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, mawlānā maḥmūd , Persian poet. Virtually nothing is known of the life of ʿĀrifī except the approximate dates of his birth and death (791-853/1389-1449), and that he belonged to the circle of poets that flourished at the court of S̲h̲āh Ruk̲h̲ [ q.v.] in the first half of the 9th/15th century. The best-known of his works is a brief mat̲h̲nawī of some 500 bayts entitled Gūy u čūgān or Ḥālnāma , which he composed in just two weeks during his fiftieth year to honour a prince Muḥammad, assumed to be Muḥammad b. Bāysonḳor (Browne, LHP, iii, 496). The subject of the poem is a mystical romance …

, Abu ’l-Nad̲j̲m Aḥmad b. Ḳawṣ b. Aḥmad , Dāmg̲h̲ānī , was the third and last (after ʿUnṣurī and Farruk̲h̲ī [ q.vv.]) of the major panegyrists of the early G̲h̲aznawid court. Very little is known of his life, and that little is derived exclusively from his poetry. Later tad̲h̲kira writers have expanded and distorted this modicum of information with a few, readily refuted speculations. What can be ascertained with reasonable certainty is that he spent his youth, presumably in Dāmg̲h̲ān, acquiring an encyclopaedic knowledg…

, eminent Persian poet of the 5th/11th century ( ca. 440/1046 to ca. 515/1121-2) who early and late in his life enjoyed position and fame at the G̲h̲aznawid court, but spent some eighteen years of his maturity in onerous imprisonment. As a poet, he is most famous for the powerful and eloquent laments he wrote from his various places of incarceration [see ḥabsiyya in Suppl.]. Masʿūd-i Saʿd was born in Lahore to a family of means and education. The family’s original home was Hamadān, but had been settled in the region long enough for his f…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl , Persian court poet, born about 402/1011, died some time after 460/1067, who left a dīwān of ḳaṣīdas , only some 1,100 bayts of which have survived. Although Lāmiʿī was a contemporary of, and panegyrist to, such major historical figures as Ṭug̲h̲ri̊l Beg, Alp Arslan and Niẓām al-Mulk, very little reliable information about his life and work has come to light. From his Dīwān we learn only that he was a native of Gurgān and that he went to Bag̲h̲dād in the train of Ṭug̲h̲ri̊l Beg in 447/1055. The tad̲h̲kiras of Dawlat-S̲h̲āh, Ād̲h̲…

(a.), the normal technical terms in Arabic and other Islamic literatures for the genre of panegyric poetry, the individual poem being usually referred to as umdūḥa (pl. amādīḥ ) or madīḥa (pl. madāʾiḥ ). The author himself is called mādiḥ or, as considered professionally, maddāḥ . The root itself is sometimes used without technical connotations, as also are commonly the various other roots signifying "praise": ḥ-m-d, m-d̲j̲-d, ḳ-r-ẓ, t̲h̲-n-y, ṭ-r-w/y, etc. 1. In Arabic literature. As both an independent unit and a component of the ḳaṣīda [ q.v.], the genre has been so widespread …