Ghazal

Examines the literary topos of dawn, the "Alba," in Persian poetry in comparative perspective, first considering the Alba poem in medieval Provencal lyric in southern France and northern Italy, establishing how the theme of the parting of two lovers at dawn was a well-established trope in European poetry of the medieval and renaissance periods.  A close parallel also appears in the Arabic poetry of Andalusia, perhaps with some interchange.  In Persian there are also some examples of the "Alba" theme -- the ghazals of Sa`di but especially Sana'i. Although Hafiz' poems do not use the Alba theme  in the same way, Hafiz does set many of his ghazals (perhaps 1/5 of all his ghazals) in the dawn or early morning.  The article develops how Hafiz uses the topos of dawn and why it is integral to his mythopoetic vocabulary.

This is one of a series of entries about the 14th-century Shirazi poet Hafez, this article focused on questions of sound-patterning in his ghazals; poems set to music during the poet's life time vs. "plain" poems; musical terminology in the poems, including for modes, melody, scales, structures, and for sound itself; for musical instruments; for dance and emotive movement in conjunction with poetry; for singers, songs and musicians. It also discusses modern musical versions of the poems as sung in Persian, plus the use of Hafez' poetry in translation in European classical music.

In this remarkable selection of Faiz’s most memorable poems and ghazals, readers will be able to experience a new dimension of the great poet’s genius. Along with popular favourites like ‘Subh-e Azadi’, with its anguished evocation of the horror and pain of the Partition, The Colours of My Heart also introduces readers to little-known gems that display Faiz’s extraordinary flair for tender hope and quiet longing.

In this essay, I will assess the motif of kissing and flirting at the Kaʿba and its sanctified environs (e.g., al-Ṣafā, al-Marwa, Minā, al-Muzdalifah), specifically. I will also generally treat the employment of Islamic religious language (astaghfiru ʼllāh, ayyām ʿaẓīmat al-ḥurma), intimate spaces (miḥrāb, masjid), and symbols (al-ḥajar, al-maqām) in the articulation of (sensual) love in Umayyad Arabic ghazal poetry.  This particular motif and subject matter can be observed for comparative purposes in several early prominent poets — e.g., Abū Nuwās (d. between 198/813 and 200/815) and Ibn al-Rūmī (ca. 283/896).  For now, one is best served by approaching the problem chronologically. As a case study for examining the admixture of amorous activity and religious space, I herewith focus exclusively on the poetry of ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa, the prince of the Ḥijāzī school of ghazal, as he praises, pursues, and even kisses women within the Kaʿba precinct.

"The Necklace of the Pleiades is a volume on Persian literature, culture and religion by Persian scholars from around the world. This book reflects the state of the field of Persian literary studies and will be of substantial interest not only to scholars of Iranian culture, history and religions, but of Middle Eastern and South Asian studies, as well.

The topics of the 24 essays range from the Persian Alexander romance, to Ferdowsi’s Shahnama and other epics, the poetics and imagery of the ghazal and the qasida, Mughal court poetry, Sufism, Ismaili history, Baha’i literature, Iranian linguistics, the modern writer Sadeq Hedayat, and the reception of Salman Rushdie’s novel in Persian translation.

In Persian literature the Necklace of the Pleiades is a metaphor for the six or seven stars (Parvin, or Sorayyâ, high up in the constellation Taurus) which the heavens bestow, like precious pearls, upon a poet in gratitude and reward for composing a beautiful poem. The poem itself is compared to a string of pearls, with its carefully chosen words bored like unique pearls and strung in perfect metrical proportion. As Hafiz puts it:

You’ve sung a ghazal, pierced the pearls, come and sing it sweetly, Hafiz!
The heavens strew the very Necklace of the Pleiades upon your verse. "

This volume was presented as a Festschrift for Prof. Heshmat Moayyad of the University of Chicago on his 80th birthday.  Originally published by (Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers and West Lafayette, Indiana:  Purdue University Press, 2007)
Publisher's Website: https://www.lup.nl/product/the-necklace-of-the-pleiades/

In the poetic practice of American poet, Steffen Horstmann, one discerns a similar Shahidean obsession with formal correctness and in his meticulous approach to the techniques of ghazal writing. The title of the book, ‘Jalsaghar’ with its performative connotations, places the volume very aptly within a dialogic framework, for the ghazal, however its enunciation or practice may vary across cultures and languages, remains in its essence a fluid performative dialogue between the poet and the audience/ readers. Horstmann’s ghazals may best be described as emotive composites that attempt, through the traversing of widely fragmented cultural terrains, to arrive at an intended emotional unity.

Abstract
In addition to the traditional commentary, foreign art theories have recently been added to the studies aimed at understanding classical Turkish literature poems. One of these modern aesthetic theories is the ontological understanding of art. The systematization of art ontology, which is one of the contemporary art philosophies, in Turkish literature was achieved thanks to İsmail Tunali (1922-2015). After Tunali's work entitled Art Ontology, the application of ontological analysis methods to literary works has been accepted in some academic circles, and the theory has been taken as reference by many academicians and researchers. When the classical Turkish literature is studied, Dursun Ali Tokel and Yavuz Bayram are observed to have made use of this method in their ghazal analysis and pioneered the method to become widespread. In particular, the methods and steps in the table developed by Yavuz Bayram based on Tunali's work were taken as an example in the ontological analysis studies after him.
In this article, the ghazal of Sheikh Galip (d. 1799), who is accepted as one of the last great representatives of Sebkihindi (Indian style) movement, ending with the redif ‘düştü’ has been studied by the ontological analysis method. Within the context of the method followed, the examples used in the application of the theory to classical Turkish literature poems until today have not been excluded, and the table prepared by Yavuz Bayram with reference from İsmail Tunali has been used. The relevant ghazal has been found in the literature to be studied through classical annotation and structuralist methods. Also, in this article, ontic integrity is analyzed. Using the ontological analysis method, the sound and meaning layers of the poem are discussed, and also the concrete and abstract meaning levels as well as the Sufi level are revealed. Whether there are reflections from the poet’s mood and life in the ghazal is also questioned through these layers.


Öz
Klasik Türk edebiyatı manzumelerini anlamaya yönelik çalışmalara, son zamanlarda geleneksel şerhin yanında yabancı sanat kuramları eklenmiştir. Bu modern estetik kuramlarından biri de ontolojik sanat anlayışıdır. Çağdaş sanat felsefelerinden biri olan sanat ontolojisinin Türk edebiyatında sistemleşmesi İsmail Tunalı (1922-2015) sayesinde olmuştur. Tunalı’nın Sanat Ontolojisi adlı eseri sonrasında ontolojik analiz yöntemlerinin edebî eserlere uygulanması bazı akademik çevrelerde kabul görmüş ve kuram birçok akademisyen ve araştırmacı tarafından referans alınmıştır. Klasik Türk edebiyatı literatürüne bakıldığında Dursun Ali Tökel ve Yavuz Bayram’ın gazel çözümlemelerinde bu yöntemden faydalandıkları ve yöntemin yaygınlaşması için öncülük ettikleri görülmektedir. Bilhassa Yavuz Bayram’ın Tunalı’nın eserinden yola çıkarak geliştirdiği tabloda yer alan yöntem ve aşamalar kendisinden sonraki ontolojik analiz çalışmalarında örnek alınmıştır.
Bu makalede, Sebkihindi (Hint üslubu) akımının son büyük temsilcilerinden biri olarak kabul edilen Şeyh Galip’in (ö. 1799) ‘düştü’ redifli gazeli ontolojik analiz metoduyla incelenmiştir. Yöntem olarak kuramın bugüne kadar klasik Türk edebiyatı manzumelerine uygulanmasında kullanılan örneklerinin dışına çıkılmamış, Yavuz Bayram’ın İsmail Tunalı’dan referansla hazırladığı tablodan istifade edilmiştir. Gazelin literatürdeki çalışmalarda, klasik şerh ve yapısalcılık metotlarıyla incelendiği görülmüştür. Bu makaleyle de ontik bütünlüğü analiz edilmiştir. Ontolojik analiz metodu ile manzumenin ses ve anlam katmanları ele alınmış somut ve soyut anlam düzeyi ile tasavvufî düzeyi ortaya konmuştur. Gazelde şairin ruh hâlinden ve hayatından akisler bulunup bulunmadığı da yine bu katmanlar vasıtasıyla sorgulanmıştır.

The Isra and Mi'raj (Arabic: الإسراء والمعراج‎, al-’Isrā’ wal-Mi‘rāj) are the two parts of a Night Journey that, according to Islam, the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, took during a single night around the year 621. It has been described as both a physical and spiritual journey.[1] A brief sketch of the story is in surah al-Isra of the Quran,[2] and other details come from the hadith, collections of the reports of the teachings, deeds and sayings of Muhammad. In the Isra part of the journey, Muhammad travels on the steed Buraq to "the farthest mosque" where he leads other prophets in prayer. He then ascends to heaven in the Mi'raj journey where he speaks to God, who gives Muhammad instructions to take back to the faithful regarding the details of prayer. This remembrance of this journey is one of the most significant events in the Islamic calendar.[3] *
1. Jump up ^ Martin, Richard C.; Arjomand, Saïd Amir; Hermansen, Marcia; Tayob, Abdulkader; Davis, Rochelle; Voll, John Obert, eds. (December 2, 2003). Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. Macmillan Reference USA. p. 482. ISBN 978-0-02-865603-8.
2. Quran 17:1 (Translated by Yusuf Ali)
3. Bradlow, Khadija (August 18, 2007). "A night journey through Jerusalem". Times Online. Retrieved March 27, 2011.
*From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"IL CANZONIERE DI AL-BALLANŪBĪ: STUDIO, EDIZIONI, TRADUZIONI",  Dīwān del poeta arabo-siculo Abū l-Ḥasan ‘Alī b. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ballanūbī (seconda metà dell’XI secolo). Edizione del testo arabo, traduzione in lingua italiana; corredato da un ampio studio sulla biografia dell'autore, sui generi, sui temi e sulle figure retoriche di questo canzoniere.
Pubblicato dall'Istituto per l'Oriente Carlo Alfonso Nallino (Roma, 2021), secondo volume della Collana Sicilia islamica, diretta da Mirella Cassarino.

Ulteriori informazioni sulla Collana sono disponibili al link http://www.ipocan.it/index.php/it/sicilia-islamica
http://www.ipocan.it/index.php/it/contattaci-top

Long subject to the distortions of an Indian nationalist literary historiography of the Nehruvian variety that valorized him without consideration for the literary and cultural categories operative in his own time as a wellspring and exemplum of a syncretic Hindu-Muslim identity, Amīr Khusrow of Delhi’s (1253-1325) large and multi-generic oeuvre is today, thanks to improvements in literary scholarship on the Persian literature of the period and in the historiography of the early Delhi Sultanate, legible in non-nationalist ways. This course aims to leave the student with an overall impression of Khusrow’s literary agency in the particular generic, courtly, Sufi and political contexts that conditioned it.

Sažetak Ovaj rad se bavi poetskim značajkama gazela Ahmeda Hatema Bjelopoljaka u okviru društveno-historijskog konteksta, relacijama s drugim kulturnim fenomenima 18. stoljeća u Osmanskoj državi, kao i sufijskom recepcijom njegovog Divana. Ahmed Aqovali-zade (Bjelopoljak) Hatem (umro 1168./1754. godine) je sin je Osmana Šehdi-efendije Bjelopoljaka, hadžegana carskog divana, a unuk Mehmeda Salim-efendije Kadića iz Bijelog Polja (tur. Aqova). Nije poznato gdje se rodio i odra-stao Ahmed Bjelopoljak, ali se zna da je visoke škole završio u Carigradu, a zatim otputovao u Misir i Hidžaz i tamo boravio neko vrijeme. U Meki je dobio iršad od nakšibendijskog šejha Ahmeda Džurjanija koji ga je i uveo u nakšibendijski tarikat. Godine 1168/1754. imenovan je za kadiju u Larissi, u Grčkoj, gdje je i umro. Bio je veoma obrazovan, isticao se kao dobar poznavalac raznih disciplina islam-skih nauka. Iza sebe je ostavio i uređen divan pjesama na osmanskom, perzijskom i arapskom jeziku. Njegov Divan je bio veoma cijenjen i često prepisivan. Unutar Divana poezija je razvrstana po jezicima: arapskom, turskom i perzijskom, tako da su odvojeni kao zasebne cjeline. Hatemova poezija je poetska filozofija u kojoj se misli isprepliću u koncentrič-nim krugovima gdje je svaka interpretacija samo jedna od mogućih interpretacija. Hatem je pjesnik misaone lirike, istančanog filinga, zgusnutog i hermetičnog jezičkog izraza čiji je površinski jednostavni smisao poezije u obrnutoj srazmjeri sa brojnim smislovima i porukama u dubinskoj strukturi. Ključne riječi: sufijski pjesnik, društveno-historijski kontekst, 18. stoljeće, perzijski jezik, gazeli.

