UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Narrative and Iranian Identity in the New Persian Renaissance and the Later Perso- Islamicate World Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1mf8638p Author Harter, Conrad Justin Publication Date 2016 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Narrative and Iranian Identity in the New Persian Renaissance and the Later Perso-Islamicate World DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History by Conrad Justin Harter Dissertation Committee: Professor Touraj Daryaee, Chair Professor Mark Andrew LeVine Professor Emeritus James Buchanan Given 2016 © 2016 Conrad Justin Harter DEDICATION To my friends and family, and most importantly, my wife Pamela ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v CURRICULUM VITAE vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2: Persian Histories in the 9th-12th Centuries CE 47 CHAPTER 3: Universal History, Geography, and Literature 100 CHAPTER 4: Ideological Aims and Regime Legitimation 145 CHAPTER 5: Use of Shahnama Throughout Time and Space 192 BIBLIOGRAPHY 240 iii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1 Map of Central Asia 5 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to all of the people who have made this possible, to those who have provided guidance both academic and personal, and to all those who have mentored me thus far in so many different ways. I would like to thank my advisor and dissertation chair, Professor Touraj Daryaee, for providing me with not only a place to study the Shahnama and Persianate culture and history at UC Irvine, but also with invaluable guidance while I was there. I would like to thank my other committee members, Professor Mark LeVine and Professor Emeritus James Given, for willing to sit on my committee and to read an entire dissertation focused on the history and literature of medieval Iran and Central Asia, even though their own interests and decades of academic research lay elsewhere. I would like to thank them for the excellent feedback which I received, both for for my dissertation prospectus as well as the dissertation itself. I would like to thank the other members of my orals exam committee, Professor Nasrin Rahimieh and Dr. Khodadad Rezakhani, for agreeing to sit through such a process, and Dr. Rezakhani in particular for taking the place on my committee of the tragically late Professor Thomas Sizgorich. I would also like to thank Dr. Rezakhani for the help and guidance he provided me while reading the Baysonghori Preface. Without his assistance and good cheer I may very well have given up on the process entirely. I would like to thank the other men and women who have mentored me at various stages of my career, both academic and non, at both Harvey Mudd College and at UC Irvine. Professor Arash Khazeni of Pomona College provided me with valuable direction in my life as an undergraduate, nurturing my nascent interest in Iran and the Shahnama, and encouraging me to pursue my studies further in graduate school. I would like to thank Dr. Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina of Stanford University, who, in addition to teaching me Middle Persian and showing me how one should teach Iranian religious studies, provided countless hours of invaluable advice on the life of a young academic and on how one should best survive in the job markets of today. I would like to thank once again the rest of my friends and family, most especially my wife Pamela, my parents Ward and Dorothy, and my aunt and uncle Laurel and Wynn, for their unfailing support and not infrequently a roof over my head. I would especially like to thank my uncle for his support of my dreams, even when my pursuit of those dreams put a hitch in his. v CURRICULUM VITAE Conrad Justin Harter 2006 B.S. in History, with a Minor in Physics, Harvey Mudd College 2012 M.A. in History, University of California, Irvine 2016 Ph.D. in History, University of California, Irvine FIELDS OF STUDY Middle Eastern and North African History, World History vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Narrative and Iranian Identity in the New Persian Renaissance and the Later Perso-Islamicate World By Conrad Justin Harter Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Irvine, 2016 Professor Touraj Daryaee, Chair In tenth century Khurasan and Transoxania, at the frontier of the Iranian cultural world, mythical and historical narratives such as the Shahnama helped to shape and maintain a sense of group Iranian identity for the Samanids and other Iranian Islamic dynasties. The Shahnama can be considered what narrative theorist Margaret Somers terms an “ontological narrative.” These narratives helped Islamic dynasties such as the Samanids understand what it meant to be Iranian, and also became sources of identity for their Arab and Turkic neighbors. The term “Iran,” or “Iranshahr” as