A literary history of Persia

358 DECLINE OF THE CALIPHATEardent Shi'ite, which gives his admirable history a specialinterest, since he speaks at greater length of the Imams, andcitesmany of their sayings. Indeed Goldziher and Brockelmann,two of the greatest living authorities on Arabic literaturein its widest sense, agree in the opinion "that the historicalsense was entirely lacking in the ancient Arabs,"and that"the idea of historiography was first inspired in them byPersian culture." 1 To the writers above enumerated wemay add the celebrated mathematician Thabit b. Qurra theHarranian, and the geographer Ibnu'l-Faqih al-Hamadhanf,both of whom died about the beginning of the tenth centuryof our era.On the death of the Caliph al-Mu'tadid and the accessionof his son al-Muktaf{ the Samanids were practically supremeCaliphate ofin Persia, while around Baghdad and Basra, inai-Muktafi Syria and in Yaman the terribleJCarmathians,(A.D. 902-908).under their able leader Zikrawayh, inspired theutmost terror a terror which cannot be regarded as ill-foundedwhen we remember that on the occasion of one of theirattacks on the pilgrim-caravans returning from Mecca 20,000persons are said to have been left dead on the field. Only twowriters of note who died during this period need be mentioned :the Shf'ite divineal-Qumm{ (t A.D. 903), and the royal poetIbnu'l-Mu'tazz, who is notable as having produced one of thenearest approximations to an epic poem to be found in Arabicliterature, 2 and also one of the " Memoirs of the Poets "(Tabaq&t\ which served as a model to ath-Tha'alib^al-Bakharzf,and other compilers of such biographical anthologies.We next come to the comparatively long reign of al-Muqtadir (A.D. 908-932), of which the most important1Brockelmann, op. cit., p. 134.2See pp. 83-86 of Brockelmann's Gesch. a. Arab. Lift, (in vol. vi ofAmelang's monographs, Leipzig, 1901 ;not to be confounded with themore scientific work by the same author, and with almost the same title,published at Weimar in 1897- ).