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A medieval Persian satirist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

A. A. Haidari
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Extract

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are outstanding chapters even in such an eventful history as that of Persia. The former witnessed the Mongol invasion and occupation; the latter ended amidst the campaigns to Timur. Although the Mongol onslaught caused much destruction, the unexpected literary outburst of the period remains a monument to the indestructible spirit of man. It is ironic that an age of terror and devastation should bring in its wake an unprecedented flowering of culture, as though the phoenix rises renewed from the ashes. For this very period produced the three greatest Persian poets, namely, Rūmī, Sa‘dī and Ḥāfiṣ, and the age in which they lived is by common consent regarded as the Golden Age of Persian poetry. In prose too, although to a lesser extent, fine work was produced, most notably of course, Sa‘dī's Gulistān.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 1986 , pp. 117 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1986

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References

1 Farzad, M., Rats against cats, London, n. d., 5.Google Scholar

2 Kulliyāt-i ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī, (2 volumes in one), Tehran, 1332/1953 I, pp. yā, hā’.

3 Browne, E. G., A literary history of Persia, III, Cambridge, 1920, 230.Google Scholar

4 Dawlatshāh, , Tadhkiral al-Sh‘arā, ed. Browne, E. G., London and Leyden, 1901, 288–9.Google Scholar

5 Ḥamdullā, Mustawfi, Tārikh-i Guzīdah, ed. ‘Abd al-Ḥusayn Nawā’ī, Tehran, 1339/1960, 805.Google Scholar

6 Tadhkirat al-Shu‘arā’, 288–94.

7 See Iqbāl's introduction to the Kulliyāt.

8 Kulliyāt, II, 56.

9 ibid., 54.

10 Tadhkirat al-Shu‘arā, 290.

11 Kulliyāt, Introduction, pp. hā-ḥā’.

12 Here the writer would like to express his profound gratitude to Mr. A. H. Morton for in valuable advice on a number of points and in particular for his suggestions concerning the development of Mūsh u Gurbah.

13 M., Minovi, Qiṣṣah-i Mūsh u Gurbah-i Manẓū’, Yaghmā, X, 1336/ 1957, 401–15. See also pp. 484–8. Minovi also discusses versions of the story by later poets.Google Scholar

14 The early version lacks the two introductory mathnawi verses in hazaj metre found in later texts.

15 The sole apparent exception, shir-shikāl (for shir-shikār ?), can probably be taken to be a casual scribal lapse.

16 guft kū gurbah tā sarash bikanam.

17 du badin chang u du badān changāl yak ba-dandān chu shīr-i ghurrānā

18 Ḥāfīẓ, Dīwān, ed. Abū ’I-Qāsim Anjawl, Theran, Fourth printing, 1361/1983, 97. For a similar allusion by the Judaeo-Persian poet ‘Imrānī, see Amnon, Netzer, Muntakhab-i Ash‘ār-i Fārsi az Ᾱthār-i Yahūdiyān-i, Īrān, 1352/1973, 249Google Scholar, also quoted by Jalāl, Matūnū, ‘Ahammiyyat-i āthār-i Adabī-yi Fārsī-yi Yahūdiyān’, Irān-nāmah, I, 3, 1983, 434.Google Scholar

19 For alternative explanations of Ḥāfiẓ's allusion see ‘A bd al-Ḥusayn Zarrīnkūb, Az Kūchah-i Rindān, fourth printing, Tehran, Anno Shahinshahi 2536, 163–4; for the trained cat belongiing to the fourteenth-century poet ‘Imād-i Faqih of Kirmān see also Browne, Literary history, III, 259. An earlier example occurs in Kalilah wa Dimnah. See the Persian translation by Naṣrullāh Munshī (ed. Minovi, Tehran, 1343/1964, 205–8).

20 The Berlin text is followed, with a handful of variants, in Iqbā's edition of Zākānī's works (II, 121–5) and in the more recent one, based on Iqbāl, of Parwīz Atābakī (2nd printing, Tehran, 1343/1964, 330–3).

21 Scribe and publisher Mīrzā Dā’ūd Shīrāzī. The undated Bombay Lithograph of which E. G. Browne provides a summary is clearly very similar. See A literary history, III, 231, 241–4.

22 azabān-rā ‘arūs-i jāmah-i khwāb kadkhudā-rā ba-khānah mihmānā

23 īn zamāmān panj panj mīgīrad tā shudah mu'min u musulmānā

24 mūshakī būd dar pas-i minbar

25 Kulliyāt, ed. Iqbāl, II, 8–31.

26 p. 10.

27 p. 14–5.

28 pp. 20–1.

29 pp. 28–9.

30 Kulliyāt, II, 62–106.

31 P. 62.

32 p. 78.

33 p. 96.

34 p. 90.

35 p. 95.

36 p. 62. Ṭalḥak was Sulḥān Maḥmūd of Ghaznah's legendary buffoon. VOL. XLIX. PART 1.

37 p. 90.

38 p. 100.

39 p. 12.

40 p. 74.

41 p. 91.

42 p. 76.

43 p. 80.

44 p. 84.

45 p. 85.

46 p. 85.

47 p. 85.

48 p. 93.

49 p. 92.

50 p. 74.

51 p. 86.

52 p. 99–100.

53 p. 76.

54 p. 83.

55 p. 76.

56 Kulliyāt, II, 107–13.

57 Kulliyāt, II, 43–8.

58 Kulliyāt, II, 32–42.

59 Man-am Rish al-Din Abū 'l-Maḥāsin. The name consists of a mock title (laqab with Din) and a punning kunyah, for maḥāsin, beauties, is also used to mean beard.

60 Sa ‘dī, Kulliyāt, Tehran, Shirkat-i Kitāb-Furūshi-yi Adab, 1317/1938, last pagination, 403.

61 Kulliyāt-i ‘Ubayd-i Zākānī, II, 93.