1 Among recent studies on this theme, one may refer to the work done on the representation of geographic and confessional borders in Medieval French romance, including the studies of de Weever, Jacquline, Sheba's Daughters: Whitening and Demonizing the Saracen Woman in Medieval French Epic (New York and London, 1998)Google Scholar; Tartre Ramey, Lynn, Christian, Saracen and Genre in Medieval French Literature (New York and London, 2001)Google Scholar; Kinoshita, Sharon, Medieval Boundaries: Rethinking Difference in Old French Literature (Philadelphia, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Amer, Sahar, Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures (Philadelphia, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 ‘Attār, Dīvān-i ‘Attār, ed. Taqī Tafazzulī, 11th printing (Tehran, 1384/2005 [first published 1341/1962]), 512.

3 See, for example, the articles collected in Kitses, Jim and Rickman, Gregg, eds., The Western Reader (New York, 1998)Google Scholar, especially those by Pam Cook and Blake Lucas.

4 In the story of Moses and the Shepherd from Rūmī's Masnavī (Book 2: 1720–1760), Rūmī explains that Fātima madh-ast dar haqq-i zanān/mard rā gū’ī buvad zakhm-i sinān (“Fatima” is praise as applied to a woman/if you say it to a man, it wounds like a spear).

5 Frederick Morrison, Karl, Understanding Conversion (Charlottesville, VA, 1992), 9.Google Scholar

6 See the groundbreaking study of the modes of transmission of “Arabum sententiae” into England, by Metlitzki, Dorothee, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (New Haven and London, 1977)Google Scholar, 136ff. The historical kernel at the root of this particular romance/legend has been traced to the court of Ghazan Khan in the year 1299, on which see The King of Tars, ed. by Perryman, Judith (Heidelberg, 1980), 42–49.Google Scholar See also The Romaunce of the Sowdone of Babylone and of Ferumbras his Sone who conquerede Rome, ed. by Hausknecht, Emil (London, 1881Google Scholar; reprinted 1891, 1898). For the analogic relationship of a tale in ‘Attār and Chaucer, see Lewis, Franklin, “One Chaste Muslim Maiden and a Persian in a Pear Tree: Earlier Islamicate Analogues for Two Tales of Chaucer,” Metaphors and Imagery: Studies in Classical Persian Poetry, ed. by Seyed-Gohrab, Asghar (Leiden, Brill, forthcoming).Google Scholar

7 Digenes Akrites, ed. and trans. by Mavrogordato, John (Oxford, 1956).Google Scholar The poem probably dates to the middle eleventh century AD, though it had previously been dated to about a century earlier (Mavrogordato, lxxvi–lxxxiv). Oikonomidès, Nicolas, “L’Épopée de Digénes Akritas et la frontière orientale de Byzance aux Xe-XIe siècles,” Travaux et Mémoires, 7 (1979): 375–397Google Scholar, identifies several written versions of the poem, the earliest which (represented in Mavrogordato's edition) was recorded in the second half of the thirteenth century, but was based upon an existing oral legend (375–376), that was written down, probably at Constantinople, during the twelfth century (393 and 397). C. Ott has suggested possible sources of this Greek poem in Arabic literature in “Byzantine Wild East—Islamic Wild West. An Expedition into a Literary Borderland,” Der Roman im Byzanz der Komnenenzeit, Referate des internationalen Symposiums an der Freien Universität Berlin, 3–6 April 1998, ed. by Dieter Reinsch and Panagiotis Agapitos (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 137–146.

8 Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England, 137–138.

9 For the dating of the poem, see B. Reinert in the Encyclopædia Iranica, s.v. “‘Attār.”

10 Astérios Argyriou noted the similarity of the intermarriage tale of Digenés’ father and Shaykh San‘ān, which tale he knew from Garcin de Tassy's French translation. He argued that the two poems were not necessarily interdependent, but drew upon a common reservoir of sources (150–151), and in the description of the Christian girl in particular, shared a number of remarkable semantic parallels (148). See Argyriou, , “La conversion comme motif littéraire dans l'épopée byzantine de Digénis Akritas et dans la Conférence des Oiseaux de Farid Uddin Attar,” Byzantinische Forschungen, 25 (1999): 143–151.Google Scholar

11 Badī‘ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Sharh-i ahvāl va naqd va tahlīl-i āsār-i ‘Attār-i Nayshābūrī, 2nd printing (Tehran, 1353/1974), 320–336.

12 al-Husayn Zarrīnkūb, ‘Abd, Nah sharqī, nah gharbī: insānī (Tehran, 1353/1974), 268–276.Google Scholar See the summary of the literature in Fātimih San‘atī-nīā, Ma’ākhiz-i qisas va tamsīlāt-i masnavī-hā-yi ‘Attār-i Nayshābūrī (Tehran, 1369/1990), 137–139.Google Scholar

13 Mantiq al-tayr-i Farīd al-Dīn ibn Ibrāhīm-i Nayshābūrī, ed. by Shafī‘ī-Kadkani, M. R. (Tehran, 1383/2004)Google Scholar, ll.1191–1601.

14 Mantiq al-tayr, 286–287, ll.1213–17. The zunnār comes to Arabic and Persian via the Greek zonē (ζω´νη ), a belt which is part of the liturgical vestment in the Orthodox church, like the Roman Catholic cincture, a cord-like girdle with knotted or tassled ends. This cord-belt or cincture was a sumptuary marker of the Christian's non-Muslim status in the medieval Islamic world, as well as a priestly ritual vestment. The zunnār's association in Persian extends beyond Christians to Zoroastrians, who for sumptuary reasons wore a similar belt, in addition to the Zoroastrian priests, who tied a ritually significant cord around their waist, the kustī.

15 Mantiq al-tayr, 287, l.1238.

16 Mantiq al-tayr, 292, ll.1349–50. The fourth task tips us off as to the religious premises of the author, who clearly presumes that no Christian could actually believe that a Muslim might find greater faith in Christianity, but could only convert by closing his eyes to true faith.

17 Mantiq al-tayr, 296, l.1446.

18 We may compare this idealized ending to the very real and very modern situation in the village of Armant in southern Egypt, where Egyptian Muslims set fire to Christian-owned shops in February 2007 after rumors spread of a love affair between a Coptic Christian man and a Muslim woman, which required the intervention of security forces to control. Reuters reported that inter-religious romances were one of the major sources of communal tension between Christians and Muslims in Egypt. The story is preserved on the US Copts association website: http://www.copts.com/english1/index.php/2007/02/13/love-rumour-sparks-muslim-christian-clash-in-egypt/.

19 Discourse 5, Tale 5. Three editions of ‘Attār's Ilāhī-nāma have been consulted: Ilahi-Name: Die Gespräche des Königs mit seinen sechs Söhnen, ed. by Ritter, Hellmut (Istanbul, 1940), 95Google Scholar; Ilāhī-nāma-yi Shaykh Farīd al-Dīn‘Attār-i Nīshāpūrī, ed. by Fu’ād Rūhānī, 5th printing (Tehran, 1376/1997), 76; and Ilāhī-nāma, ed. by M. R. Shafī‘ī-Kadkanī (Tehran, 1387/2008), 183. Ritter's edition preserves the older orthography (shuz); Rūhānī's edition gives the title with a slightly re-ordered wording as “hikāyat-i musulmān shudan-i mard-i tarsā.”

20 Discourse 19, Story 10, Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 307–309.

21 Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 309.

22 Discourse 20, Story 1, Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 315–316.

23 Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 316.

24 ‘Attār thinks through the question of religious self and other not only in terms of Christians and Zoroastrians, but also in terms of Jews, about whom there are also some conversion stories in the Ilāhī-nāma, such as the tale of Jesus and the Jews (Discourse 14, Story 18); The Muslim Pīr who wants to be buried between the Jewish and Muslim cemeteries (Discourse 17, Story 9); and the Story of the Jew who became a Muslim (Discourse 17, Story 11).

25 Discourse 11, Story 13 (Ritter numbers it Story 12), Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 181–182. It seems to me a rather unlikely name for a Zoroastrian, being from a Semitic root and associated with the Hebrew name of Simon Peter, a brother of Joseph, and the mother of Abraham.

26 Discourse 7, Story 3, Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 115. Boyle translates tarsā here as Magian, as he explains in a note, The Ilāhī-nāma, or Book of God of Farīd al-Dīn ‘Attār, trans. by John Andrew Boyle (Manchester, 1976), 110 and 368, n.5, though without, I think, sufficient reason. However, in the story of Shaykh Abū al-Qāsim Hamadānī (see the following note), Boyle, op. cit., 106 and 367, n.32, translates the word as “Christian.”

27 See the note of Shafī‘ī-Kadkanī (Ilāhī-nāma, 569) who interprets this story to be about a Buddhist monk (tarsā being a calque on Arabic rāhib, or one who fears = a religious hermit).

28 Discourse 6, Story 9, Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 111–112.

29 Discourse 3, Story 3, Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 62–63. It is also so titled by Shafī‘ī-Kadkanī in his edition of Ilāhī-nāma, 156. However, in the Rūhānī edition (50–51) it is given the title “Tale of a Christian Merchant” (hikāyat-i tājirī tarsā).

30 We may note that the compound word tarsā-bacha appears without the doubled “ch” here, as in the case of the tarsā-bacha ghazals discussed below. Also, in the second line of this tale the gender-indefinite child (bacha) is explicitly denoted as a boy (pisar), so that we may assume ‘Attār normally intends a boy by tarsā-bacha.

31 Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 62.

32 Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 59.

33 Ilāhī-nāma, ed. Ritter, 60.

34 Indeed, the story following the Old Man (Discourse 3, Story 4) concerns Jacob and Joseph, prophets who also experienced the pains of paternal–filial separation.

35 For the iconographic evidence on vases, see Lear, Andrew and Cantarella, Eva, Images of Pederasty: Boys Were Their Gods (London and New York, 2008).Google Scholar

36 See Hamori, Andras, On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature (Princeton, 1974)Google Scholar, specifically in the chapter “The Poet as Ritual Clown,” 200.

37 Kramer, Joel L., Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam. The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age (Leiden, 1993), 15Google Scholar; cited in Montgomery, James, “For the Love of a Christian Boy: A Song by Abū Nuwās,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 27 (1996): 115–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar (at 115–116). On mujūn see also Meisami, Julie, “Arabic Mujūn Poetry: The Literary Dimension,” in De Jong, F., ed., Verse and the Fair Sex. Studies in Arabic Poetry and in the Representation of Women in Arabic Literature (Utrecht, 1993), 8–31.Google Scholar

38 Al-Jāhiz, Kitāb mufākharat al-jawārī wa ’l-ghilmān (Boasting Match between Slave Girls and Page Boys), in Rasā’il al-Jāhiz, ed. Muhammad Bāsil ‘Uyūn al-Sūd, 4 vols. (Beirut, 2000), 2: 73–108.Google Scholar See also Kennedy, Hugh, “Al-Jāhiz and the Construction of Homosexuality at the Abbasid Court,” in Medieval Sexuality: A Casebook, ed. by April Harper, and Proctor, Caroline (New York/London, 2008), 175–188.Google Scholar Another of al-Jāhiz's treatises, Tafdīl al-zahr ‘alā al-batn (Rasā’il al-Jāhiz, 4: 117–125), also treats this theme of which gender is the preferable object of desire.

39 El-Rouayheb, Khaled, “The Love of Boys in Arabic Poetry of the Early Ottoman Period, 1500–1800,” Middle Eastern Literatures, 8, no. 1 (2005): 1–22Google Scholar, quoting from 8–9 and the Arabic text on 22. One might compare it to the tradition of sevi in medieval Hebrew poetry beginning in the eleventh century, an overview of which is given by Roth, Norman, “‘Deal Gently with the Young Man’: Love of Boys in Medieval Hebrew Poetry of Spain,” Speculum, 57, no. 1 (1982): 20–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 El-Rouayheb, “The Love of Boys,” 8 and 22. Here we see another play upon gendered boundaries, now geographically projected into heaven, where the believer's desire is directed toward androgynously conceived beauties. But here the boys (al-banīn) will be the object of desire of the conventionally female objects of desire, the houris.

41 El-Rouayheb, “The Love of Boys,” 9 and 22.

42 El-Rouayheb, “The Love of Boys,” 15–16, quoting from al-Tahtawī's Talkhīs al-ibrīz fī takhlīs bārīz.

43 Kay Kā'ūs ibn Vushmgīr, Qābūs-nāma, ed. by Nafīsī, Sa‘īd, 6th printing (Tehran, 1366/1987Google Scholar; originally Tehran, 1312/1934), 58 and 59.

