A literary history of Persia - The Literary History of Persia, Volume 2

Besides the philosophical and scientific works to which allusion has already been made, and certain Arabic and Persian poems of which we shall speak directly, he was the author of the philosophical romances of Ḥayy b. Yakdhán (not to be confounded with the more celebrated homonymous treatise by Ibnu'ṭ-Ṭufayl, published at Oxford in 1671 and 1700, with a Latin translation, by Pococke) and Salámán and Absál, which latter was afterwards taken by the Persian poet Jámí as the subject of a poem, printed by Falconer in 1850 and translated into English by FitzGerald, who published his translation anonymously, with a dedication to the late Professor Cowell, in 1856.

As to Avicenna's Persian poems, Dr. Ethé's industry and research have collected from various sources fifteen short pieces Avicenna's Persian poems. (twelve quatrains, one fragment of two bayts, and two ghazals), comprising in all some forty verses, which he published, with German translation, in the Göttinger Nachrichten for 1875, pp. 555-567, under the title Avicenna als persischer Lyriker. Of these quatrains it is to be noted that one of the most familiar is commonly ascribed to 'Umar Khayyám (No. 3 in Ethé = No. 303 in Whinfield's edition of the celebrated astronomer-poet's Quatrains), and is familiar to all readers of FitzGerald in the following form:—

“Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And many a Knot unravelled by the Road;
But not the Master-Knot of Human Fate.”

Whinfield's more literal translation is as follows:—

“I solved all problems, down from Saturn's wreath,
Unto this lowly sphere of earth beneath,
And leapt out free from bonds of fraud and lies,
Yea, every knot was loosed, save that of death!”

Ethé's German translation of the same quatrain, ascribed by him, on the authority of three separate Persian manuscript authorities, to Avicenna, is as follows:—

“Vom tiefsten Grund des schwarzen Staubes bis zum Saturnus'
höchstem Stand
Entwirrt' ich die Probleme alle, die rings im Weltenraum ich
fand.
Entsprungen bin ich jeder Fessel, mit der mich List und Trug
umwand,
Gelöst war jeglich Band—nur eines blieb ungelöst—des Todes
Band!”

It is, of course, well known to all Persian scholars that a great number of the quatrains ascribed to 'Umar Khayyám,

“Another cognate difficulty is this, that many of the quatrains ascribed to 'Umar are also attributed to other poets. I have marked a few of these in the notes, and, doubtless, careful search would bring many more to light. It might be supposed that the character of the language employed would be sufficient to differentiate the work of 'Umar at any rate from that of poets writing two or three centuries after his time, but, as observed by Chodzko, the literary Persian of 800 years ago differs singularly little from that now in use. Again, if, as has been supposed, there were anything exceptional in 'Umar's poetry, it might be possible to identify it by internal evidence; but the fact is that all Persian poetry runs very much in grooves, and 'Umar's is no exception. The poetry of rebellion and revolt from orthodox opinions, which is supposed to be peculiar to him, may be traced in the works of his predecessor Avicenna, as well as in those of Afḍal-i-Káshí, and others of his successors. For these reasons I have not excluded any quatrains on account of their being ascribed to other writers as well as 'Umar. So long as I find fair MS. authority for such quatrains, I include them in the text, not because I am sure 'Umar wrote them, but because it is just as likely they were written by him as by the other claimants.”

Of the two longer poems included in Dr. Ethé's abovementioned article, one is in praise of wine, while the other contains sundry moral precepts and reflections. Neither of them appears to me either of sufficiently high merit or of sufficiently certain authenticity to be worth translating here, and I must therefore refer the curious reader to Dr. Ethé's interesting article in the Göttinger Nachrichten.

Much more remarkable and beautiful is Avi-cenna's celebrated Arabic qaṣída on the Human Soul, ^110a of which the following translation may serve to convey some idea:—

“It descended upon thee from out of the regions above,
That exalted, ineffable, glorious, heavenly Dove.
'Twas concealed from the eyes of all those who its nature
would ken,
Yet it wears not a veil, and is ever apparent to men. ^110b
Unwilling it sought thee and joined thee, and yet, though it
grieve,
It is like to be still more unwilling thy body to leave.

It resisted and struggled, and would not be taméd in haste,
Yet it joined thee, and slowly grew used to this desolate waste,
Till, forgotten at length, as I ween, were its haunts and its
troth
In the heavenly gardens and groves, which to leave it was
loath.
Until, when it entered the D of its downward Descent,
And to earth, to the C of its centre, unwillingly went, ^111a
The eye (I) of Infirmity ^111b smote it, and lo, it was hurled
Midst the sign-posts and ruined abodes of this desolate world.
It weeps, when it thinks of its home and the peace it possessed,
With tears welling forth from its eyes without pausing or rest,
And with plaintive mourning it broodeth like one bereft
O'er such trace of its home as the fourfold winds have left.
Thick nets detain it, and strong is the cage whereby
It is held from seeking the lofty and spacious sky.
Until, when the hour of its homeward flight draws near,
And 'tis time for it to return to its ampler sphere,
It carols with joy, for the veil is raised, and it spies
Such things as cannot be witnessed by waking eyes.
On a lofty height doth it warble its songs of praise
(For even the lowliest being doth knowledge raise).
And so it returneth, aware of all hidden things
In the universe, while no stain to its garment clings.

“Now why from its perch on high was it cast like this
To the lowest Nadir's gloomy and drear abyss?
Was it God who cast it forth for some purpose wise,
Concealed from the keenest seeker's inquiring eyes?
Then is its descent a discipline wise but stern,
That the things that it hath not heard it thus may learn.
So 'tis she whom Fate doth plunder, until her star
Setteth at length in a place from its rising far,
Like a gleam of lightning which over the meadows shone,
And, as though it ne'er had been, in a moment is gone.”

Of other distinguished writers of Arabic produced by Persia, mention should be made of the celebrated inventor of that Badí'u'zZamán alHamadhání. style of composition known as the Maqáma, the ingenious Abu'l-Faḍl Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn of Hamadán, better known as Badí'u'z-Zamán, “the Wonder of the Age,” who, as ath-Tha'álibí tells us (Yatíma, vol. iv, pp. 168-169), died in A.H. 398 (A.D. 1008) at the comparatively early age of forty. Of his native town he had but a mean opinion, for he says in an often-quoted verse:—^112a

“Hamadán is my country; its virtues I'm fain to allow,
Yet most hateful of all our cities I find it, I trow:
Its children are ugly as aged men, and all must admit
That its aged men are like children in lack of wit.”

In the same sense he quotes in one of his letters (Yatìma, vol. iv, p. 179) another similar verse, which runs:—

“Blame me not for my weak understanding, for I am a man
Who was born, as you very well know, in the town Hamadán!”

We find, consequently, that he quitted his little-loved native town in A.D. 990, being then about twenty-two years of age, and first visited that great patron of letters, the Ṣáḥib Isma'íl b. 'Abbád, who, as we have seen, ^112b tested his skill in extempore translation by giving him a Persian verse to render into metrical Arabic. Thence he went to Gurgán, where, if ath-Tha'álibí is to be credited, he frequented the society of the Isma'íli heretics, who even at this time, nearly a century before the notorious Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ made it the centre of his “New Propaganda,” appear to have been numerous in this region. In A.H. 382 (A.D. 992-93) he reached Níshápúr, and there composed his “Séances” (Maqámát), which, as stated by ath-Tha'álibí (loc. cit.), originally amounted to four hundred. After visiting every town of importance in Khurásán, Sístán, and the regions about Ghazna, he finally settled in Herát, and there died. His memory was prodigious, so that he could repeat by heart a qaṣída of fifty verses, after hearing it recited only once, without a single mistake; or four or five pages of a prose work which he had subjected to one hasty perusal. The respective merits of him and his imitator al-Ḥarírí in that style of composition which they so especially made their own is a subject which has been repeatedly discussed, and which need not be considered in this place. ^113a Attention may, however, be called to an Arabic qaṣída, which he composed in glorification of Sulṭán Maḥmúd, which al-'Utbí cites in his Kitábu'l-Yamíní (Cairo ed. of A.H. 1286, vol. i, pp. 384-386).

“Is this,” the poet asks himself (meaning the Sulṭán), “Afrídhún with the crown, or a second Alexander? Or hath a re-incarnation brought back unto us Solomon? The sun of Maḥmúd hath cast a shadow over the stars of Sámán, and the House of Bahrám ^113b have become slaves to the son of the Kháqán. ^113c When he rides the elephant to battle or review, thine eyes behold a Sulṭán on the shoulders of a devil; [a Sulṭán whose sway extends] from the midst of India to the coasts of Furján, and from the limits of Sind to the remotest parts of Khurásán.”

One other Persian poet who wrote in Arabic, viz., Mihyár ad-Daylamí, ^113d deserves mention because of the interesting fact Mihyár the Daylamí. that he was born and brought up in the Zoroastrian religion, from which he was converted to Islám in A.D. 1003, by another poet, the Sharíf ar-Raḍí, who for many years before his death (in A.D. 1015-16) held the high position of Naqíbu'l-'Alawiyyín, or Dean of the descendants of 'Alí, at Baghdád. The example of Mihyár shows us how considerable a hold Zoroastrianism still had in the Caspian provinces, how readily it was tolerated, and how fully its representatives were permitted to share in the science and culture of which Arabic was the medium of expression. This appears in the frequency of the nisba “al-Majúsí” (“the Magian”), in works like the Dumyatu'l-Qaṣr of al-Bákharzí, who composed a supplement to ath-Tha'álibí's oft-cited Biography of Poets, the Yatímatu'd-Dahr.

To the period immediately preceding that which we are now discussing belong that great work the Fihrist (composed about A.D. 988) and the Mafatíḥu'l-'Ulúm (composed about A.D. 976), of both of which the contents were pretty fully analysed in the Prolegomena. Of local histories also several important monographs deserve mention, e.g., the History of Bukhárá by Narshakhí (composed about A.D. 942), the History of Qum (composed for the Ṣáḥib Isma'íl b. 'Abbád about A.D. 989), and the Histories of Iṣfahán and Ṭabaristán, composed respectively by al-Máfarrúkhí and al-Yazdádí, all of which were composed originally in Arabic, but are now known to us only in Persian translations. Another Arabic-writing Persian, of whose works too little has survived, was the historian 'Alí b. Miskawayhi, who died in A.D. 1029. Al-'Utbí's monograph on Sulṭán Maḥmúd (which is only carried down to A.D. 1018, though the author lived till A.D. 1035-36) has been already mentioned repeatedly, as well as the numerous works of Abú Manṣúr ath-Tha'álibí, the author of the Yatímatu'd-Dahr , who died in A.D. 1038. Persian prose works are still few and unimportant: those which belong to the Sámánid period, such as Bal'amí's translation of Ṭabarí's great history (made about A.D. 964), Abú Manṣúr Muwaffaq's Pharmacology (circa A.D. 971), a Persian commentary on the Qur'án preserved in a unique MS. at Cambridge, and Bal'amí's translation of Ṭabarí's commentary (about A.D. 981), have been already mentioned in the Prolegomena. If to these we add the rare Dánish-náma-i-'Alá'í (composed by Avicenna for 'Alá'u'd-Dawla of Iṣfahán, who died in A.H. 1042), and the lost Khujista-náma of Bahrámí, and the Tarjumánu'l-Balágha of Farrukhí, both of which treat of Prosody and Rhetoric, and both of which were presumably written about A.D. 1058, we shall have nearly completed the list of Persian prose works composed before the middle of the fifth century of the Flight of which any knowledge is preserved to us. Allusion has already been made to the fact that there is evidence of the existence of a literature, both prose (like the Marzubán-náma) and verse (like the Níkí-náma), in the dialect of Ṭabaristán; and Ibn Isfandiyár's history of that interesting province (founded on the above-mentioned monograph of al-Yazdádí) has preserved to us specimens (much corrupted, it is true, by lapse of time and careless copyists) of Ṭabarí dialect verses by poets entirely ignored by the ordinary Memoir-writers, such as the Ispahbad Khurshíd b. Abu'l-Qásim of Mámṭir, Bárbad-i-Jarídí, Ibráhím Mu'íní, Ustád 'Alí Pírúza (a contemporary of al-Mutanabbí, and panegyrist of 'Aḍudu'd-Dawla the Buwayhid), and Díwárwaz Mastamard, rival of him last named, who also enjoyed the favour of Shamsu'l-Ma'álí Qábús b. Washmgír.

We must now pass to the great Persian poets from whom the literature of this period, and in particular the Court of Ghazna, derived such lustre. Of these Firdawsí, who successfully accomplished the great work begun by Daqíqí (d. A.D. 975), and embodied for all time in immortal verse the The great Persian poets of this period. legendary history of his country, ranks not only as the greatest poet of his age, but as one of the greatest poets of all ages, so that, as a wellknown Persian verse has it:—

“The sphere poetic hath its prophets three,
(Although ‘There is no Prophet after me’) ^116a
Firdawsí in the epic, in the ode,
Sa'dí, and in qaṣída Anwarí.”

After him come the panegyrists and qaṣída-writers 'Unṣurí (Sulṭán Maḥmúd's poet-laureate), Asadí (Firdawsí's friend and fellow-townsman and the inventor of the munádhara, or “strife-poem”), 'Asjadí, Farrukhí of Sístán, and the somewhat later Minúchihrí, with a host of less celebrated poets, like Bahrámí (who also composed a work on Prosody, the Khujista-náma , no longer extant), 'Uṭáridí, Ráfi'í, Ghaḍá'irí of Ray, Manṣúrí, Yamíní (who is also said to have written a history of Sulṭán Maḥmúd's reign in Persian prose), Sharafu'l-Mulk (to whom is ascribed a Persian Secretary's Manual entitled the Kitábu'l-Istífá), Zínatí-i-'Alawí-i-Maḥmúdí, and the poetess Rábi'a bint Kalb of Qusdár or Quzdár, besides many others whose names and verses are recorded in chapter ix of 'Awfí's Lubábu'l-Albáb (pp. 28-67 of my edition of the second part of this work). It is neither necessary nor possible in a work of this character to discuss all of these, and we must confine ourselves to a selection of the most typical and the most celebrated. Three other poets of some note belonging to this period differ somewhat in character from the above; namely Kisá'í, who, beginning as a panegyrist, repented in later life of the timeserving and adulation inseparable from the career of a Court-poet, and devoted himself to religious verse; Abú Sa'íd b. Abi'l-Khayr, the mystic quatrain-writer; and Pindár of Ray, chiefly notable as a dialect-poet, though he wrote also in Arabic and Persian. Another celebrated dialect-poet and quatrain-writer, reckoned by Ethé ^117a as belonging to this period, on the strength of the date (A.H. 410 = A.D. 1019) assigned to his death by Riḍá-qulí Khán (in the Riyáḍu'l-'Àrifín ), really belongs more properly to early Seljúq times; since the History of the Seljúqs, ^117b entitled the Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr, composed in A.D. 1202-03 by Najmu'd-Dín Abú Bakr Muḥammad of Ráwand, and preserved in a unique MS. copied in A.D. 1238, which formerly belonged to M. Schefer, and is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris (Suppl. pers., No. 1314), recounts an anecdote of his meeting with Ṭughril Beg at Hamadán, probably in A.D. 1055-56 or 1058-59.

Before speaking of Sulṭán Maḥmúd's poets, however, it should be mentioned that he himself is said to have been something of a poet, and stands second, after a brief notice of the unfortunate Isma'íl b. Núḥ, the last Sámánid, in 'Awfí's Lubáb amongst the kings and princes who wrote incidental verse. Ethé (op. cit., p. 224) says that six ghazals are (on doubtful authority, as he thinks) ascribed to him. 'Awfí cites two short fragments only, of which the first, containing but three verses, is a little elegy on the death of a girl named Gulistán (“Rose-garden”), to whom he was attached. The following is a translation of it:—

“Since thou, O Moon, beneath the dust dost lie,
The dust in worth is raised above the sky.
My heart rebels. ‘Be patient, Heart,’ I cry;
‘An All-just Lord doth rule our destiny.
Earthy and of the earth is man: 'tis plain
What springs from dust to dust must turn again.’”

The second fragment, comprising six verses, is said to have been composed by Maḥmúd when he felt the approach of death. It is well-known, but its authorship is very doubtful, and Dawlatsháh (who cites three verses of it, p. 67 of my edition) ascribes it, with at least equal probability, to Sanjar the Seljúqid. It runs thus:—

“Through fear of my conquering sword, and my mace which no
fort can withstand,
As the body is thrall to the mind, so to me was subjected the
land.
Now enthronéd in glory and power I'd dwell amid gladness at
home,
Now, stirred by ambition, in arms from country to country I'd
roam.
I deemed I was somebody great when exulting to conquer I
came,
But the prince and the peasant, alas! in their end, I have
learned, are the same!
At hazard two mouldering skulls should'st thou take from the
dust of the grave,
Can'st pretend to distinguish the skull of the king from the
skull of the slave?
With one gesture, one turn of the hand, a thousand strong
forts I laid low,
And oft with one prick of my spurs have I scattered the
ranks of the foe.
But now, when 'tis Death who attacks me, what profits my
skill with the sword?
God only endureth unchanging; dominion belongs to the
Lord!”

As regards Sulṭán Maḥmúd's character, we naturally find in the verses of his Court-poets (save such as were disappointed of their hopes, like Firdawsí) and in the works of State historians nothing but the most exaggerated praise, but Ibnu'l-Athír (under the year A.H. 421 = A.D. 1030) in his obituary notice of this monarch says, after praising him for his intelligence, devoutness, virtue, patronage of learned men, and strenuousness in waging war on the unbelievers, that his one fault was love of money and a certain lack of scruple in his methods of obtaining it. “There was in him,” he says, “nothing which could be blamed, save that he would seek to obtain money in every way. Thus, to give one instance, being informed of a certain man from Níshápúr that he was of great opulence and copious wealth, he summoned him to Ghazna and said to him, ‘I have heard that you are a Carmathian heretic.’ ‘I am no Carmathian,’ replied the unfortunate man; ‘but I have wealth wherefrom what is desired [by Your Majesty] may be taken, so that I be cleared of this name.’ So the Sulṭán took from him some portion of his wealth, and provided him with a document testifying to the soundness of his religious views.” In the eyes of most Muslims, so great a champion of the faith, one who was such a scourge to idolaters and so conspicuous an iconoclast, is raised above all criticism; but there is no doubt that Ibnu'l-Athír has laid his finger on a weak spot in the Sulṭán's character, and that, besides being greedy of wealth (which, no doubt, largely explains the persistence with which he prosecuted his Indian campaign), he was fanatical, cruel to Muslim heretics as well as to Hindoos (of whom he slew an incalculable number), fickle and uncertain in temper, and more notable as an irresistible conqueror than as a faithful friend or a magnanimous foe. He was born on Muḥarram 10, A.H. 350 (= November 13, A.D. 970), and died in March, A.D. 1030, at the age of sixty. His favourite Ayáz, concerning whom so many stories are related by Persian writers, was a historical personage, for his death is chronicled by Ibnu'l-Athír under the year A.H. 449 (= A.D. 1057-58), his full name being given as Ayáz, son of Aymáq Abu'n-Najm.

