the regency of his widow; and the Sultan was at first disposed to take advantage of the circumstance. He was disarmed by a letter from the regent, who told him that she might have feared him while her warlike husband was alive, but now felt secure in the conviction that he was too generous to attack a defenceless woman, and too wise to risk his glory in a contest where no addition to it could be gained.* If Mahmud ever evinced this magnanimity towards the widow, it was not extended to her son. This young man's reign was a continued scene of misgovernment; and the rebellions it at last engendered either obliged him (as some state) to solicit the interposition of Mahmúd, or enabled that monarch to interfere unsolicited, and to turn the distracted state of the kingdom to his own profit. He invaded Irák, and ungenerously, if not perfidiously, seized the person of the prince, who had trusted himself in his camp before Rei. He then took possession of the whole territory; and, having been opposed at Isfahan and Cazvín, he punished their resistance by putting to death some thousands of the inhabitants of each city.t CHAP. III. These transactions, which leave so great a stain His death, on the memory of Mahmúd, were the last acts of his reign. He was taken ill soon after his return * D'Herbelot. Price. Gibbon. † D'Herbelot, art. " Mahmoud," p. 521. See also art. "Magdeddulat." BOOK A.D. 1030. A. H. 421. and character. to his capital, and died at Ghazni on the 29th of April, A. D. 1030.* Shortly before his death he commanded all the most costly of his treasures to be displayed before him; and, after long contemplating them, he is said to have shed tears at the thought that he was so soon to lose them. It is remarked that, after this fond parting with his treasures, he distributed no portion of them among those around him, to whom also he was about to bid farewell.† Thus died Mahmúd, certainly the greatest sovereign of his own time, and considered by the Mahometans among the greatest of any age. Though some of his qualities have been overrated, he appears on the whole to have deserved his reputation. Prudence, activity, and enterprise, he possessed in the highest degree; and the good order which he preserved in his extensive dominions during his frequent absences is a proof of his talents for government. The extent itself of those dominions does little towards establishing his ability, for the state of the surrounding countries afforded a field for a wider ambition than he ventured to indulge; and the speedy dissolution of his empire prevents * Briggs, vol. i. p. 84.; Price, vol. ii. p. 294. It was probably this anecdote that suggested to Sádi a story which he relates in the "Gulistán." A certain person, he says, saw Sultán Mahmúd (then long dead) in a dream. His body was reduced to a bare skeleton; but his eyes (the organs of covetousness with the Asiatics) were still entire, and gazed eagerly from their sockets, as if they were insatiable and indestructible, like the passion which animated them. our forming a high opinion of the wisdom employed in constructing it. Even his Indian operations, for which all other objects were resigned, are so far from displaying any signs of system or combination, that their desultory and inconclusive nature would lead us to deny him a comprehensive intellect, unless we suppose its range to have been contracted by the sordid passions of his heart. He seems to have made no innovation in internal government no laws or institutions are referred, by tradition, to him. The real source of his glory lay in his combining the qualities of a warrior and a conqueror, with a zeal for the encouragement of literature and the arts, which was rare in his time, and has not yet been surpassed. His liberality in those respects is enhanced by his habitual economy. He founded a university in Ghazni, with a vast collection of curious books in various languages, and a museum of natural curiosities. He appropriated a large sum of money for the maintenance of this establishment, besides a permanent fund for allowances to professors and to students.* He also set aside a sum, nearly equal to 10,000l. a-year, for pensions to learned men; and showed so much munificence to individuals of eminence, that his capital exhibited a greater assemblage of literary genius than any other monarch in Asia has ever been able to produce. + * Briggs's Ferishta, vol. i. p. 60. The first encouragers of Persian literature appear to have CHAP. III. BOOK .V. Of the many names that adorned his court, few are known in Europe. U'nsuri may be mentioned as the first instance, in Asia, of a man raised to high rank and title for poetical merit alone *; but it is to Ferdousi that we must ascribe the universal reputation of Mahmúd as a patron of poetry; and it is to him, also, that his country is indebted for a large portion of her poetical fame. The history of this poet throws a strong light on Mahmud's literary ardour; and is improved in interest as well as authenticity by its incidental disclosure of the conqueror's characteristic foible. Perceiving that the ancient renown of Persia was on the point of being extinguished, owing to the bigotry of his predecessors, Mahmúd early held out rewards to any one who would embody in a historical poem, the achievements of her kings and heroes, previous to the Mahometan conquest. Dakíki, a great poet of the day, whom he had first engaged in this undertaking, was assassinated by been the Sámánis. The "Táríkhi Tabari," a celebrated historical work, was translated into Persian from Arabic by the vizír of one of the kings of that race, in A. D. 946; and Rúdekt, the earliest of the Persian poets, received 80,000 dirhems from another of those princes for a moral work founded on Pilpay's fables. The Búyas, or Deilemites, are mentioned by Gibbon as revivers of the language and genius of Persia; but it is to Sultan Mahmud that she is indebted for the full expansion of her national literature. * Colonel Kennedy, from Daulot Sháh, Transactions of the Bombay Literary Society, vol. ii. p. 75.; where, also, is the authority for the present to Rúdekí. a servant, before he had finished more than one thousand couplets; when the fame of Mahmúd's liberality fortunately attracted Ferdousi to his court. By him was this great work completed; and in such a manner, that, although so obsolete as to require a glossary, it is still the most popular of all books among his countrymen, and is admired even by European readers for the spirit and fire of some passages, the tenderness of others, and the Homeric simplicity and grandeur that pervade the whole. A remarkable feature in this poem (perhaps an indication of the taste of the age) is the fondness for ancient Persian words, and the studious rejection of Arabic. It is said, though not, perhaps, quite correctly, that not one exclusively Arabic word is to be found in the sixty thousand couplets. The poem was from time to time recited to the Sultan, who listened to it with delight, and showed his gratitude by gifts to the poet; but when the whole was concluded, after thirty years of labour, as Ferdousi himself assures us, the reward was entirely disproportioned to the greatness of the work. Ferdousi rejected what was offered, withdrew in indignation to his native city of Tús, for * * The story told is, that Mahmúd had promised a dirhem every verse; and that, although he had meant golden dirhems, the sight of the sum was too much for his covetous nature, and he changed the payment into silver dirhems; but Mahmud had too much prudence to have promised an unlimited sum for verses, even of Ferdousi's, and too much taste to have thought that he would improve their value by offering a premium on their number. CHAP. |