The main task of this paper is to illustrate how Hindustani musical elements are employed in the vocal lines of Malay ghazal which have been obscured or modified and "Malayized" throughout the past decades. In current Malay ghazal practices known in Johor, a particular singing style called "Parsi" that primarily focused on a specific embellishment of the melodic line could be observed. Another particular element is called "sarigama-singing" (Arshad, 2013; Rahman B., 2012) that refers to melodic ornaments resembling the gamak and taan in Hindustani classical music. The adaptation and its outcome that have been documented in some selected ghazals confirm the existence of a discerning tolerance towards elements detached from their originating cultural environment. This paper discusses stereotypical melodic elements sung by Malay musicians in Malay ghazal. Although various raga elements can be detected in the vocal melodies, these elements are not acknowledged and are not terminologically familiar to Malay ghazal musicians. The detected ragas maintain one tonic, which means that the main fifth (Sa-Pa) applies as a frame for an entire given melody. The range in which Malay ghazal is sung does not exceed one octave. Nonetheless, the actual starting pitch is somewhat fixed through the fact that early harmoniums could not shift in pitch. Therefore, Malay ghazals are mainly played for a high pitched male or a lower pitched female voice. Male singers performing ghazal may have obtained singing skills from the model of qawwali singers. There is no evidence for it in the reviewed literature. However, the knowledge about these special features that can also be observed in Hindustani ghazal is transmitted orally from one musician to the next (Norihan, 2012-2014). Main methods applied in this study are long term participant observation in the origination and in the host culture of ghazal practices, multi-perspective analysis of musical structures and terminology.

Keywords : Ghazal, Malay ghazal, Hindustani classical music, raga, Parsi theatre

The Ghazal, a prominent form of poetry, in Arabic, Persian and other languages in India, such as Urdu, Bengali and Gujrati, has been poorly translated in its original form into English. What are its characteristics and how can it be transcreated into English? For if it is successfully Englished, the formmay open the language to a new way of appreciation of verse.

This article explores tales and tropes of conversion, especially conversion engendered by romantic attraction for the religious other, in the poetry of Farīd al-Dīn 'Attar. The plot dynamics of class, gender and confessional adherence are complex, and hold important clues to the poet's theology. One particularly rich example of the encoding of religious and social boundaries can be found in a body of ghazals written about the beautiful Christian boy (tarsa-bachcha). The history of this homoerotic sub-genre is traced, and 'Attar's treatment of the theme is explored in juxtaposition not only to earlier authors, but to other motifs of the religious other and of religious conversion, appearing in his own oeuvre, including the narrative of Shaykh San'an with its representation of the Christian girl beloved. The terminology of Christianity and the markers by which 'Attar construes Christian-ness are discussed, and these symbolically amorous encounters with Christianity are analyzed as part of a larger discourse of emasculation which 'Attar constructs around conversion, religious affiliation, and insufficient commitment to spiritual growth. Analysis of the dynamic interplay of markers of gender and class in the tales and topoi dealing with religious conversion or cross-confessional interaction will ultimately afford a perspective into 'Attar's conception of the specific religious traditions juxtaposed to Islam, as well as his beliefs about inter-religious relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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What does the 14th-century Persian poet of Shiraz, Hafez, mean by Rendi.  What does his poetry tell us about hypocrisy -- social, political and religious -- in the poet's era and his feelings about the official representatives of religion and state?

