386 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XVIII, 
cally identified, whilst in some other cases identification must 
be left to some lucky future chance. 
t is difficult to determine to what extent the pictures of 
early Sufism painted by Ansari and other early writers reflect a 
real state of things. These legends may have greater claim 
on the attention of a student of folklore than on that of an 
historian.. But unfortunately even stories of this kind become 
scarce for the subsequent periods. hen the movement had 
already grown into a mighty social factor, our information about 
it becomes particularly meagre. Jami, being probably con- 
scious of the immensity of the task which a systematic narrative 
of the evolution of Sufism would involve, wisely preferred to 
restrict his work to mentioning only the most prominent 
personalities, the ‘ stars of first magnitude,’ whose names were 
undoubtedly popular in Sufic tradition and familiar to every 
real darwish of his time. 
The full list of the various works mentioned in the text of 
the Nafahat is rather long. But an examination of the in- 
influence than Jami himself, the great Jalalu’d-Din Rimi. 
He openly scoffs at him, and his biography teems with real 
hostility. ; 
Similarly, he narrates the biography of Sayyid Qasim-1- 
Anwar, a Shi'ite saint and poet, whose connection with some 
secret Shi‘itic movement is very probable.’ It is true that he 

' All numbers of biographies or i i fer to Nassau- 
tos eg pages in this paper reier 
Lees’ edition of the Nafahatu’l-uns, Calcutta, 1859. 
_ * Cf. E, Browne, A History of Persian Literature under Tatar do- 
minion, 1920, pp. 473-475. 

