ABSTRACT
The ageing thinker held to poetry, to the strength of his word, as though his verse were indeed a sword or at least a stick by which he could scare off those who had disappointed him so bitterly.
There he was, sitting in Yumgan, without hope from the kings, for to whomsoever he had gone in hope of being healed, he was given only pain and grief instead of medicine. Turning from the rulers to those with taylasdn (the long hood typical of the religious class), turban, and mantie, he had hoped to find the way to religion because the world and its inhabitants gave him only faithlessness (358) . Yet, it was just the religious establishment that persecuted him. The whole status of Khorasan was utterly deplorable:
I am the plank of Noah's ark in Khorasan;
Of course there is no danger of the flood for me.
