Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/688

658 PERSIA [LITERATURE. Ibrahim, 1059-1088) had successfully continued, reached its perfection in the famous group of panegyrists who gathered in the first half of the 6th century of the Hijra round the throne of Sultan Sanjar, and partly also round that of his great antagonist, Atsiz, shah of KhwArizm. This group included Adlb SAbir, who was drowned by order of the prince in the Oxus about 1145 (540 A.H.), and his pupil Jauhari, the goldsmith of Bokhara; Amir Mu izzi, the king of poets at Sanjar s court, killed by a stray arrow in 1147 (542 A.H.); Rashid Watwat (the Swallow), who died in 1172 (568 A.H.), and left, besides his kasidas, a valuable treatise on poetry (Hada ik-essihr} and a metrical transla tion of the sentences of All; Abd-alwAsi Jabali, who sang at first, like his contemporary Hasan Ghaznawi (died 1169; 565 A.H. ), the praise of the Ghaznawid shah BahrAm, but afterwards bestowed his eulogies upon Sanjar, the con queror of Ghazna; and Auhad-uddin Anwari, the most cele brated kasida-writer of the whole Persian literature. Anwari (died between 1191 and 1196; 587 and 592 A.H.), who in early life had pursued scientific studies in the madrasah of Tus and who ranked among the foremost astronomers of his time, owes his renown as much to the inexhaustible store of poetical similes and epitheta ornantia which he showered upon Sanjar and other royal and princely personages as to his cutting sarcasms, which he was careful enough to direct, not against special individuals, but against whole classes of society and the cruel wrongs worked by an in exorable fate, thus disregarding the more manly example of Firdausi, whose bold attack upon Sultan Mahmud for having cheated him out of the well-earned reward for his epopee is the oldest and, at the same time, most finished specimen of personal satire. This legitimate branch of high art, however, soon degenerated either into the lower forms of parody and travesty for which, for instance, a whole group of Transoxanian writers, Suzani of Samar kand (died 1174; 569 A.H.) and his contemporaries, Abu Ali Shatranji of the same town, LAmi of BokhArA, and others gained a certain literary reputation or into mere comic pieces and jocular poems like the "Pleasantries" (Hadiyydt} and the humorous stories of the " Mouse and Cat" and the "Stone-cutter" (SangtarasK) by Ubaid Zakani (died 1370; 772 A.H.). Anwari s greatest rival was Khakani (died 1199; 595 A.H.), the son of a carpenter in ShirwAn, and panegyrist of the shahs of ShirwAn, usually called the Pindar of the East on account of the difficult and enigmatic style of his verses. Oriental critics, of course, greatly admire the obscure allusions, far-fetched puns, and other eccentricities with which the otherwise energetic and harmonious language, both of his laudatory odes and of his satires, is loaded; to European taste only the shorter epigrams and the double-rhymed poem Tuhfat- ul irdkain, in which KhAkAni describes his journey to Mecca and back, give full satisfaction. Among his numerous contemporaries and followers may be noticed Mujir-uddin Bailakani (died 1198; 594 A.H.), Zahir FAryAbi (died 1202; 598 A.H.), and Athir Akhsikati (died 1211; 608 A.H.), all three panegyrists of the atabegs of AdharbaijAn (Azer- bijan), and especially of Sultan Kizil Arslan Kamal-uddin IsfahAni, tortured to death by the Moguls in 1237 (635 A.H.), who sang, like his father JamAl-uddin, the praise of the governors of Isfahan, and gained, on account of his fer tile imagination, the honorary epithet of the "creator of fine thoughts" (KhallAk-ulma Ani); and Saif-uddin Isfarangi (died 1 267; 666 A.H.), afavourite of the shahs of KhwArizm. Didactic Fruitful as the 6th and 7th centuries of the Hijra were in panegyrics, their literary fame did not rest upon these Poetry a one! the 7 attained an equally high standard in two other branches of poetry, the didactic and the mystic, which after a short period of separate existence entered into a close and henceforth indissoluble union. The origin of both can again be traced to Firdausf and his time. In the ethical reflexions, wise maxims, and moral exhortations scattered throughout the Shdhndma the didactic element is plainly visible, and equally plain in it are the traces of that mystical tendency which was soon to pervade almost all the literary productions of Persian genius. Sufic pantheism, which tends to reconcile philosophy with revealed religion, and centres in the doctrine of the universality and absolute unity of God, who is diffused through every particle of the visible and invisible world, and to whom the human soul during her temporary exile in the prison-house of the body strives to get back through progressive stages till she is purified enough to be again absorbed in Him, is already hinted at in the numerous verses of the " Book of Kings " in which the poet cries out against the vanity of all earthly joys and pleasures, and expresses a passionate desire for a better home, for a reunion with the Godhead. But the most characteristic passage of the epopee is the mysterious disappearance of Shah Kaikhosrau, who suddenly, when at the height of earthly fame and splendour, renounces the world in utter disgust, and, carried away by his fervent longing for an abode of everlasting tranquillity, vanishes for ever from the midst of his companions. The first Persian who devoted poetry exclusively to the illustration of Sufic Sufic doctrines was Firdausi s contemporary, the renowned P oets - sheikh Abu Sa id b. Abu 1-Khair of Mahna in Khorasan (968-1049; 357-440 A.H.), the founder of that specific form of the ruba i which gives the most concise expression to religious and philosophic aphorisms, a form which was further developed by the great freethinker OMAR B. KHAYYAM (q.v.), and Afdal-uddin Kashi (died 1307; 707 A.H.). The year of Abu Sa id s death is most likely the same which gave to the world the first great didactic mathnawi, the Rushantfindma, or " Book of Enlighten ment," by NASIR B. KHOSRAU (q.v.), a poem full of sound moral and ethical maxims with slightly mystical tendencies. About twenty-five years later the first theoretical handbook of Sufism in Persian was composed by Ali b. UthmAn al-jullabi al-hujwiri in the Kashf-ulmahjub, which treats of the various schools of Sufis, their teachings and observ ances. A great saint of the same period, Sheikh AbdallAh AnsAri of Herat (1006-1089; 396-481 A.H.), assisted in spreading the pantheistic movement by his Munajdt or in vocations to God, by several prose tracts, and by an import ant collection of biographies of eminent Sufis, based on an older Arabic compilation, and serving in its turn as ground work for J Ami s excellent Nafahdt-aluns (completed in 1 478; 883 A.H.). He thus paved the way for the publication of one of the earliest text-books of the whole sect, the Iladikat- ulhaJdkat, or "Garden of Truth" (1130; 525 A.H.), by Hakim Sana i of Ghazna, to whom all the later Sufic poets refer as their unrivalled master in spiritual knowledge. In this extensive mathnawi in ten cantos, as well as in his smaller poetical productions, he skilfully blended the purely didactic element, which is enhanced by pleasant stories and anecdotes, with the chief tenets of higher theosophy, an example which has been strictly adhered to by all the following Sufic poets, who only differ in so far as they give preponderance either to the ethical or to the mystical side of their writings. As the most uncompromising Sufis appear the greatest pantheistic writer of all ages, Jelal- uddin Rumf (1207-1273; 604-672 A.H.; see RUMI), and his scarcely less renowned predecessor Farid-uddin Attar, who was slain by the Moguls at the age of 1 1 4 lunar years in 1230 (627 A.H.). This prolific writer, originally a druggist ( attAr) in NishApur, after having renounced all worldly affairs and performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, devoted him self to a stern ascetic life, and to the composition of Sufic works, partly in prose, as in his valuable " Biography of eminent Mystic Divines," but mostly in the form of math-