Persian Literature

The Old Persian of the Achaemenian Empire preserved in a number of cuneiform inscriptions, was an Indo-European tongue with close affinities with Sanskrit and Avestan (the language of the Zoroastrian sacred texts). After the fall of the Achaemenians, the ancient tongue developed, in the province of Pars, into Middle Persian or Pahlavi (a name derived from Parthavi - that is, Parthian). Pahlavi was used throughout the Sassanid period, though little now remains of what must once have been a considerable literature. About a hundred Pahlavi texts survive, mostly on religion and all in prose. Pahlavi collections of romances, however, provided much of the material for Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.

After the Arab conquest a knowledge of Arabic became necessary, for it was not only the language of the new rulers and their state, but of the religion they brought with them and - later- of the new learning. Though Pahlavi continued to be spoken in private life, Arabic was dominant in official circles for a century and a half. With the weakening of the central power, a modified form of Pahlavi emerged, with its Indo-European grammatical structure intact but simplified, and with a large infusion of Arabic words. This was the Modern Persian in use today.

Arabic continued to be employed in Iran, though on a decreasing scale, as Latin was used in Europe that is, as a language of the learned. As such it was employed by Avicenna, al-Biruni, Rhazes, Al Ghazali and others; indeed, many of the most famous names in Arabic literature are those of men of Persian birth. But in general, the use of Arabic declined; Persian developed rapidly to become the vehicle of a great literature, and before long spread its influence to neighboring lands. In India, Persian language and poetry became the vogue with the ruling classes, and at the court of the Mogul emperor, Akbar, Persian was adopted as the official language; spreading thence and fusing later with Hindi , it gave rise to the Urdu tongue. To the west of Iran, Persian heavily influenced the language and literature of Turkey; Turkish verse was based on Persian models as regards form, meter and style, and borrowed an extensive vocabulary.

A notable feature of Persian is the small extent to which it has changed over the thousand years or more of its existence as a literary language. Thus the poems of Rudaki, the first Persian poet of note, who died in the year 940 AD. , are perfectly intelligible to the modern reader. Persian literature too, has a number of noteworthy characteristics, the most striking of which is the exceptional prominence of poetry. Until quite recently there was practically no drama, and no novels were written; prose works were mostly confined to history, geography, philosophy, religion, ethics and politics, and it was poetry that formed the chief outlet for artistic expression. Classical Persian literature was produced almost entirely under royal patronage whence the frequency of panegyric verse. An influence of at least equal strength was religion, and in particular Sufism, which inspired the remarkably high proportion of mystical poetry.

Classical Persian poetry is always rhymed. The principal verse forms are the qasida, masnavi, ghazal and ruba'i. The qasida or ode is a long poem in monorhyme, usually of a panegyric, didactic or religious nature; the masnavi, written in rhyming couplets, is employed for heroic, romantic, or narrative verse; the ghazal (ode or lyric) is a comparatively short poem, usually amorous or mystical and varying from four to sixteen couplets, all on one rhyme. A convention of the ghazal is the introduction, in the last couplet, of the poet's pen name (Takhallus). The ruba'i is a quatrain with a particular meter, and a collection of quatrains is called "Rubaiyyat" (the plural of ruba'i). Finally, a collection of a poet's ghazals and other verses, arranged alphabetically according to the rhymes, is known as a divan.

A word may not be out of place here on the peculiar difficulties of interpreting Persian poetry to the western reader. To the pitfalls common to all translations from verse must be added, in the case of Persian poetry, such special difficulties as the very free use of Sufi imagery, the frequent literary, Quranic and other references and allusions, and the general employment of monorhyme, a form highly effective in Persian but unsuited to most other languages. But most important of all is the fact that the poetry of Persia depends to a greater degree than that of most other nations on beauty of language for its effects. This is why much of the great volume of "qasidas in praise of princes" can still be read with pleasure in the original, though it is largely unsuited to translation. In short, the greatest charm of Persian poetry lies, as Sir E. Denison Ross remarked, in its language and its music, and consequently the reader of a translation "has perforce to forego the essence of the matter".

In the following brief sketch of the vast field of Persian literature, we cannot hope to do more than mention a few of the most eminent authors, and to devote a paragraph or two each to the most famous of all.

Though existing fragments of Persian verse are believed to date from as early as the eight century AD., the history of Persian literature proper begins with the lesser dynasties of the ninth and tenth centuries that emerged with the decline of the Caliphate. The most important of these were the Samanids, who established at Bokhara the first of many brilliant courts that were to patronize learning and letters. Here Abu Ali Sina, better known in the west as Avicenna, developed the medicine and philosophy of ancient Greece, and wrote numerous works that were to exercise considerable influence not only in the East but in Europe - where translated into Latin, they were in use as late as the seventeenth century, Avicenna wrote mostly in Arabic, but composed an encyclopaedia - the Danish Nameh-ye Ala'i - in Persian.

The most famous of the court poets were Rudaki and Daqiqi. Rudaki, generally regarded as the first of the great Persian poets, wrote a very large quantity of verse, of which but little has survived. His style direct, simple and unadorned - was to appear unpolished to some of the over-elaborate versifiers of later ages, but appeals more to modern tastes. Daqiqi, a composer of epics, was commissioned to write a work on the ancient kings of Persia, but only completed a thousand couplets before his death. Some of these were later incorporated in the celebrated Shahnameh.

Abul Qasim Hassan ibn Ali, Known as Ferdowsi, was born at Tus near Meshed in 949 AD. After the death of Daqiqi, Ferdowsi, then about forth years of age, commenced the Shahnameh, or book of Kings, the work by which he is universally known. Ferdowsi's object was to relate the whole history of Iran from the creation down to the end of the Sassanid period, and in composing his great epic he drew both on prose writings and oral traditions. For about thirty years, he labored at his immense task, and when it was at last completed , in the year 999 AD., it comprised some 60,000 couplets. But by this time, a new royal house, that of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, had been established. Mahmud, a Turk.. by race, was unsympathetic towards Persian nationalism, and the poet's hopes of a reward commensurate with the value of his work were dashed. How Mahmud offered him a contemptible sum, how Ferdowsi retaliated with a savage satire and then fled for refuge to a neighboring court, and how Mahmud repented too late of his niggardliness, is a story known to every Persian; and every Persian, too, knows at least a few lines of Ferdowsi's great work, while many can recite hundreds of lines from memory. Indeed, the Shahnameh is still one of the most popular poetic works in Iran. Every morning one may hear, on the Persian radio, its sonorous verses declaimed to the enduring power of an ancient author that can surely have few parallels in the world.

Written in a rugged and vigorous Persian with a minimum of Arabic words, the Shahnameh contains numerous heroic and romantic tales from which later poets were to draw many of their themes. One of the best known of theses in the West is that related by Matthew Arnold in his Sohrab and Rustam. But above all, these legendary or historic stories there is one major theme dominating the whole work - Iran. As Professor Levy remarks, "It was his country itself which was the central character, almost the hero, of his poem. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that he began from an early date to be regarded as Iran's national poet".

With few dissentient voices Persian and foreign critics have hailed Ferdowsi as one of the great poets of Iran and the world. According to the scholar Mohammad Ali Forooghi, he is one of the four great pillars of Persian literature, the others being Rumi, Saadi and Hafez. The Shahnameh, says Forooghi, "considered both quantitatively and qualitatively, is the greatest work in Persian literature and poetry; indeed,, one can say that it is one of the world's literary masterpieces... Its language is as solid as iron, yet smooth as running water ... it is extremely simple and unadorned. It contains no weak or flaccid lines". Some idea of these qualities may be gained from the following passage translated by E.G. Browne who ingeniously used archaic words and the alliterative "head rhyme" of ancient English verse to covey the solidity and antique simplicity of the original:

When on the weal-stow Dara his doom met >From all his House her face Fortune averted Him did a son survive, worthy of worship , Wary and wise in war, Sasan ycleped, Who, when he saw his sire thus foully smitten, Saw too, on Persia's arms Fortune look frowning, Fled from the foes of Greece, swift and fleet- footed, Stayed not to stumble on snares of ill fortune. In distant lands of Ind death overtook him, Where he in turn left a son to succeed him, "Ferdowsi", says Professor Cowell," found his country almost without a literature, and he left her a poem that all succeeding poets could only imitate and never surpass... and which perhaps stands as alone in Asia as Homer's epics in Europe".

