[Footnote 1: The áluddínRúmínight of his marriage with Safiyya.]
[Footnote 2: See _Rubáiyát_ of Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald, second edition, quatrain lxx.]
[Footnote 3: "Form" here is used rather as soul, the love behind the decaying body.]
[Footnote 4: Joseph, a name frequently used by Persian poets, irrespective of gender, to symbolise the ideal type of human beauty.]
[Footnote 7: The meaning of this poem is strictly allegorical. We must not infer that the All-Good would be a party to the evil designs of the Devil. No material gifts, however seductive, could succeed in stamping out the Divine Presence in His Creatures.]
[Footnote 8: At first sight there seems to be Omarian pessimism in this poem. In reality it signifies that all Love is One, which shines through the ever-vanishing lanterns of the world.]
In Nīzamī's _The Chahár Magála_ ("Four Discourses"), translated by Professor Edward G. Browne, we find the _Second Discourse_ devoted to "The Nature of Poetry, and the Utility of the Skilful Poet." In this interesting Discourse Nīzamī very amiably discusses the training required to become a poet of enduring fame, and intersperses these remarks with a number of anecdotes, which in the main are examples of the advantages derived from poetic improvisations given at opportune moments before kings when wine has gone round two or three times. Nīzamī sums up the nature of poetry in the following words: "Poetry is that art whereby the poet arranges imaginary propositions and adapts the deductions, with the result that he can make a little thing appear great and a great thing small, or cause good to appear in the garb of evil and evil in the garb of good." Nīzamī denounces the habit of giving money to old poets. He remarks: "For one so ignoble as not to have discovered in fifty years that what he writes is bad, when will he discover it?" On the other hand Nīzamī favours the young poet with hopeful talent, and generously remarks that "it is proper to patronise him, a duty to take care of him, and an obligation to maintain him." The minor poets of to-day have not these glowing advantages!
The most ingenious example of a poetic improvisation in this _Discourse_ is, perhaps, one given by Rúdagí in connection with the protracted stay of Amír Nasr b. Ahmad in Herát. Four years the Amír camped with his army in this town, with its twenty different varieties of grape and beautiful narcissus. "He preferred Herát to the Garden of Eden." But at length the Amír's captains and courtiers grew weary of being absent so long from Bukhárá, where they longed to see their wives and children again. They offered Rúdagí, the poet, five thousand dinars if he could persuade the Amír to quit Herát and return to Bukhárá. Rúdagí, at an opportune moment, took up his harp and sang the following song to the Amír: