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“From Pious Journeys to the Critique of Sovereignty: Shirvani’s Persianate Poetics of Pilgrimage,” Remapping Travel Narratives....

Chapter · October 2018 DOI: 10.17613/77a4-vc91

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List of Contr rhutors ...... •...... •. , .• ...... ••.. • • • •. , ,, IZ

Acknowl dgcmen ~ ...... •...... •....•...... •• z I

Introduction: Travel a') episteme- an lntmduc.tcJry JrJUrnr~y MONTSERRAT PIERA ...... ,,, ...... •...... 1

PART f. TRANSFORMING THE RIHLA TRADITIO N: THE SEA RCH FOR KNOWLEDGE IN JEWISH, MUSLIM, AND CHRISTIA N TRAVELLERS

Chapter 1. From Pious Journeys to the Critique of Sovereignty: Khaqani Shirvani's Persianate Poetics of Pilgrimage REBECCA GOULD ...... ,, .25

Chapter 2. Observing Ziyara in Two Medieval Muslim 'Travel Accounts JANET SORRENTINO .. •...... 4 7

Chapter 3 Vulnerable Medieval Iberian Travellers: Benjamin of Tudela's Sefer ha-Massa'ot, Pero Tafur's Andan9as e viajes, and Ahmad al-Wazzan's Libra de Ia Cosmogrophia et Geographia de Africa MO TSERRAT PIERA ...... 61

PART II. IMAGININ G THE EAST: EGYPT, PERSIA, AND ISTANBUL IN MY MIND

Chapter 4. "Tierras de Egipto": Imagined Journeys to the East in the Early Vernacular Litera ure of \1edieval lbena

MAITHEW "v , DESING1 a 11 11 1 t. 111 It • It I • ...... ·. · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · .89

Chapter 5. The Petrification of Ro tam: Thomas Herbert's Re-vision of Persia in A Relation of Some Yeares Trava1le

'[ODA HDI Z":...t'\'DEH I I I I I II I I I I I I II I

Scanned by CamScanner Chapter I

FROM PIOUS JOURNEYS TO TH CRITIQU 0 soVEREIGNTY: KHAQANI SHIRVANI'S PERSIANATE POETICS OF PILGRIMAGE'

REBECCA GOULD2

ABSTRACT Like most world literatures, the Islamic world generated many different types of travel writing. While the trope of the Islamic pilgrimage (/:lajj) is well known, the impact of the imagery and concept of travel on poetic production from the Islamic wo rld, particu­ larly in Persian, has not merited the same scrutiny. Countering this tradition of neglect, this chapter introduces one of the most important and yet !east-studied Persian travel narratives to an interdisciplinary readership: the Gift from the Two Jraqs (Tuhfat al­ 'Jraqayn), composed in the middle of the twelfth century by the Persian poet Khaqani Shirwani. I examine this work's contribution to world literature and global poetics by documenting its deployment of key tropes from a longer tradition of thinking about mobility within Persian and Islamic poetics. Of particular interest is Khaqani's method of transforming the ri/:1/a, a discourse known for celebrating migration as a pious act, into a means of critiquing sovereign power.

Keywor ds: travel, ri/:1/a, journey, Persian poetry, medieval Islam, sovereignty, poetic critique

"BECAUSE TRAVEL BROUGHT them, through suffering, into learning as a way of life," writes Houari Touati in his recent intellectual history of travel in the medieval Islamic world, "Muslims saw [travel] as a figure for metamorphosis, coupled with the experience of pain." 3 The medieval Islamic understanding of travel as a stage of self­ transformation, a horizon of new experience, and a harbinger of a new epistemology has many parallels in world history. The conceptual and practical centrality of travel

1 I would like to thank Elizabeth Gould for her editorial support. 2 This publication has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under ERC-2 01 7-STG Grant Agreement No 759346. l T ..c Houa. n· ouatl, Islam et voyage au Moyen Age: histoire et anthropologie d'une pratH(UC lettree (Pans: Seuil, 2000), 2.

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13 The dates of Khaqani' . . h" 5 tion of r, u.~at to this journeypilgnmage rem . have not be en estabhshed· and the question of the rela- Muqaddamah _,· tu.hrfi at al-khavcitir (Tehams unsettled. . · Fo r furt her discussion,. see Husayn Amuzgar; 14 Houa · t . · ran. 1ntJsharat · R · r.t ouatt, Islam and Travel. . ·I uznama-i Zindagi, 1955), 26-30. trans. Lydta Cochrane (Ch' In the Middle Ages "Pre[; IS A. L. FA B Icago: UniversityofCh' ' ace to the English-Language Edition.· · · eelaen A c lcago Press 20 10) · .. Court Poet Kha ..... • ure for the Grie . , , Xlll. I qam .>lrwcini (B 'I vmg: Studies on th Sa[arnamah.'i h. 1: 199 ) e ogut> ~ n Leiden, 6 37 e Poetry of the 12th Centllry Perstan 1366/19 ar ad Mir · ' · 0 87). For further za, Mu'tamad a/ Da neh except'Ion Is· the nineteenth century tr \· Ia Me on Pe · . · w1 a ed 1 - cque dan Ia poe le p rslan Pilgrimage poe ' . sma II Navvab c ffi (Tehran: Zd\ r; Phil osoph· ersane" M ms, ee H · · Ie, 1936), 859-65 ' elanges Franz Cu nn Ma e, "Asp du pelertnage a · mont (Bru xe 11 es: Annuatre of the In titut de

