acting upon the same principle, commanded all foreign books to be destroyed, burned the second Alexandrian library, and the records of the Persian Empire, in A. D. 640. One book, however, as it is related in a life of the poet Ferdusi, was preserved from this indiscriminate destruction by Saad, one of Omar's Generals; who found it after the victory of Cadessia. It consisted of a History of Persia compiled from the Sassanian annals, and was written in the Pehlevian dialect, from which it was ultimately translated into some of the other Asiatic languages. Under the Khalifes of the house of Abbas, the Persian tongue was but little encouraged, though the literature of the Arabians met with considerable support; but when the power of those Princes began to decline, and a number of independant chiefs sprang up in the Empire, Poets and Literary men were greatly patronised, and about the tenth century a new dialect of the Persian tongue was introduced, blended with words from the Koraun, and expressions from the Arabian Poets, who then began to be imitated in Persia. The elegance of the tongue was afterwards greatly increased by the magnificent poetical writers which the country itself produced. Of these, Ferdusi, a native of Tus or Meshed, is the oldest, as he flourished in the close of the tenth, and commencement of the following century, at the Court of Mahmoud in the City of Gazna. His principal work was a very elegant Epic poem on the History of Persia, which occupied him thirty years, but for which his only reward was as many small pieces of money, as the work contained couplets. He wrote in retaliation an aninated invective against the Sultan, and then leaving Gazna in the night, fled to Bagdad, where the Khalife protected him till he died, which was in the year 1020. Ahmed Ebn Soliman Aboul Óla, called Alami from his blindness, was an eminent Arabian poet who was born in 973, and was the instructor of several Persians who were peculiarly eminent for the purity of their compositions in their own tongue and about the close of the tenth and commencement of the eleventh century, the Persian poems in general became enriched with Arabian phrases and verses amalgamated into their sentences. Aboul Ola died in 1057. Early in the twelfth century, Anveri, a native of Abiurd in Khorassan, flourished at the court of the Sultan Sanjar; and in the year 1193, the famous Poet Sadi was born at Shiraz, in whose elegant works the Arabian and Persian were most happily combined. The fourteenth century produced Shemseddin. surnamed Hafiz, the Anacreon of Persia, also a native of Shiraz; and he experienced the patronage of Tamerlane, who like many other Tartarian Princes conquered Persia, but who still continued to encourage its language, its religion, its literature, and its Fine-arts, nor did any of their in

vasions tend in the least to corrupt them. Mahomet II., Emperor of the Turks, was likewise a protector of the Persian poets; since Noureddin Jami, the author of the splendid loves of Joseph and Zelikha, flourished at his Court; whilst his contemporary Catebi was entertained at that of Mirza Ibrahim, one of the descendants of Tamerlane. Under the family of Sefi, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Persian language began to lose its ancient purity; and even to partake of the Turkish, which was then commonly spoken at the Court; and annexed is a summary view of the modern dialect, to which the preceding history, abstracted from the admirable works of Sir William Jones, (Vide Edit. Lond. 1799, 4to. Vol. 11. pp. 303-328,) has at length conducted us.

The Persian language is written from the right-hand to the left, and the following are the thirty-two characters of their alphabet, which, as it has been already stated, were derived from the Arabian, with the addition of five others.

The words in the last column contain the proper sound of each character, particularly pointed out by having the corresponding letters printed in Italic.

The Initials and Medials which are not inserted are the same as the Finals. The second and fourth of the above columns, counting from the right-hand, are used only when the letters are connected with a preceding one; and every letter also should be joined to that which follows it, excepting Alif, Dawl, Zawl, Re, Ze, Zje, and Waw. Eight of the above letters, namely Se, Jeem, Sawd, Zawd, To, Zo, Ghain, and Kaaf, were adopted from the Arabic, and are not to be found in any words that are not purely Persian; but on the other hand Pe, Che, Zje, and Kawf, are peculiar to the Persian alphabet, and from these are formed their short vowel points. The alphabet itself is divided by native grammarians into three parts; namely, Musoory, which contains fifteen of those characters that are formed but of two letters in the Persian spelling: Mulfoozy, containing fourteen letters of three characters each: and thirdly, Muktooby, in which the Initials and Finals are the same, and of which there are only three letters. Alif, Waw, and Ya, are the long vowels but the short ones according to the custom of the Hebrews and several of the other more ancient nations, are omitted in writing as sn, for sun, &c. To supply the proper powers, the Persians sometimes use small points placed above or below the letters according to the sould required; but these, as well as their orthographical marks, are very rarely written in their books. The following instances will give an idea of the nature of these characters.

Is an inclined line placed above the letter, which is denominated Futtah, or Zubber; it possesses the power of a, or ai.

Is an inclined line placed at the foot of the letter, it is called Kessr or Zeer, and supplies the place of i, and sometimes of e.

Fum or Peish, is inserted for o, oo, or u.

When placed over a consonant shows that the syllable ends with it.

Medda, when placed over Alif, gives to it a long and broad sound; but Mad over the same letter, thus, causes it to be pronounced as a short a, and sometimes like an i

or u.

Hamza is a mark placed at the end of a word, and when the sign of the short i has been expressed or understood in the course of that word, it stands for the letters ye, in words which end in he. It also represents the article as in Numahi, a book; the former of two substantives as in Nafahi Mushk, a bag of Musk; and the second person singular in the preterites of compound verbs, as in Dadaki, thou hast given.

w The mark Tashdid, is also written above the word, and shews a consonant to be doubled, as Turṛuh, a lock of hair.

The Persians use a variety of different hands for their writing, but those which are the most common, are the Niskhi; the Talik, or Hanging; and the Shekesteh, or Broken. In the first are all Arabic manuscripts together with most Persian and Turkish histories, written, and it likewise forms the character of our printed books. Poetical works are transcribed in the Talik, a beautiful small letter which corresponds with the most elegant of our Italian hands; but the Shekesteh is used only for the letters of the Princes of the country, and by the Indians in rapid writing, as its characters are imperfectly and rudely shaped.

The Persians do not use their alphabetical characters as Numerals, but the following figures have been invented for that purpose.

Ten is formed of the following character, with Eek, and is called Deh; Eleven is made of two Eeks, and called Eeaz-dek; Twelve of Eek, with Doo, and called Dooaz-deh, &c. There are no other characters used in the Persian numerals, for twenty is made of the short mark used for ten with that two placed after it; and twenty is written one two. A hundred is compounded of the one, and two short marks or cyphers; and ten thousand is written one and four cyphers, similar to the English. As the Persian letters vary their forms according to their places in the word, so likewise they vary according to those characters with which they are combined, as may be seen in the following specimen: