A literary history of Persia

CHAPTER XIIIRELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS OF THIS PERIODII.THE Surf MYSTICISM.ALTHOUGH the full development of that system orpantheistic,idealistic, and theosophic mysticism known amongst Muhammadansas tasawwufy and in Europe as Suflism belongs to arather laterperiod than that which we are now considering, itwas alreadywhen the Finrist was composed (A.D. 987) arecognised school of thought, and may therefore convenientlybe considered in this place, more particularlyas some knowledgeof its nature and isteachings essential for the understandingof a certain proportion of even the older Persianpoets who lived before the time of Sana'f (circ. A.D. 11.31),'Attar (t A.D. 1230) and Jaldlu'd-Din Rumf (t A.D. 1273).Shaykh Abu Sa'id b. Abi'l-Khayr (t A.D. 1049), whose mysticalquatrains form the subjectof one of Dr. Ethe's excellentmonographs, 1 and for whose biography we possess, thanks toProfessor Zhukovski, unusually copious materials, 2 was perhapsthe first purely mystical Persian poet whose works have survivedto our time, but Sufi influences maybe traced in the1Published in the Sitzungsberichte der KSnigl-bayer. Akad. d. Wissenschaftenfor 1875, Phil. hist. Cl., pp. 145-168.2These texts were published in St. Petersburg in 1899, and comprisethe Life and Sayings of the Saint (pp. 78), and the Mysteries of the DivineUnity with the Risdla-i-Hawrd'iyya (pp. 493).416