Page:Persian Literature (1900), vol. 1.djvu/23

Rh posed his “Yusuf and Salikha,” a poem as Mohammedan in spirit as the “Sháh Námeh” was Persian. In 1021, or 1025, he returned to Tus to die, and to be buried in his own garden—because his mind had not been orthodox enough that his body should rest in sacred ground. At the last moment—the story takes up again—Mahmud repented and sent the poet the coveted gold. The gold arrived at one gate while Firdusi’s body was being carried by at another; and it was spent by his daughter in the building of a hospice near the city. For the sake of Mahmud let us try to believe the tale.

We know much about the genesis of this great epic, the “Sháh Námeh”’; far more than we know about the make-up of the other great epics in the world’s literature. Firdusi worked from written materials; but he produced no mere labored mosaic. Into it all he has breathed a spirit of freshness and vividness: whether it be the romance of Alexander the Great and the exploits of Rustem, or the love scenes of Zal and Rodhale, of Bezhan and Manezhe, of Gushtásp and Kitayim. That he was also an excellent lyric poet, Firdusi shows in the beautiful elegy upon the death of his only son; a curious intermingling of his personal woes with the history of his heroes. A cheerful vigor runs through it all. He praises the delights of wine-drinking, and does not despise the comforts which money can procure. In his descriptive parts, in his scenes of battle and encounters, he is not often led into the delirium of extravagance. Sober-minded and free from all fanaticism, he leans not too much to Zoroaster or to Mohammed, though his desire to idealize his Iranian heroes leads him to excuse their faith to his readers. And so these fifty or more thousand verses, written in the Arabic heroic Mutakarib metre, have remained the delight of the Persians down to this very day—when the glories of the land have almost altogether departed and Mahmud himself is all forgotten of his descendants.

Firdusi introduces us to the greatness of Mahmud of Ghazna’s court. Omar Khayyám takes us into its ruins; for one of the friends of his boyhood days was Nizam al-Mulk, the grandson of that Toghrul the Turk, who with his Seljuks had supplanted the Persian power. Omar’s other friend was Ibn Sabbah, the “old Man of the Mountain,” the founder of the Assassins. The doings of both worked misery upon Chris-