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Poetics and Eros in Early Modern Persia: The Lovers’ Confection and The Glorious Epistle by Muhtasham Kāshānī

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Paul Losensky
Paul Losensky*
Affiliation:
Department of Central Eurasian Studies and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington
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Abstract

The poet Muhtasham Kāshānī (d. 1588) is today known primarily for his strophic elegy on the martyrdom of Imam Husayn at Karbalā, but such devotional poems make up only a tiny fraction of large oeuvre. Far more substantial are two works of a very different tenor, Nuql-i ‘Ushshāq (The Lover's Confection) and Risāla-yi Jalāliyya (The Glorious Epistle). Using an innovative combination of prose and poetry, these works tell the story of the poet-narrator's stormy affairs with, respectively, an upper-class courtesan and a footman attached to a nobleman's house. As part of the larger literary movement known as the maktab-i vuqū‘ or “realist school,” these purported autobiographical accounts of Muhtasham's amorous adventures reveal a sophisticated culture of eros and desire that differs strikingly from the usual representations of the state of literature and the arts under Shah Tahmāsp. After situating these works in their historical, literary, and cultural contexts, the article turns to a close analysis of an extended passage from each work to show how Muhtasham integrates lyric poetry, narrative, and setting to depict the pursuit of desire in the urbane world of early modern Persia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 5: Special Issue: Love And Desire in Pre-Modern Persian Poetry And Prose , December 2009 , pp. 745 - 764
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 The International Society for Iranian Studies

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References

1 Kāshānī, Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, ed. by ‘Abd al-Husayn Navā’ī and Mihdī Sadrī, 2 vols. (Tehran, 2001), 2: 1389Google Scholar:

All translations are mine, unless otherwise noted.

2 Kāshānī, Muhtasham, Dīvān, ed. Behdārvand, Akbar (Tehran, 2000), 635Google Scholar:

A muddled variant of this passage can be found in Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1391.

3 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1473:

4 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1317:

5 On the life of Hisābī Natanzī, see the biographical accounts included in Gulchīn-i Ma‘ānī, Ahmad, Maktab-i vuqū‘ dar shi‘r-i Fārsī (Tehran, 1995), 88–91.Google Scholar

6 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1318.

7 See the editions cited in notes 1 and 2 above. For reasons that I have yet to understand, the later Risāla-yi Jalāliyya is counted as the fifth dīvān, and Nuql-i ‘Ushshāq as the sixth. Neither of these editions is fully satisfactory as a scholarly text; they differ in their readings of crucial passages, yet neither systematically documents textual variants. Pending a proper critical edition, I will choose the readings that best seem to fit Muhtasham's sense. Both works are also available in an earlier edition, Kāshānī, Muhtasham, Dīvān, ed. by ‘Alī Mihr Gurgānī (Tehran, 1965).Google Scholar For a survey of Muhtasham's life and works, see Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Mohtasham (Mohtašam) of Kashan” (by Paul Losensky), http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/unicode/ot_grp5/ot_mohtasam_kashan_20041116.html (accessed 4 January 2009).

8 Awhadī Balyānī, ‘Arafāt al-‘āshiqīn, as quoted in Gulchīn-i Ma‘ānī, Maktab-i vuqū‘, 477.

9 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 1: 460.

10 Beg Monshi, Eskandar, History of Shah ‘Abbas the Great (Tārīk-e ‘Ālamārā-ye ‘Abbāsī), trans. by Savory, Roger M., 2 vols. (Boulder, CO, 1978), 1: 274.Google Scholar

11 For the text of this poem, see Muhtasham, , Haft dīvān, 1: 288–298.Google Scholar

12 Browne, E. G., A Literary History of Persia, in 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1902–24), 4: 173.Google Scholar

13 The catalogue of this exhibition has been published as Hunt for Paradise: Court Arts of Safavid Iran, 1501–1576, ed. by Thompson, Jon and Canby, Sheila R. (New York and Milan, 2003).Google Scholar

14 See Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Mādda tārīk” (by Paul Losensky), http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/unicode/ot_grp11/ot_madtarikh_20061205.html (accessed 6 June 2008).

15 See Losensky, Paul, “The Palace of Praise and the Melons of Time: Descriptive Patterns in ‘Abdī Šīrāzī's Garden of Eden,” Eurasian Studies, 2 (2003): 1–29.Google Scholar

16 Among the formative works in this genre from this period, one can note those of Partuvī Shīrāzī (d. 928/1520), Sidqī Astarābādī (952/1545), and Sharaf-i Jahān Qazvīnī (d. 968/1561). See Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Sāqī-nāma” (by Paul Losensky), http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/unicode/ot_grp/ot_saqinama_20090725.html (accessed 8 October 2009).

17 See Gulchīn-i Ma‘ānī, Maktab-i vuqū‘.

18 See Scott Meisami, Julie, “Mixed Prose and Verse in Medieval Persian Literature,” Prosimetrum: Crosscultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse, ed. by Harrise, Joseph and Reichl, Karl (Cambridge, 1997), 294–319.Google Scholar

19 Shamīsā, Sīrūs, Shāhid-bāzī dar adabiyyāt-i Fārsī (Tehran, 1381), 200.Google Scholar

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21 Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 308.