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, 1 1 mtJOI it of 11hlon.tt 1 ltt '. m 'in J\1 ,thil md in Jlr 0 th . . \\'hill t I1t '• • . . . . • r 1 growmg hl Pl'I'. t.lll COillllhUlJOll to thts Itt 'I clly ( (}J pu I) trt' I I f h · n tl t • • 1cu , r y or t rly ) If 11 110 • i Ill 1 'I I . . Jll ntHilt 11 ptlHH s. 1 \\ ,l • l • . . . . . voir rept o.tch d the poet for wastmg hts life m dnnk and asked him why in,\111, •1 . . . , ·ct not remain ob r. Na 1r Kim row rephed that drinking is the only solution that d ht' I d . d II . . I • "th wi t [lwkuma] have VI to a evtate thts worlds gnef [andiih-i dunya]" (2). The . nigmati all' replied," eek and you shall find Uuyandyabandeh bash ad]" and then ro1 e . . . pointed tow.u·d ~he ~1bla, ~he dtrec~wn of the Ka ba towards which Muslims pray. A. the ct1r ctwn m whtch Mushm prayers are pointed, the qibla visually entails a ntal per grination to Mecca on the part of every believer; hence pilgrimage is inscribed 111 into every act of prayer in the Islamic tradition. Taking this symbolic linkage of pilgrimage and prayer literally. Na~ir immediately set about making preparations for his journey. A few da later, he travelled to Faryab and Marv. Announcing that he had decided to rravel in the direction of the qibla, Na~ir quit his job, settled his debts, renounced every­ thing worldly (az dunya anche bud tark kardam), and began his journey to the western land under Is rna ili rule. As he later recalled, the dream had revealed to him that, unless he changed all his ways and actions, he would never find happiness (farrukh, 2). Hence, Na ir's westward pilgrimage was a concrete endeavour to implement such change. Although the qibla that instigated Na~ir's journey points to Mecca, the author had another, equally important, destination in mind when he embarked on his journey: Fatimid-ruled Cairo, a city that, since 969, had been the political centre of lsma IIi Shiism. While Mecca was Na~ir's nominal destination, reaching Cairo was argu­ ably his ultimate goal. Although he includes valuable descriptions of both cities, it was in Cairo that Na~ir stayed the longest from the year 1046 to 1052. It was also in Cairo

16 Most notably in recent years, see Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indo-Persian Tra1•e/s in the Age of Discoveries, 1400 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007); Roberta Micallef and Sunil Sharma, eds., On the Wonders of Land and Sea: Perswnate Travel Wnting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); Sohrab1, Taken for Wonder, and Nile Green, ed., Wnting Travel in Central Aswn History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 20 13). Notably, and partly due to the paucity of ources, the e works do not treat the medieval period. 17 a[arnama-1 Abii-Mu'fn Hamfd-ad-Din Nasir !bn -Khusrnu Qubadyam Marwazf, ed. Mu!)ammad Dabir iyaqi (T hran: Za~ar, 1956/1335)·. Future citation are from this ed ition and gJv n parenthetl lly. 11 The ltation 1 from Ehsan Yar hater's preface to the English translation of th e afarnama by Wh~lerTh ckston, The Book ofTrav 1 =( afarnama) (Albany: Hibhoth ca P r ic ' 1986), II.

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19 As noted by V. Jvanov,jozd 'irt icaU . . . . . It r fer to "th 1 'I YP Y rneans Islands 1n Ara b1 c and Pcrsi·m but m th1 conte.:t . • smal 1 community in a co . . < , • • • e•gnty llv nov "The o . . untry whi ch politica lly was not und r Fatumd over ' rg,IJHzatzon of the rat . I I 1 1 15 (1939) . 12). ' m l Propaganda," journal of the Royal A ~iat1c Soetet) 20 Forth claim to Prtmacy fot lh '. D. Reid I, 1956J, 204 H el en h t ;' i ~~ :; se. I. Rypka, II istory of Iramon Litera tu" ( Uordr hi manu cnpt held •n th e lJ'd lJ r •an tr v I narr tiv th t r ~ r nc 'J'uhrat well a IUth • · · n lliVet I t L b '1 ' ' h orsJourneyfromShzrwan tos· - Y I t ry (Or. 1620), by lh pot ·, Lh t narrat t 21 Reel a av1d·rul d 1 h ' aert,A C1.1re, 10. n (A Cu~, 1 n53J.

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,ift [tom 1\ro lrnq' mst '.ld d •lops < n 1 bor t p uc tropolo 111 1\h Hl II'> ton·1mn s to th nbln c.:anon through tts e t nd d met ph d 1 n!lll c~ . ~ e 11 or n 1m1 . n:rlll ul.u'l)' lO lllP•tn . on. to the sun), It .tutohiOgraphical reflectiOn, and it rhe oncal [P· , 11 b w1th obi'l:t and per ons th at, out 1de of poetry, would hav called for a n ,lgt 111 . . E . . l hihitcd unag matwn. vc n a It parts way With normative pilgrimage narrative lOJClll :1+ ' • • • n . , uons, h oweve i ~ G11 L co mpete With and mutate the be t travel narratives not on' t n , d. . . f I . . ' . through the author 1 Ision o 11 s t xt mto seven maqala (chapters), a taxonomy I~ a~t f f' t ' I t . 1 • • , . re ·crved or non- IC wna reat1 ses, 1llstones, and other avowedly documen- that\'3 2 ta 'genre . pers•'anizing the Rihla· N arrative Even a. Khaqani in fie~ ~is nar:ative with his poetic .consciousness, he uses the empiri- allv oriented rill /a tradition to mtroduce new narrative strategies for evoking the phys­ ~cal. world. and which prior to him were marginalized by a Persian poetic tradition that made "the literary imagination [ ... ] paramount, autonomous, and even sovereign." 23 After he returned from his pilgrimage, Khaqani's predecessor in Persian travel narrative, asir ]{husrow, began to compose the poems that would be included in the complete version of his collected poems (dfwan). Many of these texts were written in the remote village of Yumgan in , to which Na~ir had been exiled following his return, and where he remained in hiding until the end of his life, fearing persecution from those hostile to the Jsmaili faith .Z 4 One qa$fda (ode) composed during this period resonates particularly pow­ erfully with the pathos of exile, while also incorporating a device that was to profoundly inflect Khaqani's Gift: the trope of the messenger who travels to places that the poet himself cannot reach. The poet addresses the wind:

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t.SY. o.ll..l -'7 0-- ~ u~jl .)J\..:.: _?.. 25.) u~" Y' .>Po~ ~ .J.o Jh .)

[Say my hello, 0 wind, to Khorasan, to the virtuous and wise among them, not to the vulgar and ignorant ones. Bring back from them the news to me as you have taken the truthful news of my situation to them.]

22 For a Persian text divided into fo ur maqiilas that was almost exactly contemporaneou wtth Khaqani's TuMat, see Nizami 'Arii<;li, Chahtir maqii /a, ed. Mu~ammad Mu'in ('iehran: Zawwar, 1957) 23 Hamid Dabashi, The World of Persia n Literary Humamsm (Cambndge, MA: H rvard Umverstty Press, 2013), 53 . 24 For Na tr Khusraw's exile in Yu mgan, see Maniichihr Atishi, Nii~ir-1 Khusraw: sargashtah -'r;a han va tob'idr-r Yumgan (Tehran: Mu'assasah-1 Intisharati-i Ahang-i Digar, 2009 /1388). 15 Drvan-r ash ar-i Hakim Abu Mu'in Hamid ai-Din Nasir ibn Khusraw Qubcidijuni(lsf

Scanned by CamScanner rcA c,otll f) • fin hiS poems, Khaqani d Rl·flh· of hiS gnc eve!. 31 . th e bearer wi nd 111 to · Girt · f'" rts . tdl' the . l e w,ty Ill / ' . d cessor in hiS c tO to narra t Nas ir 01• . the sa n . r pre e e a Whcrr:J!- . . , ot the un Ill d ·t seco nd maJO oet with whom Khaqani hare I 1 unag( - · 11 a ' !131) a p l a opccl t tr si de N ~,_·ir, Kh aqani ;-'i of Ghazna (d. fh ', career, Sa n ~i'l was based at the court Along. I . was sana ost o IS 'd . , tn vcr~e. T tiS . . cation. For 01 n relations are evi ent m the Work journr se of hiS vo oet- patro . ·t·tJ·lyr. ·altcd sen 5) ·n He rat. Tense p f hi·rnself as "the master of the world sllllt • _111 I _ ived 0 __ lAa ud III (r. 10 99 . t Khaqam, conce t rs "26 J{h aqam connected his ow of ,., similarly o . b utal mas e · . n of this poet, who, rvi'le slave to hiS r ·ng self-referential verses attest· d yet a se the fol 1oWI . of wo~~:o[~~ea;orld with Sana'i's death, as IJ ..r,U.... u~ J..lil ~.l.o i u.o J~ entrY 27 ..l4-i ~..lJ l.JA ~l.i J..l; ~..l 0:! ~

t [bada/] to Sanii'I. ld s a replacemen [I entered the wor a the name Badil.] . son my father gave me For thiS rea . .f. ntlv did not commemorate this event .. . 1130 but sJgOI Jca J' sana'i completed the baJJ 10 ' 'p . li'terature of travel veered more toward 'b t'on to the ers1an with a poem.28 His contn u 1 . h t' than spiritual uplift. The most notable work . d suffused Wit sa 1re polemics, an ~as m~~~ . .r lkh (Karnamah-yi Balkh ). Although occasioned 1 8 in this regard IS Sana Is Chrome e O;alkh a where he sojourned durmg. the years 1109- by his departure from Gh azna t o B ' . . 29 , the text is primarily engaged with historical personalities from Ghazna Both Gift1114 and Chronicle of Balkh belong formally to the most important Persian narrative verse form , called the mathnawf genre. This form consists of rhyming couplets with ten to eleven syllables per hemistich. Its recitation creates a sense of forward narrative movement in a way that other verse forms such as the qa$fda, lack. Als o like Gift, SanaTs text is structured topographically and addressed to multiple patrons. The setting moves from Ghazna, where the poet had been based at the Ghaznavid court, to 30 B~lkh, which ~t.that time was, like the "two Iraqs" of Khaqani's text, under Saljuq rule. It.Is not surpnsmg therefore to see Khaqani refer to SanaTs text in the pages of h1s own Gift (28, v. 11).

26 D~b-as~i, The World of Persian Literary Humanism, 145. 27 Dtvan - lAf~a/ at-Din Badilibn 'Alf Na "ar Kha - - . - . - 1960), 850. 11 qam Shtrvam, ed. ~IJa' al-Oin Sajjadi (Tehran: zawwar,

28 For Sana'i's h. aJJ, .. see j. Stephenson's intr d . ~he En_closed Garden of the Truth (Calcutta·oB:ct:on t~ T~e First Book of th e Hadiqatu'l-haqiqat; or, ~ymst' aJol~work, l;fadlqa al-baqiqa, soon afte~ comptlslt ~tsston Press, 1910), viii. Sana'! did comp lete P -ca JOurney_ · P etmg the h· a;;,.. b ut this text does not dwell on anY 29 .~mamah-i Balkh is included in Ma . - . maad, ed. Mudarns Razavi (T !navtha-yll:fakim Sana!· b' . . - . ' with Sana'i's travel ·· . ehran : Danishgah-i Tih _ · 1-ln?tmam -J Sharh·i sayral-ibiid 1/a al· narrattve sees . ran, 1348/1969) · Black,2000),57 andM tth' umiSharma,PersianP • 142-78. Forfurther interte Works of Mahk ~I - Sh a ew Chaffee Smtth, "Lite oetryat the Indian Frontier (Vel hi: Permanent . uara Bahar" (Ph . rary Courage L 30 For Karnamah·i 8 lkh D dtssertation H anguage, Land . nd the at on JO t.he ~ a tn tl ' arvard U . , try: The lnteractwn •~'R l.e context of Sana··· . mverstty, 2006), 28. u, eltglon and 1 s btograph Ltterature in th L y, t: e J, 1: P. d Brul)n, Of P1ety and e tfe and w.or ks of Hak1m Sanii'i of ChaznO

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1-; J, t r to do With unparc~ll•l•d rna t •ry, Chmntcl of Ralkh comhincs J

w....5J!• yo.)- ·t:; .-*""• ..*! ~ ~ ..::..w.l J_,.!.S ~ JA Jj\.J v _,a J ul.l .)I.) ~6. J _).... LH J .l.il.l t5l..b.. Uhl J\5.

[A man is powerful [only] in his own city. The pupil is confident [only] in the center of the eye. Oust is pleasant when it is motionless. When it stirs, it is a calamity for the eye. One cannot find a new fortune in every city. The giver of sustenance in every country is the same. Journeying and staying at home alike are nonsense. God's beneficence alone knows what will come.] Even as they pursued similar themes, Khaqanl and Sana'l relied on the same poetic device: that of the messenger who serves as an alter ego for the poet's self. Throughout Gift, Khaqani turns to the sun, addressing it as a friend, a prophet, and a patron.34 The sun is Khaqam's interlocutor destined for geographies he cannot himself travel to, trapped as he Is in the "sublunary world" of Shirwan, imprisoned (fictionally) beneath the ground. As he Iaments:ls

(Lelden: Brill, 1983}, 39-56, and de Bruijn, "Kar-Nama-ye Balk," Encyclopedia Iranica (Costa Meta Mazda Publishers, 1991-J, 15(6): 585. 1 PorYUylnl formulations of this device, see Sharma, Persian Poetry, 54, and Beelaert, A Cure, 35. O;~lnl's ghazals, see Alireza Korangy, Development of the and Khaqani'-; A Study of the Development uf Chazal and a L1terary Exegesis of a 12th c. Poet1c baden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 20 13). ~-..triiJakfm Sana'i, 177. Th1 translation modifies that in Sharma, Permm Poetry, 55 . .._,.,_lmapryis mot thoroughly discussed in Beelaert,A Cure, 29 114. 31

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T bnn mea afet , guaran teeI from fate. H•o ur ear to war d mv• mout t. ultWith }O a' eak hea rt I cannot ral e m\.. voice to you.] Kl

·tabli hed a relations 1 • 1 ip with t e ' ., , HaVIng e J ey to Iraq on his behalf h un as his messenger, 1.1qan1 instru''t<· tl..e un to 10urn ,.4; ~ ~~ '-"1 "',!. 1

t .)~ .) .,.!.S '\.....Q J J ($ j 'L...

Thus Gift is structured by the sun's journey through Iraq, all the way to Mecca, all the while serving as a proxy for the poet, metaphorically enchained in Shirwan. Given i~ statusas one of the inaugural texts in the Persian ri (I/o tradition, the fictional conceit that lies at this tradition's inauguration foundation tells a broader story of the importance of the imagination to Persian poetics. The increasing autonomy of the Persian literary Imagination in relation to the literature of travel was also accompanied by an increased capacity to develop and deliver a critique of worldly powers, as Will be seen below. Among the many Persian poets Who used the messenger trope as a device to envi· sian thecirculation of their verse was Sana•;, who in his Chronicle of Bo 1kh addresses the Wind as a traveller Who traverses spaces vaster and more rapidly than the poet himself:

! oJ .J. fate has inscribed its designs ' In Your name, fnr better or Worse.]

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p.ltron pert.tin to .lJll'riod .tftt•r 1\h,HJ.llll's sojoum in Mosul, l't t . uch 1 turn of t•wnt~. t tt•r till wt•lt.tr • of tr.t l'llt'l'!'i to Mt•tr.t.utd Mt•dirt.t .tml sh,tl'ing alth ith th po ~ Ia mal 1-Dtn w s .t p.ttron of r tllll ~~ Wl'll ,1s Pt•r si lltlitl'r' rttllt'.

