Persian Prose

A History of Persian Literature, Vol V

Bo Utas, Bo Utas

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780755617814
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Volume V of A History of Persian Literature presents a broad survey of Persian prose: from biographical, historiographical, and didactic prose, to scientific manuals and works of popular prose fiction. It analyzes the rhetorical devices employed by writers in different periods in their philosophical and political discourse; or when their aim is primarily to entertain rather than to instruct, the chapters describe different techniques used to transform old stories and familiar tales into novel versions to entice their audience. Many of the texts in prose cited in the volume share a wealth of common lore and literary allusions with Persian poetry. Prose and poetry frequently appear on the same page in tandem. In different ways, therefore, this creative interplay demonstrates the perennial significance of intertextuality, from the earliest times to the present; and help us in the process to further our understanding and enhance our enjoyment of Persian literature in its different manifestations throughout history

CHAPTER 1

A MEDIEVAL NEXUS: LOCATING ENSHÂ’ AND ITS ONTOLOGY IN THE PERSIANATE INTELLECTUAL TRADITION, 1000–1500

COLIN MITCHELL

Epistolography occupied a profound epistemological space during a time of significant change in the medieval Persianate world. The New Persian renaissance, beginning in the east under the Samanids and the Ghaznavids, was a slow, amalgamative process whereby regimented traditions in Arabic prose and poetry were absorbed and re-articulated by Iranian polylingual and polymathic literati. While Persian poetry enjoyed fluorescence thanks to Ferdowsi, Nezâmi, and Anvari, the prose tradition was equally enlivened thanks in part to the popularity of genres like mirrors-for-princes, fables, and court chronicles. This literary boom was in no small way a reflection of the dominant role played by the families of the Persian “bureaucrat-scholars” who, since the days of the Barmakids in Abbasid Baghdad, had maneuvered themselves as the principal producers and patrons of poetry and prose in the Persianate lands from the 11^th to 17^th centuries.¹ It is the fluid multi-valency of the New Persian renaissance, with its genesis crystallizing squarely in the Arabic literary world but with articulation by Persian poets, adibs, and viziers working in Turkic-controlled courtly spaces, that makes the science of epistolography (elm‑e enshâ’) difficult to define, let alone categorize and standardize with any sense of confidence. Not only did 11^th–12^th century contemporaries disagree as to the essence and manifestation of prose enshâ’, they varied widely on what could be reasonably included in a collection of model letters, decrees, administrative documents and so on. Modern studies of medieval Persian enshâ’ material has—to date—largely approached this variability with relatively blunt tools; if not roundly dismissed by historians for its lack of concrete historical data and surplus prolixity, enshâ’ prose is largely overlooked in literary studies on account of its relative lack of structure when compared to the intense formatting and mnemonic appeal of poetic genres like qasides, mathnavis, robâ’is, etc. If the heterogeneity of enshâ’ was in of itself noted by medieval Persianate contemporaries, it has been overtly reduced and simplified in modern scholarship; the time for a re-opening and meaningful discussion of how enshâ’ was understood is long overdue.

To simply label enshâ’ as “letter-writing” is a gross oversimplification. Moreover, to approach a collection of enshâ’ as simply a repository of historical documents ignores the complicated discourses and debates, which were shaping the premodern world of literati and administrators. How, then, can we bring some semblance of coherence to this complex problem? Some scholars have sought answers by exploring a single textual source, and on the basis of that particular enshâ’ work, extrapolate across time and space to offer a normative rationale for premodern epistolography. To some extent, this is how Riazul Islam approached the issue, relying on Mahmud Gâvân’s 15^th-century Manâzer al-enshâ’ (Perspectives of Enshâ’);² Heribert Horst, on the other hand, culled a number of enshâ’ works and used titular and administrative references to assemble a picture of bureaucracy in the 11^th–12^th-century Persianate world,³ as did Heribert Busse for the 16^th century.⁴ Other collections are modern, and while helpful, the specific documents profiled in these edited works are combed from older enshâ’ manuals with little in the way of context.⁵ To be sure, scholars are interested in editing such well-noted enshâ’ works by specific authors on their own terms, and we are grateful for their efforts but nonetheless we cannot help but notice an absence of any larger context for these sources and the genre from which they emerge.⁶ While more holistic efforts have been offered by H. R. Roemer and Jürgen Paul, these are helpful, but all-too-brief, encyclopedic treatments trying to shape and define a literary Leviathan which intersects a multitude of textual traditions: poetry, rhetoric, prosody, philosophy, scriptural exegesis, history, and so on.⁷ Interest in Arabic enshâ’ in a larger historical sense was seen recently with Adrian Gully’s The Culture of Letter-Writing in Premodern Islamic Society,⁸ but to date we have yet to produce any sustained treatments of Persian enshâ’ as a genre with an eye towards its general ontology.

The ultimate purpose of this chapter is to present a survey of the epistolographic genre in the medieval Persianate world (1000–1500). Returning to the earlier question of how this can be accomplished, a solution—at least a partial one—presents itself in the concept of the dibâche, or preface. As many can attest, the foreword, or prolegomenon, to a prose work has been a longstanding feature of systematic writing since Antiquity. Texts of various subjects—philosophy, history, medicine, theology, geography, etc.—were almost invariably prefaced by a short discussion from the author. These prologues were designed, more often than not, as a space and occasion for the author to offer rationalizations and reasons in defense of the larger work; motives and inspirations, as well as praise for the pertinent patrons, were likewise included with regularity. Depending on the nature of the work and the temperament of the author, prefaces could often profile insightful ruminations and reflections on not only the ontology of the work but on the genre itself. Such textual practice in both Arabic and Persian was indubitably influenced by the Greek and Syriac traditions.⁹ Gerard Genette described such textual space as an example of a “paratext,” which effectively accompanied the main text and facilitated mediation between the author and the reader.¹⁰ Julia Rubanovich noted how such prefatory writing was crucial to the reader’s initial conception of the author and reception of the text; as such, a careful reading of a text’s prolegomenon is absolutely critical if we are to understand authorial intentions and self-view.¹¹ Preface study (dibâche-shenâsi) has yet to emerge in any serious way as a discipline of academic study, but singular studies in recent years have elicited energy and excitement; notably, David Roxburgh broadened the theoretical implications of aesthetics in the late medieval world in 2000 with his Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran. In the early 1990s, a collection of dibâches from a number of different medieval works and genres was edited and published by Sayyed Ziyâ-al-Din Sajjâdi, but admittedly there is little there in the form of analysis.¹² Likewise, Wheeler Thackston edited and published a number of prefaces to illustrated manuscript albums from the medieval period.¹³ To date, no such approach has been applied to the diverse and overwhelming world of enshâ’. Moreover, given the fact that enshâ’ manuals often consisted of copied, exemplary missives, it is only within the dibâche itself that we can locate any sus...