologians, doctors, and scholars who wrote verse. |
| Chapter | VIII. | Poets of the Ṭáhirí, Ṣaffárí, and Sámání dynasties. |
| Chapter | IX. | Poets of the Ghaznawí dynasty. |
| Chapter | X. | Poets of the Seljúq dynasty. |
| Chapter | XI. | Poets contemporary with the Author. |
| Chapter | XII. | Courtiers contemporary with the Author who wrote verses. |
The first volume, which deals with those who were not poets by profession, contains about 122 notices; and the second, dealing with poets by profession, about 164 notices: in all, about 286 notices of poets who lived before A.H. 625 (A.D. 1228). The credit of making known to European scholars the contents of this valuable compilation belongs primarily to Nathaniel Bland, who, under the title of The Most Ancient Persian Biography of Poets, described at considerable length the manuscript which belonged successively to J. B. Elliott (A.D. 1825) and Lord Crawford (1866-1901), and which has lately (August, 1901) been bought by Mrs. Rylands for the John Rylands Library at Manchester, in vol. ix (pp. 112 et seqq.) of the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal; and the other known manuscript (now at Berlin) was described by Dr. Sprenger at pp. 1-6 of his Catalogue of the … Manuscripts of the Library of the King of Oudh (Calcutta, 1854).452a Since then Dr. Ethé, of Aberystwyth, has made great use of it in a series of admirable monographs on the earlier Persian poets452b which he has published in various German periodicals; and now I hope that the text will soon be available to all Persian scholars in the edition which I am about to publish. Here it will only be possible to notice a few of the most notable poets of the earliest period.
452c(1) Ḥandhala of Bádghís is the only Persian poet belonging to the Ṭáhirid period (A.D. 820-872) mentioned by 'Awfí, who cites only the two following couplets:452d —
“Though rue-seed in the fire my sweetheart threw
452e
Lest hurt should from the Evil Eye accrue,
I fear nor fire nor rue can aught avail
That face like fire and beauty-spot like rue!”
(2) Fírúz al-Mashriqí, whom 'Awfí next mentions, lived in the time of 'Amr b. Layth the Ṣaffárid (A.D. 878-900). Of his verses likewise only two couplets are handed down:—
“A bird the Arrow is—strange bird of doom!
Souls are its prey, the quarry of its quest:
It borrows for its use the eagle's plume,
Thereby to claim the eaglet as its guest.”
(3) Abú Salík of Gurgán concludes the short list of Ṭáhirid and Sámánid poets. Two separate fragments of his verse, each consisting of two couplets, are cited by 'Awfí.
The remaining twenty-eight poets mentioned in this chapter all belong to the Sámánid period, but some of them were under the patronage of the House of Buwayh (e.g., Manṣúr b. 'Alí al-Manṭiqí ar-Rází and Abú Bakr Muḥammad b. 'Alí Khusrawí of Sarakhs, both of whom were patronised by that generous minister the Ṣáḥib Isma'íl b. 'Abbád), others (e.g., the last-mentioned poet, and Abu'l-Qásim Ziyád b. Muḥammad Qumrí of Gurgán) sung the praises of the Ziyárids of Ṭabaristán, others (e.g., Daqíqí and Manjik) of the Chaghání or Faríghúní rulers, and others of the early Kings of Ghazna; while some half-dozen seem to have had no special patron. Most of them are mentioned, and their extant verses cited, by Ethé453a in his already cited article (published in Professor Fleischer's Festschrift, entitled Mor-genländische Forschungen, Leipzig, 1875, pp. 35-68), and only a few of the most notable need detain us here. Three or four are described as Dhu'l-Lisánayn (“Masters of the two languages”), or bilingual poets, composing verses both in Arabic and Persian: of these are Shaykh Abu'l-Ḥasan Shahíd of Balkh, Abú Bakr Muḥammad b. 'Alí Khusrawí of Sarakhs, and Abú 'Abdi'lláh Muḥammad b. 'Abdu'lláh Junaydí, who is stated by 'Awfí to be mentioned in the Yatíma, though I have hitherto been unable to find any notice of him in that work.
(4) Shahíd of Balkh. Of this poet seven pieces of Persian verse, comprising fifteen couplets, and three couplets of Arabic are recorded by 'Awfí, as well as some verses composed on his death by Rúdagí, who says that though, according to the reckoning of the eyes, one man has passed away, in the estimate of wisdom it is as though more than a thousand had died. The following translations are given as specimens of his work:—
“The cloud doth weep as weeps the Lover, while
Like the Belovèd doth the Garden smile;
Afar the thunder, like myself, doth groan,
When with the dawn I raise my piteous moan.”“Had sorrow smoke like fire, I do protest
The world would e'er remain in darkness dresst;
Search the world through and through: thou wilt not find
One man of wit who's not by grief oppresst.”
Some of his Arabic verses are said to be given in an anthology (otherwise unknown) entitled Ḥamásatu'dh-Dhurafá, compiled by Abú Muḥammad 'Abdu'l-Káfí-i-Zawzaní.
(5) Abú Shu'ayb Ṣáliḥ b. Muḥammad of Herát is chiefly known as the author of five couplets in praise of a pretty Christian child, of which the first three are to the following effect:—
“Face and figure meet for Heaven, holding doctrines doomed to hell,
Chain-like ringlets, cheek like tulips, eyes that shame the sweet
gazelle,
Mouth as though some Chinese painter with his brush had drawn
a line
Of vermilion on a ground of musk to form those lips of thine.
'Midst the swarthy Æthiopians could his grace divided be,
Each would have wherewith to stir the Turkish beauties' jealousy.”
(6) Abú 'Abdi'lláh Muhammad b. Musá al-Faráláwí455a was a contemporary of the above-mentioned Shahíd, with whom he is “bracketed” by the later and greater Rúdagí, of whom we shall speak directly, in a verse cited by 'Awfí. The following fragment alone survives of his poems:—
“What greater claim on me than him to greet,
To whom I ne'er can render service meet?
For service poorly rendered none I need
Save his great charity to intercede.”
(7) Abú 'Abdi'lláh Ja'far b. Muḥammad ar-Rawdhakí,455b commonly called Rúdakí or Rúdagí, is generally reckoned the first really great poet of Muhammadan Persia; and Bal'amí, the Prime Minister of Isma'íl b. Aḥmad the Sámánid (A.D. 892-907), and father of the translator into Persian of Ṭabarí's Great Chronicle,455c even went so far as to declare that he was “peerless amongst the Arabs and the Persians.”455d Amongst contemporary poets also he appears to have enjoyed a high reputation. Shahíd of Balkh says in a verse cited by 'Awfí that “‘Bravo!’ and ‘Well done!’ are praise to other poets, but it would be satire to say ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Well done!’ to Rúdagí.” By Ma'rúfí of Balkh he is called “the King of poets” (Sulṭán-i-shá'irán), and from the words ascribed to him, “Incline to no one in the world but to the Fáṭimid,” it would appear as though he was in sympathy with the Isma'ílís, which agrees very well with the Isma'ílí proclivities ascribed to his master and patron, the Sámánid Prince Naṣr II b. Aḥmad (A.D. 913-942), by the Nidhámu'l-Mulk in his Siyásat-náma (ed. Schefer, pp. 188-193). Daqíqí also, the predecessor of Firdawsí, says that for him to praise one who had been the object of Rúdagí's panegyrics would be “to bring dates to Hajar” (or, as we say in English, “to bring coals to Newcastle”). Even 'Unṣurí, the Poet Laureate of Sulṭán Maḥmúd of Ghazna, admits that in the ghazal, or ode, he cannot rival Rúdagí.
