To this period belonged, Rūdāki, who has been called “The father of Persian poetry,” and who was said to be the author of one hundred volumes of verse, besides his metrical version of the work which has been discussed in the previous chapter under the Persian name of Anwār- i-Suhali. To this period also belonged Omar Khayyām, who was a mathematician as well as a poet. His beautiful quatrains are a great improvement upon the rubā’ī of Abu Sa’īd, who was his predecessor in this peculiar style of verse, and his rhapsodies upon love and wine resemble those of Hāfiz. The position of “King of Poets,” which was established by Mahmūd the Ghaznevide, is still maintained at the court of Persia, as well as in England, where Tennyson so long filled the office of Poet Laureate. Firdusī was the great literary light of the first period of Persian poetry, indeed he was the Homer of Īrān, and his great epic will always command the first position among the poetical productions of his native land. THE SHĀH NĀMAH. During the reigns of the Sassanian and Ashkanian princes over Persia, extensive researches were made to collect the most authentic materials[232] for a general history of that country. This work having been accomplished during the reign of Yezdejird, that monarch called upon the priests of the Fire worship to write out the annals of Persia from the reign of Keiūmers down to the end of that of Khosru Parviz. Their work was completed, but this and other valuable manuscripts were carried away with the spoil of the conquerors after the great victory of Saad Vekas over Yezdejird.[233] It was brought before Omar, and he sent it, with other portions of the spoils to the king of Abyssinia, who had several copies made, and distributed them among his friends in different portions of the East. In this way the valuable work was preserved, and in the course of years reached Khorasān. In the ninth century[234] the Persian king, Yakub bin Leith called a council of the most learned Fire- worshippers, and with their assistance selected the best materials for continuing the history of Persia down to the final defeat of Yezdejird, and they also added to it the ancient history by Danishber Dehkan, which in the meantime had been translated into modern Persian. When Shāh Mahmūd Sabuktugīn came to the throne, he conceived the idea of having the history of Persia versified in such a form that it would be appreciated by his poetry-loving people, and after many tests of the poetic ability of his literary subjects, he finally confided the works to the hands of FIRDUSĪ.