The greatest poet of this period, however, was Nizāmī,[262] whose pathetic love songs are the best productions of the kind in the Persian tongue. He lived the greater part of his life at Ganja, and is therefore known as Nizāmī of Ganja. His first important work was called “The Storehouse of Mysteries.” This was followed by the beautiful poem of “Koshrū and Shirīn,” the theme of which was taken from ancient Persian history. In the latter part of the twelfth century he wrote his Diwan, a collection which was said to contain twenty thousand verses, but few of these, however, have come down to our own times. Soon afterward the great poet wrote his famous love story entitled “Lailī and Majnūn,” which was followed by his Book of Alexander, an epic which was devoted to the glory of the Greek conqueror. His last work was the “Seven Fair Faces,” and this was presented in the form of romantic fiction, and consisted merely of seven stories which were told to amuse the king by the seven wives of Bāhram Gor. These five works are known as the “Five Treasures of Nizāmī.” His eulogies were sung by the greatest Persian poets who lived after him. It was of him that Sa’di wrote: “Gone is Nizāmī, our exquisite pearl, which Heaven in its kindness, formed of the purest dew, as the gem of the world.” His most popular work, and one of the best of the Persian classics, is the poem of Lailī and Majnūn, which, for tenderness, purity and pathos, has been seldom equaled. We give here a short prose version of the legend: LAILĪ AND MAJNŪN. Every nation has its favorite romance of love and chivalry. France and Italy have their Abelard and Eloisa, their Petrarch and Laura, while Arabia and Persia have their Lailī and Majnūn, the record of whose sorrows is constantly referred to throughout the East as an example of the most devoted affection. This story, which has been versified by several Persian authors, is of Arabian origin, and hence it bears the impress of Arabic thought. The poem contains the mystic lights and shadows of Bedawīn life—the fervid loves and passionate yearnings, the hopeless grief and stoical endurance, which belong to the sons of the desert. Majnūn was the son of a haughty chief, while Lailī belonged to an humble Arab tribe, but her father carried in his veins the pride of his desert race, and the bitter hatreds of the Moslems. Lailī is described as being very beautiful, with the crimson of her cheek flashing through the dark olive shades of her face, and her heavy ringlets, “black as night,” hanging in graceful profusion around her shapely neck.