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A version of this article is available in printVolume VI, Fascicle 4, pp. 356-388COURTS AND COURTIERS i. In the Median and Achaemenid periodsAvailable information on the Median and Achaemenid imperial courts is very limited and not entirely reliable. From Herodotus’ report (1.114) of the child Cyrus’ playing at being king it…

(1906-1985), Czech orientalist who specialized in Central Asian history, Persian historiography, and Turcology.…

Celebrated Persian lyric poet (ca. 715-792/1315-1390).A version of this article is available in printVolume XI, Fascicle 5, pp. 461-507 HAFEZ (Ḥāfeẓ), ŠAMS-AL-DIN MOḤAMMAD of Shiraz (ca. 715-792/1315-1390), celebrated Persian lyric poet.HAFEZ i. An OverviewHafez is the most popular of Persian poets. If a book of poetry is to be found in a Persian home, it is likely to be the Divān (collected poems) of Hafez. Many of his lines have become proverbial sayings, and there are few who cannot recite some of his lyrics, partially or totally, by heart. His Divān is widely used in bibliomancy ( fāl; …

, Ḥamīd al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh , was a prominent dāʿī of the Fāṭimids during the reign of al-Ḥākim bi-amr Allāh (386-411/996-1021) as well as the author of many works on the theory of the Imāmate and on Ismāʿīlī philosophy. The life of al-Kirmānī is known only in its main outlines, which can be traced on the basis of statements contained in his own works. Some other details can be derived from unpublished Ismāʿīlī sources, as has been done notably by Muṣṭafā G̲h̲ālib ( op. cit., 41 f.) who, however, does not specify these sources. His nisba points to his origin fro…

, Mad̲j̲dūd b. Ādam al-G̲h̲aznawī, Persian poet. In early sources already the kunya Abu ’l-Mad̲j̲d is sometimes added to his name. As a pen name he used Sanāʾī, only rarely Mad̲j̲dūd or Mad̲j̲dūd Sanaʾī. The former name could have been derived from Sanāʾ al-Milla, one of the laḳabs of the G̲h̲aznawid sultan Masʿūd III, but the poet’s actual relationship to this ruler is unclear, because no panegyrics directly addressed to him by Sanāʾī have been preserved. As a matter of fact, no reliable biographical data outside the p…

(a.), poetry. 1. In Arabic. (a) The pre-modern period. It is the supreme ornament of Arab culture and its most authentically representative form of discourse. The ideas articulated by poetry and the emotional resonances which it conveys earn it, even in the present day, where numerous new literary forms are in competition with it, the approval of scholars and the populace alike. Despite the phonetic resemblance, s̲h̲iʿr is totally unconnected with the Hebrew s̲h̲īr , the ʿayn is a “hard” consonant which persists in the roots common to the two langu…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Aḥmad , Persian mystic who died on the 10th Muḥarram 425/5th December 1033 at the age of 73. The nisba refers to the village of K̲h̲araḳān situated in the mountains to the north of Bisṭām on the road to Astarābād (modern Gurgān). There are several variants for the vocalisation of this place-name even in the early sources for the life of this mystic. This confusion may very well be the result of the existence of other place names with the same consonant outline, such as K̲h̲a…

(A.), a term in rhetoric, means "trope" and, more generally, the use of a word ¶ deviating from its original meaning and use, its opposite being ḥaḳīḳa ("veritative expression"). In Arabic literature. The different modes of expression labelled as mad̲j̲āz by the Arabic theorists were divided into twelve categories by Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) without, however, following a consistent system of criteria (cf. al-Suyūṭī, Muzhir , ed. Cairo 1282, i, 171). A more refined and detailed version of this classifying system was put forward by al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) ( Itḳān …

(a.), the name of apoem written in rhyming couplets. 1. In Arabic literature, see muzdawid̲j̲ . 2. In Persian. According to the prosodist S̲h̲ams-i-Ḳays (7th/13th ¶ century), the name refers to “a poem based on independent, internally rhyming lines ( abyāt-i mustaḳill-i muṣarraʿ ). The Persians call it mat̲h̲nawī because each line requires two rhyming letters— This kind ( nawʿ ) is used in extensive narratives and long stories which cannot easily be treated of in poems with one specific rhyming letter” ( al-Muʿd̲j̲am , ed. Tehran 1338/1959, 418f.). The fir…