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1 pt. .1 II p a. , in Kh aq , n1 's. n rrativ. . Vvh ·II I l '' P"' t I "Ill d him ' •niiPIZ((' I in KhaqanJ '·•ft, 11 ' Pr i ' rl' t ll m t lltl I •of th c lll .lll p.ltloll l lkPs J,unal ai ·DIIl's I •g ·ndary g n to , II 111 \ II PP"'hnt 'i lltt I IJIH 'lll I • I ll atJlllllll•. • 'I•·' I I£ ll't h md nw I It I utt•t Jl.ll mn rPhlloll. Ill t pI lll l lm tlu uk. I

HI ttu tin th 1 ov r ign '/Ia through narrative form, the remainder n 'ln , loii1Wu II' rsi.m ,ui,Jpt.llinns• •lyri nl th'·- ep1c "' moe I in order to considerp how. the 11 Persia~ fth1 'h pttl s " 1 1 [rit1qu 'o so \ I '1It tnw.mls ,, llHH . f v reignty among ersian Po ets such tr Klns loJm.' lHlll o tht• n/Jin. gt'JWJatt•r I ' poem known as "lwan-i Mada'in,"M du d -e,. to( "its bei~g 1111 In1 I to us on',·n Arabic sources as a!- a a In the two ' q . p.trtkular~ I . sit known . d S I . 1 111t llc I tht nci1•nt, pr ·Is mlllc,thr · lllCJCnt. roya 1centres of Ctestphon an. e euc1a. By 111 ") nd whilh lay between ' d . deed in a figurative sense smce the begin. • • n to Iraq an 10 · ' 11111 th n nt Kh.lllaOJ d.snJnur,. I1 ad become' a rum . and ceased to command Its wrmer regal , ol Islam, aThl-Ma Giji 1a Illfrom Two Iraqs stra ddled the dual identity of Persian anct Arab I• lnrq , theWhcrt•a Mada'in. •qa~ida cncompasse d a Sl'milarly multifarious geography of Persian k1ngs and their Mu lim conquerors. f h h .. h' l

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42 Karami, "Nagahi be ma~amin-i Musaw1 o z1baihayi an dar dtwan·t Kh< qan1," 1IlL, conn th poet's new des1gn ( Lar~i nti) to hi appropnatJOn of soverC'ign metonyrns 43 Scott John McDonough, "Power by cgotiatJOn: In titullon I I{ •frJrm 1n th ury Sasanian Emp1re" (PhD dis c1 tation, Univ r ity of Callfu1 nw Lr1 Ang I , ~005 , 44 Mir Abd ai-La~if Khan Shu<>ht ri, 'J'ubfah a/- ulum w1 zayl al-tuhfu [c 1799 J, (Tehran: Tahuri, 1984), 76-Al. For Shu htan ml ()th ·r (JaJ r-era vII r, Abb ihrough the Persian Eye: Anglophil!a and Angloplwh 111 Modern Irani n HI ry; faCing Others: ldent1ty Boundanes in u Ill tunwl fJer, pe live, d A ha An r r d I ew York: Palgrave, 2011), 136-37, nd M n K1 , " ontour o P r 1 n mmun y 1722-1835" (PhD d1s ertat10n, Harv rd Un1v r 1ty, 2011), 132 V. Mmorsky, "G ographtcal Factor m Per 1 n Art," BSOAS 9 (1938) 24 Edward G1bbon, The 111 tory of the Declme and /·all of tile Roman £mp1r B .P1'19Ch 1830), 4.78

Scanned by CamScanner Figure 1.1. Depiction ofMada'in- in Alwt'in-1 Madt'i'in, Iranschahr, . 41 post-Sasanian appropriation as Mada'in, the preeminent symbol of regal glo ry from a pre-Islamic civilization. One particularly striking evocation ofthese ruins occurs in a book-length collectio of poems and reflections on Khaqani's text published in 1924 by the Berlin-based i ourna~ Jranshahr (Figure 1.1). Partially tran~lating. Re~a Tawfi~'s 1912 Turkish-language edition of Khaqani's Mada'in qa~ida, this publicatiOn uses hnes from the text as envois to new poetic creations. The unsigned editorial preface also not incidentally inaugurates the nationalist reading of the Mada'in qa~ida that was to frame many subsequent renderings of Khaqani's poem by locating the text within a long genealogy of appeals to Sasanian regal glory as against the Arab invaders. According to this modern reading, Khaqani is among those poets who, like , stands among the ruins (dar jolii-yi khartibeh'htiyl) that frame his poetry and gazes with tearful eyes at the little that has remained (baqf mondeh) from the days of Iran's glory (sar bolandi-yi fran). 4 While the readings on the pages of lranshahryield new poetic reflections concerning the inevitable demise of nation-states suited to a modern age, particularly in the aftermath of World War I, even in the hands of modern Iran's most visionary critics, the proto-nationalist reading that has dominated the text's recent reception has done little to elucidate 1ts contribution to the Persian critique of sovereignty.

-47 Aiwan-i Mada'in: tasdis-i qa$ida-i Khdqani, bi qalam-i chand nafar az furjala ' wa shuariJ'· i lran=Aiwan-i-Medain: un poeme de Khdgdni {1606), adapte et augmante par quelques poetes contemporains (Berlin-Wilmersdorf: lranschahr, 1343). Th is text includes a translatiO n of Re(la Tawfiq's Turkish introduction to his translation of Khaqani's poem, published under th t1tle Medayin haraberleri (Istanbul: Cem·i Kutiiphanesi, 1912).

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.:...:.Jj.,. u-,. ,...,.~c: r .:, J.,.) r- ' . ;.~--~').1 ,-,1.. .rJf.. .r )t _.l',. k " J ' t t ( ~ I _rl';/r)~ .. -/•)1/' [The palace where Bahram raised his cup, where lions rested and foxes propagated, and Bahram, who used so easily to capture prey [,qurJ, is taken captive by the grave [gurj today.]

