'A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic, and English; with a Dissertation on the Languages, Literature, and Manners of Eastern Nations' [‎19r] (42/1826)

To add to the glory of a family-line was a favourite
object. Historians and poets were, of consequence,
often in the train of a successful conqueror ; they
were witnesses of the events they were to deliver
down to future times ; and they were neither ex
pected to exaggerate nor invent. The riches and
honours conferred therefore on men of genius, has
nothing similar ifi our Western world : whilst the
freedom of their strictures, and the manliness of
their moral lessons, will hardly be conceived by
those who have been accustomed to annex to
Eastern minds the feelings alone of servility and
terror. We have, in consequence, particular his
tories, not only of almost every Eastern dynasty,
and of every distinguished prince, but of the prin
cipal countries and cities of Asia; most of them
written with such an apparent adherence to truth
and impartiality, that they are almost constantly
preferred to European writers by our modern his
torians of the Crusades and other Eastern events
of the middle ages. The royal and noble authors
of Asia are, at the same time, numberless : a cata
logue alone would fill a volume. I shall here only
take notice of the vizier Nizamu’l mid/c, as a small
manuscript of that great man’s will furnish me with
several curious facts relative to Eastern manners.
Nizam rose from a private station in the eleventh
century, to be vizier to the Sultan Alp Arslan, and
his son Malikshah Jalalu’d’dln ; which high office
he held till near ninety years of age, when he was
stabbed by a Batanist, one of the subjects of the
Old Man of the Mountain, whilst he was reading
a petition which the assassin had presented. This
vizier was one of the most extraordinary men of
any age or country. He was a complete statesman
and a consummate general; he was learned, and
a most munificent patron of learning; he founded
and endowed many seminaries of science, but par
ticularly a noble college at Bagdad; his palace was
ever open to men of genius, many of whom enjoyed
great pensions from his privy purse ; they looked
upon themselves as his subjects and children, and
usually attended their benefactor, on great solem
nities, from every quarter of the empire. 43
From the foregoing observations, which might
be swelled by many authorities, I apprehend it will
appear sufficiently evident, that the Persians and
other Asiatics have been remarkably attentive to
the annals of their country; that their materials
for ancient history are upon a footing of respect
not inferior to those of more Western nations; that
their traditions are upon a ground fully as substan
tial as those of the Greeks, the Egyptians, and
other people of high antiquity : and that the am
bition of royal and noble descent, more conspicu
ous in Asia than even in the more western regions,
must have been productive of much research, and
opened uncommon channels for genealogical and
historical investigation.—When we strengthen this
chain of facts and probabilities, by considering how
high in favour physicians and other learned Greeks
were at the courts of almost every Muhammadan
prince; when we consider the number of mer
chants and other travellers in perpetual motion
between the East and West; when we consider the
frequent embassies, the alliances by marriage, the
familiarity of conversation, which appears to have
been supported with an ease wherein interpreters
had evidently no concern ; and when we add to
the whole, the singular attachment of the princes
of the East to almost every species of learning,
whilst Constantinople was the theatre of every
barbarity that could degrade human nature ; the
presumption is much stronger that the Asiatics
spoke Greek, than that the Grecians spoke Arabic
or Persian. As every ground of reason seems to
lead us therefore to conclude, that the Greek
tongue was, for many centuries, known in the
East, nearly as well perhaps as it now is in Europe,
we must extinguish all curiosity in man, and con
tradict every characteristic disposition of human
nature, if we suppose that the Grecian accounts of
Ancient Asia should have remained, for so many
ages, wholly unknown to the men of erudition who
wrote ; or the men of rank, who patronized them.
History is one of the first objects which engages
the attention, when dipping into a foreign tongue.
Sovereigns and ministers of state must ever, above