Rúdagí was born in a village near Samarqand, and is stated by 'Awfí (though Dr. Ethé doubts the truth of this statement) to have been blind from his birth. He was not only a graceful poet but a sweet singer, and withal skilful in the use of the harp and lute; and he stood in high favour with his royal patron Naṣr II. Indeed the most celebrated of his achievements (mentioned in almost every biography of Persian poets) is connected with an improvisation of which the circumstances have been already mentioned in the first chapter of this book (pp. 14-16 supra), and which was, apparently, sung by him before the King to the accompaniment of the harp.456a Towards the end of his life456b (possibly for reasons connected with his religious beliefs, to which allusion has already been made) he fell from favour and was overtaken by poverty, but in the heyday of his popularity he is said by 'Awfí to have possessed two hundred slaves, while a hundred camels456c were required to carry his baggage. His verses, according to the same authority, filled a hundred volumes; while Jámí in his Baháristán states, on the alleged authority of the Kitáb-i-Yamíní (i.e. Utbí's history of Sulṭán Maḥmúd of Ghazna), that they amounted to one million and three hundred couplets.457a Of these only a very small proportion have come down to our time, though many more than was formerly supposed. Thus Dr. Horn has pointed out in his excellent edition of Asadí's Lughatu'l-Furs (pp. 18-21) that Rúdagí is cited in that work more often than any other old poet, and he gives some sixteen couplets from his lost mathnawí of Kalíla and Dimna alone, and there are a good many inedited anthologies and similar works in the British Museum and other large libraries of Europe which would yield a very considerable quantity of his work. Dr. Ethé in his admirable monograph on Rúdagí457b has collected together from such sources fifty-two fragments of greater or less length, amounting in all to 242 couplets, and from the additional sources of information rendered available within the last thirty years, there is no doubt that this number could now be largely increased. As Dr. Ethé has appended German verse-translations to all the fragments of Rúdagí which he has collected in the above-mentioned monograph, it appears unnecessary to give here any further specimens of his poetry for the European reader, save the two following fragments translated by my dear old teacher, Professor Cowell (= Ethé, Nos. 20 and 41):—
“Bring me yon wine which thou might'st call a melted ruby in its cup,
Or like a scimetar unsheathed, in the sun's noon-tide light held up.
'Tis the rose-water, thou might'st say, yea thence distilled for purity;
Its sweetness falls as sleep's own balm steals o'er the vigil-wearied eye.
Thou mightest call the cup the cloud, the wine the raindrop
from it cast,
Or say the joy that fills the heart whose prayer long looked-for
comes at last.
Were there no wine all hearts would be a desert waste, forlorn
and black,
But were our last life-breath extinct, the sight of wine would
bring it back.
O if an eagle would but swoop, and bear the wine up to the sky,
Far out of reach of all the base, who would not shout ‘Well
done!’ as I?”
“When I am dead, my last breath sighed away,
And spent my latest wish with no return,
Come by my bed and whisper o'er my clay,
‘I killed thee, and 'tis I who now must mourn.’”
(8) Shaykh Abu'l-'Abbás, Faḍl b. 'Abbás, a contemporary of Rúdagí, mourned the patron of the latter, Naṣr II, and at the same time hailed his successor in the following lines:—
“From us is snatched a King of noble race,
Another, brave and high-born, takes his place.
For him who's gone Time sorrows with one voice,
For him now crowned the World's heart doth rejoice.
Look with the eye of Wisdom, now, and say,
‘God giveth, even when He takes away!’
The Lamp which shines He may extinguish, yet
Again another in its place doth set.
Unlucky Saturn heavy blows may deal,
Yet Jupiter transmutes the woe to weal.”
(9) Shaykh Abú Zurá'a al-Mu'ammarí (or Mi'márí, or Mi'márí) of Gurgán, on being bidden by a noble of Khurásán to compose verse like Rúdagí's, replied thus:—
“Though I have not Rúdagí's fortune, let that not amaze
Nor cause you to think me behind him in sonnets and lays.
He amassed, at the price of his eyesight, great treasure, we're told,
But ne'er would I barter my eyesight for silver or gold!
Of what princes gave him as gifts give one thousandth to me,
And a thousand times sweeter than his shall my melody be.”
From the following fragment it would appear that he considered his military talents to be equal to his literary skill:—
“Where there is giving afoot, for silver gold do I fling,
And where there is speaking, hard steel to the softness of wax
I bring:
Where there are winds a-whirling, there like the wind I pass,
Now with the lute and the goblet, now with the mailed cuirass!”
Passing over Abú Isḥáq Ibráhím b. Muḥammad al-Bukhárí al-Júybárí, of whose life and date 'Awfí says nothing save that he was by profession a goldsmith, but of whose verse he cites five couplets, we come to another really important poet, Firdawsí's predecessor—
(10) Abú Manṣúr Muḥammad b. Aḥmad ad-Daqíqí of Ṭús. In spite of the essentially and almost aggressively Muhammadan name of this poet, it has been contended by Ethé,459a Nöldeke,459b and, less decidedly, by Horn,459c that he was a Zoroastrian, this opinion being based on the following verses with which one of his poems concludes:459d —
“Of all that's good or evil in the world
Four things suffice to meet Daqíqí's need:
The ruby-coloured lip, the harp's lament,
The blood-red wine, and Zoroaster's creed.”
Though these verses, notwithstanding what is said by Ethé (who only had at his disposal the Berlin manuscript of 'Awfí, which has a lacuna at this point), are not given by 'Awfí, I am not disposed to doubt their genuineness, but I think too much has been based upon them, and that Daqíqí's admiration for “Zoroaster's creed” was probably confined to one single point —its sanction of wine-drinking; which, as I have elsewhere remarked,460a is still a very prominent feature in the daily life of the Persian Zoroastrian.
Daqíqí's chief claim to fame is that he was first entrusted with the versification of the Persian Epic, but when he had completed about one thousand couplets of that portion which deals with the appearance of Zoroaster and the establishment of his religion, he was stabbed by a Turkish boy who was his favourite slave.460b Firdawsí, in consequence of a vision (which, probably enough, is a mere poetic figment) incorporated Daqíqí's work in his own, but not without passing a somewhat severe and ungenerous criticism on its merits—a criticism which Professor Nöldeke, who has carefully compared this portion of the Sháhnáma with Firdawsí's work, very properly condemns as unfounded.460c That Daqíqí stood high in the esteem of his contemporaries is shown by the words with which As'ad the 'Amíd presented Farrukhí to the Amír Abu'l-Mu dhaffar, “O Sire, I bring thee a poet the like of whom the Eye of Time hath not seen since Daqíqí's face was veiled in death;”460d as well as by al-'Utbí's brief remarks460e on the most eminent poets of the reign of Núh II b. Manṣúr the Sámánid (A.D. 976-997).
Of Daqíqí's lyric verse, 'Awfí gives ten fragments comprising in all twenty-seven couplets, and Ethé gives three additional fragments (Nos. 1, 4, and 6), comprising thirteen couplets, which are not to be found in 'Awfí. The following verses form part of a qaṣída in praise of the Amír Abú Sa'íd Muḥammad [b.] Mudhaffar [b.] Muḥtáj-i-Chighání:—
“Thy sword to guard the Empire hath God as sentry set,
Bounty its chosen agent hath made that hand of thine:
The Ear of Fate from Heaven is strained for thy command,
And gold to reach thy hand-hold emergeth from the mine.”
In another qaṣída addressed to the Sámánid ruler Manṣúr I (A.D. 961-976) he says:—
“O King recalling Dárá's noble line,
Who dost in Sámán's sky like Pole-star shine!
Should Satan see him when his wrath is stirred,
Fearing his sword, he would accept God's Word.
Náhíd and Hurmuz461a guide his soldier's feet,
While Mars and Saturn are his vanguard fleet.”
In another qaṣida addressed to Núḥ II (A.D. 976-997), the successor of the king last mentioned, he says:—
“The circling Heaven lends an eager ear
That what the King commands it swift may hear.
For fear of him Saturn, most sorely tried,
Scarce dares survey the Sky's expanses wide.”
The following lines are from one of his love-poems:—
“O would that in the world 'twere endless day,
That from those lips I ne'er need 'bide away!
But for those scorpion curls461b my Love doth wear
No smart like scorpion-sting my heart need bear.But for the stars462a which 'neath those lips do play,
I need not count night's stars till dawn of day.462b
Were she not formed of all that is most fair
Some thought beyond her love my soul might share.
If I must pass my life without my Friend,
O God, I would my life were at an end!”
In another verse he says:—
“Long tarrying, I'm lightly held: away!
Even an honoured guest too long may stay:
Waters which in the well too long repose
Lose all their flavour, and their sweetness goes.”
The following verse is descriptive of wine:—
“Wrung from the Grape which shines as shines the Light,
Yet Fire consuming is its soul and sprite:
Compounded from a Star whose setting-place
Is in the Mouth, yet rises in the Face.”
This is descriptive of a bowl of iced water:—
“Water and ice in crystal bowl combine:
Behold these three, which like a bright lamp shine.
Two deliquescent, one hard-frozen see,
Yet all alike of hue and bright of blee.”
Of the remaining poets of this earliest epoch cited by 'Awfí (and, for the most part, by Ethé also) is Manjík, who was patronised by the Chighání amírs, and whose verses seem often to have contained rare, archaic, and dialectal expressions, since in the following century we find the poet Qaṭrán of Tabríz asking Náṣir-i-Khusraw to explain and elucidate them.
462cThen comes Abu'l-Ḥasan 'Alí b. Muḥammad al-Ghazzálí al-Lúkarí , who has some very pretty verses describing a beautiful Kurdish boy, and other lines in praise of Núḥ II b. Manṣúr the Sámánid Prince (A.D. 976-997), and of the wazír Abu'l-Ḥasan 'Ubaydu'lláh b. Aḥmad al-'Utbí. Next comes Ma'rúfí of Balkh, who has the following lines in praise of the Sámánid 'Abdu'l-Malik I (A.D. 954-961):—
“O Colocynth and Aloes to thy foes,
But to thy friends like sugar, honey-sweet!
The use of foresight no one better knows,
Nor how to strike the first when blows are meet.”
Next follows Manṣúr b. 'Alí al-Manṭiqí of Ray, one of the panegyrists of the great Ṣáḥib Isma'íl b. 'Abbád, the wazír of the House of Daylam (see p. 453 supra), to whom he alludes in the following lines:—
“Methinks the Moon of Heav'n is stricken sore,
And nightly grieveth as it wasteth more.
What late appeared a great, round, silver shield
Now like a mall-bat463a enters heaven's field.
The Ṣáḥib's horse, you'd think, had galloped by,
And cast one golden horse-shoe in the sky.”
The following verse, apart from the pretty hyperbole which it contains, has a certain adventitious interest:—
“One hair I stole from out thy raven locks
463b
When thou, O sweetheart, didst thy tresses comb;
With anxious toil I bore it to my house,
As bears the ant the wheat-grain to its home.
My father when he saw me cried amain,
'Which is my son, I pray thee, of these twain?”
According to 'Awfí's narrative, when Badí'u'z-Zamán of Hamadán, Ḥaríri's great rival in the writing of Maqámát, came to visit the Ṣáḥib at the age of twelve, the Ṣáḥib, wishing to test his skill, bade him translate these lines into Arabic verse. The youthful scholar asked what rhyme and metre he should employ, and was told to make the rhyme in ṭá and to use the metre called Sarí' (“the Swift,” in the variety here used:), whereupon he at once extemporised a very close translation in Arabic, to the following effect:—
“I stole from his tresses a hair
When he combed them with care in the morn;
Then, labouring, bore it away
As the ant staggers off with the corn.
Quoth my father, ‘Since either would go
Through the eye of a needle, I trow,
Inform me, I pray thee, which one
Of the twain is my son?’”
Such translations of Arabic into Persian verse, and vice versâ, seem to have been a very favourite exercise with scholars and wits from this period onwards into Seljúq times, though unfortunately it is not always possible to compare the version and the original, one or other having been lost. Thus we find in two of al-Bundárí's works, his abridged Arabic translation of the Sháhnáma of Firdawsí, and his History of the Seljúqs, numerous verse-renderings in Arabic of Persian poems,464a which in the former instance can be compared with their originals, but in the latter, as a rule, not. And it is interesting to note that the translators considered themselves under no obligation to preserve the form, metre, or rhyme of the original, but only the meaning, and this though they were practically bilingual (dhu'l-lisánayn), and though the metrical system of the Arabs and Persians is substantially identical. On this ground alone I consider, contrary to the view of many eminent Orientalists, notably my deeply lamented friend, Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, whose great History of Ottoman Poetry has been already mentioned in several places, that he who seeks to render the poetry of the East into a Western tongue may most justly claim the same indulgence as these old masters of Arabic and Persian took when translating in verse from the one language into the other; and indeed, having regard to the wide differences which separate our verse-forms and laws of prosody from those of the Muhammadan nations, we are doubly justified in demanding the right to take equal liberties with the forms, though not with the substance of our originals.
With Manṭiqí we notice a more artificial style, and a greater fondness for rhetorical devices, than is the case with the early poets hitherto mentioned: in particular, a fondness for the figure known as “poetical ætiology” (ḥusn-i-ta'líl), as, for instance, when he ascribes the “pallor” or “sallowness” of the sun to its fear of trespassing on the realms of his patron in its passage across the sky, and that of the gold dínár to its dread of his lavish and prodigal hands; or the “trembling” (or twinkling) of the stars to their dread of his far-reaching sword. This characteristic is due, I think, not so much to personal idiosyncrasy as to the fact that the Buwayhid Court of 'Iráq was, owing to its greater proximity to, and closer connection with, the metropolis of Baghdad, more directly subject to the literary influences and tendencies of Arabic-speaking and Arabic-writing men of letters than the Sámánid Court of far Khurásán. For this very reason, perhaps, Khurásán is regarded (and justly so) as the cradle of the Persian Renaissance; yet that it was considered far behind 'Iráq in literary culture clearly appears from the following verses (cited in the Yatíma, vol. iv, p. 3) of Abú Aḥmad b. Abú Bakr al-Kátib (the secretary), whose father was secretary to the Sámánid Prince Isma'íl b. Aḥmad (A.D. 892-907) and wazír to his son and successor Aḥmad b. Isma'íl (A.D. 907-913):—
“Wonder not at a man of 'Iráq in whom thou seest an ocean of
learning and a treasure of culture;
Wonder rather at one whose home is in the lands of ignorance if
he be able to distinguish head from tail!”
These lines were, of course, written before that brilliant epoch described in another passage of the Yatíma (vol. iv, pp. 33-4: see pp. 365-6 supra), but it shows that the flow of Muhammadan culture was, as we should expect, centrifugal, from Baghdad towards the periphery of the Lands of Islám.
The next poet mentioned by 'Awfí, Abú Bakr Muḥammaa b. 'Alí al-Khusrawí as-Sarakhsí, was attached neither to the Sámánid nor to the Buwayhid Court, but to that eminent prince of the Ziyárid dynasty of Ṭabaristán, Amír Shamsu'l-Ma'álí Qábús b. Washmgír (A.D. 976-1012), of whose own literary achievements we shall shortly have to speak. He too was a bilingual poet, and apparently wandered from court to court, praising now his proper patron Qábús, now the Ṣáḥib, and again the grandson of Símjúr, Abu'l Ḥasan Muḥammad. Another poet who sang the praises of Qábús was Abu'l-Qásim Ziyád b. Muḥammad al-Qumrí of Gurgán, whose few surviving verses shew taste and ingenuity, and something also of that artificiality which we have already remarked in Manṭiqí. Abú Ṭáhir al-Khusrawání was another Sámánid poet, who has some bitter verses against “four sorts of men from whom not one atom of good accrued” to him, viz., physicians, devotees, astrologers, and charm-mongers. Somewhat better known is Abú Shukúr of Balkh, who, in A.H. 336 (= A.D. 947-8) completed a work (now lost) called the Áfarín-náma, and who is also the author of the following lines:—
“I ventured to glance from afar at thy face, and Behold!
'Twas sufficient a wound to inflict on thy countenance sweet;
By thy glance in return was my heart smitten sore, for of old
'Tis the Law of Atonement that ‘wounding for wounding is
meet.’”
This verse was put into Arabic by the bilingual poet, Abu'l-Fatḥ of Bust, while another Persian verse by the poet Abú 'Abdi'lláh Muḥammad b. Ṣáliḥ al-Walwálají was similarly Arabicised by Abu'l-Qásim, the son of the wazír Abu'l-'Abbás. Abú Muḥammad al-Badí' of Balkh composed verses in praise of the Chighání Amír Abú Yaḥyá Ṭáhir b. Faḍl of the kind known as mulamma' or “patch-work,” i.e., half Persian, half Arabic. Abu'l-Mudhaffar Naṣr al-Istighná'í of Níshápúr is known to us now only by the two following couplets:—
“Like to the Moon would she be, were it not for her raven locks;
Like unto Venus, save for her beauty-spot, fragrant as musk:
Her cheeks to the Sun I would liken, save that, unlike the Sun,
She needs not to fear an eclipse, she needs not to shrink from the
dusk.”
Abu 'Abdi'lláh Muḥammad al-Junaydí was another of the Ṣáḥib's bilingual poets. Abú Mansúr 'Umára of Merv flourished under the last king of the House of Sámán and the first of the House of Ghazna, and excelled in brief and picturesque descriptions of the spring season, wine, and the like. His is the following admonition to those who seek worldly success:—
“Though the world should hold thee in honour, let that not fill thee
with pride:—
Many the world hath honoured and soon hath cast aside.
For the world is a venomous serpent: its seeker a charmer of
snakes:
And one day on the serpent-charmer the serpent its vengeance
takes.”
Seven more poets whose patrons are unknown conclude 'Awfí's list of these early pre-Ghaznawí singers, of whom in all thirty-one are noticed. These seven are: Íláqí; Abu'l-Mathal of Bukhárá; Abu'l-Mu'ayyad of Balkh; his namesake of Bukhárá, also called Rawnaqí; Ma'nawí of Bukhárá; Khabbázi of Níshápúr, and Sipíhrí of Transoxiana.
Leaving these poets by profession, we turn now to two royal poets of this period.
The first of these was the Sámánid King Manṣúr II b. Núḥ (A.D. 997-9), whom 'Awfí calls the last of his line, though his brother, 'Abdu'l-Malik is generally reckoned to have succeeded him. “Though he was young,” says 'Awfí, “yet the dynasty had grown old, and no order (sámán) was left in the affairs of the House of Sámán, while the life of the Royal House had sunk to a mere spark. He lived at the beginning of the reign of Sulṭán Maḥmúd Yamínu'd-Dawla. Many times did he fall a captive into the hands of his enemies, and again recovered his freedom: greatly did he strive to recover his father's kingdom, but human effort avails naught against the Decree of Heaven and the Fate preordained by God, as saith God Almighty, “None can avert His Decree and none can postpone His command; God doth what He pleaseth and ordereth as He will.” Of him alone amongst the Kings of the House of Sámán is any verse recorded. His verses are both spontaneous and kingly. Whilst he sat on the throne of sovereignty in Bukhárá, enemies rose up against him on all sides, and all his nobles were disaffected, so that night and day he was on horseback, clad in a Zandaníjí468a coat, while most of his life was passed in flight and fight. One day some of his companions said to him, “O King, why dost thou not get thyself fine clothes, or amuse thyself with those distractions which are one of the perquisites of royalty?” Thereupon he composed this fragment, in the sentiments of which the signs of manly courage are apparent and evident:—
“They ask me why fine robes I do not wear,
Nor covet stately tent with carpets rare.
'Midst clash of arms, what boots the minstrel's power?
'Midst rush of steeds, what place for rose-girt bower?
Nor wine nor sweet-lipped Sáqí aught avail
Where blood is spattered o'er the coats of mail.
Arms, horse for me banquet and bower enow,
Tulip and lily mine the dart and bow.”
The following quatrain reproaching Heaven for its unkindness is also ascribed to him:—
“O blue to look on, not in essence blue,
A Fire art thou, though like a Smoke to view.
E'en from thy birth thine ears were deaf to prayer,
Nor wrath nor protest aught avail with you.”
More important as a patron of letters, if not as a poet, was the Ziyárid prince of Ṭabaristán, Qábús b. Washmgír, entitled Shamsu'l-Ma'álí (“the Sun of the Heights” reigned A.D. 976-1012). To him al-Bírúní dedicated his “Chronology of Ancient Nations” (al-Átháru'l-báqiya mina'l-Qurúni'l-kháliya , edited and translated into English by Dr. Sachau), in the preface of which work he thus speaks of him (Sachau's translation, p. 2):—
“How wonderfully hath He whose Name is to be exalted and extolled combined with the glory of his noble extraction469a the graces of his generous character, with his valiant soul all laudable qualities, such as piety and righteousness, carefulness in defending and observing the rites of religion, justice and equity, humility and beneficence, firmness and determination, liberality and gentleness, the talent for ruling and governing, for managing and deciding, and other qualities which no fancy could comprehend and no mortal enumerate!”
Ath-Tha'álibí, in the tenth and last chapter of the third volume of his Yatíma, is equally enthusiastic in “crowning his book with some of the shining fruits of his eloquence, which is the least of his many virtues and characteristics.”470a The great Avicenna (Abú 'Alí ibn Síná) was another of the eminent men of learning whom Qábús protected and aided, as is fully narrated in the Chahár Maqála, or “Four Discourses” (pp. 121-4 of my translation), by Nidhámí of Samarqand, who calls Qábús “a great and accomplished man, and a friend to men of learning.” His unhappy and violent end is well known,470b and ampler details of his life are to be found in Ibn Isfandiyár's History of Ṭabaristán, of which I am now preparing an abridged translation. He composed verses both in Arabic and Persian. Amongst the former is the following:—
“Say to him who fain would taunt us with vicissitudes of Fate,
‘Warreth Fate or fighteth Fortune save against the high and great?
Seest thou not the putrid corpse which Ocean to its surface flings,
While within its deep abysses lie the pearls desired of Kings?’
Though the hands of Fate attack us, though her buffets us disarm,
Though her long-continued malice bring upon us hurt and harm,
In the sky are constellations none can count, yet of them all
On the Sun and Moon alone the dark Eclipse's shadows fall!”
And again:—
“My love is enkindled in thinking of thee,
And passionate thrills through my being do dart:
No limb of my body but speaks of thy love,
Each limb, thou would'st think, was created a heart!”
Amongst his Persian verses 'Awfí records the following:—
“The things of this world from end to end are the goal of desire
and greed,
And I set before this heart of mine the things which I most do
need,
But a score of things I have chosen out of the world's unnumbered
throng,
That in quest of these I my soul may please and speed my life
along.
Verse, and song, and minstrelsy, and wine full-flavoured and
sweet,
Backgammon, and chess, and the hunting-ground, and the falcon
and cheetah fleet;
Field, and ball, and audience-hall, and battle, and banquet rare,
Horse, and arms, and a generous hand, and praise of my Lord
and prayer.”
And again:—
“Six things there be which have their home in the midst of thy
raven hair;
Twist and tangle, curl and knot, ringlet and love-lock fair;
Six things there be, as you may see which in my heart do reign;
Grief and desire and sorrow dire: longing and passion and
pain!”
The following quatrain is also his:—
“Mirth's King the Rose is, Wine Joy's Herald eke;
Hence from these two do I my pleasure seek:
Would'st thou, O Moon, inquire the cause of this?
Wine's taste thy lips recalls, the Rose thy cheek!”
