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Whether or not Khayy§m wrote this poem—or indeed most of the others attributed to him, is a secondary matter here. See Saidi’s “Introduction” and A. J. Arberry’s critical discussion in A. J. Arberry ed. , The Ruba"iyat of Omar Khayyam (London: Penguin, 1981), 9-41. Khayy§m, of course, is usually associated with quatrains celebrating systematic indulgence rather than disciplined abstinence. 52 A. J. Arberry, Classical Persian Literature (London: George Allen and Unwin, repr. 1967), 408-09. 32 chapter one Said she, her arching eyebrows like a bow....

38 Then too, in the continuing enthusiasm for the Vaq§"i# the significance of B§bur’s poetry, much of it also autobiographical in different and important ways, has been almost totally ignored. It is one of the great ironies of historical and literary scholarship on B§bur that while his Vaq§"i# is widely recognized as an autobiographical text that resembles many classic western examples of the genre, the significance of that perception in both the Islamic and broader literary world has been largely overlooked.

F. L. Beeston et al. Arabic literature to the end of the Umayyad Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 81-5. 57 Nora K. Chadwick and Victor Zhirmunsky, Oral Epics of Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 90 and 87-8. The extant forms of these poems date to the eighteenth century. Y. and London: Garland Publishing, 1992). 34 chapter one B§bur’s, but the values they extol and the heroes they describe are a recognizable feature of B§bur’s society as well. In fact B§bur’s marvelously detailed characterizations of the Turks and Mongols who composed his following represent a fifteenth century class picture of egotistical, hard drinking, socially unrestrained TurcoMongols, almost none of whom would have blushed at full-throated praise or would have been reluctant to laud themselves.