A Persian Manuscript in the Library of Huis Bergh Castle, ’s-Heerenberg, The Netherlands (original) (raw)
Related papers
"The Illustration of History in Persian Manuscripts"
Iran 56.1 (2018), pp. 47-67
Many medieval manuscripts are illuminated with paintings and other graphic elements, one purpose of which may have been to reinforce the significance of the work in question with a pictorial gloss, and perhaps also as a visual aid to convey its message for the benefit of readers who may not always have been literate. Reading the text through pictures is a matter of particular interest in the case of historical literature, as chronicles often commissioned at court lend themselves especially well to a deliberate programme of enhancing the image of the ruler and celebrating his deeds according to the political concepts and ideological imperatives of the time. This paper addresses the question of the illustration of historical texts within the Persian tradition of book art, focusing on the Jami' al-tawarikh of Rashid al-Din and its impact on later productions.
Persian Literature (ISLA 388), Fall 2024
Undergraduate course syllabus, 2024
This course is intended to introduce you to classic texts in English translation from the millennium of pre-19th century literature in Persian. You will read Rūmī, Firdawsī, Hāfiz and other famous poets with attention to questions salient to them and to us: how did poetry perpetuate or undercut father-son relations? Why and how did Persian (and Arabic) literatures celebrate their own origins in and as translation? How did the courtly panegyric fuse Islamic and pre-Islamic values, put moral pressure on its addressee and displace the speaker's desire? How can proverbs and wise sayings obscure life decisions rather than clarifying them? Does Rūmī's poetry need its readers to be scholars? What kinds of reading competencies do texts like his assume? Why and how do ghazals eroticize a cruelly distant beloved? How did a ghazal or masnavī relate to prior, present and future ghazals or masnavīs? What kinds of social spaces-the court, the Sufi hospice, the coffee house, the madrasa, the home-did these texts circulate in, assume and help produce? What gender ideals did they assume and prescribe? What genre logics do they obey and disobey? How did Persian literary culture understand emotion and how does this understanding differ from our own?
Patchwork for a Prince: Exploring Persian Poetry Anthology British Library Or. 13193
Decorated Papers in Early Modern Islamic Manuscript Cultures, The Islamic Manuscript Association Symposia, Istanbul, Turkey, 23 November, 2019
Persian poetry anthologies – particularly those produced during the 15th and early 16th century - often display a kaleidoscopic use of decorated papers, and an engaging celebration of color with every turn of the page. This 'patchwork' effect may be likened to the patched cloaks worn by Sufi adherents as a sign of their renunciation of material wealth. Indeed, in Persian, the word muraqqa’ may refer not only to a ‘patched garment’ but also to an assembled (or ‘patched’) album. We can detect a similar visual conceit at work in many of the “patchwork” Persian poetry anthologies produced in the 15th and early 16th century. These manuscripts exhibit a ‘patched’ appearance which, clearly, is not out of necessity. Rather, it is achieved only through a highly labor-intensive process of multi-layered collaboration that transforms the manuscript into an elaborate and luxurious visual pun. In addition, the imagery within these manuscripts offers the visual equivalents of intertextual allusions. Paintings and other imagery within such anthologies display connections between the “internal” image and “external” texts - demanding that their viewers possess a sophisticated familiarity not only with the popular literature of the period, but also with its common visual vocabulary.
Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 2019
Ḳānūnī Sulṭān Süleymān “Muḥibbī” (r. 1520–1566) was one of the most important poets in the 16th century in period that could be rightly termed the golden age of Ottoman poetry with authors like Ḫayālī, Ẕātī and Bāḳī. Most Ottoman poets in this period composed poetry in Turkish, only a few of them felt the necessity to write poems in Persian. Though the majority of the poems of Sulṭān Süleymān are in Turkish he also composed poetry in Persian. His small Persian divan was first published in 1995 by Coşkun Ak who based his edition on two manuscripts. One of them is preserved in the Topkapı Palace Library, the other in the library of Istanbul University. The present paper besides introducing a hitherto unnoticed manuscript from Israel copied during Süleymān’s life that contains the Persian divan as well also aims at giving a detailed analysis of Muḥibbī’s Persian imitation poems.
Zbornik radova, 2017
When we look at the Islamic cultural context, we can observe that both Arabic and Persian languages were vehicles of the cultural identity. What is implied with this statement is that the language was an idiom of Islamic cultural code. Starting from this premise, I studied manuscripts preserved both in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as in the wider region of former Yugoslavia. The manuscripts I studied belong to the divan literature and they emerged in the second half of the 15 th , and were written until the beginning of 20 th century. The main authors were Adni, Derviš-paša, Ziyayi, Talib, Rušdi, Hatem, Salahi, Fevzi Mostari and others. The divan literature understood as a medium of the cultural memory was consisted of the specific structures (that could be recovered through) temporal traces, reproduction of literary canon and observing the unbroken dialogue within it. Therefore, the canonic poets reappear all the times (Attar, Rumi, Sadi, Hafiz, and Jami). This canon and local Bosnian reinterpretation of it were grounded in the Sufi understanding of poetry. Poetry in Persian in Bosnia was taken to be the best form of transmission and commentary of the Sufi thought. The corpus of kasidas, ghazals, mufreds and tarihs gathered here represents erudition, philosophical eros, imaginative strength and personal lyric tenor of poets under research. This kind of poetry produces different results among readers. And these different results (stemming from different experiences of the text) were duly marked in manuscripts as copies and various marginalia. Therefore, we still need to study various manuscript versions to produce valuable critical editions. The question of contextualization of this literature is constantly evoked: should it be classified as Islamic, Ottoman or Bosnian literature. A logical answer is that these authors and their works should be studied as individual phenomena, as a part of national context, as a part of literary community of the Ottoman Empire, and finally as a part of global Islamic culture. It is obvious that different aspects of study and various questions should be approached through different contexts. The artifacts of our poets in those languages witness the high Islamic culture of these areas. These are the remnants of a specific culture. Their poetics is informed by Sufi thought with its esoteric dimension. It treats time and space of human existence. It communicates within itself and with other, but it addresses the universal metaphysical questions. One should never be tired of stressing that the basis for any serious analysis of this legacy is a responsible and painstaking study of manuscripts.
Introduction_Text and Image in the Divan of Baki_MAdissertationSOAS2018
Divan of Baki (British Library, Add. 7922) from 1636 and its text. The manuscript features the Turkish anthology of the Ottoman poet Baki (d. 1600) with Safavid miniatures. The connection between the text and the images is one that reflects the well-established tradition of the illustration of nonnarrative books in Safavid Iran. The four themes identified in the miniatures are (a) courtly scenes, (b) entertainment of youths, (c) youth and older man, and (d) a reference to the story of Yusuf and Zuleyha. These themes are associated with the poems they illustrate, and are represented in other works of the period as well, such as the Divan of Hafiz (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, H. 1010) from 1640. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS