Background

These words set the tone for one of the only surviving texts from the early Alamūt period of Ismaili history, a missive from Khwājah Qāsim Tushtarī in which he emphasises that in Ismaili belief, the central purpose of human existence is to recognise God. The text is revealing in many ways, not least because it provides some of the earliest evidence we have of literary, historical and doctrinal developments in Ismailism that were to allow the schools of Ismailism and Sufism to draw closer together over the course of many centuries.

With the death of the Prophet Muḥammad, the Muslim community came to adopt a variety of interpretations of his message. Among the diverse schools that emerged, the Imāmī Shīʿah accepted the privileged position of the hereditary Imams of the Prophet's family, adhering closely to their guidance. Following the death of Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in 148/765, the community divided. Among other groups, one eventually came to recognise the imamate of his son Mūsā al-Kāẓim,Footnote ¹ while others held to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq's designation (naṣṣ) in favour of his elder son Ismāʿīl al-Mubārak. In the course of time, the adherents of this elder line came to be designated “al-Ismāʿīliyyah”,Footnote ² while the younger line eventually became known as the “Ithnāʿashariyyah”, or Twelver Shīʿah, after the disappearance of their twelfth Imam.

In the year 297/909, the Ismaili Imam ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī (d. 322/934) established the Fāṭimid caliphate. At the height of their power, the Fāṭimid caliphs claimed dominion over all of North Africa, Egypt, Sicily, the Red Sea coast of Africa, Yemen, Syria, Palestine and the Hijaz with the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. A noteworthy feature of Ismāʿīlism was its organised “Invitation” (daʿwah) to recognise the Imam of the time. With the death of Imam al-Mustanṣir in 487/1094, the vizier and commander of the armies al-Afḍal (d. 515/1121) placed his brother-in-law, al-Mustanṣir's younger son Aḥmad, on the throne, in place of the designated successor Abū Manṣūr Nizār.Footnote ³

The eastern Ismailis and their leaders, out of reach of the Fāṭimid armies, supported Nizār's cause and broke away from Cairo. The castle of Alamūt was later to become the headquarters of the Nizārī Ismailis for over one-and-a-half centuries. ʿAṭā-Malik Juwaynī, Hūlāgū Khān's attendant and historian, who visited the celebrated library of Alamūt—“the fame of which had spread throughout the world”—Footnote ⁴ informs us of the multitudes of Ismaili religious books he found there, indicating that there had been substantial literary production. However, in 654/1256 the community was dealt a stunning blow when the Mongol hordes swept through the Near East and destroyed their capital. Juwaynī condemned the library to be burned, saving only copies of the Quran and a few other treatises.Footnote ⁵ Consigned to a fate similar to that of their books, the Ismailis themselves were also hunted down and slaughtered indiscriminately. So complete was this devastation that it was long assumed that the community, and virtually all of its literature, had ceased to exist.

The text analysed in this study is a work by Khwājah Qāsim Tushtarī, untitled but on the subject of Recognizing God (Maʿrifat-i Khudāy taʿālā). It is one of only a handful of works hitherto discovered that may hail from the early Alamūt period, with a likely composition date between 525/1131 and 533/1139, making it one of the oldest Ismaili texts from Alamūt still in existence.Footnote ⁶

This article begins with an examination of previous scholarship that led to the discovery of this author and his writings and continues by surveying the text of Recognizing God in the context of the “new Invitation” (daʿwat-i jadīd) to the Ismaili faith inaugurated by the Fāṭimid Imam al-Mustanṣir billāh (d. 487/1094) and championed by Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 518/1124). In this connection, it explores the concepts of the true teacher (muʿallim-i ṣādiq) and sage (ḥakīm) as technical terms in the Ismailism of the period. Both of these terms had specific connotations within the Ismaili Invitation (daʿwat), but there does not appear to have been a one-to-one correspondence with the established levels in the spiritual hierarchy or ḥudūd-i dīn.

The article delves into the poetic citations in Recognizing God, with specific attention given to the place of the celebrated Ḥakīm Sanāʾī Ghaznawī (d. circa 525/1131) in Ismaili literature. It continues by positing several hypotheses about the literary culture in the Ismaili fortresses, about the development of the Persian metre that would eventually be used by Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (d. 618/1221) in his epics, and would soon be considered the mathnawī metre after Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273) used it for his magnum opus, and about the rise to prominence of religious, devotional and homiletic themes in Persian poetry. In this vein, the article demonstrates the likelihood that the symbiotic relationship between Ismailism and Sufism, hitherto commonly considered to have begun after the fall of Alamūt, began at a much earlier date.

Scholarship: “Apparently a real Ismaili”

For centuries, the Ismailis were little heard from, and what people knew of them was largely derived from the works of their opponents. In the summer of 1914, however, Ivan Ivanovich Zarubin (d. 1964), the Russian Empire's leading authority on the languages of the Pamirs, set out on an ethnographic and linguistic expedition to the remote, mountainous region of the Pamir Okrug, or what was to become the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast.Footnote ⁷ While in Shughnān and Wakhān, he collected a handful of Persian texts belonging to the Ismailis of that region, which he donated two years later to the Asiatic Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences.Footnote ⁸ Along with items contributed by Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Semenov (d. 1958) slightly later, this tiny acquisition of fewer than 20 genuine manuscripts formed, at the time, the West's largest collection of Ismaili texts.Footnote ⁹

The small trove included The Mine of Mysteries (Maʿdin al-asrār), an epistle that was to become the first genuine Ismaili work in Persian prose ever published.Footnote ¹⁰ Datable to after the death of Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī (d. 939/1533), whose poetry it quotes, the text refers to several works from Alamūt, indicating that at least some of these must have survived the Mongol invasions until the author's time.Footnote ¹¹ Here and elsewhere in this article, I use ‘Alamūt’ in reference not only to the castle itself, but to the various territories administered from the central headquarters.