Ghazal parti, also called Ghazal parti utara, denotes an event, a group of performers playing music, acting and dancing, as well as a repertoire. This paper is to introduce some features of this genre that is found in Penang, Kedah and Perak. In result, a discussion of concepts should help to find a more differentiated view on performance genres that evolved as entertainment among the Malay population in the region and shaped a distinct perception of Malay performance culture.

Öz
Edebî metinlere uygulanan farklı analiz metotları metinlerdeki edebî değeri ortaya koyma hususunda önemli bir yere sahiptir. Bu durumun bir sonucu olarak, son zamanlarda, edebiyat metinlerinde sanatsal değeri bulma ve metni çözümleme konusunda analiz metotları önemli bir rol oynamaya başlamıştır. Farklı disiplinlerden gelen ve farklı kuramsal arka planlara sahip araştırmacılar, edebî metinlere farklı yönlerden yaklaşarak, okuyucunun konuya ilişkin farklı bakış açıları geliştirmesi yolunda önemli yaklaşımlar getirmişlerdir. Edebî metinlerde, metnin anlam katmanlarını inceleyen ve metnin büyüsünü araştıran yaklaşımlardan bir tanesi de ontolojik analiz yöntemidir.
Bu çalışmada, edebî metinleri varlığın katmanlarının temelinde inceleyen ontolojik analiz metodu hakkında özetleyici mahiyette bilgi verildikten sonra, Nâbî’nin “gelür gider” redifli gazeli ifade, anlam, obje ve kader basamakları dikkate alınarak ontolojik analiz yöntemiyle yorumlanmıştır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Divan Şiiri, Nâbî, Gazel, Ontolojik Analiz Metodu.

Abstract
The different analysis methods applied to literary text has an important place about reveal the value of literary texts. As a result of this condition, recently, analysis methods has begun toplay an important role on the literary texts about the analyzing of the text and finding artistic value of text. Researchers who coming from different disciplines and having different theoretical backgrounds, have brought different perspectives in the manner of improve the different perspectives of reader on the issue there by approach literary texts in different ways. In the literary texts,  one of the approaches to examining in sememic stratum of text and the investigating on the magic of the text, is ontological analysis method, too.
In this study, after giving summariser information about the ontological analysis method which investigates on the basis of these memic stratum of literary texts, Nâbî’s ghazal rhyme with “gelür gider” was interpreted with Ontological Analysis Method taking account of expression, meaning, object and fate layers.
Keywords: Divan Poetry, Nâbî, Ghazal, Ontological Analysis Method.

Odia Ghazal, unlike ghazals in Urdu and other Indian languages, was a twentieth century phenomenon, with no links to  Urdu and Islam culture. In fact, it was started as a musical experiment by an influential musician of Odisha.  The paper examines what are the factors that made it a surviving genre, despite little appreciation of what a ghazal is by general Odia music listeners.

This self-narrative examines the various engagements that changed  this researcher from being an ill person to exploring her musical and creative self. This article follows the method of auto-ethnographic inquiry in which evidences from  personal history, which coincided with 18 years  with bipolar disorder is shared from internet sites by the researcher, where such links are in a public domain, for anyone to access. In this span of time, she worked with many  aspects of music, to the point that from a state of emotional chaos there emerged an order. Examining creativity as an idea and corroborating from Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration, this article illustrates how the current researcher is no longer someone living with a serious mental illness, but a person who got healed and became an artist, researcher and entrepreneur. While some of this is ascribed to the divergent thinking that is attributed to bipolar disorder, she  explicates how one musical engagement led to another and brought about her recovery, though none of it had started with a therapeutic goal. What constitutes recovery in mental illness is also elaborated .

Sana'i of Ghazna (d. 525/1131) is the first Persian poet whose corpus of poetry includes a large number of ghazals (approximately 450), and for this reason, he has been known as the "father of the ghazal," the primary lyric form of Persian poetry. The question of the organic unity or structural coherence of individual ghazals and of the generic ghazal, specifically as epitomized in the Divan of Hafez, is one of the most problematized questions in the study of Persian literature. However, none of the proposals so far offered by scholars have satisfactorily accounted for how and what meaning inheres in the ghazal. By focussing on the origins and early history of the genre, as reflected in the ghazals of Sana'i, this study proposes new critical approaches to the generic conventions of the ghazal and the process by which the conventional symbols of the genre acquired specific meanings, depending on the textual communities to which they were addressed and the manner in which they were performed.

This dissertation traces the etymology of the word gazal, explores the historical development of the ghazal as a genre, and emphasizes its origins as a performance and musical art form. Sana'i's life, the various audiences for which his poetry was performed, and the socio-cultural factors which converged to replace the qasideh with the ghazal as the pre-eminent genre of Persian literature, are next examined. Because the textual history of Sana'i's poetry is both complex and suspect, Persian codicology; the transmission history of three representative texts from various genres of Persian poetry; the question of the social uses of manuscripts; and the contribution of the bibliographic codes of manuscripts to the "meaning" of the texts that they inscribe; are all addressed. To better illustrate the complex interplay of meaning and form, fifty of Sana'i's ghazals have been selected and categorized according to ten distinct sub-genres, topoi or moods. The Persian text of these poems, based upon the edition of Modarres-e Razavi and two of the oldest manuscripts of Sana'i's Divan, is presented with an English translation, an explication de texte, a discussion of the iconology and typography of the specific sub-genre, as well as an analysis of the form and structure of the poems.

This dissertation won the Foundation of Iranian Studies Best Dissertation of the Year award for 1995:  https://fis-iran.org/fa/programs/dissertationaward/winners

Ibn Yamin who is one of the significant poets of Persian literature was born in Faryûmad, a province of Beyhak. The poet who read poems since he was a little child attended the notable gatherings of the period and sang praises to them. Ibn Yamin sang his poems with fluent, simple and clear language; and avoided confusing words and noun phrases. Ibn Yamin who used Horasan dialect became popular with his fragments about social and moral subjects though he was successful at writing different types of poetry such as eulogies, ghazals and rubaie.
In this study, Ibn Yamîn’s ghazals in his Diwan have been analyzed by translating them from Persina to Turkish. Flowers mentioned in the odes such as rose, daffodil, jasmine, tulip, lotus, violet; trees such as cypress, willow and plane tree; fruits such as apple and quince have been determined, information has been given; noun phrases made with these flowers, trees and fruits, their meanings and various elements with these have been presented to the attention of the readers.

In Urdu poetry, one finds numerous references to images such as roses, birds, gardens, mirrors, swords, and religious symbols. One of the more interesting of these is the mirror. Upon examining couplets in which the poet makes reference to mirrors, we see certain themes based around criticism and examination of the self, khudi (‫,ددى‬ ख़ु दी), for which the mirror is a metaphor or a device with which to make indirect observations about human foibles, just as the mirror itself reflects indirect images. The following couplets are cited from ghazals, a genre of Urdu poetry, by well-known Indian and Pakistani poets. They demonstrate the use of the mirror in a variety of ways, but in whichever way the poet uses it, the couplets give us a message upon which to pause and reflect. The word reflections in the title of this essay can be interpreted in two ways. It can mean either musings or images. Maybe the reflection is the reality of what others see rather than what we perceive ourselves to be. Do the poets who wrote these couplets suggest that we should reflect on our own reflection, on what our true self is? If so, we must be sure that the surface of the mirror is not distorted. When we look into the mirror, how do we see ourselves? The answer may be found in the following couplets, which reflect upon the issues of vanity, criticism, and reality. While the primary function of a mirror is utilitarian in that it allows us to see how we look, for some, as Nizam Shampuri points out, it is more reflective of our vanities. It is doubly useful since while we are absorbed in looking at ourselves, it allows us to confirm that others are not watching us while we are engrossed in our vain behavior.

