Persian Lyric Poetry in the Classical Era, 800-1500: Ghazals, Panegyrics and Quatrains

A History of Persian Literature Vol. II

Ehsan Yarshater, Ehsan Yarshater

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781786726605
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

The second volume in this series presents the reader with an extensive study of some major genres of Persian poetry from the first centuries after the rise of Islam to the end of the Timurid era and the inauguration of Safavid rule in the beginning of the sixteenth century. The authors explore the development of poetic genres, from the panegyric (qaside), to short lyrical poems (ghazal), and the quatrains (roba'i), tracing the stylistic evolution of Persian poetry up to 1500 and examine the vital role of these poetic forms within the rich landscape of Persian literature.

CHAPTER 1

THE PANEGYRICAL QASIDE—
A BRIEF HISTORICAL PREVIEW

J. T. P. DE BRUIJN

The qaside is a fundamental poetical form in Persian literature. Other lyrical forms have usually been defined as derivates of the qaside, particularly with regard to its main prosodic feature, the monorhyme pattern. Notwithstanding this central role, the qaside is also the form that is most closely linked to its historical predecessor, the Arabic qaside. The Bedouin Arab poets of pre-Islamic times had already used it as their most developed type of poetry. After the rise of Islam, it was taken over, with most of its characteristic features, and refined in literary circles of urban society in all Arabic speaking lands in the Middle East and as far west as the Maghreb and Andalusia. The qaside has survived into modern times, in spite of the rise of new forms in Arabic poetry.

According to a frequently proposed etymology, the qaside is a poem written “with a specific purpose,” insofar as the term is thought to have been derived from the Arabic root q-a-ṣ-d, meaning, among other things, “to be headed for” or “earmarked for.” This not only refers to the quest motif of the poet as he travels through the desert in search of his beloved—a frequent feature of the pre-Islamic qaside—but also more specifically to the extra-literary purpose it serves as a means of drawing the attention of the addressee, beseeching this person to fulfill the poet’s wishes. In later centuries, when the qaside had moved on from the desert tents of the Bedouins to the mansions and palaces of the cities, the function of the poem as a means to flatter a patron remained intact. It became the most appropriate form for court poetry.

The Islamized Persian rulers mostly chose to style their court rituals on the basis of elaborate conventions inherited from, or attributed to, pre-Islamic Iranian kings. It seems certain that some kind of oral minstrel poetry set to music was a part of courtly entertainment in the pre-Islamic Persian court.¹ However, it is doubtful if any form of immediate address to the royal patron—an essential component of the Arabic qaside—was in use at the Sasanid court. In the rare references to the origins of Persian Islamic poetry, the assumption is that at the genesis of the Persian panegyric qaside, there was a “translation” (both in a cultural and in a linguistic sense) from the Arabic tradition.²

1. The Qaside in the Samanid Era (819–1005)

The semi-independent emirates of eastern Persia that emerged in the ninth and tenth centuries recognized the great advantages of poets who would compose eulogies in the vernacular through which the name and fame of their patrons would spread. It may be that from the beginning, these poems were put into writing, as was the case with Arabic poems of the same period. However, frequent invasions by nomadic tribes, the rise and fall of dynasties, and periods of devastation may have contributed to the destruction of much of the poetry composed at these early Persian courts. But the loss of almost the entire poetical corpus of the tenth century CE cannot have been caused solely by historical events. To a large extent, it must also be attributed to changes in literary appreciation and taste that took place in the course of subsequent centuries. In modern literary histories of Persia, this shift has been described in terms of a transition from a comparatively simple “style of Khorasan” (sabk-e Khorâsâni) to the more elaborate and sophisticated “style of Erâq” (sabk-e Erâqi).³ Although this was a gradual process, it must have had, at an early date, an adverse impact on the prospects of survival for the poetry of the Samanid era, discouraging its retention in living memory and diminishing its chances of being copied. Eventually, no more than stray lines, preserved accidentally in lexicographical sources such as Asadi’s Loghat-e fors assembled in the mid-eleventh century, or anthologies such as Owfi’s Lobâb al-albâb from the early thirteenth century, could survive. It is nearly always impossible to say which type of poems these fragments represent. Although the poetry written for the Samanids who reigned over a fairly extensive state in Transoxiana and Khorasan has survived to a considerable extent, there are only a few more or less complete qasides from this period still extant.

Rudaki. Abu Abdallâh Jaʿfar Rudaki was the leading court poet under Samanid emir Nasr II (r. 914–43). He is generally acknowledged as the first great Persian poet, but unfortunately the passage of time has not spared his works. Nevertheless, the fragments assembled by modern scholars show that he was a prolific and versatile poet who could handle various poetic forms. According to legend, he was blind from birth and was a fine lute player. His musical accomplishments indicate that he was still close to the ancient Persian tradition that did not yet differentiate between the art of the poet and that of the minstrel.

It seems likely that during his lifetime, and for a short while afterwards, he was regarded as a celebrated poet and his poems were assembled in a divan; but if so, the tome has been irretrievably lost. The Divân-e Rudaki that is extant in some manuscripts, and has even been printed as such, is in fact a collection of poems by the eleventh-century poet Qatrân.⁴ Only one more or less complete qaside by Rudaki has survived, because it was cited in full by an anonymous historian of the Sistan province with a report of the occasion for which it was written.⁵ It was intended to be dispatched with a caravan laden with presents sent by Rudaki’s patron Nasr b. Ahmad (r. 914–43) to his governor in Sistan, Abu Jaʿfar, who had chastised one of the emir’s enemies. Among the gifts was a sealed bowl of wine; this inspired the poet Rudaki to open his poem with a long prologue on the subject of viniculture, fancifully depicting how the “children”—the grapes—of the “mother” vine are maltreated and incarcerated so as to produce a sparkling wine.

Mâdar-e mey-râ bekard bâyad qorbân

Bachche-ye u-râ gereft-o kard be-zendân

Bachche-ye u-râ az-u gereft nadâni

Tâ-sh nakubi nokhost-o z-u nakashi jân

Joz ke nebâshad halâl dur bekardan

Bachche-ye kuchek ze-shir-e mâdar-o pestân

Tâ nakh^worad shir-e haft mah be-tamâmi

Az sar-e ordibehesht tâ bon-e âbân

Ângah shâyad ze-ruy-e din-o rah-e dâd

Bachche be zendân-e tang-o mâdar qorbân

Chun besepâri be-habs bachche-ye u-râ

Haft shabânruz khire mânad-o heyrân

Bâz chu âyad be-hush-o hâl bebinad

Jush bar ârad benâlad az del-e suzân

It behoves thee to sacrifice the mother of wine [the vine]

To seize her daughter and throw her into prison.

Thou canst not take her daughter away from her

Without first striking the mother and taking away her soul.

Only it is not lawful to take away

A little child from its mother’s milk and breasts,

Until it has drunk that milk for full seven months

From the end of Ardibehesht to the beginning of Âbân.⁶

Then [it is lawful] according to the tenets of Religion and the ways of Justice

[To set] the child in a narrow prison and sacrifice the mother.

When you confine her child to prison

For seven days and nights the child is stupefied and bewildered.

When it comes to its senses, and sees its condition

It seethes and sighs from [the depths of] its burning heart.

Rudaki goes on to describe the fermentation of the wine, comparing the process to the purification of gold and to the behavior of an enraged (mast, literally “drunk”) camel. Dur...