In the course of listing the poets alluded to in The Mine of Mysteries, in his 1922 work, Ivanow writes about the author of a single couplet quoted in the text: “Khwājah Qāsim Tushtarī, whom I could not trace anywhere”.Footnote ¹² His 1933 Guide to Ismaili Literature added no additional information, referred readers to his 1922 work, and glossed Qāsim Tushtarī’s name with the comment, “apparently a real Ismaili”.Footnote ¹³ The new 1947 translation and 1949 edition of the text in the Ismaili Society series likewise added no new details about this person.Footnote ¹⁴ However, in his 1960 edition, Ivanow writes, “In 1950 a learned Ismaili friend in Dar es Salaam, British East Africa, was very kind as to send us a valuable manuscript containing a collection of 16 Ismaili works (662 pages)”.Footnote ¹⁵ This manuscript contained another copy of The Mine of Mysteries, which allowed Ivanow to produce his third edition of the text. The new manuscript, however, referred to the author of the single couplet as ‘Khwājah Qāsim Turshīzī’, rather than Tushtarī, adding confusion about the area with which he was associated. We have no definitive information linking him to one or the other locale, and so for the sake of expediency his toponymic surname (nisbah) will be left as Tushtarī.Footnote ¹⁶

In his 1963 work, Ismaili Literature: A Bibliographical Survey (an amplified second edition of his Guide to Ismaili Literature published in 1933), under the heading ‘Qāsim Tushtarī’ (to which he adds the more familiar pronunciation “Shushtarī”), Ivanow writes, “another poet apparently from the same [Alamūt] period. Very short quotations of his poetry appear in early Nizari works. So far nothing could be found to supply more precision concerning his biography”.Footnote ¹⁷ The allusion to “works” (plural) is noteworthy, and likely reflects Ivanow's belief, noted in the same bibliography, that Qāsim Tushtarī was cited in the Panj Sukhan of Imam ʿAbd al-Salām ibn al-Mustanṣir billāh of Anjudān (d. 900/1494).Footnote ¹⁸ In his 1977 Biobibliography of Ismaili Literature, I. K. Poonawala attributes to Khwājah Qāsim Tushtarī (whose nisbah is modified from the form found in the manuscripts to the more familiar variants “Shūshtarī” and “Tustarī”) a “collection of poems”, noting that “Ivanow states that his poems are frequently cited in the Nizārī works”.Footnote ¹⁹ These statements, of course, must be nuanced, as only a lone couplet by the author is hitherto known to exist, and this is quoted in a single Nizārī work, datable, at the earliest, to the 10^th/16^th century. Had he composed other works of poetry, one imagines that they may have been collected in the seven-volume Poems of the Resurrection (Dīwān-i qāʾimiyyāt) of which only two volumes appear to have survived.Footnote ²⁰ The majority of poems in this omnibus are by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd-i Kātib, but it does incorporate the poetry of several other Ismaili poets.Footnote ²¹ In 2007, I identified a previously unknown prose work of Qāsim Tushtarī, the treatise Recognizing God, which is analysed here.Footnote ²²

Contents of the text: “We have ennobled the children of Adam”

In his Book of Confessions and Creeds (Kitāb al-milal wa'l-niḥal), Tāj al-Dīn al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153) informs us that the Ismailis “have an Invitation in every age, and a new expression in every language”:Footnote ²³

al-Shahrastānī notes, however, that the system of correspondences, about which the Ismailis had composed many books in earlier times, was no longer current, as the Fāṭimid Imam al-Mustanṣir billāh (d. 487/1094) had instructed that, for the people of their times, the Invitation must be preached with a focus on the need to follow the righteous Imam of every time. It was Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ who was most well known for his role in establishing this “new Invitation”:

As few Ismaili sources from this period have been preserved, there are limited examples to illustrate the new emphasis in Ismaili thought. al-Shahrastānī provides an abridged Arabic translation of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ’s Four Chapters (Chahār faṣl). The original text of this work was consulted by ʿAṭā-Malik Juwaynī and used in composing his History of the World-Conqueror (Taʾrīkh-i jahān-gushā), by Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh in his Compendium of Chronicles (Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh) and by Abū’l-Qāsim Kāshānī in his Cream of Chronicles (Zubdat al-tawārīkh).Footnote ²⁶ Recently, a manuscript produced at Alamūt was discovered in Turkey, which contains a Persian translation of al-Shahrastānī’s Book of Confessions and Creeds.Footnote ²⁷ This finding has the potential to shed new light on the subject. Furthermore, studies highlighting al-Shahrastānī’s Ismaili inclinations have provided insights into how his writings may be used to understand this period of Ismaili thought, though, of course, keeping in mind that al-Shahrastānī lived in a hostile environment and therefore deliberately wrote in a cryptic style. In Qāsim Tushtarī’s Recognizing God, however, we now have an additional source that appears to date from the same period. It complements the Four Chapters by providing, in a very succinct manner, insights into the spiritual life of the community, while the Four Chapters is primarily written for an external audience. In the following discussion, section numbers (§) are provided to reference my forthcoming critical edition and translation of the text.Footnote ²⁸

The primary motif of the text is that creation's purpose is the existence of humankind, but that human existence, in and of itself, is meaningless unless people dedicate themselves to seeking and recognising God. Of all creatures, only human beings have the capacity to attain gnosis of their Creator. The near contemporary Ismaili work—the Prince of Sistan (Malik-i Sīstān), dated 588/1192—emphasises that “The root principle of religion is recognition of God, while how He is worshipped is a derivative branch”.Footnote ²⁹ We find echoes of this sentiment in the later works of the Twelver Shīʿī savant Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1050/1640), who writes in his Transcendent Philosophy of the Four Intellectual Journeys (al-Ḥikmah al-mutaʿāliyah fī asfār al-ʿaqliyyah al-arbaʿah):

According to Tushtarī, humanity's capacity to recognise God is the reason the Quran states, “We have ennobled the children of Adam” (17:70). But if Adam's descendants do not seek to recognise God, they are no different from other animals; as the text states, quoting the Quran: “They are like cattle—nay! Even more astray” (7:179).

Following the Quran in comparing heedless human beings to brutes is one of the most prevalent themes in Ismaili works of many periods and regions of activity. The very same Quranic verse or its counterpart at 25:44 is cited in similar contexts in several places, with a particular emphasis on probing the inner meaning of symbols. In interpreting the spiritual meaning of ablutions in his Symbolic Elucidation of the Pillars of Islam (Taʾwīl daʿāʾim al-Islām), the Fāṭimid jurist Abū Ḥanīfah al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974) explains that just as water gives life to the body and purifies it, knowledge gives life to the soul and purifies it. Those who seek this knowledge from the Imams embark on the path of felicity, whereas those who are content with the apparent and do not seek its deeper meaning are as cattle.Footnote ³¹ In his Proofs of Prophecy (Aʿlām al-nubuwwah), Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 322/934) quotes this Quranic verse, referencing the testament of Matthew in the Gospel in order to emphasise the importance of understanding the inner meaning of scripture:

In the same vein, the 9^th/15^th-century Badakhshānī writer, Sayyid Suhrāb Walī, in his Gift for the Readers (Tuḥfat al-nāẓirīn), also known as Thirty-six Epistles (Sī wa shish ṣaḥīfah), quotes the Quranic verse when he alludes to “those who have fallen from the rank of humanity, remaining with but the apparent meaning (ẓāhir) of the words of their prophets and inviters (dāʿīs) and, in the manner of livestock, are satisfied with straw and grass, never reaching the seeds of grain”.Footnote ³³ This is repeated almost verbatim in Bū Isḥāq Quhistānī’s Seven Chapters (Haft bāb).Footnote ³⁴ Similarly, drawing on a trope in the Ismaili Ginān literature which portrays the Ismaili sages (pīrs) as purveyors of pearls that can only be recognised by those who seek their inner meaning, Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn (fl. 8^th/14^th c.) writes in verse:

Believers must therefore seek to understand the hidden depths of meaning within the Quran and the words of their spiritual guides. In this vein, Qāsim Tushtarī insists that there must be a means for actualising humanity's inherent potential to recognise the Creator. The one who brings human beings to this perfection is the Purveyor of Truth (muḥiqq). It is for this reason, he continues, that when questioned about this subject, Imam Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn (d. 95/714) replied that recognition of God was only possible through recognition of the Imam of the Time. This same sentiment is also recorded in one of the defining passages in Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s (d. 672/1274) spiritual autobiography, The Voyage (Sayr ū sulūk), in which he cites the Blessed Epistles (Fuṣūl-i muqaddas) of the Imam at Alamūt, which echo the words of Imam Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn:

Walāyah (the concept that God's supreme authority must always have a representative in creation) is foremost among the seven pillars of Islam identified by the Fāṭimid jurist al-Nuʿmān, which thus differed from the primarily five or six pillar structures found in some other schools of Islam.Footnote ³⁸ In his Pillars of Islam (Daʿāʾim al-Islām), he explains the intimate relationship between walāyah and faith (īmān). Describing faith (īmān) as the inner aspect of Islam, he goes on to relate a tradition from Imam ʿAlī, further elaborating the link between faith (īmān) and walāyah, and establishing their connection to recognition of the divine (maʿrifah):

Thus, while being a Muslim is premised on affirmation, this is only a preliminary stage on the path to becoming a believer (muʾmin). Being a believer, in the words of ʿAlī, is dependent on recognition (maʿrifah) of God, the Prophet and the Imam. This connection is further emphasised by Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī in his Desideratum of the Faithful (Maṭlūb al-muʾminīn), in which (substituting the testimony of faith (shahādah) where al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān has walāyah) he stresses the connection, “The first [of the pillars] is attestation to faith (shahādat), which implies knowing God through the Imam of the Time”.Footnote ⁴⁰ As Qāsim Tushtarī asserts in the words of the Prophetic tradition, “Whoever dies without recognizing the Imam of his time dies the death of the age of ignorance (jāhiliyyah), and the ignorant is in the fire” (man māta wa-lam yaʿrif imām zamānih māta mītah jāhiliyyah wa'l-jāhil fī’l-nār).Footnote ⁴¹

Commenting on the well-known Prophetic tradition, “My community will be split into seventy-three sects, of which one will be saved and the rest destroyed” (sa-taftariq ummatī min baʿdī thalāth wa-sabʿīn firqah, firqah minhā nājiyah wa'l-bāqūn hālikūn),Footnote ⁴² Tushtarī asserts that the 72 misguided sects fall into error because they attempt to comprehend God through their own, limited, human intellects and knowledge, rather than by turning to the perfected intellects of the Prophets and Imams whom God Himself had appointed to guide them. Quoting the poet Sanāʾī, he asks:

He asks, after fashioning the heavens and the earth, had God not announced to the angels the perfection of His creation with the words “Indeed, I am placing a representative (khalīfah) on the earth” (2:30)? The knowledge of God through His representative, the Imam of the Time, is then further transmitted through the spiritual hierarchy:

The fact that such considerations were not merely theoretical but had pragmatic and practical relevance is revealed by Khwājah Qāsim's critique of a historical situation in his own times, which was likely to have been the impetus for his composing the missive. His allusion to Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad is instructive in this regard. He writes:

The general (or universal, kullī) and specific (or particular, juzwī) matters refer in the first instance to the general acceptance of God's sovereignty (represented by the first portion of the declaration of faith, “there is no deity save God”) and the specific acceptance of the sovereignty of His appointed messenger (represented by the second portion of the declaration of faith, “Muḥammad is the messenger of God”). Neglect and indifference to God's appointee renders faith invalid. In the second instance, the expression refers to the general acceptance of the sovereignty of the Imam as the Prophet's successor and specifically to the acceptance of those whom the Imam appoints. Neglecting the sovereignty of those whom the Imam has appointed to positions of authority, in this case, the true teacher (muʿallim-i ṣādiq) Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad, also invalidates faith. A parallel argument is found in Ṭūsī and Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd's Paradise of Submission (Rawḍah-yi taslīm):

