{"book":"adl0957","page":157,"text":"118\n\nwounded heart and delicate spirit turned to meditation and\nfound solace in refuge. The pious believers could not even\ntolerate this \"sin\" ; so they secretly despatched her to \"heaven.\"\nHer tragic death, however, excited universal sympathy and\ninvested her with a halo of romantic idealism.\n\nRabia was a richly gifted poetess, and her exquisite verses\ntake us to a high pitch of mystic thought and absorption. Her\npoetry is the dominant note of Persian theosophy.\n\nSultan Mahmud of Ghazni (998-1030 A.D.) was a great\nconqueror as well as an eminent patron of learning. He himself\nwas a cultured man and invited the poets, leading writers and\nscholars of the age to his magnificent court where he gave them\nall possible help. Owing to this liberal encouragement, Sultan's\ncourt at Ghazni soon became the rendezvous of the most\nbrilliant scholars and savants-such as Firdausi, Unsuri, Farukhi,\nAsadi, Asjadi, Ghazali, Behaqui and Manuchehri. Unsuri, the\npoet-laureate of the court of Ghazni, was a native of Balkh.\nHe was in the prime of life when he was sent to Ghazni by\nNasr bin Subuktagin, Sultan's brother. Mahmud received him\nwarmly and made him the poet-laureate of his court. He lived\nin great pomp and show and had hundreds of pages to wait\nupon him. Besides being an eminent poet he was a great\nphilosopher and an erudite scholar. The four hundred poets\nthat formed the famous \"Round-Table\" of the Sultan took\nadvice and inspiration from him. Unsuri is noted for his\nbeautiful metaphors and pure, vigorous diction. His death\noccurred in 1049 A.D.\n\nFarukhi of Seistan was a celebrated poet, a very skilful\nharpist and a keen observer of nature. His poetical works\ndisplay some of the best qualities of the Persian poetry of this\nperiod. He is noted for his famous elegy composed immediately","chars":1801,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00157.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/157","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/157","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}