خلاصه ماشینی:
PERSIAN POETRY AND LIFE I1V THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY BY the end of the twelfth century Persia, though paying nominal allegiance to the ' Abbasid Caliphate, had not only asserted her independence in the spheres of religion and politics, but had produced a large and varied literature in which the genius of the race expresses itself unmis• takably.
Of this literature the best part, in every sense of the phrase, was cornposed by poets ; for while there are many excellent and valuable Persian books written in prose, it remains true that few of these possess the classical quality that has made the names of Firdaus i, Sa'di and Hafiz familiar to us.
During this period, the /; late twelfth century, Sufi ethics and mysticism found a voluminous exponent in Faridu 'ddin 'Attar, but it was only after the Mongol invasion that these ideas became, for the first time, the dominating element in Persian poetry.
/ refrain from looking at him too searchingly-as a wise, witty, accomplished and much-travelled man of the world, a pious Muslim with a somewhat shallow vein of mysticism but a singularly broad and flexible code of morality; while the Mathnawi may be described as a vast labyrinth leading those who traverse its profundities into the world of the dervish and giving a wonderful panorama of Persian reli• gious life with all its lights and shadows, its idealism, antinornianism, arrogance and humbleness, exaltation and despair, sordid hypocrisy and sublime self-devotion.