Khwājah Qāsim Tushtarī invokes Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad with tremendous reverence in §8 and cites his poetry, with the pen-name Qāsim, in §10. I have come across many poems in uncatalogued Persian Ismaili manuscripts with the pen-name Qāsim or Qāsimī that cannot be traced in the published Dīwān of the well-known mystic poet Qāsim-i Anwār (d. 837/1433), who used these pen names and who is mentioned in fairly early Ismaili works.Footnote ⁴⁷ It is therefore possible that these scattered poems may have been composed by Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad “Qāsim” or, for that matter, by Qāsim Tushtarī. While §10 only refers to the poet as “the aforementioned master” (khwājah-yi mushār ilayh), the referent most recently cited in the text is Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad. Moreover, the aforementioned Ḥakīm Majdūd ibn Ādam went by the pen name Sanāʾī, not Qāsim, so this cannot be a reference to him.Footnote ⁴⁸ Khwājah Qāsim Tushtarī identifies Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad “Qāsim” by a string of epithets: “the true teacher (muʿallim-i ṣādiq), Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad, the pride of those who realize the truth and leader of the people of certainty (may his virtues be increased and his blessings last!)”. With a fair degree of confidence, we can identify Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad, who was clearly alive at the time Qāsim-i Tushtarī wrote Recognizing God, as the son of the illustrious Raʾīs Muẓaffar (d. circa 533/1139), whom he eventually succeeded as governor of the castle of Girdkūh.Footnote ⁴⁹

In addition to Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad, the Prophet and the Imams, including Imam Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn (§5), two other figures are mentioned in Tushtarī’s Recognizing God. One is Ḥakīm Sanāʾī. This is the pen name of the 6^th/12^th century savant Majdūd ibn Ādam, who is named in §4 and §7. Poetic quotations from his magnum opus, The Orchard of Reality (Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqah also known as Fakhrī-nāmah and Ilāhī-nāmah), appear throughout the work.Footnote ⁵⁰ The second figure mentioned is Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad, whose poetry is quoted in §7. The dearth of sources means that it is not yet possible to identify with certainty who this may be. However, it is conceivable that he was the same person as an Ismaili inviter (dāʿī) with a similar name, a certain Kiyā Fakhr-Āwar of Asadābād. According to Rashīd al-Dīn and Kāshānī, Barkiyāruq (d. 498/1105), the Saljūq claimant to the throne, “was favorably inclined toward the lovers of [the Imam] Nizār (d. after 488/1095) and maintained good relations with the Ismaili companions (rafīqān). Because of the goodness of their character and conduct, neither did he deny their creed nor hate them”.Footnote ⁵¹ He was particularly keen on having their support in his succession struggle against his half-brother Muḥammad Tapar (d. 511/1118), with whom the Ismailis had stormy relations.Footnote ⁵² Among Barkiyāruq's Ismaili courtiers was Kiyā Fakhr-Āwar, whom our Persian historians tell us “used to speak words of the Invitation (sukhan-i daʿwat)”, suggesting that he was an authorised inviter (dāʿī). They also tell us that the vizier ʿAbd al-Jalīl Dihistānī, without the permission of Barkiyāruq, had Fakhr-Āwar killed, apparently sometime after 494/1101, when Barkiyāruq's forces bested Muḥammad Tapar's in Hamadān.Footnote ⁵³ Fakhr-Āwar's period of activity and his having been an Ismaili inviter (dāʿī) suggest that he might have been the same person who wrote the poetry cited by Khwājah Qāsim.

Proofs from poetry, Sanāʾī and the Ismailis: “A lover of the Prophet and his progeny I am”

The poetry cited in Khwājah Qāsim's work is revealing in a variety of ways. In total, there are ten poetic quotations, with explicit attributions to Sanāʾī (§4), Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad (§7) and Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad (§10). I have been able to identify six of the remaining seven selections, the seventh being an unidentified couplet in §8.

The second poetic citation in §17, “Those closest to the king are more anxious / For they are familiar with royal punishment”, identified as a couplet (bayt), is also known to exist as the first line of a quatrain (rubāʿī) commonly attributed to Abū Saʿīd Abī al-Khayr (d. 440/1049). The full text of the rubāʿī ascribed to him is as follows:

In the Quran commentary Unveiling of Mysteries and the Provision of the Pious (Kashf al-asrār wa-ʿuddat al-abrār), ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī (fl. 5^th/11^th century) and Abū’l-Faḍl Rashīd al-Dīn Maybudī (fl. early 6^th/12^th century) and in his Memorial of the Saints (Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ), Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (d. 618/1221) cite the same line as Qāsim-i Tushtarī does, also omitting the second half. The provenance of the poem, however, is not certain, as questions have been raised about the corpus attributed to Abū Saʿīd, with several scholars denying that he left any poetic legacy.Footnote ⁵⁴

Over half of the quotations of poetry found in Recognizing God can be traced to The Orchard of Reality (Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqah) of the famed Ḥakīm Sanāʾī Ghaznawī. In addition, the metre of the unidentified poem is – ˘ – – / ˘ – ˘ – / – –, that is, Khafīf-i sālim-i makhbūn-i aslam-i musabbagh. This is essentially the same metre as that in which Sanāʾī’s three mathnawīs, including The Orchard of Reality, are composed, khafīf-i musaddas-i makhbūn-i maḥdhūf, or – ˘ – – / ˘ – ˘ – / ˘ ˘ –. Since it is perfectly acceptable and very common in Persian prosody for two short syllables to be replaced by a long one, it could be that this unidentified verse, too, is from Sanāʾī’s magnum opus, even though it is not in the critically edited text.Footnote ⁵⁵ As De Bruijn explains, over half of the lengthy work has been left out of the modern recensions:

While it is possible that Khwājah Qāsim Tushtarī was enamoured of the celebrated poet's verse, and therefore quoted it extensively, another possible reason for the pervasive references also suggests itself.

