Persian Poetry

Persian poets since Rūdakī have drawn on the letter symbolism of the Perso-Arabic alphabet. Visually, its characters have attracted poets who find the likeness of the beloved in their shapes. Spiritually, it enjoys a special status as the language of the Koran and therefore, in the eyes of some, God. Classical Persian lyric poetry combined these aesthetic and religious connotations, and as one of the foremost voices in that tradition, Ḥāfiẓ was no exception. But a review of the extant literature shows that, as a trope, letter symbolism has been largely overlooked when compared with wine, the moth, or the candle. Through a comprehensive study of the let-ters' use in Ḥāfiẓ's dīvān, this article argues that, by playing with particular letters' connotations, or punning on their physical shapes and homographs, Ḥāfiẓ invokes disparate meanings, only to then reveal their underlying unity, in the process affirming the affinity between love and language, the beloved and the divine.

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.

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""""""On Not Translating Hafiz
Dick Davis, Ohio State University
Tr. Behnam Mizababazadeh & Mostafa Hosseini
In this paper Dick Davis tries to explain the reasons behind the  difficulty in translating classical Persian poetry in general and Hafiz in  particular. He divides the problems into two categories: the linguistic  and the cultural problems. Lack of exact synonyms especially for
idioms, puns and lack of rhyme in English belong to the first category.  The lore of Shi’i Islam, the prevalence of the cult of pederasty in  Persian poetry, difference in the pattern of the poems and the language of panegyric in Persian poetry belong to the second category. Davis concludes his paper with the following sentences:  And this is why the poets who seem to develop a poetry’s capabilities most tellingly, who seem to their linguistic communities to be the most “poetic” of all, are often precisely those whom it is most difficult to bring over into  another language. Certainly, in Persian literature, the example of Hafiz, and  of the numerous poor poet-translators who metaphorically lie bleeding at  his feet, would seem to bear this out. (B. M. & M. H.)
Keywords: Hafiz, Dick Davis, classical Persian poetry, translation of
poetry, untranslatability of poetry. """"""

The manuscript Masnavi-ye Golkošti-ye Mirnejāt was written by Mirnejāt at the end of the period of Šāh Soleymān Safavid (1666-1694 C.E.) or at the beginning of the era of the period of Šāh Soltān Hosseyn Safavid (1694-1722 C.E.). This manuscript is a poetic form called masnavi (verses that rhyme).  The author was Mir Abodola'āl, who was also called Mirnejāt. His father was a famed accountant in the period of Šāh Soleymān Safavid.  Mirnejāt was a writer and accountant of the royal office, who was appointed a royal librarian during the period of Šāh Soltān Hosseyn Safavid.  Mirnejāt presented his poems in front of Šāh Soleymān and won many prizes. A characteristic of Mir Nejāt’s poems is the fact that they show a clear mastery and understanding of the wrestling terms used in that period. The Masnavi-ye Golkošti-ye Mirnejāt contains 268 rhyming couplets.  It is evident that Mirnejāt practiced wrestling and knew the techniques (Beyzāi Kāšāni, 2003/1382:393-394, 396 and Abbāsi, 1995/1374:169).

در این نقد دکتر نادر ابراهیمیان بررسی کاملی از کارنامه ی ادبی رُزا جمالی را به دست خواننده می دهد. در این مقاله شرح حالی ازآثار او، زمان انتشار آن ها و بازخورد آن ها در جامعه ی ادبی ایران داده شده است و به دوره های مختلف شعری او پرداخته است. به مضامین و سبک کار او توجه شده و منتقد به موشکافی این آثار پرداخته است.

