Origin Narratives and the Making of Dynastic History in al‐Dīnawarī's Akhbār

This article takes the reader on a journey into the historical writing of the ninth century Muslim historian al‐Dīnawarī (d. 895) and examines the motives behind composing his al‐Akhbār al‐?iwāl. The themes and narrative arrangements of this work give insight into al‐Dīnawarī's historical agenda that demonstrates his interest in royal histories that exemplify the rise and fall of nations, dynasties, and powerful rulers. Al‐Dīnawarī's emphasis on specific episodes and events demonstrates that only certain ethnic groups whose political legitimacy derives from a respectable and prominent origin can bring about political and social stability. By dealing with these sociopolitical concerns, this article also sheds new light on the intellectual discourses and political crises that dominated Islamic society during the eighth and ninth centuries and the way al‐Dīnawarī reacted to these challenges.     

Kāi Tahu me te Hopu Tītī ki Rakiura:

This article examines te hopu tītī ki Rakiura — the customary harvesting of tītī or ‘muttonbirds’ (sooty shearwaters/puffinus griseus) from islands adjacent to Rakiura (Stewart Island), by members of Kāi Tahu — the iwi (tribe) that has traditional authority over the majority of Te Wāhi Pounamu (the South Island of New Zealand). The article illustrates the pre and post-contact importance of te hopu tītī to Kāi Tahu and argues that, because the harvest is now and has always been the sole domain of the iwi, this sets it apart from prevailing settler society narratives whereby indigenous people usually lose out. The article also shows how the harvest did and continues to contribute to Kāi Tahu tribal identity. The author is both Kāi Tahu and an active participant in the tītī harvest as well as a post-graduate history student. This enables him to offer both a unique reading of the archives relating to the harvest as well as access to oral histories and early photographs associated with it.     

Islam without Fuqahāʾ: Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and His Perso-Islamic Solution to the Caliphate's Crisis of Legitimacy (70–142 AH/690–760 CE)

This paper seeks to advance the existing scholarship on Persian secretary and belles-lettrist, ?Abd Allāh Ibn al-Muqaffa? (d. 139/757) and his Risāla fī ’l-?a?āba (Epistle Concerning the Entourage). It argues that the Risāla, addressed to the second Abbasid caliph al-Man?ūr, set out to tackle the political ills of the caliphate, especially the crisis of political legitimacy. As the first documented articulation of the Islamic polity, the Risāla made a series of recommendations, including a proposal for legal codification that attempted to reinvent the caliphate by reuniting the institution's political and legal authority at the expense of private jurists (fuqahā?). The paper illustrates how Ibn Muqaffa?’s solution relied on a creative integration of Iranian and Islamic ideas of statecraft and legitimate rule. Ironically, this creative integration may have played a part in the Risāla’s failure to garner necessary support to effect change.     

IN THE FOLDS OF TIME: RASHĪD AL‐DĪN ON THEORIES OF HISTORICITY

By focusing on Rashīd al‐Dīn's (d. 718/1318) historiographical oeuvre and here in particular his “History of the World,” this article challenges the usual approach to his Jāmi? al‐tawārīkh (Compendium of Chronicles) and argues that his was a deeply pluralistic enterprise in a world with many centers, tremendous demographic change, high social mobility, and constantly shifting truth‐claims in an ever expanding cosmos, to which Rashīd al‐Dīn's method, language, and the shape of his history were perfectly adaptable. This article introduces the notion of “parallel pasts” to account for Rashīd al‐Dīn's method. By placing the Jāmi? al‐tawārīkh and its author in their historical and intellectual context, this article also argues that this method is not restricted to Rashīd al‐Dīn's historiography: His historiographical work ought to be seen as part of his larger theological and philosophical oeuvre into which the author placed it consciously and explicitly, an oeuvre that is, like Rashīd al‐Dīn's historiography, pluralist at heart, and that could be as easily classified as “theology” or “philosophy” as “historiography.”     

“SEEING” THE PAST: TEXT AND QUESTIONS OF HISTORY IN THE RĀJATARAṄGIṆĪ

Traditional scholarly opinion has regarded Kalha?a's Rājatara?gi?ī, the twelfth‐century Sanskrit chronicle of Kashmiri kings, as a work of history. This essay proposes a reinvestigation of the nature of the iconic text from outside the shadow of that label. It first closely critiques the positivist “history hypothesis,” exposing its internal contradictions over questions of chronology, causality, and objectivity as attributed to the text. It then argues that more than an empiricist historical account that modern historians like to believe it is—in the process bracketing out integral rhetorical, mythic, and didactic parts of the text—the Rājatara?gi?ī should be viewed in totality for the kāvya (epic poem) that it is, which is to say, as representing a specific language practice that sought to produce meaning and articulated the poet's vision of the land and its lineages. The essay thus urges momentarily reclaiming the text from the hegemonic but troubled understanding of it as history—only to restore it ultimately to a more cohesive notion of historicality that is consistent with its contents. Toward this end, it highlights the concrete claim to epistemic authority that is asserted both by the genre of Sanskrit kāvya generally and by the Rājatara?gi?ī in particular, and their conception of the poetic “production” of the past that bears a striking resonance with constructivist historiography. It then traces the intensely intertextual and value‐laden nature of the epistemology that frames the Rājatara?gi?ī into a narrative discourse on power and ethical governance. It is in its narrativity and discursivity—its meaningful representation of what constitutes “true” knowledge of time and human action—that the salience of the Rājatara?gi?ī may lie.     