If our tentative dating of Recognizing God is correct, Sanāʾī would have been an older contemporary of our author, and so the quotations found in the text would be among the earliest citations in Persian literature from The Orchard of Reality. Sanāʾī was one of the first major poets to use Persian verse for religious purposes in a significant way. In this, he followed in the footsteps of Shīʿī predecessors, particularly, as De Bruijn notes, Kisāʾī (fl. 4^th/10^th century) and Ḥakīm Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070).Footnote ⁵⁷ Arberry held that, “In his odes Sanāʾī comes stylistically nearest to Nāṣir-i Khusraw; while discoursing nobly on the majesty of God and the dedicated life, he rails incessantly against the evil times in which it was his misfortune to live and urges the wicked to repent of their sins before the wrath to come”.Footnote ⁵⁸ Beyond the themes and motifs that were his predecessor's legacy, Sanāʾī also composed in metres and rhymes that first appeared in the poetry of Ḥakīm Nāṣir.Footnote ⁵⁹

One of Sanāʾī’s greatest admirers was Qiwāmī-yi Rāzī, a Shīʿī contemporary who alludes to him often in his own Dīwān. Writing in about 560/1165, Naṣīr al-Dīn Abū’l-Rashīd al-Rāzī lists both Qiwāmī and Sanāʾī as Shīʿī poets. Similarly, writing in about 556/1161, ʿAbd al-Jalīl Qazwīnī, a leading Twelver Shīʿī scholar of Rayy, along with later Twelver Shīʿī authors, such as Qāḍī Nūr Allāh Shustarī (d. 1019/1610), argued for Sanāʾī’s Shīʿism as well, although two of his poems and a letter suggesting sympathies specifically with Twelver Shīʿīsm have been demonstrated to be later forgeries.Footnote ⁶⁰ Sanāʾī’s contemporary Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Raffāʾ, who knew first-hand the circumstances surrounding the composition of The Orchard, writes in his prose introduction to the work that the poet declined the Sulṭān of Ghazna's invitation to his court, saying that he preferred the poverty and contentment exemplified by Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī (d. 32/653).Footnote ⁶¹ Abū Dharr and Salmān al-Fārsī (d. 35/656) are, in fact, among the two most commonly cited examples of Muslim piety in Sanāʾī’s poetry.Footnote ⁶² While these two figures are respected by Muslims in general, they hold a special place in Shīʿī piety, being considered, along with ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir (d. 37/657) and Miqdād ibn ʿAmr, as among the ‘four pillars’ of the Shīʿah due to their allegiance to Imam ʿAlī and the family of the Prophet.Footnote ⁶³ In his poetry, Ḥakīm Nāṣir-i Khusraw singles out Abū Dharr and Salmān al-Farsī as among those blessed to pledge allegiance (bayʿat) directly to the Prophet.Footnote ⁶⁴

De Bruijn acknowledges the clear expressions of devotion to the Family of the Prophet in Sanāʾī’s works, as well as his close relationship with the descendants of the Prophet during his lifetime, but is hesitant to make a declaration of his loyalties based on this evidence.Footnote ⁶⁵ High regard for the Prophet's family is, of course, ubiquitous in much of the Muslim world. Poems extolling figures such as the caliph ʿUmar give reason for pause, but are dismissed by individuals such as Shustarī as simply examples of the prudence (taqiyyah) that Shīʿīs were forced to practise in hostile environments. Arguing along similar lines as Shustarī, de Bruijn avers that Sanāʾī’s close relationships with the leading Sunnī figures of his time would have made any open expression of Shīʿīsm very difficult.Footnote ⁶⁶ Gillies Tetley makes the same observation with regard to the poet Muʿizzī (d. between 519-521/1125-1127), upon whose death Sanāʾī composed an elegy, “Like nearly all court poets, Muʿizzī was in general very careful to express himself in a manner that was appropriate and pleasing to the patron without giving offence elsewhere, especially so when he was addressing an Ismāʿīlī patron; the last thing he needed was to be branded as an Ismāʿīlī sympathiser”.Footnote ⁶⁷ Indeed, under Ghaznawid rule, during which Sanāʾī served, the vizier Ḥasanak Mīkāl (d. 422/1031) was executed, ostensibly for being an Ismaili. Shortly before this incident, Firdawsī (d. 416/1025) is believed to have suffered the dismissive treatment of his Book of Kings (Shāh-nāmah) and to have been denied burial in the Muslim cemetery because of his Shīʿī beliefs.Footnote ⁶⁸ Indeed, we know that Sanāʾī was plagued by accusations of Shīʿī sympathies during his lifetime, particularly since he was very explicit in his condemnation of the family of Marwān (the Umayyads) and their hostilities toward the Prophet's family.Footnote ⁶⁹ A letter to Sulṭān Bahrām Shāh seeking protection in this regard has been preserved.Footnote ⁷⁰ Sanāʾī’s appeal for safety is understandable, given the openness of the critiques scattered throughout his works. For example, in his Orchard, after expressing his affection for the holy family of ʿAlī, Fāṭimah and their two sons, he vows:

The publication of the Mine of Mysteries (Maʿdin al-asrār) in 1922 established that Sanāʾī was mentioned in Ismaili works.Footnote ⁷² However, this text dates, at the earliest, to the 10^th/16^th century, and given Sanāʾī’s fame throughout the Persian-speaking world, it was not at all unusual for his name to be invoked. However, the manner in which he is mentioned is unusual. He is considered as someone who was, like Shaykh-i ʿAṭṭār and Muḥaqqiq-i Rūmī, one of the People of Truth (ahl-i ḥaqq). ‘People of the Truth’ (ahl-i ḥaqq) is one of the most common names by which Ismailis designate their own community.Footnote ⁷³ Further, the text speaks of this triumvirate as being among those who spoke in mysteries and allusions, as opposed to the people of superficial forms (ẓāhiriyān).Footnote ⁷⁴ While the passage does, unambiguously, testify to the high regard in which the author held the three, and perhaps even suggests that he considered them co-religionists, the text is too late in origin to constitute sound evidence of their actual religious leanings.

The recently published Poems of the Resurrection (Dīwān-i qāʾimiyyāt) by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd-i Kātib and other poets provides earlier evidence that is more suggestive.Footnote ⁷⁵ As in Recognizing God, Ḥakīm Sanāʾī is the most quoted poet, by means of various literary conventions.

For example, the poet describes himself as a slave of the one who said:

This is, in fact, the opening line of one of Ḥakīm Sanāʾī’s most famous odes.Footnote ⁷⁷

In another ode meant for the “ears of those who dwell in the sublime portal of the city of our lord (mawlānā)”, the poet writes:

While extensive quotations are suggestive, the epithets by which Sanāʾī is addressed are particularly noteworthy. For example, in the last couplet of one of his odes, the poet writes:

Similarly, Sanāʾī is the first poet quoted in Ṭūsī and Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd's Paradise of Submission (Rawḍah-yi taslīm), in which his verse is used to argue that it is not simply testifying to God that separates faith and infidelity, but acknowledgement of His earthly representative:

In his response to the inquiry of a certain Khwājah Muḥammad Bāsaʿīd, the Ismaili Imam of Alamūt Khudāwand ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad (d. 653/1255) warns him against those who offer lofty words about the Imam and protest their complete devotion and submission to him, but then proceed to act without any authorisation from him. Against such people, he emphasises the necessity of following the path to reach the destination, of maintaining the heavenly dispensation (sharīʿah) to reach the resurrection (qiyāmah), of holding fast to the revelation (tanzīl) to understand its symbolic elucidation (taʾwīl) and of beginning with the outward form (ẓāhir) in order to arrive at the inner meaning (bāṭin). In this context, he quotes Sanāʾī:

Writing about one century after Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd and two centuries after Sanāʾī, the Ismaili poet Ḥakīm Nizārī Quhistānī (d. 720/1320) was to compose his Debate of Day and Night (Munāẓarah-yi rūz ū shab) in the same metre as Sanāʾī’s three mathnawīs, including The Orchard of Reality (Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqah).Footnote ⁸² Curiously, one of the other poets whom he chose to honour in a similar fashion was Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, the hazaj metre (˘ – – – | ˘ – – – | ˘ – –) of whose Tale of Khusraw (Khusraw-nāmah) he emulated in his longest composition, the hitherto unpublished Azhar and Mazhar (Azhar ū Mazhar).Footnote ⁸³ He writes:

Soon after Alamūt's fall, therefore, we see classical poets (who were later to inspire the Ṣūfīs) inspiring the Ismailis as well.

As de Bruijn notes, among the Muslim poets, just as Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī is commonly referred to by the honorific epithet “Mawlānā”, Saʿdī (691/1292) as “Shaykh”, Ḥāfiẓ (792/1390) as “Khwājah” and Jāmī (898/1492) as “Mullā”, Sanāʾī was favoured especially (though not exclusively) with the title “Ḥakīm”.Footnote ⁸⁵ Indeed, he made copious use of the word ḥikmah in his poetry.Footnote ⁸⁶ Muslim tradition has used the word ḥakīm, translated here as “sage”, in both a general sense and as a technical term. For example, the word is often employed in the sense of “philosopher”.Footnote ⁸⁷ In Ismaili works, it frequently has a specific connotation, reflecting the manner in which the Quran regularly pairs the concept of the Book (al-kitāb) with that of the Wisdom (al-ḥikmah), as in 2:129, 2:151, 2:231, 3:48, 3:81, 3:164, 4:54, 4:113, 5:110, and 62:2.

A typical example is provided in The Symbolic Meaning of the Pillars of Islam (Taʾwīl daʿāʾim al-Islām) of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974), foremost jurist of the Fāṭimids. He begins by citing the following Quranic verses:

Commenting on these verses, he writes:

Similarly, al-Muʾayyad fī’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī writes:

We had given the descendants of Abraham the Book (al-kitāb) and the Wisdom (al-ḥikmah)

Centuries later, Mullā Ṣadrā, referring to the same Quranic verse (2:269) as al-Muʾayyad, was also to attribute the concept of wisdom (ḥikmah) specifically to the Imams. He writes:

The pairing of the Book and the Wisdom in the Quran was therefore of central importance to Ismaili thinkers. The former was frequently associated with the literal revelation (tanzīl) and the latter with its symbolic elucidation (taʾwīl) by the Imam, conveyed through his appointees in the spiritual hierarchy (ḥudūd). The word ḥakīm (sage), at least in its technical sense, could therefore only be attributed to the Imam himself, or to someone appointed by the Imam as capable of spiritual elucidation. In his Confluence of Two Wisdoms (Jāmiʿ al-ḥikmatayn), Nāṣir-i Khusraw avers the superiority of the people of symbolic elucidation (taʾwīl) and divine support (taʾyīd) over the philosophers, who depend solely on the human intellect, without the benefit of divine knowledge. This, he explains, is received from those vested with knowledge, the rāsikhūn fī’l-ʿilm, that is, the Prophet, ʿAlī, and their descendants. He further writes that the Imam of the Time is the “treasure keeper of divine wisdom descended from God's chosen Prophet”.Footnote ⁹² As he explains in the Dīwān, the Imam's wisdom is immaculate and devoid of both the extremes of anthropomorphism (tashbīh) and agnosticism (taʿtīl):

The connotation of Sanāʾī being referred to as a king of the sages (shāh-i ḥakīmān) in the Poems of the Resurrection takes on further importance in light of the usage of the term ḥakīm in the Ethics of Muḥtasham (Akhlāq-i Muḥtashamī), an Ismaili treatise prepared by Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥtasham of Quhistān (d. 655/1257) and his protégé, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274). As outlined in the introduction, the book, divided into 40 chapters dealing with a wide variety of ethical topics, brings together verses from the Quran, the reports of the Prophet Muḥammad (ḥadīths), the words of the Imams, and the sayings of the inviters (dāʿīs), sages (ḥakīms) and other learned people (buzurgān).Footnote ⁹⁴ The inclusion of the term ḥakīm, along with the more explicit and clearly defined term dāʿī, again suggests that in referring to Sanāʾī as a ḥakīm, the Poems of the Resurrection may have had a particularly religious function in mind, one associated with the Ismaili hierarchy and the appointees of the Imam. In places, Sanāʾī in fact refers to the particular type of poetry he composed as a poetry of ḥikmat.Footnote ⁹⁵ It should be noted that Nāṣir-i Khusraw and Nizārī Quhistānī, two of the major Ismaili poets in Persian, are also referred to as ḥakīm.