Having spoken of Maḥmúd, it is right that we should next pass to 'Unṣuri, his poet-laureate, who, if less great than Firdawsí, was highly esteemed as a poet long after the glory had departed from the Court of Ghazna, so that Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí of Samarqand says in the Chahár Maqála (p. 48 of my translation):—

“How many a palace did great Maḥmúd raise,
At whose tall towers the Moon did stand at gaze,
Whereof one brick remaineth not in place,
Though still re-echo 'Unṣurí's sweet lays.”

Concerning 'Unṣurí's life we know practically nothing, and even the date assigned to his death by various authorities 'Unṣurí. (mostly modern) varies between A.D. 1040 and 1050. 'Awfí, as usual, contents himself with an encomium embellished with a few word-plays. Dawlatsháh is more prodigal of words, and in the notice which he consecrates to this poet, whose full name he, in common with 'Awfí, gives as Abu'l-Qásim Ḥasan b. Aḥmad (a name vouched for also by the contemporary poet Minúchihrí in a qaṣída, of which a translation will follow shortly), writes as follows:—

“His merits and talent are plainer than the sun. He was the chief of the poets of Sulṭán Maḥmúd's time, and possessed many virtues beyond the gift of song, so that by some he is styled ‘the Sage’ (Ḥakím). It is said that four hundred eminent poets were in constant attendance on Sulṭán Maḥmúd Yamínu'd-Dawla, and that of all those Master 'Unṣurí was the chief and leader, whose disciples they acknowledged themselves. At the Sulṭán's Court he combined the functions of poet and favourite courtier, and was constantly celebrating in verse the wars and prowess of the King. In a long panegyric of some hundred and eighty couplets he has recorded in metre all the Sulṭán's wars, battles, and conquests. Finally the Sulṭán bestowed on him letters-patent investing him with the Laureateship in his dominions, and commanded that wherever, throughout his empire, there might be a poet or writer of elegance, he should submit his productions to 'Unṣurí, who, after examining its merits and defects, should submit it to the Royal Presence. So 'Unṣurí's daily receptions became the goal of all poets, and thereby there accrued to him much influence and wealth. ^120a Firdawsí, in his epic the Sháhnáma, bestows on him an eloquent encomium, as will be set forth in its proper place; though God best knows whether it be true!”

This last saving clause applies to a great deal of Dawlatsháh's information, which is more circumstantial than correct in many cases. As a sample of 'Unṣurí's verse he chooses a qaṣída of the kind known as “Question and Answer” (Su'ál u jawáb), of which, since it serves as well as another to give an idea of his verse, I here append a translation. The poem is in praise of Sulṭán Maḥmúd's brother, the Amír Naṣr b. Subuk-tigín, Governor of Khurásán, and the text will be found at pp. 45-46 of my edition of Dawlatsháh, or at ff. 3-4 of the edition of 'Unṣurí's poems lithographed at Ṭihrán without date. I have not attempted in my translation to preserve the uniform rhyme proper to the qaṣìda.

“To each inquiry which my wit could frame
Last night, from those fresh lips an answer came.
Said I, ‘One may not see thee save at night;’
‘When else,’ said she, ‘would'st see the Moon's clear light?’
Said I, ‘The sun doth fear thy radiant face;’
Said she, ‘When thou art here, sleep comes apace!’ ^121a
Said I, ‘With hues of night stain not the day!’ ^121b
Said she, ‘Stain not with blood thy cheeks, I pray!’ ^121c
Said I, ‘This hair of thine right fragrant is!’
Said she, ‘Why not? 'tis purest ambergris!’ ^121d
Said I, ‘Who caused thy cheeks like fire to shine?’
Said she, ‘That One who grilled ^121e that heart of thine.’

Said I, ‘Mine eyes I cannot turn from thee!’
‘Who from the miḥráb ^122a turns in prayer?’ quoth she.
Said I, ‘Thy love torments me! Grant me grace!’
Said she, ‘In torment is the lover's place!’
Said I, ‘Where lies my way to rest and peace?’
‘Serve our young Prince,’ said she, ‘withouten cease!’ ^122b
Said I, ‘Mír Naṣr, our Faith's support and stay?’
Said she, ‘That same, whom despot kings obey!’
Said I, ‘What share is his of wit and worth?’
‘Nay,’ she replied, ‘to him these owe their birth!’
Said I, ‘His virtues knowest thou, O Friend?’
‘Nay,’ she replied, ‘our knowledge they transcend!’
Said I, ‘Who are his messengers of war?’
Said she, ‘Anear the spear, the dart afar!’
Said I, ‘The age doth need him sore, in sooth!’
Said she, ‘Yea, more than we need life or youth!’
Said I, ‘Hast ever seen his like before?’
Said she, ‘Not even in the books of yore.’
Said I, ‘What say'st thou of his hand?’ Said she,
‘Like a mirage beside it seems the sea!’ ^122c
Said I, ‘He hearkens to the beggars' cries;’
Said she, ‘With gold and garments he replies.’
Said I, ‘What's left for men of gentle birth?’
‘Honour,’ she answered, ‘rank, and power, and worth!’
‘What deemest thou his arrows?’ questioned I:
‘Meteors and shooting stars,’ she made reply.
Said I, ‘His sword and he who stirs its ire?’
‘This quicksilver,’ said she, ‘and that the fire!’
Said I, ‘Lies aught beyond his mandate's calls?’
Said she, ‘If aught, what into ruin falls.’
Said I, ‘How false his foes!’ She answered, ‘Yea,
More false than false Musaylima ^122d are they!’

‘What lands,’ said I, ‘are left, were mine the might,
Were his.’ Said she, ‘What's left can ne'er be right.’ ^123a
Said I, ‘Then doth his bounty cause no stint?’
Said she, ‘Of time, in cloth-mill and in mint.’ ^123b
Said I, ‘What nobler is than all beside—’
‘—Hath God vouchsafed to him,’ my friend replied.
Said I, ‘This spacious realm where holds the King?’
Said she, ‘Beneath his stirrups and his ring.’ ^123c
Said I, ‘From praising him I will not rest.’
Said she, ‘So do the brightest and the best.’
Said I, ‘What boon for him shall crave my tongue?’
Said she, ‘Long life, and Fortune ever young!’”

Of 'Asjadí (Abú Nadhar 'Abdu'l-'Azíz b. Manṣúr), whom we should next mention, we know even less than of 'Unṣurí,

“I do repent of wine and talk of wine,
Of idols fair with chins like silver fine:
A lip-repentance and a lustful heart—
O God, forgive this penitence of mine!”

Of Farrukhí (Abu'l-Ḥasan 'Ali b. Júlúgh) of Sístán (Dawlatsháh says “of Tirmidh,” but this is certainly an Farrukhí. error), the third of the triad of poets with whom Firdawsí, according to the popular legend, was confronted on his arrival at the Court of Ghazna, we know somewhat more, thanks to a long anecdote (No. xv) in the Chahár Maqála (pp. 58-66 of my translation). His prose work on Prosody, the Tarjumánu'l-Balághat (“Interpreter of Eloquence”), of which Rashídu'd-Dín Waṭwáṭ, who describes its author as “being to the Persians what al-Mutanabbí was to the Arabs,” appears to have made use in the compilation of his Ḥadá'iqu's-Siḥr (“Gardens of Magic”), is, unfortunately, so far as we know, no longer extant; but of his Díwán, which Dawlatsháh describes as “enjoying a wide celebrity in Trans-oxiana, but lost or little known in Khurásán,” two manuscripts exist in the British Museum and one in the India Office, while a lithographed edition was published at Ṭihrán in A.H. 1301 and 1302 (A.D. 1883-85). According to the Chahár Maqála, his father, Júlúgh, was in the service of the Amír Khalaf, a descendant of the Ṣaffárids, who still preserved some fragment of his House's ancient power, while Farrukhí, on account of his skill in making verses and playing the harp (in which, like Rúdagí, he excelled), was retained in the service of a dihqán, or squire, who allowed him a yearly stipend of a hundred silver dirhams and two hundred measures of corn, each comprising five maunds. A marriage contracted with one of the ladies of Khalaf's Court made this allowance insufficient; and though at his request the dihqán consented to raise it to five hundred dirhams with three hundred maunds of corn, Farrukhí, deeming even this inadequate, and hearing glowing reports of the munificence of the Amír Abu'l-Mudhaffar of Chaghániyán (a place in Transoxiana, between Tirmidh and Qubádiyán), set off to try his fortune with this new patron, as he himself says:—

“In a caravan for Ḥilla bound from Sístán did I start
With fabrics spun within my brain and woven by my heart.”

On arriving at his destination, he found that the Amir Abu'l-Mudhaffar was absent in the country, superintending the branding of his colts and mares at the “branding-ground” (dágh-gáh), for he was a great lover of horse-flesh, and possessed, if we may credit the author of the Chahár Maqála, more than eighteen thousand beasts. In his absence the poet was received by his steward, the 'Amíd As'ad, who, being himself “a man of parts and a poet,” at once recognised the merit of the qaṣída which Farrukhí recited to him, but could hardly believe that the uncouth, ill-dressed Sístáni, who was “of the most unprepossessing appearance from head to foot,” and whose head was crowned “with a huge turban, after the manner of the Sagzís,” ^125a could really be its author. So he said—

“The Amír is at the branding-ground, whither I go to wait upon him, and thither I will take thee also, for it is a mighty pleasant spot—

‘World within world of verdure wilt thou see’—

full of tents and star-like lamps, and from each tent come the songs of Rúdagí, ^125b and friends sit together, drinking wine and making merry, while before the Amír's pavilion a great fire is kindled, in size like a mountain, whereat they brand the colts. And the Amír, goblet in one hand and lassoo in the other, drinks wine and gives away horses. Compose, now, a qaṣída describing this branding-ground, so that I may present thee to the Amír.”

So that night Farrukhí composed the following qaṣída, which is reckoned one of his most successful poems:—^126a

“Since the meadow hides its face in satin shot with greens and
blues,
And the mountains wrap their brows in silver veils of seven
hues,
Earth is teeming like the musk-pod with aromas rich and rare,
Foliage bright as parrot's plumage doth the graceful willow
wear.
Yestere'en the midnight breezes brought the tidings of the
spring:
Welcome, O ye northern gales, for this glad promise which ye
bring!
Up its sleeve the wind, meseemeth, pounded musk hath stored
away,
While the garden fills its lap with shining dolls, as though
for play.
On the branches of syringa necklaces of pearls we see,
Ruby ear-rings of Badakhshán sparkle on the Judas-tree.
Since the branches of the rose-bush carmine cups and beakers
bore
Human-like five-fingered hands reach downwards from the
sycamore.
Gardens all chameleon-coated, branches with chameleon whorls,
Pearly-lustrous pools around us, clouds above us raining
pearls!
On the gleaming plain this coat of many colours doth appear
Like a robe of honour granted in the Court of our Amír.
For our Prince's Camp of Branding stirreth in these joyful
days,
So that all this age of ours in joyful wonder stands a-gaze.
Green within the green you see, like stars within the firma-
ment;
Like a fort within a fortress spreads the army, tent on tent.
Every tent contains a lover resting in his sweetheart's arms,
Every patch of grass revealeth to a friend a favourite's charms.
Harps are sounding midst the verdure, minstrels sing their
lays divine,

Tents resound with clink of glasses as the pages pour the
wine.
Kisses, claspings from the lovers; coy reproaches from the
fair;
Wine-born slumbers for the sleepers, while the minstrels wake
the air.
Branding-fires, like suns ablaze, are kindled at the spacious
gate
Leading to the state-pavilion of our Prince so fortunate.
Leap the flames like gleaming lances draped with yellow-lined
brocade,
Hotter than a young man's passion, yellower than gold
assayed.
Branding-tools like coral branches ruby-tinted glow amain
In the fire, as in the ripe pomegranate glows the crimson
grain.
Rank on rank of active boys, whose watchful eyes no slumber
know;
Steeds which still await the branding, rank on rank and row
on row.
On his horse, the river-forder, roams our genial Prince afar,
Ready to his hand the lassoo, like a young Isfandiyár.
Like the locks of pretty children see it how it curls and
bends,
Yet be sure its hold is stronger than the covenant of friends.
Bu'l-Mudhaffar Shah, the Upright, circled by a noble band,
King and conqueror of cities, brave defender of the land.
Serpent-coiled in skilful hands his whirling noose fresh forms
doth take,
Like unto the rod of Moses metamorphosed to a snake.
Whosoever hath been captured by that noose and circling line,
On the face and flank and shoulder ever bears the Royal sign.
But, though on one side he brandeth, gives he also rich
rewards,
Leads his poets with a bridle, binds his guests as though with
cords.”

“When 'Amíd As'ad heard this qaṣída,” continues the author of the Chahár Maqála, “he was overwhelmed with amazement, for never had the like of it reached his ears. He put aside all his business, mounted Farrukhí on a horse, and set out for the Amír, whose presence he entered about sundown, saying, ‘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.’ Then he related what had passed.

“So the Amír accorded Farrukhí an audience, and he, when he was come in, did reverence, and the Amír gave him his hand, and assigned to him an honourable place, inquiring after his health, treating him with kindness, and inspiring him with hopes of favours to come. When the wine had gone round several times, Farrukhí arose, and, in a sweet and plaintive voice, recited his elegy, beginning:—

‘In a caravan for Ḥilla bound from Sístán did I start,
With fabrics spun within my brain and woven in my heart.’

When he had finished, the Amír, himself something of a poet, expressed his astonishment at this qaṣída. ‘Wait,’ said Amír As'ad, ‘till you see!’ Farrukhí was silent until the wine had produced its full effect on the Amír; then he arose and recited this qaṣída on the branding-ground. The Amír was amazed, and in his admiration turned to Farrukhí, saying, ‘They have brought in a thousand colts, all with white foreheads, fetlocks, and feet. Thou art a cunning rascal, a Sagzí; catch as many as thou art able, and they shall be thine.’ Farrukhí, on whom the wine had produced its full effect, came out, took his turban from his head, hurled himself into the midst of the herd, and chased a drove of them before him across the plain; but, though he caused them to gallop hither and thither, he could not catch a single one. At length a ruined rest-house situated on the edge of the camping-ground came into view, and thither the colts fled. Farrukhí, being tired out, placed his turban under his head in the porch of the rest-house, and at once went to sleep by reason of his extreme weariness, and the effects of the wine. When the colts were counted, they were forty-two in number. The Amír, being informed of this, laughed and said: ‘He is a lucky fellow, and will come to great things. Look after him, and look after the colts as well. When he awakes, waken me also.’ So they obeyed the Prince's orders.

“Next day, after sunrise, Farrukhí arose. The Amír had already risen, and, when he had performed his prayers, he gave Farrukhí an audience, treated him with great consideration, and handed over the colts to his attendants. He also ordered Farrukhí to be given a horse and equipments suitable to a man of rank, as well as a tent, three camels, five slaves, wearing apparel, and carpets. So Farrukhí prospered in his service, and enjoyed the greatest circumstance, and waited upon Sulṭán Maḥmúd, who, seeing him thus magnificently equipped, regarded him with a like regard, and his affairs reached that pitch of prosperity which they reached, so that twenty servants girt with silver girdles rode behind him.”

To the three poets just mentioned, 'Unṣurí, 'Asjadí, and Farrukhí, as they sat conversing together one day in Ghazna,

“Thine eyes are clear and blue as sunlit ocean”—

'Asjadí continued:—

“Their glance bewitches like a magic potion”—

Farrukhí proceeded:—

“The wounds they cause no balm can heal, nor lotion”—

And Firdawsí, alluding to a little-known episode in the Legend of the Ancient Kings, concluded:—

“Deadly as those Gív's spear dealt out to Pôshan.”

Being called upon to furnish an explanation of the allusion in this verse, Firdawsí displayed so great a knowledge of the ancient legends of Persia that 'Unṣurí told Sulṭán Maḥmúd that here at length was one competent to complete the work of versifying the national Epic which had been begun by Daqíqí for one of the Sámánid kings some twenty or thirty years before, but interrupted, when only some thousand ^130a verses, dealing with King Gushtásp and the advent of Zoroaster, had been written, by the murder of that talented but ill-starred poet at the hands of one of his Turkish favourites.

Such is the account given by Dawlatsháh and most of the later biographists of Firdawsí's first appearance at the Court of Ghazna; but, as already remarked in a note, no trace of it is to be found in the oldest accounts (dating from the middle of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries respectively) which we possess of the poet's life, and Professor Nöldeke is undoubtedly right in rejecting it as purely fictitious. Here, indeed, we suffer not from the usual dearth of biographical details, but from an embarrassing wealth of circumstantial narratives, of which neither the oldest accounts preserved to us of the poet's life, nor the incidental fragments of autobiography which the Sháhnáma itself yields, furnish any corroboration, even when they do not stand in actual contradiction. These later accounts, then, belonging chiefly to the latter part of the fifteenth century of our era, we must here ignore, referring such as are curious as to their contents to Ouseley's Biographies of the Persian Poets, Jules Mohl's Introduction to his great edition (accompanied by a French translation) of the Sháhnáma, and other books of the kind accessible to non-Orientalists.

By common consent of Easterns and Westerns, Firdawsí is so great a poet that, whatever our personal estimate of his Sháhnáma may be, he and his work must necessarily be discussed at some length; but, on the other hand, since my aim in this volume is, so far as possible, to furnish the European reader with such particulars about the literary history of Persia as he cannot easily find in European books, I shall endeavour to be as brief as seems permissible. The chief primary sources of trustworthy information at our disposal are, first, the poet's own works—to wit, the Sháhnáma, the later Yúsuf and Zulaykhá, and a certain number of short lyric poems, carefully collected, translated, and studied by Dr. Ethé in his excellent monographs ; ^131a secondly, the account given by Nidhámí-i-'Arúḍí-i-Samarqandí, who visited Firdawsí's grave at Ṭús in A.D. 1116-1117, only about a century after the poet's death, and embodied the traditions which he there collected in his delightful and oft-cited Chahár Maqála (Anecdote xx, pp. 77-84 of my translation); ^131b and thirdly, the brief and jejune account given by 'Awfí in Part ii of his Lubábu'l-Albáb (pp. 32-33 of my edition). Amongst European scholars (since the time when Turner Macan, Jules Mohl, and Rückert made the Sháhnáma generally known in Europe by their editions and translations), by far the most important critical studies on Firdawsí are those of Ethé mentioned in the last note but two, and Nöldeke's masterly article in the Grundriss d. Iran. Philologie, entitled Das Iranische Nationalepos, cited here according to the paging of the separate reprint (Trübner, 1896). To the last-named scholar in particular we owe a careful and critical statement of what may be regarded as certain and what as probable in the life of Firdawsí, derived mainly from the best possible source, to wit, Firdawsí's own statements scattered here and there through his interminable Sháhnáma.