Amongst other royal and noble poets of this early period 'Awfí mentions Sulṭán Maḥmúd of Ghazna (whose Court will Other royal and noble poets. be described at the beginning of the next volume), and his son Amír Abú Muḥammad b. Yamínu'd-Dawla; Abu'l-Mudhaffar Ṭáhir b. al-Faḍl b. Muḥammad Muḥtáj aṣ-Ṣaghání (i.e., of Chaghán); Amír General characteristics of the poetry of this period. Kayká'ús the Ziyárid, son of the talented and unfortunate Qábús whom we have just been discussing, and others who need not detain us, since we have examined a sufficient amount of the poetry of this period to be able to characterise it in general terms. The metrical system which underlies it is, as we have already observed, identical with that of the Arabs; though certain Arabic and Persian metrical systems. metres (e.g., Kámil, Basít, and Ṭawíl) which are common in Arabic are but rarely used in Persian, while some new metres were introduced in the latter language which were not used in the former. Dr. Forbes at pp. 132-3 of his Persian Grammar (4th ed. London, 1869), cites the opinion of Herr Geitlin, a German writer on the Persian language, who remarks that “the Persians and Arabs, like the Greeks and Romans, rejoice in a great variety of metres, but the Asiatic metres differ mainly in this, that the long syllables far exceed the short, which is quite in conformity with the character of the Oriental people, who are distinguished by a certain degree of gravity and sobriety in their conversation and gestures, combined with dignity and stateliness in all their movements;” and, á propos of this, remarks, in speaking of the five purely Arabian metres comprised in the “First Circle,” that in them “the short syllables are more nearly on a par with the long; whereby we are to infer, according to Herr Geitlin's theory, that the roving Arabs are less grave and sober in their conversation and gestures than their neighbours of Persia.”
As regards verse-forms, it is the qaṣída, or elegy, alone which occupies a prominent place in both languages, and Verse-forms most favoured by the Persians in early times. which (chiefly, as it would appear, from the influence of the great Arab poet al-Mutanabbí, A.D. 905-965) attained so great a development in Persia under the Ghaznawí and succeeding dynasties, as will appear in a subsequent chapter. But at the period of which we are now speaking such long and elaborate monorhymes appear to have enjoyed little favour in Persia; and even the ghazal, or ode, seems to have been less popular The quatrain. in these early days than the qiṭ'a, or fragment, and the rubá'í, dú-baytí, or quatrain. This last, indeed, was almost certainly the earliest product of the Persian poetical genius. Allusion has already been made to one of the stock anecdotes given by the biographers as to the first occasion on which Persian verse was composed in Muhammadan times; the anecdote, namely, which ascribes a single miṣrá' to the chance utterance of a gleeful child. In Dawlatsháh's Memoirs (pp. 30-31 of my edition) this child is said to have been the son of Amír Ya'qúb b. Layth the Ṣaffárid; but lately I have come across a much older version of the story in the British Museum manuscript Or. 2814 of a very rare work on Persian Prosody and Rhetoric entitled al-Mu'jam fí ma'ábíri ash'ári'l-'Ajam, composed about A.H. 617 (= A.D. 1220-1221) by Shams-i-Qays. In this version (ff. 49b-50b of the above-mentioned manuscript) the verse (“ghalatán ghalatán hamí rawad tá bun-i-kú”) and the anecdote are nearly the same, but the child is unnamed and not represented as of royal patronage, while it is not the Amír Ya'qúb but the poet Rúdagí “or some other of the ancient poets of Persia” who is the auditor and admirer. He, according to the author, after an examination of the hemistich in question, “evolved out of the akhrab and akhram varieties of the hazaj metre a measure which they call the ‘Quatrain measure,’473a and which is indeed a graceful measure and a pleasant and agreeable form of verse; in consequence of which most persons of taste and most cultivated natures have a strong inclination and leaning towards it.” The quatrain, then, may safely be regarded as the most ancient essentially The Mathnawí. Persian verse-form, while next to this comes the mathnawí, or poem in “doublets,” which is generally narrative, and where the rhyme changes in each couplet. The portion of the Sháhnáma composed by Daqíqí is probably the oldest Persian mathnawí poem of which any considerable portion has been preserved to us, though fragments of Rúdagí's Kalíla and Dimna and other old mathnawís have been discovered by Dr. Paul Horn of Strassburg amongst the citations adduced by Asadí in his lexicon in proof of the meanings of rare and archaic words.
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-Tha'álibí's Yatíma.
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.475a 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.475b 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. 961-976), have come down to us. Two of them are abridged translations of the great history and the great commentary of Ṭabarí; the third is the Pharmacology of Abú Manṣúr Muwaffaq of Herát; the last is the now celebrated old Persian commentary on the Qur'án, of which the second volume is preserved in a unique and ancient MS. in the Cambridge University Library. All these are written in a simple, straightforward and archaic language, of which I have discussed the peculiarities at some length in the article in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1894 (pp. 417-524) where I first made known the existence of the Cambridge Codex of the old Persian Commentary, which bears a date equivalent to February 12, A.D. 1231. The Pharmacology (Kitábu'l-Abniya 'an Ḥaqá'iqi'l-Adwiya) is preserved in the unique Vienna Codex, a The oldest extant Persian MS. still more ancient MS. (in fact the oldest extant Persian MS.) dated Shawwál, A.H. 447 (= January, A.D. 1056), which derives a special interest from the fact that it was transcribed by the poet 'Alí b. Aḥmad of Ṭús, better known by his pen-name Asadí, the nephew of the great Firdawsí. This work has been beautifully printed in its entirety, with a preface, notes, and facsimiles of three leaves, by Dr. Seligmann (Vienna, 1859), while a German translation of it has been published with notes by Abdul-Chalig Achundow (i.e., 'Abdu 'l-Kháliq, son of the Ákhund or schoolmaster) of Baku. Bal'amí's Persian translation of Ṭabarí's history exists in many fine old MSS., of which several are enumerated in the preface (pp. v-vii) to the first volume of M. Hermann Zoten-berg's Chronique de Abou-Djafar Mohammed ben Djarir ben Yezid Tabari, traduite sur la version persane d'Abou 'Ali Mohammed Bel'ami d'après les manuscrits de Paris, de Gotha, de Londres et de Canterbury (Paris, 4 vols., 1867-1874). Of the Persian translation of Ṭabarí's Commentary, made about the same time as Bal'amí's translation of the same great scholar's History, there is a manuscript (ADD. 7601) dated A.H. 883 (A.D. 1478) in the British Museum.
There exists a rare Persian work known as the Marzubán-náma , of which extracts have been published by the late The Marzubánnáma. M. Charles Schefer in his Chrestomathie Persane (Paris, 1885; vol. ii, pp. 194-211 of the Notes, and pp. 172-199 of the texts). This is a translation made by Sa'd of Waráwín towards the end of the twelfth century of our era from an original composed in the Mázan-darání dialect by the Ispahbad Marzubán somewhere about A.H. 400 (= A.D. 1009-1010). To the same writer is ascribed a poem entitled Níkí-náma; and it is interesting to note the considerable use made in literature (of which there is a good deal of scattered evidence) of this and other cognate dialects, and to compare the similar state of things which prevailed in England after the Norman Conquest before victory was assured to the Mercian dialect, and while the other dialects were still contending for the position of literary idioms.
There is another branch of Persian literature (that of the Persian Jews, written in the Persian language but in the Judæo-Persian literature. Hebrew character) of which one (and that the most interesting) monument may possibly go back to the ninth or tenth century of our era, though Darmesteter and other authorities place it in the Mongol period (thirteenth century of our era), while Munk puts it a century earlier. To this literature (represented by a considerable number of MSS., of which some twenty are in the Biblio-thèque Nationale at Paris) attention was first called by Munk in the Bible de Cahn (ix, pp. 134-159), and it has since been discussed pretty fully by Zotenberg (Merx's Archiv, vol. i, Halle, 1870, pp. 385-427), who there published and translated the Apocrypha of Daniel, concerning which we are about to speak; Paul de Lagarde (Persische Studien, Göttingen, 1884); Dar-mesteter (Revue Critique for June, 1882: new series, vol. xiii, pp. 450-454; and Mélanges Rénier, Paris, 1887, pp. 405-420); Salemann, and other scholars. Most of this Judæo-Persian literature is, except from the philological point of view, of little value, consisting merely of vocabularies of Hebrew words explained in Persian, translations of the Pentateuch and other The Apocrypha of Daniel. Hebrew books, and some poems; but the Apocrypha of Daniel (No. 128 of the Hebrew and Samaritan MSS. of the Bibliothèque Nationale), which, if not itself original, yet represents a lost Chaldæan original, is of an altogether different order. This Apocrypha is divided by Darmesteter into three parts, viz.: (1) A series of legends relating to Daniel, some biblical, some rabbinical; (2) a pseudo-prophetic sketch of historical events, in which the first definitely recognisable figure is the Prophet Muḥammad and the last the Caliph al-Ma'mún († A.D. 833); (3) one of those fanciful descriptions of Messianic times which are so frequent in Jewish works.
