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14 -FIRST DrscouRSE. ON SECRETARIES
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words, the discussion will be protracted, and the writer will be
stigmatised >s prolix, and "He ivho is prolix is a babbler 1 "
Now the words of the Secretary will not attain tb this elevation
ufitil he acquires, some knowledge of every science, obtains some
hint from every master, hears some aphorism from every philo-
"sopher, and borrows some elegance from every man of letters.
Therefore he must accustom himself tcx peruse the Scripture of
the Lord of Glory, the Traditions of Muhammad the Chosen
One, the Memoirs of the Companions, the proverbial sayings of
the Arabs, and the wis*e words of the Persians and to read the
;
books of the ancients, and to study the writings of their successors,
such as the Correspondence of the Saliib [Isma'il, ir\n 'Abbatip,
3
Sabi and Qabus the ; compositions of, Hamad/, Imami and
Qudama 4 5
ibn Ja'far the Gests of ;
Badi'[u'z-Zaman al-Hamadani] ,
al-Harfri 5 and al-Hami'di 6
the ; Rescripts of al-BaPam/ 7 Ahmad-
,
i-Hasan 8 and 1
Abu Nasr Kunduri 9 the Letters of Muhammad
;
'Abduh, 'Abdu'l-Hami'd, and the Sayyidu'r-Ru'asa tht Seances
;
of Muhammad-i-Mansur 10 Ibn 'Abbadi , 11 and I,bnu'n-Nassaba the
descendant of 'All ; and, of the poetical works of the Arabs, the
Dtwdns of Mutanabbi 12 Abiwardi , 13 and Ghazzi 14
; and, amongst
15
the Persian poets, the poems of Rudagi the , Epic of Firdawsi 16
,
and the panegyrics of 'Unsuri 17
; since each one of these works
wb*ch I have enumerated was, after its kind, the incomparable
and unique product of its time and ; every writer who hath these
books and doth not fail to read them, stimulates his mind,
2 See the Yatitnatu''d-Dahr (ed. DanVascus), vol. iii, pp. 3[-ii2 de ; Slane's Ibn
J&'iallikdct, vol. i, pp. 2i2-2t7, and Note III at the end. L. omits Sabi.
3 The Tarassu/, or Correspondence, of Qabus ibn Washmgir, the Ziyarid Prince
of Tabaristan, who was killed in 403/1012-13. See p. 95 of the Persian notes.
4 See von Kremer's Culturgesch., i, pp. 269-270.
6 See von Kramer's Culturgesch. , ii, pp. 470-476 Brockelmann ; s Gesch. d. Arab.
Lift., i, pp. 93-94 and 276-278.
8 See Rieu's Persian Catalogue, vol. ii, pp. 747-748, wheee a very fine old MS. of
the Maqdtiidt-i-Ham{dt"is described, written in the i3th cent, qf our era.
7 Abu 'Ali Muhammad al-Bal'ami (d. 386/996).
8 The Ghaznawi minister, Ahmad ibn Hasan of Maymand (d. 424/1033)'
9 See de Slane's Ibn Khallikdn, vol. iii. pp. 290-295. ,
10
Probably Muhammad ibn Mansvir a*i-Haddad. See H. Kh., No. 1729.
11 Abu 'Asim Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-'Abbadi (see Rieu's Arabic Suppl., p. 755),
who died in 458/1066, is probably intended.
12 See von Kremer's Culturgesch., ii, pp. 380-381; Brockelmann's Gesch. d Arab.
Litt., i, pp. 86-89.
13 See Brockelmann's Gesch.'-d. Arab. Lift., i, p. 253}^ and the Yathiia, 1 vol. iv,
pp. 25 and 62-64, where mention is made of this well-known Abiwardi (whose Dfwdn
has been printed at Beyrout) and another. t t
14 Brockelmann, op. cit., i, p. 253. A., however, reads
15 'See Ethe's monograph and also his article s.v. in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
16 See especially Noldeke's Das Iranische Nationalepos in vol. u v
(pp. 130-311)
of Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie.
17 See Ethe in the same Grundriss, pp. 224-225.