Let us first dispose of the very meagre account of Firdawsí given by 'Awfí (Lubáb, Part ii, pp. 32-33 of my edition), and Accounts of Lubáb and Guzída. of another short account given by the historian Ḥamdu'lláh Mustawfí of Qazwín in his “Select History” (Táríkh-i-Guzída) composed in A.D. 1330, before the growth of the legends to which we have referred above. According to the latter authority, Firdawsí's real name (for Firdawsí, of course, was only his nom de guerre), which is very variously given, was Abu'l-Qásim (this much is certain) Ḥasan b. 'Alí of Ṭús, and he died in A.H. 416 (A.D. 1025-26). The Lubáb, as usual, gives us little beyond extravagant praises, save that its author insists very strongly on the wonderful uniformity of style, diction, and sentiment maintained throughout so vast a work on which the poet was engaged for so many years, and notices with approval an anthology culled from it by the early poet Mas'úd b. Sa'd (flourished about A.D. 1080), which shows how rapidly the Sháhnáma grew in popular favour.

According to the Chahár Maqála (the most ancient and important of our extraneous sources of information) Firdawsí

“Of the notables of the city in this book 'Alí Daylam and Abú
Dulaf have a share.
From these my portion was naught save ‘Well done!’ My
gall-bladder was like to burst with their ‘Well done's.’ ^133a
Ḥusayn ^133b b. Qutayba is one of the nobles who seeks not from
me gratuitous verse:
I know naught of the ground-tax, root or branch; I lounge [at
ease] in the midst of my quilt.”

In explanation of the last line, our author tells us that the above-mentioned Ḥusayn b. Qutayba, who was the revenue collector of Ṭús, took upon himself to remit Firdawsí's taxes; “whence naturally,” he adds, “his name will endure till the Resurrection, and Kings will read it.”

The Sháhnáma having been transcribed in seven volumes by the above-mentioned 'Alí Daylam, Firdawsí set out with it for Ghazna, taking with him his ráwí, or “repeater,” Abú Dulaf. He succeeded in interesting the Prime Minister, Abu'l-Qásim Aḥmad b. al-Ḥasan al-Maymandí, ^134a in his work, which was, by his instrumentality, brought to the notice of Sulṭán Maḥmúd, who expressed himself as greatly pleased with it. “But the Minister had enemies,” continues our author, “who were continually casting the dust of perturbation into the cup of his position, and Maḥmúd consulted with them as to what he should give Firdawsí. They replied, ‘Fifty thousand dirhams, and even that is too much, seeing that he is in belief a Ráfiḍí (i.e., a Shí'ite) and a Mu'tazilí.’ Of his Mu'tazilí views they adduced this verse as a proof:—

‘Thy gaze the Creator can never descry; ^134b
Then wherefore by gazing dost weary thine eye?’

While to his Ráfiḍí (Shí'ite) proclivities these verses bear witness.” (Here the author cites seven couplets in praise of Alí, of which both text and translation will be found on pp. 80-81 of my translation of the Chahár Maqála.)

Now if the above account be true (and there seems no reason for doubting its substantial correctness), we are greatly tempted to connect Firdawsí's disappointment with the disgrace and imprisonment of his patron, al-Maymandí, which, as Ibnu'l-Athír informs us (under the year A.H. 421 = A.D. 1030, when the Minister was released and reinstated by Maḥmúd's son and successor, Mas'úd), took place in A.H. 412 (= A.D. 1021-1022). But the objections to this supposition are, I fear, insuperable, for Nöldeke (op. cit., pp. 22-23) shows that Firdawsí was probably born in A.H. 323 or 324 (= A.D. 935-6), and that he finished the final edition of the Sháhnáma ^135a in A.H. 400 (= A.D. 1010), being at that time about eighty years of age, and it is about this time that the question of his recompense must have arisen.

“Now Sulṭan Maḥmúd,” continues the author of the Chahár Maqála, “was a zealot, and he listened to these imputations and caught hold of them, and, to be brief, only twenty thousand ^135b dirhams were paid to Ḥakím Firdawsí. He was bitterly disappointed, went to the bath, and, on coming out, bought a drink of sherbet, ^135c and divided the money between the bath-man and the sherbet-seller. Knowing, however, Maḥmúd's severity, he fled from Ghazna by night, and alighted in Herát at the shop of Azraqí's ^135d father, Isma'íl the bookseller (warráq), where he remained in hiding for six months, until Maḥmúd's messengers had visited Ṭús and had turned back thence, when Firdawsí, feeling secure, set out from Herát for Ṭús, taking the Sháhnáma with him. Thence he came to Ṭabaristán to the Ispahbad Shahriyár b. Shírwín ^135e of the House of Báwand, who was King there; and this is a noble House which traces its descent from Yazdigird, the son of Shahriyár.^135f

“Then Firdawsí wrote a satire on Sulṭán Maḥmúd in the Preface, from which he read a hundred couplets to Shír-zád, saying, ‘I will dedicate this Sháhnáma to thee instead of to Sulṭán Maḥmúd, since this book deals wholly with the legends and deeds of thy forbears.’ The Ispahbad treated him with honour and showed him many kindnesses, and said: 'Maḥmúd had no right knowledge of this matter, but was induced to act as he did by others, who did not submit your book to him under proper conditions, and who misrepresented you. Moreover you are a Shí'ite, and naught will befall him who loves the Family of the Prophet which did not befall them. ^136a Maḥmúd is my liege lord: let the Sháhnáma stand in his name, and give me the satire which you have written on him, that I may expunge it, and bestow on thee some little recompense; and Maḥmúd will surely summon thee and seek to satisfy thee fully. Do not, then, throw away the labour spent on such a book.’ ^136b And next day he sent Firdawsí 100,000 dirhams, saying: ‘I will buy each couplet of the satire on the Sulṭán at a thousand dirhams; give me those hundred couplets and rest satisfied therewith.’ ^136c So Firdawsí sent him those verses and he ordered them to be expunged; and Firdawsí also destroyed his rough copy of them, so that this satire was done away with, and only these few ^136d verses are preserved:

‘They said: “This bard of over-fluent song
Hath loved the Prophet and 'Alí for long.” ^136e
Yea, when I sing my love for them, I could
Protect from harm a thousand like Maḥmúd.
But can we hope for any noble thing
From a slave's son, e'en were his sire a King?

For had this King aught of nobility
High-throned in honour should I seated be.
But since his sires were not of gentle birth
He hates to hear me praising names of worth.’

“In truth the Ispahbad rendered a great service to Maḥmúd, who was thereby placed deeply in his debt.

“In the year A.H. 514” (A.D. 1120-21), continues Nidhámí of Samarqand, “when I was in Níshápúr, I heard the Amír Mu'izzí ^137a say that he had heard the Amír 'Abdu'r-Razzáq of Ṭús relate as follows: 'Maḥmúd was once in India, returning thence towards Ghazna. It chanced that on his way was a rebellious chief possessed of a strong fortress, and next day Maḥmúd encamped at its gates, and despatched an ambassador to him, bidding him come before him on the morrow to do homage and pay his respects at the Court, when he should receive a robe of honour and return to his place. Next day Maḥmúd rode out with the Prime Minister ^137b on his right hand, for the ambassador had turned back and was coming to meet the King. “I wonder,” said the latter to the Minister, “what reply he will have given?” The Minister answered:

“‘And should the reply with my wish not accord,
Then Afrásiyáb's field, and the mace, and the sword!’”

“‘Whose verse,’ inquired Maḥmúd, ‘is that? For he must have the heart of a man.’ ^137c ‘Poor Abu'l-Qásim Firdawsí composed it,’ answered the Minister; ‘he who for five-and-twenty years laboured to complete such a work, and reaped from it no advantage.’ ‘You speak well,’ said Maḥmúd; ‘I deeply regret that this noble man was disappointed by me. Remind me at Ghazna to send him something.’

“So when the Sulṭán returned to Ghazna, the Minister reminded him; and Maḥmúd ordered that sixty thousand dínárs' worth ^137d of indigo should be given to Firdawsí, and that this indigo should be carried to Ṭús on the King's own camels, and that apologies should be tendered to Firdawsí. For years the Minister had been working for this, and at length he had achieved his work; so now he caused the camels to be loaded, and the indigo safely reached Ṭábarán. ^138a But even as the camels entered the Rúdbár Gate, the corpse of Firdawsí was borne forth from the Gate of Razán. ^138b Now at that time there was in Ṭábarán a preacher, whose fanaticism was such that he declared that he would not suffer Firdawsí's body to be buried in the Musulmán Cemetery because he was a Ráfiḍí; and nothing that men could say would serve to move him. Now outside the gate there was a garden belonging to Firdawsí, ^138c and there they buried him, and there he lies to this day. And I visited his tomb in the year A.H. 510 (A.D. 1116-17).^138d

“They say that Firdawsí left a very high-spirited ^138e daughter, to whom they would have given the King's gift; but she would not accept it, declaring that she needed it not. The Postmaster wrote ^138f to the Court and represented this to the King, who ordered this doctor ^138g to be expelled from Ṭábarán as a punishment for his officiousness, and to be exiled from his home; and that the money should be given to the Imám Abú Bakr [ibn] Isḥáq for the repair of the rest-house of Cháha, ^139a which stands on the road between Merv and Níshápúr at the confines of Ṭús. When this order reached Ṭús and Níshápúr, it was faithfully executed; and the restoration of the rest-house of Cháha was effected with this money.”

Such, then, is the oldest and most authentic account of Firdawsí which we possess; and we may be quite sure that,

“When the lips of the babe are first dried from their food
They lisp in the cradle the name of Maḥmúd”—

is said to have definitely gained Firdawsí the favour of the Sulṭán, who is represented as lodging him in apartments in the palace and assigning him a regular salary. The King's favourite Ayáz, whom Firdawsí is said in this narrative (for in others ^140a these two are represented as firm friends) to have annoyed by his neglect, is represented as poisoning Maḥmúd's mind against him by accusations of heresy, with which he openly charged the poet, saying, “All the great heresiarchs of this (i.e., the Carmathian or Isma'ílí) sect have come from Ṭús; but I forgive you on condition that you renounce this doctrine.” The poet is further represented as hiding in Ghazna for several months after his disappointment in order to get back into his hands from the King's librarian the manuscript of his Sháhnáma, and the name of the bookseller with whom he afterwards took refuge at Herát is changed from Isma'íl to Abu'l-Ma'álí. Other details and variations of a similar character mark the remainder of Dawlatsháh's narrative, which, however, on the whole follows that already given.

The internal evidence afforded by Firdawsí's own works is, of course, so far as the text of them (which is in many places Internal evidence. very uncertain and unsatisfactory) can be trusted, the most authoritative source of information concerning his life. This, as already observed, has been exhaustively examined, with admirable patience and acumen, by Professor Nöldeke and Dr. Ethé. It is impossible for me in the scanty space at my disposal to recapitulate here all their conclusions, neither is it necessary, since every serious student of the Sháhnáma must needs read the Iranisches Nationalepos of the former scholar, and the already-mentioned articles on this subject published by the latter, together with his edition of Firdawsí's Yúsuf and Zulaykhá, and the chapters germane to this topic contained in his Neupersische Litteratur in vol. ii of the Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie. Briefly, however, we appear to be justified in assuming that Firdawsí was a dihqán or squire of Ṭús, of respectable position and comfortable means; that he was born about A.D. 920, or a little later; that a taste for antiquarian research and folk-lore, fostered by the perusal of the prose “Book of Kings” compiled in Persian from older sources by Abú Manṣúr al-Ma'marí for Abú Manṣur b. 'Abdu'r-Razzáq, the then Governor of Ṭús, in A.D. 957-8, ^141a led him, about A.D. 974, definitely to undertake the versification of the National Epic; that he completed what we may call “the first edition” in A.D. 999, after twenty-five years' labour, and dedicated it to Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Abí Bakr of Khálanján; that the “second edition,” dedicated to Sulṭán Maḥmúd, was completed in or shortly before A.D. 1010; that his quarrel with the Sulṭán and flight from Ghazna almost immediately succeeded this; and that, having lived for a short time under the protection of one of the Princes of the House of Buwayh (Bahá'u'd-Dawla or his son Sulṭánu'd-Dawla, who succeeded him in A.D. 1012, as Nöldeke thinks; Majdu'd-Dawla Abú Ṭálib Rustam, as Ethé seems to believe), for whom he composed his other great poem, the Yúsuf and Zulaykhá, he returned, an old man of ninety or more, to his native town of Ṭús, and there died about A.D. 1020 or 1025.

We must now pass to the brief consideration of Firdawsí's work, which, so far as it is preserved to us, consists of (1) the Firdawsí's work: (1) the Sháhnáma. Sháhnáma; (2) the romance of Yúsuf and Zulaykha; and (3) a considerable number of lyrical fragments, preserved by various biographers and anthology-makers, and diligently collected, edited, and translated by Dr. Ethé in his articles Firdausí als Lyriker already mentioned.

It is on the Sháhnáma, of course, that Firdawsí's great reputation as a poet rests. In their high estimate of the literary value of this gigantic poem Eastern and Western critics are almost unanimous, and I therefore feel great diffidence in confessing that I have never been able entirely to share this enthusiasm. The Sháhnáma cannot, in my opinion, for one moment be placed on the same level as the Arabian Mu'allaqát; and though it is the prototype and model of all epic poetry in the lands of Islám, it cannot, as I think, compare for beauty, feeling, and grace with the work of the best didactic, romantic, and lyric poetry of the Persians. It is, of course, almost impossible to argue about matters of taste, especially in literature; and my failure to appreciate the Sháhnáma very likely arises partly from a constitutional disability to appreciate epic poetry in general. With such disabilities we are all familiar, most notably in the case of music, where a Wagner will entrance some, while leaving others indifferent or even uncomfortable. Yet, allowing for this, I cannot help feeling that the Sháhnáma has certain definite and positive defects. Its inordinate length is, of course, necessitated by the scope of its subject, which is nothing less than the legendary history of Persia from the beginning of time until the Arab Conquest in the seventh century of our era; and the monotony of its metre it shares with most, if not all, other epics. But the similes employed are also, as it seems to me, unnecessarily monotonous: every hero appears as “a fierce, war-seeking lion,” a “crocodile,” “a raging elephant,” and the like; and when he moves swiftly, he moves “like smoke,” “like dust,” or “like the wind.” The beauty of form in any literary work is necessarily lost in translation, though it may be to some extent replaced or imitated in a clever rendering; but beauty and boldness of ideas there should be less difficulty in preserving, so that, for instance, the beauty of 'Umar Khayyám's quatrains may be said to have been wholly rendered by the genius of FitzGerald. But the Sháhnáma, as it seems to me, defies satisfactory translation, for the sonorous majesty of the original (and this at least no one who has heard it declaimed by the professional rhapsodists of Persia, known as Sháhnáma-khwáns, will deny) is lost, and the nakedness of the underlying ideas stands revealed. I do not profess to be a skilful versifier, but at least many Persian and Arabic poets have suffered equally at my hands in these pages; and I venture to think that few English readers of this book and its Prolegomena (which contained numerous translations from the Sháhnáma experimentally rendered in various different ways) will put my renderings of the Sháhnáma even on a level with my renderings from other poets, though the coefficient of loss is in all cases about the same.

If there be any truth in these views (quite heretical, as I freely allow), to what does the Sháhnáma owe its great and,

In the previous volume, or Prolegomena, of this work I gave translations of a good many passages of the Sháhnáma connected with the Legend of Ardashír, ^144a showing how closely Firdawsí followed his sources, wherever these have been preserved to us; and I discussed at considerable length the scope and character of the Persian epic and the Sháhnáma (pp. 110-123). To these matters I have not space to recur here, and I will give but one more specimen in translation, namely, the opening lines of the celebrated Episode of Rustam and Suhráb (rendered familiar to English readers by Matthew Arnold's paraphrase), which is generally reckoned one of the finest passages in the Sháhnáma. The original text will be found at pp. 315-316 of the first volume of Turner Macan's edition, and in my rendering I have departed from the plan adopted in the Prolegomena of making alliterative blank verse the medium of my translation, and have endeavoured to imitate as closely as possible the rhyme and metre (mutaqárib) of the original.

“The story of Suhráb and Rustam now hear:
Other tales thou hast heard: to this also give ear.
A story it is to bring tears to the eyes,
And wrath in the heart against Rustam will rise.
If forth from its ambush should rush the fierce blast
And down in the dust the young orange should cast,

Then call we it just, or unkind and unfair,
And say we that virtue or rudeness is there?
What, then, is injustice, if justice be death?
In weeping and wailing why waste we our breath?
Naught knoweth thy soul of this mystery pale;
No path shall conduct thee beyond the dark veil.
All follow their ways to this hungering door,
A door which, once shut, shall release them no more!
Yet perhaps thou shalt win, when from hence thou shalt roam
In that other abode to a happier home.
If Death's clutch did not daily fresh victims enfold
Our earth would be choked with the young and the old.
Is it strange if the flame of the ravenous fire,
Once kindled, should lead to a holocaust dire?
Nay, its burning outbursteth, once grant it a hold,
As tender twigs spring from some root strong but old.
Death's breath doth resemble such pitiless fire,
Consuming alike both the son and the sire.
E'en the young in the joy of their living must pause,
For, apart from old age, Death has many a cause.
Should Death bid thee fare to thy long home with speed,
And constrain thee to mount on pale Destiny's steed,
Think not that for Justice Injustice is sent,
And if Justice, then wherefore bewail and lament?
In Destiny's sight Youth and Age are as one;
Thus know, if ye want not Religion undone.
If thy heart is fulfilled with Faith's light, then I trow
That silence is best, for God's servant art thou.
Be thy business to supplicate, worship, obey,
And order thine acts for the Last Judgement Day.
In thy heart and thy soul hath the demon no lot,
Then to fathom this secret of God's seek thou not.
Seek now in this world of religion a share;
That alone will support thee when hence thou shalt fare.
Now hearken: the story of Suhráb I'll tell,
And the strife which 'twixt him and his father befell.”

It is sometimes asserted that the Sháhnáma contains practically no Arabic words. This is incorrect: Firdawsí avoided their use as far as possible in his Epic, because he felt them to be unsuitable to the subject of his poem, but even in his time many Arabic words had become so firmly established in the language that it was impossible to avoid their use. The twenty-one verses translated above comprise about 250 words, of which nine ('ajab, tarab, sabab, qaḍá, ajal, khalal, núr, ímán, and Islám) are pure Arabic, and one (hawl-nák) half Arabic; and this is about the usual proportion, namely, 4 or 5 per cent.

Passing now to Firdawsí's remaining poetical works, we come next to his mathnawí on the romance of Yúsuf and

The value of Firdawsí's lyric poetry, to judge by the specimens preserved to us in anthologies and biographies,

“Were it mine to repose for one night on thy bosom,
My head, thus exalted, would reach to the skies;
In Mercury's fingers the pen I would shatter;
The crown of the Sun I would grasp as my prize.
O'er the ninth sphere of heaven my soul would be flying
And Saturn's proud head 'neath my feet would be lying,
Yet I'd pity poor lovers sore wounded and dying,
Were thy beauty mine own, or thy lips, or thine eyes.”

Here is a rendering of the lines cited by 'Awfí:—

“Much toil did I suffer, much writing I pondered,
Books writ in Arabian and Persian of old;
For sixty-two years many arts did I study:
What gain do they bring me in glory or gold?
Save regret for the past and remorse for its failings
Of the days of my youth every token hath fled,
And I mourn for it now, with sore weepings and wailings,
In the words Khusrawání Bú Ṭáhir ^147c hath said:

‘My youth as a vision of childhood in sooth
I remember: alas and alas for my youth!’”

The next poet claiming our attention is the elder Asadí, Abú Naṣr Aḥmed b. Manṣúr of Ṭús, not to be confounded Asadí the elder. with his son 'Alí b. Aḥmed al-Asadí, the author of the Garshásp-náma and of the oldest extant Persian Lexicon, in whose handwriting is the most ancient Persian manuscript known to exist, transcribed in A.D. 1055-56, now preserved at Vienna, and published by Seligmann. Perhaps, indeed, he should have been placed before Firdawsí, who is said to have been his pupil as well as his friend and fellow-townsman; but I am not concerned within each period to follow a strictly chronological order, and, even if I were, the date of Asadí's death, which was subsequent to Firdawsí's, would justify this order, since, though in this particular case we have reason to believe that Asadí was the older of the two poets, the obituary dates, as a rule, are alone recorded by Muslim biographers.

Our knowledge of Asadí's life is meagre in the extreme. 'Awfí and the Chahár Maqála ignore him entirely, and his Dawlatsháh's fictions. name is merely mentioned (and that in connection with the Garshasp-náma, which was the younger Asadí's work) in the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída. Dawlatsháh, as usual, gives plenty of detail; but as it is, so far as I know, unsupported by any respectable authority of earlier times, it must be regarded as worthless. He pretends, for instance, that Asadí was pressed to undertake the composition of the Sháhnáma, but excused himself on the ground of his age, and passed on the task to his pupil Firdawsí; but that when the latter lay dying at Ṭús, with the last four thousand couplets of the Epic still unwritten, Asadí finished it for him in a day and a night, and was able to console the dying poet by reading to him on the following day the completion of the poem. These verses are even specified by Dawlatsháh, who says that they extend from the first invasion of Persia by the Arabs to the end of the book, and that “men of letters are of opinion that it is possible to detect by close attention where the verse of Firdawsí ends and that of Asadí begins.” One of the Cambridge MSS. of Dawlatsháh (Add. 831) has the following marginal comment on this baseless fiction: “Firdawsí, as will be subsequently mentioned in the notice of his life, himself completed the Sháhnáma, whence it is evident that no other person collaborated with him in its versification. For after he had completed it he succeeded, by a stratagem, in recovering possession of it from the King's librarian, and inserted in it the verses of the celebrated satire. What is here stated is plainly incompatible with this.” To this sensible comment another hand has added the words Níkú guftí! (“Thou sayest well!”).

Asadí's chief claim to distinction rests on the fact that he developed and perfected, if he did not invent, the species The munádhara, or “strife-poem.” of poem entitled munádhara, or “strife-poem;” and Dr. Ethé, who has gone deeply into this matter, has embodied the results of his erudition and industry in an admirable monograph published in the Acts of the Fifth International Congress of Orientalists, held at Berlin in 1882, and entitled Über persische Tenzonen. Asadí is known to have composed five such munádharát, to wit: (1) Arab and Persian, (2) Heaven and Earth, (3) Spear and Bow, (4) Night and Day, and (5) Muslim and Gabr (Zoroastrian). Of these I shall offer the reader, as a specimen of this kind of composition, a complete translation (from the text given by Dawlatsháh) of the fourth, referring such as desire further information as to the contents of the others, and the light they throw on the poet's life and adventures, to Ethé's monograph mentioned above, and to pp. 226-229 of his article Neupersische Litteratur in vol. ii of Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss.

ASADÍ'S STRIFE-POEM BETWEEN NIGHT AND DAY.
“Hear the fierce dispute and strife which passed between the
Night and Day;
'Tis a tale which from the heart will drive all brooding care
away.
Thus it chanced, that these disputed as to which stood first in
fame,
And between the two were bandied many words of praise and
blame.
‘Surely Night should take precedence over Day,’ began the
Night,
'Since at first the Lord Eternal out of Darkness called the
Light.
Do not those who pray by daylight stand in God's esteem less
high
Than do those who in the night-time unto Him lift up their
cry?
In the night it was that Moses unto prayer led forth his throng,
And at night-time Lot departed from the land of sin and wrong.
'Twas at night that by Muḥammad heaven's orb in twain was
cleft,
And at night on his ascent to God the Holy House he left.
Thirty days make up the month, and yet, as God's Qur'án doth
tell,
In degree the Night of Merit ^150a doth a thousand months excel.
Night doth draw a kindly curtain, Day our every fault doth
show;
Night conferreth rest and peace, while Day increaseth toil and
woe.
In the day are certain seasons when to pray is not allowed,
While of night-long prayer the Prophet and his Church were
ever proud.
I'm a King whose throne is earth, whose palace is the vaulted
blue,
Captained by the Moon, the stars and planets form my retinue.
Thou with thy blue veil of mourning heaven's face dost hide
and mar,

Which through me, like Iram's Garden, glows with many a
flower-like star.
By this Moon of mine they count the months of the Arabian
year,
And the mark of the Archangel's wing doth on its face appear.
On the visage of the Moon the signs of health one clearly sees,
While apparent on the Sun's face are the symptoms of disease.
Less than thirty days sufficeth for the Moon her course to run,
Such a course as in the year is scarce completed by the Sun.'

“When the Day thus long had listened to the Night, its wrath
was stirred:
‘Cease!’ it cried, 'for surely never hath a vainer claim been
heard!
Heaven's Lord doth give precedence, in the oath which He
hath sworn,
Over Night to Day; and darest thou to hold the Day in scorn?
All the fastings of the people are observed and kept by day,
And at day-time to the Ka'ba do the pilgrims wend their way.
'Arafa and 'Áshúrá, the Friday prayer, the festal glee,
All are proper to the Day, as every thinking mind can see.
From the void of Non-Existence God by day created men,
And 'twill be by day, we know, that all shall rise to life again.
Art thou not a grief to lovers, to the child a terror great,
Of the Devil's power the heart, and on the sick man's heart
the weight?
Owls and bats and birds of darkness, ghosts and things of
goblin race,
Thieves and burglars, all together witness to the Night's dis-
grace.
I am born of Heaven's sunshine, thou art of the Pit's dark
hole;
I am like the cheerful firelight, thou art like the dusky coal.
These horizons I adorn by thee are rendered dull and drear;
Leaps the light in human eyes for me, for thee springs forth
the tear.
Mine Faith's luminous apparel, Unbelief's dark robe for you;
Mine the raiment of rejoicing, thine the mourner's sable hue.
How canst thou make boast of beauty with thy dusky negro
face?
Naught can make the negro fair, though gifted with a statue's
grace.

What avail thy starry hosts and regiments, which headlong fly
When my Sun sets up his standard in the verdant field of
sky?
What if in God's Holy Book my title after thine appears?
Doth not God in Scripture mention first the deaf, then him
who hears?
Read the verse ‘He Death created,’ where Life holds the second
place,
Yet is Life most surely welcomed more than Death in any
case.
By thy Moon the months and years in Arab computation run,
But the Persian months and years are still computed by the
Sun.
Though the Sun be sallow-faced, 'tis better than the Moon, I
ween;
Better is the golden dínár than the dirham's silver sheen.
From the Sun the Moon derives the light that causeth it to
glow;
In allegiance to the Sun it bends its back in homage low.
If the Moon outstrips the Sun, that surely is no wondrous
thing:
Wondrous were it if the footman should not run before the
King!
Of the five appointed prayers the Night has two, the Day has
three;
Thus thy share hath been diminished to be given unto me.
If thou art not yet content with what I urge in this debate,
Choose between us two an umpire just and wise to arbitrate;
Either choose our noble King, in equity without a peer,
Or elect, if you prefer, that Mine of Grace, the Grand Wazír,
Aḥmad's son Khalíl Abú Naṣr, noble, bounteous, filled with
zeal,
Crown of rank and state, assurer of his King's and country's
weal.'”

It may be mentioned that Asadí incurred Sulṭán Maḥmúd's displeasure by one of his “strife-poems” (that entitled “Arab and Persian”), in consequence of the praise which he bestowed on two princes of the rival House of Buwayh, viz., Shamsu'd-Dawla Abú Ṭáhír of Hamadán (A.D. 997-1021), and Majdu'd-Dawla Abú Ṭalib Rustam (A.D. 997-1029); another instance of the Sulṭán's jealous disposition.

Abu'l Faraj of Sístán, though earlier in time than most of the poets above mentioned, is subordinate in importance Abu'l Faraj-iSagzí. to them, and also to his pupil Minúchihrí, of whom we shall speak immediately. His chief patron was Abú Símjúr, one of the victims of Sulṭán Maḥmúd's inordinate ambition, and he is said to have died in A.D. 1002. Of his life and circumstances we know next to nothing, though in Dawlatsháh, ^153a as usual, personal details are forthcoming, though only one fragment of his verse is given, of which this is a translation:—

“Gladness in this age of ours is like the 'Anqá of the West;
Consecrated unto sorrow seems our mortal life's brief span.
Widely o'er the earth I've wandered, much the World of Form
explored,
Man I found fore-doomed to sorrow, made to suffer: wretched
man!
Each in varying proportion bears his burden of distress;
Unto none they grant exemption from the universal ban.”

Of Abu'l-Faraj's pupil Minúchihrí, who survived till A.D. 1041 or later, mention has been already made, and a Minúchihrí. translation of one of his most celebrated qaṣídas is given at pp. 30-34 supra. Manuscripts of his díwán are not very common, but it has been printed, with a historical Introduction, a full translation, and excellent notes by A. de Biberstein Kazimirski (Paris, 1886), and a lithographed edition was published in Ṭihrán some six years earlier, while Dawlatsháh speaks of it as “well known and famous in Persia.” That he was a native of Dámghán (some fifty miles south of Astarábád, on the Ṭihrán-Mashhad road), not of Balkh or Ghazna, as Dawlatsháh asserts, clearly appears from one of his own verses. 'Awfí ^153b gives his full name as Abu'n-Najm Ahmad b. Qúṣ (or Ya'qúb, according to Ethé, op. cit., p. 225) b. Aḥmad al-Minúchihrí, and vouchsafes little further information, save that he was precociously clever and died young. He is generally said to have borne the sobriquet of shast galla, a term variously interpreted, ^154a but generally as meaning “sixty herds,” in allusion to his wealth. 'Awfí says nothing of this, and a passage in the unique history of the Seljúqs entitled Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr, to which I called attention in my account of this important work in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1902, pp. 580-581, inclines me to believe that two different poets have been confounded together by later writers: to wit, Abu'n-Najm Aḥmad Minúchihrí, who flourished in the first half of the eleventh century of our era, and Shamsu'd-Dín Aḥmad Minúchihr, who lived in the latter part of the twelfth century, and to whom the sobriquet of shast galla really belonged. Of this latter poet's verses nothing, so far as I know, has been preserved, and we only know that he wrote a qaṣída called (probably from its rhyme) qaṣída-i-titmáj.

Here is a translation of another celebrated qaṣída by the real The “Candleqaṣída.” Minúchihrí, describing the Candle, and ending with praises of 'Unṣurí. It is given both by 'Awfí and Dawlatsháh, and of course in the editions of the Díwán:—

“Thou whose soul upon thy forehead glitters like an aureole,
By our souls our flesh subsists, while by thy flesh subsists thy
soul.
Why, if not a star, dost waken only when all others sleep?
Why, if not a lover, ever o'er thyself forlorn dost weep?
Yes, thou art indeed a star, but shinest in a waxen sphere!
Yes, thou art a lover, but thy sweetheart is the chandelier!
O'er thy shirt ^154b thou wear'st thy body: strange, indeed; for all
the rest
Wear the vest upon the skin, but thou the skin upon the vest!
Thou revivest if upon thee falls the fire when thou art dead,^154c

And when thou art sick they cure thee best by cutting off thy
head! ^155a
Even midst thy smiles thou weepest, ^155b and, moreover, strange
to tell,
Thou art of thyself the lover, and the well-beloved as well!
Thou without the Spring dost blossom, and without the
Autumn die, ^155c
Laughing now without a mouth, and weeping now without
an eye! ^155d
Me most nearly thou resemblest; closely I resemble thee;
Kindly friends of all the world, but foes unto ourselves are we.
Both of us consume and spend ourselves to make our com-
rades glad,
And by us our friends are rendered happy while ourselves
are sad.
Both are weeping, both are wasting, both are pale and weary-
eyed,
Both are burned in isolation, both are spurned and sorely tried.
I behold upon thy head what in my heart doth hidden rest;
Thou upon thy head dost carry what I hide within my breast.
Both our visages resemble yellow flowers of shanbalíd,
Mine the bud unopened, thine the bloom which beautifies the
mead.
From thy face when I am parted hateful is the sunshine
bright,
And when thou art taken from me, sad and sorrowful the
night.
All my other friends I've tested, great and little, low and
high;
Found not one with kindly feeling, found not two with loyalty.
Thou, O Candle, art my friend; to thee my secrets I consign;
Thou art my familiar comrade, I am thine and thou art mine.
Like a beacon light thou shinest, while with eager eyes I scan
Every night till dawn the Díwán of Abu'l-Qásim Ḥasan, ^155e
'Unṣurí, the greatest master of the day in this our art,
Soul of faith, of stainless honour, great in wisdom, pure in
heart,^155f

He whose voice is like his wit, alike original and free;
While his wit is like his verse in grace and spontaneity.
Art in verse surpassing his to claim were but an idle boast;
Others have at best one talent; he of talents owns a host.
In the crow will ne'er appear the virtues of the horse, I trow,
Though the neighing of the horse be like the cawing of the
crow.
Whilst his poems you're reciting sugar-plums you seem to eat,
And the fragrance of his verses than the jasmine is more
sweet.”

Minúchihrí, it may be added, took his pen-name from the Ziyárid Prince of Ṭabaristán, Minúchihr b. Qábús b. Washmgír, entitled Falaku'l-Ma'álí (“The Heaven of High Qualities”), who succeeded his murdered father in A.D. 1012-13, and died in A.D. 1028-29.

Ghaḍá'irí of Ray has been already mentioned (pp. 69-70 supra) as the author of an ighráq, or hyperbolic praise, of Sulṭán Ghaḍá'irí. Maḥmúd, which is said to have been rewarded with seven purses of gold, equivalent in value to 14,000 dirhams. The qaṣída in which these two verses occur begins:—

“If in rank be satisfaction, if in wealth be high degree,
Look on me, that so the Beauty of Perfection thou may'st see!
I am one in whom shall glory, even till the end of days,
Every scribe who o'er a couplet writes the customary ‘says.’” ^156a Both 'Awfí and Dawlatsháh give brief notices of this poet, of whose life we know practically nothing, save that he excelled in “strife-poems” and poetical duels as well as in panegyric.

Bahrámí of Sarakhs has been already mentioned (p. 115 supra) as the author of a prose work on Prosody entitled Khujasta-náma.

Our list of the poets of this period might be greatly extended,

“Sire, whose protecting strength is sought by all,
Summon the minstrels, for the wine-cup call;
That we with molten ruby may wash out
From palate parched the march's dust and drought”—

would seem to have accompanied Sulṭán Maḥmúd on some of his endless campaigns, in allusion to which he says, in another fragment cited by 'Awfí:—

“With foeman's blood sedition thou dost stay;
Heresy's stain thy falchion wipes away.
Hast thou a vow that each new month shall show
A fortress opened and a firm-bound foe?
Art pledged like Alexander every hour
Before Earth's monarchs to display thy power?”

But only three poets of those still unnoticed in this chapter imperatively demand mention, to wit the dialect-poet Pindár of Ray, Kisá'í of Merv, and the mystic quatrain-writer Abú Sa'íd ibn Abi'l-Khayr. The last-named, whose long life (A.D. 968-1049) bridges over the period separating the Sámánids from the Seljúqids, is by far the most important of the three, and will be more conveniently considered in the next chapter, in which we shall have to say more of religious and didactic and less of epic and panegyric verse; so it only remains here to speak briefly of Pindár and Kisá'í.

Of Pindár of Ray, said to have been called Kamálu'd-Dín, hardly anything is known, save that he was patronised by Pindár of Ray. Majdu'd-Dawla Abú Ṭálib Rustam the Bu-wayhid prince of Ray, and earlier by the great Ṣáḥib Isma'íl b. 'Abbád. He is said to have died in A.D. 1010, and to have composed poetry in Arabic, Persian, and the “Dayla-mite” dialect. I can find no earlier mention of him than that of Dawlatsháh (pp. 42-44 of my edition), for 'Awfí and Ibn Isfandiyár, from whom we might have expected some light, are both silent; while even Dawlatsháh is unusually sparing of detail, and cites only two of Pindár's verses, one in Persian and one in dialect. The latter, addressed to an acquaintance who advised him to take to himself a wife, is only intelligible enough to make it clear that it could not be translated; the former, “very well known, and ascribed to many well-known poets,” may be thus rendered:—

“Two days there are whereon to flee from Death thou hast no
need,
The day when thou art not to die, the day when death's
decreed;
For on the day assigned by Fate thy striving naught avails,
And if the day bears not thy doom, from fear of death be
freed!”

Dawlatsháh also cites the following verse of the later poet Dhahíru'd-Dín Fáryábí as containing “an (implied) encomium on Pindár”:—

Through the depths unrevealed of my genius a glance should'st
thou fling,
Behold, out of every corner a Pindár I'll bring.”

I doubt, however, if the word Pindár in this line is a proper name; it is probable the common noun meaning “thought,” “fancy.”^159a

For the scantiness of his information about Pindár, Dawlatsháh endeavours to compensate by an anecdote about Majdu'd-Dawla's mother, who, during her lifetime, acted as Regent, which, whether true or not, is pretty enough. When Majdu'd-Dawla came to the throne, in A.D. 997, he was but a boy, and, as above mentioned, the actual control of affairs was in the capable hands of his mother. From her, it is said, Sulṭán Maḥmúd demanded tax and tribute, and the sending of her son with his ambassador to Ghazna; failing her compliance, he threatened “to send two thousand war-elephants to carry the dust of Ray to Ghazna.” The Queen-Regent received the ambassador with honour, and placed in his hands the following letter for transmission to the Sulṭán:—

“Sulṭán Maḥmúd is a mighty champion of the Faith and a most puissant Prince, to whom the greater part of Persia and the land of India have submitted. For twelve years, so long as my husband Fakhru'd-Dawla was alive, I feared his ravages and his hostility; but now, ever since my husband attained to God's Paradise, that anxiety has been obliterated from my heart. For Sulṭán Maḥmúd is a great king and also a man of honour, and will not lead his army against an old woman. Should he do so and make war, it is certain that I too would give battle. Should the victory be mine, it would be for me a triumph till the Day of Judgement; while, should he be victorious, men would say, ‘He hath only defeated an old woman!’ What proclamations of victory could he frame for publication through his dominions?

