1991. The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Brill

Том 13. Индекс (стр. 85)

Persian Ghazal.ii; Hamasa.ii; Hidja'.ii; Kasida.2; Khamsa; Madih.2; Malik al-Shucara3;86 LITERATURE, poetryMarthiya.2; Mathnawi.2; Mukhtarat.2; Musammat; Mustazad; Rubaci.l; Shahranglz.l; Shacir.2; Shicr.2; Takhallus.2; Tardjic-band; Zahriyyat.2; [in Suppl.]Habsiyya; Kitca.2see also Radlf.2; Safawids.III; SakL2; Shaman; Shacr.3; Sharif; Wa-sekht; YaghmaDjandaki; [in Suppl.] Micradj.6; Sawladjan; and -> LITERATURE.POETRY.INDO-PERSIANand POETRY.MYSTICALanthologies Mukhtarat.2; Tadhkira.2anthologists cAwfi; Dawlat-Shah; Lutf CAH Beg; Taki Awhadi; Taki al-Din;[in Suppl.] Djadjarmi.2biographies Dawlat-Shah; Sam Mirza; Tadhkira.2; Taki al-Din; Wafa.4stories Barzu-nama; Farhad wa-Shirin; Iskandar Nama.ii; Kalila wa-Dimna;Madjnun Layla.2; Wamik wa cAdhra3; Wis u Ramin; Yusuf and Zulaykha. 19th-century poets Muhammad b. Wasifsee also Sahl b. Harun b. Rahawayh10th-century poets Baba-Tahir; Dakiki; Kisa'i; al-Muscabi; Rudaki; Shahid; [inSuppl.] Abu Shakur Balkhi; Macruf Balkhi11th-century poets Asadi; Azraki; Farrukhi; Firdawsi; Gurgani; Katran; Lamici,Abu '1-Hasan; Manucihri; cUnsuri12th-century poets cAbd al-Wasic Djabali; Anwari; Falaki Shirwani; clmadi (and[in Suppl.]); Khakani; Labibi; Mahsati; Mucizzi; Mukhtari; Sabir; Sana'i; SayyidHasan Ghaznawi; Shufurwa; Suzani; cUmar Khayyam; Zahir-i Faryabi; [in Suppl.]cAmcak; Djamal al-Din Isfahani; Mudjir al-Din Baylakani13th-century poets cAttar; Baba Afdal; Djalal al-Din Rumi; 'Iraki; Kamal al-DinIsmacil; Nizami Gandjawi; Pur-i Baha3; Sacdi; [in Suppl.] Djadjarmi.lsee also Shams-i Kays; Sudi14th-century poets cAssar; Awhadi; Banakiti; Hafiz; Humam al-Din b. cAla' Tabrizi;Ibn-i Yamin; clsami; Khwadju; Nizari Kuhistani; Rami Tabrizi; Salman-i Sawadji;cUbayd-i Zakani; [in Suppl.] Badr-i Caci; Djadjarmi.2; clmad al-Din CAH, FakihiKirmanisee also Fadl Allah Hurufi; Hamd Allah al-Mustawfi al-Kazwini; Sudi15th-century poets Bushak; Djami; Fattahi; Hamidi; Katibi; Sayfi cArudi Bukhari;Sharaf al-Din CAH Yazdi; Shirin Maghribi, Muhammad; [in Suppl.] cArif!see also Djem16th-century poets Banna'i; Basiri; Fighani; Hatifi; Hilali; Muhtasham-i Kashani;Mushfiki; Nawci; Sahabi Astarabadi; Sam Mirza; cUrfi Shirazi; Wahshi Bafkisee also Lukman b. Sayyid Husayn17th-century poets Asir; al-Damad; Kadri; Kalim Abu Talib; Kashif; Lahidji.2;Nazim Farrukh Husayn; Sa'ib; Sacida Gilani; Shawkat Bukhari; Shifa'i Isfahani;Tahir Wahid; Taki Awhadi; cUnwan, Muhammad Rida; Zuhuri Turshizi; ZulaliyiKhwansarisee also al-cAmili; Ghanimat; Khushhal Khan Khatak; [in Suppl.] Findiriski;and ->> LITERATURE.POETRY.INDO-PERSIAN18th-century poets Hatif; Hazin; Lutf CAH Beg; Nadjat; Shihab Turshizi; Wafa.2and 3see also Azad Bilgrami19th-century poets Furugh; Furughi. 1 and 2; Ka'ani; Kurrat al-cAyn; Nashat; RidaKuli Khan: Saba; Sabzawari; Shaybani; Shihab Isfahani; Surush; Wafa.5-9;Wakar; Yaghma Djandaki; [in Suppl.] Wisalsee also Ikbal; Ka'im-makam-i Farahani; Sipihr; Wafa.420th-century poets Bahar; Furughi.3; Lahuti; Nafisi, Sacid; Nima Yushidj; ParwinTtisami; Pur-i Dawud; Rashid Yasimi; Shahriyar; Shurida, Muhammad Taki;LITERATURE, poetry 87Sipihri; Wuthuk al-Dawla; Yaghma'i; Yazdi; [in SuppL] cArif, Mlrza; Ashraf al-Dm Gilani; Dehkhuda; clshkisee also Ikbal

LITERATURE, prose (стр. 89)

Persian Hikaya.ii; Iran.vii; Kissa.4; Makala.2; Mawsuca.2; Nasihat al-Muluk.2; Risala.2;[in SuppL] Micradj.6see also Safawids.III; and -> LITERATURE.DRAMA; PRESSworks Bakhtiyar-nama; Dabistan al-Madhahib; Kahraman-nama; Kalila wa-Dimna;Ma^nun Layla.2; Marzban-nama; Wamik wa cAdhra5

see also Nizam al-Mulk; Nizami cArudi Samarkand!11th-century authors Kay Ka'us b. Iskandar; Nasir-i Khusraw12th-century authors Hamidi; al-Kashani; Nasr Allah b. Muhammad; Nizami cArudiSamarkand!; Rashid al-DIn (Watwat); al-Samcam, Abu '1-Kasim13th-century authors Sacdi14th-century authors Nakhshab!15th-century authors Kashifi16th-century authorssee also Shemc!17th-century authors clnayat Allah Kanbu18th-century authors Mumtaz19th-century authors Shay bamsee also Furugh.2

Том

Газал 2

GHAZAL. "song, elegy of love", often also "theerotico-elegiac genre". The term is Arabic, but passedinto Persian, Turkish and Urdu and acquired aspecial sense in these languages.The semantic development of the word from theroot ghzl, "to spin", "spinning", is not in doubt, butpresupposes intermediary meanings for which wehave no evidence; the ghazal was not in fact a songof women spinning, like that of which Tibullusspeaks (ed. Rat, Paris 1931, Book II, no. i, line 60),but a man's song addressed to a girl; contaminationby the noun ghazal "gazelle", from the images andcomparisons associated with it, is not perhaps to beexcluded (cf. "to make sheep's eyes"). Whatever thereason, the idea evoked by the term ghazal, like theEnglish "gallantry" and particularly the noun"gallant", now fallen into disuse, became elaboratedin a realm of ideas where there mingle the notions offlirtation, compliments made to a lady, complaintsat her coldness or inaccessibility and the descriptionof effeminate languishing attitudes on the part of thelover (cf. the noun-adjective ghazil, "affected,mincing, without vigour"; on the ambiguity of theidea, see Kudama, 42, to be compared with thedefinition in LA, xiv, 4, line 20, where the stress ison the idea of "amorous addresses"). The wordghazal, as early as in a line of al-Akhtal (ed. Salhani,142), is associated with lahw "pleasure"; in a contemporarypoet, Suraka (ed. Husayn, in JRAS, 1936,no. 20, verse 9), the term appears in the phraseyalhu ild ghazal al-shabdb "he seeks his pleasure inthe ghazal of youth". The meaning of love-songinspired by youthfulness is clear in a verse attributedto Waddah [q.v.], where the composition of ghazalsand the fear of death are contrasted. By the 3rd/9thcentury, ghazal had finally acquired the generalsense given above (see al-Washshd*, 54 bottom, IbnKutayba, Poesis, 525); the comparative aghzalu is asmuch applied to a verse as to a poet and thusrepresents the general idea of preeminence in thisgenre (see Aghdnfi, i, 114, line 5, and Ibn Rashik, ii,115). The noun-adjective ghazil means the "elegiacpoet" as early as the 3rd/gth century (thus Aghdnfi,viii, 352 and Aghdnl3, xx, 149 onwards). The 5thform of the verb, taghazzala, before it meant "tocompose love-songs", would seem to have had themeaning "to express a sorrow of love" (see thepassage in Ibn Rashik, ii, 118); for his period,Kudama established a distinction between ghazaland taghazzul (see Kudama, 42, where the basis ofthe ghazal is further distinguished from that of thenaslb).To the same realm of ideas as ghazal there belongthe verbal noun and the verb tashblb and shabbaba,whose etymology, curiously enough, was notdiscovered by certain Arab critics (see Kudama, in

Ibn Rashik, ii, 121); the term is quite certainlyderived from shabdb, "youthfulness, youth"; it isfrequently used as a simple synonym for ghazal andnaslb (LA, i, 463, line 21). According to Ibn Durayd(in Ibn Rashik, ii, 122 bottom), the term naslb wouldbe more commonly used; the origin of this remainsobscure; perhaps it originally described a type ofdedicatory verse addressed to a lady; but thepossibility must not be excluded of a relationship,by loss of emphasis, with the word nasb, "a kind ofcamelman's lament similar to the hidd*" (see al-Djahiz, Tarbi', index; Aghdnfi, ix, 133 and also vi,63, where it is a matter of a singer bearing the tribalname of al-Nasbi). The word naslb, in ancient times,designates the elegiac genre, in a list in which therealso figure the poem of praise, the satire and thefakhr (thus in Ibn Rashik, i, 100 and especially IbnSallam in Aghdnl*, viii, 6, line 4; cf. ibid., 97, line 12);sometimes this genre appears in a five-fold list (seeIbn Rashik, loc. cit., bottom of page). In certainpassages, the verb nasaba constructed with biclearlymeans "to sing of the beauty of a lady andthe agitation she inspires" (thus in Aghdnl3, vi, 219,viii, 99, 123). It is well known that in its commonmeaning naslb designates the amatory elegiacprologue at the beginning of a kaslda. Kudama, 42,attempted very artificially to establish a distinctionbetween the thematic elements of the ghazal andthose of the naslb.i. — THE Ghazal IN ARABIC POETRYi. The amatory elegy in Arabic poetry can bemade the subject of historical and critical study onlyfrom the last quarter of the 6th century A.D. onwards.Of course, we have no text originating in this era, butthose which have come down to us under the namesof poets belonging to this period, such as Imru3 al-Kays, Tarafa and a number of others, are veryinstructive. At that time the ghazal was handledaccording to a tradition which is clearly ancient andhonoured. According to all the evidence, this genrewas one of those most current in "spontaneouspoetry", that is, in the camelman's chant (or hidd*}-,at this level it must have been improvised and forthis reason no example of it has come down to us.Under what influences, where, and when did thereappear and become established the custom ofprefacing the kaslda with an amatory elegiac prelude,known from the ist/7th century onwards as thenaslb ? We can only guess at the answers tothese questions. Since the kaslda was both originallyand essentially not a framework but a lyrical movementconsisting of a sequence in the key of fakhr or aDionysiac expression of the ego, it is possible thatthe naslb owed its place to the very importance ofthe carnal and psychic impulses which it evoked; infact there also occur in the ahal of the Tuaregs thesame lyrical flights introducing identical explosionsof boasting; the procedure is not therefore peculiarto the Arabs. Though at first episodic in the poetryof the nomads of Central and Eastern Arabia, theelegiac production known as naslb seems to havebecome incorporated in the kaslda under the influenceof a fashion current among or created bypoets belonging to groups on the Euphrates steppe;certain data accepted among clrakl scholars indeedassume that the naslb is the invention of a certainIbn Hidham (see Ibn Sallam, ed. Hell, 13, line 9) orof the famous Muhalhil [q.v.] (ibid, and also al-Djahiz, Baydn, ed. Harun, ii, 297) or even in fact ofImru3 al-Kays (Ibn Kutayba, 40, 52); as may be seen,these indications demonstrate the existence of atradition which was still living in the 3rd/9th centuryand according to which the naslb was associated withan idea peculiar to the Bakri poets or others in theorbit of al-HIra (see Blachere, Litt., chap. V, § C.).This feature is significant since, in so far as it maybe historically acceptable, it permits us to infer thatthis centre, with its musicians and its circle of poets,probably exercised an influence on the ghazalcultivated in the desert. It would seem that thisGHAZAL 1029influence became apparent in the last quarter ofthe 6th century A.D. at the latest. From certainindications it may be possible to descry a similarphenomenon in other centres closely linked with thebadawi way of life such as Tayma3, Mecca and al-Ta'if. Most probably, though of still uncertain date,

the verse texts attributed to ancient poets likeTarafa, Zuhayr, cAlkama, Imru5 al-Kays, Hassanb. Thabit, al-Acsha Maymun, and al-Hutay'a, tomention only the most representative, evokereasonably well the themes which were habituallydeveloped in the amatory elegiac naslb of this period.The apostrophe to the deserted encampment, thedescription of the migrating group disappearing intothe distance, the sorrow aroused by the separation,the memory left in the poet's heart by the promisesof the beloved, the recital of the efforts made torejoin her, all constitute a thematic sequence arisingfrom the environment; even the detail of the development,as much as the stock phrases, derives from thesame origin; to a certain extent, the thematicelements belong to the real world but they aretransposed into a kind of fiction by the use made ofthem. Already at this time convention may wellhave been very powerful; everything leads us tobelieve that the elegiac poet from now on makes useof a vocabulary, of formulas, of stock phrases, whoseuse reinforces the tyranny of convention.2. Among the generation of poets which aroseabout 50/670, the amatory elegiac genre received aparticular twist which conditioned its subsequentdevelopment. This generation to varied degrees freeditself from the grip of the poetic tradition inheritedfrom Central and Eastern Arabia. The three areasof the Muslim Arab East which were to struggle forleadership during the eighty years or so whichfollowed differed in the extent of their contributionto this change. Syria and Palestine were of secondaryimportance and followed the lead of the Arabianpeninsula and clrak. The latter, while occupying aprominent place in the poetic movement, carried onthe previous tradition; the artists and versifiers wereled by circumstances to specialize in the laudatory,satirical and descriptive styles; in the works of therepresentative clraki poets, amatory elegiac themesoccur only in the nasibs of the kasidas-, in some, likeal-Farazdak, they are in fact noticeably neglected;in all, they are treated in a manner which suggests amere prolongation of the tradition passed on fromthe desert and cultivated at al-HIra or under itsinfluence.In the Hidiaz on the other hand, and more particularlyin Mecca, al-Ta'if and Madina, the situationwas entirely different. The influx of wealth from theconquest, the disruption of the social structureresulting from the enrichment and political advancementof certain families such as the Umayyads, theZubayrids, and several Makhzumi clans, the introductioninto the population of Mecca and Madinaof foreign elements, particularly captives broughtfrom Palestine and clrak, as well as the choice ofMadina as political capital, had all played their partin turning this province, with its urban centres, intoa world very different from that which the generationof the Caliph cUmar I had known. The establishmentof the Umayyad dynasty in Syria, the gradualpolitical and religious rise of the cities of clrak andthe ten years during which the revolt of the Zubayridscut off the Hid]az from the rest of the Empire,succeeded in giving society in Madina and Mecca acharacter of its own. Certain aristocratic elementsrenounced an active role and sought solace for theirunsatisfied ambitions in the pursuit of pleasure andthe taste for sentimental intrigues. The anecdotalliterature collected by Abu '1-Faradj al-Isfahani fromthe writings of the clraki "logographers", especiallythe kadi of Mecca, al-Zubayr b. Bakkar (d. 256/870),subject to the necessary critical adjustments, helpsus to form an idea of what life in this circle was like.Women occupied an important place, together withdilettanti, aristocrats with violent passions, intriguers,characters of doubtful morality, singers and singinggirls.The setting was favourable to the developmentof lyric poetry; by a happy chance, the aristocracyproduced several poets like al-cArdjI, al-Ahwa? andcUmar b. Abi Rablca, who devoted their talent tothe celebration of their love affairs; others of morehumble origin like Kuthayyir and Nusayb imitated

them, without entirely being able to avoid becomingcourt poets. In this poetic movement a significantpart is played by singers and singing-girls, as muchby reason of the practices they introduced as becausethey took part in the composition of the works;often in fact they selected fragments of verse orcommissioned them from poets, which implies anartistic production entirely governed by musicalconsiderations.The study of the amatory elegiac verse whichdeveloped in the Hidiaz between about 50/670 andthe end of the first quarter of the 2nd/8th centurycomes up against the difficulty posed by the state ofthe texts. On the one hand a considerable volume ofverse has disappeared; on the other, what hassurvived has often been preserved only in anthologiesor late or even very recent recensions, as is forexample the case with the poems of Kuthayyir (ed.Peres, Algiers 1928-30) and those of Nusayb (ed.Rizzitano in RSO, xxii, 1943); frequently, theserecensions consist only of fragments which poorlyrepresent the original outpouring; even in the case ofthe relatively important Dlwdn attributed to cUmarb. Abi Rabica (ed. P. Schwarz, Leipzig 1901-2, 1909;reprinted by cAbd al-Hamid, Cairo 1952), manyproblems arise; it is in fact apparent that thiscollection includes pieces which give evidence ofreconstruction, retouching, and indeed the hand ofimitators. The very conditions in which the ghazalof the Hidiaz was born explain the disappearance ofthese works and the state of those which survive;many were simply extempore compositions, occasionalpieces, ephemeral by nature; some seem to have beencommissioned by musicians, singing girls or dilettantifrom poets forced to compose in haste and torefurbish earlier works. The uncertainties ofattribution are great; it was indeed enough for apiece to contain the name of cAzza for it to beattributed to Kuthayyir, who was accustomed tocelebrate a lady of this name; often too, single linesor pieces attributed to a poet are nothing more thanelaborations in verse drawn from fictional biographiesor romances about the poet; thus the small historicaland literary value to be accorded to such compositionsis easily seen. Taken together, nevertheless, theamatory elegiac texts which have been preservedallow us to evoke satisfactorily the general characteristicsof the style in the period under consideration.In order to estimate the extent to which this ispossible, however, we must constantly keep in mindthe fact that our texts contain passages where theinfluence of the courtly style of clrak appears, asindicated below.The poetic instrument used by the poets of theHidjaz was substantially different from that of theircontemporaries in Central and Eastern Arabia.GHAZALUnder local influences the connexion between poetryand music remained very much alive; this is shownespecially in the use of metres practically unknownto the poets in the desert tradition; thus, the khaflf,the hazadi, the ramal are found to be extensivelyrepresented among the elegists, and the identity ofthese with the musical modes of the same namesmust be emphasized. Among the poets of this schoolenjambement is much less rare than among theirdesert rivals. The vocabulary is equally characteristic;free from rare words and hapax legomena, itaims at simplicity and naturalness; the dialogue formis frequent and corresponds to the description ofreal scenes; naturally, many expressions are properto the evocation of feelings connected with theexcitements of the heart and the flesh.The elegists of the Hidjaz were primarily poets ofthe desert school. Their surroundings simply broughtabout a development which set them aside from themain stream of the badawi tradition. This can easilybe shown from the texts. Often, for example, theelegist of Madina and Mecca invokes the desertedencampment, describes the departure of a migratinggroup, bewails his sorrow at a separation; thusthematic elements proper to the nasib of the kasida

continue to appear (cf. specimens in Kuthayyir, ed.Peres, no. 44, and cArdji, no. 2, lines 7 ff. and no. 5,lines 1-4). These remnants of the desert setting leadquickly to stylization, but they still do not precludea certain realism of description. This derives fromthe abiding nature of things. The elegist is above alla lyric poet and self-expression cannot do withouta minimum of sincerity in its references to life. Thevarious themes which he develops are in effect thehighlights of the more or less stylized narration ofknown circumstances or real events; even the poeticaltexts inserted in fictional or romantic narratives stillrepresent elements of verisimilitude within thepattern of the whole. It is clear that the elegist ofthe Hidjaz loves to note those details which evokereality. We can therefore say that this lyric poetrywas above all marked by an effort to express sentimentsand emotions which were really felt, torepresent scenes where the participants retainedtheir attitudes and reactions; this is so unquestionablethat in many cases the poet felt obliged to allude tothe lady by a name other than her own.A rapid examination of several themes treated bythe elegists of the Hidjaz demonstrates the trendsjust sketched and emphasizes the persisting badawiinfluences. The thematic sequence relating to theobstacles encountered by the poet in seeking to findhis lady reproduces the essential features of what isfound in the desert tradition. There are few novelties;at the most we may note a certain harping on theobstacles arising from the separation of the sexes andthe rigour of the new ethic in the society of Madinaand Mecca; we may also note the realism concealedbeneath the fiction of conventional personages suchas the rafcib or "censor", the kdshih or "ill-wisher",the 'ddhil or "blamer"; according to our biographicalinformation, these personages correspond to knownreal persons. The poetical texts also refer very oftento the difficulties which arise from human nature, tothe quarrels and misunderstandings between lovers,to the rupture of relations never to be resumed (thuscUmar b. Abl Rablca, ed. cAbd al-Hamid, 61, and alsoal-cArdji in Aghdnfi, i, 392). One element, however, isoriginal: in these elegists, an important r61e is playedby the evocation of the meeting of the poet and alady on the occasion of the Pilgrimage; clearly thetheme in question does not refer to imaginarycircumstances; a typical example is to be found inal-cArdjI (see Diwdn, no. 13 and the account inAghdni3, i, 408). In these meetings, the lady acts thepart of "the silent one" but the lyricism of the poetrequires nothing more than her presence for itsrelease. Similarly, the thematic sequence concernedwith rediscovery is very suggestive, and appearsfrequently; here again the poet refers to events he hasexperienced, to night rides to rejoin his lady, to thesurprise caused by his unexpected arrival; hardlyhave they met when the two lovers enter upon adialogue whose simple pattern evokes a conversationwhich has actually taken place; the amorous quest isrecorded as an exploit, which re-establishes theconnexion between the elegiac theme and fakhr(thus in €Umar b. Abl Rabica, ed. cAbd al-Hamid,no. i, line 25 ff.; no. 6, line 10 and no. 258); amongthe Hidjaz poets rediscoveries are given substanceby the description of details designed to emphasizethe reality of the experience; thus, the lover, eitheralone or with companions, surprises the lady amusingherself with her women; sometimes the event isprearranged and organized by the lady; the twolovers meet in a secluded spot (thus in al-cArdjlno. 13, line 15, no. 23, line 2); the account veryfrequently ends with a description of the beloved andthe evocation of sensual excitement between the twolovers (thus cUmar b. Abi Rabica, no. i, lines 35-41,no. 5, lines 10 ff., no. 258, lines 9 ff.; al-cArdji, no. 47,lines 6-26).There emerges from the whole pattern of theseamatory elegiac themes a certain literary concept oflove, which, for convenience, we shall call the Hidjazmanner. This concept is seen primarily in the imagesformed of the lover and his lady. The latter remains

a somewhat unfocussed character, owing to the lackof any poetess able to express herself in verse withthe authority of such men as cUmar b. Abl Rabica,Nusayb or Kuthayyir; her physical appearance isdescribed according to the canon already establishedin the traditional nasib, evoking a softness andluxury that correspond with an ideal of womanhoodhaving little in common with the generality of realbadawi women; socially, she belongs to a noblefamily, which does not at all imply any insistence onthe part of the elegist on celebrating her intellectualmerits; on the contrary, under the influence of atradition which may have already been establishedfor centuries, the lady is depicted as a creatureformidable in charm, coquetry and beauty, whichshe wields with a kind of unself-consciousness andat times with manifest cruelty. Nevertheless, on thispoint, the feminine ideal differs from what seems tohave been the ideal of the desert poets; in the textswe are considering, there is a certain contradictionin the fact that the Hidjaz elegist takes pleasure insaying that his lady is the embodiment of womanlylove, humble in the face of Destiny, eagerly submissiveto her seducer (as in cUmar b. Abl Rablca,passim, and esp. no. 7, lines 1-4, nos. 181 and 187,lines 13-18, and no. 242); this attitude is whatdistinguishes the Hidjaz lady most completely fromher clraki sister, so imbued with courtly spirit. Thepoet-lover, in contrast to the lady, emerges from ourtexts with more defined features; two thematicsequences can be distinguished: in the first the loverrepresents himself according to the psychology andin the attitudes already familiar in the deserttradition; like his badawi brother, the elegist ofMadina and Mecca appears to us as a victim of hislove for his lady, a prey to the hostility of a world inwhich he is alone with his agony and despair; hislosoGHAZAL 1031tears flow easily and his complaints are shrill; afairly large number of cliches strengthen the alreadyapparent links with a completely traditionalmentality; at many points, even in his plaintiveattitudes, the poet-lover reveals his latent badawitraits, and, conspicuously, his/aMf, one example ofthis lies in his boast of kitmdn, or "discretion", andof sabr or "constancy and courage in love"—twovirtues to display which is to infringe them. A secondthematic sequence comprises dominant ideas derivingfrom a certain realism; of particular importance inthis field are those fragments of passages in whichthe poet portrays himself as a breaker of hearts, akind of Don Juan whom no beautiful woman canresist (see details in Aghdni3, i, 119, 139, 144, 166 f.;<Umar b. Abl Rablca, no. 10, lines 10-18, and no. 45);the realities of life are also evident in the developmentswhich might be grouped under the title "lovewithers with age"; indeed, the poet often stresses thetransience of the passions he has aroused or felt;this theme is further linked with the tendency of thedesert poets to replace the elegiac nasib with astereotyped sententious reflection on the flight ofyouth (thus al-Farazdak, ed. Sawl, 78 and 89).Whatever the reason, the Hidjaz manner stands inabsolute contradiction here to one of the basicprinciples of the courtly spirit, which imposes on thelover the obligation of submission to the lady of hischoice. There is also another point on which thiscontradiction is accentuated even more decisively;the Hidiaz manner excludes *iffa, that is, a refusal toyield to desire, both in the lover and the lady. Thesepoets adhere to what is human and do not seek totranscend it; their sensuality is as much part oftheir love as is their constancy (cf. the strikinglysensual passages in al-cArdji, no. 15, lines 19-21,no. 5, lines n f., no. 131, line 7, no. 28, lines i, 9;and frequent also in cUmar b. Abi Rabica, as no. 28,lines 2, 5). In view of this, these poets have beennamed ibdhiyyun, "licentious"; it is justifiable,provided one makes it clear that their licence doesnot descend to indecency or depravity; it is verynoteworthy in this connexion that the Hidiaz

manner never offends against nature and a certainrespect for good manners.3. A new phase in the development of the amatoryelegiac genre begins at the point where one canobserve the characteristic features of cUdhri [q.vJ]love or the courtly spirit. It is very difficult to fixthe terminus a quo when this phase makes itsappearance; in the texts ascribed to the Hidjazelegists there are in fact widespread courtly tracesto be noticed, which arise from the uncertainties ofsubsequent revision; this very delicate question hasnot so far been the subject of any very profoundresearch, even though it affects the whole problem.The origins of ^Udhri love are nevertheless illuminatedwith a new clarity by a very elaborate examinationof the poetic texts attributed to Djamll [q.v.] orMadjnun [q.v.]; this examination must of course belinked with an enquiry into these poets and their<UdhrI rivals. Here and now it can be postulated thatthe amatory elegiac poetry of courtly inspirationacquired its character under influences coming fromoutside the primitive Arab homeland; certainfactors are strictly clrakl and to be sought in thepreoccupations and tastes of some elements ofsociety in Basra, Kufa or Baghdad; others derivefrom contacts between centres in clrak and theHidiaz; indeed, when in the first quarter of the2nd/8th century Madina was purified of worldlyoccupations, singer-composers left to settle in clrak,carrying with them the spirit which had favouredthe flourishing of the Hidiaz manner; withoutcreating it, this current could not but whet thecuriosity of a certain clraki public regarding thestories which had spread about the elegists ofMadina or Mecca. From the end of the 2nd/8thcentury and in the following twenty-five years,there developed in Basra and Baghdad a semiromantic,semi-historical literature, of which Ibnal-Nadlm, Fihrist, 306, cites several authors, such asIbn al-Kalbl, al-Mada'inl, or al-Haytham b. cAdi;these writings, widely utilized by Abu '1-Faradj al-Isf ahanl in his Kitdb al-A ghdni, demonstrate that thepoet-lovers sometimes underwent a genuine transfiguration,which in certain cases turned real personslike Djamil into veritable heroes of love. From thenon the poetical works collected or mis-attributedunder the names of these poet-lovers could not butreflect the psychology of the heroes who figuredin the romances or romanticized biographies. Cancertain tribal groups of Western Arabia have beenfamiliar in their folklore from the ist/7th century oreven earlier with love stories centred on a more orless legendary personality? It is very possible. Inparticular it seems that the little tribe of the cUdhra,which in the ist/7th century frequented an areaextending from the oasis of Tayma3 to the Wadi'1-Kura (see Aghdnfi, viii, 123, 126, lines 4-5) prideditself on having produced one of these heroes, thefamous Djamil. The cUdhra were not, however, theonly ones to claim such a title to fame; the Nahd ofthe same area were equally proud of having givenbirth to the sayyid Ibn cAdjlan, who later became thehero of a love saga (cf. Ibn Kutayba, Poesis, 449;Aghdni1, xix, 102-4 and xx, 22; Blachere, Litt., ii,chap. IV, § B). Under the pressure of tribal particularism,other groups seem later to have developedcreations of a similar kind in the clrakl centreswhere they had installed themselves; such seemsto have been the case with the cAmir b. Sacsaca andMadjnun, their "fool of love" who became a famoushero through his passion for Layla.Before it was finally established in a closelydefined system, the courtly spirit seems to havespread through diffuse: influences as a kind ofheightening of the Hidiaz spirit. There is no doubtthat the poet Bashshar b. Burd (b. about 95/714, d.about 167/784) played a considerable part in popularizingcertain themes at Basra; in his Diwdn,which is unfortunately incomplete, it is easy to note,among verses or fragments addressed to cAbda andother female personalities of the city, lyric pieceswhere in fact his love is from the first known to be

hopeless and draws its lasting character from thiscertainty. The setting in which Bashshar was composinghis ghazals was in any case favourable to suchemotional exaltation; it was the time indeed whenat Basra mystical experiences were particularly tobe observed among women; it was also the timewhen, in this centre as at Kufa, a giddy society, freethinking and morally lax, was plunging into easypleasures which, in occasional flashes, inspired athirst for purer and serener joys. Bashshar himselfseems to have experienced such disillusion, like hiscontemporary of Kufa, Mutlc b. lyas (d. 170/787);here and there in Bashshar's elegiac works he givesevidence of a fruitless desire to detach himself fromcarnal pursuits. The merit of having achieved suchan escape must be ascribed to his younger compatriot,al-cAbbas b. al-Ahnaf (b. about 133/750, d. about193/808). The work of this poet is unique in thehistory of Arabic poetry; it is exclusively a song of1032 GHAZALcourtly love. Inspired by real love for a lady designatedby various names, this elegist composedoccasional pieces and more elaborate works allconcerned with one ideal; for the poet, the lady isthe unattainable, the distant incarnation of a desiredbeing which one owes it to oneself to love whileobeying a self-imposed rule never to try to gobeyond dreaming. Renunciation is the law imposedfrom the moment when the heart ceases to heed thereason; nothing can permit one to dream of beinghealed from an affliction sent by fate. To express hisexperience, this courtly poet turns to the instrumentdeveloped by the elegists of the Hidjaz for their ownpurposes; he employs the same metres, khafif, ramaland hazadi', he shares their taste for a flexiblevocabulary free of lexical pathos; for him evenrhetoric has a certain spontaneity. A number ofindications suggest that his poems were composedto be set to music; without doubt, many werecomposed at the request of certain aristocraticwomen of Baghdad; it is plausible that the chosenlady of al-cAbbas was the princess cAlya, as cAtikaKhazradjI seems to have established. All this tendsto show that the courtly ghazal is a genre born amongthe aristocratic society of the clraki cities; it correspondsto a certain sophistication cultivated bythe youth of both sexes who described themselvesas zarif[q.v.], "smart" (pi. zurafa*, fern. pi. zawdrif).The emergence of Abu Nuwas (b. between 130/747and 145/762, d. at Baghdad about 200/815) representsa new stage in the development of the amatoryelegiac genre. The work attributed to this nameoffers many problems. In the two available recensionsit might well in fact not be one individual's works atall, but a collection; whatever the case, if the greaterpart of it is from the pen of Abu Nuwas alone, thisclearly implies a convergence of influences; the poetwas actually the child of an Iranian mother and ahalf-Arab father, and seems to reflect a double trendin which the Arab tradition is no longer the onlydominant. In many characteristics the elegiac poemsbrought together under his name certainly resemblethose of other poets of Basra. Though they lack muchof the courtly spirit of al-cAbbas b. al-Ahnaf, theyare nevertheless written in the fluid style typical ofthat elegist and offer notable similarities to thepoems of Bashshar; the setting of Baghdad whereAbu Nuwas lived for many years certainly must betaken into account here. There remain neverthelessfeatures which specifically distinguish Abu Nuwas orhis school; the courtly spirit occupies a secondaryplace in these works and must be sought in somepieces addressed to the enigmatic Djanan. Thesepoems prefer to develop, with significant exuberanceand insistence, an Epicureanism which embracesevery kind of satisfaction; to a certain extent theBacchic pieces verge, in certain episodes, on theelegy of sentiment; but the poet's eyes are no longerturned towards a chosen lady but towards loosewomen, or towards young men who, in these works,inflame passions which are hardly Platonic. If, asone may be justified in accepting as a hypothesis,

the collection attributed to Abu Nuwas is not thework of one individual, it follows that this lyricism,so definite in character, corresponds to the taste andmanners of one sector of Baghdad society. The breakwith the courtly spirit and romantic love on the partof this sector is clear; in opposition to an idealismlacking relation to the human, there now arises anunashamed naturalism which refuses to blame itself.4. The 3rd/9th century saw the elaboration of acoherent doctrine of the courtly ideal under thegrowing influence of neo-Platonism. This ideal isrepresented by the kind of treatise on sophisticationwhich the Kitdb al-Muwashshd of al-Washsha3 [q.v.]constitutes; it is also illustrated by that notableanthology of love which we owe to the Zahiri theologianMuhammad b. Dawud al-Isfahani (d. 297/909),called Kitdb al-Zahra. It is unnecessary here to recallthe characteristic traits of this spirit [see CUDHRA].But we must indicate the connexions which seem tohave existed between this concept of love and itsreflexions in the neo-classical poetry whose principalrepresentatives in the East are Abu Tammam, al-Buhturi and al-Mutanabbi. Among the poets of thisperiod the field of expression of the amatory elegiacgenre became more restricted; the only developmentsto be found are confined in fact to the nasibsprefacing kasidas. In several respects this is a recollectionof the badawi tradition, but the tone differscompletely and the themes are treated more intellectuallyand are reduced to the notation of states ofmind, and the expression of aphorisms on the vanityand fleeting nature of love, on the sorrow it inspiresand the dissatisfaction to which it leads. Thislyricism is sinking into conventionality and frigidity.Nevertheless, some urban poets of lesser fame, bothin clrak and in the Muslim West, composed poems ofa more personal lyricism in the ghazal manner. Theirtone is given by certain pieces by the cAbbasid princeIbn al-Muctazz (b. 247/861, d. at Baghdad 296/908);the influence of the courtly spirit is perceptible inthese works but it does not go so far as to excludereferences to a lived experience, in which emotionseeks to express itself with a spontaneity which isfrequently suppressed. During the 4th/ioth century,similar efforts are visible in other Baghdad poets,particularly those who flourished in great numbersunder the Buyids; many names could be cited, butthe most typical seem Ibn Sukkara (d. 385/995) andal-Salaml (d. 393/1003). In this group of poets theinfluence of Abu Nuwas is undeniable. Like theirpredecessor these artists sing as much of the joy ofloving as of the emotional troubles which passionbrings; in all of them we find a stylistic simplicitywhich in its directness of expression is decidedly acharacteristic of the genre. Certain works of theBaghdad poet Ibn al-Hadjdjadi (d. 391/1001) raisethe question already put regarding Abu Nuwas;should they be cited in connexion with this genre?As far as Ibn al-Hadjdiadj is concerned, the reply isof even greater delicacy, since the amatory elegiacinspiration of this poet is usually nothing butcynical eroticism. A more elaborate analysis of thegenre at this stage in its development may lead tothe conclusion that two currents are forming: theone idealistic and courtly; the other realistic, eitherwith the moderation of the Hidiaz manner or withthe extremism of the obscene poems of Ibn al-Hadjdiadi. Whatever the case may be, the lattertendency shows itself only sporadically, since theconventionalism and the religious ethic of society donot offer it a favourable soil hi which to develop.In the period we have now reached, poetry inArabic was cultivated in all the intellectual centresof the Muslim world. The amatory elegiac genrenaturally therefore had its representative figures ineach of these centres. In clrak under the Saldjuks,they were numerous, competent in the manipulationof their instrument, but entirely without originality(see al-Tahir, ii, 97-102 and the examples given). InEgypt, the same comment is valid, though under theAyyubids al-Baha3 Zuhayr (b. 581/1187, d. at Cairo656/1258) frequently manages to achieve tones which

GHAZAL 1033recall Abu Nuwas in their sincerity. In Spain, theCordovan Ibn Zaydun (b. 394/1003, d. at Seville 463!1071) contrived also to give the genre a somewhatnewer air by the employment of a more elaboratevocabulary and the substitution here and there in thetraditional thematic material of more acute psychologicalanalyses. Similarly, Ibn Hamdls of Syracuse(b. 447/1055, d. at Bougie (?) 527/1132) achievedthe combination of a generalized lyricism withamatory elegiac movements of real charm. It seemsalso that the cultivated society of the cities ofSpain particularly relished this spirit, which induceda sort of "sad delight".5. Faced with their incapacity to revivify thethematic elements of the ghazal, the Arabic Muslimpoets from the 5th/nth century onwards turnedtheir efforts at originality in another direction.Both in the East and the West, there were groupswho abandoned the exclusive cultivation of thisgenre by means of the resources of the classicalvocabulary and prosody only. The signal was givenin Spain by the composition of lyrical and elegiacpieces in the muwashshah [q.v.] or zad^al [q.v.] forms.From the West, this novelty passed to the East,where Ibn Sana3 al-Mulk (b. about 550/1155, d. 6o8/1211) in Egypt (see Rikabi, 69 f f . ) and Safi al-DInal-Hilli (b. 677/1278, d. about 750/1359) in clrakcompiled treatises with examples of these new poeticforms. These attempts signified an effort to returnto the very foundations of all lyric poetry, but theydid not aim at what was essential, namely a profoundrenewal of the themes dealt with in the ghazal.In modern times throughout the Middle East weare witnessing efforts aimed precisely at effectingsuch a revolution. Poets of this persuasion are subjectedto the influence of the Symbolists and indeedof the Surrealists who have gained importance insome literary circles of Western Europe. Theseefforts deserve our interest, but it is too early as yetto say whether they will be sufficiently widelyfollowed to give new life to elegiac lyricism in Arabicpoetry.Bibliography: For the study of the poets upto the end of the 3rd/gth century, see the accountsin K. al-Aghdni* (Cairo 1923-, 16 vols. publ.)and in Ibn Kutayba, Shi*r. For the subsequentperiods see Thacalibi, Yatimat al-dahr (Damascus1303, and ed. cAbd al-Hamid, Cairo 1366/1947);al-clmad al-Isfaham, Kharldat al-Kasr (ed. Sh.Faysal, Damascus i375/*955 and 1378/1959;Syrian section). The principal poetical texts tobe used are: al-cArd|I, Dlwdn (in the recension ofIbn Djinnl, ed. Khidr al-Ta3!, Baghdad 1375/1956);Kuthayyir, Dlwdn (ed. Peres, 2 vols., Algiers1928-30); cUmar b. Abl Rabica, Dlwdn (ed. cAbdal-Hamid, Cairo 1371/1952); Djamil, Dlwdn (ed.Nassar, Cairo no date; on its relation to the ed.of F. Gabrieli see Masnou, in Arabica, ix (1962),88-90); Bashshar b. Burd, Dlwdn (ed. T. BencAshur, 3 vols., Cairo 1950-57); al-cAbbas b. al-Ahnaf, Dlwdn (ed. CA. KhazradjI, Cairo 1373/1954);Muslim b. al-Walld, Dlwdn (ed. S. Dahhan, Cairo1376/1957); Abu Nuwas, Dlwdn (see El2, i, i44b);Ibn al-Hadjdjadi, Dlwdn (part established byAl Tahir according to the summary of al-Asturlabl;unpublished thesis, Sorbonne 1955); Ibn Zaydun,Dlwdn (ed. K. Kilani and CA. Khalifa, Cairo 1351;1932); Ibn Hamdis, Dlwdn (ed. Schiaparelli, Rome1897); also the abundant quotations in Thacalibland al-clmad al-Isfahani.On the courtly spirit in poetry and the relatedromantic literature see Washsha3, K. al-Muwashshd,ed. R. Briinnow, Leyden 1886; Muhammad b.Dawud al-Isfaham, K. al-Zahra, ed. Nykl andTukan, Chicago 1351/1932; Fihrist, 306; CA1I al-Daylaml, K. <Atf al-alif al-ma>luf cala 'l-ldm alma'tuf,ed. J. Vadet, Cairo 1962.On the aesthetics of the elegiac movement, seeKudama, Nakd al-shicr, Istanbul 1302; IbnRashik, al-cUmda, ed. cAbd al-Hamid, Cairo I353/1934, ii, 43, 98, 114, 116, 119.

Studies: Blachere, Litt., ii, iii (printing); idem,Les principaux themes de la potsie erotique ausiecle des Umayyades de Damas, in AEIO Alger, v(1939-41), 82-128; idem, Probleme de la transfigurationdu poete tribal en htros de roman"courtois" chez les "logographes" arabes du III/IXsiecle, in Arabica, viii (1961), 131-6; T. Husayn, inHadlth al-arbi'd*, Cairo 1925, 2nd printing, i,183-298; F. Gabrieli, Gamll al-^Udrl, studio criticoe raccolta del frammenti, in RSO, xvii (1937), 40-172; I. Yu. Krackovskiy, Rannyaya istoriyapovesti o MadZnune i Leyle v arabskoy literature,reprinted in I. Yu. Krackovskiy, Izbrannie Socineniyci,ii, Moscow-Leningrad 1956, 588-632, Germantranslation by H. Ritter, Die Friihgeschichte derErzdhlung von M. und L. in der arab. Literatur, inOriens, viii (1955), 1-50 (cf. J. Vadel in Arabica,iv (1957), 81-2); Z. Mubarak, Hubb b. Rabija (sic)wa-shi'ru-hu, Cairo 1928; Jabbur, *Umar b. A.R.,his age, life and works. 2 vols., Beirut 1935; H.Peres, La Poesie andalouse en arabe classique auXI siecle2, Paris 1953; Dj. Rikabi, La podsieprofane sous les Ayyubides, Paris 1949; al-Tahir,al-Shi'r al-carabi fi 'l-clrdk wa-bildd al-*Ad/[am,Baghdad 1958 (trans, with publication of athesis for a State Doctorate, Sorbonne 1955), i,124-7 and ii, 97-102; F. Ghazi, La litt/rature ^imaginationen arabe du 11IV III s. au VIXI s., inArabica, iv (1957), 164-78; Dj. Ah. cAllush, Safial-Dln al-Hilli, Baghdad 1379/1959 (cf. Blacherein Arabica, x (1963), 104-5); A. T. Hatto (ed.),Eos, The Hague 1965, 244-73; J. Vadet, LalitUrature courtoise dans les cinq premiers sieclesde VHegire (in preparation). (R. BLACHERE)ii. — IN PERSIAN LITERATUREThe ghazal is one of the most common instrumentsof Neo-Persian lyrics. In its present form it consistsof a few bayts (verses, or distichs), generally not lessthan five and no more than twelve, with a singlerhyme (often accompanied by a radlf); in the firstbayt, called matlac, both hemistichs too rhymetogether; the last bayt, called makta*, contains thenom-de-plume (takhallus) of the author; the contentsof the ghazal are descriptions of the emotions of thepoet in front of love, spring, wine, God, etc., ofteninextricably connected.The problem of the origin of the neo-Persianghazal coincides practically with the problem of theorigin of neo-Persian poetry. Various hypotheseshave been proposed, e.g.: (a) the neo-Persian ghazaloriginated from the tashblb or nasib of the Arabickasida [q.v.], isolated from its context and laterdeveloped into an independent form (Shibll Nucmani,etc.); (b) its origin lies in Persian folk-songs, antedatingArabic influence (Braginskiy and other Sovietauthors); (c) a distinction between a "technicalghazal" and a more generic ghazal should be made:the first can be said to have found its final form onlyin Sacdl (7th/i3th century), the second owes itsorigin to folk poetry, later refined at the courtsunder Arabic influence (Mirzoev). All these hypotheseshave their share of truth. Actually it should always1034 GHAZALbe borne in mind that neo-Persian poetry in itsspecific sense has its origin in the literary experimentof adapting the Persian language to Arabic metresand forms, an experiment first begun at the courtsof the first independent Persian dynasties of Khurasanby people with a perfect knowledge of Arabic. On theother hand "Arabic", in this case, does not imply anethnic meaning, as many Arabic poets of the timewere, ethnically, Persians, and, from the point ofview of its content, Arabic poetry of that period wasin its turn influenced by Persian ideas. A very usefuldistinction is that between ghazal in its technicalsense and ghazal in its generic sense, proposedespecially by Mirzoev. In its generic sense the ghazalmay also have been influenced, in its origins, byelements from folk-poetry, though this can in no waybe demonstrated by documents, as we knownothing about Persian folk-poetry of the 3rd/gthcentury, and the very little we know about pre-

Islamic Persian poetry shows us something totallydifferent, technically, even from the oldest and leastspecific and technical forms of the neo-Persian post-Islamic ghazal.The formal history of the neo-Persian ghazal canbe divided roughly into five periods. The first is theperiod of the origins, rather obscure, as we haveseen, for which we possess actually only fragments ofpoetical compositions not too different from fragmentsof nasibs of kasldas. Many elements of the"technical" ghazal still are lacking (e.g., takhallus,regular matla* and maktac) and the style is ratherdecorative/descriptive, with a certain unity andcongruity of meanings in the same composition (ascompared with the conceptual incongruity of the"technical" ghazal) accompanied by a lack, orrarity, of taghazzul (the name given to the hardlydefinable general Stimmung of the classical ghazal).Rudagi and Daklkl may be regarded as the greatestpoets of this period (srd/Qth and 4th/ioth centuries).The second period could be called the formativeone (4th/ioth to 7th/i3th centuries). In it the protoghazalacquires a very important element: themystical experience. At the end of this period theclassical ghazal is perfectly formed, though the"atmosphere" of the ghazal is either mystic intendency (e.g., cAttar), or predominantly profane,as in Anwari, best known as a kasida writer butclearly distinguishing the ghazal as a special literarygenus having as its object the ma'shuk "the Beloved"whereas the kasida has as its object the mamduh,"the Praised" (Prince or patron).The third period (7th/i3th to ioth/i6th centuries)could be called the classical period. The ghazalfinds its perfectly defined present shape, both fromthe point of view of form (all the technical elementsimplied in the definition of ghazal given above arepresent) and from the point of view of content: thedecorative style of the origins, after the mysticalinjection of the formative period, passes into ahighly refined and complex symbolic style. Sacdiand Hafiz are the supreme ghazal writers of thisperiod. Especially in Hafiz the chief object of theghazal, the ma'shuk, the (earthly) Beloved, becomesinextricably connected not only with the ma'bud,the divine Beloved (God, or better His representativeon earth, the mystical Initiator) but even with themamduh, the traditional object of the kasida: it hasbeen demonstrated, recently especially by Lescot,that the Beloved of the ghazals of Hafiz is often hisPrince or patron.The fourth period, that of the so-called Indianstyle (ioth/i6th to i2th/i8th centuries) [see SABK-IHIND!], sees an intellectual reflection on the acceptedsymbols of the classical ghazal, which becomes anarena for a quasi-philosophical exercise of the mind.The ghazal finds a renewed congruity of meaning,and its protagonist, instead of the ma^shukjmamdufilma'bud seems to be the Mind of its Author, creatingever new purely intellectual combinations of the oldworn-out symbols. (The greatest poet of this period isprobably Sa'ib).The fifth and last period is not easily definable: inIran a tendency to revive the classical and even preclassicalghazal is followed by attempts to use theghazal for more modern and profane purposes, forwhich this poetical form, with the refined neo-Platonic symbolism acquired in its classical period,seems rather inadequate.A description of classical ghazal at the time of its"perfection" can be given only by showing thefeatures and symbolic motifs of a single concreteexample. We have selected for this purpose theghazal of Hafiz whose matla* is:rawnak-i 'ahd-i shabdb-ast digar bustdn-rdmirasad mozhde-yi gul bulbul-i khush-alhdn-rd(for full text see edition by M. Kazwini and K. Ghani.Tehran n.d., 7-8).1. Once more the age of youth has returned to thegarden—and the sweet-singing nightingale receivesthe good news of the Flower.2. Oh, gentle breeze! should you once more reach

the budding plants in the meadow, give my greetingsto the Basil, the Rose, the Cypress tree.3. The young Son of the Magi, the Vintner, appearsbefore me in such charming motions that I am readyto sweep with my eyebrows the dust of the Tavern.4. Oh, thou who coverest with purest amber theface of the Moon, do not perturb yet more this manperplexed by love.5. I greatly fear that those who laugh at winebibbersmay at last make a tavern of their Faith inGod.6. But mayest thou remain a friend of the HolyMen, for in the Ship of Noah there is still a handfulof Mud that knows how to defy the Deluge.7. Go out from this Dwelling, that has the Heavensfor roof, and do not ask it for Food, for that Vile Oneat the end shamelessly kills her Guest.8. And say to those whose last resting-place willbe a handful of Dust: "Friend, what avails it to raisehigh palaces to the Skies?"9. Oh, moon of Canaan! The throne of Egypt hasbeen allotted thee; it is now high time that thoushouldst say farewell to the Prison!10. Oh Hafiz, drink wine, and be a libertine, andlive joyfully, but take care not, as others do, to makea snare of the Book of God!We have here an excellent example—the poem hasbeen chosen almost by chance—of many featurescharacteristic of the style of Persian lyrical poetry ofthe golden age. Let us list, first of all, the severalmotifs: of the images indeed none, without exception,is original.(i) Nightingale-Rose. It may seem strange, butthis motif, perhaps the one that occurs most frequentlyin Persian lyrics, has never been the objectof historical research.It appears in the most ancient Persian lyrics of the4th/ioth century. In the maturer lyrical forms(Hafiz) it contains the following meanings:The rose is Beauty aware of itself, the supreme,inaccessible symbol of the divine istighnd; often therose disdainfully derides the nightingale but as soonas it blossoms it dies. This is the cause of the twofoldGHAZAL 1035sadness of the nightingale, which mourns over therapid death of the rose and its disdainful rejection ofunion. But between the two there is a kind of mysteriousconnection: the Bird of Dawn (an epithet veryfrequently applied to the nightingale) alone understandsthe secret language of the rose. The nightingalesings in Arabic—the sacred language—invitations topartake of the mystic wine. Inebriated with theperfume of the rose it fears to end as did the magicianangel,Marut. As the prayer offered at dawn is ofspecial value and has special power (cf. Kur'an, XVII,78), so the lament of the nightingale is the auroralprayer. But it is a doleful prayer, offered to somethinginaccessible, for, as Mukaddasi says in his charmingbook translated in the middle of the last century byGarcin de Tassy, "my song is a song of grief and notof joy ... Each time that I flutter over a garden Iwarble of the affliction that will soon replace thegaiety that reigns there". In an Indian Muslim allegory,the romance of the Rose of Bakdwali, the inaccessibleRose, so difficult to find, is the onlyremedy that can restore the sight of King Zayn al-Muluk, etc. The God-Rose identity in the famouspreface of the Gulistdn of Sacdi can be clearly seenwhen the Mystic who travels in the transcendentalworld is unable to bring back any gift from histravels because: "I had in mind that when I reachedthe Rose-tree I would fill my lap with roses as gifts formy friends, but when I reached it I was so inebriatedwith the perfume of the Rose that the hem of myrobe slipped from my hand".The enthusiastic pan-Iranist, Pizzi, has endeavoured,but without adequate evidence, to showinfluence of the Persian Rose motif in the mediaevalRoman de la Rose, whose symbolism is reminiscentof this. But in the absence of definite documentaryevidence and of preparatory studies we cannotexclude the opposite hypothesis, namely that a

