478 



PERSIA (LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND RELIGION.) 



edition, ami of several other poetical works. Jela- 

 leddin Rouini of Balk, in Khurasan, is esteemed the 

 most perfect model of the mystic school : he formed 

 a sect, and died 1262, a pious Sophi. His great 

 work, Kilat el Metnavi (Collection of Distichs), is so 

 difficult to be understood, thnt a glossary is neces- 

 sary. One of the most prolific and pleasing poets of 

 Persia is Abdalrahman, or Abdurrahman Ebn Ach- 

 nied, more known under his surname of Malta Djamy. 

 (See Jamy.) To the poets of the first class belongs 

 Nizaui, or Nisami, at the end of the sixteenth cen- 

 titiy, author of five poems, three of which, Chosrou 

 and Shirin, Leila a nil .Mr; noun, and the History of 

 Alexander, Iskandernameh, are epics. Some tales 

 ami fables selected from his Hook of Fortune, have 

 appeared in the original and in translations. If \ve 

 were willing to enumerate merely names we might 

 mention Khosru, or Chosrou, of Delhi, Abubatha of 

 Kerman. and Nani, each of whom wrote five long 

 poems ; Mir Ali of Shirvan, A chined of Kirvan, and 

 Emir Soliman, each celebrated as the writer of a 

 history of Alexander ; and many others. Instead of 

 drawing up such a mere catalogue, we refer to 

 Hammer's valuable work. Sources of information 

 concerning the Persian poets, are the Beharistan of 

 Jamy, the works of Haji Chalfa, the lives by the 

 Persian Dauletshah, continued by Sam Mirza, under 

 the title Teskiretelchoara (of which some extracts 

 may be found in the Notice? et Extraits des Manu- 

 scrits, &c., by Sylvestre de Sacy), and the Ateshkede 

 (Fire Temple), by Haji Lotfali Beg, surnamed Azir. 

 The most celebrated recent Persian poet, Blab Phe- 

 lair, died in 1825, at the age of 96. He left astrono- 

 mical, moral, political, and literary works. He is 

 called the Persian Voltaire. 



Not less numerous are the prose fables, tales and 

 narratives. Among these are the Anwar Soheili, a 

 Persian translation of the fables of Pilpay ; the Ba- 

 har Danuch of Einajut Doollah (translated by John 

 Scott, under the title of Garden of Knowledge, 1799, 

 3 vols.) : the Toolinameh, or Tales of a Parrot (Per- 

 sian and English, by Hadley) ; the Tales of Baklit- 

 yar and the Ten Viziers, &c., translated by Ouseley. 

 Other similar works have been given us by Scott, in 

 his Tales, Anecdotes and Letters, translated from 

 the Arabic and Persian (1800); by Langles, in his 

 Conies, Sentences et Fables, tir&es d'Auteurs Arabes 

 et Persons (1788), and in other collections of this 

 kind. In the departments of history, geography, and 

 statistics, the Persians have some large and valuable 

 works. Abu Said, or Abdallah Ben Abulkasin Bei- 

 davi, wrote a universal history, from Adam to his 

 own time (1276), under the title of Historical Pearl 

 Necklace. Andrew Muller has published, in Persian 

 and Latin, the eighth part of this work, which con- 

 tains the history of China. Turan Shah, who died 

 at Ormuz, 1377, wrote a Shahnameh, of which an 

 abstract is given in Pedro Texeira's Relaciones del 

 Origen Descendancia y Succesion de los Reyes de 

 Persia y de Hormuz (Antwerp, 1610). Mirchond 

 or Mohammed Ebn Emir Chowand Shah, who 

 flourished in 174 1, wrote the voluminous historical 

 work entitled Hortus Puritatis in Historia Propheta- 

 rum, Regum et Chalifarum (Garden of Purity in the 

 History of the Prophets, Kings and Caliphs), of 

 which, besides the fragment in Wilkins's Persian 

 Grammar, four extracts have been published in the 

 History of the Persian Kings, by Jenisch (Vienna, 

 Persian and Latin) ; the History of the Sassanides, in 

 French only, by De Sacy, in his Memoires sur di- 

 ver set Antiijuites de la Perse ; the History of the 

 Samanidc-K, by U'ilken (Persian and Latin, Gottingen, 

 4to) ; and the History of the Dynasty of the Ishmae- 

 litr-., by Jourdain, in his Notice de VHistoire. univer- 

 telle de Mirkond, &c. (Paris, 1814, Persian and 



French). Mirchond's son, Khondemir, or Gayye- 

 theddin Ben Hamndeddin, wrote a Compendium His- 

 toria: universalis Mohammedance (Abridgment of 

 Mohammedan History), still in manuscript. The 

 Tarik el Tubari (a History of Nations and Kings) 