Rosa Jamali (Born 1977) is an eminent Iranian poet, playwright, and translator with prolific works.
She studied Drama & Literature at the Art University of Tehran and holds a Master's degree in English literature from TEHRAN University. Jamali is acknowledged as the most influential and pioneering poet of Iran since the 90s. Her works have opened new landscapes and possibilities to Persian contemporary poetry. In her early works; she describes a surreal world in which words have lost their meanings and have become jumbled objects within contemporary everyday life. She has adapted a kind of music from classical Persian poetry and imbued it with the natural cadences of speech, juxtaposing long and short sentences. In her recent poems, she creates some layers of intertextuality with Persian Mythology and mysticism.
Her poems have always been strictly engaged with the forms and conscious of styles in poetics, digressing in between various literary styles and traditions. experiencing condensed and language-based imagery taking its inspiration from the style of visionary writings of Persian transcendentalists.
She is also a very prolific translator with many books and anthologies of Anglophone poets translated into Persian.
Her seminal work; MAKING COFFEE TO RUN A CRIME STORY is a re-reading of male-dominated
classic love-hate poems, presented in a polyphonic dramatic structure. It creates
a post-modern narrative and focuses on misogyny and violence against women.
The style is fragmentary, with frequent changes in perspective and tone
depending on each episode's persona. The narrative techniques blend different
genres, such as scriptwriting, storytelling, folk plays, mourning passion pageant
plays, stand-up performances, performance poetry, and old epics. The refrains
and chorus recall Greek drama, featuring characters like Antigone or Medea who
defy the male-dominated society of ancient Greece. The poem also engages with
the portrayal of women in Sadegh Hedayat's literature, particularly the chopped off
woman in The Blind Owl; a major novella in contemporary Persian literature
known for its critical attitude towards women. Some parts of Jamali's poem are
narrated from the perspective of this very chopped-off woman.
THE SHADOW is a play by Rosa Jamali. The police are looking for a murderer, a
woman who has supposedly killed her husband. Later, the police find eleven
women who are quite alike. The setting is a room. Two women, dressed in black
and covering their hair with black headscarves, confront each other in one spot.
They were born on the same day and share the same name. They both married a
man named Parviz.
A challenge of identity forces them to kill each other. In the last scene, a third
woman, identical to the previous two, enters the same room and finds a piece of
paper which says: ‘The police have arrested 13 women who are quite alike, but
two have been found dead.'
Regarding the issues of women in Iran, THE SHADOW questions polygamy, which
is quite prevalent and legal, and intensifies women's obstacles in society.
‘Women against Women' is a frequent attitude taken by the male-dominated
society to suppress them. In terms of style, the play diverges between different
genres and can be categorized as absurd, tragicomedy, or crime.
GMT is one of her poems read in Postcolonial approach and discusses the wars of Middle East.
MY ROOTS and lots of her other poems are read in ecofeminism as environmentally friendly poetry.
Rosa Jamali has participated in so many poetry festivals and literary events worldwide. She is a Judge in a number of prestigious poetry Prizes inside the country and has written a number of scholarly articles on Poetry, Literary theory, and In her selection of essays titled "Revelations in the Wind", she discusses the Poetics of Persian Poetry.

European travel accounts have often been incorporated into scholarship on Safavid Iran as sources for historiography and ethnographic information. The study of previously underexplored travel narratives composed by Safavid Iranians, although outnumbered by European accounts, foregrounds Persian travel writing as a self-referential and self-reflective source for Safavid and Shi‘i historiography. The image of Iran in Safavid narratives of travels, none of which were destined for Europe, emerges in close encounters with Iran’s neighbours in the Muslim world and beyond. Safavid travel narratives, as the site of self-inscription, reveal how Iranians envisaged Iran and their identity in the course of their travels within and outside Iran. 

Ala Amjadi, Maryam

Conference: The Idea of Iran: The Second Safavid Century

Link: https://www.soas.ac.uk/lmei-cis/events/idea-of-iran/11may2019-the-idea-of-iran-the-second-safavid-century.html

―Abstract―



What is the secret of happiness? What is the nature of love? What makes us good hosts or good guests? What traits should we seek out in friends and seek to embody as friends ourselves? How should we approach the sensual beauties of this world—when do they induce us to error and when are they signs of God? The poets and bards of many traditions have long sought answers to such questions, but perhaps no culture has taken up this challenge with more passionate urgency than that of Persia, from the ninth century AD to modern-day Iran. These eleven centuries of poetic tradition include poets who have become well-known in the West, such as ‘Umar Khayyam, Rumi, and Hafiz, as well as many others whom Westerners have yet to discover. In Iran these poems remain part of everyday popular culture, with people of all classes and levels of education able to recite them from memory, even if they may not always be sure who the poets were, where they came from, or what precisely was the spiritual intent behind the verse.
In Persian Words of Wisdom, the US-based Iranian scholar Bahman Solati has compiled hundreds of examples reflecting his country’s religious and spiritual traditions, especially Shia branch of Islam and Islamic Sufism, but also the Baha’i and Zoroastrian faiths. This bilingual edition with his own English translations further illuminates the sometimes enigmatic poems with parallel Western proverbs, as well as comparison quotations from Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist scripture and secular sources ranging from Mark Twain to Dale Carnegie.
One of Solati’s goals in this anthology is to build a cultural bridge through poetry between the West and Iran, making these treasures of Persian culture more available both to Westerners generally and, most specifically, to young people of Iranian descent who have grown up in the English-speaking world, perhaps without fully understanding the wealth of their heritage. For them and all readers, this will be a book of discovery.