Most explicit in the Poems of the Resurrection, however, is the following couplet:

The verse is unambiguous. The poet clearly considered Sanāʾī not only a co-religionist, but declared him an Ismaili dāʿī, or inviter to the faith. Odes 4 and 79 in the Poems of the Resurrection are direct imitations of Sanāʾī’s work and, more telling, a complete ode of Sanāʾī is incorporated in the oldest manuscript of this Dīwān of Ismaili poetry.Footnote ⁹⁷

Kadkanī adduces further suggestive evidence in Kāshānī’s Cream of Chronicles (Zubdat al-tawārīkh). In his section on the Ismailis, Kāshānī cites two poems of Sanāʾī castigating the Umayyad Abū Sufyān (d. 32/653) and his descendants for the wrongs they had inflicted upon the prophet's family. The third poem, which is also found in Sanāʾī’s corpus, is headed by a sentence that says “Again, a dignitary among their [viz., the Ismaili] notables says…”Footnote ⁹⁸ Kadkanī argues that the statement is even stronger, as the scribe of the manuscript used for the critical edition often errs in writing aʿyān (اعیان) rather than dāʿīyān (داعیان), thus providing an even more explicit function for Sanāʾī’s activities among the Ismailis, not simply as a notable, but as a dāʿī. It should be recalled that at this time, virtually all Ismailis living beyond the protection of their own political domains would, of necessity, have had to conceal their identities.Footnote ⁹⁹ Given these allusions, one also wonders whether any deeper meaning should be attributed to the Vizier Qiwām al-Dīn Darguzīnī’s (d. 527/1133) desire to meet Sanāʾī, as the former had been accused by his detractors of being an Ismaili.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

One is reminded of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s forthright statement in The Journey (Sayr ū sulūk) that Tāj al-Dīn al-Shahrastānī was an Ismaili dāʿī.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Modern scholarship, particularly that of Muḥammad Riḍā Jalālī Nāʾīnī, Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh, Wilferd Madelung, Jean Jolivet, Guy Monnot, Diana Steigerwald and Toby Mayer, has borne out Ṭūsī’s remark, and maintains that, despite his external appearance as a Shāfiʿī Sunni of the Ashʿarī persuasion, at heart al-Shahrastānī adhered to Ismailism.Footnote ¹⁰² Madelung and Mayer neatly summarise it as follows, “al-Shahrastānī can thus be described as Sunni socially and communally, but as Shiʿi and Ismaʿili in some of his core beliefs and religious thought”.Footnote ¹⁰³

Might Sanāʾī’s situation have been similar? It is beyond the scope of this article to conduct an in-depth examination of Sanāʾī’s writings for indications of commonalities with Ismaili thought. That said, it is easy to see how, for example, his Worshippers’ Journey to the Place of Return (Sayr al-ʿibād ilā’l-maʿād), with its narrative detailing a search through a hierarchy for the perfect guide, who is the epiphany of the creative fiat kun and who leads the seeker along the path of perfection, might have been interpreted by Ismaili readers as an allegory emanating from their own tradition. Many of these same themes recur in the very first lines of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s spiritual autobiography, in which he describes the Imam as:

Indeed, as some of the examples in Recognizing God demonstrate, passages in Sanāʾī’s Garden of Reality certainly were used to illustrate themes of Ismaili thought. While the testimony of Recognizing God is by no means unequivocal, when combined with statements from such sources as the Poems of the Resurrection and Kāshānī’s Cream of Chronicles, along with contemporary testimony in which Sanāʾī was accused of Shīʿism, it does shed further light on the question. At the very least, Recognizing God demonstrates that immediately after Sanāʾī’s death, Ismaili authors were already citing his poetry in their religious works.

Literary culture in the fortresses and the development of pious poetry: “Verses on the wisdom and praise of his progeny”

Rashīd al-Dīn and Kāshānī tell us of the literary inclinations of Raʾīs Muẓaffar and his son Sharaf al-Dīn, the Ismaili leaders at the fortress of Girdkūh.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Raʾīs Muẓaffar was a cultivated author of bellelettristic leanings. He had studied under ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿAṭṭāsh, whom Ibn al-Athīr described as “an eloquent litterateur and skilled calligrapher”.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ He himself was described as raising the Saljūq Prince Ismāʿīl, Amīrdād Ḥabashī’s offspring, “cultivating in him grace, wisdom, and knowledge of literature and the arts”. His son would have been exposed to the same genteel upbringing. The fact that Rashīd al-Dīn and Kāshānī describe him, like his father, as a cultivated litterateur, makes it very likely that he also composed poetry and that the verses with the pen name Qāsim in Recognizing God are his. The combination of genteel tastes and financial means would have made the patronage of literature and the arts at Girdkūh a distinct possibility, and it seems likely that this was, indeed, the case.

An example of such pursuits may be found in the biography of Abū’l-ʿAlāʾ Ganjawī (d. circa 554/1160).Footnote ¹⁰⁷ One of the outstanding poets of the 6^th/12^th century, Ganjawī was known as the Preceptor of Poets (ustād al-shuʿarāʾ), having been the mentor of the illustrious Falakī and Khāqānī Shīrwānī. He had a close relationship with his pupil, to whom he gave the pen name “Khāqānī”.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Khāqānī also married his master's daughter. However, the two poets had a falling out and in one of his poems Khāqānī attacks his teacher, accusing him, among other things, of being an Ismaili, particularly because of his association with Dāmghān, and, by extension, of nearby Girdkūh, calling him “the dog of Dāmghān, bait in the trap of the Magians”.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Kadkanī argues that the loss of the poetic dīwān of such an important Persian poet as Ganjawī is likely to have been the result of his association with the Ismailis of Girdkūh.Footnote ¹¹⁰ For our purposes, it does not matter whether Khāqānī’s aspersions against his teacher's religious faith were true so much as the fact that Abū’l-ʿAlāʾ Ganjawī stayed at Girdkūh, ostensibly contributing to the literary culture there.

Might the tradition of a Persian literary culture at the Ismaili fortresses, and particularly the development of Persian poetry as a vehicle for expressing pious, rather than just secular, sentiments, have been a continuation of earlier Shīʿī, and particularly Ismaili, developments in this domain? It is well-known that Sanāʾī’s oeuvre represents a watershed in the evolution of Persian poetry in terms of its expression of homiletic and religious sentiment. While, of course, several previous poets had occasionally articulated such feelings, as de Bruijn noted, the only major Persian poets who could be considered forerunners of Sanāʾī in this regard are Kisāʾī and Nāṣir-i Khusraw. We may add that all three of these poets are commonly referred to as ḥakīm.

