Iranian Influence on Moslem Literature, Part I | Page 3

in particular. Only after the outbreak of the War
some interest has been aroused in England in matters Russian generally
and a number of grammars and dictionaries and other aids to the study
of this most difficult language have recently been placed on the market
for the use of students who only a brief three years ago had to depend
mainly on German for acquisition of Russian. This neglect of Russian
is wholly undeserved. It is doubtful if the researches into Oriental
histories and literatures by the Russians have been yet adequately
appreciated in England, the tireless efforts of Dr. Pollen and the
Anglo-Russian Literary Society notwithstanding. It is apparently still
presumed that ripe scholarship in Arabic and Sanskrit is inconceivable
except through the medium of the languages of Western Europe. No

unworthy disparagement of French labours is at all suggested. But it is
only fair to Russia to remember in India that the absence of a Serg
d'Oldenberg would leave a lacuna which must be felt in Buddhist
Sanskrit; without Tzerbatski the Jain literature both Magadhi and
Sanskrit would be appreciably poorer; and that the Continent has
produced nothing to exceed the series of Buddhist Sanskrit texts of
Petrograd, where was published the still largest Sanskrit lexicon.
Naturally in the province of Chinese and Japanese the Russian
Academy at Vladivostock stood facile princeps till only the other day
its magnificent rival was established in London under the direction of
Dr. Denison Ross. An individual scholar like Khanikoff, who like most
of his countrymen in the last century preferred to write in French, and a
Zukovski has done more signal service to Persian antiquities than could
be honestly attributed to many a German name familiar to Indian
scholars. The distinguishing feature of the Russian investigator,
devoted to the past of Persia, is his uncommon equipment. The Russian
bring to their task a mature study of Semitic languages and
acquaintance with Avesta philology. Arabic literature teems with
allusions to the religions, dogma, customs and the court of Sasanian
Iran. Once intended for contemporaries equally at home in the Arabic
and Persian idioms these references have in course of time grown
obscure to copyists who have mutilated Iranian names of persons and
places and specific Zoroastrian terms which had become naturalised in
the language of the ruling Arabs. It is scholars like Baron Rosen and
Rosenberg who have adequately appreciated the value of Arabic texts
in which are interwoven verbal translations of celebrated Pahlavi
treatises. Two such have been disinterred by the industry and erudition
of Inostranzev.
This is the first book to be translated from Russian into English by an
Indian and the obvious difficulties of the task may be pleaded to excuse
some of the shortcomings of a pioneer undertaking. I look for my
reward in on awakened interest in Arabic books which hold in solution
more information on Persia than any set work on the history of Iran.
It would not be in place to advert to the present state of hapless chaos
in Persia. The most sympathetic outsider, however, cannot help

observing that her misfortunes are less due to her neighbours and their
mutual relations than to her too rapid political strides and adoption of
exotic administrative machinery repugnant to the genius of the ancient
nation. Whatever the attitude of individual Mullas towards
non-Moslems in the past the central authority and the people as a whole
are actuated to-day with a spirit of patriotism which is still the keynote
of the character of Persia's noble manhood and womanhood. It declines
to make religion the criterion of kinship.
The inconsistency in the spelling of Arabic words has not altogether
been avoidable being due partly to a desire to adhere to the orthography
adopted by authors whom I have consulted.
SIMLA, G.K. NARIMAN.
September, 1917.
CHAPTER I
Iranian literary tradition in the opening centuries of Islam 1
The character of the Persian history during the Sasanian epoch 6
Importance of this epoch according to the Arab writers of the first
centuries of Islam 10
The position of the Parsi community and the centres of the preservation
of Persian tradition during the period of the Khalifat in Tabaristan,
Khorasan and Fars 15
The castle of Shiz in the district of Arrajan in the province of Fars
described by Istakhri, p. 118, 2-4; 150, 14-7; Ibn Hauqal, p. 189, 1-2; cf.
the translator of the Khoday Nameh, Behram, son of Mardanshah of the
city of Shapur in the province of Fars 19
This castle was the residence of those acquainted with the Iranian
tradition (the badhgozar) and here their archives were lodged 20

ARABIC WRITERS AS SOURCES OF SASANIAN CULTURE.
To the Iranian element belongs a very rich rôle in the external as well
as the internal history of Islam. Its influence is obvious and