I know, however, that the Sulṭán is wise and prudent, and will never embark on such an enterprise; therefore have I no anxiety as to the issue of this matter, but recline on the couch of tranquillity and confidence.”

The letter, adds our biographer, had the desired effect, and so long as she lived the Sulṭán made no attack on her son's dominions. Some colour is given to this tale by the fact, recorded by Ibnu'l-Athír, that Ray was seized by Sulṭán Maḥmúd, and Majdu'd-Dawla dethroned, in A.D. 420 (A.D. 1029), the year succeeding that in which the mother of the latter died. It was in the spring of that year that Maḥmúd entered Ray, and took from it a million dínárs in money, and half that value in jewelry, with six thousand suits of clothes and innumerable other spoils. He summoned Majdu'd-Dawla before him and said to him, “Hast thou not read the Sháhnáma (which is the history of the Persians) and the history of Ṭabarí (which is the history of the Muslims)?” “Yes,” answered Majdu'd-Dawla. “Thy conduct,” continued Maḥmúd, “is not as of one who has read them. Dost thou not play chess?” “Yes,” replied the other. “Didst thou ever see a king approach a king?” the Sulṭán went on. “No,” answered the unfortunate prince. “Then,” asked Maḥmúd, “what induced thee to surrender thyself to one who is stronger than thee?” And he ordered him to be exiled to Khurásán. It was on this occasion also that Sulṭán Maḥmúd crucified a number of the heretical Báṭinís (“Esoterics”) or Isma'ílís, banished the Mu'tazilites, and burned their books, together with the books of the philosophers and astronomers; while of such books as remained after this act of wanton vandalism, he transported a hundred loads to Ghazna.^160a

In conclusion, we must say a few words about Kisá'í, not so much for his own sake (though he was a noted poet in his day)

As a matter of fact, however, in the Díwán of Náṣir-i-Khusraw I find in all only seven references to Kisá'í (Tabríz lithographed ed. of A.H. 1280, pp. 19, 28, 38, 51, 133, 247, and 251), of which the translation is as follows:—

“If Kisá'í should see in a dream this brocade of mine” (meaning his fine robe of song), “shame and confusion would fret the robe (kisá) of Kisá'í.”

“If there were poems of Kisá'í, they are old and weak, [while] the verse of Ḥujjat ^162a is strong, and fresh, and young.”

“His (i.e., Náṣir's) verses are like brocade of Rúm, if the verse of Kisá'í's town (i.e., Merv) is a garment (kisá).”

“For my verses are brocade of Rúm, if the verse of the accomplished Kisá'í is a garment (kisá).”

“The robe (kisá) of Kisá'í would become hair (sha'r) on his back in shame if he should hear thy (i.e., Náṣir's) verse (shi'r).”

“So long as thou art in heart the servant of the Imám of the Age (i.e., the Fáṭimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir), the poetry of Kisá'í will be the slave of thy poetry.”

“Beside his (i.e., Náṣir's) fresh verses, that famous discourse of Kisá'í hath grown stale.”

I have not, unfortunately, all Dr. Ethé's materials at my disposal, but in the above allusions, and so far as the Díwán of Náṣir-i-Khusraw is concerned, I see no particular disparagement of Kisá'í, but rather the reverse; for when a poet is indulging in this style of boasting, so popular with the Eastern poets, he naturally declares himself superior to the greatest, not the least, of his predecessors and contemporaries. Any other method would result in bathos.

Kisá'í, then, was without doubt a noted poet in his day. He was, as already remarked, a Shí'ite, and in many of his poems hymned the praises of 'Alí and the Holy Family. This did not, however, prevent him from celebrating the glories and the generosity of Sulṭán Maḥmúd, or even from praising wine, which was certainly not the metaphorical wine of the mystics. It seems likely enough, however, as suggested by Ethé, that the poem already mentioned which he composed in his fiftieth year marks the date of a change in his life and mind, and an abandonment of sinful pleasures for ascetic exercises. In this poem he says:—

“The turn of the years had reached three hundred and forty one,
A Wednesday, and three days still remaining of [the month of]
Shawwál,
[When] I came into the world [to see] how I should say and
what I should do,
To sing songs and rejoice in luxury and wealth.
In such fashion, beast-like, have I passed all my life,
For I am become the slave of my offspring and the captive of my
household.
What hold I in my hand [of gain] from this full-told tale of fifty
[years]?
An account-book [marred] with a hundred thousand losses!
How can I at last resolve this reckoning,
Whose beginning is a lie, and whose end is shame?
I am the bought slave of desire, the victim of greed's tyranny,
The target of vicissitude, a prey to the meanness of begging.
Alas for the glory of youth, alas for pleasant life,
Alas for the comely form, alas for beauty and grace!
Whither hath gone all that beauty and whither all that love?
Whither hath gone all that strength and whither all that circum-
stance?
My head is [now] the colour of milk, my heart the colour of
pitch,

My cheek the colour of indigo, my body the colour of the reed.
Night and day the fear of death makes me tremble
As does fear of the strap children who are slow at their lessons.
We passed [our days] and passed on, and all that was to be took
place;
We depart, and our verse becomes but rhymes for children.
O Kisá'í, fifty (panjáh) hath set its clutch (panja) on thee;
The stroke and the claws of fifty have plucked thy wings!
If thou no longer carest for wealth and ambition,
Separate thyself from ambition, and rub thine ears ^164a in time!”

Only one other verse of Kisá'í's will I quote here, and that because it seems to be the prototype of 'Umar Khayyám's—

“I often wonder what the vintners buy
One half so precious as the stuff they sell,”

so familiar to all admirers of FitzGerald's beautiful version of his quatrains. Kisá'í's verse, however, is not in the quatrain form:—

Gul ni'matí 'st hidya firistáda az bihisht,
Mardum karím-tar shavad andar na'ím-i-gul;
Ay gul-furúsh! gul chi firúshí baráyi sím?
Wa'z gul 'azíz-tar chi sitání bi-sím-i-gul?

“A heaven-sent gift and blessing is the rose,
Its grace inspireth aspirations high.
O flower-girl, why the rose for silver sell,
For what more precious with its price canst buy?”

“THE advent of the Seljúqian Turks,” says Stanley Lane-Poole, in his excellent Mohammadan Dynasties (p. 149), “forms a notable epoch in Mohammadan history. At the time of their appearance the Empire of the Caliphate had vanished. What had once been a realm united under a sole Mohammadan ruler was now a collection of scattered dynasties, not one of which, save perhaps the Fáṭimids of Egypt (and they were schismatics) was capable of imperial sway. Spain and Africa, including the important province of Egypt, had long been lost to the Caliphs of Baghdád; Northern Syria and Mesopotamia were in the hands of turbulent Arab chiefs, some of whom had founded dynasties; Persia was split up into the numerous governments of the Buwayhid princes (whose Shí'ite opinions left little respect for the puppet Caliphs of their time), or was held by sundry insignificant dynasts, each ready to attack the other, and thus contribute to the general weakness. The prevalence of schism increased the disunion of the various provinces of the vanished Empire. A drastic remedy was needed, and it was found in the invasion of the Turks. These rude nomads, unspoilt by town life and civilised indifference to religion, embraced Islám with all the fervour of their uncouth souls. They came to the rescue of a dying State, and revived it. They swarmed over Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Asia Minor, devastating the country, and exterminating every dynasty that existed there; and, as the result, they once more united Mohammadan Asia, from the western frontier of Afghánistán to the Mediterranean, under one sovereign; they put a new life into the expiring zeal of the Muslims, drove back the re-encroaching Byzantines, and bred up a generation of fanatical Mohammadan warriors, to whom, more than to anything else, the Crusaders owed their repeated failure. This it is that gives the Seljúqs so important a place in Mohammadan history.”

To this we may add that they were the progenitors of the Ottoman Turks, the foundation of whose Empire in Asia Minor, and afterwards in Syria, Egypt, the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Africa, was laid by the Seljúq kingdoms of Rúm—the so-called Decarchy—and actually determined by the Mongol Invasion, which drove westwards by its storm-blast the Turkish band of Ertoghrul and 'Osmán, whose descendant is the present Sultan of Turkey.

The rise of the Seljúq power, then, constitutes the historical, as opposed to the purely literary, portion of this chapter. For the necessarily brief account of this which I shall here give the chief authorities which I shall use are: (1) Ibnu'l-Athír's Chronicle (Cairo edition, vol. x, and concluding portion of vol. ix); (2) 'Imádu'd-Dín's edition of al-Bundárí's recension of the Arabic monograph on the Seljúqs composed by the Wazír Anúshirwán b. Khálid (died A.D. 1137-38), forming vol. ii of Professor Houtsma's Recueil de textes relatifs à l'Histoire des Seldjoucides (Leyden, 1889), with occasional reference to the History of the Seljúqs of Kirmán contained in vol. i of the same; (3) the unique manuscript Persian monograph on Seljúq history, entitled Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr, and composed in A.D. 1202-3, described by me in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1902, pp. 567-610 and 849-887. To save space, I shall henceforth refer to these respectively as Ibnu'l-Athír, with a reference to the year in his Annals where the matter in question is mentioned (or more rarely the page in the abovementioned edition); Bundárí and Seljúqs of Kirmán (Houtsma's ed.); and Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr (“f.” followed by a number meaning leaf so-and-so of the unique Schefer Codex, “p.” meaning page so-and-so of my description).

The rise of this dynasty was as swift or swifter than that of the House of Ghazna, and its permanence and power were Origin of the Seljúqs. much greater. They were a branch of the Ghuzz Turks who in A.D. 1029 began to overrun the north and east of Persia, and to cause serious anxiety to Sulṭán Maḥmúd. Of this particular branch the first ancestor was, according to Ibnu'l-Athír, Tuqáq (a name explained as meaning “bow”), the father of Seljúq, who was the first to adopt the religion of Islám; and they came originally from Turkistán to Transoxiana, where they chose as their winter-quarters Núr of Bukhárá, and as their summer pasture-grounds Sughd and Samarqand. The main divisions of Seljúq's descendants are shown in the following tree, wherein the more important names are printed in capitals:—

The period covered in this chapter embraces the reigns of Ṭughril (proclaimed king in Merv, A.D. 1037, died Sept. 4, A.D. 1063), Alp Arslán (born A.D. 1032-33, succeeded to the throne 1063, killed Nov. 24, A.D. 1072), and Maliksháh (succeeded A.D. 1072, died Nov. 19, A.D. 1092). During nearly the whole of this period of fifty-five years the control of affairs was committed to the charge of one of the most celebrated Ministers of State whom Persia has produced, the wise and prudent Nidhámu'l-Mulk, whose violent death preceded the decease of his third royal master, Maliksháh, by only thirty-five days, and with whom the most brilliant period of Seljúq rule came to an end. The period with which we are here dealing may, in short, most briefly and suitably be defined as the period of the Nidhámu'l-Mulk.

Like nearly all Turks, the Seljúqids were, as soon as they embraced Islám, rigidly orthodox. The author of the Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr relates that the Imám Abú Ḥanífa, the founder of the most widely-spread of the four orthodox schools, once prayed to God that his doctrine might endure, and that from the Unseen World the answer came to him, “Thy doctrine shall not wane so long as the sword continues in the hands of the Turks”; whereon the aforesaid author exultantly exclaims that “in Arabia, Persia, Rúm (Turkey in Asia), and Russia the sword is indeed in their hands” (he wrote in A.D. 1202-3); that religion, learning, and piety flourish under their protection, especially in Khurásán; that irreligion, heresy, schism, philosophy, and the doctrines of materialism and metempsychosis have been stamped out, so that “all paths are closed save the Path of Muḥammad.” Under Maliksháh, the Seljúq Empire extended, as Ibnu'l-Athír says (vol. x, p. 73) “from the frontiers of China to the confines of Syria, and from the utmost parts of the lands of Islám to the north unto the limits of Arabia Felix; while the Emperors of Rúm (i.e., of the Eastern Empire) brought him tribute.”

Yet orthodoxy did not rule unchallenged in the lands of Islám, for Egypt and much of North Africa and Syria were The Fáṭimid Anti-Caliphs. held by the Fáṭimid or Isma'ílí Anti-Caliphs, whose power and glory ṃay be said to have reached their summit in the long reign of al-Mustanṣir (A.D. 1035-94), which just covers the period discussed in this chapter. And far beyond the limits of their territories, most of all in Persia, these champions of the Báṭiní or “Esoteric” Shí'ite doctrine exercised, by means of their dá'ís, or missionaries, a profound and tremendous influence, with some of the most interesting manifestations of which we shall come into contact in this and the following chapters; while two of their chief propagandists, Náṣir-i-Khusraw the poet, and Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ, the originator of the “New Propaganda” and the founder of the notorious order of the Assassins, are inseparably connected with the greatest events and names of this supremely interesting age.

Of other dynasties besides these two—the Seljúqs and the Fáṭimids—we need hardly speak in this chapter. On Sulṭán Decline of the House of Ghazna. Maḥmúd's death the House of Ghazna was rent by a fratricidal struggle, out of which Mas'úd emerged victorious, and carried on for a time the Indian campaigns in which his father so rejoiced, besides taking Ṭabaristán and Gurgán from the Ziyárid prince Dárá b. Minú-chihr in A.D. 1034-35. Three years later the Seljúq hordes routed his troops at Balkh and carried off his elephants of war. The year A.D. 1040 saw his deposition and murder, and the accessions first of his brother Muḥammad and then of his son Mawdúd. Ṭabaristán submitted to the Seljúqs in the following year, and in A.D. 1043-44 they defeated Mawdúd in Khurásán, though he succeeded in expelling the Ghuzz Turks from Bust, which they had overrun, and was even able to continue the Indian campaigns. This, so far as Persia was concerned, put an end to the power of the Ghaznawís, though they maintained themselves in their own kingdom of Ghazna until A.D. 1161, when they were expelled by the House of Ghúr, after which their fortunes concern India only.

As for the House of Buwayh, the great rivals in former The House of Buwayh. days of the House of Ghazna, their power ended when Ṭughril entered Baghdád on December 18, A.D. 1055, and practically took the 'Abbásid Caliph entirely under his tutelage. Three years later died the last prince of this noble house, called al-Maliku'r-Raḥím (“the Merciful King”), at Ray.

To return now to the Seljúqs. They were originally, according to al-Bundárí and the Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr, invited by Sulṭán Maḥmúd to settle in the region about Bukhárá, but their rapidly increasing power soon alarmed the Sulṭán, who, about A.D. 1029, ^170a seized one of Seljúq's sons (Músá Arslán Payghú, according to Ibnu'l-Athír, Isrá'íl according to the other authorities) and interned him in a fortress in India called Kálanjar, where, after languishing in captivity for seven years, he died. According to a well-known story (given by the Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr) the cause of Sulṭán Maḥmúd's uneasiness was that one day in the course of a conversation he asked Isrá'íl how many armed men he could summon to his standard in case of need, to which the other replied that if he should send to his people an arrow from his quiver, 100,000 would respond to the call, and if he sent his bow, 200,000 more. The Sulṭán, who, as our author says, had forgotten the proverb: “Do not open a door which thou shalt find it hard to shut, nor fire an arrow which thou canst not recall,” was so much alarmed at this boast that he decided on the harsh measure mentioned above.

On the death of Isrá'íl b. Seljúq in exile and bonds, his son Qutalmish ^170b escaped, and made his way to Bukhárá, where he Southward migration of the Seljúqs. joined his kinsmen, swearing vengeance against the treacherous Sulṭán. About A.D. 1034-35, having suffered further treachery at the hands of the King of Khwárazm, Hárún b. Altúntásh, they moved southwards to the region between Nasá and Báward. This migration is placed earlier by the author of the Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr, who says that it took place in Sulṭán Maḥmúd's time and by his permission—a permission which Arslán Jádhib, the Governor of Ṭús, strongly advised him not to accord to such powerful neighbours, his recommendation being to cut off the thumbs of every one of them whom they could catch, so that they should be unable to use the bow, wherein lay their special skill.^171a

It was after Mas'úd had succeeded in overthrowing his brother and establishing himself on the throne of his father Mas'úd and the Seljúqs. Maḥmúd that the real trouble began. Once, apparently about A.D. 1035, during the time of his invasion of Ṭabaristán, he seems to have had the advantage, but shortly afterwards, at the conclusion of that campaign, his soldiers being weary and their weapons rusted with the damp of that humid climate, he suffered defeat at their hands; ^171b and, instead of listening to his advisers, who warned him not to make light of the matter or neglect Khurásán for foreign adventures, he made speedy terms with them in order that he might indulge in another expedition against India. The result of this neglect was that on his return matters had passed far beyond his control, and that in the summer of A.D. 1038 Ṭughril b. Míká'íl b. Seljúq was declared king, by the insertion of his name in the khuṭba, or public homily, at Merv, and soon afterwards at Níshápúr. In connection with the occupation of the latter city (A.D. 1039-1040) we read in Ibnu'l-Athír (X, 167) the same story as to the simple-minded conquerors mistaking camphor for common salt as is related in the History of al-Fakhrí in connection with the capture of Ctesiphon by the early Muslims.^171c

The deposition and murder of Mas'úd (A.D. 1040) and the fresh distractions caused by this at Ghazna served still further to confirm the power of the Seljúqs, who in the following Establishment of Seljúq power. year reduced Ṭabaristán. Three years later they defeated Mawdúd, the son of Mas'úd, in Khurásán, and then indited a letter to the Caliph al-Qá'im, detailing their grievances against the House of Ghazna, assuring him of their loyalty to himself, and craving his recognition. Then they proceeded to divide the vast territories which had so quickly passed under their sway. Bust, Herát, and Sístán fell to Seljúq's son Músá Arslán Payghú, whose nephews, Chaghrí Beg Dá'úd and Ṭughril, took Merv and 'Iráq respectively; of Chaghrí's sons, Qáwurt took Kirmán, Tún, and Ṭabas, and Yáqútí Ádharbayján, Abhar and Zanján, while the third son, Alp Arslán, elected to remain with his uncle Ṭughril, who selected Ray as his capital. Hamadán was given to Ibráhím b. Ínál ^172a b. Seljúq, while Músá's son Qutalmish received Gurgán and Dámghán.

The Caliph al-Qá'im, on receiving the letter above mentioned, despatched as an ambassador Hibatu'llah b. Muḥammad Recognition of Ṭughril by the Caliph al-Qá'im. al-Ma'múní to Ṭughril, who was then at Ray, with a gracious reply, and shortly afterwards caused his name to be inserted in the khuṭba and placed on the coins before that of the Buwayhid Amír al-Maliku'r-Raḥím. Finally, in December, A.D. 1055, Ṭughril entered Baghdád in state, and was loaded with honours by the Caliph, who seated him on a throne, clothed him with a robe of honour, and conversed with him through Muḥammad b. Manṣúr al-Kundurí, who acted as interpreter. ^172b Shortly afterwards Ṭughril's niece, Arslán Khátún Khadíja, the sister of Alp Arslán, was married to the Caliph with great pomp, and Ṭughril, warned in a dream by the Prophet, left Baghdád after a sojourn of thirteen months, partly in consequence of serious disorders caused by the presence of his Turkish troops in the metropolis of Islám, partly in order to subdue Mawṣil, Diyár Bakr, Sinjár, and other lands to the west. ^173a Shortly afterwards Ṭughril returned to Baghdád, where the Caliph thanked him for his services to religion, exhorted him to use well and wisely the great power committed to his hands, and conferred on him the title of “King of the East and of the West” (Maliku'l-Mashriq wa'l-Maghrib).

