Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/237

 F I 11 F I 11 227 I have dived therein without finding any pearte it is the fault of my star and not of the sea.&quot; He then gave a sealed paper to Ayaz, begging him to hand it to the sultan in a leisure moment after 20 days had elapsed, and set off on his travels with no better equipment than his staff and a dervish s cloak. At the ex piration of the 20 days AyAz gave the paper to the sultan, who on opening it found the celebrated satire which is now always prefixed to copies of the Shahnamah, and which is perhaps one of the bitterest and severest pieces of reproach ever penned. Mahmud, in a violent rage, sent after the poet, and promised a large reward for his capture, but he was already in comparative safety. Firdousi directed his steps to Mazenderan, and took refuge with Kabous, prince of Jorjan, who at first received him with great favour, and promised him his continued protection and patronage ; learning, however, the circumstances under which he had left Ghaznin, he feared the resentment of so powerful a sovereign as Mahmud, who he knew already coveted his kingdom, and dismissed the poet with a magnificent present. Firdousi next repaired to Baghdad, where he made the acquaintance of a merchant, who introduced him to the vizier of the caliph, El Cader Billah, by presenting an Arabic poem which the poet had composed in his honour, The vizier gave Firdousi an apartment near himself, and related to the caliph the manner in which he had been treated at Ghaznin. The caliph summoned him into his presence, and was so much pleased with a poem of a thousand couplets, which Firdousi composed in his honour, that he at once received him into favour. The fact of his having devoted his life and talents to chronicling the renown of fire-worshipping Persians was, however, some what of a crime in the orthodox caliph s eyes ; in order, therefore, to recover his prestige, Firdousi composed another poem, of 9000 couplets, on the theme borrowed from the Koran of the loves of Joseph and Potiphar s wife Yustif and Zuleikha. This poem, though rare and little known, is still in existence the Eoyal Asiatic Society pos sessing a copy. But Mahmud had by this time heard of his asylum at the court of the caliph, and wrote a letter menacing his liege lord, and demanding the surrender of the poet. Firdousi, to avoid further troubles, departed for Ahwaz, a province of the Persian Irak, and dedicated his Yilsuf and Zideikha to the governor of that district. Thence he went to Kohistan, where the governor, Nasir Lek, was his intimate and devoted friend, and received him with great ceremony upon the frontier. Firdousi confided to him that he contemplated writing a bitter exposition of his shameful treatment at the hands of the sultan of Ghaznin ; but Nasir Lek, who was a personal friend of the latter, dissuaded him from his purpose, but himself wrote and remonstrated with Mahmud. Nasir Lek s message and the urgent representations of Firdousi s friends had the de sired effect ; and Mahmud not only expressed his intention of offering full reparation to the poet, but put his enemy Meimendi to death. The change, however, came too late ; Firdousi, now a broken and decrepit old man, had in the meanwhile returned to Tiis, and, while wandering through the streets of his native town, heard a child lisping a verse from his own satire, in which he taunts Mahmud with his slavish birth : &quot; Had Mahmud s father been what he is now A crown of gold had decked this aged brow ; Had Mahmud s mother been of gentle blood, In heaps of silver knee-deep had I stood.&quot; He was so affected by this proof of universal sympathy with his misfortunes that he went home, fell sick, and died. He was buried in a garden, but Aboul Casim Gourgani, chief sheikh of Tus, refused to read the usual prayers over his tomb, alleging that he was an infidel, and had devoted his life to the glorification of fire-worshippers and misbelievers. The next night, however, having dreamt that he beheld Firdousi in paradise dressed in the sacred colour, green, and wearing an emerald crown, he reconsidered his determination ; and the poet was henceforth held to be perfectly orthodox. He died in the year 41 1 of the Hegira (1020 A.D.),aged about eighty,eleven years after the comple tion of his great work. Mahmud had in the meanwhile des patched the promised hundred thousand pieces of gold to Firdousi, with a robe of honour and ample apologies for the past. But as the camels bearing the treasure reached one of the gates of the city, Firdousi s funeral was leaving it by another. His daughter, to whom they brought the sultan s present, refused to receive it ; but, his aged sister remember ing his anxiety for the construction of the stone embank ment for the river of Tus, this work was completed in honour of the poet s memory, and a large caravanserai built with the surplus. The fthahnamah is based, as we have seen, upon the ancient legends current among the populace of Persia, and collected by the Dihkans, a class of men who had the greatest facilities for this purpose. There is every reason to believe that Firdousi adhered faithfully to these records of antiquity, and that the poem is a perfect storehouse of the genuine traditions of the country. Among much that is marvellous or incongruous, therefore, we may fairly look for the records of real events ; and there is no doubt that, studied by the light of modern criticism, the volume will prove of great service and interest to future historians I and ethnologists. The entire poem has been published with a French trans lation in a magnificent folio edition, at the expense of the French Government, by the late learned and indefatigable j ever, and their great expense, make them difficult of access, while the original Persian, though easily procurable, is of I course a sealed book to the majority of European readers, i To supply this defect, Madame de Mohl has published in ! a cheap and convenient form the French translation, with her illustrious husband s critical notes and introduction, This will henceforth be the standard work on the subject, containing as it does a resume of everything that has ever been written on the Shahnamrth, or which can elucidate its contents. It is published at the &quot;Imprimerie Nationalc,&quot; Paris, under the title of Le Livre des Rois, par Aboil I Kasim Firdouti, traduit et commentc par Jules Mold, Memhre de I lnslitnt, Professeur an College de France , public par Mme. Mohl, Paris, 1876-7. (E. H. r.) FIRE. So general is the knowledge of fire and its uses that it is a question whether we have any authentic in stance on record of a tribe altogether ignorant of them. A few notices indeed are to be found in the voluminous literature of travel which would decide the question in the affirmative ; but when they are carefully investigated, their evidence is found to be far from conclusive. The missionary Krapf was told by a slave of a tribe in the southern part of Shoa who lived like monkeys in the bam boo jungles, and were totally ignorant of fire; but no better authority has been found for the statement, and the story, which seems to be current in Eastern Africa, may be nothing else than the propagation of fables about the Pygmies whom the ancients located around the sources of the Nile. Commodore Wilkes, commander of the United States exploring expedition, says that in Fakaafo or Bow- ditch Island &quot;there was no sign of places for cooking nor any appearance of fire,&quot; and that the natives felt evident alarm at the sparks produced by flint and steel and the smoke emitted by those with cigars in their mouths. The presence of the word aji, fire, in the Fakaafo vocabulary supplied by Hales the ethnographer of the expedition,
 * Jules de Mohl. The size and number of the volumes, how*