Farid Katib

Farid al-Din Katib Khurasani, a poet attached to the court of Sultan Sanjar. A former student of Anwari, he composed eulogies on Sultan Mas’ud ibn Muhammad ibn Malikshah. Proverbial for his erudition and skills in his times, his poetry includes a musammat in which he used the words ‘hand’ (dast) and ‘pay’ (foot) in the hemistiches of the first stanza and did likewise with the words ‘night’ (shab) and ‘day’ (ruz) in the second, following the same scheme in further stanzas. He also composed a satire on Anwari’s prognostication of a tempest, as follows:

Anwari said that by harsh gales,

Edifices and the mountains would be demolished even on the most exalted of heavenly bodies.

No wind blew on the day prognosticated by him,

O sender of the winds, you know what to do with Anwari.

He also composed a brilliant quatrain following the defeat of Sultan Sanjar by the military campaign led by the Khita’id Gurkhan and his salvation by Malik Taj al-Din Abu al-Fazl Sistani, as follows:

O King! The world was organized by your spear,

Your sword took vengeance upon adversaries for forty years.

Afflictions, if any, are owing to divine decree,

For the one whose state has undergone no alteration is God.

Lughatnama-yi Dihkhuda (11/ 17139).