44 Vushmgīr, Qābūs-nāma, 58–59.

45 Kai Kā’ūs Ibn Iskandar, Prince of Gurgan, A Mirror for Princes: The Qābūs Nāma, trans. by Levy, Reuben (New York, 1951), 76.Google Scholar

46 Qābūs-nāma, ed. Nafīsī, 61.

47 For example, qasīda 202 in Dīvān-i Hakīm Abū al-Majd Majdūd ibn Ādam Sanā’ī-yi Ghaznavī, ed. Mudarris-i Razavī, M. T., 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1341/1962)Google Scholar, 3rd printing (Tehran, 1362/1983), 343–347, which contains a prostitute's complaint against a young bookseller (lītak-i kitāb-furūsh), a poem described by de Bruijn, J. T. P., Of Piety and Poetry: The Interaction of Religion and Literature in the Life and Works of Hakīm Sanā’ī of Ghazna (Leiden, 1983), 48–49.Google Scholar Also the hikāyat fī al-tamaththul al-sūfī in Sanā’ī's Hadīqat al-haqīqa va sharī‘at al-tarīqa, 2nd ed. (Tehran, 1359/1980), 668–670.Google Scholar

48 Such as the Tale of the Qāzī of Hamadan and the farrier boy, in Sa‘dī's Gulistān, ed. by Ghulām-Husayn Yūsufī (Tehran, 1365/1986), 145–148, from Book 5 (dar ‘ishq u javānī), Tale 19 (Qāzī-yi Hamadān rā hikāyat kunand ki na‘lband pisarī sar-khvush būd…). For further examples, see Sprachman, Paul, “Le beau garcon sans merci: The Homoerotic Tale in Arabic and Persian,” in Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, ed. by Wright, J. M. Jr. and Rowson, Everett K. (New York, 1997), 192–209Google Scholar, and also Zipoli, Riccardo, “The Obscene Sanā’ī,” Persica, 17 (2001): 173–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 For ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī, see the many examples in Dominic Parviz Brookshaw's “To Be Feared and Desired” in the present issue of this journal. ‘Ubayd, similar to Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal, condemns his contemporaries with mercilessly witty sarcasm using the apparently widespread practice of sodomy as an index of their hypocrisy. Although his younger Shirazi colleague Hāfiz also virulently condemns sham piety and legal hypocrisy in figures of religious and political authority, he does not normally transgress the bounds of decorous language; he does come quite close to stepping over that line, however, in the famous line in which he asks to be excused for the unraveling of the prayer beads (the disorder of his litany) because his arm was in the arm of the sāqī with the bare smooth, shiny shins (rishti-yi tasbīh agar bugsast ma‘zūr-am bidār/dast-am andar sā‘id-i sāqī-yi sīmīn-sāq būd, per the reading given by Parvīz Nātil Khānlarī, Dīvān-i Hāfiz (Tehran, 1359/1980), 420. For Hāfiz's condemnatory lexicon of duplicity and hypocrisy, see Franklin Lewis, “Hāfez viii. Hafez and Rendi,” Encyclopaedia Iranica.

50 See Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, “Erotic Literature,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, as well as several articles by Zipoli, Riccardo, “Oscenità poetiche neopersiane: due tarjî‘-band sulla masturbazione,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, 33, no. 3 (1994, serie orientale 25): 249–291Google Scholar; “Le Khabîthât oscene di Sa‘dî,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, 36, no. 3 (1997, serie orientale 28): 179–214Google Scholar; as well as his “I Carmina Priapea di Sûzanî,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, 34, no. 3 (1995, serie orientale 26): 205–256.Google Scholar

51 See Sīrūs Shamīsā's study, Shāhid-bāzī dar adabiyāt-i fārsī (Tehran, 2002)Google Scholar for the history of the theme in Persian. Bürgel, J. C., “Literatur und Wirklichkeit,” Asiatische Studien, 50 (1996): 254Google Scholar, and El-Rouayheb, Khaled, “The Love of Boys,” MEL, 8, no. 1 (2005), esp. 10–15Google Scholar, trace this question in Arabic for a later period. Norman Roth, “‘Deal Gently with the Young Man’,” goes through examples of this tradition in Arabic, Hebrew and even in European literatures. Cases of rabbis or kohens dismissed from their responsibilities over charges of fornication with women or boys are listed there, as well. In addition to the normal love for a Hebrew boy (sevi) in Andalusian poems, we also find examples of Hebrew love poems for stuttering lads, for those beginning to grow beards (mu‘adhdhār poems, or in Spanish, barbiponiente), and even some written for Muslim boys.

52 El-Rouayheb, “The Love of Boys,” 11–12. One may, of course, choose to read this as a publicly defensive posture designed to cloak salacious behavior in literary propriety. While one may not exclude this possibility, it nevertheless implies a clear awareness of genre and literary convention as tradition-bound discourses.

53 El-Rouayheb, “The Love of Boys,” 15.

54 Cited in El-Rouayheb, “The Love of Boys,” 14. The view, decidedly minoritarian, was sometimes expressed that this applied only to love of a man for a woman, but the realities of social experience made this a difficult view to maintain.

