200 - 1300
50 Augustine
Aurelius Augustine, more widely known as St Augustine, was born in 354 in Thagaste in north Africa. His mental ability was recognized by his father who had him trained as a rhetorician, which led to an extensive acquaintance with Latin literature. He was drawn to Christianity after hearing Ambrose preach and converted to this religion at age 32. In his subsequent preaching and writing he kept up an interest in the Platonists and in the relationship between philosophy of a logical cast and religion.
52 Justinian
The Roman Emperor Justinian reigned at Constantinople between from 527 until his death in 565. Finding Roman law in a state of confusion, he commissioned a group of scholars to come up with an imperial constitution free of contradictions and then to bring order into the rest of Roman law. After the success of this effort, the president of the commission, Tribonian, drew up an outline of the laws so that future lawyers could learn their first lessons from the new vantage point of legal learning, rather than from ancient fables.
53 Hitomaro
Possible dates for the life of Kakinomoto no Asomi Hitomaro are from 660 to 708. Of the offices he held, nothing is clearly known, although it appears that he functioned as a court poet. He traveled widely in Japan, composing poems on each place he visited. He lived in Ihami at the close of his life and died there. He is one of the four principal poets of the earliest anthology of Japanese poetry, the Manyoshu.
54 Li Po
Li Po (701-762 was a native of Sezchaun, China. He left home to live in the mountains with a religious recluse and then took up the occupation of wandering poet. Throughout his life he produced an abundance of poems on nature, wine, friendship, solitude, and the passage of time. He has since become recognized by many as the greatest of the highly talented array of Tang poets. In 742 his poetry found great favor at the imperial court. However, accusations of malicious satire caused him to retire to the mountains. He later becoming involved in a major revolt and was imprisoned under sentence of death, commuted to perpetual banishment.
55 Du Fu
Du Fu (c.712-c.770) was raised as a Confucian but failed to gain the government post he sought. He subsequently traveled throughout China, observing the conditions of the people and commenting on his impressions in poems. He was a friend of Li Po, and the Confucianism in his poetry sometimes complements the Taoism in Li Po’s. He was an outspoken critic of the bloodshed in border wars and in the rebellions that often followed them.
56 Po Chu i
Po Chü-i (772-846), a poet and a government official, was one of the great writers of the Tang dynasty. The government posts he occupied included palace librarian, provincial governorships, and mayor of Lo-yang, the eastern capital, which was his position when he retired. Although he comes across in his poetry as easy-going and casual, he had a sharp eye for government’s effects on the lives of ordinary people. In his serious works he used satire and humor to excoriate the rapacity of minor officials and to draw attention to social problems.
57 Ki no Tsurayuki
Ki no Tsurayuki (884-946) compiled the second great Anthology of Japanese poetry, the Kokinwakashiu, and also wrote a preface to it that became the basis for Japanese poetics. He was a skilled poet himself, a prose writer, and also an able administrator, becoming Governor of Tosa. In his preface to the anthology (also referred to as the Kokinshiu or the Kokin), Tsurayuki sees the anthology as preserving something special to humanity, in which people may forever take pleasure from the form of the poems and profit from their content.
58 Albiruni
Albiruni was born in Khwarizm, the modern Khiva (Uzbekistan), in 973 CE. His full name was Abu-Raihan Muhammad b.‘Ahmad Albiruni, and in Eastern literature. he is often referred to as Abu-Raihan. He was well grounded in mathematics, physics, astronomy and ancient medicine. He discussed the earth’s rotation on its axis and computed latitude and longitude with some accuracy. A meticulous observer of natural and social phenomena, he recorded information about calendars, festivals, theories, and practices among many nations. Some of these were dying out as he wrote, and he is thus often our only source of historical information about them. His thoroughness set a high standard for observers of other countries. He concluded that most countries, including his own, had an unjustifiably hostile view of neighboring countries.
59 Al Ma'arri
Born in Ma'arra, south of Aleppo, Abu 'l'Ala Ahmad ibn 'Abdallah al-Ma'arri (973-1057) achieved fame as one of greatest of Arab poets. He was stricken with smallpox when four and became blind. Later, he traveled to Aleppo, Antioch and other Syrian cities, learning by heart the manuscripts preserved there. He created the Luzumiyyat, a large collection of verses that contrasts from traditional works in its irregular structure and in the opinions it contains. As an apology for any offenses his work might cause, Ma'arri said "My aim is to speak the truth. Now, the proper end of poetry is not truth, but falsehood, and in proportion as it is diverted from its proper end its perfection is impaired. Therefore I must crave the indulgence of my readers for this book of moral poetry."
62 Samuel ha-Nagid
Samuel ha-Nagid (Samuel ha-Levi ben Joseph ibn Nagrela, 993-1056 CE) was born in Cordoba. He subsequently settled in Malaga, part of the Berber province of Granada. He was appointed vizier in 1027. He was at one and the same time, poet, rabbi, statesman, and general, and distinguished in each one of these fields. It was his high rank and success in war that led the Jews to call him Nagid (Prince). Like other poets, he finds himself meditating on the shortness of man’s life and of our reactions to birth and death. His experience in war is also captured in his poetry, where he laments the loss of life it incurs and the suffering it causes.
65 Bilhana
Bilhana or Chauras, a young Kashmiri poet, was probably born in the 11th Century. There is a legend that Bilhana and Vidya, the daughter of the local king, had a secret affair. Bilhana was imprisoned under sentence of death by beheading. While in prison, he composed and recited a series of verses celebrating his love, the Chauraspanchasika, which can be translated as "The Collection of Fifty Verses by a Love Thief".
66 Omar Khayyam
Omar Khaiyyam was born at Naishapur in Khorassan in 1038 and died 1241. He lived under the patronage of the Vizier of that time, Nizam-ul-Mulk “busied,” said the Vizier, “in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence.” Omar was a mathematician as well as an astronomer and contributed to the reform of the Muslim calendar. He also wrote the verses that Edward Fitzgerald translated and made popular some seven centuries later.
69 Sa'di
Shaikh Sa’di Shirazi, originally named Muslih-uddin, was born about 1194 in Shiraz and studied at the Nizamiyya seat of learning in Baghdad. He remained there for about 30 years, establishing his fame as a great Persian poet and popular writer. He took the name Sa’di in honor of his patron Sa’d b. Zengi. Between 1226 and 1256 he traveled widely, visiting Europe, Ethiopia, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Armenia, Turkey, Arabia, Iran, and beyond the Indus to Hindustan.
71 Ibn Khallikan
Abu-l ‘Abbas Ahmad ibn Khallikan was born at Arbela, Iraq, in 1211. By his talents and his writings he received the title of the most learned man and the ablest historian of that city. His most famous work is The Obituaries of Eminent Men, often referred to as The Biographical Dictionary. It is of enormous scope—the English translation by Mac Guckin Slane occupies over 2,700 pages— and it is not surprising that later Arabic historians filled their pages with extracts from his work, and that Arabic rhetoricians, grammarians, and compilers of anecdotes have taken choice passages from it.