A literary history of Persia

14 INTRODUCTORYcertainlymerit little more credence than the assertion ofserious and careful Arab writers, like Tabari (fA.D. 923), andMas'udi (|A.D. 957), that the firstpoem ever written was anelegy composed in Syriac by Adam on the death of Abel, ofwhich poem they even give an Arabic metrical rendering * tothis effect :" The lands are changed and those who dwell upon them ,The face of earth is marred and girt with gloom ;and fragrant now hath faded,All that was fairGone from that comely face the joyous bloom.Alas for my dear son, alas for Abel,A victim murdered, thrust within the tomb!How can we rest ? That Fiend accursed, unfailing,Undying,ever at our side doth loom !"To which the Devil is allegedto have retorted thus :" Renounce these lands and those who dwell upon them !By me was cramped in Paradise thy room,Wherein thy wife and thou were set and stablished,Thy heart unheeding of the world's dark doom !Yet did'st thou not escape my snares and scheming,Till that great gift on which thou did'st presumeWas lost to thee, and blasts of wind from Eden,"But for God's grace, had swept thee like a broom !Nevertheless thereis one legend indicating the existence ofPersian poetry even in Sasanian times which, partly from theesisirianmi51161fcTO1persistency with which itreappearsin various oldn.writers of 2 credit, partly from a difference in the590 " f rm f t 'ie m ' nstre l's name which can hardly beexplained save on the assumption that both formsTabari, vol. i, p. 146 ; Mas'udi, Murtiju'dh-Dhahab (ed. Barbier dMeynard), vol. i, pp. 65-67 ; Tha'alibi, Qi$asu'l-Anbiyd (ed. Cairo, A.H.1306)1 PP- 29-30 ;Dawlatshah (ed. Browne), p. 20.8Amongst Arabic writers, the earliest mention of Bahlabad which Ihave found is made in a poem by Khalid b. Fayyad (circ. A.D. 718), citedby Hamadhani, Yaqut and Qazwini, and translated at pp. 59-60 of theJ.R. A. S. for January, 1899. Accounts, more or less detailed, are given of