It is said that four hundred poets were attached to the court of Sultan Mahmud; of these, the most notable were Onsori, the greatest of Mahmud's panegyrists, followed by Farrokhi, Manuchehri and Assadi. Of the prose writers, the most celebrated was Biruni, author of the "Chronology of Ancient Nations", who wrote exclusively in Arabic.

The Seljuk era, regarded as the second classical period of Persian literature, is one rich both in prose and poetry. Famous prose works include Ghazzali's influential Revivification of the Religious Sciences in Arabic and its Persian summary entitled kimiya-ye Sa'adat (The Alchemy of Happiness); Baihaqi's History of the Ghaznavid; the Siasat Nameh, a treatise on the art of government by Nezam ul-Mulk, vizier to Alp Arsalaan and Malice Shah; the entertaining Qabous Nameh of KaiKavus, translated by Professor Levy as "A Mirror for Princes"; the collection of animal fables of Indian origin entitled Kelileh va Demne by Nasrullah; the charming Chahar Maqaleh or Four Discourses of Nezami Aruzi; the Fars Nameh of Ibn al-Balkhi, and the noted treatise on poetics of Rashid-i Vatvat. Four of the above works - the Chahar Maqaleh, the History of Baihaqi, the Qabous Nameh and the Siasat Nameh - are considered by the poet Bahar as the four great masterpieces of early Persian prose.

A number of authors of this period wrote both prose and poetry. One of the most brilliant of these was Naser Khosrow, writer of some fifteen works in prose and 30,000 verses, of which less than half have survived. His best known prose work is the Safar Nameh, an account of his journey to Egypt. Most of Nasir-i Khosrow's poems are lengthy odes, mainly on religious and ethical subjects; they are noted for their purity of language and dazzling technical skill. In the opinion of the scholar Mirza Mohammad Qazvini, the name of Nasir-i Khosrow should be added to those of the six poets - Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Anvari, Rumi, Saadi, and Hafez - whom "practically all" agree to consider the six greatest Persian poets, each in his special field. Other famous poetry of the period includes the work of the mystics Ansari, Abu Said and Baba Taher of Hamedan; the odes of Qatran; Gorgani's romantic epic Vis o Ramin, and the Divans of the two Indian-born poets Massoud-e Sa'ad-e Salman and Rumi. Seven other poets of the period are of outstanding fame and brilliance; these are Khayyam, Sana'i, Mouezzi, Anvari, Khaqani, Nezami and Attar.

The versatile Khayyam- "the only man known to me", says Bertrand Russell, "who was both a poet and a mathematician" - is still perhaps the best known and most appreciated Persian poet in Europe and America. There was for long considerable skepticism as to whether he was in fact the author of all or any of the quatrains attributed to him, but the discovery recently of manuscripts more ancient than any of those previously known has removed these doubts.

Khayyam's poetry was largely neglected in Iran until the end of the nineteenth century, mainly no doubt owing to the censure of orthodoxy. When Fitzgerald's translation made him suddenly popular in the west the Iranians began to reassess his merits as a poet, and as we have seen, some native critics are now ready to accord him a place in the poetic Pantheon. Since he uses imagery common to the Sufis, Khayyam has often been hailed as a Sufi himself; but while some of his quatrains can be mad to bear a mystical interpretation, the general impression of his work is one of hedonism tinged with a gentle melancholy, born of acceptance of the tragic transience of life, the power of destiny and man's ultimate ignorance. The attitude is that of a materialist rather than a deist; indeed, he has with some justice been compared to Lucretius.

Sana'i, who wrote in a style similar to that of Nasir-i Khosrow, was the author of two great Sufi epics, the prototypes of the later masterpieces of Attar and Rumi, as well as of a huge divan. Mouezzi, hailed by 'Abbas Ighbal as "one of the artistic virtuosi of the Persian language", wrote mainly panegyric verse in a highly elaborate style. Anvari, author of numerous poetical works, mostly panegyric, wrote in difficult style, sometimes requiring a commentary; he is regarded by some as one of the greatest Persian poets. The poetry of Khaqani is even more mannered. The last three poets mentioned- Mouezzi, Anvari and Khaqani -are all famous in Iran, mainly for their technical brilliance; but, being particularly difficult to translate, they are less appreciated in the west. This is not the case with the next two poets to be mentioned.

Nezami, born at Ganja in the Caucasus in 1140, was a prolific writer famous especially for his Khamseh or Quintet, a series of five great romances and epics. These consist of the Makhzan al-Asrar or Treasure House of Secrets, a mystical epic inspired by Sana'i; the popular romances Khosrow-o-Shirin and Laily-o-Majnun; the Iskandar Nameh or story of Alexander, and the Haft Paikar, the life story of Bahram Gur. Nezami's style is original and colorful; his works enjoyed great popularity, and episodes from his romantic poems were favorite subjects for miniature painters.

Faridoddin Attar, who was born possibly around 1136, was a great and original poet who produced numerous religious and didactic works. He was essentially a mystic, and as such exercised a great influence on Rumi. The best known of his works, the Mantiq-ut-Tair (translated by Fitzgerald as the Bird Parliament), is a mystical allegory in which the birds all set off in search of the mythical Simorgh, whom they wish to make their king. The story, which symbolizes the quest of the soul for union with God, ends with their discovery that they have no existence separate form the object of their search. The Simorgh then addresses them thus:

Pilgrim, Pilgrimage and Road Was but Myself toward Myself, and your Arrival but Myself at my own Door... Come, you lost Atoms, to your Center draw, And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw: Rays that have wandered into Darkness wide Return, and back into your Sun subside.

The thirteenth century produced two poetic geniuses of the first rank, Saadi and Rumi. It is also particularly notable for histories, of which many were inspired by these singularly troubled times. Hamdullah Mostofi produced notable works both of history and geography, as well as an epic, the Zafar Nameh or Book of Victory, in 75,000 couplets, and Nasiroddin Tusi wrote on philosophy and logic. Three notable poets of the period are Iraqi, author of the mystical Loma'at or Flashes; Amir Khosrow, known as "The Parrot of India" and author of no less than five divans, and Zakani the satirist.

Foremost in the ranks of historical works are Juvaini's Tarikh-e Jahan Gosha, an account of the Mongol conquests; the history of Juzjani, an important source book for the history of Moslem India; Rashidoddin's great Jami'-u-Tavarikh or Universal History, and the History of Vassaf. The style of the period tended to over-ornateness; Juvaini, according to Arberry, was "the most accomplished exponent of the prized art of verbal arabesque" while Vassaf "modeled his style on Juvaini at his most intricate and verbose." Of the writings of this school Levy remarks that it was "so filled with metaphor, allusion, and assonance, that the meaning was often lost in a tangle of verbiage". By contrast, the work of the conscientious Rashidoddin, considered by Browne to be the best of all the Persian historians, is a model of clarity.

Abu Abd Allah Musharraf Ibn Muslih-u-Din, known as Saadi, was born in Shiraz, probably in 1208 . After receiving his early education in Shiraz he studied at the Nizamia college in Baghdad, and thereafter traveled extensively, possibly as a wandering dervish. After leading a varied and adventurous life Saadi returned to his native city, and thenceforth devoted himself to poetry, composing the Bustan, the first of his major works, in 1257 and the second, the Gulistan, in the following year. The Bustan, or Garden consists of ten sections on morals and ethics, and is written in verse; the Gulistan, or Rose Garden, is a prose work of similar content with passages of poetry, and divided into a preface and eight books.

Writing of the Bustan, Mohammad Ali Forooghi says: "This book has no like or parallel, either in Persian or any other language, as regards elegance, eloquence, fluency, delicacy, charm, wisdom and insight ... In the history of Persian literature, with the exception of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and the Masnavi of Mowlana Jalal-u-Din (Rumi), no event has rivaled in importance" the appearance of the Bustan and Gulistan. Of these two great works, the Gulistan has been the most frequently translated. It is written in a style of singular beauty, in a sonorous, rhythmic and sometimes rhyming prose varied by passages of verse. The style is of great simplicity, sometimes even of terseness; as Professor Levy remarks, "he frequently depicts a whole scene within the limits of a line or so". The following passage (Gulistan I.35), though conveying little of the verve and elegance of the original, is an excellent example both of his brevity and of his down-to-earth wisdom.

I was in a vessel with some distinguished people when a skiff following us sank, and two brothers were drawn into and eddy." Save these two men", cried one of my companion to the boatman, "and I'll give you fifty dinars for each". The boatman dived in, but by the time he had rescued one the other had drowned. I said: "That man's time had come; that is why he was slow to rescue him, and quick to save the other". The boatman chuckled, and said: "What you say is true; but I felt more inclined to rescue this one, because once, when I was weary in the desert, he set me on a camel, while from the other I receive a whipping in my childhood".

Saadi was first and foremost a great lyric poet; he was, in fact, the first to establish the supremacy of the lyric over the formal ode, and thus paved the way for Hafiz, his only superior in this field. With his many-sided talent, his gifts both as a popular entertainer and a poet of the highest rank, Saadi is thus an author of universal appeal. "In his works," says E.G. Brown, "is matter for every taste, the highest and the lowest".

Jalal-u-Din Ibn Mohammad, known as Rumi, was born at Balkh in 1207. The son of a noted preacher, from whom he received his early education, Rumi was still young when his father left Balkh and, after some wandering, settled with his family at Konia in Turkey. From this place of residence comes the name of Rumi (Rum signifying Rome or Byzantium, and hence by extension Asia Minor), a title accorded him as a spiritual leader, and from which in turn is derived the name of the Darvish order he founded - the Mowlavi or Mevlevi order.

Rumi eventually became a preacher like his father, and after turning to Sufism developed into a religious leader of note and acquired a group of disciples. Then, in 1244, occurred an event that was to change Rumi's whose life. Shams-u-Din, the strange wandering Darvish of Tabriz, arrived in Konia, and Rumi at once fell under his spell. Convinced that he had found the perfect man, Rumi lodged him in his house, and for a year or so the two were inseparable companions. But the jealousy of Rumi's disciples was aroused, and after twice disappearing from Konia because of their hostility the mysterious dervish finally vanished forever. The association, though brief, had a profound effect upon the poet, firing him with that spiritual fervor which found spontaneous expression in his great mystical masterpieces- the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi and the Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi.

The Masnavi is a vast mystical epic in six books. The Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi, a collection of Rumi's verse named after the man whom he considered to have been his inspiration as a poet, contains some 40,000 couplets. Rumi's language throughout is direct and unaffected; he uses "words and constructions from common speech which otherwise scarcely appeared in Persian literature until the modernists" (R.A. Nicholson). He was first and foremost a dedicated Sufi and devoted teacher who used poetry to convey his message, and his verse, vigorous and unpremeditated, underwent little subsequent retouching. Into his works, "he put all that his brain and fertile imagination ever knew or conceived about theosophical doctrine and the transcendental interpretation of the world of phenomena" (Levy), and the result is "as stupendous in magnitude as it is sublime in content" (Nicholson). The Masnavi, says Browne, "deserves to rank among the great poems of all time".

The grand climax of the Masnavi is considered to be those lines where Rumi seems to foreshadow Darwin, whereas he is in fact preaching the ascent of the soul - a development, it has been assumed, of Pythagorean doctrine, but which may with equal plausibility be ascribed to the influence of Indian thought, or to Rumi's own imagination.

Of the poems of the Divan, Nicholson says that they "reach the utmost heights of which a poetry inspired by vision and rapture is capable, and these alone would have made him the unchallenged laureate of mysticism." Translations suitable for quotation are scarce: Arberry's version of a poem in which "the tumult and following tranquillity of a storm at sea symbolizes the spirit's experience in its journey out of and back to God" must suffice as an example.

Happy was I In the pearl's heart to lie Till, lashed by life's hurricane Like a tossed wave I ran. The secret of the sea I uttered thunderously; Like a spent cloud on the shore I slept, and stirred no more.

The fourteenth century produced a number of excellent poets, such as Ibn Yamin, Shabestari, Awhadi and Salman, and in Khaju on outstanding and productive poet, author of a divan and five idylls after the style of Nezami's Khamseh. Khaju anticipates the style of Hafiz, whom he strongly influenced; indeed, some critics have called Hafiz Khaju's pupil.

Shams-u-Din Mohammad, known as Hafiz, was born in Shiraz in 1348, and spent almost his whole life in his native city. That his education was excellent according to the standards of his day is implied by this sobriquet, "Hafiz" meaning one who can recite the Koran from memory. Little of interest is known of his life, He lived in an age of exceptional turmoil and confusion, but his inner serenity was such that the upheavals around him left almost no impression on his work. He was certainly very famous in his own lifetime. The best-known story about him (which may or may not be apocryphal) describes his encounter with Timur, and the oldest version of the tale, dated within a decade of the poets' death, is as follows. Hafiz, like other citizens of Shiraz, had been required to pay an indemnity to Timur, but had protested against his assessment, declaring himself penniless. Timur said: "But you are the one who wrote those verses:

If that unkindly Shiraz Turk. would take my hearth within her hand I'd Bokhara for the mole upon her cheek, or Samarghand.

A man who is prepared to barter Bokhara and Samarghand for a single mole cannot be a bankrupt". Hafiz replied: "It is on account of such extravagance that I am bankrupt". Because of this impromptu reply Timur cancelled the impost.

The Divan of Hafiz consists of 693 poems, of which 573 are ghazals, and this moderately sized volume is generally regarded as the greater work in all Persian literature, The dominating theme is Sufism, which enters into every lyric, whatever its formal theme, Hafiz' poems are noted for their sudden transitions of thought; Shah Shoja' is said to have remarked to Hafiz himself; "In one and the same song you write of wine, of Sufism and of the object of your affections". But the poems have nevertheless a consistency of their own: they possess not only a unity conferred by mood and form but, as has been remarked, an "unspoken train of thought". Here is Gertrude Bell's translation of the first ode of the Divan.

Arise, oh Cup-bearer, rise! and bring To lips that are thirsting the bowl they praise, For it seemed that love was an easy thing , But my feet have fallen on difficult ways. I have prayed the wind o'er my heart to fling The fragrance of musk in her his that sleeps In the night of her hair-yet no fragrance stays The teasers of my heart's blood my sad heart weeps. Here the Tavern-keeper who counsels you: "With wine, with red wine your prayer carpet dye!" There was never a traveler like him but knew The ways of the road and the hostelry. Where shall I rest, when the still night through, Beyond the gateway, Heart of my heart, The bells of the camels lament and cry: "Bind up thy burden again and depart!" The waves run high, night is clouded with fears, And eddying whirlpools clash and roar; How shall my drowning voice strike their ears Whose light-freighted vessels have reached the shore? I sought mine own; the unsparing years Have brought me mine own, a dishonored name What cloak shall cover my misery o'er When each jesting mouth has rehearsed my shame!

Oh Hafiz, seeking an end to strife, Hold fast in thy mind what the wise have write: "If at last thou attain the desire of thy life, Cast the world aside, yea, abandon it!"

"In Hafiz' hands," says Dr. Shafaq, "The mystical lyric on the one hand reached the summit of eloquence and beauty, and on the other manifested a simplicity all its own... In short words he stated ideas mighty and subtle. Quite apart from the sweetness, simplicity and conciseness which are apparent in every lyric of Hafiz, a spirit of genuine sincerity pervades every line. It is evident that the master's lyrics come straight from the heart; each poem is a subtle expression of the poet's innermost thoughts." According to Mirza Mohammad Qazvini, Hafiz is a genius "whose poems embrace and contain every beauty alike of language and meaning to be found in poetry, every quality of image and reality that exists in fine speech, and who is at the same time the most eloquent and melodious writer of every age, ancient and modern included".

The Divan of Hafiz remains to this day one of the best loved and most widely read collections of poetry in the Persian language; its author is accorded an honorific - Khajeh - and his mystical insight is recognized in the title Lisan-ul-Ghaib, or Tongue of the Invisible. Omens are still taken by opening his Divan with closed eyes, and selecting a passage at random.

The fifteenth century produced a number of notable historians. - Nezam-u-Din Shami , author of the Zafar Nameh (a history of Timur); Yazdi, who wrote a work of the same name; Hafiz-e Abru, Khafi, Dolatshah and Mir Khand, author of the immense Rowzat-as-Safa or Garden of Purity. Other prose writers of note include Davvani, author of the Akhlaq-e-Jalali, and Kashefi, who produced an elaborate prose paraphrase of Kelileh-va-Demne known as Anvari Suhaili (The Lights of Canopus). Fifteenth century poets include the Sufis Maghribi and Qasim-i Anvar, Katibi, Bushaq the parodist, the saintly Ni'mat-Allah-Vali, and Jami.

Jami, "universally regarded as the last eminent figure in the history of classical Persian literature" (Arberry) was born in 1414. A man of considerable erudition as well as of poetic genius, Jami produced some forty- five works, of which the best known are the Baharestan, the Divan, and the Haft Awrang or Seven Thrones, a series of four didactic works and three romances (Salman-o-Absal, Yusof-o-Zolaikha and Leili-o-Majnun) which he intended to rival the work of Nezami.

After Jami, who died shortly before the Safavid, Persian poetry is generally considered to have fallen into decline. There were indeed no poets of the very first rank after the fifteenth century, yet in this long period there was no lack of writers and poets of talent, some of them of great eminence.

Of the poets immediately following Jami, his nephew Hatif was a noted writer of romantic and historical epic; also famous were his pupils Asefi, Fighani (who earned himself the title of "The Little Hafiz"), Ahli and the Sufi poet Hilali. Later in the sixteenth century came the poets Hayrati, Kasimi, Kashi the panegyrist, Shani, Fasihi and Shafai.

Sa'id (born 1677), the greatest literary figure of the seventeenth century, is considered by some to be the best Persian poet after Jami. In early life he spent some time in India as court poet to the Mogul emperor Shah Jahan, and returned to Iran to become poet laureate to Shah Abbas II. Sa'id was a vivid and original poet who infused fresh life into the old forms and founded a new school. Also of note was his contemporary Fayyaz. A famous prose writer of the eighteenth century was Azar, author of the Atashkadeh (a biographical dictionary containing the lives of over 800 poets) as well as of a divan and a romantic epic. The prolific writer Hazin produced histories and an autobiography, as well as four divans. Also worthy of note is the poet Nejat.

In the nineteenth century Saba, poet laureate to Fath Ali Shah, composed a divan and an epic called the Shahnameh; as a poet he was excelled by Neshat, also author of a divan. Qa'ani (died 1853), the best writer of the nineteenth century and perhaps the most outstanding since Jami, was one of Iran's most brilliant and melodious poets. Well known prose works of the period include Naser-u-Din Shah's diaries of his three journeys to Europe and the literary biographies of the poet Reza Qoli Khan. This period was marked by the increasing influence of European literature, noticeable in the works of the poet Sheibani and others.

The real revival of Persian letters came in the early twentieth century. when the growing desire for reform inspired numerous satires. One of the most outstanding figures of this period was Iraj Mirza (died 1926), a poet of great talent. Other noted poets were Adib, Bahar, Lahuti, Shahryar, Aref and the poets Parvin E'tesami. Poets of more recent decades include Nima, Ra'di, Khanlari, Islami and the poetess Forough Farrokhzad. Some of these poets have introduced verse forms new to Persian literature. In prose fiction, which has now come into prominence for the first time, there is a comparable development. Hejazi and others have produced novels and stories in an elegant classical Persian, while another school, founded by the writer and lexicographer Dehkhoda and including Jame'l Zadeh, Sadeq Hedayat, Sadeq Chubak and Bozorg Alavi, has turned for inspiration not only to the lives of ordinary people but to the language of everyday speech. Hedayat, who died in 1951, wrote a large number of novels, stories and other works, and is by general consent the most eminent figure in the Persian literary scene of recent times.