of mystical love. By the time the Arabs conquered Iran, Pahlavi, the language of the sacred books of ancient Iran, was in decay. A version of Pahlavi, known as New Persian, with a huge Arabic vocabulary, soon developed. The formation of sultanates in Khurasan and Transoxiana took New Persian to great cultural heights.
The Samanid court poet Rudaki (d. ) was considered the father of New Persian poetry, which included new forms such as the short lyrical poem ( ghazal ) and the quatrain ( rubai, plural rubaiyyat ). The rubai is a four-line stanza in which the first two lines set the stage, the third is finely poised, and the fourth delivers the point. In contrast to its form, the subject matter of the rubai is unrestricted.
It can be used to express the beauty of a beloved, praise T HE C ENTRAL I SLAMIC L ANDS T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY a patron, or express the thoughts of the philosopher. The rubai reached its zenith in the hands of Umar Khayyam ( - ), also an astronomer and mathematician, who lived at various times in Bukhara, Samarqand and Isfahan. At the beginning of the eleventh century, Ghazni became the centre of Persian literary life. Poets were naturally attracted by the brilliance of the imperial court.
Rulers, too, realised the importance of patronising arts and learning for enhancing their prestige. Mahmud of Ghazni gathered around him a group of poets who composed anthologies ( diwans ) and epic poetry ( mathnavi ). The most outstanding was Firdausi (d. ), who took years to complete the Shahnama (Book of Kings) , an epic of , couplets which has become a masterpiece of Islamic literature.
The Shahnama is a collection of traditions and legends (the most popular being that of Rustam), which poetically depicts Iran from Creation up until the Arab conquest. It was in keeping with the Ghaznavid tradition that Persian later became the language of administration and culture in India. The catalogue ( Kitab al-Fihrist ) of a Baghdad bookseller, Ibn Nadim (d. ), describes a large