Published in Delhi
Rosa Jamali (Born 1977) is an Iranian poet, playwright, and translator. She studied Drama & Literature at the Art University of Tehran and holds a Master's degree in English literature from TEHRAN University. She has published volumes of poetry books . Her first book, "This Dead Body is Not an Apple, It is Either a Cucumber or a Pear”, was published in 1997, and opened new landscapes and possibilities to Persian contemporary poetry. Through broken syntax and word-play, she describes a surreal world in which words have lost their meanings and have become jumbled objects within contemporary everyday life. In her other collections, she adapted a kind of music from classical Persian poetry and imbued it with the natural cadences of speech, juxtaposing long and short sentences. In her recent poems, she creates some layers of intertextuality with Persian Mythology and mysticism. Since then she has created works that have always been strictly engaged with the forms and conscious of styles in poetics, digressing in between various literary styles and traditions. experiencing condensed and language-based imagery taking its inspiration from the style of visionary writings of Persian transcendentalists. She is also a very prolific translator with many books and anthologies of Anglophone poets translated into Persian. Rosa Jamali has participated in so many poetry festivals and literary events worldwide. She is a Judge in a number of prestigious poetry Prizes inside the country and has written a number of scholarly articles on Poetry, Literary theory, and Creative writing. Selection of her essays titled "Revelations in the Wind" discusses the Poetics of Persian Poetry.

Intendiamo aprire, con questo studio, una discussione sulla poetica e sulla filosofia della natura nell’opera di Mīrzā ‘Abd al-Qādir Bīdil (1644- 1720), il maggiore poeta di lingua persiana dell’India mughal, e nella sua scuola. Riprendendo alcune suggestioni di Alessandro Bausani, ormai risalenti a quasi sessant’anni fa, ci concentriamo qui in modo particolare sull’ecologia testuale e metaforica della nuvola (abr) e di alcune realtà fisiche a questa connessa, in modo particolare la bolla (ḥabāb), che si trasformano, nella lettura bideliana, in veri e propri specchi per una riflessione concettuale fondata sul metodo del taḥqīq, insieme “indagine” e “realizzazione”. Il principale testo di nostro inte- resse è un mathnawī relativamente breve, il Ṭūr-i maʿrifat (Sinai della conoscen- za), recentemente tradotto in italiano e tra le opere meno note del maestro di Patna: un vero e proprio safarnāma, o resoconto di viaggio, focalizzato esclusi- vamente sull’osservazione e la narrazione del paesaggio naturale dell’India del nord nel momento del monsone. A questo poema si affiancano, nell’analisi, al- cuni versi tratti dai ghazal di Bīdil e, soprattutto, dall’opera di due suoi discepoli krishnaiti, Amānat Rāy e Shivrām Dās Ḥayā (entrambi attivi nella prima metà del Settecento), che riprendono, nei loro versi persiani, la tematica naturale del maestro declinandola in chiave vedantica e devozionale.

This is the authorized Persian translation of Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, done by Hassan Lahouti in cooperation with the author.  First printing 1384 / 2006.  The late Hassan Lahouti was an accomplished translator of academic works from English to Persian, especially on the subject of Mowlana Jalal al-Din Rumi . This book is now in its fifth printing in Iran.
  The attached pdf contains the table of contents, the author's foreword to the Persian translation, and the Translator's preface.
ترجمه مرحوم حسن لاهوتی از کتاب فرانکلین لوئیس، مولانا: دیروز تا امروز، شرق تا غرب با مشورت مؤلف انجام شده است.  جناب لاهوتی مفقود مترجم زبردست بودند با معللومات مخصوصی درباره مولانا . این  پرونده  پی دی اف دارای فهرست مندرجات است همراه با "دیباچۀ مؤلف بر ترجمۀ فارسی" و "سخنی از مترجم