22 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1390:

23 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, and Muhtasham, Dīvān, 634.

24 I use the capitalized Poet to refer to the character of the narrator, not to Muhtasham as author.

25 For these incidents, see Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1438, 1422, and 1433.

26 Scott Meisami, Julie, Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Poetry: Orient Pearls (London, 2003), 26–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 See, respectively, Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1324, 1329, 1338, 1336, and 1340.

28 The merger of the ideals of male and female beauty can also be seen in the painting of Rizā-yi ‘Abbāsī, who began his career near the end of Muhtasham's life. For example, in a painting of two lovers in a landscape dated to ca. 1610, the facial features, body types, and poses of the young lovers and their attendant cupbearer (sāqi) are almost identical, and their gender is distinguished primarily by clothing; see Canby, Sheila R., The Rebellious Reformer: The Drawings and Paintings of Riza-yi ‘Abbasi of Isfahan (London, 1996), 97.Google Scholar

29 Shamīsā, Shāhid-bāzī, 213.

30 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1408.

31 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1468. Muhtasham claims to encode the name of his beloved in the chronogram that closes the work (2: 1474) in the form of a logogriph (mu‘ammā), but this riddle has yet to be deciphered.

32 Matthee, Rudi, “Prostitutes, Courtesans, and Dancing Girls: Women Entertainers in Safavid Iran,” Iran and Beyond: Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie, ed. by Matthee, Rudi and Baron, Beth (Costa Mesa, CA, 2000), 131.Google Scholar

33 Matthee, “Prostitutes, Courtesans, and Dancing Girls,” 142.

34 For a life study of one of the most famous of these courtesans, Veronica Franco, see Rosenthal, Margaret F., The Honest Courtesan (Chicago, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The Courtesan's Art: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Feldman, Martha and Gordon, Bonnie (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar analyzes the role of courtesans as keepers of culture in a variety of historical and cultural settings.

35 Matthee, “Prostitutes, Courtesans, and Dancing Girls,” 142.

36 A large literature has now accumulated on this topic. See, for example, Yar-Shater, Ehsan, “The Theme of Wine and Wine-Drinking and the Concept of the Beloved in Early Persia Poetry,” Studia Islamica, 13 (1960): 43–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shamīsā, Shāhid-bāzī; Andrews, Walter G. and Kalpakli, Mehmet, The Age of the Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society (Durham, NC, 2005), 59–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and most recently, El-Rouayheb, Khaled, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800 (Chicago, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Rypka, Jan, “Persian Literature to the Beginning of the 20th Century,” in History of Iranian Literature, ed. by Jahn, Karl, trans. by van Popta-Hope, P. (Dordrecht, 1968), 298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v. “Mutasham-i Kāshānī” (by J. T. P. de Bruijn).

39 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1318. For a brief discussion of the shātir in the context of other “fraternal organizations,” see Afshārī, Mihrān, Āyīn-i javānmardī (Tehran, 1384), 19–21.Google Scholar He reproduces an illustration from Engelbert Kaempfer's Amoenitatum exoticarum politico-physico-medicarum (Lemgoviae [Lemgo], 1712), between pp. 210 and 211, which shows a group of a dozen shātirān (tsjatirri) walking before a mounted Shah Sulaymān. (Thanks to Elio Brancaforte for helping to identify the source of this illustration.) The characteristic uniform of the shātir, with its feathered cap and short jacket (qantūra), is also shown in another illustration in Kaempfer (between pp. 174 and 175); here the shātir (cursore) is shown playing a lute, an indication of his cultural accomplishments. A manual of the guild of the shātirān has been published in Chahārdah risāla dar bāb-i futuvvāt va asnāf, ed. by Afshārī, Mihrān and Madāyinī, Mihdī (Tehran, 1381), 121–135.Google Scholar

40 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1320–21 and 1358.

41 The mystico-allegorical interpretation of this work by Muhtasham's most recent editors, ‘Abd al-Husayn Navā’ī and Mihdī Sadrī (Haft dīvān, 1: 215–218), is based entirely on the numerical value of Jalāl's name and disregards any aspect of story, character, or imagery.

42 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1452.

43 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1452–54. For Persian text of this passage, see Appendix.

44 Muhtasham, Haft dīvān, 2: 1374–75. For Persian text of this passage, see Appendix.

45 Goldin, Frederick, “The Array of Perspectives in the Early Courtly Love Lyric,” in In Pursuit of Perfection, ed. by Ferrante, J. and Economous, G. (Port Washington, NY, 1975), 52Google Scholar, as quoted in Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry, 252.

46 Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry, 252.

47 Awhadī, as quoted in Gulchīn-i Ma ‘ānī, Maktab-i vuqū‘, 477:

48 Andrews and Kalpaklı, Age of Beloveds, 289.