From the literary point of view the period which we are now considering is, as we have seen, chiefly remarkable Poetry in the Mongol period for the quality and quantity of historical writers which it produced. That it was also rich in poetical talent cannot be disputed, but this is less remarkable, since at hardly any period was there a dearth of poets in Persia. Almost every well-educated Persian can produce moderately good verses on occasion, and it would be a hopeless and useless task even to mention all of those who, transcending the rank of mere versifiers, can fairly claim to be poets. Severe selection is necessary but not easy, for on the one hand due regard must be paid to the judgement of the poet's own countrymen, even when it does not entirely accord with our own; and on the other hand care must be taken not to overlook any poet of originality and talent merely because he has not found favour with the Persian biographers, who, especially in their treatment of contemporaries, are apt to be swayed by personal, political, and even religious prejudices and predilections.
In the period with which we are now dealing there lived at least a score of poets whose claims to consideration The two greatest poets who survived into this period, Jalálu'dDín Rúmí and Sa'dí, discussed in a previous volume cannot be denied. The two greatest by far were Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí and Sa'dí of Shíráz, of whom the former died in 672/1273 at the age of 66, and the latter about 690/1291 at the very advanced age, as is generally asserted, of 110 lunar years. Both these poets, therefore, belong rather to the period preceding this, and have accordingly been already discussed in a previous volume, 106a to which the reader is referred. They might with equal justice have been included in this volume, which is the poorer for their omission, since their literary activity extended into the period which it covers, and both poets came into relations with some of its leading personages, Sa'dí with the Ṣáḥib-Díwán and his brother 'Alá'u'd-Dín of the great Juwayní family, and even with Abáqá Khán himself, 106b and Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí with the unfortunate Parwána of Rúm, Mu'ínu'd-Dín, who was put to death by Abáqá for suspected complicity with the Egyptians in 675/1276-7. 106c It would be easy to devote many pages to each of them in this place without repeating anything that has been said before, but the difficulty is to limit rather than to extend the scope of this chapter, and, in spite of all temptations to the contrary, they must therefore be omitted here.
For similar reasons I shall content myself with a very
brief mention of three other poets of this time whom many
Omission of poets
who, though they
wrote in Persian,
were not of Persian race or residence
Persian students, especially such as have pursued
their studies in India, would place next
to the two great poets mentioned above; I mean
Amír Khusraw and Ḥasan of Dihlí and Badr-i-Chách,
all of whom are highly esteemed in
India, but none of whom, so far as is known, ever visited,
much less resided in Persia. To reduce the subject-matter
of this book within any reasonable limits, it becomes more
and more necessary to exclude the great and increasing
number of Indian writers of Persian. Two considerations
Grounds for excluding IndianPersian literature
besides that of space seems to me to justify this
procedure. The first is that, owing to the greater
interest in India which naturally prevails in
England, far more has been written about these Indian-Persian
authors, whether poets or historians, than about
the purely Persian men of letters. The second is that, so
far as a foreign student may be permitted to express an
opinion on matters of literary taste, this Persian literature
produced in India, has not, as a rule, the real Persian flavour,
the
The attention of those who read Urdú should be called to a very excellent modern book entitled Shi'ru'l-'Ajam
Note on a good modern Urdú work containing critical studies of Persian poets (“Poetry of the Persians”) by the late Shiblí Nu-'mání, lithographed at 'Alí-gaṛh in two volumes in or about 1325/1907, and containing critical studies of about a score of the classical poets of Persia from Firdawsí and his predecessors to Ḥáfiẓ. Amongst these a long notice 108a is devoted to Amír Khusraw of Dihlí, which contains incidentally a good deal of information about his friend, contemporary and fellow-poet Ḥasan of Dihlí. Those who do not read Urdú may be referred to another excellent and scholarly work produced by Indian scholarship under the auspices of my friend Sir Edward Denison Ross, the Catalogue of the Arabic and Persian Manuscripts in the Oriental Public Library at Bankipore, of which the first volume, containing the Persian poets from Firdawsí to Ḥáfiẓ, was published at Calcutta in 1908. Twenty pages of this volume (pp. 176-195) are devoted to Amír Khusraw and his various works, and the four following pages to his friend Amír Ḥasan. Both were disciples of the great Saint Niẓámu'd-Dín Awliyá, who died in 725/1324, only seven months before Amír Khusraw, who was buried beside him. Amír Ḥasan only survived them a few (probably two) years.Amír Khusraw, not less notable as a musician than as a poet, was of Turkish race, his father Amír Sayfu'd-Dín Brief account of Amír Khusraw Maḥmúd having fled before the Mongols from the region of Balkh to India, where he finally settled at Patyálí. There the poet was born in 651/1253. He was therefore seventy-one years old when he died, and “lived to enjoy the favour of five successive kings of Dihlí.” He was enormously productive; Dawlat-sháh credits him with nearly half a million verses. Of these “Mírzá Báysunqur, after ceaseless efforts, succeeded in collecting 120,000,” but having subsequently discovered 2000 more from his ghazals, he “concluded that it would be very difficult for him to collect the complete work of the poet, and gave up the idea for ever.”109a
Although, for the reasons given above, I do not propose to speak at length of Amír Khusraw, yet, in accordance with the well-known Arabic saying 109b of which the gist is that what cannot be fully included need not therefore be wholly omitted, I shall give here “for good luck and a blessing” (tayammunan wa tabarrukan) one short extract from his Laylá wa Majnún in which he mourns, with a remarkable touch of feeling, the death of his mother and younger brother, both of whom died in 698/1298-9. The poet's love for his mother, which is in strong contrast with his lack of appreciation of his daughter, is one of the most attractive features of his character.109c
Amír Khusraw's lament on his mother's death “A double radiance left my star this year:
Gone are my brother and my mother dear.
My two full moons have set and ceased to shine
In one short week through this ill luck of mine.
By double torture I am racked of Fate,
By double blow doth Heaven me prostrate.
Double my mourning, double my despair;
Alas that I this double grief must bear!
Two brands for one like me is't not a shame?
One fire's enough to set the stack aflame.
One breast a double burden should not bear,
One head of headaches cannot hold a pair.
Beneath the dust my mother lieth dead;
Is't strange if I cast dust upon my head?
Where art thou mother mine, in what strange place?
Canst thou not, mother, show me thy dear face?
From heart of earth come smiling forth once more,
And take compassion on my weeping sore!
Where'er in days gone by thy feet did fall
That place to me doth Paradise recall.
Thy being was the guardian of my soul,
The strong support which kept me safe and whole.
Whene'er those lips of thine to speech were stirred
Ever to my advantage was thy word.
To-day thy silence makes its dumb appeal,
And lo, my lips are closed as with a seal!”
Badr-i-Chách, another poet of Transoxiana, has a considerable reputation in India but is practically unknown in Badr-i-Chách Persia. The town of Chách or Shásh of which he claimed to be the “Full Moon” (Badr) is the modern Táshkand. His poetry, which I have never read, but of which Sir H. Elliot has translated specimens in his History of India, 110a is reputed very difficult, a common characteristic of the Persian poetry produced by men of Turkish race or writing under Turkish influence and patronage, but not in itself, from our point of view, a reason for including him in this survey.
Mention may here be made of a little-known poet called Qáni'í, who fled from his native town of Ṭús in Khurásán Qáni'í before the terrible Mongol invasion, escaped to India, and thence made his way westwards by Aden, Mecca, Medina and Baghdád to Asia Minor, where he attached himself to the court of the Seljúq rulers of Qonya (Iconium), for whom he composed an immense versified history of the dynasty on the model of the Sháh-náma, and a metrical rendering of the celebrated Book of Kalíla and Dimna, of which a manuscript (Add. 7766) belonging to the British Museum is described by Rieu, 111a from whom these particulars are taken. In virtue of these and other poetical productions, of which he boasted that they filled thirty volumes and amounted to 300,000 bayts, he received the title of Maliku'sh-Shu'ará (“King of Poets” or Poet Laureate), and he lived long enough to compose an elegy on the death of the great Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, who died, as already mentioned, in 672/1273.
Another early but little-known poet of this period is Púr-i-Bahá-yi-Jámí, to whom Dawlat-sháh 111b devotes an article Púr-i-Bahá-yiJámí' containing but few facts about his life, to which other biographical works, such as the Haft Iqlím, Atash-kada, Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá, etc. add but little. His original patron was Khwája Wajíhu'd-Dín Zangí (Dawlat-sháh) or Ṭáhir-i-Faryúmadí (Haft Iqlím), but he afterwards enjoyed the patronage of the great Ṣáḥib Díwán. He seems to have been fond of quaint conceits and tours de force, and Dawlat-sháh cites an ingenious poem of his, containing 28 bayts, in which he made use of as many Mongol and Turkish words and technical terms as possible, as when he says:111c
“The wizards of thy tresses, like the pens or the bakhshís,
Have practised on thy cheek the Uyghúr writing.”112a
The following quatrain, addressed to a friend who had lost a tooth, is also rather neat.
“If a pearl is missing from thy sweet casket
Thy dignity is in no wise diminished in the matter of beauty.
A hundred moons shine from the corners of thy cheek
What matter if one star be missing from thy Pleiades?”
The two following poems by Púr-i-Bahá, written in
the grand style cultivated by court poets, and filled with
elaborate word-plays and far-fetched metaphors, are chiefly
interesting because they can be exactly dated. The first
refers to the destruction of Níshápúr by an earthquake in
666/1267-8, and the second to its restoration in 669/1270-1
by order of Abáqá. Both are taken from that rare work
the Mujmal of Faṣíḥí of Khwáf.
112b
“Through the shakes and knocks of the earthquake shocks it is upside
down and awry,
So that 'neath the Fish is Arcturus
113a
sunk, while the Fish is raised to
the sky.
That fury and force have run their course, and its buildings are over-
thrown,
And riven and ruined are whole and part, and the parts asunder strown.
Not in worship, I ween, are its chapels seen with spires on the ground
low lying,
While the minarets stoop or bend in a loop, but not at the bedesmen's
crying.
The libraries all are upside down, and the colleges all forsaken,
And the Friday Mosque in ruins is laid, and the pulpits are shattered
and shaken.
Yet do not suppose that this ruin arose from the town's ill destiny,
But ask of me if thou fain wouldst see the wherefore of this and the why.
'Twas because the Lord had such high regard for this old and famous
place
That He turned His gaze on its fashions and ways with the eyes of
favour and grace,
And such was the awe which His glance inspired, and His Light's
effulgent rays
That with shaking feet to earth it fell for fear of that awful blaze.
For did not the Mountain of Sinai once fall down and crumble away
Where Moses stood, and the Face of God to behold with his eyes did
pray?”
“The buildings of Nishápúr Time had striven to displace
And Ruin wide from every side had thither turned its face.
God willed that men should once again its buildings strive to raise
In the reign of just Abáqá, the Núshirwán of our days.
Of all the world the lord is he, of all the earth the king,
Foe-binder, world-subduer he, all kingdoms conquering.
It happened in the year six-hundred and three-score and nine
That from its ruins rose again this city famed and fine.Venus and Sol in Taurus, Ramaḍán was ending soon;
In Gemini stood Mercury, in Pisces stood the Moon.
May this new town's foundation to thee a blessing bring,
And every desert in thy reign bear towns as flourishing!
By thy good luck Nishápúr old is now grown young again,
Like to some agéd dotard who his boyhood doth regain.
Three things, I pray, may last for aye, while earth doth roll along:
The Khwája's 115a life, the city's luck, and Púr-i-Bahá's song!”
Not very much need be said, or indeed, is known, about Imámí of Herát, whose full name, according to the author Imámí of Herát of the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída, was Abú 'Abdi'lláh Muḥammad b. Abú Bakr b. 'Uthmán. He was the panegyrist of the rulers and ministers of Kirmán, and died, according to the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá 115b in 667/1268-9. An extraordinarily complicated acrostic on his own name, composed by him according to the terminology of the state accountants, will be found in the Guzída. 115c The highest compliment which he ever received was probably that paid him by his contemporary Majdu'd-Dín Hamgar, in reply to a versified question addressed to the latter poet by Mu'ínu'd-Dín the Parwána, Malik Iftikháru'd-Dín, Núru'd-Dín Raṣadí, and the Ṣáḥib-Díwán Shamsu'd-Dín, enquiring his opinion as to the respective merits of himself, Sa'dí and Imámí. 115d His reply was as follows:
“Though I in song am like the tuneful birds,
Fly-like I sip the sweets of Sa'dí's words;
Yet all agree that in the arts of speech
Sa'dí and I can ne'er Imámí reach.”
To this Imámí replied in the following complimentary quatrain:116a
“Though throned in power in eloquence's fane,
And, Christ-like, raising song to life again,
Ne'er to the dust of Majd-i-Hamgar's door,
That Saḥbán of the Age, 116b can I attain.”
Sa'dí, on the other hand, vented his spleen in the following verse:
“Whoe'er attaineth not position high
His hopes are foiled by evil destiny.
Since Hamgar flees from all who pray or preach,
No wonder he ‘can ne'er Imámí reach.’”116c
The poems of Imámí, so far as I am aware, have never been published, nor are manuscripts of them common. In my necessarily limited investigations I have made use of the British Museum manuscript Or. 2847. One of the prettiest of his poems which I have met with occurs on f. 98a of that manuscript, and runs as follows:
“We celebrate the New Year's Feast but once in all the year;
A Feast perpetual to me affords thy presence dear.
One day the roses hang in clusters thick upon the tree;
A never-failing crop of roses yield thy cheeks to me.
One day I gather violets by the bunch in gardens fair,
But violets by the sheaf are yielded by thy fragrant hair.
The wild narcissus for a single week the field adorns;
The bright narcissus of thine eye outlasts three hundred morns.
The wild narcissus must its freshness lose or vigil keep:
117a
To thy narcissus-eyes no difference waking makes or sleep.
Fragrant and fair the garden jasmine is in days of Spring,
But round thy hyacinths
117b
the jasmine-scent doth ever cling.
Nay, surely from thy curls the hyacinths their perfume stole,
These are the druggist's stock-in-trade and those food for the soul.
Those from a ground of silver
117c
spring, and these from heaps of stone;
Those crown a cypress-form, while these adorn some upland lone.
There is a garden-cypress which remains for ever green,
Yet by thy cypress-stature it appears uncouth and mean.”
Imámí was for some time patronized by Fakhru'l-Mulk of Khurásán, 118a who on one occasion submitted to him the following versified enquiry:118b
“What says that master of the Law, chief scholar of our land,
Our guide in doctrine and belief, to this which we demand:
Suppose a cat at dead of night feloniously should steal
A cage of pigeons or of doves, and make therefrom a meal,
Would Retribution's Law revealed the owner justify
If he in vengeance for the birds should doom the cat to die?”
To this enquiry, Imámí answered as follows:
“A subtle question this indeed! The palate of the mind
Therein thy nature's fragrance fair and reason rare doth find!
No vengeance falls upon the cat, for nowhere hath implied
Our Prophet in his Holy Law that such is justified.
Have cats which hunt for birds less right than catkins 118c on the tree?
Their claws upon the branch they spread whene'er a bird they see.
So, if his own white arm he seeks to keep secure from pain,
Let him avoid with Pussy's blood his hand and arm to stain.
If he the pigeon seeks to save, the dove to keep alive,
To hang their cages out of reach he surely could contrive!”
Poetical interrogations of this sort seem to have been the fashion at this time, for certain people of Káshán addressed a similar versified question as to the respective merits of the poets Anwarí and Ẓahír of Fáryáb to Majdu'd-Dín Hamgar, and to this same question Imámí also thought good to reply in verse. The text and translation of this correspondence, including the question and the two answers, all in verse, are given in the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída , 118d to which the curious reader is referred. Majdu'd-Dín Hamgar's reply contains the date when it was written, viz. the end of Rajab, 674 (Jan. 19, 1276), and both he and Imámí agree in preferring Anwarí to Ẓahír, a judgement in which nearly all competent critics will concur. Majdu'd-Dín's claim to prefer Imámí's poetry not only to his own but to Sa'dí's, on the other hand, cannot be taken seriously, and must have been prompted by some personal motive, such as a desire to please Imámí or to annoy Sa'dí. All Persian writers who have noticed this matter at all have expressed amazement at the view which Majdu'd-Dín Hamgar saw fit to advance; for in truth Imámí's poetry, so far as we can judge from the specimens given by Dawlat-sháh 119a and in the Átash-Kada 119b and the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá, 119c has no special distinction or originality, while Sa'dí's claim to be reckoned among the half-dozen greatest poets of his country has never been disputed.
Majdu'd-Dín Hamgar was, according to the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída , a native of Yazd, and a protégé of Bahá'u'd-Dín Majdu'd-Dín Hamgar Juwayní, the high-handed governor of Fárs, who died in 678/1279. 119d When the poet came from Yazd to Iṣfahán, he left his elderly wife behind him, but she soon followed him. News of her arrival was brought to the poet by one of his pupils, who said, “Good news! Your lady has alighted in the house.” “Good news,” replied Majdu'd-Dín, “would rather be that the house had alighted on her!” The lady, to whom this speech was reported, reproached her husband for his unkind words, quoting the quatrain of 'Umar Khayyám beginning:
“Days changed to nights ere thou wert born, or I.”119e
“Before me, perhaps,” replied Majdu'd-Dín, “but Heaven forbid that day and night should have existed before thee!”
According to Dawlatsháh,
119f
Majdu'd-Dín Hamgar boasted
descent from Núshírwán the Sásánian, and was on this
account a somewhat privileged person at the courts which
he frequented. To this alleged genealogy the poet alludes
in the following verses:
120a
“My virtues all a cruel age hath made for me a bane;
My youthful blood the aged Sphere hath shed in grief and pain.
The envious Mercury
121a
hath plucked the pen from out my hand,
The arching Heaven hath drawn a bow to smite me where I stand.
O Sphere, what would'st thou of me, a poor, bare-footed thing?
O Time, what seek'st thou from me, a bird with broken wing?
Make of the falcon's eyes a dish to satisfy the owl:
Make of the lion's thighs the food for which the jackals prowl.
In no wise like the noisy drum will I his blows bewail,
Although his lashes on my back descend as falls the flail.
O foot of trouble's elephant, prithee more gently press!
O hand of this ignoble Sphere, increase my dire distress!
Through tribulations bravely borne my heart hath grown more bright,
As mirrors gain by polishing in radiancy and light.
What time the rose-bush from the dust doth raise its flowering head,
The sapling of my luck (what luck!) hath withered and is dead.
My fault is this, that I am not from some base seed upgrown:
My crime is this, that noble is the pedigree I own.
The sons of Sásán, not Tigín, my ancestors I call;
I'm of the race of Kisrá, not the household of Inál.
121b
My verse is sweet and exquisite as union with the fair:
My pen in picture-painting hath the gifts of fancy rare.
No eye hath seen an impulse mean impede my bounty's flow:
The ear of no petitioner hath heard the answer ‘No!’
When youth is gone, from out the heart all love of play is cast:
And lustre fadeth from the sun which hath the zenith passed.”
Majdu'd-Dín Hamgar wrote poems in praise of Shamsu'd-Dín Muḥammad the Ṣáḥib-Díwán as well as of the Atábek Quatrains of Majd-i-Hamgar Sa'd b. Abú Bakr. Manuscripts of his poems are rare, but a fine old manuscript (Or. 3713) in the British Museum, transcribed in the years A.D. 1293-8 by the poet's grandson, contains a number of his quatrains. Unlike the quatrains of 'Umar Khay-yám, Abú Sa'íd b. Abi'l-Khayr, and other masters of this style of verse, Majdu'd-Dín's quatrains deal less with mystical and philosophical ideas than with concrete things and persons. Some are merely abusive epigrams, such as the following:
“Born of a mother of accurséd womb
From Ganja's town to Abkház thou didst come,
Where that dog-training swineherd nurse of thine
Fed thee on dog's milk and the blood of swine.”
The following, expressing the poet's love of travel, is too ingenious in its word-plays to admit of adequate translation:
“O heaven, never turn aside my reins from wandering:
Give me my bread from Sarandíb (Ceylon), my water from Saráb:
Grant me each evening (shám) a loaf of bread from Bámiyán,
And every morning (bám) give me a draught of water from Shám
(Damascus).”122a
In the two following quatrains he laments his advancing age:
“Fiery and fluent, once my heart did hurl
Spontaneous verses forth, each verse a pearl:
Then Love, Desire and Youth were mine. These three
Not e'en in dreams I now can hope to see!”
“This foot of mine no more the stirrup suits;
For me no more are spurs and riding-boots.
Oppressed by aches and age, there now remains
No foot for stirrup and no hand for reins.”
Here is another very insulting quatrain, but again no record remains of the person to whom it was addressed:
“Compared to thee a pig's a pretty sight:
Beside thy face an ape's the heart's delight.
Thy temper's uglier than e'en thy face,
Compared to it thy face is fair and bright.”
Some of the quatrains are acrostics on names, as, for example, the following:
“The [sum of the] numbers of the letters in that graceful charmer's
name
Is exactly three hundred and sixty, like the divisions of the heavens.
The third letter is one-ninth of the fourth letter,
While the first letter is one-sixth of the second letter.”
The name appears to be Nasháṭ (
The following is addressed to his sweetheart:
“No means have I by thee to pitch my tent,
Nor money in thy street a house to rent:
My ears and eyes serve only to this end,
To hear thy voice and on thee gaze intent.”
That Majdu'd-Dín Hamgar reached an advanced age is suggested by some of the quatrains just cited, while in another he describes himself as over eighty, but I have not been able to ascertain the precise dates of his birth and death.
Mention must now be made of a poet of far greater talent and originality than those of whom we have spoken 'Iráqí above, namely Fakhru'd-Dín Ibráhím of Hama-dán, better known by his poetical nom de guerre, or takhalluṣ, of 'Iráqí. Notices of his life are found in most of the later biographies of mystics and poets, notably in the Nafaḥátu'l-Uns of Jámí 124a and in the Majálisu'l-'Ushsháq of Ḥusayn Mírzá Bayqará; but in the absence of contemporary testimony the particulars there given must be received with a certain reserve, while from his writings, almost entirely of a mystical and erotic character, little or nothing is to be gleaned as to his personal adventures. He is the typical qalandar, heedless of his reputation, and seeing in every beautiful face or object a reflection, as in a mirror, of the Eternal Beauty. “Love,” as one of his biographers says, “was predominant in his nature,” and hence his ghazals have an erotic character which has exposed him to very harsh strictures on the part of some European critics, notably Sprenger, 125a who find scandalous in a Persian sentiments which in Plato they either admire or ignore.
According to Jámí, 'Iráqí was born at Hamadán, and in childhood learned the Qur'án by heart and could recite it melodiously and accurately. When he was about seventeen years of age, a party of qalandars, amongst whom was a very beautiful youth, came to Hamadán, and, when they left, 'Iráqí, attracted by the beauty of the young dervish, followed them to India. At Multán he became the disciple of Shaykh Bahá'u'd-Dín Zakariyyá, of whom he says in one of his poems:
“If thou shouldst ask of the world ‘Who is the guide of men?’
Thou wilt hear from heaven no other answer than ‘Zakariyyá.’”
Soon after his arrival there the discipline of a chilla, or forty days' retirement and meditation, was imposed upon him, but on the tenth day the other dervishes came to the Shaykh and complained that instead of meditating in silence he was singing a ghazal or ode which he had composed, and which in the course of a few days was in the mouths of all the revellers in the city, who were singing it in the taverns to the accompaniment of the harp and zither. This ghazal, which is one of 'Iráqí's best-known poems, is as follows:
“The wine wherewith the cup they first filled high
Was borrowed from the Sáqí's languorous eye.
Since self-possessed the revellers they found
The draught of selflessness they handed round.
The loved one's wine-red lips supplied the cup:
They named it ‘Lover's wine,’ and drank it up.
No rest the hair of those fair idols knows,
So many a heart it robs of its repose.
For good and bad a place within our hall
They found, and with one cup confounded all.
They cast the ball of Beauty on the field,
And at one charge compelled both worlds to yield.
The drunken revellers from eye and lip
The almond gather, and the sugar sip.
But that sweet lip, desired of all, most fair,
Maketh harsh words the helpless lover's share.They loosen and set free their locks of jet
That they therewith for hearts a snare may set.
A hundred messages their glances dart;
Their eyebrows signal secrets to the heart.
They speak in confidence and silence claim,
And then their secrets to the world proclaim.
Where'er in all the world is grief and gall
They mix them up, the mixture ‘Love’ they call.
Why should they seek to hurt 'Iráqí's fame,
Since they themselves their secrets thus proclaim?”
When Shaykh Bahá'u'd-Dín heard the last couplet, he said, “This finishes his business!” He then called to 'Iráqí in his cell, “Do you make your supplications in wine-taverns? Come forth!” So 'Iráqí came forth, and the Shaykh clothed him in his own khirqa or dervish-cloak, raised him from the ground to which he had cast himself, and subsequently gave him in marriage his daughter, who afterwards bore him a son named Kabíru'd-Dín.
Twenty-five years passed, and Shaykh Bahá'u'd-Dín died, naming 'Iráqí as his successor. The other dervishes, however, disapproved of this nomination, and complained to the King of 'Iráqí's antinomianism. He thereupon left India and visited Mecca and al-Madína, whence he proceeded to Asia Minor. At Qonya (Iconium) he attended the lectures of the celebrated Shaykh Ṣadru'd-Din of that city on the Fuṣúṣ of Shaykh Muḥiyyu'd-Dín ibnu'l-'Arabí, 127a and composed his most celebrated prose work, the Lama'át (“Flashes” or “Effulgences”), which was submitted to the Shaykh and won his approval. The powerful nobleman Mu'ínu'd-Dín the Parwána was 'Iráqí's admirer and disciple, and built for him, it is said, a khánqáh or monastery at Túqát, besides showing him other favours. On his death, 'Iráqí left Asia Minor for Egypt, where also he is said to have been well received by the reigning Sultan, whose favour he retained, notwithstanding the efforts of his enemies to traduce him. In Syria, whither he subsequently proceeded, he met with an equally good reception, and there, after six months' sojourn, he was joined by his son Kabíru'd-Dín from India. There also he died, on the 8th of Dhu'l-Qa'da, 688 (Nov. 23, 1289) and was buried in the Ṣáliḥiyya Cemetery at Damascus, beside the great mystic Shaykh Muḥiyyu'd-Dín ibnu'l-'Arabí, who had predeceased him by 50 years, and whose influence in Persia, still prevalent even in our days, was largely due to 'Iráqí, Awḥadu'd-Dín of Marágha, and others of the same school.
The following poems from 'Iráqí's Díwán may serve besides that already given, as typical of his style:
“From head to feet thou art gracious, pleasant and sweet, O Love!
Thee to prefer to life 'twere right and meet, O Love!
To thee doth aspire the heart's desire of all, O Love!
A hunter of hearts art thou to hold us in thrall, O Love!
To mine eyes appear thy features fair and dear, O Love!
Awake or asleep like a crystal stream so clear, O Love!
Though Beauty's wine doth incarnadine thy cheek, O Love!
Bear with thy comrades, nor causeless quarrels seek, O Love!
They melt in air, hope's promises false and fair, O Love!
Excuses, I ween, you'll find enough and to spare, O Love!
Kisses sip from thine own fair lip, and behold, O Love!
The Water of Life with its savour so sweet and so cold, O Love!
In the dust hard by thy path I die at thy door, O Love!
That a draught of wine on this dust of mine thou mayst pour, O Love!
Jewels of speech on all and each thou dost hurl, O Love!
So that every soul in its ear may wear a pearl, O Love!
None do I see in grace like thee, and I'm sure, O Love!
Thou art soul incarnate and spirit essential and pure, O Love!
In mine eyes and heart thou hast thy part and share, O Love!
Thou dost hide or appear, now dark and dim, now clear, O Love!
Never a moment on earth from North to South, O Love!
May 'Iráqí aspire to have his desire of thy mouth, O Love!”
The following is the first strophe of a very fine Tarjí'-band :
“Cups are those a-flashing with wine,
Or suns through the clouds a-gleaming?
So clear is the wine and the glass so fine
That the two are one in seeming.
The glass is all and the wine is naught,
Or the glass is naught and the wine is all:
Since the air the rays of the sun hath caught
The light combines with night's dark pall,
For the night hath made a truce with the day,
And thereby is ordered the world's array.
If thou know'st not which is day, which night,
Or which is goblet and which is wine,
By wine and cup divine aright
The Water of Life and its secret sign:
Like night and day thou mayst e'en assume
Certain knowledge and doubt's dark gloom.
If these comparisons clear not up
All these problems low and high,
Seek for the world-reflecting cup
That thou mayst see with reason's eye
That all that is, is He indeed,
Soul and loved one and heart and creed.”
Here is a fragment of another ode:
“Forth from the Veil came that fair Cup-bearer, in hand the cup;
He tore our veils asunder, and our vows forthwith broke up;
Showed us His visage fair, and straightway us of sense bereft,
Then sat Him down beside us, when of us no trace was left.
His locks the knots unloosed; our spirits' bonds were cast aside;
Our souls abjured the world, and to His curls their fortunes tied.
There in His fragrant tresses we remained in frenzy fine,
Intoxicated with the proffered cup of ruby wine.
Lost at His hands, our hearts for refuge clung unto His hair,
E'en as the drowning man will catch at straws in his despair.
And when His tresses' chains became the bonds of hearts that raved,
From their own being they escaped and from the world were saved.”
Of the following ode a spirited translation was made, but not published, by my friend Sir E. Denison Ross. The translation here given resembles and is suggested by his, but is not identical with it, for I cannot lay my hands on the copy which I received, nor can I remember it in detail.
“Save love of thee a soul in me I cannot see, I cannot see;
An object for my love save thee I cannot see, I cannot see.
Repose or patience in my mind I cannot find, I cannot find,
While gracious glance or friendship free I cannot see, I cannot see.
Show in thy face some sign of grace, since for the pain wherewith I'm
slain
Except thy face a remedy I cannot see, I cannot see.
If thou wouldst see me, speed thy feet, for parted from thy presence sweet,
Continued life on earth for me I cannot see, I cannot see.
O friend, stretch out a hand to save, for I am fallen in a wave
Of which the crest, if crest there be, I cannot see, I cannot see.
With gracious care and kindly air come hither and my state repair;
A better state, apart from thee, I cannot see, I cannot see.
Some pathway to 'Iráqí teach whereby thy gateway he may reach,
For vagrant so bemused as he I cannot see, I cannot see.”
Besides his lyric poetry 'Iráqí composed a mathnawí poem entitled the 'Ushsháq-náma, or “Book of Lovers,” but The 'Ushsháqnáma this I have not read, nor is a copy of it at present accessible to me. I therefore pass to his most notable prose work, the Lama'át (“Flashes,” or “Effulgences”), a mystical treatise inspired, as already mentioned, by the teachings of “the most great doctor” (ash-Shaykhu'l-akbar ) Muḥiyyu'd-Dín ibnu'l-'Arabí, by origin of the famous Arabian tribe of Ṭayy, and by birth a Moor of Andalusia.
The Lama'át is a comparatively small book, containing, perhaps, between 7000 and 8000 words, and, though written The Lama'át in prose, includes numerous pieces of verse. The many-sided and talented Jámí, of whom we shall speak in a later chapter, wrote a commentary on it, entitled Ashi“atu'l-Lama'át 132a (“Rays of the Flashes”), in the Jámí's opinion of this work preface to which he says that he began by being prejudiced against the work and its author, but, being requested by one of his spiritual guides to study and collate the text, he found it to consist of “graceful phrases and charming suggestions, verse and prose combined together and subtleties in Arabic and Persian intermingled, wherein the signs of [human] knowledge and [superhuman] gnosis were apparent, and the lights of rapture and ecstasy manifest, so that it would awaken the sleeper, cause him who was awakened to apprehend secret mysteries, kindle the fire of Love, and put in motion the chain of Longing.” The book is divided into 28 “Flashes” (Lam'a), probably in correspondence with the number of letters in the Arabic alphabet. As a specimen I give the opening pages, down to the end of the first Lam'a, the prose portion in translation only, the verses both in translation and in the original.
“Praise be to God who illuminated the countenance of His Friend with the Effulgence of Beauty, so that it gleamed with Light; and made visible therein the limits of Perfection, and rejoiced therein with joy; and raised him up by His hand and chose him out while Adam was not yet a thing mentioned, nor had the Pen written, nor the Tablet been inscribed. [His friend, who was] the Treasure-house of the treasures of Being, the Key of the Store-houses of Bounty, the Qibla of Desire and the Desired One, the Possessor of the Standard of Praise and the Laudable Station, the tongue of whose high degree declares:
‘Though in outward form I seem one of Adam's progeny,
Yet the underlying truth claims for me paternity.’ 133a‘Although in form of Adam's race,’ said he,
‘Higher by far than his is my degree.
My beauty mirrored in a glass I see,
And all the world a picture seems of me.
Creation's Sun am I: doth it amaze
If each created atom me displays?
The holy Spirits make my Essence plain,
And human forms my Attributes retain.
The boundless Sea's a sprinkling of my grace;
The radiant light's a reflex of my face.
From Throne to Footstool all is but a mote
Which in the radiance of my Sun doth float.
The Veil of Attributes aside is hurled,
And my bright Essence brightens all the world.
The stream which Khiḍr's ebb of life did stop
Was of my Kawthar-stream a single drop.
That breath wherewith Christ loosed the thralls of Death
Was but a blast of my soul-saving breath.My Essence all the Names doth manifest;
I am of Names the greatest and the best!’
(May God bless and hail Him!)
But to proceed. A few words on the degrees of Love, dictated by the mood of the moment, are here set down in the manner of the Sawániḥ, 135a that they may be for every lover a mirror to display the Beloved; though the rank of Love is too high for anyone to approach the pavilion of its glory by dint of understanding or explanation, or to gaze on the perfection of its true nature with the eyes of discovery and observation.
Exalted high is Love o'er men's ambition,
And o'er ideas of union or partition;
For when a thing transcends all thought and mention
'Tis freed from likeness and from comprehension.
It is veiled by the Veil of Glory and isolated in its Perfection. Its Attributes are the Veils of its Essence and implicit in that Essence. Its Splendour is the Lover of its Beauty, which is involved in that Splendour. For ever it makes love to itself, and concerns itself not with aught else. Every moment it casts aside the Veil from the face of some loved one, and every instant it raises a new song in the way of loverhood.
Within the Veil Love sings its air:
Where is the lover to hear it, where?Each moment it chants a different lay,
And ever some melody fresh doth play.
All the Universe echoes its song:
Who hath heard such an anthem long?
Its secret out from the world doth leap:
How can an Echo its secret keep?
I tell no tales, but loud and clear
From the tongue of each atom its secret hear.
Every moment with every tongue it tells its secret to its own ear; every instant with all its ears it hears its speech from its own tongue; every minute with all its eyes it flashes its beauty on its own vision; every second in every aspect it presents its being to its own notice. Hear from me its description as it really is:
It speaks with me through speaking and through speechless;
136a
Through lowered eyelashes and glancing eyes.
Knowest thou what it whispers in my ears?
I am Love, for the which in these worlds there is found not a place:
The 'Anqá am I of the West,
136b
who hath never a trace.
By my glance and my eyebrow the world I have captured, I trow,
Heed not that I do not possess either arrow or bow.
Revealed in the face of each atom am I, like the sun;
So apparent am I that my form is apparent to none.
I speak with all tongues, and with every ear do I hear
Though, strange as it seems, I have neither a tongue nor an ear.
I am all that exists in all worlds, so 'tis patent and clear
That neither in this world nor that have I rival or peer.
Know that in each ‘Flash’ of these ‘Flashes’ some hint is given of that Reality which transcends differentiation, whether you call it Love or Attraction, since there is no dearth of words; and some suggestion is made as to the manner of its progress in diverse conditions and cycles, of its journey through the degrees of dissociation and establishment, of its manifestation in the form of ideas and realities, of its emergence in the garb of Beloved and Lover, and finally of the absorption of the Lover in the Beloved formally, of the inclusion of the Beloved in the Lover ideally, and of the comprehension of both together in the Majesty of its Unity. There divergences are reconciled, ruptures are made whole, the Light is concealed within the Light, and the Manifestation lies latent within the Manifestation, while from behind the pavilions of Glory is cried:
O, is not all save God hollow and vain?
The identity [of each] disappears [in the other], leaving neither sign nor trace, and they merge in God, the One, the All-compelling.
Lover, and the manner of their production by it,
which takes place in the First Differentiation;
and setting forth that wherein each stands
in need of the other.
The derivation of both Lover and Beloved is from Love, which, in its Abode of Glory, is exempt from differentiation, and, in the Sanctuary of its own Identity, is sanctified from inwardness and outwardness. Yea, in order to display its perfection, in such way as is identical with its Essence and [equally] identical with its Attributes, it shows itself to itself in the Mirror of Loverhood and Belovedness, and reveals its Beauty to its own Contemplation by means of the Seer and the Vision. Thus the names of Loverhood and Beloved-ness appeared, and the description of the Seeker and the Quest became manifest. It showed the Outward to the Inmost, and the Voice of Loverhood arose: it showed the Inmost to the Outward, and the name of Belovedness was made plain.
No atom doth exist apart from It, that Essence single:
'Tis when Itself it doth reveal that first those ‘others’ mingle.
O Thou whose outward seeming Lover is, Beloved thine Essence,
Who hitherto e'er saw the Object Sought seek its own presence?
Love, by way of Belovedness, became the Mirror of the Beauty of Loverhood, so that therein it might behold its own Essence, and by way of Loverhood the Mirror of Belovedness, so that therein it might contemplate its own Names and Attributes. Although but one object is beheld by the Eye of Contemplation, yet when one face appears in two mirrors, assuredly in each mirror a different face appears.
The Face is only one, yet multiple
When thou in many mirrors see'st it.
O how can ‘Otherness’ appear when whatsoe'er existeth here
In essence is that Other One becoming to our vision clear?”
Shaykh Abú Ḥámid Awḥadu'd-Dín of Kirmán was, like 'Iráqí, a follower, and, indeed, as it would appear from Awḥadu'd-Dín of Kirmán the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá, 139a a personal friend or disciple of the great Shaykh Muḥiyyu'd-Dín ibnu'l-'Arabí, and had met (according to the same authority) that wild mystic Shams-i-Tabríz, the inspirer of Jalálu'd-Dín's Mathnawí and Díwán. He was also acquainted, as some assert, with Awḥadí of Marágha and with 'Iráqí himself, whom, in his heedlessness of appearances and passionate admiration of beauty, he somewhat resembles. Shaykh Shihábu'd-Dín, who, for chronological reasons, cannot be the famous Suhrawardí, strongly disapproved of him, called him a “heretical innovator,” and refused to admit him to his presence, on hearing which Awḥadu'd-Dín recited the following Arabic verse:139b
“I mind not that bad names thou dost me call:
I'm glad that thou shouldst mention me at all.”
Jámí apologizes for him for “contemplating the Truth through the medium of its Manifestations in Phenomena, and beholding Absolute Beauty in finite forms,” and adds that, being asked by Shams-i-Tabríz what he was doing, he replied, “I am contemplating the Moon in a bowl of water,” meaning the Beauty of the Creator in the beauty of the creature; to which Shams-i-Tabríz replied, “Unless you are afflicted with a carbuncle on the back of your neck, why do you not look at the Moon in the sky?” Similarly Mawláná Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí, being told that Awḥadu'd-Dín sought the society of the beautiful, but with purity of purpose, exclaimed, “Would rather that his desires had been carnal, and that he had outgrown them!” Awḥadu'd-Dín expresses his own point of view in the following quatrain:
“Therefore mine eyes insistent gaze on forms
Because the Idea itself displays in forms:
We live in forms; this World's the formal World:
The Idea we thus must needs appraise in forms.”
Apart from a few quatrains cited in the Nafaḥátu'l-Uns of Jámí, the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá of Riḍá-qulí Khán, and other biographical works, Awḥadu'd-Dín seems to have left little save a mathnawí poem entitled “The Lamp of Spirits” (Miṣbáḥu'l-Arwáḥ), from which long extracts are given in the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá and the following eight couplets in the Nafaḥát (pp. 688-9):
“While the hand moves, the shadow moveth too:
What else, indeed, can the poor shadow do?
'Tis but the hand which makes the shadow fall,
The shadow, then, no substance hath at all.
To call ‘existent’ what no Being hath,
Save through another, is not Wisdom's Path.
Absolute Being only wise men call
Being, and naught save God exists at all.
That which existent but through God became
IS NOT in truth, but only IS in name.
And yet the Artist loves His work, 'tis clear;
There's none but He, so be thou of good cheer.
Himself at once the Truth doth hear and tell
The Face He shows He doth perceive as well,
Know, then, by Allah, for a certainty
That nothing else existence hath save He.”
Mention should also be made of Awḥadu'd-Dín's disciple, Awḥadí of Marágha, also called of Iṣfahán, because, though a Awḥadí of Marágha native of the former place, he passed a considerable portion of his life and died at the latter. 141a Little seems to be known to the biographers of his circumstances, but the prevalent opinion is that he died in 738/1337-8. His chief poem is an imitation of the Ḥadíqa of Saná'í entitled Jám-i-Jam (the “Cup of Jamshíd,” also known as the “World-displaying Glass”), of which copious extracts are given by the biographers, and of which I possess a good manuscript. 141b Dawlatsháh, followed by the Haft Iqlím, states that this poem was so popular that within a month of its production four hundred copies of it were made and sold at a good price, but adds that in his time (892/1487) it was seldom met with and little read. This seems to have been the only mathnawí poem he wrote, but he also left a díwán, estimated by Riḍá-qulí Khán, the author of the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá, to contain six or seven thousand verses, 142a including qaṣídas and quatrains, of which a selection is given by the biographers. The following may serve as examples of his style:
“How long wilt pride in beard and turban take?
That Friend adopt as friend: all else forsake.
With stir and movement fill thy heart with pain:The soul in rest and quiet strength doth gain.
All scent and hue of self do thou efface,
That HE may clasp thee tight in HIS embrace.
Till thou art contrite vainly shalt thou seek
In truth the beauty of that lovely cheek.
If thou canst do what He enjoins on thee
He'll do what thou dost ask assuredly.
He's kin enough: all else forsake forthwith:
When wilt thou free thyself from kin and kith?
Ask of thyself, when from thyself set free,
God-vexer, where and who thy God may be?
Who is't in thee who speaks of ‘us’ and ‘me’?
Who fixed the evil and the good for thee?
If there are ‘others,’ prithee point them out:
Art thou alone? Then wherefore ‘others’ flout?
To be united is not as to see:
In this my speech is no hypocrisy.
Were sight and union one in fact and deed
The eye on looking at the thorn would bleed.
A cup he gives thee: spill not, drink it up!
Hold fast when I bestow another cup!
One is the Master's Face: pluralities
From Mirror and from Mirror-holder rise.
One the King's portrait and the coining-die:
Numbers in gold and silver coinage lie.
One sap supplies the flower which doth adorn
The rose-bush, and the sharp and cruel thorn.
Orange and fire alike 143a their hue derive
From that life-giving sun whereon they thrive.
A thousand circles issue from the point
What time the compass doth enlarge its joint.
The world entire reveals His Vision bright:
Seek it, O ye who are endowed with sight:
All things His praises hymn in voices still,
Sand in the plain and rocks upon the hill.”
The following fragment is possessed of some beauty, but is imitated from one of Sa'dí's.143b
“Think O thou who dost inherit, yet didst labour ne'er,
Who was he whose wealth was thine, and who art thou, the heir?
He amassed but did not spend it, so 'twas left behind:
Use it well, that when thou flittest, others good may find.
Gold a goblin is, and woman for the neck a chain:
Chained and goblin-haunted's he who greatly loves the twain.
Over-anxious for thy offspring be not, for the Lord
Knoweth better than the servant how to guard his ward.
Dally not with lust and passion, which do curses bring,
Curses which thou shalt not 'scape with Flying Ja'far's 144a wing.
This thy lust and this thy craving are a sea of strife:Canst thou swim not? Wherefore venture in the waves thy life?
Washing of the coat and turban naught can profit you:
Wash thy hands of worldly longings: this is washing true!
On the evil wrought by others never wilt thou dwell
If upon the deeds thou doest thou shouldst ponder well.
Truth there lacks not in the sayings Awḥadí doth say:
He who hearkens to his counsel wins to Fortune's way!”
The following ode is another favourable specimen of Awḥadí's work:
“Many a Spring shall Autumn follow when thou'rt passed away;
Many an evening, many a morning, many a night and day.
To the World thy heart incline not, though it seemeth fair;
Deem it not a faithful friend who for its friends doth care.
Thou to-day who like a scorpion everyone dost sting,
Snakes shall be thy tomb's companions, shame to thee shall bring.
Comfort some afflicted spirit; that is worth thy while;
Else to vex thy fellows' spirits easy is and vile.
Look not on earth's humble dwellers with a glance so proud:
Knowing not what Knight is hidden midst the dusty cloud.”
The following fragment must conclude our citations from Awḥadí:
“These suppliant suitors hold in slight esteem;
Hold thou their vows as frailer than a dream.
Honours which meanness winneth for thy name
Regard, if honour toucheth thee, as shame.
When Fortune's cup into your hands doth pass
Think of the headache as you raise the glass.
Like ill-bred camel seems thy restive soul;
Put on the leading-rein or lose control!”
The village of Shabistar (or Chabistar) near Tabríz, in Ádharbáyján, gave birth about the middle of the thirteenth Maḥmúd-iShabistarí century of the Christian era (seventh of the hijra) to another notable mystic, Sa'du'd-Dín Maḥmúd, generally called, after his native place, Shabistarí. Little is known of his life, which seems to have been passed quietly, and, so far as those stirring times allowed, uneventfully, at or near Tabríz, where he died about 720/1320. He was by no means a voluminous writer, but his Gulshan-i-Ráz, or “Rose-Garden of Mystery,” a mathnawí containing about one thousand couplets, is one of the best and most compendious manuals of the mystical doctrine of the Ṣúfís, and enjoys even at the present day a high reputation. It has been edited with a translation, Introduction, and valuable notes, by Mr E. Whinfield, 146a who gives in his Introduction the few particulars known about the author and the history of the poem. This attracted the attention of European travellers as early as A.D. 1700, reached certain Western libraries during the succeeding century, was utilized by Dr Tholuck in his Ssufismus in 1821 and was partly translated into German by the same writer in his Blüthensammlung aus der Morgenländischen Mystik in 1825, and was edited with a complete versified translation in German by Hammer-Purgstall in 1838. The poem was composed, as the poet himself informs us, in the month of Shawwál, 710 (Feb.-March, 1311) in reply to a series of fifteen questions on mystical doctrine propounded by an enquirer from Khurásán named Amír Ḥusayní. These questions, which are included in the poem, are briefly as follows:
The fifteen questions answered in the Gulshan-i-Ráz| (1) | As to the nature of thought. |
| (2) | Why is thought sometimes a sin, sometimes a duty, and what sort of thought is incumbent on the mystic? |
| (3) | What am “I”? What is meant by “travelling into one's self”? |
| (4) | What is meant by “the Pilgrim,” and what by “the Perfect Man”? |
| (5) | Who is the Gnostic ('Árif) who attains to the Secret of Unity? |
| (6) | “If Knower and Known are one pure Essence, |
| What are the inspirations in this handful of dust?” | |
| (7) | “To what Point belongs the expression, ‘I am the Truth’?” |
| (8) | “Why call they a creature ‘united’? |
| How can he achieve ‘travelling’ and ‘journey’?” | |
| (9) | “What is the union of ‘Necessary’ and ‘Contingent’? |
| What are ‘near’ and ‘far,’ ‘more’ and ‘less’?” | |
| (10) | “What is that Sea whose shore is speech? |
| What is that pearl which is found in its depths?” | |
| (11) | “What is that Part which is greater than its Whole? |
| What is the way to find that Part?” | |
| (12) | “How are Eternal and Temporal separate? |
| Is this one the World and the other God?” | |
| (13) | “What means the mystic by those [allegorical] expressions of his? |
| What does he indicate by ‘eye’ and ‘lip’? | |
| What does he intend by ‘cheek,’ ‘curl,’ ‘down’ and ‘mole’? | |
| (He, to wit, who is in ‘Stations’ and ‘States.’)” | |
| (14) | “What meaning attaches to ‘Wine,’ ‘Torch’ and ‘Beauty’? |
| What is assumed in being a haunter of Taverns?” | |
| (15) | “Idols, girdles and Christianity in this discourse |
| Are all infidelity; if not, say what are they?” |
The book contains not only the answers to these questions, but a number of incidental illustrations, parables and digressions, and is on the whole one of the best manuals of Ṣúfí Theosophy which exist, especially when taken in conjunction with the excellent commentary of 'Abdu'r-Razzáq al-Láhijí.
Since the whole of this work is accessible to the English reader in Whinfield's excellent translation, the following short specimen may suffice here:
“What Sea is that whereof the shore is speech?
What pearl from out its depths our hands can reach?”Answer X.“The Sea is Being; speech its shore; the shell
Words, and its pearls Heart's Wisdom, wot thee well.
Each wave a thousand royal pearls doth pour
Of text, tradition and prophetic lore.
Each moment thence a thousand waves are tossed,
Yet ne'er a drop therefrom is ever lost.
Knowledge is gathered from that Sea profound:
Its pearls enveloped are in words and sound.
Ideas and mysteries descending here
Need some similitude to make them clear.”Illustration.“In April's month, thus was it told to me,
The oysters upwards float in 'Ummán's sea.
Up from the depths unto the Ocean's brim
Ascending open-mouthed they shorewards swim.Mists from the sea arise and veil the land,
And then in rain dissolve by God's command.
Into each oyster-mouth a rain-drop creeps:
The shell doth close, and sinketh to the deeps.
With heart fulfilled it sinketh down again;
A pearl is formed from every drop of rain.
Into the depths himself the Diver hurls,
And to the shore brings back the lustrous pearls.
Being's the sea: the shore our human frames:
God's Grace the mist: the rain God's Holy Names:
Wisdom's the diver in this mighty deep,
Who 'neath his cloak a hundred pearls doth keep.
The Heart's the vase wherein is Wisdom found:
Heart's wisdom's shell the letters, words and sound.
The moving breath like lightning doth appear,
And thence words fall upon the hearer's ear.
Break, then, the shell: bring forth the royal pearl:
The kernel keep: the husk on ash-heap hurl.
Lexicon, grammar and philology
All these mere accidents of letters be.
Whoe'er on things like these his life doth spend
Doth waste his life without an aim or end.”
Shaykh Maḥmúd Shabistarí cannot, like so many Persian poets, be charged with writing too much, for the Gulshan-i-Ráz is, so far as I know, his only poem, while his only other works are the Ḥaqqu'l-Yaqín (“Certain Truth”), and the Risála-i-Sháhid (“Tract of the Witness”). The former is fairly common, and has been lithographed at Ṭihrán with other Ṣúfí tracts: the latter I have never met with. The full title of the better-known treatise is “Certain truth on the Knowledge of the Lord of the Worlds,” and it contains eight chapters, corresponding with the eight Gates of Paradise, and dealing with the following topics:
(1) The Manifestation of the Divine Essence.
(2) The Manifestation of the Divine Attributes, and the Station of Knowledge.
(3) The Manifestation of the Degrees thereof, and the explanation of the Origin.
(4) On the Necessity of the Divine Unity.
(5) On Contingent Being and Plurality.
(6) On Differentiation of movement, and the continual renovation of Differentiations.
(7) On the Philosophy of obligation, compulsion, predestination and conduct.
(8) Explaining the Return and the Resurrection, and Annihilation and Permanence.
The poet Rabí'í of Búshanj, the panegyrist of Fakhru'd-Dín Kurt of Herát, is little known, but a long notice of him Rabí'í of Búshanj is given in that rare and valuable work the Mujmal (“Compendium”) of Faṣíḥí of Khwáf, 150a under the year 702/1399-1400 in which he was put to death. He was a great drinker of wine, while Fakhru'd-Dín was addicted to bang; a fact to which reference is made in these two quatrains:
“When I wax cheerful with the green-hued seed 150b
I'm ready to bestride the heaven's green steed;
With verdant youths on lawns the green 150c I eat
Ere like the grass the earth on me shall feed.”
“The toper, e'en if rich, is harshly blamed,
While by his rioting the world's inflamed.In ruby casket emeralds I pour, 151a
And blinding snake-eyed sorrow, grieve no more.”
While in prison Rabí'í composed a poem called the Kárnáma (“Book of Deeds”) and other poems, wherein he sought but failed to move the King's pity. Of these some seventy couplets are cited in the Mujmal of Faṣíḥí, of which the following may serve as specimens:
“The Empire's Lord, King of these realms so fair,
Prince Fakhru'd-Dín the Kurt, great Jamshíd's heir,
Had fetters fashioned for the eulprit's heel
Most strongly wrought of iron and of steel.
Therewith my feet they bound by his command:
Bow to the will of him who rules the land!
The other captives all he did set free:
Of Heaven's wheel behold the tyranny!Thus I myself in grievous fetters found,
As Ká'ús in Mázandarán was bound.
With feet in fetters, heart weighed down with care,
How long shall I in every sorrow share?
Nor men nor demons are my comrades here:
My soul cries out at such companions drear.
No heart on earth through them doth gladness feel:
Hard as their hearts no iron is, nor steel.
The Devil's but a joke when they are there;
Their pupil, only fit for blows, the bear.
Their custom is to hang, torment and bind;
Bloodshed and slaughter occupy their mind.
Their life-long work is outrage, curse and blow:
To Khaysár 152a and to Ghúr each year they go.
They're highland robbers all, in battle proved,
Themselves like mountains which God's power hath moved.
Ten of these wretches now control my fate:
Alas for my condition desolate!”
In another qaṣída, composed during his imprisonment, the poet says that he was thirty-one years of age at the time of writing, and that of this period he had spent seventeen years in the King's service and fourteen in the Holy Sanctuaries (Mecca and Medína):
A third poem in the same strain and composed under the same conditions (a mathnawí in this case) is also recorded in the Mujmal, but all appeals were unavailing, and the unfortunate poet died in prison, none knows in what manner.
Humámu'd-Dín of Tabríz is another poet of this period Humám of Tabríz who merits a brief mention. According to the Mujmal he died in 714/1314, at the age of 116, while a well-known anecdote 152b brings him into contact with the great Sa'dí (died 690/1291), with whom he engaged in a wordy duel, not conspicuous for refinement, in which he was signally worsted. No other particulars of his life are known to me, except that he also was one of the panegyrists of the Ṣáḥib Ḍíwán. 153a The following specimens of his verse (which is said to have been greatly influenced by that of Sa'dí) are taken from the Haft Iqlím.
“On the day of life's surrender I shall die desiring Thee:
I shall yield my Spirit craving of thy street the dust to be.
On the Resurrection Morning, when I raise my head from sleep,
I shall rise desiring Thee, and forth to seek for Thee shall creep.
I will smell not blooms of Eden, nor of Heavenly Gardens speak,
Nor, desiring Thee alone, shall I Celestial Houris seek.”
“When the parting from country and friends to my vision appears
The stages I tread are fulfilled with the flood of my tears.
In parting one moment, one breath like ten centuries seems:
How weary the days and the weeks and the months and the years!”
“That day of parting seemed the Day of Doom:
How were it if our friendship had been less?
Make much, then, of your friends while they are here,
For this false sphere is fraught with faithlessness.”
“Last night to tell my tale I did prepare
Unto my Friend, and forth from every hair
Flowed speech. Night passed, unended was my song;
Blame not the night; the tale was over-long!”
A good many other poets of this period, such as Afḍal-i-Káshí, Athír-i-Awmání, Sayfu'd-Dín-i-Isfarangí, Rafí'u'd- Other poets of this period Dín-i-Abharí, Faríd-i-Aḥwal (“the squint-eyed”) and Nizárí of Quhistán might be mentioned, did space allow, but as in most cases their works are inaccessible to me save in the brief extracts given by the biographers, it has seemed better to pass them over for the Nizárí of Quhistán present. Of the last-named, however, a few words must be said, for a MS. of his poems (Or. 7909) has been acquired by the British Museum since the publication of the Supplement to the Persian Catalogue, and of this MS. a transcript was made for me in the autumn of 1913 by an Indian copyist, Mawlawí Isma'íl 'Alí. This transcript I desired because of the strong probability that Nizárí belonged to the sect of the Isma'ílís, Maláḥida, or Assassins, and I hoped that his poems might afford proof of this fact, and perhaps reveal a genius comparable to that of the one great Isma'ílí poet hitherto known, Náṣir-i-Khusraw. 154a That Nizárí of Quhistán belonged to the Isma'ílí sect is not merely suggested by his pen-name and place of origin, but is asserted or hinted at by most of the biographers. On the death of al-Mustanṣir, the eighth Fáṭimid or Isma'ílí Caliph (A.D. 1035-1094), there ensued a struggle for the succession between his two sons al-Musta'lí and Nizár, 154b in which the latter lost his life and his throne, but continued to be regarded by the Eastern or Persian Isma'ílís (including the derived Syrian branch) as the legitimate Imám. It was from him, no doubt, that the poet took his nom de guerre, for the other suggestion, that it was derived from the Persian adjective nizár (“thin,” “weak”) is quite untenable. Quhistán, moreover, was a stronghold of the Assassins, 155a especially the towns of Qáyin and Birjand to which he particularly alludes in one of his poems, where he says:
“I am seated over my treasure, whether I be in Birjand or Qáyin;
O Nizárí, henceforth, free and untroubled, thou hast the treasure of
poverty and a safe corner.”
The MS. of Nizárí's poems alluded to above contains only ghazals or odes, and these, though spirited enough, appear for the most part to be of the usual Bacchanalian type, and to give little or no indication of the poet's religious views or general circumstances. It is in qaṣídas and math-nawís that such indications are generally to be found, and, unfortunately, neither of these classes of poems are represented in the MS. in question. According to Sprenger, 155b Nizárí died in 720/1320, and left two mathnawís, one of which, entitled Dastúr-náma, he describes as “very witty and amusing,” but I have never seen it. Nizárí's writings would probably repay further study.
In conclusion a few words must be said about Sulṭán Walad (or Veled, according to the Turkish pronunciation),
Sultán Walad (or Veled) and his Rabáb-náma the son and ultimately the spiritual successor of the great Mawláná Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí. He was born in Asia Minor at Láranda (the modern Qaramán) in 623/1226 when his father was only nineteen years of age, and his proper name was Bahá'u'd-Dín Aḥmad. His best-known work is a mathnawí poem, entitled Rabábnáma (the “Book of the Rebeck”), which, though mostly written in Persian, contains 156 verses in Turkish, which Gibb describes as “the earliest important specimen of West-Turkish poetry that we possess.” These archaic verses have attracted the attention of Von Hammer, Wickerhauser, Bernhauer, Fleischer, Salemann 156a and Radloff, and Gibb has very fully discussed them and their author in the first volume of his great History of Ottoman Poetry, pp. 149-163. “To Sultán Veled,” he says (loc. cit., pp. 156-7), “belongs not only the honour due to the pioneer in every good work, but the credit which is justly his who successfully accomplishes an arduous enterprise. To have inaugurated the poetry of a nation is an achievement of which any man might be proud.” Thus even so great an admirer of Turkish poetry as Gibb is constrained to admit that it chiefly owes its inception to a Persian, and is in fact, in a sense, a branch of Persian poetry, to which for five centuries and a half (A.D. 1300-1850) it owed its inspiration. At all events the rise of both the Ottoman State and Turkish literature belong to the period which we have discussed in this and the preceding chapters, and henceforth it will be necessary to allude to both with increasing frequency.I-LANG, COMMONLY CALLED TAMERLANE.
(A.H. 736-807 = A.D. 1335-1405.)
The power of the Mongols in Persia practically came to an end on the death of Abú Sa'íd (13 Rabí' II, A.H. 736
Definition of the period about to be considered = Nov. 30, 1335), and some eight months later in the same year of the hijra (Shá'bán 25 = April 8, 1336) was born Tímúr, called Lang (“the limping”), and generally known in the West as “Tamerlane,” who was destined to become in his turn almost as great a scourge to the Muslims of Western and Central Asia as Chingíz Khán. The approximate coincidence of the death of the last great Mongol ruler of Persia with the birth of this new organizer of Tartar depredations has been remarked by the author of the Maṭla'u's-Sa'dayn, 159a and makes this date a convenient starting-point for the period of seventy years which we are now about to consider; a period which, in spite of the anarchy wherewith it began and the bloodshed wherewith it ended, is remarkable alike for the quantity and the Eminent writers of this period quality of the poets and writers which it produced. Of the former were Salmán of Sáwa, Khwájú of Kirmán, 'Ubayd-i-Zákání, 'Imád of Kirmán, 'Aṣṣár of Tabríz, the two Jaláls, known respectively as 'Aḍudí and Ṭabíb (“the physician”), Kamál of Khujand, Maghribí, Busḥaq, Ibn-i-Yamín, and last but not least the incomparable Ḥáfiẓ of Shíráz; of the latter were the historians of Tímúr, Niẓám-i-Shámí and Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí Yazdí, and Mu'ínu'd-Dín Yazdí, the historian of the House of Muẓaffar which perished at Tímúr's hands, not to mention others who, though Persians, wrote chiefly in Arabic, such as the Sayyid-i-Sharíf of Jurján, Sa'du'd-Dín Taftázání, and 'Aḍudu'd-Dín al-Íjí.Tímúr's first invasion of Persia took place in A.D. 1380, when he subdued Khurásán, Sístán and Mázandarán; his Tímúr's three invasions of Persia second in A.D. 1384-5, when he again invaded Mázandarán and extended his operations into Ádharbáyján, 'Iráq-i-'Ajam and Georgia, finishing up with the subjugation of Shíráz and a massacre of 70,000 persons at Iṣfahán; and his third and last in A.D. 1392, when he again subdued Fárs and extirpated the Muẓaffarí dynasty, having already destroyed the Sarbadárs of Sabzawár (in 1381) and the Kurts of Herát (in 1389). During the 45 years succeeding Tímúr's birth and Abú Sa'íd's death (A.D. 1335-1380) Persia was, however, left to its The minor dynasties destroyed by Tímúr own devices, and was divided between four or five petty dynasties, of which the Muẓaffarís, ruling over Fárs, 'Iráq-i-'Ajam and Kirmán, were the most important; then the Jalá'irs (or Íl-khánís) of Baghdád and Ádharbáyján; and lastly the Sarbadárs of Sabzawár and the Kurts of Herát, both in the North-East. The history of these dynasties is very intricate, and, perhaps, hardly worth a detailed study; while the territories over which each held control were indeterminate, and their frontiers (if such existed) constantly shifting, and often—indeed generally—civil war prevailed between members of the same dynasty, and their heritage was divided amongstrival brothers or cousins. What is remarkable, however, is that it is pre- Persian literature most flourishing in troubled times cisely during such periods of anarchy and division of power that Persian literature has flourished most; so that, for example, while a dozen first-class poets lived in the brief period of 45 years now under discussion, the whole Ṣafawí period, which in all lasted 234 years (A.D. 1502-1736), and in which Persia reached a degree of power, splendour and consolidation unequalled in modern times, hardly produced half that number of poets of more than local fame, though arts flourished and theology reached its zenith. The cause of this curious phenomenon will be further discussed when we come to speak of the Ṣafawí period; but it would seem that the existence of numerous small courts, rivals to one another, and each striving to outshine the others, was singularly favourable to the encouragement of poets and other men of letters, who, if disappointed or slighted in one city, could generally find in another a more favourable reception.
Before speaking of Tímúr, then, it is necessary to give some account of the petty dynasties which flourished in Muẓaffarís Persia during this half-century's interregnum. Of these the Muẓaffarís were the most important, both on account of the position and extent of their realms, and by reason of the eminent poets—notably Ḥáfiẓ of Shíráz—who frequented their courts. Next to them we Jalá'irs or Il-khánís may place the Jalá'ir or Íl-khání princes who ruled over Baghdád and Tabríz as the direct heirs of the shrunken Mongol power, and under whose ægis likewise many eminent poets flourished. The Sarbadárs Sarbadárs (or Sarbadáls) of Sabzawár seem to have held sway over a very restricted territory, and were in fact (as their name, “Head-on-the-gallows,” implies) little better than successful outlaws and highway- Kurts robbers; while the Kurts of Herát, though more civilized, greater patrons of letters, and more stable in character (they ruled for 144 years, from A.D. 1245 to 1389), were established in a domain which is no longer included in Persia, but now forms part of Afghánistán, and were themselves, perhaps, of Afghán or semi-Afghán descent. Of each of these dynasties some brief account must now be given.
Apart from the general histories, such as the Rawḍatu'ṣ-Ṣafá , with which every student of Persian is familiar, there Authorities for history of Muẓaffarís exists a monograph on the House of Muẓaffar by a contemporary scholar of some repute, Mu'ínu'd-Dín of Yazd, who was made professor at one of the colleges of Kirmán in 755/1354. This history exists only in manuscript, 161a and I have been able to consult it in an old copy belonging to the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, 162a dated 778/1376-7, and, since January, 1917, in two MSS., one written in the author's life-time, from the library of the late Sir A. Houtum-Schindler. It comes down only to the year 767/1365-6, and so omits the last thirty years of the dynasty; and it is, moreover, written in a very stilted and artificial style. So difficult, indeed, was it that a certain Maḥmúd Kutbí, while engaged in transcribing the Ta'ríkhi-Guzída in 823/1420, thought good to add to that history an independent account of the Muẓaffarí dynasty from his own pen. This account is contained in the fac-simile of an old MS. of the Guzída published in the Gibb Memorial Series (vol. xiv, 1, pp. 613-755), 162b and carries the history of the dynasty down to its extinction in Rajab, 795 (May, 1393). This, and the account contained in the modern Fárs-náma-i-Náṣirí 162c of Ḥájjí Mírzá Ḥasan (pp. 49-66), have been chiefly used in compiling the following brief account of the dynasty, but I should like also to acknowledge my indebtedness to an excellent and most readable sketch of its history contained in the Introduction to Miss Gertrude Lowthian Bell's Poems from the Divan of Hafiz 162d (pp. 8-28).
The ancestors of the House of Muẓaffar are said to have come to Persia from Arabia in the early days of the Mu- Origin of the Muẓaffarí Dynasty hammadan conquest, and to have settled near Khwáf in Khurásán, whence Amír Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Ḥájji Khurásání, the grandfather of Mu-bárizu'd-Dín Muḥammad, the first king of the dynasty, migrated to Yazd during the period of the Mongol invasion. One of his three sons, Abú Bakr, with 300 horsemen, accompanied Húlágú's expedition against Baghdád, and was subsequently killed in Egypt by Arabs of the Banú Khafája tribe. His brother Muḥammad succeeded him as deputy to the Governor of Yazd, but died without issue. The third son, Jalálu'd-Dín Manṣúr, lived at Maybud, near Yazd, and likewise left three sons, Sharafu'd-Dín Muẓaffar, Zaynu'd-Dín 'Alí, and Mubárizu'd-Dín Muḥammad. The first is said to have been notified in a dream of the distinction to which his family was destined, and while still young distinguished himself by destroying a band of robbers from Fárs who were committing depredations in his province. In 685/1286 he went to Kirmán and entered the service of Súrghatmish Qará-Khitá'í. Later he served the four Mongol sovereigns Arghún, Gaykhátú, Gházán and Uljáytú Khudá-banda, to the last-named of whom he was presented at Khániqín in 711/1311, and who conferred on him a more extensive government. He died in 713/1313, leaving to succeed him his son Mubárizu'd-Dín Muḥammad, then only thirteen years of age, who was confirmed in his father's offices by Uljáytú (died Dec. 16, 1316). At the age of 29 he married as his second wife Bánú Jahán, the grand-daughter of Súrghat-mish. He had five sons, Sharafu'd-Dín Muẓaffar (born 725/1325, died of a wound in 754/1353); Sháh Shujá' (born 733/1333); Quṭbu'd-Dín Maḥmúd (born 737/1336); and two others named Aḥmad and Báyazíd.
Mubárizu'd-Dín Muḥammad is generally reckoned the first of the Muẓaffarí dynasty, the duration of which, from Mubárizu'-d-Dín Muḥammad his accession in A.D. 1313 to the extirpation of the dynasty by Tímúr in A.D. 1393, covered a period of 80 years. His original government, as we have seen, was the little town of Maybud near Yazd, but in A.D. 1319 the latter town was added to his jurisdiction. In A.D. 1340 Kirmán also fell to his share, though the previous ruler, Quṭbu'd-Dín, invoked and received help from the Kurt kings of Herát, and offered a stubborn resistance. In A.D. 1353, after a still more prolonged struggle, he succeeded in wresting the province of Fárs with its capital Shíráz from Abú Isḥáq Injú, whose little son, 'Alí Sahl, aged ten, was taken prisoner and cruelly put to death by Sháh Shujá' at Rafsinján. One of Mubárizu'd-Dín's first measures was to enact severe laws against wine-drinking and other forms of dissipation prevalent amongst the pleasure-loving Shírázís, concerning which his son Sháh Shujá'composed the following quatrain:
“Closed are the taverns now throughout the land;
Zither and harp and tambourine are banned;
Banned is wine-worship to the libertine;
Only the proctor's 164a drunk, though not with wine!”
In the following year, A.D. 1354, whether in consequence of this unpopular measure or not, Shíráz was seized by rebels against the Muẓaffarís, but was soon retaken. About this time Mubárizu'd-Dín declared his allegiance to the titular Caliph al-Mu'taḍid, 164b whose name he caused to be inserted in the khuṭba. In A.D. 1357 Iṣfahán was attacked Abú Isḥáq Injú put to death and ultimately taken, and its ruler Shaykh Abú Isḥáq Injú was captured, brought to Shíráz, and there put to death at Mubárizu'd-Dín's command by Amír Quṭbu'd-Dín, the son of Sayyid Amír Ḥájji Ḍarráb, who had suffered death by order of Abú Isḥáq. It is said that just before his death Abú Isḥáq recited the two following quatrains:
“No hope in kin or stranger doth remain,
Nor to the bird of Life one single grain;
Of all we said throughout our life, alas!
Naught will survive us save an echo vain!”“Depart and quarrel not with Fortune's spite;
Depart, nor strive with circling Heaven's might:
Drain with a smile the poison-cup of Death
And pour libations ere you take your flight.”
After capturing Iṣfahán, Mubárizu'd-Dín marched on Tabríz, which also he occupied, after two engagements with the troops of Akhí Júq, whom his sons pursued as far as Nakhjuwán. Finally, however, his fortune turned against him, for his sons Maḥmúd and Shujá', apprehensive of his intentions towards them, seized and blinded him when they reached Iṣfahán on the homeward march, and imprisoned him first in the castle of Ṭabarak and then in the Qal'a-i-Safíd in Fárs, where he succeeded in winning over the warden to his interests. Some sort of reconciliation was eventually effected between him and his rebellious sons, but it did not long endure, and Mubárizu'd-Dín finally died in prison at Bam in Rabí' 1 (December, 1363), at the age of sixty-five.165a
Mubárizu'd-Dín was succeeded by his son Sháh Shujá', whose chief claim to fame is that he was the patron of the Sháh Shujá' immortal Ḥáfiẓ. He himself was not devoid of poetic talent, and wrote verses both in Arabic and Persian, specimens of which are given by Maḥmúd Kutbí. 166a Nor did his intellectual attainments end here: he knew the Qur'án by heart when he was nine years of age; could remember eight verses of Arabic poetry after hearing them read once; was famous for his epistolary style, wrote a fine hand, and was skilled in all martial exercises. He was also a great patron of men of learning, and at one time used to attend the lectures of Mawláná Qiwámu'd-Dín, while he appointed the eminent Sayyid-i-Sharíf-i-Jurjání professor in the Dáru'sh-Shifá College which he had founded at Shíráz. Nor did his reign lack military glory of the somewhat barren kind prevalent at that time, for he retook Shíráz from his brother Maḥmúd, who had ousted him from it by a trick, and Kirmán, which had been seized by Dawlat-sháh; and, on the death of Sulṭán Uways Jalá'ir at Tabríz in March, 1375, occupied not only that city, but also Nakh-juwán, Qárabágh, Awján, Sulṭániyya, Shúshtar and even Baghdád, so that he became for a while the master of the greater part of Persia.
In his family relations he was not happier than the rest of his House. His brother Maḥmúd, who had strangled his wife, the daughter of Shaykh Abú Isḥáq, about A.D. 1368, died in 1375 at the age of 38. On hearing of his death Sháh Shujá' wrote the following quatrain:
“My brother Maḥmúd, lion-like crouched low,
For crown and ring was my relentless foe.
At length we shared the earth that men might rest:
I took the surface, he the realm below.”
He was also troubled by the real disloyalty of one son,
Sulṭán Uways, and the fancied disloyalty of another, Sulṭán
Shiblí, whom in a fit of anger, intensified by drink, he
caused to be blinded, and only repented of his rash act
when it was too late. This happened in A.D. 1383, a year
before his death, which took place on October 9, 1384, he
being then 53 years of age and having reigned 27 years.
On his death-bed he wrote a letter to the great Tímúr,
167a
setting forth his devotion and loyalty, and commending
to his care his sons and brothers, especially his successor
Zaynu'l-'Ábidín. How much effect this letter, with its
admonitions that “loyalty to promises is a part of Faith,”
produced on Tímúr was shown nine years later when he made
a massacre of the whole family. The body of Sháh Shujá'
was conveyed to Medína for burial, or, according to another
account, buried in a place called Kúh-i-Chahil Maqám (the
“Mountain of Forty Stations”) a little to the North-east of
Shíráz. The date of his death is given by the chronogram:
Zaynu'l-'Ábidín's reign was both short and troubled, for not only was it marred by those family feuds and fratri- Mujáhidu'd-Dín 'Alí Zaynu'l'Ábidín cidal strifes which were characteristic of this dynasty, but the menace of Tímúr and his Tartars hung ever more threateningly over the land. Soon after his accession Zaynu'l-'Ábidín was attacked by his cousin Sháh Yaḥyá, and shortly after this arrived Tímúr's envoy Quṭbu'd-Dín and required the insertion in the khuṭba of his master's name, which was tantamount to recognizing him as over-lord. In 789/1387 Tímúr himself made his first entry into 'Iráq and Fárs. From Iṣfahán, which was governed by Majdu'd-Dín Muẓaffar, the uncle of Zaynu'd-Dín, he demanded a large sum of money, in collecting which his agents showed so harsh and arrogant a disposition that the inhabitants rose against them and killed them. Tímúr took a terrible revenge on them, for he ordered a general massacre, in which 70,000 persons 168a are said to have perished. He then advanced on Shíráz, but Zaynu'l-'Ábidín did not await his arrival, and fled to Shúshtar, where he was treacherously seized by his cousin Sháh Manṣúr, who thereupon marched to Shíráz and drove out his brother Yaḥyá, who fell back on Yazd. The next six years (A.D.
Fratricidal strife of the Muzaffarís 1387-1393) passed in continual strife between the three Muẓaffarí princes Sháh Manṣúr (who reigned over Fárs and Iṣfahán), his brother Sháh Yaḥyá (who ruled at Yazd), and his cousin Sháh Aḥmad (who held Kirmán), until in 795/1393 Tímúr for the second time descended on these distracted provinces. He first took the Qal'a-i-Safíd (“White Castle”), killed the garrison, and released and restored to the throne Zaynu'l-'Ábidín, and then continued his march on Shíráz, whence Sháh Manṣúr fled to Pul-i-Fasá. Of some of the Shírázís who had followed him thither he enquired what the people of Shíráz were saying of him. “Some say,” they replied, “that those who wielded maces weighing ten maunds and carried quivers weighing seventeen maunds have fled like goats before a pack of wolves and have left their families as an easy prey to the foe.” On hearing this Sháh Manṣúr, moved alike by shame and compassion, resolved to go back Sháh Manṣúr gives battle to Tímúr to Shíráz and face the inevitable death which a conflict with Tímúr's hosts involved. He had with him only 3000 men, of whom 2000 fled soon after the battle began, while the Tartar army “were more numerous than ants and locusts,” yet with such valour and desperation did he engage the enemy that more than once he forced his way almost to within striking distance of Tímúr, until at last, wounded in the neck and shoulder, he turned in flight towards Shíráz. He was overtaken by Death of Sháh Manṣúr some of Sháh Rukh's soldiers, who dragged him from his horse and severed his head from his body. The year of his death (795/1393) is given by the chronogramOnly two were spared, Zaynu'l-'Ábidín and Shiblí, both of whom had been blinded, the one by his cousin Manṣúr, the other by his father Sháh Shujá'. These were taken by Tímúr to Samarqand, his capital, where they spent the remainder of their days in tranquillity. So ended the Literary tastes of the Muẓaffarís Muẓaffarí dynasty, which for eighty years had held sway over the greater part of southern and central Persia. Several of their princes were distinguished alike by their taste and their talents, and their patronage of learning and letters drew to their court not only numerous poets of distinction, including the incomparable Ḥáfiẓ, but savants such as 'Aḍudu'd-Dín al-Íjí and Mu'ínu'd-Dín Yazdí. Materially they did little to benefit their subjects, save for the building of a few colleges; while even in Eastern history it would be difficult to find a household so divided against itself and so disposed to those fratricidal wars and savage mutilations or destruction of their kinsmen which constitute the greater part of their history.
