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2 Bil grand — Quatrains of Taba Tahir . [No. 1. 
T 71 his introduction to “ The Lament of Baba Tahir,” Mr. Allen 
gives 410 A.H. as the date of the Baba’s death. Riza Quli Khan in 
his volume of “The Majma-ul-Fusaha” gives the same date, and consi¬ 
ders the Baba to be a contemporary of the Dailamite Dynasty. I quite 
agree with Riza Quli Khan in that opinion, as the Dailamites reigned 
between 3*21 and 487 A.H. corresponding to 933 and 1094 of the Chris¬ 
tian era. The Seljuks began their reign from the time of Mas‘ud (1031 
Christian era), the grandson of Mahmud of Ghazni. That Baba Tahir 
lived before Firdusi, Ansuri, and others, there exists no manner 
doubt, as these were the poets of the court of Mahmud, and Mahmud 
was before the Seljuks came into power. The Baba must therefore 
have died about 410 A.H. because, in the first place, his Quatrain 
No. 29 he tells us that he was born in 326 A.H., and, next, he died, from 
all accounts, a very old man. According to the Abjad system of chrono- 
graphy, letters have numerical values ; and it is well known that this 
fact is taken advantage of by oriental writers to denote events. And 
this is exactly what Baba Tahir has done in the quatrain above referred 
to which runs as folows:— 
Ljjiojb &S y*> 
(♦L* oil j* ait • jjf ji aij ^ 
Letters have two kinds of values, the Zabar “ written,” i.e ., the 
value of the letter itself, and the oluj Baiyyinat, i.e., the value of the 
other letters, besides the Zabar which give the spelling of the name of 
the letter, and both put together are called Zabar and Baiyyinat . For 
instance l(OI|) Alif has its own value as one , and this is called the Zabar 
of alif; but the name of the letter is pronounced OJ| alif, therefore the 
letters <J Zam and sA fa are the Baiyyinats of | that is I (oil) has two 
values, the Zabar of OI| alif is f = 1; and the Baiyyinat of cA)f are J lam 
and o fa = 30 + 80 = 110 ; and the Zabar and Baiyyinat together will give 
the value of OI| as 111. So the letter I while generally standing for one, 
may sometimes stand for 1 + J + o = 11 30 4 80= 111. Now let us apply 
both these methods of valuation, so to say, to the fourth line of the 
quatrain quoted above. The poet says “ I am the Alif Icadd who has 
come in Alf.” According to the Zubur method, adding the values of 
the letters composing OI| alif Icadd and OI| alif together we get the 
following result:— 
1 = 1; J=30; 0 = 80; <3 = 100; * = 4; 
» = 1; J = 30; 0 = 80 
Summing them up we have 1+30 + 80 1100 + 4+1430 + 80 = 32 and 
this 26 is the year of the poet’s birth. Sometimes an Arabic word 