Hellenistic motif may have penetrated into bothcultures, derived from that civilization which invarious ways and forms fertilised them both, i.e.,the late Hellenistic symbolism. One should, however,bear in mind that what we refer to is a motif and notan emotional and original perception by Hafiz of the"romantic" and vivid reality of the Spring and theflowers.(2) And here we have another "personage", thesabd, "the zephyr", the springtime breeze, generallyheld to be—and not for the first time by Hafiz butby innumerable poets before and after him—theMessenger par excellence. The breeze also is personifiedin a bird, more especially the hoopoe. Why ? becausewith a very slight change in the transcription, thepronunciation of its name is identical to that of thefamous region of Sabd* whose Queen, we read in theKur'an, sent a hoopoe as her messenger to KingSolomon. Thus the "secondary images" aroused inthe mind of the listener by the word sabd are quiteother than those awakened in us by the word"zephyr", now ineradicably associated in our mindswith Metastasio and Watteau. Sabd is a sound thatreverberates with a rich symbolism which can betraced back historically and clearly to a "gnostic"world. Basil (rayhdn), mentioned soon after, whichto us suggests little more than the idea of "perfume",is instead a word used in the Kur'an. The fragranceof basil is one of the chief components of the olfactoryjoys of the Islamic paradise (cf. Kur3an, LVI, 89),and singularly enough, of the Zoroastrian paradisealso (cf. Menoke Xrat, ch. VII). On the other hand,the Cypress, familiar to all amateur collectors ofPersian carpets and miniatures, in its charming conventionalizedshapes, is the sacred tree of Zoroaster.It is identified with the Prophet himself who planteda specially memorable cypress (that of Kashmar)just at the time when the ecstatic-prophetic experiencefirst thrilled him. It is a motif that seems tohave come straight from a Central Asian spiritualarea: the Shaman, indeed, plants a tree when startingon his "prophetic" career. Thus, even if in the case inpoint the words are not always intentionally andknowingly symbolical, they are not merely descriptivebut are related to verbal-psychological cycles withwhich they have no connexion in our languages.(3) In the springtime scenery summoned before us,the nightingale, the rose, the zephyr, the cypress, basiland the "young" (plants) of the meadow are playinga part in a scene which, even from our descriptivestandpoint, might acquire a certain unity. But nowthere enters a character who to our eyes may seemtruly extraneous. He is the young Magian (moghbacc'e),the vintner, and the Tavern. The "Zoroastrian"character of the images connected with wine, withthe Superior of the Magi, and with the Young Magian(the connexion between inebriety and forbiddenpractices with Zoroastrian belief dates back toDakiki) are but words used to summon up the ideaof that which is forbidden, of sacred impiety. Poets,ancient and modern, to evoke this idea use indiscriminatelythe words Magian, Christian, temple offire or church. Sacdl, although the differences wereknown to him, uses indiscriminately the words"priest", "bishop", "Brahmin" "Magian", "templeof fire", "church", "monastery" in the same poem.The ideas that these lyrical-symbolic images summonup are not something precisely and theologicallyZoroastrian (wine indeed is only a secondary elementin the Zoroastrian ritual); they serve as signs indicatingan esoteric rite. As lyrical poetry wastraditionally condemned both by Islam and byZoroastrianism, the motif of self-abasement is addedto this intricate image-motif. The poet, the Initiate, iswilling even to wipe with his face the door of thetavern-temple where the Young Magian reigns.Here is summed up the material inherited from thefrankly libertine poetry of the Arab muta^akhkhirm(wine-Christian Convent, already found in pre-Islamic Arab poetry) with the mystical gnostic motifof a Rite of the Wine which is of ancient syncreticgnosticorigin.

(4) And now, as in a filiform succession of images,the Young Magian takes on the ambiguous appearanceof a beautiful boy. The fourth verse should moreaccurately be translated as: "Oh thou, who drawestacross the moon a polo-stick (fawgdri) of the purestamber, do not make me, whose head whirls (like apolo ball), yet more confused". And we must thenadd that the game of polo, which is of Persian origin,supplies a wealth of images to this lyric. The polostick, with its characteristic hooked shape, is thezulf, the long wisp of hair, black as the night, andthe moon is no other than the face (the roundnessof the face is traditionally greatly admired in thislyric). The Child-Magian who is also the Beloved ofthe Poet (or his Initiator, or God) has the brilliant andround face of the moon. By mischievously half-veilingit with his black curl, shaped like a polo stick, heonly makes the already confused head of the poetwhirl like a polo-ball.(5) In this verse the poet introduces another motif:he upbraids the doctors of the law, the orthodox. ButHafiz must not for this be taken for an "anticlerical",a "progressive". There may be cases in the traditionalpoetry of Persia of mullds who, when indulging in1036 GHAZAL — GHAZALthis literary style, are obeying its conventions inabusing . . . themselves as a class. This motif can onlyhave arisen from the fact that this kind of poetrygave a gnostic-Neoplatonic interpretation to materials—derived from the Arabian cAbbasid libertine poetry—quite alien to Islamic orthodoxy. The result was astrange combination of libertinism and mysticism,that confers on it a special kind of style of its own.(6) The verse that follows contains a transparentallusion to the superiority of the Saint (the man ofGod) over the Doctor of the Law, very skilfullyexpressed. Noah's ship is the human race, thehandful of mud that it contains, possessing, however,the supreme faculty of overcoming any deluge, isthe Perfect Man, the Saint, the mystic Master. He is"earth", mud indeed, but one which—as the originalputs it—be-dbl nakharad tufdnrd, that is to say"would not buy the deluge for a drop of water",i.e., gives no importance to external "deluges" (andhere note the word-play water-deluge-earth). Weshould therefore be friends of those Masters and notof the doctors of the law.(7-8) The ethical-mystical warning continues. But,be it always remembered, without undue personaltension. The world is seen as a house, an "olddilapidated convent". But the world—in Arabic aword of feminine gender—is also often compared bythe Persian poets to a malicious, faithless old woman.Here the word we have translated by "Vile One" issiyah-kdse, "of the black pot", also "miserly""despicable"; hence the play of words "food"-"pot".(9) The following verse contains a metaphor whichmay be familiar to the Westerner also: Joseph theIsraelite, the symbol of perfect beauty, or of theSoul, for whom the throne of Egypt is prepared, butwho yet groans in prison (a typical Neoplatonicmetaphor). The last verse reiterates the traditionalaccusation of hypocrisy addressed to the mullds.In classical ghazal each verse forms a closed unit,only slightly interconnected with the others. Somemodern scholars, to explain this, have invoked the"psychology of depth" to show that there is unity,but an unconscious one, in the ghazal. However thismay be, external incongruity would seem to be a realrule in classic Persian poetry. We are in the presenceof a bunch of motifs only lightly tied together.Bibliography : articles Ghazal in Lughat-ndmaby A. A. Dehkhoda, Tehran, i, 207-210 and Gazelby A. Ates in IA; A. G. Mirzoev, Rudakl vainkishdf-i ghazal, Stalinabad 1957; A. G. Mirzoev,Rudaki i razvitie gazeli, Stalinabad 1958; I. S.Braginskiy, 0 vozniknovenii gazeli v tadSikskoy ipersidskoy literature, in SV, ii (1958), 94-100;A. Pagliaro and A. Bausani, Storia della letteraturaPersiana, Milan 1960, 239-526; J. Rypka, IranischeLiteraturgeschichte, Leipzig 1959, 71-112.Further bibliography will be found in the above

mentioned works. (A. BAUSANI)iii. — OTTOMAN LITERATURE[Circumstances beyond our control have obligedus to refer the reader to the Supplement. Editors'note].iv. — IN URDU LITERATUREIn spite of its difficulty the ghazal enjoyed awide popularity in all literatures belonging to theIslamic cultural cycle. Urdu literature was bornunder the strong influence of Persian culture, moreprecisely, of the Persian literature of the periodwrongly called of "decadence", the period of Indianstyle (ioth/i6th to I2th/i8th centuries). This factaccounts for some special features of the Urdughazal. Its history should be divided into some fourperiods. The first period is that of dakhni Urdu(9th/isth to nth/i7th centuries). In it the ghazal isonly one, and not the most successful, of the instrumentsof Urdu lyrics, that prefer indigenouspoetical forms. Dakhm ghazals are generallydescriptive and more congruous than the classicalPersian ones. With Wall (1668-1741) the experimentof adapting the contemporary Persian style to Urdupoetry is widened and deepened. Urdu ghazals, moreor less imitating the contemporary Indian-stylePersian ghazals, find acceptance also in the literarycircles of North India; so begins the classicalperiod of the Urdu ghazal, culminating perhaps inMir Taki Mir (d. 1810). Ghalib (d. 1869 [q.v.]) initiatesthe modern period of Urdu ghazal, which finds stillnewer developments in the contemporary period,the greatest names of which are, besides Ikbal(d. 1938 [q.v.]), who uses the ghazal in his peculiarideological way as a symbolic channel to introduceideas, Asghar of Gondwana (1884-1936), HasratMohan! (1875-1951), Fan! of Badayun (1879-1941)and Djigar of Muradabad (b. 1890).The Urdu ghazal, born under the influence of theIndian-style Persian ghazal (e.g., BIdil of Patna,d. 1721, who left almost no trace in the developmentof the Persian ghazal of Iran, had an enormousinfluence on Urdu ghazal), shows a more markedintellectualistic character than Persian ghazal,together with a comparatively greater congruencein meaning. In later times this led ghazal writers touse this form too as an ideological instrument,especially under the influence of Hall (d. 1914) andIkbal (d. 1938). Hall advocated, in his stylisticaltreatise Mukaddima-i shi'r u shd^irl, added as apreface to his own Dlwdn, a reform of the classicalghazal in a modern sense, based on a widening of thescope of ghazal so as to include real love, and otherhuman emotions of our times; the rather limitedWortschatz of the classical ghazal should also bewidened, according to Hall, while the maldmati andanacreontic aspects of the old ghazal should beabandoned. The renovation brought about in Urdughazal by the aforementioned personalities led to theresult that now, in the Indo-Pakistani subcontinentthe ghazal has become a serious instrument of modernpoetry and its old popularity has found an interestingdevelopment in a modern sense.Bibliography: M. Garcin de Tassy, Histoirede la litUrature hindouie et hindoustanie2, Paris1870 (3 vols.); R. B. Saksena, A history of Urduliterature, Allahabad 1927; A. Bausani, Storia delleletterature del Pakistan, Milan 1958 (esp. 99-237);Abu '1-Layth Siddiki, Ghazal aur mutaghazzilin,Lahore 1954; A. Bausani, Altdf tfusain ffdli'sideas on ghazal, in Charisteria Orientalia, Prague1956, 38-55. (A. BAUSANI)GHAZAL. (A., fern, ghazdla, pi. ghizldn, ghizla), isthe source of our term 'gazelle' denoting, in theBovidae family, the species, all wild, of the subfamilyof the Antilopinae. It is a noun much morerestricted in application than zaby, which coversindiscriminately antelopes and gazelles, that is theTragelaphini, Alcelaphinae, Oryginae, Reduncini,Antilopinae and Cephalophini. Ghazal, in commonwith a number of names of animals, is at once amasculine singular denoting the male, and a collectivenoun denoting the species (see Ch. Pellat, Sur

quelques noms d'animaux en Arabe classique, inGLECS, viii, 95-9), but its most frequent use isin the wider sense. Herbivores, small of stature, bothGHAZAL 1037sexes having tapering horns which are ringed for thelower two thirds and curve forward at the tip,gazelles are creatures of the semi-desert steppe andthe savannah; thus they bulk large among the faunaof the Arabic-speaking countries in general, andamong those of the Muslim world in particular. Thedesert-dwellers, nomads and camel-drivers, havefrom ancient times distinguished different species ofgazelle, and the Arabs early gave them differentnames according to their coats; the modern systematicclassification accords perfectly with thesedenominations, so that we have: — a. the GoitrousGazelle, Gazella subgutturosa (ghazdl), in westernPersia, Mesopotamia, and north-eastern Arabia;— b. the Rhim or Loder's Gazelle, or Slender-hornedGazelle, Gazella leptoceros (r^im/rim, pi. dram), withthe sub-species G. I. loderi on the fringe of the Saharaand G. /. marica in Arabia, Palestine and Sinai; —c. the Dorcas or Atlas Gazelle, Gazella dorcas (ddam,pi. udm, ddami, sin, sini), with the sub-species G. d.saudiya in northern Arabia, Palestine and Sinai,G. d. dorcas in Egypt, G. d. neglecta in the Sahara andG. d. massaesyla in Morocco; and the three subspeciesG. d. littoralis, tilonura and Pelzelni occurringby turns along the Red Sea coast; — d. the DamaGazelle or "Biche Robert", Gazella dama (aryal,adra*), with geographical sub-species the Mhorr orNanguer Gazelle, G. d. mhorr, in southern Morocco,G. d. dama (the sub-species bearing the specific name)in the central Sahara, the Red-necked Gazelle orAddra Gazelle, G. d. ruficollis, and the Korin or RedfrontedGazelle, G. d. rufifrons (umm d^a^ba, hamra),the two last-named being widely scattered throughoutthe scrub zones of Arabia and Africa; while thedistribution of the Soemmering's Gazelle, G. d.Soemmeringi, extends from Somalia across into thecoastal border of southern Arabia; — e. the ArabianGazelle, Gazella gazella (acfar, ya'fur), with the subspeciesG. g. arabica in the mountainous areas ofArabia, G. g. gazella in Syria and Palestine, andG. g. cuvieri (Maghrib!: ddam) throughout theMaghrib.The excellence of its meat, a food permitted by theKur'an, and the difficulty of capturing a beast sofleet-footed, made the gazelle, "daughter of thesaud" (bint al-raml), from earliest times highlyprized game alike for the nomad in search of sustenanceand the prince whose main pastime washunting. Methods of capture varied with the hunter'srank. For the well-to-do, there was the noble chase(tarad, Sahara: taldiddi) with gazelle-hounds (sulukiyya),usually in the heat of the day (tahmis); thishunting down in strength, together with the lightningattack of the trained cheetah [see FAHD], werethe forms which venery most often took in theOrient, the Arabs preferring them to the spectacularmassacres in a closed battue (halka) in which theSasanids took pride. The gazelle was also hunted bymeans of falconry, with eagles, gerfalcons, sakers andgoshawks trained for this purpose [see BAYZARA].Partaking less of sport, but more productive, werecapture by net (hibdla, hibdka, kasisa), snare (nushka),or radial trap (mikld, kula) set at the approaches towatering-places; advantage was even taken of theanimals' being dazzled by fires at night (ndr al-sayd),when driven in towards them for capture (see al-Djahiz,Hayawdn, iv, 349, 484). Moreover, wealthy Muslimsoften kept domesticated deer in their parks, Persianfashion;Usama Ibn Munkidh, the famous Syriangentleman huntsman of the 6th/i2th century, notes(K. al-Ictibdr, ed. P. Hitti, Princeton 1930, 207-8)that his father's residence had a score of whitegazelles and Atlas or Dorcas gazelles, male andfemale, grazing at liberty and breeding, each year,undisturbed, and reckoned among the domesticanimals (al-dawddjiri) of the household.From the first century of Islam, Arab philologistsactive in linguistic enquiry among the nomad tribes

assembled a valuable lexicographic collection ofterms differentiating the gazelle as to species, shape,age, coat, posture at rest, leap, gait at speed,quavering call and habits, which forms no negligibleaid to the ecological study of the animal. The fawn,for example, was known successively as: talwltald*at birth, khishf at a day old, when already on its feet,shddin at the appearance of the protuberances laterto be horns, rasha* when weaned, shasar/shafar at amonth, dj[ahsh or d^ady at six months, djidha*- at ayear, and finally thani at two years and for the restof its adult life; the gazelle differs from other ungulateruminants in that the thani is not succeeded by theribd'i, or sadasi, sdlic, or lastly shabub, terms denotingthe increasing ages of the young animals as determinedby teeth development.Without the gazelle, Arabic literature would havebeen without an important source of inspiration.The treatises on falconry and hunting [see BAYZARAand FAHD], in the first place, would virtually havelacked a raison d'etre, the antilopinae being in Arabcountries the noble game which the.cervidae are forthe West. Then poetry, classical and popular, wouldhave been without its hunting themes (taradiyydt)in radiaz, with their vivid descriptions of the huntin full cry and triumphant halloo, and erotic writing,in its search to idealize feminine grace and attractions,without countless metaphors drawn from theslender delicacy of the gazelle, its wild startingshyness and maternal tenderness, and the velvetyglance owed to the contrast (hawar) of the ebonypupil set in ivory; such transports of earthly beatitudewere induced by these eyes in the heart of theOriental that the gazelle was to surrender them to thevirgins of Paradise, the "houris" (al-hur al-cin),promised to the Muslim elect in the after-life (Kur3an,XLIV, 54, LII, 20, LV, 72, LVI, 22).The aura of lyricism enveloping the gazelle mustnot obscure the saddening fact that in our day thenumber of these gracious animals has dwindled considerablyin the Islamic countries as a result offirearms and the reckless destruction made possibleby modern vehicles; if stringent measures are nottaken for the gazelle's protection, the species will bespeedily on the way to extinction, and the termghazdl will become an archaism in the Arabiclanguage.For the ghazdl al-misk, see MISK.Bibliography : In addition to references givenin the text: Kazwlnl, ^AdjjPib al-makhlukdt, s.v.zaby; Damlri, Hay at al-hayawdn, s.v. zaby andghazdl; Djahiz, Hayawdn, s.v. zaby and ghazdl;Mascudi, Murudi, passim; Ibn Slduh, Mukhassas,viii, 21-42, s.v. zaby; Kalkashandi, Subli, ii, 45;Kushadjim, K. al-Masdyid wa 'l-matdrid, Baghdad1954, 201 f. and passim, = al-Bayzara, DamascusI953> *33 !•; Mangli, K. Uns al-mald* bi-wahsh alfald*,Paris 1880, 37 f.; G. Blaine, On the relationshipof Gazella Isabella to Gazella dorcas, in Ann. and Mag.of Nat. Hist., Ser. 8, xi (1913); L. Blancou, G&ographiecynigitique du monde, Paris 1959; W. T.Blanford, Zoology of Eastern Persia, London 1876;P. Bourgoin, Animaux de chasse d'Afrique, Paris*955; F. Edmond-Blanc, Le grand livre de la fauneafricaine et de sa chasse, Monaco 1954; J. Ellermanand T. C. S. Morrison Scott, Checklist of Palaearctic1038 GHAZAL — AL-GHAZALIand Indian Mammals, British Museum, London1951; P. Grasse (ed.), TraiU de zoologie. Mammiferes,Paris 1955; Th. Haltenorth and W. Trense,Das Grosswild der Erde, Bonn-Munich-Vienna 1956;L. Joleaud, Etudes de Gfographie zoologique sur laBerbtrie, ii, les Bovide"s, in R.Afr., no. 295 (1918);Kobelt, Die Sailgethiere Nordafricas, in Der Zool.Gart., 1886; L. Lavauden, La chasse et la faunecynigitique en Tunisie*, Tunis 1924; idem, LesVert6br£s du Sahara, Tunis 1926; idem, LesGazelles du Sahara central, in Bull. Soc. d'Hist.Nat. de VAfrique du Nord, January 1926; idem,Les grands animaux de chasse de VAfrique francaise,in Faune des colonies francaises, v/7, Paris 1934;Lydekker, Catalogue of the Ungulate mammals in

the British Museum, London 1913-7; H. Lhote, Lachasse chez les Touaregs, Paris 1951, 90-102; I. T.Sanderson, Living mammals of the world, Fr. trans.:Les Mammiferes vivants du monde, Paris 1957;Survey of Iraq fauna, by members of the MesopotamiaExpeditionary Force, Bombay n.d.; R.Ward, Record of Big Game, London 1928.—Mentionof gazelles is further to be found in the works ofthe Arab geographers, and in the many "accountsof journeys" of travellers, Arabic and European,in the regions where the animal is found.(F. VIR£)

Рубаи и Рудаки т. 8

RUBACI (pi. RUBA'IYYAT), a verse form.1. In Persian.In Persian, this is the shortest type of formulaicpoem; its long history, the strict rules governing itsuse and the richness of its expression make it one ofthe jewels of Persian literature. It is usually but inaccuratelycalled "quatrain" (Arabic rubd*, "in fours, infoursomes"; rubdct, composed of four parts >"quadriliteral"). In the 7th/13th century, Shams-iKays explained the Arabic appellation thus:"because, in Arabic poetry, the hazadi metre is madeup of four parts; thus, each bayt (in Persian) constructedon this metre forms two bayts in Arabic"(Shams, 115, 11. 3-4). This reference to Arabic poetechnique in describing a specifically Persian form ofpoem has for a long time confused study of thequatrain.Shams-i Kays, in his magisterial treatise on Persianpoetic technique (completed after 630/1232), al-Mu^djam fi ma^dyir ashlar al-^adjam, tells the story of anancient Persian poet ("and I think that it wasRudaki", 112, 1. 4) who invented the metre of thequatrain on hearing a winsome child crying out in thecourse of a game: ghaltdn ghaltdn hamirawad td bun-i gu("the ball is rolling, rolling to the bottom of thehole"), i.e. in quantitative metre: ^—^—ww-.On account of its rhythm and freshness, the poemthus invented was called tardna ("young and fine");"it was also called du bayti(with two bay?)". This involvedrecourse to anecdote betrays awareness of thespecifically Persian origin of the quatrain. But ShamsRUBACI 579no longer possessed the elements which would haveenabled him to address correctly the study of thequatrain: this is a formal adaptation of Arabic techniqueto a poetic material of Iranian tradition.The survey of the rubdci supplied by Shams-i Kays(112-27) is the most complete that is known. Thenumerous treatises subsequently composed arepedagogic adaptations of it. The studies in Europeanlanguages by Fr. Glad win, Garcin de Tassy, Fr.Ruckert-W. Pertsch and H. Blochmann, are annotatedtranslations of the latter. All give prominentplace to the study of the rubdci, as does §hams-i Kays.In the first chapter of al-Mu*(jjam, the first metre ofwhich he analyses the constitution and usage is thebahr-i hazadj_, a metre of quantitative rhythm composedof a foot of one short and three longs (mqfd^tlun)repeated three times, hence four equal feet. Like hispredecessors, §hams seeks to locate the rubdci amongthe realisations of the Arabic haza& metre; but hefinds it so original that he relegates study of it to afootnote at the end of his survey of this metre. He thenhas recourse to the authority of an imam of Khurasan,Hasan Kaftan (115, 1. 19), who had constructed anoverall diagram formed of two trees with twelvebranches, designed to show all the opportunities for"changing the foot by excision of a syllable" (zihdf),available in Persian in the usage of rubdct and "whichdid not exist in Arabic" (115, 1. 5), even though "today",he says, there are numerous rubd^iyydt in