the empire of the Sasanians was known (224-651 CE), refers to a political unity which did not exist in the domains of the Samanids. How did such a concept, removed from its original geography, inform cultural identities? To what extent was the idea of “Iran” tied to a pre-Islamic geographical, political, and Zoroastrian religious concept, and how was it reinterpreted in a post-Abbasid world? If the Shahnama tells the stories of a formerly unified Iran, how was this concept reinterpreted in a geographically fractured and religiously changing world? When delving into vii the history of Khurasan and Transoxania, there are certain unanswered questions about language, history, and literature during the New Persian Renaissance that one must keep in mind as guiding questions: Why was the time ripe for a resurgence of Persian language and literature? Why were the lands of Khurasan and Transoxania the seeming location of this linguistic and literary movement? To what extent was language tied to individual, group, or cultural “identity”? Shahnama and prose histories such as those of Bal'ami, Gardizi, and Beyhaqi helped lay the foundation for identities that have persisted until present day. This is not to say that there is a static Iranian identity that has existed since some “medieval” creation. Instead, ontological narrativity allows for a fluid and dynamic sense of identity. It is the interplay between narrative and lived experience that creates a sense of who one and one's society are, and it was the Shahnama that was the preeminent such narrative for the Eastern Islamic world after the New Persian Renaissance. viii INTRODUCTION By the ninth through eleventh centuries CE, the political power of the Abbasid Islamic Caliphate, based in Baghdad, had already begun to fracture. Provincial hereditary dynasties on the frontiers of the Islamic world began to rule locally, usually while still acknowledging the religious legitimacy of the Abbasids. These dynasties also continued the Islamic project of conquest and conversion. Dynasties such as the Tahirids, Saffarids, Buyids, and Samanids reigned over the lands of the Eastern Caliphate, including Khurasan and Transoxania, extending the reach of Islam beyond the traditionally Iranian, Zoroastrian world, and into Turkish areas of Central Asia. The ghazis, religious or frontier warriors, of the Samanid dynasty fought to conquer and convert, as well as often enslave, the peoples on the extreme edge of the Muslim world.1 It was in this time and place, Samanid Khurasan, that the poet Ferdowsi began to compose his Shahnama, or “Book of Kings,” a work often considered to be the Iranian national epic. Its verses record the history of the Iranian peoples from a mythical creation of the world through the end of the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century CE.2 As well as its import as a singular creation, the Shahnama exemplifies the poetic aspects of a greater linguistic and cultural movement, which some scholars have termed the “New Persian Renaissance.” Formally supported by Samanid and later Ghaznavid patronage, this “renaissance” was an attempt to record older aspects of Iranian culture, and to make this culture applicable and acceptable in a newly Islamic world. As the term implies, it was also notable for the language in which these works were written, which are some of our earliest examples of New Persian. The breakdown of central political authority allowed the Samanids, who belonged to an ancient Iranian class of minor nobility, known as dehqans, to retain their Iranian cultural identity along with their Muslim religious identity. It also allowed them to rule in what 1 Tor D.G, “The Islamization of Central Asia in the Sāmānid Era and the Reshaping of the Muslim World,” Bull. Sch. Orient. Afr. Stud. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 72, no. 2 (2009): 280. 2 As Ferdowsi states within his work, his Shahnama is not a completely original work, and is only the most famous of an entire genre of Shahnamas. These works may also be traced back to the genre of Sasanian royal chronicles, or Khwaday- namag. 1 they considered to be an appropriately Iranian manner. The Samanid rulers considered themselves to be the descendants of the Iranian Sasanians, specifically the royal usurper Bahram Chobin. Despite this somewhat ignominious lineage, they apparently also considered themselves to be upholders of Iranian identity as displayed by the Sasanians. This is where the Shahnama plays a role in allowing them to both retain that identity and square it with their Islamic faith. The Shahnama is an epic poem containing the deeds and putative words of kings and heroes. Who a culture chooses to idolize, to valorize, says very much about what values and traits it considers most important, regardless of the relative antiquity or even the actual existence of such heroes and kings.