A literary history of Persia

CHAPTER XIVTHE LITERATURE OF PERSIA DURING THIS PERIODAs has been already observed, Arabic continued during thewhole of the period which we are now discussing to be thechief literarymedium in Persia, not only for prosebut forverse. Nevertheless Persian again begins, under those semiindependentdynasties, the Saffarids and Sdmanids, and evenunder the earlier Tahirids, to be employed as a literarylanguage : more, indeed, for verse than prose, but to someextent for both. In this chapter we shall have to considerchiefly the poets of Persian firstnationality, those who usedtheir mother-tongue, and secondly those who employed theArabic language.Our authorities ror the latter are fuller, though, with oneexception, not much more accessible, than for the former and;the chief one is the Yatlmatud-Dahr "(or Unique*fflSS* Pearl of the Age ") of Abu Mansur 'Abdu'l-Malik(Trrhe Yattma b. Muhammad b. Ismail ath-Tha'alibf I of Nfshaofath-Tha'aiibi. . ',,. . . .. T1 _... .... ,pur in Khurasan, who, according tolbn Khalhkan,was born in A.D. 961 and died in A.D. 1038. This valuableanthology of Arabic verse was published at Damascus inA.D. 1885 and following years in four volumes; of which thefint deals in ten chapters (pp. 536) with the poets of Syria1He was called Tha'dlibi (from tha'lab, a fox, pi. iha'dlib) because hewas by trade a furrier and dealt in the skins of that animal.445