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(ca. 1582-1646), ḤĀJI MOḤAMMAD JĀN, Persian poet of the first half of the 17th century, was born in Mashad and died in Lahore. QODSI MAŠHADI, ḤĀJI MOḤAMMAD JĀN (b. Mashad, ca. 1582; d. Lahore, 1646), Persian poet of the first half of the 17th century. The earliest biographical notices depict Qodsi as a prosperous and prominent community leader in Mashad, the city of his birth ( Karvān-e Hend II, p. 1096). By his mid-thirties, he had performed the pilgrimage to Mecca and had come to be regarded as the leading grocer in the city. His cordial relations with local …

Persian poet of the latter half of the 16th century (b. Shiraz, 1555; d. Lahore, Aug. 1591). ʿORFI ŠIRAZI, Persian poet of the latter half of the 16th century (b. Shiraz, 1555; d. Lahore, Aug. 1591). His name is given as Jamāl-al-Din Moḥammad Sidi (or Sayyedi) in the early sources. His father, Zeyn-al-Din ʿAli Balawi, was a prominent official of the provincial administration whose dealings with customary law ( ʿorf) in the course of his professional duties led to his son’s choice of ʿOrfi as his penname ( taḵalloṣ). The young ʿOrfi soon established himself as a leading figure in th…

(ca. 1532-1583), Kamāl-al-Din (or Šams-al-Din Moḥammad), Persian poet of the Safavid period, who was born in Bāfq and died in Yazd. VAḤŠI BĀFQI, KAMĀL-AL-DIN (or Šams-al-Din Moḥammad), Persian poet of the Safavid period (b. Bāfq, ca. 1532; d. Yazd, 1583). Vaḥši was born in the agricultural town of Bāfq, southeast of Yazd, where he received his earliest training in poetry from his elder brother Morādi and the local literary luminary Šaraf-al-Din ʿAli of Bāfq. He continued his education in the provincial capital of Yaz…

Indo-Persian poet of the late 16th and early 17th centuries (b. Nishapur, ca. 1560; d. Ahmadabad, between 1612 and 1614). NAẒIRI NIŠĀPURI, Moḥammad Ḥosayn, Indo-Persian poet of the late 16th and early 17th centuries (b. Nishapur, ca. 1560–d. Ahmadabad in Gujarat, between 1612 and 1614). Naẓiri left his native city of Nishapur as a young man after the death of his father. Though he traveled to western Persia as a merchant, he was already an accomplished poet when he met the literary biographer Taqi-al-Din Kāši in 158…

Persian poet and prose writer (b. Shiraz, ca. 1210; d. Shiraz, d. 1291 or 1292), widely recognized as one of the greatest masters of the classical literary tradition. SAʿDI, Abu Moḥammad Mošarref-al-Din Moṣleḥ b. ʿAbd-Allāh b. Mošarref Širāzi, Persian poet and prose writer (b. Shiraz, ca. 1210; d. Shiraz, d. 1291 or 1292), widely recognized as one of the greatest masters of the classical literary tradition. The present article examines the sources for his biography, including his major works; for the articles on these in detail, see the links given below. Little about Saʿdi’s life is …

(1528/29-1588), Šams-al-Šoʿarā Kamāl-al-Din, Persian poet of the Safavid period who was born and died in Kashan. MOḤTAŠAM KĀŠĀNI, Šams-al-Šoʿarā Kamāl-al-Din, Persian poet of the Safavid period (b. Kashan, between 1528 and 1529; d. Kashan, February 1588). Like many poets of the time, Moḥtašam had mercantile origins. His father, Ḵᵛāja Mir Aḥmad (d. 1554), was active in Kashan’s prosperous cloth industry, and the poet seems to have pursued the same occupation before a business setback led him to take up poetry as …

(Book of the Cupbearer), a poetic genre in which the speaker, seeking relief from his hardships, losses, and disappointments, repeatedly summons the sāqi or cupbearer to bring him wine. SĀQI-NĀMA (Book of the Cupbearer), a poetic genre in which the speaker, seeking relief from his hardships, losses, and disappointments, repeatedly summons the sāqi (Arazi; Hanaway; Soucek) or cupbearer to bring him wine and the moḡanni or singer to provide a song. The prototypical form of the genre—an independent poem of 150-300 rhymed couplets in the motaqāreb meter—was consolidated in the early…