To those who believed in the prophetic inspiration of this document the last portion was no doubt the most interesting, but to such as judge by the ordinary standards of criticism it is the second—containing what Darmesteter happily terms, “l'his-toire prophétisée”—which most appeals. The Apocrypha purports to contain the vision of things to come until the advent of the Messiah shown by God to the Prophet Daniel, and this vision or Apocalypse is introduced by the words, “O Daniel, I show thee how many kings there shall be in each nation and religion; I will inform thee how it shall be.” Then follow several rather vague references, doubtfully interpreted by Darmesteter as applying to Ahasuerus, the Seleucidæ, and the Sásánians; then a prophetic description of an ungodly king who shall call himself “Bihishtí” (“Celestial”), and by whom, as Darmesteter thinks, Núshírwán (= Anûshak-rûbân = “of Immortal Soul”) is intended; and then is described “a short, red-complexioned king, who regards not God's Word, and claims to be a prophet, having been a camel driver; and who shall come forth from the south riding on a camel, greatly persecute the Jews, and die after a reign of eleven years. This personage is evidently intended for Muḥammad, and from this point onwards until the death of al-Ma'mún (i.e., from A.H. 1 to 218 = A.D. 622-833) the succession of Muhammadan rulers can be quite clearly traced. At this point, as Darmesteter admits, the chronological sequence of events ceases; but in the succeeding paragraphs he thinks that allusion is made to the Crusades, and in particular to Godefroy de Bouillon and his Red Cross Knights; and that is why he places the composition of the Pseudo-Apocalypse not in the tenth but in the thirteenth century of our era. Personally, I am disposed to regard these supposed references to the Crusades and the red-garbed warriors who shall come from Rúm even to Damascus as too indefinite to preclude the possibility that they have no connection with real history, in which case this curious Apocrypha may well belong to the period we have been considering, if not to that previous period which we have called “the Golden Age.”
For their names, see Brockelmann's Gesch. d. Arab. Litt., vol. i, pp. 213-214.
↩Einleitung und Makrokosmos (Leipzig, 1876), pp. 124 et seqq., and the preface to the text of the Abhandlungen der Ichwán es Safá (Leipzig, 1886), pp. vi-vii.
↩Dieterici, Makrokosmos, pp. 138-140.
↩Ibid., p. 146.
↩Ibid., p. 159.
↩Ibid., p. 159.
↩See pp. xvi-xix of the Preface to Flügel's edition.
↩Gesch. d. arab. Litt., vol. i, p. 147.
↩Islám means the submitting or resigning of one's self to God's will, and in the wider sense the term Muslim includes the faithful followers of each prophet recognised by the Muhammadans down to the close of his dispensation. Thus Abraham taught the faith of Islám, and Bilqís, Queen of Sheba, on her conversion, “becomes a Muslim with Solomon the son of David.”
↩i.e., the Qur'án, whence (xli, 42) this phrase is taken.
↩Rashídu'd-Dín Faḍlu'lláh says in the section of his great history (the Jámi'u't-Tawáríkh), which deals with the Isma'ílís, that in Abú Muslim's time the descendants of 'Alí based their claim to the Caliphate “on the nobility of their descent from Fáṭima.”
↩This is stated, for example, in the Jámi'u't-Tawáríkh mentioned in the last note.
↩Exposé de la Religion des Druzes, vol. i, p. lxxii.
↩Fihrist, p. 187.
↩Mémoire sur les Carmathes, Leyden, 1886.
↩Here speaks Dozy (Histoire des Musulmans de l'Espagne, vol. iii, pp. 8 et seqq.), whom de Goeje cites in this place.
↩Here the citation from Dozy ends, and what follows is in the words of de Goeje.
↩See my remarks on the “Ethics of Assassination,” on pp. 371-3 of the second volume of The Episode of the Báb (Cambridge, 1891).
↩See Shahristání's Kitábu'l-Milal, pp. 136-138.
↩Cf. de Goeje's Carmathes, p. 23. A similar use was made of carrier-pigeons by Ráshidu'd-Dín Sinán, one of the Grand Masters of the Syrian Assassins in the twelfth century of our era. See Stanilas Guyard's charming monograph in the Journal Asiatique for 1877, pp. 39 and 41 of the tirage-à-part. The employment of carrier-pigeons was apparently common in Persia in Sámánid times (tenth century). See my translation of the Chahár Maqála, pp. 29-30 of the tirage-à-part.
↩See de Goeje's learned note on this much-debated etymology at pp. 199-203 of his Mémoire sur les Carmathes. For a full account of the conversion of Ḥamdán, see de Sacy's Exposé, vol. i, pp. clxvi-clxxi.
↩Carmathes de Bahrain, pp. 4-11.
↩De Goeje, loc. cit., p. 10; de Sacy's Exposé, pp. lxvii, 35 and 84-87.
↩Un grand mâitre des Assassins, pp. 14-15 of the tirage-à-part.
↩Guyard refers here to Quatremère's Vie du khalife fâtimite Moezz li-din-Alláh (extract from the Journal Asiatique), pp. 118 et. seqq., and to an article by Defrémery (Nouvelles Recherches sur les Ismaíliens) in the same Journal, Ser. V, vol. iii, p. 404.
↩Allusion is here made to the monstrous pretensions advanced by al-Ḥákim, the grandson of al- Mu'izz, who claimed to be an Incarnation of God, and was accepted as such by the sect of Ismá'ílís still known as the Druzes, after al-Ḥákim's minister and abettor the Persian Ḥamza ad-Duruzí.
↩Safar-náma, edited in the original Persian, with a French translation, by the late M. Ch. Schefer (Paris, 1881), pp. 155-6 of the translation, pp. 56-7 of the text.
↩Or perhaps “Cairo,” which, as well as the country of which it is the capital, is commonly called Miṣr by the Muslims.
↩Fihrist, p. 189, where eight of his works are mentioned as having been seen and read by the author. Another work mentioned in this place (al-Balághátu 's-sab'a, in the sense, apparently of “the Seven Initiations”) was known, by name at least, to the Nidhámu'l-Mulk. See his Siyásat-náma , ed. Schefer, p. 196.
↩De Goeje's Carmathes, p. 26; and p. 350 supra.
↩De Goeje's Carmathes, pp. 31-2.
↩His own narrative is given in translation by de Goeje, op. cit., pp. 40-43. See also p. 354 supra.
↩De Goeje (op. cit., p. 75) speaks of “the almost complete inactivity of the Carmathians during the six years which immediately followed the death of Abú Sa'íd” (who was assassinated in A.D. 913-914).
↩De Goeje, op. cit., p. 85.
↩See de Goeje's graphic account, op. cit., pp. 104-113.
↩Ibid., op. cit., p. 144.
↩Concerning the very obscure causes of this incomprehensible event, cf. de Goeje, op. cit., pp. 183 et seqq.
↩See pp. 399-401 supra; and also de Goeje, op. cit., pp. 177-8.
↩Op. cit., pp. 81-83.
↩Op. cit., pp. 161-165 and 173.
↩Cf. de Goeje, op. cit., p. 172.
↩See, for instance, the Fihrist, p. 188, where the same design is ascribed to Abú Muslim; Guyard, Un Grand Maître des Assassins, pp. 4-5 and 10-13; de Goeje's Carmathes, pp. 1-2; von Hammer's Histoire de l'Ordre des Assassins (Paris, 1833), p. 44, &c.
