ABSTRACT
Jam! Persian literature is generally considered to have entered its silver period, declining slowly into sterility until its sudden renaissance in modem times-it is still necessary to look at two more prose writers of distinction who made important contribu tions to ethical writing. Of these the first, Jalal al-Din Muhammad ibn As'ad Dawani 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 Hafiz.’ But Browne forgot to take into consideration Dawani’s work in Arabic, of which some seventy titles survive; nevertheless he is indeed chiefly eminent as the author of the Akhlaq-i Ja la li, a book in direct line of descent from Tusx’s Akhlaq-i Nasiri.