During the period of the disruption of the Mongol Empire two Shaykh Ḥasans play a prominent part, the one known The Jalá'ir or Ílkání Dynasty as “the Great” (Buzurg), the other as “the Little” (Kúchak). The latter was the grandson of the great Amír Chúbán, whose power and influence were still further increased by his marriage in 719/1319 with Sátí Beg, the daughter of Úljáytú and sister of Abú Sa'íd, who bore him three sons, besides the six sons and one daughter (Baghdád Khátún) born to him by another wife. Of these ten children the most celebrated were Amír Ḥasan, Timúr-Tásh, Dimashq Khwája, and Baghdád Khátún. Amír Ḥasan and his three sons, Tálish, Ḥájji Beg and Ghúch Ḥusayn, all died violent deaths about 727-8/1327-8. Timúr-Tásh rebelled and fled to Egypt, where he was at first well received by al-Malik an-Náṣir, who, however, becoming alarmed at his increasing influence and evident ambition, put him to death in 728/1328. He was the father of the above-mentioned Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Kúchak (“the Little”), also called after his grandfather “Chúbání,” and of Malik-i-Ashraf. Dimashq Khwája, the third of Amír Chúbán's sons, was put to death by Abú Sa'íd in 727/1327 (a year very fatal to this family) on a charge of carrying on an intrigue with one of the widows of the late king Úljáytú. His daughter Dilshád Khátún and her aunt Baghdád Khátún were both ladies of considerable note, and, extraordinary as it appears, both were married at one time in their lives to the Sulṭán Abú Sa'íd and at another to the rival Shaykh Ḥasan, called “the Great” (Buzurg). Baghdád Khátún is said to have been remarkable for her beauty, and was married in 723/1323 to Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Buzurg, but unfortunately Abú Sa'íd saw her, was smitten by her charms, and conceived so violent a passion for her that in 727/1325 he compelled her husband to divorce her so that he might marry her himself. On Abú Sa'íd's death in 736/1335-6 and the elevation to the throne of Arpa, she was put to death privily by the new Sulṭán on suspicion of having poisoned her late husband, and Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Buzurg compensated himself by appropriating the late monarch's other widow Dilshád Khátún. 171a She bore him Sulṭán Uways, whose power she subsequently shared, and, like him, was the subject of many panegyrics on the part of the poet Salmán of Sáwa.
Shaykh Ḥasan “the Great” was the son of Ḥusayn, the
son of Áq-Búghá, the son of Aydakán, and claimed descent
Shaykh Ḥasani-Buzurg
from Húlágú, whence, I suppose, the title of
Ílkání (
The Jalá'ir or Íl-khánídynasty founded by Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Buzurg endured for some 75 years, and, though much harassed by Tímúr during the last fifteen or twenty years of its existence, was never entirely crushed by him like the Muẓaffarís. Shaykh Ḥasan and his son Shaykh Uways, whose mother was Dilshád Khátún, each reigned about twenty years (A.H. 736 or 737 to 757 and A.H. 757 to 776 respectively); and all three seem to owe much of their fame and good repute to their indefatigable panegyrist Salmán of Sáwa, most of whose poems are consecrated to their praise. The portrait of them presented by most historians and biographers is therefore a very flattering one, and, though their virtues may have been exaggerated, there seems no reason to believe that it is altogether unfounded. After the death of Sulṭán Uways, however, on the 2nd of Jumáda 1, 776 (Oct. 9, 1374), the fortunes of the dynasty began to decline. On that same day the late ruler's eldest son Ḥasan was put to death by the nobles, and the younger son Ḥusayn was placed on the vacant throne at Tabríz, whence he was driven out, after a successful war with the Turkmáns, for a space of four months by Sháh Shujá' the Muẓaffarí. Shortly after this his authority was resisted by his brother 'Alí, and finally in Ṣafar, 784 (April-May, 1382), he was killed by another brother, Aḥmad, who in turn was proclaimed king, and became involved almost immediately in a fratricidal conflict with yet another brother named Báyazíd. A partition of the kingdom was finally effected, Ádharbáyján being assigned to Aḥmad and 'Iráq to Báyazíd, but soon fresh conflicts occurred between the two brothers in which the aid of Sháh Manṣúr the Muẓaffarí was invoked first by one and then by the other. These unedifying squabbles were brought to an end by the approach of Tímúr's army, which, after a protracted resistance on the part of Aḥmad, finally compelled him and Qará-Yúsuf the Turkmán to seek refuge with the Turkish The Ottoman Sulṭán Báyazíd “the Thunderbolt.” Sulṭán Báyazíd, known as Yildirim, “the Thunder-bolt.” Thence they passed to Egypt, the ruler of which country was preparing to make his peace with Tímúr by surrendering them to him when, fortunately for them, news arrived that that sanguinary conqueror was dead. Shortly afterwards Aḥmad's bad faith led to a rupture between him and Qará-Yúsuf, who defeated him near Tabríz on the 25th of Rabí' II, 812 (Sept. 6, 1409). The same night he was captured and put to death, after a troubled and turbulent reign of twenty-seven years, by his conqueror, and with him practically ended the Íl-khání or Jalá'ir dynasty, though its final extinction at the hands of the Qará-qoyúnlú or “Black Sheep” Turkmáns did not take place until a year or two later.
We pass now to the Kurt dynasty which ruled over extensive territories in the N.E. of Persia and the adjacent countries with their capital at Herát. The most detailed account of them which I have met with is contained in a still unpublished history of Herát entitled Rawḍátu'l-Jannát fí ta'ríkhi madínati Herát (“Gardens of Paradise: on the history of the city of Herát”), composed by Mawláná Mu'ín of Isfizár. This history, which comes down to the year 875/ 1473-4 or thereabouts, is based on the older works of Abú Isḥaq Aḥmad b. Yá-Sín; Shaykh 'Abdu'r-Raḥmán Fámí; Sayfí of Herát; and the Kurt-náma of Rabí'í 174a of Búshanj; and is divided into 26 Rawḍas (“Gardens”), each containing two or more Chimans (“Parterres”). Of these, Rawḍas vii-x deal with the period and dynasty now under review. I am indebted to Mr A. G. Ellis, Assistant Librarian of the India Office, for the loan of an excellent MS. of this work, transcribed in 1073/1662-3 and superior in accuracy and legibility to either of the British Museum codices. 174b Another work which supplies some useful information about this dynasty is the very rare Mujmal of Faṣíḥí of Khwáf, 174c from which the poems of Rabí'í cited in the last chapter are taken. Some account of the dynasty is, of course, also contained in all general histories of Persia of a later date, such as the Rawḍatu'ṣ-Ṣafá, Ḥabíbu's-Siyar, Maṭla'u's-Sa'dayn, etc.
The ancestor of the Kurts was a certain Táju'd-Dín 'Uthmán-i-Marghiní, whose brother, 'Izzu'd-Dín 'Umar-i-Marghiní, was the powerful Wazír of Sulṭán Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Muḥammad-i-Ghúrí (d. 599/1202-3). Táju'd-Dín was made Warden of the Castle of Khaysár, and on his death his son, Malik Ruknu'd-Dín Abú Bakr, married the daughter of the Shamsu'd-Dín Kurt above-mentioned Sulṭán. Their son Shamsu'd-Dín succeeded his father in 643/1245-6, joined Sálí Noyan in an invasion of India in the following year, and met the great Shaykh Bahá'u'd-Dín Zakariyyá (the spiritual director of the poet 'Iráqí) at Multán in 645/1247-8. Later he visited the Mongol ruler Mangú Qá'án (646-655/1248-1257) who placed under his sway Herát, Jám, Búshanj, Ghúr, Khaysár, Fírúz-Kúh, Gharjistán, Murgháb, Merv, Fáryáb (up to the Oxus), Isfizár, Faráh, Sístán, Kábul, Tíráh, and Afghánistán up to the Indus. In 662/1263-4, after having subdued Sístán, he visited Húlágú, and three years later his successor Abáqá, whom he accompanied in his campaign against Darband and Bákú. He again visited Abáqá, accompanied by Shamsu'd-Dín the Ṣáḥib Díwán, in 675/1276-7, and this time the former good opinion of the Mongol sovereign in respect to him seems to have been changed to suspicion, which led to his death, for he was poisoned in Sha'bán, 676
Shamsu'd-Dín poisoned (January, 1278), by means of a water-melon given to him while he was in the bath at Tabríz. Abáqá even caused his body to be buried in chains at Jám in Khurásán. Mawláná Wajíhu'd-Dín Nasafí commemorated the date of his death in the following verses:The allusion is to the verse in the Qur'án (súra lxxxi, 1) “When the sun is rolled up,” for the title of the deceased ruler, Shamsu'd-Dín, signifies the Sun of the Faith.
The title of Malik (which means King in Arabic, but in Persia at this period meant no more than Prince or Amír) seems to have been first taken by Ruknu'd-Dín, but already the Shaykh Thiqatu'd-Dín Fámí had given the higher title of Sháh to his uncle 'Izzu'd-Dín 'Umar in the following verse:
The title of Malik was, however, that borne by all the succeeding members of this house.
Shamsu'd-Dín was succeeded in 677/1278-9 by his son
Ruknu'd-Dín, who thereupon assumed his father's title with
Ruknu'd-Dín
succeeds his
father under
the title of
Shamsu'd-Díni-Kihín
Fakhru'd-Dín was succeeded by his brother Ghiyáthu'd-Dín, who soon afterwards had a quarrel with his brother Ghiyáthu'd-Dín succeeds 'Alá'u'd-Dín, and went to lay his case before the Mongol sovereign Khudá-banda, who accorded him a gracious reception. On his return to Herát in 708/1308-9 he extended his power over Ghúr, Khaysár and Isfizár. 'Alá'u'd-Dín Hindú's intrigues against him compelled him again to visit Sháh Khudá-banda in 714/1314-15, and it took him some time, aided by the intercession of Shaykh Núru'd-Dín 'Abdu'r-Raḥmán of Isfará'in, to regain that monarch's confidence. On his return he was confronted first, in 718/1318-19, with an invasion of Khurásán by Prince Yasúr 177a the Nikúdarí and, in the following year, with the hostility of Quṭbu'd-Dín of Isfizár and the people of Sístán, on which latter war Púr-i-Bahá of Isfizár has the following verses:
“O King, do not again, supported [only] by the weak Sístánís,
Venture to give battle to the army of the Persians.
The people of Sístán are nothing more than beards and moustaches;
Beware lest thou place thy reliance on felt and cords!”
In 720/1320 Prince Yasúr was killed and the Nikúdarís dispersed, and in Rajab of that year (August, 1320) Ghiyáthu'd-Dín set out to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, leaving his son Malik Shamsu'd-Dín Muḥammad to act as Viceroy. In 729/1329 Ghiyáthu'd-Dín died, leaving four sons, the above Shamsu'd-Dín who succeeded him; Ḥáfiẓ and Mu'izzu'd-Dín who successively ascended the throne; and Báqir.
On the date of Shamsu'd-Dín's accession the following Arabic chronogram was composed by Jamálu'd-Dín Mu-ḥammad ibn Ḥusám:
The words Khullida mulkuhu (“May his rule be eternalized!”) give, according to the abjad reckoning, the date 729; but unhappily so slight was their appropriateness that Shamsu'd-Dín died two months after his accession, and was succeeded by his brother Ḥáfiẓ, who in turn, after a brief and troubled reign of about two years, was succeeded by the third brother Abu'l-Ḥusayn Malik Mu'izzu'd-Dín.
The accession of Mu'izzu'd-Dín in 732/1331 almost Accession of Mu'izzu'd-Dín synchronized with three important events, the death of Abú Sa'íd (which practically marked the end of the Mongol dominion over Persia); the birth of Tímúr; and the rise of the Sarbadár Dynasty.
The history of this dynasty, so far as it need be discussed here, may well be considered in connection with that of the The Sarbadár Dynasty Kurts. It is well summarized by Stanley Lane-Poole , 178a who says that they held Sabzawár and the neighbouring district for nearly half a century, “during which period twelve successive chiefs assumed the command, nine of whom suffered violent deaths.” It may be added that no one of them reigned more than six or seven years, and that they were enthusiastic adherents of the Shí'a doctrine, while in Níshápúr and Herát the Sunní doctrine predominated. Nevertheless Khwája 'Alí Mu'ayyad, the last of the line, succeeded in taking Bisṭám and Farhádjird and winning over Níshápúr, which, however, was recaptured by the Kurts in 777/1375-6. The revolt which gave rise to this dynasty—if such it can be called—took place on Sha'bán 12, 737 (March 16, 1337), when Amír 'Abdu'r-Razzáq of Bayhaq, a disciple of Shaykh Ḥusayn Júrí (whose muríds or disciples formed an important element in the forces of this little kingdom) first raised the standard of rebellion, saying, “A gang of evildoers dominates and oppresses the people. By God's grace we will do away with the oppression of these tyrants,
Origin of the name Sarbadár failing which we will see our heads on the gibbet (sar-ba-dár), since we can no longer endure these tyrannical aggressions,” and it was to this expression that the dynasty owed its name. 179a One notable poet, Ibn-i-Yamín, is associated with the Sar-badárs, but after the battle of Záwa, in which Shaykh Ḥusayn Júrí was killed and the Sarbadár forces routed, he fell into the hands of Malik Mu'izzu'd-Dín Kurt, by whom he was well received and treated with honour.Mu'izzu'd-Dín Kurt reigned for forty years, not ingloriously, though not without occasional acts of barbarity Death of Malik Mu'izzu'd-Dín Kurt which were, unhappily, characteristic of that time, as when, after the capture of Bádghís, he erected, in the style later made familiar by Tímúr, two towers or minarets of the heads of his enemies. Finally he sickened and died in 771/1369-70, a date expressed in the following chronogram:
He was buried at Herát by the side of the Ghúrí monarch Sulṭán Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Muḥammad Sám and of his own father Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Muḥammad-i-Kurt, and was succeeded by his son Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Pír 'Alí.
It was about this time that the shadow of Tímúr (Tamerlane) began to fall over the land, but as usual his The irruption of Tímúr first advances were of a friendly character, and he gave his niece Sevinj Qutluq Ághá in marriage to Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Pír 'Alí's son Pír Muḥammad in or about the year 778/1376. Five years later, in the spring of A.D. 1381, early in his first Persian campaign, Tímúr occupied Herát, placed it and the adjacent territories under the control of his son Mírán-sháh, and carried off the Kurt ruler Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Pír 'Alí and his eldest son Pír Muḥammad to Samarqand, where he im- Extinction of the Kurt Dynasty by Tímúr prisoned them, while two other members of the family, Amír Ghúrí and Malik Muḥammad, were similarly imprisoned at Andakán. Soon afterwards, however, an abortive rebellion at Herát in A.D. 1389 furnished their captor with an excuse for putting them to death, and so ended the Kurt dynasty, a year after the extinction of their rivals the Sarbadárs.
Amongst the four dynasties whose history has been briefly sketched above was Persia for the most part divided Comparison of Tímúr with Chingíz Khán when, in the last quarter of the eighth century of the hijra and the fourteenth of the Christian era, Tímúr burst upon the land and ravaged it as Chingíz Khán had done some hundred and fifty years before. Between the two Central Asian conquerors there are many points of resemblance; both had to begin by consolidating their power and destroying rivals amongst their own people; both had passed the age of forty when they embarked on their invasions of Persia; and both were responsible for incalculable bloodshed and suffering. Two circumstances chiefly differentiate them, the fact that Chingíz Khán was a heathen while Tímúr was, in name at least, a Muhammadan; and the fact that, while Chingíz Khán was confronted with the great empire of the Khwárazmsháhs, Tímúr found Persia, as we have seen, parcelled out amongst a number of petty rulers whose dominions had no fixed frontiers, and who were constantly at war with one another and even with ambitious members of their own families. That Tímúr was a Muhammadan certainly tended to mitigate in some measure, so far as Persia and other Muslim lands were concerned, a natural savagery not inferior to that of Chingíz, for he at least showed more respect for
TÍMÚR
Add. 18801 (Brit. Mus.), f. 23
To face p. 180
shrines and sacred edifices, and for men reputed holy or learned. Yet we must not be misled by panegyrists like Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí Yazdí, author of the Ẓafar-náma (“Book of Victory”), 181a who wrote under the patronage and for the pleasure of the conqueror; though we need not, on the other hand, endorse all the abusive language employed by the Arabic writer Aḥmad ibn 'Arabsháh in his 'Ajá'ibu'l-Maqdúr fí akhbári Tímúr (“Marvels of Destiny in the History of Tímúr”), 181b where the conqueror is habitually described as “this traitor,” “this criminal,” “this mad dog,” and the like. But Sharafu'd-Dín's fulsome flattery is less tolerable than Ibn 'Arabsháh's abuse, for though he is unable to omit all mention of Tímúr's massacres and pyramids of skulls, he does not scruple to declare 181c that “his generous personality manifested the boundless grace of God, while the purest virtue and philanthropy were concealed in his light-seeking mind; and such acts of wrath and retribution as were ostensibly committed in the initial stages [of his conquests] by some of his world-endowed followers and partisans, as will be presently set forth, were prompted only by the exigencies of conquest and the necessities of world-empire.” As specimens of those acts mention may be made of his massacre of the people of Sístán in 785/1383-4, when he caused some two thousand prisoners to be built up in a wall; his cold-blooded slaughter of a hundred thousand captive Indians near Dihlí in 801 (December, 1398); his burying alive of four thousand Armenians in 803/1400-1, and the twenty towers of skulls erected by him at Aleppo and Damascus in the same year; and his massacre of 70,000 of the inhabitants of Iṣfahán in 789 (November, 1387), to quote only a few out of many similar instances of his callous indifference to bloodshed and human suffering. Sir John Malcolm's judgements of Tímúr will command the assent of all fair-minded students not blinded by a misplaced hero-worship of great conquerors, such as Alexander, Chingíz, Tímúr or Napoleon, who deemed no price of human suffering too great for the gratification of their ambitions. “Such a leader as Timour,” says Malcolm, in his excellent History of Persia, 182a “must have been idolized by his soldiers; and, with an army of six or seven hundred thousand men attached to his person, he was careless of the opinion of other classes in the community. The object of this monarch was fame as a conqueror; and a noble city was laid in ashes, or the inhabitants of a province massacred, on a cold calculation that a dreadful impression would be made which would facilitate the purposes of his ambition. He pretended to be very religious, was rigid in performing his sacred duties, and paid attention to pious men; who, in return for his favour, used to assure him that God had given the countries of other monarchs to his victorious sword. The parade which he made of these prophecies proves that he either believed in them, or that he thought they might produce an effect favourable to his designs.”
“From what has been said,” observes this judicious historian a little further on, 182b “we may pronounce that Timour, though one of the greatest of warriors, was one of the worst of monarchs. He was able, brave and generous; but ambitious, cruel and oppressive. He considered the happiness of every human being as a feather in the scale, when weighed against the advancement of what he deemed his personal glory; and that appears to have been measured by the number of kingdoms which he laid waste, and the people that he destroyed. The vast fabric of his power had no foundation, it was upheld by his individual fame; and the moment that he died, his empire dissolved. Some fragments of it were seized by his children: but it was in India alone that they retained dominion for any length of time. In that country we yet perceive a faint and expiring trace of the former splendour of the Moghul dynasty; a pageant, supported by the British nation, still sits upon a throne at Delhi; 183a and we view in him the gradual decline of human greatness, and wonder at the state to which a few centuries have reduced the lineal descendants of the great Timour.”