, a popular story in mediaeval Islamic literature. 1. In Persian literature. The Biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, who later received the name of Zulayk̲h̲ā, entered into Persian literature mainly through Arabic sources, consisting first of Sūrat Yūsuf (XII) of the Ḳurʾān, and then of commentaries on this “most beautiful of stories” and traditions on the lives of ancient Prophets ( ḳiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ [ q.v.]). The many additions to the story as it was told in the holy scriptures were derived from the Hebrew Midrash and Christian works in Syriac (cf. …

(a.), literally, “freeing oneself, escaping from (something)”, a technical term of literary usage. 1. In literary form. Here, it is the transition from the introduction [see nasīb ] of the polythematic ḳaṣīda [ q.v.] to subsequent themes, esp. the panegyric section. Often called k̲h̲urūd̲j̲ “exit”, it may be abrupt, without any attempt at preparing what follows, or effected brusquely with formulas such as daʿ d̲h̲ā “leave this (and speak on something else)”. From ʿAbbāsid times onwards, poets and critics favoured t…

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, or Taḳī al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī al-Awḥadī, Persian anthologist, lexicographer and poet. He was born at Iṣfahān on 3 Muḥarram 973/31 January 1565, into a family with a Ṣūfī tradition from Balyān in Fārs. One of his paternal ancestors was the 5th/11th-century S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Abū ʿAlī al-Daḳḳāḳ. During his adolescence he studied in S̲h̲īrāz, where he presented his early poems to a circle of poets and was encouraged by ʿUrfī [ q.v.]. Returning to Iṣfahān, he attracted the attention of the young S̲h̲āh ʿAbbās I and joined his entourage. In 1003/1594-5, Taḳī retired for six years to the ʿatabāt …

, the pen-name of a Persian poet who lived at the end of the 4th/11th and the beginning of the 5th/12th century. His personal name as well as almost any other particulars of his life are unknown. The Tard̲j̲umān al-balāg̲h̲a has preserved an elegy by Labībī on the death of Farruk̲h̲ī [ q.v.], which means that the former was probably still alive in 429/1037-8. A ḳaṣīda attributed to him by ʿAwfī is addressed to a mamdūḥ by the name of Abu ’l-Muẓaffar, who in that source is identified with a younger brother of the G̲h̲aznavid Sultan Maḥmūd. But it is more likely that he was a member of the Āl-i Muḥtād̲j̲, the rulers of Čag̲h̲āniyān, who was also a patron of Farruk̲h̲ī’s poetry (see C. E. Bosworth, …

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, the familiar form of the name of S̲h̲ams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ḳays Rāzī, author of the oldest Persian work on poetics, al-Muʿd̲j̲am fī maʿāyīr as̲h̲ʿār al-ʿad̲j̲am , which covers the full range of traditional literary scholarship. Facts about his life are only to be found in his own statements, mostly in the introduction to his sole surviving work ( Muʿd̲j̲am , 2-24). His native town was Rayy, where he must have been born around the beginning of the last quarte…

, Ḥakīm Saʿd al-Dīn b. S̲h̲ams al-Dīn b. Muḥammad, Persian poet, born 645/1247-8 in Bīrd̲j̲and [ q.v.], where he died in 720/1320-1. The name Nizārī was not only his nomde-guerre as a poet, but also seems to indicate the loyalty of his family to Nizār [ q.v.], the pretender to the Fāṭimid imāmate in the late 5th/11th century whose claim was supported by most Persian Ismāʿilīs. Reliable facts concerning his life can only be deduced from his own work…

(also known in the Arabicised form Marzubān-nāma ), a work in Persian prose containing a variety of short stories used as moral examples and bound together by one major and several minor framework stories. It is essentially extant in two versions written in elegant Persian with many verses and phrases in Arabic. They were made from a lost original in the Ṭabarī dialect independently of each other in the early 13th century. The oldest version, entitled Rawḍat al-ʿuḳūl , was completed in 598/1202 by Muḥammad b. G̲h̲ā…