Muslim Political Theology Before and After Empire: Shāh Muḥammad Ismāʿīl’s Station of Leadership (Manṣab-i Imāmat)*

ABSTRACT

This essay examines an important yet hitherto unexplored early-nineteenth century Indo-Persian work of Muslim political theology Station of Leadership (Man?ab-i Imāmat; also known as Darājāt-i Imāmat), written by the towering and contentious Sunnī thinker and political theorist from Delhi Shāh Mu?ammad Ismā?īl (d. 1831). In this hugely critical though lesser known of Ismā?īl’s texts, he sought to detail a theory and framework of ideal forms of Muslim political orders and leaders. Man?ab-i Imāmat presents a fascinating example of a text of Muslim political theology composed during a moment marked by a crisis of sovereignty as South Asia gradually yet decisively transitioned from Mughal to British rule. In this essay, through a close reading of Man?ab-i Imāmat, I aim to bring into view a vision of Muslim political thought and understanding of sovereignty that exceed and subvert the modern privileging of a territorial conception of the nation-state as the centerpiece of politics. I show that while tethered to an imperial Muslim political theology that assumed Islam’s superiority over and subsumption of other religious identities and traditions, sovereign power for Ismā?īl indexed not territorial sovereignty but the maintenance of Muslim markers of distinction in the public performance of everyday religious life.     

Signs from Above: Towards a Comparative Symbology of Bird Imagery in Medieval Near Eastern Popular Prose

This article presents excerpts from two near-contemporary works of popular prose from the medieval Near East: the Persian Dārāb-nāmeh and the Arabic Sīrat Banī Hilāl. In each, birds or birdlike characters (the sīmorgh and the crow, respectively) that share in having had theriomorphic, mythic significance in regional pre-Islamic traditions dispense premonitory wisdom to Muslim characters. Comparing these passages, the article contends that the characterization of these birds brokers a pietistic shift in symbolism between the pre-Islamic and Islamic context, while still maintaining the birds’ mystical significance and sustaining the trope of birds as winged, heaven-sent messengers. This modified association between birds and divine ministry is not only prominent in these two texts, but also in the Qur?ān and varied bestiaries, poetry, and belletristic works that comprise these texts’ cultural network.     

Vintages of the Sāqī-nāma: Fermenting and Blending the Cupbearer's Song in the Sixteenth Century

Drawing on a rich tradition of anacreontic poetry and taking inspiration from works by Nizāmī and Hāfiz, the sāqī-nāma or “cupbearer's song” emerged as an independent genre in the early sixteenth century and flourished throughout the Persian literary world for the next 250 years. Looking back on the development of the genre, the early seventeenth-century literary historians ‘Abd al-Nabī Qazvīnī and Awhadī Balyānī give contrasting accounts of its formation, but both agree on the significance of the work of Hakīm Partuvī Shīrāzī (d. 928/1520–21). An examination of his sāqī-nāma, together with two other early representatives of the genre by Sidqī Astarābādī (d. 952/1545) and Sharaf Jahān Qazvīnī (d. 968/1561), shows how closely this new genre was tied to the politics and ideology of the new Safavid state and reveals profound structural similarities to the preeminent panegyric genre of the Islamicate world, the qasīda. But once the basic components of the sāqī-nāmā were distilled and taken up by poets outside this socio-political environment, the genre proved to be as protean as the wine symbolism at its core. Cupbearer songs from the end of the century, particularly those of Muhammad Sūfī Māzandarānī (d. 1035/1625–26) and Sanjar Kāshānī (d. 1021/1612), show how the basic elements of the genre could be reconfigured to serve a variety of more personal interests.     

The Rose and the Wine: Dispute as a Literary Device in Classical Persian Literature

As everyone knows, alcoholic drinks, including wine, are forbidden by Islam. Readers of Persian poetry often wonder how is it possible that Persian wine literature is one of the richest in the world and whether the poets and authors ever address the illicitness of the wine in their works. This article examines how one author, Zangī Bukhārī, presents a catalogue of positive and negative qualities of wine in his Gul u mul (“The Rose and the Wine”). Through the genre of debate (munāzara), he shows how a courtly audience may have tried to justify the drinking of wine. The article examines the formal generic characteristics of such debates, showing how the form of the debate is rather appropriate to let forbidden objects or ideas, in this case the wine, speak for themselves thus defending their position in an Islamic society. entertaining in is richness in metaphors and imagery used by the wine and the rose to voice their superiority to each other, but it also addresses a rather controversial topic in an uncontroversial style.     

