Introduction

Abstract

The literary history of recent times usually deals only with those realms where artistic creative force comes to the fore, above all poetry, belles-lettres and drama, and thus only turns its attention to works on learned subjects on those rare occasions when, from the point of view of cultural history, these have a special significance for the literary development of a nation. This is perfectly justifiable, because specialised literature dealing with single fields of knowledge, the output of which has latterly increased enormously, can but seldom stand up to judgement by artistic standards. The application of such a criterion is nevertheless unfounded when we are concerned with research into earlier periods of the literature of any nation, because on the one hand artistic qualities cannot be denied to a much larger number of learned scripts than is the case today, and on the other hand erudite literature was then much more important to the general cultural development of the nation concerned than it is now — technical development is not the same thing as culture. This is the aspect from which the learned literature of the Persians must also be seen.