Besides the two histories of Tímúr already mentioned, the Persian Ẓafar-náma of Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí Yazdí and Niẓám-i-Shámí's history of Tímúr the Arabic 'Ajá'ibu'l-Maqdúr of Ibn 'Arabsháh, there exists a third contemporary history, unpublished, and, so far as is known, represented only by the unique MS. Add. 23,980 of the British Museum. This history, also written in Persian, and also entitled Ẓafar-náma, was undertaken at Tímúr's command in 804/ 1401-2 by Niẓám-i-Shámí, and was concluded and presented to Tímúr in 806/1403-4, just a year before his death. The author was living in Baghdád when it was taken by Tímúr in 795/1393, and was the first person who came out to greet him. “God have mercy on thee,” said Tímúr, “for thou wert the first person to come forth from this city before me!” 183b This history, conciser and less florid than the homonymous work of Sharafu'd-Dín, appears to deserve publication, and seems to have formed the basis of the later work. In writing this chapter I have had at my disposal not only my own brief notes on its contents, taken during spare hours in the British Museum, but also a complete transcript made for me by my friend Dr Aḥmad Khán.
Reference must also be made to the so-called “Memoirs” and “Institutes” of Tímúr (Malfúẓát and Tuzúkát-i-Tímúrí),
The so-called “Memoirs” and “Institutes” of Tímúr which, though translated into English from the Persian and widely quoted and used by European writers, are now generally, and I think properly, regarded by the best judges as apocryphal . 184a The Persian version of this book was first produced in the seventeenth century of our era, in the reign of Sháh Jahán (1628-1659), by a certain Abú Ṭálib al-Ḥusayní, who professed to have translated it from a Turkí original discovered by him in the library of a certain Ja'far Páshá, governor of Yaman (Arabia Felix). Of the existence of this Turkí original no evidence whatever exists save this statement of Abú Ṭálib's, and it appears much more likely that he himself compiled the Persian work, in imitation of Bábur's 184b authentic autobiography, with the aid of the Ẓafar-náma and other histories of Tímúr. A manuscript of this work was brought to England by Major Davy in 1779, and on his death in 1784 passed into the possession of his son. In 1779 he wrote to Dr White, then Laudian Professor of Arabic in the University of Oxford, a high appreciation of this book and a vehement defence of its authenticity, 184c and in 1783 both the text and translation of the “Institutes” were published in collaboration by these two. In 1787 Professor Langlès produced a French translation with the following cumbrous title: Instituts politiques et militaires de Tamerlan, proprement appellé Timour, écrits par lui-même en Mongol, et traduits en François, sur la version Persane d'Abou-Taleb Al-Hosseïni, avec la Vie de ce Conquérant, d'après les meilleurs Auteurs Orientaux, des Notes, et des Tables Historique, Géo-graphique, &c. In 1830 Major Charles Stewart published an English translation of the Malfúẓát or [pseudo] autobiographical Memoirs.Not only as one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen, but as the ancestor of the so-called Moghul dynasty in India, Tímúr has attracted the attention of many European (especially English) as well as Asiatic historians, and has furnished a subject for many writers. For the purposes of this book, in which the historical portion of the subject is necessarily subordinated to the literary, it will be sufficient to give a brief sketch of his career, based chiefly on the Ẓafar-náma and Ibn 'Arabsháh, especially that portion of it which is connected with Persia.
Tímúr (a name which in Turkish signifies “Iron”) was born at Kash in Transoxiana on Sha'bán 28, 736 (April 11,
Birth of Tímúr 1336). As usual in the case of men who afterwards became famous, attempts are made by his panegyrists on the one hand to affiliate him (through Qaráchár Noyán) to the Mongol Royal House of Chingíz Khán, and on the other to surround his birth with all manner of portents indicative of his future greatness. Ibn 'Arab-sháh, on the other hand, merely gives the names of his father (Taragháy) and his grandfather (Abgháy), says that “he and his father were herdsmen, belonging to a gang of rascals devoid alike of intelligence and religion,” and ascribes the limp to which he owed his sobriquet of “the Lame” (Lang) to a wound received while engaged in stealing sheep. His early adventures and the steps by which he gradually attained the leading position amongst his people need not here detain us, and it is sufficient to say that he first became prominent at the age of 24 in 761/1360; received the title of Ṣáḥib-Qirán (“Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction”) ten years later when he succeeded in killing his rival Sulṭán Ḥusayn in Sha'bán, 771 (March, 1370); spent six or seven years after this in consolidating his power in Transoxiana, First Persian campaign of 1381 and did not seriously turn his attention to Persia until the spring of A.D. 1381, when he was 45 years of age. In this first campaign, which lasted only for the inside of a year, his attention was confined to Khurásán. At Andakhúd he paid his respects to a more or less crazy dervish known as Bábá Sangú, 185a and, with that superstition which was so strangely blended with his ferocious energy, interpreted as a presage of victory the piece of meat which that holy but demented personage threw at his head. Sarakhs surrendered to him, and, after visiting another holy man, Zaynu'd-Dín Abú Bakr, at Táyabád, he captured and destroyed Búshanj. The reduction of Herát and submission of Ghiyáthu'd-Dín Pír 'Alí, the Kurt ruler, followed; and thereafter came the turn of Ṭús, Isfará'in (which was levelled with the ground and many of its inhabitants slain), and Kalát. He then returned to Samarqand and Bukhárá for the winter.In the spring of the following year (A.D. 1382) he continued his operations against Persia. At Kalát, where he Persian campaign of 1382 encamped, he was joined by his son Mírán-sháh from Sarakhs and by the now submissive Ghi-yáthu'd-Dín Kurt from Herát; and, having established a blockade of this strong place, he passed on to Turshíz, which also surrendered to him. Here he received an ambassador from Sháh Shujá', the Muẓaffarí ruler of Fárs, whose daughter he demanded in marriage for his grandson Pír Muḥammad. Having received the submission of Amír Walí, the ruler of Mázandarán, Tímúr returned for the winter to Samarqand, his capital, where he was for a while plunged in sorrow by the death of his wife Dilshád Ághá and her elder sister Qutlugh Turkán Ághá.
In the autumn of A.D. 1383, after despatching an expedition against the heathen Mongols to pursue Qamaru'd-Dín,
Third Persian campaign of 1383-4 Tímúr again set out on a campaign against Mázandarán and Sístán. Towards the end of October he attacked Sabzawár, undermined and destroyed the citadel, and took captive some two thousand persons, whom “he piled alive one on another, compacted them with bricks and clay, and erected minarets, so that men, being apprised of the majesty of his wrath, might not be seduced by the demon of arrogance, and so cast themselves into the pit of wailing and destruction.” 186a Having received the submission of Faráh, he attacked Zirih, which was fiercely defended by some five thousand men, most of whom were slain, and their heads built up into minarets. In December Sístán fell before his onslaught, and “whatever was in that country, from potsherds to royal pearls, and from the finest fabrics to the very nails in the doors and walls, was swept away by the winds of spoliation, while the lightning of rapine, comprehending alike the greater and the less of that land, consumed moist and dry together.” 187a After reducing two or three other fortresses, and constructing more pyramids of the skulls of his enemies, Tímúr captured Qandahár, hanged the commander of the garrison, and returned to his capital Samarqand, where he allowed himself a period of repose lasting three months.It would be tedious, and, in a work of this character, out of place to describe in detail the almost annual campaigns which occupied the remaining twenty years of Tímúr's life, but in brief they were as follows:
In 786/1384-5 Tímúr invaded Mázandarán and Ádhar-báyján, wintered at Ray, continued his campaign in the spring of 1385, and, having reduced the Caspian provinces and the North of Persia as far as Sulṭániyya, returned to his capital Samarqand for the winter.
In 788/1386-7 Tímúr, seeing the distracted state of Persia, determined to effect its total subjugation, and set out on a three years' campaign against that country. He first marched against Malik 'Izzu'd-Dín, the ruler of Luristán, sacked Burújird and Khurramábád, and caused many of his opponents to be cast alive over precipices. He next marched on Tabríz, where Sulṭán Aḥmad Jalá'ir had collected an army to oppose him, but on his approach the latter, deeming discretion the better part of valour, retreated to Nakhjuwán, and, after a fierce battle, succeeded in making good his escape. Tímúr spent the summer at Tabríz, and despatched thence to Samarqand a selection of the most skilful artificers and craftsmen whom he could find in the conquered city. In the autumn he crossed the Araxes, pushed forward towards Nakhjuwán, and, having subdued the strong fortress of Qárs, proceeded to devastate Gurjistán (Georgia). Having captured Tiflís, and, indulged in a great hunting-expedition, in which the game slain was so abundant that most of it was left to rot on the ground, 188a he returned to winter quarters in Qará-Bagh.
In the spring of A.D. 1387 (A.H. 789) Tímúr renewed his campaign in Asia Minor, subdued the cities of Báyazíd, Erzeroum, Erzinján, Músh, Akhláṭ and Ván, and received the submission of Salmás and Urmiya, and in the autumn, in consequence of the refusal of the Muẓaffarí prince Zaynu'l-'Ábidín to appear before him, he marched against Fárs. On the way thither he entered Iṣfahán, and levied a heavy contribution on the people of that city. This provoked a riot, in which a good many of Tímúr's tax-collectors and agents were killed, and Tímúr took a terrible revenge, making a general massacre of the people, in which it is computed that 70,000 perished, whose heads were counted Tímúr's first entry into Shíráz and afterwards built up into minarets. This happened on Monday, Nov. 18, 1387. 188b Tímúr then continued his march to Shíráz, which submitted to him in the following month (Dec. 1387), and it is on this occasion that the legendary interview between the great conqueror and the poet Ḥáfiẓ is supposed to have taken place. Dawlatsháh, who relates the anecdote, 188c with characteristic inaccuracy assigns this meeting to the year 795/1392-3, when Ḥáfiẓ had been dead for four years. The story, which is probably entirely apocryphal, is that Tímúr summoned Ḥáfiẓ to his presence and upbraided him for the well-known verse in which he says:
“If that unkindly Shíráz Turk would take my heart within her hand,
I'd give Bukhárá for the mole upon her cheek, or Samarqand.”
“With the blows of my lustrous sword,” exclaimed Tímúr, “have I subjugated most of the habitable globe, and laid waste thousands of towns and countries to embellish Samar-qand and Bukhárá, my native towns and the seats of my government; and you, miserable wretch that you are, would sell them both for the black mole of a Turk of Shíráz!” “Sire,” replied Ḥáfiẓ, with a deep obeisance, “it is through such prodigality that I have fallen on such evil days!” Tímúr is said to have been so much delighted by this quick rejoinder that he not only refrained from punishing the poet but gave him a handsome present. There is a variant of the story, which I have heard in Persia but not met with in any book, according to which Ḥáfiẓ replied, “They have misquoted me: what I really wrote was not
Bi-khál-i-hinduwash bakhsham Samarqand u Bukhárá-rá
but—
Bi-khál-i-hinduwash bakhsham du man qand u si khurmá-rá
I would give for the mole on her cheek two maunds of sugar and
three dates.”
No mention of any such meeting occurs in contemporary biographers of Tímúr, such as Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí of Yazd, nor have I met with any trustworthy evidence in support of it.
To return to Tímúr's invasion of Fárs. Zaynu'l-'Ábidín, the Muẓaffarí prince, had fled to his cousin Sháh Manṣúr, governor of Shúshtar in the S.W. of Persia, who, violating alike the bonds of kinship and claims of hospitality, cast him into prison. Most of the other princes of the House of Muẓaffar, as well as the Atábeks of Luristán and other petty rulers, waited on Tímúr at Shíráz and tendered their submission. But, even in the moment of his triumph, news was brought to the conqueror by a messenger, who had accomplished the long journey from Samarqand to Shíráz in the incredibly short space of seventeen days, that a fresh revolt of the stiff-necked Túqátmish required the presence of Tímúr to defend his own realms. Thereupon, in February, 1388, he at once set out for Samarqand, bearing with him, as part of his spoils, the learned Sayyid-i-Sharíf-i-Jurjání, and appointing the Muẓaffarí princes Sháh Yaḥyá, Sulṭán Muḥammad, Sulṭán Aḥmad and Sulṭán Abú Isḥáq governors of Shíráz, Iṣfahán, Kirmán and Sírján respectively.
For the next four years and a half Tímúr was engaged in warfare against Túqátmish, the Mongols, the realm of Khwárazm or Khiva, and other northern peoples, and Persia enjoyed a brief rest from his attentions, though a rebellion which broke out in the summer of 1389 in Khu-rásán (apparently prompted by reports of his defeat at the hands of Túqátmish) was put down in the usual bloody and barbarous fashion by Míránsháh, especially at Ṭús, where some ten thousand persons were massacred, and their heads built up into pyramids or minarets.
On the last day of July, 1392, Tímúr, after some delay occasioned by a serious illness, once again crossed the Oxus on another of his devastating campaigns in the South. This, known as the “Five Years' Campaign” (Yúrish-i-panj-sála ) 190a included the Caspian provinces, Fárs (where he exterminated the princes of the Muẓaffarí dynasty, as already described at p. 169 supra), Armenia, Georgia, Mesopotamia, and South Russia. In Gurgán and Mázandarán he came in contact with certain heretical Sayyids, many of whom he slew, “delivering those regions from the mischievous influence of those misguided communists.” 190b Sharafu'd-Dín's account of their tenets is neither clear nor detailed, but it appears highly probable that they belonged to the heretical Ḥurúfí sect, whose founder, Faḍlu'lláh, appeared, preached his doctrines, and suffered death in Tímúr's reign, and was a native of Astarábád. We shall have more to say about him and his doctrine presently.
In the latter part of December, 1392, Tímúr, having received a visit from his wives and family, set out for South Persia, travelling by way of Dámghán, Samnán, Ray, Qazwín, Sulṭániyya, Kurdistán, and Burújird (which he reached on February 14, 1393), 190c and putting to death on his way many of the Lurs. He reached Dizful on March 2 and Shúshtar a day or two later, and thence set out for Shíráz. On his way thither he captured the strong fortress of Qal'a-i-Safíd and released the blinded captive prince Zaynu'l-'Ábidín, whom he treated with honour and promised vengeance on Sháh Manṣúr. Nor was this vengeance long delayed, for, as already narrated, Sháh Manṣúr was slain in battle a few days later, while most of the remaining princes of the House of Muẓaffar were put to death by Tímúr's order on May 22, 1393. “All the most skilful of the craftsmen and artisans of the provinces of Fárs and 'Iráq” were, according to Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí of Yazd, transferred by Tímúr to Samarqand.191a
On August 10 Tímúr, who was approaching Baghdád was visited by Shaykh Núru'd-Dín 'Abdu'r-Raḥmán of Isfará'in, who came as an ambassador from Sulṭán Aḥmad Jalá'ir to make his excuses for not waiting on Tímúr in person. His excuses were ill received by Tímúr, who nevertheless treated the Shaykh with the respect which, according to the Ẓafar-náma (p. 629), he habitually accorded to learned and pious men. Shortly afterwards he entered Baghdád and occupied the palace of Sulṭán Aḥmad, who fled before him. Some of Tímúr's amírs went in pursuit, overtook the fugitives near Karbalá, and captured much spoil and some of the wives and sons of Sulṭán Aḥmad, who, however, succeeded in making his escape. His son 'Alá'u'd-Dawla, together with his wives, a selection of the most skilful artisans of Baghdád, and the celebrated musician Khwája 'Abdu'l-Qádir, were sent to Samarqand by Tímúr, who also despatched an ambassador to Barqúq al-Maliku'ẓ-Ẓáhir, the ruler of Egypt, with a view to concluding a treaty of friendship and commercial intercourse with him.
Tímúr's next exploit was the reduction of the strong fortress of Takrít, which was gallantly defended. Finally, however, the defenders were overcome and put to death, and their heads built up into minarets. Continuing his march northwards he passed by Karkúk, Arbíl, Mawṣil (Mosul) and Rawḥá, where, in March, 1394, he was overtaken by stormy and rainy weather, and compelled by this and the disobedience of Malik 'Izzu'd-Dín to return to Mesopotamia. Having in a brief space of time dealt with this rebellious chieftain, Tímúr again turned northwards and reduced the fortress of Márdín. Luckily for the garrison, news had just reached Tímúr of the birth, at Sulṭániyya, on March 22, 1394, of a grandson, the afterwards celebrated Ulugh Bey, son of Sháh-rukh, and this put Tímúr in such good humour that he spared their lives, which would otherwise have certainly been forfeited. 192a Ámid (Diyár Bakr) next succumbed to his victorious arms in April, but he had to abandon his attempt to raze the fortifications on account of their extraordinary strength and solidity. 192b He then passed on to Síwás, Músh, Bitlís, Akhlát and Aydín, halting for a while in the Plain of Ála-dágh to receive his wives and younger children, who came to visit him from Sulṭániyya, and despatching an army in pursuit of his enemy Qará Yúsuf and his Turkmán followers. At the end of July, 1394, he captured the fortress of Avník, on the upper waters of the Araxes, and sent its defender, Miṣr the son of Qará Yúsuf, to Samarqand, together with Sulṭán 'Ísá, the ex-governor of Márdín. He next invaded Georgia and occupied Tiflis.
Fortunately for Persia, a fresh menace on the part of his old enemy Túqátmish compelled Tímúr at this juncture, towards the end of February, 1395, 192c to march northwards to defend his own territories, and this, with the ensuing campaign in Southern Russia, in the course of which he penetrated as far as Moscow, 192d kept him occupied for more than a year. During and in consequence of his absence several revolts broke out in Persia, such as that of Qará Yúsuf the Turkmán in Ádharbáyján; 192e of Gúdarz (probably a Zoroastrian) at Sírján; 192f of Sulṭán Muḥammad, son of Abú Sa'íd of Ṭabas, and some Khurásáni soldiers who had formerly been in the service of the Muẓaffarí dynasty at Yazd; and of Buhlúl at Niháwand. All these revolts were quickly and sternly repressed, and the ringleader of that last mentioned, Buhlúl, was burned alive. 193a The ensuing month of Ramaḍán was passed by Tímúr at Hamadán “in obedience and devotion to the Divine Benefactor, and in the observance of the obligations of fasting and vigils and of every kind of religious rite and ceremony.” He then, having ordered his generals to subdue the whole Persian shore of the gulf from Khúzistán to Hurmuz, set out on July 18, 1396, for Samarqand.