But Ṭughril's ambitions were not yet satisfied, and, on the death of his wife in A.D. 1061-62, ne demanded the hand of Death of Ṭughril. the Caliph's daughter (or sister, according to the Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr) in marriage. The Caliph was most unwilling, and only yielded at length to importunities in which a minatory note became ever more dominant. The bride-elect was sent with the circumstance befitting her condition to Tabríz, but ere Ray (where it was intended that the marriage should be celebrated) was reached, Ṭughril fell sick and died, on September 4, A.D. 1063, at the village of Ṭájrisht, and his intended bride was restored to Baghdád. He was seventy years old at the time of his death, and is described by Ibnu'l-Athír (X, 9-10) as being possessed of extraordinary self-control, strict in the performance of his religious duties, secretive, harsh and stern when occasion arose, but at other times very generous, even towards his Byzantine foes.

Ṭughril was succeeded by his nephew Alp Arslán, though an attempt was made by the late King's minister, the already- Accession of Alp Arslán. mentioned al-Kundurí, generally known as the 'Amídu'l-Mulk, to proclaim Alp Arslán's brother Sulaymán. This false step proved fatal to al-Kundurí, who was sent a prisoner to Merv, where, after a year's captivity, he was put to death in the most deliberate and cold-blooded manner by two servants sent by Alp Arslán for that purpose. Having commended himself to God, bidden Al-Kundurí put to death. farewell to his family, and asked to die by the sword, not by strangling, he sent to Alp Arslán and his Minister the Nidhámu'l-Mulk the following celebrated message: ^174a “Say to the King, ‘Lo, a fortunate service hath your service been to me; for thy uncle gave me this world to ??le over, whilst thou, giving me the martyr's portion, hast given me the other world; so, by your service, have I gained this world and that!’ And to the Wazír (i.e., the Nidhámu'l-Mulk) say: ‘An evil innovation and an ugly practice hast thou introduced into the world by putting to death [dismissed] ministers! I pray that thou may'st experience the same in thine own person and in the persons of thy descendants!’” The unfortunate minister was a little over forty at the time of his death. He was a fine Arabic scholar, and was originally recommended on this ground as secretary to Ṭughril by al-Muwaffaq of Níshápúr; ^174b and he composed graceful verses in Arabic, of which Ibnu'l-Athír gives specimens. He was a fanatical adherent of the Sháfi'í school, and instituted the public cursing of the Ráfiḍís (or Shí'ites) and of the Ash'arís ^174c in the mosques. The former was continued, but the latter abolished by the Nidhámu'l-Mulk, to the satisfaction of several distinguished theologians like al-Qushayrí, the author of a well-known hagiology of Ṣúfí saints, and Abu'l-Ma'álí al-Juwayní. Al-Kundurí had been made a eunuch in early life at Khwárazm; his blood was shed at Merv, his body was buried at his native place, Kundur, and his head at Níshápúr, save part of the cranium, which was sent to Kirmán to the Nidhámu'l-Mulk.

It is sad that so great, and, on the whole, so good a Minister as Abú 'Alí al-Ḥasan b. Isḥáq, better known by his title The Nidhámu'lMulk. Nidhámu'l-Mulk, should first appear prominently in history in connection with this deed of violence, and, as though the curse of his dying predecessor had a real efficacy, should, after a career of usefulness hardly rivalled by any Eastern statesman, come to a bloody and violent end. He was born in A.D. 1017-18, of a family of dihqáns, or small landed gentry, in Ṭús. His mother died ere yet he was weaned, and at the same time his father was beset by financial difficulties and losses. Notwithstanding these unpromising circumstances, he obtained a good education, learned Arabic, and studied the theological sciences, until he obtained some secretarial post at Balkh under 'Alí b. Shádhán, the Governor placed over that town by Alp Arslán's father, Chaghrí Beg, who on his death recommended him most strongly to the young prince. ^175a So he became Alp Arslán's adviser and minister, and, on the accession of his master to the throne, Prime Minister over the vast realm which acknowledged the Seljúqs' sway. He was a most capable administrator, an acute statesman, a devout and orthodox Sunní, harsh towards heretics, especially the Shí'ites and Isma'ílís, a liberal patron of letters, a sincere friend to men of virtue and learning ('Umar Khayyám, or whom we shall shortly have to speak, being one of the most celebrated of his protègès), and unremitting in his efforts to secure public order and prosperity and to promote religion and education. One of his first acts on becoming Prime Minister was to found and endow the celebrated Nidhámiyya College (so called after him) in Baghdád, of which the building was begun in A.D. 1065 and finished in 1067, and which afterwards numbered amongst its professors some of the most eminent men of learning of the time, including (A.D. 1091-95) the great theologian Abú Ḥámid Muḥammad al-Ghazálí, of whom as-Suyúṭí said: “Could there have been a prophet after Muḥammad, it would assuredly have been al-Ghazálí.”

As regards Alp Arslán, his birth is variously placed in A.H. 420 and 424 (= A.D. 1029, 1033) ^176a by Ibnu'l-Athír,

Alp Arslán's reign, though short (September, A.D. 1063 to November, 1072), was filled with glorious deeds. In the first Achievements of his reign. year of his reign he subdued Khatlán, Herát, and Ṣighániyán in the north-east, and drove back the “Romans” (i.e., the Byzantines) in Asia Minor. A little later (A.D. 1065) he subdued Jand (which, since his great-grandfather Seljúq was buried there, probably had a special importance in his eyes), and put down a rebellion in Fárs and Kirmán. He also checked the power of the Fáṭimid Anti-Caliphs, from whose sway he recovered Aleppo and the holy cities of Mecca and Medína; and last, but not least, in the summer of A.D. 1071, he, at the head of 15,000 picked troops, ^177a inflicted a crushing defeat at Malázgird (near Akhláṭ, in Western Asia Minor) on a Byzantine army numbering, at the lowest estimate, 200,000 men (Greeks, Russians, Turks of various kinds, Georgians, and other Caucasian tribes, Franks and Armenians), and took captive the Byzantine Emperor Diogenes Romanus.

Concerning this last achievement a curious story is told by most of the Muslim historians. ^177b Sa'du'd-Dín Gawhar-Á'ín,

Two years later, in November, A.D. 1072, Alp Arslán was engaged at the other extremity of his empire in a campaign against the Turks. He reached the Oxus at the head of 200,000 men, ^179a whose transport across the river occupied more Death of Alp Arslán. than three weeks. And while he was halting there, there was brought before him as a prisoner a certain Yúsuf Narzamí (or Barzamí, or Khwárazmí), ^179b the warden of a fortress which had withstood his troops and had now fallen before their prowess. Alp Arslán, exasperated, as some historians assert, by the prisoner's evasive answers, ordered him to be brought close to his throne and extended on the ground by being bound by his wrists and ankles to four pegs driven into the earth, so to suffer death. On hearing this sentence the prisoner, hurling at the Sulṭán a term of the foulest abuse, cried out, “Shall one like me die a death like this?” Alp Arslán, filled with fury, waved aside those who guarded the prisoner, and, seizing his bow, fired an arrow at him. The skill for which he was so famous, however, failed him at this supreme moment, and the prisoner, no longer held, rushed in, ere one of the two thousand attendants who were present could interfere, and mortally wounded him in the groin with a dagger which he had concealed about him. Gawhar-Á'ín, who rushed to his master's assistance, was also wounded in several places before a farrásh (an Armenian, according to al-Bundárí) succeeded in slaying the desperate man by a blow on the head with his club. Long afterwards the son of this farrásh was killed at Baghdád in a quarrel with one of the Caliph's servants, who then sought sanctuary in the Caliph's private apartments, whence none dared drag him forth. But the farrásh came before Maliksháh crying for vengeance, and saying, “O Sire! deal with the murderer of my son as did I with thy father's murderer!” And though the Caliph offered a ransom of ten thousand dínárs to save his house from such violation, Maliksháh was obdurate until the murderer had been given up and put to death.

Alp Arslán lingered on for a day or two after he had received his death-blow, long enough to give to his faithful Alp Arslán's dying words and dispositions. minister, the Nidhámu'l-Mulk, his dying instructions. His son Maliksháh was to succeed him on his throne; Ayáz, another son, was to have Balkh, save the citadel, which was to be held by one of Maliksháh's officers; and his brother, Qáwurt, was to continue to hold Kirmán and Fárs. ^180a He died with the utmost resignation. “Never,” said he, “did I advance on a country or march against a foe without asking help of God in mine adventure; but yesterday, when I stood on a hill, and the earth shook beneath me from the greatness of my army and the host of my soldiers, I said to myself, ‘I am the King of the World, and none can prevail against me’: wherefore God Almighty hath brought me low by one of the weakest of His creatures. I ask pardon of Him and repent of this my thought.” ^180b He was buried at Merv, and some poet composed on him the famous epitaph:—

Sar-i Alp Arslán dídí zi rif'at rafta bar gardún:
Bi-Marw á, tá bi-khák andar sar-i-Alp Arslán bíní!

“Thou hast seen Alp Arslán's head in pride exalted to the sky; Come to Merv, and see how lowly in the dust that head doth lie!”

Maliksháh was only seventeen or eighteen years of age when he was called upon to assume control of the mighty Accession of Maliksháh. empire which his great-uncle and his father had built up, and his reign opened with threats of trouble. Altigín, the Khán of Samarqand, seized Tirmidh and routed the troops of Ayáz, the King's brother; Ibráhím, the Sulṭán of Ghazna, took prisoner his uncle 'Uthmán, and carried him and his treasures off to Afghánistán, but was pursued and routed by the Amír Gumushtigín and his retainer Anúshtigín, the ancestor of the new dynasty of Khwárazmsháhs, whereof we shall have to speak in another chapter; and, worst of all, another of Maliksháh's uncles, Qáwurt Beg, the first Seljúq king of Kirmán, marched on Ray to contest the crown with his nephew. The two armies met near Hamadán, at Karaj, and a fierce fight ensued, which lasted three days and nights. Finally Qáwurt's army was routed, and he himself was taken captive and put to death, while his sons Amíránsháh and Sulṭánsháh, who were taken with him, were blinded, but the latter not sufficiently to prevent him from succeeding his father as ruler of Kirmán. The Nidhámu'l-Mulk, for his many and signal services at this crisis, received the high, though afterwards common, title of Atábek.^181a

The following year saw the death of the Caliph al-Qá'im and the succession of his grandson al-Muqtadí. A year later his Fáṭimid rival succeeded in re-establishing his authority in Mecca, but only for a twelvemonth, while as a set-off to this he lost Damascus. In the same year (A.D. 1074-75) Malik-sháh established the observatory in which the celebated 'Umar Khayyám ('Umar ibn Ibráhím al-Khayyámí) was employed with other eminent men of science ^181b to compute the new Jalálí Era which the Sulṭán desired to inaugurate, and which dates from the Naw-rúz, or New Year's Day (March 15th) of the year A.D. 1079. About two years later Maliksháh gave his daughter in marriage to the Caliph al-Muqtadí, and in the same year lost his son Dá'úd, whose death so afflicted him that he would scarcely suffer the body to be removed for burial, and could hardly be restrained from taking his own life. Time, however, and the birth of another son (Sanjar, so called in allusion to his birthplace, Sinjár, near Mawsil) three years later, gradually mitigated his grief. About this time (A.D. 1082-83) the curse uttered against the Nidhámu'l-Mulk and his sons bore, as it might seem, its first fruits. Jamálu'l-Mulk, the Premier's eldest son, was of a proud and vindictive disposition, and hearing that Ja'farak, the King's jester, had ridiculed his father, he hastened from Balkh, where he was governor, to the Court, dragged the unfortunate jester from the King's presence, and caused his tongue to be torn out through an incision in his neck, which cruel punishment proved instantly fatal. Maliksháh said nothing at the time, but shortly afterwards secretly ordered Abú 'Alí, the 'Amíd of Khurásán, on pain of death, to poison Jamálu'l-Mulk, which, through a servant of the doomed man, he succeeded in doing.

Maliksháh twice visited Baghdád during his reign. The first visit was in A.H. 479 (March, 1087), when, in company with the Nidhámu'l-Mulk, he visited the tombs of the Imám Músá (the seventh Imám of the Shí'a), the Ṣúfí saint Ma'rúf al-Karkhí, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, and Abú Ḥanífa. He also sent costly presents to the Caliph al-Muqtadí, and, on the day after his arrival, played in a polo match. About the same time he gave his sister Zulaykhá Khátún in marriage to Muḥammad b. Sharafu'd-Dawla (on whom he bestowed ar-Raḥba, Ḥarrán, Sarúj, Raqqa, and Khábúr in fief), and his daughter to the Caliph; while his wife, Turkán Khátún, bore him a son named Maḥmúd, who was destined to play a brief part in the troublous times which followed his father's death; for Aḥmad, another son whom Maliksháh designed to succeed him, died at Merv at the age of eleven, a year after Maḥmúd's birth, about the same time that an alliance was concluded with the House of Ghazna by the marriage of another of Maliksháh's daughters to the young King Mas'úd II.

Maliksháh's second visit to Baghdád took place in October, 1091, only a year before his death. Since his last visit he had Extent and splendour of Maliksháh's Empire. conquered Bukhárá, Samarqand, and other cities of Transoxiana, and had received at distant Káshghar the tribute sent to him by the Emperor of Constantinople. Never did the affairs of the Seljúq Empire seem more prosperous. The boatmen who had ferried Maliksháh and his troops across the Oxus were paid by the Nidhámu'l-Mulk in drafts on Antioch, in order that they might realise the immense extent of their sovereign's dominions; and at Latakia, on the Syrian coast, Maliksháh had ridden his horse into the waters of the Mediterranean and thanked God for the vastness of his empire. He rewarded his retainers with fiefs in Syria and Asia Minor, while his army, numbering 46,000 regular troops whose names were registered at the War Office, pushed forward his frontiers into Chinese Tartary, ^183a and captured Aden on the Red Sea. He supervised in person the administration of justice, and was always accessible to such as deemed themselves oppressed or wronged. His care for religion was attested by the wells which he caused to be made along the pilgrim route, and the composition which he effected to relieve the pilgrims from the dues hitherto levied on them by the Warden of the Sacred Cities (Amíru'l-Ḥara-mayn ); while his skill in the chase was commemorated by minarets built of the skulls and horns of the beasts which he had slain. His love of the chase was, indeed, one of his ruling passions, and he caused a register to be kept of each day's bag, which sometimes included as many as seventy gazelles. The author of the Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr (ff. 56-57) had himself seen one of these registers (called Shikár-náma) in the handwriting of the poet Abú Ṭáhir al-Khátúní, who composed in Persian one of the oldest biographies of Persian poets (now, unfortunately, as it would appear, no longer extant) entitled Manáqibu'sh-Shu'ará. Yet, as Ibnu'l-Athír tells us (X, 74), he felt some scruples about his right to slay so many innocent creatures. “Once,” says this historian, “he slew in the chase a mighty bag, and when he ordered it to be counted it came to ten thousand head of game. And he ordered that ten thousand dínárs should be distributed in alms, saying, ‘I fear God Almighty, for what right had I to destroy the lives of these animals without necessity or need of them for food?’ And he divided amongst his companions of robes and other valuable things a quantity surpassing computation; and thereafter, whenever he indulged in the chase, he would distribute in alms as many dínárs as he had slain head of game.” Of the many cities of his empire, Iṣfahán was his favourite residence, ^184a and he adorned it with many fine buildings and gardens, including the fortress of Dizh-Kúh, which a few years later fell into the hands of a notorious leader of the Assassins, Ibn 'Aṭṭásh.

During all these prosperous years the wise old Nidhámu'l-Mulk, now nearly eighty years of age, was ever at the young The Nidhamu'lMulk's fall. King's elbow to advise and direct him. In his leisure moments he was occupied in superintending or visiting the colleges which he had founded at Baghdád and Iṣfahán, conversing with learned doctors (whom he ever received with the greatest honour), and composing, at the request of Maliksháh, his great Treatise on the History and Art of Government (properly entitled Siyásat-náma, but often referred to by Persian writers as the Siyaru'l-Mulúk or “Biographies of Kings”), one of the most remarkable and instructive prose works which Persian literature can boast, now rendered accessible to all Persian scholars in the late M. Schefer's edition, and to a wider circle by his French translation. Of his twelve sons, all, or nearly all, held high positions in the State, and the achievements of himself and his family seemed to recall and rival the Barmecides ^185a of old. But the same cause—Royal jealousy excited by envious rivals —which brought about the fall of the House of Barmak (and which has caused, and will probably continue to cause, the fall of every great Minister whom Persia has produced) was at work to compass the overthrow of the Nidhámu'l-Mulk. His chief enemy was Turkán Khátún, the favourite wife of Maliksháh, over whom she exercised a great influence. Her chief ambition (in which she was seconded by her Minister the Táju'l-Mulk) was to secure to her little son Maḥmúd the succession to the throne, while the Nidhámu'l-Mulk was known to be in favour of the elder Barkiyáruq, then a boy of twelve or thirteen. The immediate cause of the catastrophe was the arrogant conduct of one of the Minister's grandsons (son of that Jamálu'd-Dín who had been poisoned some ten years before by the Sulṭán's orders), who was Governor of Merv. One who had suffered at his hands laid a complaint before Maliksháh, who sent an angry message to the Nidhámu'l-Mulk, asking him ironically whether he was his partner in the throne or his Minister, and complaining that his relations not only held the richest posts under Government, but, not content with this, displayed an arrogance which was intolerable. The aged Minister, angered and hurt by these harsh and ungrateful reproaches from one who owed him so much, answered rashly, “He who gave thee the Crown placed on my head the Turban, and these two are inseparably connected and bound together,” with other words of like purport, ^185b which he would hardly have employed in calmer moments, and which were reported, probably with exaggerations, to the Sulṭán. The Nidhámu'l-Mulk was dismissed in favour of Abu'l-Gha-ná'im Táju'l-Mulk, the protègè of Turkán Khátún above mentioned, and this was accompanied by other ministerial changes not less unwise and unpopular, Kamálu'd-Dín Abu'r-Riḍá being replaced by Sadídu'l-Mulk Abu'l-Ma'álí, and Sharafu'l-Mulk Abú Sa'd by Majdu'l-Mulk Abu'l-Faḍl of Qum, who is coarsely satirised for his miserliness in one of the few Persian verses of Abú Ṭáhir al-Khátúní which time has left to us. ^186a Another contemporary poet, 'Bu'l-Ma'álí Naḥḥás, condemns these changes of Ministers in the following lines:—^186b

“It was through Abú 'Alí and Abú Riḍá and Abu Sa'd,
O King, that the lion came before thee like the lamb.
At that time every one who came to thy Court
Came as a harbinger of triumph with news of victory.
Through Abu'l-Ghaná'im and Abu'l-Faḍl and Abu'l-Ma'álí
[Even] the grass of thy kingdom's soil grows up as stings.
If thou wast tired of Nidhám and Kamál and Sharaf,
See what hath been done to thee by Táj and Majd and
Sadíd!”

