with soldiering and military command, that except of those two tasks, what could be learned from his conversation ? what known from his pen ? Though he failed in both, those two ambitions ended by giving to the winds his goods and his life, his house and his home. He may have been a Shi'a.
(*. The Poets.)
The all-surpassing head of the poet-band was Maulana 'Abdu'r-rahman/«7«f. Others were Shaikhim Suhaill and Hasan of 'Ali Jalairr whose names have been mentioned already as in the circle of the Mlrza's begs and household.
AsafT was another,2 he taking Asafi for his pen-name because he was a wazir's son. His verse does not want for grace or sentiment, but has no merit through passion and ecstacy. He himself made the claim, " I have never packed up {bulmddi) my odes to make the oasis (wadi) of a collection."3 This was affectation, his younger brothers and his intimates having collected his odes. He wrote little else but odes. He waited on me when I went into Khurasan (912 AH.).
Bana'i was another ; he was a native of Herl and took such a pen-name (Bana'i) on account of his father Ustad Muhammad Sabs-band.'' His odes have grace and ecstacy. One poem (inasnawi) of his on the topic of fruits, is in the mutaqarib measure ;5 it is random and not worked up. Another short poem is in the khaflf measure, so also is a longer one finished towards the end of his life. He will have known nothing of music in his young days and 'All-sher Beg seems to have taunted him about it, so one winter when the Mlrza, taking 'All-sher Beg
' A sister of his, Apaq Bega, the wife of 'A'T-sher's brother Darwlsh-i-'all kitabdar, is included as a poet in the Biography of Ladies (Sprenger's Cat. p. n)- Amongst the 20 women named one is a wife of Shaibaq Khan, another a daughter of Hilali.
2 He was the son of Ivhw. Ni'amatu'1-lah, one of SI. Abu-sa'id M.'s wazlrs. When dying aet. 70 (923 ah.), he made this chronogram on his own death, "With 70 steps he measured the road to eternity." The name Asaf, so frequent amongst wazirs, is that of Solomon's wazlr.
3 Other interpretations are open : wadi, taken as river, might refer to the going on from one poem to another, the stream of verse ; or it might be taken as desert, with disparagement of collections.
4 Maulana Jamalu'd-din Bana'i was the son of a sabz-bana, an architect, a good builder.
s Steingass's Dictionary allows convenient reference for examples of metres.
