A literary history of Persia

476 THE LITERATURE OF PERSIAArabic verses produced in Persia at this period might nodoubt be found by a more careful examination of the stillsomewhat inaccessible sources of information on this subject.Thirdly, we find occasional use made by Persian poets whowrote in Arabic of verse-forms essentially Persian, notably themathnawl and the ghazal. A good instance of theEmployment of . / 11 j A u- / \ ir jPersian verse- former (called m Arabic muzdaivija)is to be found'forms, such as. . . .MoOMirfaad at p. 23 or vol. in of the Tatima iny.the notice ofAbu'1-Fadl as-Sukkari (?) al-Marwazi, who, weare told," was very fond of translating Persian proverbs intoArabic. These proverbs are here strung together into agenuine mathnawl poem, such as I do not remember to haveseen elsewhere in Arabic, and the original of many of theparaphrases can be "easily recognised, e.g., Al-laylu hubId ; laysayudrd md yalid" ("The night is it ispregnant: not knownwhat it willbring forth)= " Shab dbistan-ast :fardd chizayad?" And again:Iaha 'l-md' u fawqa ghariq inFa-qdb u qandi in wa alf"" siva.tamd("When the water surges over the drowning man, then afathom [lit.the cast of a javelin] and a thousand are alike")= " Chu db az sar dar guzasht, chi yak nlza, chi sad niza"As instances of Arabic ghazah or pseudo-ghazals,it is sufficientto refer to two short poems occupying the upper part ofp. 23 of the third volume of the Yat'ima, of which the secondespecially is quite in the Persian style as regards sentiments and;another on p. 113 of the same volume. Of the existence oftrue quatrains composed in Arabic I am less certain ;buttwo pieces of verse by Abu' Ala l-4 as-Sarwi, describing thenarcissus and the apple respectively (Tathna yvol. iii, p. 281),at least closely resemble this essentially Persian form of composition,and more particularly accord with a fashion prevalentamongst the Persian poets of this period of describing in aquatrain or short "fragment " some particularOther natural object.fruit, flower, or