Art. XXXIII.—Account of the Atesh Kedah, a Biographical Work on the Persian Poets, by Hajji Lutf Ali Beg, of Ispahan

Abstract

The history of the Persian poets is the history of the Persian nation; it is the biography of their greatest men, whose lives, whose actions, whose feelings, and whose tastes, are all, in a greater or less degree, associated with poetry and influenced by poetic impulse. This influence was exercised over the highest potentates by the most subordinate of their subjects. Their graver historians supply countless anecdotes of men exalted to rank and power, and enjoying the unlimited favour of their Sovereign by this sole merit. Lives have been sacrificed, or spared—cities have been annihilated, or ransomed—empires subverted, or restored—by the influence of poetry alone. Armies, levied to avenge the insult of an epigram, have been disbanded at its palinodia; the prison has opened its gates to the ingenious author of an impromptu; stanzas have saved a suppliant's life, and a well-turned compliment in verse more than once soothed a breast in which dwelt all the undisciplined passions of Eastern despotism. Even history itself is indebted to this taste, and if not written in verse, its pages are enriched with metrical fragments and quotations, while the earliest annals of the Persian empire are preserved in the poetic legends of the Shah Nameh.