On the Artāy Vīrāz Nāmak

Sans résumé

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On the Arty Vrz Nmak

     

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.     

Buddhist Deities and Mantras in the Hindu Tantras: II The Śrīvidyārnavatantra and the Tantrasāra

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

The Daoguang Response to the Āfāqī khoja Jahāngīr during the 1826–1828 Jahāngīr Uprising

This study examines Qing state attention to the Muslim challenger Jahāngīr, leader of Xinjiang’s 1826–1828 Jahāngīr Uprising. It considers how imperial agents, guided by Emperor Daoguang, defined and processed this contender, as well what this rendering implied for views of “Hui Frontier” Muslims. As will be seen, Jahāngīr was depicted as not just “treacherous” and duplicitous, but also an external “barbarian.” This image – crafted from military reports, imperial edicts, confessions, ritual, sentencing, and punishment – served to clarify a narrative with two salient characteristics. First, the khoja was set as the keystone of the conflict, the management of whom signaled a restoration of imperial integrity. Second, he was differentiated from local Turkic Muslims “Hui,” who (with ambiguity) were framed as Qing subjects. This rendering mirrored earlier Qing (esp. Jiaqing Reforms) depictions of borderland rebel leaders, suggestive of a solidification of the “idea” of Xinjiang as interior to the empire.     

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.     

On a quotation of the Skandapurāna in the Tīrthavivecanakānda of Laksmīdhara's Krtyakalpataru

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

A rare anthology of nice Sanskrit verses: Śrī-Sūktāvalī

A rare anthology of nice Sanskrit verses: r-Sktval     

Ṭūsī Reloaded: Ismāʿīlī Paths of Sufi Wayfaring and Sufi Paths of Ismāʿīlī Apophaticism

Much ink has been spilled on the tumultuous life and works of Na?īr al-Dīn ?ūsī. This paper re-evaluates his connections with Sufism and Ismā?īlism, and challenges the reduction of the former to a late interest, and the latter to an early affiliation abandoned in the wake of the Mongol invasion. The paper argues that Sufi and Ismā?īlī themes, sources, and ideas are in an organic interpenetration in ?ūsī’s works throughout his career. While his early Ismā?īlī eschatology has a fundamentally Sufi nature, his late Sufi treatise adopts the key components of Ismā?īlī negative theology of the divine nature. The case of ?ūsī illustrates that the Ismā?īlī double negation was preserved in Iran and Central Asia, and put into creative interactions with Sufism in the thirteenth century.     

Hidāyat’s Libidinal Hell: Persian Fiction and Inscribing the Demonic

The prominent modern Iranian author ?ādiq Hidāyat (1903?51/1281?1330 sh.) was arguably the most observant expositor of the contortions within the inner world of Iranian demonology during the first Pahlavī period (1921?41/1299?1320 sh.). Through an investigation of his many interbellum titles, such as “Zindah bih Gūr,” “S.G.L.L.,” and “‘Alavīyah Khanum,” the purpose of this paper is to flesh out Hidāyat’s role as a demonographer, meaning someone who inscribes the demonic in his works. It is argued that Hidāyat’s uniqueness was located in his ability to allow the demonic, “the world as it is before the human imagination begins to work on it,” to interact with man at his most nihilistic moment. As such, it is unsurprising that recognition of the demonic was often simultaneously the moment when the voice and visage of Nature itself became apparent.     

When the Subject is the Object: Islamic Advice Literature Modes and the Treatment of Slavery in The Qābūs Nāmih and The Nasirean Ethics

This paper investigates the difference of perspective which informs The Qābūs Nāmih's and The Nasirean Ethics’ respective treatments of the topic of slavery. While in various parts of their discussions both works show an engagement with each side of the hybrid status of a slave's existence as both subject and object, The Qābūs Nāmih deals with the issue almost entirely in terms of the slave's status as an object, while The Nasirean Ethics engages this issue with clear acknowledgments to his/her status as a subject. It is possible that the divergent approaches of these two works are a reflection of the two distinct modes of the genre of Islamic advice literature in which they were respectively written.