74 



A brief notice of the 



[July 



YI.— • A brief notice of some of the Persian Poets, by T. J. Newbqld, 

 Lieutenant', a. d. c. to Brigadier General Wilson, c. b* 



(Continued from Vol. III. page 47.) 

 Firdousi, 



Or Abu' I Cas.nm Hassan Bin Alt Al Toosi (a)— the most celebrated 

 historical poet of whom Persia has to boast. He was the son of Tshak 

 Sharif Shah, the gardener of Suri Bin Afoezz, of the city of Toos, or 

 Meshed, in Khorasan (hence the appellation of Toosi), and was born, 

 in the 4th century of the Hejira, on an estate of Suri's called Firdous : 

 from this circumstance he obtained the title of Firdousi, the heavenly, 

 by which he is generally known. Some authors assign the honour of 

 his birth place to a small town, called Rizan, near the city of Samarcand 

 in Transoxania ; but they do not appear to have had any good au- 

 thority for having done so. He repaired, at an early age, to Ghdzneh 

 to apply to Sultan Mahmud, son of Sebekhtagin, first monarch of the 

 dynasty of the Ghdznavides, for redress against the governor of I'oos, 

 from whom he had experienced some act of oppression; and, probably, 

 urged by a wish to escape from, and shake off, the trammels, his 

 lowly duties as a labourer imposed on the aspirations of a soul, al- 

 ready beaming with poetic fire. 



Firdousi soon distinguished himself, by his genius, among the 

 crowd of poetical competitors by whom the (6) court of this distin- 

 guished conqueror, and patron of literature, was adorned, and was se- 

 lected by Mahmud to embody in verse the ancient chronicles of the 

 Persian empire, extending, from the time of the antediluvian dynasty 

 of Kaiumers, down to the end of that of the Sassdnian race, the fourth 

 dynasty of the Persians, which commenced with Ardashir Babegdn, 

 or Artaooerxes (not Longimanus), and terminated with Yezdegerd 

 Parviz. (e) The illustrious poet (d) Anseri had been solicited by the 



(a) Firdousi has been also styled Bin-Sherif, Sherifshah, Al Mansur and Danishmend-i- 

 Ajem. 



(b) Among the numerous men of learning, that attended Mahmud' s court, Ferishta enu- 

 merates the poets, Azuri Razi ; Assedi Toosi, the master of Firdousi ; Munnu-Chlhr, a 

 noble of Balkh, famous both for poetry and wit; the philosopher and poet Anseri, 

 whom four hundred poets and learned men, besides the students of the university of 

 Ghiznij acknowledged for their master ; Asjedi of Murv, a scholar of Anseri, Furrokhi 

 and Dgklki. Vide Briggs's Ferishta, vol. I. page 90—1 and 2. 



( c) According to Persian historians, four dynasties reigned in Persia previous to its con*, 

 qy^stby the Arabs in 15 A. H. 1. That of the Kaiumers or Peshdddians, founded by 

 Kaiumeras a monarch supposed to bave been cotemporary with Enoch. 2. That of the 

 Eaidnioms, founded hy Kaicobad, who is supposed to have reigned about 600 years before 

 f'hript. 3. That of the A&hkamans, founded by /Ishek, who is said to have been the son 

 of Darn, and grandson of Darab, or Darius Codowanus : this dynasty js said to have 



