Having finished the Quran our little Persian boy goes on to Persian books. These, too, he studies in much the same way as he did the Quran, but it is more useful, because now he understands what he reads. After plodding through the Quran it is a pleasant change for little Ghulām Husain to turn to the War between the Cats and Mice, the Hundred Fables, or Stories of Husain and Hasan (Muhammad’s two grandsons). Later on he reads the poems of Hāfiz and Sa’adi, and other great Persian poets, for there is a great deal of beautiful poetry in Persian.
There is no convenient desk or table for Ghulām Husain to write on. He sits on the floor and holds the paper in his hand or on his knee. His pen is a bit of fine cane, cut like a quill, but with a slanting end. As he holds it the handle points directly to the right and it is the horizontal lines which he must make broad, while the up and down strokes must both be fine.
A PERSIAN SCHOOL
Ghulām Husain never spills his ink. Each boy has his own inkpot, which contains a tangled piece of silk soaked in ink. It dries up between the lessons, so when Ghulām Husain wants to write he moistens it with water so that the silk is thoroughly wet, but there is no water lying in the inkpot. In among this wet silk he dips his pen.
If you look into Ghulām Husain’s pen-box you will find pens cut to various breadths for large or small writing, a penknife, and a little slab to rest the pen-point on for the final cut; an inkpot, and a tiny brass ladle for adding water.
Many an English boy finds it tiresome to have to dot his i’s, but little Ghulām Husain has to dot almost every letter, some above the line and some below, some with one dot, some with two, and some with three. These dots are not round, but square, and the height of the letters is measured by the size of the dots. This letter must be one dot high, that letter two dots high, another three, and yet another five dots high. The size of the dot itself depends on the breadth of the pen.
As he learns to write better he will run his letters into curious combinations, and group his dots picturesquely in parts of the word to which they do not belong, or leave them out altogether, until at last, when he can write a really beautiful hand, the schoolmaster himself will not be able to read the letter without careful study, and may even have to guess at the meaning of particularly well-written passages.
One great beauty of a Persian letter is the way each line runs up at the end, making a pile of words, syllables, and even single letters, something in this style:—
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