The full text is available here
http://kata.petra.ac.id/index.php/ing/article/view/18847

Death has always permeated human’s thoughts at all levels. This preoccupation with death is manifested in the realm of literature. John Donne is one of the artists whose obsession with death is universally recognized. The contemporary Iranian poet, Sohrab Sepehri in some of his poems employs the subject, too. Unlike Donne, Sepehri is not known as a ‘death poet.’ Although he lives in a turbulent period in the history of Iran, he is not influenced by his immediate condition. While the English poet is inconsistent in his treatment of death, Sepehri is consistent in his treatment of death. Sepehri’s consistency in the treatment of death has something to do with his religious beliefs. The reason behind Sepehri’s consistency in treating death as a positive phenomenon is his familiarity with the Islamic Sufism and eastern mysticisms.

The full text is available here
http://kata.petra.ac.id/index.php/ing/article/view/18851/18544

Many similar subjects can be traced in world literature; among them is nature since it belongs to man/nature binary opposition. The American poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) employs nature in his works. Throughout his works, the American writer discusses the affinity between man and nature, emphasizing how man takes advantage of it. The contemporary Iranian poet, Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980), also makes intensive use of nature in his poems; his interest in the subject increases along with his tendency to Buddhism. Sepehri is proficient in using nature either in philosophical or emotional issues. Due to the significance of nature in the works or the two figures, an ecocritical reading of them is not only applicable but unavoidable. This comparative study aims at investigating different approaches towards nature employed by the two poets, emphasizing their points of difference. Although both poets employ nature in their works with romantic tendencies, the postmodern environmental ethics of Sepehri is in direct contrast to the instrumental value viewpoint held by his American counterpart.

Comparative literature deals with the study of literature in the broadest possible framework--interlingual, intercultural and interdisciplinary. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882), an essayist, philosopher, and poet, was one of America’s most influential thinkers and indisputably the central figure of the American Renaissance of the mid-19th century. Sohrab Sepehri is a distinguished modern artist. Familiar with Buddhism, far eastern mysticisms, and western literary schools, he combines the eastern concepts with western techniques, thereby writing a kind of poetry unsurpassed in the history of Persian literature. 
    While the number of works written on the influence of Persia on Emerson and the similarity between the American figure and Persian thought is noteworthy, unfortunately very few comprehensive works are written to compare Emerson with a Persian literary figure and even worse is that just one is written to compare Emerson with Sepehri. Therefore the collection of comparative works written on Emerson and Sepehri lacks some comprehensive comparative works in English on the Persian poet and his American counterpart. The main intention in this study is to introduce Sepehri to non-Iranian audience, especially English-speakers, by means of comparing and contrasting him with Emerson, a figure highly reputed in the international level, especially in the English-speaking countries.
    Chapter one is introduction and review of literature. Chapter two is biography and works of Emerson and Sepehri. Chapter three is nature, death, literary theory, and the influence of Persian poetry on Emerson. Chapter four is nature, death, literary theory, and the influence of Persian poetry on Sepehri. The last chapter is a conclusion which summarizes the three previous chapters and compares and contrasts Emerson's literary theory, the influence of Persian poetry on him, and death and nature in Emerson's works, with the corresponding items in Sepehri.

