Note 235 — THE MAN’S DISPUTE WITH THE LEARNED WOMAN CONCERNING THE RELATIVE EXCELLENCE OF MALE AND FEMALE.

It is an unpleasant fact that almost all the poetry of Háfiz is addressed to youths, as we see by the occasional introduction of Arabic (e.g., Afáka’lláh). Persian has no genders properly so called, hence the effect is less striking. Sa’di, the “Persian Moralist” begins one of the tales, “A certain learned man fell in love with a beautiful son of a blacksmith,” which Gladwin, translating for the general, necessarily changed to “daughter.”