The Nidhámu'l-Mulk, however, did not long survive his disgrace. While accompanying Maliksháh from Iṣfahán to Assassination of the Nidhámu'lMulk. Baghdád, he halted on the 10th of Ramaḍán, A.H. 485 (=October 14, 1092), near Naháwand, a place memorable for the final and crushing defeat there sustained by the Zoroastrian soldiers of the last Sásánian monarch at the hands of the followers of the Arabian Prophet, about the middle of the seventh century. The sun had set, and, having broken his fast, he was proceeding to visit the tents of his wife and family, when a youth of Daylam, approaching him in the guise of a suppliant, suddenly drew a knife and inflicted on him a mortal wound. The supposed suppliant was, in fact, a member of the redoubtable order of the Fidá'ís or Assassins, at this time newly instituted by Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ and other chiefs of the “New Propaganda” ^187a of the Isma'ílí sect; and this, it is generally said, was their first bold stroke of terror, though Ibnu'l-Athír (X, 108-9) ^187b mentions the earlier assassination of a mu'adhdhin at Iṣfahán, and supposes that the execution of a carpenter suspected of being an accomplice in this murder by the Nidhámu'l-Mulk exposed him to the vengeance of the Order. Apart from this, however, or of that personal animosity which, according to the well-known and oft-told tale, Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ bore against the Minister, the openly expressed detestation in which the latter held all Ráfiḍís or Shí'ites, and most of all the “Sect of the Seven,” those formidable champions of the Isma'ílí or Fáṭimid Anti-Caliphs of Egypt, would sufficiently account for his assassination. Nor were there wanting some who expressed the belief that the Táju'l-Mulk, the rival who had supplanted the Nidhámu'l-Mulk, was the real instigator of a crime which, while calculated to perpetuate his power, actually led to his own murder some four months later.^187c

The Nidhámu'l-Mulk was deeply mourned by the vast majority of those whom he had ruled so wisely for thirty years, and though a fallen Minister is seldom praised by Eastern poets, many, as Ibnu'l-Athír (X, 71) tells us, were the elegies composed on him, of which the following graceful Arabic verses by Shiblu'd-Dawla ^188a are cited:—

“The Minister Nidhámu'l-Mulk was a peerless pearl, which the
All-Merciful God esteemed as of great price,
But, precious as it was, the age knew not its value, so in
jealousy He replaced it in its shell.”

The author of the Chahár Maqála ^188b says that an astrologer called Ḥakím-i-Mawṣilí, in whom the Minister had a great belief, had told him that his patron's death would follow his own within six months. This astrologer died in the spring of A.D. 1092, and when news of this was brought to the Minister from Níshápúr, he was greatly perturbed, and at once began to make all his preparations and dispositions for the death which actually befell him in the following autumn.

Ibnu'l-Athír (X, 72) alludes to the numerous stories about the Nidhámu'l-Mulk which were current even in his time (the thirteenth century), and of which later writers, as we shall see, are yet more prolific. One of these apocryphal narratives, which too often pass current as history, relates that as the Minister lay dying of his wound he wrote and sent to the Sulṭán Maliksháh the following verses:— ^188c “Thanks to thy luck, for thirty ^188d years, O Prince of lucky birth,
From stain of tyranny and wrong I cleansed the face of earth.
Now to the Angel of the Throne I go, and take with me
As witness of my stainless name a warrant signed by thee.
And now of life when four times four and four-score years have
fled
Hard by Naháwand doth the hand of violence strike me dead.

I fain would leave this service long, which now for me doth
end,
Unto my son, whom unto thee and God I now commend!”

I have elsewhere pointed out ^189a that the last of these verses, in a slightly different form, was undoubtedly written by Burhání, Maliksháh's poet-laureate, to recommend his son Mu'izzí, who succeeded him in this office, to the Royal favour, and that the three first verses are obviously spurious. For firstly, we know, on the authority of the Chahár Maqála, that the Nidhámu'l-Mulk “had no opinion of poets, because he had no skill in their art”; secondly, that he was only about seventy-five years old at the time of his death, not ninety-six; and thirdly, that his numerous sons, as previously mentioned, had already obtained more lucrative posts in Maliksháh's domains than most people outside their family deemed at all necessary or desirable. I wish to emphasise this because it well illustrates the remarkable tendency of all peoples, but especially the Persians, to ascribe well-known anecdotes, verses, sayings, and adventures to well-known persons; so that, as already pointed out, the quatrains of a score of less notable poets have been attributed to 'Umar Khayyám, and, as we shall shortly see, stories are told about Náṣir-i-Khusraw and Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ which are borrowed from the biographies of other less notable or less notorious men.

Maliksháh only survived about a month the Minister whose long and faithful service he had rewarded with such ingrati- Death of Maliksháh. tude. On November 6, A.D. 1092, less than three weeks after the Nidhámu'l-Mulk's death, he went out hunting, and either caught a chill or ate something which disagreed with him, and, though he was bled, a fever supervened which proved fatal on November 19th. On this the poet Mu'izzí has the following well-known verse:—

“One month the aged Minister to heaven did translate;
The young King followed him next month, o'erwhelmed by
equal Fate.
For such a Minister alas! Alas! for such a King!
What impotence the Power of God on earthly power doth
bring!”

On the dismissal of the Nidhámu'l-Mulk in favour of his rival the Táju'l-Mulk, the same poet had already composed these lines:—

“The King, alas! ignored that lucky fate
Which granted him a Minister so great;
O'er his domains he set the cursed Táj,
And jeopardised for him both Crown and State!”^190a

Maliksháh was born in A.H. 445 (A.D. 1053-54) according to the Ráḥatu'ṣ-Ṣudúr, two years later according to Ibnu'l-Athír, and was in either case under forty years of age at the time of his death.

Thus far we have spoken of such facts in the life of the Nidhámu'l-Mulk as are recorded by the earliest and most sober The legend of the Nidhámu'l-Mulk, Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ, and 'Umar Khayyám. historians, but some of the “many legends” concerning him to which Ibnu'l-Athír alludes are so celebrated and have in later times obtained so general a credence, both in Asia and Europe, that they cannot be altogether ignored in a work like the present. Of these legends at once the most dramatic and the most widely-spread is that which connects his earliest days with the formidable organiser of the “New Propaganda,”^190b

Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ, who is on more solid grounds associated with his violent death. This legend, familiar to every admirer of Chronological difficulties involved. 'Umar Khayyám, ^191a involves chronological difficulties so serious that, so long as the chief authority which could be quoted in its favour was the admittedly spurious Waṣáyá, ^191b or “Testamentary Instructions,” of the Nidhámu'l-Mulk, it was unhesitatingly repudiated by all critical scholars, since its fundamental assumption is that two eminent persons (Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ and 'Umar Khayyám) who died at an unknown age between A.H. 517 and 518 (A.D. 1123-24) were in their youth fellow-students of the Nidhámu'l-Mulk, who was born in A.H. 408 (A.D. 1017). Now, the chances against two given persons living to be a hundred years of age are very great; and, even if we assume this to have been the case, they would still have been considerably younger than the Nidhámu'l-Mulk, who, moreover, appears to have finished his education and entered public life at an early age. ^191c This objection has been forcibly urged by Houtsma in his preface to al-Bundárí (p. xiv, n. 2); and he very acutely suggests that it was not the famous Nidhámu'l-Mulk who was the fellow-student of the Astronomer-Poet Probable origin of the legend. and of the first Grand Master of the Assassins, but Anúshirwán b. Khálid, the less famous and later Minister of the Seljúqid Prince Maḥmúd b. Muḥammad b. Maliksháh (reigned A.D. 1117-31), who, in speaking of the first appearance of the Assassins or Maláḥida in his chronicle (which forms the basis of al-Bundárí), distinctly implies (pp. 66-67) that he had been acquainted in his youth and had studied with some of their chief leaders, especially “a man of Ray, who travelled through the world, and whose profession was that of a secretary,” in whom we can hardly be mistaken in recognising Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ himself. If this ingenious conjecture be correct, it would afford another instance of a phenomenon already noticed more than once, namely, the transference of remarkable adventures to remarkable men. The dates, at any rate, agree very much better; for Abú Naṣr Anúshirwán b. Khálid b. Muḥammad al-Káshání (-Qásání), as we learn from the 'Uyúnu'l-Akhbár, ^192a was born at Ray (of which city Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ was also a native) ^192b in A.H. 459 (A.D. 1066-67), became wazír to Maḥmúd the Seljúq, whom he accompanied to Baghdád, in A.H. 517 (A.D. 1123-24), and later, in A.H. 526-28 (A.D. 1132-33) to the Caliph al-Mustarshid; and died in A.H. 532 or 533 (A.D. 1138-39); so that he may very well, as his own words suggest, have been the fellow-student of his notorious fellow-townsman.

But the legend which we are discussing does, as a matter of fact, rest on older and more respectable authority than the Oldest occurrence of the legend. Waṣáyá, the Rawḍatu'ṣ-Ṣafá, the Ta'ríkh-i-Alfí, or other comparatively late works; for, as I pointed out in an article entitled “Yet More Light on 'Umar Khayyám,” in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for April, 1899 (pp. 409-420), it is given by the great historian Rashídu'd-Dín Faḍlu'lláh (put to death in A.D. 1318) in his valuable Jámi'u't-Tawáríkh. The text of this passage, taken from the British Museum Manuscript Add. 7,628, f. 292^b, together with a translation, will be found in the article above mentioned. The authority adduced by Rashídu'd-Dín for the story is an Isma'ílí work entitled Sar-guzasht-i-Sayyid-ná, “The Adventures of our Master” (i.e., Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ), which was amongst the heretical books found in the Assassin stronghold of Alamút when it was captured by Hulágú Khán's Mongols in the middle of the thirteenth century, and examined by 'Aṭá Malik Juwayní (as he himself tells us in his Ta'ríkh-i-Jahán-gushá, or “History of the World-Conqueror,” i.e., Chingíz Khán) ere it was committed to the flames with all else savouring of heresy. But, curiously enough, though the author of the Jahán-gushá draws largely on this biography of Ḥasan-i-ṣabbáḥ in that portion (the third and last volume) of his great history of the Mongol Invasion which deals with the history of the Isma'ílís and Assassins, he does not allude to this picturesque narrative.

The Assassins play so prominent a part in the history of this period and of the two succeeding centuries, and, by the achieve- Origin of the Assassins. ments of their Syrian offshoot during the Crusades, made their name so notorious even in Europe, that it is necessary to describe their origin and tenets somewhat fully in this place, in order that the repeated references to them which will occur in future chapters may be understood. In the Prolegomena ^193a to this volume I have discussed very fully the origin and nature of the Shí'a heresy, and of its two chief divisions, the “Sect of the Seven,” or Isma'ílís, and the “Sect of the Twelve,” which last is to-day the national religion of Persia. A brief recapitulation of the facts there elaborated may, however, be convenient for such of my readers as have not the earlier volume at hand.

The word Shí'a means a faction or party, and, par excellence, the Faction or Party of 'Alí (Shí'atu 'Aliyyⁱⁿ), the Prophet's The Shí'a. cousin, the husband of the Prophet's daughter, the father of al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, and the ancestor of all the other Imáms recognised by the Shí'ites or people of the Shí'a. To the “orthodox” Muhammadan (whether Ḥanafite, Sháfi'ite, Málikite, or Ḥanbalite) 'Alí was only the fourth and last of the four orthodox Caliphs (al-Khulafá'u'r-Ráshidún), and neither greater nor less than his predecessors, Abú Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthman. But to the Shí'a he was, by virtue alike of his kinship and his marriage connection, the sole rightful successor of the Prophet; and this right descended to his sons and their offspring. From a very early time there was a tendency to magnify 'Alí's nature until it assumed a divine character, and even at the present day the 'Alí-Iláhís, who, as their name implies, regard 'Alí as neither more nor less than an Incarnation or “Manifestation” of God, are a numerous sect in Persia. From the earliest times the idea of Divine Right has strongly possessed the Persians, while the idea of popular and democratic election, natural to the Arabs, has always been extremely distasteful to them. It was natural, therefore, that from the first the Persians should have formed the backbone of the Shí'ite party; and their allegiance to the fourth Imám, 'Alí Zaynu'l-'Ábidín, and his descendants was undoubtedly strengthened by the belief that his mother was a princess of the old Royal House of Sásán.^194a

Agreeing, then, in maintaining that 'Alí and his descendants alone were the lawful Vicars of the Prophet and exponents Sects of the Shí'a: the “Sect of the Seven” and the “Sect of the Twelve.” of his doctrines, the Shí'ites differed from one another both as to the actual number and succession of Imáms and as to their nature. The two sects with which we are chiefly concerned, that of the Seven (Sab'iyya) and that of the Twelve (Ithna 'ashariyya), agreed as to the succession down to Ja'far aṣ-Ṣádiq, the sixth Imám; but at this point they diverged, the former recognising Isma'íl, Ja'far's eldest son, as the seventh and last Imám, the latter recognising Isma'íl's younger brother Músá and his descendants down to the twelfth Imám, or Imám Mahdi, whom they supposed to have disappeared from earth at Sámarrá (Surra man ra'a) in A.H. 260 (A.D. 873-74) into a miraculous seclusion whence he will emerge at “the end of Time” to “fill the earth with justice after that it has been filled with iniquity.” And still the Persian Shí'ite, when he mentions this twelfth Imám, adds the formula, “May God hasten his joyful Advent!”

The moderate Shí'ites confined themselves to maintaining the paramount right of 'Alí and his offspring to succeed the Prophet Moderates and Extremists (Ghulát). as the Pontiffs of Islám, and hence were disliked by the Caliphs of Damascus and Baghdád (whom they naturally regarded as usurpers) mainly on political grounds, though on other doctrinal questions besides the succession they differed considerably from the Sunnís, or orthodox Muslims. Hence in biographical and historical works written by Sunnís we constantly meet with the phrase, “Tashayya'a, wa ḥasuna tashayyu'uhu” (“He was a Shí'ite, but moderate in his Shí'ite opinions”). But there was another class of Shí'ites, the Ghulát, or “Extremists,” who not only regarded 'Alí and the Imáms as practically Incarnations of God, but also held a number of other doctrines, like Metempsychosis or “Return,” Incarnation, and the like, utterly opposed to the whole teaching of Islám; and the vast majority of these extremists gradually passed into the “Sect of the Seven,” or partisans of the Imám Isma'íl.

The political importance of the Isma'ílís began in the tenth century of our era with the foundation of the Fáṭimid The Isma'ílís. dynasty, so called, as the author of the Jámi'u't-Tawáríkh says, because they based their claims [to both temporal and spiritual authority] “on the nobility of their descent from Fáṭima,” the Prophet's daughter. Hence they are called indifferently 'Alawí (descended from 'Alí), Fáṭimí (descended from Fáṭima), or Isma'ílí (descended from lsma'íl, the seventh Imám), though, as a matter of fact, the pedigree by which they endeavoured to make good this lofty claim was repeatedly challenged, e.g., in A.H. 402 (A.D. 1011-12) and A.H. 444 (A.D. 1052-53), by their rivals, the 'Abbásid Caliphs of Baghdád, who declared that they were really descended from the Persian heretic 'Abdu'llah b. Maymún al-Qaddáḥ, ^196a who saw in the hitherto unaggressive sect of the Isma'ílís a suitable instrument for the propagation of his transcendental and eclectic doctrines, and for the achievement of his ambitious political aspirations.

This Fáṭimid dynasty—the Anti-Caliphs of North Africa and Egypt—attained and maintained their political power The Fáṭimid dynasty. (which endured from A.D. 909 until A.D. 1171, when the fourteenth and last Fáṭimid Caliph was removed by Saláhu'd-Dín, or Saladin, from the throne of Egypt) by a religious propaganda conducted throughout the lands of Islám, and especially in Persia, by numbers of skilful and devoted dá'ís (plural du'át) or missionaries, men with a profound knowledge of the human heart and of the methods whereby their peculiar doctrines might best be insinuated into minds of the most diverse character. These, if we wish to seek European analogies, may be best described as the Jesuits, and their Isma'ílí Pontiffs as the “Black Popes,” of the Eastern World at this epoch. They taught, so far as they deemed it expedient in any particular case, a Doctrine (Ta'lím) based on Allegorical Interpretation (Ta'wíl) of the Scripture and Law of Islám, of which, as they asserted, their Imáms were the sole inheritors and guardians; hence they were sometimes called Ta'límís; and this Doctrine was an esoteric doctrine, whence they were also called Báṭinís or “Esoterics.” More commonly, especially after the institution of the “New Propaganda,” they were simply called, par excellence, “the Heretics” (Maláḥida).

Their Doctrine, which is intricate and ingenious, I have described at some length in the Prolegomena (pp. 405-415)

At the epoch of which we are now speaking al-Mustanṣir (Abú Tamím Ma'add), the eighth Fáṭimid Caliph (reigned A.D. 1035-94), was the supreme head of all the Isma'ílís, whom the rival claims of his sons, Musta'lí and Nizár, divided Al-Mustansír, the eighth Fáṭimid Caliph. after his death into two rival groups, a Western (Egyptian, Syrian, and North African) and an Eastern (Persian), of which the latter (afterwards extended to Syria) constituted the Assassins properly so-called. Al-Mustanṣir's predecessor, the probably insane al-Ḥákim bi amri'lláh (“He who rules according to God's command”), had concluded a reign of eccentric and capricious tyranny, culminating in a claim to receive Divine honours, by a “disappearance” which was almost certainly due to the murderous hand of some outraged victim of his caprice or cruelty, though some of his admirers and followers, the ancestors of the Syrian Druzes of to-day (who derive their name from al-Ḥákim's minister ad-Duruzí, who encouraged him in his pretensions), pretended and believed that he had merely withdrawn himself from the gaze of eyes unworthy to behold his sacred person. ^199a The confusion caused by this event had subsided when al-Mustanṣir came to the throne in A.D. 1035, and his long reign of nearly sixty years may justly be regarded as the culminating point of the power and glory of the Isma'ílí or Fáṭimid dynasty, whose empire, in spite of the then recent loss of Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis, still included the rest of North Africa, Egypt, Sicily, Malta, and varying portions of Syria, Asia Minor, and the shores of the Red Sea. Indeed, in A.D. 1056 Wásiṭ, and two years later Baghdád itself, acknowledged al-Mustanṣir the Fáṭimid as their lord, while the allegiance of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, lost for a while to him in A.D. 1070-71, was regained for a time in 1075; and, though Damascus was lost in the same year, Tyre, Sidon, and Acre were occupied by his troops in 1089.