 was originally written in Arabic, by Mohammed Ebn 

 Giaffir Mahomed Ben Gerir, but is now extant only 

 in a Turkish translation, and in the Persian transla- 

 tion of Balami. The Lebtarik (Marrow of History) 

 of Al Emir Vahia Ebn Abdollatif al Kazwini (who 

 died 1351) has been translated into Latin by Gaul- 

 min and Galland. Of Mohammed Kazim Ferishta, 

 we have two valuable works, one of which has been 

 translated into English by Dow, under the title His- 

 tory of Hindoostan (London, 1768, 3 vols., 4to), and 

 the other by John Scott, under the title of History 

 of Dekkan (1794, 2 vols., 4to). The Tuzuki Jehan 

 Guir, written by the emperor Jehan Guir, is very 

 valuable in regard to the history and geography of 

 Hindoostan ; of which Gladwin has given extracts in 

 the Asiatic Miscellany : but the most important work 

 is the Akbarnameli of the vizier Abul Fazl (put to 

 death 1604), the most elegant writer of Hindoostan, 

 written by command of the emperor Akbar. The 

 two first parts of this work contain a history of 

 Akbar and his predecessors ; the third, entitled 

 Ayeen Akbari, contains a geographical, statistical 

 and historical description of Hindoostan, with much 

 other information. Of this third part, Gladwin has 

 published extracts, under the title Ayeen A/cbery, or 

 Institutes of the Emperor Akbar. Abul Fazl also 

 translated the fables attributed to Vishnu Sarma from 

 the Sanscrit into the Persian. Of the Annals of 

 Asem of Kufa, Ouseley has given some extracts in 

 his Oriental Collections, which make us desirous ot 

 the whole. We are indebted to the same learned 

 Orientalist for an Epitome of the ancient History of 

 Persia, extracted and translated from Jehan Ara, a 

 Persian Manuscript (London, 1799). The History 

 of the Persian Empire, by Alomri, from original 

 sources, has not yet been edited. There are 

 numerous works, comprising short periods of time, 

 as single dynasties and single reigns. The Tari/c 

 Ali Mosaff'cr contains a history of the seven 

 kings of the Mosafter family. Shah Babur loft 

 valuable commentaries concerning Hindoostan, trans- 

 lated into Persian by Abdul Rahim (English by doc- 

 tor Leyden and Mr Erskine). Abul Rizak wrote a 

 life of the Shah Rokh and his successors, and the 

 history of his embassy to China and Hindoostan, the 

 latter of which has been translated by Langles in 

 his Collection portative des Voyages. Mevana Ab- 

 dallah Ibn Faziellah, surnamed al JVafi, wrote, in 

 the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a history of 

 Gengis Khan and his successors till 1336. Sheri- 

 foddin, or Molla Sherifoddin Ali Yezdi (died 1446), 

 wrote a biography of Timur, full of fables, trans- 

 lated into French, by Petit de la Croix (Paris, 1724), 

 whose son also wrote, from Persian sources, a His- 

 toire du grand Genghiz Chan. Sir W. Jones trans- 

 lated into French a history of Nadir Shah, by Mirza 

 Mohammed Mahadi Chan of Masandaran. Gladwin 

 translated another history of the same prince, by 

 Abdul Kurreem of Cashmere, entitled Beyoni Uaki 

 (Necessary Information) ; and Langles has given an 

 abstract of this author's Pilgrimage to Mecca, in his 

 Collection. Lastly, James Fraser has also written a 

 history of Nadir Shah (London, 1742). Here we 

 may mention the Tuzukati Timur, translated by 

 Davy,.and edited by White, under the title, Insti- 

 tutes political and military, written originally in the 

 Mogul language, by the great Timur, translated into 

 Persian by Abn Talib Alhusseini, and thence into 

 English (Oxford, 1783, 4to). 

 As to the geographical works in the Persian Ian- 