Lascivious Vines,Corrupted Virgins,and Crimes of Honor: Variations on the Wine Production Myth as Narrated in Early Persian Poetry

The Persian wine production myth centers on the relationship between a male vintner and his female vine and her daughters, the grapes. This myth, the earliest extant examples of which are found in qasīdas by the Samanid poets Rūdakī and Bashshār Marghazī and which was much developed by Manūchihrī and his contemporary Farrukhī, contains images of femininity, the mother–child bond, separation, violence, execution, and ultimate redemption. The grape harvest comes in the late summer and culminates in the Mihragān festival, a celebration focused on the grape and grape wine, at which poems containing versions of the wine production myth were recited. The present study maps the evolution of this myth over the span of a century through a close reading of eleven poems with specific reference to variations in narrative structure.     

A Theory of Reduplication: Eightfold Meters in Classical Persian Poetry

It is a known fact that classical Persian poets were partial to poetic meters composed of eight feet, known as muthamman. On this topic, however, two issues remain unsolved: How did the Persian poets devise these meters in the first place? Despite their flagrant predilection for eightfold meters, why did the Persians never use such meters as sarī? and qarīb in this form? This paper argues that the Persians, influenced by the structure of the Arabic eightfold base meters, crafted their muthamman meters after a specific process of reduplication. This theory also accounts for the lack of eightfold sarī? and qarīb meters, their structure being incompatible with the reduplication process.     

A Messiah Untamed: Notes on the Philology of Shah Ismāʿīl’s Dīvān

The article aims to refute a long-standing thesis first put forth by Vladimir Minorsky about how the various copies of the dīvān of Shah Ismā?īl might reflect shifts and changes in the religious and political landscape of early modern Iran. Contrary to the luminary Russian Orientalist’s claims, it demonstrates and contextualizes the observation that there were several textual traditions and that most of the copies continued to reflect messianism and “extremist” notions of religiosity well into late ?afavid times, appealing to a broad audience which was likely made up of Sufi adepts and nomadic Qizilbash, as well as a more refined echelon of courtly connoisseurs, residing in the borderland between the Ottoman lands and Iran. At the same time, it suggests that the main theme of Shah Ismā?īl’s messianic poetry was sainthood and that in this sense ?afavid messianism was not a unique aberration but comparable and connected to such similar ideologies as are known from the Timurid, Ottoman or Mughal context.     

Yaḥyā Dawlatābādī’s Contribution to Persian Poetic Modernity

In 1912, Ya?yā Dawlatābādī composed two poems, the form of which diverged greatly from the canonical rules of tradition. Both poems were based on syllabic meters. Critics and historians of modern Persian literature have given these poems little consideration, and discussed them merely from the point of view of metrics. When compared to the great modernist endeavors in the poetry of the time, these pieces were judged severely, or altogether disavowed. This paper aims to show that, beyond mere metrical audacity, Ya?yā Dawlatābādī’s syllabic poems were in fact innovative. As the article argues, they were born out of the same quest for fresh poetic forms that induced contemporaneous modernists to create new, individualized poetic patterns.     

Lives of Frankish princes from al-Ṣafadī’s biographical dictionary,al-wāfī bil-wafayāt

This article endeavours to bring to the English reader unpublished historical sources about Frankish figuers in the fourteenth century biographical dictionary al-Wāfī bil-wafayāt. This work, one of the largest biographical dictionaries in the history of the genre in Arabic, was written by Khalīl b. Aibak ?alā? al-Dīn, al-?afadī who was born in 1297 to a Mamluk father and a respected amir of the Mamluk military troops in ?afad. This article analyse nine biographies of Frankish historical figures and endeavours to answer the question: how original were al-?afadī’s biographies on Frankish princes?     

Lost priests in ancient Mangaia

Abstract

Politics and religion in Polynesia are one and same, both concerned with appropriating and controlling sources of mana. William Wyatt Gill collected priestly lists from various Mangaians, but only published those from the reigning ariki, Nūmangātini. The lists show significant variations, suggesting that some priests disappeared partly because of their gender, but more especially due to political considerations, notably rival claims to legitimacy and authority among the various lineages and kin groups who competed for these titles. These variations highlight how particular accounts make different claims on the past, and how the Christian missions minimised the significance of sacred women who possessed great mana. By publishing Nūmangātini's version, Gill fits the missionary preference for supporting the political establishment, and echoes New Zealand's Stephenson Percy Smith, who embraced Hoani Te Whatahoro Jury's interpretation of the Māori migration, thereby marginalising knowledge claims of others.