, the tak̲h̲alluṣ or pen-name of a Turkish translator and commentator of Persian literary works who flourished in the second half of the 10th/16th century. In his own works and in most of the biographical sources only this name is mentioned. B. Dorn, referring to “two manuscripts” of Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa, asserted that he was properly called Muṣṭafā Darwīs̲h̲. Even more uncertain is the name S̲h̲emʿ-Allāh Perzennī which Bursali̊ Meḥmed Ṭāhir attributed to him; this was based perhaps on the confusion with another S̲h̲emʿī, a Ṣūfī poet from the town of Prizren [ q.v.], or Perzerīn, who …

, or Dāstān-i Ḳahramān , a popular romance in prose, several versions…

, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Mad̲j̲d al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Bisṭāmī (or al-Harawī), Persian scholar and theologian, was born in 803/1400-1 at S̲h̲āhrūd near Bisṭām as a descendant of the famous theologian Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn al-Rāzī [ q.v.]. The nickname muṣannifak (“the little writer”) was probably given to him “in allusion to his youthful productivity as a writer” (Storey). He studied at Harāt and continued to live in Eastern Persia until 848/1444 when he travelled to Anatolia. While he was teaching at Ḳonya, his hearing d…

, muḥammad s̲h̲arīf b. s̲h̲ams al-dīn al-s̲h̲īrāzī ( ca. 1001/1592-after 1063/1653), a Persian prosewriter and poet with the tak̲h̲alluṣ Kās̲h̲if (the forms Kās̲h̲if-i Kumayt, cf. Rosen, loc. cit., and S̲h̲arīfā Kās̲h̲if, cf. …

(p.), the Indian style, is the third term of a classification of Persian literature into three stylistic periods. The other terms, sabk-i Ḵh̲urāsānī (initially also called sabk-i Turkistānī ) and sabk-i ʿIrāḳī , refer respectively to the eastern and the western parts of mediaeval Persia. The assumption underlying this geographical terminology is that the shifts of the centre of literary activity from one area to another, which took place repeatedly since the 4th/10th century, were p…

(the most probable interpretation of the consonants mhsty , for which other forms, like Mahistī, Mahsitī or Mihistī, have been proposed as well; cf. Meier, 43 ff.) a Persian female poet whose historical personality is difficult to ascertain. She mus…

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, a dynasty which ruled in Persia as “sovereigns 907-1135/1501-1722, as fainéants 1142-8/1729-36, and thereafter, existed as pretenders to the throne up to 1186/1773. I. Dynastic, political and military history. The establishment of the Ṣafawid state in 907/1501 by S̲h̲āh Ismāʿīl I [ q.v.] (initially ruler of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān only) marks an important turning-point in Persian history. In the first place, the Ṣafawids r…

(p.). a Persian word, derived as an adjective from the common Iranian root nāman- , “name”. Already in Middle Persian the form nāmag can be ¶ found also as a substantive referring to an inscription, a letter or a book. In the orthography of Pahlavī, the word could be written either phonemically, as n’mk’, or by means of any of two heterographs: S̲H̲M-k’, which was based on the Semitic word for “name”, and MGLT’, i.e. the Aramaic m e…

, (or S̲h̲abustarī , according to modern Azeri writers) S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Saʿd al-Dīn, Persian mystic and writer. He was born at S̲h̲abistar, a small town near the north-eastern shore of Lake Urmiya. The date of his birth is unknown, but would have to be fixed about 686/1287-8 if the report that he died at the age of 33 (mentioned in an inscription on a tombstone erected on his grave in the 19th century) is accepted. He is said to have led the life of a prominent religious scholar at Tabrīz. Travels to Egypt, Syria and the Ḥid̲j̲āz are mentioned in the introduction to the Saʿādat-nāma …

i.—Geography The geological background: The alignments of Iran’s principal topographie features, represented by the Kūhhā-yi Alburz and the Zagros Chain, are west to east and north-west to south-east, respectively. In broad context, the Alburz is a continuation of the European Alpine structures, while the Zagros chain has been linked through Cyprus with the Dinaric Alps (Fisher, 1956). The structure of the mountain rim of the country has been influenced strongly by tectonic movements which have n…

(p.), a word applied in Persian with a contemptuous connotation to “a knave, a rogue, a drunkard” or “a debauchee”; in the terminology of poets and mystics it acquired the positive meaning of “one whose exterior is liable to censure, but who at heart is sound” (Steingass, s.v., after the Burhān-i ḳāṭiʿ ). The etymology of rind is unclear. It is not an Arabic loanword, in spite of the existence of the broken plural runūd , a learned form used next to the regular Persian plural rindān …

, legendary ruler of Sīstān [ q.v.] and vassal of the Kayānids, the epic kings of Īrān, was, according to al-T̲h̲aʿālibī and Firdawsī, the son of Narīmān, the father of Zāl-Dastān and the grandfather of Rustam [ q.v.]. This pedigree is the outcome of a long development spanning the entire history of the Iranian epic. In the Avesta, Sāma is the name of a clan to which T̲h̲rīta, “the third man who pressed the Haoma”, belonged as well as his sons Urvāk̲h̲s̲h̲aya and Kərəsāspa (Yasna 9. 10). Kərəsāspa (Persian Kars̲h̲āsp or Gars̲h̲āsp)…

, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim Ḥasan Aḥmad, Persian poet at the G̲h̲aznawid court during the early 5th/11th century. …

, “the Madman of Laylā”, or Mad̲j̲nūn Banī ʿĀmir, the name given to the hero of a romantic love story, the original form of which could date back as far as the second half of the 1st/7th Century. 1. In Arabic literature This imaginary character (acknowledged as such even by some Arab critics; see Ag̲h̲ānī , ed. Beirut, ii, 6, 11) has been furnished by the ruwāt with an ism and with a complete genealogy; Ḳays b. al-Mulawwaḥ b. Muzāḥim b. Ḳays b. ʿUdas b. Rabīʿa b. D̲j̲aʿda b. Kaʿb b. Rābīʿa b. ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa, but according to the evidence, …

, Ḥakīm S̲h̲araf al-Dīn Ḥasan, Persian physician and poet of the Ṣafawid period. He was born in 956/1549 (Gulčīn-i Maʿānī) or 966/1558-9 (Ṣafā) at Iṣfahān. His nom-de-plume refers to the medical profession, which was a tradition of his family. He was also a student of speculative mysticism, but he achieved his greatest fame as a poet. His literary work consists of g̲h̲azals and ḳaṣīda…

b. Āḳā K̲h̲ān , Persian anthologist and poet, who is also known by his penname Ād̲h̲ar which he adopted after having used the names Wālih and Nak̲h̲at previously. He was descended from a prominent Turcoman family belonging to the Begdīlī tribe of Syria (Begdīlī-i S̲h̲āmlū) which had joined the Ḳi̊zi̊lbās̲h̲ movement [ q.v.] in the 9th/15th century. Afterwards, the family settled down in Iṣfahān. Many of his relatives served the later Ṣafawids and Nādir S̲h̲āh as administrators and diplomats. Luṭf ʿAlī Beg was born on Saturday 20 Rabīʿ II 1134/7 F…

is in the technical language of Persian and Turkish literature a set of five mat̲h̲nawī poems. The term is used, first of all, to designate the five epic poems of Niẓāmī [ q.v.] of Gand̲j̲a which were composed between ca. 570/1174-5 and 600/1203-4. The set contains one didactic poem Mak̲h̲zan al-asrār , in the metre sarīʿ-i maṭwiyy-i mawḳūf ; three romantic poems: Laylā u Mad̲j̲n…

, S̲h̲araf al-Dīn Ḥasan b. Muḥammad, Persian rhetorician and poet, who ¶ flourished in the middle of the 8th/14th century. Very little is known about his life and the few chronological indications that we possess are either imprecise or unreliable. Dawlats̲h̲āh states that he was the poet laureate ( malik al-s̲h̲uʿarāʾ [ q.v.]) of ʿIrāḳ dur…

, Sayyid (or Mīr) Muḥammad Ḥusayn , a modern Persian poet. He was born about 1905 at Tabrīz as the son of a lawyer, and belonging to a family of sayyid s in the village of K̲h̲us̲h̲gnāb. In hi…

(a.), poet. ¶ 1. In the Arab world. A. Pre-Islamic and Umayyad periods. Among those endowed with knowledge and with power in ancient Arabia stands the figure of the s̲h̲āʿir , whose role is often confused with that of the ʿarrāf ( s̲h̲aʿara and ʿarafa having the same semantic value: cf. I. Goldziher, Abhandlungen , i, 3 ff.) and of the kāhin [ q.v.]. They were credited with the same source of inspiration, the d̲j̲inns (Goldziher, Die Ǧinnen der Dichter , in ZDMG, xlv [1891], 685 ff.). However, the s̲h̲āʿir was, originally, the repository of magical rather than divinatory knowledge; …

, the principal hero of the Iranian epic, especially in the version of Firdawsī [ q.v.]. 1. In Iranian legend. Neither his name nor that of his father Zāl occur in the Avesta. In the Yas̲h̲t s, Kərəsāspa (in Persian, Kars̲h̲āsp or Gars̲h̲āsp) is the most important heroic figure. Marquait conjectured that originally “Rustam” was no more than an epithet of Kərəsāspa, which only by chance was not attested in the extant Avestan texts. The exploits later attributed to Rustam would be the result of a blend of the l…

(p.) or S̲h̲ahrās̲h̲ūb (“upsetting the town”), a genre of short love poems on young craftsmen, often related to the bazaars of specific towns. 1. In Persian In Persian literature, the genre is usually referred to under the latter name. E.J.W. Gibb’s contention that the genre was invented by the Turkish poet Mesīḥī [ q.v.] of Edirne ( HOP, ii, 232), was challenged already by E.G. Browne who, pointing to Persian s…

(a.), anthology, selection of poetry. 1. In Arabic. Mediaeval tradition holds that the oldest anthology of Arabic poems is the small collection of celebrated pre-Islamic ḳaṣīda s variously known as “the seven long poems”, al-Muʿallaḳāt [ q.v.], al-Sumūṭ , etc. It is probably the oldest in conception. The early ʿAbbāsid period saw the compilation of the celebrated Mufaḍḍaliyyāt [ q.v.]. Al-Aṣmaʿī’s anthology …

, S̲h̲ams al-S̲h̲uʿarāʾ Kamāl al-Dīn , Persian poet of the early Ṣafawid period, born ca. 1500 in Kās̲h̲ān. According to the most reliable sources, he died in 996/1587-8; a ¶ less likely dating of his death, given by Abū Ṭālib Iṣfahānī in K̲h̲ulāṣat al-afkār (see Storey i/2, 878), is 1000/1591-2. For some time he was a draper ( bazzāz ) like his father, but he abandoned this trade for the more profitable career of a…

, or Niẓām al-Dīn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Zākānī, Persian poet of the Mongol period who became especially famous for his satires and parodies. He was born into a family of scholars and state officials descending from Arabs of the Banū Ḵh̲afād̲j̲a [ q.v.] settled in the area of Ḳazwīn since early Islamic times. In 730/1329-30 the historian Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī described him as a talented poet and a writer of learned treatises. A collection of Arabic sayings by prophets and wise men, entitled Nawādir al-amt̲h̲āl , belongs to this early period. When later in the same …

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, or K̲h̲ard̲j̲ird, has been the name of at least two different places in northeastern Persia but is at present only current for one of them. 1. K̲h̲argird in the s̲h̲ahristān of Turbat-i Ḥaydariyya, or, more precisely, the dihistān of Rūd-i miyān K̲h̲wāf, is situated at about 6 km. to the southwest of the latter place. It is now a small settlement, the inhabitants of which live on the growing of cereals and cotton as well as on weaving. Archaeological remains point, however, to a much more prosperous past when K̲h̲argird was one of the main urban centres of the district of K̲h̲wāf [ q.v.]. Many m…

(a.), “memorandum”…

b. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Niẓām al-Dīn Abu ’l-Maʿālī, also known as Naṣr Allāh Muns̲h̲ī, a Persian author and statesman who was born at G̲h̲azna in a family which came from S̲h̲īrāz. He served as a secretary in the dīwān of the G̲h̲aznawids. Under K̲h̲usraw Malik (555-82/1160-86) he rose to the rank of a vizier but he fell into disgrace with this sultan and was executed while in prison (cf. ʿAwfī, Lubāb , i, 92 ff.). Naṣr Allāh Muns̲h̲ī’s fame rests on his version ( Tard̲j̲uma ) of the Indian mirror for princes Kalīla wa Dimna [ q.v.] into Persian prose, which was based…