48 for an overview of Persian and Arabic po(·ts who have cornpoc;t·d i•ll•f.W"> lt1 Mada'iu, •,t•(• <;ayyul Parsa, "Derangi har Jwan ·i Mada'10 i Khaqan~," Ma;alluh yi/Jurmhlmdu Y' J1drJb1yrJt 1'J(•hmn 41 I 54-5(2006-2007 /1385 j: S-18.J•c,rcomp;mc,on'> of Butttun and J(lJ;HJ•Hu\ fHH'IIl'• or1 M.Hl.!'tn, :-, c· · Aru1r Mll)mOd Anvar, A1wun i Mada'in ('li•hran lJarmhgah·i 'I c ~ hran, 1'Hnj2004) .111d jPrrmtc W. ( lllll'Hl, 1 Mad6'en Qasida of X, s1·1· S.Hrt ·r M. Air, "I{ •trtl r pr •tlrw •ltW'1rslwan Kisr Od ·."journal of Amhir. 1./lr•rr;tur,. Tl (LCJ()f,) · r;u , ubi sunt was a fcrttl• ground of r tllec t ion 111 rn du·vall'''I sl.trl .wd Ar .dw IItPr,uy lttltw t e Latm l world.J·or tlu Ar .rhu uiJI Will, '>I • C.,HI B., IPr, "IJin .unt 1/lll ani' 110 111 mutulu 1 zur Kultur· uml Sprru hgt•wh u ht t' vm whmliLh t1 fh w11t , ( flr ,I u M. r' u '• 1 J I l ),

lbr hamal· lnJ lawJ, '"J h • I. 1111 nt for I· ll•n C.tltl' "(l'hD It ~ r lHHl, llruv r I y {1

) For uh1 unt In l~w op1 rr Iller t1IJJJ , l't' M.uy J:IIPn B k r, '"Jiu• lJh l Sun I rrn, dttl nu (PhD di ·rt l!llll, Ar 1/IJII I. I lJn v I I y, 198]) Khayyam, d. d q li d y<~t ( ' ~ hr. n. Javtd n, l 52 ), 71, rub 7

Scanned by CamScanner /1 ,QIJLO 40 . 8.111ram raised his sceptre Uam 1. or th 0 rl whcrL' ' ·••or , • L nt the palace ICf ~ ·gnty has now become a grave fo e In tht: r t l' ' . rnbol of sovcret ' . . r the h'-. up. the Jrantan . , Is across three temporalities: first 1' t l t , , ubi wnt extcm . . , the ch-r wrcrl kmg. Kha ·yams . I S·ts·mian king excelled m captunng onagers an ntu . , . ·gn when t tc • • 1· h d oraht ofBahr ,un s 1 et ' I . 1tcrmediate tempora tty w en the Pal t mp . ·er" second, t tc t1 . _ . ace rl pia ~ng 111s sO\'CI etgn pov. ' f habitation for lions (shu) and of propa I . d became a p1 ace o ga. reduced to rums, an l'ty of the poet who gazes on the past a '' a . - . 1· d the tcmpora I . s a uon for to ·c. (nibalwn), t llr ' Tl' tl1'trd temporality accomphshes the poet's ta k f · country. 11s _ s trav 1Jer gaze. on a oretgn _ _ er of onagers (gur), now taken captive by , t k'ng1 Bahram Gur, s1 ay . a b ' burymg the gna h ~ 's ubi sunt is but one of many texts m this genr · d f 11·r QmarK ayyam e very differt:nt km o 9 • • fhomonyms a poetic device known in Arab . f 't ·meaning on an mterp 1ay o ' o- that re I1e on .. _ . ) and which heavily characterizes Khaqani' p . rhetoric as Jlnas (paronomasta , h' s er. tan d . II his critique of sovereignty. That t IS mode of verbal oetic generally, an espeCla Y d' · P . b · unt texts indicates how the tscursive world of the opposition occurs m so many u I 5 ...... d . uistic opposition that ts gtven spattal as well as temporal ubi sunt 1s premtse on a 1mg expression. . . Even before poets turned their mind to the task of representmg the rums of Ctesiphon, orators such as the famous Mutazill leader Wa~il b. Ata' (d. 7 48) had already engaged with this image to suggest the fleetingness of worldly power. "Where are the kings," asked Wa~il b. Ata', "who built Mada'in?" Typically for the ubi sunt, Wa~il b. Ata"s list of these king's accomplishments contrasts royal sovereignty, which is sub­ ject ~0 decay, with the orator's temporality, which is not subject to the decay induced by time:

And strengthened palaces and fortified gates? [ ... ] And trained purebred horses? And possessed all the lands?[ ... ] This world[ ... ] crushed them with its breast, it chomped on them with its canines. It gave them in exchange for vast space, narrow confines; for might, humility; for life, perishing. They went to reside in graves. Maggots ate them. They became such that you see only their abodes [masakanahum], and you find only their signposts [ma'alimahum] [ ... ] You do not hear a single sound from them. 52

The Persian .po~t Ferdowsi (d. 1025) recycled Wa~il b. Ata"s oratory of sovereign power's demise Ill a speech delivered by the Sasanian king Ardashir (r. 379-383) to the Persian ruling elite:

w.:...:; J ~l.:i l: ..:;~ .JY. u' ~ ~jJ.J:!;..JI)_,.... J~ u'.)J'~ .li..l_?. 0 t ~ ..JI..>-"~ J ji)I..>-"..JI~

51 I Cite, With minor modifications from the Arab1c Human/Lie 1n 'fhei T ' translation of'J'ahera Qutbuddm, "Khutba," m Cia 'Sica/ r 0 wn erms, ed, Beatnce G dl . II 2008), 267 For the Arab t ruen er and M1chael Cooper on (Le1den· Bn • •c ext, see Ahmad Zaki S f arab1yya al-zah1ra (Be• rut: Dar I-M b . ·a wat, }amharat khuf.ab a/- arab fi I· u iir a/· a at u at al- ArabJYah, 1933), 2.501-3, No.4 75.