Arabic, imitations of the Persian. Case by case, oversix pages, Shams subsequently brings his aesthetic appreciationto bear on the major realisations of haza$_metre in the rubdci; these are formed on the basis oftwo principal types of excision of a letter (or of asyllable) at the beginning of a foot, kharb or kharm. Thespecifically Persian tardna was thus forced into a mouldwhich was inappropriate for it and from whichmodern ingenuity has been unable to extricate it (M.Farzaad, Persian poetic metres, Leiden 1967, 99-123).In order to escape from the impasse to which thefalse path of hazadj_ was leading, it has been necessaryto undertake a philological study of the antecedents ofthis sophisticated rubdct and a statistical study of thereality of the usage of the metre of the Persianquatrain, setting all theories aside. It is undisputedthat three elements characterise the rubdci: brevity, theuse of a special metre and the use of a rhyme appropriateto its structure. In its classical form, it is theshortest of Persian poems. Each one begins in thesame formal fashion. It is composed of two bayts; eachbayt consists of two misrd^s or hemistiches; the fourmisrdcs have the same metre, or are arranged in pairs,with two variants of the metre. Misrdcs 1, 2 and 4rhyme; in some cases misrd*- 3 also rhymes with theothers. In short, it is a form offering almost limitlesspossibilities for stylistic experiments.It is not known when the quatrain first came intoexistence. Its emergence in literature can be pinpointed,but it is certainly of pre-Islamic origin, andof popular origin also: the du bayti remains a form ofpoetry widely practised throughout the Persiancultural sphere. Historically, the quatrain has followedthe evolution of Persian poetry in general.Written evidence remains of pre-Islamic poetry basedon a syllabic metre and an accentual verse withcaesura; rhyme, admittedly irregular, appears in theearly Islamic period, and is followed by the use ofquantitative metre, irregular at first, ultimatelybecoming regular quantitative versification, withregular rhyme (Lazard 1975, 612-14). The appearance,under Arabic influence, of rhyme dictatedby increasingly stringent rules is understandable;more singular is the subjection of the Iranian syllabicmetre to Arabic quantitative prosody (Benveniste1930, 224). There was imitation of the quantitativeprinciple, but application took account of previousrealities. It is for this reason that the Persian metrediffers from the Arabic metre in the distribution oflong sounds; this applies particularly to the quatrain.The Persian metre is a syllabic metre, but withsyllables divided into long and short. Accents andcaesuras had moulded the elementary distributions ofsyllables; the major Persian metres are moulded accordingto these distributions. The accent has ceasedto be a factor in the distribution of syllables in theclassical bayt. The reckoning of syllables, short andlong, is what matters in Persian metrical systems,rather than the reckoning of letters, which are importantonly for the rhyme.Various studies have been undertaken (Benveniste,Henning, Lazard and ShafFi KadkanI) with the objectof identifying, in fragments of verse in Pahlavi (ofthe Bundahishn) and in older Persian (before the3rd/9th century), transmitted through texts in Arabicas well as in Manichaean fragments, what used to beknown as the tardna, a term of pre-Islamic originwhich denoted songs intended for feasting and wine.Rudaki (d. 329/940 [q.v.]) had, at the apogee of theSamanids of Bukhara, a leading role, owed to a poeticgenius which led to his acceptance as a master by allthe poets of the 5th/llth century. Numerousquatrains were attributed to him (including, nodoubt, some pseudepigrapha), and he was evencredited with the invention of the genre. But amongpoets who preceded him, some by as much as a century,and among poets contemporary with him, examplesare known of poems which conform to thecharacteristic traits of the rubdci. In Arabic, the rubdcidid not appear until the end of the 4th/10th century,in Khurasan and from the pen of a poet of Pu§hangin the region of Harat (ShafFl KadkanI, 1988, 2331),evidently under Persian influence.

Another important feature in the history of thequatrain is its usage in $ufT circles. The question wasposed in the 4th/1 Oth century: whether in the courseof the spiritual observance and the dance which accompaniesit (samd* [q.v.]), it is permitted to listen torubd^iyydt (Abu Nasr al-Sarradj al-Tusi (d. 378/988),K. al-Lumdc, 299, 1. 3). A number of pieces ofevidence emanating from $ufi circles of Khurasan,and also from Baghdad and elsewhere (thus al-Tanukhi, in Nishwdr al-muhatfara, written in 360/971),testify to the usage of the quatrain by the Persians,simple people expressing their love to the best of theirability; "it is the discourse of lovers and madmen",the master Djunayd (d. 298/910) is supposed to havesaid of it, according to SulamI (d. 412/1021). Accordingto the same, the samdc al-rubd^iyydt "is suitable onlyfor strong and experienced men" (Shaft*! KadkanI,2337, 1. 22).It is therefore not astonishing that in the 5th/llthcentury the quatrain was in use among all the Persianlyrical poets. Attempts have been made to establishAbu Sacld Abi '1-Khayr (d. 440/1049 [q.v.]) as the inventorof the quatrain in $ufism; like others beforehim, he practised it, but his eminent role in thehistory of Khurasanian $ufism gave added respectabilityto the rubdct, and poems attributed to him wereconsidered to have been endorsed by his authority. Inthe same period, the Hanbali $ufi al-Ansarf (d.481/1088 [q.v.]) composed some fine quatrains, andthe mountain-dwelling hermit Baba Tahir (d. in themiddle of the same century [q. v.]) expressed the sumof his experience in du bqytts in which his Persian was580 RUBACIblended with dialectal elements of Luristan. There arefew poets who, over ten centuries, have not practisedthe quatrain; the modern period has seen the evolutionof variants of the rubd't having 3 or 5 misrd^s. Themost widely admired author of quatrains is cUmarKhayyam (d. before 53071135 [q.v.]); his life, his workand his eminent position made him an easy target forpseudepigraphical artifice; it was not until a centuryafter his death that a copy of a quatrain attributed tohim was found, but the scholarly scepticism which isobserved here corresponds closely to that which wasdenounced by the great mystic cAtfar (d. ca. 617/1220[?.».]), in regard to Khayyam precisely (Ildhi-ndma,215,11. 5169-83). Thus was born a Khayyamian traditionof quatrains, from the terrible century of theMongols, the 7th/13th, onwards.In his study of Persian metre based on statisticalfindings, P.N. Khanlari (Khanlarl 1966), has demonstratedonce again that the metre of the rubd^i followedrules exclusive to it. The basic structure of what hecalls the bahr-i tardna consists, he asserts, of five feet;the first and the fourth, comprising two longs, nevervary; feet 2 and 5, made up of two longs, may haveas a variant: ww-; foot 3, constructed thus: w-^, canhave two variants: -w^ and —. Twelve principalrealisations are identified by the author, emanatingfrom the possibilities offered by these variants.L.P. Elwell-Sutton (1976, 134-6), has set aside thedivision into feet and has sought to group the realisationsof a sample of 400 lines or "hemistiches"(misrdc), under patterns capable of producing all therealisations. A group a corresponds to a basic patternconstructed thus:—^j\jl—w—w—\j^j—this is the most ancient, the most popular and themost frequent; group b:WV>»/ ^J^l WW —

For the two shorts in the penultimate position, it isquite common to substitute one long; the samesubstitution for the two shorts in the third position isexceptional, and this would be out of place in the middleof the line. These features are quite typical of Persianmetre. The statistical survey has also enabled theauthor to state that lines of 12 and 11 syllables are themost frequent, and that there is no evidence to showthat the rhyme pattern A A A A in the quatrain isolder than the rhyme pattern A A B A, although thelatter obtains in 70% of cases.The quatrain is not restricted to a unique semanticfield; it may be lyrical, satirical, mystical, philosophical,conveying aphoristic maxims or expressing

states of mind. It should be dignified (buland), ordelicate (lattf), or mordant (tiz). Its structure should besuch that the first three misrdcs introduce the fourth,the first two sharing a certain unity, whence the ternarystructure which is encountered in a number ofquatrains (Bausani 1960, 532). While quatrains are tobe found in almost all the Persian dtwdns, there aresome diwdns which are composed exclusively ofquatrains.There are numerous translations of Persianquatrians. The technical problems of translating therubd^i into European languages have only recentlybeen the object of systematic consideration (Lazard1991). The object must be to convey an impression ofthe form of the rubd^i, a poem of such rigorous intensitythat the rhythmic clash of words is constantly strikingbrilliant sparks of intelligence.Bibliography: E. Benveniste, Le texte du DraxtUsurlk et la versification pehlevie, mJA, ii (1930), 193-225; Shams al-Dln Muhammad b. Kays al-RazI, al-Mudiam ft macdyir ashlar al-caajam, ed., introd. andnotes Muhammad Kazwim and Mudarris-iRacjawi, Tehran 1314/1935, 374; A. Bausani, Laquartina, in Storia delta letteratura persiana, Milan 1960,527-78; P.N. Khanlari, Wazn-i shfr-ifdrsi, Tehran,3rd ed. 1345/1966, 272-5; G. Lazard, ahu-yekuhi... Le chamois d'abu Hafs de Sogdiane et les originesdu Robdi, in Henning memorial volume, 1970, 238-44;L.P. Elwell-Sutton, The rubacl in early Persianliterature, in Camb. hist, of Iran, iv, 633-57; idem, ThePersian metres, Cambridge 1976; F. Thiessen, Amanual of classical Persian poetry, Wiesbaden 1982,166-73; B. Reinert, Die prosodische Unterschiedlichkeitvon persischem und arabischem Rubd^i, in R. Gramlich(ed.), Islamwissenschaftliche Abhandlungen, Wiesbaden1974, 205-24; M.R. §hafi<I Kadkani, Rudaki waruba^i, in Ndmwdra-i Duktur Mahmud Afshdr, iv,Tehran 1367/1989, 2330-42; Lazard, Commenttraduire le robdi?, in Ydd-Ndma. In memoria di AlessandroBausani, Rome 1991, 399-409.(C.-H. DE FOUCHECOUR)2. In Turkish.It is impossible to deal with the problems of theTurkish rubd^i without a suitable consideration of thecorresponding Persian metre; the two civilisationshave broadly amalgamated.The word rubd^i signifies here the distinct type describedby Eilers, sc. an independent strophe of fourlines, with the basic form —ww—ww—ww-, therhyme sequence aaba and a definite meaning sequence:introduction (the first two lines), surprisingnew motive (third line), pointe, return to the outset(last line). We may call this kind of quatrain the "perfectgenuine rubd^i" (abbreviated PGR).In this rigid and narrow sense, the word rubd^f isfrequently employed in Turkish (and extra-Turkish)literature, for example in the following works:Kabakli (i, 617-18, 678-9), Ozkinmh (996), TDEA(xxvii, 445), Dilcin (5, etc.). Karaalioglu (605); Gibb(i, 88-90), Kowalski (161-3), Andrews (167-70).Nevertheless, the term is sometimes employed in abroader sense, namely as an equivalent of the Turkishdortluk. That is, it signifies a quatrain: a strophe consistingof four lines (which we may abbreviate asFLS). Cf. Rypka, 694 ("the quatrain [rubdci\", bywhich term is meant the popular Persian strophe containingeleven syllables in each line), Kopriiluzade,113-22 (where the form is arranged into the generalnotion of dortluk, e.g. some strophes of Kutadhghu bilig,which are, nevertheless, mutakdrib mahdhuf), Bertel's,88 ( = Eastern Turkish tortluk), Eckmann, in PTF, ii,299-300 (the quatrain quoted there as "rubdci" has themetre fd^ildtun fd^ildtun fd^ildtun faculun, similar totuyugh).The origin of the PGR is controversial, since it is incan#, but not of the Arabic type. This diachronicproblem must clearly be distinguished from the synchronicstructure of the PRG, as it has been describedabove. See on this, Doerfer (Hungary, Sweden).Substantially, two opinions exist:(a) The "rubd^i" has a purely Persian origin, eitheras going back to Old Persian metres (Salemann, Gershevitch)or as having developed in an early New Persian

epoch (Elwell-Sutton, Eilers, Meier, Andrews,Rypka). Most Turkish authors, too, support thisthesis, under Koprvilu's influence (Dilgin, 208,Kabakli, 618, Ozkinmli, 996, TDEA, 350-1,Karaalioglu, 605); cf. also PTF, ii, 104-5, 112-13,256, 261. To be sure, "rubd*?* is mainly confinedhere to the narrow sense of PGR.(b) On the other hand, Kopriiluzade remarks (113-22) that the dortluk (= FLS) already existed in pre-Islamic Turkish literature. He says, furthermore, thatRUBACI 581for the "rufozcf' ( - PGR) neither a Turkish nor a Persianorigin can finally be proven (although PGR isdocumented in the Persian literature much earlier).At any rate, the four-line strophe is popular both inTurkish and Persian mediaeval and modern lyrics.The same differentiation is also expressed in Bertel's,88, 107; the PGR has originated under the influenceof the Turkish FLS, but it has assumed its ultimateshape in Persian literature.The origin of the Persian PGR under the influenceof the Turkish FLS has been underlined still more expressivelyby Kowalski, 161-3: TurkAnsiklopedisi, 445;Qetin, in L4, 759-61; and Bausani, 527-78 (above allin 535, where Chinese parallels, also originatingunder Turkish influence, have been considered).Indisputably, the first PGR metre has beendocumented much earlier in Persian poetry than inthe Turkish. It is found as early as 333/944-5 in apoem by Abu Shakur, whereas the first PGR metre inTurkish language belongs to the second half of the6th/12th century, see below. This fact proves that atleast the direct origin of the PGR is Persian; and thissimultaneously signifies that the hypothesis of anorigin from the Turkish FLS cannot in the strictestsense be proven, particularly since the first Turkishpoems belong to the 5th/llth century. On the otherhand, a diachronic investigation shows that an originfrom the Turkish FLS (or, at least, a certain influencefrom this side) can also not be excluded. The most frequentmetre in Mahmud al-Kashghari's Diwdn is—^_/_w_. The Diwdn dates from 464-70/1072-8,but derives from many earlier sources. But exactlythis metre occurs, too, in the first rubdct-\ike poem inNew Persian literature, found in a satirical verse in al-Tabari under the year 108/726: az Khuttaldn dmadhih Ibd ru tabdh dmadhih I dwdr bdz dmadhih I be dil fardzdmadhih. The subsequent development of early Persianmetrics gradually leads to the PGR. It should benoted that these metres are largely similar to al-Kashghan's eleven-syllable metre —\j—l—v—l—w-.Cf. Hanzala (250/864), — w-/^—A,—/-„_;Mashriki (283/896), —^_A,_^,_/— (the samemetre is found in a poem by Mamie"ihri (432/1040-1);Abu '1-Husayn (311/923), —^-/-^-/-w-;Shahld (324/936), —^_/_ww_/_^_ (but only ina two-line verse); and finally, in Abu Shakur,—ww-/^-^-/-v_yw-. This last example is of particularinterest, since it follows the PGR rhythm exactly;however, it has a rhyme sequence aaaa. Both therhyme sequence aaba and the meaning sequence (seeabove) have only gradually developed in Persianliterature (see below), becoming a general norm fromthe 5th/llth century onwards. Since Bausani hasshown that a Turkish influence of the FLS both uponthe East (China) and the West (Iran) is likely, thehypothesis of a Turkish FLS origin of the PersianPGR may also be regarded as possible. But thedefinitive shaping of PGR occurred on Persian soil, sothat PGR is a witness to the Iranian spirit.In other words, we may put forward the hypothesisthat the Persians adopted models from both adjacentnomadic societies: that west of Iran (the Arabic caru<f)and that east of Iran (the Turkish FLS), but that theyreorganised these patterns into a genuine Persianform.So much for metrics. The meaning sequence describedabove is certainly of Persian origin and hasbeen cultivated, above all, by cUmar Khayyam [q.v. ],to become an admired and frequently imitated modelnot only for Persian, but also for Turkish poetry. Thespirited and pointed rhyme sequence aaba has alsobeen made a norm by cUmar Khayyam. It seems likely

that TDEA, 350, is right in supposing that it wasMewlana Djalal al-Din RumI (604-72/1207-73 [q.v.])who influenced Ottoman literature by his Diwdn-ikabir, introducing the PGR in its perfect structure.The rhyme sequence aafia occurs frequently in theEastern Turkish literature of the 5th/llth century,e.g. in the Kutadhghu bilig (196 verses) and in thecAtabat al-hakd^ik (generally), cf. Kopriilu, 341. To besure, these verses are no PGR, but FLS in mutakdrib,and resemble a collection of kita^dt. In MK's work,aaba is rare, if it exists at all, but it may be found inStebleva's no. 44, which also follows the PGR-likemetre —^-/-^-/—w-. This sequence is widespreadin modern Turkish folk-poetry, not only in theAnatolian mdni [q. v. ] and in other regions of WesternTurks, such as Persia, but also in Central Asia(Karakalpak, Kazakh, Uzbek and New Uyghurfolklores). It is even found in South Siberia—above allin Tannu-Tuva—and this may be a hint at the archaiccharacter of aaba in the Turkish world. On the otherhand, in Iranian folk-poetry aaba is also welldocumented.In Iranian educated literature, the olderrubd^iyydt have mostly the rhyme sequence aaaa, cf.Elwell-Sutton, 639-44; seven Persian poets of the5th/11th century offer 905 cases of aaaa (91 %), againstonly 91 (9%) aaba. In cUmar Khayyam's work, on thecontrary, aaba prevails over aaaa (70%: 30%), andthis norm is still more valid in Hafiz, where aaaa hasbecome extremely rare (about 2.5%).The Turkish development is almost a parallel of theIranian one. However, extensive statistical investigationsof this topic are still lacking, and poets seem tobehave very differently. Mir CA1I §hir Nawa3! (845-906/1441-1501) favours aaaa both in his CaghatayTurkish and Persian rubd^iyydt to about 88%. The lastword is often identical in all four verses_(then generallywith a radif[q.v. ]). In poems of the Adharbaydjanipoet Neslmi (770-820/1369-1417), aaaa prevails overaaba (and xaya); 314 (86%) 52 : 1. But in the EastAnatolian Kacli Burhan al-Dln's (745-800/1345-98)poems we find aaba : xaya in a relation of 19 : 1;similarly in the Rumelian Yahya Newcl's (940-1007/1533-99) rubd^iyydt, aaba : xaya = 8 : 3; and inthe Istanbul! Haleti's (977-1040/1570-1631) poems(here, for example, the 16 poems quoted by Gibb, iii,227-30, are aaba throughout). The same holds true ofthe Adharbaydjani Fucjull's (d. 963/1556) work:aaba : aaaa = 65 : 7 (three aaaa with radtf), i.e.90 : 10%. Generally speaking, the rhyme sequenceaaba (which corresponds to that of the mdni) found increaseduse in the course of time, particularly in thewestern area of Turkish literatures.These and other hints at the Turkish origin of theFLS and PGR are remarkable, and may be due to anarrow Turkish-Iranian symbiosis. However, thePGR in its ideal form is owed to the Persians andabove all to cUmar Khayyam. It remains (Eilers, 212)"ein wundervolles Zeugnis des persischen Genius".This PGR has been adopted by both Ottoman-Adharbaydjani and Caghatay literature and plays anenormous role there. Kabakli, 618, understates whenhe says that every Diwdn poet has written "one or tworubdciyydt"; PGRs, sometimes in great number, arefound in almost every important diwdn.The earliest documented purely Turkish PGR waswritten by Mubarakshah from Marw-i Rud [q.v.] ineastern Khurasan. It presumably belongs to the endof the 6th/12th century: wa^dd berusdn nd^iicun kdlmdssdnI soz yalghaninl mdning bild koymas-sdn I yuzung kiin usac tun kara kormds-sdn I ^Ishklngda kardrslz ay ^adjabbilmds-sdn "thou givest me a promise, (but) why doestthou not come? Thou abandonest neither lying nor582 RUBACIme. Thou dost not see that thy face is (bright as) thesun and thy hairs are black (as) the night. Thouknowest, foresooth, that thou art unsteady in thylove". Furthermore, there are two macaronicrubd^iyydt dating from the same period, Badr al-Dln al-Kawwami of the Rayy Oghuz (6th/12th century, witha rhyme sequence aaad) and Kura§hl from Transoxania(7th/13th century, rhyme sequence aaba), cf.Kopriiluzade, Turk dili ve edebiyati hakkinda avastirmalav,118-20.

According to Kopriilu (344, and in PTF, ii, 256)the PGR metre is not adapted for the Turkishlanguage ("etranger au rhythme du metre nationalturc et tres difficile a adapter a la langue turque ...caprices individuels des poetes turcs possedant unesolide connaissance de la metrique persane"). On theother hand, he explains (1934, 350) that the PGR wasreadily adaptable to Turkish prosody, since it is afour-line strophe. Indeed, the PGR has become afavoured genre in the Turkish literatures, at leastthose more or less influenced by Persian poetry. Thispreference lasted from the earliest period (e.g. KacJIBurhan al-Dln until the modern era (e.g. YahyaKemal Beyatli, 1884-1958). Rubd^iyydt have beenshaped not only in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey,but also in Adharbaydjan (see above; Nesiml, Fucjuli,and many others), in Turkmenia (Azadi, 1700-60)and even in the successive regions of the UlusCaghatay (Nawa5!; Shlbam, 855-916/1451-1510;AmanI, 945-1017/1538-1608; Babur, 888-936/1483-1530; Kamran Mirza, 1825-99; Djahan Khatun, 19thcentury; cf. Eckmann, in PTF, ii, 304-402, andHofman).For the poets of the Ottoman Empire (and Turkey)cf. PTF, ii (index 952; references given by Bjorkmanat 403-65); Kabakli, 618; Turk Ansiklopedisi, 445;Dilcin, 168, 350, etc., Ozkinmh, 996, Karaalioglu,605; Necatigil. As well as those named above we maymention as the most outstanding rubd^t poets: KaraFadli (d. 1564), Ruhr from Baghdad (d. 1014/1605);Fehlm (1036-58/1627-48); Djewri (d. 1064/1654);Neshati (d. 1085/1674); Thabit (1060-1124/1650-1712); Nab! (1052-1124/1642-1712); Nedlm (1092-1143/1681-1730); Seza°I (1080-1151/1669-1738);Nahlfi (d. 1151/1738); Esrar Dede (d. 1210/1796);Sheykh Ghalib (1170-1214/1757-99); cAwm fromYenishehir (1826-83); Sabahattin Eyuboglu (1908-73); Arif Nihat Asya (1904-75); and Cemal Yesil(1900-77). The most famous and celebrated rubd^ipoet, however, is cAzmi-zade Haleti. Nedlm glorifiedhim with the following verse: Haletiewd^-i rubdcide ucar*ankd gibi "HaletT is like the cankd (bird), flying on therubdVs summit", cf. PTF, ii, 443; TDEA, 350.Mucallim NadjI, however, criticised him. As to hisbiography and literary creativity cf. El1 art. s.v.(Menzel), lA, v, 125-6 (Yontem); EP art, s.v. (Iz),Turk Ansiklopedisi, xviii, Ankara 1970, 346-8. Hewrote 2 car</-i hdh, 3 kasfdas, 2 merthiyes, 3 kifa-ylkebires, 5 tdrfkhs, 330 beyts, but 569 rubd'is. He wascalled Ustdd-i rubd^i "master of the rubdci" andKhayydm-i Rum. (Gibb's and Kabakli's opinion thatHaletT cannot equal Khayyam in respect of originalityis disputed by Yontem.)In Turkish (Ottoman) rubd^iyydt, the akhreb pattern,whose first three syllables are —w, is much more frequentlyemployed than the akhrem pattern ( ), cf.TDEA, 350-1; the same holds true for Caghatayliterature (e.g. for Nawa°I). This fact may be conditionedby the structure of the Turkish languages. Therubdct appears in 12 variants, of which Turkish poetryhas made a certain selection; not only the akhrem, butalso certain kinds of akhreb patterns occur less often.The following table shows the patterns and their frequency:akhreb 1 —w/w-w-/w /- frequent accordingto Kabakli, TDEA,Dilcin; accordingto Andrews (alongwith 2) the mostfrequent pattern2 —v^/^-w-/w—v^/w- frequent accordingto Kabakli, TDEA,Dilcin; accordingto Andrews (alongwith 1) the mostfrequent pattern3 —w/w / /- frequent only accordingto Kabakliand TDEA4 —w/w /—w/w— frequent only accordingto Kabakli5 —w/w—w/w /- frequent accordingto Kabakli, TDEA,Dilcin

6 —w/^—w/w—\jl\j— frequent accordingto Kabakli, TDEA,Dilcinakhrem 7 /-w-/w /- frequent only accordingto TDEA8 /-^-/^—w/w- frequent only accordingto TDEA9 / / /_ rare10 / /_ww_/_ rare11 /—ww/ /- rare12 /—ww/—^W- rareThese statements can be corroborated. For example,Newci's 11 rubd^iyydt and KacJI Burhan al-Dln's 20rubd^iyydt are all akhreb; in Fucjull's 72 examples, onlyone akhrem is to be found.According to Dilcin, 207, a certain preference existsto employ two different variants in a rubd^i, namely,one for the verses 1,2,4 (which also rhyme with eachother) and another for the third (in the aaba pattern,unrhymed) verse; this is a frequent usage in Persianpoetry too, for example in cUmar Khayyam's poems.This accentuation of the third verse, the underlying ofits particular character is also known in the Turkishmdni, where, to be sure, the same effect is produced bya change of caesura (e.g. dam iistunde I duran kiz IIbayram geldi I dolan kiz II kurbanslz I bayram olmaz II olamsana I kurban kiz "girl standing on the roof; bayram hascome, walk around, girl; without victims there is nobayram; I may become a victim for you, girl": 4,3;4,3; 3,4; 4,3). In a more distant way, this underliningof a verse resembles certain poems in al-Kashghari,where, however, it is the last verse of the aaab patternwhich has a particular structure (e.g. in Stebleva,31.1, following the scheme\J I^J 1/<J /W 1 I\J /V-> //— WW—/— \J — ).

In whatever manner the problem of the genetic connectionof the Turkish and Persian folk poetries (ofwhich the PRG is a sublimation) may be explained,the symbiosis of these peoples and the similarity oftheir civilisations is undeniable.Bibliography: W.G. Andrews, An introduction toOttoman poetry, Minneapolis and Chicago 1976; A.Pagliaro and A. Bausani, Storia della letteratura persa,Milan 1960; E.E. Bertel's, Istoriya persidskotadzikskoiliteraturt, Moscow 1960; C. Dilcin,Orneklerle Turk siiri bilgisi, Ankara 1983; Doerfer(Hungary) = G. Doerfer, Formen der dlteren turkischenLyrik (forthcoming); Doerfer (Sweden) = G.Doerfer, Gedanken zur Entstehung des rubacl (forthRUBACI583coming); L.P. Elwell-Sutton, The rubaci in early Persianliterature, in Camb. hist. Iran, v, Cambridge1975, 633-57; W. Eilers, Vierzeilendichtung, persischund aulerpersisch, in WZKM, Ixii (1969), 209-49;PTF, ii, ed. L. Bazin et alii, Wiesbaden 1964;Fuzuli, Turkfe divan, ed. K. Akyiiz et alii, Ankara1958; EJ.W. Gibb, HOP; H.F. Hofman, Turkishliterature, Utrecht 1969; A. Kabakli, Turk edebiyati,Istanbul 1985; S.K. Karaalioglu, Ansiklopedikedebiyat sozlugu, Istanbul 1969; F. Kopriilii ( = Kopriiluzade),Edebiyat arastirmalan, Ankara 1966;idem, Turk dili ve edebiyati hakkinda arasttrmalar, Istanbul1934; T. Kowalski, Ze studjow nad forma poezjiludow tureckich ("Studies on the form of the poetryof the Turkish nations"),'Krakow 1921; G. Lazard,Les premiers poetes persons (IXe-Xe siecles), Tehran-Paris 1964; Mahmud al-Kashghari, Diwdn lughat alturk,according to Stebleva, q.v. (other editions byBrockelmann, Danfcoff and Talat Tekin); F. Meier,Die schone Mahsati, Wiesbaden 1963; Mir cAH-£hirNawa°i, Diwdn, ed. L.V. Dmitrieva, Moscow 1964;idem, Divanlar, ed. S.S. Levend, Ankara 1966;Necatigil = B. Necatigil, Edebiyat imizda isimlersozlugu, Istanbul 1991; Neslml = ImadaddinNasimi, Asdrldri, i, ii, ed. Kahramanov, Baku 1973;Newci, Diwdn, ed. M. Tulum and M.A. Tanyeri,Istanbul 1977; A. Ozkirimh, Turk edebiyat ansiklopedisi,Istanbul 1987; Kacli Burhan al-Dm,Divan, ed. M. Ergin, Istanbul 1980; J. Rypka,History of Iranian literature, Dordrecht 1968; I.V.Stebleva, Razvitie tyurkskikh poeticeskikhform v XI veke,Moscow 1971; TDEA = Turk Dili ve Edebiyati Ansiklopedisi,vii, Istanbul 1990; Turk Ansiklopedisi,xxvii, Ankara 1978; cUmar Khayyam = A.Christensen, Critical studies in the rubdiydt of ^Umar-i-Khayydm, Copenhagen 1927. (G. DOERFER)

3. In Arabic.The rubd^iyya, lit. "quadripartite entity", orquatrain occurs in Arabic literature both as an independentverse form and as an element of structurein longer compositions. It represents a comparativelylate development of poetic form and its origins are notaltogether clear.The lines of the quatrain can either be lines in thesense of a bayt (two hemistichs with between 16 and 30syllables and a caesura) or in the sense of a misrd** orshatr (a single hemistich so to speak, of 15 or lesssyllables). In the classical kasida it is the bayt whichrepresents the unit of structure, in radjaz poetry it isthe shatr. In the rubaHyya either case can apply, leadingto ambiguity in the usage of this term. However,more often than not, the rubd^iyya denotes a quatrainwhose lines have the length of half a bayt. This explainswhy expressions like baytdn1 ("two bqyts") ordubayt (from Persian du "two"; also dubayti) are sometimesused as synonyms for ruba^iyya.Dubayt, however, is more often used for a quatrainof a particular metre (fa^lun mutafd^ilun fa^ulun faHlun)and rhyme scheme aaba (called a'radf) or aaaa. Commonmetrical variations are:(a) ww—w—w wv_/—; (b) v-/w v»/w ^j^j—;(c) —^w ^—ww-. When used in this sense,dubayt is the Arabic equivalent of the Persian rubd^i. Itsorigins and its development are discussed extensivelyin the introductory essay of Kamil Mustafa al-ShaybT.Diwdn al-dubayt fi 'l-shicr al-^arabi (fi ^asharat kurun),Manshurat al-djamica '1-Llbiyya, n.p. 1392/1972, 15-132. This book contains, arranged according to centuries,a collection of 808 poems in the dubayt metre(mostly quatrains, but also some other forms, such asmuwashshahs) by 168 poets from the 5th/llth centuryuntil the beginning of the 14th/20th century, togetherwith 120 anonymous poems, of which 14 are in colloquialArabic. Supplements have been published in al-Mawrid (1975), 153-72, and (1977), 49-108.In most cases, only a few dubayt quatrains of eachauthor have been handed down in the literature. Amore extensive collection is the dubayt diwdn Nukhbatal-shdrib wa-^ua^alat al-rdkib, by Nizam al-Dln al-Isfaham (d. after 680/1281 or in 1278, Brockelmann,S I, 449), which contains some 500 quatrains arrangedaccording to rhyme-letter in Arabic (predominantly),Persian and in a mixture of both languages(mulamma*). Eighty of the Arabic quatrains of thisauthor are in al-ghaybi's book (op. cit., 285-300).clmad al-Dln al-Isfahanl (519-97/1125-1201 [q.v.})and $alah al-Dln al-Irbill (572-631/1176-1234) arealso said to have composed diwdns of dubayt quatrains(see al-^haybl, op. cit. 74-5).The rise of the dubayt quatrain is placed by al-§haybi among bilingual Persians in and aroundQhazna, and the most easterly Iranian territories. Asa date he suggests the 380s A.H., i.e. coinciding moreor less with the beginnings of the Persian rubd^i. ThePersian origin is borne out by the occurrence of a radif[q. v. ] in three early Arabic dubayts (al-Shaybl, op. cit.,nos. 2/1, 5/1 and 8/1).The earliest textual examples of dubayt quatrains goback to the first half of the 5th/l 1th century. They arepreserved in the Dumyat al-kasr compiled by Abu '1-Hasan CA1I al-Bakharzi (murdered in 467/1075 [q. v. ]).In his comment on one of these quatrains, al-BakharzTspeaks of "pieces in the rubd^iyya metre" (kitac caldwazn al-rubd^iyya) and he remarks that he had notheard of this method (tarikd) until his father hadrecited quatrains in this manner (rubd^iyydt cald hddhd'l-namat) (Dumya, ed. Muhammad Raghib al-Tabbakh, Aleppo 1349/1930, 174). Two early Arabicdubayts are by the Persian mystic Abu Sacld b. Abi '1-Khayr (357-440/967-1049 [q.v.]) famous for his morethan 700 Persian quatrains.References to quatrains of an earlier date do occurin the literature. Examples are Abu Nasr al-Sarradj(d. 378/988), K. al-Lumac fi 'l-tasawwuf, ed. R.A.Nicholson, London 1914, 299 (Bab f i man kariha 7-samdc); Abu CAH al-Tanukhi (329-84/939-94), Thetable-talk of a Mesopotamian judge (= Nishwdr al-Muhddara), ed. and tr. D.S. Margoliouth, London1921-2, i, 54, ii, 59: "there was a Sufi present, whowas humming some rubd^iyydt"; Abu cAbd al-Rahman al-Sulaml (330-412/941-1021), Tabakat alsufiyya,ed. Nur al-Dln Shurayba, Cairo 1953, 239, ina report in which Abu 'l-cAbbas Ahmad b. Masruk al-Tusi (d. 298/911) is asked for his opinion on the permissibilityof listening to musical performances of

quatrains (su^ila can samd*- al-rubd^iyydt). All these textssuggest that these quatrains were popular in Baghdad!mystical circles. As the word rubd^iyya is indefinitewith regard to structural details, it is difficult to knowif dubayt quatrains are intended in any of these cases.Another expression that may refer to the quatrainis mathndt, mentioned in al-Djawhari, Sihdh, Cairo1282, ii, 453 s.v. th-n-y, said to be equivalent to "whatis called in Persian dubayti, which is singing (alghind^}"(see also LA, xiv, 119 s.v. th-n-y).Quatrains or quatrain-like compositions may alsobe intended in a passage in Aghant1, xiii, 74( = Aghani?, xiv, 324) where shfo muzdwidj. baytayn1 baytayn1

is attributed to Hammad cAdjrad (d. between155/772 and 168/784 [q.v.]). See also G.E. vonGrunebaum, in JNES, iii [1944], 10 and G. Vajda,Les zindiqs en pays d'Islam au debut de la periode abbasside,in RSO, xvii [1938], 205.The 7th/13th century represents the Golden Age ofthe dubayt quatrain, with many poets among mystics(such as Ibn al-Farid [q. v. ] with over 30 quatrains and584 RUBACIDjalal al-Dm al-Ruml [q.v.] with 19 Arabic dubayts inthe Kulliyydt-i Shams), princes, men of law,philosophers and physicians. There are experimentsin form, e.g. the famous dubayt kasida by Baha° al-DlnZuhayr (581-656/1186-1258 [q.'v.]), Diwdn, ed. E.H.Palmer, Cambridge 1876, 202-4; the mixture of dubaytand muwashshah. such as the example by Ahmad al-Mawsili (603-56/1207-58) quoted in Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi, Fawdt al-Wafaydt, ed. Muhammad Muhyi al-Dln cAbd al-Hamid, Cairo [1951], ii, 510-11; as wellas the many imitations (mu*dra4a [q.v.]) which theseinnovations provoked.In this century, the dubayt also spread to the westernpart of the Muslim world. The Escorial ms. 288 containsfour texts on the dubayt written by Maghrib!authors, Abu '1-Hakam Malik b. cAbd al-RahmanIbn al-Murahhal (604-99/1207-99), Abu Bakr al-Kalalusi (d. 707/1307), Muhammad b. cUmar al-Darradj (authorship not certain) and Abu '1-HasanCA1I Ibn Barn (d. 730/1330). Two of these texts havebeen published by Hilal NadjT, Risdlatdn1 faridatdn1fi*arud al-dubayt, inal-Mawrid, iii(1974), 145-74. Hazimal-Kartadjanm (608-84/1211-85 [q.v.]) finds thedubayti exquisite, in spite of its non-classical origin,and therefore approves of its being practised (Id ba^s0

bi 'l-*amal *alayhi fa-innahu mustazraf wa-wad*uhumutandsib), see Minhddj. al-bulaghd^, ed. M.H. Belkhodja,Tunis 1966, 243. After the 7th/13th century, thenumber of dubayt-quatrains found in the literaturedwindles, but there are examples in the work ofauthors such as $afi al-Dm al-HillT (d. ca. 752/1351[q.v.]), $alah al-Dm al-$afadl(d. 764/1363 [q.v.]), IbnHidjdja al-Hamawi (767-837/1366-1434 [q.v.]) andIbn Hadjar al-cAskalam (773-852/1372-1449 [q.v.]).Today, the dubayt is said to be still in use in al-Kuwayt, al-Bahrayn and cUman.In modern Arabic literature, the rubd*iyya in thedubayt metre is seldom found, but there are many instancesof quatrains in original Khalflian metres ormodern derivatives. They represent one of the examplesof the revival and development of strophicform in modern Arabic poetry (cf. S. Moreh, ModernArabic poetry 1800-1970, Leiden 1976, and idem,Technique and form in modern Arabic poetry up to WorldWar II, in Studies in memory of Gaston Wiet, ed. M.Rosen-Ayalon, Jerusalem 1977, 415-34 = Moreh,Studies in modern Arabic prose and poetry, Leiden 1988,116-36).The diwdn of Ibrahim NadjI (1898-1953 [q.v.]), forexample, contains, under the title Rubd*iyydt, a collectionof 77 short-lined quatrains in the sari* metre,partly in monorhyme aaaa and partly in cross rhymeabab (ed. Ahmad Rami et alii, Cairo [1961], 225-34).In this diwdn, the short-lined quatrain is also used asa structural unit in 27 other poems, three of whichare of the murabba* type aaaa, bbba, ccca ... (seeMUSAMMAT), most of the others showing cross rhyme(abab cdcd efef...). The number of quatrains per poemvaries between 4 and 35. Several metres areemployed, especially hdmil, ramal and sari*.The long-lined quatrain (based on a bayt with twohemistichs) occurs in 11 poems. The rhyme schemefor most of these is aa xa xa xa; xb xb xb xb; xc xc xc xc

(in which x represents unrhymed hemistichs). Thenumber of quatrains varies between 4 and 33 perpoem.The Egyptian poet CAH Mahmud Taha (1901-49)also employed both short-lined and long-linedquatrains in longer poems. His poem Allah wa 'l-shd*irconsists of 108 short-lined quatrains in the sari* metrewith rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef... (al-Malldh al-td^ih,Cairo 19433, 77-117).Slightly longer is Tarajamat shaytdn by cAbbasMahmud al-cAkkad (1889-1964 [q.v.] in Suppl.]),with the same rhyme scheme but in the ramal metre(Diwdn al-*Akkdd, Cairo 1346/1928, 238-54).Cjamfl $idkl al-ZahawI (d. 1936 [q. v. ]), has a diwdncalled Rubd*iyydt, Beirut 1924, containing 1,018quatrains in different metres, all of them of the shortlinedtype.Mahmud Darwi§h (b. 1942) publishes under thetide Rubd*iyydt 22 short-lined quatrains (abab cdcd efefrhyme) mAwrdk al-zaytun, Beirut n.d. (original date ofpublication 1964), 133-142. Eleven of these are inDiwdn Mahmud Darwish i, Beirut 19796, 108-13. HisYawmiyydt (jjurh filastini, from tfabibati tanhatfu minnawmihd, is a poem of heterometric quatrains (madeup of lines of differing lengths), with rhyme schemeabab cdcd and a ramal-type metre (Diwdn i, 542-62).More traditional are the long-lined quatrains withrhyme scheme xa xa xa xa by the Mahdjar [q. v. ] poetsIlyas Farhat (1893-1976) in Rubd*iyydt Farhdt, SaoPaulo 1954 (U925), and Ilyas Kunsul (1914-81), inRubd*iyydt Kunsul, al-Djuz^ al-awwal, Damascus 1956.$alah IJjahln (1931-86) published a collection ofquatrains in the sari* metre in Egyptian Arabic underthe title Rubd*iyydt, Cairo 1962; also in Dawdwin $aldhDjdhin, Cairo 1977, 205-61.There is no uniformity with regard to thenomenclature of the modern quatrains. The longlinedquatrain is sometimes called murabba*, the shortlinedquatrains with rhyme scheme abab are also referredto as muthannaydt or thund^iyydt (cf. Yusuf Bakkar,Fi 'l-*aru4 wa 'l-kdfiya, Beirut 19902, 177-87).The term rubd*iyydt is also used as a name fortranslations of Persian quatrains, such as those byHafiz and Sacdl, and, especially, cUmar Khayyam[q.vv.]. Seldom have these quatrains been translatedin the original rubd*i form, i.e. in the dubayt metre:there is one example of a quatrain by cUmarKhayyam translated as a dubayt quatrain, in the workof the above-mentioned Nizam al-Dm al-Isfahanl (seeal-Shaybl, op. cit., 287); there are six quatrains fromthe Gulistdn of Sacdl occurring in the Arabic translationby Djabra'a b. Yusuf al-Mukhallac (d.1268/1851), ed. Cairo 1340/1921, 46, 137, 144, 151,168, 197; and some examples in the translation ofcUmar Khayyam's quatrains by Ahmad al-$afT al-Nadjafi (1895-1978), ed. Damascus 1350/1931, e.g.nos. 24, 194, 243, 320. Ahmad Zaki Abu §hadichooses the khafif metre, following the example ofDjamil $idki al-Zahawi, wrongly alleging that it coincideswith the Persian original (Rubd*iyydt *Umar al-Khayydm, Cairo 1931, 3). The translation made byAhmad Rami (M924), which is entirely in the sari*metre, has become popular in its version sung by theEgyptian singer Umm Kulthum (d. 1975).Apparently the first rendition in Arabic of a collectionof Khayyam's quatrains is the one published byWadi* al-Bustam (1886-1954), Cairo 1912, which hasthe form of septets, a 7-line stanza with the rhymescheme aaabbCD, brought together in two cantos(nashid), in each of which the septets are linkedtogether throughout the canto by the common rhymeof the last two lines.Muhammad al-SibacI (1881-1931) published in ca.1918 his translation in three cantos of 44, 38 en 9quintains cccAB, dddAB in an extended muwashshahlikefashion.Structured along the same lines, but in EgyptianArabic, is the work of Husayn Mazlum Riyacj,Rubd*iyydt al-Khayydm, Ladjnat al-nashr li '1-djamiciyyin, Cairo 1944.A more recent translation in short-lined verse in theRUBACI — RUDAKI 585mutakdrib metre is by the Bahraym poet Ibrahim cAbd

al-Husayn al-cUrayyic] (b. 1908), published asRubd^iyydt al-Khayydm, Beirut 1966, 19842.The term rubd^iyya is also employed in the sense ofa literary work in four parts, translating both tetralogyand quartet.Bibliography (in addition to works already citedin the text): Muhammad al-SibacI, Rubd^iyydt cUmaral-Khayydm, Cairo n.d. [ca. 1918]; Ahmad ZakI Abughadl (tr.), Rubd'iyydt Hdfiz al-§hirdzi, Cairo 1931(also in al-Muktataf[1931]); idem, RubdHyydt ^Umaral-Khayydm, Cairo 1931; Mustafa Djawad, al-Rubd^iyydt wa 'l-mathnaydt, in Ma&allat mad^rna^ allughaal-^arabiyya bi-Dimashk, xliv (1969), 982-9; B.Reinert, Die prosodische Unterschiedlichkeit von persischemund arabischem Rubd^i, in R. Gramlich (ed.),Islamwissenschaftliche Abhandlungen Fritz Meier zumsechzigsten Geburtstag, Wiesbaden 1974, 205-25; W.Stoetzer, Sur les quatrains arabes nommes "dubayt"', inQuaderni di studi arabi, v-vi (1987-8), 718-25; YusufBakkar, al-Tarajamdt al-^arabiyya li-rubd^iyydt al-Khayydm, Doha 1988 (not seen); Reinert, DerVierzeiler, in W. Heinrichs (ed.), Orientalisches Mittelalter( = Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft Bd.V), 1990, 284-300. (W. STOETZER)RUB£HUZI [see RABGHUZI].RUBIS [see YAKUT].

RUDAKI (properly RodhakI, arabicised as al-Rudhakl) the leading Persian poet during thefirst half of the 4th/10th century and author ofthe earliest substantial surviving fragments of Persianverse. Al-SamcanI gives his name as Abu cAbd AllahDja^far b. Muhammad b. Hakim b. cAbd al-Rahmanb. Adam al-Rudhakl al-Shacir al-Samarkandl, saysthat he was born in Rodhak, a suburb of Samarkand,and that he also died there in 329/940-1; there are,however, reasons to think that this date might beabout a decade too early (see the discussion in StoreydeBlois). cAwfi says that Rudaki was born blind andthere are quite a few references to his blindness(though not to the fact that he was sightless frombirth) in early Persian authors. The availablebiographical data all link him with the Samanid rulerof Bukhara Nasr II b. Ahmad (301-31/914-43 [q.v.])or with his minister Abu '1-Fadl al-BalcamI [q. v. ], andit was evidently under their patronage that heflourished.Rudaki left, as AsadI tells us, a diwdn of more than180,000 verses. This was lost long ago. What havesurvived are a fairly large number of single versesquoted in the Persian dictionaries (notably in theoldest of them, Asadl's Lughat-i Furs) as well as a fewcomplete poems quoted by anthologists andhistorians, the most important of the latter being asplendid kasida of nearly 100 verses (beginning mddar-imay) which is preserved in the anonymous Tdrikh-iSistdn and which, according to that source, Rudakisent from Nasr's court in Bukhara to the ruler ofSlstan, Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Khalaf. We alsohave (in chronological order of the authorities whocite them) five short poems, all of elegiac inspiration,quoted by the historian Abu '1-Fadl BayhakI [q.v.],the verses beginning boy-i djpy-i Muliydn quoted byNizamI cAruclI in connection with an anecdote aboutNasr b. Ahmad, a few short pieces quoted by cAwftand Shams-i Kays and a description of spring quotedby the 8th/14th century anthologist Djadjarml. Thelater anthologies add a few more poems, but the onlyone of these that can be ascribed more or less confidentlyto Rudaki is a long ode, cited by Amm RazI(1002/1593-4), in which the poet laments his old ageand recalls the amorous adventures of his youth. Thispoem refers also the riches which the poet had formerlyreceived from the Samanids, but also from "mfrMdkdn" (evidently the Daylami Makan b. KakI, d.329/940-1 [q.v.]), and adds that ''times have changed"and that the poet was now reduced to poverty.The most famous of Rudaki's works was evidentlyhis versification of the book of Kalila wa-Dimna. TheShdh-ndma of Firdawsl tells us how the dastur Abu '1-Facjl (sc. Balcaml) first had this book translated intoPersian and how the amir Nasr subsequently appointed"interpreters" to read it out so that the blind

Rudaki could versify it. Horn noticed already thatsome of the rhymed couplets in ramal metre quotedfrom Rudaki in Asadl's Lughat-i Furs clearly belong tothe stories of Kalila wa-Dimna, and the present authorhas been able to identify the location in those storiesof about 50 verses. Moreover, Noldeke (apud Horn)showed that some of the fragments in the same metrebelong to the story of Sindbad and the SevenMinisters and that Rudaki must consequently haveversified that book as well.From at least the 11th/17th century onwards the anthologistsbegin to ascribe to Rudaki a number ofpoems that are in fact by Katran [q. v. ], and these formthe main content of the diwdn that is ascribed toRudaki in a number of manuscripts and which waslithographed in Persia in 1315/1897. It is nowrecognised that this diwdn is a forgery. The valuablecollection of Rudaki's fragments by Sacld NafisI(altogether 1,047 verses in the second edition) excisesKatran's poems, but retains a number of otherdubious verses from unreliable sources. Moreover,the collection includes a good number of pieces thatthe sources either quote anonymously or ascribe to adifferent poet, but which NafisI attributed to Rudakifor stylistic reasons, as well as several "poems" thathe patched together from single verses quoted in thelexica. The collection must therefore be used withcaution.Rudaki's style is simple and direct, and consequentlystands in stark contrast to the mannerismwhich dominated Persian poetry from the 6th/12thcentury onwards; it is thus hardly astonishing that hisworks, greatly admired though they were in his owntime, soon seemed dreadfully old-fashioned and fellinto oblivion. What he lacks in rhetorical ornament hemakes up for in musical sonority; he is particularlyfond of assonance and internal rhymes. Much of whatremains of his poetry has a decidedly pessimistic tone,a lot of it along the usual lines of Islamic homileticpoetry (as represented, for example, by Abu '1-cAtahiya [q.v.]), but there is hardly anything overtlyreligious in his work and certainly no trace of Sufism."You ought not, O guests", he says in one poem, "toset your hearts for ever on this way-station, for youmust slumber under the earth, even if now you sleepon silken brocade. What use to you is the companionshipof others? The road into the grave must be takenalone and your companions under the ground will beants and flies", etc. (BayhakI, 188). Other poems areunashamedly hedonistic, though with a hedonism thatis often shot through with melancholy. "Live merrily",he advises us, "amongst the black-eyed beauties,merrily, for the world is nought but wind and an idletale. Be happy with what has come your way and giveno heed to what has departed. Look rather at me inthe company of a maiden with curly hair and thefragrance of fine musk, a face like the moon, of therace of the houris. ... This world is a breeze, a fleetingcloud, a jest. Bring the wine and let come what may."(cAwfi, ii, 9).Bibliography: Firdawsl, Shdh-ndma, ed. Moscow586 RUDAKI — AL-RUDHRAWARIviii, Nosjun-ruwdn verses 3337-3470; Bayhaki,Tdnkh-i Mas^udi, ed. Ghani and FayyacJ, Tehran1342 SH./1945, 61, 188, 239, 366, 599; Tdnkh-iSistdn, ed. M.T. Bahar, Tehran 1314 Sh./1935,316-24; Asadi, Lughat-i Furs, passim (see the editionsby Horn, Ikbal and Mudjtaba°i/$adiki, and alsoHorn's introd., 18-21); Raduyani, Tardjumdn albaldgha,ed. A. Ates, Istanbul 1949, passim (andAtes's notes, 90-2); Samcani, fol. 262a-b = ed.Haydarabad, vi, 192; Nizami cAruc]i, Cahdr makdla,ed. Kazwini, London-Leiden 1910, 28, 31-4;cAwfi, Lubdb, ii, 6-9; Shams-i Kays, al-Mu'djam fimacdyir ashlar al-^adjam, ed. Kazwini, London 1909,passim; Muhammad b. Badr al-Djadjarmi, Mu^nisal-ahrdrjidakd^ikal-ash^dr, ed. Tabibi, Tehran 1337-50 Sh./1959-79', ii, 453-4; Dawlatshah, 31-3; AmlnRazI, Haft iklim, ed. Dj. Fadil, n.p. n.d., iii, 335-43; E.D. Ross, Rudaki and Pseudo-Rudaki, inJRAS(1924), 609-44; idem, A Qasida by Rudaki, inJRAS(1926), 213-37 (contains a critical edition of the odemddar i may... by M. Kazwini and a translation by

Ross); S. NafTsi, Ahwdl wa asjfdr-i Rudaki, 3 vols.,Tehran 1309-19 Sh./1930-40 (collection of thefragments in the last volume); revised ed. under thetitle Muhit-i zindagi wa ahwdl wa ashcdr-i Rudaki,Tehran 1336 Sh./1958 and reprints; M. Dabir-Siyaki, Rudaki wa Sindbdd-ndma, in Yaghmd, viii(1334 Sh./1955), 218-23, 320-4, 413-6; OsoriRudaki, ed. A. Mirzoyev, Stalin-abad 1958;Rudaki, Stikhi, ed. I.S. Braginskiy with Russianverse trs. by V.V. Levik and S.I. Lipkin, Moscow1964; CA.A. SadikI, Asjfdr-i tdza-yi Rudaki, in NashriDanish, ix/4 (1372 Sh./1993), 6-14; Storey-deBlois, v/1, 221-6 (with further literature).(F.C. DE BLOIS)

Маснави т. 6

MATHNAWI (A.), the name of a poem w r i t t e nin rhyming couplets.1. In Arabic l i t e r a t u r e , see MUZDAWIDJ.2. In Persian.According to the prosodist Shams-i-Kays (7th/13thcentury), the name refers to "a poem based onindependent, internally rhyming lines (abydt-imustakill-i musarra**). The Persians call it mathnawibecause each line requires two rhyming letters....This kind (nawc) is used in extensive narratives andlong stories which cannot easily be treated of in poemswith one specific rhyming letter" (al-Mu^djam, ed.Tehran 1338/1959, 418f.). The first part of this definitionmentions the single characteristic which separatesthe mathnawi from all other classical verse forms,namely its rhyme scheme aa bb cc, etc. Otherwise, thename is given to poems differing greatly in genre aswell as in length.Etymologically, it is often explained as a nisbaadjective to the Arabic word mathnd, "two by two";but mathndtun (according to al-Djawharl, the equivalentof the Persian du-baytT, "which is a song") ismentioned as another possibility in the Tadj_ al-^arus(cf. Lane, s. v.). It is reasonable to think that the termwas coined by the Persians in spite of its Arabicderivation. The Arabs used the term muzdawidj. [q.v.]instead. By this they designated poems with rhymingcouplets, usually written in the trimeter of the raajazwhich has either eleven or twelve syllables. Suchpoems were composed at least since the beginning ofthe 8th century A.D., but the verse form remained oflittle importance in Arabic literature (cf. G. E. vonGrunebaum, On the origin and early development of Arabicmuzdawij poetry, in JNES, iii [1944], 9-13, repr. inIslam and medieval Hellenism, London 1976).The much more successful Persian mathnawi is firstknown from the Samanid period (4th/10th century).Although it made its appearance at a much later datethan the muzdawidj_, the mathnawi is regarded by nearlyall modern scholars as a continuation of an Iranianverse form and not of its Arabic counterpart. Yet thistheory meets with a few thorny problems pertaining tothe history of prosody in Iran. Prior to the Islamicperiod, rhyme—the most prominent feature of a mathnawi—was apparently not in use as a characteristicof a verse form. The metrical system of pre-IslamicIranian poetry is still very imperfectly understood.The early opinion of modern scholarship was that itmust have been governed by the principle of syllablecounting. On the basis of this assumption, an Iranianorigin of some Persian metres, which were frequentlyused in early mathnawis, was held to be likely (cf. G.E. von Grunebaum, Islam. Essays in the nature andgrowth of a cultural tradition, London 1955, 177-80).The syllabic principle was rejected by W. B.Henning and M. Boyce in favour of the theory thatthe pre-Islamic metres were accentual and allowed avariable number of syllables within certain limits. Ithas been shown more recently that a rather great

irregularity in the length of verse lines was permitted,probably under the influence of the accompanyingmusic (see S. Shaked, Specimens of Middle Persian verse,in W. B. Henning memorial volume, London 1970, 395-405, with further references). L. P. Elwell-Sutton, onthe other hand, arguing in support of his thesis thatthe metres of classical poetry continue the system usedin pre-Islamic Iran, opted for the principle of syllabicquantity (Persian metres, 168ff.). It has often beenobserved that the Persian mathnawis are written in arestricted number of metres. These metres alwayshave eleven or, more rarely, ten syllables. A verseform marked by such inflexible rules for its rhyme andthe number of its syllables can only have developed inthe early Islamic period. It is most likely, therefore,that the mathnawi came into being through a processof adaptation of pre-Islamic verse forms to the prosodyof the Islamic period which was dominated by theMATHNAWI 833metric principles of Arabic poetry. The stages of thisprocess can no longer be traced from the scantremains of pre-classical Persian poetry which havebeen preserved (cf. e.g. Chr. Rempis, Die dltestenDichtungen in Neupersisch in ZDMG, ci [1951], 235-8;Fr. Meier, Die schone Mahsati, Wiesbaden 1963, 9ff.;G. Lazard, Les premiers poetes per sans, Paris 1964,lOff.).In the view of the classical poets, the mathnawi wasundoubtedly on a par with other forms of poetry. ToGurganI [q.v.], the treatment in a mathnawi of thestory about Vis and Ramln, known up to his daysonly in an unadorned "Pahlawl" form, amounted tobringing it to the level of poetic expression (Vis-uRdmin, ed. Tehran 1337/1959, 20). The poems ofNizaml [q. v. ] show which heights of stylistic art couldbe reached in this form. In some respects, however, itwas also akin to prose. The narrative and didacticcontents of many poems could equally be dealt with inprose works. In principle, there were no limits to thelength of a mathnawi. A few works of exceptionablesize like the Shdh-ndma, some of the later heroic poems,and the MathnawT-yi ma^nawi left aside, most of thebetter-known poems fall within a range of 2,000 to9,000 bayts, but the form was also used for texts of amuch lesser extent. Fragments of no more than a fewlines with the rhyme scheme of the mathnawi can befound as inserted lines in prose works, for example inthe Gulistdn of Sacdl [q. v. ], who sometimes wrote anentire story on this scheme in 10 or 12 bayts.Other poems were occasionally inserted into amathnawi text, either with or without the use of theirspecific rhyme scheme. The first poet to do the formerwas, to our knowledge, cAyyukI (fl. in the early5th/llth century), who put short poems inmonorhyme into the mouths of the protagonists in hisWarka u Gulshdh (ed. by Dh. Safa, Tehran 1343/1964).This insertion ofghazals was also a characteristic of theDah-ndma genre and occurs sometimes in versions ofthe legend of Madjnun Layla [q. v. ], notably in thepoem of Maktabl (9th/15th century). Lyric poemsadjusted to the pattern of the mathnawi can be foundfrequently in the works of Firdawsi [q.v.], GurganI,Nizaml and others.Prose and poetry were in some cases used alternatively,e.g. in the Walad-ndma of Sultan Walad[q.v.]. The Tuhfat al-^Irdkayn of KhakanI [q.v.] is inmost copies introduced by a prologue in ornate prose;a similar prologue belongs to one of the early versionsof the HadTkat al-hakika of Sana°I [q. v. ], but was certainlynot written by the poet himself. Djalal al-DlnRumi [q. v. ] added a composition of this kind to eachof the six books into which his Mathnawi is divided.The composition of mathnawis shows the samevariety as most of their other features. Yet certainconventions can be recognised in a number of poemsand can be used therefore as the basis of a classification.A common type is exemplified in mathnawis witha clear distinction between introductory sections andthe proper text of the poem concerned. The former(which are often collectively designated as the dibdca,a term also applied to prologues in prose) deal with a

series of topics, some of which can be regarded asobligatory whereas others were added at the pleasureof the poet. To the first category belonged praise ofthe One God and prayers (tawhid, mundajdt), a eulogyof the Prophet (nact), which usually included thepraise of his Family and his Companions, a dedicationto the poet's patron, and digressions on the occasionfor writing the poem, its subject matter, etc. Reflectionsof the value of poetry, usually referred to assukhan, meaning both "speech" and "logos" (see e.g.J. Chr. Biirgel, Nizami uber Sprache und Dichtung, in^Festschrift fur Fr. Meier, Wiesbaden 1974, 9-28), andother sections of a moralising nature have frequentlybeen added. A dibdca of this kind can already be foundin the Shdh-ndma together with a series of sections onthe origin of the world which form a prelude to thesubject-matter of Firdawsl's epic. The obligatory partof the scheme was further enlarged by Nizaml, whoadded it to the treatment of the mi^rdd^ [q.v.] ofMuhammad following upon the nact. Sufi poets likeAmir Khusraw and DjamI [q. vv.} inserted the praiseof their spiritual guides. In some poems, a few sectionsof the dibdca were placed at the end by way of anepilogue.Less frequently found is a type of poem introducedby the description of one particular object treated asan emblem from which symbolic meanings relevant tothe following poem are derived. This device may havebeen borrowed from the nasTbs of kasTdas. Suchemblems were: the wind in Sanaa's Kdr-ndma and Sayral-^ibdd ild 'l-ma^dd, the sun in Tuhfat al-^Irdkayn, theflute in the MathnawT-yi ma^nawT, and the rabdb inSultan Walad's Rabdb-ndma.A distinction between an introduction and thepoem itself cannot always be recognised. This isespecially not possible in many of the shortermathnawis and in some didactic works like the HadTkatal-hakika.Several devices could serve to articulate the contentsof poems. Firdawsi inserted passages of variouskinds into the Shdh-ndma to introduce the major storiescontained in the text. The night scene describing howthe poet was inspired by a "beloved idol", whobrought him a lamp, and the theme of the tale ofBizhan and Manlzha, is the best known example. Thegenre of nature poetry provided Nizami with themeans to mark transitions in the structure of hisromances; reflective intermezzi could fulfil the samepurpose. More systematic was his use of shortaddresses to the cupbearer (sdki) and the singer(mughanni) respectively in the two parts of the hkandarndmaas introductions to each section of the narrative.Didactic poems were often, like treatises in prose,divided into chapters styled bdb, makdla or otherwise.The genres cultivated in mathnawis are notrestricted to the heroic [see HAMASA], the romanticand the didactic, the three usually associated with thisverse form. Panegyrics and satire, topical events, loveand wine, and many others subjects could also bedealt with in a mathnawi. The larger poems nearlyalways contain passages of other genres than the onethey are mainly concerned with. Sections dealing withethical, philosophical or religious themes are hardlyever missing in narrative poems. The didactic poet,on the other hand, used both long and short tales toexemplify the ideas propounded in his works. Theycan be found already in one of the oldest specimens ofthe didactic genre, the Afann-ndma of Abu ShakurBalkhl [q.v. in Suppl.].The mathnawi was also a useful tool to present factualinformation on account of its memotechnicadvantage. An early example of this is HakimMaysarl's Ddnish-ndma, the oldest integral text inrhyming couplets which has been preserved. It wascompleted in 370/980-1 and treats of medical matters(partial edition and translation by G. Lazard, Lespremiers poetes persans, Tehran-Paris 1964, ii, 178-94; i,163-80, see also 36-40). A wide range of subjects pertainingto the religious and the natural sciences,astrology, occultism and the arts were treated in thesame fashion.The choice of a metre for a mathnawi was deter834

MATHNAWImined by convention and not by some intrinsic qualityof the metre concerned. A clear example is providedby the metre mutakdrib-i muthamman-i mahdhufwhich, because of its occurrence in the Shah-ndma, waschosen by most poets who subsequently wrote heroicmathnawis. Already in the time of Firdawsl, however,it was used also in a didactic poem by Abu Shakur andin a love story by cAyyukI. Similar divergences of usecan be noticed in the case of other metres. A decisivefactor was the tendency towards the imitation ofauthoritative models according to their most importantcharacteristics of form and content. The classicalpoets tried to bring their originality to bear throughthe emulation of predecessors. This consisted both ofrepetition and of change. The former made it clearthat they were following the example of a greatmaster; the latter that they were clever enough to findnew variations on one aspect or the other of theirmodel. The long series of imitations based on thekhamsa [q.v.] of NizamI provides the best-knowninstance of the workings of this artistic principle. Themetre was usually among the features which wereretained in an imitating poem. The metre of a genuinework was also carefully maintained in pseudepigraphicalforgeries as they were based, e.g., on theworks of Sana3!' and c Attar [q. v. ]. On the other hand,a change of the metre could also serve to demonstratea poet's independence with regard to a model followedin other respects, e.g. in the case of Nizami's replacingthe khafif of Sanaa's Hadikat al-hakika for the sari^of his own Makhzan al-asrdr (cf. E. E. Bert el's, Nizamii Fuzuli, Moscow 1962, 183).Sometimes the imitation of one particular elementof a poem gave rise to an independent genre ofmathnawis. The exchange of ten letters between Wlsand Ramin in Gurgani's poem became the source ofthe Dah-ndmas, short works in mathnawi and ghazals,which were written from the beginning of the 8th/14thcentury onwards (cf. T. Gandjei, The Genesis and definitionof a literary composition: the Dah-ndma ("Ten loveletters"),in M, xlvii [1971], 59-66). Another exampleis the even longer sequence ofSdki-ndmas which had itsorigin in the call of the cup-bearer used by NizamI inthe first book of his Iskandar-ndma. It was a genre ofanacreontic verse written in the mutakdrib metre of itsoriginal. The authors of Sdki-ndmas were numerousenough to become the subject of a special tadhkira, theMaykhdna of cAbd al-Nabl Fakhr al-Zamanl, completedin 1028/1619 (Storey, i/2, 813; ed. by A.Gulcln-i Macanl, Tehran 1340/1961).During the later Middle Ages, new subjects wereadded to the repertoire of the narrative mathnawi bypoets like Khwadju KirmanI [<?. P.], clmad al-DlnFaklh-i KirmanI [q.v. in Suppl.] and Djaml. At thesame time, mystical poems continuing the examplesset by Sana°I, c Attar and Djalal al-Dln Rum! proliferated.The didactic genre includes several masterworksof Persian poetry, such as Sacd!'s Bustdn, theoften-imitated Makhzan al-asrdr and the didactic poemsof Dj arm's Haft awrang. Among the many writers ofshort Sufi" mathnawis, Mahmud Shabistar! [q.v.] andHusayni Sadat Amir [q.v.] should be mentioned. TheIndo-Persian poet Bldil [q.v.] was the most versatileauthor of mystical mathnawis in later centuries. Thenarrative and the didactic strains were intertwined inallegoric poems, for which Fattah! [q.v.] providedinfluential models. The great variety of subjects dealtwith in shorter poems cannot be completely describedhere. Mention should be made, however, of a fewgenres which were fashionable in the 10th-llth/16th-17th century: shdhrdshub or shahrangiz, poems dealingwith the playful description of young craftsmen andartisans which also exist in the form of series ofquatrains (cf. A. Gulcln-i Macanl, Shahrdshub dar shicrifdrsi,Tehran 1346/1967); sardpdy, devoted to the descriptionof an ideal human body "from top to toe";suz-u guddz, the description of painful experiences (seefor a specimen, Talib-i Amull, Kulliyydt-i ashlar, ed.Tehran 1346/1967-8, 193-208); and kddd* u kadar,stories about the workings of fate (cf. Armaghdn, viii[1306/1927], 120-3; x [1308/1929], 458-64, 554-60:specimens by Rukna Masih-i KashanI and Muhammad-Kul! Sallm). Biblical themes were taken as thesubject of mathnawis in Judaeo-Persian literature

[?•»•]•In modern literature, the mathnawi proved still to be

a useful medium for the Persian poets as long as theywere mainly interested in a renewal of contents.Imitations of the Shah-ndma with a nationalisttendency were the Ndma-yi bdstdn or Sdldr-ndma(1313/1895-6) by Aka Khan KirmanI [q.v. in Suppl.],the Kaysar-ndma by Adlb Plshawarl [q.v. in Suppl.]and the PahlawT-ndma, an unfinished history of IslamicIran in heroic verses by Nawbakht, published in 1926-8. Social and political criticism was voiced inmathnawis by Amlrl [q.v. in Suppl.] and Parwln [#.£.].I raclj Mlrza (1874-1924) used the form for satire in hiscArif-ndma and for a modern love story in Zuhrd waManucihr. The Indo-Persian poet Muhammad Ikbal[q.v.] adopted it for some of his most famous works,like the Djawid-ndma and Gulshan-i rdz-i djadid, animitation of the short mystical poem of MahmudShabistarl. The last major mathnawi to be written bya Persian poet was the Kdr-ndma-yi zinddn by Malik al-Shucara Bahar [ q . v . ] . It contains the account of thepoet's imprisonment and exile during the 1930s in thestyle of the great didactic poets of the past (Diwdn-ias_hcdr, ed. Tehran 1345/1966, ii, 2-126).Other prosodic forms—stanzaic poems and evenkasidas—were however increasingly used for epicpoetry, even by poets who remained faithful to theclassical canons. The experiment with a mathnawi-yimustazdd made by Bahar (op. cit., ii, 234-8) was notpursued. Under the influence of the theories of NlmaYushidj [q. v. ], the shi^r-i naw poets of the period afterthe Second World War abandoned the mathnawi,mainly because the rigid isochronism of its verse wasconsidered to be an impediment to the expressive useof metre (see e.g. Mahdl Akhawan-Thalith (M.Umld), Biddcathd wa baddyi^-i Nimd Yushidj, Tehran1357/1978, 70 ff.).Persian literary theory had little to add to the briefdefinition of the mathnawi given by Shams-i Kays. Afew remarks on the subject by later writers wereassembled by H. Blochmann, The prosody of the Persians,Calcutta 1872, 87-90. Works on inshd* [q.v.]sometimes pay attention to the corrections of thedibdca of a mathnawi (one of such works is quoted byAhmad CA1I, Haft Asmdn or History of the Masnavi of thePersians, ed. Blochmann, Calcuta 1873, 41-2; cAH'sbook contains the introduction to an unfinished workon mathnawi poets).Bibliography: M. CA. Tarbiyat, Mathnawi wamathnawi-guydn-i Iran, in Mihr, v (1316-7/1937-9),225-31 and continuations; A. Bausani, II Masnavi,in A. Pagliaro and A. Bausani, Storia della letteraturapersiana, Milan 1960, 579-777; M. Dj. Mahdjub,Mathnawisard^T dar zabdn-i fdrsT td pdydn-i karn-ipanajum-i hidjri, in Nashriyya-yi Ddnishkada-yiadabiyydt-i Tabriz, xv (1342/1963), 183-213, 261-85;Fr. Machalski, La litterature de I'Iran contemporain, iii,Wroclaw 1965-7, passim;]. Rypka et alii, Historyof Iranian literature, Dordrecht 1968, passim; A.Munzawl, Fihrist-i nuskhahd-yi khatti-yi fdrsi, iv,MATHNAWI 835Tehran 1349/1970 (with an alphabetical list of theopening lines of all the mathnawis mentioned in thiscatalogus catalogorum); L. P. Elwell-Sutton, ThePersian metres, Cambridge 1976, 243-5; F. Thiesen,A manual of classical Persian prosody, Wiesbaden 1982,passim; J. T. P. de Bruijn, Of piety and poetry, Leiden1983, 185ff. (J. T. P. DE BRUIJN)3. In Turkish.The Turkish mathnawi developed late under theinfluence of that of Persia and alongside it. The oldestmonument of Muslim Turkish literature that haschanced to be preserved, the Kutadghu bilig [q.v.}, is along didactic mathnawi (R. Dankoff, Yusuf Khdss Hdjib.Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig). A Turko-IslamicMirror for Princes, Chicago 1983). Turkish and Persianmathnawis shared a great stock of authoritativemodels, ranging from the themes themselves to thechoice of the appropriate metres (mutakdrib for theheroic genres [see HAM ASA], ramal for the religiodidactictype and hazaaj_ for the romance). Up to now,this division into three genres has served as the mainprinciple of organisation. But more attention needs tobe paid to the social and cultural context in whichthese works were written, and to the way in which thethree genres overlap. Turkish mathnawis had the samearchitectural framework as their Persian counterparts[section 2 above]. The authors' possibilities lay in the

"internal" significance of the details rather than inthe "external" aspects of plot and metre, the choiceof the formal means being largely determined by thetheme, for which terms as kissa [q.v.}, ddstdn, or hikdya[see HIKAYA. iii] were used.The chief element of the narrative mathnawi was theplot, turning on love between two chief characters,male and female, who gave it its title. Openingchapters dealt with the reason for writing and its truepurpose, incidentally drawing the patron's attentionto his skills as a poet. Structure and contents of theframework could be modelled on that of the kasida[q.v.], without the tautness of that form. Changingmetres could be used as structural boundariesdividing parts of the prologue. In his religious exordium,an author could combine the praise of the OneGod with a meditation on the works of creation. Theeulogy of the prophet Muhammad and his heavenlyjourney [see MICRADJ] have been treated in all Islamicpoetry, whereas the praise of the four first caliphswould only be found in the mathnawi of a Sunn!author. In the dedicatory passage, a local patron couldbe praised next to the ruler. If there was no response,the dedication might be removed and replaced with acomplaint to Fate. Since it was the poets' desire toprove their own superiority, they hardly ever felt theneed to mention their immediate predecessors. Anattitude of reverence for the great classical models waspresent in the poets' reflections on the value andessence of poetry. A favoured way of expression wasthat of mystically-coloured love poetry, depicting theauthor in a dialogue with the "speaker of the heart",the cupbearer, sdki, or the pen, kalem. In the epilogue,the date and the author's name could be transmitted.The author would seek to disarm adverse criticism,justifying his adaptation of a foreign classic or an old"native" story in the Turkish of his own time andenvironment. Disavowal of the vernacular in generalneed not prevent a poet from praising his own elegantidiom which he had substituted for the obsoletelanguage of the original.As for his narrative, the themes being familiar andspeaking for themselves, a mediaeval author couldtrust his audience to appreciate the significance of hisparticular treatment. In this way, the mathnawi couldcombine religious teachings, offer historical truth,serve as tool of learning or simply offer entertainment.Chapter headings divided the more voluminous texts.Short lyrical insertions belonging toghazal [q.v., iii. InOttoman Turkish literature, in Suppl.] poetry actedas breathing spaces. Without shifting his point ofview, the author presented the inmost thoughts of hisprotagonists, using lyrical monologues, dialogues ofthe lovers or the old technique of inserting letters; hecould also express his own feelings in signed ghazah,using mystical images (R. Dankoff, The lyric in theromance, inJNES, xliii [1984], 9-25). Much research isneeded into the great mass of Turkish mathnawis inorder to relate them to the social and cultural contextswhich define their significance. Most of the old poemsdid not appear in print before the Republic. Only afragment of this material has been translated into amodern language.Mystic-didactic mathnawis were introduced intoAnatolia by Djalal al-Dln RumTj^.y.] and his sonSultan Walad [#.».]. The short Carkh-ndme seems tohave been overvalued as compared with Gulshehn's[q.v.] Mantlk al-tayr and cAshik Pasha's [q.v.]Gharibndme.Suleyman Celebi's Wesilet el-nedjdt (Mewlid) onthe birth and miracles of the Prophet, completed in1812/1409, has remained immensely popular (N.Pekolcay, art. Siileyman Qelebi, in I A). Khusraw andShinn [see FARHAD WA-SHIRIN], Maajnun and Layld[q. v. ] and Yusuf and Zulaykhd were loved as movingromances; such compositions were often religious intheir purport, even though the actions and emotionsthey displayed did not always accord with an orthodoxethical code.In Caghatay, Azeri and Ottoman literatures, greatpoets like Mir CA1T Shir Nawa?T [q. v. ] and Fudull [q. v. ]deployed all the resources of Persian and Turkishliterature in the perfection of this form. From the