55 El-Rouayheb, ibid., 14-15. In approving the station of martyr for men who die chastely pining for a boy, it is clear that the jurists must not consider homoerotic desire by itself forbidden.

56 The first Crusade, launched in 1096, resulted in the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 and the establishment of Frankish rule; three further crusades were launched during the time ‘Attār flourished as a writer.

57 There are earlier examples, including a poem of a blasphemous nature ascribed to the Umayyad Caliph al-Walīd ibn Yazīd (d. 126/744), which expresses love for a Christian girl, supposedly named Safrā.

58 Montgomery, James, “For the Love of A Christian Boy: A Song by Abū Nuwās,” JAL, 27 (1996): 118–119.Google Scholar

59 van Gelder, Geert Jan, “Mudrik al-Shaybânî's Poem on a Christian Boy: Bad Taste or Harmless Wit?,” in Orientations 5: Representations of the Divine in Arabic Poetry, ed. by Borg, Gert and de Moor, Ed (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2001), 49–70.Google Scholar

60 The story is related in the Mazāri‘ al-‘ushshāq (Fields where the Lovers Lie Slain) of Ja‘far ibn Ahmad Sarrāj (d. 1106) and in many other medieval compendiums, as given by van Gelder, “Mudrik al-Shaybānī's Poem,” 50.

61 Van Gelder identifies at least two other poems modeled on it one by the Andalusian poet Fātik al-Shahwājī, the other, an excerpt from which is quoted by al-Tha‘ālabī (d. 1038) in his Yatīmat al-dahr.

62 Van Gelder, “Mudrik,” 58–59. Conversely, symbols of sacrality have elsewhere acquired a taboo status, or are employed as swear words, as in Canadian French, where words associated with the sacraments, such as tabarnak, crisse, viarge, baptême, câlice, etc., are employed as profanity (the general Québéçois term for which is sacre).

63 The line comes from a 1970 song titled “Vehicle,” by the Chicago band, the Ides of March: “Well, I'm a friendly stranger in a black Sedan/won't you hop inside my car?/I got pictures, candy, I'm a lovable man/and I can take you to the nearest star.”

64 Alternative readings of pidar or ma-râ are cited in the different entries for rāhib-āsā and silsila-var in Dihkhudā's Lughat-nāma.

65 Dīvān-i ‘Attār, ed. Taqī Tafazzulī (Tehran, 1345sh. 1966), 141.

66 Rypka, Jan, History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht, 1968), 202CrossRefGoogle Scholar, feels that she “no doubt instructed her son in the basic ideas of Christian doctrine and liturgy.”

67 Despite myriad attestations in the meaning of Christian, tarsā has also been defined as fire-worshipper, or Zoroastrian, as the Farhang-i Jahāngīrī, Burhān-i qāti‘ and Ghiyās al-lughāt attest, though it is even then oddly qualified as a sect of Christian fire-worshippers, as if the lexicographers were aware that anything with tarsā surely belonged under the rubric “Christian.” Other early modern lexicographers denied this sense of “fire-worshipper” (Anjuman-ārā, Ānand-rāj), along with Mu‘īn, who indicates in a note in Burhān-i qāti‘ that no citations have been evinced to attest this reading (see above). In the usage of Sufis (according to Kashshāf-i ittilā‘āt al-funūn) the word tarsā often designates a holy man who has conquered his concupiscent soul, while the word tarsā-bachcha is said to describe an unseen prompting that comes over the heart of the worshipper. Likewise, Ānandrāj says that the followers of the path use tarsā-bachcha to mean a perfect pīr, that is one who is in perfect taqvā, and detachment. Tarsā-bachcha, like the also attested tarsā-zāda, quite naturally means a Christian boy, in contrast to the mugh-bachcha, or Magian boy—though both may serve wine. However, probably following Jahāngīrī's definition for tarsā as fire-worshipper, the pre-modern Farhang-e Ānand-rāj gives for tarsā-bachcha “a Christian boy who worships fire and the religion of Jesus,” whereas more sober definitions give simply a Christian child (tifl-i nasrānī).