ادبیات تطبیقی به مطالعه آثار ادبی از زبان ها و فرهنگ های متفاوت می پردازد. مقایسه آثار ادبی با دیگر محصولات فرهنگی نیز در این حیطه از مطالعات ادبی قرار می گیرد. رالف والدوامرسون (1882-1803) فیلسوف، شاعر، متفکر تاثیرگذار و بدون شک چهره ی شاخص مکتب تعالی گرایی آمریکا می باشد. وی از عقاید مذهبی و اجتماعی هم عصران خود جدایی گزید و فلسفه ی تعالی گرایی را تقویت کرد. این شخصیت بر بسیاری از  نویسندگان بعد از خود نیز تاثیر گذار بود. سهراب سپهری(1359-1307) ، هنرمند معاصر ایرانی، از بزرگان شعر نوی فارسی به شمار می رود و از نقاشان مطرح معاصر نیز می باشد. آشنایی وی با بودیسم، عرفان های شرقی و مکاتب ادبی غرب به وی کمک کرد تا مفاهیم شرقی را با تکنیک های غربی در هم بیامیزد و گونه ای از شعر را خلق کند که در تاریخ ادبیات فارسی بی سابقه است.
اگر چه پژوهش های قابل توجهی در مورد مشابهت آرای امرسون با اندیشه های ایرانی و تاثیر پذیری وی از این اندیشه ها صورت گرفته ولی متاسفانه در خصوص مقایسه ی این شخصیت با ادیبان ایرانی فعالیت چندانی نشده است. بنابراین خلاء عدم وجود پژوهش کافی در مقایسه ی امرسون و سپهری  در مجموعه آثار تطبیقی به زبان انگلیسی در مورد مقایسه ی امرسون با شخصیت های ایرانی احساس می شود. پایان نامه ی پیش رو گامی است کوچک در راستای پر کردن این خلاء. نویسنده می کوشد تا از طریق مقایسه ی سپهری با امرسون، این شخصیت ایرانی را به مخاطب جهانی، به ویژه خوانندگان انگلیسی زبان بشناساند. 
فصل نخست شامل مقدمه و پیشینه پژوهش می شود. فصل دوم به بررسی زندگی و آثار دو شخصیت می پردازد. فصل سوم دربردارنده نظریه ادبی، مرگ، طبیعت و تأثیر ادبیات فارسی بر امرسون می باشد. فصل بعد به همین موارد در شعر سپهری می پردازد. و در فصل پایانی مقایسه دو فصل پیش از آن به نتیجه گیری می انجامد.

Bayān al-Ḥaq Maḥmūd b. Abū al-Ḥassan b. Ḥusayn Nayshābūrī Ghaznavī (d. 521/1127) was a celebrated scholar and judge of his time and a Ghaznavid statesman, importantly during the reign of Sultan Yamīn al-Dawlah Bahrāmshāh (511-552/1117-1157) and the father of Abū Jaʽfar Muʽīn al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd Nayshābūrī, the author of Tafsīr Baṣāʽir Yamīnī. His extant works include Ījāz al-Bayān ʽan Maʽānī al-Qurʽān, Bāhir al-Bayān fī Maʽānī Mushkilāt al-Qurʽān, and Jumal al-Gharāʽib fī Tafsīr Gharīb al-Ḥadīth wa Khalq al-Insān. In the present article, a detailed study of Jumal al-Gharāʽib will follow a brief biography of Nayshābūrī, and then Persian verse quotations in the commentary will be dealt with.
Khalq al-Insān (Creation of the Human Being) is a detailed commentary on the Quranic verse “and within your souls [are signs for those possessing certainty] Do you not then behold?” (al-Dhārīyāt, verse 21). The commentary is arranged in 100 sessions, the first fifty sessions dealing with human organs (khalq al-Insān) and the second fifty sessions dealing with human temperament and character. Writing books of the khalq al-Insān type and enumerating different names of human organs were commonplace among early writers who used the word khalq as an equivalent of human or animal organs. However, the commentary Khalq al-Insān by Bayān al-Ḥaq, despite the title, cannot belong to this literary (and sometimes medical) genre. Although based on the same tradition, the book goes beyond the limits of the genre and begins to take on a life of its own. The author fuses this literary type with majlis nevīsī (session writing) into a new genre. We know that session writing was popular in the greater Khurāsān and other parts of the Islamic world in the middle centuries, and many literary, mystical, and exegetical sessions were written at the time.
Every session consists of a literary essay with its own taḥmīdīyah (conventional invocation and praise of God) and ṣalawātīyah (conventional salutation upon the prophet of Islam). In each session, the author first discusses generalities and theoretical considerations of the matter at hand followed by relevant hadiths, traditions, anecdotes, verses and sayings of Prophets, Companions, Sufis, philosophers, kings, viziers and literary scholars. The book is thus turned into a rich source of sayings from Sufis, mystics, pious men, together with Arabic verse quotations and anecdotes. Verse quotations are so numerous that they can form an important thematic collection in their own right.
Although no poetry has come down to us from Bayān al-Ḥaq, his writings testify to the fact that he was a man of letters and a literary scholar. That is perhaps why a great part of Khalq al-Insān is dedicated to poetry written by Arabic-language poets on different subjects. The author does not, however, limit himself to Arabic verses and avails himself of Persian verses as well when the occasion arises. The Persian verses, amounting to 97 bayts, were all written before 521/1127 which make them significant as literary fragments. Several of the verse lines have not been recorded in other sources, and different readings of verses already extant in other sources are sometimes provided or their writers identified. Bayān al-Ḥaq does not seem to be bound to mention the name of the poets from whom he quotes, but the few names he mentions indicate the importance of the verse lines, namely lines from Manṣūr b. ʽAlī Mantiqī Rāzī (d. around 367/978 to 380/990), Qāz̤ī Ṣāʽid (d. 431/1040) and Abu al-Qāsim Aḥmad b. Ḥasan Maymandī the Vizier (d. 424/1033). There are also 54 moral and wisdom verse quotations from the Shahnameh which shows Bayān al-Ḥaq’s mastery of the work. There are five other contemporary or earlier works in which verse lines from the Shahnameh are quoted (while quotations in Khalq al-Insān are much more significant). Khalq al-Insān is, however, the oldest Arabic source in which verse quotations from the Shahnameh can be found. The quotation of two lāsacawī bayts is also important because no lāscuwī verse has been available till now. Lāsacawī, like khusravānī, was a kind of syllabic poem or a musical mode.
Access to lost books and quotes from them is another feature of Khalq al-Insān, quotes from lost books like Ibn Muqaffa’s Khudāynāmah, Sallāmī’s Akhbār Wulāti Khurāsān, and Abūzayd
Aḥmad b. Sahl Balkhī’s Al-Baḥth ʽan al-Taʽwīlāt.
Despite the importance of Khalq al-Insān, the book was not widely circulated and after around 900 years since its writing, except the author’s son, only three other writers have had access to the text and have quoted from it with citations: Sadīd al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad ‘Ufī (alive in 630/1233) in two of his books namely Nuzhah al-ʽUqūl fī Laṭāʽif al-Fuṣūl and Jawāmiʽ al-Ḥikāyāt wa Lawāmiʽ al-Riwāyāt, Siyyid ʽAlī Khān b. Aḥmad Madanī Shīrāzī (d. 1120/1708), with an interval of 5 centuries, and 2 centuries later Muḥammad b. ʽAlī Showkānī Yamanī (d. 1250/1834).
In the present article, Persian verses quoted in Khalq al-Insān are collected, edited, and collated with other sources. Persian phrases are also extracted from the book and reported at the end of the article.
Three extant copies of Khalq al-Insān are available: MS no. 10136 of the Islamic Consultative Assembly Library, MS no. 3526 kept in the Central Library of Astan Guds Razavi, and MS no. 2445 possessed by Dar al-Kutub of Cairo. The three copies consist, unfortunately, of the second book of Khalq al-Insān only, so the first fifty sessions of the book are not yet available.

