Persian Poetry

Sources

Language . Middle Persian, or Avestan, was a written language during the entire twelve centuries of the ancient Persian empires (550 B.C.E. – 651 C.E.), and some of the ancient literature in that language is still read by followers of the Zoroastrian religion. But after the Muslims established control of most of Iran (638–651), the Avestan language lost the state patronage that was important for its survival. The decline of Avestan was accelerated by the Arabicization of public records that began during 700–742 in different areas of the khilafah. As Iranians began to adopt Islam, especially in northeastern Iran, Arabic became the primary language for all kinds of writing while Persian remained the spoken tongue of the people, including Muslims. Indeed, even the descendants of the original Arab immigrants to Iran and the rest of the Muslim East came to speak Persian as their mother tongue. As the unity of the khilafah waned and certain marginal regions became independent, they began to cultivate forms of Persian written in the Arabic script, perhaps to underline their cultural independence within the Muslim world. These areas included especially Sistan—the remote region where the modern borders of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan meet—where the Saffarid dynasty (861–1003) cultivated Persian poetry and probably other writing in Persian. The term Modern Persian is used to describe the Persian language since the introduction of Islam, and especially since Arabic script was first used to write Persian. Beginning in the mid tenth century, the use of Persian as a literary language expanded both suddenly and widely. This development was probably connected with the continuing decline of the central authority of the Abbasid khilafah in Baghdad and the concomitant growth of Persian-speaking local dynasties, the most prominent of which were the Samanid (873–1005), Buyid (945–1055), and Ghaznawid (977–1187) ruling groups. After this time Persian spread widely in the eastern part of the Muslim world and tended to displace Arabic except in religious literature. It not only became the lingua franca of the Iranians, many of whom spoke Iranian languages other than Persian, but was also generally used by Muslim speakers of Turkish and Indian languages. When Islam became securely established in India after 1200, the local Muslims used the Persian language as their main vehicle of written expression, thus greatly enriching Persian literature. The same can be said to a lesser extent for the Anatolian and Central Asian Turks, who also used Persian as their literary vehicle.

Models . Poetry has always been the most highly respected form of Persian literature. Poetry written in Modern Persian, an exceptionally rich and extensive literary form equal to any other world literature, came into existence in the earliest Muslim period. Its existence is documented by a few fragments from the eighth and ninth centuries. The earliest extensive surviving Modern Persian poetry, however, starts in the tenth century with the poets Rudaki (died circa 940–950) and Daqiqi (circa 935 – circa 980). The earliest surviving poetic works date from the beginning of the eleventh century, with Firdawsi (circa 941–1020), Farrukhi (died 1038), ‘Unsuri (died 1040), and Manuchihri (died circa 1041). Early Modern Persian poetry was primarily influenced by Arabic models, including meter and rhyme—which might be compared to English poetry using Latin meter and rhyme schemes for much of its history. Such borrowing is understandable in the case of Persian poetry, as Arabic poetry represented the highest level of literary achievement for the Muslim elite, whether of Arab, Iranian, or another origin. Until the thirteenth century most Persian poems, like their Arabic models, were in the form of the qasidah (ode) and consisted of a prologue, a panegyric, and an appeal to the patron. In the eleventh century the ghazal (love poem), based on a common prologue theme for the qasidah, appeared, and it was the dominant poetic form from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. Also based on earlier Arabic models, the ghazal form was specifically used for love poetry, but all other forms of Persian poetry also celebrate love, whether earthly or divine. Indeed, Persian love poetry may perhaps be considered the most extensive and refined expression of romantic emotion in all human literature. As a great gulf exists between the structures of the Arabic and Persian languages, Persian poets began to establish their own forms. One Persian invention was ruba’i, two lines of two rhymed hemistichs each: in effect, four rhymed lines. The greatest creation of classical Persian literature was the mathnawi, an epic poem written in rhymed couplets (with each couplet written as a single line of verse). Although one meter of Arabic poetry, the rajaz, is also written in rhymed couplets, there is no form in Arabic poetry that compares to the development of the Persian mathnawi, especially in its ability to sustain poems of thousands of lines. Except for colloquial oral epics, such lengthy poems are lacking in Arabic. Already in existence by the tenth century, the mathnawi consists of three types: the heroic epic based on ancient, pre-Islamic Persian traditions, the romantic epic celebrating a famous pair of lovers, and the didactic mathnawi, which is only epic in its use of narrative to illustrate the moral, spiritual, or philosophical truths that it tries to inculcate. Some Persian poems follow other forms, or mix them, but the forms mentioned here are the dominant ones.

Important Persian Poets . Rudaki is in many respects the founder of Modern Persian verse and the inventor of some of its forms. Only one hundred lines of his poetry have survived: one complete poem and fragments quoted by later anthologists. Firdawsi created the foundational epic of Persian poetry, which is also the national epic of Iran, the massive Shahnameh (Book of Kings) of more than forty-eight thousand mathnawi verses (up to sixty thousand in some versions), one of the longest poems in any language and the earliest long poem surviving in Persian. Written between about 980 and 1010, Firdawsi’s monumental epic tells the story of the ancient Iranian kingdoms through the Sasanids (224–651), whose history occupies the last third of the work. The work uses fewer Arabic words than later Persian poems. Firdawsi may be considered the Persian Homer, and his work has had a major influence on all subsequent Persian literature. Abd Allah-i Ansari (1005–1089), who wrote in both Persian and Arabic, became the founder of Persian mystical poetry with his Munajat, a mixture of prose and poetry. ‘Umar Khayyam (1048–1131), though widely known as a poet, has always been better known among Muslims as a scholar, scientist, and mathematician. ‘Umar’s poems are quatrains, and only perhaps 250 of them survive, a small output compared to the quantity of work produced by writers who are primarily poets. He has become known as a great poet in the West chiefly because of the famous, creative, and loose translation of his Rubaiyyat by Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883), which has strongly influenced subsequent Western views of Persian poetry and Muslim philosophy. Although it represents ‘Umar’s poetry to some extent, FitzGerald’s work also promotes his own materialistic and antireligious beliefs in a manner that many late-nineteenth-century British readers found attractive. That ‘Umar questioned God’s actions in his poetry was not especially remarkable; Sufis, even the great mystic Abd Allah-i Ansari did the same. Likewise, the wine drinking and hedonism implied by some of the ‘Umar’s poems may be found in the hedonistic Arabic poetry of Abu Nuwas, and ‘Umar’s poetry also exhibits a struggle to repent that matches that of Abu Nuwas. ‘Umar and Abu Nuwas, like other poets, lived their lives as Muslims within the framework of Islam, even while they struggled with the prevailing interpretations of it.

The Beloved . As it developed, Persian poetry began to put a heavy emphasis on love as the means of reaching union with God, the Beloved. Often written in the ghazal form, Persian Sufi love poetry was derived from the earlier ode celebrating the poet’s patron, who was replaced by God or by the shaykh (spiritual leader) as a representative of God. At the same time the undying devotion and absolute obedience of the lover to the beloved becomes a symbol for complete surrender, devotion, and obedience to God. While perhaps not a practitioner of Sufism like most other Muslim mystic poets, Sana’i (died 1131) wrote the first large body of Muslim pietistic poetry, in particular the first large group of ghazals. He also wrote the first religious mathnawi. Continuing the religious mathnawi form, Nizami of Ganjah (1141 –circa 1209) wrote the romantic epic Layla wa-Majnun (Layla and the Crazy One) about the chaste devotion and unrealized love of a Bedouin Arab couple. The story had circulated for centuries before Nizami wrote his poem, but his version in Persian is often considered the best and has become the quasi-official version. Layla wa-Majnun has the mystical overtones that characterize most Persian love poetry, especially because the love described is that of devotion and obedience to the beloved without expectation of reward. Nizami’s near contemporary Farid al-Din al-’Attar (circa 1143 – circa 1220) wrote poetic epics with mystical content, generally teaching that God is within each individual and that one has only to realize his presence to achieve salvation. This theme is present in his Mantiq al-tayr widely available in English as The Conference of the Birds. Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273) wrote during an important period for Persian verse, when several prolific major poets were living at the same time. Rumi is the most famous of all Persian poets and indeed the best known and most widely read Muslim author in English. His surviving ghazals are included in his Diwan-i Shams-i Tabrizi (The Collected Poems of Shams-i Tabrizi) of more than forty thousand verses. He also wrote a Mathnawi of more than twenty-six thousand verses. Although he is primarily considered a Sufi poet, he was also a poet of passionate love. These two aspects are brought together by the idea that the beloved is really God, even though the expressions of love may seem earthly. In the view of Rumi and his followers such passion is the most ideal state to which humans may aspire and is thus a suitable way in which to express one’s love of God. Such ideas have helped to endear Rumi to a large segment of the western public. Another important Sufi poet was the daring and well-traveled Fakhr al-Din ‘Iraqi (1213–1289), also known chiefly for his mystical love poetry. Sa’di (circa 1216–1292) is considered to have brought the ghazal to its peak. In his Gulistan (Rose Garden) he developed a mixture of prose and poetry that has remained a popular form. Sa’di’s poetry is shrewd, entertaining, and full of practical worldly advice. Amir-i Khusraw (1253–1325), who wrote both ghazals and panegyric “historical” poems, became the premier Muslim poet of medieval India. Hafiz (circa 1325–1390), whose complete works consist of only a few hundred short ghazals, is often held to represent the pinnacle of Persian literature. Jami (1414–1492) brought Sufi love poetry to its highest perfection, writing a large number of poems characterized by ornate, elaborate expression and filled with complicated references and metaphors. He may also have expressed a more conservative or orthodox religious sentiment than most of his predecessors who wrote Persian love poetry, and his poems tend to inculcate lessons, offer advice, and voice admonishment.

Sources

Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi (Oxford & Boston: Oneworld, 2000).

George Morrison, ed., History of Persian Literature: From the Beginning of the Islamic Period to the Present Day (Leiden: Brill, 1981).