(p.), a word applied in Persian with a contemptuous connotation to “a knave, a rogue, a drunkard” or “a debauchee”; in the terminology of poets and mystics it acquired the positive meaning of “one whose exterior is liable to censure, but who at heart is sound” (Steingass, s.v., after the Burhān-i ḳāṭiʿ ). The etymology of rind is unclear. It is not an Arabic loanword, in spite of the existence of the broken plural runūd , a learned form used next to the regular Persian plural rindān . The abstract noun rindī denotes the characteristic behaviour of a person thus qualified.

Mediaeval historians r…