8th/14th century onwards, Turkish poets suppliedinventive translations and adaptations of Persianoriginals. The anonymous author of the ^Ishk-ndme (S.Yuksel, Mehmed. Isk-Ndme. Inceleme metin, Ankara1965) already made satirical use of the stock formulasof the epic with its exciting adventures in strangelands. Darir [q.v.] composed early versions of theYusuf-Zulaykha theme, to which the great muftiKemalpashazade [q.v.] later was to contribute amathnawi; Kutb and Fakhri (both 8th/14th century),must now be looked upon as pioneers in the TurkishKhusraw-ShirTn versions. Weighted with a heavilyPersianised vocabulary, SheykhT's version (F. K.Timurtas, §eyhi'nin Husrev u §irin'i, Istanbul 1963), inwhich Fakhri's verses can be traced, had a great influenceon later poets. Under the Ottomans, new subjectswere added to the repertoire. Dacl [q.v.] contributedan allegorical Ceng-ndme; Lamicl [q. v. ] dealtwith comparatively new (Salaman and Absal) ornearly forgotten themes, such as Vis and Ramin [seeGURGANI], and Wamik and cAdhra. It is doubtfulwhether he ever saw a complete copy of the latterpoem in the version of cUnsun [q.v.], who ultimatelydrew from a Greek source (see M. Nazif §ahinoglu,art. Unsuri, in I A; art. Vdmik u Azrd, in I A; B. Utas,in Orientalia Suecana, xxxiii-xxxv [1984-6]). Lamicl andDhati [q.v.] both composed a Shem^ u Perwdne; Fadli[g. v. ] introduced the Gul we Bulbul theme. DjacfarCelebi [q.v.] wrote an original Heves-ndme; to Mesihl(d. 918/1512 [q.v.]) the first Ottoman shehr-engiz isattributed, a genre later to be elaborated as a socialsatire by Fakiri [q.v.]. Indeed, as in the kasida, praisecould turn into satire and invective; Ahmad! [q.v.] inhis medical Tarwih el-erwdh flung abuse at the peopleof Bursa who had obstructed his work; the Khar-name836 MATHNAWIby Sheykhi [q. v. ] contains a vigorous satire on the badluck of a poet who is robbed of his timdr (F. Timurtas,§eyhi'nin Harndmesi, Istanbul 1971). In 933/1526Giiwahf completely rewrote c Attar's [q.v. ] popularmoral Pand-ndma, using colloquial expressions and awhole collection of Turkish proverbs (P. N. Boratev,in Oriens, vii) and fables (R. Anhegger, in TM, ix).Ahmad! appended the first versified chronicle of theOttomans to his Iskender-ndme. The term ghazdwdt-ndmeis used with reference to narrative poems celebratingthe military triumphs of the Ottomans. Epics tohonour contemporary sultans in Persian and Turkishin the shdh-ndme style, sumptuously produced in the10th/16th century (see LUKMAN; H. Sohrweide, in Isl.,xlvi), were already criticised by contemporaries fortheir lack of literary or historical merit. Sur-ndmescelebrated royal festivities in the capital. Prognosticsdeduced from meteorological phenomena of the solaryear had been the subject of an old mathnawi entitledShemsiyye by Yazidji Salah al-Din; the poetcalligrapherDjevri reworked them in his Melheme(Gibb, HOP, iii, 298; Levend, Ummet (Jagi Turkedebiyati, Ankara 1962, 46-7), Apocalyptic aspects ofhistory [see DJAFR] dominated Mewlana clsa's rhymedchronicle Djdmi** el-meknundt, which predicted theadvent of the Mahdl after Sultan Suleyman (B. Flemming,in Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des VorderenOrients [ = Festschrift Spuler], ed. H. H. Roemer and A.Noth, Leiden 1981, 79-92).Not every poet had the time and concentration towork with this epic form; sultans and princes wroteghazals. But an author who had composed onemathnawi from hundreds or thousands of beyts could gofurther and compose a set of five [see KHAMSA];Bihishtl, Hamdi, cAtaDI [q. vv. ] and others performedthis feat. Dukaginzade Yahya Beg (d. 990/1582), whoturned his back on "the dead Persians", broughthomoerotic love to the traditionally heterosexualromance by giving the (Persian) theme of the Kingand the Beggar, Shah u Gedd, an Ottoman backgroundand including it in his Khamsa (Istanbul kutuphaneleriTurkfe Hamseler katalogu, Istanbul 1961). By the end ofthe 10th/16th century, the straightforward versifiedadventure story seems to have lost its appeal, whileallegorical, didactic and descriptive mathnawisremained in demand. Nabi's long didactic Khayriyye.addressed to his son in plain Turkish, and hisKhayrdbdd, "out-Persianising" the Persians, aretypical for the late llth/17th and early 12th/18th centuries

(HOP, iii, 370-74), Sheykh Ghalib [q.v.] Dede'sallegorical subject is the mystic devotion of Beautyand Love. Fadfl-i Enderuni [q. v. ] described the attractionsof young men and women. Subtlety remainedthe stock-in-trade of the inevitable Sdki-ndme. But asmore people learned to read for themselves, there wasa great increase in the quantity of Turkish proseworks of all sorts; standard ingredients of the rhymedromances of action found their way into prose; CA1TcAz!z [q.v.] stands out with his famous collection. Heis a forerunner of literary westernisation, which led tothe introduction of the novel and the drama. In the19th century, the mathnawi form was cultivated forsome last Zafer-ndmes "Books of victory" on the warswith Russia and on uprisings of the Greeks and Serbians.clzzet Molla [q.v.] revived the narrativemathnawi for his great autobiographical elegy Mihnetkeshdn,completed in 1825. As late as 1874. Diva3

(Ziya) Pasha [q.v.] prefaced his Khardbdt, a threevolumeanthology of classical poetry, with a long andelaborate mathnawi in the old manner (HOP, v, 78-83); Namfk Kemal [see KEMAL, NAMIK] responded inprose. The vitality of the mathnawi was sustained rightto the end_of Ottoman literature; the Islamist poetMehmed cAkif [q.v.] Ersoy brought a new ease to it,using it for conversational verses as well as rhetoricalpassages in his written sermons on religious and moralsubjects.Bibliography: Given largely in the article, butsee further M. Fuad Koprulii, art. Aruz (Turk), inIA; A. S. Levend, Gazavdt-ndmeler ve Mihaloglu AHBey in Gazavdt-ndmesi, Ankara 1956; A. Ates, art.Mesnevi in I A; PTF, ii; A. Bombaci, La letteraturaturca, Milan 1969; N. Qetin, art. §iir, in L4; T.Gandjei, The Dah-ndma, in M, xlvii (1971); a fulllist of Turkish mathnawis has been compiled by A.S. Levend, Turk edebiyati tarihi. I. cilt. Giris, Ankara1973, 103-13; A. Qelebioglu, XIII-XV yuzyilmesnevilerinde Mevlana tesiri, Mevlana veyasama sevinci,Konya 1978, 99-126; H. Ayan, XIV.'yuzyil Turkedebiyatmda biiyuk mesnevi, in 1. Milli TiirkolojiKongresi, Proceedings, Istanbul 1980, 83-9; H.Tolasa, 15 yy. edebiyati Anadolu sahasi mesnevileri, inTurk Dili ve Edebiyati Arastirmalan Dergisi, i (1982),1-13.Printed editions of mathnawis inAnatolian Turkish: J. H. Mordtmann, Suheilund Nevbehdr, Hanover 1925; N. H. Onan, Fuzuli.Leyld He Mecnun, Istanbul^ 1956; A. Zajaczkowski,Najstarsza wersja flusrdv i Sinn Qutba, Warsaw 1958-61; F. Iz, Eski Turk edebiyatmda nazim. I. Divan siiri,Istanbul 1967; N. Hacieminoglu, Kutb'un Husrev ii§irin'i, Istanbul 1968; G. Alpay, Ahmed-i Da'i veQengnamesi. Eski Osmanlica bir mesnevi, Cambridge,Mass. 1973; B. Flemming, FahrTs Husrev u STrin.Eine tiirkische Dichtung von 1367, Wiesbaden 1974;T. Karacan, Nev'i-zdde Atayi: Heft-hvan mesnevisi.Inceleme, metin, Ankara 1974; M. Akalm, Ahmedi.Cemsid u Hursid. Inceleme-metin, Erzurum-Ankara1975; G. M. Smith, Varqa ve Gulsdh. A fourteenthcenturyTurkish Mesnevi, Leiden 1976; H. Ayan,§eyhoglu Mustafa. Hursid-ndme (Hursid u Ferahsdd),Erzurum 1979; M. Qavusoglu, Yahyd Bey. Yusuf veZelihd, Istanbul 1979; I. Olgun and I. Parmaksizoglu,Firdevsi-i Rumi. Kutb-ndme, Ankara1980; T. Gandjei, The Bahr-i durer: an early Turkishtreatise on prosody, in Studia turcologica memoriae AlexiiBombaci dicata, Naples 1982, 237-49; K. Yavuz,Muini. Mesnevi-i Muradiye, Ankara 1982; M.Hengirmen, Guvdhi. Pend-ndme, Ankara 1983; M.Demirel, Kemal Pasazade. Yusuf u Ziileyha, Ankara1983. I. Unver, Ahmedi. Iskender-name. Incelemetiphbasim,Ankara 1983; A. Gallotta, // "Gazavat-iHayreddin Pasa" di Seyyid Murad, Naples 1983.I n d i v i d u a l mathnawis have been studied byT. Gandjei, Zur Metrik des Yusuf u Zulaihd von SayyddHamza, in UAJb, xxvii (1959); A. Bombaci, in D.Huri, Leyld and Mejnun, London 1970; Gandjei,Notes on the attribution and date of the "Carbndme", inStudi preottomani e ottomani, Naples 1976, 101-4; H.Sohrweide, Neues zum "^Isqndme", in ibid., 213-18;Flemming, Die Hamburger Handschrift von Yusuf MedddhsVarka vu Gulsdh, in Hungaro-Turcica. Studies inhonour of Julius Nemeth, Budapest 1976, 267-73; A.Karahan, Un nouveau mathnawi de la litterature turqueottomane: Le Mevlid Haticetul-Kubrd, ou la description dumanage de Khadija avec le Prophete, in VII. Kongressfur

Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft, Proceedings, Gottingen1976, 230-5; I. Unver, Ahmedi'nin IskenderndmesindekiMevlid bolumu, in Turk Dili ArastirmalanYilhgi Belleten 1977 (1978), 355-411; C.' Dilcin,XIII. yiizyil metinlerindenyeni biryapit: Ahval-i kiyamet,in Omer Asim Aksoy armagam, Ankara 1978, 49-86;1^. Tezcan, Ldmi^inin Guy u fevgdn mesnevisi, inibid., 201-25; A. Ugur, §ukru-i Bitlisi ve Selimnamesi,MATHNAWI 837in Ildhiyat Fakultesi Dergisi, xxv (1981), 325-47; M.A. Qatikkas, Turk Firdevsi'si ve Suleymanname-i kebir,in Turk Dunyasi Arastirmalari, xxv (1983), 169-78.M. Anbarcioglu, Turk ve Iran edebiyatlannda Mihr uMah ve Mihr u Musteri mesnevileri, in Belleten, xlvii(1985), 1151-89. I/E. Eriinsal, The life and works ofTdci-zdde Cacfer Qelebi, with a critical edition of hisDivan, Istanbul 1983; M. N. Onur, Ak-§emseddinzddeHamdullah Hamdi'nin Yusuf ve Zuleyhdmesnevisindeki onemli motifler, in Turk Kulturu, xxii(1984), 651-58; M. Kohbach, Die Parabel vomgefundenen Dirhem in derfruhen anatolischen Versepik, inTurk Edebiyati Dergisi, xii (1981-2), 499-506; S.Aktas, Roman olarak Husn u Ask, in Turk DunyasiArastirmalari, xxvii (1983), 94-108.(B. FLEMMING)4. In Urdu.The development of the Urdu mathnawi fallsbroadly into three periods: early, middle and modern.The early period is associated mainly with the Dakkaniphase of Urdu literature. In DakkanI verse, themathnawi constitutes the most popular form, and isrepresented by a large output of both religious andsecular poems. Many of these are long pieces comprisingseveral thousand couplets. Often they aretranslated or adapted from Persian sources, but not afew of them are works of an original character.The growth of the early mathnawi reached its mostproductive stage in the 10th/16th and llth/17th centurieswith the emergence of Bidjapur and Golkondaas the main centres of DakkanI literature. Hitherto,the mathnawi?, were more concerned with religioussubjects, but subsequently stories of love and heroismbegan to find increasing prominence in their content.In Bidjapur, under the enlightened patronage of thecAdil Shah! dynasty (895-1097/1490-1686 [q.v.]),there flourished many important poets who are knownexclusively for their mathnawis. One of them wasMlrza Muhammad MukTmT (d. ca. 1075/1665),author of Candarbadan u Mahydr, which was the firstmathnawi "with a purely literary motif. Its subject dealswith a contemporary incident involving the tragic loveof a Muslim merchant, Mahyar, for Candarbadan,daughter of a Hindu rajah. Another poet living at thesame time was Kamal Khan RustamI, who composedin 1059/1649 the first artistic work of epic poetry inUrdu, the mathnawi Khdwar-ndma ("The book of theEast"). This poem, written in imitation of IbnHusam's Persian epic of the same name, follows themodel of Ddstdn-i Amir Hamza, and also borrows sometopics from Firdawsl's Shdh-ndma. At the court of cAllcAdil Shah II (1068-83/1656-73) was the poet laureateMuhammad Nusrat NusratI (d. 1095/1684), who hasleft behind several mathnawis, the most famous beingthe Gulshan-i ^ishk ("The rose-garden of love"). Thispoem, written in 1067/1657, is a fairy tale describingthe love between prince Manohar and princessMadhumaltT. His other notable mathnawi is the longhistorical epic cAli-ndma ("The book of CAH"), whichcontains a narrative of the wars fought by CAH cAdilShah with the Mughals and the Marathas. He alsocomposed the historical mathnawi Ta^rikh-i Iskandan("The history of Iskandar"), a_poem dealing withevents during the reign of CA1I cAdil Shah's son andsuccessor, Sikandar (1083-97/1673-86). Other commonlyknown mathnawis produced by cAdil Shahipoets include Bahrdm u Ba.no Husn, a love poem begunin about 1029/1620 by Amln and completed in1049/1639 by Dawlat; Kissa-yi benazir ("The incomparablestory"), written by Sancatl in 1054/1644 todescribe the exploits attributed to Abu TamTmAnsarl, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad; thepoetical adaptation of Amir Khusraw's mathnawiHasht bihisht, executed by Malik Khushnud in about1056/1646; and Yusuf u Zulaykhd, composed in1098/1687 by the last major poet of the cAdil Shah!era, Sayyid MTran Hashimi (d. 1108/1697).Rivalling Bidjapur in the patronage of literature

and literary men was the Kutb Shah! dynasty (918-1098/1512-1687 [q.v.]) of Golkonda. Several of itsrulers were poets themselves, and their generous supportof literary activities provided encouragement tothe development of Dakkanl verse. Many outstandingmathnawis were written during this time. In 1018/1609Mulla Wadjhi, poet laureate of Muhammad KullKutb Shah (988-1020/1580-1611), composed amathnawi entitled Kutb u Mushtan ("Polar Star andJupiter"), which allegedly describes the love affair ofhis patron with a famous courtesan of the day. In1034/1625 the most outstanding poet of cAbd AllahKutb Shah's reign (1034-83/1625-72), Ghawwasi,composed for the ruler the mathnawi Sayf al-Muluk waBadi^ al-Djamdl, which took its theme from a story ofthe Arabian Nights. Another mathnawi, the Tuti-ndma("The book of the parrot"), which he wrote in1050/1640, was a poetical rendering of Piya3 al-DlnNakhshabi's earlier Persian adaptation of the samename. Ghawwasi's contemporary, Mazhar al-DTnIbn NishatI, was the author of the mathnawi Phulban("The flower garden"), which he completed in1065/1655 and dedicated to cAbd Allah Kutb Shah.Adapted freely from a lost Persian work, Basdtin("Gardens"), written under Muhammad Shah IITughluk (725-52/1325-51), Ibn Nishati's mathnawiprovides a picture of the life in Deccan in the latellth/17th century, and is interesting both from aliterary as well as historical point of view. During thereign of Abu '1-Hasan Tana Shah (1085-98/1674-87),who was the last ruler of the Kutb Shahi dynasty, twoimportant mathnawis were written. The first wasBahrdm u Gulanddm, composed in 1081/1670 by Tabclin imitation of NizamT's Haft Paykar, and the secondwas Ridwdn Shah u Ruhafzd, a romance by Fa°iz writtenin 1094/1683 and based upon a Persian prose taledescribing the love between the Chinese prince Ridwanand the princess of the djinns.The middle period of the Urdu mathnawi may besaid to begin from the early 12th/18th century, whenthe language of Urdu poetry acquired an idiomdistinct from the Dakkanl. This period, known alsofor the impetus received in it by the ghazal [q.v.},witnessed the appearance of some excellent mathnawiswhich have left their mark on Urdu literature. Heroicmathnawis lost favour during this period, but romanticmathnawis continued to prosper and gained a richnessin their diction and approach. Of particularsignificance was the growth of mathnawis dealing withlove themes based upon personal experience.The poem Bustdn-i khaydl ("The garden of imagination")must be regarded as the first importantmathnawi of the middle period. Written in 1160/1747by Siradj al-Dln (1126-76/1714-63) of Awrangabad, itdescribes a love episode in the life of the poet. Thechief distinction of the poem lies in its intimate noteand, especially, in its refined language which almostverges on the modern idiom. Personal love found anoutspoken exponent in Mir Athar (d. 1208/1794),best known for his mathnawi Khwdb u khaydl ("Dreamand imagination"), which represents a plaint by thepoet suffering the loss of his mistress. The famous poetMuhammad Takl Mir (1136-1225/1724-1810 [q.v.]),who excelled in the ghazal, is equally noted for hismathnawis, some of which express the disappointmentof love, and are regarded as autobiographical by the838 MATHNAWIcritics. The mathnawis of Muhammad MuDmin KhanMu'min (1215-67/1800-51), like those of Mir, providea record of the poet's emotional involvements,whether real or imaginary, and have won recognitionfrom literary authorities.In the poetic creations of Nawwab Mlrza Shawk(1197-1288/1783-1871), whose real name was TasaddukHusayn, the Urdu romantic mathnawi with a personalmotif reached its maturity. Shawk, who devotedhis talents almost exclusively to the writing ofmathnawis, is the author of three works in that genre,namely Farib-i ^ishk ("The deception of love"), Bahdr-i^ishk (''The spring of love") and Zahr-i cishk ("Thepoison of love"). The last-named poem, written probablyin about 1860, is Shawk's masterpiece, andindeed stands out as one of the great narrative piecesof Urdu literature. Both in diction as well as theme itdisplays a level of realism seldom attained by anyother Urdu mathnawi.Among the writers of non-personal romantic

mathnawis, Mir Ghulam Hasan (d. 1200/1786),generally known as Mir Hasan, holds a distinguishedposition. He is the author of one dozen knownmathnawis of varying length. His reputation restschiefly on his long mathnawiSihr al-baydn ("The magicof eloquence"), which was finished in 1199/1784-5,and comprises approximately 2,500 couplets. It is afairy tale of the conventional type containing a descriptionof the love between prince Benazir andprincess Badr-i Munlr. Besides its literary qualities,such as simple and elegant language, faithful interpretationof emotions, effective portrayal of natureand convincing characterisation, it also provides detailsregarding such contemporary topics as people'sdress, social etiquette, customs and ceremonies.Sharing honours with Mir Hasan's Sihr al-baydn isthe poem Gulzdr-i Nasim ("The rose-garden ofNaslm") written in 1838 by Pandit Daya ShankarNasim (1811-43). This work has left a marked impacton contemporary and later poets, as seen from themathnawis composed after its example. Its central plotrevolves around the adventures of prince Tadj al-Muluk, whose search takes him into a fairyland wherehe expects to find the magical flower needed to curehis father's blindness. The poem has been praised forits terse description, its flights of fancy, and its choiceof similes, words and idioms.The Urdu mathnawi in its modern phase dates fromthe latter part of the 19th century, and its origin islinked with the campaign initiated at that time toachieve literary reforms. The reformers, dissatisfiedwith the ghazal, advocated the adoption of the nazm or"thematic poem" patterned after Western models.The mathnawi, with its tradition of continuous themesand a comparatively less inhibiting rhyme scheme,provided a ready-made form for the nazm, and it cameto be employed by the reformers as an effectiveliterary instrument to popularise the new trends inUrdu poetry.The predominant theme of the modern Urdumathnawi is social. As such, it differs from the earliermathnawi which was identified with romantic subjects.In other respects also, it evokes differences from oldermodels. Lengthy mathnawis like those composed in thepast are now extremely rare, and the restrictionimposed by custom on the type of metres to beemployed by the mathnawi is no longer observed.It was the poet Altaf Husayn Hall (1837-1914[<7.z>.]) who critically examined the role of the mathnawiin Urdu poetry and laid the foundation for its futuredevelopment. He pointed out that the mathnawT provideda medium best suited for expressing continuousthemes. The mathnawis he wrote reflect his social andreformist leanings. Conspicuous among them areHubb-i watan ("Patriotism"), Tacassub u insdf("Bigotry and justice") and Munddj_dt-i bewa ("Thewidow's prayer"), which appeared respectively in1874, 1882 and 1884.Following the pioneering efforts of Hall, themathnawi acquired a new dimension. It was used byMuhammad Ismacll Merathi (1844-1917) for hisshort, descriptive poems which, written in a simplelanguage and dealing with everyday subjects, representthe first successful attempts in Urdu to composechildren's poetry. Ahmad CA1I Shawk Kidwa3! (1853-1925) gave special attention to mathnawis, his mostfamous work being the ^Alam-i khaydl ("The world ofimagination"), a sentimental poem expressing thefeelings of a lonely woman whose husband has goneon a journey. Shawk's contemporary Sayyid CA1TMuhammad Shad cAzimabadI (1846-1927) was anavid mathnawi writer displaying a maturity of style.The greatest Urdu poet of the 20th century, MuhammadIkbal (1877-1938 [q.v.]) adopted the mathnawi formany of his poems, of which the Sdki-ndma ("Thebook of the cup-bearer") is undoubtedly one of thegreat masterpieces of Urdu literature. Mention mustalso be made of HafTz Djalandharl's (1903-82)mathnawi-style narrative Shdh-ndma-yi Islam, whichappeared in four volumes from 1929 to 1947, andrepresents a lengthy attempt to record the history ofIslam in a versified form.Bibliography: I. Works on literaryh i s t o r y and criticism: Altaf Husayn Hall,Mukaddama-yi shicr u shd^iri, ed. Wahid_KuraysJii,Lahore 1953; Muhammad Husayn Azad, Ab-ihaydt, repr. Lahore 1967; Garcin de Tassy, Histoire

de la litterature Hindoue et Hindoustani, 3 vols., Paris1870-1; R. B. Saksena, A history of Urdu literature,repr. Lahore 1975; T. G. Bailey, A history of Urduliterature, Calcutta 1932; cAbd al-Salam NadwT,Shfral-Hind, 2 vols., Aczamgafh 1939; A. Bausani,Storia della letteratura de Pakistan, Milan 1958;Muhammad Sadiq, A history of Urdu literature, London1964; Annemarie Schimmel, Classical Urduliterature from the beginning to Iqbdl, Wiesbaden 1975;Naslr al-Dln HashimI, Dakkan men Urdu, repr.Lakhnaw 1963; MuhyT al-Dln Kadirl Zor, Dakkaniadab ki ta^rikh, repr. Karachi 1960; cAbd al-KadirSarwari, Urdu mathnawi kd irtikd, repr. Karachi1966; S. M. cAkil, Urdu mathnawi kd irtikd,Allahabad 1965; Giyan Cand Djayn, Urdumathnawi shimdli Hind men, cAligafh 1969; FarmanFathpun, Urdu ki manzum ddstdnen, Karachi 1971;Khushhal Zaydl, Urdu mathnawi kd khdka, Dihli1978.II. Poetical works: Kissa-yi Candarbadan waMahydr, ed. Muhammad Akbar al-Dln SiddikT,Hyderabad 1956; Rustami, Khdwar-ndma, Karachi1968; NusratI, Gulshan-i cishk, ed. cAbd al-Hakk,Karachi 1952; idem, Diwdn-i Nusrati, ed. DjamllDjalibi, Lahore 1972; idem, ^Ali-ndma, IO ms. P.834; Sancatl, Kissa-yi Benazir, ed. cAbd al-KadirSarwari, Hyderabad 1938; Wadjhl, Kutb uMushtari, ed. cAbd al-Hakk, Karachi 1953;GhawwasT, Sayf al-Muluk wa Badic al-Djamdl, ed.Mir Sacadat CA1I RidwT, Hyderabad 1938; idem,Tuti-ndma, ed Mir Sacadat CA1T Ridwl, Hyderabad1939; Ibn NishatI, Phulban, ed. cAbd al-Kadir Sarwari,Hyderabad 1938; Fa°iz, Ridwdn Shah uRuhafzd, ed. Sayyid Muhammad, Hyderabad1956; Siradj al-Dln AwrangabadI, Bustdn-i khaydl,ed. cAbd al-Kadir Sarwari, repr. Hyderabad 1969;Mir Athar, Khwdb u khaydl, ed. cAbd al-Hakk,MATHNAWI — AL-MATLAC 839Karachi 1950; Muhammad Taki Mir, Kulliyyat-iMir, ii, ed. Masih al-Zaman, Allahabad 1972;Muhammad MuDmin Khan MuDmin, Kulliyydt-iMu^min, ii, Lahore 1964; Kulliyydt-i Nawwdb MirzdShawk Lakhnawi, ed. Shah cAbd al-Salam, Lakhnaw1978; Mir Hasan Dihlawl, Mathnawiydt-i Hasan, i,ed. Wahid Kurayshi, Lahore 1966; idem, Mathnawisihr al-baydn, ed. Wahid KurayshT, Lahore 1966;Daya Shankar Nasim, Mathnawi gulzdr-i Nasim, ed.Amir Hasan Nurani, DihlT 1965; Altaf HusaynHall, Kulliyydt-i nazm-i Halt, 2 vols., ed. IftikharAbmad Siddlkl, Lahore 1968-70; Shawk Kidwa'i,^Alam-i khaydl, Lakhnaw 1918; SayfT PremT (KhalTlal-Rahman), Haydt-i Ismail, DihlT 1976; Shad^AzimdbddikTmathnawiydn, ed. NakT Ahmad Irshad,Dihli 1971; Muhammad Ikbal, Kulliyydt-i Ikbal(Urdu), Lahore 1973; Haffz Djalandhari, Shahndma-yi Islam, 4 vols., Djalandhar 1929-47.(MUNIBUR RAHMAN)

Касида т. 4

$A$lDA.i. In Arabic. — Kaslda collective fyasld is thename given in Arabic to some poems of a certainlength. It is derived from the root liasada,"to aim at", for the primitive kaslda was intendedto eulogize the tribe of the poet and denigrate theopposing tribes. Later it was concerned with theeulogy of a personality or a family from whom thepoet was soliciting help or subsidies. Although thefunerary elegy (marthiya or rithd*) does not seem tohave been included originally under the same designation,the form of the kaslda may nevertheless beclassified in this poetic genre. On the other hand,the poetic satire (hidid*), which, furthermore, doesnot go beyond insult in verse, is often called kasldaby the ancient poets, even though it does not presentall the characteristics of the kaslda.The classical kaslda, represented ideally by thepre-Islamic or at least archaic poems [see MUCALLAKAT],collected and perhaps also given their formduring the first centuries of Islam, has been defined byIbn Kutayba in a famous passage many timestranslated and commented upon (see Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Introduction au Livre de la poesie et despoetes, Paris 1947, xvi-xviii, 13-15, 54'55)> and then

by the various literary critics who pronounced theirjudgments (particularly Ibn Rashik, see A. Trabulsi,La critique poetique des Arabes, Damascus 1955,passim). It contains a series of successive developmentswhose conventional character implies a traditionalready immemorial. The kaslda, which numbersat least seven verses, but which generally comprisesfar more, consists essentially of three parts of variablelength: (i) a prologue in which the poet sheds sometears over what was once the camping place of hisbeloved now far off (bukd* <-ald yl-atldl], then describesthe charms of the latter, which he forebears topursue (the naslb [see GHAZAL]). (2) The poet's narrationof his journey (rahll) to the person to whom thepoem is addressed. This part of the kaslda is a pretextfor descriptions of the desert and the hero's mount,as well as for lyrical flights of eloquence, for exampleon the insignificance of man. (3) As a general rule,this rahll leads without any great transition into thecentral theme, constituted by the panegyric of a tribe,a protector or a patron, or in satire of their enemies.The Arabic kaslda is a very conventional piece ofverse, with one rhyme, whatever its length, and ina uniform metre. Consequently, the charm andoriginality of certain of the themes employed cannotprevent boredom and monotony from reigning overthese never-ending poems. These formal constraintswere moreover resented by the poets themselves; theyare without doubt the cause of the fragmentarycharacter of many of the pieces, which took a particularlylong time to compose. Tradition reportsnumerous examples of poets paralysed by the tyrannyof the form. Furthermore, this situation can no doubtprovide a good explanation for the hesitations withregard to the original structure of a given poem: apoet could well have recited a kaslda on differentoccasions with more or less important variants,additions or suppressions. A number of kasldas havedoubtless never contained all the essential parts of theideal piece, and it is always very unwise to assert thatsuch a poem has been lost or truncated on the pretextthat one knows only a part of the work. Certainancient pieces, nevertheless describable as frasldas, donot even contain the essential part, praise or satire.714 KA$IDAAt the end of the 2nd/8th century, the classical%a$ida, while it continued its triumphant reign amongpoets with a classical tendency, on the other handbursts forth among the "modern" poets and givesbirth to a whole series of autonomous poetic genres,which are however already present in embryo formin the themes employed by the classical ba?ida; thusthe naslb gives birth to the erotico-elegiac genre,directly associated with the Bacchic genre; the descriptionof the desert becomes description of natureand gardens; the description of the mount and theride results in the poetry of war or hunting; etc.All these genres are represented in independentpieces, to which the name of kasida continues oftento be given, even though incorrectly. The long classicalmetres become shorter, and lend themselvesbetter to musical adaptation.The tripartite form of the kasida survived throughthe agency of the post-classical poets who did notalways observe it strictly (see notably R. Blachere,Abou f-Tayyib al-Motanabbi, Paris 1935, passim),until the modern period in its neo-classical form.The Bedouin or partially sedentarised societies—asin Mauritania—still cultivate it with delight.The classical or neo-classical liasida can in certaincases be a vehicle for information of a historicalnature. It is always advisable to use it in this respectonly with the greatest prudence (see further M. Canard,Les allusions a la guerre byzantine chez AbuTammdm et Buhturi, in A. A. Vasiliev, Byzance etUs Arabes, i, Brussels 1935, 397-403).The collective kasid, designating in the aggregatethese ample and elaborate pieces, was in ancienttimes opposed to the radjaz [q.v.] which is a roughand everyday verse form, in a rudimentary metre ofconstant structure.Bibliography: The classical bibliography is

immense. It is to be found, in an almost exhaustivestate, in R. Blachere, HLA, as much in the "generalreferences" i, XVIII-XXXIII, as at the endof the chapters or paragraphs dedicated to archaicpoetry; see especially i, 82-186, ii, 243-453, iii, 455-716. See also, cARUp, GHAZAL, HIQIA, SHICR.Among the more recent studies, one should seeespecially: M. C. Bateson, Structural continuity inPoetry, Paris-The Hague 1970; R. Jacoby, Studienzur Poetik der altarabischen Qaside, Wiesbaden1971; J. E. Bencheikh, La creation pottique aBagdad de 200 a 250. Modes et proce'de's (forthcoming).On contemporary survivals, see M. el-MoktarOuld Bah, Introduction a la poesie mauritanienne,in Arabica, xviii (1971), 1-48.(F. KRENKOW-[G. LECOMTE])2. In Persian. — The Persian basida is a lyricpoem, most frequently panegyric, which appears inthis form in the earliest Persian poetry (G. Lazard,Les premiers poetes persans, i, Paris 1964, 12).Later theorists of this poetry codified its forms withundeviating constancy. In their view, the kasida isone of the realisations of the rules they imposed onpoetry, which, according to Naslr al-DIn al-jusl(Micydr al-ashfar, written in 649/1251, ed. Tehran1942, fasl i of the introd.), consists of metre andrhyme, which provided him with the sections of histreatise. His predecessor Shams-i Kays (al-Mucd£amft ma'd'ir ashlar al-'adiam, completed after 630/1232,ed. Tehran 1960, 196) even insisted: "even if thediscourse has a metre, if it is not in rhyme it isnot poetry". The first theorists whose work is extant(al-Raduyanl, Tardiumdn al-baldgha, witten in the5th/nth century, Istanbul 1949; R:i_Md al-DInWatwat, ffada'ib al-sifrr fi dakd'ik al-shi'r, writtenin the 6th/i2th century, Tehran 1961; for the others,see Kazwmi, intro. to the Mu'd[am of Shams-i Kays,n) were still rhetoricians, and their writings revealthe essential norms imposed on the Persian panegyriclyric. More than a mere knowledge of rhyme, prosodyand rhetoric were needed for the composition of afrasida: the author had to be well-versed in thelearning of his day so that he could make timely useof it and had to possess, above all, what NizamIcAru4i called badiha, the ability to improvise (Caharmakdla, written in the mid-6th/i2th century, Tehran1963, 48), which was worth a fortune to many of thepoets at court. The golden age of the fcasida was alsothe great era of poetic theory, so much so that eachfound in the other its main field of activity. Thetheoretical works produced after the 7th/i3th century,which are still best known in the West throughtranslations (by Blochmann, Garcin de Tassy,Gladwin and Ruckert), have little to teach us aboutthe kasida.The theorists of Persian poetry borrowed theirterminology from Arabic, but none, at least of thosewhose work has been cited, ever omitted to pointout the difference between the two types of poetry ofwhich they were aware. The 'arud, that is the endingof the first hemistich (misrd*) of the first distich(bayt) of the kasida, had to supply the one singlerhyme for the whole poem. The rhyme was repeatedin each darb, the final part of the second hemistichof each distich, according to complex rules. No studyhas yet been made of these rules, but fortunatelywe do have P. N. Khanlari's basic study of Persianmetre (Wazn-i shi'r-i fdrsi, Tehran 1969). Quantitatively,a poem cannot be a kasida unless the numberof its distichs exceeds 15 and does not exceed 30.As a general rule, the poet must ensure that themeaning of each bayt is independent of its neighbours;in Persian poetry, tadmin [q.v.] is an errorunless it is dictated by a rhetorical figure. The kasidacomprises three parts; The first, the exordium, mustcommand attention by touching the hearts of thelisteners, an effect which is often achieved by aghazal, a courtly song, either by describing the beautyof the beloved and the state of the lover (nasib), orthrough the amorous poet making his listeners sharein his condition (tashbib)', by the time of Shams-iKays, these distinctions no longer existed, as he

himself remarks (Mu*dj[am, 413), because of thewealth of the subjects treated in the exordium:mainly love, nature and wine. The frasida is first andforemost a poem composed for a princely festival,especially the spring festival (nawruz) and theautumn one (mihrigdn); it can also be a poem on theoccasion of a funeral, a victory or an earthquake, thethemes being adapted according to the circumstances.The madh, eulogy for a prince or protector, is thecentral portion of the ^asida-, put into a sensitiveframe of mind by the exordium (tashbib), the listenerwill be carried away by the poet's skill; all that isrequired is a degree of rhythm in the eulogy, a strongeffect of baldgha (a wealth of meaning in a few words)but an uncontentious one, and the transport of thesoul out of its ordinary element (cf. Cahdr makala, 42).After the eulogy comes the petition: the poet mustknow how to "wrap up" his request, says al-Raduyanl(op. cit., 128), stirring the person being praised toreward him by the charm of his poem and the renownit engenders. Three bayts require particular care:the first (mapla*), because it opens the poem andsignals all the areas of expression; the transitionalbayt (makhlas) between tashbib and madh, which mustKA$lDA 715skilfully introduce the name of the person beingeulogised; and the last bayt (mafrta'), which must beof a quality that redeems any mediocrities in thework.Among the variations in the kasida and its componentswith which have emerged through the agestwo types of poem that appeared very early on areespecially significant: the tardj[ic, a kasida (cf. Mu*-djamt 400) written in a single metre composed of partswhich each have their own rhyme and are separatedby a distich (tardji*- band) that often serves as arefrain; and the musammaj, a fyasida (cf. Tardjumdnt

104-5) made up of rhyming figures.From the outset, the fcasida was connected withcourtly life in Iran, where it perpetuated poemsrecited in honour of the Sasanid kings, and it had almostas many schools as there were importantdynasties, at any rate until the arrival of the Mongols.This latter precipitated a group of phenomena whichhad begun earlier, principally the breaking up of the"feudal" system and a liberalisation of city life andthe extension of the religious way of life and expressionto differing sectors of society. The kasida was inturn philosophic, mystic, meditative, then hymnodicunder the Safawids, and panegyric once more whenit returned to the ancient style under the Kadjars.In fact, it ceded to the ghazal [q.v.] its privileged placein Persian lyric poetry.The Persian kasida, a homogenous phenomenon ofa great culture, is a largely unexplored field opento the modern study of mediaeval poetry. Its authorswere acutely aware that the poetic ethos was embodiedin form (in the sense employed by P. Zumthor);regardless of its later destiny, the kasida madea definitive mark on Persian poetry.Bibliography: Apart from works cited in thearticle, M. Bahar, Ta^rikh-i tatawwur-i shi^r-i fdrsi,Tehran 1956; A. Bausani, Storia delta lettemtumpersiana, Milan 1960, 298-9, 307-526; C.-H. deFouchecour, La description de la nature dans lapotsie lyrique persane au A7e s., Paris 1969; R. Levy,An introduction to Persian literature, New York 1969,27-33; B. Reinert, Hdqdni als Dichter, Berlin 1972;J. Rypka, History of Iranian literature, Dordrecht1968, 94-5, 913; Ph. Safa. Gand^-i sukhan, i, Tehran1961, intro. 45-59. (C.-H. DE FOUCHECOUR)3. In Turkish. — It was under the influenceof classical Iranian literature that the Muslim Turksadopted and developed the kasida, a verse formvery different from their own traditional poetry. TheTurkish kasida has the same rhyme scheme and metricpatterns as the kasida in Arabic and Persian and atfirst appears very similar, though in fact, a studyof the subject matter, the nasibs, and the organisationof the poems shows that there are considerabledifferences. At first the Turks tended to use themathnawi and quatrain (kifa] which, to some extent,

resembles their own older verse forms, rather thanthe kasida and ghazal. The fact that the earliest verseworks in Islamic Turkish literature, such as Kutadgubilig, 'Atabat al-hakd*ik or Diwdn-i hikmat, arewritten in the mathnawi and kit^a forms, supportsthis view.Variation in the form and nature of the kasidawere inevitably the reflection of the geographical,social, economic and cultural differences between theArab, Iranian and Turkish worlds. It is easy to seethese differences in the first and best-known sectionof the kasidat the nasib or the tasblb. In this openingsection, the Arabs usually chose love themes ordescriptions of desert life, while the Persians andabove all, the Turks tended to rhapsodise on thebeauties oi their native lands or to describe geographicalphenomena or social events.Theoretically, a complete Turkish kasida shouldcontain six sections: nasib, taghazzul, girizgdh,madhiyya, fakhriyya and du*d*. The nasib is thekasida's longest section, and the subject which itdescribes often gives its name to the whole poem. Agreat variety of subjects is possible: religious fervour,love, nature, wise or moralising thoughts, buildings,war or peace, descriptions of towns, holy days andfestivals, mourning or rejoicing. If a fyasida has asection embracing subjects more often found inghazals, such as love or wine, then this section is calledtaghazzul. The passage marking the transition fromthe nasib to the main part of the %asida consists ofone or more couplets and is called giriz or girizgdh.The couplets known as the eulogy or madfyiyyacomprise the central part of the kasida, and it ishere that the poet praises the person to whom thefcasida is addressed. The recipients of kasidas wereusually men who held high office in the state, suchas sultans, viziers or shaykh al-isldms or they mightbe palace officers, men of religion or men of wealth.This section is always fairly long, and usually comprisesthe real reason for writing the poem. In caseswhere the poet hopes to ingratiate himself with influentialpeople and receive in return favours oroffice, then the exaggerated praise usually exceedsreasonable bounds and detracts from the sincerity ofthe works. The fakhriyya is the last but one section ofthe fcasida where the poet praises himself; and inthe final section, the du^a3, the poet implores Godfor the prosperity of the Sultan or person to whomthe kasida is addressed, and expresses his thanks forthe completion of the work.However, Turkish fcasidas do not invariably containall these sections. Very often, one or more areleft out, the most frequent omissions being thetaghazzul, fakhriyya and ducd* sections. For example,the greatest Turkish kasida writer, Nefci of Erzurum([q.v.], 979/1572 ?-i044/i635) wrote some kasidaswhich contain all these sections, and so did Fighan!of Trabzon ([q.v.'], 920/1505 7-937/1532) and Nedlmof Istanbul (1092/1681-1142/1730). Nevertheless, thediwdns of these and many other poets contain fcasidaswith no taghazzul or fakhriyya and some even withno nasib. The subject and arrangement of the Turkishkasida has thus varied according to the poet, the era,the place, and the social conditions.In Turkish, as in Arabic and Persian kasidas,the first couplet is musarra', that is, the first twohemistiches are rhymed. Thereafter, the secondhemistich in each couplet rhymes with the firstcouplet. The first couplet is called the mafia* and theone towards the end where the poet reveals his penname(makhlas) is called the tddi bayt. Turkish alsoadopted the term bayt al-Jiasid for the couplet consideredthe finest in the poem. The usual length of aTurkish kasida is between 15 and 99 couplets, but infact, some longer ones exist.Kasidas may take their name from the generalsubject matter. One inspired by the unity and existenceof God and describing His qualities and acts iscalled tawhid, while a supplication and prayer toGod is called munddidt. Na't is the name for a kasidapraising and expressing devotion to the ProphetMuhammad. A frasida in praise of a great man

describing his virtues and achievements is calledmadhiyya, while a satirical T^aslda attacking an enemyor someone of whom the poet disapproves is calledhidjwiyya. Also, it is common in classical Turkishliterature to name the frasida after the subject of the7i6 KA$IDA — KASIMnasib. Hence fyasidas describing spring, summer,autumn or winter are called bahdriyya, sayfiyya (ortammuziyya), khazdmiyya and shitd'iyya respectively.If the nasib describes a festival or New Year's Day,then the kasida is called bayramiyya (or *idiyya) ornawruziyya. A Ramadan kasida is a Ramaddniyya;kasidas commemorating a royal accession, circumcisionor wedding, or a death are diulusiyya, suriyyaand marthiyya. Kasidas can also take their name fromthe letter of the rhyme or from the word repeatedafter each rhyme (radif). If, for example, the rhymeletter is lam, mim or rd*, then the kasida is a Idmiyya,mimiyya or rd'iyya. Similarly, if the fyasida has aradlf such as su, sunbiil or kerem, then it would benamed accordingly. Some kasidas describe particularcities which then gave their name to the poem, suchas the Edirne, Istanbul or Baghdad %a?idas. Othersdescribe things, places or events such as appointmentsor removals from office, and hence one finds the Nilekasida, the Polish Campaign kasida, fcasida on thereturn from the German Campaign, kasida on thebuilding of the mosque or pavilion, the halwd-partykasida, congratulatory kasida?, (tabrikiyya), appointmentkasidas (tawdi'iya) or dismissal kasidas (cazliyya).Even after the Tanzimat, frasidas continuedto be written in accordance with modern thoughtsand feelings, cf. Namlk Kemal's [q.v.] Freedom kasida.Kasida writing in Turkish began to develop inthe 7th/i3th century with Dehhani and in the 8th/14th with AhmadI, Ahmad-i Daci and Shaykhl. In the9th/i5th century, with such poets as Ahmad Pasha,Mihri Khatun, Nedjati and Meslhi, it became a widelyaccepted and popular form. In the ioth/i6th century,the golden age of classical Turkish verse, it reacheda high level of accomplishment through the effortsof such poets as Revani, Lamici, Figham, IJayretl,Dhati, Khayali, Fu^uli, Fevri, Nevcl and Bakl. Butthe greatest Turkish kasida writer, Nefcl, lived inthe following century. The other famous uth/i7thcentury poets—Waysi, cAzmI-zade, tfaletl, cAta%Sabri, Na'ill, Neshati and NabI—never reached thesame standard as Nefci, but nevertheless show greatmaturity in technique and in handling of the subjectmatter. In the I2th/i8th century, the kasida partlymanaged to retain its old status, thanks to the poeticgenius of Nedim at the beginning and Shaykh Ghalibat the end of the century, but in general it lost itsold artistry, scope of subject matter and novelty ofexpression. Poets like Thabit, Nazlm, Sami, SayyidWehbi and Haml-yi Amidi kept the form alive, butthe kasida was by this time becoming outmoded; itwas a form tied to a single rhyme and could hardlyhelp being repetitious. In these circumstances it couldonly die out.However, the generation following the Tanzimat(122/1839) continued to express the new thought inthis form. ShinasI ([q.v.], 1239-1288/1824-1871), DiyaPasha ([q.v.], 1240-1297/1825-1880) and Namlk Kemalall occasionally wrote kasidas. Today the form hasdisappeared; modern social and cultural conditionsare hardly favourable.Bibliography: Djemal al-Dln, cAruz-i Turki,Istanbul 1291/1874; E. J. W. Gibb, A History ofOttoman Poetry, i, London 1900, 83-87; MucallimNadjl, Istildhdt-i edebiyya, Istanbul 1307/1889-90,161-68; Mehmed Salami, Kdmus-i 'Othmdni, Istanbul1329/1911, 217; cAli Ekrem, Nazariyydt-iedebiyya, Istanbul lithograph 1333/1915, i, 254;Fuad Kopriilii, Turk Edebiyatt Tarihi, Istanbul1926, 161-64; Tahir Olgun, Edebiyyat Lugati,Istanbul 1936, 62-63; Zeki Pakalm, T.'.rihdeyimlerive terimleri sdzliigu, Istanbul 1951, ii, 206-9;

Istanbul kutiiphaneleri turkfe yazma divanlarkatalogu, Istanbul 1947-65, catalogues of the manuscriptsof various Turkish diwdns; AbdiilkadirKarahan, Nef*P, Istanbul 1967, 24-32; AbdiilkadirKarahan, Nef't divamndan segmeler, Istanbul 1972,introduction; tA art. Nasib; Nihad Sami Banarh,Resimli Turk edebiyati tarihi, Istanbul 1971, fasc.3 (1972), 186-90. (ABDULKADIR KARAHAN)4. In Urdu. — In Urdu poetry, it is the ghazal thattakes pride of place, both quantitatively and qualitatively,and the kasida is less important. It is thegenerally accepted view that only two Urdu poets,Sawda and Dhawk [qq.v.], composed kasidas of astandard comparable with that achieved in Persianby Anwar! and Khakani[^.7;.]. Most Urdu kasidas are,formally speaking, encomia addressed by the poet tohis actual or intended patron; in this aspect, they aredesigned above all else to display both his virtuosityin the craft of poetry and the range of his learning.A more lasting value derives from the fact that theform also offers the poet scope for the extendedexpression of his feelings on any poetic theme thatinspires him; and some kasidas are definable as suchonly in terms of form (length and rhyme-scheme).Thus one of Sawda's most famous poems in kasidaform is a shahrdshub, a bitter and indignant commentaryon the political, social, economic, culturaland spiritual degeneration of society in the MughalEmpire of his day. Ghalib [q.v.] who, however, wrotemost of his fyasidas in Persian and only a few in Urdu,in general dispenses with the praise of his patron in afew lines, and devotes the bulk of the kasida to theelaboration of his views on life and love and poetry.(R. RUSSELL)