While much of Kisāʾī’s oeuvre has now been lost, the early 13^th century anthologist Muḥammad ʿAwfī writes in his Essences of Intellects (Lubāb al-albāb):

De Bruijn suggests the pen name Kisāʾī may allude to the craft of a tailor. However, given the poet's devotion to the People of the House, that is, the family of the Prophet, the pen name may very well allude to his attachment to the ahl al-kisāʾ, the People of the Cloak—the Prophet Muḥammad himself; his daughter, Fāṭimah; her husband and the cousin of the Prophet, ʿAlī; and the Prophet's two grandsons by this marriage al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, who form the nucleus of the “House of Prophecy”. It is in light of the “Tradition of the Cloak”, ḥadīth al-kisāʾ, that both Shīʿī and Sunnī commentators overwhelmingly interpret the Quranic verse of purification (taṭhīr). According to this account, the Prophet wrapped himself and the other four members of his family in his cloak, solemnly declaring, “O God, these are the People of my House (ahl baytī)!” He then recited the following Quranic verse, “God desires only to remove impurity from you, O People of the House (ahl al-bayt), and to purify you completely” (33:33).Footnote ¹¹²

Nāṣir-i Khusraw, the Ismaili ḥujjat, saw himself as continuing Kisāʾī’s legacy, held the poetry of Kisāʾī in esteem and referenced him in a number of his odes, claiming to have breathed new life into his predecessor's verses and to have surpassed them:

Scholars such as Muḥammad Muʿīn and Saʿīd Nafīsī are of the opinion that Kisāʾī was an Ismaili Shīʿī, while de Bruijn, basing his opinion on testimony in ʿAbd al-Jalīl Rāzī’s 6^th/12^th century Book on the Shamelessness of the Haters of the Prophet's Family, in Refutation of the Book Disgraces of the Shīʿīs (Baʿḍ mathālib al-Nawāṣib fī naqḍ baʿḍ faḍāʾiḥ al-Rawāfiḍ), suggests that he was a Twelver Shīʿī.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Given the closeness of these two sister schools of Imāmī Shīʿism, the problem is not easy to solve, particularly as Kisāʾī’s complete Dīwān has been lost to posterity.

We also see a parallel pietistic trend in the development of Arabic Ismaili poetry of the same period. Tahera Qutbuddin has argued that al-Muʾayyad fī’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, a contemporary of Nāṣir-i Khusraw, inaugurated a new tradition of religious commitment in Arabic poetry under the Fāṭimids.Footnote ¹¹⁶ While earlier Fāṭimid poets writing in Arabic, such as Ibn Hāniʾ (d. circa 362/973), did express religious sentiment in verse, the homiletic element was not prominent. Similarly, early Persian poetry lacks the full development of religious and pietistic qualities. Rūdakī (d. circa 329/941), a contemporary of the Fāṭimid caliph al-Mahdī (d. 322/934), became well-known as “Adam of the Poets” (ādam-i shuʿarāʾ) because of his role in inaugurating new Persian as a literary medium. We can establish with some confidence that he was an Ismaili. The Sāmānid poet, Maʿrūf Balkhī (fl. 4^th/10^th century), writes:

While Rūdakī’s Dīwān is no longer extant, the surviving fragments of his poetry are largely secular in nature, albeit with certain homiletic, though perhaps not overtly religious, themes.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Thus, with al-Muʾayyad in Arabic and Kisāʾī and Nāṣir-i Khusraw in Persian, we see the development of a new category of poetry, one which spoke of a spiritual world and in which the religious, devotional and homiletic elements were not only extremely prominent but were, in fact, the dominant force.

Of piety and poetry: “ʿAṭṭār was the spirit, Sanāʾī his eyes twain”

The trend of pious poetry, which had gained prominence in a Shīʿī environment, was continued and taken in new directions by Sanāʾī. By his writings it spread throughout the Persianate regions, inspiring wide appreciation. In particular, one may note his influence on two successors, Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (d. circa 618/1221) and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 672/1273), exemplified in Rūmī’s well-known verse:

The case of Raʾīs Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad's poetry cited in Khwājah Qāsim Tushtarī’s Recognizing God is especially interesting in this regard. It reads:

Anyone familiar with Persian poetry will immediately recognise the lilting cadence and rhythm of the lines. This is the same metre used in Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s immortal Rhyming Couplets of Spiritual Meaning (Mathnawī-yi maʿnawī), after which it became the metre used for virtually all Persian poetry of the mathnawī genre, ramal-i maḥdhūf-i musaddas, that is, – ˘ – – / – ˘ – – / – ˘ –.

Use of this metre for mathnawīs is exceedingly rare before Shaykh Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār made it famous in his epics, particularly the Bird's Discourse (Manṭiq al-ṭayr).Footnote ¹²⁰ Prior to ʿAṭṭār, we find the metre used in the famous ghazal of Rūdakī, by which he is said to have convinced his king to return to Bukhārā:

The surviving fragments of what was apparently Rūdakī’s magnum opus Kalīlah and Dimnah (Kalīlah wa Dimnah), a mathnawī containing the translation of the Panchatantra, along with his Story of Sindbad (Sindabād-nāmah), are also in a very similar metre. A surviving couplet is provided below in transcription to illustrate the scansion:

As will be readily apparent to those versed in Persian prosody, while the rhythm is essentially the same, the final syllable in Rūdakī’s mathnawī is overlong (darāz as opposed to buland), – ˘ – – / – ˘ – – / – ˘ – +, that is, ramal-i maqṣūr-i musaddas  rather than ramal-i maḥdhūf-i musaddas.Footnote ¹²³ The distinction is primarily theoretical, and it is entirely possible for a composition to have lines with final syllables that are either long or overlong. Thus, for example, the metre of the famous Persian epic poem Book of Kings (Shāh-nāmah) is mutaqārib-i musamman-i maḥdhūf aw maqsūr, that is, either long or overlong.Footnote ¹²⁴

Regardless, if our identification of Raʾīs Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad “Qāsim” is correct, his verses quoted in Tushtarī’s Recognizing God would be one of the oldest uses, if not the oldest testimony, of this metre for a mathnawī. This metre then went on to become famous with ʿAṭṭār and reached its pinnacle with Mawlānā Rūmī.