Persian poet of the early 17th century (b. Mazandaran, ca. 1580; d. India, 1626-7). ṬĀLEB ĀMOLI (Taleb of Amol), Sayyed Moḥammad, Persian poet of the early 17th century (b. Mazandaran, ca. 1580-d. India, 1626-7). A precocious talent, Taleb embarked on his literary career in his late teens, composing praise poems to notables in his native Mazandaran and ḡazals (lyrics) under the penname Āšub. Beginning a lifetime of constant travel, he soon sought to further his career in the major literary centers of Persia. In Kashan (Kāšān), his maternal uncle held …

(ca. 1320-1401), Persian poet and Sufi also known as Shaikh Kamāl. A version of this article is available in print Volume XV, Fascicle 4, pp. 412-414 KAMĀL ḴOJANDI, known also as Shaikh Kamāl, Persian poet and Sufi (b. Ḵojand, a town in Central Asia, ca. 720/1320; d. Tabriz, 803/1400-1401). Nothing is known of Kamāl’s family background or early life. Even his personal name is uncertain; Masʿud is the consensus of most modern scholars (Ṣafā, III, p. 1131; Nafisi, I, p. 210; Rypka, p. 262), but early manuscripts of his divān give his name as Moḥammad, sometimes adding the patronymic ( konya) Abu…

Mollā Nur-al-Din Moḥammad (d. 1025/1616), Persian poet. ẒOHURI TORŠIZI, Mollā Nur-al-Din Moḥammad (d. 1025/1616), Persian poet. Ẓohuri was born and raised in rural Khorasan. Ẓohuri himself states that he comes from the village of Qāyen ( Sāqi-nāma, p. 203), but the earliest biographies associate him with the town of Toršiz, near today’s Kāšmar, where he perhaps went to study in his youth. Based on the statement of ʿAbd-al-Nabi Qazvini that Ẓohuri died at the age of 82 ( Mayḵāna, p. 364), he was born around 943/1537-38. In his early thirties, Ẓohuri left Khorasan for Yazd,…

Persian literary historian, administrator, and poet of the Qajar period (1800-1871). A version of this article is available in print Volume XII, Fascicle 2, pp. 119-121 HEDĀYAT, REŻĀQOLI KHAN, Persian literary historian, administrator, and poet of the Qajar period (b. Tehran, 15 Moḥarram 1215/8 June 1800; d. Tehran, 10 Rabiʿ II 1288/29 June 1871). He came from a prominent family which traced its lineage back to Kemāl-e Ḵojandi, the well-known lyric poet of the 8th/14th century. His father, Moḥammad-Hādi Khan, served in the…

chronogram poem, a poetic genre characterized by the inclusion of the year in which an event occurred. MĀDDA TĀRIḴ (plural mawādd-e tawāriḵ, also known simply as tāriḵ or tawāriḵ), chronogram poem, a poetic genre characterized by the inclusion of the year in which an event occurred. Since the beginning of the classical tradition, Persian poets have used various devices to mark significant dates in their works. The earliest and simplest method was to versify the year in lexical form. Kesāʾi Marvazi (q.v.), for example, gives the date that “he came into the world” in this way: be siṣad o če…

(ca. 1592-1676), MIRZĀ M0ḤAMMAD ʿALI, celebrated Persian poet of the later Safavid period, was born in Tabriz and died in Isfahan. ṢĀʾEB TABRIZI, Mirzā Moḥammad ʿAli (b. Tabriz, ca. 1000/1592; d. Isfahan, 1086-87/1676), celebrated Persian poet of the later Safavid period. The exact year of Ṣāʾeb’s birth is unknown, but an allusion in one of his ḡazals to turning eighty suggests that he was born sometime in the last decade of the sixteenth century. He was a privileged child of the mercantile elite. His father, Mirzā ʿAbd-al-Raḥim, was a successful mer…

Muḥsīn Fānī Kashmīrī (d. 1081/1670–1) was born into an educated family in Kashmir, in the first decades of the eleventh/seventeenth century. According to Taʾrīkh-i Aʿẓmā (“Aʿẓmā’s history”, by Muḥammad Aʿẓam Dīda-marī, d. 1179/1765–6; Rāshidī, 3:1049), he was distantly related to the famous Kashmiri Ṣūfī poet Yaʿqūb Ṣarfī (d. 1003/1594–5). Fānī cannot have been one of Ṣarfī’s students, as some later sources assert, although he does acknowledge him as a poetic influence and model. An anecdote in the principal source for the poet’s life, Mirʾat al-khayāl (“The mirror of imaginati…

Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad Aflākī ʿĀrifī (d. 761/1360) was a Persian Ṣūfī writer, the author of Manāqib al-ʿārifīn (“Feats of the gnostics”), a biography of the leaders of the Mawlavī Ṣūfī order, including Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī. The origins of Aflākī are uncertain. He may have come from Sarāy, the capital city of the Golden Horde on the Volga River (the Golden Horde was a Mongol, later Turkicised, khānate, 640s–908/1240s–1503, that comprised the northwestern part of the Mongol empire). Aflākī’s father is described “a great man and singular preacher” (Aflākī, Manāqib al-ʿārifīn, 2:931), and, whe…

Badrī Kashmīrī, Badr al-Dīn b. ʿAbd al-Sallām b. Ibrāhīm Ḥusaynī (d. after 1001/1593), was a Persian poet and Ṣūfī. Rarely mentioned by his contemporaries, Badrī provides biographical information and inventories of his literary output in the introductions to several of his surviving works. In 959/1552, he left his home in Kashmir intending to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, but getting no further than Qan-dahar, he turned instead to Central Asia and arrived in Merv the following year. There he was ini…

Mawlānā Maḥmūd ʿĀrifī -yi Harawī (c. 790–853/1388–1449), a Persian poet, was born in Herat and spent his literary career at the court of Shāh Rukh b. Tīmūr (r. 807–50/1405–1447), where his principal patron was the vizier Khwāja Pīr Aḥmad b. Isḥāq (d. 857/1453). ʿĀrifī became known as Salmān-i Thānī (“the second Salmān”) due both to the similarity of his style with that of Salmān Sāwajī (d.778/1376), the panegyrist at the Jalāyirid court, and because of the eye affliction from which both poets suffered. ʿĀrifī's reputation rests largely on Ḥālnāma (“The book of ecstasy”), or, as it …

The forbears of the Indo-Persian poet Abū l-Fayḍ Fayḍī (954–1004/1547–95) migrated from Yemen to Sind and thence to Nagaur, in Rajasthan, where his father, Shaykh Mubārak (d. 1001/1593), was born. As a scholar and teacher, Shaykh Mubārak travelled first to Gujarat and then to Agra, where Fayḍī was born on 5 Shaʿbān 954/20 September 1547 (Fayḍī, Dīwān, 75), the eldest of three sons. Fayḍī received a broad and thorough education under the direction of his father, in fields as diverse as ḥadīth, medicine, poetics, epistolary arts, astronomy, and geomancy. Early in the reign of …

Āṣafī-yi Harawī (d. 923/1517), a Persian poet, was born to a family of prominent Tīmūrid administrators in Herat in 853/1449. He did not distinguish himself in government service, and the vizier and scholar-poet ʿAlīshīr Nawāʾī (d. 906/1501) depicts Āṣafī as an idle, self-indulgent dandy. Āṣafī, nonetheless, had access to the inner circles of the court; he was trained in the art of poetry by the most notable literary figure of the age, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492), and he counted Sulṭān Ḥusa…

Bābā Fighānī Shīrāzī (d. 925/1519) was a Persian poet born in Shiraz around the middle of the ninth/fifteenth century. Like many poets of the period, he came from a family of craftsmen, knife makers by trade. Nothing is known of his early education or his mentors in poetry. He first emerges on the literary scene in Tabriz as a poet of the Āq Quyūnlū dynasty, whose ruler Sulṭān Yaʿqūb (r. 883–96/1478–90) bestowed on him the honorific title bābā shāʿir or bābā al-shuʿarā (lit. “papa poet”) (Sām Mīrzā Ṣafavī, 176). Fighānī composed a ceremonial ode (qaṣīda) in praise of Sulṭān Yaʿqūb (Fighā…

Khwāja Zayn al-Ābidīn ʿAlī ʿAbdī Shīrāzī (921–88/1515–80 or 1581), known as ʿAbdī Beg or Nowīdī, was a Persian poet, historian, and administrator. 1. Life and times Contemporaries left few records of ʿAbdī's life and works, and after his death, he virtually disappeared from literary history. ʿAbdī himself, however, made numerous autobiographical asides in the course of his own writings, and as his literary legacy has been recovered in recent decades, his editors (A. Raḥīmūf , ed., Majnūn va Laylī, iii–xvi, and ʿA. Nawāʾī, ed., in ʿAbdī Bayg, Takmilat al-akhbar, 9–12) have assembled…

ʿAbd al-Nabī Qazvīnī Fakhr al-Zamānī (b. 988/1580, d. after 1041/1631–2) was a Persian anthologist, biographer, storyteller, and poet. ʿAbd al-Nabī’s father, Khalaf Bayg (d. 1001/1592–3), was a merchant in Qazvīn but retired to a life of religious devotion after a pilgrimage to Mecca. ʿAbd al-Nabī, however, took his literary aspirations and honorific, Fakhr al-Zamānī, from his highly cultured maternal grandfather, Fakhr al-Zamān, who served as a judge in Qazvīn during the reign of Tahmāsp I (r. 93…

Mawlānā Muḥammad Ahlī-yi Shīrāzī (858–942/1454–1535 or 1536) was a Persian poet who was born and died in Shiraz, where he was buried near the tomb of his great literary predecessor, Ḥāfiẓ (d. 792/1390). Reports of later biographers and some modern scholars that Ahlī travelled widely appear to be unfounded. His earliest biographer, Sām Mīrzā (d. 974/1566–7), states that the poet's “poverty and scant dealings with worldly people” were too well-known to merit mention (177). Most of Ahlī's qaṣīdas (panegyrics) were dedicated to representatives of dynasties based in western P…

Asīr -i Shahristānī (or Iṣfahānī), Mīr Jalāl Muḥammad (c. 1029–58/1620–48), was a Persian poet of the Ṣafavid era (907–1135/1501–1722). Born in Isfahan into a family of prominent sayyids (persons claiming descent from Muḥammad) from Shahristān, a district east of the city, his family's high social position was cemented by his marriage to a daughter of Shāh ʿAbbās I (r. 995–1038/1587–1629), Malik Nisāʾ Begum, and Asīr's home became a centre of Isfahan's lively literary scene. He was a student of the poet Faṣīḥī Harawī (d. …

Abū l-Qāsim Amrī-yi Shīrāzī (d. 999/1590 or 1591) was a Persian poet and an occultist, most of whose work has been lost. Amrī was born into a family of landholders in the village of Kūhpāya near Isfahan. He began his poetic career during the reign of Shāh Ṭahmāsp (r. 930–84/1524–76) and apparently had access to court circles through his elder brother, the calligrapher Mawlānā Abū Turāb. In addition to his literary talents, Amrī was also proficient in occult sciences (ʿulūm-i gharība), such as numerology (ʿilm-i aʿdād), and the “secrets of the points” (asrār-i nuqta), associated with the…

Badr Shīrvānī (789–854/1387–1450) was a Persian poet who spent most of his career in Azerbaijan as a panegyrist at the court of the Shīrvān Shāhs (fl. mid-ninth to mid-sixteenth centuries). He was born in Azerbaijan, in the city of Shamākhī, the capital city of the Shīrvān Shāh dynasty. His father, Ḥājjī Shams al-Dīn, was apparently wealthy but paid scant attention to his son after the death of his birth mother. By his own account, Badr was precocious and began writing poetry at the age of ten or…

Ghazālī Mashhadī (d. 980/1572) was born in Mashhad in 930/1524 (Gulchīn-Maʿānī, 2:933) or 933/1527 (Ghazālī, Dīvān, xiii), received his education and poetic training in Mashhad, and apparently built his literary reputation by trading invectives with a certain Nūrī Dandānī. In his youth, he travelled to Qazvīn, where he joined the court of the Ṣafavid king Shāh Tahmāsp I (r. 930–84/1524–76). In 958/1551, the king dispatched Ghazālī to Shiraz to write verses mocking Khwāja Mīr Bayk Kujajī (d. 984/1576), whom Tahmāsp had confined, to prevent him from performing magic t…

Muḥammad Ṭāhir Ghanī Kashmīrī (d. 1079/1668–9), known by his pen-name “Ghanī”, is perhaps the most celebrated Persian poet of Kashmir, but there is little reliable information about his life. He is sometimes associated with the Ashāʾī clan, which arrived in Kashmir with the Ṣūfī shaykh ʿAlī Hamadānī (d. 786/1385), in the eighth/fourteenth century. Ghanī was probably born in or near Srinagar and spent most of his life there, apart from a journey to Hind (northern India), to which he alludes in several verses. Although he composed a chronog…

ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN NUR-AL-DIN b. Neẓām-al-Din Aḥmad-e Dašti, Persian poet, scholar, and Sufi (1414-1492). A version of this article is available in print Volume XIV, Fascicle 5, pp. 469-482 JĀMI, ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN NUR-AL-DIN b. Neẓām-al-Din Aḥmad-e Dašti, Persian poet, scholar, and Sufi of the 15th century (b. Ḵarjerd-e Jām, November 7, 1414/d. Herat, November 9, 1492). For a music sample, see Ḥazin. For a music sample, see Ḥeṣār - part 2. JĀMI i. Life and Works LIFE Though born in the hamlet of Ḵarjerd, Jāmi would take his penname from the nearby village of Jām (lying about…