ABSTRACT
THE springs of poetry flowed as abundantly as ever under the T"m#rids, and the fifteenth century produced one, indeed the last, of the seven Persian immortals. But before reviewing this concluding phase of the classical epoch-for after J!m" Persian literature is generally considered to have entered its silver period, declining slowly into sterility until its sudden renaissance in modern times-it is still necessary to look at two more prose writers of distinction who made important contributions to ethical writing. Of these
the first, Jal!l al-D"n ibn Davv!n" was one of the most productive authors Persia ever produced; so that it is strange that E.G.Browne should have said of him that ‘in spite of his fame, he seems to have left little behind him besides his work on Ethics, except some Quatrains, written and commented by himself, and an
explanation of one of the odes of ’ But Browne forgot to take into consideration Davv!n"’s work in Arabic, of which some seventy titles survive; nevertheless he is indeed chiefly eminent as the author of the Akhl#q-i Jal#l!, a book in direct line of descent from
Akhl#q-i
Davv!n" was born in 1427 at Davv!n near K!zar#n, stated by Y!q#t to be ‘a district of F!rs noted for the excellence of its wines.’ His father was a judge who claimed to be descended from the first caliph Ab# Bakr; he himself served as a provincial justice, and also taught in the Orphans’ College in Sh"r!z; he died close by his birthplace in 1501. Ibn
who inexplicably puts his obiit in the year 1522, states that he was visited by students from as far afield as Transoxiana and Turkey, and this is little surprising; for his commentaries on the Arab philosophers and theologians exhibit a rare gift for clear
exposition. The Akhl#q-i Jal#l! (its original and more pompous title is
al-ishr#q f! mak#rim al-akhl#q) was composed for Uzun of the ‘White Sheep’ dynasty, supplanter of the ‘Black Sheep’ in Western Persia, between 1467 and 1477 under circumstances described by Davv!n" as follows.