On this occasion Tímúr remained quiet at his capital for a longer period than usual, and devoted a good deal of attention to beautifying it and its environs by the labours of “the expert engineers and skilful architects who had been gathered to the Royal Metropolis from every clime and country from East to West.” 193b He also gave a series of gorgeous banquets, of which one of the chief was to celebrate the conferring of the kingdom of Khurásán, including Sístán and Mázandarán, from Fíruzkúh to Ray, on his son Sháh-rukh, which happened in May, 1397. 193c Less than a year later, in the spring of 1398, he set out on his Indian campaign, instigated thereto, as asserted in the Ẓafar-náma, 193d by his desire to promote Islám and crush idolatry, and by the accounts which reached him of the toleration shown by the Muslim rulers towards their Hindú subjects and neighbours. After some preliminary operations against the Afgháns (or Awgháns) of the Sulaymán Kúh and the Siyáh-púsh (“Black-robed”) heathen of Káfir-istán, he crossed the Indus on Muḥarram 12, 801 (Sept. 24, 1398) and proceeded to carry fire and sword into India. It is unnecessary for our purpose to follow these operations in detail. They were characterized by the usual bloodshed and barbarities, amongst the worst of which was the massacre in cold blood of 100,000 Indian prisoners near Dihlí on December 12, 1398. 194a Compared to this monstrous crime the horrors enacted a few days later at Dihlí, and the massacre of 10,000 persons a month earlier at Batnír sink into insignificance.
Reports of troubles in Persia (especially in Ádharbáyján, where his son, Míránsháh, to whom the government of this important province had been entrusted, was courting disaster by his insane vagaries, generally ascribed to an injury to his head caused by a fall from his horse) impelled Tímúr to cut short his Indian campaign early in the year A.D. 1399, and to hasten homewards. He crossed the Indus on his return journey on March 8 of that year, five months and seventeen days after he had crossed it at the beginning of his campaign, and the Oxus three weeks later. On April 7 he reached his native town of Kash or Shahr-i-Sabz (the “Green City”), and entered Samarqand, his capital, on April 27. A fortnight later (May 9, 1399) he laid the foundation-stone of the magnificent mosque (Masjid-i-Jámi') which he had long intended to erect for the embellishment of his metropolis.
On September 9, 1399, Tímúr again quitted Samarqand for Ádharbáyján, where the erratic conduct of his son Míránsháh, of which fresh accounts continued to reach him, urgently demanded his attention. At Aywának, near Ray, he was joined by his son Sháh-rukh and by another army which he had despatched by way of Mázandarán. Míránsháh was induced to come to his father's camp to render account of his misconduct, which included the waste or embezzlement of a large proportion of the revenues, the putting to death on mere suspicion of certain men of consequence against whom he had conceived a spite, the wanton destruction of certain historic buildings, and the exhumation of the eminent Minister and historian Rashídu'd-Dín Faḍlu'lláh, whose body he caused to be re-interred in the Jews' cemetery. Míránsháh was punished by his father's displeasure and the virtual transference of the authority he had misused to his son Abú Bakr, but Tímúr's fiercest wrath fell upon certain minstrels and poets who had been Míránsháh's boon-companions, and who were alleged to have corrupted his principles and encouraged his extravagances. Several of these, namely Mawláná Muḥammad of Quhistán, “who, together with a complete mastery of the technicalities of the various sciences, was unique in his age and the marvel of his time in verse and prose composition, both serious and frivolous,” 195a Quṭbu'd-Dín Ná'í, Ḥabíb-i-'Údí and 'Abdu'l-Mú'min the rhapsodist, were condemned to death on this charge and hanged at or near Qazwín. According to Dawlatsháh, 195b Muḥammad of Quhistán must needs indulge his propensity for jesting even on the scaffold. Turning to Quṭbu'd-Dín, one of his fellow-victims, he said, “You had precedence in the King's company: precede me, therefore, here also.” “O unlucky heretic,” replied the other, “do you bring matters to this pass, and cannot you cease jesting yet?” When it came to Muḥammad's turn to die, he recited the following punning verse:
“'Tis the end of the matter and the last round, O heretic!
Whether thou goest or not, the choice is no longer in thy hand!
If they lead thee, like Manṣúr,
195c
to the foot of the gibbet (pá-yi-dár),
Stand firm (páy-dár) like a man, for the world is not enduring (páy-
dár)!”
The campaign on which Tímúr was now embarked, and which included some of his most remarkable achievements, is called by Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí Yazdí (ii, 206) the “Seven Years' Campaign.” As it began about Muḥarram 8, 802 (Sept. 10, 1399), and as Tímúr returned to his capital, Samarqand, in Muḥarram, 807 (July, 1404), this appellation must be regarded as a misnomer. Even the abridged account of the many bloody battles and brilliant victories included in this period which is given in Price's Chronological Retrospect 196a fills 166 quarto pages, and in this place it must suffice to indicate only its chief events.
The winter of A.D. 1399-1400 was spent by Tímúr in Qarábágh near the Araxes, and ere spring had melted the snows he once more invaded Georgia, devastated the country, destroyed the churches and monasteries, and slew great numbers of the inhabitants. In August, 1400, he began his march into Asia Minor by way of Avník, Erzeroum, Erzinján and Sívás. The latter place offered a stubborn resistance, and when it finally capitulated Tímúr caused all the Armenian and Christian soldiers to the number of four thousand to be buried alive; but the Muhammadans he spared. 196b Meanwhile an animated correspondence was taking place between him and the Ottoman Sulṭán Báyazíd, called Yil-dirim (the “Thunder-bolt”), from whom Tímúr demanded the surrender of Sulṭán Aḥmad of Baghdád and Qará Yúsuf the Turkmán. This Báyazíd refused, as, until a very recent occasion, the Turks have ever been wont to refuse such betrayal of guests; and, moreover, as must be admitted, and as will presently be seen, he couched his refusal in language little calculated to appease his great rival. With the Sulṭán of Egypt also (al-Maliku'n-Náṣir Faraj) Tímúr became embroiled by reason of the unlawful detention of his ambassador at Cairo, and thus the campaign became diverted not only against the territories over which the two fugitive kings had reigned respectively, but against the Ottoman and Egyptian, and incidentally the Syrian lands.
After taking 'Ayntáb, Tímúr besieged and reduced Aleppo in October, 1400, and there captured and sent with Aleppo and Damascus captured by Tímúr other spoils of war to Samarqand his future historian Mawláná Niẓámu'd-Dín called Shámí (the “Syrian”). Having next subdued in turn Ḥama, Ḥims (Emessa) and Ba'labakk (Baalbek) he proceeded to invest Damascus. Here an assassin, instigated by al-Maliku'n-Náṣir, Sulṭán of Egypt, attempted his life, but failed and was put to death. Damascus surrendered, but again revolted, and was again subdued in March, 1401, when it finally submitted, and suffered Tímúr's name to be inserted in the khuṭba, after it had suffered the horrors of Tartar incendiarism and looting. Another portion of Tímúr's army ravaged the Syrian coast as far south as 'Akká.
Tímúr next turned his attention to Baghdád, the capital of the recalcitrant Sulṭán Aḥmad Jalá'ir, and,
Sack of Baghdád by Tímúr having taken it, made, on June 20, 1401, a great massacre, in revenge for the many notable officers of his army who had perished in the siege. Each soldier was ordered to bring a head, 197a and in the words of Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí Yazdí, “the market of retribution became so brisk that the broker of death sold at one price the old man of eighty and the child of eight, while the oven of wrath was so enkindled that it consumed in like manner the corporeal vestiture of the wealthy plutocrat and the wretched pauper.”197bHaving left Baghdád a smoking charnel-house, Tímúr again turned his attention to the unfortunate Georgians,
The Battle of Angora until the approach of winter drove him in November, 1401, into his winter quarters at Qarábágh. About the middle of February, 1402, he prepared to attack the Ottoman Sulṭán Báyazíd, from whom he had received another defiant letter which goaded him to fury. On July 20, 1402, was fought the memorable battle of Angora, in which the Ottoman Turks were utterly defeated and their Sulṭán, Báyazíd, “the Thunderbolt,” taken prisoner. The well-known story that The story of Báyazíd and the Iron Cage Tímúr confined him in a cage and carried him about with him wherever he went is now generally discredited. 198a No mention of this is made, I think, by Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí of Yazd and other Persian historians of Tímúr, and the story may have arisen from an expression used by Ibn 'Arabsháh, who, as already mentioned, hated Tímúr, and sought always to represent his actions in the worst light. The expression in question is:“The son of 'Osmán fell into a hunter's snare, and became confined like a bird in a cage”—
a phrase which it is not necessary to take literally, and which may well have been employed metaphorically and to fulfil the exigencies of the rhymed prose in which Ibn 'Arabsháh's work is composed. Sharafu'd-Dín explicitly says 198b that when Báyazíd, with hands bound, was brought before Tímúr, the latter, after reproaching him for his previous contumacy, expressing his regret at having been compelled to make war on a fellow-believer who had rendered such signal services to Islám, and reminding him how he would have probably behaved to the conquered had their respective positions been reversed, concluded by saying that “in gratitude for the victory and help vouchsafed to him by the mercy of God” he would do naught but good to his captive and the other Turkish prisoners.
Be this as it may, the campaign against the Ottoman Turks continued; royal Broussa and “infidel” Smyrna were attacked and made desolate, the latter in December, 1402; and a little later, on February 26, 1403, the unfortunate Báyazíd died in captivity.
Seeing what had befallen the Turks, the Egyptian Sulṭán, al-Maliku'n-Náṣir Faraj, abandoned his former Submission of the Egyptian Sulṭán alMaliku'n-Náṣir attitude of defiance, released Tímúr's ambassador, and sent his submission to the victor of Angora by an embassy which was graciously received. In August and September, 1403, Tímúr again raided Georgia, and, having wintered once more at Qarábágh, reached Ray on May 10 and Samarqand about the end of July, 1404. Here a month later arrived Clavijo's embassy to Tímúr the Spanish Mission headed by Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, who has left us an entertaining account of his journey from Spain to Samar-qand and back, and of his impressions of Tímúr, of which account an English translation, edited by Sir Clements R. Markham, was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1859. Clavijo sailed from Seville in company with an envoy, Muḥammad al-Qáḍí, whom Tímúr had sent to Spain, accompanied by Gomez de Salazar and an ecclesiastic named Fray Alonzo Paez de Santa Maria. Travelling by way of Constantinople, Trebizond, Erzeroum, Khúy, Tabríz, Ṭihrán and Mashhad, the Spanish envoys reached Samar-qand on August 31, 1404, in company with the ambassador of “the Sultan of Babylon,” and were received by Tímúr on Monday, September 8. He “was seated in a portal, in front of the entrance of a beautiful palace; and he was sitting on the ground. Before him there was a fountain, which threw up the water very high, and in it there were some red apples. The lord was seated cross-legged, on silken embroidered carpets, amongst round pillows. He was dressed in a robe of silk, with a high white hat on his head, on the top of which there was a special ruby, with pearls and precious stones round it.” The ambassadors were brought close before him that he might see them better; for his eyesight was bad, he being so old that the eyelids had fallen down entirely. He received them graciously, enquiring, “How is my son the king? Is he in good health?” and then turned to the nobles who stood round him, saying, “Behold! here are the ambassadors sent by my son the King of Spain, who is the greatest King of the Franks, and lives at the end of the world. The Franks are truly a great people, and I will give my benediction to the King of Spain, my son. It would have sufficed if he had sent you to me with the letter, and without the presents, so well satisfied am I to hear of his health and prosperous state.”
The Spanish envoys were subsequently entertained at several banquets, of which Clavijo gives detailed descrip- Clavijo's description of Tímúr's Court, his banquets and his “justice” tions, and saw Tímúr several times. They seem to have been much struck by the quantities of meat and wine consumed, and the frequent drunkenness. “The drinking,” says Clavijo (p. 148), “was such that some of the men fell down drunk before her” (Caño, wife of Tímúr); “and this was considered very jovial, for they think there can be no pleasure without drunken men.” On another occasion (Oct. 9, 1404), besides the banquet, they were treated to an exhibition of Tímúr's “justice,” for “in the place where the traders had pitched their tents, he ordered a great number of gallows to be set up; and declared that, in this festival, he knew how to be merciful and kind to some, and how to be severe to others.” On these gallows he forthwith hanged several persons of quality, besides “certain traders who had sold meat for more than it was worth,” and some shoemakers. “The custom is,” adds Clavijo, “that, when a great man is put to death, he is hanged; but the meaner sort are beheaded”—a curious inversion of the mediaeval practice in England.
The ambassadors do not seem to have seen Tímúr after November 1, 1404, on the morrow of which day “he did not come out of his tent, because he felt ill.” They were bidden by the Mírzás, or Secretaries of the Court, to depart, but this they at first declined to do until they should receive their dismissal from Tímúr and his messages and compliments to their own King. Finally, however, they were compelled to leave without another audience (Tímúr being then, as they were led to believe, sick unto death) and quitted the city on November 18 with the “ambassadors from Turkey” and “the ambassador from the Sultan of Babylon.” After remaining for three days in a garden outside the town, they started on their homeward journey on November 21, 1404. They reached Tabríz on February 28, 1405, and were delayed there and at the camp of 'Umar Shaykh Mírzá in Qarábágh for six months, not leaving Tabríz on their homeward march until August 22. After passing through Armenia, of whose inhabitants Clavijo says that “the Christian Armenians are an evil race, who would not let the ambassadors pass until they had given up some of their property,” they reached Trebizond on September 17, Constantinople on October 22, 1405, Genoa on January 3, 1406, and San Lucar in Spain on March 1 of the same year, after an absence of nearly three years.
But few notices of this Embassy occur in the Persian historians, though mention is made of it by Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí of Yazd, who says: 201a “At this juncture there arrived an ambassador from the ruler (farmán-dih) of the Frankish realms, who presented many fine gifts and presents, and a variety of offerings and oblations,” amongst which “certain tissues adorned with designs and pictures which would have filled Manes with despair” specially aroused the author's admiration. He also mentions on the next page the presence of the Spaniards at one of the banquets given by Tímúr, adding that “even chaff finds its way into the sea,” and, a few pages lower, 201b chronicles their departure.
By this time Tímúr was apparently recovered from his indisposition, tired of the settled life, and eager for fresh adventures, and he resolved to undertake a campaign Tímúr prepares for a campaign against China against China in order to destroy the temples of the heathen, spread the true faith, and incidentally enrich himself and his army with the spoils of that spacious, ancient and wealthy land. After making all necessary arrangements for the campaign and for the administration of his vast territories during his absence, he set out from Samarqand on his eastward march on November 27, 1404. The winter was exceptionally severe, and the army, after suffering much from the cold, crossed the Jaxartes (Síḥún) on the ice, and reached Utrár on Illness and death of Tímúr on Feb. 18, 1405 January 14, 1405. A month later Tímúr fell ill, and, though treated by Mawláná Faḍlu'lláh of Tabríz, who was accounted one of the most skilful physicians of his age, his sickness increased and complications set in until he finally succumbed, a week after the first attack, on February 18, 1405, being then seventy-one [lunar] years of age, and having reigned thirty-six years. His mind remained clear to the last, and having nominated his grandson Pír Muḥammad-i-Jahángír to succeed him as ruler of his vast empire, he embodied his last wishes in a discourse which is fully reported by Sharafu'd-Dín, 202a and died with the profession of the faith of Islám on his lips.
The character of Tímúr has been differently appraised by those who are dazzled by his military achievements on Various views of Tímúr's character the one hand, and those who are disgusted by his cruelty and utter disregard of human life on the other. One factor in such judgement is the acceptance or rejection of the much discussed and quoted Tuzúkát, or “Institutes,” which profess to contain Tímúr's own philosophy of Empire. Thus Gibbon says, in a foot-note in ch. lxv, that though he “did not expect to hear of Tímour's amiable moderation”…he “can excuse a generous enthusiasm in the reader, and still more in the editor, of the Institutions,” though in the corresponding portion of the text, he criticizes him pretty severely, and admits that “perhaps we shall conclude that the Mogul Emperor was rather the scourge than the benefactor of mankind.” Sir John Malcolm's very judicious observations have been already cited. 203a Sir Clements R. Markham 203b says that, although Tímúr's conquests were the cause of much suffering to the human race, yet “he certainly was not the remorseless tyrant he is represented by [Ibn] 'Arabsháh and his other enemies,” and that “there is evidence that he had loftier aims than the mere gratification of his lust for conquest.” He adds 203c that though “the name of Tímúr is frequently coupled with that of Chingíz Khán, yet the latter was a rude uncultivated barbarian, while there is evidence that the former was versed in all the knowledge of his age and country.” As regards the facts of Tímúr's life, there is little difference of opinion: his massacres and pyramids of skulls are equally chronicled by his panegyrists, Sharafu'd-Dín 'Alí of Yazd and Niẓám-i-Shámí, and his detractor Ibn 'Arabsháh, though the former affect to regard them as “manifestations of the Divine Attributes of Wrath” (Sifáti-Jaláliyya or Qahriyya), and the latter as the outcome of diabolic malignity. The latter view appears to me the more reasonable and natural; and as for the “Institutes,” which supply a quasi-philosophic basis for this policy of “frightfulness,” I incline to the reasoned opinion expressed by Rieu 203d that they are spurious.
Before closing this brief account of Tímúr, some reference should be made to certain despatches which passed Firídún Bey's collection of State Papers between him and the Ottoman Sultan Báyazíd and others, of which the texts are preserved in an important collection of State Papers known as the Munsha'át-i-Firídún Bey, of which a good edition was printed at Constantinople in Jumáda II, A.H. 1274 (February, 1858). The compiler of this work, Aḥmad Firídún, known as Tawqí'í (Tevqí'í), flourished in the middle of the tenth century of the Muhammadan (sixteenth of the Christian) era, and composed, besides the Munsha'át (compiled in 982/1574-5), a history entitled Nuz-hatu'l-Akhbár. The first volume of the Munsha'át comprises State Papers ranging in date from the time of the Prophet (seventh List of despatches connected with Tímúr century of the Christian era) to the middle of the sixteenth century. It contains 626 large pages, of which pp. 118-142 contain letters to, from, or about Tímúr, as follows:
(1) Letter from Qará Yúsuf to Sulṭán Báyazíd, written in Persian and undated, complaining of the aggressions of Tímúr, whom the writer describes as “that quickener of the fire of evil and trouble and agitator of the chain of mischief and insolence, Tímúr the object of Divine Wrath (may God destroy and crush him!),” and demanding help from Báyazíd (pp. 118-119).
(2) Báyazíd's answer to the above, also written in Persian and undated (p. 119).
(3) Letter from Tímúr to Báyazíd, written in Arabic and undated, requiring in peremptory language that no shelter shall be afforded to Qará Yúsuf and Sulṭán Aḥmad, and warning the Ottoman Sultan against disobedience to this command (pp. 120-1).
(4) Báyazíd's answer to the above, also written in Arabic and undated. This begins (after the doxology), “Know, O ravening dog named Tímúr,” and hurls defiance at the invader, daring him to advance (p. 121).
(5) Letter from Sulṭán Aḥmad Jalá'ir of Baghdád to Sulṭán Báyazíd, written in Persian and undated. The writer describes how, after the capture of Baghdád and the two 'Iráqs by Tímúr, he withdrew to Malaṭya and Síwás to await the arrival of Qará Yúsuf, according to Báyazíd's instructions, and how in conjunction they attacked, routed and annihilated the Uzbeks who formed the vanguard of Tímúr's army, but were awaiting with certainty an attack from his main army so soon as news of this disaster should reach him (pp. 124-5).
(6) Báyazíd's answer to the above, announcing that, in consequence of the news received from Sulṭán Aḥmad, he has concluded peace with the “Tekfur,” or Byzantine Emperor, and has advanced to Tóqát to aid in checking the invasion of Tímúr (p. 125). Dated Sha'bán, 798 (May, 1396).