68 François de Blois runs through the various language terminologies in his “Nasrānī (Naζωραιoς) and Hanīf (ϵθνικóς): Studies on the Religious Vocabulary of Christianity and of Islam,” BSOAS, 65, no. 1 (2002): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar His discussion of Middle Persian usage is on pp. 5–10. The word Nasrānī is used in Arabic, following the Greek words Nazarene or Nazorean used to designate Jesus’ birthplace, Nazareth. This was also used in Greek for Christians generally, but by 377 AD it begins to designate in Epiphanius' writings various Jewish-Christian sects. In Syriac, Kristyān, pl. Kristyānē is the usual word, though Nasrāyā occasionally occurs as well. In the Persian context, already by the end of the third century Kirdir's letter mentions Yahūd wa shaman [Buddhists] wa Brahman wa Nasrāy wa Kristyān (seeming to use Aramaic words to distinguish Jewish Christians [Nazarenes] from Pauline Christians—Greek Xριστιανóς). In any case, the typical word used by Zoroastrians, Christians and others in Sasanian Iran for Christians was tarsāg, though tars-kār is also sometimes used. W. B. Henning thought the word a Middle Persian calque from Syriac.

69 The suggestion was made for rāhib (pl. ruhbān = monk/rāhiba, pl. rahban = nun/rahbānīy = monastic) by Nöldeke and more recently by Pines, Shlomo, “The Iranian name for Christians and the God-Fearers,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities, 2 (1968): 143–152Google Scholar, reprinted in Collected Works, iv. Studies in the History of Religion (Jerusalem, 1996), 11–120.Google Scholar But it has been conversely suggested by Geiger, A., Was hat Mohammad aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (Bonn, 1833), 51Google Scholar, that the Arabic word rāhib derives from Aramaic Rabb, lord/master/religious teacher, and that the Arabic plural ruhbān may have come from the Syriac plural rawrβānē/rabbānē, with a popular etymological attachment to Arabic R-h-b, esp. since ahbār and ruhbān appear associated together in Qur’ān 9:31 and 34, as do rabbāniyyūn and ahbār in Qur’ān 5:44 and 63.

70 De Blois, “Nasrāni,” 9, n.49, does not find this very convincing.

71 Meaning a person named Büktegin, such as the Hājib of Mahmūd of Ghazna, or a toponym [?].

72 These passages read, respectively, andar vay tarsāyān va gabrakān va sabīyān nishīnand and va īn mardumān-and tarsā va bi du-zabān sukhan gūyand, bi tāzī va rūmī, Hudūd al-‘ālam min al-mashriq ilā al-maghrib, ed. Manūchihr Sutūda (Tehran, 1340sh. 1962), 77 and 109. See also the English translation by Minorsky, Vladimir, Hudud al-‘alam: The Regions of the World. A Persian Geography 327 A.H.–982 A.D. (Karachi, 1980), 95 and 160.Google Scholar

73 Kitāb jāmi‘ al-hikmatayn, ed. by Corbin, H. and Mu‘īn, M. (Tehran, 1953), 31Google Scholar (yakī gurūh ān-and ki gūyand sāni‘ yakī bīsh-ast, chun tarsāyān) and 32 (va dīgar sinf-i tarsāyān and ki gūyand ki khudā si ast va har si yakī-st).

74 Dihkhudā, Lughat-nāma, s.v. “Khatt-i tarsā.”

75 Gulshan-i rāz, ed. by Samad Muvahhid (n.p.: Sirang, 1369 sh./1990), 112–116.

76 Gulshan-i rāz, 112.

77 Gulshan-i rāz, 113.

78 Gulshan-i rāz, 113.

79 Dīvān, ed. Tafazzulī, 424.

80 Dīvān, 491.

81 Dīvān, 499.

82 Ilahi-Ghomshei, Husayn, “Of Scent and Sweetness: ‘Attār's Legacy in Rūmī, Shabistarī and Hāfiz,” in ‘Attār and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight, ed. by Lewisohn, Leonard and Shackle, Christopher (London and New York, 2006), 40.Google Scholar

83 Dīvān, 71.

84 Dīvān, 192.

85 Dīvān, 435.

86 Dīvān, 65.

87 Dīvān, 158.

88 Dīvān, 177.

89 Dīvān, 360.

90 Dīvān, 433.

91 Dīvān, 435.

92 Dīvān, 488.

93 Dīvān, 539.

94 Dvān, 585.

95 Dīvān, 603.

96 Dīvān, 638.

97 Dīvān, 659.

98 Dīvān, 666.

99 Dīvān, 693.

100 Dīvān, 695.

101 Variant readings give zi shaydā’ī or zi rusvā'ī in place of zi ra‘nā’ī, but the latter echoes with what we saw in the Ilāhī-nāma about the soft, seductive girlishness of the convert to Christianity.