God-Loving in the classical Persian Poetry (in Hungarian).

Publication: Tempevölgy. Kultúra - Művészet - Tudomány (Quarterly) IX. évf. 3 sz. (Vol 9 Nr. 3 = 3/2017) pp. 83–92.

Location: Balatonfüred

More Info: Original version of the lecture

Event Date: March 18, 2016

Organization: Balatonfüred Városért Közalapítvány

ISSN: 1789-9265

Love and beauty have been defining elements of Islam from its inception. While Sufism provides the most extensive discourse on love in the Islamic world, such discussions are but one dimension of an extensive love tradition. Many of the themes associated with the Sufi love tradition find direct reflections in the secular literary traditions of the Muslim world, particularly udhri ghazal poetry, where the beloved becomes the personification of the ideal and the lover is condemned to die in love. The heart is transformed by perceiving and contemplating God’s Beauty, being drawn to God’s Beauty, and conforming to or manifesting God’s Beauty. The relationship between the lover and the beloved is defined by beauty and love. As love pertains to the realm of eternity and lies beyond the realm of form and matter, it is an expression of the eternal relationship between the Divine and the human and thus extends beyond any one religion.

This piece for the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Literature, Vol. II, examines the life and works of Jalal al-din Rumi. It discusses key issues in the study of Mowlana/Rumi, and includes a description of the style and examples from each of his key pieces of writing. Target audience is undergraduates in world literature classes, graduate students in religious studies, and/or use by professors who wish to include Rumi in their syllabi. Resources for further study of Rumi are included in the references.

Brochure of an exhibition of textiles and related arts organized by The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., on view 7 November 1986 - 29 January 1987. Topics addressed: Meaning and Metaphor, Court and Commerce, Textiles and Trade, Textiles and Technology, Commodity and Consumption, Pasture and Product.