(7) Second letter from Tímúr to Báyazíd, written in Persian and undated. It begins with a “salutation tempered with reproach” (salám-i-'itáb-ámíz), describes the writer's forty years' career of conquest, and how he has now advanced to Síwás, and taunts his adversaries with their failure to capture Malaṭya and Sinope. He is still, however, ready to come to terms, since he is unwilling that the dissensions of Muslims should afford fresh opportunity to the “Frankish infidels” to pursue their schemes of aggression. In conclusion he describes himself as of the family of the Íl-khánís, and demands a speedy and conciliatory answer to his overtures (pp. 126-7).
(8) Báyazíd's answer to the above, also in Persian and undated. The writer boasts of the martial prowess of the Turks, reminds Tímúr how his ancestor Er-Toghril with 300 horsemen routed 10,000 “Tartar and Mongol heathens,” and rehearses other like glorious deeds of his predecessors. He claims to be the protector of the Muslims, and declares that “hitherto not one of the House of 'Othmán has sought by flattery to turn aside an enemy, or has had recourse to deceit or guile” (pp. 127-8).
(9) Tímúr's third letter to Báyazíd, written in Persian and undated, acknowledging a letter sent by means of the Qáḍí Farídu'd-Dín and a person named Najáshí, and expressing a desire for friendship and alliance. Tímúr alludes to his Syrian campaign, objects to the Sultans of Egypt calling themselves “Kings of the two Holy Shrines” (Sulṭánu'l-Ḥaramayn), and complains of the return of Sulṭán Aḥmad Jalá'ir to Baghdád (pp. 128-131).
(10) Báyazíd's answer to the above, written in Persian. It is couched in much politer language than his previous letters, but declines absolutely to surrender Sulṭán Aḥmad Jalá'ir and Qará Yúsuf, which, says the writer, would be entirely incompatible with the Ottoman traditions of hospitality. He alludes to the continuance in Egypt of the lawful descendants of the 'Abbásid Caliphs, and calls on Tímúr, if his intentions are really peaceful, to surrender Síwás (pp. 131-2).
(11) Tímúr's fourth letter to Báyazíd. In this letter he boasts his orthodoxy and adherence to the Sunní creed, denounces the actions of Sulṭán Aḥmad Jalá'ir and Qará Yúsuf, and demands their banishment from Ottoman territory, and an apology from Báyazíd (pp. 132-4).
(12) Báyazíd's answer to the above (pp. 134-5).
(13) Letters from Sháh Manṣúr, the nephew of Sháh Shujá' the Muẓaffarí ruler of Shíráz, to Báyazíd, written in Persian after Dhu'l Qa'da, 802 (June—July, 1400), describing the mischief wrought by “the accursed ones of Chaghatáy,” and the deceitfulness and cunning of “that sinner and rebel” Tímúr (pp. 135-9).
(14) Báyazíd's answer to the above. He abuses Tímúr, alludes to the depredations wrought by him in Fárs and at Shíráz, and states that, though actually engaged in an attempt to capture Constantinople, he is preparing to abandon this in order to attack Tímúr (pp. 139-140).
(15) Tímúr's fifth letter to Báyazíd, written from Marágha in Persian, but undated. He alludes to his capture of Baghdád, and, after quoting a verse to the effect that to win the whole world it is not worth vexing even an ant, indulges in veiled threats as to what he will do if Báyazíd still refuses to listen to his demands (pp. 140-2).
Here ends the correspondence between Tímúr and Báyazíd preserved by Firídún Bey.
It only remains to be added that Tímúr's corpse was conveyed across the frozen Khujand River on the night of Feb. 19, 1405, and interred four days later at Samarqand, while the Chinese campaign—happily for that people—was finally abandoned.
Lit. Hist. of Persia, vol. ii, pp. 515-539.
↩See the English Introduction to vol. xvi, 1, of the “E. J. W. Gibb Memorial” Series (the Jahán-gushá of Juwayní, edited by Mírzá Muḥammad), pp. lii-liv.
↩See Bar-Hebraeus' Mukhtaṣaru'd-Duwal (Beyrout ed. of 1890), pp. 501-3.
↩Vol. iii, pp. 524-566.
↩A most sumptuous edition of this Persian Díwán of Sulṭán Salím, edited by the late Dr Paul Horn of Strassburg, was printed by command of the German Emperor for presentation to the late Sulṭán 'Abdu'l-Ḥamíd in 1904. Of this rare and beautiful work I am fortunate enough to possess a copy.
↩Op. laud., vol. ii, pp. 107-195.
↩See the Bankipore Catalogue mentioned above, vol. i, pp. 176-7, and my edition of Dawlat-sháh, p. 240.
↩The five verses addressed to his daughter, who appears to have been called 'Afífa, will be found on p. 125 of vol. ii of the Shi'ru'l-'Ajam , and the verses to his mother on pp. 126-7.
↩Vol. iii, pp. 567-573.
↩Rieu's Brit. Mus. Pers. Cat., pp. 582-4.
↩Pp. 181-5 of my edition.
↩Loc. cit., p. 182, lines 22-3.
↩See d'Ohsson, vol. i, p. 17, who defines “les Cames” (Qámán) as “ministres de leur culte grossier, qui étaient à la fois magiciens, interprètes des songes, augures, aruspices, astrologues et médecins.” The bakhshís were the scribes who wrote the old Uyghúr character, which continued to be used in Turkistán until the fifteenth century of our era.
↩Only four MSS. of this work are known to exist, two in Petrograd and two in Cambridge. See my article on this rare book in the number of the Muséon published at the Cambridge University Press for the exiled Belgian professors in 1915, pp. 48-78.
↩Arcturus (Simák) is accounted one of the highest stars in heaven. In the popular cosmogony of the less educated Muslims, the earth is supposed to be supported by a great fish (Samak in Arabic, Máhí in Persian) which swims in a vast ocean contained by banks of cloud. Hence the Arabic expression mina's-Samak ila's-Simák (“from the Fish to Arcturus”), corresponding to the Persian az máh tá bi-máhí (“from the Moon to the Fish”), meaning from the highest to the lowest.
↩Probably the Ṣáḥib-Díwán is meant.
↩Vol. i, p. 98.
↩See my translation of this section of the work (ch. v, § 6) in the J.R.A.S. for Oct. 1900 and Jan. 1901, pp. 13-15 of the separate reprint.
↩These verses are given by Dawlatsháh, p. 166, l. 24—p. 167, ll. 1-9 of my edition.
↩.
↩Saḥbán ibn Wá'il, an ancient Arab, whose eloquence is proverbial.
↩There is an untranslateable pun here, for Ímámí means the position of an Imám, or leader in prayer, as well as being the poet's nom de guerre.
↩ MS.
A flower “keeps vigil” when it is fully open.
↩“Hyacinth” (sunbul) is a common poetical metaphor for hair.
↩Meaning the fair, silver-like skin.
↩Apparently that same minister Fakhru'l-Mulk Shamsu 'd-Dawla, to whom several of Imámí's poems are dedicated.
↩For the original verses, which it would be superfluous to reprint here, see my edition of Dawlatsháh, p. 169.
↩Catkins are called gurba-i-bíd, “willow-cats,” in Persian.
↩See pp. 60-64 of the separate reprint of my translation of this portion (ch. v, § 6) published in the J.R.A.S. for Oct. 1900 and Jan. 1901.
↩Pp. 167-170 of my edition.
↩P. 137 of the lithographed edition of 1277/1860-1.
↩Vol. i, pp. 98-101.
↩See p. 21 supra.
↩See E. H. Whinfield's text and translation in Trübner's Oriental Series (1883), No. 33 (pp. 24-5).
↩P. 176 of my edition.
↩Cited in the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá, vol. i, p. 596.
↩Mercury is the planet which presides over the destinies of authors, scribes and poets.
↩Tigín or Tagín is a suffix of Turkish names (e.g. Subuk-tigín, Alp-tigín, etc.) and Inál is another common Turkish name or title. Kisrá is the Arabic form of Khusraw (“Chosroes”), the proper name of Núshírwán and Parwiz, and the generic name for all the kings of the Royal House of Sásán.
↩Sarandíb, from the Sanskrit Swarna-dípa, is the name given by the Arab geographers to Ceylon, and Saráb is a town in Ádharbáyján. There is a kind of word-play between these two names, but a much more complete one in the second half of the quatrain between bám (morning) and Bámiyán (north-west of Afghánistán) on the one hand, and shám (evening) and Shám (Damascus) on the other. The last is an example of the “complete word-play.”
↩Pp. 700-704 of Nassau Lees's edition.
↩Catalogue of the Library of the King of Oude, pp. 440-1.
↩See vol. ii of my Lit. Hist. of Persia, pp. 497-501.
↩Lithographed, with other Ṣúfí tracts, at Ṭihrán in 1303/1885-6.
↩This verse, as Jámí tells us, is from the Tá'iyya, or qaṣída rhyming in t, of Ibnu'l-Fáriḍ. Though outwardly the Prophet is descended from Adam, he is in reality the Object and Cause of Creation, so that Adam exists through and because of him, not he through Adam. The Muslims represent God as saying to the Prophet, “But for thee, I had not created the Heavens.”
↩This is the title of a treatise by Shaykh Aḥmad Ghazzálí on Love, the Lover, and the Beloved.
↩I.e. through articulate and inarticulate creatures, through the organic and the inorganic.
↩The true explanation of 'Anqá-yi-Mughrib is doubtful. See Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v.
↩See the Ṭihrán lithographed edition, vol. i, pp. 89-94, and Jámí's Nafaḥát, p. 685.
↩See Jámí, Nafaḥátu'l-Uns, ed. Nassau Lees, pp. 684-689. This verse is ascribed by Badí'u'z-Zamán al-Hamadhání to a poet named Dumayna (Rasá'il, ed. Beyrout, 1890, p. 96 and n. 8 ad calc.). In its original form it was addressed to a woman and runs:—
See my edition of Dawlatsháh, pp. 210-215; Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá, vol. ii, pp. 94-98; Haft Iqlím, under Iṣfahán, etc. Jámí, however, (Nafaḥát, p. 707) reverses the rôles of these two cities.
↩Dated 916/1510-11. The text comprises about 4500 couplets.
↩Dawlatsháh (p. 210 of my edition) says 10,000.
↩Or “Orange and pomegranate,” for nár has both meanings.
↩.
↩I.e. Ja'far ibn Abí Ṭálib, the Prophet's cousin, who was killed by the Romans in the Battle of Mú'ta (September, A.D. 629), and of whom the Prophet said, “I saw Ja'far yesterday in a group of the angels, having two wings whereof the pinions were stained with blood.” (Ibnu'l-Athír, ed. Tornberg, vol. ii, p. 181). Hence he was called the “Winged (or “Flying”) Martyr.” (Muir's Life of Mahomet, new and abridged edition of 1828, p. 410 ad calc.)
↩Published by Trübner, London, 1880.
↩The MS. which I have used formerly belonged to Colonel Raverty, and was bought by the trustees of the “E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Fund” on his death. A second MS., now in my possession, is from the Library of the late Sir Albert Houtum-Schindler. There is a third MS. at St Petersburg. There is, unfortunately, a large lacuna comprising the years A.H. 718-840 (A.D. 1318-1436) in the Raverty MS.
↩I.e. Indian hemp (Cannabis Indica) or bang, the green colour of which is also alluded to in its nicknames Áqá-yi-Sayyid (“Master Sayyid”) and Ṭúti-yi-Sabz (the “Green Parrot”).
↩I.e. Indian hemp (Cannabis Indica) or bang, the green colour of which is also alluded to in its nicknames Áqá-yi-Sayyid (“Master Sayyid”) and Ṭúti-yi-Sabz (the “Green Parrot”).
↩This seems to point to the smoking of hemp, the hemp being compared to the emerald and the fiery pipe-bowl to the ruby casket.
↩Khaysár is a fortress in Khurásán, not far from Herát (Yáqút, vol. ii, p. 507); and Ghúr a mountainous district in Afghánistán. Perhaps, like Kalát-i-Nádirí at the present day, they were formerly used as penal settlements.
↩See Sir Gore Ouseley's Biographical Notices of Persian Poets (London, 1846), pp. 14-15.
↩See p. l of the English introduction to Part 1 of Juwayní's Ta'ríkh-i-Jahán-gushá, edited by Mírzá Muḥammad (“E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series,” vol. xvi, 1).
↩See vol. ii of my Lit. Hist. of Persia, pp. 218-247.
↩Ibid., pp. 199, 201, 203, 204, 206, etc.
↩See G. le Strange's Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, pp. 354-5.
↩Catalogue of the Library of the King of Oude, vol. i, p. 524.
↩For references see Gibb's Hist. of Ottoman Poetry, vol. i, p. 157 ad calc. Radloff's article, which he does not mention, is entitled Über Alt-Türkische Dialekte. i. Die Seldschukischen Verseim Rebâbnâmeh. It was published in 1890 in vol. x, Livraison 1, of the Mélanges Asiatiques at St Petersburg.
↩See Rieu's Persian Catalogue, p. 182.
↩See Rieu's Persian Cat., p. 168, and Persian Suppl., p. 33.
↩Frank McClean Collection, No. 198.
↩See also Rieu's Persian Cat., p. 82.
↩Lithographed at Ṭihrán in A.H. 1313/1895-6.
↩London: Heinemann, 1897.
↩The Muḥtasib, here rendered “proctor,” was an officer whose function it was to maintain public order and morality and ensure that the goods sold by tradesmen should both in quantity and quality maintain a proper standard.
↩Abu'l-Fatḥ Abú Bakr al-Mu'taḍid bi'lláh, son of al-Mustakfí, one of the titular 'Abbásid Caliphs who exercised a merely nominal sway in Egypt after the sack of Baghdád until the Ottoman conquest (A.D. 1262-1517), succeeded his brother al-Ḥákim bi-amri'lláh in 753/1352-3 and died in 763/1362. See as-Suyúṭí's Ta'ríkhu'l-Khulafá (ed. Nassau Lees, Calcutta, 1857), p. 516.
↩His severity was such that, according to one of his intimates, Luṭfu'lláh b. Ṣadru'd-Dín 'Iráqí (cited in the Fárs-náma-i-Náṣiri), he would often lay aside the Qur'án which he was reading to decapitate some criminal brought before him for judgment, and then calmly resume the perusal of the Sacred Book.
↩See pp. 683-4 of the fac-simile of an old MS. of the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída published in the Gibb Series (vol. xiv, 1).
↩The text of this letter will be found on pp. 730-733 of the facsimile of the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída (Gibb Series, vol. xiv, 1)
↩This is the number given in the Fárs-náma-i-Náṣirí, but the Ta'ríkh-i-Guzída (p. 739 of fac-simile) raises the number to 200,000.
↩This works out at 40 + 30 + 20 + 5 + 300 + 400 = 795.
↩Concerning the Jalá'irs, a tribe cognate to the Mongols, see the History of the Moghuls of Central Asia by N. Elias and E. Denison Ross (London, 1898), p. 88*.
↩The author of the Ḥabíbu's-Siyar, Khwándamír, endeavours to explain the illegality of Abú Sa'íd's marriage with Baghdád Khátún and her niece Dilshád Khátún by assuming that he divorced the former before marrying the latter. He also asserts that Baghdád Khátún avenged this slight by poisoning Abú Sa'íd.
↩The name is generally spelt Kart by English Orientalists, but in the carefully-written MS. of the History of Herát, which will be mentioned immediately, it is repeatedly pointed Kurt, which pronunciation I have therefore adopted.
↩Rabí'í, called Khaṭíb, of Búshanj, was killed, according to the Mujmal of Faṣíḥí, in 702/1302-3. He was court-poet to Fakhru'd-Dín Kurt.
↩Add. 22380 and Or. 4106.
↩See p. 150 supra, ad calc., where the MSS. are enumerated. The St Petersburg MS. is No. 271 of the Institut des Langues Orientales du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères. See Baron Victor Rosen's Manuscrits Persans, pp. 111-113.
↩See Howorth's Hist. of the Mongols, Part iii, pp. 590-1.
↩Mohammadan Dynasties, p. 251.
↩Published in two volumes at Calcutta in the Bibliotheca Indica Series in 1887-8. This history, which comprises in this edition some 1560 pages, is prolix, tedious, florid and fulsome.
↩Published at Leyden, 1636; Calcutta, 1818; Cairo, A.H. 1285, etc.
↩Pp. 15-16 of the Bibl. Ind. edition.
↩London, 1815, pp. 482-3.
↩Op. laud., p. 484.
↩Sir John Malcolm's History was published in 1815, long before the Indian Mutiny, which led, among other results, to the final extinction of the dynasty of Tímúr, commonly known as the “Great Moghuls.”
↩MS., f. 99.
↩See Rieu's Pers. Cat., pp. 177-180, where several very cogent reasons against the authenticity of the book are given.
↩That this, not Bábar, is the correct form has been shown by Sir E. Denison Ross, in his interesting article on A Collection of Poems by the Emperor Bábur published on Oct. 26, 1910, as an extra number to vol. vi of the J.A.S. of Bengal, pp. iv-vi of the Introduction.
↩See pp. ix-xiii of Major Charles Stewart's translation of the Malfúẓát (1830).
↩Ẓafar-náma, i, p. 310.
↩Ẓafar-náma, i, p. 360.
↩Ibid., pp. 368-9.
↩Ẓafar-náma, i, p. 404.
↩Ibid., p. 435.
↩See pp. 305-6 of my edition.
↩Ẓafar-náma, i. pp. 561 et seqq.
↩Ibid., pp. 576-7.
↩Ibid., p. 587.
↩Ibid., p. 619.
↩Ẓafar-náma, i. p. 680.
↩Ibid., p. 684.
↩Ibid., p. 735.
↩Ibid., p. 761.
↩Ibid., p. 757.
↩Ibid., pp. 784-5.
↩Ibid., i, p. 788.
↩Ibid., ii, p. 6.
↩Ibid., i, pp. 803-4.
↩Ibid., ii, p. 15.
↩Ẓafar-náma, ii, p. 92.
↩Ẓafar-náma ii, pp. 213-214.
↩Pp. 330-1 of my edition. In the very rare Mujmal of Faṣíḥí, under the year A.H. 802, two other victims are enumerated, viz. Ardashír-i-Changí (“the harper”), and Khwája Yaḥyá-yi-Narrád (“the backgammon-player”).
↩The celebrated mystic who was hanged or crucified in the tenth century of our era at Baghdád for exclaiming Ana'l-Haqq! (“I am the Truth!” i.e. God). His real name was Ḥusayn ibn Manṣur al-Ḥalláj (“the wool-carder”). See my Lit. Hist. of Persia, vol. i, pp. 428-437.
↩Published in London in 4 vols., 1811-1821. The portion to which reference is here made is vol. iii, Part i, pp. 297-463.
↩Ẓafar-náma, ii, p. 269.
↩According to Ibn 'Arabsháh the number of Tímúr's soldiers on this occasion was 20,000, and each was ordered to bring two heads.
↩Ẓafar-náma, ii, p. 367.
↩It is, however, accepted by Professor H. A. Gibbons in his very interesting work on the Foundation of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford, 1916). See his long foot-note on p. 255, where the matter is very fully discussed.
↩Ẓafar-náma, vol. ii, pp. 438-9.
↩Ẓafar-náma, ii, p. 598.
↩Ibid., p. 633.
↩Op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 656-7.
↩See pp. 182-3 supra.
↩History of Persia, p. 219.
↩Ibid., p. 220, and the Introductory Life of Tímúr prefixed to Clavijo's Embassy to the Court of Tímúr, p. li.
↩Pers. Cat., p. 178.
↩