A literary history of Persia

CHAPTER IINTRODUCTORYTHIS book, as its title implies, is a history, not of the differentdynasties which have ruled in Persia and of the kings whocomposed those dynasties, but of the PersianScope of work.. .people. It is, moreover, the history of thatpeople written from a particular point of view the literary.In other words, it is an attempt to portray the subjectivethat is to say, the religious, intellectual, and aestheticcharacteristics of the Persians as manifested in their ownwritings, or sometimes, when these fail, in those of theirneighbours. It is not, however, precisely a history of PersianLiterature ; since, on the one ithand, will exclude from considerationthe writings of those who, while using the Persianlanguage as the vehicle of their thought, were not of Persianrace ; and, on the other hand,it will include what has beenwritten by Persians who chose as their medium of expressionsome language other than their mother-tongue.*. India, forexample, has produced an extensive literature of which thelanguage is Persian, but which is not a reflex of the Persianmind, and the same holds good in lesser degree of severalbranches of the Turkish race, but with this literature we arein no wise concerned. Persians, on the other hand, havecontinued ever since the Muhammadan Conquest that is tosay, for more than twelve hundred years to use the Arabic3