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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Sayat`-Nova: Within the Near Eastern Bardic Tradition and Posthumous Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/05h957tx Author Yang, Xi Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Sayat`-Nova: Within the Near Eastern bardic tradition and posthumous A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements of the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures by Xi Yang 2016 © Copyright by Xi Yang 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Sayat`-Nova: Within the Near Eastern bardic tradition and posthumous by Xi Yang Doctor of Philosophy in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Peter S. Cowe, Chair AšuƗ/aşık/aşıq (from the Arabic ʿāshiq, or lover) is a skilled bard's composite performing art-- a unity of prose narrations, songs, instrumental accompaniment, and appropriate gesture. Of sixteenth-century Turkic origin, the art spread over a vast area covering modern Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and further. In the mid- eighteenth century Sayat`-Nova, the best-known Armenian ašuƗ, was active in Tiflis (modern Tbilisi), the capital of Eastern Georgia. His songs were written in at least three languages--Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani--and won praise for their ardent emotion and artistic perfection. But despite his importance in Near Eastern culture, two issues in Sayat`-Nova studies have rarely been studied. First, fully appreciating Sayat`-Nova requires contextualizing his work within the developing ii Armenian ašuƗ tradition and the international ašuƗ/aşık/aşıq tradition in the Near East. Second, the history of Sayat`-Nova studies as a field and its growing popularity in relation to twentieth-century Armenian nationalism and Soviet cultural policies demands attention as well. Focusing on these neglected issues will enable a richer understanding of Sayat`- Nova's place in the history of the ašuƗ/aşık/aşıq tradition as well as his relation to the elevated poetic traditions in South Caucasia, the Armenian ašuƗs’ contribution within the broader matrix of the early modern Turkic aşık/aşıq tradition, and the evolution of a distinct ašuƗ tradition in the Armenian language. At the same time, exploring his posthumous adoption as a cultural icon will provide insight into the history of scholarship and of mass culture both in South Caucasia and for Armenians worldwide. iii The dissertation of Xi Yang is approved. Dominico Ingenito Münir Beken Peter S. Cowe, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv Table of Contents Explanation of terminology and the principles of transcription employed in this study ....................................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ x Vita .............................................................................................................................. xiii Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter Breakdown ..................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1 .................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 2 .................................................................................................................... 41 Chapter 3 .................................................................................................................. 123 Chapter 4 .................................................................................................................. 163 Chapter 5 .................................................................................................................. 204 Chapter 6 .................................................................................................................. 234 Epilogue ................................................................................................................... 279 Appendices ............................................................................................................... 282 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 287 v Explanation of terminology and the principles of transcription employed in this study A. Terminology 1. The ašuƗ/aşık/aşıq tradition is essentially a type of bardic composition and performance widespread in the Near East from the sixteenth century onwards. This triple designation relates to the form of the term current in the three major languages in which it was disseminated, Armenian, Turkish, and Azeri. As a result, whenever the context is clear, it will be referred to as “bardic tradition” and the exponent as “bard” instead of “ašuƗ/aşık/aşıq”. In most cases the term ašuƗ/aşık/aşıq will be individualized to refer purely to ethnic Armenian/Turkish/Azarbaijani bards respectively. 2. The same considerations apply to related terms like davt`ar/defter/dəftər illustrating the variant forms in the three above languages to denote the notebook in which the bard or an associate inscribed the text of his songs, the triple term would be abbreviated such as “bardic notebook” whenever possible. 3. In this dissertation the terms Azerbaijan/Azerbaijani/Azeri are used without any political implications. “Azerbaijan” refers to both the territory of the current Republic of Azerbaijan (called “Tartary” in Russian in the nineteenth century) as well as the region in the Northwest of Iran, which bears this name from ancient times. “Azerbaijani” as a noun refers to the Turkic inhabitants of both territories mentioned above in addition to those Turkic inhabitants who used to live, or still live in the Republic of Armenia and the mostly eastern and southern parts of the vi Republic of Georgia, which belonged to the Persian Empire in the early modern period, since from Russian Imperial times onward these people are identified as “Azerbaijanis”. As an adjective, “Azerbaijani” pertains to the Azerbaijanis. “Azeri” refers to the Turkic language spoken by the “Azerbaijanis” as defined above. 4. In the context of the early modern period, the toponym Armenia refers to the area of historical Armenia on the Armenian Plateau. From 1918 to the present it refers to the Republic of Armenia, regardless of its political affiliation. 5. The term Armeno-Turkish ašuƗ refers to those ethnic Armenian ašuƗs who composed in a Turkic language or dialect. 6. Armeno-Azeri refers to the convention of Armenian ašuƗs, all of whom till now lived in the former Iranian sphere, of employing the Armenian script to render their Turkic compositions, where the dialect shows more affinity with modern literary Azeri than modern standard Turkish. For example, it is appropriate to refer to Sayat`-Nova’s Turkic songs as being recorded in this script. This designation is preferable to classifying such songs as “Turkish” or “Armeno-Turkish”, since the orthography of these songs reflects the local Azeri dialect. B. Principles of Transliteration Where toponyms have a widely accepted English form that will be followed. Therefore “Yerevan” is preferred over “Erevan”, “Moscow” over “Moskva”, “Tehran” over “Tihrān”, etc. For Armenian, Georgian, Russian, and Ukrainian the Library of Congress system of transliteration is followed with the following exceptions: vii 1. Monographs on Armenian Studies published in Western languages are cited according to their existing Romanized versions. Similarly, where authors have a preferred spelling of their names in Latin script, those are retained. 2. Transliteration of book titles or quotations follow the orthography of the original printed form. The names of authors from Soviet and post-Soviet countries are uniformly transliterated according to the reformed orthography. 1 Therefore, “Hovhannes T`umanyan” will appear instead of “Yovhannēs T`umanean”. 3. Exceptions to principles 1 and 2: A. The name of the focal figure of this dissertation is uniformly spelled as Sayat`- Nova in the main text outside of quotations. B. The famous Soviet Armenian film director’s name will be spelled uniformly as Sergei Parajanov as has become accepted in English. C. As explained in chapter 2, keeping a davt`ar/defter/dəftər, or hand-written notebook of songs, is the common practice for bards. To distinguish Sayat`- Nova’s songbook it appears as Davt`ar with initial capital. In Russian transliteration, for the sake of simplicity, the ligature tie above two-letter tie 1 There was an orthographical reform in Soviet Armenia in 1922, and its revision in 1940. It seems that the major purpose for the reform was its “colloquialization” at the cost of classical, etymological spellings. Therefore, letters ē and ō were abolished, substituted by e and o as monophthongs; or as diphthongs ēa, ēo and ēi, substituted by eya, eyo and eyi. Letters e and o, when pronounced as ye and vo at the initial position, were written as ye and vo. Diphthongs ea and eo were replaced by ya and yo. Diphthong ow is reserved only for vowel u; while its pronunciation as v was replaced by the monophthong v. Diphthong iw was replace by yu. Diphthong oy was