A literary history of Persia

DOWN TO A.D. 1000 465the meaning, and this though they were practically bilingual(dhul-lisanayn\ and though the metrical system of the Arabsand Persians is substantially identical. On this ground aloneI consider, contrary to the view of many eminent Orientalists,notably my deeply lamented friend, Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, whosegreat History of Ottoman Poetry has been already mentioned inseveral places, that he who seeks to render the poetry of theEast into a Western tongue may most justly claim the sameindulgence as these old masters of Arabic and Persian tookwhen translatingin verse from the one language into theother ;and indeed, having regard to the wide differences whichseparate our verse-forms and laws of prosody from those of theMuhammadan nations, we are doubly justified in demandingthe right to take equal liberties with the forms, though notwith the substance of our originals.With Mantiqf we notice a more artificial style, and a greaterfondness for rhetorical devices, than is the case with the earlypoets hitherto mentioned in : particular, a fondness for thefigure known as " "poetical aetiology (husn-i-ta'/tl), as," foror " " sallowness ofinstance, when he ascribes the " pallorthe sun to its fear of trespassing on the realms of his patron inits passage across the sky, and that of the gold dln&r to itsdread of his lavish and prodigal hands ;or the " "trembling(or twinkling) of the stars to their dread of his far-reachingsword. This characteristic isdue, I think,not so much topersonal idiosyncrasy as to the fact that the Buwayhid Courtof 'Iraq was, owing to its greater proximity to, and closerconnection with, the metropolis of Baghdad, more directlysubject to the literaryinfluences and tendencies of Arabicspeakingand Arabic-writing men of letters than the SamdnidCourt of far Khurasan. For this very reason, perhaps,Khurasan isregarded (and justly so) as the cradle of thePersian Renaissance ; yet'Iraq in literarythat it was considered far behindculture clearly appears from the followingverses (cited in the Yatlma, vol. iv, p. 3)31of Abu Ahmad b.