AbstrAct: This article aims to get at the voice of Ghanī Kashmīrī (d. 1669), the most famous poet of the Persian language ghazal from Kashmir and one of the foremost practitioners of the early modern ghazal style that called itself Speaking the Fresh or Speaking Anew. 1 Literary studies recognizes " voice " as designating the relationship between the narrator or narrators and their diegetic universe or universes, between a tale's teller(s) and the tale-world(s). 2 It is only by specifying the logic of these relations that we may then specify the overarching logic of an author's voice. In the generic context of the pre-nineteenth-century Persian ghazal, voice designates the relations between the many personae the speaker might adopt and the topoi (maḍmūn, pl. maḍāmīn) he adapts. We judge the attitude he takes toward these personae on the basis of the tropes or figures of speech he uses because they signal the degree and quality of his adaptations of them. In the early modern Persian ghazal, more than any other period in Persian literary history, these tropes and the metaphors and syntactical patterns they are embedded in signal a reflexive distance between the poet and his personae.

When American missionaries from the Methodist Episcopal Church arrived in India in the middle of the nineteenth century, they very soon published hymn-books to aid the Christian church in worship. But these publications were not solely the product of American Methodists nor simply the collection of foreign songs and music translated into Urdu. Rather, successive editions demonstrate the increasing participation of both foreigners and Indians, of missionaries from various denominations, of both men and women, and of even those not yet baptised as Christians. The tunes and poetry included were in both European and Indian forms. This hybrid nature is particularly apparent by the end of the century when the Methodist press published a hymn-book containing ghazals and bhajans in addition to hymns and Sunday school songs. The inclusion of a separate section of ghazals was evidence of the influence of the Muslim culture on the worship of Christians in North India. This mixing of cultures w...

This is a pre-publication form of a paper that attempts to reconstruct the canon of Persian poetry as it was generally understood about six centuries after poets began writing down their compositions in the late 9th century CE.  Ultimately, it is an attempt to understand the extent to which 15th-century Persian poets read and were inspired by earlier poets writing in older styles.  Simply put, what was considered "old-fashioned" in the 15th century: whose poetry was thought to be modern and part of the style current among poets in the later Timurid period, and which "oldies" poets could still be regularly read and deeply appreciated?
Special attention is given to the ghazal, through the works of Abd al-Rahman Jami and Ali-Shir Nava'i (Fani), who often indicate which poet they are inspired by or imitating in a given ghazal.  Jami's Baharistan and its chapter on the history of Persian poetry is also analyzed, side-by-side with Dawlatshah-i Samarqandi's Lives of the Poets.  Even when poets and litterateurs of the Timurid era write literary histories of Persian poetry, they do not seem to have extensive material from earlier poets -- typically not full divans, and often just a few anthologized poems.  They do, however, have a distilled sense of what each poet's particular strengths and weaknesses were - that is to say, there is a well-established reception history, and poets knew what to think about earlier poets, even poets who were barely read.
Spoiler alert:  Timurid poets did not seem to spend much time reading 9th- and 10th-c Persian poets; even 11th- and 12th-century poets are respected at a distance.  Timurid poets and their stylistic affinities in the ghazal do not go much further back than Sa`di, but focus in particular on Amir Khosrow and Hafez.  In the Masnavi form, Jami has his eye on Nezami and Amir Khosrow, as well as Mawlana and Sana'i, and seems to want to outdo his predecessors in the number of poems and the variety of forms/genres he writes in. 
This article appears in a large volume studying the reception of Jami in a magnificently international context (Persian, Arabic, Chinese, Georgian, Malay, Pashto, Sanskrit, Urdu, Turkish, and Bengali).  While my article looks at Jami's reception of the Persian poetic past, others look at the reception of Jami, in Persian and in many many other languages and traditions.
I drew up a chart of poets who composed poems or prose works that mention earlier poets.  This chart could not be included by the publisher in the book, because it would not display in a meaningful form.  Not to worry, as the chart displays well on the internet in pdf form, and is available here for download for free:
https://figshare.com/articles/Lewis_Catalogues_of_Poets_table_15_3/7212176