↩See de Goeje, op. cit., p. 15 and note 2 ad calc.
↩No doubt Persian national feeling was appealed to, when it could serve the purpose of the dá'í, but he was just as ready to appeal to similar sentiments in the Arabs and other peoples. See de Sacy's Exposé, p. cxii.
↩See the footnote on p. 11 of Guyard's Grand Maître des Assassins.
↩A Year amongst the Persians, pp. 210-212, 271, 301 et seqq., 331 et seqq., 481-3, &c.
↩The particulars which follow are almost entirely drawn from de Sacy (Exposé, pp. lxxiv-cxxxviii), who cites the account of Akhú Muḥsin given by Nuwayrí.
↩See p. 408 supra.
↩These are the three positions in prayer named qiyám, rukú', and sujúd.
↩Op. cit., pp. lxxxvii-lxxxix.
↩De Sacy (op. cit., p. xciii).
↩They are called “silent” because, unlike the Prophet who introduces each Period, they utter no new doctrine, but merely teach and develop that which they have received from the Náṭiq.
↩Cf. my Year amongst the Persians, pp. 303-306, 367-8, &c.
↩Published in the Sitzungsberichte der Königl-bayer. Akad. d. Wissen-schaften for 1875, Phil. hist. Cl., pp. 145-168.
↩These texts were published in St. Petersburg in 1899, and comprise the Life and Sayings of the Saint (pp. 78), and the Mysteries of the Divine Unity with the Risála-i-Ḥawrá'iyya (pp. 493).
↩See the extract at the end of Socin's Arabic Grammar (English edition of 1885), pp. 72-3, 75, 76, and 77.
↩See Herman Frank's Beitrag zur Erkenntniss des Sufismus (Leipzig, 1884), pp. 8-10.
↩'Abdu'l-Karím b. Hawázin al-Qushayrí († A.D. 1046-7), the author of the well-known Ṣúfí treatise entitled ar-Risálatu'l-Qushayriyya, which was printed at Buláq in A.H. 1284 (A.D. 1867). The passage in question is cited by Jámí at p. 31 of Nassau-Lees's edition of the Nafaḥát.
↩Jámí, however, gives A.H. 258 (A.D. 872) as the date of his death (Nafaḥát, p. 62).
↩Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete des Isláms (Leipzig, 1873), pp. 45-55.
↩See Haarbrucker's translation of Shahristání, vol. ii, pp. 192 et seqq, and 429-430.
↩Bouillet in his translation of the Enneads of Plotinus (Paris, 1857) speaks (p. xiii.) of “la filiation qui existe entre certaines idées de Plotin et les doctrines mystiques de l'Orient;” and again (p. xxvii) of “la trace des doctrines théologiques tirées de l'Orient.”
↩Idem, p. 41: “Il prit un si grand goût pour la philosophie qu'il se proposa d'étudier celle qui était enseignée chez les Perses et celle qui prévalait chez les Indiens. Lorsque l'empereur Gordien se prépara a faire son expédition contre les Perses, Plotin, alors âgé de trente-neuf ans, se mit à la suite de l'armée. Il avait passé dix à onze années entières près d'Ammonius. Gordien ayant été tué en Mésopotamie, Plotin eut assez de peine à se sauver à Antioche.”
↩See ch. xl of Gibbon's Decline and Fall (ed. 1813, vol. vii, pp. 149-152). Agathius is the chief authority for this curious episode. The philosophers in question were Diogenes, Hermias, Eulalius, Priscian, Damascius, Isidore, and Simplicius.
↩Not to be confounded with Shaykh Shihábu'd-Dín 'Umar Suhrawardí, with whom Sa'dí was acquainted (Bustán. ed. Graf, p. 150), and who died in A.D. 1234-5.
↩See my article on this sect in the J. R. A. S. for January, 1898, pp. 61-94; and Gibb's History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. i, pp. 336-388.
↩See the article Ṣúfí in Hughes's Dictionary of Islám.
↩The Arabic MS. Add. 9692 in the British Museum (ff. 317 to end) contains a considerable quantity of his rhapsodies, which, so far as I have examined them, are very much in the style of this citation.
↩Two idolatrous tribes of the ancient Arabs to whom were sent respectively the Prophets Húd and Ṣáliḥ, and who for their obstinate unbelief were destroyed, the one by a violent tempest, the other by a terrible noise from heaven. See Qur'án, Súra vii.
↩See what is said as to the derivation of the word Ṣúfí on p. 417 supra.
↩Compare what is said of the books of the Manichæans on p. 165 supra.
↩See Qur'án, iv, 156.
↩The later Ṣúfís generally imply that he was put to death by crucifixion, being possibly influenced by a desire of establishing a resemblance between him and Christ. In A.H. 1305 (A.D. 1887-8) there was actually published at Bombay a collection of Persian poems purporting to be by Ḥusayn b. Manṣúr al-Ḥalláj, and to this impudent forgery is prefixed a rude woodcut of Christ on the Cross (evidently taken from some Christian book), surmounted by a well-known verse from the Mathnawí of Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí to this effect:—
↩“Whene'er the unjust judge controls the pen, Some Manṣúr dies upon the gibbet then.”
The naṭ', or executioner's carpet, is a large circular piece of skin or leather, round the margin of which are holes or eyes through which a cord is run. By tightening this cord the carpet is made concave, so as to catch the blood; and when the victim's head has been struck off the cord is drawn quite tight, so that a bag is formed in which the remains are removed.
↩He means that the Being of both these veils of Theophany was overshadowed and absorbed, as it were, by the Divine Effulgence which was manifested in them.
↩Jámí's Nafaḥát, p. 169.
↩See my Year amongst the Persians, pp. 281-2.
↩Religious Sytems of the World (Swan Sonnenschein, 1892), pp. 314-332: an article on Ṣúfíism originally delivered as a lecture at the South Place Ethical Institute.
↩I.e., with Pharaoh, who is conceived of by Jalálu'd-Dín as “walking in the right way” with Moses, though seemingly opposed to him, and yet bitterly lamenting this apparent antagonism. See Whinfield's Masnaví (abridged translation, Trübner, 1898, second ed.), pp. 37-38.
↩The passage is more fully given on p. 326 of Religious Systems of the World (Swan Sonnenschein, 1892).
↩Light of Asia (ed. 1882, Trübner), pp. 226.
↩Light of Asia, p. 231.
↩See Religious Systems of the World, p. 325.
↩As this subject is of great importance for the understanding of much that is best in Persian literature, I here enumerate some of the best books and treatises on it to which the European reader can refer. I. Translations .—'Aṭṭár's Mantiqu'ṭ-Ṭayr (“Language of Birds”), French translation by Garcin de Tassy, Paris, 1864; Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí's Mathnawí, abridged translation by E. Whinfield (2nd ed., London, Trübner, 1898); Shabistarí's Gulshan-i-Ráz (“Rose-garden of Mystery”), ed. and transl. by Whinfield, Trübner, 1880, one of the best Oriental manuals, with excellent Introduction and illuminating comments; Jámí's Yúsuf-u-Zulaykhá, ed. and German transl. by V. von Rosenzweig (Vienna, 1824); Ḥáfidh, Díwán, ed. and German translation by Rosenzweig-Schwannau (Vienna, 1858-1864), and John Payne's English verse transl. published for the Villon Society. II. Original Works.—Tholuck's Ssufismus, sive Theosophia Persarum Panthe-istica (Berlin, 1821); Ibid., Blüthensammlung aus der Morgenländischen Mystik (Berlin, 1825); Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics, Book vill; Hughes' Dictionary of Islám, sub voc.; my own article in Religious Systems of the World, pp. 314-332; Gibb's History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. i (London, Luzac; 1900), pp. 53-67. These books will suffice to give the general reader an adequate and correct notion of the Ṣúfí system.
↩He was called Tha'álibí (from tha'lab, a fox, pl. tha'álib) because he was by trade a furrier and dealt in the skins of that animal.