"Study of Rumi's circle (his father, his teacher Borhan al-Din, Shams of Tabriz, Salah al-Din Zarkub, Hosam al-Din Chelebi and Sultan Valad), his life, his poetry, his teachings and his reception history around the world.  Winner of the British-Kuwaiti Friendship Prize for 2001.
Translations of this book have been published as:
two in Persian: (Mowlana: Diruz ta emruz, sharq ta gharb. Tehran: Nashr-e Namak, translated by Hassan Lahouti  &  as Mowlavi:  Diruz o emruz, sharq o gharb.  Tehran: Nashr-e Saless, translated by F. Farahmandfar)
Turkish (http://www.kabalciyayinevi.com/kitap.asp?KitapId=337)
Danish (http://www.forlagetvandkunsten.dk/107561/)"
Arabic (  http://syrbook.gov.sy/index.php?ACT=2&Cid=4&id=151&Mod=2
                http://syrbook.gov.sy/index.php?ACT=2&Cid=4&id=152&Mod=2 ) 
See on the Publisher's Website:  https://oneworld-publications.com/rumi-past-and-present-east-and-west-pb.html

The attached file contains: Table of Contents and preface to the 2008 revised edition

E. Shavarebi (ed.), Мунҷики Тирмизӣ, Деван: Ашъори Пароканда [Monjik-i Tirmizī, Divān: Collected Poems], Tajik transl. by R. Abdulloev, Tashkent: Yangi Nashr, 2016.

A Tajik transliteration of my Persian edition of the Divan-e Monjik-e Termezi (Tehran: Miras-e Maktoob, 2012), with an introduction in Uzbek by Ramazon Abdulloev.

در شعرهای کتاب "هفتاد سنگ قبر"، رویایی مرگ را دستمایه ای قرار داده است برای یادآوری آنچه بر آدمی گذشته است که بعد آخرالزمانی هستی را به رخ می کشد. انگار شاعر می خواهد ارواح مردگان جهان را احضار کند. در رستاخیزی که تصویری عام از روز قیامت را تداعی می کند به بررسی اعمال یکایک این مردگان می اندیشد. به کردار، شیوه ی زندگی و گذشته ی آن ها. کتاب پر است از اسامی شهرها، مکان ها، تاریخ و جغرافیا که پاره ای از اسامی مذهبی هستند و پاره ای با تاریخ و دیگر آیین های دیرینه و باستانی ارتباطی توامان دارند. شاید "هفتاد سنگ قبر" را متنی بین ادیان و ادبیات دانست. دایره المعارفی از  اسامی، عناوین تاریخی، اساطیری پدید آورده است که شاعر به مدد این شخصیت ها و مکان های ازلی- ابدی جهان، تاریخ را برای شهادت خود به گواه می گیرد. گویی هزار سال زیسته، در تمام این مکان ها زندگی کرده و با تمام این آدم ها روبرو بوده است. انگار روایتگر این شعرها عمری به اندازه ی تاریخ بشر داشته و از کنه کنه هستی خبردار بوده است.

This article approaches Saʿdi's little-studied panegyric production. The contribution focuses on an encomiastic modality that is almost completely neglected when it comes to the study of the Persian qasida as a performative text that enacts the political , ethical, and aesthetic values of the court. This modality is primarily amatory, and combines the standard erotic discourse of the Ghaznavids and late Saljuq poems of praise with Saʿdi's original theo-erotic lyricism, which is mostly known through his ghazals. This critical approach will unfold by unearthing its underlying functions in a broad variety of qasidas that relate to the courtly conversations between Saʿdi and two young rulers who patronized the majority of Saʿdi's literary activities: the Salghurid prince Saʿd b. Abi Bakr (d.1260), and the minister of finances (sāheb divān) of the Il-khanid empire, Shams al-Din Jovayni (d. 1284).

Safavid-Ottoman encounters in Persian travel texts, none of which explore Europe, transcend the one-dimensional accounts of Shiite-Sunni rivalry often propagated in historical, jurisprudential, and polemical texts, and instead offer more complex manners of theorizing diverse and first-hand encounters between Safavid and Ottoman subjects. Sunni travelers, who moved from Iran to Mecca and beyond, tend to reveal more affinity with the Ottoman Empire and Ottoman sultans, rather than the Safavid shahs, as the embodiment of Shiite Iran. By decoding these predominantly understudied and overlooked travel texts—particularly those composed in verse—as self-documented attempts at self-inscriptions, scholars might better assess how Safavid Shiite and Sunni travel writers navigate their selfhood and envision the Ottomans as they move away from Safavid Iran towards the Ottoman realms.

Access: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jottturstuass.7.2.08?refreqid=excelsior%3Aca323496b27399c00a4f042b4820c9b2&seq=1

Citation:

Ala Amjadi, Maryam. “Safavid-Ottoman Encounters in Persian Travel Prose and Poetry (1505–1741).” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, vol. 7, no. 2, 2020, pp. 115–131.

Author: Domenico Ingenito
Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry explores the relationship between sexuality, politics, and spirituality in the lyrics of Saʿdi Shirazi (d. 1292 CE), one of the most revered masters of classical Persian literature. Relying on a variety of sources, including unstudied manuscripts, Domenico Ingenito presents the so-called “inimitable smoothness” of Saʿdi’s lyric style as a serene yet multifaceted window into the uncanny beauty of the world, the human body, and the realm of the unseen.

The book constitutes the first attempt to study Sa‘di’s lyric meditations on beauty in the context of the major artistic, scientific and intellectual trends of his time. By charting unexplored connections between Islamic philosophy and mysticism, obscene verses and courtly ideals of love, Ingenito approaches Sa‘di’s literary genius from the perspective of sacred homoeroticism and the psychology of performative lyricism in their historical context.

https://brill.com/view/title/57745

An eagle reaching the end of his life seeks the advice of a crow regarding how to elongate his life. What he hears is not what he expects to hear. So they part.
See On Academia:  https://www.academia.edu/video/jW4Xz1 or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVLjMmB-BxQ&t=56s

This article appears in a large-format edited book published in conjunction with an international exhibition of Persian, Mughal, and Ottoman manuscripts from the collections of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. My article engages with ʿAṭṭār’s Conference of the Birds (Manṭeq al-ṭayr), initially through a description of the various valleys through which the world’s birds must pass, according to ʿAṭṭār’s frame-story, so as to arrive at union with the Simurgh, an allegorical representation of the Divinity. Apart from ʿAṭṭār’s poetic text, my account draws on illuminated manuscript depictions of ʿAṭṭār and his characters (e.g. MSS. Ouseley Add. 24, fol. 65v & Elliott 246, fol. 25v). I then underline certain revealing narratival correspondences among ʿAṭṭār’s epic and later European works such as The Parliament of Fowls of Chaucer (c. 1343-1400), Itinerarium Mentis in Deum of Bonaventure (1221-1274), and Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). I conclude with a discussion of the historical possibility of Islamic sources (such as the Prophet Muḥammad’s Night Journey (Isrāʾ) or Ascent (Miʿrāj) as well as the Manṭeq al-ṭayr itself) underpinning these Christian works.

In 1979, in relation to understanding the poetry of Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, known as Ḥāfiẓ-i Shīrāzī, I proposed that in the Ṣūfic sonnets of Ḥāfiz, form was as important as meaning.  I also added that when interpreting those pieces one needs more than a mere knowledge of Persian and assistance from medieval and modern dictionaries. Those poems need to be interpreted in the philosophical and/or Ṣūfic contexts in which they have been composed. In that article, and another one called "Hafiz and the Sufic Ghazal," I analyzed four sonnets, each dealing with a particular aspect of the Ṣūfic way of life.  In 2008, I used the same technic and argument in presenting an analysis of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī's "Az jamādī mordamu nāmī shodam."
In the analysis of the Ṣūfic poem of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī that follows, I intend to follow the same line of argument as in the previous articles and show that like Ḥāfiz and Rūmī, Jāmī, too, expresses his sublime thoughts using powerful Ṣūfic imagery. There is, however, a major difference. In Jāmī content supersedes form. In other words, Jāmī pays more attention to the correct development of the idea that he presents than to the way in which the idea is presented. Thus, while Ḥāfiz's ghazals are memorized and recited as exemplary pieces of poetry by almost everyone in the Persian-speaking world, Jāmī's poetry does not evoke similar reactions. It does, however, leave an indelible mark on the reader who can follow his thoughts.