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l A L) '..;j. ~ L.. u'.S J u' ~ u • • J L»! La .l.i J' ...s d~~~ ....s.JI

\'Vhere are th mighty ones with their th1 on· and crowns? [ ., . re the hor em en elated with victory? w1e'"'1 1 here arc the wi e brave ones? W . 7 Where are th prou d warnors. Where are our exalted ancestors? Where are our valiant servants? NoW their pillow is dust and bricl< LuckY he who did not grow but the seed of goodness.] erdoW i's text corresponds precisely to its Latin counterpart in offering a Persian ;aralleL at the opening of each hemistich,. to the ubi sunt refrain: "where?" ( koja) Ferdowsi deploys anaphora rather than ep1strophe, but the effect is the same. From the reflections of Wa~il b. 'Ata' to al-Bul:tturi to Khayyam and Ferdowsi, one theme is consistently reinforced: the sovereignty of kings, these authors intimate in antici- ation of Khaqanl's more forthright declarations, yields to poetry's more permanent ~overeignty. The difference between worldly and poetic power is temporally exposed through the discourse of the ubi sunt. Spatially it is exposed as the poets gaze on ruins, through the topos of travel. The contrast between worldly and poetic sovereignty leads aJ-Bu~turi to conclude his poem on Mada'in by insisting on the equality of races and peoples. "I find myself thereafter in love with noble," states al-Bul:lturi, "men of every race [sinkhin] and origin [issW (v. 56). While of course not equivalent to a modern theory of human equality, al-Bul:lturi's insistence on the proximity of all peoples to his understanding of greatness constitutes a challenge to the hierarchal discourses on which the prerogative of royal sovereignty is founded, including those that inform Sasanian kingship. The equalizations inflicted by these poet's ubi sunt discourse onto the passage of time through the medium of ruins (as well as spatially through the travel narrative) were fully absorbed in Khaqani's poem. As the poet who, more than any of his contemporarie , used to poi pertaining to exile and complaint to extend the authority of poetry, Khaqani also drew on the medieval discourse of ubi sunt to contest sovereign power. When Khaqani set out to compose his qa$fda on the ruins of Nushtrwan's palace in 1156, he had already composed the six prison poems that refashioned his poetic persona within a prophetic lineage and which created the foundation for his understanding o poetry's discursive sovereignty. 54 For Khaqani, poetry vatic utterance had already been mfused with sovereignty by the topos of incarceratiOn.

Sl Shiihniima, ed. Ojala! Khaleghi-Motlagh. Mahmoud Omtdsalar, and Abu ai-Fazl Kh atibi ( ew York Btbhotheca Persica, 1987-2008), 1504. 54 The e poems are included in the appendi to Gould, ''The Polittcal Ae thettc"

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pa t.sKhaqam' _ _ _ poetic. d'1scourse d'ffers1 from other genres of travel literature in that th e poet's evocation of the past is not fashioned in response to a royal mandate. There is no patron for this poem: the poet speaks in his own VOJce. Instead of chronicling the achievements of Sasanian kings, but in keeping with the aesthetics of rebellion that the Mad>' in qasida seeks to cultivate, Khiiq:ini exposes the founding violence of royal saver. eignty. Here and elsewhere, the conceptual severance of power from glory is one conse. quence of the Khiiqiinian aesthetic mode. The opening hemistich of the Madii'in qasicla entail a discursive transformation of sovereignty. The lesson ('ibrat) Khaqan; instructs thepassage reader of time:to learn from the ruins is the text of his own poem, a mirror (.zy; neh) to th . e

ulA r:fi ~ o~~ J U:H ~J:IC J~ (.SI ulA 57 . b . . ll U I...JJ:IC (.$~ .J l,)jl.l..Q UI_J:!I [Behold! 0 heart Willing to take lessons, Take a look! . Knowthat the ruins of Mada' in are a mirror that gives Iesso ns .] This distich simultaneously add h . resses t e poet d h . constratns) the poet's vocation Th' d l' an t e regime that limit (and P . . Is ua Ity of add . ersian aesthetics, Wherein unmir t d ress IS a hallmark of the clas ical cage d tga e calls for revot t' ncy, an the most effective Politi . . u Ion Would have posse sed little ca 1 CrttJques empl d . SS J, Huizinga, The Waning o[th lvf oye a POetics of indirection. 56 As Clinton has n e ldd/e Ages (Garden City· A h ltors of ironshah:)ted,drnhostreactings ofJeal to lost Sasan· a IS treated in rnocter . x s reception history. For r c nt na.... an glory l• n 1ranian h' ... ..,n., Aflal ai·Din 8 • 'see •·•ehcti Ma'khuzi "t tstoriography a a proto-n uon· adl/ rbn 'Ar1 , 11 ash and a h quotationsinthlSch Najjar khaqani h . _ rc ang (1ehran Sukhan, 1388) apter are f rrvam d . - rorn this Poern. · alJ dt, 358-60. Th remamm

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\\ r, ytt 1t uses timl' .' Wl'll ,\s Spd c to I"C'inlo1n• thi'i thc•n~t· r11 str·,1cJ ol trH'I •ly r, humanmortahty, the poet st.llrs th,\1 tiH' t•.trth is drunl< with th. hlrH d 12111 (ma~t) 1 /'u!>hin\.lll that tlows from his on's cup (lws). Cups, pttrtirularly rn Sasanian ltOn()g­ h ',are bear r: of regal power and not vessels lor mortality. The cJouhl . ent(•ndrc on ;~d (meaning both ad.vic~, an_d ~he sp~cics of bird known as a l

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u~ ,_; .r- .)i.a J..l u_,AI w..,.; ~ ..;...Q 1 So many ha\\'ks shined on his crown. , ow much more new counsel is hidden in his brain.

The sovereign power delineated here is fraught with mortality. Nothing will remain, and we lmO\\' this due to the very position of the speaker; gazing on ruins of what used to be. Sasanian power in Khaqani's rendering breeds death. Khaqanf's pun exposes the entire soda! order on which medieval kingship is founded. In v. 30, there is a brief return to the temporalizing ubi sunt with the rhetorical question "where have they gone (koja raftand)?" Unusually, the poet answers his rhe­ toncal question. When kings die, their bodies depart, but not to heaven: the earth's belly, the poet says is pregnant ( abestan) with the flesh of the royal deceased. A series of observations follow that fulfill Walter Benjamin's insight that genres are only realized in the act of their transgression. Whereas Samuel] ohnson argued that every new innovation •subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established;' Benjamin went further, pointing out that all major literary works transgress the boundaries of genre. And yet, a text that has transgressed a genre remains accountable to it. ''A major work either establishes a genre [Gattung] or abolishes it," argued Benjamin. "A per­ fect work does both.''58 As an exemplar of a range of genres, discourses, and forms (the narrative of mobility and confinement, the ubi sunt, and the qa$fda) and as the antithesis afthese modes, written after Khaqani has been freed from prison, the Mada'in qa~Tda Is the Benjamin ian vision of a work that shapes a genre by violating its norms. •Giving birth [zayfdan] is difficult," the poet continues, "but sowing seed [notfeh is easy." These words at once transgress the temporalizing focus of the ubi sunt,

BenJamm, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspie/s, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Berhn: uhrkamp,

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b al-8u htu n, Ferdowsi ' and , and. alter 1 sub r ubject 1 le the fteetlngness of earthly exostence than Po • Th e relgnty o who give their bodies. to the earth,' including. the d '>' d d H u ho in an ormuz • are performmg the imper.ect, masculine ' lab ' Ur d that culmonates In aborted births, or In death. By contrast With the ko 1 0 ~dl aimlnately 50 their sperm, Khiqini aligns the poet's task With the ~~~~, rk of giYOng birth. Rather than feed his body to. the earth by lusting ar r worklly glory, Khaqini vows with his verse to create sovereognty from Poetry. Ech,, e medoeval discourse of the ubi sun~ the q~ida's final apostrophe-" How rtoa~g tyran · bodies [llln·i jobbdnin1 has the earth eaten so far?" (v. 3 4)-signals its a Path ~ It also extends poetry's discursive sovereignty, for the cycle that cannibalizes the humanng's power blood. knows no end. The voracious earth will never be satiated (sir nashod) bj.

Whereas other poets deploy the temporalizing discourse of ubi sunt to place, c:asmlt valuation on the fteettngness of worldly power and to suggest that nothing on earth Is permanent Khiqini offers a counterweight to the emptiness of the worldly -..1gn. Pace Clinton, who counts among the most astote readers of this Poe to cia , Khlqan; Is more inspired by poetry's discursive sovereignty than by religious111 piety. Inaugurating section three (vv. 36-42) With an apostrophe to himself, the poet iiiStnu:ls himself to learn the lesson ('ibrat) of Nushirwin's court, in the expectation t th balaace of power between the poet and his patron awaits Imminent reversal. d ruler:rse that follows even more explicitly reverses the balance of power between poet

~ji ~ IS.l.iJ ul.l.al... jl ..J. jJ.,.. ull.l.. ~ ~ ji «S.l.i J ..;J j '-.;i today the beggar seeks food from the sultan, -MI'Imw the sultan Will beg from the hungry one.

••••tr of1 a -. SOcial order In the near future Is Immediately followed by a ~ve link between Gift and this q<1$1"da, composed during the same IChiqini Provides the name of the text on Which he was workmg at Mr:•·lraqq,n (Gift: from the Two lraqs), and Indicates that it Is destined for

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'1 l' • "l ~ mt tal . f kmgl glory, including those found in the 1 • ~~ t1 • tlnt tr at· poetry, rath r than kingship, as the pin­ nl~ a \ar of hi dep nd n y on patronage networks, th ult n. At the ·am time, he also perceived d \\ ith hypo ri ·y at be t and blood hed at worst. 10u earth pr gnant v ith blood-drenched Sa anian di I t1 b tween worldly pow rand poetry' over ignty.

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Montserrat Plera is Associate Professor of Medieval Spanish at 1i mple University. She has published on a wide range of topics from chivalry to early modern women writers.

Cover Image: Vr w of 1h c a~t 1 11 Medtt rr anean in th fourt nth c ntury. Library of Conaress Geography • nd M p D1v1 s1on W hington, DC. Fac 1mil of th Atlas Catalan de 1375 attnbuted to th e Ma1orc, n cartogr pher Ab ra ham Cr squ s and hous d m th Bibhotheque nat1onalc d Fr anc 111 P n .

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