↩See the separate reprint of my article on The Sources of Dawlatsháh in the J. R. A. S. for January, 1899, pp. 47-48.
↩See de Slane's transl. of Ibn Khallikán, vol. iii, p. 517; and T. W. Arnold's Preaching of Islám (London, 1896), p. 180.
↩The first Codex is now in the possession of the John Rylands Library at Manchester, having been bought in August, 1901, by Mrs. Rylands from Lord Crawford and Balcarres, for whose library it was purchased at the sale of Bland's MSS. To Lord Crawford and to the Berlin Library I am deeply indebted for the liberality with which they placed these rare manuscripts at my disposal in Cambridge.
↩See J. R. A. S. for January, 1899, pp. 42-3.
↩Another MS. was discovered by Dr. Ethé amongst the India Office Persian MSS. (No. 2516 = No. 2455 of the forthcoming Catalogue, cols. 1321-1335). This Asadí was the transcriber of the oldest extant Persian MS., the Vienna Codex of Abú Manṣúr al-Muwaffaq's Pharmacology, edited by Seligmann (Vienna, 1859). This Codex is dated A.H. 447 (= A.D. 1055-6).
↩This MS. is also described by Pertsch on pp. 596-7 of the Berlin Catalogue of Persian MSS. (1888).
↩These are: Rûdagî, der Sâmânidendichter (1873); Rûdagî's Vorläufer und Zeitgenossen (1875); Firdûsî (sic) als Lyriker (1872); Die Lieder des Kisâ'î (1874), &c.
↩For reasons already given (p. 13, n. 3 supra), I exclude the verses alleged by 'Awfí to have been composed by a certain 'Abbás of Merv, in A.D. 809, in honour of the Caliph al-Ma'mún, since I agree with A. de Biberstein Kazimirski in regarding them as spurious.
↩The other two couplets ascribed to him in the Haft Iqlím (see Ethé, Rûdagî's Vorläufer, p. 40) are really by a different poet. See p. 355 supra.
↩The seed of the wild rue (sipand) is burned as a fumigation against the Evil Eye or “Eye of Perfection” ('Aynu'l Kamál), so called because whatever is perfect of its kind is especially subject to its malevolent influence. The poet compares his sweetheart's bright face and dark beauty-spot to the fire and the rue-seed, and implies that they are too perfect to be so easily protected against the Evil Eye.
↩Of the thirty-one poets included by 'Awfí in this chapter, Ethé mentions about twenty, and adds two or three more.
↩Ethé, using only the Berlin Codex of 'Awfí, reads Faráládí, but the better Elliott Codex, as well as the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá, has clearly d, not w, and this reading is confirmed by the verse of Rúdagí cited by 'Awfí in which the name rhymes with ráwí.
↩In a passage from an Arabic work entitled Ghyátu'l-Wasá'il ila Ma'rifati'l-awá'il, which I have cited at pp. 125-6 of my Handlist of the Muḥammadan MSS. in the Library of the University of Cambridge, Rúdagí's pedigree is carried three generations further back (b. Muḥammad b. Ḥakím b. 'Abdu'r-Raḥmán b. Ádam), and he is described as “the first to produce fine poetry in Persian” (see p. 356 supra).
↩A French translation of the younger Bal'amí's version by Zotenberg was published in Paris in 1867-1874 in four volumes.
↩Handlist, p. 126, ll. 3-4.
↩The oldest, fullest and most authentic version of this story occurs in the Chahár Maqála of Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí of Samarqand. See my translation of that work (Luzac, 1899), pp. 51-56; and also my article on the Sources of Dawlatsháh in the J. R. A. S. for January, 1899, pp. 61-69.
↩He died, according to as-Sam'ání (cited by al-Maníní in his commentary on the Ta'ríkhu'l-'Utbí, Cairo ed. of A.H. 1286, vol. i, p. 52) in A.H. 329 = A.D. 940-1.
↩Jámí exaggerates this number to four hundred.
↩The poet Rashídí of Samarqand in one of his poems says that he counted Rúdagí's verses, and found that they amounted to thirteen times 100,000 (i.e., one million and three hundred thousand), which is probably what Jámí was thinking of.
↩Nachrichten von der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenchaften u. der G. A. Universität zu Göttingen, No. 25, November 12, 1873, pp. 663-742.
↩Rûdagî's Vorläufer und Zeitgenossen, p. 59.
↩Das Iranische Nationalepos, p. 18 (Separätabdruck from the Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie, Strassburg, 1896).
↩Gesch. d. Persische Litteratur, p. 81 (Leipzig, 1901).
↩Ethé, op. cit., p. 59.
↩A Year amongst the Persians, pp. 375-6.
↩See Turner Macan's edition of the Sháhnáma, at the beginning of vol. iii (p. 1065, l. 11), where Daqíqí is made to say to Firdawsí in the vision: “I composed a thousand couplets about Gushtásp and Arjásp, when my life came to an end.” The portion of the poem ascribed to Daqíqí extends from p. 1065 to p. 1103. In Vüllers's edition this is equivalent to vol. iii, pp. 1495-1553; or 1001 couplets minus the prologue of 13 couplets = 988 couplets.
↩Op. cit., p. 20. The criticism in question occurs in Macan's ed. on p. 1104.
↩See the tirage-à-part of my translation of the Chahár Maqála, p. 65.
↩Ta'ríkhu'l-'Utbí, ed. Cairo, A.H. 1286, vol. ii, p. 22.
↩Náhíd (the ancient Anáhíta) is the planet Venus, and Hurmuz (Ahura-Mazda) is Jupiter, these being the two fortunate planets, as Saturn and Mars are the unlucky ones.
↩The locks (zulf) of the Beloved, by reason of their shape, their blackness, and their power to wound, are often compared to a scorpion.
↩This, I suppose, is a metaphor for the dimples which flash and flicker round the mouth of the Beloved.
↩“To count the stars,” is, both with the Persian poets and their Turkish imitators, a common expression for passing sleepless nights.
↩Safar-náma (ed. Schefer, Paris, 1881), p. 6 of the text = pp. 18-19 of the French translation.
↩The crescent moon is here compared to the curved head of a polo-bat.
↩Meaning that his son, Manṣúr, was so wasted with love that he could scarce be distinguished from a hair.
↩This Arabic version of the Sháhnáma exists only in manuscript, and is rare, but there is a fine old copy in the Cambridge University Library, and others at Paris and Berlin (see pp. 43-4 of my Handlist of Muhammadan MSS.) The Seljúq History has been edited in the most scholarly way by Houtsma (Brill, Leyden, 1889). Arabic verse-translations of Persian originals occur on p. 85 (verses of Abú Manṣúr of Ába), p. 86 (verses of the Mu'ayyidu'l-Mulk), p. 105 (verses of Abú Ṭáhir al-Khátúní), &c.
↩Qur'án, v, 49.
↩Zandaníjí or Zand-píchí (see Vüllers's Lexicon, vol. iii, p. 151) is a loose white garment made of very thick and strong material, probably to afford some protection against sword-cuts.
↩This pedigree, given in full by al-Bírúní (p. 47 of Sachau's translation), traces his lineage to the Sásánian King Qubádh, the father of Anúshírwán.
↩Other passages of this encomium will be found on pp. 507-8 of the second volume of de Slane's translation of Ibn Khallikán.
↩He was murdered, with his son's connivance, in the Castle of Janáshk in Gurgán, where he had been imprisoned. See my edition of Dawlatsháh, pp. 48-9, and de Slane's translation of Ibn Khallikán, vol. ii, p. 509.
↩See Blochmann's Prosody of the Persians, p. 68, where the twenty-four rubá'í metres, of which half are derived from each of these two varieties of the hazaj metre, are given in full.
↩Another similar word-play on dih-khudhá (the Persian word for a landowner or squire) will be found in a verse by Abu' l-Qásim al-'Alawí al-Utrúsh cited at the top of p. 280 of vol. iii of the Yatíma.
↩See Sachau's translation of al-Bírúní's Chronology of Ancient Nations, p. 209.
↩