A description of al-Mustanṣir's Court, of his just and wise rule, and of the security and prosperity of his subjects, has been Náṣir-iKhusraw. left to us by one of the most remarkable and original men whom Persia produced at this, or, indeed, at any other epoch—to wit, the celebrated poet, traveller, and Isma'ílí missionary, Náṣir-i-Khusraw, called by his fellow-religionists “the Proof” (Ḥujjat) of Khurásán. He is briefly mentioned in two places (ff. 286^a and 290^a of the British Museum Manuscript Add. 7,628) of the Jámi'u't-Tawáríkh , in connection with the successor to his see, ^200a Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ. The first of these passages runs as follows:—

“Náṣir-i-Khusraw, attracted by the fame of al-Mustanṣir, came from Khurásán to Egypt, ^200b where he abode seven years, ^200c performing the Pilgrimage and returning to Egypt every year. Finally he came, after performing the [seventh] Pilgrimage, to Baṣra, ^200d and so returned to Khurásán, where he carried on a propaganda for the 'Alawís [i.e., Fáṭimid Caliphs] of Egypt in Balkh. His enemies attempted to destroy him, and he became a fugitive in the highlands of Simingán, where he remained for twenty years, content to subsist on water and herbs. Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ, the Ḥimyarite, of Yaman,^200e

came from Persia to al-Mustanṣir bi'lláh ^201a disguised as a carpenter, and asked his permission to carry on a propaganda in the Persian lands. This permission having been accorded to him, he secretly inquired of al-Mustanṣir in whose name the propaganda should be conducted after his death; to which the Caliph [al-Mustanṣir] replied, ‘In the name of my elder son, Nizár’; wherefore the Isma'ílís [of Persia] maintain the Imâmate of Nizár. ^201b And ‘Our Master’ [Sayyid-ná, i.e., Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ] chose [as the centres of his propaganda] the castles of Quhistán, as we shall presently relate.”

The second reference (f. 290^a) is too long to translate in full, and is cited, in what profess to be the ipsissima verba of Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ. Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ, from the already-mentioned Sar-guzasht-i-Sayyid-ná . According to this passage, Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ's full name was al-Ḥasan b. 'Alí b. Muḥammad b. Ja'far b. al-Ḥusayn b. aṣ-Ṣabbáḥ al-Ḥimyarí, but he would not allow his followers to record his pedigree, saying, “I would rather be the Imám's chosen servant than his unworthy son.” His father came from Kúfa to Qum, where Ḥasan was born. From the age of seven he was passionately fond of study, and till the age of seventeen he read widely and voraciously. ^201c Hitherto, like his father, he had belonged to the Sect of the Twelve; but about this time he fell under the influence of a Fáṭimid dá'í named Amír Ḍarráb, “and before him,” he adds, “of Náṣir-i-Khusraw, the ‘Proof’ of Khurásán.” ^201d The propaganda, he adds, had not met with much success in the time of Sulṭán Maḥmúd of Ghazna, ^202a though previously Abú 'Alí b. Símjúr and the Sámánid Prince Naṣr b. Aḥmad, ^202b with many persons of humbler condition, had embraced the Isma'ílí doctrine in Persia. After many long conferences and discussions with Amír Ḍarráb, Ḥasan remained unconvinced, though shaken; but a severe illness, from which he scarcely expected to recover, seems to have inclined him still further to belief. On his recovery he sought out other Isma'ílí dá'ís, 'Bú Najm-i-Sarráj (“the Saddler”), and a certain Mú'min, who had been authorised to engage in the propaganda by Shaykh [Aḥmad b.] 'Abdu'l-Malik [b.] 'Aṭṭásh, a prominent leader of the Isma'ílís in Persia, mentioned both by al-Bundárí ^202c and Ibnu'l-Athír. ^202d This man was subsequently captured and crucified on the reduction of the Isma'ílí stronghold of Sháh-dizh or Dizh-kúh, near Iṣfahán, about A.H. 499 (= A.D. 1105-6). Mú'min ultimately, with some diffidence (for he recognised in Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ a superior in intelligence and force of character), received from the distinguished proselyte the bí'at, or oath of allegiance to the Fáṭimid Caliph. In Ramaḍán, A.H. 464 (May-June, 1072) Ibn 'Aṭṭásh, whose proper sphere of activity or “see” was Iṣfahán and Ádharbayján, came to Ray, saw and approved Ḥasan b. Ṣabbáḥ, and bade him go to Egypt, to Cairo, the Fáṭimid capital. Accordingly, in A.H. 467 (A.D. 1074-75) he went to Iṣfahán, whence, after acting for two years as Ibn 'Aṭṭásh's vicar or deputy, he proceeded to Egypt by way of Ádharbayján, Mayáfáriqín, Mawṣil, Sinjár, Raḥba, Damascus, Sidon, Tyre, Acre, and thence by sea. On his arrival at his destination on August 30, A.D. 1078, he was honourably received by the Chief Dá'í (Dá'i'd-Du'át) Bú Dá'úd and other notables, and was the object of special favours on the part of al-Mustanṣir, whom, however, he was not privileged to see in person, though he remained at Cairo for eighteen months. At the end of this period he was compelled —by the jealousy of Musta'lí and his partisans, especially Badr, the commander-in-chief, as we are informed—to leave Egypt; and he embarked at Alexandria in Rajab, A.H. 472 (January, A.D. 1080), was wrecked on the Syrian coast, and returned by way of Aleppo, Baghdád, and Khúzistán to Iṣfahán, which he reached at the end of Dhu'l-Ḥijja, A.H. 473 (June, 1081). Thence he extended his propaganda in favour of Nizár, the elder son of al-Mustanṣir, to Yazd, Kirmán, Ṭabaristán, Dámghán, and other parts of Persia, though he avoided Ray, for fear of the Nidhámu'l-Mulk, who was eager to effect his capture, and had given special instructions to that effect to his son-in-law Abú Muslim, the Governor of Ray. ^203a Finally he reached Qazwín, and, by a bold stratagem, fully described in the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída, ^203b obtained possession of the strong mountain fortress of Alamút, originally Áluh-ámú't, a name correctly explained by Ibnu'l-Athír (x, 110) as ta'límu'l-'aqáb, “the Eagle's Teaching”; more often, but, as I think, less correctly, as “the Eagle's Nest.” ^203c As noticed by most historians, by an extraordinary coincidence the sum of the numerical values of the letters comprised in the name of this castle (1 + 30 + 5 + 1 + 40 + 6 + 400 = 483) gives the date (A.H. 483 = A.D. 1090-91) of its capture by Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ.

The capture of Alamút, which was rapidly followed by the seizure of many other similar strongholds, ^204a like Sháh-Dizh and Other strongholds of the Assassins in Persia. Khálanján, near Iṣfahán; Ṭabas, Tún, Qá'in, Zawzan, Khúr and Khúsaf, in Quhistán; Washmkúh, near Abhar; Ustúnáwand, in Mázandarán; Ardahán; Gird-i-Kúh; Qal'atu'n-Ná dhir, in Khúzistán; Qal'atu'ṭ-Ṭanbúr, near Arraján; and Qal'atu Khallád Khán, in Fárs, marks the beginning of the political power of the followers of Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ, who, on the death of al-Mustanṣir, became definitely separated in their aims from the Isma'ílís of Egypt, since they espoused the cause of Nizár, while al-Musta'lí, another son of al-Mustanṣir, succeeded to the Fáṭimid Caliphate of Cairo. Hence, in nearly all Persian histories, such as the Jámi'u't-Tawáríkh and the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída, separate sections are generally assigned to the “Isma'ílís of Egypt and the West” and the “Isma'ílís of Persia,” “Nizárís,” or, to give them the name by which they are best known, “Assassins.”

The etymology of the name “Assassin” was long disputed, and many absurd derivations were suggested. Some supposed Etymology of the word “Assassin.” it to be a corruption of Hasaniyyún (-yín), or “followers of Ḥasan”; Caseneuve proposed to connect it with the Anglo-Saxon word seâx, “a knife”; and Gébélin wished to derive it from Sháhinsháh (for Sháhán-sháh), “King of kings,” while many equally impossible theories were advanced. It was reserved for that great scholar Sylvestre de Sacy to show that the word, variously corrupted by the Crusaders (through whom it came into Europe) into Assassini, Assessini, Assissini, and Heissessini, was more closely represented by the Greek chroniclers as , and most accurately of all by the Ḥashishin of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela; and that it stood for the Arabic Ḥashíshí (in the plural Ḥashíshiyyún or Ḥashíshiyya), ^205a a name given to the sect because of the use which they made of the drug Ḥashísh, otherwise known to us as “Indian hemp,” “bang,” or Cannabis Indica. This drug is widely used in most Muhammadan countries from Morocco to India at the present day, and allusions to it in Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, Ḥáfidh, and other poets show that it has been familiar to the Persians since, at any rate, the thirteenth century of our era. But, at the epoch cf which we are speaking, the secret of its properties seems to have been known in Persia only to a few—in fact, to Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ and his chief confederates, amongst whom, we may recollect, was at least one physician, the already-mentioned Aḥmad b. 'Abdu'l-Malik b. 'Aṭṭásh.

I have elsewhere ^205b discussed at greater length than is possible here the use and peculiarities of this drug, and I there em- Ill repute of Ḥashísh. phasised the evil repute, as compared with opium and other narcotics, which it bears in Persia, where it is seldom mentioned save in some metaphorical way, as “the Green Parrot,” “the Mysteries,” “Master Sayyid,” and so on; and I ascribed this ill repute less to the harmfulness of the drug than to its close association with a heretical and terrifying sect. It must not, however, be imagined that the habitual use of ḥashísh was encouraged, or even permitted, amongst his followers by the “Old Man of the Mountain,” for its habitual use causes a lethargy, negligence, and mental weakness which would have fatally disqualified those to whom it was administered from the effective performance of the delicate tasks with which they were charged; and its use was confined to one of the Grades or Degrees or Grades in the Order of the Assassins. Degrees into which the Isma'ílí organisation was divided. These Grades of Initiation existed, as we have seen, from an early period in the Isma'ílí sect, but after the “New Propaganda” they were in some degree rearranged by Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ as follows. At the head of the Order (subject at this time to the Imám, who, after the death of al-Mustanṣir, was no longer the Fáṭimid Caliph, but a son of his disinherited and murdered brother Nizár) stood the Dá'i'd-Du'át, Chief-Propagandist, or Grand Master, commonly called outside the circle of his followers Shaykhu'l-Jabal, “the Mountain Chief,” a term which the Crusaders, owing to a misunderstanding, rendered “le Vieux,” “the Old One,” or “the Old Man of the Mountain.” Next came the Grand Priors, or Superior Propagandists (Dá'í-i-Kabír), who formed a kind of episcopacy, and to each of whom was probably committed the charge of a particular district or “see.” ^206a After these came the ordinary propagandists, or dá'ís. These formed the higher grades, and were pretty fully initiated into the real doctrines, aims, and politics of the Order. The lower grades comprised the Rafíqs, or “Companions” of the Order, who were partly initiated; the Láṣiqs, or “Adherents,” who had yielded the oath of allegiance without much comprehension of what it involved; and, lastly, the Fidá'ís, or “Self-devoted Ones,” the “Destroying Angels” and ministers of vengeance of the Order, and the cause of that far-reaching terror which it inspired—a terror which made kings tremble on their thrones and checked the angry anathemas of outraged orthodoxy.

In this connection I cannot refrain from again quoting the graphic and entertaining account of the initiation of these Fidá'ís given by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century of our era, at a time when the power of the Assassins in Persia (for in Syria they continued to hold their own, and, though quite innocuous, continue to exist there even at the present day) had been just destroyed, or was just about to be destroyed, by the devastating Mongols of Hulágú Khán:—

“The Old Man,” says he, “was called in their language Aloadin. ^207a He had caused a certain valley between two mountains to be Marco Polo's description. enclosed, and had turned it into a garden, the largest and most beautiful that ever was seen, filled with every variety of fruit. In it were well-erected pavilions and palaces, the most elegant that can be imagined, all covered with gilding and exquisite painting. And there were runnels, too, flowing freely with wine and milk, and honey and water, and numbers of ladies, and of the most beautiful damsels in the world, who could play on all manner of instruments, and sing most sweetly, and dance in a manner that was most charming to behold. For the Old Man desired to make his people believe that this was actually Paradise. So he fashioned it after the description that Mahomet gave of his Paradise—to wit, that it should be a beautiful garden running with conduits of wine and milk and honey and water, and full of lovely women for the delectation of all its inmates. And, sure enough, the Saracens of those parts believed that it was Paradise!

“Now no man was allowed to enter the garden save those whom he intended to be his Ashishin. ^207b There was a fortress at the entrance of the garden strong enough to resist all the world, and there was no other way to get in. He kept at his Court a number of the youths of the country, from twelve to twenty years of age, such as had a taste for soldiering, and to these he used to tell tales about Paradise, just as Mahomet had been wont to do; and they believed in him, just as the Saracens believe in Mahomet. Then he would introduce them into his garden, some four or six or ten at a time, having made them drink a certain potion ^207c which cast them into a deep sleep, and then causing them to be lifted and carried in. So when they awoke they found themselves in the garden.

“When, therefore, they awoke and found themselves in a place so charming, they deemed that it was Paradise in very truth. And the ladies and damsels dallied with them to their heart's content, so that they had what young men would have; and with their own good will would they never have quitted the place.

“Now this Prince, whom we call the Old One, kept his Court in grand and noble style, and made those simple hill-folks about him believe firmly that he was a great prophet. And when he wanted any of his Ashishin to send on any mission, he would cause that potion whereof I spoke to be given to one of the youths in the garden, and then had him carried into his palace. So when the young man awoke he found himself in the castle, and no longer in that Paradise, whereat he was not over-well pleased. He was then conducted to the Old Man's presence, and bowed before him with great veneration, as believing himself to be in the presence of a true prophet. The Prince would then ask whence he came, and he would reply that he came from Paradise, and that it was exactly such as Mahomet has described it in the law. This, of course, gave the others who stood by, and who had not been admitted, the greatest desire to enter therein.

“So when the Old Man would have any prince slain, he would say to such a youth, ‘Go thou and slay So-and-so, and when thou returnest my angels shall bear thee into Paradise. And shouldst thou die, natheless even so will I send my angels to carry thee back into Paradise.’ So he caused them to believe, and thus there was no order of his that he would not affront any peril to execute, for the great desire that they had to get back into that Paradise of his. And in this manner the Old One got his people to murder any one whom he desired to get rid of. Thus, too, the great dread that he inspired all princes withal made them become his tributaries, in order that he might abide at peace and amity with them.”

The blind obedience of these Fidá'ís, who, as will have been gathered from the above quotation, were chosen with special Blind obedience of the Fidá'ís. regard to this quality, combined with courage and adroitness, and were not initiated into the philosophical conceptions of the higher degrees of the Order, is well illustrated by an anecdote preserved to us by Fra Pipino and Marino Sanuto:—

“When, during a period of truce, Henry, Count of Champagne (titular King of Jerusalem), was on a visit to the Old Man of Syria, one day, as they walked together, they saw some lads in white sitting on the top of a high tower. The Shaykh, turning to the Count, asked if he had any subjects as obedient as his own; and, without waiting for a reply, made a sign to two of the boys, who immediately leaped from the tower and were killed on the spot.”

The Fidá'ís, though unlearned in the esoteric mysteries of their religion, were carefully trained not only in the use of arms, the endurance of fatigue, and the arts of disguise, but also, in some cases at any rate, in foreign and even European languages; for those deputed to assassinate Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat, were sufficiently conversant with the Frankish language and customs to pass as Christian monks during the six months which they spent in the Crusaders' camp awaiting an opportunity for the accomplishment of their deadly errand. It was seldom, of course, that they survived their victims, especially as they were fond of doing their work in the most dramatic style, striking down the Muslim Amír on a Friday in the mosque, and the Christian Prince or Duke on a Sunday in the church, in sight of the assembled congregation. Yet so honourable a death and so sure a way to future happiness was it deemed by the followers of Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ to die on one of the “Old One's” quests, that we read of the mothers of Fidá'ís who wept to see their sons return alive.

Sometimes they only threatened, if thus they could compass their end. The leader who marched to attack one of their strongholds would wake up some morning in his tent to find stuck in the earth beside him a dagger, on which was transfixed a note of warning which might well turn him back from his expedition; as is said (but not, I think, on good authority) to have happened to Maliksháh, and later to Saladin. And a theological professor, confronted by a quasi-student, whose diligent attendance and close attention to his lectures had favourably attracted his notice, with a choice between a purse of gold and a dagger as alternative inducements to him to cease reviling the “heretics” of Alamút, wisely chose the former; and thereafter, when rallied on his avoidance of all disrespectful allusion to them, was wont to reply, with some humour, that he had been “convinced by arguments both weighty and trenchant” that he had been wrong to indulge in such uncharitable utterances.

Until the final destruction of their strongholds in Persia, and the capture and execution of their eighth and last Grand Master, Ruknu'd-Dín Khursháh, by the Mongols in the middle of the thirteenth century, about the same time that the Caliphate of Baghdád was also extinguished, the Assassins were very active, and will be repeatedly mentioned in these pages, so that it is essential that the reader should have a clear idea of their principles, their organisation, and their relation to the parent sect of the Isma'ílís of Egypt, in the history of which the “New Propaganda” instituted by Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ, with the new element of physical violence and terrorism which it involved, marks an important epoch. Of the Syrian branch, which made the Order famous in Europe and enriched our language with a new word, and whose political power dates from the seizure of the Castle of Banias about A.D. 1126, we shall not have much occasion to speak; but no one interested in their history should fail to read Stanislas Guyard's most fascinating paper in the Journal Asiatique for 1877, Un Grand Maître des Assassins. This true and judicious account of the remarkable Shaykh Ráshidu'd-Dín Sinán, who for a while rendered the Syrian branch of the Order independent of the Persian, rivals in interest the most thrilling romance, and supplies a mass of detail concerning the history, achievements, and methods of the sect which I am compelled to omit in this place. Even at the present day the remnants of this once powerful body are widely, though sparsely, scattered through the East, in Syria, Persia, East Africa, Central Asia, and India, where the Ághá Khán—a lineal descendant of Ruknu'd-Dín Khúrsháh, the last Grand Master of Alamút, who himself claimed descent through Nizár, the son of al-Mustanṣir, the Fáṭimid Caliph, from Isma'íl, the Seventh Imám, and great-great-great-grandson of the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, 'Alí b. Abí Ṭálib— is still honoured as the titular head of this branch of the Isma'ílís.

In following the career and examining the achievements of Ḥasan-i-Ṣabbáḥ we have wandered away from his earlier co- Náṣir-iKhusraw. religionist, Náṣir-i-Khusraw, who, from the purely literary point of view, is of greater importance; since, while of the writings of the former we possess no thing (so far as is at present known) except the extracts from the Sar-guzasht-i-Sayyidná cited in the Jahán-gushá and the Jámi'u't-Tawáríkh, of the latter we possess numerous works of the highest value and interest, both in verse and prose, several of which have been the objects of very careful study by Bland, Dorn, Ethé, Fagnan, Nöldeke, Pertsch, Rieu, Schefer, and other eminent scholars. With these and with their author—one of the most attractive and remarkable personalities in Persian literary history—we shall deal in the next chapter, which will be devoted to the literature of the same period whereof we have sketched in this chapter the outward political aspect.