ABSTRACT

In the post-Muhammadan poetry of Persia, the sea, like the devil in Scripture, has never been mentioned for its own sake. During Kay Khusraw’s journey over the great sea, only once does a storm occur. The enumeration of strange sea-monsters is the chief thing in this journey. The evidence of Persian literature is as completely against a theory of Persian maritime activity as the evidence of history is in favour. Obviously, therefore, a hard and fast line has to be drawn between the coastal Persian and the Persian of the Persian plateau; the former, like the Sabaean Arab, was a sailor; the latter, like the Beduin, a lover of land. Though there were Persian sailors along the Gulf, and Persian landsmen in the interior, it appears that the difference between the landsman and the sailor was merely of degree, not of kind. For what the sea is to the one, the circumambient sea is to the other.