Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/55

 THE COURT AT GHAZNI 31 or pouncing like a hawk upon Khwarizm beside the Sea of Aral, and then coursing south to Hamadan, almost within call of Baghdad itself, would settle down to listen to the songs of poets and the wise conversation of divines. If Mahmud is to Moslems for all time a model of a god-fearing king, zealous for the faith, his court has no less deservedly held a pattern of humane culture. Napoleon imported the choicest works of art from the countries he subdued to adorn his Paris; Mahmud did better, he brought the artists and the poets themselves to illuminate his court. From the cities of the Oxus and the shores of the Caspian, from Persia and Kho- rasan, he pressed into his service the lights of Oriental letters, and compelled them, not unwillingly, to revolve about him like planets in his firmament of glory. The fall of the Samanid dynasty, who had been noble pa- trons of Persian literature, left many homeless scholars and poets, who flocked with eagerness to the new centre of learning. The names of the many luminaries who shone at the court of Ghazni may not convey very definite ideas to Western readers, but they are among the leaders of Eastern literature and science, and some have a repu- tation outside the circle of Orientalists. Al-Biruni, the astronomer, chronologist, and even student of Sanskrit; Al-Farabi, the philosopher, whom Mahmud prized the more since Avicenna himself refused to be lured to Ghazni; Al-Utbi, the historian and secretary to the Sultan; Al-Baihaki, whose gossiping memoirs have earned him the title of " the Oriental Mr. Pepys; "