This paper will investigate the discussion of Iranian or otherwise “Persianate” figures in Arabic biographical anthologies of the eleventh/seventeenth century. Little research has been done thus far on the question of the familiarity of Arabic literati—particularly in the Ottoman Arab provinces—with poetry or other works that were being produced in Persian by their neighbors to the east. It turns out that there was at least a modest degree of awareness, not only of the older classics of Persian poetry, but also of more recent figures such as Sa’ib Tabrizi (d. ca. 1087/1676). In this paper, we will explore the Persian dimension as it is reflected in anthologies by Hasan al-Burini (d. 1024/1615), Shihab al-Din al-Khafaji (d. 1069/1658), Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi (d. 1111/1699), and Ibn Ma‘sum (d. 1120/1709).