A literary history of Persia

PREFACEixdown to the Mongol Invasion and the extinction of the Caliphateof Baghdad in the thirteenth century, which, as I haveelsewhere observed (pp. 210-211 infra\is the great turningpointin the history of Islam but even this; finally provedimpracticable within the limits assigned to me, and I ultimatelyfound myself obliged to conclude this part of my workwith the immediate precursors of Firdawsi, the writers andpoets of the Samanid and Buwayhid dynasties.This division is, perhaps, after all the best, since theProlegomenawith which the student of Persian literatureought to be acquainted are thus comprised in the presentvolume, while the field of Persian literature in the narrowersense will, with the aid of one chapter of recapitulation, beentirely covered by the second, with which it is intended thatthis should be supplemented. Thus, agreeably to the stipulationsimposed by my publisher, the two volumes will beindependent one of the other, this containing the Prolegomena,and that the History of Persian Literature within the strictmeaning of the term.My chief fear is lest, in endeavouring to present to thegeneral reader the results attained by Oriental scholarship, andembodied for the most part in books and periodicals which heis unlikely to read, or even to meet with, I may have fallen,,so to speak, between two stools, and ended by producing abook which is too technical for the ordinary reader, yet toopopular for the Orientalist by profession. To the formerrather than the latter it is addressed ;but most of all to thatsmall but growing body of amateurs who, having learned tolove the Persian poets in translation, desire to know more ofthe language, literature, history, and thought of one of themost ancient, gifted, and original peoples in the world. In acountry which offers so few inducements as England to whatmay be called the professional study of Oriental letters andlanguages, and which consequently lacks well-organisedOriental schools such as exist at Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg,