Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/274

Rh 254 S A N S A N the imams and diminished the prosperity of their capital, but Cruttenden in 1836 still estimated the population at 40,000, or, with the three neighbouring towns of Rauda, Jiraf, and Wady Dahr, at not less than 70,000. In 1870, when the imamate had been extinct for twenty years, and the town was governed by an elected sheikh and had lost its provinces, Halevy found it much decayed, with many of the palaces and public buildings demolished or used as quarries, but still presenting a comely aspect, with good streets, houses, and mosques. In 1872, having been hard pressed by the Bedouins for several years, Sanaa opened its gates to the Turks, who were then engaged in the reconquest of Yemen. In the following year Millingen estimated the population at only 20,000. The climate is good, though the extreme dryness of the air is trying. Rain usually falls in January and June, and more copiously in the end of July ; the markets are well supplied with grain and fruit; vineyards were formerly numerous, but were largely given up after an attack of vine disease some thirty years ago. Arabic writers give many discordant and fabulous traditions about the oldest history of Sanaa and its connexion with the ancient kingdom of Hiinyar. But most agree that its oldest name was Azal, which seenis to be the same word with Uzal in Gen. x. 27. A Himyarite nation of Auzalites occurs in a Syriac writer of the 6th century. The better-informed Arab writers knew also that the later name is due to the Abyssinian conquerors of Yemen, and that it meant in their language " fortified " (Bakri, p. 606 ; Noldeke, Oesch. d. Pers. u. Arab., p. 187). Sanaa became the capital of the Abyssinian Abraha (c. 530 A.D. ) who built here the famous church (Kalis), of whose splendour the Arabs give exag- gerated pictures, and which was destroyed two centuries later by order of the caliph Mansur (Azraki, p. 91). SANA'l. Abulmajd Majdiid b. Adam, commonly known as the hakim or philosopher Sana'i, the earliest among the great Sufic poets of Persia, was a native of Ghazna or Ghaznin (in the present Afghanistan), and flourished in the reigns of the Ghazna wid sultans Ibrahim (1059- 1099, 451-492 A.H.), his son Mas'iid (1099-1114), and his grandson Bahramshah, who, after some years of desperate struggle among members of his own family, ascended the throne in 1118 (512 A.H.) and died after a long and prosperous reign in 1152 (547 A.H.). The exact dates of the poet's birth and death are uncertain, Persian autho- rities giving the most conflicting statements. At any rate, he must have been born in the beginning of the second half of the llth century and have died between 1131 and 1150 (525 and 545 A.H.). He gained already at an early age the reputation of a very learned and pious man and of an accomplished minstrel. Like his con- temporaries Mas'xid b. Sa'd b. Salman (died 1131), Hasan of Ghazna (died 1179), and Uthman Mukhtari (died'l!49 or 1159), who was his master in the poetical art, he com- posed chiefly kasidas in honour of his sovereign and the great men of the realm, but a peculiar incident made him for ever abandon the highly remunerative although often perilous career of a court-panegyrist, and turn his poetical aspirations to higher and less worldly aims. One day, when he was proceeding to the royal palace to pre- sent an encomiastic song to SultAn Ibrdhim, he was taunted by a half-mad but witty jester, who proposed a toast to the poet's blindness, because with all his learning and piety he had as yet only succeeded in flattering kings and princes, who were mere mortals like himself, and entirely misinterpreted God's motive in creating him: Sana'i was so struck with the appropriateness of this satirical remark that he forthwith gave up all the luxuries of court-life, retired from the world, and devoted himself after the due performance of the pilgrimage exclusively to devotional exercises, pious meditations, and the com- position of Sufic poetry in praise of the Godhead and the divine unity. For forty years he led a life of retirement and poverty, and, although SultAn BalirAmshah offered him not only a high position at court, but also his own sister in marriage, he remained faithful to the austere and solitary life he had chosen. But, partly to show his gratitude to the king, partly to leave a lasting monu- ment of his genius behind him, that might act as a stimulus to all disciples of the pantheistic creed, he began to write his great double-rhymed poem on ethics and religious life, which has served as model to Farid-uddin 'Attar's a.nd Jalal-uddin Rumi's Sufic masterpieces, the ffadikat-ulhakikat, or " Garden of Truth " (also called Alkitdb alfakhn), in ten cantos, dealing with the following topics : unity of the Godhead, the divine word, the excellence of the prophet, reason, knowledge and faith, love, the soul, worldly occupation and inattention to higher duties, stars and spheres and their symbolic lore, friends and foes, separation from the world, &c. One of SanA'i's earliest disciples, who wrote a preface to this work, 'Ali al-Raffa, alias Muhammed b. 'Ali Rakkdm, assigns to its composition the date 1131 (525 A.H.), which in a consider- able number of copies appears as 1140 (535 A.H.), and states besides that the poet died immediately after the completion of his task. Now, San&'i cannot possibly have died in 1131, as another of his mathnawis, the Tarik-i-tahkik, or " Path to the Verification of Truth," was composed, according to a chronogram in its last verses, in 1134 (528 A.H.), nor even in 1140, if he really wrote, as the Atashkada says, an elegy on the death of Amir Mu'izzi ; for this court-poet of Sultan Sanjar lived till 1147 or 1148 (542 A.H.). It seems, therefore, that Taki Kashi, the most accurate among Persian biographers, is right after all in fixing Sana'i's death in 1150 (545 A.H.), the more so as 'Ali al-Raffd himself distinctly says in his preface that the poet breathed his last on the llth of Sha'ban, "which was a Sunday," and it is only in 1150 that this day happened to be the first of the week. Sana'i left, besides the Hadikah and the Tarik i-tahkik, several other Sufic mathnawis of similar purport : for instance, the Sair ufibdd ild'lmadd, or " Man's Journey towards the Other World " (also called Kunuz-urmmtiz, " The Treasures of Mysteries ") ; the 'Ishkndma, or " Book of Love ; " the 'Aklndma, or " Book of Intellect ; " the Kdrndma, or "Record of Stirring Deeds," &c.; and an extensive diw&n or collection of lyrical poetry. His tomb, called the " Mecca " of Ghazna, is still visited by numerous pilgrims. Sana'i's Hadikah still lacks a critical edition, for which 'Abd- ullatif al-'Abbasi's commentary (completed 1632 and preserved in a somewhat abridged form in several copies of the India Office Library) would form an excellent basis. See, on the poet's life and works, Ouseley, Biogr. Notices, pp. 184-187 ; Rieu's and Fliigel's Catalogues, &c. SAN ANTONIO, a city of the United States, incor- porated in 1873, the county-seat of Bexar (Bejar) county and the principal centre of western Texas, is situated in the fertile plain watered by the head-streams of the San Antonio river, which, after a course of 200 miles, falls into the Gulf of Mexico at Espiritu Santo Bay. It is an im- portant junction for several of the Texan railways, lying on the main routes from the States to Mexico, 153 miles north of the frontier at Laredo. San Antonio proper, or the business part of the city, lies between the San Antonio and the San Pedro, and has been nearly all rebuilt since 1860. Chihuahua (formerly San Antonio de Valero), west of the San Pedro, is still almost exclusively Mexican ; and Alamo, on somewhat higher ground to the east of the San Antonio, is largely inhabited by Germans. The total popu- lation of the city was in 1870 12,256 (1957 coloured) and 20,550 (3036) in 1880. Newspapers are published in English, German, and Spanish. Flour, beer, meat- extract, ice, candles, and soap are the local manufactures.